In London there are lots of street lighting lampposts which are charging-enabled. They look identical to a normal lamppost except there's a charging port on the side. Metering is done using a special cable with integrated meter you get when you sign up to the scheme, which transmits readings over the mobile phone network, and you pay your bill at the end of the month. If this system could work with private power providers as well it would seem pretty much ideal, you could just plug in anywhere without worrying about how to pay.
I have read that that is feasible in Europe where electricity is 240 v and will provide decent L2 charging but in the USA the lampposts are 120v and aren’t capable of providing power to vehicle of any note. Companies like Ubiquity that are installing lamppost charging as test projects in LA are running into the expense and complication of upgrading the posts electrical wiring to make them useable as street charging
Ok, that's a neat solution. I was kinda skeptical of street charging since, if the idea is to have cars charging whenever they're parked, it would require ugly charging stations at every parking spot. But if Level 1/2 chargers are implemented into already existing structures like streetlights and parking meters, that wouldn't be too garish.
It would be easier for the meter to just be a prepaid charging meter where you pay up to a certain number of kilowatts with credit card or coins and then plug into the receptacle. It could be a 120 volt or 240 volt receptacle or both.
I’m an employer and I let my staff charge their cars at work using the level-1 chargers that come with their cars. It doesn’t cost me a lot, and even at slow level-1 speeds it adds up after 8+ hours. One of my guys lives in a basement suite and can’t charge at home, so it’s a crucial perk for him. If not for that perk he wouldn’t have got an EV, in fact.
Yes, we need as many charge locations as possible, but they do not all need to be 350kw. If they are in locations where you park for many hours anyway a few kw ( say 3 to 22) is enough. Keep the 50-350kw DC fast chargers to short stay locations where they are really needed.
thats legit @steven hurdle , i'm sure that person appreciates it. you get the tax writeoff on costs and he gets the benefit and the morale boost from it. sounds like a win-win.
Yes it adds up but you are probably buying a whole lot of good will with your employee and you are making their commute cheaper and easier. It could also change their entire outlook on their job too. You could install a sub meter on that circuit so you can track just how much good will you are paying for. Maybe charge a small fee for a reserved spot to cover the cost if it gets too much.
@@stellamcwick8455 It doesn't really add up for me. I am only paying 9.5 cents Canadian per kW (the equivalent of 7.1 cents US per kW at the current exchange rate). We have some of the cheapest electricity in North America where I live.
I live in an "own your own appartment" place where the community has installed ev-charging on 10 of our 70 parking spots. If you buy an electric or hybrid car you can apply to swap parking spots. You start charging via an app. The installation, maintenance and invoicing is done and paid by an separate company and they get their money from a slightly higher kWh price. If more EV spots are needed we just apply and it's installed within a month or two. Very easy for the community. All for a reasonable cost, in the end paid by the people who actually use it.
@@SimuLord You missed the part where mabs503 wrote: "The installation, maintenance and invoicing is done and paid by [a] separate company and they get their money from a slightly higher kWh price."
@@SimuLord well the way to tell who is charging and who isn’t it comes down to if you own an EV since your need to register it to the building hoa or management.I used to live a car free zone in NYC but rent is too damn high so I move to the suburbs where I’m paying the same for a rent to own home.
These two vids have me completely sold, especially after finding out I already have everything I need for an EV. Even in small town Indiana, it appears EVs are the obvious and in the long run cheaper choice. But, after looking into it, the up front cost is SO much. Like, most used EVs cost just as much as new ones rn. I, just like most ppl, can't afford a 35k new car, and you only get close to 10k with a car on its very last legs. Not to mention, the financing for used EVs is downright predatory. I feel so close and yet so far 😔
It has been noted that, if you finance your new car, you're not actually looking at a high sticker price: you're really looking at a high monthly payment which is offset by a very low monthly fuel cost. In some cases the _total_ monthly cost to own and drive an EV can be lower than the equivalent non-EV. Of course, what's missing in that equation is that the market for used-but-still-perfectly-good EVs has not matured yet. And if you can't justify the price of a _new_ car, it doesn't help much that a _new_ EV may be a bit cheaper after accounting for fuel.
@@bsladion Yes but that's not an everyday monthly cost. The point was to compare car payment plus fuel. It's a response to the idea that the _upfront_ cost of an EV is prohibitive. (Which it is... if you don't finance it.) Unlike the fuel savings, the maintenance savings are only realized months or years later.
@@ps.2 thanks for the help. I'll def look into it further. My main concern is that all the articles online are saying that right now EVs are in very short supply and prices recently ballooned because of the semiconductor shortage, inflation, tariffs, and gas prices, and that if low income ppl want reasonable prices and fair payment plans I should wait. Indefinitely. 🙃
@@Connie.T. You're not wrong. The most favourable comparisons are new EV vs new other comparable car. My only point is that the EV premium may seem a lot bigger than it actually is, in terms of a monthly payment, taking fuel cost into account. But yes. the chip shortage and other factors certainly may mean that now is not a great time for a new EV purchase (or, to a lesser extent, _any_ new car purchase). I certainly didn't mean to imply otherwise.
It is, just not very simple to do anywhere. Some of them are light-sensor activated, and you have the issue of if the wiring will allow for such a large extra load. But seeing as the manager of a hotel I've been to made the staff install one for him... :)
@@nullfield1126 But in some older areas it's very easy because the light pole infrastructure was for high-energy lighting that has since been replaced with LED lighting. In my area that excess power is being used in conjunction with the powered spool setup mentioned and an app, works well (except for the middleman in my nearest example being Shell with an app that's a bit annoying--but it does work after some fiddling). Yes, the petroleum companies (like Shell I mentioned) see the future, one of my nearest gas stations has a bunch of DC fast chargers (though I prefer to spend 20-60 minutes at a restaurant/shopping center, personally). Even for a brand new light pole, the municipality has a pretty easy choice between something that's always just going to be a cost to them and something that can pay for itself--or even be a net profit. Also I believe the light sensor is generally on the lamp, not the supply.
@@TheCritic-MMA For us it seems like the entire light grid is remotely activated by a single sensor (which cuts the power when not needed), but I've yet to verify this.
@@nullfield1126 The light sensors are on the light not the incoming supply, well certainly here in the UK. Streetlight charging is becoming very common here especially in the suburbs of the cities where everyone has old Victorian terrace houses and on street parking
Anecdotally-- several years ago, my wife ran into a situation where she needed to plug a (gasoline powered) work vehicle into a 120V outlet at our rented apartment every night, to sustain some auxiliary aftermarket electrical equipment while the engine wasn't running. Landlord brokered a deal with the owner of an adjacent building that shared the parking lot where we (really, her employer) paid for the circuit to be run and receptacle to be installed, and the building's owner gave her a reserved space adjacent to the outlet and free electricity for as long as we lived there. It was a win for everyone involved. Wife and her employer got their needs met for a reasonable cost and minimal hassle, and the owner of the other building got an outdoor receptacle in a very useful location at no cost to themselves other than a slightly increased electric bill for a few years. Point being-- even with no obvious solution in a shared living/ parking situation, you can very likely come up with a suitable arrangement if you ask around a bit and are reasonable about it.
Sounds like u have a great landlord. Alot of them aren't willing to work with u at all, mostly now that landlords are multibillion dollar management company's and they aren't exactly flexible.
Seems like that is possible solution for 1 or 2 tenants, but what happens when everybody in the complex is forced to go EV? Set your alarm clock, get up at 2 am to take your turn at one of the 4 charging stations the landlord installed?
@@MRblazedBEANS if your landlord is being a problem, have a chat with some maoists, they usually have some pretty good ideas about dealing with landlords.
@@kaiserruhsam Look, I like democratic socialism as much as the next guy, but Maoism is plain fantasy. It doesn't truly take into consideration human behavior and thus relies on totalitarianism to meet its goals. -also it appeals to entitled poor dumb people-
The problem is not always that simple. I have been trying to get EV Charging installed my condo complex for nearly three years now. The NIMBY Grandmas that run the board have flat-out told me "NO" on multiple occasions. They do not want to hear about new technology or anything they don't understand. I've presented them with my own 10page cost-benefit analysis, a 50page feasibility study that I received through a research firm, market research showing the demand for EVs in my area (Downstate NY), and a small survey of neighbors in my community; showing a fair amount of support. They don't want to spend a dime on it. Our community does not have any assigned parking. All parking is outdoors in large parking lots, surrounding pockets of 4-8unit townhouse structures. The electrical panels are on the buildings themselves, capped at 125A/Unit I believe. My building for example is 250ft from the nearest parking lot. A bit far for an extension cord. Because there is no assigned parking, I cannot buy equipment only for myself. a. I wouldn't be able to guarantee the spot is always available, and b. When I move, the money I invested is down the drain. The most economical solution I have come up with is a community charging area that is open to all residents. Let's say, 4-6x Dual-port L2 chargers. concerns I've had brought up are: "the community will not want to pay for the installation cost of something they won't be using", which is fair; since there are only 5 PEVs in the community (1BEV/4PHEV). There are 292 total units in the community. There is also the concern of our old wiring and electrical grid. This community has likely not seen any major electrical upgrades since it was built in 1978. Where it stands now, I managed to get myself appointed to the condo board. I brought it up again after I joined (prior, I was only a resident). They're now at least willing to let me do the research and find out what the costs are. New York Power Authority says they will cover up to 90% of installation cost for an EV charging project in a multi-family community. The only other concern then being the price of the equipment itself, which there is currently no rebate for. I'm happy to discuss this further with anyone that is interested in learning more about my journey. longislandevs@gmail.com
I had a similar situation with my condo board (unmotivated board who could only say no) I offered to pay for all the hardware to install the charger, and threatened to sue the board (after many months of negotiations and similar reports/analysis). They went to their lawyer who was very bright and said the EV owner is offering to pay for infrastructure and added that the board should put a legal agreement in place (that says the EV owner agrees to maintain the infrastructure, a circuit and meter) and give the EV owner the power. The key to encouraging the boards is a carrot and stick. Carrot - pay all infrastructure and legal costs. Stick - threaten to sue the board if they won't co-operate after much negotiation.
Reminds me of an apartment building I used to live in, back in the early 90's, that refused to allow residents to have cable TV, or anything else that required wiring or mounting to the building, other than landline phone service.
Sounds very German. What I can suggest is to decrease the cost for the equipment install. Just put up RV-plugs (nema something-something?). Everyone brings their own equipment. Done. Not sure how to meter and bill power then, tho. sometimes, you can get external companies install all the stuff. They will also take care of it and do billing. You pay them with more expensive power.
Just from a quick look that I did, check out chargepoint's website. They have an option on their website that lists active incentives by state for installing their chargers. I did it under New York and there were a lot listed. Including tax credits for buying the equipment. There might have some money off or what have you for buying the equipment as well, but I think that fell under the stipulation that the charge station was open for the general public to use as well.
"Long Island" not surprised, its the magic land of NO. Anything that would improve the island you will get people angrily opposing it. Be it better developments around the LIRR, a bridge to Westchester, hell people were even opposing the LIRR expansion!
I switched to an EV because of your previous videos on this subject. The “you just have a full tank every morning” thing is what did it. Until that clicked, I was stuck in the mindset where I’d constantly be having to worry about where I’m going to charge. It should have been obvious that “home” is the best possible place to charge, but fueling up at the gas station was a stubborn idea that just would not leave my head. I think the way the next few years are going to go is that apartment complexes and public parking garages are going to figure out that they can attract renters with charging stations. I think on street charging is going to take a little longer before it becomes ubiquitous. And, unfortunately, I think we’re gonna be stuck with a half-dozen different apps to pay for it all for the foreseeable future. The incentive to unify with a single payment system, electric company or otherwise, probably just isn’t there. That’d take legislation, and I don’t see that happening soon.
Where there's a bill, there's a way. It'll indeed be a mess of start-ups for a while, but like everything (streaming TV, e.g.), it will eventually consolidate to a handful of larger firms with the capital to expand and buy-out the most. To your initial point, though, I think once people get a taste of EV life, there won't be a sales pitch involved anymore. Gasoline engines are going to seem very "last-century" here soon, appreciated only by those with nostalgia or toolboxes for brains.
Charging your car is more like charging your phone than like filling your gas tank. Yes, there are those expensive batteries you can get at the airport in an extreme situation, but usually you just charge overnight and it will get you through the day no problem.
@@nickwallette6201 First, I'm not in the US. But I don't want a couple of companies doing it, I want a lot of competition but with a standard. Standards can be created long before we have duopolies.
@@xWood4000 That’s the reality of it. Setting up a “charging as a service” offering is inherently an expensive proposition that will pay lots of very small dividends, so it only makes sense on a larger scale. It’s also better that way, since as the OP said, otherwise you end up signing up with a dozen outfits, each with their own app, and probably with their own loyalty programs and whatever… It’s not exactly a threatening monopoly, since public charging, private charging, and home charging are still likely to be the primary methods. On-the-go charging will be a thing you do when you must, like how most people will drink water at home, at work from a water cooler, or from a water bottle they carry - but are thankful to have the opportunity to buy bottled water from a vending machine or street vendor when they’re out doing things.
I can’t even get a landlord to not paint over dead insects and you think they’re gonna go for this? The only way you’ll get landlords to comply is to enshrine it into law. 240v outside receptacles at every associated parking space. 👍
We just need to make ownership of rental buildings much more regulated. We've let it be far too long, and that's sending housing prices through the roof.
What I've learned is that you've had excellent Condo associations and landlords. The best I can do out here is my landlord allowing a drop cord out the window to connect. Or charging at work or the local grocery store. Which... Is the option I'm strongly considering. The stores chargers are never/rarely used and they have a Starbucks inside where you're welcome to sit and work as long as you like if you buy something. That or bribing my mother to let me set up in her house 😂. My landlord and I are in a highly contentious relationship where every single thing that breaks is dragged out to the last possible moment to fix. Like the AC leaking water into the carpet for two weeks peak of summer. I'm sure it's grossly molded. I couldn't keep it dry despite my efforts.
Over time, these types of landlords and HOAs will find that they value of their properties will decrease if they don't offer EV charging options. Pretty sure there were small towns who were against letting gas stations open up...
You've been super good about pointing out this is all useless for renters and condo owners (or really anyone who can't install chargers..) but so few others are even acknowledging this, let alone adjusting policy to account for this fact.
I mean, also, one of his points is that installation isn't necessarily a thing you have to do. Depending on your situation, you might be able to just plug into a normal outlet that happens to be near where you park. I rent and that's what I intend to do when I get an EV, since I could easily make do with the absolute minimum charging speed.
There's a infrastructure race involving both third parties and EV makers (Tesla and GM in the US) to install public chargers. I'm in the Midwest, where everyone says you can't have an EV in, and I'm seeing this.
Here in Vienna, Austria, on-street chargers are plentiful and work flawlessly. They offer two charging outlets, 3-phase AC, 11 kW each. More than enough power, installation is relatively cheap due to ubiquitous 3-phase power and drivers bringing their own cable. The chargers themselves are rather unassuming, about the size of a typical US parking meter, and very simple. They do not even have a display, just an LED for each outlet and a beeper to confirm the successful start of a charging process. To start, you typically swipe an RFID card, which is very straightforward. Alternatively, you could also use an app. Less convenient, but at least it should work for pretty much everyone.
In emergencies, I've always been able to throw an extension cord out my 3'rd floor window when I parked right below. By pinching the cable under the trunk lid on the side opposite to the curb, the cable stays taut and get nowhere near the sidewalk. Now the council outlawed parking on my side of the street, so my little trick is no longer feasible!
@@SoulAssassino That's the way to go. The code in my city states in is not allowed to run cables across the sidewalk or road (somewhat reasonable), so doing it like this keeps it legal.
@@Tore_Lund you say that, but setting up a couple 12ft goal posts on either side of the street to hold up the cord and adding a few dozen feet of extension cord could potentially solve the problem. That's assuming there's almost literally no law or code enforcement while also having no criminals that would nick your easily acquired length of copper. Easy
@@tommink8379 I did this over a period of two years, and I live in a neighborhood with multiple pubs and watch party goers pass by completely oblivious to the wire overhead. A few noticed it and figured out what it was and even took pictures, but nobody ever tried to pull it or such. Slow charging is really the easiest: can park all night and the standard socket required costs next to nothing compared to a ccs setup, especially if you use one of your house sockets, if you are really ingenious, it should be able run the cord through the drain to the storm drain with a water proof socket, you the can fish out of the drain when you park there.
@@tommink8379 a twelve foot goal works great till a truck comes through. The last thing the public needs are private individuals stringing wires overhead. It would be a nightmare.
The US charger format with attached cables is because US charger sites emulated fuel pumps with the attached hoses. You pull up, put a hose in the tank filler neck and go. They wanted EV charging to have that same sort of experience.
And its pointless. I agree with just installing the NEMA 14-50 or the 14-30 with independent circuits in parking places. He showed the 14-50 saying it could do 30A, well the actual receptacle is rated for 50A, hence the number. Of course the 80% rule that's 40A your car could have, which at 240V is 9.6kW or 8.3kW at 208; or 5.7kW and 4.9kW with the 30A plug (using 24A). Actually, for a true widespread deployment NEMA 6-50 makes the most sense, its hot-hot-ground no need for the useless neutral. Carry your own cable lazy folks.
That was pretty much exactly the same thing I was thinking. For the average consumer, it's easier and something everyone is familiar with. You don't have to lug your own cable around, and besides, how often do you or did you ever use a broken hose at a fuel pump? Don't know about big cities but up here in the midwest, I've never had that issue. Not to mention his point about cutting into a live wire. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, all I know is I don't want to find out, and that should be incentive enough not to.
@@freeculture The only bad thing with installing outlets is that the building owner will never be able to charge a fee for electricity usage. They'd just always be giving away electricity for free (and losing more money as time goes on). For certain situations that may be okay, but those are few and far between. They'll either want a regular networked EVSE or an electrical meter setup to monitor and bill usage.
I think the only thing I'd quibble with here is the idea that gas stations could be made obsolete. Gas is kind of an ancillary function of most of them. For a lot of people, they exist as rest stops with bathrooms and snacks. Makes sense to have chargers to help keep cars going on longer trips while people take care of those needs. The stations focused at local consumers I can see going down to a couple legacy gas pumps and fast chargers for more emergency situations, but mostly pivoting to being convenience stores. [They don't really make a ton on the fuel as-is, so you could argue they already have.]
In Germany they are mostly chips and beer retailers for the hours 22:00 to 6:00 anyways, for exactly that reason. The profit on 1 can of beer is probably almost as high as an entire tank of gas. I mean the stuff that costs like 70 cent at normal stores costs like 2€-3€ there.
I agree with you for the most part, but I think there are two distinct uses of a gas station and only one of them really has a future. For travel stops along the highway, sure, we will need as many of those as we currently have to support an all-EV traveling populace. Arguably we will need more dispensers, but since each electric "dispenser" takes up less parking footprint than a corresponding gasoline dispenser, the actual station will be about the same footprint. The audience stopping there will be stopping for a little longer than their gasoline counterparts, so having something to distract them and separate them from a little cash in their 15-30 minute wait will remain quite profitable, possibly more profitable than today. Neighborhood gas stations (used mostly for daily commuters to fill up their cars on shorter daily commutes) will eventually be obsolete, or at least not be likely to attract enough people on a daily basis to sustain the continuous foot traffic needed to make a convenience store worth having. Instead of the car fueling being the major draw, you will have to develop some other draw to make it worth spending time to charge your car there when you could do the same at home or work. Obviously plenty of people will still need a charging solution for their routine commutes (if they have no options at home or work), but that population will be much smaller than the current population of "nearly everyone who commutes" who need to fuel their cars outside their home/work.
