While this seems to be more aimed at scooters and the like, I’ve been waiting for electric vehicles and renters to become an issue.
Landlords are going to try to avoid putting in electric car charging points for as long as they can. They simply don’t want to spend the money.
The issue is a little more nuanced than that. Most buildings can only install a few EV chargers before they need to upgrade the mains, and if that needs to be done, the transformers likely aren’t adequate, and the local grid may not be able to withstand it as well.
The owners costs ends at the transformers, taxpayers and the energy corp are in for the rest, and until the energy corp upgrades the grid and transformers, building owners can only do so much.
If the infrastructure can’t handle it, then upgrade the fucking infrastructure! Politicians will fall at voters’ feet to build new roads, highways, etc., but when it comes to the green energy transition, there’s no problem too minuscule to be ignored!
I’ll happily admit that there are going to be many issues in the green energy transition; we should acknowledge them, but we should also strive to address them, rather than throwing our hands up in the air and idly promulgating the status quo.
Switching from one type of car to another isn’t a green transition. Car production still creates enormous co2 emissions, paving everything for cars makes heat islands, tires produce piles of particulate pollution, and so on. Fixing the car pollution problem means moving to other forms of transportation, not just slightly-less-bad automobiles.
Amen. Don’t have to worry about the house, neighborhood, or city infrastructures supporting your EV if your EV is an ebike that can plug into a standard outlet in your living room, or wherever you keep it. Or if you can just walk a quarter mile and hop on a light rail. Or if instead of driving a Ford, you just use your Chevrolegs. Of course, this does also require development patterns to support it, i.e. roads that aren’t fucking death traps for anyone outside a car and stuff being close enough together that you can actually get to it in a reasonable amount of time, but hey, there are also non-car-related reasons we should be doing those things too.
I have up to 4 kids at a time in my vehicle along with an often substantial amount of their stuff ( school backpacks / sports equipment ). It is not uncommon to stop for groceries already loaded with passengers and gear.
What model of eBike should I get?
Also, I work 50 km from home and commute on a road that was made primarily to provide large trucks faster access to the port. It is a road along the river. In addition to the huge, fast moving vehicles, it has no artificial lighting and is away from building that might help with that ( so pitch black at times and also prone to significant fog ). Please recommend something safe.
It is probably 40 km and through a major tunnel and over a substantial bridge to the nearest “light rail”. I do not live in the country.
Now, not everyone has my situation. That said, I am sure MANY people ( in North America at least ) have needs that require cars today. Our culture and infrastructure has been designed around it and changing that is a bigger problem than migrating to electric vehicles.
Shared ownership or shared fleets is one middle ground. Autonomous cars would help but that timeline is uncertain.
I have up to 4 kids at a time in my vehicle along with an often substantial amount of their stuff ( school backpacks / sports equipment ). It is not uncommon to stop for groceries already loaded with passengers and gear. What model of eBike should I get?
That’s a valid question, and it’s one that anybody who advocates for better urbanism, like I do, needs to be able to address. Fortunately, there are multiple answers.
The most direct answer to your question on its face is that you could get a bakfiets, or what the English-speaking world calls a cargo bike/cargo ebike. These are available from brands like Orbea, Aventon, Tern, Co-Op, Specialized (that’s Specialized with a big S), and more, they have been showcased as potential car replacements capable of carrying people and large amounts of stuff on Youtube channels like GCN, Not Just Bikes, Oh The Urbanity, Propel, Shifter, and others, and some specialized (that’s specialized with a small S) models have even been deployed as low-footprint urban delivery vehicles in so far highly successful trials by companies like UPS and FedEx.
However, to address the frankly incredibly frustrating assumption underlying your question, neither I nor the vast majority of other urbanism advocates will actually try to take away your car, even if we were given dictator-like control, because I for one am not interested in controlling people, I’m interested in having multiple viable choices for how to get around. You would still be able to have your car. Driving it in the city center would be inconvenient and expensive enough that you wouldn’t want to do it, but it’d be trivially easy to get there by transit or cargo bike instead. Plus, while the drive to your work would be largely unaffected, that road wouldn’t be the only way to get there, either. Speaking of which,
Also, I work 50 km from home and commute on a road that was made primarily to provide large trucks faster access to the port. It is a road along the river. In addition to the huge, fast moving vehicles, it has no artificial lighting and is away from building that might help with that ( so pitch black at times and also prone to significant fog ). Please recommend something safe.
