Chicago: Site of an EV Charging Mess for Sure, but Illinois is a Leader in Fixing a Far Bigger EV Charging Problem

I linked to few items in my last blog post about the Chicago EV world’s equivalent of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in an earlier post. EV advocates were quick to push back with solid data — from EV Zanadu Norway where electric cars are in the majority — that EVs actually fail less in deep winter temperatures than ICE vehicles! And with proper battery conditioning knowledge EVs can do just fine in winter months.

That wasn’t the case in Chicago however. Lots went wrong; super-cold tempatures stressed batteries, fast chargers were overloaded (and too often failure prone outside the Tesla NACS universe, too many drivers lack understanding of cold-temp charging techniques). Another contributing cause of the Chicago Freeze-Out? A flood of ride share drivers who rent EVs on a weekly basis and — this is key — do not have access to home or work based “Level 2” chargers to keep their EVs charged up (and batteries from dropping to super low temperatures.)

Why? The big EV charging challenge surrounding multi-unit buildings.

While we focus a bunch on DC fast charging in the EV world, we too often forget the best EV charging solution of all: a Level 2 charger at your home, workplace or both. For day to day EV use, having a Level 2 charger in your life pretty much solves everything. Level 2’s are super reliable, cheaper to use than DC Fast charging and easily cope with winter weather; keeping your EV charged, batteries warm and ready to roll. The problem is many EV drivers live in multifamily dwellings, without easy overnight charging. Compounding the problem, younger drivers are both most interested in owning EVs and most likely to live in an apartment. As EVs become cheaper, the apartment and condo charging “gap” will become worse.

This lack of charging options in multifamily buildings is the chokepoint — along with limited, albeit growing, DCFC station supply and CCS stationreliability problems, that drives the over-crowding problem at many urban fast charging stations. (My worst experience finding fast charging was in Las Vegas; long line, shaky Electrify America fast charging stations.). An allied problem is the “free charging” deals that many dealers offer new EV buyers; these are dynamite on the showroom floor but trouble at Fast Charging stations where drivers lean into “free” charging — often to 100% state of charge which really ties up charging units — and don’t think they need a Level 2 unit at home. (I’ll defend BMW on this a bit; they limit their free sessions at Electrify America to 30 minutes, which puts an incentive in place to get people to move on along after an 80% charge.)

Voters/Consumers are on to the whole apartment and condo charging problem. In our national survey, we asked respondents about their biggest concerns when thinking about owning an EV. 43% listed “Charger networks are unreliable” as their first or second concern (ranking third after price and worries about limited range.). Despite all the partisan disagreement over EVs, both Republicans and Democrats voiced nearly identical opinions on the charging network question. In the agree or disagree section, a whopping 82% of respondents also agreed with the statement “Home EV charging is often too big a challenge if you live in an apartment or condo.” 86% of Republicans agreed with this, as did 79% of Democrats. Only current EV owners split opinions; with 48% agreeing and 52% disagreeing (but essentially half of people already driving EVs agreeing that home charging is often too big of a challenge is still a pretty bad number.)

Agree or Disagree: "Home Charging is often too big a challenge if you live in an apartment or condo"

This concern over home charging in multi-family buildings was one of the very few EV characteristics that Democrats and Republicans in our polling completely agreed on.

(Our poll was of 600 voters nationwide with HH incomes of $50K or more. We chose this income cut off so the sample better reflected the U.S. new car market. It represents about 2/3 of the total voting electorate in the 2020 Presidential election. The margin of error is 4%.)

Back to Illinois. In June of last year Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law the “Electric Vehicle Charging Act” which requires any house or multi-unit housing completed after January 1, 2024 in Illinois to have at least one EV capable parking space for each unit that has dedicated parking. Originally the law required an actual Level 2 charging device in each space, but this was appropriately reduced to only require each space to be “charging capable” which means laying in the electrical conduit for a (minimum) 40 AMP 240 volt circuit. The bill applied to building retrofits as well. While critics complained this new requirement would add big costs and an impossible new electric load on new buildings, it is important to remember that with modern load management technology you can balance the power needs of different Level 2 charging stations by spreading the power load over multiple “smart” chargers since all chargers are not needed to be charging all of the time. This saves the landlord a lot of cost by reducing some of new electrical load needed to power the new Level 2 chargers.

Here is a good case study about how load balancing can really decrease installation cost and power demands in an actual multi-family building project. Most landlords probably weren’t excited about the additional cost, but it is much cheaper to install new conduit early in construction than to break out the saw cut gear and put it in later. (Trust me, I learned all about this when I put an Autel Level 2 unit in my parking space at the mixed apartment/commercial building where my office is located. I was lucky to have a forward-thinking landlord who let me do it but it was costly. Now, several of the residents in the building with EVs want to start using my charger at night when I’m not there; I might have to upgrade to a commerical AC unit and start my own L2 charging station.)

For critics who say these regs just reflect big government mandates gone amuck, keep in mind that Illinois’ final legislation only requires conduit to be put in along with sub panels; the tenants have the option of adding — and paying for — the actual Level 2 charging unit (generally around $500 bucks) and of course they must pay for the power they use. So for the cost of conduit installation and a basic sub box, Mr. Smart Landlord will create a more competitive apartment to rent or condo to sell with a pretty small incremental capital investment, since EV sales are growing and demand for condos and apartments will grow. That gives such multiunit buildings a competitive advantage, so landlords can — as we say in the GOP — charge more! And tenants with EVs quickly find out that Level 2 electric charging power is far cheaper than gas (or DC Fast Charging), so they can actually net out ahead even with a more expensive apartment. Free enterprise works for everybody.

I think Illinois’ EV Charging Act was a good, practical idea and should be applied everywhere. While I support the NEVI charger infrastructure bill, the Administration should learn from its many initial shortcomings and work to improve it. I would like to see far more Federal and state money invested to build multi-family Level 2 charging capacity and less poured into large and expensive DCFC projects. (I’ll have more NEVI improvement suggestions in a future post.)

It would be very smart policy to make Illinois style multi-unit charing capacity regs even more effective; use tax policy to make it really easy and cheap for apartment and condo developers to build EV charging capable projects along the lines of the Illinois requirements. The bottom line is building more fast charging stations will help lessen the EV charging problem in the future, doing multi-unit Level 2 charging right, soon and everywhere will solve the EV charging problem, reducing the demand on DC fast charging stations (creating less waiting and more proper use of those stations for longer distance trips.). EVs and multi-family should do more than rhyme… it should be a top EV infrastructure priority.