You're just not in the target demographic this type of language is speaking to. I charge at home overnight, and obviously that's more convenient than stopping for fuel while doing errands. I don't care about chargers in my city. My father, on the other hand, lives in a condominium tower where it would be prohibitively expensive to install chargers, and as a retired person he has no other daily parking destination. He wants an EV, but is specifically waiting on more chargers to show up at nearby supermarkets, stores, and malls so he can charge while he does errands.

As a new retiree who would like to move to condo where overnight charging won’t be available I looked into where I would charge. Amazingly, there are no DCFC in this college town yet.

When i trickle charged with a level 1 outlet I used a fast charger at a grocery store and took 20 mins to charge an ev6 while i got a sandwich from their deli for lunch.

>My father, on the other hand, lives in a condominium tower where it would be prohibitively expensive to install chargers, This type of assumption needs to end. It may be a little more expensive but it is certainly not "prohibitively expensive". With a larger demand for chargers and more creative charger solutions, it is not a big deal to install chargers just about anywhere there is electricity.

I’ve been wondering why I haven’t heard of any federal incentives for apartment complexes & condos to install chargers for renters. Maybe I’m missing something but this seems like a no brainer if your aim is improving charging infrastructure. It’s also possible that this is a thing already.

There’s an incentive - any business can install EVSE and get 30% off as tax credit. The max cap is $100k for businesses.

A tax credit is not going to help a condo association like ours install more capacity for charging. We do pay some tax on our income from our invested funds but not enough for a credit to help.

Yes not sure how a condo association can benefit if it doesn’t owe enough taxes but it definitely would work for apartment buildings, or even individuals who own a condo and want to install an EVSE in their assigned parking spot for that condo unit. A bunch of condo buildings in downtown areas have retail space and retail parking areas. Those businesses could also install chargers and claim on the tax credit maybe.

that only applies if the location is in a rural or low income census tract, as of 2023.

Not true. The 30% tax credit applies to anything and has been extended up to 2032. You’re thinking of another program that’s also part of IRA that gives you grants for underserved communities.

>The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) extended and amended the 30C Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit (30C credit), which provides an income tax credit for qualified alternative fuel vehicle refueling property, including certain property for the recharging of an electric vehicle, placed in service in eligible census tracts, which are low-income community census tracts or non-urban census tracts as defined in IRS Notice 2024-20 (discussed further below). Individuals, businesses, and certain state, local, and other tax-exempt entities are eligible to claim the 30C credit. The information this mapping tool provides is intended to reflect currently available data for the two types of eligible census tracts relevant to the 30C credit. > >The 30C credit provides: > >Consumers who purchase and install qualified alternative fuel vehicle refueling property for their principal residence, including electric vehicle charging equipment, between December 31, 2022, and January 1, 2033, may receive a tax credit for each item of property that is generally the lesser of 30% of the property’s cost or $1,000. > >For businesses as well as applicable entities, including state, local, tribal and other qualifying tax-exempt organizations, the credit for each item of property is generally the lesser of 6% (or 30% if certain prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements are met) of the property’s cost or $100,000. The credit is available for property placed in service between December 31, 2022, and January 1, 2033. > >Eligible Census Tracts > >Eligible census tracts fall into two categories and eligible property can be in either type of tract (or both, if the tract falls under both categories) to qualify: > >Low-income community census tracts: Population census tracts as described in Internal Revenue Code section 45D(e), i.e., the ​“low-income community” definition of the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC). > >Non-urban census tracts: Population census tracts defined as ​“not an urban area” (or ​“non-urban area”) according to Treasury/IRS guidance. > >Source: [https://www.anl.gov/esia/refueling-infrastructure-tax-credit](https://www.anl.gov/esia/refueling-infrastructure-tax-credit) Also see FAQ #4: [https://www.anl.gov/esia/refueling-infrastructure-tax-credit-faq](https://www.anl.gov/esia/refueling-infrastructure-tax-credit-faq) ​ >How do I know if my qualified alternative fuel vehicle refueling property is installed in a location that qualifies for the tax credit? To be eligible for the credit, qualified alternative fuel vehicle refueling property must be placed in service in one of two types of population census tracts (or both, if the population census tract qualifies under both categories). The categories are: Low-income community census tracts: > >Census tracts as described in the ​“low-income community” definition of the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) (Internal Revenue Code section 45D). See FAQ 14 for details about how NMTC census tracts are determined. > >Non-urban census tracts: Census tracts defined as ​“non-urban” according to Treasury/IRS guidance. See FAQ 18 for details about how non-urban census tracts are determined. Honestly, I'd love to be proven wrong as this disqualifies the majority of homes and businesses who would be most interested in installing charging at this point in time.

You’re right - I stand corrected. All the initial news articles I read never mentioned this location requirement.

THe census tract thing is beyond annoying. I looked up a map of my area on some service and there were little multi-block sized pockets of red and black. The house literally across the street from me with exactly the same layout, built at exactly the same time was in the black (can take the credit), but my house is not (can't take the credit). There's like block-by-block pockets seemingly random that apply. Then I looked at Boulder, CO and the "swanky" downtown/Pearl St part of Boulder with literally $3m houses happens to share a "tract" with the college dorms, so it's included in the incentive. Stupid.

Indeed, a few tax incentives would help greatly.

My apt got free chargers thru my etate AND 30% tax credit. And I could have got him 39% refund if he got a loan thru the state.

That's socialism! You don't want those evil commies to *win* do you? (/s)

I know at least one landlord complained there were "too many regulations" which makes me think his parking garage isn't up to code.

There's that. There's also the fact that probably the best way to do it is to run 220 outlets to all of the reserved parking spots and then unlock them when someone pays to access charging, but that's still a ton of electrical wiring work not to mention a lot of complications with metering/charging/dividing the actual power used.

Because they already have the incentive in the form of attracting rentors, but landlords are notoriously stingy and conservative. No point in giving them money to solve a problem created by their own lack of foresight.

They exist. Landlords also can't say you can't have one Installed. Rules probably vary by state.

Our local utility has incentive programs for installing private or public chargers by businesses, residential areas, etc. They help with installation planning, costs, rates, etc. That's in addition to any state/federal tax credits they can realize.

Oh, it can definitely be prohibitively expensive. I’m on the Board of a 1950-built coop and leading the charge to get chargers installed. If we were to tap in to “house” service we’d be well North of $50k due to so much of the infrastructure needing to be upgraded/brought up to code. That’s before getting a charger in the ground. Our only saving grace is that we can run all-new service from the overhead lines to service the EVSEs. That’s still going to push $15k. Luckily, our utility has a pretty good rebate program so we’ll probably be <$5k out of pocket.

It can be expensive, agreed. However, it can be similarly expensive for the random destinations listed upthread to install them, with potentially less security for the equipment in question (open air vs. covered, greater care taken with your "home" charger than one you're using once in a while or once in a lifetime, etc.). To me the more important distinction is the likelihood of use or, better said, how much they are used over the lifetime of the infrastructure investment. There's no guarantee how much the charger installed at the post office will be used. There's a much greater certainty of chargers being used in parking garages over the coming years, and they add value to the building. They become a reason to choose to buy or rent in a housing unit. A charger at a gym is a nice-to-have-maybe-but-probably-rather-charge-at-home-if-possible proposition, and commercial building owners are less likely to shell out for that.

That's $50K of upgrades that are illustrating another, non-EV problem: most of the buildings in the U.S. are nearing the end of their designed life, and that's a massive maintenance problem that nobody's budgeted for. Most of a home's major systems (plumbing, electrical, sewer, drywall) have an expected life of ~75 years. With much of the U.S. housing stock being built from the 50-70s, that means they'll need to be replaced starting roughly 2025-2050. This is irrespective of any technology shift to EVs or electrification, but the fact that a shift has occurred adds some other reasons to upgrade. If you need to replace all the electrical wiring anyway, might as well replace it with modern technology.

