On the one hand, I think that ICE cars should be banned from cities, the air would be much better, and these curbside chargers look like it could help with that.
On the other hand, a city filled with parked EV cars is not very different from a city filled with ICE cars. Curbside parking should be abolished or at least significantly reduced. People should just park in underground garages and walk the remaining 200m, there's no need to have parking everywhere. It's much easier to install chargers in a garage.
Cologne is a city with roots that reach back to the Roman empire. It has grown and developed over hundreds of years. Where would all these underground parking lots come from?
Why not go a step further and demand that all roads should be put underground, too, so that pedestrians can enjoy an idle stroll on green meadors above ground without all the annoyances that come from car traffic?
> a city filled with parked EV cars is not very different
> Curbside parking should be abolished
> just park in underground garages
> walk the remaining 200m
I appreciate the humor. I certainly hope that's how it was intended.
The last part was particularly funny. I get it. Let's dig-up every city and build huge underground car garages --which require massive amounts of concrete, materials, digging, etc.-- generate monumental amounts of pollution and CO2 doing so. And then we park our electric cars underground.
And this is where you really got me: The requirement is to be able to walk 200 meters to every destination within a city. Brilliant! I mean, can you imagine the digging under every city on earth to build massive swiss-cheese networks of parking caverns every, say, 400 meters or so? What are we going to do with all the underground water lines, gas, sewer and, in some cases, power lines?
You might as well ban cars entirely at that point. The biggest criticism of EVs is that they are still cars. They are still the most resource and footprint intensive form of transportation out there.
I don't exactly see what banning ICE/promoting EV has to do with controlling curbside parking. It just has to be banned. Then the issue of compatibility between EV charging and mechanical parking[0] can be addressed.
If I've learned anything living in central Amsterdam, it's that a healthy city has a mix of all transit options almost everywhere. Cars, bikes, motorcycles, scooters (the vespa kind), mopeds, buses and trams all mix with pedestrians at street level.
Sure, some areas are closed to cars and trucks, but it is just as common that non-cars and pedestrians are simply overwhelming cars on a street by sheer numbers. This means that most places are still accessible to a car or truck, it's just not the most convenient option for most use cases.
I get that not everywhere is going to be like Amsterdam, with high density, narrow streets and a consensus that bicycles are first class vehicles, but the notion that cars have to be eradicated to make a city livable is ridiculous.
Rather than abolish curbside parking...reserve more of it for specific uses. Every block should have at least one space dedicated to delivery, one for services like maintenance/repair workers, another for drop-off, another for municipal/emergency. Allow standing and active loading/unloading in all but the emergency spaces.
Also, we should not subsidize parking for private individuals (ie none of the uses above) in any way, shape, or form.
I agree, outside space in cities is too valuable to be taken up by parked cars. New multi family construction should have requirements for underground parking spaces with EV loading infrastructure.
I think this is cool, but as the owner of a (non-Tesla) EV, I'd just be glad for chargers that usually work. People ask me sometimes if I have "range anxiety" - I don't really have range anxiety so much as charger anxiety.
When I'm not at home my options are pretty much Chargepoint chargers, and there is an Electrify America DC fast charging station about 20 mins away. I'd say about 50% of the time the Chargepoint stations are non-functional in some way (either totally busted and have been for years, or the station just says "offline" or some such). I haven't had problems with the EA chargers but going by online forums my experience seems to be unusual - for a lot of folks their EA experience is even worse than my Chargepoint success rate.
If all these other car companies plan to go 100% electric in the near future, they really need to invest in better charging infrastructure. Say what you will about Tesla but they understood the criticality of solving this problem early on, and their network is currently far better than anyone else's.
There should be a law requiring chargers to fallback to "free for all" when they have a data connectivity problem. Or implement some kind of offline payment protocol. Heck, your car or mobile phone could handle the payment and present a code to the charger. The charger doesn't need to be online at all, it just needs to prevent replays by remembering the last used code.
It's quite simple to imagine a better state of things for EV chargers. It's however impossible to convince all companies to adopt the same protocols, unless you have a quasi-monopoly (e.g. Tesla) or the government steps in.
I live in a high EV density region and it’s already a complete non issue. We have a good number of providers around here, and they are all mostly extremely reliable. Most of the time when I go to charge it will be a bank of 6+ chargers. Occasionally one isn’t working, but that’s not much different from a gas pump being out of service. Worst case I can always drive down the street to another bank.
Like a lot of stuff with EVs, it’s just a question of demand reaching a certain level- which it will- before the services really hit their stride. It’s already happened in a good few places, and it will happen where you live in time.
