Featured Toyota Says Public Charging Not Ready For Pure EVs

How about a manual switch? During the day your drier, etc. could run and at night your EV could charge (or any time the drier, etc. aren't being used)?

 

i thinking ev's are expanding fast enough that we don't need to worry about people who can't yet afford them or have no charging available.
that will slowly change down the road, along with cleaner, more renewable electricity and grid improvements

 

True, but domestic housing often has a limited power supply, but which has a low loading most of the day/night. It will be a while before most of the domestic housing stock is upgraded esp. if owned by landlords or pensioners, don't have the money.

I live in an almost 100 year old house with less than 100A supply and charge our PHV at home daily. I could still own a BEV and charge at home every night. 3.3kW or even just 2kW every night easily covers the vast majority of commuter travel, and manage catch-up a bit for those longer trips.

Personally, I'd be happy just continue charging a BEV most nights. If I wanted to charge at higher power levels I would have to be careful about overloading the supply, so a manual switch would be fine for me. But then I'm not everybody, of course. A current meter reading the house's current draw could be useful.

 

Dryer about 5700 watts on high, level 2 about 6600. 12300/240 volts=51.25 amps. Landlord may say you can’t add anything not there already. It could put stress on an old panels bus bars. I see people plugged into 120 outlets in their driveways with EV’s. Pretty much all the time the car is there. Probably better for the battery. It’s like running a space heater on high all the time. Landlord might not like that either on his outlet. Maybe overheat and burn everything down.

 

True but domestic dwellings often have a limited power supply, which has a low loading most of the time. I live in an almost 100 year old house with much less than 100A supply. We own a PHV and charge it at home at 1.8kW at night, but could own a BEV and continue charging at home. Overnight charging at even just 1.8kW is more than enough for the vast majority of commuter travel. In our case, if we wanted faster charging we might have to be careful about overloading the supply (a manual or automatic switch might be necessary e.g. a smart board). We had an old oven sat on a 32Amp circuit so we could repurpose that circuit.

Yeap, it'd depend on whether you owned the house, or on the landlord, and on the property in question. I'd be a bit worried about 12.3kW/240V/50A especially if the house has old wiring.

If there is a 5.7kW drier already then most likely 6kW EV charging should be possible on the same circuit but with a switch (manual or automatic).

 

That could work, Only the dryer is in the back of the house, far away from the driveway, as there is no garage. So the question would be how to wire for that with permission.

 

The switch isn't the problem.

The problem is that no landlord wants any tenant to do anything involving changes to electrical service at their properties.

Heck none of them even want to admit that not having charger access has made their unit less desirable than the best.

 

If there were an electric dryer in a garage, one could put a switch on the outlet and plug the dryer and an EVSE into it. At least I've seen ads for such switches. But ya, making changes to the building's wiring would require more than just baking the landlord a cake.

The problem with desireability is that so far, only a few people actually want EV's. And in a town like mine, finding a rental is brutal in the first place. I've seen places going for $2,000 or more per month that are complete dumps because the landlords know people will rent them anyway at that price. They have no interest in improving their properties for anyone and everyone, much less for the 7% that drive EV's. If a large majority of people drove EV's then landlords would have an incentive to install EVSE's in their rental units.

 

there's no talk around here about chargers in rental properties, and i doubt you could get a penny more from a prospective tenant.
now if someone were to request it upon looking at an apartment, and they were willing to cover the cost of installation within the lease terms, most landlords would probably go along.

 

Perhaps. But there's still a lot of what-ifs from what I can tell. Will the landlord be ok with a smart switch of some sort, or will he insist on a 200A service upgrade that's going to be at least some $2,000 just by itself?

And in the end, any changes to a rental property will stay with the rental property. You won't be able to take that 200A upgrade along with you to your next apartment.

And what about dediated parking in the parking lot just for your EV?

Sure, someone renting a 2 bedroom house for $3,000 might be interested in the upgrade if the prospective tenant offered to pay for the instalation of the EVSE. But renting a house is kind of out of my and a lot of people's ballpark anymore.

And at my age, I should probably start asking if appartments for senior citizens are going to have EVSE's any time soon. Of course if I get to the point I can retire then I probably would do fine charging off of 120V with a 200ft cord running out of my apartment window to my EV.

