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Bigger problem: More than half of Americans do not have a garage to park their car in to charge. Fast charging is great for road trips but it's got nothing on g

Bigger problem: More than half of Americans do not have a garage to park their car in to charge. Fast charging is great for road trips but it's got nothing on gas fill ups..yet.

iamgopal 6y ago
Or electricity distribution infra not large enough to move that much energy.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  We have plenty of distribution infrastructure that moves that much energy during the day to big industrial facilities. A lot EV charging would help "fill in the bathtub" where night-time demand for energy hugely drops in demand graphs. EVs also add other possibilities for smoothing the energy demand curve in vehicle-to-grid "smart grid" capabilities that would let (known) dormant vehicles contribute back to the grid during high demand periods as a new and somewhat uniquely new distributed mobile storage infrastructure.
  - ema 6y ago
    I don't think using cars for grid storage makes sense since you do want to limit cycles. Giving those batteries a second live as grid storage when they're down to X% of capacity might be worth it though. Also yes shifting charging to low demand times will be a thing.
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      I think we are going to learn a lot about the cycle capabilities of car batteries in the next few years. Overall, battery degradation has been much less of a problem in real world EV statistics, at least for actively temperature managed batteries, than many pessimistic models feared. One thing we seem to have growing evidence for is that battery cells resting at full charge for long periods of time may have more of an impact on battery lifetime than cycle counts, and so partial cycles of an active vehicle-to-grid system may actually be a smart plan for extending the expected life of EV batteries, given that evidence. Such systems are still in very early testing/planning, so we'll see as we learn. The fact that it is a possibility, though, greatly changes a lot of the "doomsday predictions" about electricity demand in an all EV tomorrow, so it is worth pointing out as a possibility, even if we aren't certain it is a probability that it will be used widespread.
      - fomine3 6y ago
        Fully charged state is bad for battery but it not means return to grid is smart. If there's no reword, car owner would hope just charge 60%, rather than full charge and return.
rconti 6y ago
Citation? I'm very curious about if this literally means "garage" as opposed to "any kind of off-street parking". Our tesla charges in.. our driveway. Our garage is too small to hold a car. When we remodel, I hope to convert our single into a tandem with a lift, holding 3 cars. The tesla will still be in the driveway, though.
- mperham 6y ago
  Apartment buildings and complexes.
  - bradlys 6y ago
    Or anyone who just doesn't have a parking space and has to use street parking. (Huge amount of people) Even where I live - a suburb with homes averaging $2m - there are a metric shit load of cars parked on the street.
    - ricardobeat 6y ago
      Hence we need to develop public charging infrastructure, like has been already happening in Europe. Not a big deal. Installing chargers in apartment parking lots is even easier.
WorldMaker 6y ago
Street level charging is very possible (and growing quickly in Europe). Any street with lamps or parking meters already has easy opportunities for chargers to be added.
- AgloeDreams 6y ago
  In America this would require some pretty high-level rework of how city infrastructure works.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    Not really? We have electricity at the streets. We want additional plugs on the streets, and maybe a credit card reader on those plugs (even that's not a given, really; cars themselves can transmit their payment information these days, or costs could be rolled into existing city taxes/parking fees). This isn't rocket science, this is infrastructure America has been building since the early 1900s.
    - nordsieck 6y ago
      > Not really? We have electricity at the streets. We want additional plugs on the streets, and maybe a credit card reader on those plugs Your parent was not saying that it'd be difficult to have a few charging stations on streets, but rather that it would be difficult to add a lot of densely packed chargers on the street. Today, there just isn't that much use for electricity on the street: traffic lights and the occasional parking meter are pretty much it from what I can tell. What you're proposing is adding 100's if not 1000's of amps of electricity to the sidewalk. For many, many streets. The situation is even more dire in the north: while it's not too bad to charge in a garage, particularly if it's insulated, EVs on the street will have to expend a substantial amount of energy keeping their batteries warm during the winter months, meaning that the minimum charging rate for those areas will have to be solidly in the Level 2 range. All of this work isn't impossible or even conceptually difficult. But it is a lot of work, and it's not as simple as just setting up charging stations and hooking them into the already existing infrastructure.
lallysingh 6y ago
A Porsche Taycan gets 214 miles of range in 30 minutes of charge for <$20. https://pod-point.com/guides/vehicles/porsche/2020/taycan https://pod-point.com/guides/vehicles/porsche/2020/taycan The charging rates are getting faster to fit more use cases. It's already pretty good.
- gambiting 6y ago
  Yes, at the highest rate of charge which: 1) is an optional extra when ordering the car 2) as far as I know, there's only a handful of these 200kW chargers in all of UK, nearly every motorway and public rapid charger are "only" 50kW, so it will take about an hour to get your battery to 80%
samatman 6y ago
Everyone has to park their car somewhere, and most people who don't have a garage (indeed, most people) have to park their car somewhere during work hours as well. This is a problem which solves itself during the buildout phase: BEVs are less attractive to people without a garage, but for people with a garage, it's a no-brainer once they're cheaper than ICE. Those people will want to charge during the day as well, and legislate for charge points in the downtown areas. Malls and other outlying work areas will want to add charge points as well: Malls in particular, anything which induces customers to spend longer at the mall is attractive. A bit of government funding to induce cheapskate office parks to put in electric chargers isn't out of the question. By the time we need them on city streets, it will happen.
- gambiting 6y ago
  >>Those people will want to charge during the day as well, Why would they though? In my experience owners of electric cars who can charge at home don't bother charging during the day while out and about, because....why would they? They start the day, every day, every morning, with a fresh 300 mile range car. Charging while out at work or in town is a faff, and usually a lot more expensive so....they just charge at home. It's people who can't charge at home who mostly rely on public chargers and charger at their place of work. They have to have a solid and consistent place to charge their vehicles, just like we have petrol stations now.
  - samatman 6y ago
    Main reason would be the relentless progress of solar power. Granted, they might not care as much. But we might want them to care, and I would expect the overnight price of power to climb steadily as our production mix shifts toward solar power. More than half of the US live in parts of the country where solar is high-performance, and it only gets cheaper from here.
r00fus 6y ago
Changing building codes to require retrofits to existing parking garages and dedicated covered parking to include EV charging would be a good medium term fix. THe problem is how do you charge people for the power? For dedicated parking stalls, that could be covered by a blanket fee or giving the owner a key to the charger. For public shared parking that's more going to look like ChargePoint etc.