Not having charging at home would make me not want to own an EV. The constant management of battery charges with the possibility to do permanent damage when charge gets too low would just be too much of a hassle.
Here in DC we have a lot of food trucks, and their fumes and noise is a sad mark upon the area. I dream of a law where these things could be connected to the grid instead. Right now that's just a fantasy as there's not a real way to accomplish that objective, but tech like this is exactly what it would take! And more inverters setup to be powered off EV voltage levels.
Likey really ? They just have an engine running, not even an external generator ?
Around here in the Czech Republic they hook up to the grid (they often have regular spots they visit, so often arrange a connection to be available) or cook on gas from gas bombs anyway, so don't really need electricity when cooking.
Aren't food trucks licensed? Surely the municipality could've placed a power connection point when they gave out the license for a food truck location?
It's nicer to add plugs to lamp posts. If you can retrofit existing posts, there's less electrical/digging work involved. If not, you are adding lighting at the same time.
Lamps use a specific voltage and amperage useful for lighting, not charging cars. You’d have to completely overhaul electricity to lamps, while also having a transformer for the lights, and at that point you might as well do something purpose built. Lamps are also not built next to each spot you’d park a car.
I wish I lived in a community where these wouldn’t get fucked around with left out in the open…
I’ve been renting an EV for the last two weeks while my hybrid awaits repairs and it’s been a wonderful experience. I look forward to more charging options!
I was very surprised by the company they chose for it, but from this perspective, it's definitely a great choice. If someone knows how to make things indestructible, it's them.
(Rheinmetall is generally known as a military supplier, think "General Dynamics" or "BAE Systems". I didn't realize they made anything for civilian use.)
We don't need difficult to fix, hard to clean chargers in every curb. We need maintainable chargers which are gauranteed to work in some convenient location. Ideally 11kW to 22kW chargers at work and shopping places and proper fast chargers at every highway stop. This will cover most drivers needs, as daily charging is not needed. What is important is to have every location always have free charging spots, since arriving to find a single charger occupied or broken is one of the most common frustrations of finding charging spots.
I slow charge at home, which covers my need for ~340 days per year. The remaining couple days, instead of dealing with broken chargers, I pick hotels with chargers and/or pick a reliable charging network to fast charge along the way (such as Tesla or Ionity).
My experience so far is:
- some hotels require you to unplug once you are done -- which can be annoying if you arrive in the evening and your car will be done charging at 4am.
- some apps under report the number of charging spots. I noticed this on a recent, it showed 4 chargers when there were 4 physical chargers with 2 plugs each (effectively allowing 8 cars to charge at the same time).
- winter vs summer makes a huge difference in EV range. I wish car makers published data for each season.
- I wish car makers published the car charge graph for different types of chargers. My car consistently mis-predicts how long its going to take to charge (usually over-estimates the time, sometimes by a couple hours).
I would argue a common scenario in a German city is the following: You live in an appartment building without a garage and your workplace is closeby, i.e. you do not take your car to work. You use the car to visit family on the weekend, appointments out of town, etc.
You can get by without curbside charging in this scenario, but it sounds like a huge annoyance.
What about a small hot-swappable battery compartment in EVs that give you enough kms to get home (like a jerry can of petrol). I'm not sure if the size of battery needed for a car would be prohibitive though. How big would a ~30km battery be?
Then instead of charging points, you could have something more like a petrol/filling station. Pop in, swap your pack, and drive off. (You could even plug the car in for a fast charge while they do the battery swap).
My model for this is the hot-swappable battery packs that the electric scooter networks in many Asian countries employ. [0]
It's just a plug... in the ground.. well, in a curb... Why is this innovative?!
I was expecting some kind of automatic system, where you just park near it and it charges automatically... like an indentiation where you stop your rear tires in, and an automatic system takes over and plugs the car in as you leave.
I think if the goal is large scale electrification we're designing our electric cars wrong.
Personally I'd love to have an electric car for the 99% of the driving I do. It could even have a small battery. ~25KWh would do, but on the other hand 1% of the time I do need to go few hundred km and back within a day without spending hours on charging. It seems silly to lug a huge ~100KWh+ battery just for this 1% of uses, then there is the issue of extra car cost and weight.
What would be really cool is some sort of standardisation in removable battery tech. Imagine electric cars had only ~10-25KWh built in batteries and an ability to slot in "something" that could be another 75KWh of battery, a hybrid power unit, or anything else we might develop in future. Motorway services could have companies that lease out those batteries.
The idea is good; but this implementation will not work.
