A mere 6 fast chargers at 20% utilization would roughly double the electricity needs of a store.

Double.

Not to mention, we haven’t had to increase the capacity of our electric grid in decades (and it’s still falling down regularly), yet getting everyone in EVs quickly would increase the average need by a fair bit.

I did the calculations some time ago, and it was about 43,000 GWh/y for CA (15m cars * .24 KWh/m * 12,000 annual miles). For reference CA has a yearly electricity generation capacity of just under 200k GWH/y.

First I don't think EVs will ever fully replace ICE. There's use cases for gas.

But when I hear about the grid load, I have no pity. Or fear.

Imagine going back to 1800 and describing to an engineer the vast scale of gasoline production, distribution and consumption. Billions of ICEs distributed around the globe. The scale of fuel distribution! The network of trucks. The massive holding tanks. The inshore and offshore refineries. The pipelines and wells. The geopolitics. The strategic reserves, and prodigious tanker fleets. All because we need something everywhere that is only available in a few places.

We can send a rover to Mars for less cost than a prospecting well in the ocean, and there are lots of oil wells in the ocean. Trillions have been spent.

It seems unfathomable to go to such lengths from scratch. To invent and maintain so much, and for what? And we did.

Now imagine all that exists and you just want more. That's not unfathomable. It's just market dynamics. It'll double just fine thanks. It'll more than double.

> It's just market dynamics. It'll double just fine thanks. It'll more than double.

Sure. If you let the market operate. But at least in Sweden we don’t. So we’re stuck in this loop of conflicting requirements: “no greenhouse emissions, no nuclear, no wind farms close to my home, and double the capacity - thanks!” It’s not going to happen.

When you put all this in perspective, it makes sense. Electricity usage will probably tripe or quadruple and I think we can handle that.

But I'm going to miss the sweet petrol and diesel engine cars.

TL;DR: Market forces have been proven to be insufficient to force changes on public utilities.

I agree, nothing technological blocks the grids from growing. But there are plenty of political and profit driven blocks which are preventing it.

To continue with my theme of CA power grid bashing - PG&E is still starting forest fires due to poor quality infrastructure (pushing too much power through lines not rated for it, causing sagging). PG&E does constant rolling blackouts over the summer because of their lacking capacity. PG&E imports about 20% of the electricity that CA requires yearly. They do this because it's cheaper than fixing their infrastructure.

And there's no reason they won't just continue in this fashion in the face of their 2035 electric car replacement deadline. They have a government-created monopoly, and have no reason to build out their capacity.

Rinse and repeat for most states and countries.

But why would a store need fast chargers? 22kW is perfectly enough for any place where you stop for an hour or more.

Fast chargers would require you to leave your shopping cart in the middle of Costco and run back to your car to unplug & move so you don't get idle fees :)

Counter argument: Why would I want to spend an hour in a minimart? The equivalent of gas stations will be required to support long-distance travel. And there are a lot of gas stations out there today.

And I'm guessing you mean 20W, not kW? Fast chargers are 300W as a point of reference.

You really think you can charge a car with a phone charger ? Of course it's 20kW...

You're right, my memory messed that up.

To avoid looking like more of an idiot, I went back and found the official DC Fast Charge levels and wattages (level 3 DC fast charge is up to 350kW, level 2 is up to around 18kW). Which, thankfully, didn't change my conclusions above, I was of a more sound mind when I did those calculations before.

But here they are again.

Level 2, at 18kW, would be around 157,680 kWh/y per charger at full utilization. (18*24*365)

Level 3 would max out at 3,065,000 kWh/y per charger; but it's much more likely to be intermittently used. (350*24*365)

Compare to these commercial building utilization numbers (the units are thousands of kWh/y): https://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/data/2012/c&e/cfm...

There are exactly zero cars on the road today that won't be 100% full from 0.1% battery in under 24 hours when plugged in to a Level 2 charger.

Depending on the car's internal charger (1 or 3 phase) most charge from "towed to charger" empty to absolutely full in well under 10 hours.

Doing it like that is like trying to calculate how many fuel trucks would a gas station need if all its pumps were being run 24/7/365 at full blast. It'll never ever happen.

That's more related to the the calculation from my statement a bit back up the comment tree:

> it was about 43,000 GWh/y for CA (15m cars * .24 KWh/m * 12,000 annual miles). For reference CA has a yearly electricity generation capacity of just under 200k GWH/y.

