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Electric Vehicles

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I like the idea of the driver owns the car, the swap stations own the battery. When one goes bad, they retire it. The costs of that spread across the price of each swap.

The idea of that appeals to me, that once the expensive battery has a problem I don't suddenly have a few thousand dollars to come up with in the short term.

On the other hand I've been hearing about batteries you can count on to last the lifetime of the car, so maybe that's obsolete.
 
MRC_Hans said:
Thing about public transport is that it tends to have very varied loads over a day. So there will be plenty of opportunity to charge vehicles during the low periods.

However, I think we are here having some tunnel-vision again, in reality some future scenario could be this:

There is already a move (at least in Europe) towards cars that are not owned. You rent them when you need them. There is also the quest for fully automatic cars. Let's assume those are combined (and assume various safety challenges are solved), then a car would be something you ordered on your smartphone (or whatever communication terminal we may have in a decade or two). You will tell the app where you want to go, and an automatic car will appear at the curb. You will get in, take a nap or read a book, and leave it at the destination. You will be billed online. If you order a longer ride than the range of the usual car, you will either get a long-range version, or you will be requested to change car during the trip. If you are a larger group, you order a larger car.

Mind you, this scenario needs not be applied universally. In some areas, it may never be feasible, in others it could be implemented tomorrow (well, within a few years ;) ).

Hans
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I think, generally, thats where transportation is headed. But its going to take longer than we think. For one, I don't believe fully auto drive cars will ever work on "normal" roads. We'll need some sort of beacons in the road, and some sort of way for traffic signals and the like to talk to them, and talk to each other (ie position data). I just don't see powerful enough AI in the next century to account for things like road lines being invisible due to snow cover or construction. As long as you are staying in a fully developed "auto car network" you can order your on demand car. But if you need to go on low density dirt roads, then you'll need one with the option to drive manually.
 
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Here's the thing.

No matter how long it lasts, people are still going to want new cars every once and while for new features, new style, or simple "I'm sick of my old car"-ness.

It's a nice idea that I buy a car when I'm 18 and just "Ship of Theseus" it until I'm 80, but that's not going to actually happen in the real world.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
The devil, as always, is in the details.

Still, none of that seems insurmountable. It seems roughly analogous to what happens when you exchange an empty propane tank for a full one. In that case you “own” the one given to you for the time you have it, and the dealer verifies your exchange tank is still legally in limits.

It’s also been pointed out that even after a car’s battery pack drops below a certain arbitrary threshold, it could still have value as part of a “PowerWall” or other backup usage. I have no doubt a successful business model could be dreamed up once the demand is there.
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Yea it is not impossible but seems to be unnecessary for personal transport. People just are not driving that many hours solid all that often with how fast they can be charged and how much capacity batteries have. It is a solution in search of a problem.

There simply isn't going to be enough people driving long distances and not able to stop for a half hour for a recharge to support the infrastructure to make battery swapping practical.
 
Reverting to an earlier part of this thread, can someone summarize the connection possibilities/alternatives/permutations?

In the US, fuel nozzles are standardized, as are the filling tubes in the car. This in theory prevents putting diesel fuel in a gasoline tank and vice versa. It also means that the owner of a particular brand of car is not limited to using only a station that has that brand of nozzle: I don't have to worry about whether my Chevrolet truck is not fillable at a particular station.

Is there a move to standardize connectors and receptacles, or will a vehicle owner have to carry adapters? If so, how would that work?

A related issue is whether eventually charging stations will be tied to particular payment systems, or whether one could just use a credit or debit card.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Here's the thing.

No matter how long it lasts, people are still going to want new cars every once and while for new features, new style, or simple "I'm sick of my old car"-ness.

It's a nice idea that I buy a car when I'm 18 and just "Ship of Theseus" it until I'm 80, but that's not going to actually happen in the real world.
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True - but there will also always be people who can never, ever afford a new car. The people who like new cars just supply the market for used cars. Older used cars eventually get shipped out of country, some get fully destroyed in accidents. Even if we stopped all production of internal combustion-engined cars tomorrow and made up for it with production of EV's, we might still be a decade or more away from the longevity of the EVs suppressing sales of new cars. In reality we are probably decades away from that point.

You might see a new service industry springing up in the refurbishment of older EV's. New paint, new upholstery, maybe some sort of standardized way of updating the electronics.
 
