Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/drive/mobility/article-where-will-garage-orphans-charge-electric-cars-if-they-have-to-park/

by throw0101a • 7 years ago

151 513 7 years ago

theglobeandmail.com

toomuchtodo6• 7 years ago

Several states have laws that require apartment building and condo managers to allow tenants/owners to install EV chargers (at their own cost). I expect this trend to continue slowly across the US.

If you can't charge at home, public charging is going to continue to expand rapidly (as electricity is everywhere). It'll just take some time, and effort on the part of local citizens and policy makers.

If you own an EV, get involved! Advocate for home, workplace, and public charging stations where you frequent.

stcredzero3• 7 years ago

Several states have laws that require apartment building and condo managers to allow tenants/owners to install EV chargers (at their own cost).

Which states?

toomuchtodo6• 7 years ago

California, Colorado, Florida, and Oregon. Shorthand is typically "right to charge" laws.

tdiggity2• 7 years ago

California for Condo/Townhome owners. However, in my experience, it didn't help. I had a condo with a shared garage, and the HOA said I had to pay for not just a line from the electrical room to my parking spot, but also the equipment/piping to scale it to any of the other parking spots. What would have been a $2000 installation turned into much more. My point being, even though there are laws that allow you to do this, there are ways they can make it out of reach if they want to.

rubidium• 7 years ago

There are quite a few single family homes that just have on-street parking with no dedicated parking spots (myself included). EV isn't an option for my unless my workplace had charging for nearly every vehicle. The current 2 charging stations are already taken most days.

toomuchtodo6• 7 years ago

Have you spoken to your local city about getting charging pedestals installed? Or having chargers added to street lights? Have you spoken to your workplace about having any amount of chargers installed? Progress is not a function of time.

The transition to electric mobility will require effort, but is not impossible. I am happy to speak to whomever is required to work towards having chargers installed near your home or workplace.

chc10• 7 years ago

Those laws seem like such a raw deal, though, since it's not like you can take the charger with you. You're allowed to upgrade your landlord's property at your own expense, providing you also take out an insurance policy at your own expense. And even if you're fine with that, it doesn't really help "garage orphans," since you can only do it if you have a garage or assigned parking space with access to electricity.

shyn3• 7 years ago

There was a guy several years ago trying to get his car charged. The city will have tons of work in the future to allow this [1].

[1] https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/09/01/toronto-electric...

stcredzero3• 7 years ago

I used to run an extension cord out of my 2nd floor window, but I wasn't parking on the street. My space was off the driveway, behind a fence and a gate, but only about 12 feet from the curb.

More recently, I had been parking an electric car in my apartment's lot, and running an extension cord from the exercise room, out to the car. Then the apartment decided to close off those outlets.

In both cases, the car's battery was only 24Kwh. With 110 volts, it took about 18 hours to fully charge. With a battery the size of a Tesla, that charging rate is going to take all week.

rootusrootus3• 7 years ago

The average car is only driven enough miles per day to require about one night of charging at 120V to top off. A lot of folks, even Tesla owners, get by fine just using existing 120V sockets.

toomuchtodo6• 7 years ago

I get by with a 100' extension cord (12 gauge) for my 100D Model S charging off 120V. The vehicle detects the voltage drop and reduces its charge rate accordingly. 36-48 miles of range per 12 hours added to the vehicle (the average American round trip commute is ~34 miles/day).

If I'm in a pinch, I'll pop over to a Supercharger for a top up, which is at the local grocery store so I'm shopping anyway. The charge is so fast (~150kw charge current, ~25 minutes), I sometimes have to go move the car mid shopping trip.

Finnucane2• 7 years ago

There's a guy with a Tesla around the corner from me, who does this (cable out the 2nd floor window), and he does park on the street. Not sure what he does if he can't get a space close enough. (A neighborhood of row houses with little off-street parking)

I think the car makers have to accelerate integrating solar charging into their cars. You probably wouldn't get 100% of your charge that way, but you could get enough to substantially reduce dependence on the grid.

lonelappde4• 7 years ago

Leaf had a solar charger as a gimmick. It doesn't work. There isn't enough panel space.

davrosthedalek4• 7 years ago

I wonder what pedestrians et al. think about the cable running across the sidewalk. I don't think this solution scales well, also from an insurance perspective.

justin66• 7 years ago

Not substantially, no.

duskwuff2• 7 years ago

I think the car makers have to accelerate integrating solar charging into their cars.

Nah. Solar on cars is a dead-end -- even with perfectly efficient solar panels, a clear sky, and the sun at the zenith, the most power you can possibly get is 1.3 kW/m² (cf. [1]). I don't know exactly how large of a solar panel you could put on a car, but even with a huge 5 m² panel, you'd still be looking at over 12 hours (i.e, multiple days of charging) to charge a Tesla's 85 kWh battery. With realistic panel efficiency and sun conditions, it'd take even longer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_constant

mohaine• 7 years ago

I used 120v exclusively for the first 3 months I owned my Model 3. It took a few days to get back full after a long trip but it worked great for day to day driving.

I did finally put in 240v but only because it was easy since I just had to go through 1 concrete wall. This does speed it up 5x the 120v rate (2x volts @ 2.5x amps) which is nice after you drop down to a low charge but not really noticed in day to day use.

gist3• 7 years ago

I used to run an extension cord out of my 2nd floor window
More recently, I had been parking an electric car in my apartment's lot, and running an extension cord from the exercise room, out to the car. Then the apartment decided to close off those outlets.

Won't even get to what I am sure others have raised about safety issues. My question is why do you go to this effort? What in you makes you want to go to this extent in order to use an electric car?

thrill• 7 years ago

Why not?

pjc50• 7 years ago

Personal contribution to the environment?

6934714• 7 years ago

Because the cars are literally that much better than ICE. There's no comparison in the driving and ownership experience. Plugging in is not an inconvenience. Going to a gas station actually is an inconvenience and I'm dying to dump my second vehicle for an EV

esotericn10• 7 years ago

Drastic reduction in pollution of my local environment.

Eventual huge reduction of CO2 emissions (once mining and other activities become fossil-fuel free enterprises). Small reduction now assuming local electricity sources are CO2-free.

Perhaps me aiming to reduce my CO2 emissions won't make a difference. I'm going to do it anyway. You should too.

lutorm2• 7 years ago

I think "charging time" is the wrong metric to think about. The relevant metric is "miles/h". The model 3 may have a giant battery pack that takes forever to charge fully, but it's also very efficient so whatever electricity you get into it corresponds to more miles. All that matters for the situation to be sustainable is that you drive less than the amount of miles that you can charge while not driving, on average. That's a simple comparison between miles driven, the current you can charge at, and the number of hours you can charge per day.

rootusrootus3• 7 years ago

Why does everyone need a place to charge at home? Sure, it is one of the big advantages of an EV, but not everyone can take advantage of it. If the car has a 300-400 mile range, then charge it like you fuel up a gas-powered car. Takes a little bit longer, but that will improve over time.

SketchySeaBeast10• 7 years ago

I imagine the same people who are garage orphans are probably also those who haven't got time to charge their machines for an hour or two.

That's already a concern for road trips, but day to day that'll be a nightmare. Just hang around the charging station for an hour while your car recharges.

ecpottinger2• 7 years ago

Since it does not take an hour to charge for a normal drive, maybe you are the one with bad timing.

If a person is driving 30 miles or less a day they only need less than 10 minutes charging to get by.

benj1113• 7 years ago

Put them I supermarket car parks. It can charge while you're shopping.

Anyway, I would dispute there are people that can't find the time, they may not want to spend 2 hours a week filling up the car, but just like you don't find cars abandoned at the side of the road now, because owners can't find to time to fill up, the problem isn't going to be appreciably worse in the future.

Reason0778• 7 years ago

The latest generation of cars and chargers don't need an hour to charge. A Tesla Model 3 can already charge at 250 kW, which is over 1000 miles per hour. Practically speaking, that means a decent charge in less than 20 minutes. On a long trip, most stops for gas take around that long anyway by the time you use the restroom, buy supplies, eat, etc.

The newest chargers being installed today go up to 350 kW, so the charging infrastructure is being future-proofed for even faster charging as the cars improve.

m4rtink• 7 years ago

Is "garage orphan" really a commonly used term? It sounds really weird & needlessly emotional to me.

Just saying "people without a garage" seems perfectly adequate to me & does not require manufacturing new terms.

Excel_Wizard3• 7 years ago

The inconvenience of charging away from home is much bigger than you make it out to be.

Other posters here are mentioning ~40 miles of charging in an 18 hour period. That's pretty dang restrictive.

jfrankamp• 7 years ago

No one who charges an EV away from home is charging at that rate, that's for an at home 'trickle' charger. Look up any L2 charger and you're well above that rate, and rates are only going for public chargers.

dmitrygr3• 7 years ago

A little longer? What am I going to do at a gas station for an hour? I am already bored when I am there for 3 minutes with an ICE car...

AshleyGrant7• 7 years ago

A) It doesn't take an hour to charge an EV unless you're charging past 90%, which isn't typically done as it hurts the battery.

B) You're bored b/c you have to stand next to the pump waiting for it to finish. This isn't a problem with EV charging. Go get a coffee or read a book.

vanilla_nut• 7 years ago

I'm surprised that coffee shops/bookstores haven't started to target this demographic yet. Buy a coffee, an hour or two of quick charging, and read a book for a couple of hours in a comfy seat while your car charges. Considering how many people will go to those establishments already, it seems like a pretty easy hook (and probably has a lot of demographic overlap).

gist3• 7 years ago

Exactly. I simply don't get this. All of that effort when it's (for lack of a better way to put it) 'not ready for prime time'. Other comments include running an electric extension cord out the window and other hacks. A cord out the window be serious.

Imagine for a second of what compensating good could be done for the world if people put the same time, thought or effort into something else with more immediate (and urgent payback).

stetrain6• 7 years ago

Both of my local Tesla chargers are in the same parking lots as grocery stores. One is also near a movie theater and several restaurants.

EV charging (except specifically for long distance travel) is less about "Let's sit here while the car charges" and more "Let's plan a thing we were probably going to do anyway at a place that also has EV chargers".

Obviously that gets a lot easier as more chargers get installed. Electrify America is installing fast chargers in a large number of Wal-Mart parking lots across the US.

calyth2018• 7 years ago

I don't have a garage, and the work charger charges by the hour.

So if one has an EV, and it doesn't charge quickly, you'll be dinged through the nose.

Had the charger been charging for the kwh + a margin, then sure. But as is, EVs are off the table for me.

Reason0778• 7 years ago

Sounds like a pretty tight-fisted workplace. You would think they'd want to encourage employees to sustainable transport, not try to make a profit on charging.

