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I feel like what a lot of people miss is that with an EV if you have a garage or dedicated parking spot you’re leaving home with a “full tank” every single day.

I feel like what a lot of people miss is that with an EV if you have a garage or dedicated parking spot you’re leaving home with a “full tank” every single day. You only need to use a public charger if you’re on a road trip.

bbv-if 5y ago
That is the big 'if' for the majority of population in European cities. Pretty convenient for suburbs though.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Yep, having to charge them at public charging stations is pretty shitty, takes a long time, and a lot of time they're not available to use. I used to work in a large business building a few years ago, and they had 4 charging stations right next to the main entrance, and having an electric car then was great... the "plebs" would have to park behind the building or in the garage under, and you'd have priority parking infront. Then, the number of electic cars rose to above 4 there, and first 4 that came, parked there, connected the chargers and went to work. If you came 5th, there was nothing you could do, except maybe if you knew one of those 4, politely ask them to move their car during lunch, so you can charge yours too.. but most of the people left their car there until end of work at 3-5h in the afternoon.
  - shiftpgdn 5y ago
    Ive charged plenty of times on road trips on both the Tesla and Electrify America networks. Charge time is usually under 20-30 at places and times I’d already be stopping to use the bathroom and stretch my legs. In regards to the chargers in your work garage: most modern charge systems let you set idle fees. If you install anything worthwhile you could easily configure it so people have to move after their car has been sitting fully charged for an hour.
_carbyau_ 5y ago
Plenty of apartment buildings don't have a dedicated powerpoint per parking spot. This can be fixed but in the meantime it is a significant cost for the building. And you bet that early adopters putting in regular powerpoints will be trumped by later installs of dedicated, secured charging stations. I am not jumping to an EV any time soon.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  > And you bet that early adopters putting in regular powerpoints A 110V AC outlet is completely inappropriate and inadequate for charging a BEV; for example, it would take three days of nonstop charging to charge my car from a 110V outlet. BEV automakers include the 110V adapter as an emergency stopgap more than anything else - I suppose they intend it to be used to help you get to a DC charger: but even assuming I'm no more than 100mi from a Supercharger then I still need to be plugged-in to 110V for at least 24 hours to get the 30kWh level I'd need to travel 100mi - and who is going to let someone borrow a days' worth of 1-2kWh electricity like that?
  - dmix 5y ago
    Could an apartment building even support say 50% or 75% of a typical sized apartments buildings parking garage's worth of 'supercharger' like installs? Later on times a whole cities worth of apartment buildings. I'm not familiar with this field but I'd imagine this would take some special arrangement with the power companies. But so far that seems to be the only solution at the moment. Without apartment buildings offering this I don't see how it could be widely deployed without changing how cities are built and transportation is deployed. Even if all the buildings offloaded to external Uber-style autonomous fleets they need to be charged somewhere and at a massive volume. And in my city 90% of new housin development for the last two decades seems to be on apartment buildings.
    - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
      Preface: DC fast-charging is "Level 3". A 240V ("clothes dryer connector" in the US) or hardwired wall-connector is "Level 2" and in the US is typically 15-50A - if you have a modern home with plenty of free 'leccy panel spots then you can do 90A. A slow 110V or low-amperage 240V (for outside North America) is considered "Level 1". The supply of DC fast chargers is not open to the public at all: only Tesla and a tiny number of third-parties maintain Level 3 infrastructure, and they all require outhouse-sized transformer units for each car space, separate from the car-connector part. --------- Level 3 / DC fast-charging is not intended for long-term and repetitive use: it's only intended for road-trips and that's it - that's because DC fast-charging is bad for your battery. I primarily charge at home using my 90A wall-connector - but I still rate-limit the charging to ~60A to help conserve the health of my battery-pack. Not that it matters much: since Covid and WFH my driving has dropped drastically, from ~30,000mi/yr to less than 5,000mi in 2020, and less than 1,000mi so far in 2021. (I got my Model X in 2018 and it's still got under 20,000 miles on it, lol). But you raise an excellent point about apartment complexes and parking-lots not being able to feed dozens or more charging spaces. Yes, it's a problem, and no, I don't see a viable long-term solution. Other than apartments, cities like London, etc, have built car charger ports into streetlamps so people with street-parking can charge their car at Level 2 speeds using that pre-existing infrastructure - I'm unsure to what extent it's a public-private-partnership vs. public, but the opportunity to profit from car-charging infrastructure means pushing the cost-per-mile up above the cost of gasoline/petrol - which undermines the economic-and-environmental benefits of BEVs (especially when you consider the dreaded fuel-tax on petrol will eventually be extended to electricity if governments don't introduce usage-based road taxes). It'll be mess, methinks. Also, everything is terrible.

