Where do those people park their cars now? Wherever that is, put a charger on a post next to the spot.

And where does the electricity come for those chargers? Huge swaths of the USA are experiencing rolling blackouts right now because there isn't enough electrical capacity.

And the car batteries can supply peak demand instead of having a blackout.

I hope that doesn't mean I plug in my car at 80%, hoping to top it off for a long trip, but since everyone else is averaging 60% and there's peak demand, it decides to drain the battery and generously put a dollar in my account.

It would most likely be opt-in, as a form of this is already a thing in some place - you can choose to have the power company reduce the power of your cooling/heating during peaks in demand in return for a discount on your power bill.

Try building some generators? Renewable energy is cheap and a perfect match for charging cars, just adjust the charging current to match current generation.

Rolling blackouts are being experienced because the delta between high day usage and low night usage is too great to invest in upgraded peak-capable infrastructure. Charging vehicles at night will actually _improve_ the situation.

Well, if they're smart, they've built their cities in such a way that cars are only something you hire for your vacation, rest of the time, a bike and/or a train pass is sufficient.

Ah, the Stack Overflow classic “this is a wrong problem to have”

It's more the circular reasoning that frustrates me - we built our cities for ICE cars, therefore EVs aren't suitable, because we built our cities for ICE cars.

You've got to break that circle at some point.

> What about the millions of people who live in apartments and rowhouses?

If they have cars, they have a place to park them, and this place can host a charger. Outdoor parking without access controls may have security issues, but that's true without a charging point, too.

A place where you can’t even park your car outdoors unattended is not a place you want to live in in the first place.

At least some of those people will continue to rely exclusively on public transportation, the same as they do today. In our urban areas, public transportation + car sharing / rental services make a whole lot more sense than continuing to incentivize everyone to own a car (electric or otherwise)

Just got back from the UK. The neighborhood I was in had charge sockets on every 3rd or 4th parking post. You wouldn't even know they were there if not for the tiny little LED.

In some ways the UK is a view into the future of the US.

But this is not it.

Wealthy neighborhoods in the US are going to get these on the streets eventually. Places where poor folks live don't have the ROI needed to justify it. Wealthier folks tend to be older and have more time on their hands to do things like go complain at city council meetings.

You're going to get these chargers in the richest neighborhoods first (of course), and eventually to the decent middle class neighborhoods. The poorer areas where blue collar workers live (apartment complexes) will get it approximately never - the city won't invest in those areas because fuck them, and the apartment complexes won't invest in them, because fuck them.

https://youtu.be/MqkT4B-9MGk

I can confirm as someone who lives in the uk, that is not normal.

There are a significant proportion of residential developments where it wouldn’t even be possible to install such infrastructure due to the legal framework around how the properties are owned and maintained.

Legislative changes are needed here to make this happen, but alas our government has had its mind on “other things” for quite a few years now and doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it.

This isn't representative of the UK as a whole though and, likely, never will be. Providing charging points for middle-class homeowners at the expense of basic infrastructure and countless other spending 'priorities' would be considered political suicide in most high-density locations outside of London.

I have a charger in my uncovered townhouse spot. It’s really not a big deal. Nowhere near what you and other commenters here are making it out to be.

My HOA woulndn't allow that in our common parking area.