7 ms·

90% of the complaints appear to be from folks who have no ability to charge at home. I would agree with the sentiment that if you have to drive any significant

by tw04 3y ago

90% of the complaints appear to be from folks who have no ability to charge at home. I would agree with the sentiment that if you have to drive any significant distance daily, and live in an apartment where you can’t charge at home, having an EV is going to be a giant pain and it might be a little too soon to go that route. I’d imagine we’re still several years away from having robust enough charging infrastructure assuming the build outs continue to get government support.

aa_is_op 3y ago
I'm confused that these people are confused. Why did they buy an EV if they don't have a place to charge it. It's like buying a surfboard while living in Iowa.
- chollida1 3y ago
  They do have a place to charge their cars. There are charging places all over the place, and possibly at their work. They just don't have one at home. That's going to become even more common as not every single parking spot can be turned into a charging space.
  - brad_Saggy 3y ago
    That's the funny part I don't understand. We want EVs to become mainstream but all apartment/condo dwellers should magically have a personal charging station.
    - natch 3y ago
      Or an electrical outlet within reach. “Charging station” makes it sound inordinately expensive. An outlet is all they need and is already hard enough that there’s no need to make it sound harder than it is.
      - tw04 3y ago
        That's not exactly accurate. Pick a car - say a Mustang Mach-e: a standard 15A outlet is going to charge at 4miles/hr. Say you get home a 6pm, never go anywhere, and leave it plugged in overnight - that's 48 miles of range. If you're talking dead of winter in Chicago in negative temps, assume half that. Long story short: a 15A outlet really isn't going to get the job done for charging a car. Also you cannot just charge off a 15A outlet, you're going to need to run an extension cord within 15ft of the car give or take and plug in your charger there (you can't just plug a NEMA 5-15 plug into an EV). That charger >> extension cord connection is going to need to be weatherproofed somehow. And oh, by the way, if you're in a big city good luck not getting your $500 charger stolen since there's probably no good way to secure it. So yes, they are going to need an EV charger.
        mdorazio 3y ago
        Not really, though. The average American drives 37 miles a day [1]. Your 48 miles overnight is more than enough 9 months out of the year even in a place like Chicago. A once a week trip to a faster charger or just a top-off when you're at a store / workplace that has chargers would cover the other 3 months. For places with less extreme winters than Chicago (the vast majority of US population centers), it's a non-issue. [1] https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/average-miles-driven-per-year/ https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/average-miles-driven-per-year...
        tw04 3y ago
        48 miles assumes 12 hours of charging every day, in 50 degree or warmer weather. You haven't covered how you're planning on securing the charger or getting power to it for someone that lives in an apartment. I have multiple EVs in my household, I'm completely onboard. People acting like they're for everyone today are delusional with the current state of charging infrastructure in the US. We've had the unfortunate need to use public charging a handful of times and almost every single time it has been an absolute nightmare. From non-working chargers to long lines (because of all the aforementioned people who only have access to public chargers). The only time it has been relatively painless was road trips when it's the middle of nowhere middle america because most folks that live there don't have EVs.
    - 5555624 3y ago
      And there's the assumption that everyone with a house has a place where they can charge an EV. My neighborhood was laid out prior to 1900. (Several houses, including mine, were built in 1900 or earlier.) Many houses don't have a driveway (or a place to build one). The streets are one-way, in order to allow parking on the north side of the street. Many people cannot even park in front of their house.
- tetromino_ 3y ago
  Well, there is a narrative out there that the ICE is dead and everyone should be driving electric. The media always neglects to add the caveat that the electric future has arrived only for garage-owning suburbanites.
  - el_benhameen 3y ago
    I have seen and heard countless “range anxiety” stories in commercial and nonprofit media in the US, including many about how the issue specifically affects apartment-dwellers.