 

You seem to be borrowing trouble.
There are rental units now that have EV charging. As EVs get more and more common, so will rental units that have charging for them.
There are apartment units today that also have charging. True, not a lot, but as time goes by, more and more will.

Yes, those are probably areas that have the most growth to go. But until you are planning to move into such a place, why wring your hands over if they have charging or not?

 

Because planing on moving into such a place right now would mean moving out of town, county and possibly the entire half side of the state, as there are zero places anywhere close, at least within 100 miles (if not 200 miles), that rents and has L2 charging. And there's no DC quick charging in town either, not for at least another 60 or 70 miles out of town with one exception 30 miles north.

There are a few places that have 120V charging, or at least the idea originally was a place to plug in a block heater during the winter. One rental I was looking at had a switch by the front door to turn on and off the outside outlet labeled "Block Heater." So L1 at home is about the only option for someone like me to live here and own an EV.

The point is there's some truth in the title of this thread. I think I could get by, personally, with what I got now and an EV charging off of 120V, even though the EV would have to be our only vehicle. After all we made a 24KWh Nissan Leaf work, and that was back when there was zero DC fast charging anywhere we would ever drive.

But if a L2 charger is what people need to consider an EV, there are places like here where that's not going to work unless you can afford a +$500,000 home of your own plus the installation of the EVSE.

 

you should really just resign yourself to driving a hybrid for the time being, most people do.
no use agonizing over what is nesarly impossible

 

How much power does he presume a toaster oven pulls. Or a hair dryer. Or a microwave. Or a window AC.

what part of the nation is that - where there are no level 2 charging spots?
.

 

Are we talking Level 2 charging spots on public parking or at rentals?

I'm in Gunnison, Colorado. There are a few public Level 2 charging spots in town. Two are in the middle of town, a couple now at the college (which allways seems to have ICE vehicles parked in front of them when I've driven by and looked) one at a hotel outside of town and one at the county electric office also outside of town.

But as far as homes for rent with EVSE's there are zero that I know of. And if there are any, I'm sure they're not cheap.

Just take a look at the town's rental lists and you will sometimes not be able to find any places to rent whatsoever, much less one with a level 2 charging spot. It looks like we're getting a few places available though as the college is letting out this week, but still none with a level 2 charging spot.

https://gunnisonrealestateandrentals.com/rental-list/

Classifieds (gunnisonshopper.com)

 

Toyota sees 2023 Prius Prime and RAV4 Prime as practical EV solution.
What's the old adage?
"If you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem"?
How is Toyota part of the solution.
.

 

Toyota sells self charging EVs!

 

I keep going back and forth on this on whether there really is a problem or not.

On 120V 15 amps an EV will charge from 4 to 7 miles of range for every hour of charging. So for 10 hours, that's 40 to 70 miles of range. This is why I'm sure an EV would work for me and most people as a daily driver even with 120V charging, as long as it isn't the Hummer EV of course!

Most families have two or more cars. However, from experience I can attest that you will get some looks of discontentment and disapproval from your wife if you try to explain to her why we have to take the old car to visit the family instead of the nice newish EV.

As far as Toyota is concerned, they do offer something I think is a great middle ground, the PHEV! I don't make enough money to be more than a single car family, unless the other car is a $500 junkyard special that I happened to find a free engine for. But a plug-in hybrid would make tons of sense as it covers all bases.

I still think I could make a full EV work, as long as it wasn't much more than $20,000 after trade-in/down-payment. But most people that know my circumstances and lack of charging options would think I'm nuts.

 

Hydrogen doesn't precipitate?

 

lol. They can no longer claim that in some countries ;-)

Just smile at the spouse and say both cars are great. The old one is better for this trip. ;=_

It probably isn't time yet for you to get an ev, but they are easier and more convient than you think. Infrastructure is coming, which makes toyota's statement seem like nonsense.

I hope in a few years toyota makes enough phevs to stop the dealer scalping and high prices caused by the anemic production today. If toyota was saying we will make more phevs instead of people don't want BEVs, or saying people want hydrogen, it wouldn't be a problem. I have hopes for new management, but this stuff should have been shelved when the old chairman left and the new ceo took over.