Using street lamps as EV chargers

It's interesting how this sounds like a cutting edge experiment, while this is a common thing to see in Germany and other European states for quite a while now.

I think the "bold innovation" framing partly because the current administration is making green technology a though crime, and partly just the ambient American tendency to describe any incremental improvement as groundbreaking.

I live in the UK; my postman walks up to my house and posts my letters through a flap in the door. I grew up in Australia, where our postman used to ride up to our letterbox on a postal-service-issued motorbike, because the suburban houses are too far apart to make walking economical.

The fact that putting EV chargers in lampposts works in Europe doesn't necessitate that doing so will work in the natural environment, built environment and cultural context of the US. They have to do their own assessments to work out the best solution to the same problem in a different context.

Grants are given to those that can make the mundane seem new and exciting.

Indeed, the several streets around me in London just had hundreds of EV chargers attached to lampposts.

Well, if we are discussing the scenario where people live in tall buildings with no private parking available and need to park the car overnight on the street (which is the scenario depicted by the study)... It sounds a lot like your average European city.

I saw them in London a couple of years ago, and they looked like they had been there for a long time then.

There were lamppost based chargers in Montréal last time I was there. They're a thing in North America as well.

Quebec is ahead of the game vs most other places in North America when it comes to anything EV.

Having some of the cheapest and most plentiful electricity in North America, courtesy giant hydroelectric facilities, helps. (Also why it's a major aluminum producer)

As an EV owner, crossing the border into Quebec from Ontario gives me about 5x the charging options. Everything from ski hills to grocery stores are set up with a mixture of charging types it's great. Get a 20 minute DC fast charge while running into the IGA to grab groceries and conveniences blew my mind.

Those ONroutes in Ontario seemed pretty nice in terms of EV charging infrastructure planning as well. My road trip through Canada was in an ICE so I didn't actually get a real feel for the charging infrastructure, but seeing those definitely felt like the future of long shot highway travel. Looking at maps like plugshare though definitely made it feel like those were the oasis of good charging experiences with things getting more sparse as you continued to travel off the highway.

There were a number of good EV charging ideas I saw on my road trip through Canada.

In the US, the postal service contacts out rural mail routes, and in many states it's legal for the contractor to drive from the passenger seat.

I've heard they're unreliable and expensive. I don't fast charge much, but when I do I usually just hit a Tesla station and use the NACS adapter for my Polestar.

Electrify Canada was overall the best experience, though. No nonsense with installing a stupid custom app and setting up an account. Just tap credit card and go. Got full 150kW that my car can take. No hassle. Ate a burrito and returned to 80%.

Oh that seems difficult. In Finland the postal service uses right hand drive cars.

Meanwhile on Reddit you will find people who delight in cutting charging cables they find plugged into street lights and the like. "Sticking it to the electricity thieves".

I'll bet its even better since the standard voltage is double what the US uses, giving 2x energy over similar wires.

US municipal lighting is 240V.

This is false.

Most rural routes are served by the USPS-proper.

If most, but not all routes are served by USPS proper, and the rest are contracted out, than it is true the USPS contracts out routes.

They do in the US too, but contractors use their own vehicles. Imported right-hand drive cars can be imported, but their use is rare.

This is partially because the car dealer lobby convinced congress to prevent the importation of cars less than 25 years old. Ironically, they did so using safety regulations, so a brand-new car meeting current European safety regulations is legally unsafe, but a 25-year-old car, complying with what European safety regulations were 25 years ago, less any deterioration in those safety systems, is legally safe.