Comment by speeder
2 hours ago
I am in Portugal right now. You know something we don’t have often here? Garages.
For example in my neighborhood most cars are parallel parked, people are living in centuries old houses converted into high density condos, there are no garages.
So what is more practical, charging your car overnight without an electric plug or going to the gas station for a few minutes?
I do have a garage and 'fuel' is half the cost of my previous, smaller ICE. We're considering solar power to get it practically free.
There's some nicer differences like leaving the air-conditioning on constantly because there's no pollution and it's also practically free. It's nice to have a giant battery instead of requiring an engine to constantly recharge it to run the electronics.
That's cost, not practicality. Like it or not, the EV isn't as flexible when it comes to ownership, because you need a place to charge it. A product that is less practical has to be cheaper to compete in the market.
You use kerbside charging. Unlike petrol, electricity comes to you.
This is how it needs to work, but in practice it doesn't really exist right now. (And, in the few places where it does exist, the price basically destroys a lot of the running costs advantages of an EV).
>>So what is more practical, charging your car overnight without an electric plug or going to the gas station for a few minutes?
100x charging your car overnight with a plug. I don't think people who don't own an EV realize how great that is. Imagine if your petrol car magically got refilled with fuel every single night - add up all of those "few minutes" spent at a petrol station over your lifetime, and realize how much time you're getting back.
>> people are living in centuries old houses converted into high density condos, there are no garages
And yeah, that's a problem everywhere, not just in Portugal. Here in the UK a lot of people wouldn't have anywhere to charge at home.