But the numbers I posted that you're directly referring to are still important, as they indicate the need for improved electrical infrastructure for individual buildings who may want to put in chargers. Your grocery stores, apartments, motels, etc.

If just one 18kW charger can double demand on a motel's power, what happens when you add ten? Twenty?

If you're just grabbing a coffee and protein bar, of course it doesn't make sense.

But I said "Costco" on purpose, it's not a place you just drop in real quick and grab one thing. You're gonna be there for a while. Target is another good reference for US people. Maybe even Ikea.

And yes, it's kilowatts. They're not mobile phone chargers =) The Hyundai Ioniq 5 charges at 350kW, 800 volts.

The US. Since I was posting statistics for CA, I had hoped that was clear. Sorry if it wasn't.

Here's CA, a state well known for its rolling brownouts throughout summer, as an example:

https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...

The logistics of a 15-30 minute charge time at a power station seems harder than a 1.5 to 3 minute gasoline fill, IMO.

Chargers at work. At the grocery store. At your doctors appointment.

Most people spend a significant time with their car sitting somewhere for at least that amount of time.

at least where i am, these either do not have their own parking lots, or have multistory lots where maybe 5 spaces out of dozens are equipped with chargers, and I have no idea how feasible a full retrofit would be.

in the pre-pandemic world they had to implement a queue system for the charging spots, so you couldn't just park your car the whole day in one and had to move it out to let someone else have a turn.

I'm also wondering how this works in areas where it snows. My dad's old apartment in Virginia would routinely get snow in the winter, and his apartment complex had no covered parking. One needed to park in the limited number of spaces in the parking lot or park on the street. Imagine trying to coordinate rotating EV charging while digging your car out of the snow. I'm sure someone will think of a solution, but it's not immediately obvious how one would handle that.

The solution there would be something like a 110V 15A outlet at a large portion of the parking spaces and some method for metering and accounting for the delivered power so it can be charged to the tenant. And if they charge a convenience fee like most apartments do for preferential parking then that financial outlay would become a profit center after it was paid off.

I'm sure it'd be more costly for commercial work but a simple home charger infrastructure installation runs around $1k, and that's for a Level 2 (240V) charger. Although that doesn't account for the supplemental meter equipment costs.

A Level 1 charger can recharge say a Nissan Leaf from empty overnight. A single day's drive is far more likely to be at or below 20% of the capacity which is closer to 2hrs. For the average user that would be just fine.

A small number of time-limited slots with Level 2 charger could be provided for convenience, but even just allowing individuals to charge at Level 1 rates while their cars are parked would likely suffice in at least half the cases.

There seems to be this misconception that every EV will eventually need a dedicated fast charger and needs to charge to full capacity in 5 mins. But the reality is that, for a large portion of the driving population, a car tends to sit in place for large amounts of time and a modern 150mi+ range EV rarely get depleted in a day. A Level 1 charger would be more than enough for those people. Especially with public fast chargers available for those unusual situations where you need more charge very quickly.

For those who need more than that, an EV is truly not an ideal vehicle for them.

I think in general a lot of people "sleep" on how much of a game changer just having Level 1 "chargers" aka "boring wall outlets" everywhere would be.

I also think that thinking of Level 1 as "chargers" and not "boring wall outlets" is a part of the remaining problem. You shouldn't need to bother with the costs for metering and accounting the delivered power at Level 1. Does Starbucks charge you a wall outlet fee to charge your cell phone or laptop? At Level 1 it can just be a "courtesy".

At Level 1 each car is basically the extra draw of one additional old school incandescent light bulb. Who seriously cares to measure that accurately?

You can do a rough math estimate at Level 1 and just add that overhead to your operating expenses per usual. Many places with existing parking fees the added overhead likely is a rounding error compared to the existing parking price. (Same versus apartment rentals or HOA/COA dues.)

Individual outlet metering is expensive and complicates everything, just install boring outlets like we've done for more than a century.

> I think in general a lot of people "sleep" on how much of a game changer just having Level 1 "chargers" aka "boring wall outlets" everywhere would be.

Exactly! So many people fixate on fast charging that they just don't register the magic inherent in your car and home running on the same "fuel".

