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The EV charging infrastructure is going to have some reckoning before they can abolish ICE around these parts. I live in a dense multifamily housing community.

The EV charging infrastructure is going to have some reckoning before they can abolish ICE around these parts. I live in a dense multifamily housing community. There are 289 units and there's plenty of parking in the lot for all the cars. There are zero bicycle racks and it's not pleasant for pedestrians to access the property; it's built for cars. There are also zero EV charging stations, and I don't expect to see any. There are no garages for cars. There are not even electrical outlets that could be subverted nearby. That means that anyone who lives here is completely unable to charge an EV on the premises. It's out of the question. That's 289 families who must use and maintain an ICE car, or if they have bicycles they get to bring them upstairs and put them inside the apartment (bicycles not allowed on the porch or balcony.) There are hundreds of multifamily housing units in the area and we have no recycling program and we won't be seeing any EV charging stations. Nobody who lives like I do will be able to own an EV unless they are 100% able to charge while at work or running errands. It's out of the question and out of reach. This is the reality of the urban city environment: we are not yuppies with multi-car garages and 220V multi-phase circuits and photovoltaic panels on the roof. We are working poor with enough cash for a tank of gas and a quart of oil once in a while, and that's how it's going to stay. The only things that will supplant ICE vehicles in my neighborhood will be the public transit, the rideshare drivers, and shared scooters and bicycles. I already do plenty of commuting on electric scooters; that's the wave of the future around here - I let someone else worry about charging them!

