This article originally appeared on EV Obsession.
This is something that may be unique to me, but I don’t think so — for a long time, I thought electric cars needed a special charging station or charger. All the talk about new EV charging stations, chargers, and nonsensical “range anxiety” kept me from realizing that electric cars can be plugged into typical household electricity outlets. That makes “fueling up” an EV a whole lot more convenient than fueling up a gasmobile.
Actually, I’ve written posts on how ridiculously convenient charging an EV is, as I think that’s one of the biggest benefits of these cars for the people who own them.
So, I’m not going to focus on that great convenience today. But I wanted to highlight a great comment one of my internet friends made on a post a few months ago — “if you can live with a charging rate of 5 miles per hour charging, there are more than 475 million 110 V electrical outlets that you can plug into but at 8-10 Amps.”
Credit: Carbon Arc / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA
When you put it like that, the whole issue of “limited EV infrastructure” and range anxiety becomes somewhat comical — ridiculous. And then add in thousands of public EV charging stations and electrical outlets with even greater voltage (that can charge your EV faster than 110 V outlets can). Clearly. we’ve got a pretty built out and widespread EV infrastructure network.
There is one key caveat. Many people who live in apartment buildings or condos or don’t have a parking place near an outlet for some other reason could have difficulties with an EV, and they may have the same lack of availability at work. 110 V outlets take a fairly long time (several hours) to charge an EV. Completely charging a 2013 Nissan Leaf using a 110 V outlet would take approximately 16 hours. However, with the 6.6kW charger that you can get when you buy a 2013 Leaf, and using a 240 V outlet, that is cut down to 4 hours. 110 V outlets can be very helpful to owners who have access to them, but for those without, some sort of residential charging solution or good EV charging infrastructure at work or nearby is still important.
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