Americans’ junk-filled garages are hurting EV adoption, study says

a year ago by return2ozma to c/technology

A new report looks at barriers to EV charging.
HootinNHollerin 105 points a year ago

It ain’t the junk in the garage, it’s the $80k and the spyware

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aword 62 points a year ago

Yup. Find me a car that respects my privacy and won't advertise to me and I'm in.

Edit to add: and no fuucking subscriptions to enable things the car can already do but disabled in software.

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paraphrand 9 points a year ago

How clean is your garage? Do you have one? Just curious.

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aword 13 points a year ago

Currently parked in it!

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paraphrand 5 points a year ago

Nice

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blargh513 -6 points a year ago

I do not understand people who use their garage to store useless crap and leave their car outside. The car is more valuable than the crap.

Dump all that useless junk into a dumpster. Get a bike shed, put the mower in it too.

The garage is for cars, not bikes, mowers or trash nobody cares about.

Looking at you California.

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bluGill 7 points a year ago

The car is more valuable than the crap.

Only if you spend way too much money on a depreciating asset that won't be that valuable for long. For that matter storing inside or outside makes zero difference to the value. The stuff in my garage is more valuable than my car (my car is 26 years old so this is a much lower bar than most people), is more sensitive to weather than my cars, and I enjoy it more than cars.

I don't get this obsession people have with depreciating assets like cars. They brag about how great they are, take good care of it, and then 3 years latter trade in that piece of junk...

Besides, the worst weather for cars is bright sun, and most cars are parked outside in a parking lot (at work) when it is sunny, and only put in the garage when it is dark.

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IsoKiero 2 points a year ago

I'm not in the US, but here where we have snow and all the fun that comes with it using garage can be actually harmful to your car (and your garage) unless you spend a ton of energy to melt and dry all the snow every night. If there's some snow or ice on somewhere it doesn't really do anything but bring it in a lukewarm garage and then you have water (and likely road salt) all over the thing. So your car corrodes faster and there's a ton of moisture in the garage for mold, rot and everything else prospering inside.

I'm driving old, cheap cars. Keeping them dry them every day during winter in the garage would easily cost me as much as the cars themselves in a year. So cars stay outside and garage stores my tools and other valuables in a good condition so that I can fix those old shitboxes.

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acosmichippo 3 points a year ago

my ford EV has no subscriptions (other than the usual sirius XM and nav subs that all cars have). There is data collection but you are able to opt out.

Also this is more of an issue with new cars in general, not a reason to choose a new ICE vehicle over a new EV.

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captain_aggravated 1 point a year ago

If the car has an RF transmitter of any kind installed, it is a HARD no.

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acosmichippo 2 points a year ago

is an RF transmitter in your phone a hard no as well?

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Vakbrain 18 points a year ago

As opposed to what your comment implies, the drivetrain (EV or ICE) has nothing to do with cars spying on you. You should not blame the technology itself because shady car companies spying on your internet connected car. Most of them are well known ICE car brands that do the spying (GM, Volkswagen for instance)

Yes, most new ICE cars are Internet connected now, not just EVs.

Blame those greedy corporations, not the technology.

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acosmichippo 9 points a year ago

exactly, data collection is an issue with new cars in general. It's not a reason to buy a new ICE car instead of a new EV.

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atrielienz 10 points a year ago

It is a reason to not buy a new car which means people who aren't buying new cars won't be buying EV's.

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bluGill 1 point a year ago

They won't be buying new cars in the near future, but their cars will be wearing out and spare parts for old cars always become hard to find. Either they will be spending a large part of their time maintaining the car, including making parts from scratch, or they will forced to buy a new car anyway.

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entropicdrift 1 point a year ago

You could always pick up a 9-year-old Bolt

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jjlinux 2 points a year ago

As a matter of fact, ICE cars were connected to the internet way before the first EV was connected to the internet.

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artyom 7 points a year ago

What does spyware have to do with EVs?

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HootinNHollerin 2 points a year ago

Well my next car will be an EV so I’m holding on to the older car i have for now until some good option actually comes that’s reasonably priced and not spyware

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artyom 4 points a year ago

If we ever see a Slate truck, that will be your best bet.