saagarjha 4y ago
Charging at work is an option, assuming their workplace provides chargers. (I understand that this is a rose-tinted, tech company view…but it doesn't have to be.)
- friendzis 4y ago
  It's still the same problem - you need that charging infrastructure and someone is going to pay for it, one way or another.
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    Getting a charging station installed at your office is often easier than it is at your apartment building. I'm sure companies get tax credits and greenwashing PR that your landlord may not really care much about. (This is also why a lot of parking lots get solar panels.)
    - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
      But those credits/subsidies are usually provided with string attached, like you are obligated to allow anyone to charge on that charger. So you will have random people going on your property, charging their cars. Then you will need to take care and maintain the chargers, maintain bureaucracy around charging and keep them operational and safe, because if somebody gets electrocuted by your charger, you are responsible for the damages.
      - saagarjha 4y ago
        I don't think this is true, most companies have chargers only accessible to their employees?
- mellavora 4y ago
  So in the US, health care is tied to employment not citizenship/residency. Next up, let's tie car charging to employment. No job? Your car stops working.
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    Fair point, ideally we'd build public chargers that don't suck as well :)
  - Hamuko 4y ago
    >No job? Your car stops working. Losing your job/income already has a pretty big impact on keeping your car running.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    It’s somewhat common for literally all of one’s income to be tied to one’s job, so yes, that includes the money one spends on gas.
    - nsxwolf 4y ago
      When you get fired you can keep buying gas with the money you have left. Losing access to your only charger immediately is different.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  If my employee would have asked to charge his car, I would point him out to nearest public charger, because somebody needs to pay that electricity and it won't be me.
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    You can charge people for electricity.
    - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
      If I want to do it legally, then I need to become an energy provider company and keep all bureaucracy and maintenance as an energy provider company. Sorry no, there is a public charger of somebody who already did this leg work.
      - marsokod 4y ago
        Some of the public charger networks have offerings to manage that for you. You can task Chargepoint to install and maintain a charging facility on your premises for instance. This way you just need to organise the parking and the access to the connection, but everything else is outsourced.
        TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
        I could surely also task OMV to build gas station on my property, question is why should I do that?
- kkfx 4y ago
  In theory yes, but try a small game: to charge "quick enough" you need let's say 7kWp power, at 3kW you can't even balance cells, so you just end up with 80% or so maximum charge. But EVEN at 3kW: 10 workers means 30kW load, in a building there are normally MUCH more. They start all around the same timeframe. That's means a BIG grid peak load, after another peak load (when the Sun start shining). An AC grid without enough battery storage (the sole who can compensate quick enough) simply will go down unable to keep a stable frequency. The theory is that in a smart grid cars, witch happen to be rolling batteries, charge or discharge following energy needs and owner needs, the practice so far is that no such smart grid exists, inverters at maximum follow as quick as they can grid frequency witch do not allow "smart" programming at all and most chargers do not even have DC ports needed to pilot the charge/discharge bi-directional usage (since on AC in-cars inverter would demand too much signaling for a still slow response). The reality is: those who have designed the new deal have imagined to shift hyper-expensive storage costs to the people and have them mount as p.v. mount. Actually p.v. is economically interested enough so many have accept it, BEVs not much so they artificially change energy prices to "reshape the market" making BEVs interesting and as a result they create a situation that force people to switch WITHOUT the needed infra or the physical possibility.
  - muzika 4y ago
    If you can’t charge above 80% at 3kw then you have a major problem with your car. Cell balancing does not require high wattage charging.
    - kkfx 4y ago
      The issue is not in the car but in hours of sunlight vs battery SOC when the Sun start giving enough energy to charge... If you charge at 3kW it's a slow charge. In winter it means you end up in the "evening" after all "Sun day" at 3kW and still the battery hardly have more than 80%. IF you charge at let's say 7-10kW than things change...
- packetlost 4y ago
  Only companies large enough to afford that can... so what do all the smaller companies do? The rest of the world is so much much different than the West Coastal Cities, EVs are a pipe dream.
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    A 240V car charger is like $1000. They're not that expensive.
- Eleison23 4y ago
  The folks who live near me are either students, immigrants, or they work blue-collar, minimum wage jobs. How many Wal-Mart greeters get fast-charger access in the parking lot?
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    This can definitely be non-zero if we put effort into it. After all, these people are buying gas, no?
friendzis 4y ago
The major problem with BEV charging is not the chargers themselves. While it is a huge infrastructure project it is somewhat doable in small chunks. The elephant in the room is generation and transmission. You need shitloads of energy for BEVs. Depending on climate and culture BEV consumption is roughly in the ballpark of a household consumption. Most grids are simply not built for that kind of increase in transmission capacity and we already struggle with enough generation.
- greatpatton 4y ago
  A study was made for Switzerland. If all private cars were going electric, it will only require an additional 17% to the current electric generation. This is not a shitload... People keep forgetting that the yield of an ICE is really really bad.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > it will only require an additional 17% to the current electric generation. That.... That is not an "only". Switzerland's total consumption is 58.46 billion kWh [1]. "Only" 17% increase is another 9 billion kWh. That's the equivalent of Estonia [1] https://www.worlddata.info/europe/switzerland/energy-consumption.php https://www.worlddata.info/europe/switzerland/energy-consump...
    - mahkeiro 4y ago
      Estonia is 1.3M inhabitants or about 15% of Swiss population… And that’s if all cars were going electric which is going to take many years. Not like you need to increase power generation by 15% overnight. This perfectly doable and not even a real engineering challenge.
      - dmitriid 4y ago
        And population of Switzerland is 8.6 million. What's your point? It is an actual engineering challenge because it's not just Switzerland that will increase its power demands. Total energy consumption of EU is on the order of thousands of petajoules: "Final energy consumption in the EU in 2020 amounted to 37 086 PJ" [1] "Not an egineering challenge" is in reality "we need to increase energy supply by 6 thousand petajoules which amounts to sum total of all renewable energy currently available in the EU" (renewables account for 17% of EU's energy production). Plus add all the infrastructure needed to distribute it to charging stations. Not a challenge at all. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Energy_statistics_-_an_overview#Final_energy_consumption https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
kirykl 4y ago
EV charger sales or leases to Multifamily Residential properties is going to be a huge business
- shapefrog 4y ago
  Driverless taxis that never park up at multifamily residential properties are going to be a huge business
  - lm28469 4y ago
    > Driverless taxis Yeah I just read an article from Musk and Uber about it, they should be here in 2013, 2014 at the latest, can't wait for the future
    - shapefrog 4y ago
      It has been suggest that they are wildly optimistic with that time line, but Musk insists that those people only think that because they are stupid and dont understand all the things he knows. All the same, if we have them by 2015, might be a few years late, but well worth it. The future looks bright.
  - kirykl 4y ago
    So then when driverless arrives, Renting out those close to customer electrified unused multi family parking spaces to driverless taxi operators will be big
addicted 4y ago
Yup. It’s increasingly clear that EVs are fools good. Unfortunately it may be the only tool acceptable to Americans, who are simply not willing to pay for public transport and give up an inch of roads for dedicated electric bikes and scooter lanes.
Fatnino 4y ago
At least putting in wires is easier than putting in gas pumps. Unfortunately the real obstacle is building management having to do anything at all so it wouldn't matter even if the wires were free.

