I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property
canarymedia.com"I'd have to bring my electrical systems up to code and that's expensive for my 80 year old house"
Well, yeah. I suppose it would be. I'm a bit surprised this is a surprise to the landlord. Also, many of the costs here are looming anyways. It's a matter of when, not if, the electrical needs updating to meet code.
> I'm a bit surprised this is a surprise to the landlord. Also, many of the costs here are looming anyways. It's a matter of when, not if, the electrical needs updating to meet code.
I see this all the time. “Investors” buy real estate by assuming repairs and maintenance to be minimal and then pocketing every dime of excess cash created by the property. Then, over time when the windows need to be replaced or the roof or the electrical system upgraded or the HVAC improved, they don’t have any budget for it because they’ve become used to living off all of the income (despite the fact that over their 10-20 years of ownership they’ve seen rents increase dramatically). So what do they do? They list it for sale at high current market rents as if all of this deferred maintenance / Capex has been completed. This puts buyers in a position of paying a massive purchase price and having massive costs to renovate / upgrade.
I hate landlords like this. Fortunately you can spot them a mile away. If the paint is peeling, then the electrical isn’t to code.
You don't have to spot them a mile away, the article plainly says the landlord used to occupy the duplex until their family grew too large for it.
I writing more generally in response to the previous commenter’s statement about being surprised.
That's not necessarily true. It sounds like most of the upgrades are about convenience to the power company. Not anything safety related, which is why older properties are exempt.
You also have to remember that it takes a lot of power to be able to change an EV in timely manner. It is easily the number one consumer of energy. Older neighborhoods utilities where never designed to do that.
> It sounds like most of the upgrades are about convenience to the power company. Not anything safety related, which is why older properties are exempt.
That is definitely not true. An 80 year old house might not even have grounded outlets, let alone GFCI or AFCI protected outlets.
> You also have to remember that it takes a lot of power to be able to change an EV in timely manner
Nobody worries about how many electric ovens, clothes dryers, or air conditioners are in an older neighborhood. 240V at 30A is a trivial load addition, and even if it were to become a concern, there are existing mechanisms to shed load during peak usage. Even a crude cut-off switch, like many air conditioners have, would be sufficient.
GFCI and AFCI are great! But a home isn't going to burst into flames or explode without them. Which is why there are exemptions.
240v at 30A is most definitely not a trivial load. Most homes have 100 amp service. That would be 30% of your homes total power capacity just for changing EV. You wouldn't be able to run AC and the dryer and charge an EV at the same time at that rate. But more importantly there is only so much power at the pole.
They might not burst into flames, today, but these technologies weren't invented because there was no risk.
> That would be 30% of your homes total power capacity just for changing EV
That's the thing - most people have a 8 to 12 hour window to fully charge their car(s) overnight and when you and your neighbors are using practically no energy. Worst case is there is no active management and there is just a new peak at midnight. Best case is that the electric company incentivizes you to not only charge at non-peak times, but also pays you to allow them to manage the charging times.
This technology is not science fiction - it already exists. I got a $250 rebate from my electric company to install a connected level 2 charger. It is not currently managed, but if there is some dystopian future where all of my neighbors aren't burning hydrocarbons, all have EVs, and somehow the infrastructure hasn't kept up, as long as my car is fully charged in the morning, I don't care if it happened from midnight to 2 AM or 4 AM to 6 AM.
But also...
> Most homes have 100 amp service
Most homes built decades ago, maybe. And to be clear, we're talking about US 120V system. I would be very surprised if any house built since...lets be generous...the 1980s doesn't have a 200A supply or couldn't easily be updated.
Your recommendation would require updates to the NEC to even be considered.
As it stands today, an EV charger (or an outlet designated for EV charging) is considered to be 'in use' 100% of the time from a loading perspective (i.e., when counting how big of a main breaker you need to handle). Which, honestly, makes sense. You can't predict when other loads are being used reliably, and you can use an EV charger for many hours. For, say, during the middle of the night.. there's a high heating load so that loading will happen simultaneously.
There are more intelligent ways to handle this (and, the products exist today!), however they're quite expensive. Maybe less expensive than a full new overhaul of your house's electrical... but eventually electrical needs to be updated to code.
Also, regarding 100A vs 200A main panels: it heavily depends on the size of the house. I know in my neighborhood, which the oldest house was built in 2008, they only gave 100A panels to houses that were ~1700sqft or smaller. For larger houses, those got 200A panels.
It seems that this 100/200A thing might just be very different across even just North America, nevermind Europe. So much so that we can't make a general statement either way.
As in no, it does not heavily depend on size in general in the way you describe. It may do so where you are but that's about it. My house is smaller than 1700sqft, was built quite some years before 2008 and we have a 200A panel and I don't know what I would do with 100A service. It would be impossible actually. But that might be because we use electric baseboard heating and thus lots of heating circuits with quite a bunch of amps in use by that.
All houses in this neighborhood use natural gas for heating and stove/oven heating, so they have minimal heating load in the winter in terms of actual electrical consumption, and you get rid of the 50A oven outlet.
In general, electric heat is a bit of a menace in terms of electrical consumption... especially given electric prices lately.
Which is exactly my point. For your reality the reasons you gave make sense for why 100A may have been standard even in 2008. It does not generalize well to an entire continent or two though.
I live way too far out to have natural gas service and because I have such a small house it has baseboard heating. Most larger houses here have electric furnaces instead. But having 200A service meant I was easily able to add a mini split heat pump taking care of heating most of the time but we have no space to put a furnace instead. We do have propane to heat when power is out (or just if I want the nicety of a roaring fire heating up the room on -40 evenings). The oven is electric too. I was looking at getting a tankless water heater but would need to upgrade the electric service for that apparently because my 200A are not enough in case "everything else is on at the same time" (I personally wouldn't mind the heaters shutting off for 3 minutes while I take a shower but I guess that's against code).
Also electricity prices do not generalize well. Way too much variance across an entire continent or two. What you say is expensive for you actually isn't that expensive here. Now ask someone in Europe this winter what they think about your electricity prices in comparison.
When I moved into my home the first major upgrade I did was upgrading my electrical panel. The home was built in the early 80's and had a 100amp panel.
Putting in a 200 amp panel ran me about $1,000. Power company checked off on it and upgraded my meter in the process. I also added a 240v 30amp socket in the garage for things like an EV, and put a whole house surge protector on in the process.
My house has rock solid power at every socket and plenty of capacity for the future as well, definitely worth the investment.
> GFCI and AFCI are great! But a home isn't going to burst into flames or explode without them. Which is why there are exemptions.
True, but not what you said. You said the changes are not safety related, but these are safety related.
Keep in mind 240v @ 30 amps = charging at 30 miles per hour or so. Common daily driving (12k miles a year) = 33 miles per day. Even throttling to 10 amps (which my charger supports), is 11 miles per hour or 110 miles per day if you charge for 10 hours.
Having had a 100 amp service, it was really not a big deal. Sure I'd normally charge at 11pm, when the AC wasn't running. But the home is using WAY less electricity than when I bought in 1994 when TVs consumed a ton of power, single paned windows insulated poorly, a fair number of 300 watt halogen bulbs, and tons of the 100 watt incandescents. Between LED lighting, a more efficient refrigerator, and a MUCH lower power flat panel TV our power use per day is less than it was in 1994, even with a EV.
100 amps @ 240v is a ton of power, and if you need to peak shave there's quite a bit of room between 240v@30 amps and 240v@10 amps which is plenty for most normal driving patterns.
240 at 20A is sufficient for an overnight charge for nearly all uses of EV cars and SUVs. So even less impact.
