Re: EV charging stations

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

Well, in retrospect, it's probably good that we went with a plug-in hybrid
rather than a full EV.

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2024 14:13:36 -0800 (PST)
 >
 > from electoral-vote.com
 > And yet, despite all the money and enthusiasm from the state 
 > government, the Golden State's charging network is basically a 
 > fiasco, as The Los Angeles Times reported just last week. Nobody 
 > even knows exactly how many public chargers the state has; the 
 > federal government thinks the number is around 40,000, while the 
 > state government thinks it's more like 80,000. That's a rather 
 > sizable difference.
 > 
 > The biggest problem, however—and this is something that every EV 
 > driver in Ca knows, and presumably most EV drivers in other 
 > states, too—is that there is clearly much more profit in building 
 > charging stations than there is in operating them. As a consequence, 
 > chargers are out of order all the time. According to the Times, 
 > between 20% and 30% of the state's public chargers are out of 
 > service at any given moment. And since it's usage that causes them 
 > to break, it means that the most-needed chargers are the ones most 
 > likely to be unavailable.
 > 
 > You can see the "perfect storm" that has emerged here. More and more 
 > people are buying EVs, and they are competing for a set of public 
 > chargers that is not growing substantially in number, at the moment. 
 > That makes it harder to get access to a charger, and it also means 
 > the chargers are overtaxed, leading to breakdowns. That leaves even 
 > fewer chargers for EV drivers, leading to even more overtaxing, 
 > leading to even more breakdowns. Rinse and repeat. It's problematic 
 > enough, from a practicality standpoint, if a person has to set aside 
 > 2 or 3 or 4 "charging hours" every week, just to remain mobile. It's 
 > rather worse if a person also has to set aside 1 or 2 or 3 "waiting 
 > to charge hours," in addition. Most people are clever enough to do 
 > some sort of practice run before committing to an electric vehicle, 
 > and many of those—when they see what kind of hassles they are in 
 > for—decide the time is not so right, after all.
 > 
 > Eventually, all of these wrinkles will presumably be ironed out. But 
 > not without overcoming many and varied political and logistical 
 > obstacles. Governing is hard. (Z)