I don’t think this is realistic. There are millions of apartments in east-coast cities that have no parking or garages at all. There is nowhere for charging stations to go. The only solution for urban adoption of EVs will be better penetration of DC fast chargers (Superchargers in Tesla-ese.)
As someone who grew up in a farmhouse, I’ve been chuckling at the whole ‘oh noes what does someone in a farmhouse do for charging’ thing, since in my experience most farmhouses are next to a shop with a 240V outlet for a welder.
Well, they put the cars somewhere, right? In a parking space? Somewhere?
If it’s a parking garage, that’s another source of revenue right there. Wire it for power, charge for use.
If it’s on the street, is there a parking meter? Municipal funds!
Metered street parking is uncommon in residential areas of NYC. This is what private parking lots look like in Manhattan.
The infrastructure challenges are not insurmountable, but it’s naive to expect city dwellers to just plug in when getting your car out means a lot or garage attendant needs to spend 20 minutes playing vehicle Tetris with five other cars just to move the thing for you.
Why would it take 20 minutes? It says right on the sign - park FAST! 
Okay, I confess curiosity as to how they get cars in and out of those.
And you wouldn’t plug our car in when getting out of your car. The attendant would plug it in for you, and charge you for the privilege. Seriously, that thing looks easy to run power to - it’s not like they have to cut through any walls.
People in those apartments are in a few basic situations:
- No car at all. Nothing to do here.
- Street parking. This is a bit problematic, but there just aren’t that many cars here compared to the total. Millions–sure. But there are hundreds of millions of cars in the US. And as you say, public chargers are still an option. These people have cars for a reason, and may be able to charge at work, or the supermarket, or elsewhere.
- External garages/lots. These guys can install chargers, and will have an interest in doing so (my understanding is that in some places, these guys charge what would be a decent rent for an apartment just for a single parking space–a charger is peanuts in comparison).
I don’t dispute at all that it will be a while before all these situations are handled. I do think the first 50% will be easy, which nothing more required than the already decreasing cost curve. 80% will be a little harder, but not insurmountable. 95% will be hard and may take a few decades. And more than 99% may be impossible, but that’s ok (though the remaining 1% won’t be happy at the difficulty and expense in operating their car).
I expect that if EVs are more common in cities, the parking lot operators will find a way to make a buck providing recharging to the cars. Perhaps the lot attendants will keep the EVs in the spots closest to the chargers. (I also expect to find people offering recharging via stolen electricity, running extension cords from residences or businesses.)
I watched a video about how those work and it looks like if you were unlucky enough to get put on the top of a stack, your car is going to be charged in the time it takes them to retrieve your car for you.
This really puts into perspective how petty some of the EV complaints are. Not that this should be the standard to strive for, but if New Yorkers are putting up with 20 minute waits just to retrieve their car, then similar times for waiting at a fast DC charger or whatever are a complete nothingburger.
Even if the minor inconveniences I’ve experienced weren’t massively outweighed by the advantages, they’d still be nothing compared to this nonsense. The time I’ve spent at Superchargers in the past year are less than the time I’d waste waiting for my car in a week at one of these lots!
In Seattle, all the high rise office and retail buildings have parking garages. Almost all have level 2 chargers at this point. Usually there is no problem finding an available one. So I could easily charge for two hours, or six hours, while I’m downtown working or shopping. (I did this frequently with my Volt. I don’t have the “need” anymore with a true EV) I don’t know about residential buildings, but I suspect many have garages with dedicated spaces for each unit. I’ll acknowledge, NYC is different.
I live in Supai Arizona, and an Electric Car will not be suitable for my needs. They are stupid, and will never work.
But seriously, what’s the car ownership rate in Manhattan?
Okay, so it turns out that Google is a thing, and it can track down information for you. In Manhattan, 22% of households own a car, but only 7% of Manhattanites use their car to commute to work.[sup]1[/sup]
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that automakers aren’t tuning their products for improved desirability in Manhattan.
I’m buying one of these and moving to Supai. Even if they don’t have a gas station, they have electricity.
You are correct. Which is why I think a lot of the discussion surrounding EV adoption in dense cities is kinda missing the point. EVs are for people who live in houses and need to drive daily. City-dwellers in the northeast tend to take mass transit to work and, if they have a car, it’s usually parked in a lot or garage for use on the weekends.
Suburban and rural users are going to drive (heh) the EV market, and the initial build-out of infrastructure is necessarily going to support their needs primarily. If and when EVs make significant inroads into cities, it will be as a side effect.
The Supai link says that the mail is still delivered by mule (pretty sure that’s how Amazon delivers to me), I think you need one of these.
You need one of these. Just park your car on the rim.
There are places where people routinely wait for a half hour or longer for gasoline. And those places all have multiple gas pumps. And yes, they’re in the US, not some third-world country. In all parts of the US, in fact. Lots of people fill up at these places, which is why the long wait. So I’m not sure why the complaints about equally long charging times.
Bolding mine. Cite? I have never encountered such a wait. At very most, I have to wait for one car to fill up.
I have a short commute. 43 miles would mean that I would be at the side of the road with a dead battery about a quarter of the way home from work.
People who have 100 amp service have a full breaker, or in many cases, fuse box. They have one dryer plug, which their dryer is plugged into. They may or may not have one external plug. Which is worth 43 miles per day, max.
Most rentals here are actually small boxes with 10 - 12 apartments. It would be a massive investment for the landlord to rewire the place to install chargers. Especially unlikely when you have to struggle to even get a leaky tap fixed now. We have a vacancy rate of less than 1% in some towns, so there is no trying to lure in new tenants with the promise of a charging station.
No matter how “simple” completely overhauling our electrical infrastructure is made out to be in this thread there is nothing simple about this magnitude of change at a level that would see a significant portion of the population around here to be able to enjoy EV ownership.
Again, I am sure there are many densely populated areas with upper middle class residents that have enough disposable income to drive this sort of change, but getting people outside gated communities to buy a car at twice the price of an ICE vehicle with no plan to fuel them is just a non-starter.
There are two types. In some, you put the car into the slot & the slot moves up/back; kind of like a skip truck. In others, you drive your car into rack in an elevator, get out & press <Park> where the elevator moves up/sideways & puts your vehicle in an open space in the garage; kind of like an automated forklift in a warehouse. No one enters the area where the car is stored.