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by raspberry1337 1303 days ago
In Europe where I live - VW, BMW and Mercedes do not have a reliable system of recharging for longer trips. Why they are not working to create that is beyond me.
4 comments

You don't seem to be across what's happening in Europe. All of the companies you mentioned are invested in Ionity which provides 350 kW chargers at over 400 locations:

https://ionity.eu/en/ionity/who-we-are

Europe has standardized on CCS Type 2 Combo for charging. Any CCS EV can charge on any CCS charging network. Teslas can charge on Ionity, BMWs can charge on Tesla chargers, charging networks like FastNed, BP, GridServe, EnBW, Circle K and friends can charge all brands, etc.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y33AArvMUQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TVohXHjLro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yra3AsicSRY

Ionity is owned exactly by those actors, and seems pretty developed (and developing) to me https://ionity.eu/en/network/network-status
Ironically, the US has a head start on a nationwide EV charging network specifically because VW was a bad faith actor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrify_America#History

VW only did this because they were forced to. It's no mystery why traditional ICE manufacturers would be dragging their feet to modernize.

It is still not that great in the USA. In the Pacific Northwest, if I want to goto Spokane, I have to hope the the Electrify America charging stations in Ellensburg aren't down again. One point of failure doesn't make me feel very comfortable, especially since EA is so flaky (if Tesla opens up there supercharger network, I'll be the first to buy an adapter).

If I want to go down to John Day national monument in eastern Oregon, things are even worse. Things will get better (oh, and we want to do a trip to Anchorage someday...).