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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

I think this is under appreciated. Its impossible to install fuel stations near the office, its easy to install plugs. I'm waiting for the City to figure out that charging 25c a kW for charging in their parking garages is a net win for them. People plug in when they are at home (usually, our CTO is in an apartment without an easy to reach plug). In that scenario, most of the time, perhaps 90 - 95% of the time you never are 'waiting to fill up' the car is just always ready.

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I think you are underestimating the investment needed to provide charging power to dozens of vehicles. Yeah one or two novelty "EV" spaces with a charging outlet is easy, but scaling up will get expensive, not just more wire and conduit, but new utility substations needed to handle the load.

This is what kills me. People in the tech community seem to think that electric outlets grow on trees or something. Apparently an electric car takes about as much power as a TV set or PS3, electricity will always be readily available at a fraction of the cost of gasoline or diesel, and we can all have a pony when we grow up.

It's great that we're starting to take alternative energy seriously in the US, but the fact that no one is looking at distribution and load-management issues -- up to and including the mandatory standardization of swappable battery modules for EVs -- is really disconcerting.

We're patting ourselves on the back for looking ahead, but we're not looking far enough.

That is certainly possible. If you want to make every space in a parking garage a 'recharger' space then you're going to rebuild the garage anyway. Tesla 'slow' chargers are 10kW [1] so a 300 space garage would be at a maximum of 3MW if every space was used and charging. That is a larger load than some commercial buildings but not exceptionally so (the NetApp building 3 used to draw 1.5MW from the lines) It certainly isn't 'new substation' level of load.

[1] http://www.teslamotors.com/charging#/basics

I wish someone had a good answer for apartments. The last time I had somewhere to charge my car overnight was in my parents' garage around 1990.

I think if we can figure out how to get 40% efficiency solar panels (which have been made in labs, but not mass produced) embedded in electric cars' paint, we're looking at about 1 mph of range added per square foot of solar panel (400 wh per mile / 400 watts per sq foot), and that may work out to 30-40 miles per day of added range just by parking in direct sunlight, which may cover many people's commute, especially for apartment dwellers who probably live closer to work than people who have space for conventionally inefficient solar panels.

That should have been 1 mph of range added per square meter, not per square foot.

.25 a kW is a hell of a bargain if you are plugged in for 8 hours.

That's the thing, the last time it came up in the news it seemed San Jose had a contract with PG&E where they paid a fixed rate for power at 0.12/kWh in their facilities. If they re-sold that power for 0.25/kWh to people parking their electric vehicles, for every kWh sold the city recovers the cost of one kWh they have used. City garages get preferred by folks with electric cars (better occupancy, more revenue) and its a win.

Now as this 'win' becomes more obvious we'll see sharks come in as 'contractors', bidding to 'run the garages' for $X where that number is padded by money they will make selling charge to vehicle owners.

Today, this is silly since the number of electric only cars on the market is vanishingly small, but eventually it will be the norm. Having a parking meter design on the shelf that can charge for parking and supply electricity is probably good preparation for that time.

Wow. I pay .01 per kWh in Chicago with time of day metering between noon-6am.

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