ASIDE - if anyone has any recommendations for commercial EV installation firms please shoot me a pm.
STORY
Perhaps this story will illustrate some of the EV infrastructure challenges from the other side - that of the business owner. If you ever gripe to yourself about clueless real estate owners who don't help EV adoption by installing charging for their residents - I'm one of those people you gripe about!
I'm starting to feel like a hypocrite - I own a Model S and tell everyone that EV's are the future - but I also have apartments where my tenants have nowhere to charge. I'd like to fix this situation but I'm not sure where to start.
Part of the problem is my units are in the suburbs of a big city in the Midwest - not California where I live. Gas is really cheap there and I don't see any EV's, let alone Teslas, when I go there on business.
Nevertheless you gotta start somewhere right?
The other problem is a logistical challenge - like many complexes mine is spread across a number of acres and the units do not have assigned parking.
So where do I start? I'm not going to poll the tenants and ask if they want EV chargers - I need to just put some in. If I build them - hopefully the residents will consider buying EV's.
But where? People like to park in front of their own apartment - not walk across a complex to get home.
But I can't afford to put chargers in all over the place when not a single one of the residents currently owns an EV.
If I put in a charger in one spot for a single resident, and then that person moves out - I now have an EV charger locked into one spot with no guarantees that anyone with an EV wants to park in that location.
This thinking gives me a headache, I say "screw it" - and I forget about it.
I imagine this problem is exactly what goes through the heads of many other multifamily investors/executives.
I can tell you FOR SURE that tenants asking the on-site manager would do no good. A request like that would get filtered immediately - probably not making it up to the district manager level - let alone all the way to me (the property owner) in a monthly report from the management company which runs the complex for me.
And at the end of the day there is the budget issue - I'm not in commercial real estate as a charity operation. I am willing to throw a few thousand dollars out there to do some good for the world - but I'm not willing to embark on a major capital expenditure project giving everybody EV charging stations when the adoption rate for EV's is so low.
And so - a chicken and egg problem...
STORY
Perhaps this story will illustrate some of the EV infrastructure challenges from the other side - that of the business owner. If you ever gripe to yourself about clueless real estate owners who don't help EV adoption by installing charging for their residents - I'm one of those people you gripe about!
I'm starting to feel like a hypocrite - I own a Model S and tell everyone that EV's are the future - but I also have apartments where my tenants have nowhere to charge. I'd like to fix this situation but I'm not sure where to start.
Part of the problem is my units are in the suburbs of a big city in the Midwest - not California where I live. Gas is really cheap there and I don't see any EV's, let alone Teslas, when I go there on business.
Nevertheless you gotta start somewhere right?
The other problem is a logistical challenge - like many complexes mine is spread across a number of acres and the units do not have assigned parking.
So where do I start? I'm not going to poll the tenants and ask if they want EV chargers - I need to just put some in. If I build them - hopefully the residents will consider buying EV's.
But where? People like to park in front of their own apartment - not walk across a complex to get home.
But I can't afford to put chargers in all over the place when not a single one of the residents currently owns an EV.
If I put in a charger in one spot for a single resident, and then that person moves out - I now have an EV charger locked into one spot with no guarantees that anyone with an EV wants to park in that location.
This thinking gives me a headache, I say "screw it" - and I forget about it.
I imagine this problem is exactly what goes through the heads of many other multifamily investors/executives.
I can tell you FOR SURE that tenants asking the on-site manager would do no good. A request like that would get filtered immediately - probably not making it up to the district manager level - let alone all the way to me (the property owner) in a monthly report from the management company which runs the complex for me.
And at the end of the day there is the budget issue - I'm not in commercial real estate as a charity operation. I am willing to throw a few thousand dollars out there to do some good for the world - but I'm not willing to embark on a major capital expenditure project giving everybody EV charging stations when the adoption rate for EV's is so low.
And so - a chicken and egg problem...
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