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Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

> charge at ... work

I can't charge at work. I can't even plug in a block heater. I imagine most folks everywhere can't charge at work.

Plus, charging at home depends heavily on the ownership of a garage. For one, power sockets (let alone charging stations) are pretty rare at most dense housing. Secondly, charging cables contain enough copper that they are rich targets for thieves.

Currently, most apartment owners are not interested in providing charging stations, even if their tenants want them. The cost of putting them in and maintaining them is too high to justify it. Or the laziness quota, either/or.

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If you can't afford a house but you can afford an EV, but you also live in a high crime area where extension cords are severed for their copper, then I am very confused about your finances and living situation.

In most states with high housing costs (such as California), landlords are required to let tenants install EV charging stations.[1] Also there are companies such as ChargePoint that go around to apartment complexes and sell them charging stations. The stations bring the apartment complex revenue and attract higher-end tenants.

I think the concerns about charging are overrated. Yes, some landlords will drag their feet, but that's true for all tech adoption. I'm sure the same thing happened with cable TV, telephone lines, and dishwashers. The fancy places adopt the new thing first, then the average places, and finally the low-end places.

1. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

A house, with a garage, starts at $450k where I live (Montana, FWIW). A BEV can be had for under $40k. Plus rebates.

And charging cable theft is like bike theft. Combine exceptionally low risk with a fairly high reward, and it will happen everywhere, no matter how “low” of a crime area you’re in. A quick application of bolt cutters nets them hundreds of dollars, and may cost the owner thousands, depending on the250 per battery. Now imagine this applied to charging cables with their excess of copper and data lines and occasionally cooling jackets.

Downplay the problems as you like, but they are problems.

You must live in a very nice part of Montana if houses are that expensive. I live in a suburb of Portland and paid $350k for a home with a garage.

Stealing a charging cable is extremely high risk. A thief would be dealing with lethal currents. Also almost every EV has a phone app that notifies the owner if charging is interrupted. If you're home you'll almost certainly be able confront the thief. If it's a Tesla, sentry mode means you'll also have camera footage of the thief.

If you're worried about thieves, you should get an EV. Combustion vehicles have catalytic converters. In terms of risk-reward they are much juicier targets than charging cables. I don't know a single EV owner who has had their cable stolen. I know plenty of people who have had their catalytic converters stolen. (Yes, far fewer people have EVs, but you'd think I'd have heard of it happening at least once by now, especially in the Portland area.) EVs don't have cats, and they're basically rolling iPhones that record their surroundings, so they're less likely to be messed with.

Does the law specify the type of charger? Like do they have to allow you to install a level 2 charger or only a level 1 charger?

The other issue is having capacity in your panel. Most level 2 chargers are at least 50A and the average house has a 100A to 200A panel. Depending on your appliances, you may or may not have enough space left in your panel without doing at minimum a panel upgrade if not a service upgrade. Just adding an L2 charger is like $2000 or more depending on labor. Switching from 100A to 200A or 200A to a second 200A panel is about $5000 or more in parts and labor (this is on top of the parts and labor for the charger). If you also have to get the utility company to upgrade your service that’s another $5000 or more depending if you need to buy a new transformer for your pole.

This stuff can add up fast if you don’t already have capacity.

The feed size isn’t a limit on how many circuits you can have, just how many are running at the same moment. I have 200A of service like most houses built since 1970 but 500A of circuits. I never go above 80A at any given time though.

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