Robert Gordon and Lisa Lemble cut the ribbon to Ann Arbor's first curbside charging station for electric vehicles on May 7, 2019. The couple spent about $15,000. It took almost a year to negotiate and permit. Lemble stated that it was primarily for people to know that they can put in a curbside charging station if they don't have a driveway or garage and live in Ann Arbor.
Advertisement
Yes, it is possible. It's possible, yes. Their example is not being followed more than two years after they installed their Level 2 dual-nozzle charger at the curb in front their condo. Missy Stults is the sustainability and innovation manager for Ann Arbor. She said that she doesn't know of any other similar project in the city of 120,000 people, which is home to the University of Michigan.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Stults stated that it is so difficult. It is very difficult to adopt multifamily housing.
Advertisement
What about the streets? Where residents like Gordon park and Lemble live? Stults explained that it can be difficult to dig in the right-of-way. The result is that people tend to park in one spot and not move.
Ann Arbor is just one of the many cities facing a huge challenge. Democrats are focusing their efforts to reduce U.S. carbon emissions on the widespread adoption of electric cars. How can you provide power to those who park on the streets? Is electrifying cars about changing how we park?
According to the 2019 American Housing Survey, one in three U.S. households does not own a garage and many do not have their own parking spaces. The ratio of gas stations to electric chargers is slowly declining. Some studies suggest that there may be as few as one charger per two electric cars. The bipartisan infrastructure bill, which contains $7.5 billion for charging EVs, was signed by President Joe Biden. This will allow half of U.S. car sales to be effected by 2030. That's up from the current 2 percent.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Which places can you charge them? Many cities are experimenting in EV charging at curbs. Extension cords can be seen hanging from the windows and triple-deckers of East Village tenements, Boston and Boston. Street parking is a long-standing problem. Electric vehicle charging at curb has been working in the same way as street parking. Every driver charges their own battery. Experts fear that EV adoption may slow in areas where curbside parking is dominant. New York City, for example, has just 15,000 electric cars among its 2,000,000 cars, despite liberal voters and wealth.
Advertisement
This means that there is a possibility that gasoline-powered cars will continue dominating neighborhoods with multifamily housing. The promise of cleaner air won't be fulfilled in the areas that have suffered the greatest from the numerous harms caused by automobile exhaust.
Advertisement
According to Cole Roberts, the North American energy business leader for ARUP, Los Angeles County's Cleantech Incubator (LACI) estimates that there will be 84,000 charging stations in public and work places by 2028. This is five times the number of gas pumps currently available. Roberts collaborated with LACI to develop Charge4All, a tool that helps to find good locations to place curbside chargers. Why are there so many chargers? Because it is very slow to juice up an electric car right now.
Advertisement
It is important to remember that there are three types EV chargers in order to understand the complex infrastructure problem of electric vehicle charging. Level 1 is similar to plugging into a standard household outlet. It can replenish your battery by a few miles per hour. The second, Level 2, is capable of delivering a full charge in under an hour. The third, also called fast chargers can provide a full charge in under an hour. Speed and cost are closely linked. Fast chargers can cost upwards of $50,000, and depending on how much utility work is required, could end up being even more. Los Angeles would be responsible for millions of dollars in charging fees if it relied on fast charging in the next decade. Other factors to be considered include charger utilization rates and durability, utility grids and variable energy costs. It is complicated.
Advertisement
This infrastructure is available to drivers who don't have home chargers. EVgo, ChargePoint and others have opened their doors in public parking lots or grocery store garages. Tesla also has its Supercharger network. Nitesh Doti, a YouTube engineer from San Francisco, found this to be a good solution. He recently purchased a long-range Tesla Model 3. It doesn't matter that there aren't any chargers in Dontis' garage. He said that it is not as bothersome as it may seem. It's not as annoying as it might seem, he said. It's almost like going to the gas station.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Most people who have studied EVs believe that this approach won't work for everyone. Roberts believes there should be a mixture. It is difficult to answer the question of Level 1. It is the most expensive, but it also has the lowest quality. This might be something that we could distribute wider. It won't be distributed by homeowners at scale.
Peninsula Clean Energy, an electric utility in San Mateo County is trying to get widespread acceptance for lower-voltage chargers. These chargers could be used from existing curbside infrastructure such as streetlights. Although these Level 1 chargers can take several days to fully charge a car, they are only one-third as expensive to install than fast chargers and don't require any additional infrastructure.
Advertisement
Traditional EV charging is done by placing a 40 amp charger in an old building. After driving 30 miles per day, we think that's a lot of charging. One hour of charging is enough to charge one of those chargers.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Two Peninsula board members stated it in an op-ed critiquing California's green building code. It is better to have faster chargers for more cars than it is to spend money.
Advertisement
However, curbside charging can be difficult even at low voltages. Youd think theyd be simple projectspole-mounted, streetlight-mountedbut the way its looking right now is theyre all kind of one-off, and you dont get a cost reduction from scaling. It will be much cheaper to place it in a garage. Curbside will become a niche.
Advertisement
Curbside is still a necessity in cities with cars parked on the streets. New York City's first curbside Level-2 chargers was installed in June. The city plans to make 100 more chargers available by the end of this month. ConEd, an electric utility, is a partner in the project and plans to invest $310million in more than 21,000 chargers (and 525 quick chargers) in the City by 2025. The chargers will cost approximately $15,000 each.
Advertisement
This kind of low-powered, expensive infrastructure means we need to change how cars are parked in cities. EVs will be moving in and out of the most prized charging spots, and police will issue parking tickets for cars that remain unattended. This is a completely different idea from the Peninsula's West Coast plan. It focuses on lots of low-cost chargers that can be used for a few days, so plugged-in cars could stay in the same spot for several days.
Next, there is the issue of where to place all these power plants. Analysts suggest that commercial locations are better suited for parking. Customers can shop as they wish, and charge the same as in a Target or Whole Foods parking lot. Hank Wilson, San Francisco MTA Parking Manager, wanted to avoid this outcome. It is a costly thing and requires a lot infrastructure. We are hesitant to lock in curb space for one purpose for decades because of our changing commercial curbs, he stated at a panel this past week.
Advertisement
This perspective shows the real danger of electrifying curbs in densely populated areas. It would make the curb more suitable for car storage for many decades, just like activists are encouraging cities to look at alternative uses such as bike lanes and bus lanes.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Paul Barter, who founded Reinventing Parking, and is a long-standing advocate for better parking policies, said he has mixed feelings. It would be terrible if EV penetration is slowed down by the inability to provide EV charging for residential cars stored on streets. It would be sad, on the other hand, if charging infrastructure locks existing on-street parking configurations in place and prevents changes like protected bike lanes and parking-protected bicycle lanes, bus lanes and so forth.
A viral photo of a car charging through downtown Los Angeles last year showed a vehicle with a black power cord hanging waist-high over a newly painted bike lane. This is not the kind of mistake you want to make every single day at $15,000 per piece.
