Electric Vehicles and Places Like Georgetown

Electric vehicles might be one of the key tools we need to use in order to limit the impact of disastrous climate change. But they present a tough problem for neighborhoods like Georgetown. How do people keep their Teslas charged when they don’t have any off-street parking?

For most Americans this isn’t a problem. They either have a garage or at least a driveway to store their cars at home when they’re not using them. They can easily locate a charging unit at this location and conveniently use it. But in dense neighborhoods like Georgetown garages or parking pads are the exception not the rule. Most Georgetowners with cars store them on the street.

So how would they charge their EVs? Well one resident has simply run a cord out the front of his or her house and out to the curb. They use a cord cover for the three feet the cord needs to cross the sidewalk. But it is still a tripping hazard. And would result in a whole lot of sidewalk clutter if everyone else did the same. Moreover, for this plan to work, the owner needs to be able to reliably park in one of the three or so spaces in front of his or her house. Most Georgetowners don’t have that situation.

So are Georgetowners (or other dense-neighborhood living residents) to be left out of the EV revolution? Hopefully not, but it will require some large technical advances.

As it stands now, EV-owners already have lots of options from public sources, as this video explains:

But even the fastest Tesla chargers require a half hour to give you roughly 150 miles of range. That’s about half a tank of gas. So given your current car use, you’d have to spend an hour at the “gas” station for every fill-up versus the ten minutes or so you currently spend there. That’s not ideal.

But the future of charging is likely to bring that number down significantly. As mentioned in the video, Elon Musk is already promising a newer supercharger technology that could cut those charging times in half. Take that claim with a brick of salt, but it’s clear that either way, the charging times will continue to fall.

So Georgetowners will likely someday be able to join the EV revolution. But early adopters will face challenges for the foreseeable future.