Also a device is available that shares the EV circuit with a dryer circuit; set your car to start charging very late at night when laundry is not running. Zero additional max load for the house.
>It sounds like most of the upgrades are about convenience to the power company. Not anything safety related
It's always painful trying to have discussions related to any kind of physical infrastructure on HN because it's absolutely full of people that assume that physical design and maintenance is somehow the trivial, easy part.
This is why American infrastructure is crumbling. People are under the impression that concrete, pipes lasts forever, but it doesn't.
> That's not necessarily true. It sounds like most of the upgrades are about convenience to the power company. Not anything safety related, which is why older properties are exempt.
The exterior service disconnect rule added in 2020 is safety related, it’s so firefighters can kill electrical power to a home from the outside to make it safe to enter. It has nothing to do with the utility.
I keep hearing that, it seems like no big deal. The average annual driving I hear is somewhere around 12,000 miles. 12,000/365 = 33 miles a day. Or 10 ish hours on a 120v circuit. Presuming most people sleep, shower, dress, etc 10 ish hours a day it doesn't seem like a big deal. Sure you might have to occasionally use an external charger ... much like the gas folks do.
33 miles a day of electricity is not that much, something like 7.6 KwH per day. For perspective AC units use from 0.5 to 5 KwH per hour.
Is it a difference, yes. However most EVs charge off peak, and would go even more off peak with a financial incentive. I set mine to start charging at 11pm when it's the cheapest rate, which nicely offsets AC use which is heaviest in the afternoon.
that is interesting to consider a neighborhood scale of infrastructure and the capabilities therein. How much copper is underground in various places, is fiber internet present or on the way, something to think about for sure.
Grandfathering in electrical codes seems quite dangerous. At some point wouldn't the city just require it or deem the property unsafe?
On other hand I think mandating upgrades every time code changes for everything would be unsustainable. From many perspectives like supply of labour and materials. And fact that creating such uneven demand would cause very messy labour market.
Mandating ripping out immediately everything dangerous or carcinogenic, would be even bigger issue. And these things don't cause actually so many issues to be very life threatening. They have been around for decades after all.
Because it would destroy poor-middle class home owners and renters. This year, it's electrical, next year is gas line, the year after is sewer, soon enough, poor-middle class won't be able to afford any homes and rents will go up. This is particular true in larger cities.
Defer code compliance to time of sale/purchase. Basically: if you want to sell it as a house, it has to be up to code, but until then, go hog-wild. Seems like that would solve the issue - and in practice I'm pretty sure that's already the case.
A good amount of modern building code is related to energy efficiency. These standards applying to new construction make sense: it's only a marginal increase in cost to add insulation, use upgraded products, or ensure air-tightness during construction. However, for existing homes, this would be extremely costly. The house would, in many cases, need to be ripped down to the studs on exterior walls and completely reinsulated/sealed, older windows would need to be replaced, HVAC ducts exposed and sealed/insulated, etc.
For an existing structure, the result of all these improvements, even considering rising energy costs, would never pay back over the expected life of the house. Code tries to strike a balance here by enforcing that when it's reasonable to do so (e.g. you tore down to the studs for a remodel anyway), you need to bring the areas modified up to modern-ish standards.
That's fine where the benefits of code compliance outweigh the costs of compliance.
But old homes are expensive to rewire. And often, the safety benefits are very small. Current code requires a lot more outlets than older code, in part because many people overuse extension cords and tiny/cheap power taps when there aren't sufficient outlets, which is a safety issue, but is it worth spending thousands of dollars to pull new wire through existing walls, and then repairing the walls afterwards?
Some issues, are worth retrofitting for, and hopefully a pre-sales inspection by the buyer or insurance inspection will catch those. It would be reasonable to have a transfer inspection for those too.
To bring something up to code, it takes weeks if not months. Getting permit, construction and inspection. You can't tie up a sale until that's done. Where do you get the money to pay for that? Buyer isn't gonna wait for X months, especially if buyers want to do their own renovations. You know what people will do? Pass the buck to the buyer (Sold As Is). The cycle repeats again and again.
You require something akin to an FHA 203k loan, where the improvements can be financed with bank oversight. You make these specific improvements a requirement where, if not performed using the funds provided, the loan is in default. Cash transaction can still require the work be done; have the county recorder notify the permit office of the AHJ.
Lots of paths to success here.
Some codes would require you do things like tear down a addition that was perfectly legal and safe last year or moving a house back further from a road that the government expanded. Not everything in local building codes is for safety, there is a lot of aesthetic stuff in there. Imagine being forced to rip out a 100 year old oak tree because it isn't legal to have a tree in your front yard anymore. Pools are no longer allowed, fill it in. No thanks. I'd never buy in a locality like that, might as well live in a HOA.
It's amazing how so many people here have no clue how building codes work. There's a new version of the NEC released every 3 years. These are physical systems, not continuously deployed software being pushed to centrally-controlled surveillance company servers. They're building codes, not occupancy codes. Building codes are focused on making sure big jobs with a lot of money/effort have sane defaults, and weren't skimped on to save a few percent. A house built X years ago is still an X year old house, and everybody knows it.
The egregious safety problems (eg knob and tube, fuses, Federal Pacific breakers) are taken care of by insurance companies. Or state laws that address the specific problem (eg septic, smoke detectors, etc). One can certainly have an opinion that something specific should be added to the regulations that apply when selling, but the out of touch comments here are far from informed.
Also some of the recent changes in the NEC are actually not beneficial to many people - eg the plastic gates in TR receptacles that tend to bind up and bend plug prongs, and shoddy overaggressive AFCIs running proprietary software. That you're generally left alone in the privacy of your own home without an inspector coming around every year and making you remodel is a feature, not a bug.
How can a retiree or poor middle class person get a loan? They probably have below 650 credit. The house hasn’t seen an updated in 20 years. Any delay in construction will put them under water for years. For the poor, there is no path for success, as the house is probably the only assets they have.
My old neighborhood has a bunch of 80 year olds with houses worth a million easy without any mortgages. You would think the banks would give them loans to fix things up. Nope, not a chance. The banks are waiting for them to die and make money off the next mortgage.
> You can't tie up a sale until that's done.
Sure you can - and you damn well should, especially for outright safety issues. What's the point of a building code if it ain't gonna be enforced?
> You know what people will do? Pass the buck to the buyer (Sold As Is).
Then give the buyer a grace period to bring the building up to code.
Then you can expect even more housing crunch. It’s simply not realistic to updates homes 50-100 years old without significant cost which old retirees can’t really afford. Some of the new codes would force pre-war homes to be completely tear down. For example, asbestos sidings which would require the homeowners to move out of the house. Bubble wrap the house and do mitigation work. After that, massive amount of interior work to ensure safety. Toss in electrical, plumbing, and lead paint, you might as well do a new construction.
Reality simply doesn’t work this way. Just like we allow people to drive old ass cars that aren’t safe for the passengers but will pass emission inspections.
My house is 40 years old. To "bring it up to code" would have one simple step: demolish the whole house. There is no way you will ever economically bring a structure this old up to code.
In my neck of the woods, eventually your insurance will not cover you for damage caused by out of spec electrical wiring, which then endangers a mortgage…
I agree, especially if you are a landlord.
They don’t because (in places like California at least) their property taxes go up if they do any significant upgrades
That is the same in my state of Wyoming. The assessors visit my property every year and ask what improvements I've made. Two weeks after I bought the property they showed up and went through a checklist with me that detailed everything they knew about the house. I did something taboo and brought them into the house because they listed something as "fair" that was "bad".
