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by kbob 1483 days ago
Apartment dwellers will want to use the fastest charger regularly. They have to sit in their cars in some desolate location for the whole time, and they have to charge every week. Not an experience to prolong.
2 comments

This is why we need slow chargers everywhere. Even a basic 120V outlet can provide 1.5kW of vehicle charging. Over the course of the night, this is 18kWh, which is enough for about 80 miles of charge for a Tesla Model 3. This is more than enough for the vast majority of people's daily usage.

If apartment dwellers that park on the street had access to these slow chargers, for example, using power from street light circuits, they could handle 90% of their charging needs, using fast chargers for days where they drove an unusually long ways.

In Europe, or other 240V places, the slow charger is about twice as fast, so the situations where a fast charger is needed are even less.

It's important to remember that you don't need to be near the car during charging. In cities, chargers aren't in desolate locations pretty much by definition. You can leave and do something else while it's charging. Chargers are increasingly common in parking lots of fast food chains and supermarkets.
I've been to a lot of Tesla Superchargers, and in my experience, drivers hardly ever leave their cars at urban/suburban spots. We are unusual in that we usually get out and walk the dog or ourselves a little.

Part of it is that Tesla levies a fee for leaving the car plugged in after it charges, so we can't go too far.