Pfhreak3• 7 years ago

Where will garage orphans add gasoline to their cars if they must park on the street?

If only there was a way to add energy to a vehicle outside of the home. Cars park all over the place. Distributed charging infrastructure doesn't sound too impossible -- parking meters probably already need electricity. Park and rides or business parking lots incentivize people to shop or commute in certain ways for a relatively modest investment.

goatinaboat3• 7 years ago

parking meters probably already need electricity

Not 50A they don’t. Retrofitting it would be a substantial engineering effort.

chc10• 7 years ago

You don't necessarily need 50A everywhere. Level 1 charging only needs about 12A. It's slow, but if you can be plugged in most of the time, it doesn't particularly matter that it's slow. That's probably enough to keep you topped off when you're just doing light commuting. A lot of level 1, a healthy amount of of level 2 and a smattering of level 3 would probably cover people's charging needs.

chc10• 7 years ago

It's not really comparable. Garage charging makes EVs more convenient than ICE cars, but they're much less convenient if you can't charge at home. ICE cars can stop at a gas station on empty and be back on the road completely full in two minutes. Even with a fast charger, it takes upwards of half an hour to charge an EV. Level 2 charging takes hours.

Pfhreak3• 7 years ago

Maybe the PNW is different, but there are chargers everywhere here. Charge during work, while you shop, etc.

Charging will be an incentive or even an expectation. Imagine if your employer said, "We'll fill your tank with gas while you work", people would love that perk. Having free or subsidized charging at work seems like an inevitability to me.

xbmcuser• 7 years ago

Workplaces need to install solar panels and chargers for electric cars. A large percentage of cars are parked for 7-8 hours at work and 8-10 hours at home. Charging car batteries with solar energy in the afternoon is the most optimal way to decrease carbon use as charging at home at night means you are using the most carbon intensive electricity.

davrosthedalek4• 7 years ago

In (large?) parts of Europe, parking meters at each spot were replaced with central parking pay-machines. But even if there are powered meters at each spot, I doubt that the power lines can deliver semi-fast charging currents (say 5 kW so that you get 40kWh in an 8 h time window) for so many spots. While not impossible, this would mean substantial construction. Whoever pays for that, they probably want to recoup that by inflated power prices.

fwip• 7 years ago

"parking meters need electricity"

The vast majority are mechanical or solar-powered.

If you find some that are wired, good luck running hundreds of kilowatts through the wiring built for delivering 10 watts.

frankus2• 7 years ago

The main difference is that a gas pump can dump single-digit megawatts of power, so a "full charge" only takes a few minutes.

The best commercial EV fast chargers (that require a six-figure DC power converter) are on the order of a quarter of a megawatt, and a good level 2 charger (basically a glorified dryer plug) is just shy of 10kW.

Pfhreak3• 7 years ago

But it also requires human attention. There's TONS of time in a day when your car is just hanging around somewhere. It doesn't need to be as fast if it's ubiquitous.

bkohlmann• 7 years ago

Not exactly pertinent to "garage orphans," but i was struck by the picture featured in the article and the design choice of how electric chargers look.

They seem to be an exact replica of a traditional gas nozzle. Striking to me how initial conditions matter for human perception and adoption. While EV is an entirely new technology and thus could be built from a cleanslate, the easiest way to drive adoption was to shape it as close to the existing solution as possible - which was specifically designed to transmit a liquid. Clearly it works - but an important design lesson for me!

lonelappde4• 7 years ago

Electricity and gasoline both travel through tubes, and both are dangerous if they breach insulation.

Handles are convenient for people with hands.

Theodores• 7 years ago

Quite a lot of senior citizens go for EV cars - they are not as fit and strong as your average HN reader (who seem to be the only other demographic buying EV).

So there needs to be consideration for them. Apparently it is really quite hard work plugging in if you are in the twilight years with health considerations. The more you need the mobility solution an EV offers the more likely it is that you are going to struggle putting that big charging cable in to your Nissan Leaf.

michrassena• 7 years ago

Is this just another example of Skeuomorphism? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph

I can see where this would drive adoption. From the user standpoint, familiarity is a selling point. The more the electric car can be seen as a drop in replacement to the internal combustion vehicle, the less the potential buyer has to consider. If the Tesla were steered by two sticks instead of a steering wheel, it probably wouldn't ever appeal to more than the enthusiast.

Excel_Wizard3• 7 years ago

Big Fat High Flowrate Hoses are stiff and need a big handle to manhandle them around. Pistol grip handles work well for this.

Big Fat High Wattage Cables are stiff and need a big handle to manhandle them around. Pistol grip handles work well for this.

JustSomeNobody3• 7 years ago

This is why we need standard, swappable battery packs. You pull into a "filling station" and a robot pulls your used pack and pops in a new one. 5 minutes, in and out.

Sad thing is, this isn't a new idea. People just don't seem to want it.

goatinaboat3• 7 years ago

People just don't seem to want it.

People right now feel that the advantages of batteries integrated throughout the chassis are greater.

freehunter2• 7 years ago

Yeah standard swappable batteries are nice but as we can see in the cell phone and laptop world, they're very restrictive on design choices. And since EVs are very sensitive to weight and aerodynamics, coupled with the fact that EV makers are trying to put as many batteries into the car as they can, there's just no way to make a one-size-fits-all battery that works for every car.

You'd either need to trade off battery density (which means EV range concerns are amplified) or trade off weight and aerodynamics (which means EV range concerns are amplified).

No general consumer EV maker is going to reduce the total range on their spec sheet just to make it easier to swap a battery that also fits several other cars that they don't make. It's not a smart marketing decision.

Mountain_Skies• 7 years ago

That type of solution likely will start with company owned fleet vehicles until a critical mass of electric vehicles in the general public is reached at which point there will be enough demand for electric vehicles to make the cost of infrastructure for battery swapping viable.

lonelappde4• 7 years ago

That adds a huge expense to and already expensive proposition.

cornellwright• 7 years ago

Hopefully one day flow batteries [1] will be efficient enough where you can pull into an electrolyte station and swap out your discharged (liquid) electrolyte for charged electrolyte.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery

secabeen3• 7 years ago

One of the reasons is that batteries are expensive, and can be damaged/degraded. If I have a nice battery that I've treated well, and I swap it at the swap station for a different one, I would be unhappy if I got a totally worn-out battery.

JustSomeNobody3• 7 years ago

The idea is that you don’t really own it. The company doing the swapping has it in their best interest to make sure you don’t get a dud. Like gas stations; if you get bad gas at one you take your business elsewhere next time.

Anzene• 7 years ago

My personal opinion is that for cars may be asking too much from the manufacturer to invest, unless they come together and do a consortium thing (like the SD card standardization).

Else, it does make sense for slow, light electric vehicles (SLEVs) such as e-scooters, e-motorcycles, e-bikes to reduce the range anxiety when the users take the SLEVs out, as form factor can be more easily adapted.

imposterr• 7 years ago

To me, this seems like a transient problem. As battery technology improves, we may be able to move back towards a "gas station" model for charging. BMW/Porsche already has a charging solution that can do 100 km in 8 minutes [1].

[1] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/282364-bmw-porsche-demo-...

mattlutze3• 7 years ago

If there was no switching time, that'd be 7.5 cars / hour for a potentially every-other- or every-third-day quick charge, and the high voltage required does reduce battery life (I think).

I'd be curious to know how long gas stations plan on someone staying at a stall for a full fuel up, to know what sort of capacity in an area would need to be replaced or added.

Part of the benefit of EVs is that fueling points don't require all of the fluids storage and safety; putting in transformers can be easier and allow fitting charging points to many more places a car gets parked. But it'll still be an interesting issue if an optimum charge takes 20-45 minutes.

spenrose• 7 years ago

The chargers are cheap and getting much faster and will be deployed everywhere you can run an electric line: https://twitter.com/sampenrose/status/1152625267589840896

toomuchtodo6• 7 years ago

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1152625267589840896.html

chc10• 7 years ago

This is kind of the "Year of Linux on the Desktop" of EVs. I'll believe it when I see it. I live in a community with an incredibly high number of EVs, but I can't get one because I am not a homeowner and there's no charging anywhere besides people's garages.

The above thread suggests there's going to be free, ubiquitous inductive charging in a few years. Just look how far we are from that. Even in putatively EV-friendly areas, it's still really hard for someone without a garage to consider an EV today. California can't even find the political will to fund its EV rebate for the whole year. How likely is it that there will just be magic free electricity everywhere in 10 years?

esotericn10• 7 years ago

Ten years ago viable electric cars did not exist. At all.

arkitaip• 7 years ago

Once cars get smart enough to actually drive on their own, your car can sneak off to the nearest charging station while you are at work or sleeping at home.

dmitrygr3• 7 years ago

So what do we do for the 50 years between now and then?

xkcd-sucks• 7 years ago

Run a gas-powered generator in the back seat?

rodmor• 7 years ago

This story reveals an underlying problem, DC charges are still too slow compared to gas stations. You can fill a gas car en less than 5 minutes, compare to Level 3 charges that still requires an hour. This causes a severe convenience problem for electric cars. if you are running out of gas and still need to use the car, you can quickly solve the problem at a gas station; with electric cars what if you still need the car? (You had a pretty busy day), you are no good for more than 6 hours while the car charges.

Certainly, it will be a good business opportunity for the company who figures out how to take charge time to gas station levels.

In Condominiums, metered charges could be installed in each appartment parking lot. For those who don't have a garage or parking lots, small public charging stations could be used, although the charging time problem would need to be solved.

Havoc• 7 years ago

Seems the US is at a severe disadvantage here with 110V.

Also, surely people can charge at work? 8 hours at work should cover a fair bit of the population

AshleyGrant7• 7 years ago

The US has both 240v single phase and 208v three phase across the entire country. Any house with an electric range would have 240v service and can likely handle a L2 charger.

nategri• 7 years ago

Currently living this lifestyle. Luckily there's a set of level 2 chargers in a nearby parking garage that don't see heavy use, so I just charge there.

But I still have to pay a premium, and walk half a mile there and back, so it's not exactly as hassle free as just plugging in when I get home. Also need to plan ahead significantly if I'm driving anywhere far.

cr0sh• 7 years ago

My question would be - does frequent short charging sessions cause issues for the battery packs? Versus longer full charging sessions?

I know that lithium cells with their different chemistry are more forgiving of charging and discharging (vs NiMH, NiCd, or Lead Acid). I wonder though if that doesn't cause other effects, such as perhaps longevity issues that might cause overheating or something?

joshlegs• 7 years ago

i have a tesla model 3 and i believe that multiple smaller sessions are better for the longevity of the battery. elon has said that 'a plugged in tesla is a happy tesla.'

you're also only supposed to charge to 80 or 90 percent charge unless youre going on a road trip, since charging to the absloute max (and conversely, discharging to near zero) is worse for the battery.

hundchenkatze• 7 years ago

I'm not a battery expert, but I think the full charges do more damage than charging to 80% capacity or so. But I don't know if there's any difference to battery life with multiple short charges vs one long charge up to 80%.

frankus2• 7 years ago

Deep discharges and sitting at low state of charge for a long time are the main things that shorten battery life.