It's funny though, all of this is just for tax revenue. They don't care about electrical wiring, plumbing, etc... I am told that when a house is first built they will inspect the electrical but I do not believe them. I've had to fix dozens of incorrectly wired sockets and really janky wiring in the circuit breaker panel and missing grounding connections.
On the other hand, as a landlord it's not your health and safety you're gambling with. As long as your insurance company doesn't complain, spending a lot of money to decrease the risk of fire doesn't make financial sense.
no, the property will just burn down in a fiery electrical explosion killing anyone unlucky enough to have been there after the contractor missed the ancient arts necessary to avoid that.
municipalities lack consensus for any other outcome to occur, they are all land fiefdoms.
I'm on board with what you're saying, but also electrics done to "code" can burn down your house.
My mother in law told me yesterday that my sister in law's mother in law's house burned down while they slept (they're safe) this week due to brand new electrics in a brand new house extension, carried out by a licensed (is that the correct word for an electrician?) professional.
This is in England
Isn't the code in the UK quite lax? From what I understand this is the reason every plug in the UK is required to have a fuse because the homes are not properly fused.
I don't know honestly, the plug fuse thing is due to us having ring mains which I heard was due to copper savings around war time I believe; I'm too young to know as a 30-something millennial, and haven't looked into it properly as that reason seems plausible.
Our circuits are "properly fused" though with RCDs/circuit breakers, but they're high current because we can have so many large current drawing devices on a single circuit (such as in the kitchen) which is always given its own circuit.
Plugs are fused because the current capacity of the in-wall wiring (and the breakers that protect it) is much higher than the safe current capacity of a single appliance's power lead. The circuits are often 32A and most appliances are rated for 13A or less. So without a plug fuse a fault in the appliance that draws, say, 25W would potentially overheat and set fire to the appliance cord without tripping the breaker. This is true of most countries' larger radial circuits too, I think, and the British practice of fusing plugs is a safety upgrade. How much risk it reduces in practice, I don't know.
The final ring circuit is an idiosyncracy of British wiring practice, where the cable goes out in a loop from the distribution board to sockets etc and then connects back to the board again. It allows smaller gauge wires to be run for a given current rating, and was introduced after WWII to reduce copper use during reconstruction. This does have some unusual failure modes, but the code is absolutely fine for this system as long as it's followed (including the testing regime after new installations, which will catch, for example, a ring circuit with the neutral conductor disconnected only on one side of the ring). Obviously bad work can happen anywhere.
whose house? I need a chart, or was this sarcasm about hearsay
Sadly not, it was a bit of a confusing one to write, there may be an easier way to describe the relationship but it seemed quite funny to read so I left it.
I meant to say my wife's sister's partner's mother.
They sound like a bit of a slumlord to me based on that description.
The electrical code has evolved not only to enrich electricians, but also to provide a safer environment for the occupants of the buildings. So noting/complaining about having to upgrade an 82 year old rental duplex to modern standards because of electric car charging is a little disingenuous. That wiring is already past the end of life and ought to be updated for the safety of the occupants.
But I wouldn't be surprised if the 2023 (maybe 2026) NEC will require at least 30A 240V service to garages with electrical service.
That's a valid argument to make to a home owner, but for a landlord that's potentially all of their profits, and besides, it's not theirs or their family's lives at risk from the old wiring.
It still works right? Great, let's add another excuse to increase the rent and we're golden!
I don't think they were complaining until they realized they may be liable for upgrading the neighborhood's infrastructure too which seems ridiculous.
Note that states can always override NEC requirements. For example, Texas overrode the 2020 NEC requirement that 240 outlets in the garage must have GFCI breakers. (Learned this when wiring my garage with a 30A plug for my EV)
> the 2020 NEC requirement that 240 outlets in the garage must have GFCI breakers
I haven't been keeping up on all the new NEC requirements for shoving xxCI's in various places, but I can see no rationale for this one. There is no such thing as 240 volts to ground in a home - it's all 120V (that's RMS, it's 170V peak), with a "240" outlet being both line phases (say +120 and -120 at a given point in time, giving a differential of 240).
Touching a residential "240 volt" line for a dryer or stove will give you the same exact shock as touching a common 120 volt line. The risk of 240 volt circuits is that they are generally of higher ampacity, and will thus have a much higher arc current. A GFCI does absolutely nothing to mitigate this!
Honestly they would have been better mandating the garage 120v receptacles be GFCI even though they're above grade, because people tend to do things like plug extension cords into them for use outside. 240 volt receptacles generally have a dedicated purpose, like a car charger.
I'm pretty sure it is any outlet in the garage now needs to be GFCI (though that may be that we have a utility sink out there for why we needed it).
For my EVSE I just had it hardwired to avoid it (which also allowed me to do higher amperage too).
You do not need an EV charger to charge your EV. A 110 or 220 outlet with a cord and an adapter will work just fine. Apologies for the US centric terminology but I expect the situation is roughly the same (though numbers vary) elsewhere.
We did TWO Teslas in an apartment for two years sharing (alternating cars) a single plug of a single 110 outlet. It was fine. With this arrangement, yes, on days where you do big trips, there’s a supercharger visit, But normally, an outlet is totally sufficient.
An installed charger does add some very, very minor convenience (no adapter, big deal… not worth the cost). And if it needs to be shared and bills split, that’s different. But for basic charging no special installation is needed as long as you can reach.
I made this second copy of my comment because while profanity (in the other comment) makes some people take notice, it gives others the excuse they need to tune out the message, which is the same for both comments:
You don't need to install a charger.
Yes, I think Americans especially discount the "Level 1" charge in home charging as "inadequate" when it is still sometimes an incredible game changer. Having more miles available in the morning when you wake up then when you parked the car is a difference maker even if it is only 10-12 extra miles overnight on the worst, least efficient EVs on the current market. (Most cars get much better than that. I can easily get nearly 40 miles overnight on a work night on just a 110 Level 1 charge. That covered my daily commute handily.)
I had a neighbor with Tesla and he was happy to charge his car only on superchargers. Today in Germany all fast chargers cost at least 2x more than electricity at home making electric vehicles barely economically viable. My assumption: real car with 20 kWh/100km consumption comparing to 6-8l/100km diesel similar sized car.
Spending 30+ minutes not including added drive time to go to a supercharger everytime I want to go to the city or on a hike is not even close to a "very, very minor inconvenience." Speak for yourself, as I would bet money that the majority of EV owners find significant value and benefit from at-home L2 charging.
It’s hardly like that at all though.
300+ miles of range is plenty to get to a nearby city and back for most people, with or without supercharging.
The “very, very minor inconvenience” I referred to is the non-issue of having to find something to coil the cord onto when not in use, solved by most installed chargers which give you an hanging hook. BFD.
Oh wow you can charge 300 miles without L2 charging overnight? That's one hell of a plug you must have there.
You don’t need to. The charge level just keeps climbing each day. It’s not like it resets to zero at midnight or something. So it will get to 300 or 400 (Model S) if you let it.
And most people living near a city aren’t 150 miles away… more like 5-10 miles away. Even 60 miles away, there’s no need to charge to 300. Except for special cases, and on those rare times you supercharge for maybe 10-15 minutes to augment it, while watching Netflix or posting on Hacker News on the screen. Let me know if you have any more questions, always happy to clear up these misconceptions!
Before I had an EV, I'd have agreed with you.
Imagine your gas car increased it's range by 50 miles every time you came home for the night. How often would you fill up your gas tank?
For me it was much rarer than I expected. Sure longer road trips over 300 miles I'd often spend 15 minutes getting 140 miles of extra range. How far away are these hikes or cities?
