Detroit Is Turning Lampposts Into Internet-Connected EV Chargers (insideevs.com)
- Reference: 0175418495
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/11/06/1741253/detroit-is-turning-lampposts-into-internet-connected-ev-chargers
- Source link: https://insideevs.com/news/739836/voltpost-at-t-lamppost-ev-chargers-detroit/
> Curbside EV charging in Michigan should become easier in the coming months thanks to a new collaboration between telecom giant AT&T and lamppost EV charging startup Voltpost. The two have joined forces to bring internet connectivity to EV charging posts across Michigan and the Metro-Detroit area-this way, the operator knows immediately if a stall has gone offline and can send a team to fix it faster. Better uptime benefits both the company and the EV drivers who choose to top up their cars' batteries while parked.
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> Voltpost's lamppost charging solution essentially turns existing street lights into EV chargers. The startup claims the installation of a single stall takes anywhere from one to two hours and that the costs are much lower than a conventional EV charging station. However, the caveat here is that the charging speeds are limited to what one would experience with a home charger. The AC Level 2 lamppost chargers are powered by the street lighting grid, which was never designed to sustain high loads, so expect to keep the car plugged in for hours. That said, the system can still come in handy when the owner of an EV goes to work and parks the car on the street. Or during a lengthy shopping trip topped off with an evening movie. It's no DC fast charger, but it doesn't claim to be one.
[1] https://insideevs.com/news/739836/voltpost-at-t-lamppost-ev-chargers-detroit/
What odds are we giving.... (Score:2)
On the majority of these streetlamp chargers still being functional 18 months from now?
I wouldn't give them better than 1 in 5 odds, they'll probably give up maintaining them after they get vandalized for the 8th or 9th time.
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If that is the case then it will say more about Michigan than anything else. What kind of place do people in Michigan want to live in?
When I was living in Ukraine I was warned to watch out for missing manhole covers as they were stolen for scrape metal value. I never saw that happen while I was there. Despite the risk of being stolen most countries still use metal manhole covers. How would EV chargers be any different from manhole covers, they are both in public spaces and have scrape value if stolen
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Try internet search of your choice for "charging station vandalism" or "charging station copper theft." It is not just Michigan.
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There are a few public chargers in the world now so I'm sure an Internet search is going to find cases of vandalism and copper theft. But really how much of a problem is it? I have owned a BEV for over 4 years and have yet to see a charger that has been deliberately damaged. If it is common where you live it says more about where you live than anything else.
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If you had actually tried you would have seen headlines like:"Electric Car Charger Vandalism Continues To Surge Nationwide" "Thefts of charging cables pose yet another obstacle to appeal of electric vehicles" "Thieves Hunting for Copper Are Vandalizing American EV Chargers" "Over 50 EV charging stations vandalized across Fresno" and on, and on...
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Sure, headline like that sell ads so of course they are going to be reported, how else are they going to make money.
I tried that search prefixed with my country and the first page was all reports for the same a single incident where the driver of the Ford Ranger was arrested for intentional damage and also driving with excess breath alcohol.
The reality is EV charging is just another publicly accessible service and the state of them is a reflect of the community they are located in. Ask BEV owners how
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Here is one from Spain "Copper theft in charging stations: How to address the new eMobility challenge?" A strange one from Germany "Vandals destroy EV chargers with raw meat in bizarre attack." One from the UK "Since November 2023 Instavolt has reported 174 cables stolen from 27 sites" One for the EU in general "EV Outrage In The EU Leads To Vandalism Of Supercharging Facilities."
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Manhole covers are extremely heavy and made from iron which has almost no scrap value until you're talking literal tons of the stuff. EV charger cords are relatively lightweight and contain copper wires, which are quite valuable as scrap.
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Tesla started using aluminum wiring to stop the crackheads and tweakers from stealing it.
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> Tesla started using aluminum wiring to stop the crackheads and tweakers from stealing it.
and also extremely short cords, which literally require ignoring the vehicle's proximity alert when backing into the charging stall. Since getting a NACS adapter for my Chevy Bolt, I've already noticed a few Tesla chargers with collision damage, probably because no one at Tesla had the foresight to make the cord at least long enough so you could stop backing up when the car warns you to brake.
