16 ms·

Think apartment-hunting is frustrating? Try doing it with an electric car

44 points by lauluz 4y ago

codekansas 4y ago
When I first bought a Tesla in Tennessee we had the same problem with our condo's HOA board. We were lucky to live in a newer building but it still only had a single third party charger that would milk you dry if you used it (still not sure why it was so expensive). We just ended up charging at a supercharger when we got groceries. Would've been a nightmare if we had a Leaf or another electric car without that option. Maybe this isn't fully appreciated by the average Silicon Valley person since charging is so ubiquitous there (and in California more generally) - after we moved to Mountain View basically every apartment we looked at had plenty of charging options, if your workplace doesn't provide one for you already.
- krolden 4y ago
  >We were lucky to live in a newer building but it still only had a single third party charger that would milk you dry if you used it (still not sure why it was so expensive). Totally unrelated, but does anyone know if stealing power to charge your car has the same repercussions as stealing gas?
  - doubled112 4y ago
    Theft of service is a crime in many places. Somebody could probably make a case for it.
    - krolden 4y ago
      Yeah but will they take your drivers license?
  - saveferris 4y ago
    I dont know what the policies are now but I was an inspector for the electric company (PSE&G in north Jersey) for a few summers in college. Mostly, someone would call in about their bill being high and we'd go check and find someone had run power from their meter so they were paying for a neighbor. We'd report it, someone would come out and usually just remove the offender. I don't even think they even tried to find out where it went. As far as I know the matter was dropped at that point. No charges filed, etc. even though it was theft of some kind since it was intentional. Maybe today with EVs there is a different approach. I don't know. Some of the things people would do not to play their electric bill were literally shocking :-)
joshuaheard 4y ago
Why is "equity" and race mentioned? It's completely irrelevant to the story.
- yboris 4y ago
  Literally the next sentence: "Unsurprisingly, renters tend to have lower incomes than those who own their own homes; they are also more likely to be Black or Latino." Given the history of the US, this seems a worthwhile thing to note.
  - evv 4y ago
    The whole paragraph is self explanatory and makes sense in this article because it prohibits huge swaths of people from adopting EVs. Some people tend to freak out when race is mentioned, I suppose, so they can't even read a few more lines of context.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      I would think being low income is itself prohibitive to adopting electric.
      - toast0 4y ago
        If your needs fit its range, off lease Leafs were pretty low cost when I was last looking; you could get an older gas car for much less and not everyone can afford a $10,000 car. Electric $/mile operating cost is very often less than gas $/mile, especially if you have significant access to free charging. Of course, if you move, you might need to get a different car.
        coredog64 4y ago
        Nissan cheaped out on the Leaf and didn’t include any battery cooling. A used Leaf that spent any time in a hot climate and was charged to get the published range is unlikely to have a battery at full capacity.
dhosek 4y ago
Multi-family housing has lots of issues like this. How can rooftop solar be managed for a multi-family building (especially a rental building)? For a smaller apartment building with a shared garage, even if you go through the expense of running electric lines to the garage tied to individual units’s meters, what’s to keep an unscrupulous neighbor from using someone else’s charger? I’ve been contemplating buying a rental building and I’ve been trying to figure out these sorts of things. I’m thinking having some sort of charger where the car owner has to enter a pin to identify themselves (and thus be billed for their electric use) is the best approach to the charger issue, but I’m not sure if there’s a good way to manage rooftop solo for a 2–4 unit building.
- xani_ 4y ago
  One way would be having charger have an app and charger itself be managed by utility company, then just add the charging costs to the electric bill
- toast0 4y ago
  A multifamily building should have one meter per unit, plus one for common areas needs like garage and pathway lighting, etc. Rooftop solar would be best put on the common area meter, but that's not ideal under most net metering regimes because the common areas won't have much draw. If you add charging stations and those charging stations are actually used, then that may give you enough usage to offset your generation or at least a meaningful portion. I'd put in something like a chargepoint charger and set the kWh price to about the local average electricity prices, and maybe help your tenants get chargepoint rfid tags. If you can put a publicly accessible charger at the street as well as tenant only chargers, that would again help you make economic work of your solar panels. You could also run the whole building on one utility meter, and include electricity in the rent... But that's asking for cryptocoin miners or grow operations as tenants.
jeffwilcox 4y ago