I spent something like 10x less time charging on the road than I used to for gas and oil, so I consider that a huge win. Even driving from Sacramento Area to Denver area wasn't a big deal. Drive for 4-5 hours, stop and grab a snack and walk the dog and back into the car. Sure I had to wait an extra 10 minutes before driving for another 4-5 hours. I'd much rather do that than have to hit a gas station weekly ish.
Now imagine how much better it'd be if you could fully charge your car at night instead of add only 50 miles.
Totally! That’s where a 220 plug comes in. But still absolutely no need whatsoever to install a charger. Just plug right in.
More like 10 minutes with a 250kw charger if it’s on your way. Big if, of course. But again you can always charge at home instead if it’s just a nearby city.
Yeah again, I'm not arguing against EVs (not sure how people even arrived at that opinion), I'm arguing that owning an L2 charger at home provides more than "barely a convenience over 110V". If you have only a 110V then, no, you cannot "always charge at home." It's literally the argument I'm making.
I think what was expressed was that there are exceptions (so, not literally always). Like road trips. We don’t need to get hung up on this. There are phrases that apply like “for all practical purposes.”
And having an L2 charger beyond a simple 220 wall outlet is no faster than the 220 wall outlet. Sure you can upgrade and get a fast L2 charger but you can more cheaply upgrade your 110 wall outlet to 220 and it will be just as fast as any installed L2 charging unit. In other words the installation of a charger is superfluous when it comes to speed of charging, which is what you have been talking about.
You might have heard of people getting faster charge times with an L2 charger versus their friend’s 220 volt outlet. But the opposite happens too: 220 outlets vary depending on amps, and so do L2 chargers. It’s possible to have an L2 charger that is slower than a 220 outlet, depending on the amps of the L2 charger and the amps of the 220 outlet.
I lived in a ranch-style home in California. Literally added a new breaker, ran 30’ of Romex rated for 50A, and wired up an EV charger in about 2-3 hours. It’s not rocket science.
Now, obviously some panels don’t have the space, or the service to the house isn’t enough amps but if that’s a case why aren’t you upgrading a 50 year-old electrical panel anyway? It sounds like OP had a bunch of deferred electrical maintenance to begin with but wants to blame it on EVs.
If you don't own or didn't use a torque wrench to tighten the connections and this was awhile ago, I would go and re-torque them. Properly connecting these types of connections requires more technique than "give it five ugga duggas and it'll never move." Not saying that's what you did, but still, re-check :)
How many electricians do you see using a torque wrench?
It's code to do so as of NEC 2017.
Only if the outlet provides torque specs with its instructions. If there's no specification, torquing isn't required. Stupid 'workaround', but most outlets likely do not have torque requirements.
Correct, though when I put the 240 in my garage, both the outlet and breaker had torque specs.
When I put my plug in, I did this. Torque screwdrivers are $30 on Amazon (hint: look for the ones that are used for firearms)
> It’s not rocket science
And an earth rod, right?
Anyone can stick a breaker in, run some cable, but it takes the rocket scientists to consider neutral fault conditions, causing potential between your home, charger, car and literal earth.
It might not apply to you. Your charger might have built in protection (many don't) or your supply might be grounded to the literal earth… but this is why we have building regs and people to follow them. Even if you do the work, it's worth a chat with a qualified electrician, and to have them inspect your work. It could save your life.
If they ran the standard 4 wire cable one of the wires will be a grounding wire that goes back to the panel. The panel should already have an earth ground and grounding rod(s). Adding a second grounding rod anywhere else would violate code in most states and potentially create a grounding loop and fire hazard.
To correctly add more grounding rods in multiple locations would require a common ground bus where all grounding rods are inter-connected to an oversized grounding bus cable or bus bar that is independent of the circuit panel wiring. This is rare to find in a home however. This is more common in industrial buildings that have high power and high voltage equipment. In this setup every grounding rod has to be independently tested with a megger prior to being connected to the bus.
For the nothing it's worth, PME is the dominant earthing arrangement here, so rods are required. It might be geographic but I'm sure you get all sorts all over the world.
Understanding your earthing arrangement is another thing you shouldn't assume. It's not a failure to engage professionals about safety equipment.
Some chargers have built in neutral fault detection.
> Adding a second grounding rod anywhere else would violate code in most states and potentially create a grounding loop and fire hazard.
Can you cite the relevant portion of the code? Or, for that matter, can you explain why exactly a ground loop is a fire hazard? If this was a hazard, then buildings would burn down when a grounded metallic conduit was buried underground (perfectly legal and very common, although dubiously wise if the conduit is galvanized steel), when anything conductive and connected to building ground (an outdoor appliance, a person touching a switch, etc) touched the ground, or in any building with an associated ordinary in ground swimming pool (which is extensively bonded and generally grounded at the pool equipment pad).
Now you do need to avoid connecting neutral to ground in more than one place if you are a modern NEC-following project or a utility in California, for quite good reasons, but those reasons aren’t a “ground loop” or really a fire hazard — it’s because intentionally running current through a circuit that parallels a path through ground will make a fraction of that current flow through the ground, with potentially unfortunate consequences.
Multiple grounding rods (electrodes) are permitted by § 250.52, but they have to be bonded together and kept away from other (non-bonded) grounding systems:
Electrode Spacing. Where more than one of the electrodes of the type specified in 250.52(A)(5) or (A)(7) are used, each electrode of one grounding system (including that used for strike termination devices) shall not be less than 1.83 m (6 ft) from any other electrode of another grounding system. Two or more grounding electrodes that are bonded together shall be considered a single grounding electrode system.
http://thenecwiki.com/2021/02/article-250/
That said, it would be very strange to add another grounding rod just because you added another breaker or outlet—I can't think of any circumstance where that would be required, unless the existing service entrance was not properly grounded, in which case you have bigger problems.
That section AIUI is about “grounding electrodes” that are intended for use as part of the required main ground. NEC 250.54 says you may install an auxiliary grounding electrode if you are so inclined without following all those rules. Other sections of the NEC explicitly allow burying things like rigid metallic conduit underground, which is a lot like a grounding rod attached to a branch circuit or feeder.
You don’t need a ground rod for an EV charger, the service is already grounded and bonded and the EV wiring will have a grounding conductor.
You're not wrong, and I have wired my own 60A circuit, but it is not trivial either and it is right at the edge of the above-average DIY capability to do it safely.
Siemens has a new product that basically bypasses this entire problem by installing as a mezzanine connector into the power meter. Called the ConnectDER https://connectder.com/
Regardless of what people will continue to claim, a 110V 15A outlet is really not enough. It's possible if you live your life on a strict schedule, drive very little, are very diligent about keeping your car plugged in, and don't mind having to go to a public charger routinely to sit for half an hour because you couldn't be bothered to hire an electrician one time to make the situation better for you in any possible way.
Now obviously driving mileage is normally distributed. But that said, the average American drives ~ 12,785 mi / year [1]. This means, on average, 35.03 mi / day. If a 110V/15A outlet can offer 1.65 kW, and we assume a conservative 3 mi / kW, then you only need to charge for 7.08 hrs to offset your daily driving. Assuming 8 hours a day for charging, as long as you drive less than 40 mi / day you should charge your whole day of driving up, and even if you can't you're only going to use a bit more of the battery.
This doesn't seem to be particularly strict or diligent and it's based around average driving mileage. Our house came with an L2 charger box, but we drive much less than average in the US and it feels wasted on us. I run the charger once every 2-3 weeks or so and I'm fine.