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crescent said:
You might see a new service industry springing up in the refurbishment of older EV's. New paint, new upholstery, maybe some sort of standardized way of updating the electronics.
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Not gonna happen. Cars are high tech now. That's like suggesting buying a computer once and just keep updating the parts forever. Sure you could do that back in the 80s, 90s, maybe the early 2000s but not anymore. Eventually one key part just isn't going to be able to support another key part.

BTW, I fully predict about a 50/50 at worst odds that that same thing will happen to housing within a few decades at most.
 
gnome said:
I like the idea of the driver owns the car, the swap stations own the battery. When one goes bad, they retire it. The costs of that spread across the price of each swap.

The idea of that appeals to me, that once the expensive battery has a problem I don't suddenly have a few thousand dollars to come up with in the short term.
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Not necessarily a horrible idea, but there are flaws.

The fact that you have added a new "middle-man" into the maintenance of an electric vehicle can cause problems... there is an increase in overhead (after all, the swap station has to earn its profit), they would need some way to determine who the biggest "battery abusers" are (so that people who don't drive as much don't end up "subsidizing" others), and there is always a risk that your local swap station could go out of business (meaning you would lose any sort of deposit you had with them).
 
jadebox said:
I do, however, have to have the brake fluid replaced once a year, ironically because the car seldom uses the brakes and water can build up in the system.
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Brake fluid is hygroscopic and absorbs water from the air. Higher moisture content in your brake system reduces the boiling point of the fluid. This can lead to failure over time. But people neglect this more than any other fluid. I know people that have never replaced it. I'm sure you could easily go a few years as opposed to every year. But I replace mine every year because it is so easy to do.

Everyone should replace the fluids every one to two years in their vehicles. But it is an easy job to do. You can easily do it yourself with a turkey baster or a fluid extractor. I never pay to have this done. You merely pull the cap off the brake reservoir and suck out as much fluid out of the reservoir as you can and refill with the correct brake fluid for your vehicle. Don't worry that you're only replacing 80 to 90 percent. The point is to remove as much moisture from the system as you can. It's never going to be perfect except when it is brand new.

PS: NEVER EVER USE THAT Turkey Baster for food once you have used it for this.
 
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xterra said:
Reverting to an earlier part of this thread, can someone summarize the connection possibilities/alternatives/permutations?

In the US, fuel nozzles are standardized, as are the filling tubes in the car. This in theory prevents putting diesel fuel in a gasoline tank and vice versa. It also means that the owner of a particular brand of car is not limited to using only a station that has that brand of nozzle: I don't have to worry about whether my Chevrolet truck is not fillable at a particular station.

Is there a move to standardize connectors and receptacles, or will a vehicle owner have to carry adapters? If so, how would that work?

A related issue is whether eventually charging stations will be tied to particular payment systems, or whether one could just use a credit or debit card.
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Tesla gets bad mouthed for going their own way on charging, but it was the only way to sell the cars. There was very little infrastructure and nobody was willing to build it. Tesla stepped up and built out the infrastructure and made it free for their early vehicles. It was a necessary step to get people to invest in EVs and it worked.

Since then the rest of the industry has gone back and forth on standards. I think there is one pretty universal standard in the US and another in Europe, but I don't really know. There are now more non-Tesla chargers in the US than Tesla ones, but the real catch is that Teslas can use both, with adapters, while non-Teslas still can't use the Tesla chargers. Many think this will change over time as Tesla will have to get some return on that investment, but it can be a pretty big reason why some people buy a Tesla over competitors.

I think there will be adapters and differences for some time, but that each region will settle in on some standard for a bit. And then USB-C will come out and we will all get new adapters.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Here's the thing.

No matter how long it lasts, people are still going to want new cars every once and while for new features, new style, or simple "I'm sick of my old car"-ness.

It's a nice idea that I buy a car when I'm 18 and just "Ship of Theseus" it until I'm 80, but that's not going to actually happen in the real world.
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That isn't a new issue, nor a problem. That's how the car market works now. The people who buy new cars might typically only keep them for 3 years. There are a similar number of people who buy 3 year old cars, and so on.

The worry around how electric cars will disrupt the car market is probably about what they will cost. Electric cars are, for now, significantly more expensive, and at some point they might need a part replaced which is so expensive it's an uneconomic repair.