Bigger problem: More than half of Americans do not have a garage to park their car in to charge. Fast charging is great for road trips but it's got nothing on gas fill ups..yet.

iamgopal 6y ago

Or electricity distribution infra not large enough to move that much energy.

WorldMaker 6y ago
We have plenty of distribution infrastructure that moves that much energy during the day to big industrial facilities. A lot EV charging would help "fill in the bathtub" where night-time demand for energy hugely drops in demand graphs. EVs also add other possibilities for smoothing the energy demand curve in vehicle-to-grid "smart grid" capabilities that would let (known) dormant vehicles contribute back to the grid during high demand periods as a new and somewhat uniquely new distributed mobile storage infrastructure.
- ema 6y ago
  I don't think using cars for grid storage makes sense since you do want to limit cycles. Giving those batteries a second live as grid storage when they're down to X% of capacity might be worth it though. Also yes shifting charging to low demand times will be a thing.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    I think we are going to learn a lot about the cycle capabilities of car batteries in the next few years. Overall, battery degradation has been much less of a problem in real world EV statistics, at least for actively temperature managed batteries, than many pessimistic models feared. One thing we seem to have growing evidence for is that battery cells resting at full charge for long periods of time may have more of an impact on battery lifetime than cycle counts, and so partial cycles of an active vehicle-to-grid system may actually be a smart plan for extending the expected life of EV batteries, given that evidence. Such systems are still in very early testing/planning, so we'll see as we learn. The fact that it is a possibility, though, greatly changes a lot of the "doomsday predictions" about electricity demand in an all EV tomorrow, so it is worth pointing out as a possibility, even if we aren't certain it is a probability that it will be used widespread.
    - fomine3 6y ago
      Fully charged state is bad for battery but it not means return to grid is smart. If there's no reword, car owner would hope just charge 60%, rather than full charge and return.

rconti 6y ago

Citation? I'm very curious about if this literally means "garage" as opposed to "any kind of off-street parking". Our tesla charges in.. our driveway. Our garage is too small to hold a car. When we remodel, I hope to convert our single into a tandem with a lift, holding 3 cars. The tesla will still be in the driveway, though.

mperham 6y ago
Apartment buildings and complexes.
- bradlys 6y ago
  Or anyone who just doesn't have a parking space and has to use street parking. (Huge amount of people) Even where I live - a suburb with homes averaging $2m - there are a metric shit load of cars parked on the street.
  - ricardobeat 6y ago
    Hence we need to develop public charging infrastructure, like has been already happening in Europe. Not a big deal. Installing chargers in apartment parking lots is even easier.

