The question here is how many people don't have a garage but still want a car. The rural and suburban folks are out - plenty of room for garages and charging. So any discussion of public charging infrastructure is focused on places where public transit would be a better investment.
This discussion is about public EV charging. If you live somewhere rural or suburban and can afford a car, you can probably afford a garage for it. The push for public EV charging is in more urban places, where public transit would be a better investment.
For those of us city dwellers with on-street parking, there doesn't seem to be much talk about getting public infrastructure to charge them. Public charging stations? I'm not sure that will help a lot.
It seems like a future for those with suburban homes. I think those in cities don't drive that much, so maybe those car bound people are a better place to start.
Very true. I live in a a city where there are quite a few places to charge, but I imagine that there are millions of people who would be interested in an EV but don't have access to the infrastructure.
> I live in a city, I have no garage, an EV is impractical for me.
Here's my heuristic. What are the places your car usually spends parked at, and do these places have at least a power outlet you can plug into(a proper charging stations is better of course)? For most city-dwellers, that's either their home, their workplace, or any other place they spend some time on (supermarkets?). Do any of these places, or places nearby, provide a way for you to charge? If yes, you should be fine.
Failing that, it starts to become less practical, as you'll have to rely on quick-charging (if it is even available).
Honestly, this isn't much of a concern medium term. Yes, it's problem now. But, as the EV fleet increases, so will the market pressures for a proper charging infrastructure. It costs much less than creating a gas infrastructure. Most places have electricity, they may require some upgrades, but that's relatively cheap (compare that to adding more gas stations).
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.
Infrastructure is absolutely the deciding factor for those of us who are not suburban home owners. I live in a building which has 1 EV space for 200-something units. I work in an office building which has 2 EV spaces installed, but they're reserved for the Tesla-driving building owners. There are no public charging stations remotely convenient to either location.
My next car will absolutely be a Prius/Insight/Ioniq, but a full EV is not a reasonable consideration, and not because of range or habits but 100% because of infrastructure. Despite a majority-freeway commute I still pass 5 or 6 gas stations going to and from work every day. I ought to be passing at least one charging station.
It sounds like the charging infrastructure isn't there yet where you live. Doesn't mean the cars are useless for many many people, including people in rural areas. In the US, I don't think most rural people are 40 miles from the nearest food store, and I'd be surprised to learn that's true in most European countries either.
I live in a pretty big city. I can't remember ever actually seeing a charging station for electric cars.
They're probably around. But I don't see them, so I don't know that they're around. This definitely makes me more cautious about getting an electric car.
We own a house, so we can put in an electric charger, but that would mean parking inside our garage. The problem is that our garage has been taken over by storage (working on that problem) and my woodworking. And when we do park the car in the garage, it's hard to get around the washer/dryer to get into the house.
We've already decided not to park the car in the garage except during big storms.
So even though we should be able to charge at home, we couldn't really do it well.
There are a ton of problems with how things are set up for the majority of people in regards to charging EVs. There's a lot of momentum to overcome.
Not everyone has a garage, or can practically run a line out to the street. A self-charging car would be a good option for many. The charge this can manage is more than I drive, i’d Be very interested.
An interesting (to me) meta analysis of the discussion here: most people who find the numbers out of whack bring up charging at home at off peak rates. But home ownership is only about 65% in the us, and falling about 1.5% quarterly.
That is, home charging is not available to a significant and growing population. Home charging without a garage is pretty risky due to the high value of charging cables.
As it stands, a lot of car owners will continue to use gas stations and charging stations, raising their costs accordingly.
My experience is that complaints about lack of public charging stations tend to be more from those considering buying an EV than those actually with one.
(Those who drive an EV tend to complain more about the maintenance of the public stations than the number of them).
A fair amount of city drivers do not have a dedicated off street parking space where they can install a charger. There are basically zero street parking spots in any American city with charging. It is not going to be possible to retrofit most multistory garages to have even a significant minority of spots with chargers.
I live and work in fairly new multistory buildings, and there aren’t many EV spots. My coworkers with EVs move their cars around constantly in hope of getting their one hour ration of charging in the office garage.
People don't understand yet why you don't need as many public charging points as gas stations. People who buy EVs charge at home. Public charging ports are only used by people who don't live there.
Edit: Yes people who don't have driveways still need them. Overall, not as much infrastructure as we needed with gas pumps. Everyone with gas cars needed public gas pumps, but only a subset of EVs need public charging stations.
I suspect the point was more centered around access to charging facilities. Range is less of a problem if you have access to a charging point overnight. For those that park on-street or in public garages without charging available, range is far more of a problem unless you plan to take a few hours out of your day to hang out at a charging facility. That group of people would include a pretty substantial portion of those living in dense urban environments.
That only works for people with private garages wired for high capacity circuits. So it's a minority of the population, mainly affluent suburbanites. Other solutions will have to be find to get broader EV adoption.
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