Graham wrote:
No, it’s not impossible at all – but it requires planning
I wouldn’t call it planning. More like awareness that you don’t have 7-900 km range all year round like a typical diesel. There are more chargers around than gas stations, but where gas stations are easy to find, easy to spot from the road, chargers are usually much more out of sight. Nothing that isn’t solved with a good app 
You start from home with 100% charge anyway. Which reminds me of 98 octane gasoline. in Norway the 98 octane is E0. Good for airplanes, but also good for old cars (oldtimers from, veteran cars). A couple of guys there have made an app to find where 98 octane can be filled. Essentially, driving a 57 Chevy, you will have exactly the same range “problem” as driving a 23 EV
The largest change with an EV is in fact you never go to a gas station anymore. You hardly ever charge at a charging station either. Usually you can count them on one hand in a year, two hands max. So all the talk about lost time is just nonsense. Not talking about the UK, since we all know home chargers are banned there for a variety of reasons
There are more chargers around than gas stations,
Please… only in Norway, and presumably Sweden
In 2022 there were around 82100 public charging points in France.
LeSving wrote:
There are more chargers around [in Norway] than gas stations
gallois wrote:
In 2022 there were around 82100 public charging points in France.
Interestingly, according to this web site there were about 11000 petrol stations in France the year before! So apparently what LeSving mentions is not limited to Norway.
OTOH, a petrol station can have several filling points so the figures are not directly comparable.
France is mostly nuclear…
Also “filling” times are a factor of about 100 different, so a petrol station has a 100x bigger throughput even if it had just one pump, which none have, hence you need only 1/100 as many for the same service level
In reality, closer to 1000x difference.
Peter wrote:
France is mostly nuclear…
It’s the same relation between petrol stations and charging points in the UK as well! (Source.)
Of course what you wrote about occupancy is true in principle – although I would argue that the factor is substantially less than 100.
gallois wrote:
In 2022 there were around 82100 public charging points in France.
Airborne_Again wrote:
there were about 11000 petrol stations in France the year before
Additionally to the “time at charger” vs “time at pump” thing raised by Peter, I wonder whether that is comparing apples to apple trees. Wouldn’t a “charging point” be a single plug coming out of a machine, and that single plug can be plugged into one car and charge one car? While a “petrol station” is a whole area that has 8 / 16 / 32 / … pumps that can pump gasoline into that many cars at once?
(OTOH people adapt to the longer charging times and don’t wait up standing next to the car, nor sitting inside, when it is charging…)
EDIT: case in point, the UK link by Airborne_Again says 61000 charge points but “only” 22000 locations. Admittedly that’s still far more locations than petrol stations (13000 in 2000 down to 8365 in 2022 according to https://www.statista.com/statistics/312331/number-of-petrol-stations-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/)
The UK is practically useless for public charging, so if France is the same that’s similarly useless also.
Outside my window here are 12 pumps (each with 3-4 fuels) so 12 cars serviced concurrently. Total time per customer is actually determined more by how much staff is taking the payments, and whether they are Brits or Romanians 
Probably a few mins.
You are not going to do a service station EV charge (while exercising the “coffee” paradigm) in under half an hour and that would be rushing it, at most service stations. So yes less than 100 but not enough to make a difference which remains in the “absolutely vast” department. And is getting worse, at least here, as more EVs are sold but charging points are lagging behind, or new installs have been abandoned entirely (not good enough business case, and vandalism).
lionel wrote:
Wouldn’t a “charging point” be a single plug coming out of a machine, and that single plug can be plugged into one car and charge one car? While a “petrol station” is a whole area that has 8 / 16 / 32 / … pumps that can pump gasoline into that many cars at once?
Yes, That’s why I wrote that the numbers are not directly comparable.
Peter wrote:
The UK is practically useless for public charging, so if France is the same that’s similarly useless also.
That may be. My point was really that one should not dismiss a statement offhand without checking the facts. It’s of course even better if the person making the claim provides a source.
