I see this all the time. “Investors” buy real estate by assuming repairs and maintenance to be minimal and then pocketing every dime of excess cash created by the property. Then, over time when the windows need to be replaced or the roof or the electrical system upgraded or the HVAC improved, they don’t have any budget for it because they’ve become used to living off all of the income (despite the fact that over their 10-20 years of ownership they’ve seen rents increase dramatically). So what do they do? They list it for sale at high current market rents as if all of this deferred maintenance / Capex has been completed. This puts buyers in a position of paying a massive purchase price and having massive costs to renovate / upgrade.

I hate landlords like this. Fortunately you can spot them a mile away. If the paint is peeling, then the electrical isn’t to code.

You also have to remember that it takes a lot of power to be able to change an EV in timely manner. It is easily the number one consumer of energy. Older neighborhoods utilities where never designed to do that.

It still works right? Great, let's add another excuse to increase the rent and we're golden!

And an earth rod, right?

Anyone can stick a breaker in, run some cable, but it takes the rocket scientists to consider neutral fault conditions, causing potential between your home, charger, car and literal earth.

It might not apply to you. Your charger might have built in protection (many don't) or your supply might be grounded to the literal earth… but this is why we have building regs and people to follow them. Even if you do the work, it's worth a chat with a qualified electrician, and to have them inspect your work. It could save your life.

This doesn't seem to be particularly strict or diligent and it's based around average driving mileage. Our house came with an L2 charger box, but we drive much less than average in the US and it feels wasted on us. I run the charger once every 2-3 weeks or so and I'm fine.

[1]: https://smartfinancial.com/average-miles-driven-per-year

I charge at work, and L1 charging was fine for me when I was WFH during covid. I don't bother using outside chargers because L2 is too slow for short trips and fast charging is expensive.

Their daily commute is less than 100km so they have no problems charging the batts with their granny charger.

In our household we have one to four ~90% capacity commutes per week and being able to always get a full charge with the 11kW charger helps a lot.

So YMMV. I agree with you. Especially agree with the point that people should analyze their usage, maybe get some experience living with an EV and never give up on the first mental hurdle without even trying.

This has two benefits: it is cheaper to charge and the grid works more efficiently — price is lower when the demand is low and/or production is high.

So my caveat to your claim would be: only if your EV itself has enough range, which means you're limited to newer EVs, rather than buying older ones on the second hand market that were manufactured with less range (and by now probably only have ~80% of their original, lesser range, remaining).

That it's been working for you for a few years does not invalidate this point, in the same way as not wearing a seat belt is unsafe.

3 miles per hour of charging is simply not enough. 12h x 3mph = 36mi range added, and that's not enough to reliably expect even a 30 mile roundtrip, let alone any errands you might run. I'd say we go through easily 55-60 miles of range for a 42mi commute. Plus, you're charging at peak hours for part of that.

Obviously I'm not saying you're lying, you did it, that's great, but you sure weren't driving many miles in both cars.

You’re correct, you don’t need to move the panels, but you do need to provide a emergency service disconnect on the exterior of the house. You could leave all the existing branch wiring in place, assuming it is up to code, and refeed the existing panels from the new service entrance location. The relevant code section in the NEC is 230.85, added in 2020.

A large portion of the cost is new panels with AFCI and GFCI breakers, they’re $50-100 each for a 15A 1p breaker, probably $1500-2500 for each panel.

> We recently decided to update our duplex’s electric system.

I'm left wondering what exactly they meant by "update our duplex's electric system" if they did not mean put in a new service, new main panel, and bring the branch circuits up to current code? Like what were they actually envisioning doing, that did not include redoing the branch circuits?

If this story were written with the electric vehicle precipitating the chain of events, I can see how that would be frustrating. But it seems they set out to do the updates, and are now complaining about doing the updates?

The utility's position seems wholly unreasonable though. If this weren't a rental property, the right answer would be to DIY the install and make the utility deal with the additional load on the distribution infrastructure.

Most level 2 chargers have a 20+ foot cord. I did the plug/unplug thing while I waited to install the plug in my garage, but my dryer is just inside of the door to the garage. Perhaps you're talking about a much longer run, but even with a proper extension cord (often less than $100), it should be fine.

Obviously, it depends on the tenant's daily commutes especially, but at today's ranges a giant median chunk of US daily commuters could fast charge only once a week and meet their commute needs easily, with no other charges in between.

Home chargers are incredibly useful and a game changer, but also destination chargers (chargers at work or grocery stores or malls or other places where cars are parked for multiple hours) are also similarly game changers. Just having one or the other reduces (and in some cases eliminates) the need for any "fast" charges. But EVs themselves don't "require" any specific charging configuration and compared to gas have more options than ever before with home and destination options.

Stop by the "gas" station, open up the hood, grab your drained battery cell cards, bring them in, and pay for fully-charged cell cards to swap in.

The "gas" station can then charge the cards you brought and give them to another customer.

It's worth noting that, under this scheme, battery life can be monitored and manufacturers can recycle/replace EOL cards when the "gas" station sends them in.

No more waiting for the car to be charged. No more changes to homes. Just use the existing infrastructure! It's a win-win.

There's also no reason we can't provide charging at destinations rather than homes. Workplaces, shopping centers, etc.

Transit, trains, ebikes, etc. are all significantly more efficient, less polluting, and just better solutions all around.

Now if you’re talking plug-in hybrid hydrogen cars, that’s fine. You’ll be on pure electric 85% of the time anyway so the crazy expense of hydrogen fueling isn’t so bad.

The post was mostly about the challenges with regulations/codes. For the most part it was a plea for governments to smooth over the jankiness they introduce to the whole process. Hardly an insurmountable challenge.

Hydrogen is dead. Upgrading the existing electrical network gradually over time (EV adoption will be gradual) is going to be significantly easier than building a distribution network from (almost) scratch as would be required for hydrogen. To think the reverse is bonkers.

Prometheus and others have plans that may come to fruition.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31264388

Electric cars are for the rich. And of course they say it's the future and everyone should do it, without realizing it's literally impossible. No grid in the US could come close to handling that, much less in developing countries.

Not to mention due to range limitations, many people and companies are ruled out automatically.

I don't think electric is bad, or should go away. But it's not meant for the masses. I think H has a brighter future worldwide.