This becomes more apparent with governmental push in certain areas to stop selling non-electric vehicles. It’s one thing if it’s your choice to buy electric, if you have a home and do not take long trips, for instance. It’s another if you live in an apartment and work somewhere that will not have a charging station.
And I assume that people who live in apartments are more likely to work at a place that won’t provide a charging station. And people working from home will be SOL.
And I don’t think that there will be sufficient changeover from gas to electric in convenience stores in most areas. If I owned a convenience store in most places, and my gas tanks were ending their useful life 5-10 years from now, the one thing I would not do is replace them with superchargers. I would either try to make a go at continuing to sell gas with demand reduced by half, or replace them with ordinary cheap chargers, or become a gasless bodega. Regardless, there would probably be only half as many stations in town that provide either gas or electric, since while stations close to an interstate will likely be large and well-trafficked enough to support both, smaller stations far from the interstates are not. So, to fill up your EV in an apartment, you will need to make a longer trip to a charging station, more often, and wait longer. (You might need to take a slightly longer trip with an ICE vehicle also although the other downsides don’t apply.)
There is one wildcard that I am not sure about. It is not whether apartments will install chargers. Of course they won’t, at least until well over a decade after the mandatory switchover of sales, when the cheapest used car you can get will be electric and thus installing chargers will be a clear attraction to renters (and even then, some will still cheap out.) The wildcard is public and business installation of chargers for business customers outside of dedicated convenience stores. If most places you can park at outside of your home will have chargers, then you may not have to take a dedicated trip to charge as often, even if your home or workplace doesn’t provide one for you.
Ditto everything that Ludovic said about electric cars.
The only thing to add is: Even if I (a renter) resign myself to having to drive to a charging station, how damn long is it going to take to get a full charge. How much patience are we going to expect people to have? If I happen to go to a convenience store (which I’m doing rather rarely nowadays), will I get a full charge in the 5 minutes that I spend inside the store? I doubt it very much. And if I have to go to some other sort of place simply to charge up, I won’t have even 5 minutes of patience. (As things are now, I tend to drive right past a gas station if there are even one or two cars on line ahead of me.)
You theoretically can still get a truck like that from a dealer. Dealers nickname them “contractor’s specials” – a base model with a single cab and a long bed. But good luck finding a dealer with a truck like that actually in their inventory; if you want one you’ll most likely have to special order it.
Most EV mandates seem to be targeting around 2035. If any apartment owners are too stupid to use the 13 years until then to install chargers, they deserve to go out of business when they find that apartment seekers with EVs are going somewhere else. This isn’t even one of those semi-invisible bad landlord situations where the fact that they aren’t fixing your stove or replacing light bulbs isn’t apparent until after you move in. It’s obvious in advance whether the parking spots have chargers.
As for public/business chargers, they’re already universal. There’s not a single major location I go to without them. Safeway, Wal-Mart, my workplace, all major hotels I’ve been to recently, conference halls, etc. There’s a good chance they exist in all kinds of places that you don’t know about, just because they’re sometimes tucked in out of the way locations.
It seems disingenuous to me to claim that since the electric car infra isn’t there yet, it will not be there in the future either, with the mandated, quasi-global switch over.
That’s about what it was here 10 years ago, but now you can’t throw a rock without hitting one. I can’t imagine that Missouri is going to be on the forefront of an ICE phaseout, so it’s likely that it’ll be more like 20 years from now that charger availability really becomes crucial for you. And there will be plenty of time before then when EVs have not yet dominated the market, but become too popular to ignore–say, around 10%. Landlords can ignore EVs when they’re 1% of the market, but at a certain point not having chargers becomes a liability.
EV-compatible parking slots are just not that expensive, anyway. The cost to install an L2-compatible plug in a stall is likely less than the cost of the asphalt. Actual charging stations are convenient but not required for most EV renters; just a 20-50A, 240V plug is sufficient. Most cars come with an L2 charging cord or can get one for a few hundred bucks.
If memory serves, there was a story on the news about ST. Louis County, not city, requiring a certain number of chargers in new shopping center builds. The story mentioned that the cost to the developer was in the 10K each range. Don’t know whether that’s accurate or not. But developers were of course against it.
At some point having chargers at a shopping center will be a draw I’m sure.
