This is something I’ve thought about a fair amount, and not really in the context of the F-150. Around here, most folks live in houses in the 80-110 year-old range, and most garages are one-car garages. Few use them for cars. I am among the many who just park on the street. I could park in my driveway area, but part of it is an easement for my neighbor, so I can’t block it, and the rest is set up as outdoor dining and socializing area, which I’d prefer not to cannibalize.
I think, when I do make the switch to EV, I’m likely to be setting up some sort of weather-proofed outdoor charging, and run a cord with one of these things across the sidewalk to the car. I wonder how many folks will end up doing something similar.
Perhaps I am the odd one out, but my garage has been filled with crap for years, and I’ve never been able to park anything in it. Luckily, I have a GFI plug on the outside of my house near the driveway, and the cord that comes with the car is plenty long enough to plug into it. I would guess that most folks that have garage too small for the F150 are able to park in a driveway.
For those with no parking other than street parking, the EV charging challenge is still there of course.
I had a look at a bunch of level 2 chargers, and you can get outdoor wall-mounted units that have a maximum of about a 23 foot cable. Furthermore, the National Electric Code in the U.S. limits EV level 2 charge cables to a maximum of 25 ft. So you could park the truck in your driveway and charge it, but getting a cable from your house out to the street isn’t as easy.
I’d probably put the charger inside the garage near the overhead door, then I could either charge the truck in the garage, or park it on the pad and run the cable under the door. For people who park on the street, I don’t think this would be an option.
Here’s the relevant section on EVs in the electrical code. Lots of good stuff in there to know.
Yes, if you only have street parking, charging can be problematic. As I mentioned above.
Personally, I don’t have a level 2 charger, as I get about 7km range/hour on my 15 amp circuit, and that amounts to around 90km overnight. I rarely if ever need to drive more than 90 km in a day. I recognize that not everyone is in my shoes, and some do drive more than that daily; These folks need a level 2 charger in their home.
StatsCan says that for those that commute by car in Canada, the median distance one way is 8.7 km. Longer than median commutes are found in people who work in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. About 10% of car commuters in these areas are “long commuters” with a median on-way commute of 40 km.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the NEC really can’t give more than advice about extension cords. The inspector is just going to see an outdoor rated outlet and not care about how the owner is actually using it.
I personally use a beefy 8 AWG, 50’, 6-50 extension cable when charging at my parent’s place, since my dad has a 6-50 outlet in his shop but it’s a fair distance to where I park. Works totally fine. The car reports the voltage drop as the current increases and it’s negligible.
Really though, municipalities should give some kind of easement for homeowners to run outlets out to their part of the street. Ideally there’s a small grassy strip where they can install a pole with an outlet mounted on it, and then direct bury the cable back to the house/garage. No need for a full L2 charger box necessarily, though a lockable box large enough for the Tesla mobile charger would be nice (it’s pretty small).
In the suburbs, sure. It wouldn’t be a problem at all for me to reach my street-parked car with a 25’ cable and a weather-proof charging station mounted on or by the side of my house.
Wow, I can’t believe this hasn’t occurred to me. When I redid my garage I ran a separate box back to the garage from the main box so I had 220. But 2 EV’s with 2 high capacity charging stations are going to require a pretty stout line to the garage. People are probably going to use a single 220 charger on one car and then a 120 wall plug on the other and switch off as needed.
Are people going to have to put in a separate meter/panel to support 2 or more cars?
Many charging boxes can share a connection. Install two interface boxes on one circuit, they talk to each other, and if both cars are charging they split the available current, but if only one is charging, it can charge with all the current.
At $400+ per charging interface box, I expect many multi-EV families will just alternate days they plugin each car. Most people don’t charge everyday, anyway.
Probably not most people. We have two EVs, parked side by side in our garage. One level two charger between us. I plug in when my range dips below 150 miles, and we plug my wife’s car in when she dips below about 200 miles. It’s not that regimented of course, but that’s basically how it works out. I plug in ever few days and top off and she does the same. We drive less than “average” people, but even if we were both going 80 miles per day each, charging every other night would be more than sufficient. We’ve never had a situation where both of us needed or wanted to charge that the same time. If one of us knows we want a full charge the next day, we just make sure that car is plugged in when we go to bed. Sometimes I charge over night and plug her car in when I leave for work in the morning.
If we more routinely needed full range, I’m sure we’d come up with a more sophisticated scheduling system.
I can imagine a scenario where two chargers might be necessary, but it would be pretty rare.
I’m one of those weird drivers who drives long distance but this is something I was concerned about the other day in the shower. In another 14 years I’ll have two teenaged drivers, my kids will probably be commuting 17 miles one way to high school and will probably have friends all around the county so I would expect them to drive 70+ miles per day on average and probably much more on the weekends. My wife has a 50 mile round trip commute and with errands she’s typically in the 60-70 mile range. Each of these is more then a level 1 charger can handle so I would expect at least two level two chargers to be required with swapping between cars each night.
With our 200 amp panel I’d be a bit concerned about adding two 50 amp circuits above what we have now. It might be necessary to upgrade the house to 400 amp.
In 14 years, range and charging times could be considerably different.
And level two (or higher) chargers might be everywhere, so your wife could charge at work instead of at home. So, maybe the problem will go away, or maybe you will need two chargers at home. Heck, maybe we’ll be in quarantine still and no one will be going anywhere.
Or the kids might not bother getting a license. The fraction of Americans getting licenses is down across the board, but most significantly for teenagers. It’ll probably be even less in 14 years. Especially if self-driving cars are available by then.
Certainly, but the only thing that could change it would be be a large increase in battery energy density or a large increase in efficiency in terms of Kw/mile. From what I’ve read those will both be unlikely on the used cars my kids will be driving when they are old enough though possibly possible on the nicer car my wife will drive which would likely be brand new at that point.
This seems like magic to me. Driving their own car would put my kids commuting more than an hour per day to school. I can’t imagine them volunteering to increase that to two hours+ per day on a bus and I’m done being a taxi once they turn 16. I would bet the lack of driver’s license will primarily occur in urban environments not in the rural suburbs where we live.
Self driving cars may be possible in 15 years but taxis that cost less than owning your own car that will drive to rural areas without a return trip seems unlikely.