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    Yes, banning the sale of brand new non-EVs in a decade's time is often presented by people with an agenda as if everyone needs to switch to EVs overnight. This is frankly silly though. In reality the EV sales will ramp over time and then ICEs age out of the fleet over multiple decades. And that's the timeline that is being attacked as insanely rushed.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  A lot of them didn't buy them. There are a lot of Uber/Lyft drivers up there and many use the Hertz Uber rental program (https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/hertz/tesla/ https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/hertz/tes...). I'd guess that most of these would use superchargers as their idle lots to top up between rides. I'd guess that this usually works pretty well, but with winter and a higher than normal number of broken chargers, those became more congested than normal, and this usage pattern will lead to it getting steadily worse throughout the day.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    From what I heard, a lot of those chargers weren't broken. What happened in Chicago was that Tesla drivers plugged in, and the car didn't immediately start charging because it had to warm the battery first. So they did the universal signal for a broken charger and left the cord dangling rather than hooking it. It then froze. IIRC on a Tesla the car screen displays that it's warming the battery, but the app on the phone doesn't. The phone screen just says that it's charging with 0 amps.
    - _ea1k 3y ago
      I've heard of a lot of that happening too. Tesla nav was also reporting a decent number of stalls out of order, so there were some outages as well. TBH, it sounds like a lot of things going wrong (or even just weird) at once. In every report that I saw, there were at least some cars sitting unplugged in front of stalls with noone in them. Even if those were broken, when they get fixed they might need to tow cars to make them usable again! You are definitely right though. Someone with a cold soaked battery could easily think the charger isn't supplying current, when it is really just running the battery heater for 30+ minutes first.
    - Corrado 3y ago
      > IIRC on a Tesla the car screen displays that it's warming the battery, but the app on the phone doesn't. The phone screen just says that it's charging with 0 amps. This isn't quite accurate. The Tesla app on iOS at least shows the battery preconditioning.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>90% of the complaints appear to be from folks who have no ability to charge at home. That's a significant demographic of the car owning population, especially here in Europe. Having your own house with a charger is an extreme rarity.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  2/3 of americans have a garage. I suspect the percentage of americans who can afford an EV and have a garage is much higher. A SFH really is the epitome of the American dream to many.
xyst 3y ago
The real blunder in this country is the lack of viable alternative transportation options in a majority of the nation. Visited NYC recently and didn’t need to rent a car. Primarily took the bus, ferry, and rail car/trains. In some cases I just walked from my hotel to the destination. Could have rented one of the e-bikes as well. Transportation costs for just 1 week were less than $100 (a quarter of this was because of LIRR usage). Didn’t have to deal with traffic, or some dumbass rear ending me because they weren’t paying attention. I could effectively multitask while traveling by alternative means. Unpopular opinion: heavy investing in “EV infrastructure” is a waste of time and money.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  ... but a small apartment costs $4000 in NYC which would cover the payment, gas, insurance and everything on two or three big SUVs. Without some revolution in the cost structure of urban life, "transit friendly" is going to look like going from the frying pan to the fire for most people.
  - pkulak 3y ago
    True. But I'd say that all that proves is that there's so much demand for not needing to own a personal automobile! And yet, cities aren't like private businesses; they don't do what's in demand. Instead of spending millions on public transportation, they spend billions on more roads to suburbs because that's what they are used to, and why the hell not? What good will come to elected officials from millions of car-free millennials streaming in from all over the country? That will just jack up rents, because, let's face it, no one city can absorb the demand anyway. My home city, Portland, put in modest light rail and painted some bike lanes, which caused some new people to move in. That pissed everyone off, and all transit development abruptly stopped. Desirable city == pissed off locals, and the locals vote! So we have shitty apartments in Manhattan where the land is 99% of the cost and countless, cookie cutter suburban hellscapes.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      >But I'd say that all that proves is that there's so much demand for not needing to own a personal automobile! It really doesn't. NYC isn't $ARBITRARY_SUBURB except without obligatory car ownership.
RetpolineDrama 3y ago
This is why apartments are stupid designs, and we should tax them appropriately.
- cozzyd 3y ago
  Many of us apartment dwellers don't even own cars ... I suspect that's much less common for SFHs

by tw04 3y ago

aa_is_op 3y ago

I'm confused that these people are confused. Why did they buy an EV if they don't have a place to charge it. It's like buying a surfboard while living in Iowa.

