Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars? • Hacker News Board

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#241

Post by chrisseaton » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 8:22 PM UTC

thehappypm wrote: post #220

This stopped me from buying a Tesla with my most recent car purchase. I live in a 100 year old apartment in Boston that has 0 parking spots for over 100 units. My wife and I share a car, mostly for weekend adventuring, so we rent a spot in a dude's backyard down the block from us. It works well for us, much more convenient than the rat race of street parking. But it was hard to imagine that life with a Tesla. I could…

> I live in a 100 year old apartment

Keeping in mind '100 years old' sounds dramatic but is now as recent as 1919, which doesn't sound that old when you write it out! That's about a fifth of the housing stock in the UK I believe. Obviously, almost none of these houses have garages.

I wonder if local governments could install plugs under little hatches like they use for stop cocks all the way down residential roads.

https://stock.adobe.com/be_en/images/blue-painted-water-stop...

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#242

Post by opportune » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 8:23 PM UTC

neogodless wrote: post #160

gok wrote: post #122

I live in a high rise apartment with three shared level 2 chargers in the garage. I would say there are ~10 EVs in the building and sharing the chargers has never been an issue. It's like shared laundry; you really only need it once a week or so for a few hours. Once it's easy to make people pay for electricity, adding lots of chargers will be a no-brainer for garage owners.

Laundry. That just might be the perfect example. What a huge division of experience between the wealthy and the less wealthy. Most homeowners have laundry in their home. Starting and switching loads is a few minutes, and the rest of their time is still free. Many high-end apartments have laundry within a short walk from each residence. It's largely the same experience. But then those with less ability to afford "nice…

Also, most luxury apartments have in-unit laundry. Just like they typically have electric charging stations in their garages. Laundry actually is scarily analogous here

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#243

Post by jperras » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 8:23 PM UTC

trilila wrote: post #139

I 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…

> I think this points out the elephant in the room: why are so many people in supposedly high income cities not able to buy properties?

I own & live in an apartment on the top floor of a 3 floor walk-up in a busy metropolitan city. There is perhaps one single person on our street that has a "garage". Everyone else parks on the street. The "not able to buy property" argument here seems like a red herring.

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#244

Post by gambiting » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 8:24 PM UTC

trilila wrote: post #139

I 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…

>>why are so many people in supposedly high income cities not able to buy properties?

There's plenty of properties which are super high-end and which don't come with their own parking space(terraced houses on popular streets in the UK can go for millions and yet you won't get your own parking space - just a parking permit to park on the street, but there is no guarantee it will be in front of your own house).

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#245

Post by pi-rat » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 8:24 PM UTC

This problem requires multiple solutions, here's some that I think work great in Norway:

- "Lamppost" charging, Oslo (and other cities) put up a ton of charging poles in the streets, you use an RFID card to start charging. They've recently been free, but now cost $1 per hour ($0.5 at night). They look like this[1a] or this[1b]. Oslo will have about 2200 of these at the end of the year.

- Parking house charging. My regular parking house got it's own zone for electrics. Your license plate is read when you enter the parking house, then read again if you enter the charging zone. Automatically billed when you leave. This is my main charging atm, I've a garage, but not had extra power installed yet. My car has about 500 km range. Leaving it a work day in a parking house once per ~14 day is enough for my (limited) use. Some of the parking houses in Norway are built with battery banks to handle the load of 100+ chargers. Here's a video tour of one of them[2] (I don't live in Oslo though, but it's similar). I think I end up paying $12-ish for parking+charging for the one I use for 8+ hours.

- Shopping centers / convenience store charging. Many stores here got free AC charging now. And some of the larger centers / stores have established fast chargers (DC) on their parking lot (costs money to use). I can charge 250 km range while doing 30 minutes of shopping for around $10.

- Charging at work. Many work places here in Norway offer free charging as a perk.

