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Comment by pfortuny | Hacker News Reader

The “at home” is very tricky in Europe (Western) where most (like almost all) of the people live in flats.

No one said that today everyone has to be able to do it. The transition takes decades.

But now still a lot of people, especially those with a car, could load there cars at home.

Also we had this dicussion in our meeting for the house (munich underground parking) and the pressure wasn't high enough yet but the needed effort to allow a power outlet on your underground parking spot, is relatively low.

As long as you only need normal powercord, you just put it on the ceiling.

That doesn't mean they don't have a parking spot. Most flats include them and states are passing laws that say you can install chargers in your space. Street parking does need more chargers as well and cities are adding them.

> Most flats include them and states are passing laws that say you can install chargers in your space.

That certainly can't be cheap. The cost of the charger aside, you'd still have the costs of:

  1. Permits and inspections of the work.
  2. Trenching costs for the electrical line.
  3. Survey work to make sure it doesn't interfere with other underground stuff.
  4. Materials and time for the mounting pad.
  5. ...and probably a ton of other things I don't know about.

On an individual basis, it would seem to make little sense. Plus - is there a standard for chargers yet? Unless it's just a standard (for whatever country) plug, I don't know if EV manufacturers have standardized on a particular charger style so that any vehicle type can plug into a charger (I'm thinking more of the case where somebody either sells their EV and buys another, or sells their flat and moves, the next buyer with a different EV, etc).

Maybe it's not as big a deal as I am thinking (owner takes charger, leaves infrastructure behind for next owner to mount theirs in place?)...

I think you're overthinking this. I'm planning on adding a charging point to my parking space. The building's shared garage already has power everywhere so I just need to install a meter and a standard power socket. The actual charger just plugs in there and if I change EV I just change the charger (or not since everything is moving to CCS hopefully). Neighbors have done it and it was quite simple. If it's an external parking lot without power already installed it may be harder but in cities this is the most common setup. I'm sure third-party parking garages that people use when their flat doesn't include one will also be doing these installations at scale to attract customers. It's really the equivalent of adding a few power sockets. For night time charging you don't want fast charging, 10kW is fine and 5kW probably enough and that's not a very complex electrical install.

The only actual issue I know of is that once the whole building is doing this because 90% of cars are EVs we're going to need more total power in the garage. Depending on the electrical infrastructure around you that may or may not be an easy thing to do. I suspect it's not a huge issue since we all together already have enough contracted power right now if you add up our individual circuits going to the actual flats. But maybe the electrical company is oversubscribed counting on low effective usage of the contracted power, I don't know.

A powercord is easy to install on ceiling etc. Supercharge might be slightly trickier.

But there is enough time to transition and not everyone will do it now.

Pressure also creates solution.

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