[Zanni]

Yeah, this is closing the gap in a significant way. It's still not "charge on the way to work" fast, but it wouldn't be a painful delay on the way home. More important, it's an improvement. I still switch back and forth between my Model S and an ICE car--I can't remember a time when the gas station experience ever got better.

[atq2119]

One of the big benefits of electric in my view is that you can just let it charge overnight in your own garage. There's simply no need to charge on the way to work. (Yeah, this only works if you do have a garage, but that covers a lot of people.)

[rcMgD2BwE72F]

>There's simply no need to charge on the way to work

Why not simply charge at work?

It makes little sense to charge on route vs at destination; unless your commute is longer than your battery range, but you would probably not have purchased an EV.

[atq2119]

Yeah, in many ways that would make more sense. For one thing, the sun is likelier to shine during the day, so PV electricity can go into your car.

Unfortunately, the practical reality is that at home you're likely to have a garage where you can charge (though I'm of course aware that many people don't!) while at work your car is likely to be in a large parking lot without outlets.

The logical conclusion is that we should invest in widespread outlet infrastructure in pretty much all parking lots. We're just not there yet, which is why I phrased my first comment in the way I did.

[rypskar]

Body panels made of solar-cells would be nice, combined with charging from stations or at home when there is not enough sun. Is probably not doable with current technology, but maybe some day

[Klathmon]

Aren't solar-cells on the car like multiple magnitudes less power than regular level 2 chargers?

There was a lot of talk about why Tesla wasn't putting solar panels on the cars when the Model S was still new, and I thought the general consensus was it would need crazy amounts of time in direct sunlight to even make any kind of significant impact on the charge.

I mean just look at this announcement. They are talking about 250kW charge rates at peak for SuperCharging V3, and at those charge rates you'd get 75 miles of range in 5 minutes. A solar panel about the size of the car would put out maybe around 250w (give or take a lot, it's been a few years since i looked into what they can put out). Some extremely inaccurate napkin math would put it at less than a mile per hour of charge while in direct sunlight. It's just not worth it (in my opinion) in almost all cases, and probably won't be for a LONG time.

[dogsgobork]

A regular solar panel is a large flat area that's oriented to maximize solar exposure. Solar cells on a car wouldn't capture nearly as efficiently. You'd be much better off spending the money on traditional PV than on putting cells on cars.

[rypskar]

And that is why I did write "Is probably not doable with current technology, but maybe some day". We need to have much more efficient solar-cells to make this work in real life. But is it more unrealistic than getting charged from the road while driving? One step on the way is getting them enough efficient to charge the car while it is parked outside at work

[clouddrover]

Already done:

https://electrek.co/2019/03/04/sono-sion-electric-car-solar-...

[tsukikage]

You're guaranteed a hassle-free charging spot at home, but elsewhere it's very likely there are fewer charging spots than vehicles wanting to use them, and/or the charging spots and day-long parking places are separate and you have to go move the car once charged.

[Ntrails]

The difference between 90 seconds to fill up and 3 minutes to fill up is negligible. The appetite for improvement isn't there because the marginal is small.

The difference between 3 minutes and 20 minutes is still enormous. Pretending for a minute that superchargers were as common as petrol stations, that there were never queues and you always started charging immediately. I would still not consider that a reasonable time to spend waiting around so I can finish a journey.

I agree it's a huge improvement, but it doesn't get close to making the gap insignificant

[vsl]

It also depends on where and how you drive, park etc.

To me, the difference between filling up on gas and 20 minutes on a Supercharger not only isn't enormous, but literally doesn't matter. But that's because I charge at home, usually drive only around the city and when I go on a trip where I need to supercharge, it's a few hours between chargers and by that time I need to take a ~20 mins break for coffee anyway.

If I had to use them to charge, yep, 20 mins would be enormous.

[zhoujianfu]

When they added credit card readers to all the pumps?

[SmellyGeekBoy]

My local Shell station recently switched from card readers to an app and QR codes. No thanks. If I'm really desperate I'll fill up there and go inside to pay (maybe 3 times in the past year), otherwise I now go out of my way to fill up elsewhere.

[1stranger]

At least your card can't get skimmed that way. Of course contactless would be the ideal.