Austin Condo's w/ EV charging stations
 

Do you guys know of any condo's in the Austin downtown area that have EV charging stations for the residents? Do they have a few, or one for every parking spot? If a few, how is that working out?

Most have some capacity, albeit limited. They are usually tied to specific (privately owned) parking spaces rather than as a community feature. There are capacity issues in older buildings that limit the total amount, while newer projects are thinking ahead and including more from the beginning.

As a LEED gold certified building, the Austin Proper has about 2-3 per parking floor (total of 4 floors for residents). During the purchasing process we were asked whether we wanted the option. Not sure if that meant these spots were predetermined or they build additional charging stations ad hoc for those that chose the option. My guess is the former since the charging stations all appear to be in the same place on each floor.

Interestingly, the website doesn't really mention it. It has one sentence, that says we will plug in the car for you. Sounds like you may have to allow someone to valet the car over to the plug, so they can also get it off the plug for the next person to use.

I wonder if the building is primarily "EV Ready", meaning you could have a charger installed in your spot if you wanted, the electrical infrastructure is there, but not the actual charger.

Do you know which buildings?

Not 100% what you're asking here?

Don't spend $.75 Million so everyone can get a charger in their own spot. Contact Austin Energy about installing a few ChargePoint chargers that can be installed in shared spots.

As a Rainey St. resident, I can say that my building (the Shore) does not have any EV Charging. The HOA absolutely does not want to foot the infrastructure bill to place individual charging on parking spots. In addition, for many people with 2/3 parking spots, they are not together (for some strange reason) and it would be challenging to meter the electricity to each unit. Instead, they are considering repurposing an unused garage spot for EV charging, and then adding EV charging to a visitor spot for resident use -- all for a share of the fee.

My understanding is that 70 Rainey Street -- rather unsurprisingly given how new it is -- does have EV parking, though I'm not sure exactly how it's set up.

I'm sure there's variation in the cost depending on the size of the building, size of garage, and a dozen other factors -- but, this seems like it would be a great deal to me, even if I don't have an EV. IIRC, my condo building has 191 units. If the total up-front cost is $750k, that would mean the average cost per resident is just under $4000. I wouldn't be surprised if it was closer to about $10k a spot, but I also wouldn't be surprised to see a large number of people willing to pay that (mainly the younger tech employee crowd versus the empty nester crowd, of course). While it's not going to have some huge boon to resale value or anything else, it certainly can't hurt.

As an alternative to the extent that not everyone in a building is willing to foot the bill for a project like this, I've also seen it done where the currently-interested residents pay their share of the infrastructure and setup cost and the HOA covers the rest. Then when someone moves in and is interested, they will have the "endpoint" installed to their space specifically, and will also have to pay the HOA for their fractional share of that up-front cost.

You mentioned "most" have some capacity. I'm wondering specifically which buildings those may be, most that I am aware of, have no capacity unless they have been retro-fitted.

What is the plan to keep someone from leaving their car in the way, keeping others from using the charger?


Not quite following this idea, the HOA are the owners, which would mean all owners pays for the infrastructure, even if they don't want it. Am I reading that right? Seems to me you would run the infrastructure once (one time cost shared by all), and connect the endpoints (charging units that plug into car) as demanded (each owner that wants it, pays for the charger)


I don't see how the infrastructure can be done in an equitable manner, other than financing the project? Someone may have plans to move out in a few years, and doesn't get to enjoy the infrastructure improvement once they move out. But if financed, they enjoy it for the period of time they live there, at an amortized rate.

Gotcha. In that respect I really do mean most - 360, Seaholm, 5th&West, Proper, 70 Rainey, Independent, 44E, Austonian, W, Linden, Vesper, Modern, etc all have EV charging stations. The usual process is the owner pays to run the charging station to their specific parking spot. We don't see much in the way of community charging if that's what you were originally meaning.

I wish I knew, but it will probably be just sending them reminders and threatening to tow. I doubt it will work well at all in practice.

You've basically got my understanding of it as well. The HOA (and therefore all owners in their fractional percentage) *would* be responsible for paying the up-front infrastructure cost. But, anyone who will actively use the chargers and wants them in their spot would need to pay for the connection of the endpoint, as well as "reimbursing" the HOA for a larger share of that infrastructure cost. Basically, the HOA is on the hook for it, but they would eventually recoup the cost assuming enough people eventually wanted the chargers.