For the used market it might feel a bit like if everyone who buys new cars suddenly decided to buy big executive cars instead; they're really expensive when new so used car buyers will probably have to buy an older one than they're used to, but their value tumbles as they get older and they approach the age when they're liable to require a repair that costs more then the car's worth.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
For the used market it might feel a bit like if everyone who buys new cars suddenly decided to buy big executive cars instead; they're really expensive when new so used car buyers will probably have to buy an older one than they're used to, but their value tumbles as they get older and they approach the age when they're liable to require a repair that costs more then the car's worth.
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You sound like my wife when I proposed buying a five year old BMW 7 Series* instead of a new minivan. It was wrong then and it is wrong now!!!!


* The L models had longer rear doors that made child seats a breeze.
 
I could see battery swapping gaining favor, but it will take a lot more infrastructure and standards that no every manufacturer would want to be bound to. Performance standards and plugs and the like are far different from being locked into a specific battery size, capacity, and compatibility. Still, if an outfit like Tesla were able to provide battery swapping at multiple locations which double as charging stations, it might be a good alternative for people who would rather pay a little extra to save a little time. Since those cars seem to be so intricately connected all the time, the problems of differing battery condition and mileage might be addressable in ways we're not currently used to.

Propane and welding tanks are a different sort of thing, because what you exchange is really only the container. If it passes a pressure test, you know it's good, and its efficiency as a container is not questionable as it ages. The decline of life in a battery is quite different.

As for new versus used cars, some of us just don't like to buy new cars, preferring to let some other sucker eat the depreciation, and some of us like to hold on to old ones for a long long time. Just last year I finally gave my 1972 Mercedes to one of my kids. My truck is a 2002, my "new" Hyundai is a 2013 bought used a few years ago, and I expect to keep it for some years more. I also have a 2006 Jeep, currently in semi-retirement awaiting some work to get it through inspection, and I was stalled in my repair work by a slipped disk and long recovery. Now it's buried under snow and waiting till spring. I certainly would be really peeved if cars, like some other appliances, were to become obsolete and lose support after only a few years.
 
bruto said:
As for new versus used cars, some of us just don't like to buy new cars, preferring to let some other sucker eat the depreciation, and some of us like to hold on to old ones for a long long time. Just last year I finally gave my 1972 Mercedes to one of my kids. My truck is a 2002, my "new" Hyundai is a 2013 bought used a few years ago, and I expect to keep it for some years more. I also have a 2006 Jeep, currently in semi-retirement awaiting some work to get it through inspection, and I was stalled in my repair work by a slipped disk and long recovery. Now it's buried under snow and waiting till spring. I certainly would be really peeved if cars, like some other appliances, were to become obsolete and lose support after only a few years.
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I think legally they are not allowed to, that was an issue with the experimental electric cars put out when California had the upcoming mandate that X% of cars sold needed to be electric.
 
Dr. Keith said:
You sound like my wife when I proposed buying a five year old BMW 7 Series* instead of a new minivan. It was wrong then and it is wrong now!!!!


* The L models had longer rear doors that made child seats a breeze.
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A 5 year old 7 series would have likely depreciated by at least 60 percent. But almost any repair on a 7 series is incredibly expensive. Almost every part is 2, 3, 5 times as expensive as a mass market minivan. But they are amazing to drive.;)
 
Fast Eddie B said:
I envision battery modules that simply slide or drop in, not requiring cabling. Something like the rechargeable batteries on power tools. “Swap Stations” would probably need to verify the serviceability of batteries that are swapped.
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Part of this issue, is that the battery is a pretty integral part of the entire system and the crash protection is critical. While it was an early thought, I believe that the current state of design does not make this feasible. Doesn't mean that it won't be an option down the road, especially as battery technology improves.

I am not on the electrical side of the build, but I am not sure you can do away with the cabling at this point either. I would have to ask around about that.
 
Disbelief said:
Part of this issue, is that the battery is a pretty integral part of the entire system and the crash protection is critical. While it was an early thought, I believe that the current state of design does not make this feasible. Doesn't mean that it won't be an option down the road, especially as battery technology improves.
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Pretty sure the car would have to be designed ground-up for swappable battery modules.

What I picture is a monocoque “frame” design with a built in “tunnel” or ”tunnels”that the battery pack(s) slid into. The frame/tunnel is what would provide crash protection. Another large advantage is that as battery technology improves, keeping up with that technology would just involve upgrading battery packs. In the future that pack could even involve hybrid super-capacitors or whatever the latest technology is.

