Reply to Besides cost, what keeps you from buying an EV?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]1) recharge time.

2) charging infrastructure.

3) battery fires.

In the near future, homeowners policies will specifically exclude/prohibit policy holders from keeping an EV inside a garage or structure attached to the home. [/quote]

All three of these things are vastly overstated by non-ev owners.

Charging time at home is completely irrelevant - I plug it in whenever I get home and it's full whenever I leave. Every single one of us has at least 8 hours a day of free charging time, which is more than enough for any EV. Charging on a trip is also negligible. Charging stops are 20 minutes every 2.5 hours of driving. Considering very few people are taking 5+ hour trips without stopping for gas, or food, or bathroom breaks at least once, you're looking at a few minutes of extra time at most.  I drove my Tesla from DC to Savannah recently and it added 1 hour to a 10 hour trip. Considering I ate while I was charging really it was only about 30 minutes more than a gas car would have taken assuming they stopped for a meal along the way.  That's nothing.

Charging infrastructure is also a nonissue unless you're going somewhere incredibly remote. Every interstate in the country has enough coverage to get you from one charger to the next with battery to spare. Dense corridors like 95 have chargers every 10-15 miles.  And since modern EVs have 200+ miles of range, even if you're going off-interstate, you'd have to go 100 miles into the wilderness before you didn't have enough charge to get back.

And battery fires are probably the dumbest thing to be worried about. They make the news because "new thing scary!" so every EV fire is a national story while zero gas fires are. As others have pointed out, EVs are safer than gas vehicles when it comes to fires. [/quote]

Well, for those of us who have on-street parking or live in large apartment complexes, home charging is VERY relevant because it's not a possibility. That kills it for me right there. (There are literally millions of people throughout the country who face this problem.)

[b]Two very close friends have visited me this summer in DMV -- one from Michigan and one from Massachusetts -- and both had problems with broken chargers on the route that significantly impacted their trip. A recent article in the WSJ by a writer who travelled from NOLA to Chicago and back and, because of broken chargers and other charging problems, spent more time trying to charge than sleeping overnight.[/b]

There will come a time when an adequate infrastructure will be in place -- but it isn't now.

It never ceases to amaze me how so many people have no idea how people in other states and cities really live. DMV folks seem to have a very narrow view of the real world.[/quote]

Three anectodal stories.  I've lived and travelled all over the country so I'm not in a DC bubble.  I'll add my own story.  I've driven my Telsas (I've had three now since 2014) all over the country on multiple road trips, and I've lived in three cities with them, and I've NEVER encountered a broken charger.  Seriously! Tesla has an enormous charging infrastructure.  And I'm seeing EVGo and ChargePoints all over the country expanding like mad.  I can charge my Tesla on any of them with the adapter.

More and more apartment and condo complexes are installing EV chargers.  I have an apartment in LA and installed a charger in my parking spot.  No big deal - there's a law in CA and many other states that prevents HOAs and apartment management from denying EV owners from installing chargers.  There are also many streets in LA that have EV chargers right next to the parking meter.

It's the non-EV owners that have a narrow view of what's really out there.  [/quote]

The Tesla charging network is solid - especially along the 95 corridor. Telsa range is getting better but still annoying for long distance road trips.

The non-Tesla charging networks suck. Some large gaps in coverage. Slow chargers. And non-Tesla range generally sucks.

PP’s anecdotes may have been non-Tesla EVs. /quote]

The current issue of WIRED Magazine has an article about the unreliability of the charging network throughout the country. It's an eye-opener for those looking for data and not relying on anecdotal evidence.

As for apartment complexes, I live in one with 12 buildings (over 300 apartments) and unassigned parking. That is the typical size in the area in which I live. Management at my complex has no current plans to install chargers and there is currently no state law requiring that they do (I'm in Delaware -- kind of ironic, eh?). Many parts of this area, including Wilmington, are made up of old neighborhoods with no driveways/off street parking. In New Castle County where I (and Joe Biden) live, there are not enough chargers to support an increase in EVs on the road.

I look at my hometown of Detroit where, again, tens of thousands of residents have no driveways/garages. In many cities, the lower-income people will have little access to chargers and companies will have little incentive to place them in areas where vandalism and theft can be a problem.

Again, when people talk about EVs, they're thinking about MC and UMC people/neighborhoods that don't reflect how literally millions of people in this country live.

EVs will grow in number, but it will take time and serious planning. [/quote]

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