4 ms·

the charging infrastructure just isn't good enough for non-enthusiasts and apartment dwellers

rainsford 3y ago
I think the apartment/city dweller problem is a major limiting factor that does not have an obvious or quick solution. Owning an electric car if you can charge it at home is a pretty big experience upgrade over a gasoline powered vehicle since it is considerably cheaper to fuel and it happens with very little effort while you sleep. For those people, the less convenient experience of on-the-go electric charging might be worse than stopping at a gas station, but it happens rarely enough that it's not necessarily a major consideration. If you can't easily charge at home though, electric cars kind of suck and offer a noticeably worse experience. Sure, you could probably make it work by exclusively charging at public fast chargers similar to how you fill up a gasoline car now, but those are much harder to find and inconveniently slow enough to be annoying to use on a regular basis. I know people who do this because they like the idea of a electric car enough to put up with it, but that's not going to ever be most prospective car buyers. Trying to make non-home electric charging competitive with gas stations is going to take a long time and faces a catch-22 if EV purchase rates slow down. And upgrading every condo/apartment building and city with street parking to have sufficient overnight charging capacity is not a quick answer either. Anecdotally, I would absolutely buy an electric car if I didn't live in a condo with no charging facilities, but no way I'd do it without being able to charge at home. However, also worth noting that while I wouldn't move just so I could charge my car, I probably also wouldn't move to a new home without EV charging options unless I was forced to for some reason. So I'm guessing market pressure will make it happen eventually, not it's not right around the corner.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Do you have 120V at your parking spot? I know several people who bought electric cars, planning on putting in a charger in their garage. And then never bothered, because 120V was good enough. You can come home with an empty battery Sunday, plug in every weeknight, putting on 100 miles of charge overnight and taking off 50 miles every weekday for commuting and have a full battery by Thursday or Friday.
  - jandrewrogers 3y ago
    That doesn't work in an apartment. Most do not have any power to the parking spots. When they do, it is shared building circuit not intended (or scalable) for that purpose nor billable to the individual. I have seen tenants pay to have individual charging circuits installed in apartment parking spots but that costs real money.
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      Probably the cheapest way to get charging in most apartments is to rewire those shared circuits so they can handle the current of concurrent usage, and then just charge all electric cars $20/month or so rather than dealing with the expense and hassle of billing. I know I'd far rather have a dedicated 120V outlet in my parking spot than have to share an L2 charger with other people.
      - rainsford 3y ago
        Agreed, dedicated charging of any kind seems like the answer. I may actually suggest such an option to my condo board...would be an interesting use-case.
  - rainsford 3y ago
    I do not, and in fact there is no power at all close to the parking spots. It's a fairly typical (at least in the US) setup with a mid-rise building set back from a shared parking lot. The spots in front of the building aren't too far away so they could presumably get EV chargers installed, but it would require at minimum installing new circuits in the building and running electricity to the parking spots. The spots across the lot would require a more complex cable install since they're not adjacent to the building. I'm sure it would be doable, but non-trivial. And maybe most importantly, something the building would rather do for more than one resident at once, so it would take some sort of critical mass. Buildings with parking garages might have it easier since they already have power of some kind in the garage, although you still need to solve the billing problem somehow. New buildings seem to be addressing this, but retrofits in existing buildings are going to be a long tail here I imagine.

I think the apartment/city dweller problem is a major limiting factor that does not have an obvious or quick solution. Owning an electric car if you can charge it at home is a pretty big experience upgrade over a gasoline powered vehicle since it is considerably cheaper to fuel and it happens with very little effort while you sleep. For those people, the less convenient experience of on-the-go electric charging might be worse than stopping at a gas station, but it happens rarely enough that it's not necessarily a major consideration. If you can't easily charge at home though, electric cars kind of suck and offer a noticeably worse experience. Sure, you could probably make it work by exclusively charging at public fast chargers similar to how you fill up a gasoline car now, but those are much harder to find and inconveniently slow enough to be annoying to use on a regular basis. I know people who do this because they like the idea of a electric car enough to put up with it, but that's not going to ever be most prospective car buyers. Trying to make non-home electric charging competitive with gas stations is going to take a long time and faces a catch-22 if EV purchase rates slow down. And upgrading every condo/apartment building and city with street parking to have sufficient overnight charging capacity is not a quick answer either. Anecdotally, I would absolutely buy an electric car if I didn't live in a condo with no charging facilities, but no way I'd do it without being able to charge at home. However, also worth noting that while I wouldn't move just so I could charge my car, I probably also wouldn't move to a new home without EV charging options unless I was forced to for some reason. So I'm guessing market pressure will make it happen eventually, not it's not right around the corner.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
Do you have 120V at your parking spot? I know several people who bought electric cars, planning on putting in a charger in their garage. And then never bothered, because 120V was good enough. You can come home with an empty battery Sunday, plug in every weeknight, putting on 100 miles of charge overnight and taking off 50 miles every weekday for commuting and have a full battery by Thursday or Friday.
- jandrewrogers 3y ago
  That doesn't work in an apartment. Most do not have any power to the parking spots. When they do, it is shared building circuit not intended (or scalable) for that purpose nor billable to the individual. I have seen tenants pay to have individual charging circuits installed in apartment parking spots but that costs real money.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Probably the cheapest way to get charging in most apartments is to rewire those shared circuits so they can handle the current of concurrent usage, and then just charge all electric cars $20/month or so rather than dealing with the expense and hassle of billing. I know I'd far rather have a dedicated 120V outlet in my parking spot than have to share an L2 charger with other people.
    - rainsford 3y ago
      Agreed, dedicated charging of any kind seems like the answer. I may actually suggest such an option to my condo board...would be an interesting use-case.
- rainsford 3y ago
  I do not, and in fact there is no power at all close to the parking spots. It's a fairly typical (at least in the US) setup with a mid-rise building set back from a shared parking lot. The spots in front of the building aren't too far away so they could presumably get EV chargers installed, but it would require at minimum installing new circuits in the building and running electricity to the parking spots. The spots across the lot would require a more complex cable install since they're not adjacent to the building. I'm sure it would be doable, but non-trivial. And maybe most importantly, something the building would rather do for more than one resident at once, so it would take some sort of critical mass. Buildings with parking garages might have it easier since they already have power of some kind in the garage, although you still need to solve the billing problem somehow. New buildings seem to be addressing this, but retrofits in existing buildings are going to be a long tail here I imagine.