• tonyn@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Not looking forward to sidewalks and curbs covered in a tangle of car charger cables.

    • Nusm@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      A tangle of cables? I’ll feel right at home! …and right at work! 🤣

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It would be nice if more manufacturers would put multiple charge ports on cars. Most only have one. And I don’t think anyone is doing more than 2.

      Having one on each corner would be dope and would reduce the length of cord that often needs to be run.

        • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Ah yes, just fuck up streets and waste a fuckton of energy due to wireless charging

          I am assuming you’re assuming inefficiencies in wireless charging over wired charging. One provider looking at this technology finds wired and wireless VERY close to one another in efficiency, with wireless possibly being even MORE efficient.

          "Wireless charging for EVs is considered as efficient and fast as charging with a plug. For example, most EV plugs have 80-95 percent efficiency ratings. According to WiTricity, a leading provider, their wireless EV chargers achieve 90-93 percent efficiency. " source

          • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            I would be interested in that if done by anyone else than elon. I wouldn’t put it past them to have made that proposal to kill public transit or something else. Like they already did with the dumb tunnel that was canceled now.

          • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, and most wired charging for a modern EV and charger is on the upper end of that scale.

            The wireless charging being that efficient is reliant on the ground never being dirty or wet, the charging coils on the car being very low, and the car being perfectly aligned.

  • GadgeteerZA@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

    @[email protected] home owners would certainly charge their EVs at home, so the issue really is for those in apartment blocks. By us most apartment blocks have reserved/paid bays, so I’d imagine it must be possible to fit pop-up type chargers? I’d expect apartment blocks would have to make a plan of sorts to meet car owners halfway. After all, if you buy/rent any apartment today, it normally has electricity wired (and water piped, and often Internet connected) to the unit. Why not the same for a parking bay?

      • node815@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I live in a suburb of Portland and in an apartment. Our management is nice enough to provide a covered space (a luxury!) for a single car. I got to thinking about EV’s and if all of a sudden everyone here was driving them, there would be no place to charge them, but then why not place a charger in front of each parking space? Problem solved. Then, the managers would probably assess an additional fee on top of the already high rents for monthly charging privileges.

        Living in this area does have it’s advantages, you can drive just a short distance to the local library and hit up the chargers, there, or go to the stores and always find an open charger or two

        I get and will readily admit that most cities don’t have this so I appreciate the concern over EV charging stations. I don’t know much about them as I drive a dinosaur powered Honda so it’s not yet in my radar. :)

    • steal_your_face@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      In lots of cities most people live in apartments with only street parking. Hopefully public transit will grow to fill the needs of people living in dense cities, though.

      • GadgeteerZA@fedia.io
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        1 year ago

        @[email protected] yes by us, most have parking allocation at a cost per parking bay. But yes, if no parking bays then the City should be providing better public transport. The first prize is to actually have less private cars on the road, through efficient and safe public transport.

        @[email protected]

  • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Not an exotheric notion.

    Besides special purpose built charging spots, available in the streets, my country is incentivizing the instalation of charging spots in supermarkets, shopping malls and regular gas stations.

    Residential buildings have incentives to install charging spots and I’ve read that new construction has to have it by default.

    It is doable. In extremis, regular street light posts can be retrofitted with the necessary hardware.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    A big advantage of repurposing existing lampposts is that cities don’t have to dig in order to lay new cables, says Artis Markots, the chief executive of the Latvian start-up SimpleCharge, which is focusing on Central and Eastern Europe.

    Trojan Energy is a Scottish company whose chargers sit flush with the pavement, resembling miniature manhole covers from the outside.

    The UK company Nyobolt recently created Bolt-ee, a compact, ultra-rapid charger that can provide up to 300kW of DC power to charge a car within minutes.

    Fully mobile charging could be useful for people with disabilities, says Liana Cipcigan, a professor of transport electrification and smart grids at Cardiff University’s School of Engineering.

    In terms of fire risks, Mr Shivareddy says that Nyobolt has carefully designed Bolt-ee to be ultra-efficient, and thus to generate very little waste heat.