Since this article was published, Washington State finally has a right-to-charge law, too, with the passing of HB 1793 - 2021-22, hopefully making things mildly better in Seattle. While the article claims there is no money to be made in EV charging to incentivize and align with building owners, there's plenty of similar "amenities" that easily can help differentiate a "luxury" apartment building, hopefully they become more common.
- ianai 4y ago
  There’s tons of money for apartment complexes in having chargers. For one EVs are definitely more expensive right now (outside of the older stalwarts like used Leafs). For two, my place charges an absolute arm and leg to charge and they have Solar on-site. $3 for the first two hours, $2 per hour for parking after the first eight, etc.
HEHENE 4y ago
Buying a Tesla has caused us to bump up our timeline for purchasing a house. We are very lucky to have two charging stations at our apartment complex, but a few things make it a less than perfect scenario. 1) They charge a 40% markup on electricity. This is fair, given the upfront costs of installation and ongoing maintenance costs, but still a downside. 2) Since installing it, the number of EVs living here have tripled or quadrupled. A great thing, but also ties up the charger more frequently. 3) Their breaker apparently can't support 2 Teslas charging at once. This doesn't seem to be a problem with two non-Telsa EVs, or one Tesla and one non-Tesla, but if two Teslas plug in at the same time the breaker blows and both chargers are out of commission for 24-72 hours until maintenance gets around to fixing it. All of that is still better than no charger of course, but we have other complaints with this complex and want to move when our lease is up. Looking for apartment complexes with chargers severely limits options and makes buying a house make a lot more sense.
- xani_ 4y ago
  > 3) Their breaker apparently can't support 2 Teslas charging at once. This doesn't seem to be a problem with two non-Telsa EVs, or one Tesla and one non-Tesla, but if two Teslas plug in at the same time the breaker blows and both chargers are out of commission for 24-72 hours until maintenance gets around to fixing it. https://www.tesla.com/support/gen-3-wall-connector-power-sharing https://www.tesla.com/support/gen-3-wall-connector-power-sha... ? Or chargers are non-tesla ?
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    Parent comment DID mention non-Teslas charging.
    - xani_ 4y ago
      ...so ? https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/tesla-wall-connector-charging-non-tesla-vehicles-australia.224044/page-2 https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/tesla-wall-connector...
_fat_santa 4y ago
This is one of the main reasons I have not gone electric yet. I currently live in an Apartment Complex and getting power to an EV there would be impossible. One of two solutions will fix this problem, either more chargers or better energy density in the batteries. The first solution is the simpler one, just add the chargers, not actually that simple but simpler than the latter option which is develop batteries with higher energy densities. If we could get to a place where your average EV could go 500mi easy on a charge, or we somehow figured out hyperfast charging so even though your car may only do 200mi on a charge, it doesn't matter because you can charge your car about as fast as you can pump gas.
- jewayne 4y ago
  Non-EV owners seem to be under the impression that DC fast charging has not been invented yet. The Superchargers that I use all charge at a peak of 250 KW. At 250 KW, my car is gaining up to ~17.5 miles of range per minute of charging. Of course, it can only charge close to that fast when the battery is low, so what about a more realistic wattage, like 150 KW? That's still 2.5 KWH per minute, or up to ~10.5 miles of range per minute of charging. At that rate, I'm still gaining 30 miles of range is less than 3 minutes.
  - Analemma_ 4y ago
    You’re supposed to use Superchargers as seldom as possible; like just for the occasional road trip. Using them for regular charging shortens the lifespan of the battery considerably.
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    > Non-EV owners seem to be under the impression that DC fast charging has not been invented yet. Yup, there's a dead comment [0] about having to "wait hours", which is just flat-out incorrect. On a road trip, I find that every 150 miles of driving takes 10-20 minutes to charge, depending on how low I let my battery get. Charging from 10% to 60% is faster than 30% to 80%, but planning to arrive with 30% gives peace of mind. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33068439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33068439
Insanity 4y ago
This is what is kind of keeping me back from going electric. My current condo building (in Toronto) does have chargers on the first parking level, but each time I drive past them, they are taken. Dealing with that sounds annoying. Across the pond, in Belgium, there is now a push for companies to offer electric cars as part of the compensation package, some friends have placed their first EV "order". Because of this, companies are installing chargers around the office. I'd instantly opt-in for that. (Although in Belgium I think it's mandatory now, so wouldn't even have a choice. But someone still living/working there can correct me on that).
- echelon 4y ago
