In an electric car, you can commute every day without ever worrying about filling up, because you can charge at home, overnight, just like your phone. Sure, it'd be nice to charge a phone in seven...
In an electric car, you can commute every day without ever worrying about filling up, because you can charge at home, overnight, just like your phone. Sure, it'd be nice to charge a phone in seven minutes, but most of us just do it overnight so we don't need to worry about it the next day.
I'll chime in with my experience as an EV owner: we need more chargers, everywhere, with a mix of charging solutions. At my old job, they installed EV charging stations and I could charge my car...
I'll chime in with my experience as an EV owner: we need more chargers, everywhere, with a mix of charging solutions.
At my old job, they installed EV charging stations and I could charge my car at work, and this covered 80% of my charging needs. These stations were packed, and often required you to arrive a bit early or stay a bit late to get a spot and get enough charge, but it was super convenient. (because ancient nissan leafs and new priuses take literal ages to charge and need to charge daily for even short commutes)
I take road trips semi-frequently in my Tesla. For this US Thanksgiving holiday, my husband and I did an 800mi roadtrip (1600 mi total). On these 800mi travel days, we stopped 5 times to supercharge for ~10-15 minutes: enough for us to run to grab food/drink, use the toilet, let our dog stretch her legs, etc.
I finally got an EV charger installed at home (literally, today). This lines up with a solar installation in our house, so our cars can now be sun-powered (we over-installed by 2.5kw to anticipate home charging).
However, I think that centralized charging stations are actually not the solution. I'd far prefer every parking lot to have a small handful of medium-speed L2 chargers that fit into my everyday life. Then, you just charge wherever you're already going, so it fits your lifestyle: grocery shopping, out to dinner, etc.
Those of us who live in big cities rarely end up parking in lots. It's usually on-street parking, and putting charging stands at every possible parking space would be prohibitively expensive for...
I'd far prefer every parking lot to have a small handful of medium-speed L2 chargers that fit into my everyday life.
Those of us who live in big cities rarely end up parking in lots. It's usually on-street parking, and putting charging stands at every possible parking space would be prohibitively expensive for any city government. Charging stations are the only way.
This totally ignores the realities of my comment: centralized charging stations are not the only way. Saying this is just wanting to keep with old habits, rather than earned experience from living...
Charging stations are the only way.
This totally ignores the realities of my comment: centralized charging stations are not the only way. Saying this is just wanting to keep with old habits, rather than earned experience from living with an EV.
There are many possible times and places for EV drivers to charge. (And yes, that sometimes could be in a charging station.) The reality is that, charging should adapt to fit your lifestyle, you should not have to go to a destination to charge.
Those of us who live in big cities rarely end up parking in lots.
Anecdotally, my vacation was just to a non-California big/dense city, and charging for me there was not at all difficult: I used chargepoint and blink in various parking structures where I was already planning to go. Most charging apps allow you to throw in a destination, and they display all the chargers nearby for your vehicle (even chargers with a different service).
It's usually on-street parking, and putting charging stands at every possible parking space would be prohibitively expensive for any city government.
I can't say I've ever seen city government gas stations before...
Also, it's not like charging stations require tons of power and infrastructure: two cars can charge from a single charger on as low as a 20A circuit. Businesses can charge for power provided, and recoup the power/installation costs. It works because these are getting installed. I've personally seen street side, parallel parking chargers before, too.
I don't know about "old habits." I haven't owned a car for 11 years and have gotten by using car-sharing services like Zipcar. I am only considering one now because I'm applying for jobs in the...
Saying this is just wanting to keep with old habits, rather than earned experience from living with an EV.
I don't know about "old habits." I haven't owned a car for 11 years and have gotten by using car-sharing services like Zipcar. I am only considering one now because I'm applying for jobs in the burbs, and I'm explicitly not considering EVs because I don't want to add "spend a half hour every week charging it at the one public charging plug (not station, plug) near me.
Anecdotally, my vacation was just to a non-California big/dense city, and charging for me there was not at all difficult
You were on vacation, which means you presumably were free of the kinds of time restrictions one deals with as a commuter with errands to run and a job to get to.
I can't say I've ever seen city government gas stations before...
