Well the obvious answer is parking spots will need to get electrified. Most new condos where I live already come with enough electrical provision pre-planned to electrify parking spots if needed and old ones are considering adding provisions.
Household wiring will anyway not have enough current capacity to support charging, so smart plug based billing will likely be the way these things will go. Since electric cars ARE becoming cheaper economically for city use, this likely WILL happen. Accelerating the trend will be the fact that property prices will go up/down depending on availability of electric charging - so big property owners will start making these investments since there's no lack of capital among them.
Basically, these tipping point things don't necessarily happen because of "activism" but happen when economics cause a runaway effect (think spread of mobile connectivity for another example) - so to that extent Tesla is pushing in the right direction by trying to get economics right.
Old homes would benefit from better load management technology. I want to clip something like this (http://www.theenergydetective.com/homemtuct200.html) to my main feed, and have it send power measurements to an EV charger, which automatically adjusts to fill all remaining capacity.
This wouldn't require any Internet access, just data sent over the power line, to a charger that's able to listen.
Existing home wiring could also be repurposed to carry HVDC, and therefore more power (12A * 600V = 7.2kW)... but I'm not sure if HVDC cars are designed with low current in mind.
ClipperCreek sells EV chargers with a UART interface to set the charging rate (in 25% increments), so it should be relatively straightforward to stuff a Raspberry Pi or something in there.
But that option costs an extra $184, and the UART protocol is only available under NDA, which probably makes it difficult to open source.
The J1772 spec is well documented and supports the "advertisement" of maximum charging current. You could add the capability to something like OpenEVSE. https://www.openevse.com/
At the moment, I'm pretty sure I have enough panel capacity for a plain old EVSE, but if I do need something controllable, then OpenEVSE looks really interesting. Thanks.
Here's an example of OpenEVSE tracking solar capacity, which is basically equivalent to panel load management:
No need, because it is simply untrue: Electric vehicles can charge on anything from 1-ph 8A 240V, to 3-ph 32A 400V, all of which can easily be provided by common urban household wiring.
Or even less. I tell my Model S to charge at 5A when I am at home (230 V single phase). Gets me 5 km per hour, 60 km from 18:00 to 06:00 which is fine because I average about 20000 km a year which is less than 60 km a day. On road trips I use the superchargers.
Annecdata: all the houses I personally know of in the south bay (North California, USA) area have three phase power, and the oldest was built in the 1940es.
Charging a Model S from a 110V 20A outlet is very slow and probably not a very useful option (but I have done it on a visit to LA).
Most home electricity installations have circuit breakers @ 15 Amps where I live. Wiring typically rated to a max 20 Amps draw before overheating. At a below 15 Amps current draw levels, you'll required an inordinate number of hours of charging for getting mileage on the battery and it's just not practical.
When we first got our electric car we used a cord strung out the window, 12 amps at 120 volts. Not a problem, plug in when you get home, unless you need more than 60 miles this will be fine.
How many km do you drive in a year? My 20k km is about 55 km per day which is easily supplied by 5A 230 V to my Tesla S in 12 hours, say from 18:00 to 06:00.
Perhaps he's referring to the recommendations that Tesla has: "We recommend installing the Wall Connector with a power output to match the on-board charger of the vehicle, typically a 40, 60 or 90 amp circuit breaker."
Our house has a 30A dryer outlet on the second floor. The house is maxed out on a 100A main line. To get another 40A or 50A breaker permitted, and installed would mean new main line, new meter, new main breaker, new breaker box. Bids have come in between $7,000 to $9,000. New homes with 200A service will mostly be ok, but older homes are often underserved electrically.
Household wiring will anyway not have enough current capacity to support charging, so smart plug based billing will likely be the way these things will go. Since electric cars ARE becoming cheaper economically for city use, this likely WILL happen. Accelerating the trend will be the fact that property prices will go up/down depending on availability of electric charging - so big property owners will start making these investments since there's no lack of capital among them.
Basically, these tipping point things don't necessarily happen because of "activism" but happen when economics cause a runaway effect (think spread of mobile connectivity for another example) - so to that extent Tesla is pushing in the right direction by trying to get economics right.