saagarjha 4y ago

Charging at work is an option, assuming their workplace provides chargers. (I understand that this is a rose-tinted, tech company view…but it doesn't have to be.)

friendzis 4y ago
It's still the same problem - you need that charging infrastructure and someone is going to pay for it, one way or another.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  Getting a charging station installed at your office is often easier than it is at your apartment building. I'm sure companies get tax credits and greenwashing PR that your landlord may not really care much about. (This is also why a lot of parking lots get solar panels.)
  - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
    But those credits/subsidies are usually provided with string attached, like you are obligated to allow anyone to charge on that charger. So you will have random people going on your property, charging their cars. Then you will need to take care and maintain the chargers, maintain bureaucracy around charging and keep them operational and safe, because if somebody gets electrocuted by your charger, you are responsible for the damages.
    - saagarjha 4y ago
      I don't think this is true, most companies have chargers only accessible to their employees?
mellavora 4y ago
So in the US, health care is tied to employment not citizenship/residency. Next up, let's tie car charging to employment. No job? Your car stops working.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  Fair point, ideally we'd build public chargers that don't suck as well :)
- Hamuko 4y ago
  >No job? Your car stops working. Losing your job/income already has a pretty big impact on keeping your car running.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  It’s somewhat common for literally all of one’s income to be tied to one’s job, so yes, that includes the money one spends on gas.
  - nsxwolf 4y ago
    When you get fired you can keep buying gas with the money you have left. Losing access to your only charger immediately is different.
TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
If my employee would have asked to charge his car, I would point him out to nearest public charger, because somebody needs to pay that electricity and it won't be me.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  You can charge people for electricity.
  - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
    If I want to do it legally, then I need to become an energy provider company and keep all bureaucracy and maintenance as an energy provider company. Sorry no, there is a public charger of somebody who already did this leg work.
    - marsokod 4y ago
      Some of the public charger networks have offerings to manage that for you. You can task Chargepoint to install and maintain a charging facility on your premises for instance. This way you just need to organise the parking and the access to the connection, but everything else is outsourced.
      - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
        I could surely also task OMV to build gas station on my property, question is why should I do that?
kkfx 4y ago
In theory yes, but try a small game: to charge "quick enough" you need let's say 7kWp power, at 3kW you can't even balance cells, so you just end up with 80% or so maximum charge. But EVEN at 3kW: 10 workers means 30kW load, in a building there are normally MUCH more. They start all around the same timeframe. That's means a BIG grid peak load, after another peak load (when the Sun start shining). An AC grid without enough battery storage (the sole who can compensate quick enough) simply will go down unable to keep a stable frequency. The theory is that in a smart grid cars, witch happen to be rolling batteries, charge or discharge following energy needs and owner needs, the practice so far is that no such smart grid exists, inverters at maximum follow as quick as they can grid frequency witch do not allow "smart" programming at all and most chargers do not even have DC ports needed to pilot the charge/discharge bi-directional usage (since on AC in-cars inverter would demand too much signaling for a still slow response). The reality is: those who have designed the new deal have imagined to shift hyper-expensive storage costs to the people and have them mount as p.v. mount. Actually p.v. is economically interested enough so many have accept it, BEVs not much so they artificially change energy prices to "reshape the market" making BEVs interesting and as a result they create a situation that force people to switch WITHOUT the needed infra or the physical possibility.
- muzika 4y ago
  If you can’t charge above 80% at 3kw then you have a major problem with your car. Cell balancing does not require high wattage charging.
  - kkfx 4y ago
    The issue is not in the car but in hours of sunlight vs battery SOC when the Sun start giving enough energy to charge... If you charge at 3kW it's a slow charge. In winter it means you end up in the "evening" after all "Sun day" at 3kW and still the battery hardly have more than 80%. IF you charge at let's say 7-10kW than things change...
packetlost 4y ago
Only companies large enough to afford that can... so what do all the smaller companies do? The rest of the world is so much much different than the West Coastal Cities, EVs are a pipe dream.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  A 240V car charger is like $1000. They're not that expensive.
Eleison23 4y ago
The folks who live near me are either students, immigrants, or they work blue-collar, minimum wage jobs. How many Wal-Mart greeters get fast-charger access in the parking lot?
- saagarjha 4y ago
  This can definitely be non-zero if we put effort into it. After all, these people are buying gas, no?