WorldMaker 6y ago

Street level charging is very possible (and growing quickly in Europe). Any street with lamps or parking meters already has easy opportunities for chargers to be added.

AgloeDreams 6y ago
In America this would require some pretty high-level rework of how city infrastructure works.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  Not really? We have electricity at the streets. We want additional plugs on the streets, and maybe a credit card reader on those plugs (even that's not a given, really; cars themselves can transmit their payment information these days, or costs could be rolled into existing city taxes/parking fees). This isn't rocket science, this is infrastructure America has been building since the early 1900s.
  - nordsieck 6y ago
    > Not really? We have electricity at the streets. We want additional plugs on the streets, and maybe a credit card reader on those plugs Your parent was not saying that it'd be difficult to have a few charging stations on streets, but rather that it would be difficult to add a lot of densely packed chargers on the street. Today, there just isn't that much use for electricity on the street: traffic lights and the occasional parking meter are pretty much it from what I can tell. What you're proposing is adding 100's if not 1000's of amps of electricity to the sidewalk. For many, many streets. The situation is even more dire in the north: while it's not too bad to charge in a garage, particularly if it's insulated, EVs on the street will have to expend a substantial amount of energy keeping their batteries warm during the winter months, meaning that the minimum charging rate for those areas will have to be solidly in the Level 2 range. All of this work isn't impossible or even conceptually difficult. But it is a lot of work, and it's not as simple as just setting up charging stations and hooking them into the already existing infrastructure.

lallysingh 6y ago

A Porsche Taycan gets 214 miles of range in 30 minutes of charge for <$20. https://pod-point.com/guides/vehicles/porsche/2020/taycan https://pod-point.com/guides/vehicles/porsche/2020/taycan The charging rates are getting faster to fit more use cases. It's already pretty good.

gambiting 6y ago
Yes, at the highest rate of charge which: 1) is an optional extra when ordering the car 2) as far as I know, there's only a handful of these 200kW chargers in all of UK, nearly every motorway and public rapid charger are "only" 50kW, so it will take about an hour to get your battery to 80%

samatman 6y ago

Everyone has to park their car somewhere, and most people who don't have a garage (indeed, most people) have to park their car somewhere during work hours as well. This is a problem which solves itself during the buildout phase: BEVs are less attractive to people without a garage, but for people with a garage, it's a no-brainer once they're cheaper than ICE. Those people will want to charge during the day as well, and legislate for charge points in the downtown areas. Malls and other outlying work areas will want to add charge points as well: Malls in particular, anything which induces customers to spend longer at the mall is attractive. A bit of government funding to induce cheapskate office parks to put in electric chargers isn't out of the question. By the time we need them on city streets, it will happen.

gambiting 6y ago
>>Those people will want to charge during the day as well, Why would they though? In my experience owners of electric cars who can charge at home don't bother charging during the day while out and about, because....why would they? They start the day, every day, every morning, with a fresh 300 mile range car. Charging while out at work or in town is a faff, and usually a lot more expensive so....they just charge at home. It's people who can't charge at home who mostly rely on public chargers and charger at their place of work. They have to have a solid and consistent place to charge their vehicles, just like we have petrol stations now.
- samatman 6y ago
  Main reason would be the relentless progress of solar power. Granted, they might not care as much. But we might want them to care, and I would expect the overnight price of power to climb steadily as our production mix shifts toward solar power. More than half of the US live in parts of the country where solar is high-performance, and it only gets cheaper from here.

r00fus 6y ago

Changing building codes to require retrofits to existing parking garages and dedicated covered parking to include EV charging would be a good medium term fix. THe problem is how do you charge people for the power? For dedicated parking stalls, that could be covered by a blanket fee or giving the owner a key to the charger. For public shared parking that's more going to look like ChargePoint etc.