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I've never had an apartment offer power at the parking lot. I couldn't buy a non-hybrid EV until a solid majority of them install that (either metered or on an

I've never had an apartment offer power at the parking lot. I couldn't buy a non-hybrid EV until a solid majority of them install that (either metered or on an indoor switch if I have an assigned space). Street parking is a harder problem.

WorldMaker 7y ago
Again, there are so many options, and it's just almost sad the lack of imagination everyone is bringing to these discussions. The same anecdotes appear, and the discussion just keeps going around in circles. Are you trying to solve the problem or are you just complaining that you won't bother? You have never had an apartment offer power at the parking lot? Isn't that an issue with your landlords like any other apartment feature/benefit? Isn't that the same as price shopping for an apartment with in-unit Laundry or up-to-date Appliances? Maybe the Landlord doesn't presently see a need for such a convenience, but they should be willing to compete, open to suggestions and the right sort of incentivization, right? (At least, so claim the free market folks.) Do you even need to charge at home? What's your daily commute, can you buy an EV with enough range that a supercharge once every two weeks will do it? That's the exact scenario discussed just posts above, this discussion is a flat circle. Can you charge at work? Can you charge at the grocery when you are running errands? Most Americans can, statistically, find a range in an EV today that they could charge once every two weeks and handle 100% of their average work life. Yes, everyone has an anecdote of how they are a special outlier that needs personal attention to their complaints. You couldn't buy a non-hybrid EV, or you just aren't willing to put the work out into figuring out any sort of strategy or plan? It's not even rocket science. Electricity is everywhere and this should be really easy for everyone to figure out. Does the building you are parked outside of have electricity? If yes, ask if it can give you an outside plug. That's it. Level 1 charging is that simple. Level 2 charging is nearly as simple: Does that building have Dryers or any other reason to already have 220+ Volt A/C circuits? (Maybe you are somewhere like England where that's actually the wall sockets.) Get a "dryer plug" installed in the parking lot. Admittedly we use a bit fancier of a plug socket in that case, but the basic electronics are the same. You aren't probably going to get a Level 3+ supercharger at an apartment complex any time soon (though it depends on your municipality and electric company and their goals for subsidizing the fun), but you probably don't need it. In most cases it's a lovely either/or: Level 1 or 2 charging at home/work, slow and steady every day, or Level 3+ charging in short bursts every two weeks or so. (Though it's not an exclusive-or; you could do both.) There are options already. None of these are hard problems to solve. We have the technology, it's just amazing we don't seem to have the will or the imagination, at least in terms of how often these same questions come up in repeat on HN comments, and HN is an audience I'd expect to be more willing to explore creative technical solutions to problems rather than to just stop at the first anecdotal problem to mind.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  You know what would be a lot more convincing, or at least valuable to the conversation? If you provided some anecdotes about how you live, in an apartment, with a BEV as your only car, on a middling salary for a white collar worker (say $40-50K USD). Possibly some numbers/calculations based on your experience. Putting people down for "anecdotes" and not having "imagination" gives the impression you might be basing your opinions on theoretical ideas.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    The problem is there are more anecdotes than useful information. Apologies for getting a small bit of angry there. It's one of those cases where I've had a lot of different people pop up in my "mentions" with variations of the same anecdotes, and there's that imbalance in that even if it is the fiftieth time I've responded to the same anecdote, it can still be that person's first time thinking about it. If you really want my anecdata, I do live in an apartment building with a tiny shared garage. I use a "range extended" EV (Generation 1, 2012 Volt) as my only car. I do my entire daily commute on a Level 1 charge, 8-12 hours charging each night for roughly 35-42 miles of charge depending on weather, entirely off of a boring, normal three-prong garage outlet. I have a dedicated parking space for my unit, but it's not entirely as convenient to the plug as I would like, but it's served me well enough now for 7-ish years. I've not yet convinced my building to install a Level 2 or higher charger, but as some of my neighbors start to talk about the idea of also buying EVs it could happen as a joint effort. The only big maintenance issues I've had with my car in all this time have been related to its gas engine for range extending and partly related to how little I've wound up using it. (I used it a lot in the first couple of years for a dumb commute I wasn't happy with; on an average year since then I use a full tank of gas at most twice in that year for big road trips, with rare sips for weather or the car's own monthly maintenance cycle.) At this point, I do feel certain my next car when it comes time to replace the Volt will be entirely battery electric. A gas range extender made sense in 2012, but I'd strongly recommend against it in 2019, the range in BEVs is now good enough to cover 100% of my daily driving for two whole weeks between required charging, and I do have years of experience now that I can also easily cover ~140% of my daily miles in the evenings on the most boring of a Level 1 charger (110 volt, standard US three prong wall outlet), not even counting how long my car usually sits on the weekends, nor how much of a charge I could get if I could convince my office to give me even a boring old Level 1 plug while I'm parked at work. There's this perspective that Chargers are something new and unique and need to be giant gas-station like things, and it just belies the fact of how ubiquitous our electric grid already is, just how many plug outlets we've placed throughout our cities. In my years of owning my car, I've found a small game of cataloging outdoor outlets and their rough distance to parking lots. (I've found parking spots to charge in at the back of hotels I've stayed at. The hotels didn't even know they had spots that could charge a car, and always had fun reactions if I asked to use those outlets.) Then that lead to a game of cataloging the nearest electric device to a parking spot. Do you realize how many parking lots have lots of bright shining lamps every so many feet? How many street lamps on the average street? Do you know how easy it would be to install a plug at the base of each and every one of those lamps? (More interestingly, it was brought to my attention that the vast majority of parking lot lamps run in the US actually run at 220 volt A/C for reliability of the most common type of halogen lamps at the time a lot of parking lots were built. In theory we should be easily capable of adding Level 2 chargers near every parking lot lamp.) We could argue middling salary multiple ways, and I'm not sure I'd fit some of your definitions, but I will offer as some evidence that I'm driving a 7-year old car, expect to keep it until at least 10-years old, and my previous car was 13-years old (and I had driven it for 10 of those) when I upgraded. I had to buy this car new to put my money where my mouth was on EV as the present in 2012, but it was a trade-off I felt important. For the most part I've saved on maintenance and gas more than enough to make up the difference from buying used, at least according to the last time I did a back-of-the-envelope check (which was an important check for my father, who is very adamant from experience about never buy a new car, always buy used). So yeah, electric charging is already the past and present for me, I'm not just talking theoretically.
perl4ever 7y ago
I just moved out of an apartment building that did have chargers, but they had like two in a garage for hundreds of cars. They didn't seem to have plans to provide one for everyone.
- erik_seaberg 7y ago
  I don't get this. If I can't rely on having a charger every day, I have to plan on being able to get home without one, and then why have it?