[1]: https://smartfinancial.com/average-miles-driven-per-year
Averages don't really work when most folks driving tends to be pretty lumpy. An example I've experienced personally:
* Take a trip ~150mi round trip to a nearby town.
* Return home with car at relatively low state of charge (since, I started with ~80% SOC).
* Immediately next morning, I need to take a trip ~200mi
Couldn't do it if I was charging using 120V. I could do it even with relatively wimpy 240V (20A), though.
It would be interesting to do look at broader survey data (maybe I'll do that this weekend) and see how driving mileage is distributed. Nobody in my circles ever drives longer than 20 mi. one way regularly, and even then most never more than 10 mi. one way regularly. Of course I live in a somewhat-walkable metro area adjacent to suburbia.
Sure if you have the need for bursty travel (emergency helping a relative in another part of the state maybe, picking up friends from a regional airport, etc) a 240V/20A charger would work much better. But as long as you can find a fast charger along your route this shouldn't be a huge factor. The argument is that most average travel needs can be taken care of by L1 chargers and L2s and L3s can help usecases further out of the average. But I admit, my assumption of normality on driving mileage is just an assumption and it may just be more pareto distributed.
Really? I have a Nissan Leaf and a Tesla Model Y. I alternate using the same outlet to keep both of them fully charged. The Leaf only charges at home, and I only use Superchargers for the Y when I'm on road trips. I already have 220V in the garage, it's just not worth spending a few hundred on a 220v charger as 110v meets my needs completely. The only reason that I might go 220v would be if I install solar panels and want to dump more power into the cars during daylight hours.
It all depends on your use case. EV's aren't for everyone.
I charge at work, and L1 charging was fine for me when I was WFH during covid. I don't bother using outside chargers because L2 is too slow for short trips and fast charging is expensive.
110V 15A is plenty for many users. Like anything else, driving range needed is a bell-curve. You can make the situation much better for many with just access to 110V.
Profanity alert. Don’t read this if you are sensitive.
You. Do. Fucking. Not. Need. An EV charger, to charge your EV. A 110 or 220 outlet with a cord and an adapter will work just fine. Apologies for the US centric terminology but I expect the situation is roughly the same (though numbers vary) elsewhere.
We did TWO Teslas in an apartment for two years sharing (alternating cars) a single plug of a single 110 outlet. It was fine. Yes, on days where you do big trips, there’s a supercharger visit, But normally, an outlet is totally sufficient.
An installed charger does add some very, very minor convenience (no adapter, big deal… not worth the cost). And if it needs to be shared and bills split, that’s different. But for basic charging no special installation is needed as long as you can reach.
I know a person who has done this with their tesla for like 6 years and to the point that they will not plug their tesla into anything more powerful because they think that charging it at 2kW is keeping their battery pristine. I don't think they realize that by pressing that accelerator pedal they can load the battery with ~300kW and therefore 2kW or 11kW or 22kW charging makes no effing difference.
Their daily commute is less than 100km so they have no problems charging the batts with their granny charger.
In our household we have one to four ~90% capacity commutes per week and being able to always get a full charge with the 11kW charger helps a lot.
So YMMV. I agree with you. Especially agree with the point that people should analyze their usage, maybe get some experience living with an EV and never give up on the first mental hurdle without even trying.
If you buy electricity at the (hourly) market rate, you want to charge when it is cheapest and charge reasonably fast. On a typical 11kW home charger here in EU, that means about 6 hours for full charge or 1..2 hours for daily top-up. All the benefits for buying the electricity at hourly demand based rate disappear when full charging times approach 24h.
This has two benefits: it is cheaper to charge and the grid works more efficiently — price is lower when the demand is low and/or production is high.
> when full charging times approach 24h.
200 miles a day is not the median driving pattern. It's closer to 30 miles
In our area the higher price (peak demand time) was during a window about 6 hours long. So we were able to charge a maximum of 18 hours a day while avoiding that window. Now we have 220 which makes things easier, but still no need for a charger installation.
An installed charger is not needed for scheduled charging if the car already does it. Buy an EV with good modern features and you’ll be fine with just an outlet.
To be cost efficient with day-ahead hourly pricing, you need a faster (level 2) charger as there are only few extra-cheap hours in a day.
How long before you recoup the cost of the charger though?
There is absolutely no financial advantage to having an installed charger versus an outlet. There are other advantages. It might fit your hand better during the 2 seconds it takes to plug in. It might be better in the rain if your outlet is exposed to driving rain in wind. It might look more impressive to the neighbors. It looks more impressive to the landlord or wife or anyone who might be approving a budget for upgrading wires inside a wall or upgrading a panel. It does not save any money.
If you are thinking of charge scheduling, the car does that. Or should… if you buy an EV from a good EV company, not an old crusty legacy automaker.
The point with scheduling is that on a normal plug, it make take long enough to charge your car that you can't charge it completely during the time window where electricity is the cheapest. So the parent comment was arguing you need faster charging to save money by doing all your charging in that time window.
But yeah I have a hard time believing it's gonna be a big enough saving to offset the cost of the charger.
Cars have the scheduling built in.
Unless you buy an electric car from one of the companies that is actively promoting gas cars and trying to make their own electric cars super crappy in hopes the entire concept will fail. Meaning, any gas car maker.
Yes, scheduling saves money. But even paying high electric rates during peak hours can still be way cheaper than gas, depending on what exact rates we're talking about, which varies by location.
But the plug has nothing to do with scheduling if you just use the car's own scheduling or plug/unplug yourself.
Being able to charge with 11kW (level 2 charger) instead of 3.5kW (level 1 charger) allows to charge daily 20kW within 2 hours instead of 6.
Two days ago kWh was at 0.03€ For two hours only, after 0.41€ peaks during the day. Of course this scheduling is automatic. Using Gridio (https://www.gridio.io/) for that.
Payback time here is about 100 full charges (IONIQ5, Nordpool day-ahead pricing).
We bought a second hand EV with ~60 miles range, and a standard 240V (UK) outlet wasn't enough for us. We got a charger installed. It turned out that around city the range was fine, but if we wanted to do [multiple] outings in a day, we couldn't. Getting a 7kW charger made all the difference, because it can recharge the car in a couple of hours in the middle of the day.
So my caveat to your claim would be: only if your EV itself has enough range, which means you're limited to newer EVs, rather than buying older ones on the second hand market that were manufactured with less range (and by now probably only have ~80% of their original, lesser range, remaining).
This is a bad idea because the risk of fire is very high. The electrical wires aren't built for the high load of charging a car, and doubly so if they happen to be old. That's why electricians should always draw completely new wires, to make sure that everything is fresh and able to handle the load.
That it's been working for you for a few years does not invalidate this point, in the same way as not wearing a seat belt is unsafe.
Yes always use higher spec outlets made for heavy duty appliances, such as kitchen outlets. And yes it's a good idea to get your setup checked, and upgraded or repaired if necessary.
That only works if you have a short commute. I've charged my Tesla 3 maybe 3 times on 110 and it's a dumpster fire. One time parked at an AirBnB hoping to gather enough juice over the course of a weekend to get useful range heading home while we carpooled with friends.
3 miles per hour of charging is simply not enough. 12h x 3mph = 36mi range added, and that's not enough to reliably expect even a 30 mile roundtrip, let alone any errands you might run. I'd say we go through easily 55-60 miles of range for a 42mi commute. Plus, you're charging at peak hours for part of that.
Obviously I'm not saying you're lying, you did it, that's great, but you sure weren't driving many miles in both cars.
As I said we augmented with supercharging as needed. Doesn’t work for everyone though as not everyone lives near a supercharger. And there was one person working from home, and one with a short commute.