  Non-California resident. I have a hunch that this is what is going to slow EV adoption. I could be wrong, but I don't see this changing since the incentives aren't directly linked. Apartments can easily find other residents. Condo associations have to subsidize a few residents. I can't fathom having an EV currently. Charging at home is a must.
  - brianwawok 4y ago
    A huge % of Americans live in home with garages though. Even if that’s all we get to adopt EV, that’s huge.
    - kcplate 4y ago
      Everyone in my neighborhood has 2-4 car garages, we are unusual in the neighborhood in the fact that we keep our cars in it.
      - brianwawok 4y ago
        HUGE swatches of the US are this way. Especially places without mass transit. I cannot see a house out my window without at least a 2 car garage, some go up to 4 or higher.
        4y ago
logicalmonster 4y ago
At one time, hotels didn't offer free (or any) Wi-Fi, and now it's basically standard even at the bargain basement cheapo motels. As the market demands a feature, it will eventually come. I think time will ultimately solve the EV charging issue in many apartment complexes, multi-family homes, townhouses, and other types of residential areas as that feature gets more demanded. Property management companies are particularly cheap and unintelligent bastards, so the change might be slow, but it will eventually get there if the demand exists. For local driving needs, slow overnight charging should be a workable solution for many. What I don't think is easily workable with mass-adoption of EVs is the following. > Long Distance travel. EVs sort of almost work for a handful of people doing long drives even when it's slower than just filling a gas tank. But when the number of cars on the road exceeds charger throughput, the delays are going to compound. The proverbial family roadtrip is going to suck a lot when you show up at a charging place and there's a line of EVs waiting for the charger and your kids are crying. > Dense cities. It's hard to see how EVs can work in denser cities where they theoretically could do the most good. In places like NYC, many buildings don't offer any parking spaces whatsoever to install chargers at. Instead, people park on the street wherever they can find a semi-legal parking spot. Are cities going to dig up all roads/sidewalks and put EV chargers literally everywhere? That's the the only thing that would make EVs theoretically feasible for an average family in a city.
- ghaff 4y ago
  >At one time, hotels didn't offer free (or any) Wi-Fi, and now it's basically standard even at the bargain basement cheapo motels. Somewhat off-topic but WiFi tended to be free initially at chains most frequented by individual travelers and families, rather than business travelers--who could just expense a WiFi change. Free WiFi then tended to become a carrot for signing up with a hotel chain's loyalty plan before becoming mostly free in general.
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  One other thing to consider is installation costs. The office complex at which I work spent roughly $45,000 in order to install two electric charging stations. There was a lot of debate about justifying the expense at a management level. That expense was only for a mere two stations, and that was also before the supply chain issues and inflation we're seeing now. I can easily see how most apartment complexes would avoid installing charging stations - unless they were forced to install them because of a city ordinance. Maybe it wouldn't be as much of an expense for new construction where the charging stations were planned from the beginning, but that is just speculation on my part.
newaccount2021 4y ago
netsharc 4y ago
I wonder if a hack would be - just like a USB power bank to power your phone away from an outlet - to have a portable lithium ion battery (something like Jackery, the only name I know since I watched an LTT video about it[1]) to charge your car. You fill up the Jackery at home, and you drag it to your car when it's time to charge. Optimally you could leave it in inside your car while charging (otherwise it'd be stolen), and route the cable in a weatherproof way to the charger port. Alternatively, cars should start having a charging port inside the car. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1hZ9zJAd2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1hZ9zJAd2s
- gruez 4y ago
  There's no way this can work when you consider that the battery packs in cars are massive. Wikipedia says that the long range version of the tesla model 3 weighs 1060 pounds. Assuming that energy density of your "portable lithium ion battery" is similar, you'd need to lug around a 200 lb battery pack just to charge your car 20%.
  - netsharc 4y ago
    Hmm, true. Plan 2: like a tanker truck (well maybe the dimensions of an F-150 truck or a U-Haul) but it's batteries . Your car park has no charging infrastructure? We place the truck there and electric cars can park around it and be charged. Just don't read the fine print about how explosive it'd be if the battery catches fire.
Kim_Bruning 4y ago
I was apparently lucky last time I rented in Germany. My apartment came with its own garage which was equipped with a 400V 3-phase socket. So it's definitely possible! (Sadly my car still ran on fossil fuel at the time. )
mcculley 4y ago
