I swear there's a huge contingency of the general public which simply has not realized the electricity an electric car needs is the same electricity they already have at home.

March 21, 2026 - 16:48 UTC

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There *are* cases where charging is a genuine problem. Much of the UK is terraced housing with no off road parking. I can't even park on the same street as my house. I cannot charge at home. I also can't charge most of the places I drive to.
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Yes, this is true, but the thing is if you had a little pole by the road and a couple dozen meters of wire going towards the house you could create charging infrastructure.

It's phenomenally easy from a technical perspective. It's just legal and liability stuff which slows it down.
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Not trying to tell anyone what's best for them, but I live in such an area myself and have found that the best solution has been to just not have a car at all.

Electric cars are good for the irreducible core demand for personal transportation, hopefully that demand is just low in dense urban areas.
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People are so used to 'gassing up' their cars at 'stations' that they simply have trouble imagining NOT doing that.
The fact that specialized chargers ARE required for long distance trips further reinforces the 'gas station' assumption.
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I would love a “range extended electric vehicle” or whatever the hell they’re calling series hybrids these days for my next car.

100% electric most of the time in town, cruising with the generator on the longer trips I make monthly.

Plug it in at night & refuel like, whenever.
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There's also a huge contingency of the public that can't charge their cars at home. If you don't own your own home or live in a new-build apartment, good luck.
Heck, I do live in an older single family house and can't afford the massive expenses to add a charger, starting with a garage.
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This sucks because the neighborhoods that would most benefit from more electric cars are the same ones that can't afford to add home charging or have landlords who won't.
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Had a friend say "you shouldn't buy an EV if you can't pay for the expensive home charging setup, or you will fuck up the battery and the engine".

I admittedly don't understand much about EVs but I have no idea what his argument even was or where he got it from.
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It makes me crazy! I've had an EV since 2015. If you have a GFCI plug in your garage (which you need to be code compliant anyway and if not they're like 15 bucks and can be installed by a non professional) you have a spot to plug in.
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It really sounds absurd on the face of it. Without a dedicated charger you are just charging really slowly ( 10 hours for a full charge) there's nothing that should cause degradation of the chemistry with that method.

I'm thinking it's an adversarial taking point from bad people.
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Lmk when a home charger takes as long as a service station visit.

Chemical fuel is freedom from planning. Aka freedom from want.

*This is explanation, not advocacy.
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You mean outdoor and indoor electricity are the same thing??? But what happens if indoor electricity is used outside and gets wet?
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I’ve been charging my EV at home for 3 yr. Just replaced my gas furnace w a heat pump & gas water heater w electric. Then found I had to upgrade my electrical service to 200A. All good, but it cost a few thousand $. I love my Hyundai Ioniq5.
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In my case, it's that my home cannot power a car. I'd need to rewire it. The juice is the same but I can't squeeze the power out of the rock.
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Can it also not power a space heater? Then yeah, you've got a fundamental "does your homeowner's insurance know about this" wiring problem. (I live in New England, occasionally someone here finds knob and tube wiring that hasn't already burned the house down...)
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I charge mine with a regular wall outlet. Does your house have wall outlets? If so, no need to rewire anything!
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If you have a free outlet, you could probably add 30 miles of charge to an electric car overnight (if my math is right). If you drive less than 30 miles most days, that's pretty much all you need!
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Some of the cars let you decide how many amps to pull from the socket. It's never impossible.
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There are cases where this is true, but "I'd need to rewire it" is often not actually the case.

This is why I'm so focused on spreading the knowledge of lower-power charging circuits. If you've got two free breaker slots and just 16 amps of overhead you can have a L2 charger to drive 100 mi/day.
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Getting a dedicated circuit installed to power your charger is a pretty hefty cost upfront, that's true; but with gas hitting $6.25 a gallon in some places, it's an investment that will pay for itself right quick.
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Yup and bonus points if you have solar installed on your property, not saying its entirely free (unless you produce way more than use) but it 100% will reduce the load on the electrical grid.
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What do you think about the exceptionalist argument some people are making for hydrogen powered shipping?
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Hydrogen might make sense for things like that! I have said before I can envision a future where it replaces diesel fuel for heavy-duty applications.

But it should not be used as a "better" alternative to electrochemical batteries because it simply isn't. It has significant tradeoffs.
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Don’t they use 400v or 800v or DC or something. It’s so confusing!

Just plug the damn thing in you fool! The engineers did all the work.
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I charge mine out of the old power outlet with a normal 120V plug in my garage and range has never been a serious issue except for a handful of blizzard days over the last year. And I still didn’t run out.
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In my experience, they think it requires SO MUCH electricity that it'll make their electric bill thousands of dollars a month. People don't seem to realize just how cheap electricity is in the grand scheme of things. Again, this is just my experience.
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Unless you're in California where it costs over 40 cents/kWh anyway
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Yeah, especially if you aren't a daily commuter or a road tripper. On average me and my family drive about 40-50ish miles a week. Gasoline costs a substantial amount more than an electric vehicle would here.
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When I've talked with people about EVs they didn't know you could just plug them in at home.
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420 following i see u 👁️👁️hahaha
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If you could fill a water bottle with a dripping tap (and you can), then you can understand home EV charging. That's how I see it.
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Well yeah, my car requires cold pressed extra virgin electrons, not those commodity mechanically separated ones you feed your washing machine.

* Pardon while I start a business around 'premium charged bespoke free range artisan' lipo packs...
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It's like @wtyppod.bsky.social says about trains: you take the power plant off of the train, and put it somewhere else. Railway electrification makes the most sense!

You can do the same for cars!
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With how used EVs depreciate (I see Chevy bolts for sub 10k now), its possible more will.try it out if they do live in a house with accessible charging.
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You mean a regular wall outlet close enough to where they park?

Gee, too bad nobody ever puts outlets in their garage! /s
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The only catch is they depreciate like that because of (assumed) battery pack wear. If they get one that has been beat to hell it’s going to turn them off to EVs.

Tho it seems like the Leaf had the real wear problems, not the Bolt.
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You mean I don’t need Premium Unleaded electricity with detergents?!?
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Trying to wrap my head around how to convert €/l to $/gallon
If 2 € really equal 2'32 $
And 1 gallon is 3'78 l
That'd make spanish prices 10'3 $/gallon and usian ones 0'36 €/l
No way that's true. I must be totally failing at math. Are you also paying like 2 cents per kwh or megacalorie per teatime
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Probably because the gas you get at home for your stove is not the same one you put in your car (the latter isn't even a gas), so they extend this comparison to electricity?
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Outside of cars converted to run on LPG, which were popular in some parts of the world due to cost.
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I just talked about this last night with my aunt who is in her seventies. She, indeed, thinks this is the case. She asked me about EVs and I had to explain this to her, and she was mystified. It's insane what big oil has done to indoctrinate these people into believing.
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