Why Americans aren’t buying more EVs

boem@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 99 points –
Why Americans aren’t buying more EVs
arstechnica.com
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Where I live, there's one charging station. And it's like 8 miles or so from my house. I've yet to see more. It's also a fairly rural area. I think we forget how much population lives outside cities.

You don’t have electricity in your house??

IDK about houses, but this would be the case for people in apartment buildings. What should you do? Not even joke about "lowering a cord from your window" because it's not guaranteed that your street parking is near your windows!

My co-worker has an electric car and lives in an apartment without a charger. Luckily our office has a few chargers and he only needs to charge it once or twice a week. If he really needed it he could charge at a public fast charger somewhere else in town, but he tries to avoid that.

Yeah, my office has a couple free chargers. It’s really not worth the fuss for me since I can charge at home and it’s a short commute but I’m happy to see there’s always a queue

Yes, of course, but in remote areas you very rarely have apartment buildings, as I recall.

That is not accurate. There are plenty of apartment buildings far away from commercial areas. They can be surrounded by rural areas or suburban areas (SFH zoning).

😮 and there are no changes at such remote apartment places?

Of course he does. But a standard house power connection does not deliver the amount of power you need to charge a car.

So you need to build a charging pole at your house if you want to charge ar home. Which is another investment.

And if you are in a somewhat remote area and there are not many charging poles around you, you are also very limited in how far and how fast you can travel.

So there really is no point investing in a charging pole and an EV car if the car is not capable of doing to the same things that a gas car can do.

EDIT: thanks for the responses. I'm still not convinced that electric is a good option for me, but some issues seem to be fixed or not as bad as I thought.

Still, within my price range it will take a while before I can pay one.

It depends on the circuit in the garage and people need to check. But trickle charging overnight is entirely feasible for many people.

Or I got a fairly cheap set of adapters that also work for 240v dryer/power tool, and RV outlets. I ought to be able to charge by y vehicle pretty much everywhere

The problem here is that you think the only viable method to charge an electric vehicle is a level 2 or above charger. The average person, even in more rural areas, generally drives less than 60 miles in a day. Which is something that can be recouped overnight with a standard 15 amp outlet. And that's assuming it's only plugged in for 8 hours. Most people's cars sit idle at home much longer than that. You don't even need to go Fancy with a dryer Outlet much less a level2 charger.

Unless you're somewhat remote area is over 200 mi from the nearest charger the majority of electric vehicles will get you there without you having to drive like a grandma. As many of them have somewhere on the order of 250 to 280 miles of range on a full charge now.

My car is plugged in to a normal power outlet in my garage. As long as it's not sharing a circuit with a stove or ac compressor or something it'll be fine, and even if it is you could work around that.

It’s nowhere near as bad as you think. A level 2 charger is essentially an electric stove circuit, and the chargers are only a few hundred dollars. I had to do both this year and there really wasn’t a significant cost difference. I charge once or twice a week for a couple hours. It’s quite reasonable to install a level 2 charger if you have a single family house with off street parking

Or for like $150, I got a full set of adapters to charge pretty much everywhere. In addition to a regular outlet, I can plug into a 240v dryer/powertool/heater/ac outlet, or an RV outlet for a faster charge.

While I do have many charging stations nearby (and I’ll bet that’s far more common in the population than people who don’t), with a home charger, I’ve never had the need to use a public charger less than 100 miles from here

Well, it is enough for my car.. You don't need 50kW if you charge over Night (same Like you don’t need fast charge g, if you charge your phone over night)

Remember the yanks have pink fluffy girly 110v electricity. They've only just been told about kettles and they think a microwave is a cooking device

Yea, but normally you can draw about 15 amps compared to the 10 amps typically allowed un EU. 110v x 15A = more then 1.5kW which should totally be enough to charge over night (maybe blug it in every night)

I just learned that you can steam broccoli in the microwave and it's such a time saver!

Um, excuse me, sir! It's called a microwave oven for a reason thankyouverymuch!

My entire city currently has 30 charging ports in total, half of which are either in private locations, malls, paid parking, or singular charging station spots in obscure places.

I’m not opposed to EVs at all, but the infrastructure is just not there. Not to mention the abysmal price of these