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posted by
martyb
on Wednesday December 19 2018, @04:34AM
from the now-they're-buying...trucks? dept.
from the now-they're-buying...trucks? dept.
General Motors has announced it's shuttering five production facilities and killing six vehicle platforms by the end of 2019 as it reallocates resources towards self-driving technologies and electric vehicles.
[...] North American car production hit 17.5 million vehicles in 2016, and dropped marginally to 17.2 million in 2017. Interesting, but perhaps not significant.
More telling are changes in driver behaviour. In North America, for example, fewer teens are getting driver's licences. In 1983, 92 per cent of teens were licensed, while by 2014, that number had dropped to 77 per cent. In Germany, the number of new licences issued to drivers aged 17 to 25 has dropped by 300,000 over the last 10 years.
Are we over our love affair with cars?
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TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @09:41AM (3 children)
My building manager told me that we have only one charger per garage because of the capacity of the power cables. When the apartment complex was built 18 years ago they had drawings, power calculations, cable selected for this load - and the city stamped the design. Gas everywhere, no electric anything except dishwashers, fridges, microwaves. Everything was constructed with thin cables - they fit the bill. And now there is a need for 80 chargers per building, each draws 6-8 kW, that is more than ten apartments (fridge=400W, tv=50, light=100...) He says that all the power cables have to be replaced. Not likely to happen until the buildings are renovated in the far future. The only hope is that proliferation of EVs will force the owners to redo the power cables "live," while the renters are occupying the apartments. This will be difficult.
Why not to move to a house? Because living in an apartment is more socially responsible, for example. Because it is easier, because everything is handled - from lawns to gutters and water and sewage. Because it is safer. I have no need for a house, and everyone knows now that a house is not an investment - it's dead money on which you could be getting interest/dividend or not paying mortgage. Houses are sold for "stability," but in practice they are a box of surprises - and you still pay ever-rising property taxes, so houses are anything but stable.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Wednesday December 19 2018, @01:03PM (1 child)
Although it does rather depend on the layout of your apartment complex - it sounds like your building manager is making excuses for not doing the obvious: installing a separate high-current circuit to the garage. It frankly doesn't matter if the individual apartments are wired on a moderate capacity circuits.
Working out how the billing works is another issue but there must be some solution already in place because it appears you are already using a shared charger.
If you want more chargers - it's as simple as instructing the building manager to get an electrician out to wire a nice fat pipe into the garage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @02:06PM
> ...a separate high-current circuit to the garage.
In some cases this is possible, but in other areas the local transformer, mains and/or local generating capacity may not support the increase in power. In which case the upgrade gets incrementally much more expensive.
Here in the far 'burbs there is an 8-bay Tesla supercharger and at one end there is a ~two-car-sized enclosure for the required transformer and other equipment. If there is no vacant land near the apartments the space required by this equipment could reduce the parking capacity by 10% or more?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday December 19 2018, @02:07PM
Funny how adding the word "socially" neutered the word "responsible". Particularly weird given that you talked about a glaring reason why the apartments weren't more responsible (inadequate wiring that wouldn't be replaced any time soon - at least a home owner could fix that problem right away).
Sure. You don't have control over who is in either neighborhood. But there will be more irresponsible and relatively dangerous people living near you in an apartment complex than in a residential home neighborhood. Higher population density means more crime and idiots near you.
That's a better point. Homes are well overpriced in many markets now.
You'll pay for the property taxes on the rental property too.