[ssl-3]

Owning an EV doesn't necessitate spending a few grand to have a fast charger installed. They charge fine from a regular 110v US wall outlet -- they just do it slowly.

And by "slowly," I mean: Somewhere in the realm of 2-5 miles per hour. It's not fast at all.

But that's compatible with many lifestyles, wherein: The car is probably just sitting there at home for 12 or more hours per day, anyway.

If the round-trip commute is 30 miles, and the car gains just 3 miles per hour while plugged in, and it gets plugged in for 12 hours per day, then: It gains 36 miles per day, and the daily-commute part of driving it is completely covered by a regular outlet.

(Which still doesn't address the conundrum that many apartment dwellers face, but it would've helped me at most of the apartments I've lived in: Ground floor, and parking right outside of my place. I'd have just used an extension cord and the landlord wouldn't have said a word, except maybe to have a chat about how I like the car.)

[michaelmrose]

Even people who have a round trip commute of 30 miles drive other places than work on average days and have days when they drive 2 and 3x as much as normal days every time enough greater than average days line up you have to contend with finding a charger which gets more contentious as more electric cars exist AND as they age in the hands of people who cannot afford to just replace car or battery.

[mixmastamyk]

Doesn’t matter, go to a charging station once every two weeks if/when charging gets behind. If you’re determined to fail instead of succeed there’s always more excuses to be made.

There’s a good tech connections series on this. Slow home charging has been doable for quite a while.

[michaelmrose]

It's doable for single family detached housing for users with a modest daily drive and relatively flat usage patterns so long as they can afford to pay a premium on the car and replace it in a timely fashion when the battery gets sufficiently old that its capacity continues to match peaks in usage with the understanding that failure to keep up means you don't get to work on time or can't get home.

Which is exactly why techbros think its obvious and most regular people aren't buying.

[mixmastamyk]

Nope, our 1970s apartment garage has 120V outlets and light fixtures, some have been tapped, and the rest could cheaply.

[michaelmrose]

Most apartments especially in cities where most people live are unsuitable for charging of any kind

[mixmastamyk]

False, just mentioned our apartment.

For the ones that need upgrades, we’re talking extension-cord-level technology.

[ssl-3]

So all of these problems are intractable? There is no way that any of them can be dealt with at all?

[asdff]

It falls into the bin of "tragedies of the commons we could fix with current technology but fail to sufficiently fund and support in earnest"

Really, when is the last time we overhauled our built environment and actually followed through with a comprehensive plan in the west? We couldn't even finish the interstate highway system in a time when we had seemingly great alignment towards it along with far cheaper costs. Public housing failed too. Broadband access failed. Cell service is still pretty spotty and unreliable.

[nradov]

Public housing failed not because of insufficient funding or support but because a small fraction of residents were sociopaths and criminals. The authorities refused to take decisive action to quickly evict the troublemakers and so they wrecked the projects for everyone. Section 8 vouchers have been far more effective by enabling low-income people to rent housing from private landlords at market rates. There are some abuses but overall it's a better model than public housing.

Starlink satellite cellular service is available pretty much everywhere now.

https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/satellite-phone-service

[asdff]

That is probably an issue with low income housing overall. I don't think slumlord landlords are somehow immune to renting to gang members.

When I talk about spotty coverage I mean, verizon says I have an LTE connection, and yet I get served with dialup tier experience. Not always, but often. This has been the case for the probably 15 years I've had a mobile data plan. I experience this nowhere near anywhere remote, in the heart of large cities even.

[michaelmrose]

Neither public nor private parties are immune to renting from problematic people. There are a few important factors in determining trajectory from normalcy to abnormal

- Friction to evict for cause.

People are less willing to engage in action against tenants when it is difficult or expensive to evict. This is often less about well meaning protections for tenants and surprisingly more about reasonable process in county. If it takes 6 months to get on the docket to get the process started this is going to be more important than what you have to do when you get there.

- Financial cost and immediacy of impact.

Most places lose tenants at end of term and can find at least some new suckers. Turning your place into a shithole may take years to fully show its impact and in a tight housing market it may still be muffled by the sheer number of poor bastards who need somewhere to sleep.

- Incentive structure and distance from decision makers.

If throwing out the bums requires work pain and risk only from the peons who manage the place for the owners and failure to do so only hurts residents and owners then one may find that these enforcement actions never happen. A bureaucracy further increases distance between actors and decision makers.

If you consider these factors you might rightly conclude that a government project is maximally situated to fail at removing bad actors. Friction to evict those in need is going to be higher than almost anywhere else, front line workers are there for long term career trajectory, have little real power nor incentive and nobody but the residents really feels the pain. If you are running a house of last resort your vacancy rate is going to be low even if its a bad place to live.

None of this makes it impossible to run projects correctly it represents increased risk not destiny.

[michaelmrose]

Section 8 in my state is a lottery to get on the list for housing which may or may not happen in a multi year time frame. It's mostly unavailable for the people that need it while some folks who have the ability to work live off it after they went through the expected multi year wait.

[fragmede]

> overall it's a better model than public housing.

I don't know about better, but it's what we've got. The problem is a shortage of housing, and the government building housing solves for that because the public market has been shown to be incompetent at that.

[s1artibartfast]

mostly because the state has made it illegal or costly to build housing. The only reason the state would do better is if they can ignore either costs or their own regulation. e