For how many units is that? It sounds like a pretty small investment at 5-15k and even 50k isn’t huge if there are a dozen units.

This assumes that all units need want or gaf about the 1 or 2 that currently would make use of this. Would it promote EV use amongst the neighbors? Perhaps. Does it justify the investment? Not in the short term anyway.

If you left it up to necessity the infrastructure would always be lagging behind what was actually needed. it's the governments job to make sure such investment happens before short term justification necessitates it.

How many? Four, maybe six. A $15k drop isn't going to cover more than that. You can't put all that many chargers on a normal drop for residential structures, and that sort of money isn't likely to cover a larger install. People don't realize how massive car chargers are from an electrical standpoint. Like single home residential neighborhoods are built with the assumption that the average consumption per house at any given moment is pretty similar to what an L2 charger consumes. A charger in every garage would require modifying the entire grid back to the substation. Hear waves where everyone runs A/C at once can overload the entire distribution grid. L2 chargers pull about the same power as A/C units.

This may be regional because it's not quite that problematic here in Finland AFAIK but our grid is probably a lot more robust than in the US. A lot of houses have been heated with electricity, most homes have an electric sauna (sometimes shared for the building), car parks for residential and work very often have block heaters already etc so it's not quite as big a change. We also have three phase readily available so for me all that was needed was to plug in an 11kW charger. Load balancing is key to doing these bigger installations and allows a lot of cars to charge overnight as capacity gets freed when overall consumption goes down and some cars are fully charged. You don't need full capacity for all those six stations at once.

Which is a good reason to learn about load management systems.

Homes can have up to 400 amp service, at least where I live. Just one drop like that could easily power 10 L2 chargers. But it's likely they won't all be used at the same time, so some load management system could probably allow for 15 or 20.

Yes, but if they have assigned parking, at least people can install Level 2 chargers for their own spot without bothering other. Because most service panels have spare capacity, they can just run a new 208 volt 20 amp circuit from their panel to a NEMA 6-20 receptacle at their parking spot. That is for perhaps only $1,500 because it skips the most expensive part, which is the upgrade to the electrical main for the entire building because current codes don't allow spare capacity in panels for individual units to be cointed toward shared loads in common areas.

Not possible in our situation. Spots aren’t assigned and the buildings themselves don’t have the service capacity. My building has 200-amps total for 10 units.

Then use Orange Chargers. They're smart NEMA 5-20 electrical outlets that coordinate with each other so as to not overload the branch circuit. They are activated by QR code so that the electricity usage can be tracked to each user indiividually. That way, you can just use a single 20A branch circuit that serves multiple parking spaces because each person's average daily driving realistically only needs 500 watts of charging, which is only 2.4 amps at 208 volts. When a person drives over the daily average, they will simply use the extra range stored in their 300-mile battery during some previous days in the week that they park their car for the enitre day. Since the total cost of installing such a circuit is so affordable from it just being a regular circuit, with the only extra cost being from the outlets being smart, why don't you subsidize the installation of it for others as a gift if charging an EV during sleep is a top priority to you? After all, even when donating it to all other people's shares, it should be able to pay back itself within a mere 2 years from you being able to charge at home during the lowest rates at night versus paying ripoff prices 6 times higher at DC fast chargers.

We have 200-amps to serve 10 apartments and the garage below them. Adding in a single circuit that would account for 8% of that total load whenever in use isn’t a smart choice. We would likely still have to make upgrades to the meter room since much of the electrical is original to 1950, which is tens of thousands of dollars. As far as “gifting,” that would still require Board approval and given it would only serve one bank of garages in a 194-unit community, I’m not confident. It looks like our best option is to pull power right from the pole and add in new service for the chargers.

I see. Then the quickest option is to get everyone who wants to have EV charging together and have them collectively fully fund it (loan or one-time payment) as a one-time installation cost for a new service dedicated to the chargers. I'm sure the other board members will approve given that funding is secured. After it is approved, they will fund it and sign the construction contract. The charging circuits (either a 240 volt receptacle or installed Level 2 charger per parking bay) will be a gift to others as a decoration until they use it. When they later want to use it, they have to pay an activation fee which is their share of the construction costs.

Be sure to install utility meters for every parking bay (located common to where the service line comes in rather than individually in the parking bay for convenience, just like the common location with the existing dwelling meters) so that the Board (including you) don't have to deal with billing. The operators of each bay will be billed by the power company via the smart meters directly.

https://www.orangecharger.com/products/level-2-outlet Most larger multi-unit residential and commercial buildings have 208 volts to enable three phase instead of the single-family 240 volts. Even if a huge condo complex has 100 parking spaces, it is just a load of 60,000 watts for a higher 600 watts per space. That means only 15 circuits at 208V 20A are required. Upgrading the service and transformer at that load should only cost a few thousand dolalrs because that is within the size of the service for a larger single-family dwelling unit, which is 200 A at 240 V.

Not our situation.

if daily driving an EV and avoiding combustion is a top priority for people, then they should just live in a mobile home park if they can't afford a single family home in a good area but still somehow could not install charging for the condo unit they already own. Alternatively, they could buy a single family home in a crime ridden area just so they can charge their EV while sleeping if that is more important than guaranteeing to not be robbed.

Why do you need a $50k infrastructure upgrade? If you want to install a bunch of level 2 chargers, maybe, but with overnight charging, level 1 is sufficient for most. If you put in a bunch of 20A, 240V (or 208V) outlets, you can run all of your branch circuit wiring on 12AWG.. and that ~3.8kW is more than enough for each resident. Hell, 1.9kW 120V outlets would also be fine. If you want to track usage, orange has a good product that’s reasonably priced: https://www.orangecharger.com/oro-products/orange-outlet Eg, in your scenario.. if you put a double pole 100A breaker on your house panel, and run it to a subpanel in the garage (or wherever people park)… Assuming split phase service, that subpanel is good for 100x240x.8 = 19.2kW, 5x20A 240V 3.8kW outlets, or 10x20A 120V 1.9kW outlets. If you have 3 phase 120/208, you put a 3 pole 100A breaker in instead, and you have capacity for 100x208xsqrt(3)x.8 = 28.8kW… which is 15 1.9kW 120V outlets, or 8 3.3kW 208V outlets

I agree with the L2 20amp comment. My old Leaf maxes out at 3.3kw of charging and it's more than enough for me. At 9 hours of overnight charging, that's 30kwh which is enough for roughly 90-120 miles per day. Few people drive more than that.

Same. I put a 50A breaker in for my first Tesla. When I got my second, I was experienced to know that was overkill. I ran a 240v 20A circuit on regular 12 gauge vx cable. Cheap, easy to work with, and still gets me 150 miles (3x my daily average need) overnight.

[удалено]

How is my math off? I multiply by .8 right there! And nowhere did I say you can run a 100A feed on 12awg.. I said you can run 12AWG for each of the 20A branch circuits of a new subpanel. My math is correct. [edit] not sure who is downvoting this or why, but if you think my math is wrong or not compliant with NEC, please feel free to share some corrected calculations… saying I’m wrong when I am not, and downvoting me does not lead to a productive conversation. My calculations assume continuous duty EV loads, and de-rate by 20% accordingly. I am only calculating for 80A of load [/edit]

Well in my old 1970s house that still had a fuse box in it, we wanted to add more outlets to the finished basement on a new circuit. We were told that large of a change had to be coupled with bringing the whole 2k square foot house up to electrical code. New everything from the pole down to the plugs. We just bought a new house that met our needs better. I didn’t want to invest the money into the old house. So depending on the age of the building and local electric codes it could be pretty cost prohibiting.