I was office and apartment hunting in 2018. I ended up moving into a freshly built apartment building with no infrastructure for charging. Five years later, those that have electric cars compete for the few available 15 amp outlets on each parking level. I asked each broker/property manager (residential and commercial) of new construction why they were not making accommodations for electric cars and Ubers. (Ubers are a lot more convenient where there is a portico or designated area for getting in and out and waiting for cars instead of holding up traffic in the street.) It was obvious that how people prefer to use cars is changing. All of them told me that it was too far away to worry about. Now they are trying to figure out how to retrofit the building for the necessary wiring and to correctly meter the tenant. Right now all of those electric cars are going against the common area usage. Myopia seems an expected consequence of bad housing market policy. I won't be buying an electric car until I move elsewhere.
helen___keller 4y ago
Depending on location, apartment hunting with any car can be difficult, and likewise house hunting without a car can be difficult. In general the infrastructure needs of apartment dwellers and house dwellers tend to differ a lot. Personally, if we're talking about upgrading legacy infrastructure in rental units, I would really like if including in-unit washer dryer combos would be the norm in my city (Boston). Although I own now so it doesn't bother me anymore, but it was quite frustrating paying $3500/mo rent and still hoarding quarters for the weekly laundry haul to the common-area basement of the building.
- triceratops 4y ago
  No in-unit washer-dryer at $3500/mo in Boston?! Even from the Bay Area that seems absurd.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    My favorite was moving into an apartment that had no fridge which is what happened to me when I relocated to LA. Not once in my previous apartment renting experience until then did an apartment not come with a fridge.
  - helen___keller 4y ago
    Depends on location and size of the unit. This was for a 3 bedroom 1000~sqft unit in a pretty great location (near the Charles river in Cambridge, 12 minute walk to the subway, quiet + beautiful + safe neighborhood). Generally speaking, urban rental units with in-unit washer+dryer in boston command a $300-500 rental premium from what I've seen (makes sense because retrofitting an old triple-decker[0] with in-unit laundry isn't trivial) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-decker_(house) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-decker_(house)
    - ghaff 4y ago
      For that kind of premium I would assume just taking laundry to a wash and fold place would make more sense for a lot of people.
drewg123 4y ago
The real problem is lack of choice in where you live. If it wasn't the charger, then the folks in the article might have had another problem that their inflexible landlord would not resolve. If you have a choice, then things are a lot easier. I rented a townhouse in the fall of 2019. As I was negotiating rent, move in dates, etc, I got the landlord to agree to have his electrician install a NEMA 14-50 outlet in the garage at my expense. It was all quite painless. If he would have said "no", I'd have rented a different townhouse. I made it clear that was a deal breaker. When I bought my current place, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had a NEMA 14-50 already installed in the garage, so I didn't have to do anything to secure charging for my car.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Right, as with almost all problems related to the housing crisis, the issue would be solved by building more units.
buildbot 4y ago
There’s a lot more to be considered here - while charging in your own parking garage is great, has anyone thought of what happens when your tesla overheats and catches fire in the basement? Are the fire suppression systems rated for electric car fires?
jononomo 4y ago
This seems to be an issue even for plug-in hybrids, which in my view are a far more intelligent solution than all-electric vehicles. The all-electric portion covers 90% of the trips you take, and the gas portion gives you basically unlimited range, given how common gas-stations are.
mint2 4y ago
This issue is why I can’t wait for CA’s mandate to push EV ownership higher. The charging challenges are not going to be addressed while it’s a very minority issue. Laws and regs will catch up only when it reaches a critical mass
LazyMans 4y ago
I live in a townhome community managed by an HOA with shared electric costs. A proposal to explore shared charger installation was not explored because they had made up their minds already that nobody that would live in our community would be able to afford an EV anyway. I have a plug-in hybrid. It's an uphill battle and generally the people against BHEV or EV just don't know that much about them, and why would they? It's not like they're keeping up with EV news. I bet a number of people still think Tesla is the only EV player in town. Buying an EV and living in this community would be a huge pain unless I had a car with a really good charge curve and nearby DC charging. The places I regularly visit each week don't have level 3 charging yet.
ufmace 4y ago
We've also been going for a while on night charging to help the grid - usage is (used to be?) lower at night, so you can start charging a bunch of electric cars and not notice too much. For now at least. I wonder if/when we'll start feeling some pain from the grid or specific buildings/areas not being able to keep up with the power demand of charging so many cars.