This is a systemic problem, not a you problem. As such, you shouldn’t be expected to take responsibility for solving it, least of all by just protecting yourself. You mention a port: most ports have existed for longer than cars have been the dominant urban species, and as such, that road you describe might have either replaced or run parallel to a railway that would have also gotten you there. The fact that that railway is no longer a viable option for you means that an option has been taken away from you, and that’s what you should actually be angry about. That, and the lack of artificial lighting on said road. Allow me to refer you to the second half of my earlier comment:
Of course, this does also require development patterns to support it, i.e. roads that aren’t fucking death traps for anyone outside a car and stuff being close enough together that you can actually get to it in a reasonable amount of time, but hey, there are also non-car-related reasons we should be doing those things too.
Emphasis added. Anyway:
Now, not everyone has my situation.
Yes. Hi, it’s me.
That said, I am sure MANY people ( in North America at least ) have needs that require cars today. Our culture and infrastructure has been designed around it and changing that is a bigger problem than migrating to electric vehicles.
That is exactly the problem I’m talking about. They have those needs because our infrastructure has been built to create them, and that causes far more harm than just switching to EVs will ever solve. EVs are like trying to wallpaper over the hole in the Titanic: better than doing literally nothing, but won’t actually fix anything.
Shared ownership or shared fleets is one middle ground.
Sounds like communism to me.
Autonomous cars would help but that timeline is uncertain.
Adam Something has a thing he does where he takes some kind of pie-in-the-sky techbro gadgetbahn idea, like AVs, and gradually addresses all the design flaws with it until he’s invented trains again, then ends with his catchphrase “just build a regular fucking train.” And I think that’s where I’m going to leave off.
Chevrolegs
Hehe, reminds me of a similar joke in French, “B-M-double-pieds” (B-M-double-feet, for BMW).
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No need to swear, friend. If that city switched to walking and shared transport, most of those roads could be converted into housing or parkland instead of concrete and parking.
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I mean, a heck of a lot of people do get by just fine using public transport.
I think a nice balance would be better, personally, but it is an option. Public transit would be more viable if we increased it’s infrastructure. I believe that more people would use it if it was more appealing.
Sometimes it can be fun to not need to drive lol. Some of the best nights out over the last year ended in a bus ride home. Nobody had to be the DD this way.
I don’t know why, but I feel like I should also specify that we kept to ourselves and didn’t really talk while we were on the bus those nights.
First you have to get people out of the habit of being an active driver, and get to the point where their EV drives them to work. Once that becomes norm then taking a light rail transit is an easy sell. If you try to just force a new transit mode on motorheads they aren’t going to accept it. Small environment savings and having large generating company’s scrub pollution is better that leaving it up to individual car owners, and in places with Hydroelectic power it makes sense to ditch fossil fuels
Yes it is. Why switch to walking if just killing the whole population will do even more. Just because something else can do more doesn’t mean the original isn’t worth doing.
They are upgrading it, as people need it and as fast as they can ahead of planned upgrades.
There shortages on parts, so most are being done as required, but to think it’s not being upgraded (in most places, local bullshit aside) is just pure ignorance.
I’m sure people are trying to address the problems, I’m not saying that’s not happening. What I find maddening however is the double standard between how issues are handled when it’s fossil fuels vs. green energy. Every tiny issue with green energy is breathlessly amplified, while there’s no shortage of idiotic solutions to resolve issues in carbon-based energy infrastructure.
It’s this atmosphere that I’m trying to raise awareness of and change!
“The grid can’t handle it” is a bullshit argument that is easy to sell to people who want to keep their IC cars. The difference between highest demand and lowest demand in Ontario this week was 7000MW, if everyone charges their car at night there is power available AND it helps increase the base load which is good for the gird operators.
Even individual buildings may not need to upgrade their main service even with rapid chargers, the operators just need to keep in mind not to run the oven, dryer, AC and car charger at the same time.
Yes the power plants can pump out enough, but not all transfer stations are able to handle the load, each individual hub, may not be able to handle the load.
It’s far more nuanced than this even, but don’t believe everything everyone is selling you, everyone has an agenda and no one is going to tell you the entire truth.
If an entire block suddenly goes EV one night the infrastructure isn’t there, it’s slowly being updated which you don’t see, but there’s issues out there.
New Brunswick had a program in the 1970s/80s to get people to switch to electric home heating due to the oil shocks. That was far more ambitious than what is being proposed here.