Also harmful is charging to the absolute maximum state of charge. I believe most vehicles have a setting to terminate the charge at a level that maximizes battery life and another setting that maximizes range.

kazinator2• 7 years ago

Right now, the bulk of public stations in Canada are Level 2 (there are nearly 3,500 of them), But to get a full charge, you’ll have to leave your car there for hours, and many of the country’s chargers are clustered in major urban centres like Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. Even if you live in a city where many chargers exist, there might not be one located conveniently close to where you live.

That's okay, Trudeau will invest in this area by running a few copper wires along the trans-mountain pipeline expansion.

madcaptenor• 7 years ago

One guy I used to work with drove a Nissan Leaf, and he ran an extension cord from his car through the office front door and charged at work. I'm not sure if he was a garage orphan or just cheap.

goldcd2• 7 years ago

I'd seen the idea of using street-furniture, such as lamp-posts - but can't help seeing visions of coils of cable looping all over the pavement/sidewalk (in the UK at least, lamp posts tend not to be on the road side of the pavement). Plus, if this isn't new-build, whatever's powering those lamps isn't going to charge your car. Well.. it might charge one or two, but once you've got 20 cars, all wanting to be charged overnight..

If you're going to have to lay new lines, then cheapest approach is surely to just put cable in the gutter, and then protect it with something similar to those rubber speed-bumps you can bolt into the ground. Downside is the low profile prevents great big connectors/supply units - but would be fine for the equivalent of the domestic-plug....

...I'm meandering now, but wonder if you could retro-fit drain covers to contain chargers...

baybal2• 7 years ago

In China, small shops and restaurants buy coin chargers for their patrons.

1 CNY buys you 300Wh or about 4 times less the market price =D. Though, the shopkeeper often charge extra from patrons for small change.

mattlutze3• 7 years ago

In Stuttgart, Germany, Daimler piloted a rent-by-the-minute electric car program (which is proliferating with normal petrol cars elsewhere, called Car2Go). The Smart ForTwos that they use are all electric, and the cable is bolted into the trunk of the car, so it takes its cable with it. The charging unit and car's "fuel port" are both receptive sides of the connection, and both the car and the charging station (the city installed them so anyone with the right cables can use them) has a lock that keeps the cable from getting removed when it's in use.

Works pretty well and this sort of model would likely work fine, with you keeping your cable yourself.

gsk22• 7 years ago

Car2Go used to operate in my US city, but they pulled out a couple years ago under the guise of "an onerous new tax burden" (despite no new taxes being passed). I think the real issue was they were just plain expensive -- barely cheaper than an Uber, and way less comfortable.

Other rent-by-time companies like ZipCar are similarly expensive. I'm not convinced that business model works, at least the ways I've seen it implemented.

theandrewbailey• 7 years ago

Since you mentioned all the cabling everywhere, I'd be concerned about copper thieves stealing the cables.

goldcd2• 7 years ago

Many years ago I went out to South Africa to work in telco.

When cabling up an area, they laid:

1) Deep cables to carry the data 2) Shallow cables to be dug up and stolen, without affecting the data-carrying ones.

throw0101a13• 7 years ago

Fully Charged had an episode on Ubitricity:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaEhBjt1ls

This mostly works if the posts are closer to the curb, but in some places they are on people's front lawns so the sidewalks are completely clear.

mantap• 7 years ago

Where I live (London) there's a few of these lamppost chargers and people do use them. The thing about cars is that they... move. So you can drive your car to a vacant lamppost charger 5 minutes away and park it there. The walk back home, not a big deal.

kazinator2• 7 years ago

How about running one of those gas-powered generators next to the car?

Put a sign next to it saying, "my government doesn't invest in green energy".

aphextim• 7 years ago

Something like this image, but with your slogan/sign on it?

https://imgur.com/UgEs6va

oh_hello• 7 years ago

I always thought this was a big problem for EVs, but recently came to think nightly charging might not matter so much for these drivers. If an urban apartment dweller has an EV with 200+ miles of range, can't a public fast charger be used once or twice a week instead? I lived in an apartment with a ~200 mile range ICE car and filled it less than once a week.

neogodless7• 7 years ago

It's mentioned elsewhere in the comments.

This issue will hopefully be transient; once charging speed is comparable to filling your ICE vehicle with fuel.
Until then, the lack of fast public chargers combined with the relative slowness of charging makes this a major downgrade from ICE.

In other words, the only reason most people are OK with this one attribute of EVs that is inferior to ICE is the fact that they can charge at home (and/or work.) But there are plenty of people that do not fit into that category.

throw0101a13• 7 years ago

By being able to easily plug-in at home, overnight, one always has a full battery in the morning. Especially nice if you can program things to charge during off-peak hours.

jedberg2• 7 years ago

Filling your car at the gas station is a five minute stop on the way home. Filing your electric car is at least an hour if you have a DC fast charger and that gets you only 80% full. To get totally full, it would take a multi-hour stop.

kennywinker5• 7 years ago

Sure. If your commute is 15% of your range, you’d be able to charge once a week. I’m pretty sure most people could work out a multi-hour stopover near a charging station into their week. Put them near a restaurant, arts, or shopping district and bingo problem solved.

Brakenshire6• 7 years ago

You’d do a weekly food shop, and do your weekly charge at the same time.

“Well over an hour” is wrong, there’s almost no electric car that won’t do an 80% charge in 45 minutes, and most take half an hour.

6934714• 7 years ago

Only takes 15 minutes to go from 0-40% in a Tesla Model 3 Long Range (310 miles max) at a superCharger, and full is only about an hour because the last 20% is slow.

You can hit another charger 2 hours down the road after that 15 minute charge and plug in for 5-10 minutes to get to the next charger if needed. It will be ready after you're done taking a bathroom break and you bought a snack.

Few people need to charge to 100% on a road trip if they have a good EV. Tesla did the right thing with their design. Everyone else should catch up.

Imagine if GM cars only came with 5 gallon gas tanks but the Audi came with a 15 gallon tank. That's basically what we're talking about. Don't shit on EVs because only one company is doing it correctly.

aaomidi2• 7 years ago

Filing your electric car is at least an hour if you have a DC fast charger and that gets you only 80% full.

..What? Where are you getting your numbers from.

ryanmercer2• 7 years ago

can't a public fast charger be used once or twice a week instead?

It takes me less than 2 minutes to fill up my tank and pay, now you want me to sit 1-4 hours at a fast charger a week twiddling my thumbs?

Never mind the fact a Tesla Model 3 starts at my annual salary.

ummonk4• 7 years ago

I think it works if the fast charger is at e.g. a shopping center where you can grab dinner or shop while the car charges.

kennywinker5• 7 years ago

Not sitting twidding your thumbs. If they are near somewhere you want to be recreationally, you’re set. The gym, the grocery store, the movies, a hiking trail, spending 1-4 hours at one of these once a week would likely enhance your life not take away from it.

claytoneast• 7 years ago

Why is a fast charger 1-4 hours a week? You can do an 80% charge in a Tesla Model 3 in 24 minutes with the new generation of Superchargers, https://electrek.co/2019/07/02/tesla-supercharger-v3-range-m.... That will only improve in the coming years. 1-4 hours is not a valid charge time even now.

rco8786• 7 years ago

This is where my family is - we're considering an EV but do not have a charger at home. We live in a reasonably dense urban area w/ a dedicated spot in a garage and don't typically drive more than 200 miles a week, so we'll just use public chargers.

This will be a second car though - and I would be slightly wary of this sort of responsibility for a primary vehicle.

kelnos4• 7 years ago

That might work for urbanites who drive to work and work in the same city where they live.

But I know quite a few people whose daily commute is 40+ miles each way. They'd be visiting the charger every other day. That's unfortunately very common for people who live in San Francisco and work outside the city, and vice versa.

(I have a different problem: I walk or take transit to work, and have a car mainly for longer trips outside the city. I also have no charging station in my building's garage, so I've stuck with an ICE car for now.)

Brakenshire6• 7 years ago

Surely not having access to private parking is almost entirely an urbanite problem, to do with living in apartment blocks. Anyone who lives in the suburbs would be very likely to have their own parking.

gok2• 7 years ago

I live in a high rise apartment with three shared level 2 chargers in the garage. I would say there are ~10 EVs in the building and sharing the chargers has never been an issue. It's like shared laundry; you really only need it once a week or so for a few hours. Once it's easy to make people pay for electricity, adding lots of chargers will be a no-brainer for garage owners.

neogodless7• 7 years ago

Laundry. That just might be the perfect example. What a huge division of experience between the wealthy and the less wealthy.

Most homeowners have laundry in their home. Starting and switching loads is a few minutes, and the rest of their time is still free. Many high-end apartments have laundry within a short walk from each residence. It's largely the same experience. But then those with less ability to afford "nice" housing often have to use shared public laundromats that are not as close to home. You probably plan a trip once a week or two, and it takes you several hours. If you're lucky, it's close to other errands, but since you've got your hands full with your laundry, it's not like you can really combine it with grocery shopping.

In a future where everyone drives EVs, the wealthier will have higher range vehicles, easy access to super fast chargers, and even chargers in their home or luxury apartment. But the poor, with lower range vehicles, will just have to visit a mediocre public charger, and hope they can make that time useful, or read a newspaper while they wait. They'll have to be more thoughtful about how they use their car because going an extra 20 miles for some unexpected errand might screw up their schedule and send them to the public charger where they can waste a half an hour of precious time waiting in line and getting a partial charge.

DataGata• 7 years ago

Why will public chargers be slow? We should assume that those who provide public charging services (the gas stations of the future) will be trying to optimize throughput + convenience store sales.

DC fast chargers currently get you 40 miles in ten minutes[1] (that sucks!) so your extra 20 miles gets you an extra 5 minute wait. Presumably that wait can be "limited" by getting your shopping done or grabbing a bite to eat while you do it.

[1]https://pluginamerica.org/understanding-electric-vehicle-cha...

egypturnash• 7 years ago

God yes I don’t have laundry machines in my new place (there’s space for some but I gotta get my own) and walking several blocks to the laundromat on a weekly basis is A Hassle.

I am lucky in that my work fits on a laptop so I can just sit there and get stuff done while the washer and dryer run. But if I had a shitty service job it wouldn’t be money-earning time for me.

opportune3• 7 years ago

Also, most luxury apartments have in-unit laundry. Just like they typically have electric charging stations in their garages. Laundry actually is scarily analogous here

Aloha3• 7 years ago

Perhaps a laundromat with chargers.

