5 ms·

From the headline: >the problem is getting it where it's needed. Same issue with EV rollout. EVs are great if you have a single family home and a few grand to

by asdff 3mo ago

From the headline: >the problem is getting it where it's needed. Same issue with EV rollout. EVs are great if you have a single family home and a few grand to spend on outfitting a fast charger. Most apartment renters however are shit out of luck. I mean it has been how many years now of EV cars on the road and virtually no sweeping buildout of EV chargers in apartment complexes that I can see at least. There was a push for like maybe a half dozen token ev charging spots in new parking garage construction but that has been it for years in terms of that scale, a sort of nicety not something you can bank on having when you go to one of these garages. Street parking EV hookup has also not been rolling out at any serious scale. There is 1 single ev street parking spot in my neighborhood; they put it in years ago and nothing more has been built since. I know someone with an EV in an apartment without a hookup for them, and charging it is a legitimate constant chore as they have to plan to go somewhere offsite to do it. Frequently they can't take the EV and have to resort to the gas car because the EV is at 20% charge or something. I think what we are seeing with EVs is akin to general K shaped economy phenomenon. The rich and rich government leadership assume rollout must be going well, since they can charge conveniently at their house and they see many other Teslas in the parking lot of the country club or the luxury shopping center. Never mind actually considering how a renter's experience might be different, and renters are the bulk of our cities.

Terr_ 3mo ago
There's definitely a gulf between living-situations, and people assuming their local experience is nationally representative. I had a car-purchase decision a few years ago, and ultimately I had to choose based on the housing I had, not the housing I wish I had. It was frustrating to hear a lot of "you can just X" from folks who couldn't seem to imagine an apartment or chaotic street-parking.
- lostlogin 3mo ago
  There is another sibling comment saying that it works just fine with charging at fast chargers. I would find that irritating as it’s still time consuming - slow charging at home suits me, but as you say, requires a suitable home.
  - lumost 3mo ago
    if super chargers were always within 5 minutes, located around desirable locations to spend an hour, did not charge idle fees, and everyone had 30 minutes of free stuff to do at these locations... then it might just work!
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
dghlsakjg 3mo ago
Why are people so convinced that we need an EV charger per car at every home? We need enough high speed chargers in the right places. The average American drives 37 miles per day. That pencils out to less than 30 minutes of charging per week using current high speed standards (which will continue to drop). Your friend could take their car at 20% if they knew that they could charge quickly at their destination. We don't need a fast charger for every car anymore than we need a gas pump for every car. When I got my EV, I thought I would need to hire an electrician to put in a fast charger. After a week of just running the 1.5 kw slow charger I realized that was fine. Even using just that charger I am able to get 43 miles of range on my 10 hour overnight charge in an SUV. If you told me I was never allowed to charge at home, I would still use an EV. Parking at the charger while I shop once a week is fine. Most people with EVs that I talk to have the same feeling. Charger anxiety ends up being a non issue except for outliers that drive a lot, or in bursty patterns. We need to have enough high speed chargers in spots where people spend at least 30 minutes per week, and that will cover the huge majority of driving. Put high speed chargers at malls, grocery store and workplaces and it doesn't matter if you have a charger at home, you can just charge when your car is parked away from home. I'm not even sure it's that big of a buildout that's needed. Where I am, there are far more public chargers (level 2 or better) than gas pumps. If I want to charge my car while I'm out and about, its pretty hard to find a commercial district where I would have to be more than 2 blocks from a charger (and I live in rural Canada). This feels like a political problem (and maybe consumer perception) a lot more than an intractable one.
- michaelmrose 3mo ago
  How many is enough is a complicated thing though. You don't need there to be as many pumps as cars because there is enough everywhere that you know with certainty that you can find one any given time within 15 minutes and be refueled in 5. If you have a charger or as many chargers at your apartment for the number of electric cars you know you are going to be able to charge with certainty. If you have some small number of chargers at work do you know that you are going to be able to charge? Are you going to go into work park at the charging spot for 30 minutes then play musical chairs with your coworkers instead of working or are you going to park for 9 hours then leave at approx the same time as others ensuring that exactly 5 cars get charged per week despite being able to theoretically charge 336 per week in 3O minute blocks. Regarding trips to the grocery store. Did you spend 30 minutes in a parking lot of a grocery store or mall this week? I haven't this month and even so you can't be sure that one of a small number of spots are actually available. Currently plug in vehicles are what 1.9% of cars on the road. A relatively small number of spots scattered here and there is enough for this to work better than expected but trying to scale this begins to get pretty stupid pretty fast. What does this look like with 1 in 3 cars? At 2 in 3 cars? How does it look like when you try to put enough chargers in the place where people incidentally land for extended periods of time instead of just putting them in lots of homes and apartments?
ssl-3 3mo ago
Owning an EV doesn't necessitate spending a few grand to have a fast charger installed. They charge fine from a regular 110v US wall outlet -- they just do it slowly. And by "slowly," I mean: Somewhere in the realm of 2-5 miles per hour. It's not fast at all. But that's compatible with many lifestyles, wherein: The car is probably just sitting there at home for 12 or more hours per day, anyway. If the round-trip commute is 30 miles, and the car gains just 3 miles per hour while plugged in, and it gets plugged in for 12 hours per day, then: It gains 36 miles per day, and the daily-commute part of driving it is completely covered by a regular outlet. (Which still doesn't address the conundrum that many apartment dwellers face, but it would've helped me at most of the apartments I've lived in: Ground floor, and parking right outside of my place. I'd have just used an extension cord and the landlord wouldn't have said a word, except maybe to have a chat about how I like the car.)
- michaelmrose 3mo ago
  Even people who have a round trip commute of 30 miles drive other places than work on average days and have days when they drive 2 and 3x as much as normal days every time enough greater than average days line up you have to contend with finding a charger which gets more contentious as more electric cars exist AND as they age in the hands of people who cannot afford to just replace car or battery.
  - ssl-3 3mo ago
    So all of these problems are intractable? There is no way that any of them can be dealt with at all?
    - asdff 3mo ago
      It falls into the bin of "tragedies of the commons we could fix with current technology but fail to sufficiently fund and support in earnest" Really, when is the last time we overhauled our built environment and actually followed through with a comprehensive plan in the west? We couldn't even finish the interstate highway system in a time when we had seemingly great alignment towards it along with far cheaper costs. Public housing failed too. Broadband access failed. Cell service is still pretty spotty and unreliable.
alsetmusic 3mo ago
Ew apartment buildings have them where I live, though a limited number so I can imagine that their use fluctuates. Someone who can’t reserve an open charger can’t move in. Someone who can’t get the floor plan they want is less likely to sign a lease even if a charger is available. This is in the Bay Area, fwiw.
- rconti 3mo ago
  I think this is usually done with idle fees and the like. I was recently apartment hunting and we tested out the EV chargers -- in this case it was a Tesla destination charger, but I didn't realize those now had smarts built into them to provide for billing and idle fees just like superchargers have. We ended up in an apartment without any way to charge, so for now we're dealing with supercharging -- and just recently found a nearby condo complex (1/3mi walk) with 19 completely free chargepoints. But yeah, this is Menlo Park, so we have 5 superchargers within a few miles.
m4rtink 3mo ago
Well, when there were no cars using gasoline, there were no gas stations, what a surprise! Sure, there might sometime be a chicken-and-egg problem initially, but saying a new but proven technology is totally unusable because it does not have infrastructure everywhere seems kinda weird to me. The infrastructure will catch up as usage grows.

