Man, it's just constant retreat with you, isn't it?
You're seriously saying Alma doesn't have cellphone signal? I've lived in a smaller town and still had signal.

Generally speaking, those installing EV charging stations want to be able to bill for it. Which means that the station itself needs connectivity, even if it doesn't need to be much. They need a big fat pipe of electricity as well.
Sounds like an excellent spot for a cell phone tower, if one isn't already in range.

Besides that, I managed to drive from Alaska to Florida, through Canada, without ever being out of cellphone signal.

Worst case, the app developers are aware that you might be out of signal occasionally. Therefore they cache information.

If you have a cell phone, you have mobile internet. Even if you're just using it as a hotspot for a laptop or tablet.

In any case, those purchasing EVs are overwhelmingly fine with using an app. Or the in-dash infotainment system that can do the same thing. Plug in where you want to go, it finds a route including chargers. Question: Do you use google maps?

Most people don't need to find EV charging stations, only those with EVs need to be able to, and they all generally have cellphones.

And why would they need an attendant? They're fine with being open at night. Gas stations only need attendants because of the large quantities of flammable liquids stored on location. Even with that, I've seen the occasional gas station that, late at night, doesn't have anybody and it is pay at pump only. But they get most of their profit from the attached convenience store, so they need an employee for that, to make money.

Now, there have been some problems with people stealing the charge cables for the copper in them, because current doesn't flow until the car and charger have verified the connection and negotiated charging stuff, so they're safe enough for unattended use.

But said people have also discovered that said lots tend to have very good cameras and end up being caught.

It isn't so much that it "flowed", it is that aluminum has a greater coefficient of thermal expansion than copper. So it would expand more when it heated up. This was exasperated by the greater gauge of sufficiently rated cable or the installation of the same gauge as copper, insufficient due to it's slightly lower conductivity, causing it to heat up even more.
Over time, this could allow the connection to work its way loose, at some point leading to higher resistance at that point and thus more heat, and even sparking, leading to fires.
Modern connectors address this a number of ways, but the primary way I've seen is to make the connection a little springlike, it doesn't even have to look like a spring at first glance - the expansion isn't that much, after all. Some are even "self tightening", in that they'll tend to pull the wire in rather than let it loosen. Very clever designs that generally don't take anything more than the old connectors. In addition, in wire gauges large enough to be stranded, the very stranding helps with handling the expansion.
As I understand it, when installed to code, the aluminum wiring was safe, the problem was that the code was too stringent for the electricians used to working with copper, and they'd use stuff rated for copper and not aluminum all over.

You see gas stations because they have giant price signs and were built long before phones, apps, and incar navigation. They grabbed the most obvious, highvisibility locations decades ago, and we’re all trained to look for them.
EV chargers don’t work that way. Companies installing them know that almost every EV driver is using an app or the car’s builtin route planner to find chargers. Because of that, they don’t need huge signs or prime corner lots. They can be tucked behind a restaurant, at the edge of a parking lot, or a little down an access road. They’re easy to miss if you’re not specifically looking for them.
That’s why you don’t “see” them even though they’re there. I know of several near me, but one of them I only know about because the app pointed me to it. If I were just driving by, I’d never notice it.
As for Alma, 4 Lads Ct has coffee shops and a small park to stretch your legs in. Assortment of shops as well.

Depends on the location and how busy it is. In a lot of places they do not care because there is plenty of capacity. There are a few spots that will charge an idle fee once your car is done, but those are mostly in congested areas.

One simple trick is to set the charge limit to 100 percent. If your car can finish in 20 minutes, that means it was already around 70 to 80 percent when you plugged in, which also means you probably did not need to charge much in the first place.

For a typical 300 mile EV:
20 percent to 80 percent takes about 15 to 25 minutes.
20 percent to 100 percent takes about 35 to 45 minutes because the last 20 percent is slower.
That extra time gives you a better window for a sit down meal.

So etiquette is basically this:
If the site is quiet, finish your meal and move the car afterward.
If the site is busy or has idle fees, either set the limit to 100 percent so the session lasts longer and plan to move the car when the car finishes charging.

Long term, the real solution is more charging stalls. We are already seeing stations built with more charging posts than the site can power at full speed at the same time. The idea is that some cars will be tapering or done, which frees up power for new arrivals. And when chargers are placed in restaurant parking lots, the business wants you to stay. They are not going to care if your car sits at 100 percent for a while.

If you are sitting down for an hour anyway, a slightly slower charge is easier on the battery.

Where you looking to increase ampacity? Because just swapping aluminum for copper isn't an upgrade. As long as the wire is heavy enough gauge for the amperage, it's good. Aluminum is 1 gauge larger than copper, but that doesn't really matter when it's buried in a wall, attic, or crawlspace.

It's a bit asking for an aluminum car frame to be "upgraded" to steel.