I think the straw that broke the camel's back was the city's demand that they relocate the electrical panels. This means that all the interior wiring in the house now has to run to the new panel location - a huge expense. I'm not sure why they couldn't just move only the meters to be more accessible to the power company & firefighters[1] and then run a longer service cable from there to the original panels. That would be much cheaper.
I plan to add a charger to my rental property, either when my current tenant buys an EV or when they move out (to avoid disrupting them). The home is fairly new and was built with 200 amp service so I don't anticipate any permit problems. The idea is to differentiate my property in the marketplace and justify a higher rent.
What I don't want is a tenant running a homemade 240v cable to the outlet for the electric clothes dryer and manually plugging/unplugging back & forth. That's unsafe.
[1] The fire department will pull the meter when they arrive and start fighting a fire, so they aren't spraying water on live circuits.
> I think the straw that broke the camel's back was the city's demand that they relocate the electrical panels. This means that all the interior wiring in the house now has to run to the new panel location - a huge expense. I'm not sure why they couldn't just move only the meters to be more accessible to the power company & firefighters[1] and then run a longer service cable from there to the original panels. That would be much cheaper.
You’re correct, you don’t need to move the panels, but you do need to provide a emergency service disconnect on the exterior of the house. You could leave all the existing branch wiring in place, assuming it is up to code, and refeed the existing panels from the new service entrance location. The relevant code section in the NEC is 230.85, added in 2020.
A large portion of the cost is new panels with AFCI and GFCI breakers, they’re $50-100 each for a 15A 1p breaker, probably $1500-2500 for each panel.
From the article:
> We recently decided to update our duplex’s electric system.
I'm left wondering what exactly they meant by "update our duplex's electric system" if they did not mean put in a new service, new main panel, and bring the branch circuits up to current code? Like what were they actually envisioning doing, that did not include redoing the branch circuits?
If this story were written with the electric vehicle precipitating the chain of events, I can see how that would be frustrating. But it seems they set out to do the updates, and are now complaining about doing the updates?
The utility's position seems wholly unreasonable though. If this weren't a rental property, the right answer would be to DIY the install and make the utility deal with the additional load on the distribution infrastructure.
> a tenant running a homemade 240v cable to the outlet for the electric clothes dryer and manually plugging/unplugging back & forth
Most level 2 chargers have a 20+ foot cord. I did the plug/unplug thing while I waited to install the plug in my garage, but my dryer is just inside of the door to the garage. Perhaps you're talking about a much longer run, but even with a proper extension cord (often less than $100), it should be fine.
Back when ICE cars first came along, owners bought cans of gasoline from their local general store and stored them in their stables (now garages). They recharged their cars at home. This seems like the era we are now in with respect to electric vehicles.
There are some EV fleets for which charging downtime is not palatable (taxis in busy cities, for example). Swappable batteries have been developed and are being used by some of those fleets.
The next step is standardization of swappable batteries, and divestment of battery swapping and maintenance into a separate company from fleet operation. The third step is the separate company offering services to the public.
As vehicles built for these fleets are sold used, they will spread to households.
Then we are back to "gas" stations/service stations.
The logic seems sound. Rather than having to build charging complexity into every vehicle, and supply tens of millions or hundreds of millions of chargers, charging can be done at merely hundreds of thousands of charging stations, with the customer having a three minute trip through something like a car wash booth.
Im just rebuilding my own house from the last century. You as a landlord did not upgrade your eletrical system and the current one is probably held together by straws ;)
The title should be "what? You do really need a pesky netural wire for EV charging, who knew"?
There are ways to fake a neutral wire for EV charging. Not recommending it, but I found out how to do it when learning how to charge my EVs using an inexpensive pure sine wave inverter (using the 12V system of the other EV or some other vehicle in case I needed a little charge to get to the nearest charging station).
As a comparison, we just did a similar project in Washington DC for our ~105 year old row house. It cost us ~$2500 including permits and all materials except that actual EV charger unit (blanking on what that’s called). But that is BEFORE federal+DC tax credits worth about $1k.
Situations differ. Local policies and code differ. For a couple thousand dollars, my car will be fully sun powered (from our 11Kwh rooftop solar system). Gas savings over the life of the car should more than make up for it.
(We had previously upgraded our panel to handle more load and offer more slots when we renovated, but even that was under $3k.)
We (the HOA) tried to do this in a townhouse complex (where I own one unit) in Mountain View. The story went similarly, except the last step. Instead of telling us that we’ll need to relocate meters, the utility told us that they consider our neighborhood “complete” and they will not be running a thicker line to our buildings to allow for the now-code-required 125A panels. So thanks to their laziness, we can never ever do any electrical work in any unit, since getting permits requires upgrades to current code, and the electrical company won’t do their part no matter what, and without their part, compliance with current code is impossible.
TL;DR improving a property triggers mandates like bringing the whole thing up to code (I'm personally OK with this generally) and also the potential to shoulder ore share costs to improve the surrounding infrastructure (I'm against this, it's similar to the problems broadband rollouts face when attaching to aging poles in that if they find an issue it's suddenly their problem to pay for).
IMO the solution is top down and should require public planning to scale infrastructure to desired standards in a planned way. It should also require updates to modern code rather than allowing older and probably unsafe (code changed for good reason) buildings around until they fail (usually in a catastrophic way).
It's also bad that there aren't good ways to save for such updates, far too often short term needs prevail rather than doing things right the first time. I'm not sure if taxes to encourage and fund improvements or ways of saving money tax free towards major expenditures (which are then taxed at that time) are better, but there should be some process.
Honestly, if you are renting out a unit as a landlord, you should be required to keep the property in compliance with code.
Sounds good, but just don't be surprised if this results in more expensive rents, and less affordable housing being built.
That’s exactly what the article author expected to do, they said they wanted to make their rental properties more expensive. No one’s installing anything in a rental unit out of the goodness of their heart. They’re literally seeking rent. At least they should be expected to keep up their end of the bargain.
the "the house is burning down and firemen will die" discount,
along with
the "oops I dropped the hair dryer in the sink and died without ground faults" discount
Or the "the microwave blew a fuse that killed my work computer, so I lost my job" discount
the "the pilot light doesn't work well, so carbon monoxide" discount.
The "stairwell is only loose here" discount, "the deck is fine for 2 people to stand in that corner" discount
We should have higher standards for "investment" operations than 30 years out of safety standards
New built housing already has to comply with the latest codes. Having slightly higher rent is worth it for safety.
Perhaps. But this stuff does raise the minimum amount it takes to build, which in turn makes developers less likely to invest in building affordable housing.
Assuming 'code' is equivalent to UK building regs. This is very onerous.
Eg if the door lintel is made from wood. Does it pass certification to say it can take that weight. To find out if the lintel is even wood requires removing plaster.
What happens if you wanted to tighten the specs on concrete? Are you going to tear down every pre existing concrete building because they can't demonstrate it was made to the new specs.
As an interim solution, the property owner might be able to install large batteries (for example Powerwall) that renters could use to charge their vehicles. The batteries could be charged continuously, without overloading the old electrical service
Probably this wouldn't be enough if every renter was a heavy EV user, but it could be good for a few years, and also would be useful for power outages and to take advantage of off-peak rates in future
Metering and payment would be an issue, but it should be possible to find a solution for that
> As EVs become more common, more landlords will be driven to invest in vehicle charging.
Can EVs become more common without tenants being able to charge them ?
Yes.
Obviously, it depends on the tenant's daily commutes especially, but at today's ranges a giant median chunk of US daily commuters could fast charge only once a week and meet their commute needs easily, with no other charges in between.
