[harikb]

Those factors can change. Currently charging at night at home is cheaper today, only because power company makes it so. Ideally cars should charge when the sun is up, in day time. If they were self driving, it could charge while we work. Don’t assume everyone work place will become a gas station

[dunmalg]

>charging at night at home is cheaper today, only because power company makes it so.

They make it so because there's excess capacity at night, when most everyone is asleep. This is not an arbitrary decision.

>Ideally cars should charge when the sun is up, in day time

That's not even remotely true. Someday MAYBE, if massive solar deployment shifts our excess capacity from night to daytime, but that's certainly not the case right now.

[barry-cotter]

> Ideally cars should charge when the sun is up, in day time. If they were self driving, it could charge while we work.

Ideally cars should charge during times when energy is cheaper. This could be at times of lower consumer demand, like at night or at times when prices are cheaper because variable and barely off at all controllable renewables are dumping power into the grid, like when it’s especially sunny or windy.

[Nasrudith]

Wind apparently produces more at night. I guess it makes sense given thermal cycling. Sun goes down and locally cools producing a temperature differential which makes wind more night-biased and a good solar complement.

Which suggests favoring the time based on whatever the "grid-time-bias" has cheaper.

[gruez]

>Currently charging at night at home is cheaper today, only because power company makes it so. Ideally cars should charge when the sun is up, in day time.

Power's cheaper at night because demand's lower. The sun being out during daytime does make more solar power available, but there's also higher demand because everyone's awake. Unless there's evidence to the contrary, I'm inclined to believe that night power is cheaper because of pure market forces, rather than being dictated by the power company.

[tjoff]

We are a long long way from that.

And even if so driverless cars won't give them any other business, as well as drastically alter the desired locations of the stations.