by asdff 3mo ago

Terr_ 3mo ago

There's definitely a gulf between living-situations, and people assuming their local experience is nationally representative. I had a car-purchase decision a few years ago, and ultimately I had to choose based on the housing I had, not the housing I wish I had. It was frustrating to hear a lot of "you can just X" from folks who couldn't seem to imagine an apartment or chaotic street-parking.

lostlogin 3mo ago
There is another sibling comment saying that it works just fine with charging at fast chargers. I would find that irritating as it’s still time consuming - slow charging at home suits me, but as you say, requires a suitable home.
- lumost 3mo ago
  if super chargers were always within 5 minutes, located around desirable locations to spend an hour, did not charge idle fees, and everyone had 30 minutes of free stuff to do at these locations... then it might just work!

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

dghlsakjg 3mo ago

Why are people so convinced that we need an EV charger per car at every home? We need enough high speed chargers in the right places. The average American drives 37 miles per day. That pencils out to less than 30 minutes of charging per week using current high speed standards (which will continue to drop). Your friend could take their car at 20% if they knew that they could charge quickly at their destination. We don't need a fast charger for every car anymore than we need a gas pump for every car. When I got my EV, I thought I would need to hire an electrician to put in a fast charger. After a week of just running the 1.5 kw slow charger I realized that was fine. Even using just that charger I am able to get 43 miles of range on my 10 hour overnight charge in an SUV. If you told me I was never allowed to charge at home, I would still use an EV. Parking at the charger while I shop once a week is fine. Most people with EVs that I talk to have the same feeling. Charger anxiety ends up being a non issue except for outliers that drive a lot, or in bursty patterns. We need to have enough high speed chargers in spots where people spend at least 30 minutes per week, and that will cover the huge majority of driving. Put high speed chargers at malls, grocery store and workplaces and it doesn't matter if you have a charger at home, you can just charge when your car is parked away from home. I'm not even sure it's that big of a buildout that's needed. Where I am, there are far more public chargers (level 2 or better) than gas pumps. If I want to charge my car while I'm out and about, its pretty hard to find a commercial district where I would have to be more than 2 blocks from a charger (and I live in rural Canada). This feels like a political problem (and maybe consumer perception) a lot more than an intractable one.