    As Prof Cipcigan says, there is much space for innovation in the EV charging market, and younger and smaller companies “could make an interesting impact on this very complex landscape”.


    The original article contains 1,108 words, the summary contains 167 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • Tosti@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      It will be interesting to know if the cables for these things can handle the load. On an individual level probable, but on larger scale?

      • wilberfan@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It will be interesting to know if the cables for these things will be stolen for their copper or other metals on a regular basis.

      • lnxtx (xe/xem/xyr)@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        If we change all street lighting to the LEDs, it will save about 200-250 W per pole. That’s peanuts for the thirsty EVs.

        Why not fast charge at the existing petrol stations? I know! Convenience.

        • Fogle@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Putting fast chargers at the gas stations going across empty highways is huge for ev travel

        • scops@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          On a hot day sitting in a parking lot, my Model 3 loses about 10% of its charge just cooling the battery. I am lucky to have the ability to charge at home so I don’t have to worry about it, but if I was living in an apartment, I’d have constant anxiety about it discharging and not being ready when I need it. It’s doable, but having to plan out an extra 20-30 minutes plus travel time to hit a charger, that’s a fairly significant change to routine.

          That said, yes, more EV charging at gas stations please. It’s critical for road trips.

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The problem is apartments without garages or without parking lots. See San Francisco, New York, etc.

      • laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        My understanding is that most people like that in those cities don’t have cars because mass transit there is actually quite good, and keeping a car is excessively expensive for something they’ll rarely need

          • laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 year ago

            I mean, I was specifically referring to those two cities in the US because the comment I was responding to was mentioning them

          • stankmut@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I think it’s mostly true in New York, but that’s the only city where I’ve heard that.

        • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          A lot of people in those cities don’t have cars, but a lot do. Especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, which has worse public transportation than NY.

          Speaking as someone born and raised in SF, a shit load of apartment dwellers have cars. There are so many cars that you often can’t find a parking space near your building in the residential parts of town. Honestly, the main reason people get rid of their car is because the city has hit peak car capacity. You have to spend 30-60m looking for a spot in the vicinity of home.

        • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Depends on the city. That’s not true for SF.

          The parts of town with high rises are WAY easier to park in. They all have parking garages connected to the building. It’s places like the Haight and the Mission that are terrible - mostly residential neighborhoods with 2 story single family homes. Maybe a few 3 story apartment buildings.

          Many were converted into apartments and may have even had garages converted into a living space. So now you have neighborhoods with homes that were originally designed to hold 1 or 2 cars, but now they have 3 or more cars - and they may not even have a garage anymore.

      • iluminae@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Did this for 3 years with a daily commute to a different state - ~13h of charging a day on 120v was far more than enough. Obviously I’m lucky enough to have a outdoor plug available to the car area but if you do it’s completely doable.

        • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 year ago

          Same. I got about 2 miles of range per hour of charging on 120V, and my office was only 9 miles away. Easy peasy.

          • bamboo@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Even that seems low unless it’s a giant truck, my Chevy volt can charge at like 4mph on 120V, and I think I have the charging rate reduced to not test my house’s 60 year old wiring.

      • Dremor@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Unless you use most of the charge during the same day, it is quite doable.
        Sure the charge is slow, but you can plug it in the evening and let it charge during the night, like you’d do for a smartphone.
        Depending on the capacity you may not get a full charge, but it is enough for most uses. If it charges enough for what you’ll do during the day, it isn’t a problem at all.

  • WHYAREWEALLCAPS@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    This is the same problem ICE cars faced when they were rolled out. It isn’t like there was a gas station on every corner when the Model T rolled out. As more and more EVs hit the road, charging availability will increase until we reach a point where chargers are ubiquitous. It may reach the point where every parking space has a charger.

    This is a transitional issue that will resolve itself.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Ffs, can we please please stop the car centric city? Can we please invest in public transportation, bicycle lanes everywhere, and walkable neighborhoods?

    Climate change hats this one little trick where we don’t design cities to be car dependent hellscapes, and it’s good for your (mental) health too!

    • Adanisi@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      This is an article posted by the BBC, in the UK.

      Our cities are perfectly walkable, and we have public transport links.