5 ms·

I always thought this was a big problem for EVs, but recently came to think nightly charging might not matter so much for these drivers. If an urban apartment d

I always thought this was a big problem for EVs, but recently came to think nightly charging might not matter so much for these drivers. If an urban apartment dweller has an EV with 200+ miles of range, can't a public fast charger be used once or twice a week instead? I lived in an apartment with a ~200 mile range ICE car and filled it less than once a week.

rco8786 7y ago
This is where my family is - we're considering an EV but do not have a charger at home. We live in a reasonably dense urban area w/ a dedicated spot in a garage and don't typically drive more than 200 miles a week, so we'll just use public chargers. This will be a second car though - and I would be slightly wary of this sort of responsibility for a primary vehicle.
neogodless 7y ago
It's mentioned elsewhere in the comments. > This issue will hopefully be transient; once charging speed is comparable to filling your ICE vehicle with fuel. > Until then, the lack of fast public chargers combined with the relative slowness of charging makes this a major downgrade from ICE. In other words, the only reason most people are OK with this one attribute of EVs that is inferior to ICE is the fact that they can charge at home (and/or work.) But there are plenty of people that do not fit into that category.
- throw0101a 7y ago
  By being able to easily plug-in at home, overnight, one always has a full battery in the morning. Especially nice if you can program things to charge during off-peak hours.
  - neogodless 7y ago
    That is exactly my point. The people that can plug-in at home find it very convenient, but if that's not an option, it's not convenient at all! So I don't understand why you posted that comment as a response to mine?
jedberg 7y ago
Filling your car at the gas station is a five minute stop on the way home. Filing your electric car is at least an hour if you have a DC fast charger and that gets you only 80% full. To get totally full, it would take a multi-hour stop.
- kennywinker 7y ago
  Sure. If your commute is 15% of your range, you’d be able to charge once a week. I’m pretty sure most people could work out a multi-hour stopover near a charging station into their week. Put them near a restaurant, arts, or shopping district and bingo problem solved.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Near where I live, there's actually one in the parking lot of the almost derelict shopping mall. But that's also right next door to a particularly busy grocery store. There are usually vehicles in it and this is in an area (Mass) that doesn't have a lot of Teslas generally and certainly not in the somewhat rundown small city this store is on the outskirts of.
- Brakenshire 7y ago
  You’d do a weekly food shop, and do your weekly charge at the same time. “Well over an hour” is wrong, there’s almost no electric car that won’t do an 80% charge in 45 minutes, and most take half an hour.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    I never said it would take an hour. I specifically said you could get an 80% charge in about an hour. And the grocery store better have a lot of chargers if everyone is doing their weekly fillup while they shop.
    - Brakenshire 7y ago
      > Filing your electric car is at least an hour if you have a DC fast charger and that gets you only 80% full. “At least an hour” to 80% charge. I don’t think there’s a car on the market for which this is the case. People will charge in a variety of way. Some people in apartments will have block parking for which there will be chargers, some people will go to superchargers or similar, some will do it at the gym, some at the train station, some shopping, some at work, others will have chargers for on street parking. Other people will use car sharing schemes which have dedicated chargers. Ultimately cars are parked for hundreds of hours a week and you only need a tiny fraction of that for charging.
ryanmercer 7y ago
>can't a public fast charger be used once or twice a week instead? It takes me less than 2 minutes to fill up my tank and pay, now you want me to sit 1-4 hours at a fast charger a week twiddling my thumbs? Never mind the fact a Tesla Model 3 starts at my annual salary.
- ummonk 7y ago
  I think it works if the fast charger is at e.g. a shopping center where you can grab dinner or shop while the car charges.
  - neogodless 7y ago
    Any solution that requires a certain behavior is unnecessarily coupling that behavior to transferring energy into transportation. In a world where a couple owns two EVs, and only one does the weekly grocery shopping, do they have to swap cars to get them both charged? Do they have to start eating out to charge their car? What if you use Amazon Fresh for food deliveries? Give that up; you need to charge your car. In other words, there are lots of ideas that might work for some people, but they shouldn't be necessary for EV ownership.
    - kelnos 7y ago
      I think your point hits to the heart of it for many people's situations. You can fit car-charging into your routine if you make some very specific changes to your routine to accommodate it, and you must make possibly several hours of time for those changes every X days, or else you'll have a car with a flat battery and no quick fix that will let you complete your regular car-requiring errands. If that errand is "go grocery shopping" or "drop a large package off at the post office", you might be fine rearranging or postponing, but if it's "go to work", you're completely screwed. There are quite a few jobs where "I can't get to work because my car's battery is dead" will get you fired. For me, I'm privileged enough that it's simply inconvenient to put that constraint on my lifestyle (inconvenient enough that I won't buy an EV), but for many people it's a showstopper.
kelnos 7y ago
That might work for urbanites who drive to work and work in the same city where they live. But I know quite a few people whose daily commute is 40+ miles each way. They'd be visiting the charger every other day. That's unfortunately very common for people who live in San Francisco and work outside the city, and vice versa. (I have a different problem: I walk or take transit to work, and have a car mainly for longer trips outside the city. I also have no charging station in my building's garage, so I've stuck with an ICE car for now.)
- Brakenshire 7y ago
  Surely not having access to private parking is almost entirely an urbanite problem, to do with living in apartment blocks. Anyone who lives in the suburbs would be very likely to have their own parking.