44 points by lauluz 4y ago

When I first bought a Tesla in Tennessee we had the same problem with our condo's HOA board. We were lucky to live in a newer building but it still only had a single third party charger that would milk you dry if you used it (still not sure why it was so expensive). We just ended up charging at a supercharger when we got groceries. Would've been a nightmare if we had a Leaf or another electric car without that option. Maybe this isn't fully appreciated by the average Silicon Valley person since charging is so ubiquitous there (and in California more generally) - after we moved to Mountain View basically every apartment we looked at had plenty of charging options, if your workplace doesn't provide one for you already.

krolden 4y ago
>We were lucky to live in a newer building but it still only had a single third party charger that would milk you dry if you used it (still not sure why it was so expensive). Totally unrelated, but does anyone know if stealing power to charge your car has the same repercussions as stealing gas?
- doubled112 4y ago
  Theft of service is a crime in many places. Somebody could probably make a case for it.
  - krolden 4y ago
    Yeah but will they take your drivers license?
- saveferris 4y ago
  I dont know what the policies are now but I was an inspector for the electric company (PSE&G in north Jersey) for a few summers in college. Mostly, someone would call in about their bill being high and we'd go check and find someone had run power from their meter so they were paying for a neighbor. We'd report it, someone would come out and usually just remove the offender. I don't even think they even tried to find out where it went. As far as I know the matter was dropped at that point. No charges filed, etc. even though it was theft of some kind since it was intentional. Maybe today with EVs there is a different approach. I don't know. Some of the things people would do not to play their electric bill were literally shocking :-)

joshuaheard 4y ago

Why is "equity" and race mentioned? It's completely irrelevant to the story.

yboris 4y ago
Literally the next sentence: "Unsurprisingly, renters tend to have lower incomes than those who own their own homes; they are also more likely to be Black or Latino." Given the history of the US, this seems a worthwhile thing to note.
- evv 4y ago
  The whole paragraph is self explanatory and makes sense in this article because it prohibits huge swaths of people from adopting EVs. Some people tend to freak out when race is mentioned, I suppose, so they can't even read a few more lines of context.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    I would think being low income is itself prohibitive to adopting electric.
    - toast0 4y ago
      If your needs fit its range, off lease Leafs were pretty low cost when I was last looking; you could get an older gas car for much less and not everyone can afford a $10,000 car. Electric $/mile operating cost is very often less than gas $/mile, especially if you have significant access to free charging. Of course, if you move, you might need to get a different car.
      - coredog64 4y ago
        Nissan cheaped out on the Leaf and didn’t include any battery cooling. A used Leaf that spent any time in a hot climate and was charged to get the published range is unlikely to have a battery at full capacity.

dhosek 4y ago

Multi-family housing has lots of issues like this. How can rooftop solar be managed for a multi-family building (especially a rental building)? For a smaller apartment building with a shared garage, even if you go through the expense of running electric lines to the garage tied to individual units’s meters, what’s to keep an unscrupulous neighbor from using someone else’s charger? I’ve been contemplating buying a rental building and I’ve been trying to figure out these sorts of things. I’m thinking having some sort of charger where the car owner has to enter a pin to identify themselves (and thus be billed for their electric use) is the best approach to the charger issue, but I’m not sure if there’s a good way to manage rooftop solo for a 2–4 unit building.

xani_ 4y ago
One way would be having charger have an app and charger itself be managed by utility company, then just add the charging costs to the electric bill
toast0 4y ago
A multifamily building should have one meter per unit, plus one for common areas needs like garage and pathway lighting, etc. Rooftop solar would be best put on the common area meter, but that's not ideal under most net metering regimes because the common areas won't have much draw. If you add charging stations and those charging stations are actually used, then that may give you enough usage to offset your generation or at least a meaningful portion. I'd put in something like a chargepoint charger and set the kWh price to about the local average electricity prices, and maybe help your tenants get chargepoint rfid tags. If you can put a publicly accessible charger at the street as well as tenant only chargers, that would again help you make economic work of your solar panels. You could also run the whole building on one utility meter, and include electricity in the rent... But that's asking for cryptocoin miners or grow operations as tenants.

jeffwilcox 4y ago

Since this article was published, Washington State finally has a right-to-charge law, too, with the passing of HB 1793 - 2021-22, hopefully making things mildly better in Seattle. While the article claims there is no money to be made in EV charging to incentivize and align with building owners, there's plenty of similar "amenities" that easily can help differentiate a "luxury" apartment building, hopefully they become more common.

ianai 4y ago
There’s tons of money for apartment complexes in having chargers. For one EVs are definitely more expensive right now (outside of the older stalwarts like used Leafs). For two, my place charges an absolute arm and leg to charge and they have Solar on-site. $3 for the first two hours, $2 per hour for parking after the first eight, etc.