Smaller gas stations won’t exist but “travel centers” certainly will. At a minimum, heavy trucks will still need to refill (optimistically, they’ll still need hydrogen in the future)
Here in Michigan, we'll likely install solar panels on the roofs of 2 of our 5 manufacturing facilities as soon as the part shortage/ridiculous pricing goes away (next year?). We've been thinking about adding EV charges at all of our facilities... it's really not very expensive and my hope is that doing so will attract some creative minds who want a good job. I don't give a rat's about your rambling; this was good video as always.
For apartments et al, one option going on here in Hudson County NJ (approx) is having a company like Chargepoint setup a private charging area, which is part of the amenity list. Though in Chargepoint's favor, one option is to have a public section setup at a cost set (by the County usually), then part of the Amenity Fee (parking or otherwise) is used to have the renters be part of a 'discount group.' [Note - ChargePoint was the 'ID Card' handed out with my Ionic Plug-in.] As for workplace, that's not possible in my case - the parking garage for the nearby office buildings is shared with the local Mall. The mall itself does have chargers, but not nearly enough (for non-Tesla, anyway - its got a large Tesla charging group).
@@NJRoadfan Bet they allow your apartment to profit from this arrangement. You will pay whatever your apartment wants to charge over the prevailing electric rates. Never underestimate greed.
There's at least one company I've heard of that is going the 'customer provides the cable' route. Or rather, the customer uses their mobile adaptor portable EVSE route. Orange Charger apparently figured that cables are most of what goes wrong with charging; and are expensive anyway -- so their product for multi-unit properties are smart 110v or 240V outlets that you use a QR code and their app to turn on -- then you plug your mobile adaptor in and get an overnight slow charge. The outlet tracks your usage and bills you through their app. Hopefully ideas like this will take off and make it easier and more affordable to retrofit existing multi-unit properties to be EV friendly.
Honestly, I think just having regular NEMA 14-50 with in-use weather proof covers in even a handful of places would be amazing. While I carry standard 110V 16A EVSE with me everywhere, it's not much use for charging anywhere but work or home. Even having *SOME* NEMA 14-50 outlets available to the public would effectively eliminate my need to borrow a dino-fuel vehicle for the few times a year I need to go on a road trip. I think it would be cool for restaurants to have a couple and just tack the charging time to your bill (perhaps with an auto shut-off to avoid camping), same with shopping centers. How good would it be for business if people were motivated to spend an hour at a grocery store or mall vs. not stopping at all?
The problem with having those outlets be what you plug into is that they aren't designed for frequent replugging and also generally aren't GFCI protected. So there are definite safety hazards with having to plug something into them especially in wet conditions. Having a J1772 charger exposed instead fixes both of those issues.
I also am not convinced on the safety of NEMA 14-50 and would go further and propose that they should be phased out for EV charging. It wasn't designed for frequent connections - the prongs are too exposed when plugging it. And I'm not aware of any being tamper resistant, so I'd be concerned on how many kids might get injured or killed by jabbing something into an unused receptacle. The electric code is pushing more GFCI protection for 240 V circuits, but it seems that many plug-in charge points don't want the breaker for the circuit to be GFCI. So, I think that spending ~$500 on a full hard-wired EV charge point and having a safer place to plug in is worthwhile.
I've installed a few of these right next to breaker boxes for clients and I just make them a long 6 gauge service cord, works great and if you ever want to hard wire the whole way you already have the outlet and the breaker installed, you just extend the run with conduit outside or romex in the wall
For the thing you mentioned in 25:42, we are already working on similar stuff in Hong Kong despite we are not a power company but a EV charging startup. It requires a lot more than you might think but it's feasible and we are going to launch our first site at around Nov-2022
Sometimes, the theoretically most efficient solution doesn't work in practice, because it depends on buy-in from specific individuals or businesses who may or may not cooperate, while an alternative solution may be less efficient in theory, but it's something that you can use to solve your individual situation unilaterally, so it ends up being the go-to option. A simple example: my neighbor's landscapers have obnoxiously loud leaf blowers. The efficient solution would be for them to switch from gas blowers to electric blowers for around $500. But, they control the blowers, not I, and there is nothing I can do to make them switch. So, I had to settle for the much less efficient solution, which was to install an extra layer of soundproof glass on my windows for $5,000. Yes, the soundproofing is far more expensive than an electric blower would cost and, yes, it only helps if I'm inside with windows closed. But, for all the faults of the less-efficient solution, it was a solution that I could apply unilaterally, without requiring any cooperation from my neighbor or my neighbor's landscaper. Just pay the contractor and get it done. The same is true for transportation. In lots of cases, the most efficient solution is neither a gas car nor an electric car, but a bicycle and/or better public transit. But, of course, the transit system sucks, there's no safe place to ride a bike, and you have no way to making the city spend the money to improve either. So, you go with the less-efficient solution you are able to apply unilaterally, which is to get a car and drive it. And, for people that live in apartments, the same logic also applies to charging. Yes, the most efficient solution is for the landlord to install chargers. However, you are powerless to get your landlord to install chargers at home. So, you make due with the less efficient solution of, once a week, driving to a further away grocery store that has DC fast chargers, and charging the car while you shop. Yes, the electricity and infrastructure are much more expensive. But, it is something that you, as an individual can do unilaterally, regardless of what your landlord does or does not do. No, it's not ideal. But, unfortunately, the real world is not ideal.
Bicycles are safe. Your life expectancy riding a bike vs a car comes out in the bike's favor. They're just not _fast_ beyond about 2-5 mi (depending on the location and terrain.) Mr Money Moustache has a post where he calculated this, and John Forester for decades pointed out how the dangerous places for bikes are intersections, which are relatively easy for an aware cyclist to be safe at. "Bicycling is dangerous" is longstanding auto industry propaganda that was internalized by anti-motor vehicle groups.
10:00 "U low" might be your power meter complaining that the input voltage is low if it was designed for 220-250V and is getting less than 208V. It could also be that it uses a capacitive dropper circuit and its capacitor got damaged over time, no longer supplying enough current for the meter to work properly. 18:00 DC-charging doesn't need to be fast: you could have a bank of DC-DC converters capable of pushing 50kW but arranged in a way where they can be dynamically allocated to 10-20 charging points or ganged up to push 50kW to a single vehicle when needed. Siemens and other companies make units that can dynamically allocate 250-400kW between up to four vehicles. 25:30 No need for a FOB, the EVSE can read the VIN over the data pins, only thing needed is a secure authentication protocol so people cannot spoof your VIN to steal power if there isn't one already.
Your idea at 25:42 was what I was thinking this entire video! Though I think it could be taken even further into the app domain so that it would run similar to how the ExxonMobil app works. You just open the app, then: plug in the number scan a qr code geo-fence it etc. (however to tie you to that "pump number" in gas station parlance) That outlet works until you unplug it at either end of the cable. (to prevent people stealing your charge if not in an easily seen space) Your account gets charged. The reason to do this instead (or in addition to) the fob method is so that you can top someone else's vehicle up for them. Like for say if a bunch of people are on a road trip, and you want to split charging costs. Likely also a way to start charging road tax on electric vehicles which are not currently being charged in the same way as dead dinosaur cars. And it possible they impact the roads themselves just as much, if not more with their increased weight.
I can see apartments/condos in the future having outlets available at the assigned parking space(s) and billed to the individual apartment dweller. I've lived in two apartment complexes where my assigned spot was not near my apartment and one where my assigned spot was out front of my building. This was great when I had to put a battery charger on my ICE vehicle. The other option is a common area to install a third party charger which is billed by that company.
Right now I'm renting an apartment, and it's the crappy kind where you pay fees for everything. $20/mo just to park (not reserved parking) per vehicle, $20 for trash management, $5 for a parcel locker, etc. I saw they are advertising an EV charging spot where they charge like $120 a month for level 1 charging. Yes, $120 a month for a crappy 120v outlet, which incentivizes against an EV. Ignoring the moral issues, this type of greed which stops progress should be illegal.
@@semisagoglu Yeah, that is almost certainly private parking for the building. And usually there is limited space (limited in that there will not be enough for everyone to have as many as they want), so supply/demand will certainly come into play. And with crappy owners, that will be a heavily biased supply/demand even if a fair version would be warranted.
What on earth is the moral issue? Aside from providing a poor value. I'm not clear on exactly why EVs constitute 'progress.' There's no free lunch environmentally for energy to run a car. Don't mean to be argumentative, by the way, nor rhetorical.
@@magickmarck because as we replace more of our energy sources with renewables, replacing gas with electric means a greater share will be less dependent on fossil fuels
A low speed charger at supermarkets I think its a great idea. 20 minutes on a 230v 8A charge gives you 2.45kms - enough to offset the journey to the supermarket and back home for most people. Its also cheap and easy to set up for supermarkets. Having lots of slow chargers for everyone to use is better than one or two chargers always occupied at the front of the carpark.
You really don't want to be charging that slowly all the time. The car needs to be (at least partially) "on" while charging and can use a not insignificant amount of power to do that. Very slow charging can lead to higher charging losses than DC fast charging despite additional cooling. Level 2 chargers should be the minimum for destinations such as hotels. Opportunistic charging at stores needs to be 50kW DC fast-ish chargers to be worthwhile.
if more cars had 22kw AC those would be good sizes for supermarkets. But a lot are limited to 7-11. 50kw DC may be the best balance. Fast enough to get you a decent charge in the 30-60 minutes you may be in the supermarket (and within the limited parking time you’re allowed) but not so fast that they’d attract people just to charge (and wouldn’t be free)
DC fast chargers at every rest stop along the highway would be ideal. Seems like the perfect place for them and L2 charging everywhere else. Like you said, 50kW chargers could fit in at shopping areas, but personally I think a 12kW L2 charger would do fine, most likely replenish the miles used to get to and from the shopping center at least.
I'm in the Mountain West, and my complex installed smart locks and started toward smart HOMES last year. I see no reason why they couldn't run lines to our assigned parking spots and have an extra pin to unlock the charger that's unique to our apartment.
IF EV price and availability come to a reasonable point for me I would love to go EV. As a condo cave dweller with indoor parking and electrical meters somewhere on that same level, I assumed getting a hook-up could be accomplished without too much difficulty. You mentioned the meter tap ring (more info please) and that would address the issue of payment without the need to guestimate. These are 2 very useful and informative videos. Thank you.
The ConnectDER meter collar is actually oldish tech (2018 or so) that was originally developed to facilitate easy bolt-on solar PV without needing to upgrade the main panel. They're in the news again because Siemens is helping to develop them to take power out rather than feed power in, to facilitate easy bolt-on EV charging without needing to upgrade the main panel.
I agree, level 2 charging is suuuuper easy to setup. I recently ran a new 50 Amp circuit for an electric stove from the panel in my garage. Installing an outlet or hardwired level 2 charger in my garage will take about 10% of the effort that my stove did. I already bought a used L2 charger, only reasons I haven’t installed it yet are: A. I’m getting solar installed in a few weeks and don’t want to have to move it to accommodate the inverter B. Level 1 charging has been plenty for my needs thus far. The only time I’ve really really wanted L2 is when visiting family out of town.
There’s already a device on the market for multi-unit buildings similar to the Siemens device you discussed. It’s called a DCC-9 by Thermolec. I have it installed for my EVSE. It’s installed next to the meter in my building’s basement while my service panel is upstairs in my unit. It provides 40amps of charging on my 100amp service. It will automatically pause charging for at least 15 minutes if my panel exceeds 80% usage capacity. That used to only happen when my AC kicked on, but I recently got a high efficiency heat pump and since then it’s never needed to pause charging.
It's amazing if you think about it that people in 240V land use 3 kW just to boil water in an electric kettle, but yet that same amount of current is enough to charge an electric car in a few hours.
Who is using 3kW to boil water? Not likely unless you are talking about something that boils a pot of water in less than one minute. Besides, you are using your units incorrectly. Kilo-watts is a unit of instantaneous power. KWh is total energy (instantaneous power X time). If you do not understand the difference then you are not likely to understand the implications of that difference (but I will try to explain). A human might be able to generate one horsepower while on an exercise bike but only be able to do that for a short amount of time. So the power was 1 Hp but it only lasted for a few moments. The total work done is the average amount of power multiplied by the total time for which that power was developed. So you might conceivably have a high powered kettle that boils a pot of water in two minutes. That 3kW kettle would have then used 0.1 kWh of total energy. The average EV uses about 34.6 kWh to travel 100 miles. So 0.1 kWh takes you less than 1/4 mile.
@@mikebetts2046 I'm assuming OP is correct and European (probably german given the name) so a standard electric kettle pulls 3kW and heats water up in about a minute. They noted a standard circuit that delivers 3kW charges a car in a few hours (presumably after normal daily driving) so definitely understand kW vs. kWh.
@@mikebetts2046 In the UK our "fast boil" kettles are 3KW, also houses/flats that don't have gas supply use 3KW immersion heater water tanks. Our electric showers use between 7-10KW depending on the model.
@@ian54589 I see no evidence of understanding kW vs kWh. He suggested some correlation between boiling water (in a minute or so) and charging a car over several hours. Consuming 3 kW for one minute is not at all comparable to using that same power over several hours.
@@joeynebulous816 I can believe that. Of course there are a great many electric water heaters in use in the U.S. What I was saying that either way; consuming 3 kW for a minute or so is the equivalent energy to take the average EV just a very short distance. It seemed he was trying to suggest a similar energy usage for both.
My building recently had to halt EV charger installs because they had to get the electrical supplies put through an analysis to meet new code standards. Hopefully they get that done and any updates in quickly. There was about 1 EVSE going in per month it seemed.
I've done the math out, and DC fast charging is a daunting proposition. Rest stops could easily consume an entire 7kV primary circuit or more. Meanwhile, at work charging with 24A/208V chargers is actually pretty scalable and would be great for the grid as solar production would be high all day but AC loads would be low in the morning and most cars would be fully charged before lunch. Companies should offer charging as a perk, it costs a few $/day for workers being paid hundreds of dollars a day. It would also provide an incentive and commuting subsidy for jobs that require a physical presence, or entice hybrid workers to actually show up once in a while. People would game the system by swapping cars with their partner or bringing them in almost empty on Monday but who cares it's peanuts for the employer.
@@ewicky tbf $100/day is $12.50/hr, so that’s below the “fight for $15” minimum wage proposal. (And now with inflation that original $15 would be $20 if not more.) If the minimum wage was inflation-pegged it’d be ~$20 and everyone would be paid almost $200 a day at a minimum
@@kaitlyn__L hundreds with an s. Also you're assuming 8 hr days. A $15 or $20 minimum wage nation wide would cripple the economy and break so many already-fragile things. Food prices would skyrocket (further)
@@dspiffy I thought you meant it didn't seem oversharey in that respect, because your original comment made more sense that way. So you heard him saying "I felt like I gave away too much private information" and your reaction was "nah I don't think you gave away too much"?
There’s a few EVSEs installed around my little rural town - behind historic hotel across from the power company and at the sports complex. It’s owned and maintained by the power company. I loved that you mentioned the power company to do own and operate these things. They’re even installing and running a DC Fast Charger soon die travelers and people visiting from out of town.
I definitely think that one of the biggest obstacles to EV adoption (besides cost) is apartments. If you own your own home, you can easily modify it to add an EVSE, especially if you have a garage. If you live in an apartment, then there's no incentive to improve the property if it's owned by someone else. There's also no real incentive for landlords to improve their property either, when they could just keep costs low and rents high. It's funny that people say that owning an EV is impossible in rural settings, when it's really the opposite. In rural areas, land is cheaper, and therefore ownership of single-family homes is much more common. In big cities, it's much more common for people to live in big apartment buildings, where they don't really have their own spot to park their car, or leave it charging overnight.
If we got rid of a lot of zoning restrictions, there would be more apartments who would have to compete for tenants, so they'd need to do things to attract people. Right now, huge areas of cities are taken up by single family housing, artificially lowering supply.
That's what this video is about. But what it didn't mention that the now-privated older video did is that Alec paid for the installation in the parking garage. I imagine most landlords would be okay with an EVSE installation if it doesn't cost them anything _and_ it lets them charge the next person more.
@@Br3ttM In fact the inverse would happen - SFH zones would obtain commercial property which makes them complete villages and thus reduces traffic by a reduction in demand for the roadways to the commercial districts. As things should be.
Hi. It's probably already being written here, but taking the power from someone's home is more difficult for the power company than taking it from the cables that run to the home. It means it's easier for them to not bother home owners and just install those plugs in the public domain.
Not if it's properly buried (like here in Chicagoland). They'd have to find, unearth, tap in, re-bury, then dig new to street. Or, like he said, you can tap into an existing smart meter (so no second meter needed) and just shallowly bury wire to street. When looking to keep costs down, not having to dig up a mains is huge.
@@ObscuraGrey You're right. I'm not used to buried cables, even though there should be access chambers fairly often, there also may not be when the terrain is really stable. I'm also used to home owner not trusting smart devices, not keen on accepting ojects they don't own or can't act on (like those cables which would go to the street). But yes, if it's easier to set up and we can overcome such hurdles, sure, I'm all for it as well :)
The only reason I put in a big service to my garage was for EV charging, I don't have an EV yet, but I had to run a new service out to my garage anyway. So instead of running another 20 amp out there I ran a 100 amp and put in a sub panel. The whole reason is because I think that most EVs will support backflow into the house at first it will probably be to assist with power outages and such, but in the future they will probably be used to help balance loads on the power grid.
In the UK, EVs are suddenly not making sense any more. As of October, the domestic electricity price cap is going up to about 34p/kWh (currently about 28.5p/kWh) - it was going to be around 52p/kWh before the government intervened. However, commercial entities have no such price cap and social media has reported that many pub owners are giving up because they are going to be billed around 90p/kWh - that's over US$1/kWh. The operators of commercial charging points will not be subject to the price cap so only EV owners with their own parking space in their garage or driveway would be able to use price-capped electricity, and with the price going up to 34p/kWh the cost of running an EV is getting close to that of a petrol car.
Love your videos, and I've also recently been getting disillusioned with carcentric infrastructure thanks to Not Just Bikes and Strong Towns. Nice to see other folks talking about such things as well.
A few things worth mentioning: - Dual plug chargers exist. The two I know of are the Clipper Creek HCS-D40 and the Grizzl-E Duo. These chargers allow for charging two EVs from one outlet, potentially reducing installation cost. This is beneficial for dual EV households as well as workplace settings. - Even though charging with a 120v outlet is considerably slower than anything else, it's still something. It might enable recruiters to mention that as a perk to potential employees. - Many utility companies encourage the use of EVs by partially subsidizing the cost of EV charger installation and the monthly cost of charging an EV. The utility I use offers $250 towards the cost of EV charger installation, and $30 a month for 12 months as a credit on the bill.
In Winnipeg, we get ticketed for running cords to the street when we want to run our block heaters during the winter, so there’s one hurdle that we’d have to overcome first. I understand the reasoning behind the law (not wanting to create a hazard with cords running over walkways), but there’s got to be a shift in thinking before EVs can be a reasonable solution for the masses.