Moot point, nowhere will suddenly switch to electric vehicles overnight.
Multi family complexes do all the time, richer neighborhoods typically adopt EVs faster.
It’s happened before, which is why it’s a known issue, so it’s far from moot if it’s happened before, no?
Point out one example of an entire block switching to electric vehicles overnight then.
Municipality requires new buildings to be EV ready, ANY infill neighborhood would fit the requirements for your example. That’s just one city, happening all over the world.
But hey, continue with your head in the sand.
Everyone in the burbs run their AC full tilt all summer and the grid holds up just fine. An EV charger used overnight, when your AC runs less, would present no more of a load than the daytime high usage. Stop pushing anti-electrification bullshit, or move to Alberta, they love that shit.
A friend showed me his overnight Tesla fill up. 6 bucks. That really doesn’t seem like much power used compared to everyone running baseboard heaters here in the winter.
A whole street going electric suddenly wouldn’t be great in many places. Hell, just look at all of the electricity-caused wildfires over the last few years. Those places are currently struggling to keep the supply stable. There probably wouldn’t just be one car in each driveway. Many families have multiple vehicles. Most of those would probably be charging at the same time overnight.
If places with really poor power management suddenly took on a lot of EV’s, it would cause further issues. If a power line is already struggling at it’s current capacity, it only makes sense that increasing the load on that same power line would be problematic. Once it’s too much, it’s too much.
So, we should install power systems that can take on that additional capacity if we want everyone to go EV. Outfitting a place like New York City would be very different than outfitting rural areas. Many cities are still running on infrastructure that was built a long time ago. It should hopefully be more feasible outside of those areas.
That sounds sick though, $6 for a full tank.
This is no different from the widespread adoption of electric clothes dryers, water heaters or domestic home air conditioning. Electrical distribution is never static.
Also, on 2400w an EV can charge a significantly large amount overnight. You mightn’t need a charge point in the first place.
2400W x number of occupants is still some series draw on their main panel.
Their point still stands that their mains would need an upgrade.
Electrician here, no it would not need to upgrade your panel to add a garger. If you have an intermittent load, like a car charger, you can add it on to your panel provided you don’t run it along with your other high power, intermittent loads (clothes dryer, oven).
Car Charger wouldn’t be an intermittent load,
You literally can not charge a car 24/7, so if it is not a continuous load…
So by your definition there is only
- Plugged in 24/7 = Continuous Load
- Not 24/7 = Intermittent
Jesus, thankfully I also size electrical systems and I would never hire you.
It’s almost not worth the hassle for level 1 charging because it’s so slow though. Might as well put in a level 2, and even then, you’re not often charging every night unless you’re putting serious miles on your EV daily. I’d say one level 2 charger for four occupants/EVs would be reasonable.
If everyone trickle charges every day it’s make a more even draw from the gird which is easier to supply. The equipment is also cheaper for the car/parking space owner.
Places without heated parking RIP
Tons of parking in sweden is open air, and we do fine with charging.
It is my understanding that “level 1” charging is 110V 12A 60Hz AC? AKA just plug it into a normal residential wall socket like a toaster? I wonder which one presents more of a load on the power grid, charging an EV like that overnight, or owning a water bed.
Usually yes, level 1 is plugging into a typical 110V socket. You can also adjust the amperage draw on some chargers. I can go from 6 to 12 A in 2 A increments on the one that came with my ioniq 5.
Level 2 is 220V and 25-80 A (<20kW).
Level 3 is technically anything above 20 kW, but usually 50 kW is the floor. These are the EV-specific fast chargers or Tesla’s Superchargers.
An EV on level 1 (or 2) is a continuous load, so I’d imagine probably easier to handle than an intermittent load.
Im west coast Canada where central heat is more of a new home thing, every previous home has baseboard heat in every room. This is true in condos and town homes also. So every winter the grid handles every non new single family dwellings use of baseboard electric heat. I don’t see this being an issueto have an EV that can charge in late hours or at lower draw if needed
When I saw this post, I also thought about places like Camp, California, who weren’t so lucky in terms of having a safe electric infrastructure. I imagine it might be trickier to shift over in those types of areas.
It’s awesome that they managed that in BC. I hope more places gain that kind of stability.
I hadn’t considered that aspect, thank you for the information!
The problem is somewhat exaggerated though.
The technology already exists to share charge across multiple cars, and since most cars don’t need that much charging, that’s not really a huge problem.