rco8786 7y ago

This is where my family is - we're considering an EV but do not have a charger at home. We live in a reasonably dense urban area w/ a dedicated spot in a garage and don't typically drive more than 200 miles a week, so we'll just use public chargers. This will be a second car though - and I would be slightly wary of this sort of responsibility for a primary vehicle.

neogodless 7y ago

It's mentioned elsewhere in the comments. > This issue will hopefully be transient; once charging speed is comparable to filling your ICE vehicle with fuel. > Until then, the lack of fast public chargers combined with the relative slowness of charging makes this a major downgrade from ICE. In other words, the only reason most people are OK with this one attribute of EVs that is inferior to ICE is the fact that they can charge at home (and/or work.) But there are plenty of people that do not fit into that category.

throw0101a 7y ago
By being able to easily plug-in at home, overnight, one always has a full battery in the morning. Especially nice if you can program things to charge during off-peak hours.
- neogodless 7y ago
  That is exactly my point. The people that can plug-in at home find it very convenient, but if that's not an option, it's not convenient at all! So I don't understand why you posted that comment as a response to mine?

jedberg 7y ago

Filling your car at the gas station is a five minute stop on the way home. Filing your electric car is at least an hour if you have a DC fast charger and that gets you only 80% full. To get totally full, it would take a multi-hour stop.

kennywinker 7y ago
Sure. If your commute is 15% of your range, you’d be able to charge once a week. I’m pretty sure most people could work out a multi-hour stopover near a charging station into their week. Put them near a restaurant, arts, or shopping district and bingo problem solved.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Near where I live, there's actually one in the parking lot of the almost derelict shopping mall. But that's also right next door to a particularly busy grocery store. There are usually vehicles in it and this is in an area (Mass) that doesn't have a lot of Teslas generally and certainly not in the somewhat rundown small city this store is on the outskirts of.
Brakenshire 7y ago
You’d do a weekly food shop, and do your weekly charge at the same time. “Well over an hour” is wrong, there’s almost no electric car that won’t do an 80% charge in 45 minutes, and most take half an hour.
- jedberg 7y ago
  I never said it would take an hour. I specifically said you could get an 80% charge in about an hour. And the grocery store better have a lot of chargers if everyone is doing their weekly fillup while they shop.
  - Brakenshire 7y ago
    > Filing your electric car is at least an hour if you have a DC fast charger and that gets you only 80% full. “At least an hour” to 80% charge. I don’t think there’s a car on the market for which this is the case. People will charge in a variety of way. Some people in apartments will have block parking for which there will be chargers, some people will go to superchargers or similar, some will do it at the gym, some at the train station, some shopping, some at work, others will have chargers for on street parking. Other people will use car sharing schemes which have dedicated chargers. Ultimately cars are parked for hundreds of hours a week and you only need a tiny fraction of that for charging.

ryanmercer 7y ago

>can't a public fast charger be used once or twice a week instead? It takes me less than 2 minutes to fill up my tank and pay, now you want me to sit 1-4 hours at a fast charger a week twiddling my thumbs? Never mind the fact a Tesla Model 3 starts at my annual salary.

ummonk 7y ago
I think it works if the fast charger is at e.g. a shopping center where you can grab dinner or shop while the car charges.
- neogodless 7y ago
  Any solution that requires a certain behavior is unnecessarily coupling that behavior to transferring energy into transportation. In a world where a couple owns two EVs, and only one does the weekly grocery shopping, do they have to swap cars to get them both charged? Do they have to start eating out to charge their car? What if you use Amazon Fresh for food deliveries? Give that up; you need to charge your car. In other words, there are lots of ideas that might work for some people, but they shouldn't be necessary for EV ownership.
  - kelnos 7y ago
    I think your point hits to the heart of it for many people's situations. You can fit car-charging into your routine if you make some very specific changes to your routine to accommodate it, and you must make possibly several hours of time for those changes every X days, or else you'll have a car with a flat battery and no quick fix that will let you complete your regular car-requiring errands. If that errand is "go grocery shopping" or "drop a large package off at the post office", you might be fine rearranging or postponing, but if it's "go to work", you're completely screwed. There are quite a few jobs where "I can't get to work because my car's battery is dead" will get you fired. For me, I'm privileged enough that it's simply inconvenient to put that constraint on my lifestyle (inconvenient enough that I won't buy an EV), but for many people it's a showstopper.

kelnos 7y ago

That might work for urbanites who drive to work and work in the same city where they live. But I know quite a few people whose daily commute is 40+ miles each way. They'd be visiting the charger every other day. That's unfortunately very common for people who live in San Francisco and work outside the city, and vice versa. (I have a different problem: I walk or take transit to work, and have a car mainly for longer trips outside the city. I also have no charging station in my building's garage, so I've stuck with an ICE car for now.)

Brakenshire 7y ago
Surely not having access to private parking is almost entirely an urbanite problem, to do with living in apartment blocks. Anyone who lives in the suburbs would be very likely to have their own parking.