Curbs take a lot of kinetic knocks from cars, trucks and other vehicular traffic. If you have a snow season, these will get torn up. They have to be at least a meter high on sturdy posts --like the guard posts at service stations.
You seem pretty confident that no one can design a robust... plug? Set in concrete? Because of car tires and snow? Try having a little bit more faith in mechanical engineers pls
I can't be certain, but it appears that the plugs are embedded in the curb stone and face directly upwards. What prevents water from collecting in them and causing a short?
Short is actually better than the other more common failure mode - oxidation and creation of additional resistance in the connector to the point of not working at all (better case) or melting and catching fire when used (worse case)
I worry we're replacing polluting ICE cars with just as many, polluting EVs. EVs pollute less than cars, but they produce a lot more tire dust and road wear, since those things scale exponentially with the weight of the vehicle.
Tire dust has been shown to damage salmon populations and disrupt endocrine systems.
Yes, improving infra for EVs is an incremental improvement, but we are decades too late for iterative improvements, we need to take more radical action.
I would like to by a curb stone charger for my EV.
Rheinmetall: Here, got you!
Do you have any idea where I could buy a smoothbore tank gun?
Rheinmetall: You won't believe it, but...
What are the core “limitations” of a charging pole? Is it aesthetics? Being able to drive over it? These look neat, but I’m a little vague as to the problem that is being solved?
[+] [-] newaccount74|2 years ago|reply
On the other hand, a city filled with parked EV cars is not very different from a city filled with ICE cars. Curbside parking should be abolished or at least significantly reduced. People should just park in underground garages and walk the remaining 200m, there's no need to have parking everywhere. It's much easier to install chargers in a garage.
[+] [-] kleiba|2 years ago|reply
Why not go a step further and demand that all roads should be put underground, too, so that pedestrians can enjoy an idle stroll on green meadors above ground without all the annoyances that come from car traffic?
[+] [-] robomartin|2 years ago|reply
> a city filled with parked EV cars is not very different
> Curbside parking should be abolished
> just park in underground garages
> walk the remaining 200m
I appreciate the humor. I certainly hope that's how it was intended.
The last part was particularly funny. I get it. Let's dig-up every city and build huge underground car garages --which require massive amounts of concrete, materials, digging, etc.-- generate monumental amounts of pollution and CO2 doing so. And then we park our electric cars underground.
And this is where you really got me: The requirement is to be able to walk 200 meters to every destination within a city. Brilliant! I mean, can you imagine the digging under every city on earth to build massive swiss-cheese networks of parking caverns every, say, 400 meters or so? What are we going to do with all the underground water lines, gas, sewer and, in some cases, power lines?
Yes, as a joke, it's really funny.
[+] [-] _hypx|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickff|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] numpad0|2 years ago|reply
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6blks7vfZog
[+] [-] jdblair|2 years ago|reply
Sure, some areas are closed to cars and trucks, but it is just as common that non-cars and pedestrians are simply overwhelming cars on a street by sheer numbers. This means that most places are still accessible to a car or truck, it's just not the most convenient option for most use cases.
I get that not everywhere is going to be like Amsterdam, with high density, narrow streets and a consensus that bicycles are first class vehicles, but the notion that cars have to be eradicated to make a city livable is ridiculous.
[+] [-] KennyBlanken|2 years ago|reply
Also, we should not subsidize parking for private individuals (ie none of the uses above) in any way, shape, or form.
[+] [-] jupp0r|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|2 years ago|reply
When I'm not at home my options are pretty much Chargepoint chargers, and there is an Electrify America DC fast charging station about 20 mins away. I'd say about 50% of the time the Chargepoint stations are non-functional in some way (either totally busted and have been for years, or the station just says "offline" or some such). I haven't had problems with the EA chargers but going by online forums my experience seems to be unusual - for a lot of folks their EA experience is even worse than my Chargepoint success rate.
If all these other car companies plan to go 100% electric in the near future, they really need to invest in better charging infrastructure. Say what you will about Tesla but they understood the criticality of solving this problem early on, and their network is currently far better than anyone else's.
[+] [-] amenghra|2 years ago|reply
It's quite simple to imagine a better state of things for EV chargers. It's however impossible to convince all companies to adopt the same protocols, unless you have a quasi-monopoly (e.g. Tesla) or the government steps in.
[+] [-] tomtheelder|2 years ago|reply
Like a lot of stuff with EVs, it’s just a question of demand reaching a certain level- which it will- before the services really hit their stride. It’s already happened in a good few places, and it will happen where you live in time.