HEHENE 4y ago

Buying a Tesla has caused us to bump up our timeline for purchasing a house. We are very lucky to have two charging stations at our apartment complex, but a few things make it a less than perfect scenario. 1) They charge a 40% markup on electricity. This is fair, given the upfront costs of installation and ongoing maintenance costs, but still a downside. 2) Since installing it, the number of EVs living here have tripled or quadrupled. A great thing, but also ties up the charger more frequently. 3) Their breaker apparently can't support 2 Teslas charging at once. This doesn't seem to be a problem with two non-Telsa EVs, or one Tesla and one non-Tesla, but if two Teslas plug in at the same time the breaker blows and both chargers are out of commission for 24-72 hours until maintenance gets around to fixing it. All of that is still better than no charger of course, but we have other complaints with this complex and want to move when our lease is up. Looking for apartment complexes with chargers severely limits options and makes buying a house make a lot more sense.

xani_ 4y ago
> 3) Their breaker apparently can't support 2 Teslas charging at once. This doesn't seem to be a problem with two non-Telsa EVs, or one Tesla and one non-Tesla, but if two Teslas plug in at the same time the breaker blows and both chargers are out of commission for 24-72 hours until maintenance gets around to fixing it. https://www.tesla.com/support/gen-3-wall-connector-power-sharing https://www.tesla.com/support/gen-3-wall-connector-power-sha... ? Or chargers are non-tesla ?
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  Parent comment DID mention non-Teslas charging.
  - xani_ 4y ago
    ...so ? https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/tesla-wall-connector-charging-non-tesla-vehicles-australia.224044/page-2 https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/tesla-wall-connector...

_fat_santa 4y ago

This is one of the main reasons I have not gone electric yet. I currently live in an Apartment Complex and getting power to an EV there would be impossible. One of two solutions will fix this problem, either more chargers or better energy density in the batteries. The first solution is the simpler one, just add the chargers, not actually that simple but simpler than the latter option which is develop batteries with higher energy densities. If we could get to a place where your average EV could go 500mi easy on a charge, or we somehow figured out hyperfast charging so even though your car may only do 200mi on a charge, it doesn't matter because you can charge your car about as fast as you can pump gas.

jewayne 4y ago
Non-EV owners seem to be under the impression that DC fast charging has not been invented yet. The Superchargers that I use all charge at a peak of 250 KW. At 250 KW, my car is gaining up to ~17.5 miles of range per minute of charging. Of course, it can only charge close to that fast when the battery is low, so what about a more realistic wattage, like 150 KW? That's still 2.5 KWH per minute, or up to ~10.5 miles of range per minute of charging. At that rate, I'm still gaining 30 miles of range is less than 3 minutes.
- Analemma_ 4y ago
  You’re supposed to use Superchargers as seldom as possible; like just for the occasional road trip. Using them for regular charging shortens the lifespan of the battery considerably.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  > Non-EV owners seem to be under the impression that DC fast charging has not been invented yet. Yup, there's a dead comment [0] about having to "wait hours", which is just flat-out incorrect. On a road trip, I find that every 150 miles of driving takes 10-20 minutes to charge, depending on how low I let my battery get. Charging from 10% to 60% is faster than 30% to 80%, but planning to arrive with 30% gives peace of mind. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33068439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33068439

Insanity 4y ago

This is what is kind of keeping me back from going electric. My current condo building (in Toronto) does have chargers on the first parking level, but each time I drive past them, they are taken. Dealing with that sounds annoying. Across the pond, in Belgium, there is now a push for companies to offer electric cars as part of the compensation package, some friends have placed their first EV "order". Because of this, companies are installing chargers around the office. I'd instantly opt-in for that. (Although in Belgium I think it's mandatory now, so wouldn't even have a choice. But someone still living/working there can correct me on that).