It wouldn’t be as fast as a dedicated charging spot, but for at home charging that’s fine for most.
Which is why BEVs won’t be 100% of the market as some are imagining. It’s simply impossible for a mostly inflexible idea to replace everyone’s transportation needs. It requires a vast amount of cooperation and extra resources being spent. It’s highly unlike to happen past a certain point.
I own an electric car and I accept maybe I’ve been luckier than most but my last basement suite the landlord put it in completely of his own will and his own dime at my request. He reused some old hot tub wiring and it worked great. And my current apartment I had them pick their preferred electrical company and paid for it myself since it was just a plug like 3 feet down from their sub panel.
So far I’ve not had a ton of issues finding places. It definitely limits where you can live with some places only having street parking or just not having the capability of putting in a charger or plug but there are definitely places out there
Look, if the rich don’t want you to have a house, they certainly don’t want you have a car.
In all seriousness, this is why it’s called late-stage capitalism: because at this point, it’s going to be fatal to it’s host. We’re nearing the point where there less and less value to extract from labour because they’re already underpaid for the value they generate and over-leveraged because debt was an easy substitute. At the same time, the wealthy are increasingly desperate for ever-larger returns.
Electric cars, if not personal transit in general, are probably going to be the iceberg that the ship of capitalism breaks on: the wealthy don’t want to pay taxes for roads and charging infrastructure, and they don’t want to pay for public transit, but they also don’t want you to have a home where you can charge your own car. But they want you to buy stuff, and they expect electric cars to sell for higher prices than gas ones.
Something has to give, here.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Tenants’ rights advocates are raising legal concerns about a Toronto building complex that’s banning electric transportation vehicles from the property, including in units, the garage, parking spaces and lockers.
Notices were posted this week at 110 and 120 Jameson Avenue in Parkdale, owned by Oberon Development Corporation, to alert tenants to the ban.
The Residential Tenancies Act guarantees a tenant’s right to the “reasonable enjoyment” of the premises, Kwan pointed out.
Beyond that, said Kwan, if a person has a disability and relies on an electric vehicle due to mobility restrictions, such a ban could infringe on their human rights.
The devices are also environmentally friendly, said Mason, adding having more Torontonians rely on alternative transportation is helpful to combat climate change.
“This is a great solution for families who live in the buildings because it makes life more affordable by eliminating the cost of private car ownership,” said Ian Klesmer, the director of strategy and grants at TAF.
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117 comments and I can not find mine and only see maybe 20 of those. Edit: now they are back, 2 hours later.
Landlord didn’t approve of the other messages
And the top comments are all boomers typing “what about electrical fires!” never mind that half the people these days seem to sleep with a wired lithium-powered phone fast-charging next to them, if not in bed with them. Those batteries might be smaller, but that’s surrounded by flammable wood and fabric not a concrete parking garage. But that’s my phone and e-bike riders are other people.
There are scenarios where this is reasonable. If cars are parked below housing units. The risk of fire from the electric battery that can’t be controlled, might be too great for their insurance carrier.
Maybe if it were 2009 lol. EVs don’t randomly catch fire anymore. Even if it were true, with what Toronto landlords charge, they can afford an insurance bump.
You mean Canadian landlords. I pay more for a town house in London Ontario than most people in Toronto 😂. Canada is fucked.
Ah, a fellow victim of the London housing market. Shame how the only thing less than 450k is a literal burned out crack den.
And after paying all that money you still have to live in London 😔
Hey, I moved from Winnipeg, could be waaaaaay worse
The remaining fire risk/safety issues tend to be with dodgy cheap batteries used as replacements in ebikes and the like, and there are ways to mitigate even those risks (fireproof charging lockers, anyone?). Electric cars are much more heavily safety-tested, and I would say that at this point in their evolution they’re no more likely to catch fire spontaneously than an ICE car.
Plus, some of those parking spaces are probably reserved for visitors, right? You think they’re going to go out and rent an ICE car just to visit this place? There will be EVs on the premises anyway, as they gain market share in general.
Right! We should stick to safe, non-flamable gasoline like god intended.
Battery fires burn much hotter than gasoline, and are much harder to put out.
Car battery fires use something like 10x the water to put out and take longer to put out.
Car batteries are great, until they are on fire
Because you don’t put out metal fires with water. Powdered salt is supposed to be used to smother class D fires.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tp0FFY4oBsg
if you have the salt, sure
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