Every home, office, business is a potential charging station.
Yeah this is an easily fixable problem. We have so many parking lots, could easily do solar overhangs and stick some EV chargers on them.
This is far from a fixable problem. I work decarbonizing buildings and almost no buildings in a 1m+ city have the spare electrical capacity to add a fast charger. Level 2s are challenging in that they take up electrical capacity that could otherwise be used to add elec heating and heat pumps to decarbonize much more effectively than an infrequently used charger.
To do real infrastructure you need to add new feeds to the grid which is much more expensive than you'd think. And also assuming that any amount of solar overhang could power any meaningful ev charging makes me think you haven't put a ton of thought into the topic.
An infrequently used Level 2 EV charger by definition doesn’t take up much electrical capacity. Level 2 chargers at multi-family residence parking structures will be used mostly at night when the building and grid electricity demand are low. And Level 2 chargers at workplace employee parking will be used mostly during the day when cheap solar power will be most abundant.
If most people have access to charging at home or at work, Level 2 charging is more than adequate for day to day charging needs. DC fast charging would then only be used for those traveling long distances or who have no access to charging in the places they normally park for long durations.
You can only load up an electrical panel to 80 percent by code. It specifically does limit what else we can connect. I understand load diversity but we can't ignore electrical code.
I agree on home charging. Would never own an ev without a charger at home.
I certainly agree that very old homes with 60 amp service would have a very hard time accommodating Level 2 EV charging without overloading the service. But even an older 100A service home can likely accommodate Level 2 charging and general electrification with a little cleverness, for example, by using a smart panel to intelligently switch loads, or by using a lower speed charger like a 15A, 20A or 30A circuit instead of a 50A or 60A circuit. Even a relatively modest 220V 15A circuit can deliver 80 miles or more of range overnight, far more than most people drive per day on average.
I'm talking commercial/institutional here - i.e. adding ev charging capacity to large buildings. They're not big on 'clever' approaches and neither is the ESA inspector.
Again, I agree on the at home stuff and I'd never ever own an EV I couldn't charge at home. That being said, if I added a cold climate heat pump I'd never have the room for EV charging without upgrading my 125a service.
I just want to say the lack of excess electricity in commercial buildings is a major problem. In the work I do we install a lot of backup generators to large commercial buildings and you would be surprised how many do not have the electrical capacity for the generator and the computer attached. Generators don't even really utilize a lot of electricity and only do so if the power goes out (otherwise it is just the monitoring system attached), but because of codes we often times have to upgrade the electrical panels on these facilities and it can be very expensive.
I know my company even installed a single charging station (with two chargers) through a grant at our building and we had to upgrade our electrical panel and we are a pretty small building comparative to some of the larger ones we work on. Even adding charging stations to existing gas stations is very complex and not easy to do. Most owners make very little money on the backend from the chargers and they are very expensive on the front end, plus they take up retail parking spaces, which a lot of gas stations do not want to give up.
Sounds expensive, wonder who will pay for that.
Ultimately end users. Just like with a gas station the build out cost is up front and made up by sales later on
Oil and gas is expensive. Take those subsidies and use them to finance this.
Also the massive amount of laborers including loads of electricians who are in short supply already.
The only short supply is good union jobs, as in, good projects for union laborers. That is why.
Climate change is far more expensive.
Billionaires.
who is going to pay for a product that has a demand so high that supply cant keep up? im not a fan of capitalism but even capitalist have got it covered.
yeah!! same thing when fossil fuel vehicles took off. who the hell paid for all those extremely expensive gas stations? so HA! take that climate activists. nice one bruh. gotteeem 👀
lol no it's not AT ALL easy with a high rise apt/condo structure. or In a dense city that is car-dependent.
"Easily fixable" what an insane take. If it was easy, we'd have done it already.
???? You're telling me there's nothing with easy solutions that we just haven't bothered to or don't have the political will to do? Like it literally took a decade and multiple major crashes to get a traffic light installed at the intersection by my grandma's, the US is not known for building infrastructure in a timely manner.
It's literally a cable with a wall outlet at the end of it. Every home can have one for couple hundred dollars.
It actually is yes
This is the difference between BEVs and Hydrogen cars, electricity is everywhere, especially when you don't need a fast charge. I've seen pictures of people staying on a ground floor hotel room and running a cable inside to charge via the socket.
The thing is the speed of charging. A 240 outlet like the one for a clothes dryer charges a vehicle in 6-8 hours. A typical wall outlet would take 30 hours. A fast charger that does it in under an hour requires a big industrial electric supply that isn't even permitted in many homes and businesses.
Average commute in the USA is 42 miles with a 200+ mile EV that's 2 times a week charging
Not really. Not every has a level 2 charger and several people so far have been fined for using a businesses electricity for free.
You don't plug in without permission. The potential is there, just need to figure out how to take advantage of it.