echelon 4y ago
Non-California resident. I have a hunch that this is what is going to slow EV adoption. I could be wrong, but I don't see this changing since the incentives aren't directly linked. Apartments can easily find other residents. Condo associations have to subsidize a few residents. I can't fathom having an EV currently. Charging at home is a must.
- brianwawok 4y ago
  A huge % of Americans live in home with garages though. Even if that’s all we get to adopt EV, that’s huge.
  - kcplate 4y ago
    Everyone in my neighborhood has 2-4 car garages, we are unusual in the neighborhood in the fact that we keep our cars in it.
    - brianwawok 4y ago
      HUGE swatches of the US are this way. Especially places without mass transit. I cannot see a house out my window without at least a 2 car garage, some go up to 4 or higher.
      - 4y ago

logicalmonster 4y ago

At one time, hotels didn't offer free (or any) Wi-Fi, and now it's basically standard even at the bargain basement cheapo motels. As the market demands a feature, it will eventually come. I think time will ultimately solve the EV charging issue in many apartment complexes, multi-family homes, townhouses, and other types of residential areas as that feature gets more demanded. Property management companies are particularly cheap and unintelligent bastards, so the change might be slow, but it will eventually get there if the demand exists. For local driving needs, slow overnight charging should be a workable solution for many. What I don't think is easily workable with mass-adoption of EVs is the following. > Long Distance travel. EVs sort of almost work for a handful of people doing long drives even when it's slower than just filling a gas tank. But when the number of cars on the road exceeds charger throughput, the delays are going to compound. The proverbial family roadtrip is going to suck a lot when you show up at a charging place and there's a line of EVs waiting for the charger and your kids are crying. > Dense cities. It's hard to see how EVs can work in denser cities where they theoretically could do the most good. In places like NYC, many buildings don't offer any parking spaces whatsoever to install chargers at. Instead, people park on the street wherever they can find a semi-legal parking spot. Are cities going to dig up all roads/sidewalks and put EV chargers literally everywhere? That's the the only thing that would make EVs theoretically feasible for an average family in a city.

ghaff 4y ago
>At one time, hotels didn't offer free (or any) Wi-Fi, and now it's basically standard even at the bargain basement cheapo motels. Somewhat off-topic but WiFi tended to be free initially at chains most frequented by individual travelers and families, rather than business travelers--who could just expense a WiFi change. Free WiFi then tended to become a carrot for signing up with a hotel chain's loyalty plan before becoming mostly free in general.
BitwiseFool 4y ago
One other thing to consider is installation costs. The office complex at which I work spent roughly $45,000 in order to install two electric charging stations. There was a lot of debate about justifying the expense at a management level. That expense was only for a mere two stations, and that was also before the supply chain issues and inflation we're seeing now. I can easily see how most apartment complexes would avoid installing charging stations - unless they were forced to install them because of a city ordinance. Maybe it wouldn't be as much of an expense for new construction where the charging stations were planned from the beginning, but that is just speculation on my part.

newaccount2021 4y ago

netsharc 4y ago

I wonder if a hack would be - just like a USB power bank to power your phone away from an outlet - to have a portable lithium ion battery (something like Jackery, the only name I know since I watched an LTT video about it[1]) to charge your car. You fill up the Jackery at home, and you drag it to your car when it's time to charge. Optimally you could leave it in inside your car while charging (otherwise it'd be stolen), and route the cable in a weatherproof way to the charger port. Alternatively, cars should start having a charging port inside the car. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1hZ9zJAd2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1hZ9zJAd2s

gruez 4y ago
There's no way this can work when you consider that the battery packs in cars are massive. Wikipedia says that the long range version of the tesla model 3 weighs 1060 pounds. Assuming that energy density of your "portable lithium ion battery" is similar, you'd need to lug around a 200 lb battery pack just to charge your car 20%.
- netsharc 4y ago
  Hmm, true. Plan 2: like a tanker truck (well maybe the dimensions of an F-150 truck or a U-Haul) but it's batteries . Your car park has no charging infrastructure? We place the truck there and electric cars can park around it and be charged. Just don't read the fine print about how explosive it'd be if the battery catches fire.