And having heard from people that cold climates often have outlets like these in place for engine heaters to prevent engine freezes shows that infra for this can easily exist. Though it's probably more investment for 3-7kW capacity at each outlet compared to powering a block heater.

> Does Starbucks charge you a wall outlet fee to charge your cell phone or laptop? At Level 1 it can just be a "courtesy"

Oh I totally agree, but try getting an apartment complex to buy into thousands of dollars in electrical work only to shell out even more money buying "gas" for all their tenants.

My in-law has trouble getting his complex to fix sidewalks let alone do something like installing charging infra and providing electricity. If the $1k estimate was even close for commercial 120v charging infra, you'd still be talking between 10k and 100k in just electrical work.

But that sounds like something that could be easily turned into a market differentiator, so it's not to say it won't happen.

Perhaps tacking on a flat-rate fee to offset costs would be a strong middle ground as well. That concept is something apartments/HOAs are already quite familiar with, what with things like covered parking, garages, and even additional storage space already available as add-on charges in many places.

> Individual outlet metering is expensive and complicates everything, just install boring outlets like we've done for more than a century.

Somewhere in the eventual development of this tech could be something like a complex level charging system where an apartment could meter through the charger, since most modern IoT type chargers track this anyways. That way the infra is still just as simple as a dumb outlet.

> You can do a rough math estimate at Level 1 and just add that overhead to your operating expenses per usual

This pans out at small scale, though I wonder how that pans out in the real world. The sticker shock of running that calculation at "worst case scenario" seems like an issue. With even 100 EVs at worst case using todays numbers (~60kWh capacity per car, $0.15/kWh, full charge daily) that number is nearly $1k per day. Realistically it'll be much lower since that full charge nightly is highly unlikely, but sticker shock is real.

His comment was about snow though. What do you think of that?

Other than the small range decrease because of the cold weather, how does that differ from an ICE car? His comment was about swapping cars at the charger with cars buried in snow, which isn't an issue when you no longer need to swap cars because they are charging at their own spot (per my comment about adding L1 charging to a large portion of the spots).

I guess if you're for some reason running your cabin heating the whole time then I suppose you're reducing your range, but that's solved by not doing that perhaps.

Finland here. Every single car parking spot has had a dedicated 230V 8-16A plug for over 30 years for ICE car block and cabin heaters.

The power grid hasn't melted even though the plugs at the parking spots are on a timer and usually run two hours from 0600 to 0800 so the car is nice and unfrozen when it's time for the daily commute.

Now when we are moving to PHEVs and EVs some people are _very_ worried that an EV using the exact same plug with the exact same load steadily from evening to morning will melt the entire power grid and the local wires and melt the plug. Dunno why.

Street parking is still an issue, but there are solutions for that too. The power could be pulled from street lamps for example.

Some parking spaces may be designed for bursting loads, and the wires actually do heat up if used continuously. They may still need upgrades for EVs, but overall should be only a modest cost.

When it's -25C outside the wires heating up isn't really an issue, it's more of a bonus feature :D

But yea, the cabling needs to be checked by an actual electrician and they'll determine how many cars can be charged in the ye olde block heater system without melting any wires or tripping fuses.

The 1980's stuff can usually handle 8A continuous loads. They changed the standard some time in the mid 90s, those can handle multiple cars at 10-16A continuous depending on the main fuse.

Anything above that and you'll need to overhaul the whole field and people usually go for Level 2 capable cabling if they need to break ground for cabling anyway.

I'm kinda joking but can the solution be a... Roof? (Like, over the parking lot, place to install solar panels or just a simply a roof from elements?)

Of course, this would probably (?) be a bit absurd for street parking, that's true.

Also expensive, to provide a roof that’s able to withstand snow and solar panels.

The roof doesn't need to "withstand" snow. It just needs to be sloped enough for it to fall down.

Source: My dad has his hobby car in a glorified tent during winter, works just fine, the roof is in a 45 degree-ish slant so any snow just falls off.

45° wouldn't work well with any overhangs which are not facing south - not when the goals is to put solar panels on them.

And I, every winter, see snow clinging to 45° roofs quite often. Slightly wet snow (also the heaviest snow) can even stick to vertical surfaces.

45° would also make an overhang more susceptible to wind forces, acting like a sail.

Could be. But why would they do that?

Over 80% of Americans live in a single family home.

