As Tesla expands its Supercharging network and Volkswagen spends $2 billion on their network over the next seven years, we're reminded that one of the biggest conveniences of electric cars is the ability to charge them at home.
That led us to ask, how many electric car owners are dependent on public charging and how fast do they need it to be? For that matter, how many electric-car drivers mainly charge at home?
So we thought we'd put the question to our Twitter followers to find out what types of charging they rely on for their electric cars.
What type of charging do you rely on for your electric car?
— Green Car Reports (@GreenCarReports) May 29, 2018
Specifically, our Twitter poll this week asks: "What type of charging do you depend on for your electric car?"
The choices are: home charging, which could be a standard Level 2 EVSE charging station or just an ordinary 110-volt household outlet; public Level 2 chargers that have been springing up at shopping malls and Whole Foods stores for several years now; or DC fast chargers such as Tesla Superchargers or Electrify America fast charging stations. We also included an option for those who are able to do most of their charging at work at an outlet or a charging station provided by their employer.
Without widespread public charging infrastructure, electric cars have been limited mostly to homeowners who have control over where and when to install a charging stations. A few electric-car drivers have also been able to charge at work even if they couldn't charge at home.
Most experts agree that easy access to public charging for city or apartment dwellers will increase the number of electric cars on the road.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 66.2 percent of Americans own their homes, though many of these are also condominiums or co-ops that might not make it easy for a homeowner to install their own electric-car charger.
To tell us what type of charging you need, whether you already own an electric car or are hoping to buy one, click on over to our Twitter poll.
Remember, as always, that our Twitter polls are unscientific, because the sample size is small and the respondents are self selected.