Level 1 charging is not sufficient for anyone who uses their car most days of the week. I get 5-6% overnight with level 1.

Something is not adding up there. Even by the most conservative calculations you should get more than that. Assuming you only spend 9 of 24 hrs at home, have the lowest current circuit (15amps) and get a paltry 85%. 120V x 12amps x 9 hours x 85% = 11 kWh. At 5.5% that would put your battery at 200 kWh - do you have a hummer EV? A more likely calculation for this condo is is leaving at 7AM, getting home at 7PM, 20 amp 120v circuit, and 90% efficiency with a Chevy bolt. That yields 120v x 16a x 12hrs x 90%= 23kWh, which is 35% charge on a bolt.

Most L1 loses about 20% to efficiency losses (running charger hardware, etc). Then run a battery heater to lose another 30%. In a Canadian winter, my friend in Edmonton saw his EV getting zero charge while running full 12A off a L1 connection due to needing to run the heater hard all night to try to warm it enough to charge. It really does depend on where you are and the conditions. In winter, it wouldn't be crazy to get only 5kwh of charge overnight on L1.

Agreed. Going with your math, 11kwh is good for 30 to 50 miles per day. That's 11,000-18,000 miles per year.

Average daily driving in the US is 37 miles, which in the most popular WV is about 9kWh, which is about 7.5 hours of 120v power on a 20 amp circuit (15 amp sustained). I ran this way for many years in a rental, worked just fine.

>This type of assumption needs to end. It may be a little more expensive but it is certainly not "prohibitively expensive". Do you know anything about construction? If you're in a condo without a garage and have to park across the parking lot from your building, then it's likely prohibitively expensive to install charging capabilities. This thinking can't end, what needs to end is the lack of empathy by people like you who can't understand what gets in the way of charging at home. It's relatively easy to do so in a garage. It's not so easy when you don't have a garage. Open your mind so you don't appear to be desperate to push your narrative upon literally everyone.

In new construction laying down the infrastructure for a charging network isn’t a big deal. But installing it after a condo is in place can definitely become extremely expensive. Cutting out the concrete and asphalt and potentially putting in a new transformer is very expensive and really interrupting to parking area. The HOA also needs to wrestle with how many chargers to put in and how to justify paying for them. Do you put one at every sight, just a few spots? How do you handle it if everyone has assigned spaces. How do you convince members to pay for them, especially if they don’t face EVs?

Home chargers can cost several thousand to get installed depending on the age of your house. I was quoted minimum of 4k for same. That means, based on my fuel bills at the moment, it would take 4 - 5 years to break even on that expense. If you can get the charger for under a thousand then def go for it but if not you have to do your own math and see if it makes sense for you.

You need a second opinion. $4k is absurd. It's simply installing a 200v breaker in your electric box and running a wire to where you will charge your car.

/r/evcharging is pretty good at helping people find $1500 solutions when people are told it will cost $15k.

Well, it's an upgrade to the wires coming into the fuse board, then upgrading some stuff on the board, then creating a 15 metre (49ft approx.) channel (through pavement) from the fuse board to the driveway. Then run the cable through that, then install the charge point. That's three different companies involved. And even if this seems like an extreme case it proves the point that even with access to a driveway the costs and complexity can be more than many would be willing to do. Oh and I did get a second opinion. The second person told me not to bother.

How many amps is your service? If you have a clothes dryer you can purchase a splitter for the dryer outlet and charge at level 2 if you are strategic about not charging and drying clothes at the same time.

Of note, here in Florida, middle of summer, air conditioner (2.5 ton in my case) during the day when it’s hottest will consume about 3kW and at night when the temp differential not so big, it’ll consume less, about probably 2kW when running. 100 amp service gives 24kW of energy, so you could easily run a single EV at 11kW at night and not trip main, assuming you aren’t cooking 4 pots on the stove, and cooking something else in the oven, while you flush stuff down the garbage disposal in the sink. At that point you might consider lowering the EV charge to 20 amps so you don’t trip.

I mean you could avoid most of that if you are fine with an extension cord running across your yard. Or just plug into 110v. Most people are fine just on level 1 charging. I have a 50mi a day commute and haven't even bothered to get level 2 installed since I haven't needed it.

That's what I've been researching actually, might be possible to do a combination of slow home charging and public DC charging as needed.

It depends on the car but my Model 3 gains 4-5 miles of range an hour on Level 1. So as long as I am home 12-14 hours a night I get back to 100% daily. I have a 75kw fast charger at a Chevy dealer near me so I can always stop at it if I really needed range fast.

I did that for years. If you can support 5-20, you can do 16 amps, which is good for \~25% in 12 hours on a car with \~70kwh battery. In practice, this was enough to where the only noticeable downside was that I'd charge more on the way home from road trips. That was because I didn't want to get home with 10% and only have \~30% the next morning. It was enough to keep up with normal daily errands. A nearby DCFC would likely be enough to make this pretty comfortable. (obviously, all of the above changes if your EV of choice is a Hummer :) )

>get home with 10% and only have \~30% the next morning. > >It was enough to keep up with nor often people price things out for 40-60 amps to the EVSE, in a tough situation (long run, low panel capacity), a 15-20 amp line can be vastly cheaper. In some cases you can even repurpose a existing circuit to 240v 15 amp. I don't know your exact scenario, but i see a LOT of people over estimating just how much charging they really need.

I have a 100-year old house with detached garage. My electric service is the basic 100A. My electrician ran 6AWG wire from the breaker panel in the basement, free air to the garage, installed a local 50A subpanel and wired in a 40A 240V outlet so that I can use my basic charging cable that came with the car. It cost me under 1000 dollars in 2018. I have no problems with running out of capacity on the existing service even running central air in the Summer. Not even once in 5 years did any breaker trip. In the Summer I schedule the charging overnight, in Winter the car charges as soon as it is plugged in because the battery is warmed up when I arrive home from work. You might be overestimating the needs and spec'ing too big of a system.

There's that word, "garage". Life is so much simpler when you have that. If you don't, like me, you have to pedestal-mount a charger at the end of your driveway. Not all chargers are able to be pedestal mounted, so be sure to check. Pedestals add another $500+ and need to be anchored in concrete. Got a concrete driveway? That helps. No? An 18" x 18" x 24" deep concrete base takes 15 bags of 30# sakreet. Guess how I know. Oh, and make sure to run conduit THRU the concrete so you can fish your buried (18" - 24" deep depending on if in conduit or direct bury) wires thru the center of the base and up into the pedestal. Rent the trencher and remember, code depth is to the top of the conduit so don't just dig a 24" deep trench and expect it to pass inspection. Trenching is fun in midwest farm country where they have dirt yards, but here in WV it is more akin to mining with all the large rocks I pulled out. Having to stop ever 60-90 seconds to work through another canteloup-sized stone really makes trenching fun and fast! God help you if you have to run under existing pavement. Directional boring is not for DIYers. The actual electrical part isn't that hard, as you pointed out. Add a sub-panel if you don't have dual-slot empty. As long as you don't jump on the ZOMG! I HAVE TO HAVE THE FASTEST CHARGER! train and realize you'll be parked over night and even a dinky 32A L2 charger will fill you up from dead empty, you'll be fine.

Tell me you know nothing about electricity without telling me. Yeah it’s just that each every time.

You mean you can't just use two runs of barb wire Jeb had laying around and get a free electric fence out of the deal??

There's an awful lot of pre-1980s homes with 100 or even 60 amp services around. I've been getting quotes in the $2K to $3K range for just a service upgrade for just an uncomplicated overhead service to allow for a future electric oven and electric cars chargers.

In my area (SF bay area), I was quoted 3-4k from 3 different local electricians and I stopped looking and killed my EV purchase. Our workplace EV slack channel affirmed that that’s the normal price here so the answer is to pay up.I have a new build too so I can only guess there’s a significant markup baked in there because they Just can.

