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kuschku

> This is only true for apartment dwellers (for now). People who live in houses typically charge at home.

In Germany, over 65% of people rent. So, the supermajority would be affected by this.

EDIT: I meant "live in rented apartments". "Miete" implies renting an apartment here, usually.

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Why can't you charge in a house that you rent instead of own?

Because the landlord might take issue with you installing a 220V charger in the house. Why, I would have no idea, since it would seem to add (a minuscule) value to the house.

Wait a minute, it's Germany, don't y'all already have 220V/240V/whatever it takes? In which case, yeah, I guess you could just plug into an outlet and charge just as quickly as I do in my American garage with its special charger because our outlets are 110V.

> Wait a minute, it's Germany, don't y'all already have 220V/240V/whatever it takes? In which case, yeah, I guess you could just plug into an outlet and charge just as quickly as I do in my American garage with its special charger because our outlets are 110V.

Actually, we have up to 400V/60A for stoves and charging cars, or as main line for your apartment. But if you rent an apartment, you won't have that at your parking space.

Germany doesn't have that, and will never have that? Quite a prediction. In the US, most apartments don't have chargers, but they're starting to install them. And where I live, new construction is required to have chargers in the garage.

Germany doesn't have that, and will never have that? Quite a prediction

The only one predicting anything is you, Captain Pedantic. Parent used the present tense, which I take to mean that if I look for an apartment today in Germany, I won’t find an apartment with a charger. Tomorrow? Who knows, no one was talking about tomorrow. On top of that, speaking from a German perspective, odds are that English is a second language. But you go right ahead and pick apart that sentence for something to criticize.

I heard that's why Americans don't have electric kettles either - takes too long to boil on 110 v.

Canada has 110v and electric kettles. America apparently just doesn't care for tea (and/or have much of the subpopulations from areas of the world that got big into boiling their drinking water before chlorinated public water came about, and so who see drinking even clean unboiled tap water as gross.)

i care quite a lot for tea, but i use a kettle on the stove, not a plug-in one. it just tastes wrong, somehow, else.

Actually, in Europe drinking water is unchlorinated. Chlorinated water is something I'd consider as gross, by default.

That isn't true:

http://www.lenntech.com/processes/disinfection/regulation-eu...

While some countries moved away from permanent chlorination, it is still widely used, either as a permanent (all the way to the faucet) or punctual (just in the treatment facility) water disinfection solution.

The UK, for example, uses permanent chlorination.

So depending where you live, maybe its time to find all tap water gross.

Oh, that's interesting. Everywhere I've been – be it Austria, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands – I’ve never seen chlorinated water.

Actually they use it, the deal is that you just don't notice.

Chlorinated water is used in Germany depending on the city and source. Cities using aquifers for drinking water, like Berlin, usually require less disinfectants as the original water carries little to no organisms.

They might still use chlorine for emergency disinfections. But usually the levels are very low and hard to notice.

http://www.evoqua.com/en/brands/Wallace_and_Tiernan/Pages/be...

Cities that don't have good aquifers usually resort to rivers and lakes, requiring heavier disinfection both at the treatment and on the way to the homes, so they need to add higher levels of chlorine.

Ah okay.

All cities I've ever lived in, or ever been to, have used aquifers for their drinking water, and have never fluoritdated or chlorinated their water due to that. We currently use UV desinfection where I live.

Yeah, if you use rivers and lakes I could understand it, but I never actually knew places would do that.

What do they use for disinfection?

Pretty sure I'm right in saying they don't flouridate the water either.

They can use UV light, ozone, or even chlorine, but they remove the chlorine before pumping the water into the system.

The downside is that it requires a highly precise tuning and maintenance of the water systems to avoid any contamination downstream. Most countries don't seem to have the discipline to do so (US for example).

But they do fluoridate the water, depending on the country and region.

Water fluoridation's positive impact is small when the population frequently brushes their teeth with fluoridated toothpaste, and both fluoridation and chlorination don't have any negative impacts on health.

I just used one to make a cup of coffee. I haven't timed it, but it can't take but three minutes to reach boiling. I wish the U. S. had standardized on 220V for a lot of reasons, but the time it takes to heat a kettle of water is not one of them.

You mean 110V countries don't just run at double the amps? How much current can you typically pull from a 110V socket?

You mean 110V countries don't just run at double the amps?

Nope, because then you need bigger wires, and copper ain't cheap. Whereas on the same wires if the voltage is bumped, you get a wattage bump, too. So Europe gets kettles that heat twice as quickly as U. S. kettles.

In the US, the typical circuit max is 15 A. Some outlets provide more (e.g. 20 A for an electric clothes dryer, though those usually run on 240 V).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector#/media/File:NEM...

120V circuits are typically 15A. My kettle is 1500W.

It takes 2 1/2 minutes to microwave a coffee cup full of water to hotter than I need it.

In my case there's no outlet in my carport. And many others in my building only have street parking.

I don't get what you mean. If there's no off street parking then it doesn't matter if you are renting or owning you still have the same problem.

Sorry, 65% of Germans live in rented apartments was what I meant.

If you buy an electric vehicle, you're committed to always having a private garage, which severely limits your rental options in the future.

Some places already have on-street chargers, and who knows what the future will bring? My apartment complex has a shared charger in the garage, and new construction in my city is required to have that.

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