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atticus88th -23 points a year ago

Apparently people are living double lives and are afraid their secret identity will be uncovered by checks notes corporations who already know more about us because we have a smartphone in our pocket.

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IllNess 23 points a year ago

Privacy matters.

The government and corporations abused this information by stopping protestors getting to their destination.

Protestors can atleast use faraday bags or just leave their phones at home. Now they can't even get to important events.

Now this information is being used by ICE to arrest immigrants.

Considering how conservative views and Nazis are coming back in to fashion, this is very scary for anyone not white and male.

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blargh513 8 points a year ago

Privacy matters. If it didnt, bathrooms would not have doors.

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acosmichippo 5 points a year ago

privacy matters, but data collection isn't limited to EVs. Pretty much all new cars collect data whether EV ICE or hybrid.

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ramenshaman 4 points a year ago

I have a used model 3 (I bought it before shit really started going downhill) and I've been contemplating disconnecting the wifi and cellular antennas. My car wouldn't be able to send any images/video anywhere, I wouldn't be tracked except for my location when I stop at supercharger stations, and I would never have to risk getting Grok installed in my car.

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whosepoopisonmybutt 10 points a year ago

Would you mind posting your phone book and a copy of all your text messages here for us all to read? Can we see your photo album, all credit card transactions, amazon purchase history, GPS location data, credit score? We promise only to sell this info to other people, use it to sell you stuff, raise your insurance rates, tell us where to focus our funding for political campaigns. Don't worry, we'll only save it forever and you can be assured that we'll feed this into AI models 10 or 20 years from now, along with everyone else's data, establishing a massive cache of information from which incredible inferences will be possible. We may or may not use this information to enrich ourselves, increase wealth inequality, influence politics. You should surely not take steps to limit the data being collected about you. Just relax your body. Let it happen.

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HiTekRedNek 1 point a year ago

Would you mind posting your phone book

Did you know that before cellular phones were a thing, the phone company regularly sent out books with everyone's name, phone number, and sometimes even their address in them?

You could even find such a book in public in these little things called "Phone booths".

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acosmichippo 4 points a year ago

with the used EV tax credit there are good options at ~20k.

edit: why downvotes? the used EV market is bigger every year and if the price is under $25k you get a ~$4k credit.

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rbesfe 1 point a year ago

Older bolt EVs all had their batteries replaced in 2021/2022, and can be had for under $20k before any incentives.

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Cethin 3 points a year ago

You can get electric for only a slightly higher cost than gas, just not the "premium" ones. As for Spyware, that's any modern car. It has nothing to do with being electric.

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icystar 1 point a year ago

You can get electric for only a slightly higher cost than gas

Bullshit.

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lka1988 58 points a year ago

How about talking to the landlords who refuse to install EV chargers? Or maybe talk to manufacturers who won't sell a basic EV that isn't overpriced?

This is just "Am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong!" again.

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bountygiver 3 points a year ago

Why lower your EV price when you can just block foreign competition?

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lka1988 1 point a year ago

Ah, the Detroit approach

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icystar 1 point a year ago

Or maybe talk to manufacturers who won’t sell a basic EV that isn’t overpriced?

This is huge. Keep in mind, every additional bullshit "feature" in your car will end up costing you more than it costs the business.

This is why we've been conditioned to accept so much superfluous bullshit as possible.

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shalafi -2 points a year ago

What do landlords have to do with it? Can you not power the charger off 110V or 220V? Do you need a higher amp circuit cut in, larger than 30A? (American question obviously.)

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Zen_Shinobi 15 points a year ago

Some apartment buildings are nowhere near where tenets park vehicles. Running extention cables would be a mess and dangerous

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shalafi 1 point a year ago

Ah! When I think "landlord", I'm thinking of a single family home. That's generally the context in America.

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Zen_Shinobi 7 points a year ago

It depends. More rural areas are single family/duplex set ups. If you are more urban you'll find complexes or even skyscrapers in large metro areas :)

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mojofrododojo 6 points a year ago

fast charging requires a larger service connection than a wall outlet. you can slow charge from a normal wall outlet, but it will take ages to fully charge a modest battery.

generally people have it installed by an electrician, running a new conduit from the circuit breaker.