Charging stations don't need to work like gas stations. They can work like metered parking spaces instead. But you're not going to get one of those at every on-street parking slot, so people will have to go to the designated metered parking spaces, hope it's not already got a car in it, and then hang around and find something to do while the thing is charging. The only way this works is with a bounty of available charging stations made available regardless of how economically advantageous it is to build a business out of it. You're literally removing long/medium term parking in vital urban neighborhoods that already have a scarcity of it. If you expect EVs to be ubiquitous, that's not going to meet the level of demand you're going to have.
I don't like this for a few reasons, but there's an important economic disadvantage being overlooked here: it introduces another class-based divide. Those who rent will tend to be in housing that...
I don't like this for a few reasons, but there's an important economic disadvantage being overlooked here: it introduces another class-based divide. Those who rent will tend to be in housing that disincentives home charging, and would effectively be forced to pay commercial charger rates, while those who can afford to own their own home in the suburbs would be able to pay residential power rates, or get their electricity for free via solar panels.
I think going forward, as electric vehicles become more ubiquitous, people are going to expect rental properties and inner city apartments to provide chargers by default—which will encourage landlords and apartment complexes to install them to avoid losing out.
I also agree with @cptcobalt, we need an all of the above approach, but we shouldn't be mixing intents. Superchargers are worse for your car's battery longevity, and are intended for quick refills on roadtrips. They're not your 'out and about' charging destination. That's called your home.
If you want real world numbers, I can give you some, but please keep in mind there are many variables and differences in priced depending on where you go. So for my first generation Leaf, i...
If you want real world numbers, I can give you some, but please keep in mind there are many variables and differences in priced depending on where you go.
So for my first generation Leaf, i haven't been able to get a good handle on how much it has cost me since I bought mine at the same time I moved in with my boyfriend, even though I'm the one paying for electricity. My current estimate is that it costs me around 15-25 dollars per month for about 30 miles per workday.
For quick DC charging (keep in mind this is not a system you have at home and for most cars you need to spend more just to able to use them), it's been around 10 dollars per charge. And on my car, that doesn't give me a 100% charge - it only goes to about 85% capacity, regardless of how much it was charged before. That gives me roughly 45 miles of real-world range. As you can see, it's a terrible value.
Level 2 chargers (240VAC) are probably the most common. The good news is that there are a handful out there that offer free charging. Some of them only charge for the power, and they tend to be between 20 and 40 cents per kilowatt-hour. It's an inflated price, but they aren't too terribly unaffordable.
It's when they also charge for parking that it becomes an issue. There is no standard fee for that. Some places have a flat fee, some of them charge you by the hour. Some only charge you for parking if you leave your car connected for over a certain period of time. And because of that I can't give you a realistic average. I can tell you that it often ends up being over 10 if it has a flat fee for parking.
Landlords do not need to provide chargers, they just need to provide access to electricity. This seems like a much more realistic solution than spending a significant amount more to charge in a...
Landlords do not need to provide chargers, they just need to provide access to electricity. This seems like a much more realistic solution than spending a significant amount more to charge in a third location. Charging in these places may be subsidized by the manufacturers sometimes, but the vast majority of public chargers cost much more than charging at home because they have to pay for the space as well as have a profit margin.
This is such a huge false equivalence it is crazy. Gasoline has far, FAR fewer applications compared to electricity, and is far more difficult to transport. A closer equivalent (but still very...
This is such a huge false equivalence it is crazy. Gasoline has far, FAR fewer applications compared to electricity, and is far more difficult to transport. A closer equivalent (but still very distant) would be natural gas, which is alternatively sold bottled or piped for use.
The infrastructure for generation to premises already exists for electricity transport - all that is needed is to do individual work in the areas where it is needed, which is an absolutely minuscule fraction of the cost to develop a petrol piping infrastructure.
I'm seriously going to need a source for that. I have lived in more apartments than I have kept count of and I have never lived in one more than two stories high before. I have seen apartments...
My parking garage is five levels high and supports over two hundred residents. This four level walk up type apartment complex is one of the most popular designs for rental housing in North America.
I'm seriously going to need a source for that. I have lived in more apartments than I have kept count of and I have never lived in one more than two stories high before. I have seen apartments like you are talking about, but only as mixed developments with the first floor taken by shopping spaces. It should be noted that each instance of this that I have visited had charging stations in the public spaces.