chollida1 3y ago
They do have a place to charge their cars. There are charging places all over the place, and possibly at their work. They just don't have one at home. That's going to become even more common as not every single parking spot can be turned into a charging space.
- brad_Saggy 3y ago
  That's the funny part I don't understand. We want EVs to become mainstream but all apartment/condo dwellers should magically have a personal charging station.
  - natch 3y ago
    Or an electrical outlet within reach. “Charging station” makes it sound inordinately expensive. An outlet is all they need and is already hard enough that there’s no need to make it sound harder than it is.
    - tw04 3y ago
      That's not exactly accurate. Pick a car - say a Mustang Mach-e: a standard 15A outlet is going to charge at 4miles/hr. Say you get home a 6pm, never go anywhere, and leave it plugged in overnight - that's 48 miles of range. If you're talking dead of winter in Chicago in negative temps, assume half that. Long story short: a 15A outlet really isn't going to get the job done for charging a car. Also you cannot just charge off a 15A outlet, you're going to need to run an extension cord within 15ft of the car give or take and plug in your charger there (you can't just plug a NEMA 5-15 plug into an EV). That charger >> extension cord connection is going to need to be weatherproofed somehow. And oh, by the way, if you're in a big city good luck not getting your $500 charger stolen since there's probably no good way to secure it. So yes, they are going to need an EV charger.
      - mdorazio 3y ago
        Not really, though. The average American drives 37 miles a day [1]. Your 48 miles overnight is more than enough 9 months out of the year even in a place like Chicago. A once a week trip to a faster charger or just a top-off when you're at a store / workplace that has chargers would cover the other 3 months. For places with less extreme winters than Chicago (the vast majority of US population centers), it's a non-issue. [1] https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/average-miles-driven-per-year/ https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/average-miles-driven-per-year...
        tw04 3y ago
        48 miles assumes 12 hours of charging every day, in 50 degree or warmer weather. You haven't covered how you're planning on securing the charger or getting power to it for someone that lives in an apartment. I have multiple EVs in my household, I'm completely onboard. People acting like they're for everyone today are delusional with the current state of charging infrastructure in the US. We've had the unfortunate need to use public charging a handful of times and almost every single time it has been an absolute nightmare. From non-working chargers to long lines (because of all the aforementioned people who only have access to public chargers). The only time it has been relatively painless was road trips when it's the middle of nowhere middle america because most folks that live there don't have EVs.
  - 5555624 3y ago
    And there's the assumption that everyone with a house has a place where they can charge an EV. My neighborhood was laid out prior to 1900. (Several houses, including mine, were built in 1900 or earlier.) Many houses don't have a driveway (or a place to build one). The streets are one-way, in order to allow parking on the north side of the street. Many people cannot even park in front of their house.
tetromino_ 3y ago
Well, there is a narrative out there that the ICE is dead and everyone should be driving electric. The media always neglects to add the caveat that the electric future has arrived only for garage-owning suburbanites.
- el_benhameen 3y ago
  I have seen and heard countless “range anxiety” stories in commercial and nonprofit media in the US, including many about how the issue specifically affects apartment-dwellers.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  Yes, banning the sale of brand new non-EVs in a decade's time is often presented by people with an agenda as if everyone needs to switch to EVs overnight. This is frankly silly though. In reality the EV sales will ramp over time and then ICEs age out of the fleet over multiple decades. And that's the timeline that is being attacked as insanely rushed.
_ea1k 3y ago
A lot of them didn't buy them. There are a lot of Uber/Lyft drivers up there and many use the Hertz Uber rental program (https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/hertz/tesla/ https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/hertz/tes...). I'd guess that most of these would use superchargers as their idle lots to top up between rides. I'd guess that this usually works pretty well, but with winter and a higher than normal number of broken chargers, those became more congested than normal, and this usage pattern will lead to it getting steadily worse throughout the day.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  From what I heard, a lot of those chargers weren't broken. What happened in Chicago was that Tesla drivers plugged in, and the car didn't immediately start charging because it had to warm the battery first. So they did the universal signal for a broken charger and left the cord dangling rather than hooking it. It then froze. IIRC on a Tesla the car screen displays that it's warming the battery, but the app on the phone doesn't. The phone screen just says that it's charging with 0 amps.
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    I've heard of a lot of that happening too. Tesla nav was also reporting a decent number of stalls out of order, so there were some outages as well. TBH, it sounds like a lot of things going wrong (or even just weird) at once. In every report that I saw, there were at least some cars sitting unplugged in front of stalls with noone in them. Even if those were broken, when they get fixed they might need to tow cars to make them usable again! You are definitely right though. Someone with a cold soaked battery could easily think the charger isn't supplying current, when it is really just running the battery heater for 30+ minutes first.
  - Corrado 3y ago
    > IIRC on a Tesla the car screen displays that it's warming the battery, but the app on the phone doesn't. The phone screen just says that it's charging with 0 amps. This isn't quite accurate. The Tesla app on iOS at least shows the battery preconditioning.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