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Usernameblankface 4 points a year ago

For home charging to keep up with a commute, a normal wall outlet all night long is fine. It just needs to be installed where the car is parked, and it should have some protection from weather while the car is plugged in.

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mojofrododojo 3 points a year ago path: 0 18926938 18928628 18929036 18929484 18930399, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
shalafi 1 point a year ago

220V? Better than 30A? I'm asking what I would need to install in my home. I have no clue on this.

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mojofrododojo 5 points a year ago

talk to an electrician after looking at the specs on the charger you want. I'm not qualified to give you electrical instructions

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spongebue 2 points a year ago

How much do you drive in a year? What kind of car are you looking at?

For the average driver, a 120V (normal) outlet on a smaller car is actually perfectly fine most of the time. If you think you might get a bigger car, or multiple EVs, you may want to look into a level 2 setup. And while you're at it, use thicker wires so you can run more power through it. But don't feel like you have to go overboard. I think the sweet "buy once, cry once, hard to come up with a situation where this isn't enough" number is a 50 amp 240V circuit running a 40A charge cord (always charge at 80% of your circuit rating, max).

But if your panel can't take it or you want to do it cheaper or whatever, a 20A 240V circuit is on the lower end of the level 2 spectrum and it can still do a lot... Like, more than double that "average driver" amount for level 1. And here's the fun part: everyone is so afraid of 240V and think it takes special wiring or whatever. It really doesn't. I've got a 240V air compressor outlet on a 20A circuit, just like what I suggested a minute ago. It uses the exact same wiring as the 120V next to it. The only difference? It's connected to two "opposing" hots with a double breaker (not terribly more expensive) rather than a single hot on a single breaker plus a neutral as you'd see on 120V. All you need to do is wrap the white wire (usually neutral) with a colored (not green, that's ground) electrical tape to indicate that it carries current. Do it on both sides. Easy peasy, up to code, and uses really affordable wiring.

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blargh513 2 points a year ago

In the us, home chargers will typically run on 240 volts, similar to a dryer or electric stove.

The amperage can be as low as 16 amps (not common) and up to 40 amps. There are higher amperage chargers, but they're not super common. Most homes dont have that much capacity provisioned and adding it to the breaker box means new circuits and often the power company has to provide a higher capacity meter. It gets expensive.

Since volts x amps = watts, a 240 volt charger that operates at 40 amps will charge at 9600 watts or 9.6 kilowatts (maximum).

You can charge using a standard 120v outlet, most are rated for 15 amps. However, you will get 120v x 15a = 1800 watts or 1.8 kilowatts (maximum).

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bluGill 2 points a year ago

The work isn't hard - I did it myself (I checked my spare parts box and discovered the only thing I was missing was the cover for the outlet, so it cost me $3). However if you don't know what you are doing around electric I can't train you on the internet. While you can find good instructions via a simple search you can also find instructions that are dangerous and if you don't know what you are doing you won't know the difference.

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spongebue 1 point a year ago

Also, volts and amps are apples and oranges. Home electric circuits mostly run on 120 volts, but some bigger things like stoves and central air run on 240 volts instead. Amperage is the other piece of the puzzle. Wire sizing is largely based on how many amps the circuit can carry. Multiply the two together, and you get watts. Divide that number by 1000, and you get kilowatts.

My car's battery has a capacity of 65 kilowatt-hours, meaning it can run 65 kilowatts for an hour, 1 kilowatt for 65 hours, 13 kilowatts for 5 hours... You get the idea. Same idea goes for charging. My 240V 40A charging setup (which runs on a 50A breaker) can give almost 10 kilowatts of power, meaning my battery will be charged 0-100 in about 6.5 hours. A regular outlet gives about a kilowatt and can do it in about 65 hours. But before you think that's useless, remember that you can easily plug in daily and if you only use a fraction of your battery each day, it's no big deal at all!

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lka1988 3 points a year ago

I rent a house. Our lease is explicit about no battery charging in the garage, including EVs. Yet they seemingly have no problem with my welder or RC cars...

