Electric car charging 'SubNet' for apartments, condos, and office buildings

Guest post: William Truesdell

Electric vehicle sales in the U.S. are nearing 1.5 million, with significant growth recorded month over month since 2011 (see Veloz chart below). At this rate, the U.S. is slated for 1.28 million EV sales in 2026 alone. While we’re at it, let’s throw another number into the mix: 20X. That’s the projection of 20X more EVs on the road by 2030 than today. 

Above: A Tesla Model 3 arrives at an apartment building (Source: Aniseh Sharifi)

Now that I’ve sufficiently muddled your mind with numbers, let’s talk about charging. In 2030, over 30 million EVs will require charging infrastructure. There are a number of efforts underway to increase public charging, especially fast charging along major highway corridors by players like Electrify America and Tesla. But if today is any guide, more than 80% of charging will continue to take place at home. That’s great news for homeowners since most "fueling" won’t even take a trip to a station across town; instead, they can pull into their own garage and charge up overnight. 

Above: Quarterly sales of electric cars (Source: Veloz)

But what about over 40% of Americans who rent or live in multi-unit dwellings? Most of these buildings were designed (and built) long before EVs hit the mainstream. As a result, they lack charging infrastructure and most retrofitting options today are simply too expensive for the owner’s or HOA’s budget.

EVmatch has a solution. The California-based company can help install affordable smart charging stations, cover electricity costs, and even allow you to earn extra money when renting your stations to the public. Payment processing, booking, and SubNet features allow EV drivers to reserve a charger for a specific time period, ensuring efficient sharing and optimal utilization among residents.

Why Reservations?

For those of you who drive EVs, I’m sure you can relate to this experience. In any setting, it follows a similar pattern. Maybe you show up at your workplace hoping to charge during the day so you can make your commute home. You arrive at the office to find all the chargers occupied. That’s okay, you’ll check your email and run back out to see if one has become available. Still no luck. At lunch, you look out the window to peek around the corner at the chargers. Two new cars have moved in. Meetings gobble up the afternoon and before you know it, it’s already 4 o’clock. You run down with hopes of charging for the last hour of the day. Fortunately, one charger has become available. You gain about 25 miles of charge by 5, just enough to make it home. You pull into your garage and think, “Maybe this car isn’t right for my commute.”

Above: New solutions for charging at multi-unit dwellings are making things easier for EV owners (Image: EVmatch)

Charging shouldn’t be this stressful, and it’s not hard to imagine how difficult it would be for tenants in a multi-unit dwelling to share a charger if they didn’t have a way to book and reserve them. That’s why EVmatch built a reservation system for EV drivers. Whether you’re at home or at the office, you can make a reservation through the EVmatch app to charge for a specific time period, eliminating the stress of jockeying for a charger.

How SubNet Works

An especially exciting new feature is called SubNet: a customized group management system designed to enable flexibility in how you manage EV charging. It works in any commercial setting, like college campuses, business parks, hotels, or gyms, and allows station owners to set specific pricing and availability for different groups. For example, a co-working office can offer free charging to its members and then rent stations to the general public for a fee at specific hours. The SubNet leverages access codes and idle fees to ensure smooth scheduling and usage of chargers.

Above: A "host" can manage her charging station(s) with the SubNet feature right within an app (Image: EVmatch)

With this new SubNet feature, EVmatch is able to provide an ideal charging solution for multi-unit dwellings. Multi-unit dwelling owners install affordable charging stations with EVmatch and then have the option to rent them out to both tenants and the public through SubNet for quick recuperation of installation and electricity costs.

SubNet allows you to customize charging station access to meet the unique needs of your business, organization, or multi-unit dwelling.

Here are a few SubNet use cases:

1. Multi-Unit Dwellings – Low-priced tenant user group and a more expensive public user group. Public can access stations when most tenants are away from home.
2. Campus Charging – Student, employee, and public user groups. Public access on the weekends and students receive discounted or free pricing.
3. Lodging Destinations – Guest, employee, and public user groups. Distribute codes to guests for exclusive access and pricing that can be deleted after their stay has ended.
4. Workplace Charging – Employee and public groups. Can be priced to recover electricity costs from employees but charge a higher rate to members of the public.

If you’re a tenant, manager, or owner of a multi-unit dwelling or you have another commercial location and you’re interested in charging stations, it might be worthwhile to contact EVmatch to learn more about the company's flexible (and affordable) solution.

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Source: EVMatch; Author Bio: William Truesdell has always been interested in creative ways to advance clean energy. He works day in and day out to advance EV adoption by increasing public charging options and busting EV-related myths. William has worked in the political sector managing nonprofit, candidate, and issue advocacy campaigns as well as for elected officials at the Colorado State Legislature to move the ball on energy and climate policy. He holds a BA from the University of Colorado, Boulder.