>90% of the complaints appear to be from folks who have no ability to charge at home. That's a significant demographic of the car owning population, especially here in Europe. Having your own house with a charger is an extreme rarity.

HDThoreaun 3y ago
2/3 of americans have a garage. I suspect the percentage of americans who can afford an EV and have a garage is much higher. A SFH really is the epitome of the American dream to many.

xyst 3y ago

The real blunder in this country is the lack of viable alternative transportation options in a majority of the nation. Visited NYC recently and didn’t need to rent a car. Primarily took the bus, ferry, and rail car/trains. In some cases I just walked from my hotel to the destination. Could have rented one of the e-bikes as well. Transportation costs for just 1 week were less than $100 (a quarter of this was because of LIRR usage). Didn’t have to deal with traffic, or some dumbass rear ending me because they weren’t paying attention. I could effectively multitask while traveling by alternative means. Unpopular opinion: heavy investing in “EV infrastructure” is a waste of time and money.

PaulHoule 3y ago
... but a small apartment costs $4000 in NYC which would cover the payment, gas, insurance and everything on two or three big SUVs. Without some revolution in the cost structure of urban life, "transit friendly" is going to look like going from the frying pan to the fire for most people.
- pkulak 3y ago
  True. But I'd say that all that proves is that there's so much demand for not needing to own a personal automobile! And yet, cities aren't like private businesses; they don't do what's in demand. Instead of spending millions on public transportation, they spend billions on more roads to suburbs because that's what they are used to, and why the hell not? What good will come to elected officials from millions of car-free millennials streaming in from all over the country? That will just jack up rents, because, let's face it, no one city can absorb the demand anyway. My home city, Portland, put in modest light rail and painted some bike lanes, which caused some new people to move in. That pissed everyone off, and all transit development abruptly stopped. Desirable city == pissed off locals, and the locals vote! So we have shitty apartments in Manhattan where the land is 99% of the cost and countless, cookie cutter suburban hellscapes.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    >But I'd say that all that proves is that there's so much demand for not needing to own a personal automobile! It really doesn't. NYC isn't $ARBITRARY_SUBURB except without obligatory car ownership.

RetpolineDrama 3y ago

This is why apartments are stupid designs, and we should tax them appropriately.

cozzyd 3y ago
Many of us apartment dwellers don't even own cars ... I suspect that's much less common for SFHs