The most brilliant thing you've ever heard ofFollow

I'm sure the final consumer model will have at least an optional package for something like that.

You mean OPTIMAL package!

I like to think that Burt's face is the censor bar.

And that's really the point I was trying to get at. It's not really just about how many charging stations there are, but that once you actually drive an electric car for any length of time, you adjust your use of the car so as to not need to use them. I know several people who ran out and bought Leafs or Volts a few years back when both hit the market (I want to say 2009, might have been early 2010 though). In addition to the usual interest and excitement about an electric car, all of them initially were super interested in the idea that there would be charging stations all over town that they could use. They would talk about how they could locate charging stations in areas they were planning to go so as to charge whilst shopping, or at the movies, or out to dinner, etc. That rapidly changed to disappointment when they realized that while there were some charging stations out there, the odds of finding one right where you planned on going that day when you happened to be there and needed it were remarkably small.

Everyone I know who owns an electric car more or less assumes that they will never be able to find a charging station when they need one. Doing otherwise will eventually result in your getting stranded with an uncharged electric car somewhere. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but counting on there being a charging station for you to use while away from home will eventually fail you. Yes, this was compounded early on by non-accessible charging stations showing up on the nav systems, but that's still not the whole problem. It's one thing to look at a map find an open charger and go there. It's a whole different thing to say "I'm going to be at this location from 11AM to 3PM tomorrow, and there's a charger a block away, so I'll count on parking there and getting a charge". You don't tend to go where the chargers are. You go where you need to go and hope there's a charger near there. But you're playing an odds game doing that. So since you can't ever be 100% certain that charging station right near where you'll be parked for a couple hours will be open, you must assume it wont be. Thus, you will always make sure you have enough charge on your car to get to where you're going and home without needing a charge.

End result is that any public charging infrastructure will, merely by the nature of the beast, be inefficiently applied to the market needs. There's kinda no way around that.

I, Robot

Edited, May 28th 2014 6:52pm by TirithRR

So what I heard from gbaji is that a bunch of early adopters were slightly inconvenienced by a new technology. If you're going to make a big move like get an electric car, it would behoove you to know where these charging stations are, not just assume that you'll never be able to find one.

Edit: I do have some suggestions for charging stations, but won't type them out on my phone. Speaking of which, "gbaji" keeps auto-correcting to "guano", so take that as you will.

Edited, May 29th 2014 10:07am by Debalic

A story that likely has little reality attached to it.

I bet all these friends of his that bought electric cars were imaginary or at least virtual.

So what I heard from gbaji is that a bunch of early adopters were slightly inconvenienced by a new technology. If you're going to make a big move like get an electric car, it would behoove you to know where these charging stations are, not just assume that you'll never be able to find one.

Don't be silly, he's a technology oracle. You don't remember him telling us all how the iPhone would fail because it didn't do anything unique?

For awhile, I used garbaji as a nickname.

I'll cop to thinking the iPad was stupid because why would anyone want a giant iPhone that doesn't make phone calls?

That's why you can now get phones half the size of an iPad, it's the best/worst of both worlds!

I didn't say it would fail. And I didn't say it didn't do anything unique. I said that the technology inside the iPhone was actually behind the times, and that the only thing it had going for it was a new form factor and interface. I also predicted that if Apple didn't update their chipsets it would suffer against competitors who could easily adopt the same kind of form and interface but would have actual better performing phones as well.

Um... And I was pretty much 100% correct. Not only have other competitors copied the form and interface of the iPhone and cut into Apple's share of the smart phone market, but Apple has since implemented better tech inside the iPhone in order to compete against those other phones. Yeah. Kind of a "duh" prediction, but then I didn't expect anyone to react to it with the kind of "No way! Apple is the wave of the future and is blazing a trail of new high tech goodness!!!". The fact is that the first iPhone was a generation old phone with a touch screen and slick interface. Apple had *zero* development of any sort of new communication tech going, so their only route to stay competitive was to adopt the internal components that other phones were already using. Which is precisely what I said they'd have to do, and precisely what they did.


I'll give you that answer for free even!

A lot of how it was only going to do well with Apple fanboys.