In ohm's law, U is voltage, so a U low error would indicate low voltage, which propably meant the meter had a fault and needed replacement. And if it had a separate clamp type amp meter, those don't take much to damage.
It would make a very confusing error message since it's somewhat standard* to use V in English-speaking countries. * At least I've never heard of using U before, and English Wikipedia doesn't use U.
@@johnsmith34 The only problem with using V is the meter probably use a seven segment display, where you can't get a V to show on these type of segments.
@@johnsmith34 It would of been communicated if you know the limitation of the display and it was representing a U for voltage, but as Alec said, he didn't have the users manual so he didn't know what the U LO meant, so therefor wouldn't know U was for Voltage?
I love the Media Pending T-shirt! I had nightmares seeing the Media Offline screen on some of my earliest Premiere Pro 1.0 Projects around 1999! Thanks for the throwback!
I'm an architect who focuses on sustainability in multi-family buildings and we are seeing a couple of factors come together in that market. One is that some cities are reducing or eliminating off-street parking requirements for multi-family buildings, with the idea that this will encourage public transit use and is viable in cities like Seattle where we have semi decent public transit. In reality, this is more of a win for developers where they don't have to spend money on expensive parking and can dedicate that to rentable units, but I digress. The other factor is that cities, like Seattle, are requiring parking garages to be EV ready like you mentioned, and often developers are opting to install a couple of chargers at the start of the project and will expand later as demand increases but the infrastructure is already there and they just have to install the EVSE. With California passing the law banning new gas car sales in 2035, Washington seems to be following suit, along with possibly other states such as New York and others that have historically followed California when it comes to emissions regulations like CAFE. This will make the landscape really interesting and I can see developers looking ahead and making sure that any parking they are planning on having will be EV ready if not just having EVSE's installed at each location. I know that I will be pushing my clients to make all stalls EV ready with the shared charger concept you mentioned since that is so much more cost effective. 13 years isn't a long time in developer land where planning, design, permitting, and construction can take 2-5 years if not more in some worst case scenarios. That doesn't put 2035 that far away once you consider that timeline. I think and hope that having level 2 EV chargers at home will not be something most people have to worry about in the near future. Seattle already has a free program for installing level 2 chargers on utility poles on the street and you just have to request one and then they have some sort of app to bill you for the usage.
I mean, that sounds great for new developments, but there will still be a lot people living in older buildings. More street charging will help, but it will probably still be markedly more difficult for people who live in multi-family residences to charge EVs for a long time.
I really, really, really hate the trend to reduce or eliminate off-street parking. I've lived in apartments in Auburn, Kent, and Tukwila built some time in the 60s-80s, and they've all had too few parking spots, and that's a nightmare. It's infuriating seeing apartment buildings being built with even less parking.
City-mandated parking is never a good idea. The free market knows better than government bureaucrats how many parking spaces a building needs. If you want parking, and are willing to pay enough for it to justify the costs of constructing it, the free market will be happy to rent it to you. But, if you're not, it is unreasonable to expect a landlord to just give you free parking for the same reason it's unreasonable to expect them to give you free electricity, water, or anything else.
@@ab-tf5fl A perfectly free market can never exist. It's a mathematical axiom that can lead to some interesting conclusions, but in reality there is always market power, rent seeking, erosion of the ecological ceiling and social foundation, etc.. (And, by the way, there will always be a monopoly on violence in order to enforce contractual agreements and protect those with wealth and influence; and that monopoly -- that state -- will always be captured by the ruling class.) Back to the point, I cannot see incentives ever working out like that. Denying the political does not make the political go away.
@@ab-tf5fl If parking is not mandated, it just creates a new place for 'socialize the costs, privatize the profits'. The developers get to build more densely, and when people need parking they end up using the street, which is paid for by taxpayers and each resident in the form of parking tickets and meter fees.
The elephant in the room with the electric car conversation is privilege. For those of us making minimum wage (or even a few bucks an hour more, in many places), an electric car is still wildly unaffordable. We're barely making ends meet as it is, and have no wiggle room in the budget for a newer car, never mind convincing the slumlords we rent from to install charging infrastructure when they can't be bothered to fix leaking septic systems or roofing. The discussion about what types of chargers to put where is interesting to me, but only in an academic, almost theoretical sense, because I don't see myself being able to afford an electric car in the foreseeable future, much less own a home or even be able to live in a place where the landlords would consider installing EV chargers.
Progressives don't care about you. "Take the bus if you can't afford a $50k vehicle!" is their answer to your situation. You have to understand that they want you to suffer, it's the only way to force society to move in the direction they want.
Once you finally are in the market for a new car, EVs can already be far cheaper to own in the first month than a gas car thanks to gas savings alone (depending on your driving needs of course). When you're doing $40 in electricity versus $400 in gas per month, that's $360 saved that can go towards payments on an EV. As for slumlords, they need to be woken to the fact that EV chargers can be a stable long-term revenue source for them.
@@jrharbortproductions Dude, slumlords are definitely not going to be installing EV chargers for tenants who will never be able to afford to use them, and if they do, they'll monetize them way beyond $40/mo. You can't even do laundry in places without paying dollars on the penny of energy usage. EVs are a privilege and a distraction from developing equitable public transit. There is no way people making minimum wage will be able to afford a $40,000 expense, no matter how well intentioned or "money saving" it is, without systemic change.
You can add poorer rural people to your "list" of people who won't be able to afford them until you can buy one used and even then, it'll be expensive for a lot of us in that group. Rural places will be the very last, if ever, places where people can have EVs unless they somehow win a lot of money and can afford to put the chargers in their garages or on the outside of their houses next to their driveways.
@@hobosaur4250 Public transit in the US is basically a dead issue if you don't live in or near a large city. It's another of the many issues poorer rural people experience. EVs will eventually, in several decades, be a viable solution where public transit will not. You just won't get farmers and ranchers willingly giving up or selling their land unless we make natural meat, and hence cattle/other farm animals, illegal.
1:11 Don't forgot it's harder on the cars themselves. Remember the more you fast charge a lithium battery, the more heat, the shorter the operational life of the battery. (More rapid degradation). Also, we need these batteries to last as long as possible to offset the carbon footprint of making the batteries... Edit: yay he covered the fact dc fast charging is hard on batteries later on.
True but honestly that's all a matter of smart recycling. When a battery pack is not suitable for a vehicle anymore it's still a damn good storage battery for PV for example. And even if it's not suitable for PV anymore most of the pack can still be recycled.
@@theosexpertdaymon2774 Not from an University, but the Tesloop rideshare Service has pushed their Cars pretty hard with frequent fast charging, and they published a Report about that and their degradation many years ago
Another option for roadside charging: There ARE the droids you're looking for. There are already parking meter and scooter rental systems in place that bill to whatever payment method you have set up in your smartphone's virtual wallet. This could easily be extended to EV chargers. In most downtown areas, you already have lampposts along the street for public safety, so it's not like much infrastructure would need to be added or upgraded.
It is infact a huge amount of infrastructure. But we need to get on with it. It will be great once finished. (Edit. Not even finished, just a few projects scattered properly would help so much)
Re: "Put L2 chargers everywhere". Also Hotels. Usually hotels have 1-2 chargers per hotel, and it should be closer to 5x that (for now, and growing over time to "1 per expected rental car in our lot") We do still need a lot more DC charging though, but more in the sticks, not in the city. (Not just between cities. Also out between cities and rural destinations like parks/mountains/lakes/etc)
As far as providing chargers at work places goes, bear in mind that not everyone works 8 hour shifts. Those who have to work around caring commitments (children or elderly) often have shorter shifts - maybe 4 or 5 hours. Could a slow charger fully charge a car in that time?
In Germany all the chargers require specific apps and it's a mess whereas the UK required all chargers to have a credit card slot. However the car manufacturers saw the problem and a way to make extra money. Mercedes, for example, now allows you to register with their me system and then the car talks with the charger and automatically deals with the payment details. So you just have to drive up to a charger, plug in and leave it. The car will deal with payments. There are also uber style apps that let homeowners rent out their chargers now to other people.
The plugged in car is denying charging for another car. One which needs to move. This is an opportunity to raise tax. Leave your car when charged and you will pay government by the minute.
@@20chocsaday So you have to stop whatever you're doing and go outside to move your car or the government's going to tax you? Can't you just go find another charger? I love living in the US where the government doesn't involve itself in every little problem, though things are going that way.
@@bwofficial1776 Well, you wouldn't need to. But if you have no concern for your fellow citizens and the gov'ment will stay out of it what next? The guy wanting his car charged will hire a bulldozer to get your truck out of the way. And a specialist to make sure you pay to charge his car. Then it's up to you. Have you read jimbolino's post?
My guess for the thing about cables attached to the chargers in the US is that it provides visual and functional similarity to gas pumps? You used to take a cable from the gas station to your car, and now you take a cable from the electric pump to your car. That's what makes the most sense for me...
That's probably part of it. Older CHAdeMO plugs in the Eugene, OR area even have a lever that clamps to lock them in place, exactly like a gas pump. I found it oddly satisfying, frankly.
Probably also just that it's convenient to not have to faff about with pulling your own cable out of whatever storage compartment you leave it in, and putting it back, and worrying about it getting lost or stolen or damaged.
Also, by the time you get up to 300 kW or so, your cable really really needs liquid cooling. How to manage _that_ with a detachable cable stored in your car, I have no idea.
@@ps.2 Speaking from EU: You only use your own cable for L2 Charging (a.k.a. up to 22kW AC, sometimes 44kW). For L3/DC charging, the cable is attached to the charger (using Type2+CCS combo). This is pretty much standard across Europe. Only rarely do you get an attached Type2 plug for AD charging and your car usually comes with one as standard.
“The power company handles it all” might work in a place where the utility has an absolute monopoly, but the metro area I live in has 3 or 4 power companies serving different areas, which would limit your options in weird ways. In addition, consumers here own everything from the weather head back (except the meter), so there could be issues there with using customer assets to charge other peoples cars.
I am curious on what you think is an ideal solution for a hi-rise? My building is currently looking to install some chargers. Of course, they need to be shared chargers (not every parking spot can get a charger...that's a bridge too far). So, install expensive fast DC chargers or slower level-2 chargers? Since they have to be shared we really do not want just one car sitting there for 8 hours while four other cars are waiting. But then, DC fast charging is expensive to install and not the best for the battery. Part of the problem is there is not telling how many EV cars will be in the building in the future. Maybe there are 2-3 today but there may be 50 in a few years.
The fairest solution might be to rely mostly on a whole bunch 120V AC wall plugs, as it is fairer to have 100 cars charging slower than 20 cars charging faster. You can couple that with a few shared 8 kW level 2 charging stations, which would be pay-as-you-go for those that need them (but charge significantly more per kWh than the level 1 plugs).
DC fast charging at apartments would be worse because nobody wants to make an extra trip down to move their car when it's done charging. A larger number of load-sharing level 2 chargers is a more sensible choice. When somebody is sitting already charged it would have no effect on everybody else.
Biggest hurdle for a Condo or Apartments well may be state laws regulating who is and who is not a "utility provider". In many states, it's simply illegal to sell electricity without registering as a utility. So, some legal reform allowing Condo associations or Rental complexes to sell up to a small amount of power (say 5 GWh a year) without registering as a utility would go a long way.
This is true but I think the real threat is condos profiteering, not charging the actual cost. My condo charges a $40 flat charging fee which is way more than my Volt would reasonably use. Way more than if billed to my utility meter at night on off peak power.
We've got an EV (2015 Nissan LEAF) and a plug-in hybrid (2015 Chevy Volt), and we've never bothered getting a 220v L2 EVSE at home for either one. In fact, since we moved, we're currently keeping both of them charged on the Volt's granny lead (the 110v L1 EVSE from the trunk of the car). We basically unplug from the car we're about to drive and plug into the car we're leaving. Not an ideal situation, but we've managed so far, partly because I work from home. I'll have to install another circuit to get both cars plugged in at the same time. I might consider 220v if it doesn't break the bank, but we could manage on 110v for both cars, since they're both early vehicles with very limited EV range.
Here in the Netherlands, at least in a lot of city's, when you buy an EV and you don't have the ability to charge at home and there is not a charger within 250m of your house the city will create one within those 250 meters. (A private company will be appointed to place on) That's why we have a very, very dense network of chargers. I can pretty much go anywhere and there will be a destination charger somewhere in the vicinity. That's also the reason 30% of European chargers are found in the Netherlands. :) You can get 7.2 kwh homecharger installed for about 750€ here btw. 1500€ for one that will take your solar panels surplus production first before it will get it from the net.
@@protonneutron9046 yeah i can see that, the country is slipping more and more to a third world country. The world and tech is changing to much and too fast for too many people.
@@Flaggyt no, it's that the product doesn't fit the need. Anyone who understands econ knows that the market is always right. So, that means that EVs are wrong for the USA at this point in their development. EVs have existed far longer PVs and still are not ready for market in the US. They aren't high tech enough.
@@protonneutron9046 that they had a few ev's in early 1900 is a bs argument. But hey if it doesn't fit them it's their loss. EV's are simply brilliant but we are a smaller society that can quickly change and adapt to new technology and we aren't as conservative as a lot of Americans. And yes the market is always right doesn't mean it isn't old-fashioned and not able to embrace new tech.
This Siemens product development mentioned at 26:50 or so in his utopian level 2 charging and key fobs for pre-meter lines ...what's the name? Where can I find out more?
Fun fact: there's also a thing called "Plug & Charge" where an EV identifies itself to the EVSE, so that you don't even need a key fob or anything. You just plug it in and it automatically knows who to bill. It's not everywhere yet, but the idea is quite powerful and it's already standardized, so we're on a good track here. What I currently see as one of the roadblocks is insane roaming charges. Basically it works like this: people who own charging points tend to hire companies (CPOs - Charge point Operators) who supervise them. These companies then handle the technical side as well as payments. Each company usually have their own app and their own RFID cards (or key fobs or whatever). And they each try to get people to sign up with them. The problem is when you want to charge with chargers that are managed by other CPOs, not the one you signed up with. Then you either need to sign up with the other CPO, or your CPO needs to have a roaming agreement with the other CPO. Since there are many, many CPOs out there, it would be impractical for every CPO to sign an agreement (and perform an IT integration) with every other CPO. Enter roaming networks. CPOs sign up to participate in them, and suddenly every CPO can use every other CPO's charge points. All billing goes through the roaming network. There are two problems that I see with this: 1. This schema is VERY complicated and there are very many middle men 2. The roaming networks charge insane fees for using them. Most often the charging price literally DOUBLES when you're not charging in your home network. All in all, both EVSE owners and electric car owners suffer from this. If it all could be made simpler and cheaper, I think it would help a lot.
I believe Tesla already does that with its Superchargers, you just plug the car to the Supercharger and the car identifies itself to the charger, including payment information. When you go to use a supercharger for the first time, it asks in the car's screen for payment info. This is also very powerful for rental companies, just have the car ask for credit card info per each charge, and you could easily have a central location with chargers that bypass that, so the rental company can top up the car's battery before renting it to someone.
The roaming fees are most likely an issue that differs by country/region. Here in Germany we also have a ton of CPOs, many of them formed "unions" (for example most of the municipal energy providers of larger cities that offer charging bunched together and formed the "Ladenetz" group), and those groups then have roaming contracts with other groups/CPOs. AFAIK I can use >90% of all charging points in Germany and neighboring countries with my Ladenetz RFID card and always pay the rates from my contract with Ladenetz without additional (roaming) fees.
@@Aubreykun I do believe it's some sort of opt-in thing that you have to manually enable, but I'm not sure. Well, at a bare minimum you need to register you car with some company through which you will pay.
@@vilx7259 Again, as someone privacy-concerned, that sounds like a nightmare. If there's no "walk up and pay cash" option then this is going to meet heavy resistance.
In July, I moved into a rented home, which has a detached garage. Sadly, it does not have 240V in it though, and the electrical panel is on the side of the house on the opposite end of the property. I could get an EV, but I would probably have to rely on Level 1 charging at home, unless I wanted to cover the cost of running a rather long circuit to support Level 2 in a home I don't own. Since I work from home though, I suspect I could get away with this just fine, and I would seriously consider getting an EV if I were looking to buy a car right now. I still have a 2018 RAV4 though, and it seems awfully early to trade it in right now (not to mention the market being crazy at the moment). Likewise, my parents rent a home, which has an attached garage, and it actually has an unused 240V dryer outlet in it (there's a gas dryer instead). You'd think this would be perfect for an EV, but the problem is that it was built in 1930, and the garage is therefore on the small side. While it would probably fit a Model T perfectly, modern cars do not fit comfortably. They can be squeezed in, but it's a very tight fit. It's difficult to get out, and you would have to move the car in order to, for example, do the laundry. I suppose they could technically run a long cord across the sidewalk to get to the car, but that's a poor solution since it would undoubtedly get in people's way. There are all sorts of situations like these which currently make Level 2 charging a challenge. Even the "have the power company put it on your bill" idea has some challenges. For one thing, people in especially older apartment complexes often don't receive an electricity bill (I lived in such a place for years). Even if you solve that by allowing people to open accounts that are for EV use only, you're also going to have problems with visitors from outside the area who would have no reason to have any sort of account with the local utility. And this is before you even get into all the challenges deregulation like we have here in Texas would introduce into this scheme, but I won't get into that rant... I have no idea what the answer is, but I hope we get one eventually. Personally, looking down my street, I see lots of utility poles that seem like they would be excellent places to mount EV chargers. Some of them even have street lights on them, so there's already power available there from somewhere. I wonder how hard this would be to pull off.
It sounds like you're not really in the market for an EV but when you are, try talking to you landlord. You don't know what they'll say if you don't ask and the worst that can happen is that they say no and you are no worse off than you already are. Also, be prepared to cover some of the cost, either directly or in the form of a rent increase. Maybe you'll get lucky and your landlord will be cool with covering the costs but I think a more realistic scenario is that you will need to cover some or all of the cost one way or another. Remember that to your landlord, this is a business and it's unreasonable for people - renting or otherwise - to expect capital improvements to their home at no cost. If you're asking for improvements, you're going to have to pay something for it one way or another. The power pole charging station thing... Definitely shouldn't be difficult. It already exists in a number of cities, including Toronto and London so solutions already exist.
Alec, i think you are completely correct. Where i live (the netherlands) a lot of what you say, is already being done, especially in commercial buildings. Either the building owner, or the electricity supplier puts in an extra meter on the main supply to an office building, digs a trench to the parking lot, and installs a few charger poles (usually 4KW types), and you can access those with a membership card. I've even seen installations on shared commercial buildings where the charger pole just contains a payment terminal for your debit or credit card, no membership required, Just plug in, swipe your card, and choose full charge or a fixed amount, you can even enter your mobile phone number, the system will text you when the charge is completed.
I would say you were very lucky they were willing to work with you. In my experience landlords generally have zero interest in anything they are not legally required to do, even if you offer to cover the cost of an electrician and materials to make an improvement. One change to your idea, I think it'd be better to have a credit card used to pay for charging vs a specialty fob, especially for shared vehicles, rentals, and other stuff - or like business trips when you have to use a company card and provide receipts for that trip. I think BIGGER shopping stores (WalMart, Target, Lowes, Home Depot, similar) would still benefit from chargers though - grocery stores its not unusual to spend 2-3 hours doing a big shopping trip which could charge a useful amount of power at ~6kW charge rate. Side note - I would love for you to do a video about single-phase vs 3-phase power and connecting single-phase loads like an EV to a 3-phase power supply how it works and what the sinewaves look like.