I've often said that if I were to open a retail business, it'd be a 24 hours combo, laundromat, pizza place, coffee shop and book store, probably with a side of bodega inside.

esotericn10• 7 years ago

You're right, but ultimately, this just points to apartment living being basically a hack that is only acceptable for the poor, and some very specific prestige situations (e.g. the alpha cities; a flat in London is 'special' because it's London; a flat in Leeds is just crap).

It strikes me as being another one of these 'let's make the life of the poor better' type situations, where you assume the continuation of strong class boundaries.

A person should be able to modify their living environment as they choose within reason. Plugging in a car or plumbing in a washing machine is such a basic adjustment that really should never be an issue.

It becomes such because we have this whole class-based nonsense of tons of people being serfs to a hamster wheel of landlords or whatever.

freeflight2• 7 years ago

Laundry. That just might be the perfect example. What a huge division of experience between the wealthy and the less wealthy.

While a bit off-topic: I never understood why a lack of washing machines in flats is such a huge issue in some countries.

In Germany, most flats come with a connector for your own washing machine, those that don't have on inside the flat often have them in the basement, where every party living in the house just adds their washing machine.

Public laundromats do exist, but from what I can gather they are quite underutilized because there's barely any demand.

Does anybody happen to know why these vast differences in "washing machine availability" exist in other countries? Is it really that much more expensive to lay the water/wastewater lines for washing machines inside the flats? Doesn't all that just plug into the same plumbing that's already there?

demosito666• 7 years ago

This question bothers me for some time already: why can't you guys just buy a washing machine?

Where I live everybody has one and we have salaries like 10x less than they have in US. And also flats are mostly tiny.

Taking you clothes somewhere to wash it sounds like first world nightmare to me.

pkaye• 7 years ago

The Target in my neighborhood has like 10-20 charging stations. Its packed to the brim with Teslas with even a waiting line at times. I'm not sure if they are people trying to save money or apartment dwellers.

wffurr11• 7 years ago

Yet another reason the real answer to the climate crisis isn't EVs - it's public transit, bicycles, e-bikes, scooters, e-scooters, walking, etc. All these other modes are much lower impact on the environment than purchasing and operating an EV, much less an ICE.

wffurr11• 7 years ago

Or carbon-neutral liquid fuels for use cases where you absolutely need an ICE-type vehicle with 300+ mile range. e.g. synthetic gasoline or biofuels. Unfortunately, those fuels really need a carbon tax to be competitive with fossil fuels.

ummonk4• 7 years ago

Plenty of travel (both commutes and long distance travel) which is too lengthy for bicycles / scooters, but doesn't have public transit servicing it.

wffurr11• 7 years ago

So build the transit. It's cheaper than highways and doubly so when you factor in the private vehicle cost borne by users of those highways.

ysavir2• 7 years ago

I think that's GP's point: Instead of investing in EVs, we should be expanding public transport to reduce the dependencies on personal vehicles in the first place.

notJim3• 7 years ago

A lot of the reason for those long commutes is that housing in dense, urban areas served by public transit is too expensive. Affordable housing is a climate change issue.

whatshisface• 7 years ago

You have to add "redesigned cities" to that list. Electric vehicles are almost as much a patch for ICE cities as they are a replacement for internal combustion.

mumblemumble• 7 years ago

I don't think most actual cities would need to be wholesale redesigned; plenty of urban planners have proposed plenty of incremental ways to successfully re-tool cities to favor humans over automobiles. And it has successfully happened in the past - see Amsterdam, for example, or (admittedly to a lesser extent) Montréal.

notJim3• 7 years ago

"Simple" things like good bike lanes and traffic calming enable cities to redesign gradually, and of course this is largely already happening (perhaps too slowly) in many cities.

nextos• 7 years ago

Some cities in mainland Europe are like this already. They make cars unnecessary. Even bikes, as you can walk everywhere.

I'm talking about midsized cities (100-300k inhabitants) that are really compact thanks to 4-8 levels in every apartment block and ubiquitous use of lifts.

Lifts are the disruptive technology. They make energetically efficient cities possible and cheap.

I also find these cities much more nice to live in. Nice parks, avenues and shopping streets. I guess they are the heirs of the Hellenic tradition of valuing meeting squares a lot.

In contrast, as much as I like other aspects of Anglo-Saxon societies, their terraced or detached house model is energetically unsustainable, and yields both liveless suburbs and downtowns.

lukifer• 7 years ago

Much is made of the "self-driving" part of autonomous vehicles, but I think "self-parking" could end up being just as significant. Imagine if there was no longer any reason to mandate parking capacity for planning and zoning purposes; you drive to your destination, and your car goes and parks itself (paying/negotiating automatically if needed), and returns when summoned via phone.

dtwest• 7 years ago

That doesn't work in many low density areas (prime example is American suburbia). So your answer for those people is to make them move to a more dense area that can support such solutions. Which isn't a bad idea, but it's a much harder thing to accomplish.

kennywinker5• 7 years ago

Ebike/scoot to transit hub, trains to commercial areas. It’s not rocket science.

wffurr11• 7 years ago

Or build out infrastructure in those areas too. In suburbs, there's plenty of room for separate bike paths and trains. It doesn't require everyone to move into Soviet-style superblocks and towers.

gxqoz• 7 years ago

Interesting article from CityLab on why plugging public transit EVs into a city can be more challenging and expensive than originally planned: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/06/electric-bus-...

"That’s what Philadelphia discovered when it decided to expand its existing fleet of e-buses with newer models—ones that featured bigger batteries. The city failed to recognize in the early planning process that it would be prohibitively expensive to acquire land in its busy downtown area for charging stations along the bus routes. So they decided to install all the charging infrastructure in the bus depots."

wffurr11• 7 years ago

The MBTA found that CNG buses had the lowest lifecycle cost and cost per greenhouse gas reduction. Diesel-electric hybrids have maintenance issues, and battery electric and hydrogen buses have significant capital costs which makes it difficult to realize the significantly lower operational costs.

https://www.abettercity.org/docs/Alternative%20Propulsion%20...

However, even pure diesel buses are much more efficient at moving people than single-occupancy vehicles.

It's also worthwhile to note that a real plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions would necessarily include substantial capital outlays: not just bus charging infrastructure but grade-separated rail, dedicated busways, bus rapid transit, cycle and scooter infrastructure, etc. etc. Not to mention all the other climate adaptions that need to happen at an infrastructure level.

golover7212• 7 years ago

It’s never going to be a one size fits all solution. While all the things you mention work for “some” people, an EV is the best option for “some” people.

wffurr11• 7 years ago

Yeah, which is why it's such a huge problem to jam cars everywhere, even places they don't belong like city centers.

m4634• 7 years ago

Like old people, or people who don't want to fall down and break a wrist or hip.

(and then there's what elon musk says -- all lease return model 3's will be added to the tesla automonous taxi network)

steelframe2• 7 years ago

Yet another reason the real answer to the climate crisis isn't EVs

If our objective is to significantly reduce carbon emissions from people moving from point 'A' to point 'B', fully electric vehicles are a red herring solution. It's more realistic and cheaper to focus on plug-in hybrids. That way you can achieve 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from driving 4-wheeled vehicles without requiring new infrastructure or requiring people to drastically change their habits.

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/06/14/reducing-carbon-emissio...

bin02• 7 years ago

And yet, public transportation is not the same. Americans love their cars because we are a very independent people who appreciate the ability to go where we want, when we want. An EV could at least conceivably be a replacement, though that will be difficult until they can charge in a time comparable to that of a gas station fueling and go as long or longer. I don't want to have to plan around some schedule set by a committee.

Issue number two: other people. Public transportation is not as nice as a car because you are not insulated from others. I can run my AC nice and high and listen to a pod cast in peace and quiet in my car, even if I've got to deal with jostling cars on the outside. In a train/bus/etc, you never know what you'll get. Half the time there's some one with music blasting, or cussing loudly. The other half they guy next to me smells awful or takes two seats because he's a land whale. If by some miracle neither of those things is true, all the seats are taken. Public transportation sucks,

I like my car, and see no personal reason to switch to a less-comfortable and less-available form of transportation for the sake of some one else's political win.

m4634• 7 years ago

Public transportation takes a lot of time.

It doesn't necessarily lead to an efficient workforce.

The hour of commute time saved by driving could probably be translated into percentage points of GNP for a country.

esoterica4• 7 years ago

Using public transit as your main mode of transportation is not the same as swearing off cars entirely. If you live somewhere with good transit you can get to 99% of the places you want to go without a car with no additional inconvenience. You can take the train to work, bike to the gym, walk to the grocery store, and then when you want to head out to the mountains you can hop into your car (or a rental).

You can reap the environmental benefits of switching mostly away from cars without sacrificing your freedom to drive to the small number of destinations that are not convenient to get to by other means.

stevenhubertron2• 7 years ago

Agree. I have an ebike and commute 8 miles each way. It's been fantastic and I arrive home in the afternoon feeling fresh despite it being 95F out.

baron816• 7 years ago

Hopefully (from a convenience standpoint) driverless will be the solution. Could still be zero emissions. Hard to imagine half the country migrating to denser areas within 30 years.

zimprop• 7 years ago

I 100% agree, not only are they much lower impact on the environment but from an implementation perspective are far simpler. I find it kind of funny that people talk about the future of travel and transit being automated electric cars that can pick one person up and take them to another predetermined place without the passenger's intervention. I immediately think it kinda sounds like a bus or a train. I think we have gotten into the habit of falling so in love with convoluted high tech solutions that we overlook the most basic and straightforward answers to these deep problems

m4634• 7 years ago

Actually, the switch from incandescent to LED street lights could easily smooth this over.

The old incandescent street and traffic lights were frequently hundreds of watts, on long chains over large distances.

This can be repurposed to car charging with little in the way of power delivery redesign.

ColanR3• 7 years ago

It's been entertaining to read the discussions (below) about how to make this practical. So far, it looks like the only way to make this work is to a) live in a city, or rebuild your suburbia into a city, and b) construct your entire life around riding that bike - choose a job with a tolerant boss, spend extra hours every day showering and changing clothes after biking, etc.

I'd rather drive an air-conditioned car, sit in traffic for that hour or two, and enjoy my private backyard (however small it may be).

zanny• 7 years ago

Instead of constructing your life around a bike you construct it around a car. You can't commute to work any other way, if it breaks down you are bound to mostly Uber as a backup strategy to get anywhere.