bbv-if 5y ago

That is the big 'if' for the majority of population in European cities. Pretty convenient for suburbs though.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Yep, having to charge them at public charging stations is pretty shitty, takes a long time, and a lot of time they're not available to use. I used to work in a large business building a few years ago, and they had 4 charging stations right next to the main entrance, and having an electric car then was great... the "plebs" would have to park behind the building or in the garage under, and you'd have priority parking infront. Then, the number of electic cars rose to above 4 there, and first 4 that came, parked there, connected the chargers and went to work. If you came 5th, there was nothing you could do, except maybe if you knew one of those 4, politely ask them to move their car during lunch, so you can charge yours too.. but most of the people left their car there until end of work at 3-5h in the afternoon.
- shiftpgdn 5y ago
  Ive charged plenty of times on road trips on both the Tesla and Electrify America networks. Charge time is usually under 20-30 at places and times I’d already be stopping to use the bathroom and stretch my legs. In regards to the chargers in your work garage: most modern charge systems let you set idle fees. If you install anything worthwhile you could easily configure it so people have to move after their car has been sitting fully charged for an hour.

_carbyau_ 5y ago

Plenty of apartment buildings don't have a dedicated powerpoint per parking spot. This can be fixed but in the meantime it is a significant cost for the building. And you bet that early adopters putting in regular powerpoints will be trumped by later installs of dedicated, secured charging stations. I am not jumping to an EV any time soon.

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
> And you bet that early adopters putting in regular powerpoints A 110V AC outlet is completely inappropriate and inadequate for charging a BEV; for example, it would take three days of nonstop charging to charge my car from a 110V outlet. BEV automakers include the 110V adapter as an emergency stopgap more than anything else - I suppose they intend it to be used to help you get to a DC charger: but even assuming I'm no more than 100mi from a Supercharger then I still need to be plugged-in to 110V for at least 24 hours to get the 30kWh level I'd need to travel 100mi - and who is going to let someone borrow a days' worth of 1-2kWh electricity like that?
- dmix 5y ago
  Could an apartment building even support say 50% or 75% of a typical sized apartments buildings parking garage's worth of 'supercharger' like installs? Later on times a whole cities worth of apartment buildings. I'm not familiar with this field but I'd imagine this would take some special arrangement with the power companies. But so far that seems to be the only solution at the moment. Without apartment buildings offering this I don't see how it could be widely deployed without changing how cities are built and transportation is deployed. Even if all the buildings offloaded to external Uber-style autonomous fleets they need to be charged somewhere and at a massive volume. And in my city 90% of new housin development for the last two decades seems to be on apartment buildings.
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    Preface: DC fast-charging is "Level 3". A 240V ("clothes dryer connector" in the US) or hardwired wall-connector is "Level 2" and in the US is typically 15-50A - if you have a modern home with plenty of free 'leccy panel spots then you can do 90A. A slow 110V or low-amperage 240V (for outside North America) is considered "Level 1". The supply of DC fast chargers is not open to the public at all: only Tesla and a tiny number of third-parties maintain Level 3 infrastructure, and they all require outhouse-sized transformer units for each car space, separate from the car-connector part. --------- Level 3 / DC fast-charging is not intended for long-term and repetitive use: it's only intended for road-trips and that's it - that's because DC fast-charging is bad for your battery. I primarily charge at home using my 90A wall-connector - but I still rate-limit the charging to ~60A to help conserve the health of my battery-pack. Not that it matters much: since Covid and WFH my driving has dropped drastically, from ~30,000mi/yr to less than 5,000mi in 2020, and less than 1,000mi so far in 2021. (I got my Model X in 2018 and it's still got under 20,000 miles on it, lol). But you raise an excellent point about apartment complexes and parking-lots not being able to feed dozens or more charging spaces. Yes, it's a problem, and no, I don't see a viable long-term solution. Other than apartments, cities like London, etc, have built car charger ports into streetlamps so people with street-parking can charge their car at Level 2 speeds using that pre-existing infrastructure - I'm unsure to what extent it's a public-private-partnership vs. public, but the opportunity to profit from car-charging infrastructure means pushing the cost-per-mile up above the cost of gasoline/petrol - which undermines the economic-and-environmental benefits of BEVs (especially when you consider the dreaded fuel-tax on petrol will eventually be extended to electricity if governments don't introduce usage-based road taxes). It'll be mess, methinks. Also, everything is terrible.