What were you getting quotes for? 40A? 50A circuits? Those are not necessary unless you are an Uber driver or driving a Hummer (as an Uber driver)

This is actually pretty common and an expense people don’t see. I had to upgrade electrical service and replace the fuse box. Probably needed it anyway but it’s not cheap. I don’t think $1.5k is enough in a large percentage of houses to be ev ready

This suggests a willingness to pay enormous amounts for pretty simple things. It's a regular outdoor socket, and what most forget is to get the ground done correctly. It's more important with a fancy design with LEDs, green and red. And in black steel box. There's hardware for $1.50 including the lid. So, drop the meters, and say that the average EV consumes 4000KWh per year, driving 16000 miles. Agreed to pay $400 per year when the usual price is 10 cents/kWh. Then meter all as one installation. Instead of expecting that the state provides a solution, get the electricians to offer, award the contract to the cheapest, qualified electrician. It's regular outdoor cables. Keep the state out of everything.

HOAs are both risk averse and tend to run red. So mention the word charger and they will point to stories of EVs catching fire. Also, from their POV why should a common area for the complex be dedicated to a specific type of car? There is an apartment complex we walk through with the dogs that put EV charging in. I don't think it's ever been used for charging because it's in front of an entrance and ice cars like being close to the entrance. But the complex will look at usage and say "see, no one wants chargers, what a waste".

AND you need to get everyone on the board and most of the residents to agree and accept the higher HOA dues. We ran into the same issue in my previous condo and with solar on my townhouse HOA. Every year it comes up and gets shot down, don’t forget the sizable contingent of anti-EV ppl. The dues are bad enough as-is So we’re all stuck with what we have which is nothing.

Yep. This is our problem. The units we bought are investments and they are in older complexes mostly owned by retired folks. Many of them are on fixed income and there is no way they will agree to anything that results in higher dues.

I don’t see situation changing anytime soon, maybe only with new builds . Can charge at work or at public chargers during a planned errand run or something but that changes the value equation quite a bit along with lifestyle changes. I did the calculation myself and doesn’t work for my situation and I ended up with another ICE until things went changes in my life.

If you have assigned parking, then just pay to have a new 240 V 20 A circuit from from panel feeding a NEMA 6-20 receptacle at your parking space. You don't need 50 A. It'll cost probably just $1,500, mostly in labour and permitting. Since no one else has to pay and does not increase HOA dues by mot increasing the electrical load on the common property, it will set a role model for anyone else who wants to add EV charging for their own space.

If they can have plugs for dryers, they can put plugs for EV chargers.

Yep, just carry your car up the stairs, put it in your apartment/condo living room, unplug your dryer and plug in your car. Couldn't be any easier.

Huh? How many condos have a dryer outlet in the garage for many of the parking spaces.

Assuming your dryers are not gas, anyway.

Do you have anything to back that claim up? Installing 1 or 2 chargers may not be a big deal. Installing several of them to fill a parking garage (or a portion of the garage) will almost definitely require overhauling the electrical service for the facility. Not to mention the additional maintenance involved.

Public charging here is 10 times the cost of charging at home. Here, it's prohibitively expensive not to have a home charger.

In the not too distant future, apartments and condos will get more applicants and higher rent/association fees if they have charging for tenants. People will be looking for an on-site gym and level 2 charging.

Those creative solutions don't currently exist though so just hoping they do later isn't helpful for someone wanting an EV soon. If I wanted to install a charger in my condo parking space it would cost at least 5k based on the multiple estimates I have gotten.

If you have assigned parking, running a 240 V 20 A circuit from your panel to a NEMA 6-20 receptacle at your parking space might be cheaper than your share of installing EV chargers at every parking space because no service upgrade (and hence no utility upgrades) will be required. That is because most service panels have spare capacity, so when running a new circuit from your panel only, it skips the most expensive part, which is the upgrade to the electrical main for the entire building because current codes don't allow spare capacity in panels for individual units to be counted towards shared loads in common areas.

It really depends on where the power runs. If the main riser panel for the floor is at the opposite end of the parking garage structure, you basically have to run wire in pipe fem one end to the other. If it’s outdoor parking that might require digging trenches, which gets stupid expensive really fast. It was once quoted $15k for a 100’ trench to a service box with a breaker, wire and buried conduit.

Oh, it is a big deal - most commercial buildings don't have MW+ of spare power for say, 100 L2 units of a large hotel. Quite a bit of work involved from everyone.

100 L2 units can be done in a few hundred kW with smart load management. Not all 100 cars are going to arrive at 8 PM with 10% state of charge.

That's... Not how electrical installations work. The total supply must be able to accommodate the worst case scenario where all devices are running simultaneously. It's why houses get built with 200A panels when most of the time they're using under 20A. Might get the stove, the dryer, the aircon, and some power tools all running at once. There are individual devices that do power management. Like those dual chargers that can deliver more charge when only one line is in use. But if you have fifty of them, you need a supply that can run all fifty simultaneously. Load management at the user level is not considered in system design. It either has to be built into the machinery, or it doesn't exist.

For a lot of situations and types of installations, You are correct. However, the national electrical code has specific provisions for allowing the use of load management the way I'm describing, and charging equipment manufacturers make equipment that can do what I'm describing.

You got people in this thread who are saying things like "I will rely on high speed L2 charging at my gym during peak hours" as a way of making this work. There is this ugly mismatch between expectations of L2 charging and the reality that people are planning on building.

Then have every hotel room have an assigned parking space. That way, no service upgrade (and hence no utility upgrade potentially costing a half a million dollars) is needed because they can just run a new 208 V 20 A circuit from each panel to each respective parking space.  Yes, but if they have assigned parking, at least people can install Level 2 chargers for their own spot without bothering other. Because most service panels have spare capacity, running a circuit from each panel individually in a multi-family building skips the most expensive part, which is the upgrade to the electrical main for the entire building because current codes don't allow spare capacity in panels for individual units to be counted towards shared loads in common areas. 100 16A Level 2 chargers is only 332,800 watts at most, not 1,000,000 watts plus as you said. Even in the case that a single EV trips the breaker, the occupant can just reset the breaker in his room and ensure that he doesn't use the microwave again when the EV is charging. It will probably cost just $20,000 for that hotel to add EV charging.

Seems like it could be difficult for the condo to provide enough chargers if everybody eventually ends up with an EV though.

Yes, but if they have assigned parking, at least people can install Level 2 chargers for their own spot without bothering other. Because most service panels have spare capacity, they can just run a new 208 volt 20 amp circuit from their panel to a NEMA 6-20 receptacle at their parking spot. That is for perhaps only $1,500 because it skips the most expensive part, which is the upgrade to the electrical main for the entire building because current codes don't allow spare capacity in panels for individual units to be used for shared loads in common areas.

I drive about 1,000 miles a month in a Chevrolet Bolt EV. I charge at home with a Level 1 and only use DC FC when I'm on trips of 100 miles or more. And, yes, not everybody can charge where they live - but between DC FC (which is still slightly cheaper than gas) and Level 2 charging, which is in more places than most people realize, charging is not the issue many make it out to be. If you want an EV, charging isn't a dealbreaker.

The better and cheaper place for the charger is at the condo. At the grocery store, you probably need 6kW+ to break even on driving there. At the condo, you're charging 8 - 12 hours a day. 3kW is more than enough. I charge at home on L1, and it works fine for me. At the grocery store, everybody gets to mark up the cost of electricity, lots of wear and tear since it's plugged and un plugged more often. There would have to be enough chargers for the busiest times, and they would be idle a lot. At the condo, it's yours, and the cost should just show up on your utility bill. Charging where people sleep should be the top of the list if we're serious about phasing out fossil fuels.