WorldMaker 7y ago

Again, there are so many options, and it's just almost sad the lack of imagination everyone is bringing to these discussions. The same anecdotes appear, and the discussion just keeps going around in circles. Are you trying to solve the problem or are you just complaining that you won't bother? You have never had an apartment offer power at the parking lot? Isn't that an issue with your landlords like any other apartment feature/benefit? Isn't that the same as price shopping for an apartment with in-unit Laundry or up-to-date Appliances? Maybe the Landlord doesn't presently see a need for such a convenience, but they should be willing to compete, open to suggestions and the right sort of incentivization, right? (At least, so claim the free market folks.) Do you even need to charge at home? What's your daily commute, can you buy an EV with enough range that a supercharge once every two weeks will do it? That's the exact scenario discussed just posts above, this discussion is a flat circle. Can you charge at work? Can you charge at the grocery when you are running errands? Most Americans can, statistically, find a range in an EV today that they could charge once every two weeks and handle 100% of their average work life. Yes, everyone has an anecdote of how they are a special outlier that needs personal attention to their complaints. You couldn't buy a non-hybrid EV, or you just aren't willing to put the work out into figuring out any sort of strategy or plan? It's not even rocket science. Electricity is everywhere and this should be really easy for everyone to figure out. Does the building you are parked outside of have electricity? If yes, ask if it can give you an outside plug. That's it. Level 1 charging is that simple. Level 2 charging is nearly as simple: Does that building have Dryers or any other reason to already have 220+ Volt A/C circuits? (Maybe you are somewhere like England where that's actually the wall sockets.) Get a "dryer plug" installed in the parking lot. Admittedly we use a bit fancier of a plug socket in that case, but the basic electronics are the same. You aren't probably going to get a Level 3+ supercharger at an apartment complex any time soon (though it depends on your municipality and electric company and their goals for subsidizing the fun), but you probably don't need it. In most cases it's a lovely either/or: Level 1 or 2 charging at home/work, slow and steady every day, or Level 3+ charging in short bursts every two weeks or so. (Though it's not an exclusive-or; you could do both.) There are options already. None of these are hard problems to solve. We have the technology, it's just amazing we don't seem to have the will or the imagination, at least in terms of how often these same questions come up in repeat on HN comments, and HN is an audience I'd expect to be more willing to explore creative technical solutions to problems rather than to just stop at the first anecdotal problem to mind.