But it still may be that battery advances will render this concept moot, as I predict will happen with plug-in hybrids before long.

As to cabling, I’m sure there must be durable, high-voltage solutions, perhaps similar to the interface now with fast DC charging.
 
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acbytesla said:
A 5 year old 7 series would have likely depreciated by at least 60 percent. But almost any repair on a 7 series is incredibly expensive. Almost every part is 2, 3, 5 times as expensive as a mass market minivan. But they are amazing to drive.;)
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I hope you don't mind that I deleted the parts of your post I find offensively true and completely off-topic to the conversation I was having with my wife.
 
Dr. Keith said:
I hope you don't mind that I deleted the parts of your post I find offensively true and completely off-topic to the conversation I was having with my wife.
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I'm a car buff. You're the one who brought up buying a 7 series BMW which I think is a great car. I'm not trying to offend you.

This is a common issue with luxury vehicles. Manufacturers will trade reliability for cutting edge features that sell the vehicle to the first owner who can afford the maintenance. And manufacturers often could care less about second owners. Also unlike vehicles that they manufacture a lot of, they are unable to enjoy the benefits of scale with repair parts,

This concerns me with the Teslas. What is a second and third owner's experience? One of the biggest reasons I wouldn't buy a Tesla is many of the features are not transferable to a second owner. The second owner has to purchase them again. Repairs look to be very expensive as well.
 
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Fast Eddie B said:
Pretty sure the car would have to be designed ground-up for swappable battery modules.

What I picture is a monocoque “frame” design with a built in “tunnel” or ”tunnels”that the battery pack(s) slid into. The frame/tunnel is what would provide crash protection. Another large advantage is that as battery technology improves, keeping up with that technology would just involve upgrading battery packs. In the future that pack could even involve hybrid super-capacitors or whatever the latest technology is.

But it still may be that battery advances will render this concept moot, as I predict will happen with plug-in hybrids before long.

As to cabling, I’m sure there must be durable, high-voltage solutions, perhaps similar to the interface now with fast DC charging.
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I think you may be misunderstanding just how large the batteries are at this point. I think that we may eventually get to swappable when the size is more conducive, but the size makes it much more difficult at this point.
 
Disbelief said:
I think you may be misunderstanding just how large the batteries are at this point. I think that we may eventually get to swappable when the size is more conducive, but the size makes it much more difficult at this point.
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Well, I may be wrong, but I thought the “batteries” were individually about the size of AA batteries.

Google turned up this about Tesla battery packs:

The 85 kWh battery pack weighs 1,200 lb (540 kg) and contains 7,104 lithium-ion battery cells in 16 modules wired in series (14 in the flat section and two stacked on the front). Each module contains 6 groups of 74 cells wired in parallel; the 6 groups are then wired in series within the module.

But you’re right - any way you divided up the battery into modules, 1,200 lbs is a lot of weight to handle. Might not be practical for cars, but trucks and buses might be able to handle heavy modules on dollies or whatever.

But I am in the camp that advanced in battery technology may render this solution unneeded.
 
bruto said:
As for new versus used cars, some of us just don't like to buy new cars, preferring to let some other sucker eat the depreciation, and some of us like to hold on to old ones for a long long time. Just last year I finally gave my 1972 Mercedes to one of my kids. My truck is a 2002, my "new" Hyundai is a 2013 bought used a few years ago, and I expect to keep it for some years more. I also have a 2006 Jeep, currently in semi-retirement awaiting some work to get it through inspection, and I was stalled in my repair work by a slipped disk and long recovery. Now it's buried under snow and waiting till spring. I certainly would be really peeved if cars, like some other appliances, were to become obsolete and lose support after only a few years.
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I was under the impression this was a pretty common tactic for buying cars. New cars are luxury products for either wealthy people who don't mind the depreciation hit or for the financially illiterate.

I bought my 3 year old Corolla with 40,000 miles on it and plan to drive it until a serious enough mechanical failure occurs that repairs are no longer cost-effective. Hopefully this doesn't occur before 250,000 miles with good maintenance habits. I prefer a manual transmission because long-term maintenance is cheaper than an automatic, or at least I hope so. Putting in new clutch plates is much cheaper than swapping an automatic transmission.

acbytesla made this point better than I could articulate. Teslas are largely luxury products and most buyers are of substantial means and are buying them new. These are the kind of people who have no problem dropping a few thousand bucks to fix their fancy car should a problem spring up. More likely, they sell it off while it's still somewhat low mileage in order to trade up to the newer, better models and they never have to experience the maintenance woes of a car getting long in miles.

