Why Nearly Half of Americans Can’t Charge an Electric Vehicle at Home.
Apartments and condos are the next charging frontier.
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This post was originally published in November 2013. Since the industry is fast moving, it may already be outdated. I reccommend reading the updated version from February 2015. Click here to redirect to it.
-Greg
If you live in Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, LA, San Diego, Atlanta, Seattle, or Portland, and you pay attention to the road at least some of the time, you will agree that Electric Vehicles are seemingly everywhere. Some Nissan dealerships are reporting that more than half of their overall sales are now Leafs. Chevy just rolled out the all-electric Spark at a very competitive price point. Tesla has been crushing it’s sales figures and will sell 21,000 units by the end of this year, and double that next year. Tesla now sells more vehicles in California than Porsche or Jaguar.
As the diffusion of innovations details, emerging technologies go through phases in adoption. America is now exiting out of the ‘Innovators’ phase and into the ‘Early Adopters’ phase. Until now, only people that could work an electric vehicle into their existing lifestyle made the switch. People who have easy access to charging, most likely via their own private garage and power source, have been the primary purchasers.
Tesla has been very open for its plans to build an electric car around the $30,000 price point, essentially opening up its demographic by an order of magnitude. Some estimates suggest they’ll start selling 100,000 units/year. The California Air Resources Board has also publicly stated that by 2040, every single new car will be zero emission; meaning, either electric or fuel cell. (Probably won’t be the latter, see why Mr. Musk believes fuel cells are bull$^!+.)
If Mr. Musk and others want to start selling more EVs,they have to start addressing a massive demographic that has been overlooked; residents of Multi Family Dwellings (MFDs), also referred to as Multi Dwelling Units (MDUs). This designation includes condominiums, town homes, apartments, and mobile homes. In San Diego , 51% of residents fall into this category. (For you math wizards, that is more than half.) In California, it is just shy of 39%. Most of these residents park in a large covered or uncovered lot, parking garage, or some other communal situation. In other words, nearly half of the urban EV market is being ignored. Ironically, this high density market is where EVs are catching on, too. So, you have more potential buyers with less practical means of charging.
If you are part of this forgotten half, tweet this article in support.
Some charging companies out there think they have a solution. They’ll say, “Let’s put a few public chargers nearby or on the property, that will solve the problem!”
Um…no it won’t. Here is why:
- If I have my own parking space at my condo or apartment, I want to park in it everyday. I don’t want to come home, cross my fingers that nobody else is using one of the public chargers, and then walk to my place with groceries, etc.
- What happens after 5 EVs are on the property? What about 10, and 20, and 100? Publicly available charging may kind-of work for a handful of EVs, but after that, there just isn’t enough charging to go around.
- Current public charging systems are absurdly expensive. I recently spoke to one business owner who paid $16,000 to install one at his office. It can charge 2 cars simultaneously. I counted 6 Teslas in the parking lot. Hmmm….seems like there isn’t enough juice to go around at the party.
Alright, so public charging isn’t the answer. Then what are the other options? Well…
You could run an extension cord from your car, across your parking lot, over your yard, and into your home. Of course, this would only be a 110V line, meaning you will get a whopping 3 miles of charging per hour. And, you can probably last 4 days before someone complains that this is either a hazard or any eyesore. This isn’t gonna work, chief.
You could luck out, and find an outlet right next to your car. But the problem is that the outlet isn’t connected to your meter, so you don’t pay for the power. How long will that work?
You could call up an electrician, and instruct him to run a line from your own power meter to your parking spot. Of course, this would not work for renters. For homeowners, this can work in theory, but we often see situations where a resident’s meter is 500 feet and 6 walls away from their spot. This means it is incredibly expensive for an installation. Furthermore, the parking area will look like a bowl of spaghetti (conduit running every which way) if more residents decide to go this route.
You could run a line to the house panel. (The panel for the common area lights, doors, etc. The HOA or building owner usually pays for this.) However, there is often only capacity for 2-3 vehicles before making massive infrastructure upgrades. Recently, we met with a 400 unit California building that had allowed 3 Tesla owners to run lines to the house panel. Everything was fine until the 4th Tesla showed up, and received the unfortunate news that it would be $30,000 to upgrade the infrastructure to allow for the additional car. Had they gone with EverCharge (read below), they would have been able to support 18-30 EVs before they needed to upgrade.
The reality is that EV charging takes a massive amount of electricity.
Simultaneously, the amount of electricity entering a building or property is finite, so how do you ensure that all residents have the power that they need without overtaxing the system and tripping breakers all day long?
Join the conversation on Twitter.
Enter EverCharge. Our solution makes the most sense from the first vehicle to the 500th, most notably because of our scalability. Our proprietary devices communicate with one another and expand the capacity of the property by a factor of 6-10x. Since the system is networked, it means there are minimal conduit runs, which keeps installation costs down. Generally, we are about 10-15% of the cost of a current public charger.
California Civil Code Section 1352 — 1353.9 protects homeowners by forbidding HOAs from denying a resident’s request to install charging. The HOA doesn’t have to pay for the system, but they can’t disallow it. This same law has some requirements, though. Chiefly, a $1,000,000 insurance policy has to be in order. With our service, that policy is included.
With EverCharge, all EV owners can come home at 6 PM, plug in their cars, and not have to worry if the system will support it. Our devices (called EverCharge Power Managers) communicate with one another to sequence powering. First we’ll charge the Tesla for an hour. Then we’ll charge the Leaf, followed by the Volt, and then back to the Tesla. We’ll do this until all batteries are full. The next morning, the car is fully charged and the EV owner is ready to go.
We’ll keep track of the power that a resident uses, and bill them accordingly. Then, we’ll reimburse the HOA or building owner automatically, so that they aren’t paying for a resident’s power.The resident gets to keep their own spot, too. It’s an easy solution for everyone involved. Let’s call it a win-win-win-win-win because EV owners get power, auto manufacturers sell more EVs, greenhouse gases are reduced, HOAs/building owners don’t have to worry about the logistics, and we grow as a business.
Here is where it gets so exciting that I get goosebumps: Nearly all EVs have API capability and can communicate data wirelessly. Meaning, we can collect data of a vehicle’s usage habits to algorithmically predict its future charging needs. This work is still under wraps, but it’s incredibly exciting.
A bright future lies ahead for EVs. But, it won’t come without many issues to address. At EverCharge, we like to think we are doing our part by lowering the barrier to entry to purchase for a significant portion of the population.
P.S. For the record, I think the Tesla fire incident is way overplayed. They’ve got 20,000 cars on the road and this is the first incident, which was only the result of an accident, not a malfunction. I’m pretty sure gasoline cars catch on fire if they have a massive collision.
Like what you read? Spread the word via Twitter and follow me via @gregmuender to stay tuned. Need help charging your EV? Visit EverCharge or call ‘em up at 888.342.7383.