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sem 43 points a year ago

Stupid article. You don't need 240 V , you can charge with a regular wall plug. For a lot of usage patterns this is more than enough.

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Skysurfer 6 points a year ago

You can make it work on 120V, it just uses ~20-30% more energy due to the overhead of running all the vehicle systems for so much longer while charging.

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spongebue 9 points a year ago

I think that number is a bit off. Yes, there is overhead when charging a car to run its battery management system, heat losses in the wiring, etc. But it's not 20-30% of the ~kilowatt of power you'd run through level 1. A quick search says that 20% loss is at the higher end for level 1 (probably 15% on the lower end) but even level 2 has about a 10% loss.

The bigger issue is that level 1 just doesn't have nearly as much power as level 2. Most cars charge at level 1 at 8-16 amps. Most level 2 setups charge at a few times that, plus the voltage is doubled so the total power ends up being about 10x as much. But that's not to say everyone needs that power either. Honestly, for the average driver it's quite easy to make level 1 work.

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ulterno -6 points a year ago

battery management system, heat losses in the wiring, etc.

No, that number corresponds to the WiFi you need to connect it to, to send all the telemetry and the LLM that will be running on some server in the US, picking data out of your telemetry and deciding which company to sell it to, while your car is powered.

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spongebue 2 points a year ago

Do you really think that or are you looking for an opportunity to make a statement?

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oh_ 39 points a year ago

What about transit? Why do Americans always have to drive. We need real alternatives to cars.

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BussyCat 19 points a year ago

The suburban sprawl makes building transit a lot harder but to fix that we need to increase density but then it’s hard to increase density when you need space for cars because you have no usable transit

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bluGill 8 points a year ago

Most suburbs have plenty of density to support transit as proved in other countries that provide good transit to their areas of similar density. However most suburbs have such bad transit you can't use it for anything and to people start believing the idea that it is impossible to get them good transit and so they won't agree to get it.

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BussyCat 6 points a year ago

The American style suburbs where you have just single family homes and the closest stores are 5 miles away?

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lka1988 4 points a year ago

I live in the suburbs. The older kids can bike to the local Walmart (save it) as there is a pedestrian tunnel that crosses under the main road, providing a complete pedestrian/bike path from one end of the town to the other.

I'd prefer if we had more of those, but it's something.

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bluGill 2 points a year ago

Most suburbs a store is not that far. you will often drive more than that for a store you like but something is closer.

american suburb covers a lot of variation. If you have a horse as some of the least dense support that is different from ones where you get a postage stamp lot. Streetcar suburbs designed before cars are ess dense than the new developments they are putting is around me today.

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corsicanguppy 6 points a year ago

Infrastructure alone to Bungalow jungle is never cost-effective: as Detroit learned, it never pays for itself with property tax.

I say we jack the property tax on low-dense residential to properly reflect a 20-year amortization and all the operating expenses of the infrastructure used, all the way back to City Hall, so that it does pay for itself (and the farther out, the more expensive to fix, the more expensive the tax).

At the same time, the city will

  • wreck a park (wait for it)
  • put up 40 storeys of mixed use
  • offer to buy the shitty bungalows around the building, with an option to buy into ready condo space
  • same for businesses, because #mixed-use
  • use adjacent bungalow space for central square. Start with transit station underneath
  • build 7 more towers
  • offer same buy-up to adjacent bungalows
  • surround with greenspace and one really ineffective laneway to connect garages under building with roadway out there
  • begin offering more incentives for bungalow people to give up their home for agri space and move into mixed-use
  • repeat until city is transformed to efficient walkable oases linked by transit

People think they can't do apartments, but I'm sure a spacious 1200sqft place planned with an eye to sight-lines isn't what they're thinking. We love our (smaller) apartment near the mixed-use block that sprung up , and everything we need is within that block. From daycares and pet stores to restaurants and coffee-shops and take-out, and gyms (plural) and insurers and a market and a chemist and an insurer and a physio... it's endless, and they're still building out more commercial space.

But you have to build the new space, properly configured with GOOD (rail) transit, before you can get people out of their cars.

