SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The global fleet of electric vehicles grew 60% last year, and while predictions vary, some people claim that we'll all be driving (or riding in) electric vehicles within just a few decades.
But in many cities, one major impediment could slow down adoption: Where the heck do you charge your car if you don't have a driveway or garage?
Hounslow Council in London has implemented an interesting—and aesthetically pleasing—solution to this problem. It has converted its streetlights to energy efficient LEDs and, in doing so, is integrating electric vehicle charging points in the base of those streetlamps. The charge points themselves come from German company Ubitricity, and they integrate with a custom charging cable—which is ordered by the EV owner/driver—that has an electricity meter built in.
So if you happen to live in Hounslow, you simply request a charging point from your council, they install three near your house (they are trying to avoid painting dedicated electric vehicle bays). You then order an Ubitricity cable, you plug in, and you start charging. Ubitricity then sends you a monthly bill, charged at a competitive rate of £0.13 per kWh. And that's it.
Who's liable when pedestrians trip on the charging cables?
[Ed note - As a side note, apparently the LED streetlamp replacement has some issues.] - Fnord666
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @11:33PM
amirite?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday June 20 2017, @11:42PM (6 children)
How much is that nice thick copper cable worth, and how it is bolted to the car and the post?
(Score: 3, Informative) by NewNic on Tuesday June 20 2017, @11:45PM (4 children)
The J1772 standard (the car side of the connector) includes a locking mechanism.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2, Touché) by tftp on Wednesday June 21 2017, @02:46AM (3 children)
How much the locking mechanism is worth?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @03:41AM (2 children)
How much is the car worth? Or just the batteries? What's the lamppost make from?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @02:10PM (1 child)
1. Attach cable to "charging port" on modified van. 2. Drive away and rip out the cable. 3. If observed caught say "oops". 4. Throw cable into van.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @03:26PM
https://www.ubitricity.com/en [ubitricity.com]
Doesn't look like you'd get much copper out of it. Grab a 10x longer extension cord from any random shed.
The cable belongs to the owner, so it's already attached to the car not just hanging off the lamppost waiting for you to yank it out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @02:25AM
Yeah, if I was a copper thief in Hounslow, I'd be licking my chops.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @11:44PM (11 children)
If the streetlights are too bright why not just charge with a solor panel?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Wednesday June 21 2017, @01:23AM (10 children)
One of the more subversive effects of the "safety over all" mindset is that streetlights make the night sky [flickr.com] inaccessible to those anywhere near them.
So yes, the vast majority of streetlights are too bright.
I absolutely despise gratuitous lighting. Just in case that wasn't obvious. I am lucky enough to live in one of the still-very-dark regions of the USA. The Bakken oil field is just a few hundred miles from here, and it posed a huge threat to my area due to the failure of the drillers to properly deal with the outgassing from the wells (the gasses are burned off... such torches burn very bright. [flickr.com]); luckily, oil prices cratered, and the field's activity has dropped a great deal, so there's zero expansion going on at this time.
Feh. People have lost so much, and they're mostly blithely unaware of it. Streetlights. Double-feh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @03:57AM (8 children)
Which sounds great until you wind up being mugged or raped in the shadows because the lights weren't bright enough to give you adequate view of what's going on around you. It sucks that we're losing the night sky, but you make it sound like this isn't a reasonable measure to keep people safe.
Things like this do make a meaningful difference in crime rates.
The best thing would be to figure find a single wavelength or the smallest possible portion of the visible spectrum for use with the lights and hopefully make it easier to filter out just that portion of the spectrum.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by bob_super on Wednesday June 21 2017, @06:10AM (1 child)
>until you wind up being mugged or raped in the shadows
Guns reduce crime rates, I've been told.
Obvious solution: Arm everyone with a gun, then you can turn off all the lights.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:39PM
Great, I'll go order my night vision goggles right now.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TheRaven on Wednesday June 21 2017, @10:42AM (4 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:50PM (1 child)
Yep, this is a known issue and one of the ways in that the older, less-bright, yellowish streetlights were better is that they didn't produce so more contrast that you couldn't see past the lit up area.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday June 21 2017, @04:58PM
That's another reason flashlights are better: instead of one pool of light where you can see, you can put light anywhere you actually need or want to see, any time you want to.
