[godelski]

I'm sure the infrastructure will evolve over time but it currently seems like a good stop-gap. Makes dual use of current infrastructure in a transitionary period. EV adoption is still quite low. But I won't be surprised if when it increases we see the infrastructure change a lot. Like movie theaters offering deals for EV parking or far more charging stations at malls and big stores like wallmart and costco. But what to do on interstate seems like the interesting one. Do we see more casinos pop up? What entertainment or time expending industries will pop up to fill the time for people stopped in the middle of nowhere.

[Thlom]

In Norway there’s a few charges at every mall and parking garages, a lot of grocery stores also have charges in the parking lot. Many of the gas station chains have started to adapt by installing charging stations and remaking the store inside to more of a fast food shop/coffee shop with a few tables and places to sit etc.

If you need to charge on the road then most rest-stops and fast food restaurants along the main roads have charging stations installed.

[godelski]

Yeah these same things exist in most American cities, especially in the West. But a big difference in America is the population density. America is almost all empty. Yeah, Europe has a lot of sparse areas, but remember that the landmass of America (contiguous) is 8e6 km^2 while Europe is 10e6 km^2 while US has that between 350m people and Europe between 750m people. Lose 4e6km2 and 143m people if you want to remove Russia (which itself is sparse, a bit more than the US). I'm saying this because what happens in the US around transportation infrastructure is going to be __substantially__ different than what happens in Europe. There's always people saying "well Europe does X why can't the US" but you can't drive for 10hrs in Europe without passing through a major city while you can do that in just Texas[0]

That's why I specified the middle of nowhere ones as the "interesting" ones. The mall one, like Norway, was explicitly stated.

US: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_population_map.png

Norway: https://popdensitymap.ucoz.ru/news/174_population_density_ad...

Germany: https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/624149000030978048/g...

Europe: https://citymonitor.ai/environment/these-maps-reveal-truth-a...

[0] Play around, you'll find constant 8hr+ drives between "major" cities. Cities which aren't very large, especially in middle America https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Dallas/Las+Cruces,+NM/@32.24...

[highwaylights]

Is this a real scenario? Most EVs can rapid charge with the right infrastructure in 30-45 minutes. It’s stop and get coffee/stretch legs timeframes, I’m not sure it’s that much of an event.

[godelski]

Adding gas to car: 3-5 minutes

EV: 30-45 minutes

Human attention span: a few tiktok videos

You be the judge. It is literally an order of magnitude longer than filling up with gas (this is actually why some car companies have pursued hydrogen which is also 3-5 minutes).

[Retric]

Also EV: ~0 minutes because you plugged in at home/hotel last night and get to walk away.

No need to drive to a gas station, pay, and watch something flammable for several minutes. Just plug in and go to sleep. Different technologies simply have different trade offs.

Waiting 45 minutes at a charger is also really inefficient. At 350kW a 100kWh car would fully charging in 17 minutes but unfortunately things really slow down above 80% charge, optimum is closer to 10-50%. This makes longer stops wasteful unless you happen to want to stop for something else.

Optimizing for speed it’s ~10 minute stops and fully charging at night thus skipping multiple fueling stops.

[mannykannot]

Indeed, but that is still an order of magnitude slower than adding the same range to a gasoline-powered car. If everyone who, today, refuels along an interstate / motorway / autobahn took 30-45 minutes to do so, I suspect that traffic in the more densely populated areas would grind to a halt.

[Retric]

Parked cars don’t impact traffic. The major difference is presumably the size of parking lots devoted to charging vs pumps, but ant home/work/etc charging offsets quite a bit.

On longer trips the pay/pump/bathroom/grab a soda/hit the road cycle is probably 15 minutes. I expect many businesses focusing on capturing revenue from the captive audience of people waiting 20-30 minutes for their cars to charge.

However, this goes away if we end up with in road charging.

[mannykannot]

I am assuming a large majority who stop to refuel do not park at all, let alone for 20-30 minutes, and there would not be room for them all to do so if they wanted to.

In-road charging would render this article moot, together with the discussion about it.

[godelski]

Tell that to anyone who's been on a roadtrip and visited a busy rest stop. I've definitely seen long times on off-ramps as well as on-ramps for them. Given your "15 minute" time I'd take it you haven't really done a long road trip. As in multiple days of 8+hrs of driving. I did 4 days of 12hrs (split with someone) and that was rough.

[Retric]

I entertain myself on long trips by timing how long things take and 15 minutes is sadly common I’ve seen it take take 25 minutes when the bathroom has a line. Gas stations are much faster day to day when you just want fuel and to hit the road, but after a few hours in the car someone needs to go to the bathroom etc and nobody is racing for the car.

I do know people who try and minimize such stops. They got an extra gas tank and use a piss bottle etc but businesses optimize for the general population not extreme outliers.

[godelski]

> I entertain myself on long trips by timing how long things take and 15 minutes is sadly common

Honestly, seems like you have a bias. If you're timing yourself you're biasing yourself to be faster. So incorporate higher variance into your model and assume you're on the lower end of at least that 1std deviation.

And again, I'm considering a long trip as multi-day 8hr+ driving. Your legs just don't last that long. First day is usually fine. Second if you're seasoned. Beyond that is where it gets real hard.