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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

My apartment building does not have, and by my best guess, will never have car chargers in its parking garage.

And I'm lucky enough to have a parking garage. At least ~70% of the people living in my area park on the street, where there are... Also no chargers.

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Have you considered asking them if they would install one? They aren't that expensive, only about $1000 bucks, and I think there are some federal subsidies.

With a service like Chargepoint, there is no cost to the landlord at all. They have a brochure you can print out on their website.

Failing that you can park near a regular 120v outlet and use level 1 charging, which fills up most cars in about 8 hours.

> a regular 120v outlet and use level 1 charging, which fills up most cars in about 8 hours

A regular 120V outlet is 15A at best (usually 12A). That's barely enough to charge a PHEV in 8h, let alone a BEV. Practical example [0]:

> connected to a 240V outlet, the onboard 7.7kW charger should take the battery from 0-100% SoC in 2 hours 25 min. (A 120V charge will take a bit longer at just over 16.5 hours.)

[0] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/10/on-the-road-with-audis-...

I'd clarify that regular outlet is _usually_ 15A. 12A is what car will be drawing as this is continuous load (should be 80%, code requirements). Quite often breaker behind that 120V outlet is 20A one.

The federal tax credit ended in tax year 2018. I installed two Open EVSE in my garage, and ran a 100 amp sub-panel. I did all the work myself and was able to claim about $300 of the tax credit; can't claim own labor so it was all materials. Even then, the credit was capped at $1k.

The EVSE run between $500 - $1000. Add in the cost of a residential electrician, and I'm estimating $3k total. If it's commercial, then double that. If you have to trench and do concrete work, double it again. Get into a ROW with other utilities, even worse. It gets expensive really fast.

The level 1 charger for my 24 kW*H Leaf says 24 hours for a full charge. Forget about it for a Tesla.

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