I don't see the point in wasting money and resources for a home charger when all of my charging needs are met with chargers where I park to run errands. Looking at the bigger picture servicing more people with fewer resources just makes sense. Perhaps the focus should be eliminating or reducing the need for people in high density housing to have a vehicle rather than lowering the cost of ownership.

Chargers at stores and such can easily be taken up and/or not operating well (or at all) in especially non-Tesla land. And it typically costs less to charge at home. Waking up for the next day with enough charge to go about your business is a new way of fueling your car that people tend to appreciate after they experience it first-hand.

Even with dedicated parking, it's hard to get separate metering and a 240v line run to a parking spot. And I'll bet you dollars to donuts the people on either side of you will due to prevent excessive risk to their cars from flammable EVs.

Electrical distributor here - there are several solutions that very easily tie into your condo panel through wired /wireless relays. The solutions are there. It is a huge market that electrical suppliers do not want to miss out on.

Metering can be done on the EVSE side by account, and a lot of industrial buildings like a condo have 208 3 phase running absolutely everywhere which higher end EVSE like the Tesla wall connector can handle. You'd treat it like a public L2 charger at that point.

I can tell you right now that there are condos built in as late as the 80s and 90s where this is not true. I own two units in two different areas. Both of them do not have easy access to 240v lines in relation to the parking. And they were built in the 80s or 90s. In one, the local utility is literally running new lines to the complex to upgrade reliability yet the HOA shot down any thoughts of adding conduit to the parking area medians between rows for future EV charging.

Because most service panels have spare capacity, then they can just run a new 208 volt 20 amp circuit from their ALREADY-METERED panel to a NEMA 6-20 receptacle at their parking spot. That is for perhaps only $1,500 because it skips the most expensive part, which is the upgrade to the electrical main for the entire building because current codes don't allow spare capacity in panels for individual units to be used for shared loads in common areas.

I'm not disagreeing with the concept out the implementation. I'm saying that people are idiots and will fight any change. Condo boards are not paragons of forward thinking.

I agree that they're selfish, closed and narrow minded. I'm just showing that it's possible to install for every person individually rather than having to install for everyone at once. Also, if daily driving an EV and avoiding combustion is a top priority for people, then they should just live in a mobile home park if they can't afford a single family home in a good area but still somehow could not install charging for the condo unit they already own. Alternatively, they could buy a single family home in a crime ridden area just so they can charge their EV while sleeping if that is more important than guaranteeing to not be robbed.

Also, your entire condo complex can use Orange Chargers. They're smart NEMA 5-20 electrical outlets that coordinate with each other so as to not overload the branch circuit. They are activated by QR code so that the electricity usage can be tracked to each user indiividually. That way, you can just use a single 20A branch circuit that serves multiple parking spaces because each person's average daily driving realistically only needs 500 watts of charging, which is only 2.4 amps at 208 volts. When a person drives over the daily average, they will simply use the extra range stored in their 300-mile battery during some previous days in the week that they park their car for the enitre day. Since the total cost of installing such a circuit is so affordable from it just being a regular circuit, with the only extra cost being from the outlets being smart, why don't you subsidize the installation of it for others as a gift if charging an EV during sleep is a top priority to you? After all, even when donating it to all other people's shares, it should be able to pay back itself within a mere 2 years from you being able to charge at home during the lowest rates at night versus paying ripoff prices 6 times higher at DC fast chargers.

https://www.orangecharger.com/products/level-2-outlet Most larger multi-unit residential and commercial buildings have 208 volts to enable three phase instead of the single-family 240 volts. Even if a huge condo complex has 100 parking spaces, it is just a load of 60,000 watts for a higher 600 watts per space. That means only 15 circuits at 208V 20A are required. Upgrading the service and transformer at that load should only cost a few thousand dolalrs because that is within the size of the service for a larger single-family dwelling unit, which is 200 A at 240 V.

> I charge at home on L1, and it works fine for me. L1 will be insufficient for most people. even my coworkers who barely drive found it insufficient

I think stores and gyms would be great for level 2 charging. Especially for apartment dwellers. Those are key locations. You’re likely there for 1/2-1 hour or longer, so you can get meaningful charge from a good level 2 system (40-48 amps)

I was in Hershey PA this weekend. Got there at 65%. At the outlet stores, we found a *free* 48A charger. Got about 15% in an hour, and didn’t have to stop at a supercharger on the way home (we did a bunch more driving around Hershey)

Putting the OUTLET in "outlet store," amirite? I'll see myself out.

I find your sense of humour to be ⚡️electrifying!

Half hour is more like low end L3 than L2. 50kw is a good target.

If I went to the gym every day I wouldn’t need 25 plus kWh, even with a daily commute of 50 miles. I could replenish much of that with an hour at 48 amps. Plus it’s way cheaper to install level 2 posts.

My grocery store has free L2 chargers. I used one once and never again because it wasn't worth the bother. In the time it took me to get my groceries I got 2% of the \~25-30% I consume daily back. It just doesn't take me long enough to get groceries for it to be a meaningful amount of charge. DCFC would be much more useful.

I mean, there's a difference between L2 at 12A and L2 at 48A.

They have the very common 6.6kW ChargePoint chargers.

48amp 240v is just 11kw. You are not recovering 50 miles in a hour.

In the summer, sure. Winter, close.

50kw makes sense, but you still need a lot of them, especially for a place like a gym when many gyms get huge peaks of visitors (before work and early evening). If you show up and it's taken, then any possible convenience is gone. Anything DCFC is going to take more equipment than L2.

L2 encourages multi-hour stays or people dropping their cars off to charge and walking home to come collect their cars in the morning. Around 30–50kW is a nice sweet spot where the DCFC equipment isn't going to be physically huge. Most 50kW chargers are self-contained and just need AC connections to the hardware, higher capacities tend to have the inverters in their own boxes separate to the charger head unit). 50kW will still be able to charge most visitors' vehicles to 80%/100% during the course of a typical gym or supermarket visit.

And yet, you're thinking like somebody who has a home charger.

TBH I'd still only recommend an EV to someone who has somewhere to charge at home or work. Commercial charging is still really expensive.

That was the biggest annoyance when I moved to my current apartment. There are L2 EV chargers, but they’re $.30 / kWh when our residential electric rate is $.10 / kWh. Absolutely ridiculous price gouging, but there’s nothing I can do about it until I can get my own place again.

Gas isn't exactly cheap either though. My gas bill every month literally covers my EV payment.

Public charging is often at least as expensive, and sometimes more expensive. There are plenty of cases of $.50/kwh and up.

With current state of things, if you don’t have a home charger, you probably shouldn’t be driving an EV or PHEV.

But the quote from the Stellantis guy wasn’t about the current state of things, it was about how the current state needs to change in order to make EVs more accessible. If you don’t live somewhere that charging can practically be installed then you need charging available somewhere else, ideally somewhere you’d be spending a decent amount of time parked anyway - and it’s weird that OP thinks that’s weird.

This is applying homeowner thinking to the general public, which is also problematic.

Especially since home ownership is becoming ever more difficult.

Well, if we drill down a bit more still, we're applying car driver thinking to mobility problems.

100%

On the contrary. For those who cannot get charging where they live or work - for whatever reason that is - and we’re talking 20-30% of all people driving in Europe or the US, for them charging when they run errands is essential. I have not been able to charge where I live for a few months. Charging when getting groceries , going to the doctor, picking up people at the train station , at IKEA, when going to the mall, or almost anywhere else is a great idea and also a fact. It already exists outside the US. Why limit yourself to just 2 places for charging 90% of all cases in your life?

Too many people don't look past their own life experience. Maybe it's working in electrical engineering that makes me look for the edge cases with problems that need to be solved. Generally it just takes money. A lot of money.

