Ffs, can we please please stop the car centric city? Can we please invest in public transportation, bicycle lanes everywhere, and walkable neighborhoods?
Climate change hats this one little trick where we don't design cities to be car dependent hellscapes, and it's good for your (mental) health too!
It boggles my mind, that solutions so obvious and simple are somehow framed as untenable. If 3/4 streets in Manhattan were made walkable/bike-able only (except for wee hours for trash and whatnot) - we could still get everywhere - less death - less pollution - more little shops - more trees - healthier.
FFS can we please acknowledge reality that cars are not going anywhere anytime soon and that cars are going to be a part of the solution along with the expansion of public transportation and bike lanes that doesn't get people killed and city planning around less urban sprawl and stop treating this stuff like it's a zero sum game.
I'm actually really interested in this as a project I would like to understand what it would take to get this done. The scope creep in planning seems simply astronomical and I would like to know who the authorities are on city design at the moment.
I also think there is a cynical side to me that thinks that all the people who do city design take the money they make and dump it into a mc mansion out in the burbs anyway so the motivation of individuals with these skills seems skewed.
Having lived in the US with publicly run transit and in the UK with privately run transit I'd say there's a lot of 'it depends' you're glossing over here. Very city dependent
I would love to see chargers more incentivized at workplaces. As solar becomes more common charging during the day is going to make more sense than night. There are already ways to track charging costs and bill them out or just consider it a job perk. Most people don't need to charge 300 miles a day so even if every single employee drives an EV you probably only need to install enough chargers for somewhere like ¼ of the cars on site. Yes some people need to drive for work, but there are a lot of cars that sit all day and could be running on solar instead of charging off something else at night instead.
I don't need to. Is there a way to charge EVs there? Then EVs will likely be charged there. Is there not a way to charge EVs there? Then EVs probably won't be charged there.
What I see are cables is coming out of a lamppost.
I'm all for electric cars but I can't see a reasonably safe solution to all the cars on the street being connected.
Which is the truth, pretty much everywhere. There simply won't be enough chargers, likely ever.
It's a repeat of what happened to biofuels. It was hyped as the magic solution for fossil fuels, until people began to realize that we weren't in any position to scale up production of biofuels to the levels needed. After a brief period when we fantasized about ideas like cellulosic ethanol or algae oil, which never really happened BTW, we ultimately just gave up on biofuels.
Battery powered cars are likely to do the same thing. We are at the point were we are realizing that this won't scale up. There's going to be a brief period of fantasy solutions to the problem too, but those probably won't happen either. After that, we will move on from BEVs.
Battery powered cars are likely to do the same thing. We are at the point were we are realizing that this won't scale up.
This is a very Western (US especially) argument. All across major cities in the East, China specifically you're already seeing major cities becoming increasingly electrified far far beyond what is both being done in the US currently and what is capable of being done by the US in the next 10 years.
Then China is just repeating Brazil. Brazil was one of the few countries that could pull off biofuels in a real way. But it was a unique situation, and it doesn’t work elsewhere.
The problem is that biofuel costs ballooned some years ago and I don't know a single person that still uses it since you get more km with regular gas, biofuels had a sweet magic price for some time but it has gone way up.
That's true of ethanol, but not biodiesel. High cost is a consequence of insufficient supply. Basically, it was how the market stopped further biofuel growth.
They can. Make it mandatory on any new construction and require it as a part of remodels while offering solar incentives for their covevered parking lots.
I own my house (okay, the bank does) and just bought an EV.
I feel like people are sleeping on 120v. Maybe I just drive less than the average person but I only use about 10-15% of the battery in a day going to/from work and I fully recover by about 0200 every day.
I’ve been testing with 120v expecting to have to spend money on a charger at some point but now I don’t know if I’ll bother.
This is the same problem ICE cars faced when they were rolled out. It isn't like there was a gas station on every corner when the Model T rolled out. As more and more EVs hit the road, charging availability will increase until we reach a point where chargers are ubiquitous. It may reach the point where every parking space has a charger.
This is a transitional issue that will resolve itself.
Except it's not the same, yet. Currently in the space you can have a fuel station cars can refuel in 5 minutes to full and be on their way making that pump available.
EVs need at least 30 minutes with the fastest charger to get from say 20 to 60 right? In either case they take up the bay. So you need to be able to handle many more at once.
If all bays are fast charge, that's a lot of power infrastructure required.
Now, all isn't lost. There's more ways to charge an EV. For example people can mostly charge at home, there could be ways to charge on the move (I don't wonder what kind of drag would be applied charging with induction) and then, yes charging points which we'd hope are used less often.
