this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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At home? Not like we are lacking electric outlets.
The problem is apartments without garages or without parking lots. See San Francisco, New York, etc.
My understanding is that most people like that in those cities don't have cars because mass transit there is actually quite good, and keeping a car is excessively expensive for something they'll rarely need
Things work differently in the US lol
I mean, I was specifically referring to those two cities in the US because the comment I was responding to was mentioning them
I think it's mostly true in New York, but that's the only city where I've heard that.
Unfortunately all too many still do. I’ve known people in NYC who have cars, even if they rarely need them. When I lived in Boston, I needed a car despite using transit for all daily trips: some weeks I only used the car to move it for street cleaning
A lot of people in those cities don’t have cars, but a lot do. Especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, which has worse public transportation than NY.
Speaking as someone born and raised in SF, a shit load of apartment dwellers have cars. There are so many cars that you often can’t find a parking space near your building in the residential parts of town. Honestly, the main reason people get rid of their car is because the city has hit peak car capacity. You have to spend 30-60m looking for a spot in the vicinity of home.
As electric car ownership increases, apartments will be incentivized to install ways to charge them. Just like electric cars it'll start with high end apartments and trickle down. This may also incentivize apartment owners to install solar on their buildings to charge battery banks to save money on electricity.
Problem is that these places often don’t have available street parking in front of the building. It’s a public street, and someone that lives in different building often grabs the open spot. And in addition to that, buildings almost always have more cars than spots in front of them.
Sure, the building owner could put chargers in front of their property, but in a place like SF, the residents will rarely get access to them.
Charging infrastructure needs to be lead by the city, state, or federal government. Putting it on landlords won’t do anything.
Also, landlords in these places already barely maintain their units. Many of them wouldn’t even maintain the HVAC until laws forced them to. And even now, many drag their feet.
Fair enough. One of the downsides of high rise buildings.
Depends on the city. That’s not true for SF.
The parts of town with high rises are WAY easier to park in. They all have parking garages connected to the building. It’s places like the Haight and the Mission that are terrible - mostly residential neighborhoods with 2 story single family homes. Maybe a few 3 story apartment buildings.
Many were converted into apartments and may have even had garages converted into a living space. So now you have neighborhoods with homes that were originally designed to hold 1 or 2 cars, but now they have 3 or more cars - and they may not even have a garage anymore.
Yeah, go on and charge an EV with your slow standard wall plug.
Did this for 3 years with a daily commute to a different state - ~13h of charging a day on 120v was far more than enough. Obviously I'm lucky enough to have a outdoor plug available to the car area but if you do it's completely doable.
Same. I got about 2 miles of range per hour of charging on 120V, and my office was only 9 miles away. Easy peasy.
Even that seems low unless it’s a giant truck, my Chevy volt can charge at like 4mph on 120V, and I think I have the charging rate reduced to not test my house’s 60 year old wiring.
I know what you mean but it's pretty funny to read charging in terms of mph.
Indeed, and it’s also a much more practical unit that anyone can comprehend instead of kW.
Unless you use most of the charge during the same day, it is quite doable.
Sure the charge is slow, but you can plug it in the evening and let it charge during the night, like you'd do for a smartphone.
Depending on the capacity you may not get a full charge, but it is enough for most uses. If it charges enough for what you'll do during the day, it isn't a problem at all.
It's trivial to get a 240v circuit installed, even an electrician apprentice can do it with their eyes closed. Alternatively, you can install a battery bank that discharges at >120v while being plugged into a 120v circuit.
And it's not trivial when you don't live in a place that allows for you to do that, which is what this article is alluding to.