Hacker News Reader

> I could potentially hire an electrician to run a new circuit out to the pole where I have a lamp that is next to my driveway, but there's no feasible way for me to get anything other than L1 charging out there safely, which would get me very little range.

Not saying you’re wrong, but are you sure? I ran a new 240 line out to a post in the middle of the yard to charge a EV with no trouble at all. Run it into a weatherproof outlet box and plug in any off the shelf outdoor EV charger and you should be good to go. If you have to run a new line anyway, there’s no reason you can’t run a line capable of 40 amps at 240v.

> However, if you have a townhouse or an apartment, or even if you rent your home, with rare exception of your complex either having chargers or potentially having a deck for you to park in where you might get lucky in negotiating a charger, you're straight out of luck.

Not necessarily. In California at least, landlords are required to let tenants install EV chargers in their assigned parking spaces, including running any electrical lines or conduit needed. Granted, you still have to pay for what is effectively a capital improvement on a rental property, but some landlords may be willing to split or subsidize the cost, especially if they can get a tax incentive for doing so.

> Not saying you’re wrong, but are you sure?

To be honest, I was anticipating using the same circuit for the lamp instead of pulling a new one, but sure, having the electrical work done to pull a new circuit to the car is definitely feasible.

> Not necessarily. In California at least... Thanks for making keeping me honest in assumptions there. That said, I have to imagine the amount of states that have these provisions is pretty small, and likely more importantly, this assumes that one has assigned parking. I haven't lived in an apartment in a long time, and never in a major city, but all of the apartments I've lived in had free-for-all parking.

The point I was trying, but didn't fully make in my original comment was to highlight that there's a fairly significant amount of the population in the US that doesn't have easy and/or reasonable access to home charging, and that is a fair reason why even folks who can afford and are interested in owning BEVs are precluded from considering them.

If you can run an L1 outlet (a nema 5-15 or 5-20 outlet) to the light pole, running an L2 circuit is literally identical work. The only change is a different receptacle (a nema 6-15 or 6-20) and a dual pole breaker. The wire is exactly the same. The cost is essentially identical, maybe $50 more for the breaker if you use a GFCI one.

Then, you get 3.8kW of charging (240V, 16A from a 20A outlet) which is plenty for all but the longest daily commutes.

Sure, running a 7.2 or 9.2kW charger is nicer, but it's not actually necessary is almost any case and the cost of the wire is substantially higher to run a 50A circuit.

Good to know re: the circuit (my knowledge of electrical is pretty lacking). However, really, the circuit itself wasn't my primary concern so much as the unsecured attachment with regards to theft of the charger itself. Like lots of neighborhoods these days, I'm getting hit with Nextdoor alerts about "cars being broken into", and I imagine an electric car charger might be a tempting target.

Many EVs (all Teslas, Kia EV6/Hyundai Ioniq 5, probably others) have a method for locking the EVSE to the car itself while charging/plugged in.

For when you're not charging, that's what a lockbox of some sort is useful for as others have suggested. You need to weatherproof an outdoor outlet in the first place, so going the extra step of having an enclosure for the EVSE isn't too much harder or more expensive. Nobody is going to cut an EVSE cable... since if they do they're likely to get a tasty 240V.

Yeah, I'm less concerned about a cable being cut as much as I am someone unplugging it from the outlet. Sounds like there's ways to think about this though! This is encouraging for me, as I would certainly prefer to get a BEV for my next vehicle.

This is where I've been stuck. I have enough money and income to buy and support an EV charger, but the network isn't there yet for an EV to be a primary vehicle. I also would get punished for ptax as well vs stretching the life of a random used car.

I rent a house and the wall charger my Model 3 came with gets 30mi/hr off the dryer power socket in the garage, with a $45 adapter. Though it might be a regional thing to have a dryer there.

IMO L1 charging is fine unless you live in a very cold climate or your commute is 50+ miles round trip.

Not sure how you’re defining a “very cold” climate, but when I looked into buying a Tesla a few years ago I got the impression that for my use (US Northeast, often at houses I don’t own), in winter it’d wind up using nearly all of the power from an L1 charger just heating the battery.

Disclaimer: I don't live in that kind of climate and my knowledge here comes from talking to people in Minnesota and reading some reddit posts

I think temps above 0°F aren't that big of a deal. The cold will hurt you more in terms of miles per kWh than it will for charging speeds. If you go below 0 that's when the car might spend the majority of incoming juice maintaining battery temps if it's sitting outside on an L1 charger. However even that will vary from car to car.

I see enough teslas around here in winter to know it just be workable for some people somehow, but I suspect the trick is indoor heated garages.

I've got 6.7kw from an outlet on the external wall of my house. No garage.

This is why the entire plan is totally ridiculous and ultimately doomed. There is no flexibility on any level. No hybrids, PHEVs, hydrogen cars, etc. Just demanding everyone to look exclusively at BEVs and only BEVs.