But the issue is the promises of X things done by Y year. Since there's just not been enough work done until now.
The footprints of chargers and gas stations aren't the same though. A lot of places I go have a row of 8-10 spots with chargers. No added footprint really, just installed at the front of the spot. Compare that to an 8-10 pump gas station, even without a convenience store. If you removed a gas station and replaced it with rows of spaces with chargers I think you'd get more cars through over a given period of time.
EVs need at least 30 minutes with the fastest charger to get from say 20 to 60 right? In either case they take up the bay. So you need to be able to handle many more at once.
No. The Hyundai IONIQ 5 and 6 (and likely 7) only need 18 minutes to go from 10% to 80%.
But I can charge my EV at home so I only use public chargers like once every couple months instead of refilling exclusively at the gas stations. I also see a lot of people paying small amounts at the gas station (like 10-20 euros) so I'm guessing they visit them once per week. I have no idea how this impacts the overall occupancy rate but my guess is that a lot of city cars will not use public chargers at all so it's not like we're moving all cars for gas stations to charging stations.
It's what I covered later in that message. That we'll need some mix of home charging, fast charging but ultimately if we can get some kind of charging on trunk roads at least, it could just make EVs better than fuel driven cars.
Installing wires is too difficult. Let's just continue doing it the easy way, pumping liquid dinosaurs out of the ground and transporting flammable liquid thousands of miles.
Gasoline has about a 6 month self life and has to be refined from crude oil at specific facilities that polute the surrounding area.
The supply chain to support gasoline is completely insane compared to plugging you car in at home 90% of the time. Once the wiring is updated to support EVs it's basically done, no more logistics expense but gas is expensive always.
My apologies I was meaning to share frustration because I agree with you not come off as an argument. I hope you don't feel as if I was saying you were wrong.
It's also madness because we did this before at least in the US with air conditioning going main stream on a grid designed to support lights only.
Besides special purpose built charging spots, available in the streets, my country is incentivizing the instalation of charging spots in supermarkets, shopping malls and regular gas stations.
Residential buildings have incentives to install charging spots and I've read that new construction has to have it by default.
It is doable. In extremis, regular street light posts can be retrofitted with the necessary hardware.
The parts of town with high rises are WAY easier to park in. They all have parking garages connected to the building. It’s places like the Haight and the Mission that are terrible - mostly residential neighborhoods with 2 story single family homes. Maybe a few 3 story apartment buildings.
Many were converted into apartments and may have even had garages converted into a living space. So now you have neighborhoods with homes that were originally designed to hold 1 or 2 cars, but now they have 3 or more cars - and they may not even have a garage anymore.
My understanding is that most people like that in those cities don't have cars because mass transit there is actually quite good, and keeping a car is excessively expensive for something they'll rarely need
A lot of people in those cities don’t have cars, but a lot do. Especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, which has worse public transportation than NY.
Speaking as someone born and raised in SF, a shit load of apartment dwellers have cars. There are so many cars that you often can’t find a parking space near your building in the residential parts of town. Honestly, the main reason people get rid of their car is because the city has hit peak car capacity. You have to spend 30-60m looking for a spot in the vicinity of home.
Unfortunately all too many still do. I’ve known people in NYC who have cars, even if they rarely need them. When I lived in Boston, I needed a car despite using transit for all daily trips: some weeks I only used the car to move it for street cleaning
As electric car ownership increases, apartments will be incentivized to install ways to charge them. Just like electric cars it'll start with high end apartments and trickle down. This may also incentivize apartment owners to install solar on their buildings to charge battery banks to save money on electricity.
Problem is that these places often don’t have available street parking in front of the building. It’s a public street, and someone that lives in different building often grabs the open spot. And in addition to that, buildings almost always have more cars than spots in front of them.
Sure, the building owner could put chargers in front of their property, but in a place like SF, the residents will rarely get access to them.
Charging infrastructure needs to be lead by the city, state, or federal government. Putting it on landlords won’t do anything.
Also, landlords in these places already barely maintain their units. Many of them wouldn’t even maintain the HVAC until laws forced them to. And even now, many drag their feet.
Unless you use most of the charge during the same day, it is quite doable.
Sure the charge is slow, but you can plug it in the evening and let it charge during the night, like you'd do for a smartphone.
Depending on the capacity you may not get a full charge, but it is enough for most uses. If it charges enough for what you'll do during the day, it isn't a problem at all.