I can see the specialty fob going away now that contactless credit cards are a thing. (Even if you don't use ApplePay or whatever Google is doing) The main benefit for that is it removes the swipe and just bypasses reading the chip. (Because contactless essentially is a wireless chip.
Workplace chargers are necessary, even if billed to the employee as a company car would have been. In my case, we have customer service / sales reps in electric fleet cars who come and have to go to a hotel or some other facility to charge. They could be charging at work, and put in their full time instead of stressing about where to get their charge so they can get to the next site or home.
In the UK, most electric chargers come with pen-fault protection built in. However, the tesla wall chargers do not and therefore, pen-fault protection needs to be added onto the circuit to install the tesla charger. Not sure how similar/different this is in US.
The PEN fault protection seems to be a UK specific thing. In North America code requires a grounding electrode at each building so some of those fault scenarios can't happen. Also L2 chargers connect line to line and don't use a neutral connection.
@@RobertHancock1 Possibly, I don't fully understand what the fault even is. I just know that it's possible to happen and that all 3 live, neutral and earth/ground need to be disconnected. Otherwise, the car body basically becomes live
$2500 definitely seems reasonable to me after my experience. Probably close to half of the cost of that was probably conduit and cables. And, wow. Electricians could use some education on EVSE’s. The issues you had were some of the same I ran into in my region, except the thinking a transformer would be needed. We needed load sharing set up and the electricians didn’t adequately convey that to the city for inspections, and so they ended up not setting them up that way (and upsizing the circuit). One more complication in large residential with 3-phase service is phase balancing. We went with an EKM meter, which was similar to what you had but a different brand. The nice thing with them is that you can use a bunch of independent meters and they can feed a cloud service that can send bills to tenants and owners however you need to without monthly fees.
I absolutely love your idea of tapping in to home’s electricity for level 2 chargers! But it might be even easier. The electricity to the house is probably run along the road already!
Might be helpful to frame charge times in terms of how many hours per month/year/decade you spend filling up, not how many minutes per individual charge. With an EV, you spend (effectively) 0 time charging at home since you just plug in as you walk into the house, plus 20 minutes per fill-up on long road trips using Level 3 charging. However with gas cars, you need to drive to a gas station every single time you need to fill up, which is a 5-20 minute round trip journey plus the 2-3 minutes spent pumping. If you take 1 road trip per month and otherwise commute to work, you're probably spending less time charging an EV in total over that month than you would filling up the gas tank.
In some new condo buildings in my area (Greater Vancouver, Canada) the developers are running electrical lines from the suite panels to the assigned parking spots. A move in the right direction.
Interesting. My building is semi-recent. They have 2 parking spots in the visitor parking where you can pay by hour to charge a vehicle for up to 4 hours.
So.. here's the problem with condos. What you suggested might work for a few gung-ho EV enthusiasts, but it doesn't scale. Where I live, the government (in its *infinite wisdom*) has decreed from on high that sales of new gas powered cars will be banned in 2035. If we're going to rely on AC charging for daily needs.. that means, as that date approaches (fudge factor of a few years before or after..), you're really going to need to have every spot in the parking garage wired up with a L2 charger. In my building, there are I'm going to guess approximately 500 condo units. And the parking garage is shared with another building of equal size. Virtually everyone has a parking spot (some have two).. so that's 1000 L2 chargers. Oh, and there's no metering in the building at all currently (electricity is a common element paid by condo fees).. but that'll likely have to change. And if everyone's charging for 10 hours at night at 3kW, that means 3000 kW of power on top of what's being used currently.. so I'm going to guess that'll probably involve major upgrades to the electrical infrastructure of the building. That's not going to be cheap. And then, you've got to do that for every high rise. In 12.5 years (more or less).. and that's likely to be backloaded, since, you know, people don't tend to proactively plan ahead on such a timeframe. It doesn't seem feasible to me.
The average lifespan of a new ICE car these days is 8-12 years depending on which source you ask, so it's more like a 20+ year timeframe. Not to discount the challenge of upgrading the infrastructure, but it's not as doom-and-gloom as people are yelling about. That, and new laws can be passed if reality does prove to be a problem. Push the deadline back (the most likely scenario tbh,) require/incentivize getting those upgrades in place in time, fund transit/bicycle infrastructure to reduce the need for car usage in the first place...
@@crazoatmeal1854 This is why I say there's a fudge factor of a few years either way. Ideally all of the infrastructure would be in place before you're forced to buy an EV if you're shopping for a new car. And depending on how the market plays out, as the deadline approaches, it could be increasingly difficult to buy a gas-powered car at a reasonable price (they could be highly sought after and expensive, or shunned and worthless.. who knows?) The nightmare scenario is being forced to buy an EV when you have nowhere to charge it. I think as governments change, some of these laws may change or be scrapped entirely. That's always a possibility. But for now, this is where we're at, for better or worse. And I just don't think it's realistic.
If you live in a certain Western state, you're having problems today with not having enough electricity to go around. PG&E is turning off power and rationing it. They're actively decommissioning power plants in the name of being green. Windmills don't work when it's not windy and solar panels don't work at night. Nuclear is safe and clean and good for decades but it's "scary" so no one wants to seriously entertain building more nuke plants. California and the country as a whole has a lot of work to do before mandating EVs. We hear all the time about how the US electrical grid is barely adequate and falling apart.
Getting a small project involving PG&E can take months. To get a new transformer can take more than a year. The idea that we can do this on a large scale is laughable.
Afaik, all on street chargers in the Netherlands use a keyfob, but the bill doesn't go to your (home) power company. You just have to pay to the company who installed the charging pole.
Just wanted to say that here in Iceland, thanks to somewhat recent laws, if you *own* an apartment in a condo, it doesn't matter if you're the only person in the entire condo, you can request that the housing association install an electrical parking spot, and they are *forced* to comply, with every apartment paying their share. I haven't read the laws thoroughly, regarding what happens for person number 2 or 3 in the condo that asks for the same thing, but at least this means that every single condo will have a 22kW charger installed on the shared condo parking lot, if even a single EV owner lives there. As a *renter*, myself, I have no such perks. Which is why there is no charger in our parking lots, and I have no access to charging outside of fast-chargers / public 22kW chargers around the city. Which is why I don't own an EV yet.
10:43 i have an Emporia Smart EV charger which gives me charge time, kWh used and cost (based on entered value). This is installed in my own house garage, but could be used anywhere. I'm thinking there are better options now though (JuiceBarcharger) for EVSE's with built in billing ability.
I would prefer if cars would communicate with the smart meter via IEEE 1901-2010 (ethernet over powerline) and would send its VIN to the meter, that way the car itself is the authentication that tells the utility who to bill. This has other benefits too. This could be done using an on-board REST api, that way it could be tied into home automation and you could easily track the charge status of a vehicle using local systems (no cloud needed). And for those who are security conscious the same api endpoint that sends the VIN could also provide a TOTP or challenge OTP so that the billing system doesn't bill the victim of a bad actor and the charger just doesn't turn on without the code.
An alternative is to use the control pilot as a single wire CAN bus, I think this is what Tesla does at the moment, which honestly isn't a bad idea. It'll probably require lower cost electronics than a EoP solution, and overall will probably be less complicated. The downside is it'll be pretty slow, maximum baud rates of about 33300, but that's almost certainly more than adequate for the messaging going between an EV and a meter. It's fairly straightforward to have the control pilot drop back to "normal mode" when not being used as a CAN bus.
As a person that has driven electric for some 10 years, you nailed it: 1) We need a huge focus on AC chargers (At home and work) not DC chargers (which should mainly be for long distance driving). 2) Utilities should install lots of L2 chargers that allow you to use a fob, RFID, phone, etc to put the charging on your home bill. 3) Workplaces should be spammed with chargers with (2) so people can charge at work during peak solar PV hours. 4) AC charging is cheaper, easier on the grid, easier on the cars, and can be put in demand-response programs.
Hybrid is the way to go, particularly plug-in hybrid. Charge up when you can and drive around town on electric, when you go out of town and deplete the battery it's just a hybrid with hundreds of miles of range and refuel time in minutes.
As far as a fob to track power usage: is there a major reason why your car can't transmit identification in the same handshake that communicates power availability?
i guess it makes it easier for other people to pay for you. Like your friend chipping in, or a company paying for your miles, or like you let someone borrow your car and their suppose to pay the bill.
The major reason is existing cars don't all support that so you'd need a solution for older cars. A minor reason is the power handshake is a (mostly) one-way analog signal which is too simple to support such a system. This is minor because there are standards to enable two-way communication over the power wires.
Presumably they'd partner with e.g. Chargepoint for actual EVSEs and billing system. It ends up being a "normal" public charger, but slower and conveniently located. EV owners pay Chargepoint; Chargepoint reimburses employer for the energy and maintains the EVSEs.
A large-ish capacity L2 charger at California-emergency electricity rates is less than federal minimum wage. If you have more common electricity rates giving away free charging would be the equivalent of a $2/hr raise. Less if they do a lower-capacity charger.
I think we need chargers in grocery store and mall parking lots. The workers will be there for 8 hours sometimes when working. Customers wouldn't always need them. But workers are there for long times.
If people could have a gasoline tap at home for their explody thing cars, they'd do it in a heartbeat for the convenience. I don't understand the desire to take what can be done at home cheaper and in your free time, and forcing it to happen at dedicated chargey places that are less convenient and more expensive.
19:35 - that is probably because people are used to gas pumps having the filling hose and nozzle permanently attached, so they followed the same paradigm with chargers. If you think about it, that makes FAR more sense than every car having to carry a cable around with them at all times. Think about your cell phone. Do you carry the cable around with you everywhere you go, or do you just leave the cable at the place where you typically charge it?
The reason (as assumed by me), for wires to be pre-attached to charging stations, is that we as a country are just absolutely addicted to Gasoline, and in order to get anyone to adopt EV's on any kind of mass scale, we had to make owning an EV feel as much like owning a gasoline car as humanly possible. Thus: charging stations look as much like gas pumps as possible, down to the attached "hose", charging ports are in the same spot as gas tank fill ports (in a lot of cases), and there's a large push for charging a car to take the same amount of time as filling a gas tank, despite being completely different technologies. What we need, is to get it through people's heads that EV's are DIFFERENT, and that "different =/= bad".
Level 3 chargers are hard-wired as they have liquid cooled cables, so they are not easy/safe to disconnect. Level 2 chargers in Europe require you to bring your own cable, but not in the US! I suspect it may have to do with crime rates and variability of equipment too. The US is just a larger scale than Europe with EV chargers.
The biggest mistake you can do in a shared parking system is to make an ad-hoc install as owners get EVs. The reason is that those installs will take up a lot of the buildings inlet capacity which puts everyone else at a disadvantage later. Instead plan as though all parking spots eventually will get EVSEs. This means setting up load sharing systems which saves a lot on the inlet capacity. Even though each individual EVSE might have support for 5 or even 10kW, the inlet can be planned to as little as 1kW pr. parking spot. (assuming you have a fair number of them) This works fine because a) 1kW goes a long way and B) a lot of the stalls will NOT be charging at any one time so on average a lot more capacity is available. The load sharing system makes sure multiple EVSEs can share circuits without overloading. It does add some cost, but the base infrastructure will also do metering for the building without needing the utility to install individual meters. There is a standard protocol for load sharing and more, called OCPP, so you do not get locked into a single vendor. These can scale to hundreds of installs easily. (I live in norway where this sort of install is a reality now, they get rolled out in buildings all over) Now just because you plan to install EVSEs everywhere does not mean you need to install them all at once. As each owner needs an EVSE they can pay to get one installed and plugged into the common infrastructure, but the building will need to invest a bit the common systems.
I know someone who got bit by this. Originally, each person in their condo who got an EV got a charger installed. After a few of them, the building can't accommodate any more chargers without expensive service upgrades. The problem is precisely what you said - each individual car on a separate high-powered circuit, even though everyone doesn't need to charge at maximum speed, all at the same time. Worse, the chargers that do exist are private property of individual unit owners, so the HOA cannot fix it without buying them out, but they sell for around $10k each, due to limited supply. Had the building been set up with load sharing to begin with, none of this would be a problem.
In Montreal we have roadside chargers everywhere. They aren't high speed but they are cheap. More downtown but even near where I live there are 4 chargers within 1 block. The most amusing part is how they are proof that Tesla put the charge port on the wrong side of the car since when you parallel park it is the passenger side next to the curb so you get to see the cable stretched to the far side of the vehicle.
There are actually quite a number of commercial oriented EV "gang chargers" available that are designed to simplify the installation of many chargers on a single circuit: Efixx has done several videos about the various options including Easse EV chargers and the IDACS flexible busbar which is a really, really slick solution.
I've lived in apartments without central air, dishwashers, on site laundry, etc. You are right. Rich renters in my city already have easy access to car chargers. But the rest of us have window air conditioners. 😆
Hey Alec. Ever heard of a load miser. I've seen them here in Canada from time to time. Basically it allows you to connect 2 devices to the same breaker circuit and it will automatically switch off current to the less essential device while the essential one is being used. Usually they installed in older apartments to allow the installation of a dryer on an oven circuit. When the oven is turned on the dryer looses power.
My only major concern is the lack of general pro-activity when it comes to strengthening municipal or private power grids. In Los Angeles this week we had a major risk of blackouts and calls to stop using electricity as much as possible, and that’s just because of people fighting the heat (and that was after the governor announced a state of emergency to increase power production). Tacking on a full population’s worth of electric cars to that can’t be good. To be clear, I am 1000% for a electric car future. Just don’t trust those handling the infrastructure.
Sounds like the solution is not to shy away but to straighten the power network. Not everyone has 40k+ to buy a band new car so its going to take a while before there are so many EVs that its a problem, so they should fix their power so it can handle the heat and cars.
Well... that's because the folks running the infrastructure are a bunch of grifters. Corruption and California politics go hand in hand. There was no good reason to shut down all your nuclear power plants. California also spent 100 Billion on their stupid choo-choo train to nowhere, when they could have used that money to build reservoirs and hydro plants.
It actually _can_ be good if done right. You can charge at night when the grid is less stressed and when vehicle to grid becomes adopted the car could supply some power back to the grid, or at least to the owner's house.
Definitely have agreed with the charge-at-work thing for so long. I've seen several solar "car ports" go up in open parking lots lately. But sadly, no place to charge as far as I could tell. Frankly any garage seems it'd be easy to build with power per spot. Hell, I wanted to see that just from the perspective of plugging a vac for car cleaning. I have a recent car purchase so it'll be a while for me anyway; but hoping it actually will be feasible by then.
These videos were fascinating and some people definitely need cars but I think the US is in dire need of upgrading their public transportation infrastructure first.
Public transit only works in cities and dense suburbs. Most of the country's land area is unsuitable for public transit. You can't put a bus stop for every farm and cabin.
Unless and until the US makes natural meat, and hence cattle/other farm animals, illegal, public transit won't happen. The farmers and ranchers will never willingly sell or give up their land for it to be done properly. EVs are the only solution, even though it will take decades for rural people to be able to afford one even used.
Sure, transit works best in dense situations, but this video is about inherently dense situations such as apartment buildings. If you live in a farm go ahead and plug your car into your house, you don’t need anything special. But should large cities be spending our tax dollars building charging infrastructure or running more busses? I vote for the busses.
@@bwofficial1776 Incorrect. There only has to be will, and some government subsidies. Example: Switzerland. You can take a train or a bus into the remotest vally if you want to. Sure service is quite a bit thinner there, but there is public service. Or have a call-on-request service (somewhat like a Taxi). Texel, a Dutch island has such a system where you can call a number and provide them with your location by using a stop number and they will pick you up. Of course the US is larger but if there is a will, public infrastructure can be implemented.
I’ve been thinking the same thing about shared charging stations run by the electric company. It should work like credit unions-you have an account and wherever you use it, the cost just shows up on your bill. The EVSEs wouldn’t even need to be very smart. Everything could happen in your smart phone (just scan a code for the location or use GPS to select the right one) and all the EVSE has to do is turn on. Excellent, excellent video!
27:15 I have a much simpler idea. Instead of messing with apps etc., just make e-car charging free at the point of use. Install a single meter for the entire parking lot and have the government pay the bill out of road tax revenues. Also use road tax to subsidise public transport. Yes, people would be incentivized to waste charge, and some would do so. But there is a limit to how much charge an individual can waste. People waste petrol by the gallon despite the cost. Government already imposes minimum efficiency standards, which suggests that the market is failing to incentivize efficiency, and besides: e-car tech is inherently power efficient already. Markets and price signals are often useful tools, but let's not be dogmatic. Government could drastically simplify incentive structures here and guarantee long term expectations, which would create ideal conditions for investment and rapid adoption.
In London there are lots of street lighting lampposts which are charging-enabled. They look identical to a normal lamppost except there's a charging port on the side. Metering is done using a special cable with integrated meter you get when you sign up to the scheme, which transmits readings over the mobile phone network, and you pay your bill at the end of the month. If this system could work with private power providers as well it would seem pretty much ideal, you could just plug in anywhere without worrying about how to pay.
I have read that that is feasible in Europe where electricity is 240 v and will provide decent L2 charging but in the USA the lampposts are 120v and aren’t capable of providing power to vehicle of any note. Companies like Ubiquity that are installing lamppost charging as test projects in LA are running into the expense and complication of upgrading the posts electrical wiring to make them useable as street charging
Wow, that's an awesome system!!
Ok, that's a neat solution. I was kinda skeptical of street charging since, if the idea is to have cars charging whenever they're parked, it would require ugly charging stations at every parking spot. But if Level 1/2 chargers are implemented into already existing structures like streetlights and parking meters, that wouldn't be too garish.
Makes more sense for the meters themselves to just be electric plugs
It would be easier for the meter to just be a prepaid charging meter where you pay up to a certain number of kilowatts with credit card or coins and then plug into the receptacle. It could be a 120 volt or 240 volt receptacle or both.
I’m an employer and I let my staff charge their cars at work using the level-1 chargers that come with their cars. It doesn’t cost me a lot, and even at slow level-1 speeds it adds up after 8+ hours. One of my guys lives in a basement suite and can’t charge at home, so it’s a crucial perk for him. If not for that perk he wouldn’t have got an EV, in fact.
Yes, we need as many charge locations as possible, but they do not all need to be 350kw. If they are in locations where you park for many hours anyway a few kw ( say 3 to 22) is enough. Keep the 50-350kw DC fast chargers to short stay locations where they are really needed.
thats legit @steven hurdle , i'm sure that person appreciates it. you get the tax writeoff on costs and he gets the benefit and the morale boost from it. sounds like a win-win.
@@1rbdfl It really is a win-win. And it costs me a mere 9.5 cents (Canadian) per kW too! :D
Yes it adds up but you are probably buying a whole lot of good will with your employee and you are making their commute cheaper and easier. It could also change their entire outlook on their job too. You could install a sub meter on that circuit so you can track just how much good will you are paying for. Maybe charge a small fee for a reserved spot to cover the cost if it gets too much.
@@stellamcwick8455 It doesn't really add up for me. I am only paying 9.5 cents Canadian per kW (the equivalent of 7.1 cents US per kW at the current exchange rate). We have some of the cheapest electricity in North America where I live.
