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In the UK you can get a government grant for 75% of the install cost of a domestic charge point; there are also a growing number of public chargepoints (1400 no

In the UK you can get a government grant for 75% of the install cost of a domestic charge point; there are also a growing number of public chargepoints (1400 now, increasing to 6000 in a couple of years), and workplace garages often have them; urban gas stations are mostly closing for commercial reasons (redevelopment).

threeseed 11y ago
I spent years living in London and I had to find parking on the street often not near my car. Are we really expecting every house to have a power cable running from their house down the street ? Because it sounds dangerous, impractical and hardly an elegant solution for the next generation of automobile power technology. And again my workplace in London was a big car garage. I don't see how that magically ends up with per bay power with the current chicken/egg situation.
- buro9 11y ago
  It is now common in London to see electric only parking spaces, with a power bay, on most central London streets and these are increasing in number in the 'burbs too. You will get a ticket if you put a liquid-fuelled vehicle in those spaces. These tend to be filled with Nissan Leaf and cars of that kind, I've yet to see a Tesla in one (do all Tesla owners charge at home?).
  - threeseed 11y ago
    The Nissan Leaf takes 8 hours to recharge. I just don't understand how electric cars scale out to all consumers given the housing situation. There would need to be an electric charging unit on every parking spot. Is this logistically practical ?
    - kuschku 11y ago
      Remember, whatever the charging time at a residential socket is in the US, the charging time at a European socket will be half of that. (If the socket is properly used) (US uses 110V residential, 220V industrial; Europe uses 220V/230V/240V residential, 400V industrial; Additionally usually british and German wall sockets, at least, offer up to 16 or 24A, which, again, is more than US sockets. If the socket delivers more power, you can charge faster)
      - sokoloff 11y ago
        US residences have 240VAC available, and standard outlets provide half of that, 120VAC, all single-phase. US electric ovens, dryers, water heaters, conventional split AC, etc run on 240V. It's fairly trivial to install a 6.6kW "charger" in most US residences. (It's not in a detached garage if fed by only a single 120VAC line.) US industrial is variously 208VAC, 240VAC, 277VAC, and 480VAC; some are single phase; some are three phase. If you're discussing only the "walk up and plug into an existing outlet" situation, EU charging will be faster. Not so for permanently installed chargers. As for the very last point, the supply equipment negotiates with the car to advertise how much supply it has. Unless you can tell it to charge at 24A, it doesn't "know" and the charge will be at the slower rate. Same in the US. If I plug my trickle charger into a typical 15A plug, it charges at around 12A. If I plug the equipment into a 20A plug, it still charges at the same rate, because the equipment doesn't know that a higher amperage is available.
        kuschku 11y ago
        German residencies have 240VAC as standard, and 400VAC available. Normal stoves usually end up using around 18kW here. For permanently installed chargers, this will be a lot more power.
        sokoloff 11y ago
        Learned something today; thanks! Note that the J1772 charging standard won't supply 400VAC-3phase, but IEC 62196[1] will allow that super-fast AC charging. 1-https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
        kalleboo 11y ago
        And European homes have 400V available (230V is the single phase). When my parents had their old three phase 400V oven replaced they had to have am electrician in to redo the outlet since the new one was only single phase 230V.