friendzis 4y ago

The major problem with BEV charging is not the chargers themselves. While it is a huge infrastructure project it is somewhat doable in small chunks. The elephant in the room is generation and transmission. You need shitloads of energy for BEVs. Depending on climate and culture BEV consumption is roughly in the ballpark of a household consumption. Most grids are simply not built for that kind of increase in transmission capacity and we already struggle with enough generation.

greatpatton 4y ago
A study was made for Switzerland. If all private cars were going electric, it will only require an additional 17% to the current electric generation. This is not a shitload... People keep forgetting that the yield of an ICE is really really bad.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > it will only require an additional 17% to the current electric generation. That.... That is not an "only". Switzerland's total consumption is 58.46 billion kWh [1]. "Only" 17% increase is another 9 billion kWh. That's the equivalent of Estonia [1] https://www.worlddata.info/europe/switzerland/energy-consumption.php https://www.worlddata.info/europe/switzerland/energy-consump...
  - mahkeiro 4y ago
    Estonia is 1.3M inhabitants or about 15% of Swiss population… And that’s if all cars were going electric which is going to take many years. Not like you need to increase power generation by 15% overnight. This perfectly doable and not even a real engineering challenge.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      And population of Switzerland is 8.6 million. What's your point? It is an actual engineering challenge because it's not just Switzerland that will increase its power demands. Total energy consumption of EU is on the order of thousands of petajoules: "Final energy consumption in the EU in 2020 amounted to 37 086 PJ" [1] "Not an egineering challenge" is in reality "we need to increase energy supply by 6 thousand petajoules which amounts to sum total of all renewable energy currently available in the EU" (renewables account for 17% of EU's energy production). Plus add all the infrastructure needed to distribute it to charging stations. Not a challenge at all. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Energy_statistics_-_an_overview#Final_energy_consumption https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

kirykl 4y ago

EV charger sales or leases to Multifamily Residential properties is going to be a huge business

shapefrog 4y ago
Driverless taxis that never park up at multifamily residential properties are going to be a huge business
- lm28469 4y ago
  > Driverless taxis Yeah I just read an article from Musk and Uber about it, they should be here in 2013, 2014 at the latest, can't wait for the future
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    It has been suggest that they are wildly optimistic with that time line, but Musk insists that those people only think that because they are stupid and dont understand all the things he knows. All the same, if we have them by 2015, might be a few years late, but well worth it. The future looks bright.
- kirykl 4y ago
  So then when driverless arrives, Renting out those close to customer electrified unused multi family parking spaces to driverless taxi operators will be big

addicted 4y ago

Yup. It’s increasingly clear that EVs are fools good. Unfortunately it may be the only tool acceptable to Americans, who are simply not willing to pay for public transport and give up an inch of roads for dedicated electric bikes and scooter lanes.

Fatnino 4y ago

At least putting in wires is easier than putting in gas pumps. Unfortunately the real obstacle is building management having to do anything at all so it wouldn't matter even if the wires were free.