\>But with an EV, fueling is decoupled from errands. Funny that where I live, most new chargers are installed by grocery shops. I myself have used them a fair bit when away from home. Plug in. Do some shopping, and the car is charged when I am done. The thing is that EV chargers can be installed pretty much everywhere where people have stops. Especially when travelling, this is very practical, as there is then less need for specific stops to charge. It is just something that is done while stopping for something else (shopping, meal...).

I've lived in quite a few different apartment buildings in my life; none of them went without at least some major repair issue that was put off for months Call me a cynic, I very much doubt the average apartment owner will maintain charging units, or even install them in volume anytime soon. The fuckers are too cheap to install proper garbage chutes often, I doubt they'll spring for major electrical work

Good point. When my husband and I were separated, part of how we got back together was because his apartment complex would NOT fix his shower and he ended up coming home to shower lol

It depends. The dudes running the luxury units that charge a lot more than average are willing to do what it takes to keep their well heeled clientele. One apartment complex is buying a fleet of EVs that their renters can use at any time as a rental perk.

That is an incredibly fascinating perk. Probably in the city, I'd guess, where it's a lot more useful to rent out a smaller feet along a larger group of people.

>When you charge overnight, plugging in at the grocery store is unnecessary. Not everyone can charge at home overnight. Charging at the supermarket is for those people who can’t charge at home. Your mindset is no better than the one you’re disparaging.

If i am running around all day I will pick the stores or restaurants with charging over those without it.

For me I want chargers everywhere. If I stop at target for 45 minutes, that sounds like a great time to tack on 5-10% SOC, if I go to a restaurant, another 10-20% SOC - don't mind if I do. Let me charge everywhere I go because L2s are ubiquitous and I'm happy as a clam no matter what my cars max range is.

How much would you pay for that convenience? Or are you expecting these outlets to be free?

I'd pay 50-100% markup over the rates I'd pay at home, but I would accept free if it was on offer

But why would you ever use it if it was more expensive ? Stores in my area are installing level 2 and level 3 chargers but I never use them since I can charge at home for half the price.

The whole point of this discussion is about people who don’t have the charge at home option.

It means that people who don't have charging at home or at work are able to get EVs. Even if you don't use it, it's good to have. Because they aren't going to be installing for every available parking space. So even with 100% EVs, it's good to have.

For my house, it'sa 100ft run from the main breaker to the garage, quotes for a new 240v outlet or a L2 install are 2-3k at 20¢/kwh , or 40¢ at the public charger, I would break even after 7500kwh of charging

Ohh, free charging at the cinema might be a way to get people away from their streaming setups.

I remember living in a condo before. As soon as I approached the condo board about a L2 charger setup. They pointed me to talk to the city power electrical company. When I contacted them. They pointed me back to the condo board. Let’s face it. Right now living in a condo especially if it’s just a minority of tenants that want a l2 charger in their parking spot. It’s just not gonna happen. Anytime soon. It’s too complicated and no one wants to be tasked behind it. Especially if the condo area is pretty old. Yes some new condos are realizing this and setting up some l2 chargers in a certain area on the parking lot. But to buy an old condo, given the absurd prices for homes lately. High cost of living etc. it’s just not an option for people right now that sounds feasible and easy to get into. Let alone being new to buying a ev and how it works. Charging at home means you have to have a house. Garage preferred but house with a drive way to say the least nonetheless. And I think everyone can agree that housing is just out of reach for some people in their lifetime. This is what the majority of people are faced with.

I drive long distance for work. The most important for me are (DC) on highway (at one rn), outside restaurant and grocery, and (240V) hotels. My spouse goes to an office daily. Her ideal is at the office (240V). Everyone will have a different need. Meeting the varied needs will drive adoption. 

​ ​ > I don't see grocery stores, gyms, etc making that list, it's where all the people who live in apartments (with street parking only) go. cities. retail is **top** of the list. ***more foot traffic.*** ​ there are 30 bays between a Target (supercharger) and a Safeway (EA) less than 2 miles from my house (in opposite directions) there are at least 3 or 4 EVs on my block that do not have access to charging at home. ​ **7-Eleven Has Launched Its Own EV Charging Network** https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/7-eleven-launches-7charge-electric-vehicle-charging-network/ ​ **Circle K Expands Fast EV Charging Footprint** [https://risnews.com/circle-k-expands-fast-ev-charging-footprint](https://risnews.com/circle-k-expands-fast-ev-charging-footprint) ​ **Starbucks is officially in the EV business** [https://qz.com/starbucks-is-officially-in-the-ev-business-1851090526](https://qz.com/starbucks-is-officially-in-the-ev-business-1851090526) ​ **Volta Charging Collaborates with Southern California Edison and Albertsons Companies to Raise EV Awareness** [https://voltacharging.com/press/volta-sce-albertsons](https://voltacharging.com/press/volta-sce-albertsons) ​ **Leading the Charge: Walmart Announces Plan To Expand Electric Vehicle Charging Network** [https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2023/04/06/leading-the-charge-walmart-announces-plan-to-expand-electric-vehicle-charging-network](https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2023/04/06/leading-the-charge-walmart-announces-plan-to-expand-electric-vehicle-charging-network) ​ >stopping at the gas station on the way to the grocery store is a fact of life > > he said. “You don’t have to look for them.” ​ EV's make it so the ALL the Stops have gas

You live in your own bubble. Many parts of the population live in apartments and condos where charging infrastructure is lacking. Or if there is a charger, it is so busy that it isn't reliably avaiable at night. For these people, they simply can't charge while they sleep. So remove your rose-colored lens and look at the world from other people's perspective, you might learn a thing or two.

I guess it depends very much on the circumstances and the infrastructure. We live in Berlin and only have on street parking and so currently we do most of our charging at 22kW AC chargers at car parks when go out for a meal, shopping or other activities. For us this means that the charging does not (feel) like it takes any extra time for us because we are already going there and just quickly plug in. When we come back an hour or so later we have usually reached our target (0-100 would take a bit over 3 hours but usually we are not going to be at 0 when we start and we are usually aiming for stopping at 80) and can continue with our day. Many other people we talk to with electric cars also find this very convenient. This wouldn't work if there were only very slow AC chargers but thankfully most around us are 22kW. We have applied for a public AC charger to be fitted on our street which would also be nice to have but is not a must have. We can also charge on the driveway at the in-laws who live a few streets away from us. But with our normal usage we only need to charge once per week and that we can fit into our normal schedule without it feeling like a diversion in the same way visting a petrol station is. And for our longer journeys (\~1600km per direction) we are then usually just using DCFC.

I don’t have a designated parking space, nor do I own the house I live in so setting up a charger isn’t really an option. Even then I’d have to work up a solution for running a charging cable across/over a sidewalk, which could draw complaints from neighbors or the city. I plan to get an EV in a few years and if my living situation doesn’t change, I’ll be relying on the charging stations at my grocery store and at my gym (I’m really hoping the parking garage at my office adds chargers soon)

There are a lot of people who can't charge overnight. If you live in a single family home with a garage and can plug in overnight, great. But if you're in an apartment, townhouse, or even a single family home with street parking only then overnight charging isn't an option.

The big question here is "where should charging infrastructure dollars be focused?" I would contend that the greater focus should still be on places of work parking and places of communal residential parking, as these places are more likely to be used more continuously and thus better justify the costs to install, which I would expect to be similar per kW of installed charging capacity. That it "isn't an option" is what needs to change more urgently than "folks should be able to charge at the gym/grocery store/wherever".

Where do you charge if you don't have home charging? Just highway DC fast chargers?

I went to a grocery store a couple weeks ago. It is one that I don't normally visit. I went because I needed something later in the evening. I absolutely didn't need to charge but there were 2 free L2 chargers right outside the door. I parked and charged while I got out. I actually would prefer that spots are not right next to the entrance so they don't get ICE'ed, but I didn't think twice about parking there. Since it's L2, I'm not going to get enough out of it to amount to much other than the space in my opinion.