Except those car-centric environments you live and work in are a more effective gate to keep the poor out than the grandest gated community. Almost no where else on the planet is the idea of a city being a tiny urban core surrounded by hundreds of miles of single family houses in spiraling one lane streets of sprawl the norm. Its a purely American fixation on centering all human activity around cars. And for your benefit, even - the world would be alight in a raging inferno if we ever tried to globally house everyone in quarter acre single family houses with 4 hour single-occupancy car commutes every day.

acchow2• 7 years ago

Yes, sustainable population growth is based around a fairly high population density and dropping a car-centric lifestyle.

icebraining2• 7 years ago

enjoy my private backyard

This is a misconception I see all the time. Living in a city, and even in an apartment, does not preclude having a private backyard. The choices are simply not just "detached house" or "skyscraper".

I live in an apartment, don't own a car, yet I have a private backyard large enough to grow trees or build a decent DIY shop.

throw0101a13• 7 years ago

You can have high density, with front and backyards, with a garage (connected to a lane way), that supports public transit. Toronto was built this way in the pre-WW2 days (see Street View):

* https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Westminster+Ave,+Toront...

These houses are a bit pricey now, but that's because urban living has become fashionable again. From the 1950s to 1990s prices were a lot cheaper because all of the demand was for white picket fences in the suburbs.

You can reasonable build reasonable density, where public transit is possible, without going to Manhattan- or Tokyo-like densities. Perhaps put some mid-rise (5-10 stories) buildings on the main arteries, but the side streets can be quite smaller-scale.

ip26• 7 years ago

I bicycle, ride buses & trains, I have an e-bike and I love it. But realistically we have between ten and thirty years to fix all this. That's not enough time to reinvent the entire world from the ground up, so in addition to the technologies you list I am also hopeful for EVs, synthetic fuel, and so forth.

mattlondon• 7 years ago

It is certainly holding me back at the moment. I have allocated off-street parking under my apartment that is actually owned by us as part of the lease, but I doubt the building management will let me install a charger, and I don't think the law in the UK means I can force them to let me.

In London there are a few public chargers dotted around, but they are fairly infrequent. I don't have any data but it feels like there are perhaps 2 public on-street chargers for perhaps every 10 to 20 residential streets.

The nearest one to me is about a 15-20 minute walk away, and if I get there and it is full or broken, then what? Try the next charger that is 30-40 minutes walk away?! The contention ratio of homes to chargers is insane - it must be in the 500-1000:1 level (guessing)

There are however lampposts everywhere. There is some talk of adding charging points to lampposts but I think there are only very small-scale trials at the moment. If I could rely on every lamppost also being a charger then I'd buy an EV literally today.

Sadly, right now it feels like PHEVs are a more sensible option until public infrastructure catches up.

jasoncartwright3• 7 years ago

Lampposts is exactly how I charge whilst not having off-street parking, in central London. The council converted all the street lights to LEDs, meaning there is excess electricity delivered. So they put plugs on the posts. Works brilliantly. https://imgur.com/a/I5AtwJk https://www.ubitricity.com/

throw0101a13• 7 years ago

Fully Charged did an episode on this:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaEhBjt1ls

However, in many cities the posts are not in the sidewalk, but on people's properties, so as to allow clearer pedestrian paths. This is generally true in Toronto (where the story is written), especially on residential side-streets.

mymythisisthis• 7 years ago

Nice, sidewalk refilling has always been a thing http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_-LvpBoDIt4Q/TLcAQWn7TwI/AAAAAAAAIw...

michaelbuckbee• 7 years ago

I've seen a few listings where EV charging parking spots are listed as a perk. You might be surprised how willingly your landlord is keen to go with you paying to upgrade their building.

kelnos4• 7 years ago

Many people might think it's ridiculous to have to pay to have an expensive piece of infrastructure installed that isn't theirs to keep once they move away.

Brakenshire6• 7 years ago

There are however lampposts everywhere. There is some talk of adding charging points to lampposts but I think there are only very small-scale trials at the moment.

Look on the Ubitricity website, they have maps of their installations in London, there are over a thousand already and anyone can pull up and use them using the qr code system.

https://portal.ubitricity.co.uk/map

trilila3• 7 years ago

I think this points out the elephant in the room: why are so many people in supposedly high income cities not able to buy properties? This is an issue that needs to be solved hand in hand with pollution: less travel, less need for a car, and more living outside overcrowded cities means more living space. So how can we move more jobs to suburbs, where people can work at nearby or home locations and can afford more living space? I seriously struggle understanding why at least tech jobs are so centered around crowded cities, when these could really be located in tech clusters or tech cities on the outskirts.

teknopaul2• 7 years ago

Where do garage orphans plug in their cars? Same place lounge orphans plug in their TVs. They are probably both not bothered since they are watching youtube videos on the underground on the way to the pub. Times are a changin.

kelnos4• 7 years ago

This is somewhat orthogonal. In my building (where people generally own their condo units, though I'm renting), there's no access to charging in the building's garage.

Yes, theoretically people could get the HOA to install charging stations or do something to make the situation better, but... well, there is still no way to charge an EV in my building's garage. Either the demand isn't there, or the HOA has refused to pay for any upgrades.

mattmcknight2• 7 years ago

If they price it right, it could be revenue opportunity or net $0 amenity.

whalesalad• 7 years ago

This is my hangup too, and it crosses over into the craze around building high density housing in California.

I don’t want high density housing. I don’t think anyone does. I want a yard for my dogs to play, for my wife to nurture the garden she has always wanted, for fruit trees, a garage where I can work on my car, etc...

We have so much land all around this country and no one is using it.

trilila3• 7 years ago

Historically people placed business like buildings around town centres, as these were easy to reach. Lawyers, accountants, doctors and so on were supposed to be within walking distance. But these days this is becoming less and less practical, as everyone including back office employees, software developers, analysts, and other non customer non reach essential staff is crammed in those places. I seriously think planning should be made such way that any non essential business activity should be done outside cities. Downtown areas should be focused on face to face essential staff and the rest of the city on life focused businesses (restaurants, cinemas, and so on). The cities are planned at the moment is archaic.

kiba• 7 years ago

Why would you think no one wants high density housing.

Like, I don't want a backyard nor a garage or a car. But I am stuck with the lifestyle.

s0rce2• 7 years ago

Unless you live in a very small community the downside of this is horrible traffic.

Eric_WVGG4• 7 years ago

8.6 million New Yorkers humbly disagree.

hindsightRegret• 7 years ago

Many people without families don't see the need for a yard/garage/garden when they live on their own and can take public transit in a high-density area. These people value proximity to bars/restaurants/experiences and are okay with trading off space for a shorter commute more things to within their nearby surroundings.

mikeash• 7 years ago

I don’t want high density housing. But I want things that require high density housing: the ability to walk to lots of places and good public transportation when I want to go farther.

I’ve compromised on an expensive lower density location which has a bit of that. I’m happy with it, but plenty of people will make those compromises differently.

It would be great if we could all live in big houses with big yards and have stores and restaurants down the street, but basic economics and geometry means you can’t.

thephyber• 7 years ago

We have so much land all around this country and no one is using it.

As the old real estate mantra goes, "Location, Location, Location!"

Of course you can buy a house with a yard and a large garage, but can you buy it on a regionally-adjusted salary and be reasonably close to a town and your workplace? Locality is still important for the vast majority of jobs, even in this age when the capability to telecommute is here.

I think the key contributor to this asymmetry is the scarcity of the human attention. People remember a handful of cities/towns which they associate with prosperity, despite the fact/possibility that far more areas are also prosperous. It's the same reason that a few dozen universities at the top of the rankings thrive, while perfectly decent schools just below them struggle to attract applicants.

Whether the issue at mind is red/blue state or rural/urban, Americans have become more risk-averse when it comes to moving to different regions.

psychometry2• 7 years ago

I know that a lot of property owners are out of touch, but "I don't think anyone wants high-density housing" is really at another level. Time for you to take your fingers out of your ears.

Swizec• 7 years ago

Living in a city is nice when you’re young. Here in SFBA you see lots of people living in the city and commuting to the suburbs to work at bigtech campuses. Weird huh?

But it makes sense. Population density increases convenience. I have 2 amazing corner stores on my block. The movie theatre is 2 blocks away, there’s many good bars and restaurants within a 4 block radius. Major grocery store (TJ) is 3 blocks away. And my apartment building has a wonderful very secure garage and a package concierge so nothing ever gets stolen. If I can’t find something within a walkable radius, a cheap bicycle share gets me to almost anything my heart desires within 15 minutes.

And I’m meant to trade all that for what? A yard? A garage? Needing my car every time I want to run an errand? Pfft

I remember living in Menlo Park and it was hell. Everything is so far away that you need a car just to grab something quick from the store.

Guess what I’m saying is that we should find ways to reduce the need for cars, not to make sure everyone has somewhere to park and charge theirs. I think high density housing in mixed residential/business areas is the best solution.

damnyou• 7 years ago

Living in the city was great in my 20s. Now that I'm past 35 and have a family, having a private backyard to ourselves is a lot more appealing than dealing with loud people in commodified, crowded restaurants and movie theaters. My family is quite neurodivergent and everyone has sensory processing issues anyway. The city is simply too noisy, too active, too high pressure for us.

It's unfortunate that in the US, backyards and car dependence go together.

firstplacelast• 7 years ago

Because people are willing to work for wages that can't buy them the shittiest home within a reasonable commute to their office.

If people were more willing to die, unionize, or advocate for a mediocre life, this wouldn't happen.

If you're working for less than it takes to buy the shittiest home in your city, you are exacerbating inequality and thus making the world worse. Better to sit on the sidewalk until you're dead.

reificator• 7 years ago

If you're working for less than it takes to buy the shittiest home in your city, you are exacerbating inequality and thus making the world worse. Better to sit on the sidewalk until you're dead.

I'm not normally one for this term, but this has to be the pinnacle of blaming the victim.

colechristensen2• 7 years ago

why are so many people in supposedly high income cities not able to buy properties?

Housing costs seem to scale to the maximum that the population can pay, and people are willing to accept housing which is a little less than they think they need for a little more than they think they can afford. Generations of this have people growing up wanting what is "normal" and accepting a little less, each generation's normal is a little less while costing the same.

The only thing that can be done about this is removing the third parties making money off of that trend – each generation of homes is a little smaller for the same amount of (inflation or whatever adjusted) money and the difference is getting sucked into the financial and real estate sectors giving far more profits than useful work done.

Or we can just wait for peak-population to pass and an enormous crash where there will be far more housing than people and buying a house will be a money-losing venture you do because you want the space for yourself and not as an investment.

opportune3• 7 years ago

Actually, houses are getting larger by square footage over time, although not sure about lot size.

And peak population won't necessarily create a housing crash everywhere. As long as urbanization continues, it could just slow the growth of cities.