I already faced this in 2016, living in Philadelphia, lucky to have parking at the apartment and two EV chargers. Back then there were no other EVs at the apartment complex to coordinate charging shifts with.

Methinks the number of stations will organically grow with the predicted amount of EVs an apartment will have parking on site. That’s how it started for me in 2015-2016!

Well, yeah, because demand is still relatively low. Availability like that would change if/when EVs are more widely adopted.

> Chargers at work. At the grocery store. At your doctors appointment.

This doesn't work in cities. None of those places have parking lots.

And don't say "chargers on all the curbs" because we can't afford to further entrench car supremacy and make it harder to reallocate space to bus lanes and pedestrians.

> This doesn't work in cities. None of those places have parking lots.

Put the chargers where the cars are parking. With vanishingly few exceptions, they're all parking somewhere.

I'm all for a less car-centric society, but it's gonna be easier to reach that future if we address climate change a bit on the way.

> Put the chargers where the cars are parking.

That would really be doubling down on the high cost of free parking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking

I'm of the opinion the cost of climate change is likely to exceed the cost of free parking.

Great, so replace all the ICE parking lanes with electric bus rapid transit lanes. It will do much more for climate change than car chargers.

Edit: Should have mentioned the climate change is one of the biggest components of the cost of free parking. Without all the government-mandated parking spaces for the past 60 years, there would be far fewer cars today. It's not too late to reverse that.

Then the power source of for cars needs to be more available than what you're suggesting.

If addressing climate change is the goal, existing vehicles can be converted over to methanol far more cheaply than buying a whole new vehicle. Methanol can be made carbon neutrally, or carbon negatively, and will power the next generation of cargo ships.

>This doesn't work in cities. None of those places have parking lots.

Where so they park? Put chargers there, then.

Your car will drop you off at work and drive itself to the nearest parking lot/charger.

It will also fly so no need for roads anymore, just green fields everywhere.

At work? For those lucky enough to have chargers at work, good luck when fighting for one. Also, I really hope the world keep shifting towards remote working; I won’t drive to the office just to charge my car.

You have it backwards.

Put chargers where people park cars. Don’t awkwardly drive to a random place to charge.

For 75%? Of people that can be at home. For others work. For others the grocery store.

Most cars parked at "home" dont have access to a charger.

Most? In what country?

The UK for one, and I dare say most of Europe. Our nations are vastly older than the US and were not purpose built for cars. Many here have on street parking, you can't dangle a cable from your house to your car (which may not be outside of your house).

There's been arguments about putting them on lamp posts - ok, but again, cables. 1 lamp post for ~10 cars doesnt really work.

Plucking a random average UK street off of Google maps - figure out how you charge cars at 6pm when everyones home from work and this road is full of cars on both sides of the street: https://www.google.com/maps/@53.4257624,-2.9412328,3a,60y,22...

>you can't dangle a cable from your house to your car (which may not be outside of your house).

That must vary between countries, because I've seen tons of outlets on the outside walls of homes in Finland. They need a weatherproof extension cord, but it comes in handy for a lot of tools. Though most homes have at least a driveway, cars are generally shorter than homes, so they fit close by.

The cost of free parking and where to park should really be reconsidered in cities though, as with your image, those exist here as well and are really bad places to drive in. IIRC in Japan they require people to prove a car has it's own dedicated parking space before they're allowed to get a car

Requiring you to provide a dedicated parking space would be a non starter in the UK. There's just no land for that. Your dedicated parking space would end up being miles away from your home.

The issue as shown in the streetview image is that those are public footpaths next to the houses. If you tried dangling a cable from your home to your car (if you were lucky enough to get a spot outside your house) you'd very quickly be in a lot of trouble when someone trips over it.

This is false. In the UK most homes have a driveway, so fitting a charger is a no brainer.

Many do - and for those of course they can fit a charger. Terrace houses in major cities often do not have any form of allocated parking, it's all on-street. You'd be sued pretty quickly if you dangled a cable across a public footpath and someone tripped over.

Not seeing anyone coming up with a way to solve that pretty important issue.

We already manage electrically powered machines for the purpose of lighting the streets at night and for parking meters. Extending those to provide power to EVs isn’t too far fetched. https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/electric-vehicles-and-rapid...

