Although all by themselves my personal habits aren’t dramatically turning up the dial on global warming, I still want to do what I can for the planet. At home, my Amazon deliveries come bundled, my appliances are Energy Star certified, my toilet is dual flush, and I’ve replaced the oil-burning furnace with a heat pump and installed solar panels. I’d consider getting an electric vehicle, too, except for one problem: I live in New York City and don’t have a private garage. So although I can walk to the curb to deposit my recycling and compost scraps, finding a curbside EV charger for public use isn’t so easy. Of course, charging an EV is not as much of a conundrum for non-urban dwellers because of the greater likelihood that they have access to a private garage or dedicated parking space. There they can connect their car manufacturer-supplied cable into a standard 120-volt outlet, known as Level 1 charging, which can take 60 hours to deliver a full charge. Depending on the vehicle this will get you between 2 and 4 miles of range per hour of charging. Or to charge their cars five to seven times faster, they can install a Level 2 charger that delivers 240 volts of power. Many EVs can add 30 miles of range per hour or more in this case. (A third type of charger, Level 3, or DC fast charging, is even speedier but is not the kind you can install in your home.)Still, all EV owners are affected by the difficulty of accessing public charging. A 2022 Consumer Reports nationally representative survey (PDF) of 8,027 U.S. adults found that charging logistics, such as where and when they’d be able to charge an EV, were the main barrier to purchasing an EV—beating out range anxiety (concern about how far an EV can travel on a single charge) as well as the costs involved with buying, owning, and maintaining an EV.
Posted:Tue Dec 05 06:00:01 EST 2023