In any case, why do you think it's any harder to put a mass of chargers in an apartment building than a dedicated charging space? Why not wipe out gas stations and fill it with spaces people would actually want to visit?
One thing you are not considering is that quick charging batteries is actually bad for them. The reason why you hear those stats written as getting the first 50% of the battery full is because if you tried to charge to 100% at that rate the battery would explode.
In any case, it's not like we need to go through such extremes as converting an entire apartment's parking structure. Right now it would be an absurd waste to do so as there are not yet that many electric cars on the market.
And like I said, there is no reason for the apartment management to supply chargers for the tenants. They need only provide basic assistance to provide them with power near a parking spot and have the tenant supply their own chargers. As far as that assistance goes, it would be nice if they would build the infrastructure themselves, but it is certainly within reason to have the tenant pay for the work required.
You really need to figure out how far in the future you are talking about in order for this conversation to be useful. Right now I'm just talking about the next 10-20 years because I doubt that...
You really need to figure out how far in the future you are talking about in order for this conversation to be useful. Right now I'm just talking about the next 10-20 years because I doubt that electric will overtake ICE cars in that timeframe. In any case, you can't just hope for new technologies to appear and then suddenly they come up. The future isn't built on pipe dreams, it's based on current capabilities.
I'm not saying that apartment buildings with more than two stories are rare, merely that they are not the most common. All three of your articles were pointing to new construction; highrise apartments are still a minority compared to the vast number of existing apartment buildings that currently exist. And yes, I am talking about America, the land of sprawl.
In any case, you seem to think that running electricity is some ungodly unjustifiable cost, but it really is not. It's actually much easier to do in parking structures since you don't need to worry about running through walls and making everything pretty. The most expensive part is getting everyone their own meter so they pay for their own electricity, and the electric company usually subsidizes that part.
It seems as though a blend of both will be necessary. Charge times are significantly longer than fill times, so the throughput of charging stations is necessarily much lower (at least for a given...
What makes you think fitting over two hundred charging stations and the electrical capacity to support hundreds of vehicles to a concrete building not designed to support such needs is more realistic than simply transitioning gas stations to electrical stations?
It seems as though a blend of both will be necessary. Charge times are significantly longer than fill times, so the throughput of charging stations is necessarily much lower (at least for a given size of station). Alongside this, electrical infrastructure is already ubiquitous even if it doesn't quite terminate at the parking spaces - making it plausible (but not free) to extend.
I can see it being a selling point for residential buildings to offer overnight charging. Maybe an assigned space with a charger commands a slight premium on rent, or serves as a value-add incentive to move into a newer building. The property owner retrofits 20 spaces next year, then 50 five years later when that no longer meets demand, and then the last 130 ten years after that when everyone's demanding one and it's starting to lose them business if they can't offer it.
Commercial parking spaces and municipalities start adding pay-per-hour chargers, some businesses start throwing in free charging with any purchase as an incentive to shop there, and again the combination of existing power distribution and time that the cars would be idle anyway allows for regular top ups.
The centralised stations still exist as well: they're needed for longer trips, and for people who don't yet have chargers at home or work, but nobody wants to sit around there for half an hour unless they have to.
Some of us need to park on the street, so it's not on the landlord to provide either charger or electricity. It's not even their responsibility to provide parking. It would need to be on the city...
Exemplary
Landlords do not need to provide chargers, they just need to provide access to electricity
Some of us need to park on the street, so it's not on the landlord to provide either charger or electricity. It's not even their responsibility to provide parking. It would need to be on the city to install chargers for public use everywhere, but having to park on the street or in some garage for 30 min to an hour makes it kind of a hassle.
Maybe the future will be battery "jerry cans" that we charge inside and then take to the car to dump 30 miles worth of charge just to get us to the next charging station. That would be a heavy-ass jerry can though, and the car would ideally have some way to plug that battery bank in from inside the trunk or something so people don't steal it if you leave it charging outside.
Alternatively, portable gasoline generators. But that's back to not having a zero-emissions vehicle again.
In an electric car, you can commute every day without ever worrying about filling up, because you can charge at home, overnight, just like your phone. Sure, it'd be nice to charge a phone in seven minutes, but most of us just do it overnight so we don't need to worry about it the next day.
I'll chime in with my experience as an EV owner: we need more chargers, everywhere, with a mix of charging solutions.
