All Forum Posts by: Bryce Nesbitt

Quote from @Bill B.:

The average car is parked in each spot for 20-30 hours. It’s being used by people who can’t or won’t charge at home. There’s no penalty for the cars sitting in the spots after they have fully charged. I bet the government thought people would plug in while visiting the DMV and then leave, that never happens

That's solved with an "idle fee".  Just about as popular as BlockBuster Video's Late Fee.

There's a completely different movement in MF charging called "low power L2".  You give every spot a plug, so it no longer matters if someone parks all day or all week.  PM me for details.

The issue seems to be that apartment owners don't want to be bothered, even though EV charging is an amenity like a tanning booth, pool, deck, hot tub, laundry area or whatever.

Or apartment owners unrealistically view EV charging as a revenue source, though the margins are just too thin.

On the ground EV charging for multifamily is practical, even in retrofit, it's just not simple as there are so many options and tradeoffs.  The market has not yet settled out to 2 or 3 major players.  The loss is for renters, who don't have the freedom to take advantage of EVs the way single family owners can.  I've set up MF EV charging for a number of San Francisco Bay area properties.  It works, no monthly fees, no credit cards, no hassle.  It's just not yet widespread.

The case study of hotels "hotels making a nice spiff on guests when using a hotel phone" is a fine case study.  Those fees got so ridiculous, that there was tremendous pressure among travelers to avoid the phone.  The user pool got smaller and smaller so the hotels jacked the fees up, so the user pool got even smaller and more pissed off.  By the time AirBnB became real I was ready to never set foot in a hotel again.

Sure, but you can't depend as a MF owner on everyone setting their car timer to match the building needs.  Thus, the EV load management system.

Quote from @Brian Burke:

\Add 100 chargers to a 300 unit property and I bet there's no way the transformers and electrical infrastructure at the property can handle that.  Overhauling that would be a major (expensive) upgrade.  It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

 No, not a problem, because of EV load management.  Basically the EV charging gets spread out at times of day when there's capacity.

Happy to set anyone in the SF Bay Area up with that.

Quote from @Rob Harnden II:

The segment was about how the Colorado fire department has new equipment to deal with the specific problems with putting out EV fires.

Interesting.
Because the Colorado fire department also has equipment to deal with gasoline car fires.
Quite a bit of it.  Plus a separate crew to clean up the spilled fluids.  The main difference is that right now EV fires make the news, and are pesky to put out without that self same experience and special equipment (e.g. fire blankets).

Connecting smoke detectors in the garage is a great idea: the reason that garages have traditionally had only heat sensors, no smoke detectors, was automotive fumes.  New cars (from the factory) are clean enough that old rule seems rather obsolete.

Coming from google I see a
"California Real Estate Q&A Discussion Forum"
At https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/548

But this forum does not appear to be linked from the list of forums in the menu bar.  Are there other regional forums, and how can they be accessed?  Is there a "forum" for metro areas like San Francisco?

The low cost universal plug to install is:

 The regular plug up top matches the travel cord that comes with EVs.  The next connector down NEMA 6-15 is four times faster, and enough for most overnight charging, yet adds virtually nothing to the wire cost.  Then you just need a weather protected location for the outlet and you're done.  Or go for a NEMA 6-20 for not much more.

You sound like you have a LOT to learn about rent control, how it works, and why it exists.
"so can evict and reset rents to market" is exactly the type of investor behavior rent control laws were set up to prevent.

You are at the start of your investing journey: consider an area without rent control to start with until you learn a lot more.

One way to do this very inexpensively is with a combination 6-20 and 5-15 plug:

This uses very low cost wire and is basically a regular outlet except with 220V available for those with a matching EV travel charging cord.  Be sure to advertise exactly what SORT of charging your property offers as there are like a dozen possibilities.

Everything past that is speed of charge or dealing with billing infrastructure.  That's where systems differ the most.  The lowest up front cost is an outlet, followed by a "dumb" charger.  Adding billing infrastructure adds to the up front cost.  Going full professional with a service provider adds a monthly or annual fee.

The car end connector will change in 2025. 
Only the car end is changing.
In essence all the vendors will switch to Tesla's J3400 connector.  If you install a dumb outlet though you'll be fine, nothing will change. 

https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2024/03/over-240-california-community-organizations-unite-against

Late in the legislative process the tax was slipped into a 2022 law, A.B. 205, authorizing the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, to add a fixed charge to electricity bills based on household income. It also eliminated “the cap on the amount of the fixed charge that the PUC may authorize. A.B. 205 passed after just three days, without any public hearings or floor debate. As a result, the state’s big utilities and other groups are proposing fixed charges between $30 to $70 per month, three to seven times the national average. All PG&E, SDG&E, SCE, and community choice aggregation residential customers — except for California Alternate Rates for Energy, or CARE, and Family Electric Rate Assistance or FERA, customers — will have to pay this tax, and it cannot be reduced or avoided, no matter how little energy a household uses. (edited)

This will affect investors with separate metering for little used units or devices like pumps or EV charging.... even if you have excess solar generation or whatever the bill charges will still apply.  It will of course affect your tenants directly, and your house meter on multifamily.

Disclosure: I volunteer for the EV Charging for All Coalition, a non-profit working on building code policy for multifamily EV charging.