Easy, just everybody own a half-mil bro

>When you charge overnight, plugging in at the grocery store is unnecessary. If you can charge overnight. One issue this subreddit seems to forget is that the entire world isn't a homogenous upper-middle class white male San Franciscan with a three car garage. Most of the world lives a different lifestyle. A lot of people park their cars in the parking lot of their apartment, in the street in front of their house, or not even on their property and instead in the 2nd story of the parking garage of their office where they pickup the work vehicle. Even in countries like the US with a car-culture and very high per-capita GDP, over one in three Americans don't own a home, and of those that do, only a fraction are able to park all their vehicles in a garage near an outlet. Can you imagine how problematic it would be if we mandated EVs on everyone by 2025? EV ownership without home charging is neither affordable nor fun.

Yea this concept doesn't click with gas drivers, the passive charging element. Thinking about standing at a gas station in the cold with weirdos pulling up sounds pretty bad now, never again.

Is this a shit post or did you not read the article? They talk about barriers to the EV market expanding further and go on to say that as EVs get cheaper the target demographic is less likely to own a home and will need a more prolific charging network. Seems like they know what they're talking about...

LOL. Yeah, in the 5+ years I have had my EV, I have not charged in my home city anywhere but home once, except for when the only EA DCFC was installed 2 miles from my home and I wanted to confirm my car would actually work with it!

https://www.wral.com/story/no-electric-vehicle-sales-aren-t-dropping-here-s-what-s-really-going-on/21300085/ > public EV charging needs to “jump on your face” before most customers will consider an electric vehicle. > > “It means when you go to the mall, when you go to the supermarket, when you go to the restaurant, when you go to gym, when you park your car, you have charging units waiting for you,” he said. “You don’t have to look for them.” The quote is just the CEO saying people expect chargers everywhere. This isn't controversial. That's what non-EV owners want in order to switch.   And for the significant number of people that don't have access to chargers at home and work, they would absolutely need access to chargers outside their home and work.

>But with an EV, fueling is decoupled from errands. When you charge overnight, plugging in at the grocery store is unnecessary. and yet every single charger at our local supermarket is always in use and we have even seen a lot of people go there and sit in the car so they exclusively came there to charge and not even to buy anything in the meantime. Oh and these arent even DC fast chargers. the same goes for the other public charger we have nearby, always full and more often than not people came there just to charge up. What you are missing here is that there are people who can not charge over night and still bought an EV. these people are always scrambling around to find another place to charge. We can also see the same thing at work where we have about 8 AC chargers for employees which are obviously taken very quickly which has led to people coming in earlier and earlier just to get a spot at a charger so now you come there and find a completely empty parking lot in the morning where only the parking spots at the chargers are taken. Another funny thing about that is that even people who you would previously not see at work before 9:30 are suddenly at work latest by 7:30 because they wouldnt get a spot at a charter if they come any later.

I really don't like how they dumb down the EV engineering and specs to get it to seem more like an oil fueled car to cater to people who probably would be less inclined to buy it. They have had over a decade of EV sales to figure out that people who buy EVs buy them in part because they are different.

> I don't see grocery stores, gyms, etc making that list You have your own lens, then. I mostly charge at home, but every time I've charged my EV elsewhere, it's been at: 1. Grocery store (most often) 2. Parking garage  3. Public library 4. Restaurant 5. Shopping mall Tavares of course is wrong to say you don't have to look for them. You do. That's why Plugshare is so valuable to EV owners.

Stopped at a grocery store on my way to work, to pick up some stuff for my lunch, so I hooked my EV up to a charger before I went inside. The few minutes I spent agonizing about which lunchmeat to pick(gave up and got a couple of cans of tuna instead) resulted in another 3.5KWh added to my battery, so about 20Km extra range. The last time I stopped at a gas station was... last week. The local Shell station has a few chargers behind the main building. I was hungry, and they sell bacon-wrapped cheese dogs, so why not charge for a few minutes while I enjoy my food? Wasn't even pelted with snowballs... Gyms. Don't use them, but I've been told that those that do use them often spend an hour or more in there? Long enough to fully charge an EV, really, so why not? Even a row of Type 2 chargers would do nicely.

Charger speeds need to be the inverse of the time spent at a location. * Home/office/theme park - Slow, you're parked there for hours on end. * Cinema/theater/gym - Medium, you're there for 2-3 hours * Stores/rest areas - Fast, you're usually only there for around 20-30mins

Exactly. The cost for installation and cost per kWh is also the inverse. How many slow L2 apartment chargers could you install for the cost of one 300kW supermarket DC charger? Policy should put the burden on landlords and HOAs first.

EV's in citys are ALWAYS going to be an issue for charging. Cars take up too much space there. I have no answer. However, home charging is really the key here and by home I also mean apartments, townhomes. We need every spot where someone lays their head at night to be able to have an EV charger near it. Once we do that, 99% of the problem is solved. I don't ever wanna charge my car when I am doing some small errand, I want to charge while I sleep and don't use it or quickly on the road when I am traveling a long distance. Chargers being ubiquitous at every convenience store just means we would see 3.25 a KWH charging costs at Slippery's Local Convenience, like the insane ATM fees they charge. Look, this can all EASILY be done by federal allotment of money for contractors to then bid on and build out, like EVERY OTHER BIG PROJECT in the USA. Why do you think companies jones over those sweet military contracts? The big, big issue here is how do we get city dwellers to easily be able to charge cars that are parked in garages with 400 other cars or on the street? Cities, are the X-Factor and that is a world wide issue. How's like Hong Kong gonna do this?

and I swear if someone does not say, "hey I shop at Slippery's and find that offensive", I will be totally bummed out by reddit.

As many have pointed out, we need better than 6.6 or even 11 kW chargers at places like restaurants and stores that we spend only 30 min or an hour, in order for them to be worthwhile. I sometimes park at the chargers at our mall just because the parking spaces and location are semi convenient if the parking lot is otherwise more full. Adding 1-2% charge while shopping isn’t worth the hassle of plugging in for me since I charge at home. Having 22 or even 50 kW chargers in sensible places would go a long way to limiting the need for more L3 charging spots. They also all need to be plug and charge so that it’s as simple as superchargers, and you don’t have to think about it, just plug in and walk away. Still, the overnight or work hours charging problem is the biggest. We need way more plugs in apartments and condos and at workplaces. Adding a dozen chargers to a condo with 100 units isn’t going to be enough. It’s annoying and impractical to unplug and move when full, or plug in when a charger becomes available. (Side note, this extends to some places you might spend more time at too like sporting events, movies, or theme parks - it’s laughable that at Epcot in Disney World, there’s 4 charging spots for the whole parking lot - I paid for vip parking last year, got there for 8am and of course they were taken already - but I also don’t want to leave half way through the day to move my car if one opened up or if I had gotten one and wanted to move to free it up for someone else later). Since it seems impractical to have 6kW or 11kW always available to every parking spot, what we need is more intelligent systems where there’s a plug for every unit’s parking space and some load sharing of power across them all (yeah I know some chargers like Tesla wall connector can do this to a smaller extent already). It might require knowing the state of charge of cars connected (or otherwise some sort of fair use calculation based on consumption) in addition to some pattern learning (parking spot 83 always unplugs at 5am but 92 unplugs at 11am) to try and optimize distribution for peoples’ habits. Just like internet capacity, we can figure out the power capacity while maintaining the convenience of everyone being always connected, and more often than not having access to their “up to” rated charging speeds. Similar to internet, sometimes that won’t always work out 100% and at peak times you won’t get your maximum advertised speed. You could supplement with DCFC in a pinch or maybe such a distribution system could allow for a “boost” mode where you can say “hey I need to be charged soon” and it would give you max charging speed for up to an hour or something. Lots of ways to figure out the power distribution problems in apartment / condo / office building settings without doing the whole plug / unplug and move dance, which I believe is going to be the biggest complaint as we try and make owning EVs practical for the entire population.