Kim_Bruning 4y ago

I was apparently lucky last time I rented in Germany. My apartment came with its own garage which was equipped with a 400V 3-phase socket. So it's definitely possible! (Sadly my car still ran on fossil fuel at the time. )

mcculley 4y ago

I was office and apartment hunting in 2018. I ended up moving into a freshly built apartment building with no infrastructure for charging. Five years later, those that have electric cars compete for the few available 15 amp outlets on each parking level. I asked each broker/property manager (residential and commercial) of new construction why they were not making accommodations for electric cars and Ubers. (Ubers are a lot more convenient where there is a portico or designated area for getting in and out and waiting for cars instead of holding up traffic in the street.) It was obvious that how people prefer to use cars is changing. All of them told me that it was too far away to worry about. Now they are trying to figure out how to retrofit the building for the necessary wiring and to correctly meter the tenant. Right now all of those electric cars are going against the common area usage. Myopia seems an expected consequence of bad housing market policy. I won't be buying an electric car until I move elsewhere.

helen___keller 4y ago

Depending on location, apartment hunting with any car can be difficult, and likewise house hunting without a car can be difficult. In general the infrastructure needs of apartment dwellers and house dwellers tend to differ a lot. Personally, if we're talking about upgrading legacy infrastructure in rental units, I would really like if including in-unit washer dryer combos would be the norm in my city (Boston). Although I own now so it doesn't bother me anymore, but it was quite frustrating paying $3500/mo rent and still hoarding quarters for the weekly laundry haul to the common-area basement of the building.

triceratops 4y ago
No in-unit washer-dryer at $3500/mo in Boston?! Even from the Bay Area that seems absurd.
- dylan604 4y ago
  My favorite was moving into an apartment that had no fridge which is what happened to me when I relocated to LA. Not once in my previous apartment renting experience until then did an apartment not come with a fridge.
- helen___keller 4y ago
  Depends on location and size of the unit. This was for a 3 bedroom 1000~sqft unit in a pretty great location (near the Charles river in Cambridge, 12 minute walk to the subway, quiet + beautiful + safe neighborhood). Generally speaking, urban rental units with in-unit washer+dryer in boston command a $300-500 rental premium from what I've seen (makes sense because retrofitting an old triple-decker[0] with in-unit laundry isn't trivial) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-decker_(house) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-decker_(house)
  - ghaff 4y ago
    For that kind of premium I would assume just taking laundry to a wash and fold place would make more sense for a lot of people.

drewg123 4y ago

The real problem is lack of choice in where you live. If it wasn't the charger, then the folks in the article might have had another problem that their inflexible landlord would not resolve. If you have a choice, then things are a lot easier. I rented a townhouse in the fall of 2019. As I was negotiating rent, move in dates, etc, I got the landlord to agree to have his electrician install a NEMA 14-50 outlet in the garage at my expense. It was all quite painless. If he would have said "no", I'd have rented a different townhouse. I made it clear that was a deal breaker. When I bought my current place, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had a NEMA 14-50 already installed in the garage, so I didn't have to do anything to secure charging for my car.

colinmhayes 4y ago
Right, as with almost all problems related to the housing crisis, the issue would be solved by building more units.

buildbot 4y ago

There’s a lot more to be considered here - while charging in your own parking garage is great, has anyone thought of what happens when your tesla overheats and catches fire in the basement? Are the fire suppression systems rated for electric car fires?

jononomo 4y ago

This seems to be an issue even for plug-in hybrids, which in my view are a far more intelligent solution than all-electric vehicles. The all-electric portion covers 90% of the trips you take, and the gas portion gives you basically unlimited range, given how common gas-stations are.

mint2 4y ago

This issue is why I can’t wait for CA’s mandate to push EV ownership higher. The charging challenges are not going to be addressed while it’s a very minority issue. Laws and regs will catch up only when it reaches a critical mass

LazyMans 4y ago

I live in a townhome community managed by an HOA with shared electric costs. A proposal to explore shared charger installation was not explored because they had made up their minds already that nobody that would live in our community would be able to afford an EV anyway. I have a plug-in hybrid. It's an uphill battle and generally the people against BHEV or EV just don't know that much about them, and why would they? It's not like they're keeping up with EV news. I bet a number of people still think Tesla is the only EV player in town. Buying an EV and living in this community would be a huge pain unless I had a car with a really good charge curve and nearby DC charging. The places I regularly visit each week don't have level 3 charging yet.

ufmace 4y ago

We've also been going for a while on night charging to help the grid - usage is (used to be?) lower at night, so you can start charging a bunch of electric cars and not notice too much. For now at least. I wonder if/when we'll start feeling some pain from the grid or specific buildings/areas not being able to keep up with the power demand of charging so many cars.