Are Electric Vehicles Practical In Cambridge MA?

Submitted by MussleGeeYem t3_zpefne in CambridgeMA

My cousin and her husband, who live in a fairly affluent suburb of Boston (median household income of that suburb is around $125k and 60% have a bachelor's or over), claim that EVs are not practical in the city (like Boston and Cambridge), and they are more practical in the suburbs due to their suburban house having a garage, which meant they are able to charge their EV for less than if they charged outside.

On Halloween, I visited their suburban town and in the 3-hour bike ride I took exploring around the suburb (the municipality has around 20k people), I have only seen 3 EVs and they are all Teslas, even though there was apparently a lot of traffic on that day. In Cambridge however, I have seen a bunch of EVs including several Teslas, several Rivians, several Polestars, several VW ID.4, several Hyundai Ioniq 5, several BMW i3, several Kia EV6 (I have only seen one EV6 outside of Cambridge), several Ford Mustang Mach E, several Chevy Bolt, several Nissan Leaf, one Mercedes Benz EQS, and even one Lucid Air (in fact, the first time I saw a Lucid Air on the road was in Cambridge).

With so many EVs in Cambridge MA, are electric vehicles considered practical, or should I just stick with an ICE vehicle, especially given the fact I live in an apartment building without a charging station or a garage?

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vt2022cam t1_j0shpqu wrote

Tell them their aren’t many EV minivans. People in Cambridge are wealthy, many can afford EV and the infrastructure to install them. I suspect your cousin thinks of Cambridge as being all apartments and not condos and single homes. Do people in Cambridge all have solar panels, probably less likely but the overall wealth in Cambridge, while not evenly distributed, is still very high.

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taguscove t1_j0sj08k wrote

EV owner in Cambridge for the past six years. An easy place to charge is the main constraint. Or get a Tesla which has a more robust charging network. Such broad claims are largely misinformed.

Edit: holy cow OP, you have literally over a hundred car comments in the past 10 days

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MyStackRunnethOver t1_j0toag2 wrote

+1 with off-street parking and an outlet = easy. Without off-street parking = hard

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[deleted] t1_j0sklln wrote

[deleted]

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taguscove t1_j0skxqr wrote

I would not recommend a complete EV based on your location. Tesla has a fantastic super charger station in the parking garage of the Cambridgeside galleria at Lechmere. I personally charge my car in my garage with a regular 120v outlet; don’t even need to upgrade the circuit. The electric load is less than a vacuum cleaner

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AcademicMuffin2883 t1_j0stfv4 wrote

Cars are impractical, walk, bike, use transit. Ice vs Electric is not the right question. Ask yourself do I really need a car or am I just getting one by default?

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These-Assignment-936 t1_j0skql0 wrote

I drive a Tesla and rely on street parking in Cambridge, without charging access. I don’t commute, so my battery use is fairly minimal and I’m happy taking a detour every few weeks to go charge at the (30mn) superchargers at the Galleria, or Assembly Square. There are also 220V (5-6 hour) chargers around town, but I find those impractically slow for me.

I usually tell people who ask that I don’t recommend having an EV without having a good way to charge them. Even a 110V (24 hour+) charger at home is fine. It’s just having “nothing” at home which can actually become fairly annoying.

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snorpleblot t1_j0tsti6 wrote

This is a really important question. EVs are the future. We are crossing the tipping point where the total cost of ownership is better. Cambridge residents embrace technology and sustainability and have the resources to be early adopters. However owning them without a garage or driveway is not feasible.

I have a hard time predicting how and when EVs will become an obvious choice in towns where everyone parks on the street. Will the town make the huge investment in infrastructure? It doesn’t feel like a priority to me compared to public transportation and other investment priorities. Will grocery stores become charging locations? Why aren’t they yet? What is taking them so long?

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Helen___Keller t1_j0uhfnj wrote

From a city investment PoV, investing in other modes pays off vastly better. Most investment in roads and parking gets used largely by non residents.

If anything, the state should be the one funding EV infrastructure. As a Cambridge resident I don’t want the city budget spent supporting EVs driving in from Lexington, but we’re all MA residents so it makes sense in the state budget.

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maxwellb t1_j0w0qol wrote

There was a story a few months ago about a city that added charging cables to electrical poles as a cost effective implementation. I could see that working out well here, but at the same time it got a lot of pushback when it was reposted in my local hipster square fb group on the grounds that supporting any sort of car is unacceptable. So I doubt it would actually happen (and I'm stuck with my combustion engine for the foreseeable future).

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CriticalTransit t1_j0u6v84 wrote

EV don’t solve most of the problems of cars such as noise, injuries and death, particulate matter from brakes and tires, waste of space for parking, etc. At a society level, the only practical vehicles are transit and bikes.

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st0j3 t1_j0v3tj4 wrote

You're asking a sub of car haters which car to get.

When I looked into EVs, I wasn't able to get on board and ended up getting another non-EV. For EV to work I feel you either need deeded parking or a convenient supercharger. I imagine public slow chargers would be annoying to consistently deal with.

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meratherbebikin t1_j0vz66t wrote

There are more and more public EV chargers in Cambridge, and of the two that I pass almost daily, I would guess that one is often in use, and one is almost never in use. They are in different parking lots, but arguably are almost within sight of each other. Not sure why one seems to be more popular.

I think it’s depending on neighborhood, but at least in my neighborhood, there are plenty of EVs that are owned by folks who have their own driveways. That does not stop them from street parking though.

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Helen___Keller t1_j0ugotd wrote

I’ve got a plug in hybrid and a tiny driveway, so I installed a charger and im on electric most of the time, minus road-trips. But I don’t drive much because it’s a city, so walking + T gets me to a lot of the places I want to go

In my old apartment I had street parking and I almost never was on electric because there wasn’t much reliable charging. If you do street parking, getting a Tesla for the supercharger network or an ICE is probably your best bet.

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meratherbebikin t1_j0vy8lt wrote

FYI just in case you want to check them out more closely, there are at least two Lucid Air in Cambridge. And, one is street parked.

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MussleGeeYem OP t1_j0vzrwy wrote

Where can I find them?

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meratherbebikin t1_j0w0gtn wrote

The street parked one is purple and on Fayerweather at Brattle, and the other is silver and often parked in the driveway of a house on Raymond at Robinson.

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coldsnap123 t1_j0si40n wrote

EV’s are impractical by nature and awful. ICE is fine, hybrid if you’re looking for more mpg.

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