However, I think that centralized charging stations are actually not the solution. I'd far prefer every parking lot to have a small handful of medium-speed L2 chargers that fit into my everyday life. Then, you just charge wherever you're already going, so it fits your lifestyle: grocery shopping, out to dinner, etc.
Those of us who live in big cities rarely end up parking in lots. It's usually on-street parking, and putting charging stands at every possible parking space would be prohibitively expensive for any city government. Charging stations are the only way.
This totally ignores the realities of my comment: centralized charging stations are not the only way. Saying this is just wanting to keep with old habits, rather than earned experience from living with an EV.
There are many possible times and places for EV drivers to charge. (And yes, that sometimes could be in a charging station.) The reality is that, charging should adapt to fit your lifestyle, you should not have to go to a destination to charge.
Anecdotally, my vacation was just to a non-California big/dense city, and charging for me there was not at all difficult: I used chargepoint and blink in various parking structures where I was already planning to go. Most charging apps allow you to throw in a destination, and they display all the chargers nearby for your vehicle (even chargers with a different service).
I can't say I've ever seen city government gas stations before...
Also, it's not like charging stations require tons of power and infrastructure: two cars can charge from a single charger on as low as a 20A circuit. Businesses can charge for power provided, and recoup the power/installation costs. It works because these are getting installed. I've personally seen street side, parallel parking chargers before, too.
I don't know about "old habits." I haven't owned a car for 11 years and have gotten by using car-sharing services like Zipcar. I am only considering one now because I'm applying for jobs in the burbs, and I'm explicitly not considering EVs because I don't want to add "spend a half hour every week charging it at the one public charging plug (not station, plug) near me.
You were on vacation, which means you presumably were free of the kinds of time restrictions one deals with as a commuter with errands to run and a job to get to.
Charging stations don't need to work like gas stations. They can work like metered parking spaces instead. But you're not going to get one of those at every on-street parking slot, so people will have to go to the designated metered parking spaces, hope it's not already got a car in it, and then hang around and find something to do while the thing is charging. The only way this works is with a bounty of available charging stations made available regardless of how economically advantageous it is to build a business out of it. You're literally removing long/medium term parking in vital urban neighborhoods that already have a scarcity of it. If you expect EVs to be ubiquitous, that's not going to meet the level of demand you're going to have.
I don't like this for a few reasons, but there's an important economic disadvantage being overlooked here: it introduces another class-based divide. Those who rent will tend to be in housing that disincentives home charging, and would effectively be forced to pay commercial charger rates, while those who can afford to own their own home in the suburbs would be able to pay residential power rates, or get their electricity for free via solar panels.
I think going forward, as electric vehicles become more ubiquitous, people are going to expect rental properties and inner city apartments to provide chargers by default—which will encourage landlords and apartment complexes to install them to avoid losing out.
I also agree with @cptcobalt, we need an all of the above approach, but we shouldn't be mixing intents. Superchargers are worse for your car's battery longevity, and are intended for quick refills on roadtrips. They're not your 'out and about' charging destination. That's called your home.
If you want real world numbers, I can give you some, but please keep in mind there are many variables and differences in priced depending on where you go.
So for my first generation Leaf, i haven't been able to get a good handle on how much it has cost me since I bought mine at the same time I moved in with my boyfriend, even though I'm the one paying for electricity. My current estimate is that it costs me around 15-25 dollars per month for about 30 miles per workday.
For quick DC charging (keep in mind this is not a system you have at home and for most cars you need to spend more just to able to use them), it's been around 10 dollars per charge. And on my car, that doesn't give me a 100% charge - it only goes to about 85% capacity, regardless of how much it was charged before. That gives me roughly 45 miles of real-world range. As you can see, it's a terrible value.
Level 2 chargers (240VAC) are probably the most common. The good news is that there are a handful out there that offer free charging. Some of them only charge for the power, and they tend to be between 20 and 40 cents per kilowatt-hour. It's an inflated price, but they aren't too terribly unaffordable.
It's when they also charge for parking that it becomes an issue. There is no standard fee for that. Some places have a flat fee, some of them charge you by the hour. Some only charge you for parking if you leave your car connected for over a certain period of time. And because of that I can't give you a realistic average. I can tell you that it often ends up being over 10 if it has a flat fee for parking.
