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Who can charge at home? It might depend on your income

4K views 19 replies 16 participants last post by  Sean Nelson 
#1 ·
There's a 2013 Carnegie Mellon study that suggests only 22% of all households can charge at home - they have dedicated off street parking within reach of an existing outlet.

A more recent study, looking only at new car buyers, suggests as much as 4 out of 5 households can charge at home. Why the difference? New car buyers are more affluent, and are much more likely to have dedicated off street parking within reach of existing power.

So for the current state of the EV market (mostly new vehicles), charging at home is a reasonable option. As policy-makers look ahead to expanding the EV market to lower income households, supporting charging infrastructure at home will become more critical.
 
#2 ·
I have a 3 car garage, and yes there's actually 3 cars in it. Actually, two cars and a short bed pickup. Although I must state the it seems the majority of my neighbors, even having 2-3 car garages, must prefer parking in their driveways or the street, as one can see any time they drive by and the doors are open the garages are stuffed with "junk". Couldn't get a bicycle in most of them. :D
 
#4 ·
I drive by new apartment/townhouse/condo projects going up and the majority still seem to have simple surface parking in lots, even in more affluent areas. Some have sheltered parking, and a few have individual garages. These home are probably going to be used for at least the next 50 years, how the heck are the occupants going to adapt to an EV only world? Retrofitting individual EVSE spots is pretty much a non-starter, as even those with individual electric service to their homes almost never have adjacent parking. Of course, maybe some sort of smart EVSE that can tie its usage back to the billing of the home would help, but realistically how many is that going to solve?

I live on the low income side of town, and I am seeing some EVs turning up even here. Usually it is an early LEAF plugged into an outside outlet with its Level 1 charger. There are those who can see the advantages, but unless building codes force a change, I can't see how many folks will ever be able to charge at home. Maybe some sort of tax credit for multi family homes to install individual EVSE?
 
#11 ·
Yup. There's no way to add EV charging to a location that relies on surface parking lots without MAJOR difficulties - you need to add islands to the parking (which reduces available spaces), and run electrical cable to those islands.

I have no idea how use cases like my old apartment complex (nearly all parking spaces suitable for EV charging are already reserved for handicapped usage) will ever accomodate EVs.
 
#5 ·
I'm generally against mandates for certain infrastructure, but it seems reasonable to at least require conduit and a possibility for a certain percentage of spaces to accommodate EVs in multi-unit housing. Certainly I would be building this if I were investing in housing, as I would want the competitive advantage in the future and potential bonus opportunity for income.

Makes sense that the typical new car buyer has a place to charge their vehicle, as the average age of a new car buyer is something like 52. Interesting that although EVs may fit the needs of new car buyers, they may not suit the needs of the used market for quite some time. That would eventually lead to an oversupply of used EVs and low prices. Perhaps the low-priced EVs themselves would produce the impetus to build charging infrastructure. Renters would seek the locations that offer charging solutions and drive the demand for them to be developed.
 
#6 ·
I'm generally against mandates for certain infrastructure, but it seems reasonable to at least require conduit and a possibility for a certain percentage of spaces to accommodate EVs in multi-unit housing. Certainly I would be building this if I were investing in housing, as I would want the competitive advantage in the future and potential bonus opportunity for income.
I don’t think mandates are quite necessary yet. At least here in Michigan, there are tons of rebates available from the utility companies and EGLE, in addition to the federal EVSE credit.

At this point, I don’t understand why more businesses and rental properties aren’t installing them, plus for reasons you mentioned.
 
#7 ·
2013 was ages ago. The wording is also kind of difficult to decide. An existing outlet. To me that means one can charge at a rate that they use. I can't quite make it on L1 so I need L2.
As for most people I assume they could make it on L1 if we believe the car company's sales pitches.

Almost all the new apartments around here have chargers but only a couple per hundreds of units. No L3 in them yet but most are ChargePoint networked.
 
#8 ·
Building out linked charge stations with online billing is expensive, Building out 14-50 or even 5-20 outlets on every lamp pole and parking lot is a fraction of the price. If we are really going to have 1 billion+ personal electric cars replace ICE (we won't but it is fun to dream about), we will need to have billing linked to the car and location, not just the charge station. And all vehicles and charge stations that we do install will need to offer smart demand control and bi-directional energy flow for grid stabilization with demand pricing.
 
#9 ·
Street lamp charging will begin in areas that have a "nice downtown" of a couple blocks of nice shops people stroll. The village/town could do that with free charging because it helps support their tax base. Everywhere else needs a payment system, or your much better idea of car identity for billing. We're a decade or more from that being common enough that people can plug in almost anywhere they stop for an errand or work, and until that happens most people will need to avoid BEV.
 
#14 ·
One consideration that no one has mentioned is availability of power for all these charging stations, even "just Level 2". Many places have only single-phase power available, meaning that DCFC is VERY limited. A single-phase DCFC unit that's 20 Kw capacity draws about 90 amps. Even 3 7.7 Kw L2 units will draw nearly 100 amps.

I live in lower SE Michigan, with Consumers Energy as my supplier. They have instituted a peak hour surcharge, where usage between 2PM and 7 PM on weekdays during June -> September is billed at half-again normal rates, which are already above the national average. As if that isn't bad enough, they're now offering $500.00 if you'll allow them to disconnect your power and fire up your whole-house generator for a limited time. They promise to not use your generator for more than 50 hours/year. Those 2 scenarios tell me that they don't have enough base-load generating capacity.

There's no way they'll be able to supply charging power during daylight travel hours.
 
#15 · (Edited)
I think it's been a notion that the daylight loads are always a difficult time. They can't easily build 200% extra generation but they can easily let EV owners charge at night. I'd think that the DC fast chargers would not normally be used unless free. Even then I doubt I'd use it unless traveling. If big rigs go online they'd need power 24/7.

Many of the L2 chargers are smart. They can be controlled by the power company. Many are also designed to load manage. I just peeked at a City of Austin install where they added 30 more chargepoints to their lot.
 
#18 ·
And only 9 days left with no contact from GM. 100 day limit so I could get another month but I'll park daughters old car in the garage and she can drive the Bolt parked in the driveway. Not exactly away from structures but then GM didn't consult me before publishing their guidelines that probably work fine for their executives and lawyers. I wonder how heat resistant my new vinyl siding is.
 
#19 ·
I live in an older development that has no charging capability, but new developments in our area now have to have one L2 port for every 20 units. That doesn't solve the long-term issue, but it's more than enough for the next few years. Right now, I park at the library's L2 charger and walk home.

BTW, there's a convenience store near us on the south side of Baltimore which has 5 Tesla superchargers that are in almost constant use. My take is that there are Tesla owners in the the city who want the car, even though they can't install their own charger. A short walk or a short wait aren't deal breakers.
 
#20 ·
I live in an older development that has no charging capability, but new developments in our area now have to have one L2 port for every 20 units. That doesn't solve the long-term issue, but it's more than enough for the next few years.
The problem is that developments built today will likely be around for the next 50 years or so. Building codes need to be more forward-looking than that. Here in Vancouver building codes require all new multi-unit buildings to have energized 240V service to every parking stall. That's relatively cheap to build into a new development and allows easy for deployment of chargers to stalls as they become needed.

That's a recent step up from the previous requirement that merely required electrical service space and conduit to the parking stalls.
 
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