> EV charge stations have a slower throughput than petrol stations, and that means you require more stalls to cover the same number of cars.
The thing that they say about EVs is "imagine if your car started with a full tank of gas every morning. How often would you use a filling station then?"
You can't simply compare "time to fill at the filling station, times number of stalls, is this number the same or else it's an issue". That math doesn't work. As the majority of trips are short, and the majority of charging is at home overnight, and even when on the road there are other charging options (for e.g. I usually see cars charging near my local shops on one of these https://www.sourcelondon.net/home) then the numbers are not directly comparable.
> and the majority of charging is at home overnight
Are there actually stats that show this?
What I hear anecdotally from friends (in Berlin and other bigger German cities) is that in the city it is often very hard to find charging spots. The problem is that in urban areas charging at home is almost never an option, as people live in apartments and not houses. There the parking is either done curbside (with curbside charging stations near your apartment being rare), or on the rented parking spot on the apartment building property (which landlords aren't exactly rushing to modernize).
Which is interesting because only 55% of dwellings in Canada are single-family homes or semi detached condos (where you'd be able to have a home charger).
Just goes to show that as EV adoption goes up, the percentage of people able to charge at home will go down.
No-one is disputing the growing demand for charging infrastructure, or the unsolved problems in street-side or apartment parking-lot charging. That's not motorways though. It's not the same thing.
In general yes, I see 80% of charging at home, but you can google this as well as I can.
Specifically for Berlin / inner city I don't know.
A point of denser city living is to lessen the need for private car ownership. I'm also in an apartment in London. We don't have a charger, but then we don't have a car either, we don't need one here.
This is about motorways and there I haven't seen a decrease in the amount of filling station stops just because it starts charged. If anything, electric has had an increase in fills required so far due to range limitations and the desire to avoid filling completely (for both charge time and battery wear).
Won't many motorway trips still be within EV range without a charge en route? i.e. under e.g. 200 miles.
I once had a long car commute for a while, with time spent on the M25 (a ring road around London, a major motorway / traffic jam) and that was still around 110 miles daily round trip. I could have done it daily on an overnight charge.
So maybe EVs doing a quick partial change out of "desire to avoid filling completely" which swings the numbers the other way. IDK how big these relative effects are, but this is another way in which the maths is different, the numbers are not directly comparable.
In Europe, maybe. In the USA, a 400-600 mile drive is not unusual and within the radius of what I would consider driving vs. flying given the hassle of flying here.
The topic (as opposed to the article only) includes my personal anecdote above, which you might notice is in London, UK. I use words deliberately.
Parent comment phrase "in Europe" typically includes UK as well, not just EU members. I'm already more than comfortably aware that the EU does not include the UK.
But, UK habits are at present more like those on the continent of Europe than to USA. That's why I felt the anecdote relevant.
a 400-600 mile drive is not unusual? it's not unheard of, it's not out of the question, it's not a crazy distance for cities to be "away from" each other, but unless your job is "driver", it is not a "usual" thing to do except a few times a year. You're talking about a full day driving.
Yeah, "it happens a coupe of times per year, as opposed to a commute that I do multiple times a week" is stretching the definition of "usual" to breaking point.
In context though, it was about "how many charging bays do we really need, if some or many cars don't need to charge en route, or need it much less often?" so the semantic argument around "what does 'usual' even mean?" is a ridiculous distraction. These long trips of course exist but are not the largest percentage of cars on the road.
People who live in apartments instead of single-family detached housing often have to park on the street. "at home overnight" is not near a charger. Even if they have dedicated parking they often can't install a charger into their landlord's property.
For a lot of people, it's true that they won't need charging stations. But for urban areas those stations will be more necessary than in suburban or many rural areas.
The thing that they say about EVs is "imagine if your car started with a full tank of gas every morning. How often would you use a filling station then?"
You can't simply compare "time to fill at the filling station, times number of stalls, is this number the same or else it's an issue". That math doesn't work. As the majority of trips are short, and the majority of charging is at home overnight, and even when on the road there are other charging options (for e.g. I usually see cars charging near my local shops on one of these https://www.sourcelondon.net/home) then the numbers are not directly comparable.