Re:Water Out of the Tailpipe: A New Class of Electric Car Ga...
by walrus01 on Monday July 25, 2016 @01:41AM
(#12156710)
A huge number of European apartment buildings have NO on site parking spaces whatsoever. Look at most of the apartments in Berlin for example. It's all street parking, or you have to rent a space in a parking garage somewhere.
Why is installing a few NEMA outlets in the parking garage not an option? My HOA did just that, and while we still need to figure out the etiquette of taking turns (there are more vehicles than available outlets), it's not an architectural issue for most buildings.
End of the day, though, this is less about charging availability and more about range after a single full charge - you don't expect your apartment complex to host a gas station, for example, but you go out of your way to fill up at one and then drive on a full tank. Gasoline vehicle's top-of-the-line range looks to be 600 miles (Toyota Prius has a 12-gallon tank, so multiplying that by 50 MPG), top-of-the-line Tesla Model S is 90D with rated 292 miles of range, so I'd say things are getting pretty close to where one could drive to a Tesla SuperCharger, spend exciting 20-25 minutes there, and then drive charge-free for the next 4-5 days, with perhaps occasionally charge-up at the office, train station, or the mall.