There are people who heard about the problems with aluminum wiring back in the day when they attempted to use it for convenience outlets and are thus stuck with the belief that copper is superior in all circumstances.
It's like people who think that a steel part is automatically superior to plastic.

dfghjk, if you see this, almost all overhead powerlines are aluminum with a steel structural core. Nearly all wiring can be aluminum other than 15/20 Amp branch circuits. Nearly anything permanently wired can be aluminum, the service line entering the house, etc...
Now, the terminations need to be rated for aluminum, but nearly all the big connectors are.
My rough summary from reading the code book: You go up a gauge when going with aluminum. if 6-gauge Al is cheaper than 8-gauge copper, that's what contractors will use by default.
The problem back in the day was with thermal expansion and contraction being higher for aluminum, that many installers didn't actually install the proper gauge for the amperage, and that the connectors back in the day didn't properly account for the higher thermal expansion coefficient. It resulted in wires working loose over time and causing fires.
The expansion is not nearly as much of a problem with stranded wires, so any gauge big enough to be stranded by default is generally fine. They improved the connections, which also helped with copper, and that isn't a problem anymore.

"won't tell you the pain they go through just to go on a trip"?

Dude, they'll outright tell you just that left and right. Less than a minute on google, bing, duckduck, or whatever will turn up entire videologs of trips. Some good, some bad. If you're not hearing about their trip experiences, you're not listening.
The ones with good experiences will rave about not needing to stop at gas stations, the lower cost, the power and quiet, etc...
The ones with bad experiences will lament broken or missing charging stations, loss of range towing*, that sort of thing.

But ever consider that most of them, if their EV purchase was well planned their experience overwhelmingly good, as expected for a 'proponent', that they just don't experience pain to "just go on a trip"? They might have a Tesla and thus access to the Tesla charging network even before it opened to everybody. The Tesla itself knows where the chargers are, plug in the destination and it'll pick the fastest route including charging stations.

As for the solid state battery, this is like saying that EV Semis aren't coming because the startup Nikola turned out to be a fraud, despite Tesla, Freightliner, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Kenworth, Peterbilt, and BYD all getting into the action. This was ONE relatively small attempt at fraud. Toyota, Volkswagen, BMW, and more are all working on solid state batteries as well. Donut labs is a peanut player in comparison.

*Thinking on this, first, I've experienced a 50% loss of range towing with my ICE truck. So some range loss is to be expected. Second, it occurs to me that somebody running around in a truck with a massive 8 cylinder engine has way more power than they need for just the truck. ICE engines tend to be at their most efficient around 70-80% load for the RPM. So a big towing truck may not see that much range loss because they were operating inefficiently as just the truck, the range loss towing is partially hidden by hitting a more efficient

However, when figuring out TCO, especially if one is planning to own the vehicle for a decade or more, even depreciation is going to have to be an estimate.

EV depreciation is heavy right now, but is that going to remain steady, go up, or go down? How will it affect your current model?

I can count the number of times I have bought something other than gasoline at a gas station in the last decade on one hand.

There is a reason why I propose installing DCFC stations at restaurants by preference. Though some gas stations blur the line.

TCO is kind of an individual calculation that involves unknown variables though.

Logically speaking, while it may be true in the average case that TCO for EVs remains higher than not, decreasing EV prices and increasing fuel costs, not to mention increasing prices for ICE vehicles themselves, means that as the gap narrows in the average case, more and more unusual cases pass that line.
IE people with access to cheaper than normal electricity, people who have unusual distances to gas stations or rate visiting one more negatively, those that have easy home charging, with longer driving distances that are still within EV range and predictable, etc...

That said, do you have a citation on that TCO for EVs is still higher?

EV vs ICE Total Cost of Ownership Calculator 5-Year - $42k EV vs $32k ICE, 13k annual miles, all default otherwise - EV $9,811 cheaper. Eliminate the fed EV credit and bump gas to $4/gallon, still $3,543 cheaper.
https://oxmaint.com/industries...
40 diesel vans replaced with EV versions, saved $740k in one year. A different operation found it cost them $280k, but that was because they implemented it differently - charging infrastructure, utility rate, maintenance, and route profiles were substantially different.
This was in 2022, things are a bit different in 2026.

TLDR? As EVs get cheaper and gasoline prices go up, more people will tend to choose EVs.

Lithium extraction in like half the world, actually.
But despite both being salt water, the mineral waters from the wells have a lot more lithium than salt water.

Is anyone, *anyone* surprised? Step 1: Depend on MS. Step 2: Get screwed. That's the process.

If you wash away the salt deposits, that implies using water and thus generating brine. Brushing the salt away might be better. Main thing would be avoiding losing the salt to precipitation, as the idea seems to be to avoid it returning to the ocean.
Figuring out how to economically purify the salts, including separating out the lithium, would be a neat trick.

I remember reading about the fight between polished aluminum planes and painted. The paint adds weight, and thus increases fuel consumption, but the paint lowers maintenance costs.
A dirty airplane can absolutely burn a noticeably larger amount of fuel.
A car is operating at much lower speeds, generally, so the effect is probably much less.