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SoftestSapphic 3 points a year ago

It's really isn't difficult

Our government just won't spend the money to do it

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BussyCat 5 points a year ago

If you want useful public transit then it needs to connect population centers where people are. People are lazy and don’t want to walk more than 1/2 mile to a bus stop so if you have a population density of 1000/ sq mi that means any one bus stop is only going to be able to provide adequate coverage to 250 people. With so few people per stop it needs to make a lot of stops to be useful which then makes it slow which further lowers use. At that density it also doesn’t make logical sense to have designated bus lanes so they are stuck going slow in traffic as well. So now you have an expensive system that nobody uses because it sucks

If you have higher density then you can justify more lines which makes them actually useful and can add things like light rails which really make a difference

Bike transit is usually easier in those lower density areas but due to the low density getting between places is usually a bit further away so there are usually higher speed limit roads that aren’t as good for cyclists so more expensive barriers need to be constructed or they have to follow less direct paths which causes cycling to be slow

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thatKamGuy 8 points a year ago

Chicken and egg situation, Americans drive because that’s how their cities and suburbs are laid out (excluding NYC, for the most part).

They don’t rely on alternatives because they are slow, inconvenient or non-existent; alternatives can’t be built up as the costs can’t be justified based on existing patronage levels.

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_stranger_ 4 points a year ago

Plenty of US cities are built like NY, on grids, as circles, etc. The problem is that everything is far away.

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thatKamGuy 5 points a year ago

It’s not so much about being built on a grid, but rather being built with a particularly high population density in mind - and further supported by a robust public transit network.

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bluGill 3 points a year ago

No, the problem is the network matters. When you can't get anywhere on transit you don't use it and in turn won't help improve it. I've many times looked at the transit options available to me and found I was unable to get my errand done on transit so I was forced to drive. One place I lived I checked and transit could do the job so I sold my car (but my wife still had hers because there were still many things we couldn't do on transit)

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ulterno 4 points a year ago

transit

"We mean electric cars, you commie! The next time you talk about that thing, you are going out that window."

\s

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Yaztromo 2 points a year ago

I live in a mid-sized Canadian city, with a population of just under 400k with what is considered a pretty good bus-based transit system, with roughly 60 routes. Even way out in the boonies you can catch a bus. You can get from pretty nearly any point A to any point B on the bus.

And yet I and those who can afford to do so generally avoid the bus. Our streets are still filled with cars during rush hour (which, as someone who has 100% WFM for the last 15 years I’m happy to say I’m not contributing to). Reasons?

  1. If your origin and destination aren’t on the same route, you’re going to need to transfer. Possibly multiple times. And wait for those transfers.
  2. Buses are sometimes either late, or too full and don’t stop. Which means if you rely on taking the bus to get to work, you had better be up quite early to ensure you get to your destination on time.
  3. Bus people. Creepy old guys hitting on young (or even old) girls and women. People who haven’t showered in a while sitting next to you. The people who think their bag is too important and needs a seat. We bought my wife a car the week after some racist tried to attack her.

You know what doesn’t have any of those problems? My car. I can crank my music up if I want to. I get to pick who is in my car. I don’t have to get up extra early to make sure I get to my destination on time because the bus might be late, full, or because I have to make multiple transfers (at each point of which the bus could be late or full…).

I’m glad we have the bus system we have for those people who need it. I know we have people in our city who don’t have the privilege of owning a vehicle of their own — and for some people whose needs are simple the bus can likely work just fine. I’m glad we have that system for the people who don’t otherwise have a choice — but for everyone who has that choice, the choice is typically being in their own private vehicle where they can sing loudly, eat and drink whatever they like, control who rides with them, and go wherever they want to — heck, I can even change my mind about my destination mid-drive and go wherever I want to without having to switch cars.

I’ll admit, having taken transit in bigger cities (Toronto, Montreal, Istanbul) being able to take a train (subway, LRT, surface rail, streetcars etc.) can be pretty great. I think bigger cities need this kind of transit — even with its many, many problems it can beat out taking a car to a downtown core. But even when I lived in some of these cities I still had a car. But the size of my current home city just isn’t big enough to accommodate that level of transit. The cost would just be too horrendous.