Home chargers are incredibly useful and a game changer, but also destination chargers (chargers at work or grocery stores or malls or other places where cars are parked for multiple hours) are also similarly game changers. Just having one or the other reduces (and in some cases eliminates) the need for any "fast" charges. But EVs themselves don't "require" any specific charging configuration and compared to gas have more options than ever before with home and destination options.
Yes, if EVs are produced with standardized modular battery arrays.
Stop by the "gas" station, open up the hood, grab your drained battery cell cards, bring them in, and pay for fully-charged cell cards to swap in.
The "gas" station can then charge the cards you brought and give them to another customer.
It's worth noting that, under this scheme, battery life can be monitored and manufacturers can recycle/replace EOL cards when the "gas" station sends them in.
No more waiting for the car to be charged. No more changes to homes. Just use the existing infrastructure! It's a win-win.
Two wheelers already do this in many places. Gogoro is one option where you just pull up to a station, put your old battery in, and it'll tell you which fully charged one to pull out. If the station detects bad health or battery life it'll recycle/replace it the next time someone visits.
Yes. Gas stations near me are installing fast chargers. ice driving Tenants currently have to go to gas stations.
This is one of the many reasons why I firmly believe that hydrogen hybrid are the future to replace gas vehicles. Charging at mass scale is just not feasible nor practical for most people.
We can't even roll broadband out properly let alone the massive amounts of infrastructure required to deliver enough power to every home. That leaves centralized charging hubs which will quickly become overwhelmed and a massive time sink.
Hydrogen isn't either. The real solution is to not have so many gas vehicles.
There's also no reason we can't provide charging at destinations rather than homes. Workplaces, shopping centers, etc.
Transit, trains, ebikes, etc. are all significantly more efficient, less polluting, and just better solutions all around.
This is simply not practical out side of large urban areas in the US. Not only is distance a factor but also weather. No one is going to be riding an Ebike in 10° winter weather, and a lot of people commute 60+ miles a day.
Not to mention that public transportation in a lot of areas can be... Let's just say perceived as unsafe.
Hydrogen (by itself) is as clean as it can be. The byproduct is water.
Hydrogen requires about 4 times the input electricity per mile driven than electricity for battery electric cars. That’s why it’s so much more expensive and almost no one uses it. And the fueling infrastructure is crazy expensive.
Personally, I think if we do have hydrogen cars in the future, hydrogen cars should require a plug and an enlarged lithium battery (say, 10kWh at least). Otherwise we’ll need to produce FAR more electricity than with battery-electric cars and consumers will be on the hook for far, far higher use costs.
> Hydrogen requires about 4 times the input electricity per mile
Why does this matter?
Producing it is a little different though (not necessarily, but most of the time).
I agree, but it's not much different than producing the electricity required for charging EVs.
It requires approximately 4 times the energy to make and distribute hydrogen as charging an EV to go the same distance.
Public transit practical in small towns in Europe. How do we fix it in the US?
It's cultural. Americans perceive anything but a private automobile to be inconvenient and unsafe, even though stats show that private automobile use is actually fairly dangerous. Changing the culture will take a while.
Charging at scale is just way easier & cheaper than deploying hydrogen infrastructure, and I don’t think people realize just how big of a difference there is. It takes approximately 4 times the electricity (when you include liquefaction, inefficiency of electrolysis, etc) to drive the same distance with hydrogen cars as with electric cars. And Hydrogen cars get about the same range on a tank as electric cars, but even fast charging is only about $3/useful-gallon-equivalent compared to $10/useful-gallon-equivalent for hydrogen even if you have to go Fast Charge once a week or so, you’re still WAY ahead.
Now if you’re talking plug-in hybrid hydrogen cars, that’s fine. You’ll be on pure electric 85% of the time anyway so the crazy expense of hydrogen fueling isn’t so bad.
Maybe not viable for personal vehicles but I can see hydrogen fuel used for trucks/ships. Electric batteries are probably too heavy and take too long to recharge for long haul.
Batteries are fine for semi trucks, too, actually. Even 500 miles with full payload. Transoceanic ships are a major challenge for batteries, but the scale is large enough that maybe you could use liquid hydrogen. Or just synth fuels like methane.
The US. department of energy is pushing to have $1 per kilogram by 2030. ($2 per kilogram by 2025). The Toyota Mirai can go 402 miles on 16.8kg of hydrogen. And it takes 5 minutes to fill up.
The actual cost of hydrogen filling stations in California was $10/kg BEFORE the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now it’s higher.
Takes 5 minutes to fill up if the hydrogen is pre-cooled and you happen to be at the filling station (which is rare).
As another top level comment stated, in a lot of circumstances you can make do with charging an EV from a normal outlet.
The post was mostly about the challenges with regulations/codes. For the most part it was a plea for governments to smooth over the jankiness they introduce to the whole process. Hardly an insurmountable challenge.
Hydrogen is dead. Upgrading the existing electrical network gradually over time (EV adoption will be gradual) is going to be significantly easier than building a distribution network from (almost) scratch as would be required for hydrogen. To think the reverse is bonkers.
Why is hydrogen dead? There are a few hydrogen hybrids coming to market like the BMW i3. It has a 300 mile range and can refill in 5 minutes.
Converting to hydrogen makes wayyy more sense than EV infrastructure. All of the gas station can be easily converted to hydrogen stations with different pumps and tanks. A lot cheaper than running MW of power for a EV station or upgrading neighborhoods.
Then there are people that live in apartments. It isn't feasible to have a charger for every apartment at a complex. So not everyone is going to be able to charge. Even if it is a normal outlet.
There is also the fire danger. I can't even imagine the amount of damage a fire cause by an EV could do to an apartment complex.
Then there is the vandalism issue and mantaince problems involved.
Only if you are rich dose EVs make sense. But on a mass scale they make close to zero sense.
> Why is hydrogen dead?
Car manufacturers are all releasing EVs. How many are really mass producing hydrogen vehicles?
It's a scale and chicken/egg (or two sides market) problem.
Gas stations won't convert until there is a decent number of hydrogen cars on the road (in the area the station is in), and people won't buy hydrogen vehicles if there are no stations to refill at. Manufacturers won't be able to scale production to make the investment worthwhile. EVs do not suffer from this problem as there are many people already in a position to easily charge at home (yes, I know it is not everyone, but it's a large enough market to be self sufficient).
For scale, I'll posit that there isn't room for three different types of power systems. Car companies won't want to invest in hydrogen because it's clear that there will be a significant percentage of people wanting EVs. The market for hydrogen cars will always be shrinking, because EV adoption will always be growing.
Gas station business models are finely tuned, with most of their revenue from convenience goods, petrol sales are just the mechanism to get people into the store to impulse buy. EVs will play havoc with this model. Less people will go to the stations as they will charge at home, causing a feedback loop of stations closing, and ICE vehicles becoming less convenient. It will also result in less money to invest in things like hydrogen tanks and pumps.
The number of EVs is only going to continue to grow, the window for hydrogen gets smaller and smaller (and I think already closed).
> Then there is the vandalism issue and mantaince problems involved.
Not really sure what this means. Presumably you are not talking about the EVs themselves as they require a lot less maintenance than ICE vehicles.
> Only if you are rich dose EVs make sense. But on a mass scale they make close to zero sense.
EVs continue to get cheaper and cheaper. Eventually it just won't make buy new ICE vehicles, even if you have to spend thousands to put in charging infrastructure.
Perhaps it will be only the "rich" who can adopt EVs at the start, but when the majority of new cars are EV, eventually the pool of 2nd hand ICE vehicles will become mostly EVs as well. It's inevitable.