    - sokoloff 11y ago
      My Nissan LEAF takes a hair over 4 hours to charge from basically flat to full using the commonly available 6.6kW EVSEs. 6.6kW adds about 25 miles of range per hour of charging. It's only the slow trickle charger that takes a long time (in fact can be over 24 hours).
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Why is it difficult to have one electrical outlet per parking spot? How many outlets do you already have in your house, for example?
      - shabble 11y ago
        It would make life interesting for multistorey car parks. It's not uncommon to have 500+ spaces. If each one of those has something between 3-50kW charge capacity, and many are being used at once, that's going to require some serious infrastructure upgrading (maxes out at ~25MW if I didn't flub the numbers). A wild ass guess would put them in the maybe-hundreds of kW for lighting, ventilation, automation, so that's a pretty big step. Then again, they'd be in a pretty good position to monitor spaces used and already have a billing system for parking time, adding cost of power would be quite straightforward. And it's going to be a long time before 100% electric occupancy is a real problem.
        mikeash 11y ago
        It's sort of a microcosm of the problem of upgrading the grid to handle the additional load from charging EVs. Like the grid, I think it will happen so gradually that it will barely be noticeable, and the upgrades will just be a part of regular electrical work. Note that you'd only need to size for average use, not peak use. With a bit of cleverness (and expense) you could set a power limit for the whole garage and distribute it between the charging cars, rather than letting everyone charge full blast. Most people will drive under 50 miles per day on average and will charge overnight, so you really only need to deliver about 1.5kW per car. (50 miles at 300Wh/mile is 15kWh, assume "overnight" is ten hours of charging.) You'd want to be able to provide more for those who need it, but that's probably a reasonable number for an average. I have 10kW charging at home for my Model S and it's major overkill for local driving. Most public chargers are about 6kW, which would still be plenty for daily charging.
        t0mas88 11y ago
        Tesla already has a lot of technology in their Super Charger stations to control the total charge rate. E.g. if you park right next to another car both will charge slower, because there is a limit in power per 2 adjacent parking spots. The same goes for the total over all spots, if they are all in use, the cars will charge slower. So having 500 spots in a garage means you'll need to have some technology that is aware of which car is in need of charging and when the owner is expected to return. You can then set dynamic pricing to motivate car owners to charge at the moment you have enough capacity and encourage them not to all request full charge-rate at busy moments in the garage.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Not all Tesla owners charge at home, but almost all do. It's pretty inconvenient to own an EV that you can't charge at home. It's doable in some cases, but it's far better to have home charging. I'm pretty sure that 90+% of EV owners of all stripes charge at home, whether Tesla, LEAF, or other. If you see them charging in public, it's usually either to get a bit of extra range because they're planning to drive beyond what a single charge can give them, or they're just taking advantage of the availability of changing even though they don't need it. Mostly the latter. (Just in case it comes across wrong, that isn't meant to be disparaging. I plug in when there's a free charger even if I don't need it. If it's offered, I figure I might as well take advantage. I do leave my phone number on the dashboard in case someone comes along who actually needs it to get home.)
- rokhayakebe 11y ago
  Will a solar panel on top of the care help? Could someone do the math?