Eric_WVGG4• 7 years ago

Funny, I was thinking something similar but from a completely different direction — the problem, IMO, isn’t that people in cities can't afford to buy garages, but that they want cars at all.

The problem that these “garage orphans” don’t get is that society doesn’t owe anyone a free parking space. When one can’t afford car payments, or insurance, or gasoline, they aren’t allowed to simply go out and take it; but for some reason, we give away precious space to people who can’t afford garages.

There’s a whole book on this topic, for anyone who’s interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking

MadWombat2• 7 years ago

The problem that these “garage orphans” don’t get is that society doesn’t owe anyone a free parking space

Nobody owes anyone anything. But a lot of things in the society exist because "We would rather live in the world where X rather than in the world where X isn't". Car ownership is a societal norm in US, so most people are going to buy and own cars, at least for a while longer. And people are going to park these cars somewhere, whether you like it or not. I would rather we had regulated street parking than unregulated free for all.

6gvONxR4sf7o• 7 years ago

It's not about buying property. Residential street parking is used by residents, not just visitors. Those cars can't charge whether you own your place or not. Meanwhile, the car in the garage can charge whether you're owning or renting.

opportune3• 7 years ago

There's a few big reasons, at least in tech.

One is that your investors may want you to start your business somewhere close by, especially if they want to be involved in your business.

Another is that you need to start your business somewhere where you can acquire employees - if there are very few software engineers in an area already, you now need to convince people to move to your area for work. That's kind of a bad value proposition for employees because they need to relocate their lives to move somewhere that has only a single employer they could realistically work at. Usually the people running these businesses also are motivated by doing this to save money, so you might also be making about half of what you would in a big city.

Further, being in a big city has a lot of benefits from infrastructure and network effects. It is easier to acquire some of your first customers if they are close by. You have international airports which allow you to travel the world more easily than somewhere with an airport that only feeds into a hub. Your employees will appreciate having the ability to work at other places should their employer fail/they get fired/etc. so it's easier to convince people to move there.

What should be done, but which almost never is done, is that employers in small cities should start paying truly competitively with those in big cities. If your target employee could make 300k in NYC or the Bay Area, pay them that much in the cheaper city. Make the cost of living difference actually become a real perk, rather than a way to be miserly with how you pay employees.

jperras2• 7 years ago

I think this points out the elephant in the room: why are so many people in supposedly high income cities not able to buy properties?

I own & live in an apartment on the top floor of a 3 floor walk-up in a busy metropolitan city. There is perhaps one single person on our street that has a "garage". Everyone else parks on the street. The "not able to buy property" argument here seems like a red herring.

gambiting• 7 years ago

>why are so many people in supposedly high income cities not able to buy properties?

There's plenty of properties which are super high-end and which don't come with their own parking space(terraced houses on popular streets in the UK can go for millions and yet you won't get your own parking space - just a parking permit to park on the street, but there is no guarantee it will be in front of your own house).

Aloha3• 7 years ago

I think the argument going is that if you live in a city core, you don't need a car, so most places don't have parking.

a1369209993• 7 years ago

I seriously struggle understanding why at least tech jobs are so centered around crowded cities

Because major (FAANG et al) tech companies are cross-invested with rental/housing businesses[0]. This means that concurrent increases in rent and salary have no effect; employees make 1000$/yr more but pay 1000$/yr more in rent, company('s shareholders) makes 1M$/yr of extra rent but pays 1M$/yr more in salary. Except when the employee tries to switch jobs they're under incresed time pressure (before they run out of savings and can't afford rent), and all of the tech companies benefit from their hiring candidates having less leverage. Note that this doesn't require any communication between companies; each company can see that the situation benefits them based solely on public information, and cross-investment means each company loses nothing by hiking rent and salary simultaneously.

0: Either directly owning them or, more covertly, by most of their shareholders also owning housing stocks.

x3n0ph3n3• 7 years ago

Another way to look at it is: why people are prioritizing buying a nice car over property?

I live in a shitty 1 bedroom apartment, and 3 of my neighbors (with identical apartments) have Mercedes.

jaclaz3• 7 years ago

Besides garage orphans, also those with self standing homes and a garage will have (or become) a problem.

Say that in you street that are 50 single family homes connected to a same cabin/transformer.

The electric infrastructure powering them (lines, transformer, etc.) has been dimensioned to power them at their average current power consumption rate + something to take care of peaks + something more to take care of eceptions (like - say - a constructions site for the renovation of one of the homes).

Now the existing infrastructure will have no issue with your single electric car charging at night, and probably with that of your neighboor on the left and that of your neighbour on the right, but the moment a given number of families will have an electic car, each of them will try to use 5 kW of additional power more or less at the same time.

That is a lot of "juice" and it sums up quickly.

I believe (correct me if you have better data) that in the US the infrastructure is generally dimensioned for something like 6 or 7 kW per unit, so, adding to each house some "constant" 5 kW (even if only at night) is almost using all the capability of the infrastructure.

ses19842• 7 years ago

I believe that some of that is covered by other appliances becoming more efficient. How many 60-100w light bulbs did people used to run in their home? Tube tvs? Those devices have largely been replaced by more modern versions that use an order of magnitude less power.

rhombocombus• 7 years ago

This is my understanding as well, I remember reading something that said new power consumption is either flattening or decreasing because modern electronics and appliances are getting more and more efficient.

teknopaul2• 7 years ago

People put 5kw of solar on the garage roof. When everyone has electric cars you also have a huge mobile battery fleet.

rconti4• 7 years ago

My Model 3 charges at ~240v/48a, which is around 11kW.

At peak times in our house, say, heat on, lights on, TV on, cooking, doing laundry, we pull perhaps 3kW. Our house is pretty efficient; gas appliances, LED lights, no air conditioning, etc.

The car charges after 9pm, but that's just because our rate drops then. If midnight was even cheaper, it would charge then. We don't charge every day, but if we did, it would take perhaps 1 hour. And this is for a car we drive 18,000 miles on in its first year.

3-4x the demand of a 'normal' household is not nothing, but it's not insane, either. Considering EVs don't need to charge every day, or every hour of every night, it's not that tricky to see the aggregate load as fairly similar to peak afternoon/evening hours in your average suburb as people return home from work.

To be sure, if everyone started charging their EVs at 6pm, we might have a problem. Likewise, if everyone had an EV and they all clicked on at midnight, we might have a problem. But the load on the grid is not that huge from an instantaneous perspective, and can be managed by variable pricing and/or some kind of grid scheduling tech.

jgust2• 7 years ago

I imagine a world where the electricity grid is intelligent enough to have a "conversation" with appliances to efficiently spread load across the day, more accurately plan capacity, and do it at a lower cost to consumers and the environment.

jaclaz3• 7 years ago

Yes, the grid is "big enough" and (hopefully) "smart enough" to compensate peaks, the possible issue I was pointing out was not at "grid level", but rather at "local neughborhood" distribution.

If the transformer serving a given number of houses is (say) 300 kVA, it remains 300 kVA, and as well the actual distribution cables/wires are rated for (still say) 100 kW each, they remain that size/gauge and both will likely need to be replaced by "beefier" stuff.

BTW I took the US as an example because they - on average - consume already a very high amount of electricity pro-capita something like 12,000 kWh per year:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...

and so it has surely an already well dimensioned infrastructure, but besides the nordic countries (Norway/Sweden/Finland) Europe is less than half than that, Germany and France around 6,500 most of the other EU countries around or below 5,000.

Besides there can be some repercussions on single homes as well, depending of course on local Laws, to give you an example here in Italy there is a "limit" at 6 kW, for constructions until 2008 there was no need of a project for the home cabling for power consumption below 6 kW while since 2008 the project is always compulsory, and <6 kW can be made by the electrician/contractor but if it goes > 6 kW it needs to be made by an electrical engineer.

Since most houses are < 6kW, very few, even of the recently built ones have a project redacted by an electrical engineer and the moment you ask the provider to get (say) 10 kW you will need this project which will cost you (only the project) something in the 1,000-1,500 Euro range to which you have to sum the actual electrician/contractor work to add a line for the charger, probably another 1,000-1,500 Euro.

golover7212• 7 years ago

My office has installed a couple of free level 2 chargers and I haven’t needed to charge at home or elsewhere since. Charging for a few hours a couple of times a week is enough for my Bolt and my 10 mile commute as well as driving around the metro area on the weekends.

makz2• 7 years ago

I thought it was illegal to own a car without having a parking spot. I don’t know really, can someone clarify?

thehappypm6• 7 years ago

It is not illegal to own a car without a parking spot. Where did you even hear that?

makz2• 7 years ago

Plenty of places, but maybe I misunderstood it. I thought it was illegal at least in the United States and Japan. I don’t know for sure, I don’t live in either country.

clouddrover3• 7 years ago

In Japan you have to prove you have a parking space before you buy a car:

https://www.reinventingparking.org/2014/06/japans-proof-of-p...

https://jalopnik.com/why-the-japanese-will-never-buy-lots-of...

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2017/06/04/how-tos/pa...

Kei cars (tiny city cars) don't require proof of parking so they are a popular segment of the Japanese car market.

flyingfences2• 7 years ago

I suppose that may be the case in some strange places, but it's definitely not the norm.

fit2rule• 7 years ago

I have this problem with my electric moped - I often need to find a charger for it.

Its going to be an app that connects users with each other to help provide charging facilities.

Or else, gas stations will pivot.

api• 7 years ago

Honestly I think the low hanging fruit would be to put 115V outlets in at apartment complexes that have designating parking spaces. Just normal 115V, which is usually already wired at or near the spot.

