Not everywhere, but you need a lot more than we have right now if EV adoption actually became widespread.
There are a lot of folks who can’t charge at home: The State Of Electric Vehicle Charging For Multifamily Housing • Energy Innovation
That’d be nice. Some places also integrate outlets into their curbside street lights.
There already are companies offering solutions for that. At least a couple offer EV chargers that can be retrofitted into light poles or utility poles (both of which already have power running to them). Example here.
The solution is a lot older than that, even. The apartment I moved into in 1999 had a parking spot for every unit, and an outlet for every parking spot, because it was a cold climate, and a lot of folks used engine heaters in the winter. Obviously not all apartments have that, but there’s no reason it can’t be installed.
It’s gotta be expensive to add chargers or even a 110V outlet to every parking spot if it’s not already there.
And when it was already there, it was expensive, too, because someone had to install it at some point. But it was done, and therefore it can be done.
Big difference between can be done and can be done at a cost that the owner can justify
But that, apparently, also happened.
With engine-heater outlets, presumably, some landlords started doing it, and that was a selling point for their units, and so they had an easier time renting out their apartments, and/or they were able to charge a higher rent for them, and so others gradually adopted it too, so they could also rent their apartments more easily or for more. There’s no reason that same process couldn’t occur with EV charging stations.
110V does not really cut it for EV’s. Most people who put it in their garages borrow the electric dryer circuit which is 220V at something like 40 or 50A. It has a special plug and you need really heavy wire in the power cord.
Installation of a home charger is dominated by labour costs. It costs nearly the same to run a low power outlet as a high power one. Because the cable is thicker might add five minutes to the job. If you need a breaker box upgrade it will be a lot more, but in most cases you won’t.
It still isn’t all that cheap, and there is a wide variation in charger power. But if you are overnight charging you really don’t need a high power charger.
I charge my EV at 2kW overnight, and never been short. Ever. That runs from a domestic outlet. There is a lot of handwringing from people who own EVs that just doesn’t matter in the real world. I can get electricity at 8 cents (5 US cents) per kilowatt hour overnight. (Have solar as well, but I’m not at home in the day on weekdays.) The running costs of the car are so low as to be negligible. Compared to the same costs when running an ice I am ridiculously ahead. With the current insanity of fuel, I’d pay for the car in saved fuel costs alone in 10 years. And it isn’t a cheap car. Other running costs are lower too. Tyres are worse, but brakes are near zero, which is a big deal. All the grief of an ice is gone.
My use case isn’t everyone’s, but minimally, any two car family would have rocks in their head if one wasn’t an EV. Still lots of people who can’t make it work, but a huge number that can.
Where it falls apart is indeed long distances. And here in Oz we do serious long distances where there is as near to nothing as statistics allows. Charging infrastructure is spotty. You need to plan, and you can get caught out. But generally it is OK. So long as you are not travelling far off the main routes. Then it all falls off a cliff.
well, two car families that have a place to plug in and are in the market for a new car. Replacing a car is kinda a big deal. But yeah, that’s us. We have a garage. We wanted a second car. Now one of them is an EV. It’s the one we mostly drive. We’ve scheduled one weekly trip for the ICE so it doesn’t die of non-use.
My impression is that most of the handwringing is by people who don’t own an EV and are taken in by the FF FUD. Or maybe are FF shills repeating that FUD.
You would be right.
Where the heck did the “don’t “ go in what I wrote? I’m sure it was there.
Posting from my phone, so I can’t really complain. 
From my phone app, we have charged our EV 19% at commercial charging stations in the last year and the remainder at home (we also did some level 1 charging at “destination” vacation locations which falls under home category).
We can get 40-50 miles of range from level 1 charging over night. In our life, we were lucky to have a 240V circuit in our garage, but we could’ve lived with only 110V if we had to. Of course, we have a short commute, but even a round trip commute of 50 miles would be doable (I would shoot myself if I had a long commute like that).
Level 1 charging add about five miles of range per hour of charging. That would be 60 miles if you charge 12 hours so a commute of 30 miles each way can be accommodated. In the Bolt owners message board I read, some report on their longer commutes drawing the SOC (state of charge) down during the week and catching up over the weekend.