Landlords do not need to provide chargers, they just need to provide access to electricity. This seems like a much more realistic solution than spending a significant amount more to charge in a third location. Charging in these places may be subsidized by the manufacturers sometimes, but the vast majority of public chargers cost much more than charging at home because they have to pay for the space as well as have a profit margin.
This is such a huge false equivalence it is crazy. Gasoline has far, FAR fewer applications compared to electricity, and is far more difficult to transport. A closer equivalent (but still very distant) would be natural gas, which is alternatively sold bottled or piped for use.
The infrastructure for generation to premises already exists for electricity transport - all that is needed is to do individual work in the areas where it is needed, which is an absolutely minuscule fraction of the cost to develop a petrol piping infrastructure.
I'm seriously going to need a source for that. I have lived in more apartments than I have kept count of and I have never lived in one more than two stories high before. I have seen apartments like you are talking about, but only as mixed developments with the first floor taken by shopping spaces. It should be noted that each instance of this that I have visited had charging stations in the public spaces.
In any case, why do you think it's any harder to put a mass of chargers in an apartment building than a dedicated charging space? Why not wipe out gas stations and fill it with spaces people would actually want to visit?
One thing you are not considering is that quick charging batteries is actually bad for them. The reason why you hear those stats written as getting the first 50% of the battery full is because if you tried to charge to 100% at that rate the battery would explode.
In any case, it's not like we need to go through such extremes as converting an entire apartment's parking structure. Right now it would be an absurd waste to do so as there are not yet that many electric cars on the market.
And like I said, there is no reason for the apartment management to supply chargers for the tenants. They need only provide basic assistance to provide them with power near a parking spot and have the tenant supply their own chargers. As far as that assistance goes, it would be nice if they would build the infrastructure themselves, but it is certainly within reason to have the tenant pay for the work required.
You really need to figure out how far in the future you are talking about in order for this conversation to be useful. Right now I'm just talking about the next 10-20 years because I doubt that electric will overtake ICE cars in that timeframe. In any case, you can't just hope for new technologies to appear and then suddenly they come up. The future isn't built on pipe dreams, it's based on current capabilities.
I'm not saying that apartment buildings with more than two stories are rare, merely that they are not the most common. All three of your articles were pointing to new construction; highrise apartments are still a minority compared to the vast number of existing apartment buildings that currently exist. And yes, I am talking about America, the land of sprawl.
In any case, you seem to think that running electricity is some ungodly unjustifiable cost, but it really is not. It's actually much easier to do in parking structures since you don't need to worry about running through walls and making everything pretty. The most expensive part is getting everyone their own meter so they pay for their own electricity, and the electric company usually subsidizes that part.
It seems as though a blend of both will be necessary. Charge times are significantly longer than fill times, so the throughput of charging stations is necessarily much lower (at least for a given size of station). Alongside this, electrical infrastructure is already ubiquitous even if it doesn't quite terminate at the parking spaces - making it plausible (but not free) to extend.
I can see it being a selling point for residential buildings to offer overnight charging. Maybe an assigned space with a charger commands a slight premium on rent, or serves as a value-add incentive to move into a newer building. The property owner retrofits 20 spaces next year, then 50 five years later when that no longer meets demand, and then the last 130 ten years after that when everyone's demanding one and it's starting to lose them business if they can't offer it.
Commercial parking spaces and municipalities start adding pay-per-hour chargers, some businesses start throwing in free charging with any purchase as an incentive to shop there, and again the combination of existing power distribution and time that the cars would be idle anyway allows for regular top ups.
The centralised stations still exist as well: they're needed for longer trips, and for people who don't yet have chargers at home or work, but nobody wants to sit around there for half an hour unless they have to.
Some of us need to park on the street, so it's not on the landlord to provide either charger or electricity. It's not even their responsibility to provide parking. It would need to be on the city to install chargers for public use everywhere, but having to park on the street or in some garage for 30 min to an hour makes it kind of a hassle.
Maybe the future will be battery "jerry cans" that we charge inside and then take to the car to dump 30 miles worth of charge just to get us to the next charging station. That would be a heavy-ass jerry can though, and the car would ideally have some way to plug that battery bank in from inside the trunk or something so people don't steal it if you leave it charging outside.
Alternatively, portable gasoline generators. But that's back to not having a zero-emissions vehicle again.