Assuming they meant access to a L2 charger at home, every country? Sure L2 chargers can be installed, but in a lot of cases it requires upgrading the electrical service and replacing the electrical panel which isn't a home improvement project most car buyers are looking to undertake.

Which is why GM has an ongoing incentive program to try to alleviate that problem: https://www.chevrolet.com/electric/living-electric/home-char...

> The electrical panel must have 40 amps of spare ampacity according to the load calculation for the new breaker

This is where the incentive program breaks down and the 4- or 5-figure electrician quotes start for a lot of houses that were built in a time and place where natural gas powered all of the heavy appliances and panels were sized for 60- or 100-amp service.

Yes the chargers will just magically appear everywhere for free.

The chargers aren't that expensive. Mine was 300€ + 2 hours of installation by an electrician.

Fancier Level 2 ones with Wifi and shit are up to 1k€.

True, but ideally we'd reduce land that's allotted to simply parking a car long-term, instead of turning a single gas station into something like 250 parking spaces spread out around town.

There are just certain sections of the country where you'd either have to turn half of the streetlamps into a chargers (maybe a good idea?)...or make a modular battery swap gas station scheme....or stick with ICE.

The point isn't to add new parking spots for EV charging - it's to making charging available at places you normally park anyway.

A trip to the grocery store takes 30-45 minutes. If even 20% of the existing spots had a charger (even a modest rate charge), you'll get quite a bit of charge. Or if 20% of the parking spots at your workplace had chargers, you could leave it on the charger all day one day a week and charge very slowly (which as a bonus, low-rate chargers should be easier to provision than superchargers).

You'd never have to visit a "gas" station. You'd charge at home, at work, everywhere the car parks. Every parking lot in every building will be a charging station. You plug in your car wherever you are, and get a bill from the electricity company at the end of the month. Just park the car, and the lot will charge your batteries for you.

Yeah, the issue is that you'll either have to install chargers every 10 feet in almost every city, or come up with some scheme to swap batteries, or have more "gas" stations because the charge time is longer.

My town has on average 1 car per household, but I'd guess like 0.25 off street spots per household. That's a lot of infrastructure on public land.

> Yeah, the issue is that you'll either have to install chargers every 10 feet in almost every city

It's just an electrical outlet. There are dozens of them for every parking spot already, in the house/office/building. Adding an extra electrical outlet isn't hard for a homeowner/lot-owner to do. This isn't going to have to happen overnight. It will happen slowly over two decades.

I think we're talking about completely different areas. There aren't any electrical outlets on any of the parking meters or utility polls in my city or the surrounded city, and it's illegal to run an extension cord from, say, your 3rd story window, down the side of the building, across the sidewalk, to the street.

Regardless though, you're correct that it will take decades, but I think that this is one reason why a CEO wouldn't be all in. If it's going to take 25 years for a large chunk of customers to buy an EV, you still have a lot of cars to sell that are ICE.

So instead of building some gas stations here and there we just install hundreds of thousands charging stations on private and public property across a metro?

It's not a "charging station", it's an electrical outlet. Your house probably has a couple dozen of them, they're cheap and easy to install. In cold regions, most parking spots already have one so people can plug in their block heater. That's proof by example that it can be done.

You need to change your view of a "charging station". It's not the huge fridge sized thing that says "Electrify America" or something on it.

It's just a normal plug, maybe with some components related to metering and billing included. Load balancing if you want to be fancy.

Charging anywhere but home absolutely ruins EV economics. It’s almost impossible to make an economic argument to buy an EV in 2022, but it’s outright impossible to make that argument without fuel savings.

It actually doesn’t. If you bought an EV and just used L3 chargers to fill it, you would still come out far ahead given the current price of gas, at least where I live.

But I generally agree: unless you drive a lot and can charge at home (or at work, or both), you aren’t going to get very far ahead with an EV (and lots of L3 charging supposedly strains the battery). But they are also really fun to drive, so it might still make sense for some people to get them even if they aren’t going to be saving money.

Hard disagree. It’s definitely area dependent but in New York for me it’s a 8-12 year ROI depending on fuel prices and energy prices. This is me comparing a CRV and a Model Y. If I swap out my energy savings and charge exclusively not at home the ROI horizon goes to infinity.