michaelmrose 3mo ago
How many is enough is a complicated thing though. You don't need there to be as many pumps as cars because there is enough everywhere that you know with certainty that you can find one any given time within 15 minutes and be refueled in 5. If you have a charger or as many chargers at your apartment for the number of electric cars you know you are going to be able to charge with certainty. If you have some small number of chargers at work do you know that you are going to be able to charge? Are you going to go into work park at the charging spot for 30 minutes then play musical chairs with your coworkers instead of working or are you going to park for 9 hours then leave at approx the same time as others ensuring that exactly 5 cars get charged per week despite being able to theoretically charge 336 per week in 3O minute blocks. Regarding trips to the grocery store. Did you spend 30 minutes in a parking lot of a grocery store or mall this week? I haven't this month and even so you can't be sure that one of a small number of spots are actually available. Currently plug in vehicles are what 1.9% of cars on the road. A relatively small number of spots scattered here and there is enough for this to work better than expected but trying to scale this begins to get pretty stupid pretty fast. What does this look like with 1 in 3 cars? At 2 in 3 cars? How does it look like when you try to put enough chargers in the place where people incidentally land for extended periods of time instead of just putting them in lots of homes and apartments?

ssl-3 3mo ago

Owning an EV doesn't necessitate spending a few grand to have a fast charger installed. They charge fine from a regular 110v US wall outlet -- they just do it slowly. And by "slowly," I mean: Somewhere in the realm of 2-5 miles per hour. It's not fast at all. But that's compatible with many lifestyles, wherein: The car is probably just sitting there at home for 12 or more hours per day, anyway. If the round-trip commute is 30 miles, and the car gains just 3 miles per hour while plugged in, and it gets plugged in for 12 hours per day, then: It gains 36 miles per day, and the daily-commute part of driving it is completely covered by a regular outlet. (Which still doesn't address the conundrum that many apartment dwellers face, but it would've helped me at most of the apartments I've lived in: Ground floor, and parking right outside of my place. I'd have just used an extension cord and the landlord wouldn't have said a word, except maybe to have a chat about how I like the car.)

michaelmrose 3mo ago
Even people who have a round trip commute of 30 miles drive other places than work on average days and have days when they drive 2 and 3x as much as normal days every time enough greater than average days line up you have to contend with finding a charger which gets more contentious as more electric cars exist AND as they age in the hands of people who cannot afford to just replace car or battery.
- ssl-3 3mo ago
  So all of these problems are intractable? There is no way that any of them can be dealt with at all?
  - asdff 3mo ago
    It falls into the bin of "tragedies of the commons we could fix with current technology but fail to sufficiently fund and support in earnest" Really, when is the last time we overhauled our built environment and actually followed through with a comprehensive plan in the west? We couldn't even finish the interstate highway system in a time when we had seemingly great alignment towards it along with far cheaper costs. Public housing failed too. Broadband access failed. Cell service is still pretty spotty and unreliable.

alsetmusic 3mo ago

Ew apartment buildings have them where I live, though a limited number so I can imagine that their use fluctuates. Someone who can’t reserve an open charger can’t move in. Someone who can’t get the floor plan they want is less likely to sign a lease even if a charger is available. This is in the Bay Area, fwiw.

rconti 3mo ago
I think this is usually done with idle fees and the like. I was recently apartment hunting and we tested out the EV chargers -- in this case it was a Tesla destination charger, but I didn't realize those now had smarts built into them to provide for billing and idle fees just like superchargers have. We ended up in an apartment without any way to charge, so for now we're dealing with supercharging -- and just recently found a nearby condo complex (1/3mi walk) with 19 completely free chargepoints. But yeah, this is Menlo Park, so we have 5 superchargers within a few miles.

m4rtink 3mo ago

Well, when there were no cars using gasoline, there were no gas stations, what a surprise! Sure, there might sometime be a chicken-and-egg problem initially, but saying a new but proven technology is totally unusable because it does not have infrastructure everywhere seems kinda weird to me. The infrastructure will catch up as usage grows.