I live in an "own your own appartment" place where the community has installed ev-charging on 10 of our 70 parking spots. If you buy an electric or hybrid car you can apply to swap parking spots. You start charging via an app. The installation, maintenance and invoicing is done and paid by an separate company and they get their money from a slightly higher kWh price. If more EV spots are needed we just apply and it's installed within a month or two.
Very easy for the community. All for a reasonable cost, in the end paid by the people who actually use it.
@@SimuLord You missed the part where mabs503 wrote: "The installation, maintenance and invoicing is done and paid by [a] separate company and they get their money from a slightly higher kWh price."
More details please
@@SimuLord well the way to tell who is charging and who isn’t it comes down to if you own an EV since your need to register it to the building hoa or management.I used to live a car free zone in NYC but rent is too damn high so I move to the suburbs where I’m paying the same for a rent to own home.
@@SimuLord guess reading comprehension wasn't a strong point
What if you dont want or own a smartphone?
These two vids have me completely sold, especially after finding out I already have everything I need for an EV. Even in small town Indiana, it appears EVs are the obvious and in the long run cheaper choice. But, after looking into it, the up front cost is SO much. Like, most used EVs cost just as much as new ones rn. I, just like most ppl, can't afford a 35k new car, and you only get close to 10k with a car on its very last legs. Not to mention, the financing for used EVs is downright predatory. I feel so close and yet so far 😔
It has been noted that, if you finance your new car, you're not actually looking at a high sticker price: you're really looking at a high monthly payment which is offset by a very low monthly fuel cost. In some cases the _total_ monthly cost to own and drive an EV can be lower than the equivalent non-EV.
Of course, what's missing in that equation is that the market for used-but-still-perfectly-good EVs has not matured yet. And if you can't justify the price of a _new_ car, it doesn't help much that a _new_ EV may be a bit cheaper after accounting for fuel.
Maintenance is also significantly cheaper for a BEV than ICE, in addition to the fuel savings.
@@bsladion Yes but that's not an everyday monthly cost. The point was to compare car payment plus fuel. It's a response to the idea that the _upfront_ cost of an EV is prohibitive. (Which it is... if you don't finance it.) Unlike the fuel savings, the maintenance savings are only realized months or years later.
@@ps.2 thanks for the help. I'll def look into it further. My main concern is that all the articles online are saying that right now EVs are in very short supply and prices recently ballooned because of the semiconductor shortage, inflation, tariffs, and gas prices, and that if low income ppl want reasonable prices and fair payment plans I should wait. Indefinitely. 🙃
@@Connie.T. You're not wrong. The most favourable comparisons are new EV vs new other comparable car. My only point is that the EV premium may seem a lot bigger than it actually is, in terms of a monthly payment, taking fuel cost into account.
But yes. the chip shortage and other factors certainly may mean that now is not a great time for a new EV purchase (or, to a lesser extent, _any_ new car purchase). I certainly didn't mean to imply otherwise.
Near where my mother lives they began installing level 2 chargers on light poles. Absolutely genius idea.
Exactly, they're already running 240 volts up that too many weight so every 10th parking space that happens to be next to a light post can just use
It is, just not very simple to do anywhere. Some of them are light-sensor activated, and you have the issue of if the wiring will allow for such a large extra load.
But seeing as the manager of a hotel I've been to made the staff install one for him... :)
@@nullfield1126 But in some older areas it's very easy because the light pole infrastructure was for high-energy lighting that has since been replaced with LED lighting. In my area that excess power is being used in conjunction with the powered spool setup mentioned and an app, works well (except for the middleman in my nearest example being Shell with an app that's a bit annoying--but it does work after some fiddling). Yes, the petroleum companies (like Shell I mentioned) see the future, one of my nearest gas stations has a bunch of DC fast chargers (though I prefer to spend 20-60 minutes at a restaurant/shopping center, personally).
Even for a brand new light pole, the municipality has a pretty easy choice between something that's always just going to be a cost to them and something that can pay for itself--or even be a net profit. Also I believe the light sensor is generally on the lamp, not the supply.
@@TheCritic-MMA For us it seems like the entire light grid is remotely activated by a single sensor (which cuts the power when not needed), but I've yet to verify this.
@@nullfield1126 The light sensors are on the light not the incoming supply, well certainly here in the UK. Streetlight charging is becoming very common here especially in the suburbs of the cities where everyone has old Victorian terrace houses and on street parking
Anecdotally-- several years ago, my wife ran into a situation where she needed to plug a (gasoline powered) work vehicle into a 120V outlet at our rented apartment every night, to sustain some auxiliary aftermarket electrical equipment while the engine wasn't running.
Landlord brokered a deal with the owner of an adjacent building that shared the parking lot where we (really, her employer) paid for the circuit to be run and receptacle to be installed, and the building's owner gave her a reserved space adjacent to the outlet and free electricity for as long as we lived there.
It was a win for everyone involved. Wife and her employer got their needs met for a reasonable cost and minimal hassle, and the owner of the other building got an outdoor receptacle in a very useful location at no cost to themselves other than a slightly increased electric bill for a few years.
Point being-- even with no obvious solution in a shared living/ parking situation, you can very likely come up with a suitable arrangement if you ask around a bit and are reasonable about it.
Sounds like u have a great landlord. Alot of them aren't willing to work with u at all, mostly now that landlords are multibillion dollar management company's and they aren't exactly flexible.
Seems like that is possible solution for 1 or 2 tenants, but what happens when everybody in the complex is forced to go EV? Set your alarm clock, get up at 2 am to take your turn at one of the 4 charging stations the landlord installed?
@@MRblazedBEANS if your landlord is being a problem, have a chat with some maoists, they usually have some pretty good ideas about dealing with landlords.
@@kaiserruhsam What?
@@kaiserruhsam Look, I like democratic socialism as much as the next guy, but Maoism is plain fantasy. It doesn't truly take into consideration human behavior and thus relies on totalitarianism to meet its goals. -also it appeals to entitled poor dumb people-
The problem is not always that simple. I have been trying to get EV Charging installed my condo complex for nearly three years now. The NIMBY Grandmas that run the board have flat-out told me "NO" on multiple occasions. They do not want to hear about new technology or anything they don't understand.
I've presented them with my own 10page cost-benefit analysis, a 50page feasibility study that I received through a research firm, market research showing the demand for EVs in my area (Downstate NY), and a small survey of neighbors in my community; showing a fair amount of support.
They don't want to spend a dime on it.
Our community does not have any assigned parking. All parking is outdoors in large parking lots, surrounding pockets of 4-8unit townhouse structures. The electrical panels are on the buildings themselves, capped at 125A/Unit I believe.
My building for example is 250ft from the nearest parking lot. A bit far for an extension cord.
Because there is no assigned parking, I cannot buy equipment only for myself. a. I wouldn't be able to guarantee the spot is always available, and b. When I move, the money I invested is down the drain.
The most economical solution I have come up with is a community charging area that is open to all residents. Let's say, 4-6x Dual-port L2 chargers.
concerns I've had brought up are: "the community will not want to pay for the installation cost of something they won't be using", which is fair; since there are only 5 PEVs in the community (1BEV/4PHEV). There are 292 total units in the community.
There is also the concern of our old wiring and electrical grid. This community has likely not seen any major electrical upgrades since it was built in 1978.
Where it stands now, I managed to get myself appointed to the condo board. I brought it up again after I joined (prior, I was only a resident).
They're now at least willing to let me do the research and find out what the costs are. New York Power Authority says they will cover up to 90% of installation cost for an EV charging project in a multi-family community. The only other concern then being the price of the equipment itself, which there is currently no rebate for.
I'm happy to discuss this further with anyone that is interested in learning more about my journey. longislandevs@gmail.com
I had a similar situation with my condo board (unmotivated board who could only say no) I offered to pay for all the hardware to install the charger, and threatened to sue the board (after many months of negotiations and similar reports/analysis). They went to their lawyer who was very bright and said the EV owner is offering to pay for infrastructure and added that the board should put a legal agreement in place (that says the EV owner agrees to maintain the infrastructure, a circuit and meter) and give the EV owner the power. The key to encouraging the boards is a carrot and stick. Carrot - pay all infrastructure and legal costs. Stick - threaten to sue the board if they won't co-operate after much negotiation.
Reminds me of an apartment building I used to live in, back in the early 90's, that refused to allow residents to have cable TV, or anything else that required wiring or mounting to the building, other than landline phone service.
Sounds very German. What I can suggest is to decrease the cost for the equipment install. Just put up RV-plugs (nema something-something?). Everyone brings their own equipment. Done. Not sure how to meter and bill power then, tho.
sometimes, you can get external companies install all the stuff. They will also take care of it and do billing. You pay them with more expensive power.
Just from a quick look that I did, check out chargepoint's website. They have an option on their website that lists active incentives by state for installing their chargers. I did it under New York and there were a lot listed. Including tax credits for buying the equipment. There might have some money off or what have you for buying the equipment as well, but I think that fell under the stipulation that the charge station was open for the general public to use as well.
"Long Island" not surprised, its the magic land of NO. Anything that would improve the island you will get people angrily opposing it. Be it better developments around the LIRR, a bridge to Westchester, hell people were even opposing the LIRR expansion!
I switched to an EV because of your previous videos on this subject. The “you just have a full tank every morning” thing is what did it. Until that clicked, I was stuck in the mindset where I’d constantly be having to worry about where I’m going to charge. It should have been obvious that “home” is the best possible place to charge, but fueling up at the gas station was a stubborn idea that just would not leave my head.
I think the way the next few years are going to go is that apartment complexes and public parking garages are going to figure out that they can attract renters with charging stations. I think on street charging is going to take a little longer before it becomes ubiquitous. And, unfortunately, I think we’re gonna be stuck with a half-dozen different apps to pay for it all for the foreseeable future. The incentive to unify with a single payment system, electric company or otherwise, probably just isn’t there. That’d take legislation, and I don’t see that happening soon.
Where there's a bill, there's a way. It'll indeed be a mess of start-ups for a while, but like everything (streaming TV, e.g.), it will eventually consolidate to a handful of larger firms with the capital to expand and buy-out the most.
To your initial point, though, I think once people get a taste of EV life, there won't be a sales pitch involved anymore. Gasoline engines are going to seem very "last-century" here soon, appreciated only by those with nostalgia or toolboxes for brains.
Charging your car is more like charging your phone than like filling your gas tank. Yes, there are those expensive batteries you can get at the airport in an extreme situation, but usually you just charge overnight and it will get you through the day no problem.
The right answer to "How long does it take to charge your car?" is "Usually about 15 seconds to plug the cable in when I get home"
@@nickwallette6201 First, I'm not in the US. But I don't want a couple of companies doing it, I want a lot of competition but with a standard. Standards can be created long before we have duopolies.
@@xWood4000 That’s the reality of it. Setting up a “charging as a service” offering is inherently an expensive proposition that will pay lots of very small dividends, so it only makes sense on a larger scale. It’s also better that way, since as the OP said, otherwise you end up signing up with a dozen outfits, each with their own app, and probably with their own loyalty programs and whatever…
It’s not exactly a threatening monopoly, since public charging, private charging, and home charging are still likely to be the primary methods.
On-the-go charging will be a thing you do when you must, like how most people will drink water at home, at work from a water cooler, or from a water bottle they carry - but are thankful to have the opportunity to buy bottled water from a vending machine or street vendor when they’re out doing things.
I can’t even get a landlord to not paint over dead insects and you think they’re gonna go for this? The only way you’ll get landlords to comply is to enshrine it into law. 240v outside receptacles at every associated parking space. 👍
I mostly agree but then you hear about a landlord installing a special stairway just for a tenants dog. There are some good ones out there too.
@@jmr It's like 1 in a million, and those stories rise to the top because they're the exception not the rule
We just need to make ownership of rental buildings much more regulated. We've let it be far too long, and that's sending housing prices through the roof.
@@DasGanon I won't arue that! lol
I love how you think a single landlord in this country gives a shit about following the law.
What I've learned is that you've had excellent Condo associations and landlords. The best I can do out here is my landlord allowing a drop cord out the window to connect.
Or charging at work or the local grocery store. Which... Is the option I'm strongly considering. The stores chargers are never/rarely used and they have a Starbucks inside where you're welcome to sit and work as long as you like if you buy something.
That or bribing my mother to let me set up in her house 😂.
My landlord and I are in a highly contentious relationship where every single thing that breaks is dragged out to the last possible moment to fix. Like the AC leaking water into the carpet for two weeks peak of summer. I'm sure it's grossly molded. I couldn't keep it dry despite my efforts.
Places where there's a high level of electric vehicle ownerships like Seattle tend to have higher usage of electric supermarket charging usage.
Over time, these types of landlords and HOAs will find that they value of their properties will decrease if they don't offer EV charging options. Pretty sure there were small towns who were against letting gas stations open up...
You've been super good about pointing out this is all useless for renters and condo owners (or really anyone who can't install chargers..) but so few others are even acknowledging this, let alone adjusting policy to account for this fact.
I mean, also, one of his points is that installation isn't necessarily a thing you have to do. Depending on your situation, you might be able to just plug into a normal outlet that happens to be near where you park. I rent and that's what I intend to do when I get an EV, since I could easily make do with the absolute minimum charging speed.
There's a infrastructure race involving both third parties and EV makers (Tesla and GM in the US) to install public chargers. I'm in the Midwest, where everyone says you can't have an EV in, and I'm seeing this.
Here in Vienna, Austria, on-street chargers are plentiful and work flawlessly. They offer two charging outlets, 3-phase AC, 11 kW each. More than enough power, installation is relatively cheap due to ubiquitous 3-phase power and drivers bringing their own cable. The chargers themselves are rather unassuming, about the size of a typical US parking meter, and very simple. They do not even have a display, just an LED for each outlet and a beeper to confirm the successful start of a charging process. To start, you typically swipe an RFID card, which is very straightforward. Alternatively, you could also use an app. Less convenient, but at least it should work for pretty much everyone.
In emergencies, I've always been able to throw an extension cord out my 3'rd floor window when I parked right below. By pinching the cable under the trunk lid on the side opposite to the curb, the cable stays taut and get nowhere near the sidewalk. Now the council outlawed parking on my side of the street, so my little trick is no longer feasible!
Someone in the building next to mine is doing the same thing out of their 6th floor balcony.
@@SoulAssassino That's the way to go. The code in my city states in is not allowed to run cables across the sidewalk or road (somewhat reasonable), so doing it like this keeps it legal.
@@Tore_Lund you say that, but setting up a couple 12ft goal posts on either side of the street to hold up the cord and adding a few dozen feet of extension cord could potentially solve the problem. That's assuming there's almost literally no law or code enforcement while also having no criminals that would nick your easily acquired length of copper. Easy
@@tommink8379 I did this over a period of two years, and I live in a neighborhood with multiple pubs and watch party goers pass by completely oblivious to the wire overhead. A few noticed it and figured out what it was and even took pictures, but nobody ever tried to pull it or such. Slow charging is really the easiest: can park all night and the standard socket required costs next to nothing compared to a ccs setup, especially if you use one of your house sockets, if you are really ingenious, it should be able run the cord through the drain to the storm drain with a water proof socket, you the can fish out of the drain when you park there.
@@tommink8379 a twelve foot goal works great till a truck comes through. The last thing the public needs are private individuals stringing wires overhead. It would be a nightmare.
The US charger format with attached cables is because US charger sites emulated fuel pumps with the attached hoses. You pull up, put a hose in the tank filler neck and go. They wanted EV charging to have that same sort of experience.
And its pointless. I agree with just installing the NEMA 14-50 or the 14-30 with independent circuits in parking places. He showed the 14-50 saying it could do 30A, well the actual receptacle is rated for 50A, hence the number. Of course the 80% rule that's 40A your car could have, which at 240V is 9.6kW or 8.3kW at 208; or 5.7kW and 4.9kW with the 30A plug (using 24A). Actually, for a true widespread deployment NEMA 6-50 makes the most sense, its hot-hot-ground no need for the useless neutral. Carry your own cable lazy folks.
That was pretty much exactly the same thing I was thinking. For the average consumer, it's easier and something everyone is familiar with. You don't have to lug your own cable around, and besides, how often do you or did you ever use a broken hose at a fuel pump? Don't know about big cities but up here in the midwest, I've never had that issue. Not to mention his point about cutting into a live wire. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, all I know is I don't want to find out, and that should be incentive enough not to.
@@freeculture The only bad thing with installing outlets is that the building owner will never be able to charge a fee for electricity usage. They'd just always be giving away electricity for free (and losing more money as time goes on). For certain situations that may be okay, but those are few and far between. They'll either want a regular networked EVSE or an electrical meter setup to monitor and bill usage.
I think the only thing I'd quibble with here is the idea that gas stations could be made obsolete. Gas is kind of an ancillary function of most of them. For a lot of people, they exist as rest stops with bathrooms and snacks. Makes sense to have chargers to help keep cars going on longer trips while people take care of those needs. The stations focused at local consumers I can see going down to a couple legacy gas pumps and fast chargers for more emergency situations, but mostly pivoting to being convenience stores. [They don't really make a ton on the fuel as-is, so you could argue they already have.]
In Germany they are mostly chips and beer retailers for the hours 22:00 to 6:00 anyways, for exactly that reason.
The profit on 1 can of beer is probably almost as high as an entire tank of gas. I mean the stuff that costs like 70 cent at normal stores costs like 2€-3€ there.
I agree with you for the most part, but I think there are two distinct uses of a gas station and only one of them really has a future.
For travel stops along the highway, sure, we will need as many of those as we currently have to support an all-EV traveling populace. Arguably we will need more dispensers, but since each electric "dispenser" takes up less parking footprint than a corresponding gasoline dispenser, the actual station will be about the same footprint. The audience stopping there will be stopping for a little longer than their gasoline counterparts, so having something to distract them and separate them from a little cash in their 15-30 minute wait will remain quite profitable, possibly more profitable than today.
Neighborhood gas stations (used mostly for daily commuters to fill up their cars on shorter daily commutes) will eventually be obsolete, or at least not be likely to attract enough people on a daily basis to sustain the continuous foot traffic needed to make a convenience store worth having. Instead of the car fueling being the major draw, you will have to develop some other draw to make it worth spending time to charge your car there when you could do the same at home or work.
Obviously plenty of people will still need a charging solution for their routine commutes (if they have no options at home or work), but that population will be much smaller than the current population of "nearly everyone who commutes" who need to fuel their cars outside their home/work.
Smaller gas stations won’t exist but “travel centers” certainly will. At a minimum, heavy trucks will still need to refill (optimistically, they’ll still need hydrogen in the future)
Here in Michigan, we'll likely install solar panels on the roofs of 2 of our 5 manufacturing facilities as soon as the part shortage/ridiculous pricing goes away (next year?). We've been thinking about adding EV charges at all of our facilities... it's really not very expensive and my hope is that doing so will attract some creative minds who want a good job.
I don't give a rat's about your rambling; this was good video as always.
For apartments et al, one option going on here in Hudson County NJ (approx) is having a company like Chargepoint setup a private charging area, which is part of the amenity list. Though in Chargepoint's favor, one option is to have a public section setup at a cost set (by the County usually), then part of the Amenity Fee (parking or otherwise) is used to have the renters be part of a 'discount group.' [Note - ChargePoint was the 'ID Card' handed out with my Ionic Plug-in.]
As for workplace, that's not possible in my case - the parking garage for the nearby office buildings is shared with the local Mall. The mall itself does have chargers, but not nearly enough (for non-Tesla, anyway - its got a large Tesla charging group).