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The leads on Tesla Superchargers are really short but backing in is easy if you can get a straight access to the bay. Get square and back until you are near the stop they have. The real problem is where they are on a busy street making it hard to swing in cleanly if traffic is busy or where they have something in front of the bay giving you no distance to line up. It is good to see all the new recent charging locations have taken this into account and are super easy to get into compare to some of the ear
Re:What odds are we giving.... (Score:4, Informative)
Lamp-post chargers don't have any built-in cords! They look like this:
[1]https://ubitricity.com/en/char... [ubitricity.com]
There's nothing to steal
[1] https://ubitricity.com/en/charging-solutions/ac-lamppost/
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> Lamp-post chargers don't have any built-in cords! There's nothing to steal
According to the article (I read it a day or two ago) these have retractable cords mounted about head height that pull down to connect to the vehicle which are released when you activate the unit on the app. Until released by the app, the cord is retracted in a plastic looking box mounted on the light pole.
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older types of lamp post chargers do have a cord built-in, they are around on various streets in Los Angeles. there's not many because street parking is valuable and the trade off of losing a usable parking spot is too high, so grocery stores are adding charge stations to their parking lots.
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They don't look like that. Click the link in TFS, it's literally easier than going out and searching for a picture of something that is *checks notes* not being build or talked about here.
Re: What odds are we giving.... (Score:2)
If they are smart, the chargers will just have the plug and not the cable, and it will be up to the EV owner to supply their own cable. That avoids the high risk and cost of replacing stolen/cut cables, and reduces the cost of installing each unit to begin with.
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This is indeed the default solution: [1]https://ubitricity.com/en/char... [ubitricity.com]
[1] https://ubitricity.com/en/charging-solutions/ac-lamppost/
Re: What odds are we giving.... (Score:2)
What they are doing is taking scarce city street parking spaces, dedicating them to EVs, and will likely ticket/tow any non-EV in the spot.
Oh, and if an EV does park there for a charge, it will likely get one overnight customer, followed by a near-by store/office worker for 8-9 hours, then maybe a customer that parks there while they get dinner & movie near-by. Three customers, that's gonna be it - remember, these are slow-speed chargers:
> However, the caveat here is that the charging speeds are limited to what one would experience with a home charger. The AC Level 2 lamppost chargers are powered by the street lighting grid, which was never designed to sustain high loads, so expect to keep the car plugged in for hours. That said, the system can still come in handy when the owner of an EV goes to work and parks the car on the street. Or during a lengthy shopping trip topped off with an evening movie. It's no DC fast charger, but it doesn't claim to be one.
What about charge port location? (Score:3)
This is one case where I think Tesla made a big mistake. Unless it's a one way street- the Tesla charge port is on the wrong side for curbside charging (and for anyone else who also uses the driver's side like the Ford Mach-E). For EVs to become ubiquitous in cities (where they are the most beneficial), we need solutions like this that allow charging at the curb, and moving the charge port to the passenger side would make that a lot easier with no real downside.
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It was probably styled after regular cars, most of which have their gas tank opening on the driver's side. Looking at the fuel gauge, an arrow points to which side the gas tank opening is located, so some might point to the passenger side.
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> It was probably styled after regular cars, most of which have their gas tank opening on the driver's side.
Most regular cars made by Japanese companies, and they have the filler on the side where the driver would be in their country... on what is the passenger side in this country. Ironically, having it on the non-driver side is MUCH smarter, because it means you can pull up closer to the pump and still get out of the car. (I know the filler and the driver's door are in different places, but there's usually other crap between the pumps.)
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> you can pull up closer to the pump and still get out of the car.
Please do not pull too close to the pump even if you can do it. You want to fit your persona well on the ground between the car and the pump in case something goes wrong. That way you have freedom of movement and can locate the emergency stop and actually get to it rapidly, without having to maneuver around car, pillars, pump in your hand and its hose, pumping apparatus and so on.
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My car's a Fiat Punto, and the gas tank opening is on the passenger side.
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I've had some cars with the tank on the right, and some with it on the left- though the left side is more common. Ironically, I have an old British Mini that's right hand drive, but the tank is on the left hand side.
Still, Tesla put a lot of effort into making people think their cars were better than regular cars so I don't think this would have been a deal-breaker.
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I miss the old American cars of the 60s-70s that had the gas door behind the rear fold down license plate
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With the notable exception of Tesla's Superchargers, most public EV chargers have long enough cords to reach the charging port wherever it happens to be.
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Yeah, but if you are parked along a street in the city- that would mean the charge cord and handle were sticking out into the street where the traffic is. That seems like a pretty terrible idea to me.
