Live data from Hacker News

Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

theglobeandmail.com

471–480 of 545 posts

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people are willing to work for wages that can't buy them the shittiest home within a reasonable commute to their office. If people were more willing to die, unionize, or advocate for a mediocre life, this wouldn't happen. If you're working for less than it takes to buy the shittiest home in your city, you are exacerbating inequality and thus making the world worse. Better to sit on the sidewalk until you're d…

> If you're working for less than it takes to buy the shittiest home in your city, you are exacerbating inequality and thus making the world worse. Better to sit on the sidewalk until you're dead. I'm not normally one for this term, but this has to be the pinnacle of blaming the victim.

Disagree.

I consider it a mass delusion that everyone seems to think you either live in the Big City(tm) or your life doesn't matter.

IMO it's the opposite. Living in a pokey flat that's not yours is giving up your dignity. Even in SF or London or whatever.

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are lifts really as efficient as escalators? I wouldn't be surprised. > An escalator is constantly moving (unless it's malfunctioning), so there is no wait to continue moving. That wastes energy but makes it time efficient for users (in terms of latency). OTOH, escalators are slow compared to most lifts/elevators, which means total trip time efficiency isn't good unless you are only going a floor or two or are comp…

I used to work in an office building with escalators that are powered off at night -- there was some sort of motion sensor about 10 feet before the escalator that would power it on when someone approached, you'd have to be running to reach the escalator before it reached normal speed. So on-demand escalators are possible, just rare. In the daytime either they kept them on all the time, or maybe there was enough const…

I thought on-demand escalators were the norm, from subway to malls I don't think I have ever seen an escalator that not my on-demand.

But I can't say I've put a lot of thought into it.

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#473

Fully Charged recently ran an interesting panel discussion that they put online yesterday with a few vehicle to grid experts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkh33KjF3Gc&t=0s One interesting thing with vehicle to grid is that EV battery capacity is becoming a valuable commodity. It's valuable to EV owners because they can sell back electricity to the grid and manage when they charge using either solar or simply low r…

Assuming everyone's selling it back I'd imagine there have to be easily swappable batteries then to deal with the increased wear. At least so it's not a big operation for the dealer. I wonder how much more difficult this would make car designs...

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#474
post #71

The chargers are cheap and getting much faster and will be deployed everywhere you can run an electric line: https://twitter.com/sampenrose/status/1152625267589840896

This is kind of the "Year of Linux on the Desktop" of EVs. I'll believe it when I see it. I live in a community with an incredibly high number of EVs, but I can't get one because I am not a homeowner and there's no charging anywhere besides people's garages. The above thread suggests there's going to be free, ubiquitous inductive charging in a few years. Just look how far we are from that. Even in putatively EV-frien…

Ten years ago viable electric cars did not exist. At all.

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#475

Our neighborhood Teshole is solving the problem by parking across the sidewalk. They do have a garage, but that's for storing their other car.

Please don't break the site guidelines by calling names.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#476

Our neighborhood Teshole is solving the problem by parking across the sidewalk. They do have a garage, but that's for storing their other car.

Teshole? You sound reasonable

Please don't respond to a bad comment with another one. That only makes this place even worse. Instead, flag egregious comments as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#478
post #473

Fully Charged recently ran an interesting panel discussion that they put online yesterday with a few vehicle to grid experts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkh33KjF3Gc&t=0s One interesting thing with vehicle to grid is that EV battery capacity is becoming a valuable commodity. It's valuable to EV owners because they can sell back electricity to the grid and manage when they charge using either solar or simply low r…

Assuming everyone's selling it back I'd imagine there have to be easily swappable batteries then to deal with the increased wear. At least so it's not a big operation for the dealer. I wonder how much more difficult this would make car designs...

They covered this in the panel discussion. In short, some car manufacturers seem willing to allow this under their normal battery warranty (i.e. they expect this to be not much of an issue) to minimize risk for the user and take away concerns around this. Some manufacturers are already building inverters into the cars to facilitate vehicle to grid (and vehicle to vehicle even). Most manufacturers (e.g. VW, Renault) expect this to be common in a few years and are looking to standardize how this works.

Swapping batteries is of course covered by existing warranties and obviously this is already technically doable as part of normal car service. So, no special new design is needed for this. I imagine this typically involves unplugging a bunch of cables, loosening a few bolts, etc. Doesn't sound like rocket science. In any case, your base assumption that this becomes a regular thing for EV owners is probably simply wrong. It's rare now and it will probably not become a lot more common. EV batteries are pretty good.

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#479
post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t seem to able to wrap your ahead around the fact that driving appears to give you more freedoms only because you live in a city that was designed around cars, not because cars are inherently faster or more convenient. The convenience of the car is an artifact of city planning decisions, not a universal truth. Example: do you realize how preposterous the idea of driving several miles to get groceries is to so…

> driving appears to give you more freedoms only because you live in a city I don't live in a city, just like half the population of the US. You assumed that, and now the rest of what you wrote is irrelevant.

80% of the US population lives in a city.
Post reply on HN