perl4ever 7y ago
You know what would be a lot more convincing, or at least valuable to the conversation? If you provided some anecdotes about how you live, in an apartment, with a BEV as your only car, on a middling salary for a white collar worker (say $40-50K USD). Possibly some numbers/calculations based on your experience. Putting people down for "anecdotes" and not having "imagination" gives the impression you might be basing your opinions on theoretical ideas.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  The problem is there are more anecdotes than useful information. Apologies for getting a small bit of angry there. It's one of those cases where I've had a lot of different people pop up in my "mentions" with variations of the same anecdotes, and there's that imbalance in that even if it is the fiftieth time I've responded to the same anecdote, it can still be that person's first time thinking about it. If you really want my anecdata, I do live in an apartment building with a tiny shared garage. I use a "range extended" EV (Generation 1, 2012 Volt) as my only car. I do my entire daily commute on a Level 1 charge, 8-12 hours charging each night for roughly 35-42 miles of charge depending on weather, entirely off of a boring, normal three-prong garage outlet. I have a dedicated parking space for my unit, but it's not entirely as convenient to the plug as I would like, but it's served me well enough now for 7-ish years. I've not yet convinced my building to install a Level 2 or higher charger, but as some of my neighbors start to talk about the idea of also buying EVs it could happen as a joint effort. The only big maintenance issues I've had with my car in all this time have been related to its gas engine for range extending and partly related to how little I've wound up using it. (I used it a lot in the first couple of years for a dumb commute I wasn't happy with; on an average year since then I use a full tank of gas at most twice in that year for big road trips, with rare sips for weather or the car's own monthly maintenance cycle.) At this point, I do feel certain my next car when it comes time to replace the Volt will be entirely battery electric. A gas range extender made sense in 2012, but I'd strongly recommend against it in 2019, the range in BEVs is now good enough to cover 100% of my daily driving for two whole weeks between required charging, and I do have years of experience now that I can also easily cover ~140% of my daily miles in the evenings on the most boring of a Level 1 charger (110 volt, standard US three prong wall outlet), not even counting how long my car usually sits on the weekends, nor how much of a charge I could get if I could convince my office to give me even a boring old Level 1 plug while I'm parked at work. There's this perspective that Chargers are something new and unique and need to be giant gas-station like things, and it just belies the fact of how ubiquitous our electric grid already is, just how many plug outlets we've placed throughout our cities. In my years of owning my car, I've found a small game of cataloging outdoor outlets and their rough distance to parking lots. (I've found parking spots to charge in at the back of hotels I've stayed at. The hotels didn't even know they had spots that could charge a car, and always had fun reactions if I asked to use those outlets.) Then that lead to a game of cataloging the nearest electric device to a parking spot. Do you realize how many parking lots have lots of bright shining lamps every so many feet? How many street lamps on the average street? Do you know how easy it would be to install a plug at the base of each and every one of those lamps? (More interestingly, it was brought to my attention that the vast majority of parking lot lamps run in the US actually run at 220 volt A/C for reliability of the most common type of halogen lamps at the time a lot of parking lots were built. In theory we should be easily capable of adding Level 2 chargers near every parking lot lamp.) We could argue middling salary multiple ways, and I'm not sure I'd fit some of your definitions, but I will offer as some evidence that I'm driving a 7-year old car, expect to keep it until at least 10-years old, and my previous car was 13-years old (and I had driven it for 10 of those) when I upgraded. I had to buy this car new to put my money where my mouth was on EV as the present in 2012, but it was a trade-off I felt important. For the most part I've saved on maintenance and gas more than enough to make up the difference from buying used, at least according to the last time I did a back-of-the-envelope check (which was an important check for my father, who is very adamant from experience about never buy a new car, always buy used). So yeah, electric charging is already the past and present for me, I'm not just talking theoretically.

perl4ever 7y ago

I just moved out of an apartment building that did have chargers, but they had like two in a garage for hundreds of cars. They didn't seem to have plans to provide one for everyone.

erik_seaberg 7y ago
I don't get this. If I can't rely on having a charger every day, I have to plan on being able to get home without one, and then why have it?