To be fair, six figures for a condo is probably the equivalent of $1000 to you and me.
Will condos *want* to spend the money? In the interest of “maximum profits”, perhaps not. If they have a pro EV owner, perhaps yes. But can they afford it in the grand scheme? Yeah.
Smaller apartments and such many need to have some grants or something they could apply for to get it done - let’s all remember big oil is still subsidized by our governments, perhaps it’s time to start shifting that money and those jobs to the “new green based economy” we keep hearing is on the horizon.
The price comment from
@GreyGhost could be low.
A friend is a site supervisor for one of the bigger condo electrical contractors and to be honest, they are not building for an EV world. With the new condos they put in a few charging stations on one level. I don't know how they are distributed.
Does a buyer pay extra for an EV spot and sell it for a premium when he moves? Does the new buyer need the power? Another complexity of life.
Going forward with this post, put your mind into the cynical realization of how Covid has shown the prevalence of greedy and self centered attitudes in the world of today. People ignore a life destroying pandemic. Why would we think they'll be nice with sharing power outlets?
A condo is different than a rental building. Once the developer has sold the building units he's made his profit and doesn't care about the future maintenance costs or viability of the structure. The cost of outlets everywhere is cheapest when they are put in at the building stage. It still wont be cheap thus making the building less competitive in an ICE dominated world. The developers, like most businesses, are interested in profit today, not 20 years down the road.
Even the unit buyers could be tight with the money. If the unit is a rental all the owner cares about is minimum cost and maximum profit.
How many people will pay more for an EV love nest building?
With Toronto prices, people are looking to getting into the biggest piece of floor space they can get. Paying an extra $20,000 for an EV spot that they won't use because they can't afford the $10,000 premium for the EV, does not work for those that can't afford to be energy angels.
A developer told me that people were trying to shave down the price of houses by using delete options, silly minimal baseboards in high end homes, just to get in the door. They can upgrade the trim and flooring later.
I've overheard money spats in Vaughan mansions over a set of Walmart curtains for a spare bedroom.
Retrofitting existing buildings isn't crazy. It's a drug induced nightmare.
Large amounts of power need high voltage to minimize voltage drop unless you use conductors the size of railroad tracks. Even if the nearby transformer station had the capacity, the feeds to a building would have to be upgraded. The building main transformer would need to be larger which could mean an enlargement of the transformer vault which could mean losing a parking spot or two.
Then who pays for the power? Unless it has changed in the last few years the condo corporation would need a utilities licence to resell power. If that is an issue the options are having the power costs become part of the maintenance fees. The power could also come from the individual unit meters but might overload them.
One property manager told me that power consumption in buildings with individual meters was 30% lower then where the power was part of the maintenance fee.
True, big oil gets subsidies and some might argue that green should get a kick at the cat. If you want to go down that road just re-elect Katherine Wynne. How'd that work out last time?
It worked in XXXland.
It's easy to say something worked in Europe but that ignores some basic differences with the New World , North and South America. The most obvious is distances. People drive distances to work here that would be a cross country journey in some European countries.
More importantly there are cultural differences. You can't turn the 401 into an Autobahn until you retrain all of the drivers, particularly in lane discipline. You would also have to up vehicle safety standards.
I haven't looked at the other factors but I can't help but feel that there are fewer extremes in many European countries, not having the extremes of incomes and education. These tend to condition people to socialistic systems and for EV platforms to work in the foreseeable future, we need to be socialistic.
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