EVs and car sharing

[Fred H Olson]

I encourage cohousing car sharing efforts to get Electric Vehicles (EVs).
EV's are cheaper to operate and require less maintenance than gas cars.
There are currently substantial US Federal tax credits for EV purchases
($7500 for new EVs, $4000 for used EVs) See https://fueleconomy.gov/

Does anyone now how these tax credits can work with shared vehicle ownership?

Of course EVs help reduce climate change. I think EVs will increasingly
replace gas powered cars in the next decade.

One big concern of many is "range anxiety". For local use EVs have
plenty of range for virtually all trips - even several a day. I would
expect car sharing EVs would be charged overnight in the community at
off peak rates which is cheap most places.

For longer, less populated trips planning is required tho charging
will be getting better. To get some EV experience my wife, Becca
Brackett and I flew to Providence, RI and rented an EV and drove 700
miles visiting family (and two cohousing communities). Range was not
an issue.

I have a long blog entry about the EV trip
( 7-05-2023 __ Electric Vehicle trip notes )
http://fholson.cohousing.org/blog/index.htm#x75

Fred



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Fred H. Olson Minneapolis,MN 55411 USA (near north Mpls)
Email: fholson at cohousing.org 612-588-9532
My Link Pg: http://fholson.cohousing.org

[Warwick Powell]

HI,

We at JPC intend to buy an EV for our second vehicle and every vehicle after that, although we may buy a hybrid plug-in EV like the Volt that I own because the vast majority of miles are driven on the battery anyway. The gas motor in the Volt that drives the generator allows the car to go much further after the initial battery charge has been used up, about 300 miles.

We have not looked at the Federal subsidies yet.

Lots of excitement ahead for us.

Cheers
Warwick

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[Fred H Olson]

Thanks Warwick and Wayne for your posts on your community's EV use / carsharing.

Wayne Groszko <wayne....@gomaritimes.ca> wrote:

>Agreed about using EVs for carsharing. Our cohousing, Treehouse Village in
>Nova Scotia, Canada, is nearing completion of construction of the buildings
>and we already have three shared EVs in use among our cohousing community
>members who are living in the area while preparing to move in, plus two EVs
>owned by individual families, for a total of five EVs in a community of 30
>households. We have ten EV chargers installed before move-in date, with
>wiring in place to add ten more.

Are the chargers level 2?
If there are more EVs than chargers, is there a way minimize moving
vehicles after they are done charging to allow others to be charged?

(For those not familiar with EV charger levels... ** mg/hr
level 1 - 110 volt Most EVs have portable level 1 charger 3-4
level 2 - 220 volt Some but not all EV homes have level2 20-30
DC (aka level 3) 440 volt, much faster 100+ 300 typical
** mg/hr= miles of range gained per hour of charging -- roughly, it varies

Wouldn't it be great if many EV's (which I think will be come the
dominant type of car in the next decades) were often shared cars?

[Wayne Groszko]

Hi all,

Agreed about using EVs for carsharing. Our cohousing, Treehouse Village in Nova Scotia, Canada, is nearing completion of construction of the buildings and we already have three shared EVs in use among our cohousing community members who are living in the area while preparing to move in, plus two EVs owned by individual families, for a total of five EVs in a community of 30 households. We have ten EV chargers installed before move-in date, with wiring in place to add ten more.

Our issue in Canada is the lack of an appropriate insurance product for small carsharing groups. For now, as we haven't found such a product in Canada, and Progressive Insurance doesn't operate here, we have the cars registered and insured by individuals and the additional drivers listed on their insurance policies, which is not an ideal arrangement, but we are determined to share vehicles.

I'd love to know a contact at Progressive Insurance so we can learn about what they offer for insurance for small carsharing groups and import that product to Canada.

Kind regards,

Wayne Groszko

Treehouse Village Ecohousing

Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada

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[Wayne Groszko]

Hi Fred,

Yes, we've installed Level 2 chargers - 240 Volts, maximum 40 Amps each, typically can charge at around 7 kilowatts.

An interesting point electrically is that the electrical service to the whole site has a limit, and to keep within this limit and avoid an expensive upgrade we are installing an EV charging management system. It measures the amount of available electrical capacity and then controls the chargers so that they share the available electrical power between all the cars that are charging at that time. So if only one is plugged in, it will charge at the maximum rate, but if 20 are plugged in, they will share the available power according to a priority schedule.

We will also track which vehicles are charging and how much and set a fee for members for using the electricity.

About not having to move the vehicles around, for now we have more chargers than EVs, and space for 10 more chargers, bringing the total to 20 chargers in the future. As our co-housing is 30 households, with carsharing I hope the community will be able to meet its transportation needs with less than 20 EVs, so each one can plug in to a charging head. But if we do get more EVs than chargers at some point in the future, each set of two chargers on a post probably has a long enough cable to reach the nearest 3 or 4 parking spaces, so hopefully the cars wouldn't have to be moved too much. However, people would still have to remember to go out and transfer the charge cable from the vehicle that has completed charging to the vehicle that needs charging.

I would love to see many more shared electric vehicles at cohousing and everywhere!

Cheers,

Wayne Groszko

Treehouse Village Ecohousing

Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada

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