EU passes law to blanket highways with fast EV chargers by 2025::The chargers must be placed every 60km (37mi) and allow ad-hoc payment by card or contactless device without subscriptions.
I think the bigger societal problem is that people need to start thinking differently of how charging works. It won’t and doesn’t need to work like refueling.
What I mean is, nobody would refuel every day at the beginning of their 10km commute. What they’ll do is commute for 2 weeks, and when the car is empty they’ll refuel and then continue on their way.
With EVs, this can be different. Once chargers (and not even fast chargers) are placed on every major location, you don’t need to go 0-100% in 99% of the cases. Getting groceries? Charge at the store for 30mins Going to the gym? Charge there for an hour or two Going out for dinner? Charge for 3h
The car doesn’t need to go empty all the way. Obviously you can’t do that with the current infrastructure, but with enough effort, that’s easily achievable.
Those are various ideas regarding charging problematic.
I’m still on the range topic that people apparently see as the main problem with EVs but I don’t. I’d be even fine with less range than the current top models offer.
For the US, I could see people having an EV with a smaller battery for commuting and one with a larger battery for longer family outings. But also maybe not. If solid state batteries can actually be commercially available, charge time and range will not be issues. If you can charge 500km in 5-10 minutes like Toyota is claiming with theirs, nobody is going to care too much about range of their car can be recharged in about the time it takes an ICE vehicle.
Adding an extra step for every time I stop at whatever location is a big ask. Personally, those little tasks wreck havoc with my executive disfunction disorder.
Truthfully, the range is only for long trips. Most commuting will be within normal operating ranges of EVs.
But it does need to be solved in some manner since it’s not uncommon for people to take road trips, even fairly short ones.
Even that is wrong for the most part. People are at home for generally at least 10 hours. How many people would go anywhere to fuel up if they had a pump at their home? A standard type F outlet will get you about a 10km charge per hour. That is 80-100km per day which will fully recharge most people each day. If you go farther than that one of those days? Chances are you will be fully charged the following day.
That is all continent on those shower chargers being decently available for overnight parking though. That will be something that needs to be worked on.
The issue with fast chargers is that they are much more expensive (both to install and for the customer) and tougher on the grid due to their quick, large power draw. They are fine for the less than 1% of time you are going over 400km but ideally not needed much outside of that. But there will be a transitionary period where there is not that lower speed charging everywhere and people will get EVs while having to rely on those chargers. Hopefully governments can provide the right incentives and legislation that gets things to where they need to be.