5 years ago, the most common EV on the road only went 84 miles to a charge and couldn't charge faster than about 45 kW. Today, you can get EVs with 500 mile ranges and charge at over 300 kW. By the mid-2030s when EVs are supposed to be the only thing on new car lots, they'll probably take less time to charge than pumping gas did.

There's also no reason cars really need to charge that fast. Most people park their cars for hours at a time, either at home or work or a store.

Imagine if every parking spot in an apartment had a slow charger that could charge your car overnight. Simply plug in and activate and it properly charges your apartment.

And now your employer makes it a free perk, or teams up with the electric co. so that you could do the same at work and get charged market rates directly.

Perhaps malls or larger stores provide a similar slow charger without the insane upcharge of Level 2 chargers. Heck, imagine something similar to parking validation. If you make purchases at the store or see a movie or whatever, then you get a code to "validate" your charging so you get the cost (or a portion) waived.

With infrastructure like that, then you only need fast chargers when you travel long distances, such as between states or cities.

This is the way.

People need to get over their mental view of "refueling" being a thing you do when your tank is almost empty and then you fill it to the brim.

It's perfectly workable to charge 50km of range while you're at the grocery store, maybe 100km while you're at work and another 100-150km overnight at home.

I've got a 230V/12A capable plug on my parking spot and I don't bother to plug in every night. A full charge would take around ~18 hours (10% to 100%), but my daily drives rarely take me under 50% and I don't charge to a 100% because the manufacturer recommendation is to keep the car at 80% unless you're going for a longer trip.

The only time I visit a fast charger is when I go see my family, who live a bit beyond my car's comfortable max range. I stop half way for 20 minutes to top up a bit from a 50kW charger (old car, slow charging =) ) and grab some food from the local shop while I'm at it. I don't need to charge to a 100% during the stop, 15-20% of charge is perfectly enough to get me to my destination - where I have a 230V/10A plug to charge overnight.

Seems like a pain, having to top your car up all the time like an old phone. Prefer one 5 min stop a fortnight to fill the tank up, until an EV can do similar they will remain a niche product.

It takes me literally under 20 seconds to plug in my car at home. Get out of car, walk to the back of the car, grab Type 2 cable from wall holder, poke charge port to open, plug in. Do the reverse when I leave.

That's it, I don't need to drive 5-10 minutes to tank up.

And given that my daily driving is well under 50km, I don't even need to plug in every night at home, maybe 2-3 times per week.

Also it costs me 2,25€/100km to drive. With our current prices (~2€/litre) it's the equivalent of a car that does 1.1l/100km. I'm willing to spend the extra 30 minutes to drive back home when I'm saving 50€+.

I assume many (most?) cities have the same rules as mine and you aren't allowed to run an extension cord from your house, across the sidewalk, to the street.

You're commiting the sin of assuming your workload is representative of everyone else's.

You do you, but it doesn't tend to make you many friends. Then there's the old diddy of "to Assume is to make an Ass of U & Me".

If you haven't actually sampled a sufficiently diverse set of people's travel use cases, making statements such as yours is at best ill informed and disingenuous.

And you're making the assumption that everyone has to have the same type of vehicle. There's nothing to say that the person who needs to drive 100-200mi per day needs to be using an EV. Even then, those people would likely still be fine with a Level 2 charger provided they can plug in overnight.

As for the diverse set of travel, the various DMVs and highway safety groups have done that for us. The average daily drive is under 40mi. When talking about core infrastructure here, assuming a daily drive of 40mi and basing the average charging infrastructure around would go a long way.

If EVs don't fit your life, then don't buy one. Though most people thing they drive much more often than they do, and fixate way to much on this once per week "fillup" charge idea when the daily partial charge is far more viable for the average driver.

Might seem that way, but after switching to an EV I'd never go back. Going to a gas station is a real annoyance, now I just spend 5 seconds plugging my car in whenever it gets below half.

You're comparing the most common EV on the road five years ago with the longest-range option available today. What you're saying could be true even if EVs hadn't advanced at all!

Am I computing this correctly? Assuming charger is at 120V, P = VI -> I = 300*1000/120 = 2500 Amps? That's a lot of juice...

EVs "quick charge" at 350-1000V. The charging stations today typically go up to 350 amps.

Interesting, wonder what the hard limits on voltage are? 350 amps @ 1000V must have one hell of a cord! Would be interesting to see what this station looks like.

