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by FirmwareBurner
936 days ago
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>Spoiler alert, most chargers were broken or had queues to use Right. At peak season(summer and winter holidays around Christmas and NYE) even gas stations have long ques for gasoline along the popular European highway routes like Austria, Italy, Croatia, etc. meaning a fill up can take 20+ minutes sometimes. I can't imagine what it would be with EV charging spots at those times. You're out of juice, looking for a 30 minute quick charge and there's others already waiting in line for their 30 minute quick charge. You might as well spend the night there because you're getting home today. Range anxiety and the lack of abundant charging infra is still a huge issue for most families when they choose not to go EV yet for their single do-it-all car. It seems to work for Nordics and Benelux countries that have high incomes and invested heavily in infrastructure, but most of the EU is still far behind. |
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There will be a transition period when infrastructure is constrained. That’s true.
But in the long term I think this will be less of an issue than you’d think. Many people can charge at home and at their destination so that’ll reduce the number of people that need to charge along the way. EV batteries are getting bigger and cheaper, and can charge faster.
After we bought a new EV I practically don’t use fast charging anymore, even on our longer trips. If I do, I might just need a 10min top-up to get to our destination. Our old EV that was highly dependent on fast charging is now just used for local trips, so the new EV has reduced the impact on fast chargers.
Since fast chargers are easier to build than gas stations, and better at attracting customers (these days it’s customers with spending power I might add), there’s fast chargers in many more different kinds of locations than gas stations. Like, all the roadside McDonalds here in Norway have fast chargers now.
Some times we’ve also driven to a parking garage with a whole bucketload of slow/AC chargers where we’ve had an hour break, go to a cafe, do some shopping, etc. You can get a decent top-off in that time with a 22kW charger.
There’s just so many more ways of doing charging with EVs.
This is almost a solved problem in Norway already. Some cities are hitting 30-50% EVs on the road. Yes, Norway is wealthy(-ish), but when Norway did much of its roll-out, EVs were worse and more expensive, the fast chargers were worse and more expensive. There was a lot of learning to do that others can now just copy.