Some time ago I bought a car. Anyway, it’s all-electric, and also the first car I’ve ever owned in over 35 years of holding a driver’s license. To give this a bit of a KDE spin, after Akademy in Greece I stuck a week of vacation on to it and rented a car. An ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) one, which felt backwards and weird. It is entirely a practical consideration, though.

From my house in the Netherlands, in a small town of 12 thousand people, there are 7 charger poles (2 spots each) within 300m. Only two are particularly convenient to reach, but there’s always something available. I haven’t even bothered to count the total in town – lots.

In Thessaloniki, a city of 12 hundred thousand people (e.g. 1.2 million people), there are a total of 3 charger poles (3 or 4 spots each). Basically, there is no EV infrastructure at all unless you have the private means to install charging equipment.

I asked the people at the rental agency because their site suggests that it is possible to get an EV – which would be a disaster from a practical perspective. They replied “electric driving is a myth in Greece, unless you are in Athens and do not intend to leave the city”. Which is a bit of a disappointment, and shows that EV infrastructure still has a long way to grow.

Now that Kai-Uwe has solar energy production charts available in Plasma System Monitor, can a battery monitor for your vehicle be far behind? For solar-charging an EV and then running the house off of that large mobile battery it seems like a fine thing to integrate – “Battery at 5%. House entering hibernation now.”

(Aside: Buying a car is a shitty thing to do in response to worsening public transportation, because it solves a problem for me and nobody else. Let me go on the record as a supporter of the proposed 7 cents per km tax on driving in the Netherlands, on the assumption it is mostly spent on public transport.)