Think apartment-hunting is frustrating? Try doing it with an electric car
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What I don't think is easily workable with mass-adoption of EVs is the following.
> Long Distance travel. EVs sort of almost work for a handful of people doing long drives even when it's slower than just filling a gas tank. But when the number of cars on the road exceeds charger throughput, the delays are going to compound. The proverbial family roadtrip is going to suck a lot when you show up at a charging place and there's a line of EVs waiting for the charger and your kids are crying.
> Dense cities. It's hard to see how EVs can work in denser cities where they theoretically could do the most good. In places like NYC, many buildings don't offer any parking spaces whatsoever to install chargers at. Instead, people park on the street wherever they can find a semi-legal parking spot. Are cities going to dig up all roads/sidewalks and put EV chargers literally everywhere? That's the the only thing that would make EVs theoretically feasible for an average family in a city.
Somewhat off-topic but WiFi tended to be free initially at chains most frequented by individual travelers and families, rather than business travelers--who could just expense a WiFi change. Free WiFi then tended to become a carrot for signing up with a hotel chain's loyalty plan before becoming mostly free in general.
1) Unless your trip is relatively short, you'll probably need to charge between your home and the hotel.
2) What happens when there's 4 EV parking spots at your hotel and 5 (or more) guests show up at a hotel with EVs? Are people willing to spend their vacations stressing out over getting one of those spots?
Personally, I think EVs only work as a toy for the rich and mass-adoption currently involves too many problems for average people that cannot be resolved anytime soon.
Do we have enough EV chargers for everyone today? Of course not. But the deployment does seem to be keeping up with the amount of EVs that exist, and that's good enough for today.
You can easily fill a gas tank with 100+ miles worth of gas in just a couple minutes. Recharging an EV locks up a spot at a charger for a fair bit longer, even if you don't charge to full.
Driving through remote West Virginia earlier this year, I stopped at a couple 2-pump gas stations that were doing fine business because they were the only station on the highway for 50 miles or such. You probably couldn't get away with just having 2 EV stations.
I can't charge in the carpark with my house, but never have an issue finding (many) free charging spots on the streets around my house. And besides the level 2 chargers (11/22kw) here, there's also enough fast-chargers around, though these tend to be expensive.
The user of the chargers pays for them.... they are all equipped with RFID cardreaders and compatible with all different charge-card suppliers. Prices have been going up a lot lately with the european energy crisis, with prices going from 20-30ct/kwh to ~40-50ct/kwh now, and fast-chargers going at 70-90ct/kwh.
Yeah, I've done a couple road trips and I think I've gotten lucky so far. Usually, the charging stations are at only about half capacity, but one time I got to a 12-stall Supercharging station and there was only 1 stall left, and within one minute of me plugging in, two more Teslas arrived and had to park and wait.
I've heard that in some areas in California, they've been known to have lines a dozen cars deep, but that was a couple years ago. There's constantly new construction of Supercharging stations, and Tesla just released a CCS adapter, so things are getting better.
Still though, it's a race between EV manufacturing and charging installation.
What really needs to happen is 250 kW EV chargers at highway rest stops. It sucks when I plug in to charge, and the local businesses are either closed or their bathrooms are closed.
No!!! Keep your cars out of my city! Personal EVs are not a solution for cities, they just perpetuate detrimental car centric urban policies. Spend that money on continuous sidewalks, narrower streets and better public transit.
Ideally we'd have really narrow streets, so much less parking, and many more amenities for pedestrians.
Realistically, replacing a good chunk of the existing gas-fueled cars with electric cars would be a HUGE net win.
One problem is the craven MBA's that run auto companies think there is big bucks to be made overcharging people for keyless entry fobs. Which blocks things like being able to hire a service to do things like charge your car for you.
Seems a little entitled to me.
Totally unrelated, but does anyone know if stealing power to charge your car has the same repercussions as stealing gas?
Maybe today with EVs there is a different approach. I don't know. Some of the things people would do not to play their electric bill were literally shocking :-)
In general the infrastructure needs of apartment dwellers and house dwellers tend to differ a lot.
Personally, if we're talking about upgrading legacy infrastructure in rental units, I would really like if including in-unit washer dryer combos would be the norm in my city (Boston). Although I own now so it doesn't bother me anymore, but it was quite frustrating paying $3500/mo rent and still hoarding quarters for the weekly laundry haul to the common-area basement of the building.