_ph_• 7 years ago

There need to be more chargers at places where people park their cars when they are not at home. That is parking lots at the work place and parking lots of malls and supermarkets. Parking at work would need little more than a standard plug, assuming you are 8+ hours at work. At malls and supermarkets, you would have medium-fast chargers, as you are parking for 1-2 hours. And with the lastest gen fast-chargers, a recharge can be done in as little as 20-30 minutes, so having a good coffee store with WIFI along with the charging stations (no bad smells at charging stations) should mostly solve the problem for an occasional charge and wait.

mattmcknight2• 7 years ago

It seems like an opportunity to building an electrified parking garage where people can buy a powered spot. Could also sell powered street spots to municipalities in a rev share agreement. Many office buildings and apartment complexes are ramping up charging facilities with the number of EVs.

paxys• 7 years ago

Lots of shared building garages as well as public parking lots/garages have dedicated spots for EVs with chargers built-in nowadays.

mast• 7 years ago

A few years ago I lived in a fairly northern Canadian city. Most people had block heaters installed in their cars and plugged them in when the car would be sitting in the cold for more than a few hours. Otherwise, the car would be too cold to start. Most companies and apartment buildings had outlets installed in their parking lots, and at home people just ran extension cords.

koolba• 7 years ago

You don’t even have to go particularly north to see plug in block heaters. Pretty sure I’ve seen them as far “south” as Toronto. Guess they’re all ready for the EV generation.

jperras2• 7 years ago

Block heaters in grocery stoer parking lots/apartment buildings in Toronto? Where?

aplc0r• 7 years ago

You can still find them even in the suburbs of Minneapolis, though I haven't personally seen anyone use them in years.

olivermarks2• 7 years ago

In California the bankrupt PG&E power company will be turning off power during fire season high risk periods to limit their exposure. Escape from fire in an EV won't be possible unless you keep a fully charged vehicle on standby regardless of the charging location.

post_break• 7 years ago

Can you drive a tesla while it's being charged? A small trailer with a generator on the back could work as an emergency.

olivermarks2• 7 years ago

yes with some caveats https://generatorgrid.com/blog/tesla/

thehappypm6• 7 years ago

This stopped me from buying a Tesla with my most recent car purchase. I live in a 100 year old apartment in Boston that has 0 parking spots for over 100 units. My wife and I share a car, mostly for weekend adventuring, so we rent a spot in a dude's backyard down the block from us. It works well for us, much more convenient than the rat race of street parking. But it was hard to imagine that life with a Tesla. I could probably negotiate that I could plug it into an outlet connected to the guy's house, but I'd only get a slow trickle charge, and it's an odd request he could easily reject. I could rent in a garage with chargers, but there are none near my apartment, and it would also be much more expensive. The thought of only being able to charge at Superchargers was a big turnoff.

secabeen3• 7 years ago

The slow trickle charge is indeed slow, but it's not truly a trickle. It runs about 4-5 Miles/Hr. If you largely drove on the weekend, you could fully recharge the car in a 4-day session. (24 * 5 * 4=400 miles). Additionally, most weekend trips are not 300+ miles, so you would often return with 20-30% battery, which would reduce your charging time to just 3 days. That sounds doable to me.

JeffL• 7 years ago

If you don't have a huge commute every day, a 110v "trickle charge" is actually quite adequate. A Model 3 gets about 5 mph charge on a 110 outlet. That's at least 60 miles over night and 120 miles in 24 hours. You can always supercharge if you need it.

chrisseaton• 7 years ago

I live in a 100 year old apartment

Keeping in mind '100 years old' sounds dramatic but is now as recent as 1919, which doesn't sound that old when you write it out! That's about a fifth of the housing stock in the UK I believe. Obviously, almost none of these houses have garages.

I wonder if local governments could install plugs under little hatches like they use for stop cocks all the way down residential roads.

https://stock.adobe.com/be_en/images/blue-painted-water-stop...

clouddrover3• 7 years ago

London is putting charging points in street lamps:

https://www.electrive.com/2018/08/21/char-gy-new-player-on-l...

umeshunni3• 7 years ago

I've been trickle charging for the last 3+ years I've owned a Tesla. I live in a condo and the HOA was ok with me pulling an extension from an existing 110V line and charging from it for a nominal fee (we agreed to $50/mo).

I got an electrician to pull an extension (cost ~$200). I have a non-driving commute and use the car mostly on the weekends, so it's worked out great vs the cost of installing a level-2 charger ($1000+).

aaomidi2• 7 years ago

Meanwhile my apartment charges me $15 more per month in parking to charge an EV with 40 Amps. No fee for the electricity.

thehappypm6• 7 years ago

That sounds nice—I take it you own the parking spot? That would have changed the equation for me considerably.

xenocyon3• 7 years ago

Per your circumstances (living in Boston, already possess a car, drive occasionally), a new Tesla purchase might be non-ideal even besides the charging issue, from a climate standpoint. There is a breakeven point where your cumulative carbon savings from using Boston electricity (i.e. mostly natural gas) versus gasoline intersect the one-time carbon emissions from manufacturing a new automobile. For folks who already own a car they don't drive much, the breakeven may be very far away, meaning that a new Tesla purchase may actually be a net negative from a carbon standpoint.

thehappypm6• 7 years ago

I was getting a new car either way, replacing one that had broken.

hwillis3• 7 years ago

No, electric vehicles are the best option in nearly all cases. Natural gas makes Boston electricity one of the cleaner grids in the country. For my zip, a LR Model 3 makes 131 MPG[1] per unit of CO2, while manufacturing produces ~5 tonnes more CO2 (an SR will be ~3.5 tonnes)[2].

That's a break even period of only 15,000 miles. Unless your gas car will be tossed away in under 15,000 miles you are adding more CO2 to the air- and that's assuming you actually make 29 mpg, which is not likely on a car that is only 15k miles from EOL. Even if you don't touch the car for years, if you eventually sell the car the next owners are practically guaranteed to drive that many miles. The average American drives that far in 13 months.

Of course the money you spend on a new electric car might be better spent elsewhere, but in any state with a moderately clean grid, replacing a gas car with an electric car is a clear winning choice. Even on the very dirtiest grids in the US a Model 3 produces half as much CO2 as a gas car making 30 mpg- even slightly less than a Prius. The payback time is still only ~30k-35k miles, and in all likelihood owners will put several times that on the car.

[1] https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/ev-e...

[2] https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cl...

silveira• 7 years ago

Extension cord.

pi-rat5• 7 years ago

This problem requires multiple solutions, here's some that I think work great in Norway:

- "Lamppost" charging, Oslo (and other cities) put up a ton of charging poles in the streets, you use an RFID card to start charging. They've recently been free, but now cost $1 per hour ($0.5 at night). They look like this[1a] or this[1b]. Oslo will have about 2200 of these at the end of the year.

- Parking house charging. My regular parking house got it's own zone for electrics. Your license plate is read when you enter the parking house, then read again if you enter the charging zone. Automatically billed when you leave. This is my main charging atm, I've a garage, but not had extra power installed yet. My car has about 500 km range. Leaving it a work day in a parking house once per ~14 day is enough for my (limited) use. Some of the parking houses in Norway are built with battery banks to handle the load of 100+ chargers. Here's a video tour of one of them[2] (I don't live in Oslo though, but it's similar). I think I end up paying $12-ish for parking+charging for the one I use for 8+ hours.

- Shopping centers / convenience store charging. Many stores here got free AC charging now. And some of the larger centers / stores have established fast chargers (DC) on their parking lot (costs money to use). I can charge 250 km range while doing 30 minutes of shopping for around $10.

- Charging at work. Many work places here in Norway offer free charging as a perk.

- Friendly neighbours. In my street there's a dude who's put up a sign: "You're free to use my charger if I'm not here, send me $1 per hour using vipps (local app for mobile payment) to XXXXXX if you feel like it"

- And if all else fails, have plenty of paid fast chargers around in central locations, sucks to wait around for 30-60+ minutes, but it's a nice backup.

There's tons of charging spots in Norway, but the number of cars is outpacing the number of chargers, we'll probably see more congestion and queues in the coming years.

While I've never hit a full parking house yet, it will happen sooner or later, so it really helps to have a long range EV, that way you can go "Meh, I'll charge tomorrow instead.."

[1a]: https://www.google.com/maps/@59.9287147,10.7231223,3a,59.2y,...

[1b]: https://www.salto.no/media/images/referanser/_big4by3/søyle-...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktNKWLwjQJM

yellowapple• 7 years ago

I like the streetlight idea for getting more chargers out there. It'd also be great if every parking meter had at least a trickle-charger.

Hopefully solar efficiencies will continue to improve to the point where trickle charging via solar is actually viable.

dabinat• 7 years ago

Why is this a problem? Gas-powered cars don’t fill up when they’re parked. Just solve the problem the same way - let people go to a specific place to charge their car like they do to fill up with gas.

I have a Tesla and live in an apartment and it’s really not a big problem. The Superchargers are pretty convenient. And once Tesla rolls out L3 chargers more widely it will be even easier.

protonimitate• 7 years ago

How fast is a charge though? Gas stations can fill a tank of gas in a few minutes.

philjohn• 7 years ago

The problem is filling a gas powered car takes minutes so you can easily fit it into your day - charging a Tesla is probably closer to 30 for a decent range top up.

The former can be done on the way to work, as can the latter, but the latter requires a bigger shift in behaviour to achieve.

Yes, it's not the end of the world, but to pretend there's zero problem ignores reality somewhat.

bduerst• 7 years ago

I saw an interesting pitch from Sparkcharge [1] at an incubator event, which is deliverable super charger batteries.

If it scales, it would essentially allow people to order charging on the fly, get it delivered/hooked up by an Uber driver, and then just leave it for pickup in the lot they parked in. This is obviously only an urban or suburban solution, but could help with some of the issues.

[1] https://sparkcharge.io/

ChuckMcM• 7 years ago

Sadly, if you started putting outlets on the side of street poles in the Bay Area you would attract camper vans rather than EVs. (cue the story of the guy who drove to LA using RV parks to recharge)

Its an interesting question though, EV parking lots would seem to make a lot of sense. And certainly it would seem that HOAs for apartments and condos could benefit from them if they charged a bit for the power.

6934714• 7 years ago

My friend toured the USA in his 2012 Model S before the SuperCharger network existed by only charging at RV parks. The truth is that gas is harder to find in some places than electricity. You just have to take a few minutes to think about the grid and where power is at and the entire debate about feasibility of EVs is flipped on its head.

hannob• 7 years ago

How about this: We stop giving people free (or almost free) parking lots in public space?

aurizon2• 7 years ago

Yeah, I can see guys with Teslas and extension cords on electric reels that plug into your external outlet and charge, then burn off they see your lights go on...

6934714• 7 years ago

RV plugs curbside. We could make this standard if we cared to.

aurizon2• 7 years ago

Did you know a huge part of the cost of operating an electric subway is the delays involved in getting a dollars from every person who gets on through a slow down called the fare box. Another is a stooge whose only task is to open/close doors. Another stooge starts and stop the cars. In Toronto these stooges get about $50 US per hour for salary, pension and various benefits. That is $150 an hour. Elevators were like that years ago. They had operators, and in a fully automatic elevator, they would ask you what floor and push that button. Then they fired them. End of the earth is looming said their union. Ho-hum said thje world. We need fully self driving subway cars, with fitted electic doors on the cars and on the track - just like the doors that stop you falling down the shaft on an elevator. That way subway operating costs would fall by 60% or more. WE also need fully tracked packaging. Buy a wrapped chocolate bar and they know who paid for it, and you pay a25 cent wrapper deposit. Toss away the box and they know who tossed it = fee for you. Dispose properly and the candy wrapper deposit is scanned and paid to you. We are going to have to deal with our trash. This applies to all trash, even on the high seas. The UN, after 20 years, needs to declare coal burning plants and act of war against mankind = cruise missile to destroy it. Cars must all be electric in 20 years. Any after that confiscated unless converted to batteries. No excuses. It is as stark as it can be. Do this or the world dies!!!

tbabb• 7 years ago

The "businesses renting out their lots after hours" is an interesting model, though in high-density areas it's not clear that this would be enough, and might not be well co-located with residential demand.

