Public EV chargers are pretty widespread nowadays. Not as much as gas chargers obviously, but for most people in the country if you don't have a way to charge at home it's not fundamentally that different from not having a gas pump at your house.

Plus, most people can charge at home with an extension cord. It's not particularly fast, but you should be able to get 4-5 miles an hour. In the worst case scenario where you can only charge at home and can only charge for 10 hours overnight, that's still 40 miles of driving which is enough for a lot of commuters. Even if it falls short—again—you can use public chargers.

Lastly, eliminating the sale of ICE cars will be a pretty rapid forcing function on the deployment of EV chargers. Still, I'd be all for locations that ban combustion engines mandating that landlords provide EV charging facilities.

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mattlondon 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Not as much as gas chargers

In the UK at least, there are more EV chargers than gas/petrol stations: https://www.vertumotors.com/news/there-are-more-charging-poi...

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Aachen 2 days ago | parent [-]

Also after you divide the amount of time required? So if an average charging session is 100 minutes and getting petrol is 5 minutes, you'd need 20 times more chargers to break even on availability. And I'm not sure that even works the same when considering that these events are probably bursty (most people will arrive at an energy station at a similar time of day)

In case it sounds like I'm gas station lobby: I'm not against EVs at all and don't own a car, I'm just wondering if this is a fair comparison

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mattlondon 2 days ago | parent [-]

I don't think it even includes the ones at people's homes where probably "most" charging happens. No one has a gas station at home.

FWIW a fast charge is like 10-15 mins usually while you grab a coffee or something - in modern EV cars you have 100-200kw (or more!) charging where you can get like 400 or 500 miles in an hour, so 15mins gives you 100-125 miles extra range etc. If you time it, filling up a gas tank and going in to pay and all that is not like 40 seconds but more in the 5-10 mins mark, so 15 mins top up on a longer journey is not that much longer than filling up.

It's a bit of a different mentality really - with petrol/gas I'd fill up to the brim then drive until I was almost empty, but with an EV I wake up with a full tank and just do a quick top off here and there during the day (assuming I ever need it which 99% of the time I don't) until I can get home and charge overnight where is way way cheaper.

With petrol I'd never stop to just put in a few litres at a time, but doing it with an EV is so simple and easy, and you can go do something else while it's happening. Picking up some groceries, getting a coffee, bio break etc - perfect time for a top up

	▲	xyzzyz 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Only a tiny fraction of EV chargers are 100+ kW. Most are 10-20 kW. These are great for office parking garages or shopping malls, but stopping at one for 15 minutes gets you nowhere.

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Joel_Mckay 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Popularity has costs, some are waiting in line for 45 minutes to use a fast charger.

EV is not for everyone, but those Rivian are nice though. =3

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BHSPitMonkey 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Walmart has some gigantic amount of sites under construction or in permitting at many of their stores, and many are being built by other operators too. Charging proliferation hasn't slowed down.

	▲	Joel_Mckay 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Indeed, the entire community is paying to upgrade the grid to support that infrastructure. =3

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KennyBlanken 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Well given Rivians rank among the worst EVs in the world efficiency-wise, maybe if you care about not spending your life at charging stations, don't buy a Rivian? Or a Tesla for that matter, since Tesla lies about their efficiency numbers and the real-world numbers are middling at best.

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Joel_Mckay 2 days ago | parent [-]

It is the low temperature performance that make most EV impractical. A Tesla power pack heater means the charge will be completely depleted if left outdoors for more than a week in winter.

EV are meant for people that live in 4'C to 42'C weather, and have excess capacity on their solar installations. Everyone else is getting subsidized by their neighbors paying for excess electrical capacity. =3

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Toutouxc 2 days ago | parent [-]

Someone needs to tell all those people in Norway.

	▲	Joel_Mckay 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		NY and Chicago are a little closer... =3