Correspondent Mark pointed this story in my direction. Seems researchers at Carnegie Mellon are discovering that all electric vehicles, being mandated by governments far and wide, may have an infrastructure problem that can’t be solved by placing charging stations in public garages. You can read it here.
They point out that most of the charging will be done when the cars are at home and that most drivers do not have permanent spots to park their cars (they park on streets on in spaces supplied by landlords) and therefore would not be able to install charging stations for the EVs. To Wit:
“Analysts have ignored the barrier that parking may present to electric vehicle adoption,” Traut (CM researcher) said. “We’ve seen studies that predict EV adoption as high as 80 percent by 2030.But to sell that many EVs we would not only need to make them less costly and more attractive to consumers — we would also need to address parking.
“Even if everyone wanted and was willing to pay for EVs, we couldn’t convert the whole fleet without major infrastructure changes,” Traut added.
“Landlords have little incentive to invest in chargers that only some of their tenants may use, and homeowners simply don’t have enough dedicated parking spaces to charge all of their vehicles.”
When you think about it the CM researchers have a point. If you have an EV and not a hybrid, you really want a full charge when you take off in the morning, to be sure you can make it to work. Charging at work doesn’t solve that problem. Lets say you charge at work and there is enough power to make the round trip, but after work you have to stop at the store, pick up the kids, and maybe run another errand. When you get home, you will need to recharge overnight.
If there is no place to charge, because you park on the street, or in a lot adjacent to your apartment or condo, or your garage is used for storage, when what?
These pesky little details are what governments fail to take into consideration when they make broad brush pronouncements. Witness the latest Health Care Mandate. The devil is in the details.
JVH