Anyone who thinks streetlights make them "safer" needs to go stand under one and look around at all the places they now can't see. Because if there's one thing streetlights do very well, it's create deep pools of shadows.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday June 21 2017, @04:20PM
That's true when you live in suburbia, but anywhere with lit houses and intermittent car headlights will leave you unable to use your night vision.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @08:45PM
In my town, when there is sufficient cloud cover at night, it is lit up like day. The street lights reflect off the clouds and you can see everywhere.
It was pretty disconcerting for me the first few times it happened.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday June 21 2017, @04:53PM
Did you ever hear of that marvelous new invention, the "flashlight"? Not only does it give more than enough light to walk around with, you can point it into shadow areas to see what is there; even shadows where streetlights don't reach. For those times when you're walking around at night. I use one myself. Works fine.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:19PM
Sorry for all the pokes at North Dakotans, Bro.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:35AM (3 children)
LED is used for energy efficiency. Why would the conversion help charge EV?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:58AM
I think that he thought . . .
Naaahhh, forget it. This can only devolve into a "Who's on second" type of comedy discussion. Let's not go there.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @01:58AM
Wild guess: the old cable that runs under the street to the lamp post is dimensioned for old lightbulbs (OTOH, I thought street ones were rather efficient, but expensive and slow to warm up). Now LED bulbs use (a lot?) less, so the cable can be used mostly for the charging.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @04:53PM
LEDs tend to be DC by nature. The old sodium street lamps are AC. Charging your car battery is also DC. So with sodium street lamps you'd need to convert the AC to DC to charge your car. With LED lamps it's already DC so you have one less conversion to do (still might need to mess with it to get the right voltage/current needs for your specific car though).
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:59AM (5 children)
Folks, that's not great.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @01:25AM
Totally inefficient government, the free market has already installed....oops...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @02:27AM (3 children)
I didn't vote for you because I disagreed with one of your campaign associates' position on the issue of whether or not we should put taco trucks on every corner. I'm pro-taco truck.
Can we compromise?
If we privatize the conversion of streetlamps into charging stations, can we have a system where you request one taco truck and they install three? I am comfortable with privatizing the taco trucks as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @03:44AM (2 children)
Is taco truck code-word for abortion clinic?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @01:29PM (1 child)
No.
I'm not happy with Taco Bell or Qdoba. We also have this local place that's completely overpriced. I have had consistently good experiences with taco trucks, but there are none in my area. The food is very reasonably priced and delicious. Sometimes you can even get tamales in addition to tacos. I have not tried the taco bowl at Trump Tower, but the taco bowls and taco salads I've gotten at taco trucks before are fantastic.
There is a real taco truck gap in this country, and I think the taco truck gap is going to be a very important issue in the midterms.
It's very simple. I voted for Hillary because I wanted taco trucks on every corner, or at least on my corner. Normally I vote Republican, but this issue is very important to me. In the midterms, I think I'll have little choice but to vote Democrat again if the Trump administration hasn't changed its position on taco trucks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @01:33PM
I should also add that we do have a couple very excellent and authentic Mexican restaurants here. The problem is that they're too far from where I work to even order carry-out. Are they intimidated by the Trump administration's position on taco trucks? Is that why they haven't deployed taco trucks to every corner on their own? Big government really shouldn't be in the business of intimidating local businesses against deploying taco trucks to every corner.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 21 2017, @04:14AM
Great, can they be (ab)used to charge a laptop on the go?
Stop-plug-charge-unplug-leave?
(Score: 2) by J_Darnley on Wednesday June 21 2017, @10:45AM (2 children)
How does an unrelated company know how much power passes through the cable? How do they know where the cable is? How do they know where you are? How can they possibly send you a bill?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:42PM (1 child)
Because the only thing cooler than a standard is multiple standards, there exist numerous EV charger port standards and all are semi-smart including all kinds of power monitoring and control and logging.
Its not merely a home depot extension cord.
Given what they are, in a couple years they'll be ebay sellers distributing special cables that clone other users or that hack the protocol to get free power or who knows what.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @01:46PM
My last (quarterly) electricity bill was over $600. What I need is one of those car chargers that can run in reverse to power the house from the car, two cars, (one running the house the other charging on the street) and a hacked cable that records very little power used. Voilà, cheap power!!