I think you’re grossly underestimate the availability of chargers in Europe.

They’re far more common than people expect, but you won’t see them unless you’re looking for them. 90% of the chargers are just posts with a cable, or just little black box on a lamppost with a socket. (There’s about 5 within a 10min walk of flat in London, that are hardly used)

Certainly it can be tricky in more rural areas, but if you’re spending most of your time around towns and cities you’ll be fine. If you live rural you’ll have the space to install your own private charger.

> but you won’t see them unless you’re looking for them.

I was looking for them when I had an EV over an extended weekend. Availability of chargers, especially fast chargers is grossly overestimated.

> (There’s about 5 within a 10min walk of flat in London, that are hardly used)

So, I zoomed in on Trafalgar Square (using PlugShare). Within a 10 minute walk from there:

- there are ~40 available plugs

- of those 40, 9 are fast chargers

- of those 40, 12 are non-Type-2/non-CCS compatible (1 is fast ChaDeMo, so if you're type 2, it's one connector less)

So, yeah. Whichever "10 minute walk" you chose situation will be the same.

> Certainly it can be tricky in more rural areas,

Define "more rural areas". I live 20 minutes away from Stockholm. I'll let you guess how many chargers there are within a "10 minute walk" from a suburb which is mostly apartment buildings.

Here's a representative suburb: https://www.google.com/maps/@59.2855172,17.9568074,3a,75y,21...

And it's the same everywhere. Here's Coulommiers, 1 hour outside Paris. Population, 14 thousand people: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8206163,3.0939561,3a,75y,115...

There's definitely plenty of space to "install own chargers", right? ;)

Right now EVs are in the same place where cars ini general where over a 100 years ago: toys for sufficiently rich early adopters who can afford to deal with all the issues.

Oh, wow, five chargers in 1000m of walking in London.

You right, I should have said 5 chargers within a 3 min walk of my flat. I couldn't count all the chargers within 1km of my flat, there's too many.

I used to live in different town. One way trip 160km. Mix of freeway and highway. Could charge at work there. No such luck at other end. My cheap b-segment car managed trip both ways and some weeks of regular use with one tank.

But I have read from news that electric-cars can't do similar round-trip all the way at highway speeds. So in addition to having find charging point somewhere, I would have had to spend extra half-an-hour driving slower... Not to even think of winter case...

And no public-transport would be even slower than electric car with some charging...

Considering that you can (slowly) charge an EV even with a normal socket, this overnight road trip problem seems vastly overstated to me. A socket and cable reel you should be able to scrounge up anywhere you can reach on asphalted roads.

I live in an appartment, as do many others. Good luck reeling your cable from the 4th floor to your car which is 100m away and with a sidewalk between. Even if you can do it, not sure whether you will get fined for it.

Others have brought up how unlikely it is to find a parking space close enought to an apartment building (you know, the kind of place the vast majority of people live in, at least in Europe). There's also the matter of charging 30 cars at the same time from the electrical infra designed for an apartment building - I very much doubt adding this type of load would be safe.

Cute that you think everyone can find parking in front of their apartment and that the cable won't be a trip and fire hazard.