Generally speaking, urban rental units with in-unit washer+dryer in boston command a $300-500 rental premium from what I've seen (makes sense because retrofitting an old triple-decker[0] with in-unit laundry isn't trivial)
I personally ride my escooter to the office, walk to most places, take the occasional taxi, and if I need a car, I use car sharing programs.
While the article claims there is no money to be made in EV charging to incentivize and align with building owners, there's plenty of similar "amenities" that easily can help differentiate a "luxury" apartment building, hopefully they become more common.
1) They charge a 40% markup on electricity. This is fair, given the upfront costs of installation and ongoing maintenance costs, but still a downside.
2) Since installing it, the number of EVs living here have tripled or quadrupled. A great thing, but also ties up the charger more frequently.
3) Their breaker apparently can't support 2 Teslas charging at once. This doesn't seem to be a problem with two non-Telsa EVs, or one Tesla and one non-Tesla, but if two Teslas plug in at the same time the breaker blows and both chargers are out of commission for 24-72 hours until maintenance gets around to fixing it.
All of that is still better than no charger of course, but we have other complaints with this complex and want to move when our lease is up. Looking for apartment complexes with chargers severely limits options and makes buying a house make a lot more sense.
https://www.tesla.com/support/gen-3-wall-connector-power-sha... ?
Or chargers are non-tesla ?
Teslas sold in Europe and Australia include both the proprietary Tesla plug and a CCS plug. In America, Teslas are sold with just the proprietary Tesla plug and so the wall connector uses that, making it incompatible with non-Tesla cars.
The Tesla owners can fix this themselves by changing the charging speed manually in the car or the app.
I rented a townhouse in the fall of 2019. As I was negotiating rent, move in dates, etc, I got the landlord to agree to have his electrician install a NEMA 14-50 outlet in the garage at my expense. It was all quite painless. If he would have said "no", I'd have rented a different townhouse. I made it clear that was a deal breaker.
When I bought my current place, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had a NEMA 14-50 already installed in the garage, so I didn't have to do anything to secure charging for my car.
Across the pond, in Belgium, there is now a push for companies to offer electric cars as part of the compensation package, some friends have placed their first EV "order". Because of this, companies are installing chargers around the office. I'd instantly opt-in for that. (Although in Belgium I think it's mandatory now, so wouldn't even have a choice. But someone still living/working there can correct me on that).
I have a hunch that this is what is going to slow EV adoption. I could be wrong, but I don't see this changing since the incentives aren't directly linked. Apartments can easily find other residents. Condo associations have to subsidize a few residents.
I can't fathom having an EV currently. Charging at home is a must.
I do wonder if the chargers at your condo punish at all for being plugged in even once fully charged. Some people might not care about the location of those charging spots, so they just park there and leave it there all the time.
Tesla learned many years ago that people just leaving their car at the supercharger while they spend a couple hours at the mall watching a movie or whatever was going to become a massive problem, so they charge idling fees if you're fully charged and the charging station is at more than 50% capacity.
Given the history of the US, this seems a worthwhile thing to note.
Some people tend to freak out when race is mentioned, I suppose, so they can't even read a few more lines of context.
Of course, if you move, you might need to get a different car.
and if you don't? Because your apartment building doesn't offer it, and low-wage jobs are less likely to include it as a perk..
and OMG, the US tied health insurance to jobs and what a clusterfuck that is, so severely limiting entrepreneurship, now we want to tie "ability to charge your car" to employment? Can't quit your job because you don't have a charger at home and public ones are rare/expensive??
If you can charge at home, then electric $/mile is usually significantly cheaper. For me, my electricity is 11 cents/kWh, which made driving about 1/4 the price per mile as the 32 mpg Subaru BRZ I drove before my Tesla, and with gas over $5/gallon now, it's more like 1/5th the price.
But if you can't charge at home, it's very likely nearly as expensive as gas. Electrify America, ChargePoint, etc. are not cheap. I usually see them around 50 cents/kWh.
Not only that, but renters are often put in the situation where their rent is the same as a mortgage, but can't afford to save for a down payment. Renting is a cockroach motel.
I’m grateful that I can afford it, but I understand that the mortgage isn’t the entire cost of the house and that renting allows me to leverage someone else’s capital in an efficient manner.