The State of NJ is providing incentives to HOAs and apartment owners to expand charging in common areas. I wouldn't be surprised if this is related.
The problem is when you have an apartment but not a car spot.
@@NJRoadfan Bet they allow your apartment to profit from this arrangement. You will pay whatever your apartment wants to charge over the prevailing electric rates. Never underestimate greed.
There's at least one company I've heard of that is going the 'customer provides the cable' route. Or rather, the customer uses their mobile adaptor portable EVSE route. Orange Charger apparently figured that cables are most of what goes wrong with charging; and are expensive anyway -- so their product for multi-unit properties are smart 110v or 240V outlets that you use a QR code and their app to turn on -- then you plug your mobile adaptor in and get an overnight slow charge. The outlet tracks your usage and bills you through their app.
Hopefully ideas like this will take off and make it easier and more affordable to retrofit existing multi-unit properties to be EV friendly.
Honestly, I think just having regular NEMA 14-50 with in-use weather proof covers in even a handful of places would be amazing. While I carry standard 110V 16A EVSE with me everywhere, it's not much use for charging anywhere but work or home. Even having *SOME* NEMA 14-50 outlets available to the public would effectively eliminate my need to borrow a dino-fuel vehicle for the few times a year I need to go on a road trip. I think it would be cool for restaurants to have a couple and just tack the charging time to your bill (perhaps with an auto shut-off to avoid camping), same with shopping centers. How good would it be for business if people were motivated to spend an hour at a grocery store or mall vs. not stopping at all?
I think a movie theater is an obvious place to put some chargers, you know people will be there for 1.5+ hours.
@@gregneumarke9373 Yes, definitely!
The problem with having those outlets be what you plug into is that they aren't designed for frequent replugging and also generally aren't GFCI protected. So there are definite safety hazards with having to plug something into them especially in wet conditions. Having a J1772 charger exposed instead fixes both of those issues.
I also am not convinced on the safety of NEMA 14-50 and would go further and propose that they should be phased out for EV charging. It wasn't designed for frequent connections - the prongs are too exposed when plugging it. And I'm not aware of any being tamper resistant, so I'd be concerned on how many kids might get injured or killed by jabbing something into an unused receptacle. The electric code is pushing more GFCI protection for 240 V circuits, but it seems that many plug-in charge points don't want the breaker for the circuit to be GFCI. So, I think that spending ~$500 on a full hard-wired EV charge point and having a safer place to plug in is worthwhile.
I've installed a few of these right next to breaker boxes for clients and I just make them a long 6 gauge service cord, works great and if you ever want to hard wire the whole way you already have the outlet and the breaker installed, you just extend the run with conduit outside or romex in the wall
For the thing you mentioned in 25:42, we are already working on similar stuff in Hong Kong despite we are not a power company but a EV charging startup. It requires a lot more than you might think but it's feasible and we are going to launch our first site at around Nov-2022
That's amazing! Good luck
Sometimes, the theoretically most efficient solution doesn't work in practice, because it depends on buy-in from specific individuals or businesses who may or may not cooperate, while an alternative solution may be less efficient in theory, but it's something that you can use to solve your individual situation unilaterally, so it ends up being the go-to option.
A simple example: my neighbor's landscapers have obnoxiously loud leaf blowers. The efficient solution would be for them to switch from gas blowers to electric blowers for around $500. But, they control the blowers, not I, and there is nothing I can do to make them switch. So, I had to settle for the much less efficient solution, which was to install an extra layer of soundproof glass on my windows for $5,000. Yes, the soundproofing is far more expensive than an electric blower would cost and, yes, it only helps if I'm inside with windows closed. But, for all the faults of the less-efficient solution, it was a solution that I could apply unilaterally, without requiring any cooperation from my neighbor or my neighbor's landscaper. Just pay the contractor and get it done.
The same is true for transportation. In lots of cases, the most efficient solution is neither a gas car nor an electric car, but a bicycle and/or better public transit. But, of course, the transit system sucks, there's no safe place to ride a bike, and you have no way to making the city spend the money to improve either. So, you go with the less-efficient solution you are able to apply unilaterally, which is to get a car and drive it.
And, for people that live in apartments, the same logic also applies to charging. Yes, the most efficient solution is for the landlord to install chargers. However, you are powerless to get your landlord to install chargers at home. So, you make due with the less efficient solution of, once a week, driving to a further away grocery store that has DC fast chargers, and charging the car while you shop. Yes, the electricity and infrastructure are much more expensive. But, it is something that you, as an individual can do unilaterally, regardless of what your landlord does or does not do.
No, it's not ideal. But, unfortunately, the real world is not ideal.
Bicycles are safe. Your life expectancy riding a bike vs a car comes out in the bike's favor. They're just not _fast_ beyond about 2-5 mi (depending on the location and terrain.) Mr Money Moustache has a post where he calculated this, and John Forester for decades pointed out how the dangerous places for bikes are intersections, which are relatively easy for an aware cyclist to be safe at.
"Bicycling is dangerous" is longstanding auto industry propaganda that was internalized by anti-motor vehicle groups.
Y’know you coulda just put up a heavy ass blanket on the window to deaden the sound right? Like 35 bucks lol
10:00 "U low" might be your power meter complaining that the input voltage is low if it was designed for 220-250V and is getting less than 208V. It could also be that it uses a capacitive dropper circuit and its capacitor got damaged over time, no longer supplying enough current for the meter to work properly.
18:00 DC-charging doesn't need to be fast: you could have a bank of DC-DC converters capable of pushing 50kW but arranged in a way where they can be dynamically allocated to 10-20 charging points or ganged up to push 50kW to a single vehicle when needed. Siemens and other companies make units that can dynamically allocate 250-400kW between up to four vehicles.
25:30 No need for a FOB, the EVSE can read the VIN over the data pins, only thing needed is a secure authentication protocol so people cannot spoof your VIN to steal power if there isn't one already.
Your idea at 25:42 was what I was thinking this entire video!
Though I think it could be taken even further into the app domain so that it would run similar to how the ExxonMobil app works.
You just open the app, then:
plug in the number
scan a qr code
geo-fence it
etc. (however to tie you to that "pump number" in gas station parlance)
That outlet works until you unplug it at either end of the cable. (to prevent people stealing your charge if not in an easily seen space)
Your account gets charged.
The reason to do this instead (or in addition to) the fob method is so that you can top someone else's vehicle up for them. Like for say if a bunch of people are on a road trip, and you want to split charging costs.
Likely also a way to start charging road tax on electric vehicles which are not currently being charged in the same way as dead dinosaur cars. And it possible they impact the roads themselves just as much, if not more with their increased weight.
Please not more "smart, app-based" BS. We need less tracking and privacy-destruction in the world, not more of it.
I can see apartments/condos in the future having outlets available at the assigned parking space(s) and billed to the individual apartment dweller. I've lived in two apartment complexes where my assigned spot was not near my apartment and one where my assigned spot was out front of my building. This was great when I had to put a battery charger on my ICE vehicle. The other option is a common area to install a third party charger which is billed by that company.
With a keycard authentication on the outlet/charger. I don't trust my neighbors not to steal my power.
Right now I'm renting an apartment, and it's the crappy kind where you pay fees for everything. $20/mo just to park (not reserved parking) per vehicle, $20 for trash management, $5 for a parcel locker, etc. I saw they are advertising an EV charging spot where they charge like $120 a month for level 1 charging. Yes, $120 a month for a crappy 120v outlet, which incentivizes against an EV. Ignoring the moral issues, this type of greed which stops progress should be illegal.
Well I don't live in the USA (if you're talking about it) but how can they charge $20 to park in front of the house? Isn't that public?
@@semisagoglu maybe its underground parking or private parking
@@semisagoglu Yeah, that is almost certainly private parking for the building. And usually there is limited space (limited in that there will not be enough for everyone to have as many as they want), so supply/demand will certainly come into play. And with crappy owners, that will be a heavily biased supply/demand even if a fair version would be warranted.
What on earth is the moral issue? Aside from providing a poor value. I'm not clear on exactly why EVs constitute 'progress.' There's no free lunch environmentally for energy to run a car. Don't mean to be argumentative, by the way, nor rhetorical.
@@magickmarck because as we replace more of our energy sources with renewables, replacing gas with electric means a greater share will be less dependent on fossil fuels
A low speed charger at supermarkets I think its a great idea.
20 minutes on a 230v 8A charge gives you 2.45kms - enough to offset the journey to the supermarket and back home for most people.
Its also cheap and easy to set up for supermarkets. Having lots of slow chargers for everyone to use is better than one or two chargers always occupied at the front of the carpark.
They already have ev charging at some supermarkets like Safeway in Seattle Washington
practically speaking, its not worth the hassle. unless you don't have a reliable place to charge and are always on the hunt for a charger.
You really don't want to be charging that slowly all the time. The car needs to be (at least partially) "on" while charging and can use a not insignificant amount of power to do that. Very slow charging can lead to higher charging losses than DC fast charging despite additional cooling.
Level 2 chargers should be the minimum for destinations such as hotels. Opportunistic charging at stores needs to be 50kW DC fast-ish chargers to be worthwhile.
if more cars had 22kw AC those would be good sizes for supermarkets. But a lot are limited to 7-11. 50kw DC may be the best balance. Fast enough to get you a decent charge in the 30-60 minutes you may be in the supermarket (and within the limited parking time you’re allowed) but not so fast that they’d attract people just to charge (and wouldn’t be free)
2.5 KM? I knowca loooot of people that are well over 10 km (each way) from any grocery store.
DC fast chargers at every rest stop along the highway would be ideal. Seems like the perfect place for them and L2 charging everywhere else. Like you said, 50kW chargers could fit in at shopping areas, but personally I think a 12kW L2 charger would do fine, most likely replenish the miles used to get to and from the shopping center at least.
I'm in the Mountain West, and my complex installed smart locks and started toward smart HOMES last year. I see no reason why they couldn't run lines to our assigned parking spots and have an extra pin to unlock the charger that's unique to our apartment.
IF EV price and availability come to a reasonable point for me I would love to go EV. As a condo cave dweller with indoor parking and electrical meters somewhere on that same level, I assumed getting a hook-up could be accomplished without too much difficulty. You mentioned the meter tap ring (more info please) and that would address the issue of payment without the need to guestimate. These are 2 very useful and informative videos. Thank you.
The ConnectDER meter collar is actually oldish tech (2018 or so) that was originally developed to facilitate easy bolt-on solar PV without needing to upgrade the main panel. They're in the news again because Siemens is helping to develop them to take power out rather than feed power in, to facilitate easy bolt-on EV charging without needing to upgrade the main panel.
I agree, level 2 charging is suuuuper easy to setup.
I recently ran a new 50 Amp circuit for an electric stove from the panel in my garage.
Installing an outlet or hardwired level 2 charger in my garage will take about 10% of the effort that my stove did.
I already bought a used L2 charger, only reasons I haven’t installed it yet are:
A. I’m getting solar installed in a few weeks and don’t want to have to move it to accommodate the inverter
B. Level 1 charging has been plenty for my needs thus far.
The only time I’ve really really wanted L2 is when visiting family out of town.
There’s already a device on the market for multi-unit buildings similar to the Siemens device you discussed. It’s called a DCC-9 by Thermolec. I have it installed for my EVSE. It’s installed next to the meter in my building’s basement while my service panel is upstairs in my unit. It provides 40amps of charging on my 100amp service. It will automatically pause charging for at least 15 minutes if my panel exceeds 80% usage capacity. That used to only happen when my AC kicked on, but I recently got a high efficiency heat pump and since then it’s never needed to pause charging.
It's amazing if you think about it that people in 240V land use 3 kW just to boil water in an electric kettle, but yet that same amount of current is enough to charge an electric car in a few hours.
Who is using 3kW to boil water? Not likely unless you are talking about something that boils a pot of water in less than one minute.
Besides, you are using your units incorrectly. Kilo-watts is a unit of instantaneous power. KWh is total energy (instantaneous power X time). If you do not understand the difference then you are not likely to understand the implications of that difference (but I will try to explain).
A human might be able to generate one horsepower while on an exercise bike but only be able to do that for a short amount of time. So the power was 1 Hp but it only lasted for a few moments. The total work done is the average amount of power multiplied by the total time for which that power was developed.
So you might conceivably have a high powered kettle that boils a pot of water in two minutes. That 3kW kettle would have then used 0.1 kWh of total energy. The average EV uses about 34.6 kWh to travel 100 miles. So 0.1 kWh takes you less than 1/4 mile.
@@mikebetts2046 I'm assuming OP is correct and European (probably german given the name) so a standard electric kettle pulls 3kW and heats water up in about a minute. They noted a standard circuit that delivers 3kW charges a car in a few hours (presumably after normal daily driving) so definitely understand kW vs. kWh.
@@mikebetts2046 In the UK our "fast boil" kettles are 3KW, also houses/flats that don't have gas supply use 3KW immersion heater water tanks. Our electric showers use between 7-10KW depending on the model.
@@ian54589 I see no evidence of understanding kW vs kWh. He suggested some correlation between boiling water (in a minute or so) and charging a car over several hours. Consuming 3 kW for one minute is not at all comparable to using that same power over several hours.
@@joeynebulous816 I can believe that. Of course there are a great many electric water heaters in use in the U.S. What I was saying that either way; consuming 3 kW for a minute or so is the equivalent energy to take the average EV just a very short distance. It seemed he was trying to suggest a similar energy usage for both.
I don't know why, but rolling over in the morning and turning on a TC video is so comforting. You have a soothing voice.
My building recently had to halt EV charger installs because they had to get the electrical supplies put through an analysis to meet new code standards. Hopefully they get that done and any updates in quickly. There was about 1 EVSE going in per month it seemed.
I've done the math out, and DC fast charging is a daunting proposition. Rest stops could easily consume an entire 7kV primary circuit or more. Meanwhile, at work charging with 24A/208V chargers is actually pretty scalable and would be great for the grid as solar production would be high all day but AC loads would be low in the morning and most cars would be fully charged before lunch. Companies should offer charging as a perk, it costs a few $/day for workers being paid hundreds of dollars a day. It would also provide an incentive and commuting subsidy for jobs that require a physical presence, or entice hybrid workers to actually show up once in a while. People would game the system by swapping cars with their partner or bringing them in almost empty on Monday but who cares it's peanuts for the employer.
I tried to talk my last employer into installing solar. Not for charging, but as an excuse to get covered parking.
"workers being paid hundreds of dollars a day" lucky you haha.
@@ewicky tbf $100/day is $12.50/hr, so that’s below the “fight for $15” minimum wage proposal. (And now with inflation that original $15 would be $20 if not more.) If the minimum wage was inflation-pegged it’d be ~$20 and everyone would be paid almost $200 a day at a minimum
@@kaitlyn__L hundreds with an s. Also you're assuming 8 hr days.
A $15 or $20 minimum wage nation wide would cripple the economy and break so many already-fragile things. Food prices would skyrocket (further)
I thought the condo install video was excellent and it didnt seem oversharey at the time.
I think maybe he meant overshared like "gave away a lot of private information"
@@NathanTAK Yes, that's what it means.
@@dspiffy No, as in like, about his address. Private *material* information, not emotional stuff.
@@NathanTAK I never said anything about emotional stuff.
@@dspiffy I thought you meant it didn't seem oversharey in that respect, because your original comment made more sense that way.
So you heard him saying "I felt like I gave away too much private information" and your reaction was "nah I don't think you gave away too much"?
There’s a few EVSEs installed around my little rural town - behind historic hotel across from the power company and at the sports complex. It’s owned and maintained by the power company. I loved that you mentioned the power company to do own and operate these things. They’re even installing and running a DC Fast Charger soon die travelers and people visiting from out of town.
I definitely think that one of the biggest obstacles to EV adoption (besides cost) is apartments. If you own your own home, you can easily modify it to add an EVSE, especially if you have a garage. If you live in an apartment, then there's no incentive to improve the property if it's owned by someone else. There's also no real incentive for landlords to improve their property either, when they could just keep costs low and rents high. It's funny that people say that owning an EV is impossible in rural settings, when it's really the opposite. In rural areas, land is cheaper, and therefore ownership of single-family homes is much more common. In big cities, it's much more common for people to live in big apartment buildings, where they don't really have their own spot to park their car, or leave it charging overnight.
If we got rid of a lot of zoning restrictions, there would be more apartments who would have to compete for tenants, so they'd need to do things to attract people. Right now, huge areas of cities are taken up by single family housing, artificially lowering supply.
That's what this video is about. But what it didn't mention that the now-privated older video did is that Alec paid for the installation in the parking garage. I imagine most landlords would be okay with an EVSE installation if it doesn't cost them anything _and_ it lets them charge the next person more.
@@Br3ttM In fact the inverse would happen - SFH zones would obtain commercial property which makes them complete villages and thus reduces traffic by a reduction in demand for the roadways to the commercial districts. As things should be.
Hi. It's probably already being written here, but taking the power from someone's home is more difficult for the power company than taking it from the cables that run to the home. It means it's easier for them to not bother home owners and just install those plugs in the public domain.
Not if it's properly buried (like here in Chicagoland). They'd have to find, unearth, tap in, re-bury, then dig new to street. Or, like he said, you can tap into an existing smart meter (so no second meter needed) and just shallowly bury wire to street. When looking to keep costs down, not having to dig up a mains is huge.
@@ObscuraGrey You're right. I'm not used to buried cables, even though there should be access chambers fairly often, there also may not be when the terrain is really stable. I'm also used to home owner not trusting smart devices, not keen on accepting ojects they don't own or can't act on (like those cables which would go to the street). But yes, if it's easier to set up and we can overcome such hurdles, sure, I'm all for it as well :)
The only reason I put in a big service to my garage was for EV charging, I don't have an EV yet, but I had to run a new service out to my garage anyway. So instead of running another 20 amp out there I ran a 100 amp and put in a sub panel. The whole reason is because I think that most EVs will support backflow into the house at first it will probably be to assist with power outages and such, but in the future they will probably be used to help balance loads on the power grid.
In the UK, EVs are suddenly not making sense any more. As of October, the domestic electricity price cap is going up to about 34p/kWh (currently about 28.5p/kWh) - it was going to be around 52p/kWh before the government intervened. However, commercial entities have no such price cap and social media has reported that many pub owners are giving up because they are going to be billed around 90p/kWh - that's over US$1/kWh. The operators of commercial charging points will not be subject to the price cap so only EV owners with their own parking space in their garage or driveway would be able to use price-capped electricity, and with the price going up to 34p/kWh the cost of running an EV is getting close to that of a petrol car.
Love your videos, and I've also recently been getting disillusioned with carcentric infrastructure thanks to Not Just Bikes and Strong Towns. Nice to see other folks talking about such things as well.
I don't have any experience with EVs, but it's good that you're talking about this. Thank you.
A few things worth mentioning:
- Dual plug chargers exist. The two I know of are the Clipper Creek HCS-D40 and the Grizzl-E Duo. These chargers allow for charging two EVs from one outlet, potentially reducing installation cost. This is beneficial for dual EV households as well as workplace settings.
- Even though charging with a 120v outlet is considerably slower than anything else, it's still something. It might enable recruiters to mention that as a perk to potential employees.
- Many utility companies encourage the use of EVs by partially subsidizing the cost of EV charger installation and the monthly cost of charging an EV. The utility I use offers $250 towards the cost of EV charger installation, and $30 a month for 12 months as a credit on the bill.