The jury is out to see how good these are as the everyman's car. It will probably take around a decade to see how these hold up in the long run and as they pass down into the used market.
 
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I agree, time will tell. There is, at least so far, a difference in how older used vehicles fare, because an older conventional car, though it can break down and need repair, has few parts that are guaranteed to have a limited life span, and one can keep an old car going with used parts.

Batteries are somewhat different, as they are pretty likely to expire on schedule, and the supply of recycled or rebuilt ones is limited. It's possible these days to buy a nice used Prius for very small money because the batteries have gone bad, and are so expensive to replace. The subsidies and losses that have made initial purchase so attractive disappear. It's still possible, either through recycled and re-assembled batteries, or simply buying a new one, but from the cost effectiveness point of view it's hard to justify not just buying a new car.

Eventually one can hope that third parties will get into the business of fixing or rebuilding or even making batteries, and that quantity will drive down the cost of replacement, but electric cars will always have a more defined life span, I think, and the market will change.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
I have the comparative luxury of a free car park at work. In recent years there's been political pressure around the idea of pushing commuters out of their cars and onto public transport by making employers pay tax on car park provision and perhaps charge their employees a parking fee.

The idea that I and colleagues might persuade my employer to pay to install and maintain charging points so we can charge our cars with their electricity seems far-fetched.
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Really? I think you need a better employer.
I work in tech, it's standard with all the larger companies and shared spaces. The new construction is fitted out with changing points for 10-20% of spaces and that'll increase.
 
catsmate said:
Really? I think you need a better employer.
I work in tech, it's standard with all the larger companies and shared spaces. The new construction is fitted out with changing points for 10-20% of spaces and that'll increase.
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Some employers will install chargers as a service. That depends on how hungry they are for qualified staff. But there will be companies offering to install them for the privilege of selling the power. At any rate, don't expect to get to charge for free.

Hans
 
bruto said:
Batteries are somewhat different, as they are pretty likely to expire on schedule, and the supply of recycled or rebuilt ones is limited. It's possible these days to buy a nice used Prius for very small money because the batteries have gone bad, and are so expensive to replace. The subsidies and losses that have made initial purchase so attractive disappear. It's still possible, either through recycled and re-assembled batteries, or simply buying a new one, but from the cost effectiveness point of view it's hard to justify not just buying a new car.

Eventually one can hope that third parties will get into the business of fixing or rebuilding or even making batteries, and that quantity will drive down the cost of replacement, but electric cars will always have a more defined life span, I think, and the market will change.
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I don't know about the batteries on Priuses, but the work Tesla is doing is showing the the lifetime of the batteries will be well over 250k miles, I think GM is getting similar results with the Bolt. The batteries are going to last longer than most ICE cars ever last. The "defined lifespan" of electric vehicles has not yet been determined because few of them have been around for long, but it is looking more and more like the powertrains (batteries and motors) will be much more durable than that of ICE cars.
 
crescent said:
I don't know about the batteries on Priuses, but the work Tesla is doing is showing the the lifetime of the batteries will be well over 250k miles, I think GM is getting similar results with the Bolt. The batteries are going to last longer than most ICE cars ever last. The "defined lifespan" of electric vehicles has not yet been determined because few of them have been around for long, but it is looking more and more like the powertrains (batteries and motors) will be much more durable than that of ICE cars.
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That certainly is encouraging, and I would expect it to get better. I still have my doubts about some of this, especially in nasty climates where battery usage is going to be higher per mile. Of course it's also true that in these climates overall car life is somewhat reduced by rust and other factors, so it's a fair achievement to get over 250K miles anyway. On the plus side, apart from the risk of sudden smoke-release of the electronics, I'd expect the power train and electronic guts of an EV to be very long lived, since there's so little to wear.