Can everyone do better? Sure. But I don’t think such improvements are going to significantly encourage more people to take transit over their own vehicles.

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petit_fou 2 points a year ago

There's many smaller cities than yours in Europe with a tram network. Volchansk in Russia has a tram line with a population of 10k. Canada isn't know for having great public transport... In a city like Hong Kong you don't need a car, it's so convenient.

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rbesfe 2 points a year ago

Hamilton? Guessing it because of the racism

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icystar 1 point a year ago

Have you seen America? It's huge.

There's also way more to America than the metropolitan cities you've been conditioned to prioritize.

path: 0 18933916 19005180, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 1
oh_ 3 points a year ago

Yes. I grew up in the Midwest. In rural America. I live in a city now on the west coast… Transit is a great option for metropolitan areas. U.S. cities in general have terrible transit options, big highways ruining core city areas and no thought of pedestrians in many areas. We need to start with fixing that. Slowing down urban corridors, taking away parking, adding better light rail to encourage less use of cars. Yes, in rural areas and outlying areas cars will of course still be needed. It’s a huge country.

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percent 1 point a year ago

Honestly, it's just so convenient to be able to get in the car and go (unless the destination's parking situation is really bad).

Americans value convenience quite a lot. We even trade our personal data for it.

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echodot 5 points a year ago

The design of US cities has reinforced this.

Nobody actually lives anywhere near the places they need to work and shop so driving is the only option. Because everything's so spread out public transport is terrible because it's not possible to provide a decent service.

You have as a much denser population in Europe than the US by land area, so everything's closer together and it's easier to build public transport infrastructure in that scenario, because every stop serves a greater number of people. Plus there isn't such a great distance between the suburban areas and the urban areas. Personally I can get from suburbia to urban the area with a 1-minute walk. I don't understand why Americans have to be 10 miles away from their cities.

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percent 2 points a year ago

Ah that makes sense. Personally, I tend to avoid urban areas if possible. Too much air pollution, noise pollution, light pollution, people... Maybe it's a sensory thing. I could see how it's much easier to build a public transit system when everyone's so close together though

path: 0 18933916 18984667 18985076 18988280, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0
roofuskit 30 points a year ago

Couldn't be that most Americans can't afford new cars.

path: 0 18969982, hotness: undefined, score: 30, children: 2
3abas 0 points a year ago

Because they keep buying shit they don't need and hording it in the garage, while their car sits outside in the driveway exposed to the elements.

Hyperinflation and incoming recession aside, Americans have been using their garages for junk storage for many decades.

path: 0 18969982 18984185, hotness: undefined, score: 0, children: 1
icystar 2 points a year ago

Don't get me wrong, most of them spend money like morons while complaining they need more.

However, electric vehicles are still just too expensive of an investment to justify to the average American.

This could probably be fixed if the leeches maximizing profit off of them made less profit, but why would they do that unless they're forced to?

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M0oP0o 29 points a year ago

People can't afford a new car, let alone an EV, let alone a carport or car hole.

This is just tone deaf poor blaming.

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cupcakezealot 18 points a year ago

pretty sure it's the lack of money that's hurting ev adoption.

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paraphrand 3 points a year ago

There can be multiple factors.

People with garages big enough for a nice car that also have it stuffed with things probally have money too. Right?

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icystar 1 point a year ago

People with garages big enough for a nice car

What the fuck? I can tell you don't have a garage, because for 99% of them size isn't going to impact the 'niceness' of the car you can have in it.

Challenge: People who lived in major cities understanding that there's more to life than what goes on in them.

Level: Impossible.

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paraphrand 0 points a year ago

I have a garage. And it’s one of the ones that barely fits a standard sized car.

It’s also full of stuff due to the house being super tiny too. The house has zero closets, no basement, single floor. It’s apartment sized, basically.

It’s a small town, the house is 100+ years old from what I understand.

So you’re saying for the purposes of this article that most people live outside of cities in the US? And space shouldn’t be an issue? I’m not sure what your meme is about here.

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HiTekRedNek 1 point a year ago

I have a garage that could hold 4 cars if you parked 2 rows of them....