In Winnipeg, we get ticketed for running cords to the street when we want to run our block heaters during the winter, so there’s one hurdle that we’d have to overcome first. I understand the reasoning behind the law (not wanting to create a hazard with cords running over walkways), but there’s got to be a shift in thinking before EVs can be a reasonable solution for the masses.
Make an EV cheap enough. Say around $15-$18k and then maybe that can be a reasonable solution.
@@kylevogelgesang3825 with the batterys not bankrupting you when they die.
@@robertharris6092 True that. All that lithium they mine with slave labour must sure helps smooth the EV shills hearts.
In ohm's law, U is voltage, so a U low error would indicate low voltage, which propably meant the meter had a fault and needed replacement. And if it had a separate clamp type amp meter, those don't take much to damage.
It would make a very confusing error message since it's somewhat standard* to use V in English-speaking countries.
* At least I've never heard of using U before, and English Wikipedia doesn't use U.
@@johnsmith34
The only problem with using V is the meter probably use a seven segment display, where you can't get a V to show on these type of segments.
@@johnsmith34 Meters with 7-segment displays can't draw V so might use U instead. idk if that was the case with Alec's meter but possible.
@@vk3hau I'm assuming that limitation would have been communicated.
@@johnsmith34
It would of been communicated if you know the limitation of the display and it was representing a U for voltage, but as Alec said, he didn't have the users manual so he didn't know what the U LO meant, so therefor wouldn't know U was for Voltage?
I love the Media Pending T-shirt! I had nightmares seeing the Media Offline screen on some of my earliest Premiere Pro 1.0 Projects around 1999! Thanks for the throwback!
I'm an architect who focuses on sustainability in multi-family buildings and we are seeing a couple of factors come together in that market. One is that some cities are reducing or eliminating off-street parking requirements for multi-family buildings, with the idea that this will encourage public transit use and is viable in cities like Seattle where we have semi decent public transit. In reality, this is more of a win for developers where they don't have to spend money on expensive parking and can dedicate that to rentable units, but I digress.
The other factor is that cities, like Seattle, are requiring parking garages to be EV ready like you mentioned, and often developers are opting to install a couple of chargers at the start of the project and will expand later as demand increases but the infrastructure is already there and they just have to install the EVSE.
With California passing the law banning new gas car sales in 2035, Washington seems to be following suit, along with possibly other states such as New York and others that have historically followed California when it comes to emissions regulations like CAFE. This will make the landscape really interesting and I can see developers looking ahead and making sure that any parking they are planning on having will be EV ready if not just having EVSE's installed at each location. I know that I will be pushing my clients to make all stalls EV ready with the shared charger concept you mentioned since that is so much more cost effective. 13 years isn't a long time in developer land where planning, design, permitting, and construction can take 2-5 years if not more in some worst case scenarios. That doesn't put 2035 that far away once you consider that timeline.
I think and hope that having level 2 EV chargers at home will not be something most people have to worry about in the near future. Seattle already has a free program for installing level 2 chargers on utility poles on the street and you just have to request one and then they have some sort of app to bill you for the usage.
I mean, that sounds great for new developments, but there will still be a lot people living in older buildings. More street charging will help, but it will probably still be markedly more difficult for people who live in multi-family residences to charge EVs for a long time.
I really, really, really hate the trend to reduce or eliminate off-street parking.
I've lived in apartments in Auburn, Kent, and Tukwila built some time in the 60s-80s, and they've all had too few parking spots, and that's a nightmare.
It's infuriating seeing apartment buildings being built with even less parking.
City-mandated parking is never a good idea. The free market knows better than government bureaucrats how many parking spaces a building needs. If you want parking, and are willing to pay enough for it to justify the costs of constructing it, the free market will be happy to rent it to you. But, if you're not, it is unreasonable to expect a landlord to just give you free parking for the same reason it's unreasonable to expect them to give you free electricity, water, or anything else.
@@ab-tf5fl A perfectly free market can never exist. It's a mathematical axiom that can lead to some interesting conclusions, but in reality there is always market power, rent seeking, erosion of the ecological ceiling and social foundation, etc.. (And, by the way, there will always be a monopoly on violence in order to enforce contractual agreements and protect those with wealth and influence; and that monopoly -- that state -- will always be captured by the ruling class.) Back to the point, I cannot see incentives ever working out like that. Denying the political does not make the political go away.
@@ab-tf5fl If parking is not mandated, it just creates a new place for 'socialize the costs, privatize the profits'.
The developers get to build more densely, and when people need parking they end up using the street, which is paid for by taxpayers and each resident in the form of parking tickets and meter fees.
The elephant in the room with the electric car conversation is privilege. For those of us making minimum wage (or even a few bucks an hour more, in many places), an electric car is still wildly unaffordable. We're barely making ends meet as it is, and have no wiggle room in the budget for a newer car, never mind convincing the slumlords we rent from to install charging infrastructure when they can't be bothered to fix leaking septic systems or roofing. The discussion about what types of chargers to put where is interesting to me, but only in an academic, almost theoretical sense, because I don't see myself being able to afford an electric car in the foreseeable future, much less own a home or even be able to live in a place where the landlords would consider installing EV chargers.
Progressives don't care about you. "Take the bus if you can't afford a $50k vehicle!" is their answer to your situation.
You have to understand that they want you to suffer, it's the only way to force society to move in the direction they want.
Once you finally are in the market for a new car, EVs can already be far cheaper to own in the first month than a gas car thanks to gas savings alone (depending on your driving needs of course). When you're doing $40 in electricity versus $400 in gas per month, that's $360 saved that can go towards payments on an EV.
As for slumlords, they need to be woken to the fact that EV chargers can be a stable long-term revenue source for them.
@@jrharbortproductions Dude, slumlords are definitely not going to be installing EV chargers for tenants who will never be able to afford to use them, and if they do, they'll monetize them way beyond $40/mo. You can't even do laundry in places without paying dollars on the penny of energy usage. EVs are a privilege and a distraction from developing equitable public transit. There is no way people making minimum wage will be able to afford a $40,000 expense, no matter how well intentioned or "money saving" it is, without systemic change.
You can add poorer rural people to your "list" of people who won't be able to afford them until you can buy one used and even then, it'll be expensive for a lot of us in that group. Rural places will be the very last, if ever, places where people can have EVs unless they somehow win a lot of money and can afford to put the chargers in their garages or on the outside of their houses next to their driveways.
@@hobosaur4250 Public transit in the US is basically a dead issue if you don't live in or near a large city. It's another of the many issues poorer rural people experience. EVs will eventually, in several decades, be a viable solution where public transit will not. You just won't get farmers and ranchers willingly giving up or selling their land unless we make natural meat, and hence cattle/other farm animals, illegal.
1:11 Don't forgot it's harder on the cars themselves. Remember the more you fast charge a lithium battery, the more heat, the shorter the operational life of the battery. (More rapid degradation). Also, we need these batteries to last as long as possible to offset the carbon footprint of making the batteries...
Edit: yay he covered the fact dc fast charging is hard on batteries later on.
True but honestly that's all a matter of smart recycling. When a battery pack is not suitable for a vehicle anymore it's still a damn good storage battery for PV for example. And even if it's not suitable for PV anymore most of the pack can still be recycled.
Fast charging damage has been disproven by university research and electric taxi use.
@@Nicholas-f5 I'd like to read this. Happen to remember the name of the paper or at least the university?
@@theosexpertdaymon2774 Not from an University, but the Tesloop rideshare Service has pushed their Cars pretty hard with frequent fast charging, and they published a Report about that and their degradation many years ago
Another option for roadside charging: There ARE the droids you're looking for.
There are already parking meter and scooter rental systems in place that bill to whatever payment method you have set up in your smartphone's virtual wallet. This could easily be extended to EV chargers. In most downtown areas, you already have lampposts along the street for public safety, so it's not like much infrastructure would need to be added or upgraded.
It is infact a huge amount of infrastructure.
But we need to get on with it.
It will be great once finished.
(Edit. Not even finished, just a few projects scattered properly would help so much)
Re: "Put L2 chargers everywhere". Also Hotels. Usually hotels have 1-2 chargers per hotel, and it should be closer to 5x that (for now, and growing over time to "1 per expected rental car in our lot")
We do still need a lot more DC charging though, but more in the sticks, not in the city. (Not just between cities. Also out between cities and rural destinations like parks/mountains/lakes/etc)
Often the hotel’s chargers are proprietary Tesla chargers too! 😢
As far as providing chargers at work places goes, bear in mind that not everyone works 8 hour shifts. Those who have to work around caring commitments (children or elderly) often have shorter shifts - maybe 4 or 5 hours. Could a slow charger fully charge a car in that time?
In Germany all the chargers require specific apps and it's a mess whereas the UK required all chargers to have a credit card slot. However the car manufacturers saw the problem and a way to make extra money. Mercedes, for example, now allows you to register with their me system and then the car talks with the charger and automatically deals with the payment details. So you just have to drive up to a charger, plug in and leave it. The car will deal with payments. There are also uber style apps that let homeowners rent out their chargers now to other people.
The plugged in car is denying charging for another car. One which needs to move.
This is an opportunity to raise tax. Leave your car when charged and you will pay government by the minute.
@@20chocsaday In the Netherlands there is a word for it: "Laadpaalkleven", and people have been fined for it
@@jimbolino I must write that word back to him. But he probably knows.
Thanks.
@@20chocsaday So you have to stop whatever you're doing and go outside to move your car or the government's going to tax you? Can't you just go find another charger? I love living in the US where the government doesn't involve itself in every little problem, though things are going that way.
@@bwofficial1776 Well, you wouldn't need to. But if you have no concern for your fellow citizens and the gov'ment will stay out of it what next?
The guy wanting his car charged will hire a bulldozer to get your truck out of the way. And a specialist to make sure you pay to charge his car.
Then it's up to you.
Have you read jimbolino's post?
Loved the whiteboard explanation around the 12:00 mark. But was wondering why the orange marker was applying so dark on the whiteboard.
My guess for the thing about cables attached to the chargers in the US is that it provides visual and functional similarity to gas pumps? You used to take a cable from the gas station to your car, and now you take a cable from the electric pump to your car. That's what makes the most sense for me...
That's probably part of it. Older CHAdeMO plugs in the Eugene, OR area even have a lever that clamps to lock them in place, exactly like a gas pump. I found it oddly satisfying, frankly.
Probably also just that it's convenient to not have to faff about with pulling your own cable out of whatever storage compartment you leave it in, and putting it back, and worrying about it getting lost or stolen or damaged.
Also, by the time you get up to 300 kW or so, your cable really really needs liquid cooling. How to manage _that_ with a detachable cable stored in your car, I have no idea.
@@ps.2 Speaking from EU: You only use your own cable for L2 Charging (a.k.a. up to 22kW AC, sometimes 44kW). For L3/DC charging, the cable is attached to the charger (using Type2+CCS combo). This is pretty much standard across Europe. Only rarely do you get an attached Type2 plug for AD charging and your car usually comes with one as standard.
I think the U LOW display may have indicated low voltage. I've seen a capital U used as a stand in for V on some seven segment displays.
“The power company handles it all” might work in a place where the utility has an absolute monopoly, but the metro area I live in has 3 or 4 power companies serving different areas, which would limit your options in weird ways. In addition, consumers here own everything from the weather head back (except the meter), so there could be issues there with using customer assets to charge other peoples cars.
I am curious on what you think is an ideal solution for a hi-rise? My building is currently looking to install some chargers. Of course, they need to be shared chargers (not every parking spot can get a charger...that's a bridge too far). So, install expensive fast DC chargers or slower level-2 chargers? Since they have to be shared we really do not want just one car sitting there for 8 hours while four other cars are waiting. But then, DC fast charging is expensive to install and not the best for the battery. Part of the problem is there is not telling how many EV cars will be in the building in the future. Maybe there are 2-3 today but there may be 50 in a few years.
The fairest solution might be to rely mostly on a whole bunch 120V AC wall plugs, as it is fairer to have 100 cars charging slower than 20 cars charging faster. You can couple that with a few shared 8 kW level 2 charging stations, which would be pay-as-you-go for those that need them (but charge significantly more per kWh than the level 1 plugs).
DC fast charging at apartments would be worse because nobody wants to make an extra trip down to move their car when it's done charging. A larger number of load-sharing level 2 chargers is a more sensible choice. When somebody is sitting already charged it would have no effect on everybody else.
Biggest hurdle for a Condo or Apartments well may be state laws regulating who is and who is not a "utility provider". In many states, it's simply illegal to sell electricity without registering as a utility.
So, some legal reform allowing Condo associations or Rental complexes to sell up to a small amount of power (say 5 GWh a year) without registering as a utility would go a long way.
This is true but I think the real threat is condos profiteering, not charging the actual cost. My condo charges a $40 flat charging fee which is way more than my Volt would reasonably use. Way more than if billed to my utility meter at night on off peak power.
We've got an EV (2015 Nissan LEAF) and a plug-in hybrid (2015 Chevy Volt), and we've never bothered getting a 220v L2 EVSE at home for either one. In fact, since we moved, we're currently keeping both of them charged on the Volt's granny lead (the 110v L1 EVSE from the trunk of the car). We basically unplug from the car we're about to drive and plug into the car we're leaving. Not an ideal situation, but we've managed so far, partly because I work from home.
I'll have to install another circuit to get both cars plugged in at the same time. I might consider 220v if it doesn't break the bank, but we could manage on 110v for both cars, since they're both early vehicles with very limited EV range.
Here in the Netherlands, at least in a lot of city's, when you buy an EV and you don't have the ability to charge at home and there is not a charger within 250m of your house the city will create one within those 250 meters. (A private company will be appointed to place on)
That's why we have a very, very dense network of chargers.
I can pretty much go anywhere and there will be a destination charger somewhere in the vicinity.
That's also the reason 30% of European chargers are found in the Netherlands. :)
You can get 7.2 kwh homecharger installed for about 750€ here btw. 1500€ for one that will take your solar panels surplus production first before it will get it from the net.
Less than 1% of car buyers in the USA want EVs so no problem here.
@@protonneutron9046 yeah i can see that, the country is slipping more and more to a third world country.
The world and tech is changing to much and too fast for too many people.
@@Flaggyt no, it's that the product doesn't fit the need. Anyone who understands econ knows that the market is always right. So, that means that EVs are wrong for the USA at this point in their development. EVs have existed far longer PVs and still are not ready for market in the US. They aren't high tech enough.
@@protonneutron9046 that they had a few ev's in early 1900 is a bs argument.
But hey if it doesn't fit them it's their loss. EV's are simply brilliant but we are a smaller society that can quickly change and adapt to new technology and we aren't as conservative as a lot of Americans.
And yes the market is always right doesn't mean it isn't old-fashioned and not able to embrace new tech.
This Siemens product development mentioned at 26:50 or so in his utopian level 2 charging and key fobs for pre-meter lines ...what's the name? Where can I find out more?
Fun fact: there's also a thing called "Plug & Charge" where an EV identifies itself to the EVSE, so that you don't even need a key fob or anything. You just plug it in and it automatically knows who to bill. It's not everywhere yet, but the idea is quite powerful and it's already standardized, so we're on a good track here.
What I currently see as one of the roadblocks is insane roaming charges. Basically it works like this: people who own charging points tend to hire companies (CPOs - Charge point Operators) who supervise them. These companies then handle the technical side as well as payments. Each company usually have their own app and their own RFID cards (or key fobs or whatever). And they each try to get people to sign up with them. The problem is when you want to charge with chargers that are managed by other CPOs, not the one you signed up with. Then you either need to sign up with the other CPO, or your CPO needs to have a roaming agreement with the other CPO. Since there are many, many CPOs out there, it would be impractical for every CPO to sign an agreement (and perform an IT integration) with every other CPO. Enter roaming networks. CPOs sign up to participate in them, and suddenly every CPO can use every other CPO's charge points. All billing goes through the roaming network.
There are two problems that I see with this:
1. This schema is VERY complicated and there are very many middle men
2. The roaming networks charge insane fees for using them. Most often the charging price literally DOUBLES when you're not charging in your home network.
All in all, both EVSE owners and electric car owners suffer from this. If it all could be made simpler and cheaper, I think it would help a lot.
I believe Tesla already does that with its Superchargers, you just plug the car to the Supercharger and the car identifies itself to the charger, including payment information.
When you go to use a supercharger for the first time, it asks in the car's screen for payment info. This is also very powerful for rental companies, just have the car ask for credit card info per each charge, and you could easily have a central location with chargers that bypass that, so the rental company can top up the car's battery before renting it to someone.
The roaming fees are most likely an issue that differs by country/region. Here in Germany we also have a ton of CPOs, many of them formed "unions" (for example most of the municipal energy providers of larger cities that offer charging bunched together and formed the "Ladenetz" group), and those groups then have roaming contracts with other groups/CPOs. AFAIK I can use >90% of all charging points in Germany and neighboring countries with my Ladenetz RFID card and always pay the rates from my contract with Ladenetz without additional (roaming) fees.
As someone privacy-concerned, that sounds like an absolute nightmare.
@@Aubreykun I do believe it's some sort of opt-in thing that you have to manually enable, but I'm not sure. Well, at a bare minimum you need to register you car with some company through which you will pay.
@@vilx7259 Again, as someone privacy-concerned, that sounds like a nightmare. If there's no "walk up and pay cash" option then this is going to meet heavy resistance.
In July, I moved into a rented home, which has a detached garage. Sadly, it does not have 240V in it though, and the electrical panel is on the side of the house on the opposite end of the property. I could get an EV, but I would probably have to rely on Level 1 charging at home, unless I wanted to cover the cost of running a rather long circuit to support Level 2 in a home I don't own. Since I work from home though, I suspect I could get away with this just fine, and I would seriously consider getting an EV if I were looking to buy a car right now. I still have a 2018 RAV4 though, and it seems awfully early to trade it in right now (not to mention the market being crazy at the moment).
Likewise, my parents rent a home, which has an attached garage, and it actually has an unused 240V dryer outlet in it (there's a gas dryer instead). You'd think this would be perfect for an EV, but the problem is that it was built in 1930, and the garage is therefore on the small side. While it would probably fit a Model T perfectly, modern cars do not fit comfortably. They can be squeezed in, but it's a very tight fit. It's difficult to get out, and you would have to move the car in order to, for example, do the laundry. I suppose they could technically run a long cord across the sidewalk to get to the car, but that's a poor solution since it would undoubtedly get in people's way.
There are all sorts of situations like these which currently make Level 2 charging a challenge. Even the "have the power company put it on your bill" idea has some challenges. For one thing, people in especially older apartment complexes often don't receive an electricity bill (I lived in such a place for years). Even if you solve that by allowing people to open accounts that are for EV use only, you're also going to have problems with visitors from outside the area who would have no reason to have any sort of account with the local utility. And this is before you even get into all the challenges deregulation like we have here in Texas would introduce into this scheme, but I won't get into that rant...
I have no idea what the answer is, but I hope we get one eventually. Personally, looking down my street, I see lots of utility poles that seem like they would be excellent places to mount EV chargers. Some of them even have street lights on them, so there's already power available there from somewhere. I wonder how hard this would be to pull off.
