[james_pm]

Many people can not charge at home. Where I live (Toronto), street parking is common. It's not possible to charge on the street near your house. Condos have parking garages and unless they put a charger at each single spot, most of those people can't charge either.

Toyota has it right - there are huge issues to be solved before widespread roll out of EV is possible. The charging question is just one of them.

[giantg2]

"It's not possible to charge on the street near your house."

This seems like a huge opportunity considering how much Street parking there is. Several interesting approaches come to mind for providing this, from running lockable (hardware and software) charging cables to empower residents to set up charging infrastructure of their home (plus legal changes to designate those spaces for those who improved them; to public infrastructure in the curbs.

"there are huge issues to be solved before widespread roll out of EV is possible."

I agree. One of the biggest issues in my mind is just deciding if we want to standardize and create infrastructure as a society, or if we want to empower individuals to make the changes they require.

[crate_barre]

Naive question, but aren’t we talking about installing an electrical outlet essentially? Some of these options look like they plug into a wall:

https://www.amazon.com/MUSTART-Portable-Charger-Electric-Cha...

Bare minimum the apartment building can work to install wall outlets in the garage, or very long extension cords.

Video: https://www.amazon.com/vdp/006d5bc8225646d086bb5afa191e52d8?...

That’s not asking for a lot from a building.

[gamblor956]

That’s not asking for a lot from a building.

It's definitely asking for a lot. For my building's parking structure, that would require at least $5 million worth of upgrades to the electrical system, and we're not even the biggest condo building on the block.

[giantg2]

The outlet isn't a big deal. The infrastructure to support it is. You need to pay the supplier for additional supply lines, an electrician for the panel and other customer side infrastructure. That's the expensive part.

[chipsa]

Most people don’t need a supply upgrade, because they can shift most of the charging to night time, and the majority of people don’t use as much power at night as during the day. Unless they have a very small service. But most people have it sized to support a stove, electric dryer and A/C, if they got service relatively recently. And most electric companies will do the service upgrade for cheap if necessary, because they’ll make it back from more electric use.

They do need an electrician to run the new wires to the garage though.

[giantg2]

If we are talking about a SFH charging one car at a time (or slow charging 2), sure.

My comment was more focused on the gas stations, apartments, condos, etc that others have brought up.

[chipsa]

Yeah, apartments and condos are probably going to need supply upgrades... but the normal use case for charging IME is: park, and plug in overnight. With sufficiently smart EVSEs, you should be able to limit the charge rate to not have to worry about exceeding your electrical service, even with 2 cars.

Most gas stations shouldn't have car chargers, because even with fast chargers, who really wants to be spending 30-60 minutes at one? Fast chargers should be at restaurants and other places people will naturally want to be for a bit of time. Only gas stations that should have chargers are really things like truck stops, where they already have some amenities.

[kube-system]

The grandparent comment mentioned a parking garage at a condo, presumably, spaces for dozens of cars.

[kube-system]

Depending on the current electrical system and the number of outlets you’re adding it could consist of a significant upgrade to the electrical infrastructure in the building.

[giantg2]

In the context of charging multiple vehicles simultaneously at gas stations, apartments, etc, it's almost a certainty that the building infrastructure would need to be upgraded. Newer 200 amp SFH can likely charge one car at a time with minimal upgrades.

[djfobbz]

If people can't charge their vehicles at home (inside their garage), I see that as a burden on the city to provide adequate street based charging stations...similar to parking meters they already have.

[bastawhiz]

Why doesn't the city install gas pumps along the streets as well?

Parking meters are not comparable infrastructure. They often run on a small solar cell with almost no maintenance burden. Charging stations require a substantive amount of power and regular maintenance. Installing street chargers essentially requires entirely net new infrastructure.

[giantg2]

"Why doesn't the city install gas pumps along the streets as well?"

Because the process for pumping gas is fundamentally different from charging. If filling up a gas tank took hours, then you likely would see this sort of infrastructure. Also, it doesn't need to be the city directly. They can contract this to a private provider.

[ep103]

Yeah, the city should step in to fill this role. Perhaps they could pass some sort of law requiring that current oil-based infrastructure has to support battery charging as well. Gas stations might be a particularly good target, since they are already geographically optimized for refueling vehicles.

[capableweb]

> Toyota has it right - there are huge issues to be solved before widespread roll out of EV is possible. The charging question is just one of them.

Not sure what Toyota has to do with anything (can't find them mentioned in the article), but I think that problem is a catch-22 problem. No one is gonna want to solve any issues about EV roll out unless people start using EV, but no one is gonna want to use EV unless there is realistic attempts on solving the issues.

[frenchy]

> Not sure what Toyota has to do with anything

They're probably referencing the fact that Toyota has hedged their bets on hydrogen fuel instead of electric. As far as I'm aware though, that hedge has been going poorly for them.

[olivermarks]

https://www.motorious.com/articles/news/toyota-warns-about-r...

[giantg2]

I think they brought up Toyota because they recently stated that EV adoption should not be accelerated.