Type "Electrify America" into Google and hit the images tab. The majority of their 788 sites include one or more 350 kW stations. The cords are probably over an inch thick, I've never measured, but no thicker than a fuel hose for a gas pump. They're liquid cooled to carry that current without overheating.

What EV has 500mile range?

Lucid Air. Dream Edition trim is EPA rated over 500 miles, and achieved over 500 miles in Edmunds' real-world range testing. It's also the car that charges the fastest, I believe.

1.5 to 3 min gasoline fill is trivial. 15 minute EV charge is not. It's also a long time to wait in terms of the logistics of queuing people.

EV is kinda limited to out and back trips. Which is a lot of the need (commuting), to be fair. Recharging on the go will always be worse compared to ICE.

Road trip stop time with gasoline car: 3 minutes to fill + 15 minutes to go to the bathroom and buy a coffee.

With an EV car: 15 minutes to go to the bathroom and buy a coffee, done in parallel with the charge.

Time spent filling a gasoline car in your home city: 5 minutes 3x a month = 3 hours / year.

Time spent filling an EV at home: 5 seconds 3x a week = 3 minutes / year.

I really need to see videos of people doing these mythical 90 second gasoline fills on long road trips.

Do you practice it like you're at NASCAR or F1? How do you manage bathroom breaks? Bottles or catheters for everyone?

The point is more that if you want to drive like that, you can. My partner and I will typically stop for five to ten minutes to fill up, take a quick toilet break, and then get back on the road. We'll eat in the car, because we're trying to get somewhere. And that time adds up. In this video [1], Engineering Explained spends 8 hours charging, a bit over 20% of his total trip time. That's staggering; it's effectively a whole day, and could mean the difference between staying in a hotel overnight, and sleeping in your own bed.

BEVs are fine for many people, but I don't think Toyota is wrong in their assessment. Requirements typically aren't set at the mean, they're set at the extreme. I know people who had to make emergency trips during COVID that wouldn't have been possible in a BEV. Hell, I went on a work trip with some colleagues the other day and we had to use my car, because my coworker's BEV wouldn't have made the distance back.

The reality is that a BEV isn't a one-to-one replacement for an ICEV, and ICEVs are still superior for the "non-average" use case. I'll think about getting a BEV if they're ever able to compete at Le Mans.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UskzfQJt2Bc

And there are dozens of youtubers doing 1000km+ trips with maybe a hour extra compared to ICE - while saving hundreds compared to gas/diesel.

The US charging infrastructure is really bad outside of few major thoroughfares.

Please share them, then. For example, here's another video of Engineering with Rosie [1]; 4 hours spent charging on an ordinarily 8 hour trip after a mishap. I've driven those roads, and her trips are consistently 1-2 hours longer than an equivalent ICEV. So no, I don't buy that the performance is anywhere close to ICEVs for longer trips, and reliable charging is absolutely an issue.

Secondly, You aren't saving hundreds when using fast charging; in many places you're doing roughly the same cost wise, for a worse experience [2]. Here's a reddit comparison from a year ago versus a hybrid, which came out to be more expensive [3]. It's fair to say that if you're just charging it at home and using it as a commuter, then yeah, you're coming out ahead on fuel costs, but as I mentioned above, you just can't do some things as well as a normal car, and sometimes that really matters.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0cK582iqnY [2] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Tesla-charging-costs-equal-fue... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/jrwet6/road_tr...

Here's TeslaBjörn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_04rk3lIFcM&list=PLqKx2qnB8X...

He's done a 1000km trip on almost a hundred different EVs in Norway. Very few have any major issues.

A car that's fully fueled when you leave your home is even simpler.

Damn, you must be rich I suspect? With your fancy garage and all that. In the last 14 years of my life, I have not had a place to charge my battery at home. Only at work, but it’s practically a territory battle for the few EV spots there are…

And some apartment and office space owners outright refuse to add chargers. With all that copper, they’re outright magnets for thieves.

Underrated comment.

Not sure where you grew up but garages are standard in much of the US, minus dense urban centers.

The entire Bay Area is less than 50% homeowners. The suburbs are full of low-rise apartments with street parking or asphalt lots with no power and no security. It’s not impossible to put in four million public chargers, but we’ve barely started.

> Power delivery exists more places than gasoline delivery.

This doesnt address the point that lots of people dont have access to this. Particularly in late cities.