My single income household of 3 is just barely above the national poverty level.

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Bbbbbbbbbbb 17 points a year ago

Money and options are hurting my adaption rate

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simplejack 15 points a year ago

If you need to top off with 200 - 300 miles of range every night, you commute sucks giant donkey balls.

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panda_abyss 14 points a year ago

I moved in to a house with a garage and my in laws are constantly trying to give us crap to fill it up.

I don’t even know where they’re getting this stuff, they just show up and are like “oh, we’re getting rid of this dresser, we thought you’d like it” or “or, I bought this antique trunk at a yard sale, can you hold on to it”.

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Blackfeathr 7 points a year ago

Yeah, my bfs dad is constantly filling his house, garage, and yard with a bunch of crap that he'll never use. It just sits there and gets forgotten and deteriorates. Took us 6 years but we got like 90% of what he was storing out of our house too.

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tyler 4 points a year ago

Too real

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baggachipz 3 points a year ago

Same here. Luckily our basement flooded and we were like “oh well, guess it’s all ruined and has to be thrown away 🤷”

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muusemuuse 13 points a year ago

Weird. I haven’t had a garage in a most of the places I’ve lived as an adult and I drive electric and charge at home just fine.

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echodot 11 points a year ago

That's irrelevant because as far as I know you don't actually have to have the car in the garage to be able to charge it you can put the charger on the outside if you want.

Also I don't know how it is in America but my garage is literally too small for the car, I can just about get it in there but then I'm stuck because I can't open the door far enough to get out.

path: 0 18985039, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 6
Dicska 2 points a year ago path: 0 18985039 18997551, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0
chonglibloodsport -1 points a year ago

Many Americans have huge garages, some with room to park 2 or even 3 vehicles with plenty of space to walk around them. But even single garages are large enough to park cars.

path: 0 18985039 18991515, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 4
TheLadyAugust 3 points a year ago

Cars are much wider now than they used to be. Garages that were built more than 50 years ago likely are thinner.

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roscoe 2 points a year ago

My grandparents house built just after ww2 had, what was for a long time, a standard two car garage. Enough room for two land yachts from the 70s, lawn care implements and various other stuff and you could still open the car doors all the way and walk around. My parents' house built in the 70s was the same. It's more recent construction in built up areas where they are shrinking. They've been getting smaller as developers try to cram more liveable sqft on smaller amounts of land.

path: 0 18985039 18991515 18992548 18994903, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0
chonglibloodsport 1 point a year ago

Sure, though the UK has a much larger proportion of those old houses than the US.

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amongstthetrees 2 points a year ago

I've seen in newer slapped together constructions where yes, wide enough for two cars but they skimped on depth and the average sedan or larger won't actually fit.

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acosmichippo 10 points a year ago

you don’t even need a garage to charge your EV, just install it on the exterior.

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frongt 4 points a year ago

Yeah lemme just do that on my apartment

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GreyEyedGhost 10 points a year ago

Does your apartment have a garage? No? Then what does this add to the conversation?

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redknight942 12 points a year ago

They wanted to supply some negative charge.

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sem 1 point a year ago

I'm sensing a lot of resistance.

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acosmichippo 7 points a year ago

this article is about junk filled garages, so clearly not talking about apartment dwellers.

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officermike 9 points a year ago

We have a one-car garage and two cars. I have a table saw, therefore we have a no-car garage.

path: 0 18926531, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
calmluck9349 8 points a year ago

Pretty sure it's the range and charge times. Especially in the Midwest. I need a car that can take me to Florida in under 16 hours. Also I own a EV

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surewhynotlem 19 points a year ago

The real problem is having to go to Florida so regularly. I feel for ya.

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icystar 1 point a year ago

Nothing really wrong with florida.

I say this, because I've come across genuine morons who live in Texas and have the nerve to scoff at florida while ignoring their shithole state and the one directly to the east of it.

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Devmapall 7 points a year ago

My parents have a garage full of junk. It used to drive me crazy. We have strong storms where we live and a tree/branches falling are a real possibility of damaging their cars. Plus hail storms sometimes.

