Charging an electric vehicle (EV) is one of the biggest challenges to its adoption. However, on-street charging points are an easy-to-implement solution that could facilitate EV adoption.
Who needs a Level 2 electric car charging station at home?
EVs are perfect for an urban environment. The stop-and-go traffic actually helps with range, and typically a city driver who stays within the city limits will spend hours behind the wheel, but probably only drive 20 miles a day. The downside of that is, where do they charge if they live in an apartment without a garage? It turns out there’s a solution for city-wide charging stations without the hassle of stringing cables across sidewalks.
A few years ago, while driving through Oslo, Norway, I noticed a row of boxes next to every parking space on the road. It wasn’t until I saw a man open the trunk of his Volkswagen E-Golf EV, pull out a cable, and plug it into the box and then into the charging port of his EV that I realized what I was seeing. The Norwegian street chargers were BYOC (Bring Your Own Cable).
BYOC would solve a few problems. First, there’s the issue of interoperability. Currently, there are three charging ports on vehicles in the US.