I'll probably be dead first, but I kind of look forward to shopping for a nice used EV traded in because someone wanted nicer icons and a new map display. But I'll have to wait a little to see how well such things perform here in Vermont, where the folk saying is that we have 9 months of winter and three months of bad sledding.
 
catsmate said:
Really? I think you need a better employer.
I work in tech, it's standard with all the larger companies and shared spaces. The new construction is fitted out with changing points for 10-20% of spaces and that'll increase.
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You might work for a tech employer which throws up new buildings at the drop of a hat but I work for a tech employer in a small out of the way department squeezed into a basic "crinkly shed" industrial unit on someone else's estate and we spent a year huddled around a domestic ADSL line waiting to get the fibre infrastructure installed because we weren't a high enough priority.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Jaguar Land Rover say they are going to be all electric by 2025.
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They say that on the Reuters and BBC news sites but the ArsTechnica version says they'll stop diesel production by 2026 and stop petrol production by 2036, and they'll have at least a hybrid version of each model available by 2030.

All very laudable but it needs a lot of word-twisting and asterisks to make that look like "all-electric by 2025".
 
bruto said:
Eventually one can hope that third parties will get into the business of fixing or rebuilding or even making batteries, and that quantity will drive down the cost of replacement, but electric cars will always have a more defined life span, I think, and the market will change.
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This sounds great except Tesla and other vehicle manufacturers are working to make the batteries structural components.
 
acbytesla said:
This sounds great except Tesla and other vehicle manufacturers are working to make the batteries structural components.
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I wonder when government regulation will get involved in the replaceability of batteries. There are sure to be some interesting consumer rights fights about them, though that is just true of cars in general as well.
 
ponderingturtle said:
I wonder when government regulation will get involved in the replaceability of batteries. There are sure to be some interesting consumer rights fights about them, though that is just true of cars in general as well.
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My guess here is that there would be a "right to repair" fight, in which it might transpire that physical components like batteries can be replaced, but that Tesla and others will pull out the copyright on software to make it impossible to do exact replacements of many components, and will retain the right to cancel warranties, charge options, and such.
 
MRC_Hans said:
Some employers will install chargers as a service. That depends on how hungry they are for qualified staff. But there will be companies offering to install them for the privilege of selling the power. At any rate, don't expect to get to charge for free.

Hans
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And it's possible that the free chargers that exist now may be forced to charge.

In the US, the state and federal taxes on gasoline seem to run from 15 to 60 cents per gallon. In theory, those taxes are used to maintain roads and infrastructure.

As gasoline/diesel cars dwindle and electric cars increase that tax is going to have be made up somewhere. One solution would be to make all chargers track kilowatt hours and add a tax on.
 
bruto said:
My guess here is that there would be a "right to repair" fight, in which it might transpire that physical components like batteries can be replaced, but that Tesla and others will pull out the copyright on software to make it impossible to do exact replacements of many components, and will retain the right to cancel warranties, charge options, and such.
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If I understand correctly Big Farm Manufacturers and farmers have joined (in the legal sense) that issue with regard to repair of advanced farm equipment. Hopefully, the courts will at least a rump of established law in the near future.
 
SezMe said:
If I understand correctly Big Farm Manufacturers and farmers have joined (in the legal sense) that issue with regard to repair of advanced farm equipment. Hopefully, the courts will at least a rump of established law in the near future.
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They've been in it for a long while. Right to repair is a big issue among farmers. This is a great issue for Democrats to push. The tech companies will howl as they see this as a sizable revenue stream. But it will mean a lot towards winning back farm states.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
You might work for a tech employer which throws up new buildings at the drop of a hat but I work for a tech employer in a small out of the way department squeezed into a basic "crinkly shed" industrial unit on someone else's estate and we spent a year huddled around a domestic ADSL line waiting to get the fibre infrastructure installed because we weren't a high enough priority.
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Given that large parts of the population work for employers that don't even provide living wages or health benefits in this country, I'm not holding my breath for charging stations to be installed out the kindness of employers hearts.

Yes, professionals in highly competitive fields will continue to receive generous workplace amenities, but this says very little about the broader attitudes of employers.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
Given that large parts of the populations work for employers that don't even provide living wages or health benefits in this country, I'm not holding my breath for charging stations to be installed out the kindness of employers hearts.

Yes, professionals in highly competitive fields will continue to receive generous workplace amenities, but this says very little about the broader attitudes of employers.
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Then again, if the installation costs them nothing and they stand to make some money, maybe the employer (or perhaps more accurately, the owner of the building) would agree to a third party installing charging points.
 
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