[+] [-] chroma|2 years ago|reply
1. https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2023...
[+] [-] jupp0r|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rektide|2 years ago|reply
Here in DC we have a lot of food trucks, and their fumes and noise is a sad mark upon the area. I dream of a law where these things could be connected to the grid instead. Right now that's just a fantasy as there's not a real way to accomplish that objective, but tech like this is exactly what it would take! And more inverters setup to be powered off EV voltage levels.
[+] [-] m4rtink|2 years ago|reply
Around here in the Czech Republic they hook up to the grid (they often have regular spots they visit, so often arrange a connection to be available) or cook on gas from gas bombs anyway, so don't really need electricity when cooking.
[+] [-] crote|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] izacus|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amenghra|2 years ago|reply
E.g. https://ubitricity.com/en/charging-solutions/ac-lamppost/
[+] [-] azinman2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 650REDHAIR|2 years ago|reply
I’ve been renting an EV for the last two weeks while my hybrid awaits repairs and it’s been a wonderful experience. I look forward to more charging options!
[+] [-] tgsovlerkhgsel|2 years ago|reply
(Rheinmetall is generally known as a military supplier, think "General Dynamics" or "BAE Systems". I didn't realize they made anything for civilian use.)
[+] [-] SoftTalker|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bad_alloc|2 years ago|reply
Source: I drive an EV all the time.
[+] [-] amenghra|2 years ago|reply
My experience so far is: - some hotels require you to unplug once you are done -- which can be annoying if you arrive in the evening and your car will be done charging at 4am. - some apps under report the number of charging spots. I noticed this on a recent, it showed 4 chargers when there were 4 physical chargers with 2 plugs each (effectively allowing 8 cars to charge at the same time). - winter vs summer makes a huge difference in EV range. I wish car makers published data for each season. - I wish car makers published the car charge graph for different types of chargers. My car consistently mis-predicts how long its going to take to charge (usually over-estimates the time, sometimes by a couple hours).
[+] [-] kmmlng|2 years ago|reply
You can get by without curbside charging in this scenario, but it sounds like a huge annoyance.
[+] [-] ycombinete|2 years ago|reply
Then instead of charging points, you could have something more like a petrol/filling station. Pop in, swap your pack, and drive off. (You could even plug the car in for a fast charge while they do the battery swap).
My model for this is the hot-swappable battery packs that the electric scooter networks in many Asian countries employ. [0]
[0] https://www.wired.com/story/battery-swapping-tech-gives-elec...
[+] [-] hnthrowaway8860|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arnejenssen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _Microft|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] number6|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajsnigrutin|2 years ago|reply
I was expecting some kind of automatic system, where you just park near it and it charges automatically... like an indentiation where you stop your rear tires in, and an automatic system takes over and plugs the car in as you leave.
[+] [-] tempodox|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Roark66|2 years ago|reply
Personally I'd love to have an electric car for the 99% of the driving I do. It could even have a small battery. ~25KWh would do, but on the other hand 1% of the time I do need to go few hundred km and back within a day without spending hours on charging. It seems silly to lug a huge ~100KWh+ battery just for this 1% of uses, then there is the issue of extra car cost and weight.
What would be really cool is some sort of standardisation in removable battery tech. Imagine electric cars had only ~10-25KWh built in batteries and an ability to slot in "something" that could be another 75KWh of battery, a hybrid power unit, or anything else we might develop in future. Motorway services could have companies that lease out those batteries.
[+] [-] mc32|2 years ago|reply
Curbs take a lot of kinetic knocks from cars, trucks and other vehicular traffic. If you have a snow season, these will get torn up. They have to be at least a meter high on sturdy posts --like the guard posts at service stations.
[+] [-] its_ethan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drewg123|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheLoafOfBread|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] masfuerte|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RetroHippyNimby|2 years ago|reply
Tire dust has been shown to damage salmon populations and disrupt endocrine systems.
Yes, improving infra for EVs is an incremental improvement, but we are decades too late for iterative improvements, we need to take more radical action.
[+] [-] bberenberg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] felixg3|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] balderdash|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yayo88|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pgeorgi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcarrano|2 years ago|reply
- You have to bend down to use it- not good for grandpas or other people with accessibility problems.
- Water and grit ingress will be a problem.
- In Winter it will be covered in snow
- The gravel they spread on the sidewalk will scratch the glass in no time.
- When it is wet it will be all dirty and nasty.
- Will have to withstand cars stepping on it and wheels rubbing against.
[+] [-] herr_antwort|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nntwozz|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|2 years ago|reply