[toomuchtodo]

More than 60 million Americans own a home with a garage (where a charger can be installed) and most are within 100 miles of a fast DC charger. Edge cases continue to shrink and be solved for, electricity is ubiquitous and batteries keep improving rapidly.

[extra88]

I think proportion is more useful that quantity. 66% of housing units (that's all forms of housing, not just single-family homes) have a garage or carport. Also, given that there are ~145 million housing units, 60 million would be a bad situation.

> most are within 100 miles of a fast DC charger

That's not good enough. No one can spend 3-4 hours to drive 200 miles round trip, or even 100 miles, to charge quickly.

There needs to be a good solution for the 33% of households that don't have access to EV charging as part of their home. Until it becomes really plentiful, part of the solution may involve fast charging that only the 33% can use or that favors the 33%; people who can charge overnight at home should charge overnight at home.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1268-dece...

[toomuchtodo]

Fast chargers colocated at grocery stores people shop at at least weekly are a solution, Tesla did this (Meijer partnership), as did Electrify America. Walmart is rolling out charging at most of their US stores. Home charging is a solution, but so is workplace level 2 charging.

Can you charge at home? Do so. Can you charge at work? Do so. Can you charge at a grocery store or other location your task will take longer than the charging? Do so. This works for most Americans, while charging infrastructure continues to be rapidly deployed. The gaps will be filled, how fast is a function of will and investment.

US Gains 11,300 Ultra-Fast Chargers in Bet to Lure More EV Drivers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46815932 - January 2026 (11 comments)

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=walmart+ev

https://supercharge.info/map

https://www.plugshare.com/

[extra88]

Chargers at grocery stores and other places of public accommodation that have lots of parking and customers who stay a while are good options. I don't know how many are enough; even fast chargers take orders of magnitude longer to use than a gas pump.

[loeg]

I don't think 2x slower is plural "orders of magnitude" no matter how you count it. It's at best a single power of two.

[extra88]

Filling the gas tank of of a sedan takes like 2 minutes, doing the equivalent charging is going to take a lot more than 4 minutes.

"Orders" may be an exaggeration but one order of magnitude isn't.

[loeg]

Filling a sedan takes longer than 2 minutes; you just don't notice the time.

[toomuchtodo]

If your grocery shopping takes longer than 20 minutes, fast charging will suffice. This is my experience with 250kw fast chargers.

[throwaway894345]

At least in the midwest very few grocery stores have fast charging. Usually the fast chargers are along highways on the outskirts of cities, and even then they’re almost always at gas stations.

[rootusrootus]

> That's not good enough.

Agreed. However, the number of people who live 100+ miles from a fast charger rounds to zero. Something like 85-90% of the US population lives within a metro area, and even in the least "EV friendly" states probably has a fast charger within 10-20 miles at most.

[NetMageSCW]

Nope - try again.

[rootusrootus]

I can back up my assertions with data, can you?

[throwaway894345]

Yes, things are rapidly improving. My claim was that cold weather is a pain today. Also “living within 100 miles of a fast charger” is small comfort to those who don’t have a convenient way to charge at home.

For the record, I’ve been an EV owner for 5 years in the northern US. I still like my EV and things get better all the time, but I don’t understand the people in this thread saying that cold weather battery performance is fine.

[toomuchtodo]

My argument is more charging infrastructure and sodium ion chemistries should solve this relatively soon, and both are on arguably steep trajectories. My 2018 Model S 100kw has decent cold weather performance even cold soaked after 8 years of ownership with resistive heat for both the cabin and battery pack (glycol heater), I expect state of the art to keep getting better.

I used to keep a 100ft 120V heavy duty extension cord in the frunk to charge due to how few charging options there were in 2018, and no longer have to (having driven across most of the continental US).

If an EV is not feasible today due to limited charging options, certainly, procure a hybrid until battery chemistry and charging infrastructure improves in your area. I admit cold weather performance might be hard for some, but Norway has achieved 99% BEV monthly sales, so it can be done. It’s just a matter of where you are on the global adoption curve.

https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/

[throwaway894345]

I agree with all of this; my response was narrowly to the claim that the status quo was fine.