It sounds like you're not really in the market for an EV but when you are, try talking to you landlord. You don't know what they'll say if you don't ask and the worst that can happen is that they say no and you are no worse off than you already are. Also, be prepared to cover some of the cost, either directly or in the form of a rent increase. Maybe you'll get lucky and your landlord will be cool with covering the costs but I think a more realistic scenario is that you will need to cover some or all of the cost one way or another. Remember that to your landlord, this is a business and it's unreasonable for people - renting or otherwise - to expect capital improvements to their home at no cost. If you're asking for improvements, you're going to have to pay something for it one way or another.
The power pole charging station thing... Definitely shouldn't be difficult. It already exists in a number of cities, including Toronto and London so solutions already exist.
Can you do a video on recycling the old batteries from EVs?
Alec, i think you are completely correct.
Where i live (the netherlands) a lot of what you say, is already being done, especially in commercial buildings. Either the building owner, or the electricity supplier puts in an extra meter on the main supply to an office building, digs a trench to the parking lot, and installs a few charger poles (usually 4KW types), and you can access those with a membership card.
I've even seen installations on shared commercial buildings where the charger pole just contains a payment terminal for your debit or credit card, no membership required, Just plug in, swipe your card, and choose full charge or a fixed amount, you can even enter your mobile phone number, the system will text you when the charge is completed.
I would say you were very lucky they were willing to work with you. In my experience landlords generally have zero interest in anything they are not legally required to do, even if you offer to cover the cost of an electrician and materials to make an improvement.
One change to your idea, I think it'd be better to have a credit card used to pay for charging vs a specialty fob, especially for shared vehicles, rentals, and other stuff - or like business trips when you have to use a company card and provide receipts for that trip.
I think BIGGER shopping stores (WalMart, Target, Lowes, Home Depot, similar) would still benefit from chargers though - grocery stores its not unusual to spend 2-3 hours doing a big shopping trip which could charge a useful amount of power at ~6kW charge rate.
Side note - I would love for you to do a video about single-phase vs 3-phase power and connecting single-phase loads like an EV to a 3-phase power supply how it works and what the sinewaves look like.
I can see the specialty fob going away now that contactless credit cards are a thing. (Even if you don't use ApplePay or whatever Google is doing) The main benefit for that is it removes the swipe and just bypasses reading the chip. (Because contactless essentially is a wireless chip.
Workplace chargers are necessary, even if billed to the employee as a company car would have been. In my case, we have customer service / sales reps in electric fleet cars who come and have to go to a hotel or some other facility to charge. They could be charging at work, and put in their full time instead of stressing about where to get their charge so they can get to the next site or home.
In the UK, most electric chargers come with pen-fault protection built in. However, the tesla wall chargers do not and therefore, pen-fault protection needs to be added onto the circuit to install the tesla charger. Not sure how similar/different this is in US.
The PEN fault protection seems to be a UK specific thing. In North America code requires a grounding electrode at each building so some of those fault scenarios can't happen. Also L2 chargers connect line to line and don't use a neutral connection.
@@RobertHancock1 Possibly, I don't fully understand what the fault even is. I just know that it's possible to happen and that all 3 live, neutral and earth/ground need to be disconnected. Otherwise, the car body basically becomes live
$2500 definitely seems reasonable to me after my experience. Probably close to half of the cost of that was probably conduit and cables.
And, wow. Electricians could use some education on EVSE’s. The issues you had were some of the same I ran into in my region, except the thinking a transformer would be needed. We needed load sharing set up and the electricians didn’t adequately convey that to the city for inspections, and so they ended up not setting them up that way (and upsizing the circuit).
One more complication in large residential with 3-phase service is phase balancing.
We went with an EKM meter, which was similar to what you had but a different brand. The nice thing with them is that you can use a bunch of independent meters and they can feed a cloud service that can send bills to tenants and owners however you need to without monthly fees.
I absolutely love your idea of tapping in to home’s electricity for level 2 chargers! But it might be even easier. The electricity to the house is probably run along the road already!
Might be helpful to frame charge times in terms of how many hours per month/year/decade you spend filling up, not how many minutes per individual charge. With an EV, you spend (effectively) 0 time charging at home since you just plug in as you walk into the house, plus 20 minutes per fill-up on long road trips using Level 3 charging. However with gas cars, you need to drive to a gas station every single time you need to fill up, which is a 5-20 minute round trip journey plus the 2-3 minutes spent pumping. If you take 1 road trip per month and otherwise commute to work, you're probably spending less time charging an EV in total over that month than you would filling up the gas tank.
In some new condo buildings in my area (Greater Vancouver, Canada) the developers are running electrical lines from the suite panels to the assigned parking spots. A move in the right direction.
Interesting. My building is semi-recent. They have 2 parking spots in the visitor parking where you can pay by hour to charge a vehicle for up to 4 hours.
So.. here's the problem with condos. What you suggested might work for a few gung-ho EV enthusiasts, but it doesn't scale.
Where I live, the government (in its *infinite wisdom*) has decreed from on high that sales of new gas powered cars will be banned in 2035.
If we're going to rely on AC charging for daily needs.. that means, as that date approaches (fudge factor of a few years before or after..), you're really going to need to have every spot in the parking garage wired up with a L2 charger. In my building, there are I'm going to guess approximately 500 condo units. And the parking garage is shared with another building of equal size. Virtually everyone has a parking spot (some have two).. so that's 1000 L2 chargers. Oh, and there's no metering in the building at all currently (electricity is a common element paid by condo fees).. but that'll likely have to change. And if everyone's charging for 10 hours at night at 3kW, that means 3000 kW of power on top of what's being used currently.. so I'm going to guess that'll probably involve major upgrades to the electrical infrastructure of the building.
That's not going to be cheap. And then, you've got to do that for every high rise. In 12.5 years (more or less).. and that's likely to be backloaded, since, you know, people don't tend to proactively plan ahead on such a timeframe.
It doesn't seem feasible to me.
The average lifespan of a new ICE car these days is 8-12 years depending on which source you ask, so it's more like a 20+ year timeframe. Not to discount the challenge of upgrading the infrastructure, but it's not as doom-and-gloom as people are yelling about. That, and new laws can be passed if reality does prove to be a problem. Push the deadline back (the most likely scenario tbh,) require/incentivize getting those upgrades in place in time, fund transit/bicycle infrastructure to reduce the need for car usage in the first place...
@@crazoatmeal1854 This is why I say there's a fudge factor of a few years either way. Ideally all of the infrastructure would be in place before you're forced to buy an EV if you're shopping for a new car.
And depending on how the market plays out, as the deadline approaches, it could be increasingly difficult to buy a gas-powered car at a reasonable price (they could be highly sought after and expensive, or shunned and worthless.. who knows?)
The nightmare scenario is being forced to buy an EV when you have nowhere to charge it.
I think as governments change, some of these laws may change or be scrapped entirely. That's always a possibility. But for now, this is where we're at, for better or worse. And I just don't think it's realistic.
If you live in a certain Western state, you're having problems today with not having enough electricity to go around. PG&E is turning off power and rationing it. They're actively decommissioning power plants in the name of being green. Windmills don't work when it's not windy and solar panels don't work at night. Nuclear is safe and clean and good for decades but it's "scary" so no one wants to seriously entertain building more nuke plants. California and the country as a whole has a lot of work to do before mandating EVs. We hear all the time about how the US electrical grid is barely adequate and falling apart.
Getting a small project involving PG&E can take months. To get a new transformer can take more than a year.
The idea that we can do this on a large scale is laughable.
Afaik, all on street chargers in the Netherlands use a keyfob, but the bill doesn't go to your (home) power company. You just have to pay to the company who installed the charging pole.
Just wanted to say that here in Iceland, thanks to somewhat recent laws, if you *own* an apartment in a condo, it doesn't matter if you're the only person in the entire condo, you can request that the housing association install an electrical parking spot, and they are *forced* to comply, with every apartment paying their share. I haven't read the laws thoroughly, regarding what happens for person number 2 or 3 in the condo that asks for the same thing, but at least this means that every single condo will have a 22kW charger installed on the shared condo parking lot, if even a single EV owner lives there.
As a *renter*, myself, I have no such perks. Which is why there is no charger in our parking lots, and I have no access to charging outside of fast-chargers / public 22kW chargers around the city. Which is why I don't own an EV yet.
how did you see this video 18 hours before he released it
@@NathanTAK I'm assuming he's on patreon. They get early access.
@@NathanTAK Patreon supporters usually see the videos 1-2 days before general release. 🙂
10:43 i have an Emporia Smart EV charger which gives me charge time, kWh used and cost (based on entered value). This is installed in my own house garage, but could be used anywhere. I'm thinking there are better options now though (JuiceBarcharger) for EVSE's with built in billing ability.
I would prefer if cars would communicate with the smart meter via IEEE 1901-2010 (ethernet over powerline) and would send its VIN to the meter, that way the car itself is the authentication that tells the utility who to bill.
This has other benefits too. This could be done using an on-board REST api, that way it could be tied into home automation and you could easily track the charge status of a vehicle using local systems (no cloud needed).
And for those who are security conscious the same api endpoint that sends the VIN could also provide a TOTP or challenge OTP so that the billing system doesn't bill the victim of a bad actor and the charger just doesn't turn on without the code.
An alternative is to use the control pilot as a single wire CAN bus, I think this is what Tesla does at the moment, which honestly isn't a bad idea. It'll probably require lower cost electronics than a EoP solution, and overall will probably be less complicated. The downside is it'll be pretty slow, maximum baud rates of about 33300, but that's almost certainly more than adequate for the messaging going between an EV and a meter. It's fairly straightforward to have the control pilot drop back to "normal mode" when not being used as a CAN bus.
I dont want my car to spy on me, that why i love my Aries K and my w810 phone
As a person that has driven electric for some 10 years, you nailed it:
1) We need a huge focus on AC chargers (At home and work) not DC chargers (which should mainly be for long distance driving).
2) Utilities should install lots of L2 chargers that allow you to use a fob, RFID, phone, etc to put the charging on your home bill.
3) Workplaces should be spammed with chargers with (2) so people can charge at work during peak solar PV hours.
4) AC charging is cheaper, easier on the grid, easier on the cars, and can be put in demand-response programs.
It seems to me not worth switching to electric vehicles yet because of range and other problems as a renter. My next vehicle is a no charge Hybrid.
Hybrid is a good next step also.
Hybrid is the way to go, particularly plug-in hybrid. Charge up when you can and drive around town on electric, when you go out of town and deplete the battery it's just a hybrid with hundreds of miles of range and refuel time in minutes.
As far as a fob to track power usage: is there a major reason why your car can't transmit identification in the same handshake that communicates power availability?
i guess it makes it easier for other people to pay for you. Like your friend chipping in, or a company paying for your miles, or like you let someone borrow your car and their suppose to pay the bill.
The major reason is existing cars don't all support that so you'd need a solution for older cars. A minor reason is the power handshake is a (mostly) one-way analog signal which is too simple to support such a system. This is minor because there are standards to enable two-way communication over the power wires.
Idk what places you work at but I don't see many businesses giving away free electricity.
Presumably they'd partner with e.g. Chargepoint for actual EVSEs and billing system. It ends up being a "normal" public charger, but slower and conveniently located. EV owners pay Chargepoint; Chargepoint reimburses employer for the energy and maintains the EVSEs.
A large-ish capacity L2 charger at California-emergency electricity rates is less than federal minimum wage. If you have more common electricity rates giving away free charging would be the equivalent of a $2/hr raise. Less if they do a lower-capacity charger.
I think we need chargers in grocery store and mall parking lots. The workers will be there for 8 hours sometimes when working. Customers wouldn't always need them. But workers are there for long times.
If people could have a gasoline tap at home for their explody thing cars, they'd do it in a heartbeat for the convenience. I don't understand the desire to take what can be done at home cheaper and in your free time, and forcing it to happen at dedicated chargey places that are less convenient and more expensive.
19:35 - that is probably because people are used to gas pumps having the filling hose and nozzle permanently attached, so they followed the same paradigm with chargers. If you think about it, that makes FAR more sense than every car having to carry a cable around with them at all times. Think about your cell phone. Do you carry the cable around with you everywhere you go, or do you just leave the cable at the place where you typically charge it?
The reason (as assumed by me), for wires to be pre-attached to charging stations, is that we as a country are just absolutely addicted to Gasoline, and in order to get anyone to adopt EV's on any kind of mass scale, we had to make owning an EV feel as much like owning a gasoline car as humanly possible. Thus: charging stations look as much like gas pumps as possible, down to the attached "hose", charging ports are in the same spot as gas tank fill ports (in a lot of cases), and there's a large push for charging a car to take the same amount of time as filling a gas tank, despite being completely different technologies.
What we need, is to get it through people's heads that EV's are DIFFERENT, and that "different =/= bad".
Level 3 chargers are hard-wired as they have liquid cooled cables, so they are not easy/safe to disconnect. Level 2 chargers in Europe require you to bring your own cable, but not in the US! I suspect it may have to do with crime rates and variability of equipment too. The US is just a larger scale than Europe with EV chargers.
Trains: good. Buses: good. Cars: bad. Horses: chaotic neutral.
The biggest mistake you can do in a shared parking system is to make an ad-hoc install as owners get EVs. The reason is that those installs will take up a lot of the buildings inlet capacity which puts everyone else at a disadvantage later. Instead plan as though all parking spots eventually will get EVSEs. This means setting up load sharing systems which saves a lot on the inlet capacity. Even though each individual EVSE might have support for 5 or even 10kW, the inlet can be planned to as little as 1kW pr. parking spot. (assuming you have a fair number of them) This works fine because a) 1kW goes a long way and B) a lot of the stalls will NOT be charging at any one time so on average a lot more capacity is available.
The load sharing system makes sure multiple EVSEs can share circuits without overloading. It does add some cost, but the base infrastructure will also do metering for the building without needing the utility to install individual meters. There is a standard protocol for load sharing and more, called OCPP, so you do not get locked into a single vendor. These can scale to hundreds of installs easily. (I live in norway where this sort of install is a reality now, they get rolled out in buildings all over)
Now just because you plan to install EVSEs everywhere does not mean you need to install them all at once. As each owner needs an EVSE they can pay to get one installed and plugged into the common infrastructure, but the building will need to invest a bit the common systems.
I know someone who got bit by this. Originally, each person in their condo who got an EV got a charger installed. After a few of them, the building can't accommodate any more chargers without expensive service upgrades. The problem is precisely what you said - each individual car on a separate high-powered circuit, even though everyone doesn't need to charge at maximum speed, all at the same time. Worse, the chargers that do exist are private property of individual unit owners, so the HOA cannot fix it without buying them out, but they sell for around $10k each, due to limited supply.
Had the building been set up with load sharing to begin with, none of this would be a problem.
In Montreal we have roadside chargers everywhere. They aren't high speed but they are cheap. More downtown but even near where I live there are 4 chargers within 1 block.
The most amusing part is how they are proof that Tesla put the charge port on the wrong side of the car since when you parallel park it is the passenger side next to the curb so you get to see the cable stretched to the far side of the vehicle.
You could have paid the electrician to install an actual electric meter. Used meters can be had on eBay for around $30.
There are actually quite a number of commercial oriented EV "gang chargers" available that are designed to simplify the installation of many chargers on a single circuit:
Efixx has done several videos about the various options including Easse EV chargers and the IDACS flexible busbar which is a really, really slick solution.
Let's be brutally honest here: Apartment charging is just not gonna happen anytime soon (as in the next 20yrs) for like 90% of the people. Period.
I've lived in apartments without central air, dishwashers, on site laundry, etc. You are right. Rich renters in my city already have easy access to car chargers. But the rest of us have window air conditioners. 😆
Hey Alec. Ever heard of a load miser. I've seen them here in Canada from time to time. Basically it allows you to connect 2 devices to the same breaker circuit and it will automatically switch off current to the less essential device while the essential one is being used. Usually they installed in older apartments to allow the installation of a dryer on an oven circuit. When the oven is turned on the dryer looses power.
My only major concern is the lack of general pro-activity when it comes to strengthening municipal or private power grids. In Los Angeles this week we had a major risk of blackouts and calls to stop using electricity as much as possible, and that’s just because of people fighting the heat (and that was after the governor announced a state of emergency to increase power production). Tacking on a full population’s worth of electric cars to that can’t be good. To be clear, I am 1000% for a electric car future. Just don’t trust those handling the infrastructure.
Sounds like the solution is not to shy away but to straighten the power network. Not everyone has 40k+ to buy a band new car so its going to take a while before there are so many EVs that its a problem, so they should fix their power so it can handle the heat and cars.
Well... that's because the folks running the infrastructure are a bunch of grifters. Corruption and California politics go hand in hand. There was no good reason to shut down all your nuclear power plants. California also spent 100 Billion on their stupid choo-choo train to nowhere, when they could have used that money to build reservoirs and hydro plants.
It actually _can_ be good if done right. You can charge at night when the grid is less stressed and when vehicle to grid becomes adopted the car could supply some power back to the grid, or at least to the owner's house.
Definitely have agreed with the charge-at-work thing for so long. I've seen several solar "car ports" go up in open parking lots lately. But sadly, no place to charge as far as I could tell. Frankly any garage seems it'd be easy to build with power per spot. Hell, I wanted to see that just from the perspective of plugging a vac for car cleaning. I have a recent car purchase so it'll be a while for me anyway; but hoping it actually will be feasible by then.
These videos were fascinating and some people definitely need cars but I think the US is in dire need of upgrading their public transportation infrastructure first.
Public transit only works in cities and dense suburbs. Most of the country's land area is unsuitable for public transit. You can't put a bus stop for every farm and cabin.
Unless and until the US makes natural meat, and hence cattle/other farm animals, illegal, public transit won't happen. The farmers and ranchers will never willingly sell or give up their land for it to be done properly. EVs are the only solution, even though it will take decades for rural people to be able to afford one even used.
@@jwb52z9 What are you talking about? We already have rail and road infrastructure across the country that can be put to better use.
Sure, transit works best in dense situations, but this video is about inherently dense situations such as apartment buildings. If you live in a farm go ahead and plug your car into your house, you don’t need anything special. But should large cities be spending our tax dollars building charging infrastructure or running more busses? I vote for the busses.
@@bwofficial1776 Incorrect. There only has to be will, and some government subsidies. Example: Switzerland. You can take a train or a bus into the remotest vally if you want to. Sure service is quite a bit thinner there, but there is public service. Or have a call-on-request service (somewhat like a Taxi). Texel, a Dutch island has such a system where you can call a number and provide them with your location by using a stop number and they will pick you up. Of course the US is larger but if there is a will, public infrastructure can be implemented.
I’ve been thinking the same thing about shared charging stations run by the electric company. It should work like credit unions-you have an account and wherever you use it, the cost just shows up on your bill. The EVSEs wouldn’t even need to be very smart. Everything could happen in your smart phone (just scan a code for the location or use GPS to select the right one) and all the EVSE has to do is turn on. Excellent, excellent video!
27:15 I have a much simpler idea. Instead of messing with apps etc., just make e-car charging free at the point of use. Install a single meter for the entire parking lot and have the government pay the bill out of road tax revenues. Also use road tax to subsidise public transport. Yes, people would be incentivized to waste charge, and some would do so. But there is a limit to how much charge an individual can waste. People waste petrol by the gallon despite the cost. Government already imposes minimum efficiency standards, which suggests that the market is failing to incentivize efficiency, and besides: e-car tech is inherently power efficient already. Markets and price signals are often useful tools, but let's not be dogmatic. Government could drastically simplify incentive structures here and guarantee long term expectations, which would create ideal conditions for investment and rapid adoption.