The question I have to ask: Has anyone here gotten an EV and successfully gotten a charger setup going in an apartment garage?
For where I live, I'd say we have 100-150 parking spaces, all underground. There are two spaces that have chargers, which are first-come-first-served, I don't count them.
So, the idea would be to get my own charger. I already have a safe place to put it: There is a wide-but-not-deep storage unit at the back of my parking space, with concrete behind it. I could have a charger properly mounted to the concrete wall, and I don't use the storage space, so I could keep it open when charging. The annoyance then is having to get a little electrical conduit run to the nearest place where a meter can be installed. That's likely going to be all the way across the length of the garage, and then up a level.
As for work, there are charge points on Stanford's campus, but they are not free. Assuming I take a charging slot for the entire workday, I'd be paying around $3,400 per year, for charging fees and a parking permit.
That's the real rub for me with limited range EV's. It's all but impossible to own one for your average street parking city dweller. I rent a garage, but it's non powered, so basically it's just a nice place to lock a vehicle and keep it out of the elements (and because even street parking is tough in my neighborhood).
I'd love to own an EV - it makes perfect sense for about 95% of the car trips I take, but I'd have zero way to charge it. Seems like people like me are almost the perfect market for these sub compact limited range vehicles, except for that.
Apartments are tough problems to solve. Their electrical service doesn't supply enough electricity to handle the number of chargers that are going to be desired. So they have to consider something like ChargePoint, which will intelligently manage the load, but then ChargePoint asks each resident something like $50/month just to have an account (their website says "You pay a low monthly service fee plus the cost of electricity.", but the service fee I saw quoted was ~$50/month).
I decided to head downstairs and check things out. It is a ChargePoint charger, providing 240 V service for up to two cars. It's being fed through two separate (parallel) 240 V 60 A-rated fused disconnects (Eaton Safety Switches).
What's annoying is that, although all of the conduits in the garage are run on the ceiling, the conduit from the disconnects to the charger were clearly installed after the garage was completed: There are clear signs of a trench being cut, the flexible conduit being laid, and then the void being filled in. The charging station is on the bottom level of the garage, so they couldn't have come up from a lower level.
There's also clearly no room for expansion: The cage around the disconnects leaves no additional room, and the neighboring spaces are resident spaces. So to put in more chargers, they'd have to displace some resident spots, expand the cage, probably run new overhead conduit, and do more concrete cutting. Blargh.
One good thing, though: Both charging stations were open just now! That makes me wonder if it's possible to find out past usage times, to get an idea of how I would fit in…
I realize it's a bit of an outlier but I have a friend who lives on a sailboat. She was recently told she could no longer use shore power to charge her Volt because the fire marshal thought the charging whip she paid to install from her breaker box was "an extension cord". Unfortunately the harbor master won't challenge that decision and her charging costs have gone up considerably because now she has to charge using gasoline. I can't even imagine what she'd do if she had a Bolt instead. Relying on access to power in an apartment complex or anywhere you aren't a homeowner just sounds like a potential issue.
Yes, I live in Palo Alto (near you) and I convinced my apartment complex to install an EV charger: 2 chargers, and conduit for 4 more.
I'm mystified why you aren't counting the 2 chargers that your apartment complex does provide. For all I know we live at the same place. I'm happy, you're unhappy. Given the large battery in a Bolt, do you really need to charge every day?!
In my case, the 2 spaces are not impossible to use, I've used them. (The complex has 280 bedrooms.)
Also, when they become more contended, the capacity can be tripled. (They're waiting until it becomes needed.)
Sounds like you didn't even try.
Edit: I don't think I've ever gotten 4 downvotes on HN for anything before, but it's fair to say that this is hardly the most arguable thing I've said!
Yes, it sounds like you live not too far away. I'm either south or south-west of you.
Congratulations on doing the planning for additional capacity! From what I can tell, there were no such provisions made for future expansion of the two spots available to me.
Also, to be clear, I'm not unhappy, I'm thinking ahead. Right now I do not have a car, and I don't anticipate needing a car for some time. So this discussion is theoretical right now.
As for not needing to charge every day, no, I probably don't. But, I would prefer to not have to think about it. I can understand why people harp on battery exchange: If I was running low on gas on the way into work, there are multiple opportunities for refueling on the way in to work, at the expense of not taking the time to find the best price nearby. With an EV, my options would be more limited: Hope that a charging spot is available at work; or turn around, start charging at home, and take the bus into work. There are times when it would become kind of a Russian roulette game.
Am I being alarmist? Yup! But for me right now, I would own a car because I want more flexibility than what I get using the bus. VTA's Route 22/522 schedules & delays are already variable enough that if I HAVE to be at work by a certain time, I need to either leave much earlier, or take a Lyft. I don't want to substitute one set of stresses for another, which is what would happen if I did not have a confirmed charging point on one end of my daily commute.
Finally, to head off one set of comments: I've noted the approximate for the different commute modes available to me: By bus regularly takes 45 to 60 minutes, with the data points (actual travel times) being all over the range. By car would be more around 30 to 45 minutes. By Caltrain would be 50-60 minutes, with little variability.
For where I live, I'd say we have 100-150 parking spaces, all underground. There are two spaces that have chargers, which are first-come-first-served, I don't count them.
So, the idea would be to get my own charger. I already have a safe place to put it: There is a wide-but-not-deep storage unit at the back of my parking space, with concrete behind it. I could have a charger properly mounted to the concrete wall, and I don't use the storage space, so I could keep it open when charging. The annoyance then is having to get a little electrical conduit run to the nearest place where a meter can be installed. That's likely going to be all the way across the length of the garage, and then up a level.
As for work, there are charge points on Stanford's campus, but they are not free. Assuming I take a charging slot for the entire workday, I'd be paying around $3,400 per year, for charging fees and a parking permit.