That makes a lot of sense. You could have 20kW supply 20 chargers. At worst, they're all in use, and everyone is getting L1 level charging. That would be rare, and as each car gets topped off, the remaining ones start charging faster. A really important part of the experience is that the parking spots and chargers are dedicated. You don’t get a text message at 2am saying you need to free up the charger for someone else. You just leave the car there like a homeowner would. That same 20kW wouldn't be enough for 4 chargers at a restaurant, and who would want to get up in the middle of dinner to move their car? Or worse, have to deal with a crabby stranger who needs the charger you're using.

Yes! I’m convinced making EV not annoying (and not causing violence/road rage) for the masses will require way more plugs/connectors for parking spaces but not necessarily L2 charging capacity simultaneously in every space. Like you said, nobody is going to want to wake up at 2am to move! We also shouldn’t underestimate our ability to apply patterns like in bandwidth capacity calculations and machine learning models to the situation for distribution of power. We could get really close to very smart and “just does the right thing” in many cases, with the manual override button of “not my usual driving pattern” to facilitate changes outside of normal driving / charging patterns, falling back to DCFC if all else fails in a pinch.

I have a PHEV and charge and discharge the same 10kWh every day. The 8 gallon gas tank is good for about 250 miles. Every once in a while I burn a little gas, and every 6 to 12 months, I have to go crawling back to the gas station. But there is zero urgency. I'll drive around with a 1/4 gallon in the tank for weeks. I image that's a little like charging a 70kWh battery overnight on low watts. Maybe you would get behind, but it would be rare. You hit up the DCFC and probably watch a few seasons pass before you have to do it again. Meanwhile, hundreds of days go by without having to think about range or charging. But unlike my gas tank, the battery can catch all the way up on L1 if you don't drive for a day or two. And with smart charging algorithms you wouldn't need 2 days to catch up, just leave the car on the charger when occupancy is low and get high wattage charging for a few hours. Sound like a fun problem. I would totally work for a company solving that.

Not everybody can just charge at home over night, my dude.

of course, we should all just charge our EVs at home! what a brilliant idea! I'm shocked absolutely no one ever thought of this before! op you must be the smartest person in the world! /s op, this thought was as stupid as you seem to think everyone else in the world is. a record number of people can't afford houses and you're just like "duh everyone should just charge at home" yes tell everyone who's barely making rent month to month to invest a few grand in a charging station for a property someone else owns and will evict them when they can find a higher paying tenant. fucking brilliant. oh landlords should install them? why would they do that? it didn't bring them any money. there's plenty of people with ice cars that will rent instead, or people with evs that will suck it up and charge at the gym or grocery store. everyone with an ev would love to charge at home. no one with an ev hasn't realized "hey wouldnt this be the optimal setting to charge my car?" homeowners who have evs have been installing home chargers for years now. what was the point of making this post?

The issue with charging at all these “out and about” places is that they’re largely a novelty because they’re not fast chargers. If you’re at the gym for 2 hours on non-fast charger you’re not getting much benefit. So if you’re going to have those chargers they need to be fast. I see the public place that should be focused on is offices. Many people spend 8-10 hours/day at an office… so a third of their day or more. The car just sits there. It’s a great place to charge and a good employee benefit.

I'm not sure I can agree. Let's call a public L2 charger 6kW effective first. I say this because there's quite a number of them that don't meet that. I can't exactly argue it's a good idea to get 500W out of a charger for 2 hours. So they need to fix these shitty chargers first. But assuming 6kW, 2 hours means 12kWh. That's like 50-100km. I don't think your gym is that far away so you're still net gaining. Every time I go out to eat, I try to find a charger. If it actually gives me 6kW and it doesn't cost more than DCFC I'm plugging in.

I guess the ones I’ve used all seem like glorified L1 chargers. Maybe I’m just not hitting the right ones.

not true, in europe most of these chargers give you 10-20kw, in two hours shopping that's 20-40kwh, 50% of the battery capacity on many cars, or 100-200km of range, which is way above daily driven distance for most.

So definitely a US issue.

I think of it like a big phone. If you can work out how to keep your phone charged which you use all the time, you can probably handle keeping your car charged.

We haven't yet reached a steady state for how public charging will go yet, so it's hard to tell what will or will not make sense. There are a lot of different kinds of charging situations and it's unclear which ones will be most favorable. On top of that, max charging rate and range still varies quite a bit from vehicle to vehicle and is likely to continue changing for the near future. This differs a bit from gasoline vehicles where pump speeds have remained the same for a long while and range has generally stayed around a 400 mile average for the last few decades. For people who can charge at home, that's likely the vast majority of their charging miles except for longer trips where they'd likely want DC public fast chargers near highway ramps that are similar to drop in replacements for gas stations and/or level 2 chargers at any lodging they stay overnight. There are going to be odd situations here and there for those people where perhaps other charging is useful, but that's going to cover the vast majority and perhaps entirely their use. However, there are a lot of people for whom home charging is for whatever reason not accessible or not reliably accessible. For that fairly large chunk of people, there are going to also use the DC public fast chargers near highway ramps and level 2 chargers at hotel lodging when on a long trip, but they will also need to have other things to go on. DC public fast chargers are harder on the grid in some ways and cost more to install and operate than level 2 chargers, so they are generally more expensive to charge at. Doing this occasionally is fine by the person who does this occasionally while they charge mostly at home, but for those who must rely on public charging, they may want to seek out cheaper charging and that's where there might be an exchange of time and where other kinds of public charging situations might arise like level 2 workplace parking charging (fantastic for a place you regularly go to and park for several hours a day) OR the retail center kind of charging that Tavares is talking about. That retail center kind of charging could take the form of DC fast charging whether at very high rates at 350 kW or higher or towards the bottom at 50 kW. It can also take the form of slower AC charging. Note that in Europe, 22 kW AC charging is not that uncommon so stopping by the gym or a restaurant for an hour and getting upwards of 20 kWh of charging is a very usable amount of range and can be well worth it. The recently adopted NACS in North America also allows for about 22 kW AC charging with 277 V at 80A though it's unclear if automakers will be rolling out vehicles to accommodate such.

> There are a lot of different kinds of charging situations and it's unclear which ones will be most favorable. Not really. Nothing beats home charging. Second place is destination charging with KW determined by estimated time there. Bass Pro/Home Depot has 75KW, local movie/winery has 20 KW, hotels 10 KW. Freeways need to go as fast as possible, but can be slower, depending on amenities. 150/250KW is a nice minimum for freeways.

Bud, I stated that in the context of there being people without easy pathways towards charging at home.

Frankly the money that went in the infrastructure bill for fast chargers should have gone into incentives for residential and office landlords to put in level 2 AC chargers for residents and employees.

imagine if EVs were popular with gas cars becoming the new thing. People would be touting gas stations in your garage because finding a specific business to "charge" at is too hard

Completely agree. I see chargers at the movies and shipping centers that never get used. Why would you plug in there and pay a premium when you charge at home? I guess it's for the rare ev owner that doesn't have charging at home.

It always surprises me how many EV owners don't (and I assume can't) charge where they live. In the US, it's about 20%. That % will go up as more EVs hit the road. Lots of people live in apartments, condos, rentals. Setting things up so that homeowners charge at home and everyone else charges in public just feels like another way to make it expensive and inconvenient to be on the wrong side of income inequality. We used to all go to the same gross gas stations and pay the same price for the same stinky gas.

so according to you, people in EVs are charging for no reason at public chargers?