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Where will ‘garage orphans’ charge electric cars?

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

#441

Post by esoterica »

bin0 wrote: post #310
wffurr wrote: post #127

Yet another reason the real answer to the climate crisis isn't EVs - it's public transit, bicycles, e-bikes, scooters, e-scooters, walking, etc. All these other modes are much lower impact on the environment than purchasing and operating an EV, much less an ICE.

And yet, public transportation is not the same. Americans love their cars because we are a very independent people who appreciate the ability to go where we want, when we want. An EV could at least conceivably be a replacement, though that will be difficult until they can charge in a time comparable to that of a gas station fueling and go as long or longer. I don't want to have to plan around some schedule set by a c…

Using public transit as your main mode of transportation is not the same as swearing off cars entirely. If you live somewhere with good transit you can get to 99% of the places you want to go without a car with no additional inconvenience. You can take the train to work, bike to the gym, walk to the grocery store, and then when you want to head out to the mountains you can hop into your car (or a rental).

You can reap the environmental benefits of switching mostly away from cars without sacrificing your freedom to drive to the small number of destinations that are not convenient to get to by other means.

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

#442

Post by wutbrodo »

xenocyon wrote: post #382
hwillis wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, electric vehicles are the best option in nearly all cases. Natural gas makes Boston electricity one of the cleaner grids in the country. For my zip, a LR Model 3 makes 131 MPG[1] per unit of CO2, while manufacturing produces ~5 tonnes more CO2 (an SR will be ~3.5 tonnes)[2]. That's a break even period of only 15,000 miles. Unless your gas car will be tossed away in under 15,000 miles you are adding more CO2 to th…

That's interesting. The last time I did the math it looked like the breakeven point would be well over a decade for me (approx 4000 driven miles per year). It may be that things have changed since.

Another often-missed factor that may shift the ethical breakeven point is that local air pollution is _really_ bad from a public health perspective, to a degree that's criminally underemphasized. If you're going to be burning fossil fuels for power, doing so in a centralized place away from dense populations makes a lot more sense than doing so next to schools, parks, residential density, etc.

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

#443

Post by Zxian »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #374
Decade wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are not enough taxpaying residents to make roads work, either. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/4/30/my-city-has-ma...

You NEED roads though. Even if you can reach 100% of the city through walking and public transportation, what do you do when you move? Take a train trip for your sofa, and another for your dining room table, and so on? How do local stores and restaurants get their goods delivered? How do you get packages larger than an envelope delivered to your home? How do emergency services and fire rescue reach your home? Do town…

You need _some_ roads, but not to the extent of your typical suburban sprawl. Where I live (Vancouver, Canada), there are sufficient roads for most travel, but the city also has relatively high quality public transit and decent bike routes. I don't think GP meant that a city should have no roads, but rather that transportation infrastructure is almost always going to be an expenditure for a city. America has simply chosen to prioritize cars over other transportation options.

Higher density minimizes the need for cars.

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

#444

Post by wutbrodo »

chc wrote: post #299
kennywinker wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I, as a business owner, can get 1-4 hours of your time and spending money - it’s probably going to be well worth it to front the cost of land and charging equipment for a park-n-charge spot

And yet business owners aren't rushing to install chargers, even in places where I'll regularly see a bunch of EVs on my way through the parking lot. So that theory doesn't seem to pan out.

It's because we don't live in the metaphorical frictionless vacuum where the speed of light is infinite.

Less pithily, complex, multi-stakeholder ecosystems don't instantaneously adapt to shifts in incentives, but that doesn't mean that we can't reason about tendencies that will shape long-term equilibria.

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

#445

Post by wutbrodo »

human20190310 wrote: post #108
vanilla_nut wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that coffee shops/bookstores haven't started to target this demographic yet. Buy a coffee, an hour or two of quick charging, and read a book for a couple of hours in a comfy seat while your car charges. Considering how many people will go to those establishments already, it seems like a pretty easy hook (and probably has a lot of demographic overlap).

I think coffee shops prefer that most people pay their money and move along a lot more quickly than that. It's likely that the reason you can't find a seat in most coffee shops already is because it isn't profitable to provide a two-hour seat to everyone.

Plenty of coffee shops have built their business around providing a place that's comfortable to relax in: free Wi-Fi, power outlets, lots of comfortable seating. Sure, all else held equal, they'd prefer that people move through quickly, but they'd also prefer to charge triple the price. The reason they don't, and the reason they do provide for customers hanging around, is that it's a way of attracting business (and prevents loss of business to competitors who try this strategy). The parent comment's suggestion seems more in less in line with this general approach.