Subaru has an electric scheduled for '23. As a long time Subaru owner I’m interested. A possible replacement for my Avalon Hybrid.
A bumper should be forgiving. It should be something that can take minor damage without that damage even being noticeable, and it should sacrifice itself, as inexpensively as possible, to protect the painted, expensive bodywork. It should be made of materials that can still look fine with some scuffing and scratches and other minor imperfections, which is why those black rubber bumpers so many of us love to hate are actually the best bumpers ever.
There was a time when bumpers actually did do their job: a magical era of time between 1974 and 1982, when federal regulations mandated 5 mph bumpers. These were bumpers that could take a solid, brutal 5 mph whack and exhibit no damage at all.
Based on data from 13 vehicles, 99 fuel-ups and 14,263 miles of driving, the 1974 Volkswagen Beetle gets a combined Avg MPG of 20.68 with a 1.28 MPG margin of error.
Mind you there are a lot of trucks and SUV that wish they got 21mpg.
They didn’t when they first came out, but now, No problemo.
My Volvo will start to make VERY LOUD alarm noises if I get too far away with my key in my pocket.
IMHO, the early plastic straws were a downgrade from later paper, as they tasted like … drum roll please…plastic! I admit trying to drink a thick milkshake with a paper straw was a challenge.
Combined MPG: 26 MPG (U.S.)
Don’t worry, this is really common. Drivers tend to brag about some great MPG they got on a trip, then as the years go by and memory dim, that is what is fondly remembered. I thought the same about my Pontiac Tempest Station wagon- which in reality got 20-25 mpg, but I distinctly remember it getting 30 mpg on a regular basic.
Very true.
I lover paper catalog, they can also serve as “dream books”.
True. But very short ranges and slow speeds (40 miles and 20 mph) . Good for about town, but not town to town or country. They became obsolete when good highways came about, not to mention the electric starter for gas cars.
To be clear–public charging spots are not going to be too cheap. A charger like that needs to be robust enough to handle public use, and have a bunch of extras like an internet connection to handle billing. They’ll also likely be on the high end of L2 charging rates. In comparison, an EV-compatible apartment parking space doesn’t necessarily require a dedicated charger, just a 240V, high-current plug. Even a standard 120V outlet is often suitable. Though state law may require actual charging stations in some cases, depending on the wording.
I’m currently sitting here in my dining room, underneath a 30-year-old chandelier, which originally had incandescent bulbs shaped like candle flames. I replaced those bulbs with similarly-shaped LED bulbs a couple of years ago – the chandelier is wired to a dimmer switch, which is likely at least 30 years old, as well (it was here when we moved into the house), and these LED bulbs dim just as well as the old incandescent bulbs did.
Not to mention, I imagine very few people today would accept a car with ~50 horsepower and basically no safety features whatsoever. I bet if someone built a car with the same weight and horsepower of a Beetle, but with modern engine technology, it would get significantly better mileage than the Beetle. IMO the fact that new cars are bigger, safer, have more power, and still are able to achieve mileage that’s at least as good if not better than the old Beetle is an advancement.
I had a '66 and a '71 Super Beetle. I now drive a 2018 Impala Premier. Here is an honest comparison between the Chevy and the Super:
Super Beetle:
Best highway mpg measured: 30 mpg
Weight: 1780 pounds
A/C, heat: No, sort of (didn’t matter on the heat, south Georgia)
HP: 60-65
Creature comfort options: owner-installed stereo
Safety: seat belts
Impala:
Best highway mpg (according to computer) 30-31 mpg
Weight: 3867 pounds
A/C, heat: dual zone
HP: 305
Creature comfort options: Electric seats- heated and cooled, Bose speakers, Bluetooth, adaptive cruise control, sunroof, automatic transmission, heated steering wheel…
Safety: ABS, emergency braking, lane alarms, many air bags, blind spot indicators in RV mirrors
Check the weight. I really enjoyed my bugs, but I enjoy everything about the Chevy more, and the MPGs are the same!
I agree with all that you’ve said. I think EVs will be more popular when folks are confident that they’ll be able to top up their charge at many of the places they visit during the day. Shopping centers of course, but groceries and similar as well.
Is that a requirement, probably not, but it’s a confidence builder for an adopter who’s on the fence regarding purchase.