It's mainly my moms stuff. Some of it is worth money but it's not being sold or anything.

If they used the garage as something other than storage it would be one thing. Instead it's full of stuff for no real reason.

path: 0 18926365, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 3
SnotFlickerman 3 points a year ago

Some of it is worth money but it’s not being sold or anything.

My mother refuses to admit she's a hoarder, and none of her things are really valuable. She's clean, it's not like she lives in filth, but she lives in 4000 square feet (main floor + basement) and has three full wall closets plus a room in the basement all filled with every item of clothing she has ever owned. I can barely fill a small closet with all my clothing. Her closets aren't small, either. They are about 15 feet wide, each. So three 15 feet wide closets absolutely crammed with shit, and each one of them has storage space broken into three sections, about three feet tall each above each closet. Everything is crammed full. None of it is ever pulled out to be used for anything. She has all these things from her family she has kept for "memories" but 1. they mean nothing to me because I hate my extended family and 2. I won't be able to afford to store them and won't have reason to when she's gone.

I don't fucking get it, it's a massive house, and it's just stuffed to the fucking brim with crap crap crap!

path: 0 18926365 18926460, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 2
paraphrand 8 points a year ago

There are lots of factors that lead to people of her generation ending up like this. It’s really common.

One factor for some people, is not wanting to face how wasteful we are. It’s putting off the reality that it’s all landfill. Just one of many reasons. And I think it might be common with people who are not exactly hoarders, but also manage to hold on to so much.

Sure, they could donate it… but the rationalization could spin up again knowing that’s just another cope, because most of it will go from the donation place to the landfill.

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GreyEyedGhost 7 points a year ago

The big thing I see in my mom is she grew up with almost nothing, and all this stuff keeps her a little further from ever being in that situation again. I get it, but it isn't a healthy way to deal with that fear, and you'd be better off saving the money instead. But she doesn't trust banks, so that's another negative. 🤷‍♂️

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artyom 4 points a year ago

I know lots of people who just run the cable under the door...

path: 0 18927876, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0
richardmtanguay 3 points a year ago
path: 0 18993773, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
Kolanaki 3 points a year ago

Me, who doesn't even have a garage: Yeah... That'e what stops me from getting an EV...

path: 0 18926818, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
paraphrand 2 points a year ago

lol, this totally makes sense to me. It can’t be the only reason. But my lived experience tells me it’s not insignificant.

path: 0 18926486, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0
etherphon 1 point a year ago
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icystar 1 point a year ago

No, it's the price.

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Deflated0ne -6 points a year ago

If you're work commuting with an EV and charging at home. What's the hit to your electric bill?

Because that's one of a few bottlenecks. $10 every few days for some gas is a lot easier on people than a blanket X hundreds of dollars higher light bill.

Being poor is expensive.

path: 0 18992792, hotness: undefined, score: -6, children: 3
roscoe 6 points a year ago

You're right, being poor is expensive, but that doesn't really apply to charging a vehicle.

The term "being poor is expensive" is generally applied to situations where you don't have the money to pay for something upfront (a quality product, bulk purchases, preventative maintenance, preventative healthcare, down payment on a house) so you have to spend smaller amounts of money repeatedly and/or have a large unavoidable cost as a result (multiple cheap products that wear out, multiple small purchases with a higher per unit price, a blown engine, a root canal, rent), which can cost a lot more over time.

The electric bill is post-paid, not up front. Not being able to set aside the "$10 every few days" to pay the higher bill at the end of the month with money left over is just poor money management.

That being said, the higher purchase cost of electric vehicles preventing poor people from taking advantage of lower operating costs that would more than offset the higher purchase price after some number of years is an example of it being expensive to be poor.

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hank_and_deans 2 points a year ago

I was paying $385 per month in gas for an Astra hatchback, which is not exactly a gas guzzler, though I did live in the mountains at the time.

I replaced it with a Bolt EV and the hit to my electric bill was about $50 with the same commute.

path: 0 18992792 18998856, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0
Denalduh 1 point a year ago

My MIL has had the original leaf and is now driving a newer Bolt. She said her bill only went up 20-30 bucks a month compared to what she was spending a month on gas.

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