Re:The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom
by WorldMaker on Monday July 29, 2019 @11:52AM
(#20555865)
The electric grid is really well built out at this point. Every street lamp, every electronic parking meter, every exterior wall outlet on a building is a possible Level 1 "trickle" charge. We have the ubiquity of power everywhere, just not the access in most current situations (street lamps and parking meters don't currently have outlets; exterior building outlets are intentionally hidden away from parking lot usage; places that do have those don't have processes for clearing access to them / may want ways to bill the extra electric usage).
Cars spend most of their day sitting somewhere and most of that often less than a meter from any sort of electric grid connection (just most of those can't be hooked into today). (I like to play a game of spot the nearest electrical object from wherever I park. It's rarely hard.)
Fancier, higher voltage/current Level 2+ chargers are great, but it should be incredibly easy to very quickly up the number of Level 1 charging spots on the electric grid: aka add more traditional wall outlets in parking lots/garages/streets. That sort of bootstrap should be something we talk about more, because it really is hard to beat the ubiquity of our electric grid build-out already. We can take advantage of that.
Cars spend most of their day sitting somewhere and most of that often less than a meter from any sort of electric grid connection (just most of those can't be hooked into today). (I like to play a game of spot the nearest electrical object from wherever I park. It's rarely hard.)
Fancier, higher voltage/current Level 2+ chargers are great, but it should be incredibly easy to very quickly up the number of Level 1 charging spots on the electric grid: aka add more traditional wall outlets in parking lots/garages/streets. That sort of bootstrap should be something we talk about more, because it really is hard to beat the ubiquity of our electric grid build-out already. We can take advantage of that.