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If you are driving close enough to parked cars to hit the charging cord, you are close enough to hit the mirrors. I'm sure it WILL happen... but people should drive better. Still no excuse for bad design of the vehicle.
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Or put a charge port on both sides...
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That would be great but with manufacturers removing physical buttons just to save a few cents- I can't imagine they'd want to add an entire second charge port and wiring.
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> This is one case where I think Tesla made a big mistake. Unless it's a one way street- the Tesla charge port is on the wrong side for curbside charging
Or they did it on purpose to force owners to use their chargers more often.
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They could have offered their own curb-side recharging option or just sold equipment for projects like these streetlights and made money on that. But it doesn't work with the door on the street side.
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Isn't charging cable that comes with Tesla long enough to reach these?
Middle of front and/or back. (Score:2)
Can we finally put the 'port' behind a swing door that also holds the license plate, like it should be? The gas filler was moved for safety considerations, but a charge port should be perfectly fine there. In fact there should be one on both ends of the vehicle.
Re: What about charge port location? (Score:2)
> Unless it's a one way street- the Tesla charge port is on the wrong side for curbside charging (and for anyone else who also uses the driver's side like the Ford Mach-E).
How do Europeans/others park their cars? Perhaps they considered the world market, not just the U.S. market?
Great idea if it's cost effective (Score:2)
Unsure on how much it costs to deliver and maintain these chargers, but it's conceptually brilliant. Ubiquitous trickle charging is what we need; not limited numbers of fast chargers.
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It's just that cabling needed for street lights (200W) and charging EVs (even slowest trickle charge, 120V 12A = 1.5kW) is completely different.
Parking lots at work too. (Score:3)
The lights there came off the 480 V service main. Due to some delta to wye trickery the lights operated at 277 V. (Ask an EE.)
That's more than enough voltage, but what size wire is installed?
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Almost never enough to meaningfully increase the load, because copper is expensive. No sane engineer would overbuild those cables by any significant margin as that's a lot of money going into copper that doesn't need to be spent.
You will almost certainly need to dig up streets for this to lay more cable. Recent switch to LEDs exacerbated this, as LEDs use less power for same illumination compared to previous street lamps.
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Depends what problem you're trying to solve. For road trips, you absolutely need DCFC. For people who can't charge their EVs at home, you might potentially convince some of those people to give up their ICE cars if public L2 charging was ubiquitous and very cheap, but I don't see the cheap part happening.
The Target by me has a few L2 chargers that are free for the first two hours and I've regularly seen people gaming it by setting a timer on their phone and ending and restarting the charging session so th
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> Depends what problem you're trying to solve.
Yep.
For lamp-post charging, I'll say the niche is not getting a full long-range charge, but is for a low-range EV intended as an in-town runabout, to give it enough charge that you can go shopping or to a restaurant in town, charge while you're shopping, and go home.
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> For lamp-post charging, I'll say the niche is not getting a full long-range charge, but is for a low-range EV intended as an in-town runabout, to give it enough charge that you can go shopping or to a restaurant in town, charge while you're shopping, and go home.
Unless we reverse course on the tariffs against BYD, I don't see that niche being filled anytime soon. The trend with EVs seems to be towards bigger batteries, faster charging and more range, and a price tag to match.
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Not really. At least in Europe, the use case is people who park on-street overnight, to get somewhere close to 100% charged. In the UK, these charge at about 5kW, which is enough to do most EVs overnight 20 to 100%. So you plug in once a fortnight or so, meaning a ratio of several owners per lamp post is fine (ie 5:1, not 50:1 and not 1:1)
Re: Great idea if it's cost effective (Score:2)
You absolutely need fast chargers. But mostly that's a solved problem. The bigger hurdle to EV adoption now isn't charging for long trips; it's the unaddressed market of those who don't live or work where they can charge. For these people, being able to charge slowly sort of wherever you go will go a long way to enabling adoption.
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We need both. But ubiquitous 7-10 kilowatt charging is, indeed, a very important part of the puzzle.
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It's up and running in many other countries already. It doesn't cost that much to put in.
[1]https://ubitricity.com/en/char... [ubitricity.com]
[1] https://ubitricity.com/en/charging-solutions/ac-lamppost/
Better use of infrastructure (Score:2)
Instead of subsidizing personal car ownership and thus increasing noise pollution and traffic congestion, convert the curbside parking into a bus lane and string lines for trolleybuses. No charging losses, less congestion, and unlike cars, accessible to children, the disabled and people who got better shit to spend $8000 a year on than a car.
