People use their car way less than they think.

The median work distance in France is 12km in the countryside and 6km in the cities.

25% of the workers travel less than 4km even in the countryside.

Source: https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/7622203

The current range is way above most needs already and I'm not sure cars (electric or not) is even the answer with such a low usage.

If people bought cars for their median usage, they'd buy cars with like 1.2 seats and that top out at 70 km/h.

That would not be a bad option to get smaller compared to the small tanks that people are driving right now.

Cars are one of the most inefficient form of transport anyways and driving almost never makes sense on large distances.

Instead of a large flow of people driving 600km to go to the same place with a single seat used each only once per year, what you would want is public transport instead on those routes, that would be more rational.

I remember in Taiwan they had roads and overpasses for scooters. You could rework cities to support small low speed vehicles.

The US could build more mass transit.

As the work from home vs return to the office struggle shows bashing business to relocate closer to where people work has some merit.

I'm also in Ireland and while 400km might get you anywhere in the country, it won't get you home. Fast charging here is more expensive than petrol (over twice as much per km in many cases), the charging infrastructure is not reliable, and it's very easily overwhelmed.

After the All Ireland semi-final this year, there were multi-hour queues for fast chargers on the M7. Multi-minute queues for petrol.

This is reflected in sales, where even with tax and BIK incentives, EV sales are falling sharply and second-hand EVs are being exported because the market has tanked.

I remember when the major advantage of EVs were “you won’t pay for gas anymore.” And now it switched to “well, it’s 10% cheaper than gas but the car itself is 3 times more expensive.”

I don’t understand how they expect poor people to buy these massively.

It was always subsidized.

Been saying this forever: most of the cost of gasoline are "road taxes". You think the government is just to let that revenue disappear as people shift to EV usage? No, your EV will be just as expensive to operate, they will add taxes to your charger.

In Ireland, that has not yet happened. Excise duties are extremely high on petrol and diesel and EV charging has none. However, fast charging is already more expensive.

Part of this is that EVs are much more expensive than the average car (over the whole fleet - new cars are much closer in price), and so EV drivers are self-selected to be wealthier, therefore willing to pay more. Another factor is the lack of competition and alternatives, especially at motorway petrol stations.

When I use public chargers, I pay about €0.08 / km.

When I charge at home, I pay about €0.01-0.02 / km.

Assuming ~€0.10 / km for a reasonably economical diesel nugget...

That's a little more than 10% for home charging :)

Yeah you have a point, but I also don't think it's fair to use a once-off surge in demand as your counterpoint.

If I am driving far enough to warrant a charge, chances are I'm spending some time at my destination before coming back. 4 hours at 7kW (slow AC charge) is 28kWh, which ~40% of my total battery capacity, or about 200km of range. It probably won't get me home but I can probably get to another less busy charger on my way home.

I do agree though, the charging infrastructure needs to be built out much more. I dream of a day where every parking space in every parking lot has a slow charging port, and there are much much more ~50kW installed. But the current level of build-out is not that bad, and when combined with home charging it's basically a non-issue ~80% of the time.

Maybe next time, get your car topped up before going to the game, and then afterwards you can just drive home, skipping probably the majority of the surge traffic. Or take the bus!