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

#446

Post by jmpman »

esoterica wrote: post #432
ColanR wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> construct it around a car I don't, actually - it's that a car is far more useful than a bike. I drive 25 minutes to work; I haul (5 bike-ride-loads of) groceries several miles to my house; I visit friends anywhere from 1-5 hours away; I casually drive into the city and back. Even if I felt like riding 10 miles each way, rain or shine, or using public transit, it takes so much less time to drive my car, and I have t…

You don’t seem to able to wrap your ahead around the fact that driving appears to give you more freedoms only because you live in a city that was designed around cars, not because cars are inherently faster or more convenient. The convenience of the car is an artifact of city planning decisions, not a universal truth. Example: do you realize how preposterous the idea of driving several miles to get groceries is to so…

A car enables cities in less hospitable environments to be inexpensively populated. Where I live it’s regularly above 110. You’re not cycling in that. Population density is too low for light rail, and only the mentally deranged and hopelessly poor ride the bus, making a greater disincentive for anyone else who wants to bear a 15 minute wait in 110 degrees.

For actual numbers, my commute is 20min by car, 2.5hr by public transportation, or 1.2hr by bike. Public transportation would need to be no more than 40min for me to consider it, and I’d only consider it because I wouldn’t have to drive. Once self driving cars arrive, I’d never consider public transit, even if driving were twice as long.

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

#447

Post by majormajor »

zaroth wrote: post #440
majormajor wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like high amounts of traffic: a bunch of people being dropped off and being picked up at arbitrary locations with the cars then having to go to and come back from various other bottlenecked hotspots.

I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion right away. You open up a lot of free space if you can take away street parking, which could also significantly alleviate traffic, for example with dedicated lanes for small-personal battery powered bikes, scooters, etc. It’s also not necessary for vehicles to travel several miles to find parking. Typical urban parking is designed so the average person is walking maybe a couple hund…

> Finally, it’s likely the vehicle is not going to park, but rather off to pick up its next ride.

Yeah, a managed fleet system could have very different congestion characteristics, but the proposal was specifically that self-parking might be a game changer on its own. At that point it's basically valet parking, and you still have to stash the cars somewhere, and they still have to go back and forth between that somewhere and wherever the passengers got out.

You get rid of the circling but I don't think you get rid of queuing and grid backups.

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

#448

Post by thehappypm »

xenocyon wrote: post #382
hwillis wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, electric vehicles are the best option in nearly all cases. Natural gas makes Boston electricity one of the cleaner grids in the country. For my zip, a LR Model 3 makes 131 MPG[1] per unit of CO2, while manufacturing produces ~5 tonnes more CO2 (an SR will be ~3.5 tonnes)[2]. That's a break even period of only 15,000 miles. Unless your gas car will be tossed away in under 15,000 miles you are adding more CO2 to th…

That's interesting. The last time I did the math it looked like the breakeven point would be well over a decade for me (approx 4000 driven miles per year). It may be that things have changed since.

Another fun fact is that, in my lifetime, Massachusetts will be a very green-energy grid. We are building a transmission line through Maine to connect to a Quebec hydro plant, and offshore wind is growing fast (though it all takes time). A Tesla I buy today will probably be carbon-free in its lifetime!

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

#449

Post by thehappypm »

xenocyon wrote: post #376
thehappypm wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was getting a new car either way, replacing one that had broken.

Ah, that definitely changes the calculation completely.

If it makes you feel better, my new car gets 10 more MPG than my old one :)

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

#450

Post by ColanR »

esoterica wrote: post #432
ColanR wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> construct it around a car I don't, actually - it's that a car is far more useful than a bike. I drive 25 minutes to work; I haul (5 bike-ride-loads of) groceries several miles to my house; I visit friends anywhere from 1-5 hours away; I casually drive into the city and back. Even if I felt like riding 10 miles each way, rain or shine, or using public transit, it takes so much less time to drive my car, and I have t…

You don’t seem to able to wrap your ahead around the fact that driving appears to give you more freedoms only because you live in a city that was designed around cars, not because cars are inherently faster or more convenient. The convenience of the car is an artifact of city planning decisions, not a universal truth. Example: do you realize how preposterous the idea of driving several miles to get groceries is to so…

> driving appears to give you more freedoms only because you live in a city

I don't live in a city, just like half the population of the US. You assumed that, and now the rest of what you wrote is irrelevant.

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