I thought it was illegal to own a car without having a parking spot. I don’t know really, can someone clarify?
It is not illegal to own a car without a parking spot. Where did you even hear that?
Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?
221–230 of 545 posts
Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe that some of that is covered by other appliances becoming more efficient. How many 60-100w light bulbs did people used to run in their home? Tube tvs? Those devices have largely been replaced by more modern versions that use an order of magnitude less power.
This is my understanding as well, I remember reading something that said new power consumption is either flattening or decreasing because modern electronics and appliances are getting more and more efficient.
Except for air conditioning in very hot days. We still break records on hot days.
Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is my hangup too, and it crosses over into the craze around building high density housing in California. I don’t want high density housing. I don’t think anyone does. I want a yard for my dogs to play, for my wife to nurture the garden she has always wanted, for fruit trees, a garage where I can work on my car, etc... We have so much land all around this country and no one is using it.
Unless you live in a very small community the downside of this is horrible traffic.
That is based on the assumption that jobs MUST be downtown, thus all traffic converging towards that area.
Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is my hangup too, and it crosses over into the craze around building high density housing in California. I don’t want high density housing. I don’t think anyone does. I want a yard for my dogs to play, for my wife to nurture the garden she has always wanted, for fruit trees, a garage where I can work on my car, etc... We have so much land all around this country and no one is using it.
8.6 million New Yorkers humbly disagree.
Staten Island and the western halves of Queens and Brooklyn are not what I would call "high density". I don't think the northern part of the Bronx would count, either.
Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?
#225Besides garage orphans, also those with self standing homes and a garage will have (or become) a problem. Say that in you street that are 50 single family homes connected to a same cabin/transformer. The electric infrastructure powering them (lines, transformer, etc.) has been dimensioned to power them at their average current power consumption rate + something to take care of peaks + something more to take care of e…
My Model 3 charges at ~240v/48a, which is around 11kW.
At peak times in our house, say, heat on, lights on, TV on, cooking, doing laundry, we pull perhaps 3kW. Our house is pretty efficient; gas appliances, LED lights, no air conditioning, etc.
The car charges after 9pm, but that's just because our rate drops then. If midnight was even cheaper, it would charge then. We don't charge every day, but if we did, it would take perhaps 1 hour. And this is for a car we drive 18,000 miles on in its first year.
3-4x the demand of a 'normal' household is not nothing, but it's not insane, either. Considering EVs don't need to charge every day, or every hour of every night, it's not that tricky to see the aggregate load as fairly similar to peak afternoon/evening hours in your average suburb as people return home from work.
To be sure, if everyone started charging their EVs at 6pm, we might have a problem. Likewise, if everyone had an EV and they all clicked on at midnight, we might have a problem. But the load on the grid is not that huge from an instantaneous perspective, and can be managed by variable pricing and/or some kind of grid scheduling tech.
Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?
#226I think this points out the elephant in the room: why are so many people in supposedly high income cities not able to buy properties? This is an issue that needs to be solved hand in hand with pollution: less travel, less need for a car, and more living outside overcrowded cities means more living space. So how can we move more jobs to suburbs, where people can work at nearby or home locations and can afford more liv…
There's a few big reasons, at least in tech.
One is that your investors may want you to start your business somewhere close by, especially if they want to be involved in your business.
Another is that you need to start your business somewhere where you can acquire employees - if there are very few software engineers in an area already, you now need to convince people to move to your area for work. That's kind of a bad value proposition for employees because they need to relocate their lives to move somewhere that has only a single employer they could realistically work at. Usually the people running these businesses also are motivated by doing this to save money, so you might also be making about half of what you would in a big city.
Further, being in a big city has a lot of benefits from infrastructure and network effects. It is easier to acquire some of your first customers if they are close by. You have international airports which allow you to travel the world more easily than somewhere with an airport that only feeds into a hub. Your employees will appreciate having the ability to work at other places should their employer fail/they get fired/etc. so it's easier to convince people to move there.
What should be done, but which almost never is done, is that employers in small cities should start paying truly competitively with those in big cities. If your target employee could make 300k in NYC or the Bay Area, pay them that much in the cheaper city. Make the cost of living difference actually become a real perk, rather than a way to be miserly with how you pay employees.
Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I didn't consider the reduced time required for the short trip. Though that's adding 10 minutes to every electric car owners commute, isn't it? Can you imagine a large portion of the city all trying to charge up every night?
Electricity rates and demand are insanely low during the night. In fact whole sale rates can dip into the negatives where they will literally pay you to use electricity. Aluminum smelting plants run during this time. Even if everyone suddenly started charging cars at night at the most we would be back close to daytime demand, but more math is needed.
Sorry, not night - evening - when everyone is all headed home and when one typically would fill up one's car.
Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is my hangup too, and it crosses over into the craze around building high density housing in California. I don’t want high density housing. I don’t think anyone does. I want a yard for my dogs to play, for my wife to nurture the garden she has always wanted, for fruit trees, a garage where I can work on my car, etc... We have so much land all around this country and no one is using it.
8.6 million New Yorkers humbly disagree.
More like 4.3 million. A lot of people don't feel strongly about density. They just live wherever makes the most sense based on the pros and cons. This is why people move out of the city when they have to raise a family.
Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe that some of that is covered by other appliances becoming more efficient. How many 60-100w light bulbs did people used to run in their home? Tube tvs? Those devices have largely been replaced by more modern versions that use an order of magnitude less power.
This is my understanding as well, I remember reading something that said new power consumption is either flattening or decreasing because modern electronics and appliances are getting more and more efficient.
In California, at least, yes, energy demand seems to be declining. I can't find the graph I saw a year or two ago.
Peak usage was in 2006, although it sounds like Sep 1 2017 usage was ALMOST as high. State population is growing overall, but not fast. I think it's roughly flat now, but has grown since 2006 for sure.
> Energy consumption of the state's residential sector per capita is lower than that of any other state except Hawaii thanks to relatively mild climate.
> California's peak electricity demand occurred on July 24, 2006, at 2:44 pm, with 50,270 megawatts. Since then measures to reduce peak load have resulted in decreased peak demand, even as the state's population has continued to grow.[28] In 2017, the peak load was 50,116 MW, on September 1
Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?
#230A few years ago I lived in a fairly northern Canadian city. Most people had block heaters installed in their cars and plugged them in when the car would be sitting in the cold for more than a few hours. Otherwise, the car would be too cold to start. Most companies and apartment buildings had outlets installed in their parking lots, and at home people just ran extension cords.
You don’t even have to go particularly north to see plug in block heaters. Pretty sure I’ve seen them as far “south” as Toronto. Guess they’re all ready for the EV generation.