Think apartment-hunting is frustrating? Try doing it with an electric car
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Re: Think apartment-hunting is frustrating? Try doing it with an electric car
#2When I first bought a Tesla in Tennessee we had the same problem with our condo's HOA board. We were lucky to live in a newer building but it still only had a single third party charger that would milk you dry if you used it (still not sure why it was so expensive). We just ended up charging at a supercharger when we got groceries. Would've been a nightmare if we had a Leaf or another electric car without that option. Maybe this isn't fully appreciated by the average Silicon Valley person since charging is so ubiquitous there (and in California more generally) - after we moved to Mountain View basically every apartment we looked at had plenty of charging options, if your workplace doesn't provide one for you already.
Re: Think apartment-hunting is frustrating? Try doing it with an electric car
#3Why is "equity" and race mentioned? It's completely irrelevant to the story.
Re: Think apartment-hunting is frustrating? Try doing it with an electric car
#4Why is "equity" and race mentioned? It's completely irrelevant to the story.
Literally the next sentence: "Unsurprisingly, renters tend to have lower incomes than those who own their own homes; they are also more likely to be Black or Latino."
Given the history of the US, this seems a worthwhile thing to note.
Re: Think apartment-hunting is frustrating? Try doing it with an electric car
#5Why is "equity" and race mentioned? It's completely irrelevant to the story.
Literally the next sentence: "Unsurprisingly, renters tend to have lower incomes than those who own their own homes; they are also more likely to be Black or Latino." Given the history of the US, this seems a worthwhile thing to note.
The whole paragraph is self explanatory and makes sense in this article because it prohibits huge swaths of people from adopting EVs.
Some people tend to freak out when race is mentioned, I suppose, so they can't even read a few more lines of context.
Re: Think apartment-hunting is frustrating? Try doing it with an electric car
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Literally the next sentence: "Unsurprisingly, renters tend to have lower incomes than those who own their own homes; they are also more likely to be Black or Latino." Given the history of the US, this seems a worthwhile thing to note.
The whole paragraph is self explanatory and makes sense in this article because it prohibits huge swaths of people from adopting EVs. Some people tend to freak out when race is mentioned, I suppose, so they can't even read a few more lines of context.
I would think being low income is itself prohibitive to adopting electric.
Re: Think apartment-hunting is frustrating? Try doing it with an electric car
#7Why is "equity" and race mentioned? It's completely irrelevant to the story.
Literally the next sentence: "Unsurprisingly, renters tend to have lower incomes than those who own their own homes; they are also more likely to be Black or Latino." Given the history of the US, this seems a worthwhile thing to note.
> Unsurprisingly, renters tend to have lower incomes than those who own their own homes
Not only that, but renters are often put in the situation where their rent is the same as a mortgage, but can't afford to save for a down payment. Renting is a cockroach motel.
Re: Think apartment-hunting is frustrating? Try doing it with an electric car
#8Multi-family housing has lots of issues like this. How can rooftop solar be managed for a multi-family building (especially a rental building)? For a smaller apartment building with a shared garage, even if you go through the expense of running electric lines to the garage tied to individual units’s meters, what’s to keep an unscrupulous neighbor from using someone else’s charger?
I’ve been contemplating buying a rental building and I’ve been trying to figure out these sorts of things. I’m thinking having some sort of charger where the car owner has to enter a pin to identify themselves (and thus be billed for their electric use) is the best approach to the charger issue, but I’m not sure if there’s a good way to manage rooftop solo for a 2–4 unit building.
Re: Think apartment-hunting is frustrating? Try doing it with an electric car
#9Since this article was published, Washington State finally has a right-to-charge law, too, with the passing of HB 1793 - 2021-22, hopefully making things mildly better in Seattle.
While the article claims there is no money to be made in EV charging to incentivize and align with building owners, there's plenty of similar "amenities" that easily can help differentiate a "luxury" apartment building, hopefully they become more common.
Re: Think apartment-hunting is frustrating? Try doing it with an electric car
#10Buying a Tesla has caused us to bump up our timeline for purchasing a house. We are very lucky to have two charging stations at our apartment complex, but a few things make it a less than perfect scenario.
1) They charge a 40% markup on electricity. This is fair, given the upfront costs of installation and ongoing maintenance costs, but still a downside.
2) Since installing it, the number of EVs living here have tripled or quadrupled. A great thing, but also ties up the charger more frequently.
3) Their breaker apparently can't support 2 Teslas charging at once. This doesn't seem to be a problem with two non-Telsa EVs, or one Tesla and one non-Tesla, but if two Teslas plug in at the same time the breaker blows and both chargers are out of commission for 24-72 hours until maintenance gets around to fixing it.
All of that is still better than no charger of course, but we have other complaints with this complex and want to move when our lease is up. Looking for apartment complexes with chargers severely limits options and makes buying a house make a lot more sense.