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> nstead of subsidizing personal car ownership and thus increasing noise pollution and traffic congestion, convert the curbside parking into a bus lane and string lines for trolleybuses.
Because there is a majority of us in the US, that prefer to be able to travel door-to-door on our own time schedule...and to have the hauling capacity for grocery and other shopping, larger than what our two arms and a backpack can carry at any given time.
Most of us feel that independence is a wonderful thing.
But, feel free
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It's not just US. It's everywhere in the world. This is why automobiles sell well worldwide. The moment people become wealthy enough to afford one, they tend to buy one because freedom granted by this massive jump in personal mobility is worth it.
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Judging by the results of the recent election, I'd say you're not going to get us Americans to give up our cars. For what it's worth, we're apparently not even too keen on giving up the concept of our cars running on gas.
And I say this as someone who already has two EVs in my household. At least we bought them before the tax credit inevitably goes *poof*.
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Great if you live in the local area, sucks if you have to come into the city or if you need a car to go beyond the city.
What is the rating for salt spray, Marine Grade? (Score:4, Insightful)
The city of chicago spent a few thousand dollars each on fiberglass add on decorative covers for the bottom of lampposts along Roosevelt Road east of Halsted. What would have been fine in Tucson, was a expensive mistake in Chicago. What these fiberglass pieces did was expand the corrosion season to 365 days and had light posts failing inspections or just falling over in stiff breeze just 3 years later. The entire sidewalk and walkway is a bridge bringing Roosevelt up to chicago downtown street level, any cathodic protection was wiped out by a sweatbox full of salt and moisture 24x7x365. This is a city that day to day maintenance within the downtown sector is second to none.
This is my concern with anything mounted outside in Michigan along a road, how is protected from the elements from -30F to 120F with 65F daily swings on spring days? Can it be repaired without a 100 day service ticket? What is the contract to get the next great thing in the spot when this company falls out of favor of the politicians or the stock market.
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So here in Finland we have "heating posts" in a lot of parking lots. It's basically a small pillar that terminates in a pair of standard 230V AC connections rated for about 2kW per socket, intermittent. Newer ones that came recently are usually around 3-4kW constant.
They are effectively build into plastic housing. This is what they look like: [1]https://images.sanoma-sndp.fi/... [sanoma-sndp.fi]
It locks, you open it and plug it in to use. Usually runs an interior heater and coolant/oil pan heater from Defa for 2 hours, on 24h
[1] https://images.sanoma-sndp.fi/3eb65db7beb6dab0d17838fc2665a450.jpg/normal/468.jpg
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We have telephone pole mounted chargers in my town. We definitely have tons of salt used on our roads, but it's not a problem because everything is mounted about fifteen feet in the air. You scan a QR code with the app, and the charger reels out enough cable until the plug is hanging within reach. You then push a button on the plug to pay out enough cable to reach your charger port. When you unplug the charger the cable automatically reels back up.
The system has been working flawlessly for several year
Re: What is the rating for salt spray, Marine Grad (Score:2)
> However, the caveat here is that the charging speeds are limited to what one would experience with a home charger. The AC Level 2 lamppost chargers are powered by the street lighting grid, which was never designed to sustain high loads, so expect to keep the car plugged in for hours. That said, the system can still come in handy when the owner of an EV goes to work and parks the car on the street. Or during a lengthy shopping trip topped off with an evening movie. It's no DC fast charger, but it doesn't claim to be one.
So the idea is, litter the city with low-cost, slow-speed chargers, then have people park their cars near the lamp posts and leave them there for hours while they work 8 hrs, or go to dinner & a movie? Doesn't anyone here see the problem? The second biggest problem I hear about with public EV chargers is that they are always occupied (the biggest problem I hear is finding a working charger).
It sounds like each charger might get 4-5 users/day, that covers the costs? (And what about non-EVs parking near t
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You missed how the internet connectivity literally addresses the problem you are having: Maintenance and availability management.
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A common complaint (on Slashdot, from people who do not have experience with EVs) is that people who do not have homes with off-street private parking places have no place to charge their EVs daily, requiring that they waste time at DC Fast-Chargers. This provides a solution to THAT problem. Charging is available while parked in public parking spaces on public streets.
You completely misunderstood the article.