In http://visforvoltage.org/forum/2572-zapino-owner-feedback a couple people mentioned charging at work.
For an EV with SLA batteries (most of us) it's bad to leave the battery pack partly discharged. This is well known to kill batteries. So if you ride to work (partly depleting the pack) and let the EV sit without being charged until you ride back home.. this is supposed to be a bad thing. I myself don't know how bad it is to leave the pack partly discharged for 8 hours, just that it's not the best to do.
At my job (Sun Microsystems) the company has on-site EV charging. The charging facility has chargers for the large EV's sold in the late 90's, hence if someone were to drive an EV1 and park it on our campus they'd be able to charge up. But we all know what happened to the EV1 and hence those charger spots aren't used very much. There is, though, an outdoors style 120v outlet (EFI protected etc) which I use from time to time.
Electricity is essentially 'everywhere'.. so it seems it ought to be simple to get outdoors charging spots. This would solve part of the range issue - if you can do opportunity charges throughout the day, then your effective range is magnified.
Agreed, with electricity already everywhere. Adding a charging infrastructure (I
envision simple coin-operated gadgets resembling - or be integrated with parking meters).
But it is a chicken and egg problem - we need the demand for such a service first, and the whole thing would require a degree of enlightenment from local governments than I'm not seeing right now. And, at any rate, 15-20 amp 120-volt charging points would generally only be suitable for electric cycles and things like the Xebra. Even in the sunniest climates, it is going to take a cultural revolution for such vehicles to be accepted for everyday use.
So, I charge at work, my justification being that others have hot-pots, space heaters, and other appliances in their offices. And, I do a lot of sneaking around town for surreptitious opportunity charging from outdoor outlets, such as those often found at the base of trees and planters along sidewalks for putting up lights. But, outdoor outlets are increasingly being turned off, because, in another dismal sign of the times, homeless people are increasingly using outdoor outlets to stay warm while sleeping or even cooking on the sidewalks.
Excellent topic.
I oppurtunity charge wherever I can in here. City of 1 mln. cold country, a lot of outlets on parking lots. You can say a heaven for opporunist like me.
My favourite are schools, because they are empty after school hour most of the time.
Due to plain neglegance and lazyness/messiness so common, they are left on most of the time also all summer. I prefer ones on walls , I lean bike against wall, plug in my onboard chargers and go to reading, eating, snoozing , etc.
Important is to have probe , the touchless one, don`t have to plug to check for power.
You can construct one for 2-3dol with Johnson decade counter.
Miroslaw
CM