"For most people here, workplace is 15 minutes walk/public transit away,..."

Curiously, how many cars need charging(at night even) in this area? Maybe I missed the intent behind your comment.

But it doesn't sound like there is much daily driving.

Perhaps "...hands wet on the wheel..." like in the Golden Earring song often? )))

People don't use the car to go to work, but they use it a lot after they come home. Families with children use their cars a lot. Even with good public transport, handling affairs of a family of 5 takes a lot of time on the bus - so people use the car to go shopping, drive the kids to their after-school sports/clubs, visit grandparents etc.

Many households have multiple cars - one or two for the parents, then maybe one for the eldest child that still lives with the parents. Each car is used daily or almost daily.

There definitely is less daily driving per vehicle - but there's much more vehicles per square kilometer.

If people are walking or taking public transit anyway, you don't have a vehicle problem in the first place.

Oh, we most certainly do. Look at how much energy in the form of gas/diesel is used in Europe - it's definitely not insignificant. The average household has almost 2 cars, many have 3 - and they use them, just not to get to work.

IMHO the usage patterns and the population density make this a much harder problem here than in the US.

> Well, that's US. I am in much more densely populated Central Europe - several orders of magnitude compared to California.

The average population density of California is 250 per square mile, for Germany it's 620. Considerably less than one order of magnitude in difference.

> For most people here, workplace is 15-30 minutes walk/public transit away, that's not going to solve anything about car charging.

If people are not driving to work, their cars can charge at home during the day, so it's already solved.

> And there's not enough physical space for solar arrays of this size.

There most certainly is. People overestimate the required space to a ridiculous degree.

I don't live in Germany. Germany is a large state with a lot of empty space. I live in a much smaller, much more densely populated state.

Anyways, the average is deceiving - I think you should compare the average of a city like Berlin or Munich or Warsaw or Amsterdam to cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco, not Germany to California.

People here live in very dense cities with empty space in between, you don't have that in US cities which are mostly long stretched of single-family households. We don't have single-family households at all except for the few villas of the ultra-rich and the few people living in the villages around the cities.

> If people are not driving to work, their cars can charge at home during the day, so it's already solved.

That's not solved at all! That's exactly where the issue is - The grid isn't able to provide that much power. It's already nearly overloaded. It would need significant capacity upgrades and the people here don't want to pay for it.