City-owned public infrastructure (i.e. lamppost charging) makes a lot of sense too, but infrastructure changes are slow and expensive, and will certainly lag far behind demand. It might be a way for municipalities to earn revenue, though.

One could also imagine how much self-driving might help this: The car could pilot itself to a nearby charging station/lot without any inconvenience to the owner. But we are not there yet with capability, so this remains a near-term problem.

mikekchar• 7 years ago

We've had an EV for about 6 months now -- no way to charge at home. I will admit to being a special case, in that I have no problems at all charging the car, but the experience has led to some insights.

First, why I'm a special case. I live in Japan. Compared to Canada (and I assume most of the US), the charger situation here is amazing. We've done a fair few road trips now and it seems like no matter where we go, there is a fast charger within 2-5 km. At least 25% of the rest stops on the highway have them. A large percentage of "michi no eki" (Road station -- essentially farmers markets) have them -- to the point where the other day we were on a road trip and were very surprised to see a michi no eki that didn't didn't have one. Family Mart convenience store often has one (something like 1 in 10, I would guess). Aeon (big shopping mall) has one or two (and often 15-20 200V chargers) and every Nissan and Mitsubishi dealership has one.

This is really the future, I think. It costs millions to make a gas station. It costs thousands to put in a fast charger. You can put one anywhere because we already have the electrical infrastructure in place. I know several restaurants that have put them in.

At the moment, there is way more infrastructure than demand, so I very rarely have to wait. If, for some reason I do, then I drive 2km the road and charge there. It's hard to know if this will get better or worse as things scale up, but for the moment it's pretty good.

I'm also in a good situation in that I work from home. When I want to charge the car (a couple of times a week), I drive to the Family Mart, plug in, pick up a few groceries and then work for 30 minutes to an hour. They have a table (with power, even) for people to work at. It's air conditioned. It's so convenient, it's crazy.

However, it's the same thing when we travel. Our car only has a 30 kWh range, so we have to stop relatively frequently. But since there are chargers all over the place, we just stop and walk around. We often end up buying small things, or having a snack. We've seen so many amazing things since we got the EV because we're forced to stop and hang out in the small towns.

I think people are going to cash in on this. You are going to see small towns with parking lots with validated charging. People are going to drive by, stop, pick up a few things and carry on. Already the rest stops in Japan are absolutely geared for this: the have souvenir stores, restaurants and even things like clothing stores.

I think this is going to be a thing because compared to a gas station, it's cheap and it's also really nice. I thought I would dread charging the car. It's actually one of the best parts of my week. I get out and meet people. I slow down a bit. I get some shopping done.

Canada is kind of a difficult problem because it has 25x the land area and 1/4 the population of Japan. It's going to be tough. Also, they don't have any particular reason for someone to invest money in the infrastructure. Nissan and Mitsubishi are doubtlessly scared stiff of the time when Toyota and Honda enter the market. They want to own that charging infrastructure -- so they are going crazy right now. But I think it's actually inevitable, so if you have a fair amount of capital and are looking for a long term investment, I think this is a good one.

chiph• 7 years ago

There was a Model 3 owner at the last apartment I lived in. The buildings had garages for some apartments, and he had one. But the management wouldn't let him hire an electrician to wire up a 240V charger. So he left the interior garage door open and ran a cable to the clothes dryer outlet instead.

Johnny5553• 7 years ago

I own a condo with a garage, yet I can't put in a charge station. I need to convince most of my neighbors to have the HOA do it.

The garage is a separate shared structure and is only wired for lighting and the electric garage door. The only way they could put in EV chargers would be to trench though 30 feet of asphalt from the electrical vault (assuming that vault has sufficient capacity), then wire up the garage. I'm not sure how metering would work in that case, I assume that'd have to put in meter boxes for each resident.

Several people have tried, but couldn't get interest from more than a handful of residents, and the cost to do the initial work is too much for one person to bear.

matthewdgreen3• 7 years ago

I had to trench about thirty feet to install a charger in my back alley. It was expensive (about $1500) but I looked at it as a long-term investment that would pay off over a decade. If I could have shared that cost with, say, 10 neighbors it would have been pretty modest. My state also has a reimbursement program that will cover a portion of the installation costs. These capital costs are problematic but not really devastating. Even if nobody wants to use taxpayer funds, cities/utilities could propose investment programs with payback done via a small extra fee charged to electric usage over a few years.

Johnny5553• 7 years ago

The estimate was about 10X more than that -- I'm not sure what made it so expensive, maybe because the wiring had to be sized to handle all 30 units, the HOA wouldn't let it be built to handle just the few people that wanted an EV charger today. And there was some sort of upgrade that had to be made to the underground electrical vault.

throw0101a13• 7 years ago

Ontario changed their provincial laws a little while ago which makes EV charging "mandatory" to the effect that a condo/apartment building must do it unless they can produce an engineering report that says it (a) be some kind of safety hazard, or (b) would compromise structural integrity.

All new builds must have at least the conduit in place (if not the wiring). I wouldn't be surprised if having EV stations becomes a selling point in pre-construction marketing.

pocketlim• 7 years ago

Check to see if your local energy utility has any rebates on charger installations.

I don't know where you are, but I'll give an example locally. For commercial installation (since it's HOA) if you're with LADWP (Los Angeles), they will reimburse for the cost of the charger and installation up to $5000 for the first charger, and $4000 for each charger thereafter.

LADWP will also install a separate meter (if you so choose) and give you a discount on the energy specifically for EV charging.

Might be easier to convince the HOA if the net cost to them to install it is... well, hopefully nearly nothing.

lazyjones• 7 years ago

I'm one of those and have never had any issues with charging. I park in a public garage with 6 charging spots near the entrance and once every 1-2 weeks when I get home I park at the chargers, plug in the car (at 11KW Type2) and move it to a normal parking spot when it's full (typically 4-5 hours later). So the time I "waste" every 1-2 weeks is pretty much the extra walk to the garage and back.

duxup• 7 years ago

“Most neighbourhoods have somewhere – a local community centre, library, school or a church – with parking that’s empty at night, and these folks could use the revenue,”

Yeah that is what we need traffic / coordinating who parks at these gathering spots.....but just to change.

fencepost• 7 years ago

I've been meaning to suggest to the franchise owner with a bunch of Wendy's around here that putting EV charging stations in some of his excess parking. Get some folks who might consider coming for lunch to come, pay to park for half an hour, then leave without monopolizing spaces for a long time because they have to get back to work. Also become a hub for food delivery drivers.

Beyond that, there are a few charging stations at local malls, one at a Meijer (regional chain, think Target with a large grocery store), probably a bunch of others that I've just not noticed. Common element is that they're at places where people can shop.

jillesvangurp2• 7 years ago

Fully Charged recently ran an interesting panel discussion that they put online yesterday with a few vehicle to grid experts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkh33KjF3Gc&t=0s

One interesting thing with vehicle to grid is that EV battery capacity is becoming a valuable commodity. It's valuable to EV owners because they can sell back electricity to the grid and manage when they charge using either solar or simply low rate night time energy from the grid. This saves them cost and some cases makes a profit. It's valuable to grid owners because they can serve peak demand from plugged in EVs and dump access clean energy back into them so they can stay on top of peaks in demand and supply. It's even attractive to battery leasing companies or EV car companies responsible for managing the batteries because keeping them fully charged all the time when they are not in use is actually not that great for battery life. Some car manufacturers are already experimenting with battery warranty and vehicle to grid usage in order to take away the concerns about wearing out the battery.

So, vehicle to grid may be used to address exactly this issue. It's a complicated topic of course but providing charging points to garage orphans could be a profitable business. There are all sorts of interesting things happening around this.

dmix• 7 years ago

Assuming everyone's selling it back I'd imagine there have to be easily swappable batteries then to deal with the increased wear. At least so it's not a big operation for the dealer. I wonder how much more difficult this would make car designs...

jillesvangurp2• 7 years ago

They covered this in the panel discussion. In short, some car manufacturers seem willing to allow this under their normal battery warranty (i.e. they expect this to be not much of an issue) to minimize risk for the user and take away concerns around this. Some manufacturers are already building inverters into the cars to facilitate vehicle to grid (and vehicle to vehicle even). Most manufacturers (e.g. VW, Renault) expect this to be common in a few years and are looking to standardize how this works.

Swapping batteries is of course covered by existing warranties and obviously this is already technically doable as part of normal car service. So, no special new design is needed for this. I imagine this typically involves unplugging a bunch of cables, loosening a few bolts, etc. Doesn't sound like rocket science. In any case, your base assumption that this becomes a regular thing for EV owners is probably simply wrong. It's rare now and it will probably not become a lot more common. EV batteries are pretty good.

morkfromork• 7 years ago

I thought people like that would use the Tesla self-driving robotaxis. They won't need their own car.

King-Aaron2• 7 years ago

This thread seems to be an argument between inner-city people who don't see a need for a car, and people who don't live in a city who can't understand why people in cities don't give a toss about anyone else.

Brakenshire6• 7 years ago

Surely this is a problem specific to cities? Must be unusual for people in suburban or rural areas not to have access to their own parking.

King-Aaron2• 7 years ago

The article at hand - agreed - is a city-centric topic in itself. What I'm getting at is the borderline aggression within the thread here.

jaclaz3• 7 years ago

Besides garage orphans, also those with self standing homes and a garage will have (or become) a problem.

Say that in you street that are 50 single family homes connected to a same cabin/transformer.

The electric infrastructure powering them (lines, transformer, etc.) has been dimensioned to power them at their average current power consumption rate + something to take care of peaks + something more to take care of exceptions (like - say - a constructions site for the renovation of one of the homes).

That is a lot of "juice" and it sums up quickly.

I believe (correct me if you have better data) that in the US the infrastructure is generally dimensioned[1] for something like 6 or 8 kW per unit, so, adding to each house some "constant" 5 kW for the charging (even if only at night) is almost using all the capability of the infrastructure and possible peaks might create issues.

[1] when estimating the need of a line the usual formula is roughly between

1/3 max power x 1.20

and

1/2 max power x 1.10

so assuming the peak is 15 kW, that would be between 15/3 kW x 1.20 = 6 kW and 15/2 kW x 1.10= 8.25 kW

Nasrudith• 7 years ago

I know at my current company they decided to put in a Tesla charger station out back. Not too many in the company have one but any regularly visited location with a supercharger could substitute.

lovemenot3• 7 years ago

Xez we cz CT f az

Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

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