Also, getting out of a rental is often as easy as just leaving. Some unscrupulous types forget to pay the last few months of rent before skipping out giving themselves an unofficial discount. When owners want to sell, they need to pay commissions, inspection costs, transfer taxes, title searches and a few more unexpected and hidden charges. The transaction can take months and that's when you find a buyer. Yes, many people like to focus on the extreme profits that some lucky people have found in the right neighborhoods, but housing prices do go down and they often go down by a staggering amount. When you're underwater on your mortgage, you're trapped. You might be able to afford the monthly payments but you can't sell because you don't have the spare cash to pay off the mortgage.
The high down payments evolved as a safety mechanism for the banks first, but also for the home buyers because markets fluctuate.
You can short sell if the lender is willing. Caveat being they will gift you the difference which can count as income and is taxed. There was an Obama era program during the last housing bubble burst that provided tax relief as well as incentives to the lenders to allow the short sale. Not sure if it’s still active, but it helped a lot of folks avoid foreclosures.
If you need the flexibility, then yeah, sure.
But if you have no plans to move or don't think you'll ever need to move, in the long term, owning is always going to win.
Rent money just goes into a black hole. Mortgage payments build equity until you pay it off, at that point the asset is 100% yours and you're no longer making payments. Sure, you're paying for maintenance, but the maintenance costs will be less than what you were paying before.
Also, rent always goes up, sometimes faster than inflation. A fixed mortgage doesn't. When I bought my house at the end of 2015 for $330K, Zillow estimated the rental value at $1,800/month, and my mortgage was $1,500/month. Now, cash value is estimated $560K and the rental value is estimated to be $2,700/month.
If I chose to rent 7 years ago, I'd be spending $1,200 more per month right now. Another couple years, and I could be spending double.
Presumably yes but especially older homes still require ongoing expenses. Some are admittedly flexible in a given year. But property taxes, insurance, utilities, and property/house maintenance can still hit $10,000 a year or so fairly easily (though big maintenance projects tend to be a bit lumpy).
I asked each broker/property manager (residential and commercial) of new construction why they were not making accommodations for electric cars and Ubers. (Ubers are a lot more convenient where there is a portico or designated area for getting in and out and waiting for cars instead of holding up traffic in the street.) It was obvious that how people prefer to use cars is changing.
All of them told me that it was too far away to worry about.
Now they are trying to figure out how to retrofit the building for the necessary wiring and to correctly meter the tenant. Right now all of those electric cars are going against the common area usage.
Myopia seems an expected consequence of bad housing market policy.
I won't be buying an electric car until I move elsewhere.
I’ve been contemplating buying a rental building and I’ve been trying to figure out these sorts of things. I’m thinking having some sort of charger where the car owner has to enter a pin to identify themselves (and thus be billed for their electric use) is the best approach to the charger issue, but I’m not sure if there’s a good way to manage rooftop solo for a 2–4 unit building.
I'd put in something like a chargepoint charger and set the kWh price to about the local average electricity prices, and maybe help your tenants get chargepoint rfid tags. If you can put a publicly accessible charger at the street as well as tenant only chargers, that would again help you make economic work of your solar panels.
You could also run the whole building on one utility meter, and include electricity in the rent... But that's asking for cryptocoin miners or grow operations as tenants.
One of two solutions will fix this problem, either more chargers or better energy density in the batteries. The first solution is the simpler one, just add the chargers, not actually that simple but simpler than the latter option which is develop batteries with higher energy densities. If we could get to a place where your average EV could go 500mi easy on a charge, or we somehow figured out hyperfast charging so even though your car may only do 200mi on a charge, it doesn't matter because you can charge your car about as fast as you can pump gas.
Of course, it can only charge close to that fast when the battery is low, so what about a more realistic wattage, like 150 KW? That's still 2.5 KWH per minute, or up to ~10.5 miles of range per minute of charging. At that rate, I'm still gaining 30 miles of range is less than 3 minutes.
Yup, there's a dead comment [0] about having to "wait hours", which is just flat-out incorrect.
On a road trip, I find that every 150 miles of driving takes 10-20 minutes to charge, depending on how low I let my battery get. Charging from 10% to 60% is faster than 30% to 80%, but planning to arrive with 30% gives peace of mind.
Optimally you could leave it in inside your car while charging (otherwise it'd be stolen), and route the cable in a weatherproof way to the charger port.
Alternatively, cars should start having a charging port inside the car.
So it's definitely possible!
(Sadly my car still ran on fossil fuel at the time. )