Both BMW and Toyota have hydrogen cars.
We are talking about the infrastructure of EVs not EVs them selfs. The price is dropping on EVs, but that won't matter if most people can't charge them. Which is the problem.
Vandalism is becoming more and more of a problem with EV charging stations. People are stealing the Copper wires. That will be a major issue at apartment complexes if they install charging stations.
The US. department of energy is pushing to have $1 per kilogram by 2030. ($2 per kilogram by 2025). The Toyota Mirai can go 402 miles on 16.8kg of hydrogen. And it takes 5 minutes to fill up.
> BMW and Toyota have hydrogen cars.
How many have shipped? How many gas stations are pumping hydrogen?
> most people can't charge them
And yet there are millions of them on the road, with numbers always increasing.
The strength of EVs, and why they will win over hydrogen is that they can be adopted regardless of what the majority are doing, incremental instead of big bang. There is a sizable market of people who can charge EVs. This number is only going to grow as more and more apartments/carpark are being fitted with chargers (which people have already said are not a necessity). It's not a small task, but it can be done gradually, unlike hydrogen. Unless you get some massive coordinated effort between multiple car companies and gas stations to roll out hydrogen refil stations across an entire country in preparation for hoped for sales, people just won't buy them. EV naysayers love to talk about range anxiety for EVs. Imagine the range anxiety if you had a hydrogen vehicle today.
Gas is too convenient and cheap for now and foreseeable future, compared to hydrogen. Hydrogen isn't matter unless existing gas is banned. At that time (2045?), BEV will cover most personal use cases.
> Converting to hydrogen makes wayyy more sense than EV infrastructure. All of the gas station can be easily converted to hydrogen stations with different pumps and tanks. A lot cheaper than running MW of power for a EV station or upgrading neighborhoods.
Care to cite any sources?
> different pumps and tanks
This sounds suspiciously like “rip out the gas station and build a new hydrogen station”
We are literally commenting on a post about how upgrading to EV charging was cost prohibited.
Source for hydrogen conversion cost
I do agree with you that hybrids are way to go but I'm also happy for EV go for it as well. We should be tackling this issue in every way possible, including changing urban landscapes to be more pedestrian/ public transport friendly.
Why not electro-fuels ?
Prometheus and others have plans that may come to fruition.
It's a good idea but the issue is convincing big money to buy in. Without billions of dollars invested this tech will just get thrown in the back with all of the other world changing technologies that need billions of dollars of investment to succeed.
Absolutely agreed.
Electric cars are for the rich. And of course they say it's the future and everyone should do it, without realizing it's literally impossible. No grid in the US could come close to handling that, much less in developing countries.
Not to mention due to range limitations, many people and companies are ruled out automatically.
I don't think electric is bad, or should go away. But it's not meant for the masses. I think H has a brighter future worldwide.
Hydrogen is less energy per volume than gas, it requires pressure vessels rather than tanks, it's stored pressurized in vehicles and stations, it makes materials it contacts brittle, it relies on a manufacturing process that either requires natural gas production or a huge excess of electrical energy, fuel stations are huge capital costs, etc.
I could go on, but it just doesn't make sense to pin hopes on hydrogen.
The exact same thing can be said about EVs and then some.
Batteries are less energy per volume than gas. Batteries are extremely hazardous if damaged. They have a relatively short lifespan. They are hardcore industrial hazardous waste. Power generation is likely coming from a gas power plant or even a coal power plant. The required infrastructure upgrades would be astronomical.
> Power generation is likely coming from a gas power plant or even a coal power plant.
A significantly more efficient plant than an ICE.
There are so many false statements in your post, I don't even know where to start.
The grid absolutely can handle EVs.
The range of modern EVs is totally fine for almost all cases.
The price is an issue, but even in my poor Eastern European country the number of EV exploded this year. Mainly second hand small city cars, but also others.
The same grid that can't handle heat waves without begging people to turn off AC, and even then having rolling blackouts, can handle everyone charging at night or after work at the same time, too?
Almost everyone in the midwest and mountain west considers a 3 hr (one way) drive a normalish weekly or monthly event. Sure, it's not most people, but it's not some tiny outlier.
I'm completely fine with being made a fool of, but I'm going to need more than 'yeah, it can do it.'
Absolutely. The reason the grid begs you to turn off your AC is because you do it at 4 PM when there isn't enough power. EVs charge at night when demand is low.
demand won't be low if that's when everyone is charging their EVs. lol
Time-of-use pricing combined with scheduled charging solves this, and is already widely available.
"The grid absolutely can handle EVs."
Maybe yours can.
In California, they were recently asked to not charge cars during certain times of the day because the power system could not support the additional load.
My understanding is that California's grid could have supported the load, they just weren't able to generate the electricity required to do so.
Almost all EV owners are charging them during the night, when the electricity demand is lower.
And ok, maybe some upgrades will be needed in some places. But the situation is not so dark as the person above described it.
Keep in mind, if my math is right, CA is at like 6% electric vehicle saturation. So basically multiply that load they claim not to be able to handle by 16.
The vast majority of home EV charging happens at night. Is that when CA was telling people not to charge their cars?
Would America even function if gas stations were only open at night?
If you could fill up your gas tank in your garage, probably most people would be just fine.
Huh?
Are you not cooking?
Our stove needs 1kw and our oven has 6kw.
It's not crashing when everyone is cooking why would it crash when everyone is charging?
Also it costs more (energy wise) to make H and then consume it than using the energy itself. This should probably has a relevant cost saving.
Economy of scale will bring much cheaper batteries very soon. Let's say 10-20 years
Cooking is super bursty, and at variable times, and for short durations. And even then, varies by day.
It's not at all the same as everyone on planet earth in the same hemisphere trying to charge their cars during peak summer AC time, between 4 and 6ish pm.
Either you charge over night than you can charge slow and steady ( I did this at my parents house a few times with 800watts or so, which is not a lot) or at work where you already can have smart charging.
Independent of this, plenty of counties use energy to heat (consumes a lot) or have ac which also pulls a lot.
Ev charging is estimated with 10% additional load on a power grid. That's doable.
Is it a challenge? Yes. In one place more than in another place
> everyone on planet earth in the same hemisphere trying to charge their cars during peak summer AC time
Why do you keep parroting this nonsense? Virtually nobody charges their car at this time
I don't see how it's nonsense. Everyone keeps saying 'at night', but more realistically for most people, when they get home from work.
My car itself can control when it's charging.
If you use anything more fancy on the PV side you can also control it on the other side.
And for more than one flat, load control is already available. We're I life we have 90 cars in the parking garage and there is a load controller
You plug in when you get home, and your car doesn’t actually charge until it’s scheduled…sometime later at night. Mine starts at 8pm. During the heatwave I bumped it to 10pm because it doesn’t really matter to me. It’s done charging in about 3 hours.
> and charge higher rents
Yeah no thanks.
Remember, if you aren't wealthy enough to be able to make these kinds of changes or buy a new home which doesn't need them, that means you're in the pocket of big oil. Or something, idk.
"Almost 1/3 of San Francisco charging stations are broken"
https://www.electrive.com/2022/05/13/almost-1-3-of-san-franc...
There are... a lot of problems yet to be solved in the perfect electrified future. I hope it happens, if only to move all the pollution from cars to the power plants far away. I have found it hard to discuss the negative / illogical aspects with true believers, which is normally fine, except now the developed world is paying a shitload of taxes to fund the dreams of true believers - logic and economics be damned.
Seems low maybe the other 1/3rd are in bad locations