threeseed 11y ago

I spent years living in London and I had to find parking on the street often not near my car. Are we really expecting every house to have a power cable running from their house down the street ? Because it sounds dangerous, impractical and hardly an elegant solution for the next generation of automobile power technology. And again my workplace in London was a big car garage. I don't see how that magically ends up with per bay power with the current chicken/egg situation.

buro9 11y ago
It is now common in London to see electric only parking spaces, with a power bay, on most central London streets and these are increasing in number in the 'burbs too. You will get a ticket if you put a liquid-fuelled vehicle in those spaces. These tend to be filled with Nissan Leaf and cars of that kind, I've yet to see a Tesla in one (do all Tesla owners charge at home?).
- threeseed 11y ago
  The Nissan Leaf takes 8 hours to recharge. I just don't understand how electric cars scale out to all consumers given the housing situation. There would need to be an electric charging unit on every parking spot. Is this logistically practical ?
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Remember, whatever the charging time at a residential socket is in the US, the charging time at a European socket will be half of that. (If the socket is properly used) (US uses 110V residential, 220V industrial; Europe uses 220V/230V/240V residential, 400V industrial; Additionally usually british and German wall sockets, at least, offer up to 16 or 24A, which, again, is more than US sockets. If the socket delivers more power, you can charge faster)
    - sokoloff 11y ago
      US residences have 240VAC available, and standard outlets provide half of that, 120VAC, all single-phase. US electric ovens, dryers, water heaters, conventional split AC, etc run on 240V. It's fairly trivial to install a 6.6kW "charger" in most US residences. (It's not in a detached garage if fed by only a single 120VAC line.) US industrial is variously 208VAC, 240VAC, 277VAC, and 480VAC; some are single phase; some are three phase. If you're discussing only the "walk up and plug into an existing outlet" situation, EU charging will be faster. Not so for permanently installed chargers. As for the very last point, the supply equipment negotiates with the car to advertise how much supply it has. Unless you can tell it to charge at 24A, it doesn't "know" and the charge will be at the slower rate. Same in the US. If I plug my trickle charger into a typical 15A plug, it charges at around 12A. If I plug the equipment into a 20A plug, it still charges at the same rate, because the equipment doesn't know that a higher amperage is available.
      - kuschku 11y ago
        German residencies have 240VAC as standard, and 400VAC available. Normal stoves usually end up using around 18kW here. For permanently installed chargers, this will be a lot more power.
        sokoloff 11y ago
        Learned something today; thanks! Note that the J1772 charging standard won't supply 400VAC-3phase, but IEC 62196[1] will allow that super-fast AC charging. 1-https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
      - kalleboo 11y ago
        And European homes have 400V available (230V is the single phase). When my parents had their old three phase 400V oven replaced they had to have am electrician in to redo the outlet since the new one was only single phase 230V.
  - sokoloff 11y ago
    My Nissan LEAF takes a hair over 4 hours to charge from basically flat to full using the commonly available 6.6kW EVSEs. 6.6kW adds about 25 miles of range per hour of charging. It's only the slow trickle charger that takes a long time (in fact can be over 24 hours).
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Why is it difficult to have one electrical outlet per parking spot? How many outlets do you already have in your house, for example?
    - shabble 11y ago
      It would make life interesting for multistorey car parks. It's not uncommon to have 500+ spaces. If each one of those has something between 3-50kW charge capacity, and many are being used at once, that's going to require some serious infrastructure upgrading (maxes out at ~25MW if I didn't flub the numbers). A wild ass guess would put them in the maybe-hundreds of kW for lighting, ventilation, automation, so that's a pretty big step. Then again, they'd be in a pretty good position to monitor spaces used and already have a billing system for parking time, adding cost of power would be quite straightforward. And it's going to be a long time before 100% electric occupancy is a real problem.
      - mikeash 11y ago
        It's sort of a microcosm of the problem of upgrading the grid to handle the additional load from charging EVs. Like the grid, I think it will happen so gradually that it will barely be noticeable, and the upgrades will just be a part of regular electrical work. Note that you'd only need to size for average use, not peak use. With a bit of cleverness (and expense) you could set a power limit for the whole garage and distribute it between the charging cars, rather than letting everyone charge full blast. Most people will drive under 50 miles per day on average and will charge overnight, so you really only need to deliver about 1.5kW per car. (50 miles at 300Wh/mile is 15kWh, assume "overnight" is ten hours of charging.) You'd want to be able to provide more for those who need it, but that's probably a reasonable number for an average. I have 10kW charging at home for my Model S and it's major overkill for local driving. Most public chargers are about 6kW, which would still be plenty for daily charging.
      - t0mas88 11y ago
        Tesla already has a lot of technology in their Super Charger stations to control the total charge rate. E.g. if you park right next to another car both will charge slower, because there is a limit in power per 2 adjacent parking spots. The same goes for the total over all spots, if they are all in use, the cars will charge slower. So having 500 spots in a garage means you'll need to have some technology that is aware of which car is in need of charging and when the owner is expected to return. You can then set dynamic pricing to motivate car owners to charge at the moment you have enough capacity and encourage them not to all request full charge-rate at busy moments in the garage.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Not all Tesla owners charge at home, but almost all do. It's pretty inconvenient to own an EV that you can't charge at home. It's doable in some cases, but it's far better to have home charging. I'm pretty sure that 90+% of EV owners of all stripes charge at home, whether Tesla, LEAF, or other. If you see them charging in public, it's usually either to get a bit of extra range because they're planning to drive beyond what a single charge can give them, or they're just taking advantage of the availability of changing even though they don't need it. Mostly the latter. (Just in case it comes across wrong, that isn't meant to be disparaging. I plug in when there's a free charger even if I don't need it. If it's offered, I figure I might as well take advantage. I do leave my phone number on the dashboard in case someone comes along who actually needs it to get home.)
rokhayakebe 11y ago
Will a solar panel on top of the care help? Could someone do the math?