Did this for 3 years with a daily commute to a different state - ~13h of charging a day on 120v was far more than enough. Obviously I'm lucky enough to have a outdoor plug available to the car area but if you do it's completely doable.
Even that seems low unless it’s a giant truck, my Chevy volt can charge at like 4mph on 120V, and I think I have the charging rate reduced to not test my house’s 60 year old wiring.
It's trivial to get a 240v circuit installed, even an electrician apprentice can do it with their eyes closed. Alternatively, you can install a battery bank that discharges at >120v while being plugged into a 120v circuit.
@boem home owners would certainly charge their EVs at home, so the issue really is for those in apartment blocks. By us most apartment blocks have reserved/paid bays, so I'd imagine it must be possible to fit pop-up type chargers? I'd expect apartment blocks would have to make a plan of sorts to meet car owners halfway. After all, if you buy/rent any apartment today, it normally has electricity wired (and water piped, and often Internet connected) to the unit. Why not the same for a parking bay?
I live in a suburb of Portland and in an apartment. Our management is nice enough to provide a covered space (a luxury!) for a single car. I got to thinking about EV's and if all of a sudden everyone here was driving them, there would be no place to charge them, but then why not place a charger in front of each parking space? Problem solved. Then, the managers would probably assess an additional fee on top of the already high rents for monthly charging privileges.
Living in this area does have it's advantages, you can drive just a short distance to the local library and hit up the chargers, there, or go to the stores and always find an open charger or two
I get and will readily admit that most cities don't have this so I appreciate the concern over EV charging stations. I don't know much about them as I drive a dinosaur powered Honda so it's not yet in my radar. :)
In lots of cities most people live in apartments with only street parking. Hopefully public transit will grow to fill the needs of people living in dense cities, though.
@steal_your_face yes by us, most have parking allocation at a cost per parking bay. But yes, if no parking bays then the City should be providing better public transport. The first prize is to actually have less private cars on the road, through efficient and safe public transport.
While I agree with the drawbacks of wireless charging, it could prevent cables obstructing pedestrians and prevent vandalism. Maybe it’s a good idea for street parking
Ah yes, just fuck up streets and waste a fuckton of energy due to wireless charging
I am assuming you're assuming inefficiencies in wireless charging over wired charging. One provider looking at this technology finds wired and wireless VERY close to one another in efficiency, with wireless possibly being even MORE efficient.
"Wireless charging for EVs is considered as efficient and fast as charging with a plug. For example, most EV plugs have 80-95 percent efficiency ratings. According to WiTricity, a leading provider, their wireless EV chargers achieve 90-93 percent efficiency. " source
I would be interested in that if done by anyone else than elon. I wouldn't put it past them to have made that proposal to kill public transit or something else. Like they already did with the dumb tunnel that was canceled now.
Yeah, and most wired charging for a modern EV and charger is on the upper end of that scale.
The wireless charging being that efficient is reliant on the ground never being dirty or wet, the charging coils on the car being very low, and the car being perfectly aligned.
If shopping carts are any indication Europeans will simply plug cables back into the chargers while Americans will be dropping them on the sidewalk and hiring people to organize them.
A big advantage of repurposing existing lampposts is that cities don't have to dig in order to lay new cables, says Artis Markots, the chief executive of the Latvian start-up SimpleCharge, which is focusing on Central and Eastern Europe.
Trojan Energy is a Scottish company whose chargers sit flush with the pavement, resembling miniature manhole covers from the outside.
The UK company Nyobolt recently created Bolt-ee, a compact, ultra-rapid charger that can provide up to 300kW of DC power to charge a car within minutes.
Fully mobile charging could be useful for people with disabilities, says Liana Cipcigan, a professor of transport electrification and smart grids at Cardiff University's School of Engineering.
In terms of fire risks, Mr Shivareddy says that Nyobolt has carefully designed Bolt-ee to be ultra-efficient, and thus to generate very little waste heat.
As Prof Cipcigan says, there is much space for innovation in the EV charging market, and younger and smaller companies "could make an interesting impact on this very complex landscape".
The original article contains 1,108 words, the summary contains 167 words. Saved 85%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
On a hot day sitting in a parking lot, my Model 3 loses about 10% of its charge just cooling the battery. I am lucky to have the ability to charge at home so I don't have to worry about it, but if I was living in an apartment, I'd have constant anxiety about it discharging and not being ready when I need it. It's doable, but having to plan out an extra 20-30 minutes plus travel time to hit a charger, that's a fairly significant change to routine.
That said, yes, more EV charging at gas stations please. It's critical for road trips.