- Friendly neighbours. In my street there's a dude who's put up a sign: "You're free to use my charger if I'm not here, send me $1 per hour using vipps (local app for mobile payment) to XXXXXX if you feel like it"

- And if all else fails, have plenty of paid fast chargers around in central locations, sucks to wait around for 30-60+ minutes, but it's a nice backup.

There's tons of charging spots in Norway, but the number of cars is outpacing the number of chargers, we'll probably see more congestion and queues in the coming years.

While I've never hit a full parking house yet, it will happen sooner or later, so it really helps to have a long range EV, that way you can go "Meh, I'll charge tomorrow instead.."

[1a]: https://www.google.com/maps/@59.9287147,10.7231223,3a,59.2y,...

[1b]: https://www.salto.no/media/images/referanser/_big4by3/søyle-...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktNKWLwjQJM

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#246

Post by zip1234 » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 8:25 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #177

kennywinker wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sitting twidding your thumbs. If they are near somewhere you want to be recreationally, you’re set. The gym, the grocery store, the movies, a hiking trail, spending 1-4 hours at one of these once a week would likely enhance your life not take away from it.

If your solution to the difficulty of finding an EV charger is "put EV chargers literally everywhere," that would hypothetically solve the problem, but how do you propose to make that happen? That's what the question here is.

Somehow people figured out how to make gasoline fueling infrastructure, which is amazing in itself. Extracting fuel out of the ground, transporting to refinery, transporting to destination holes scattered nearly everywhere around the world and pumping refined fuel back in, and then pumping back out of the ground into little fuel tanks in cars for it to be burned. If someone described that to me as a plan for internal combustion I would not believe them. With EVs, we actually have the delivery mechanism for fuel already mostly figured out.

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#247

Post by yellowapple » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 8:26 PM UTC

I like the streetlight idea for getting more chargers out there. It'd also be great if every parking meter had at least a trickle-charger.

Hopefully solar efficiencies will continue to improve to the point where trickle charging via solar is actually viable.

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#248

Post by Aloha » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 8:26 PM UTC

neogodless wrote: post #160

gok wrote: post #122

I live in a high rise apartment with three shared level 2 chargers in the garage. I would say there are ~10 EVs in the building and sharing the chargers has never been an issue. It's like shared laundry; you really only need it once a week or so for a few hours. Once it's easy to make people pay for electricity, adding lots of chargers will be a no-brainer for garage owners.

Laundry. That just might be the perfect example. What a huge division of experience between the wealthy and the less wealthy. Most homeowners have laundry in their home. Starting and switching loads is a few minutes, and the rest of their time is still free. Many high-end apartments have laundry within a short walk from each residence. It's largely the same experience. But then those with less ability to afford "nice…

Perhaps a laundromat with chargers.

I've often said that if I were to open a retail business, it'd be a 24 hours combo, laundromat, pizza place, coffee shop and book store, probably with a side of bodega inside.

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#249

Post by post_break » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 8:26 PM UTC

olivermarks wrote: post #213

In California the bankrupt PG&E power company will be turning off power during fire season high risk periods to limit their exposure. Escape from fire in an EV won't be possible unless you keep a fully charged vehicle on standby regardless of the charging location.

Can you drive a tesla while it's being charged? A small trailer with a generator on the back could work as an emergency.

Re: Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

#250

Post by frankus » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 8:27 PM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #13

Where will garage orphans add gasoline to their cars if they must park on the street? If only there was a way to add energy to a vehicle outside of the home. Cars park all over the place. Distributed charging infrastructure doesn't sound too impossible -- parking meters probably already need electricity. Park and rides or business parking lots incentivize people to shop or commute in certain ways for a relatively mod…

The main difference is that a gas pump can dump single-digit megawatts of power, so a "full charge" only takes a few minutes.

The best commercial EV fast chargers (that require a six-figure DC power converter) are on the order of a quarter of a megawatt, and a good level 2 charger (basically a glorified dryer plug) is just shy of 10kW.