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Comment by pornel

9 hours ago

You're talking in hypotheticals, but Norway has 80%+ market share of BEVs, and quite a few towns with 20,000+ residents. There are already many multi-megawatt charging locations built all around UK and Europe. It's an expensive infrastructure, but when there's demand, it pays for itself. When it's busy, they build more. Growth of the grid is also manageable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dfyG6FXsUU

High-speed charging locations that have very uneven usage with peaks, save costs by using dynamic power sharing (so capacity isn't wasted when a car that has finished charging occupies a dispenser), and have battery storage on site to use a cheaper smaller grid connection, and usually also make extra money from power arbitrage.

> it's not just hanging an extension cord from your outlet.

It almost is! For slow (overnight) AC charging the expensive inverter is in the car. The "charger" on the street is just an extension cord with a network-connected switch and a few temperature sensors for safety. BTW, home "chargers" (EVSE) are overpriced. Many of them are literally a Raspberry Pi and some switches.