Being retired I charge to 80% SOC then recharge when it hits 50%. With no commute this means I plug her in every three or four days.
I have a record of the kWh consumed and that month’s bill going back to 2020 – it’s the first thing the solar power sellers ask when talking to you. Since I bought my Bolt in 2024 I have found the weather has a larger impact on the electric bill than the auto – it’s charging is invisible. As I said above this is without a daily commute. I calculated it out and at the 16-cents per kWh I pay, with gas at 3.50 per gallon charging at home costs about one third per mile for ‘fuel’ costs. Getting a DCFC on the road at 40 to 55-cents per kWh they both cost the same.
It’s fairly common for me to make a weekend trip of ~ 100 miles.
Leave home
Pick up a friend with no car
Drive to another friend in the booneys for a square dance
Take the friend home
Return home myself
EVs don’t get their advertised milage when it’s very cold out, nor at 70mph on the highway. So one bitterly cold day, i returned home with only about 40 miles nominally in the battery.
Could i have done this two with 110V? Well, yes, if I’d planned a couple days in advance and maybe reduced my speed to 55mph. But those are both compromises i prefer not to have to make. I think an EV is a much better value proposition if you can charge at 220V.
I don’t disagree. But I disagree with the premise that is a requirement. For some, yes, but for a lot, no.
Absolutely. Personally, I travel on average 30-50 km per day. About 6 hours of charging at level 1 (15 amps, regular outlet). Totally sufficient for my needs. If I need to to a distance, I use the Plugshare app to locate chargers on my route.
Also, for a plug-in hybrid, 110V works well for most people.
Almost everyone has a 240V feed. (I do - 100A). It cost me $500 to get an electrician (friend of a friend) to install the 50A circuit in the garage, including material. Quick check - my stove takes about 30A/240V - front burners and oven at same time. My dryer takes about 20A/240V. Together they use more than my car when charging; I can program the Tesla to charge starting 12:30AM when I’m rarely using the oven or the dryer. (Other big draws - hot water heater, air conditioner seasonally, furnace fan) So the draw on the grid I use to charge my car, is probably less than peak use at dinner time. However, I have programmed the car to only use 26A not 40A to avoid tripping the main breaker. That still charges 38km/hr (24mi/hr) so 300km or 200mi in 8 hours overnight. Rarely do I need that much recharge (to 80%). I suspect this is the case for most homes. So as mentioned, the grid likely is quite capable. And the only time I use public chargers is when I’m on a road trip.
Very remote is a different story. There’s a location - Bechawana Bay north of Sault Ste Marie - the drive fromsuperchargers in SSM to Wawa is 200km, a bit more than would be comfortable for some EV’s in deep winter; but these Bechawana chargers are slow, because they don’t have 240V 3-phase power at the motel and gas station. Tesla could not put a supercharger there, so only have slow chargers “just in case”. The drive is otherwise deserted national park.
Locations with street parking only, or apartments with shared garages still will have an issue with charging - the overall feed and the distribution probably need upgrading. I see a future need for a centralized charging system that can manage several dozen chargers. For an apartment, for example, you would need a controller and for each plug, it needs authentication (for billing and so someone else does not steal your power). Also the ability to dial everyone back if a level of draw is exceeded, scheduling charges or sharing power adequately, preferably some way to prioritize based on charge required overnight (so ability to interrogate the car), etc. Such charger systems likely do not exist, but are technically feasible should the demand arise. The Tesla home chargers have a significant amount of remote management capabilty given the right central controller. Given a central controller able to manage a number of chargers, it could ensure local supply capacity is not exceeded. And experience will tell if that is sufficient - maybe a higher cost for priority higher charging for those with longer commutes. Like anything else on the grid, the overall demand likely balances out. Most people only need, say, 100 miles and can charge with lower amperage over 8 hours, but there’s one fellow who commutes 200 miles and needs more charge.
There is a local (Australian) company that does exactly this. They also do corporate systems that can distribute chargers. Chargers need little more than an RFID reader and a network connection, and be a tiny bit smart. I suspect the real value add is the backend software.
I can’t imagine that there are not others that see the market. Such solutions fly under the radar of domestic users. I only found out about this company by chance.