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by jader201 253 days ago
Not disagreeing re: the impact of tariffs.

But our problems started before tariffs. If you look at the graph in the article, things started diverging around 2018. You can see all other countries taking off, leaving the US in the dust.

And the (small) US increase dropped even more around 2023.

But we were already behind.

EV infrastructure is terrible. I've been hoping to trade our second vehicle (that is ICE) in for an EV, so that both our vehicles are EV.

But until the infrastructure improves, we have no choice but to hold onto at least one ICE vehicle for anything longer than a daily commute.

And US makers can't sell EVs when most Americans are still dealing with range anxiety due to lack of infrastructure.
1 comments
fragmede 253 days ago
Needing an app for every different charger's owner is terrible. They're shooting their own feet with that one. It should be as simple as a gas station. Drive up, swipe credit card, and pump watts. (To their credit, some of them are now.) What I think is a bigger problem though is that the non-Tesla options just aren't well integrated. Tesla doesn't let you use Android/Apple integration, and they have their own navigation . This is annoying to some, but their built in navigation accounts for the battery level. It tells you how much charge you've got, how much you'll have when you get there, and if it's not enough, it guides you towards all possible charging options along your route, and, knowing that, preconditions the battery for being charged when you get to the charger. This makes what infrastructure there is, way more useful. Because charging takes longer and is more sparse than gas stations, it's a necessary integration. My limited experience with non-tesla EVs says they don't have that level of integration, which is a whole problem, but I'd love to hear other's experiences there.
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jader201 253 days ago
Yeah, 100% to this too. My wife won't even charge our EV away from home due to the issues we've run into with the various apps.

Not only are they all different, they sometimes just fail. And this is sometimes an app issue, but it's also often a charger issue. We had to literally drive an hour away, with only about 15% remaining, to get to a working charger one time, because we couldn't get either of the two chargers working at the place we often stop by.

Not only was that a big inconvenience, it was stressful not knowing whether we had enough charge to make it to our backup. If we didn't have a backup close enough, I'm not sure what we would've done.

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jjav 252 days ago
The obsession with apps is a huge problem with all these.

It needs to be as easy as a gas station. Pull up, plug in, tap credit card, done.

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rsynnott 252 days ago
> Needing an app for every different charger's owner is terrible. They're shooting their own feet with that one. It should be as simple as a gas station. Drive up, swipe credit card, and pump watts.

The EU now requires that for all new chargers installed. Like, this is a problem easily solved with regulation.

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fragmede 252 days ago
What? Government can be used to help ordinary consumers like me? Are you sure that isn't, like, communism or something?
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