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Chinese EV maker BYD says new fast-charging system could be as quick as filling up a tank
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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People just have the wrong idea about EV charging. They think of it like a gas car, wait until you're low, then go somewhere to fill up. But really, it’s more like charging your phone. You plug it in at home, go to bed, wake up, and it’s ready. You’re not constantly thinking about it.
Fast charging is for road trips, not everyday driving. You’re not supposed to be scrambling to find a charger every couple of days. Ideally, you start each morning with 80%, go about your day, come home, plug in, and do it all over again. You’re never really "empty" unless you seriously mess up. And the whole "how long does it take to charge?" thing, isn't really all that relevant. You’re not sitting there watching it, it just happens while you’re doing other things.
People are stuck on the idea of gas stations, but with an EV, your "gas station" is literally your house.
So ideally it wouldn't be handling 12 cars at once it'd be handling one or two.
Unfortunately, the infrastructure for the standard use case you talk about isn't pervasive enough. Most apartments don't have chargers at all, let alone one per apartment. You can drive by a Tesla or DC fast charge station at almost any time of day in a big city and see a line of cars waiting to use the small number of chargers. People are taking naps in their car in a bank parking lot while charging. Kudos to them for embracing the inconvenience of not charging at home to help the environment, but I never would have bought my 2 EVs if I didn't have charging at home.
Thats a great point as well, if you live in an apartment the best you can hope for is if you have a garage with an outlet and your apartment complex hasn't cracked down on you plugging in that way, but that's like 20 miles charge in several hours.
Missed opportunity, right there, because even the operators still think in terms of "gas station". Get a plot of land with a nice view, build a cafe, build a couple of charging stations. Make it a destination people want to go to regardless whether they need a fill-up or not.
Heck, whatever happened to car cinemas.
Yeah this is the idea. Personally I think charging needs more emphasis on at-work and apartment charging because if you don’t live at a house, you essentially rely on public charging which isn’t good for the battery.
Also more hotels should have charging. Having to drive 15 minutes away just to charge is annoying.
The other annoying thing is when you find a L2 charger at a hotel that is actually just an L1 charger in disguise.
I wouldn't buy a car I couldn't take on a road trip though, even if it's only a few times a year.
And everyone tends to go on a road trip at a similar time, too.