This is the best summary I could come up with:
Tenants’ rights advocates are raising legal concerns about a Toronto building complex that’s banning electric transportation vehicles from the property, including in units, the garage, parking spaces and lockers.
Notices were posted this week at 110 and 120 Jameson Avenue in Parkdale, owned by Oberon Development Corporation, to alert tenants to the ban.
The Residential Tenancies Act guarantees a tenant’s right to the “reasonable enjoyment” of the premises, Kwan pointed out.
Beyond that, said Kwan, if a person has a disability and relies on an electric vehicle due to mobility restrictions, such a ban could infringe on their human rights.
The devices are also environmentally friendly, said Mason, adding having more Torontonians rely on alternative transportation is helpful to combat climate change.
“This is a great solution for families who live in the buildings because it makes life more affordable by eliminating the cost of private car ownership,” said Ian Klesmer, the director of strategy and grants at TAF.
The original article contains 915 words, the summary contains 157 words. Saved 83%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Electric vehicles are better than combustion but they are not “environmentally friendly”
Let’s not propagate this argument disingenuously. Electric cars aren’t perfect, but a quick check of the history of the combustion engine will tell us that sufficient time and R&D will take care of many of the mining and materials issues that exist in current electric car manufacturing processes.
Those are not the primary long term problems with those. Electric cars still require roads, tires, parking lots, etc. That’s why they are ‘better’ due to no direct emissions and higher efficiency, but they can never be ‘environmentally friendly’ because they will always need expensive and harmful infrastructure.
Plus they tend to be heavier so they cause even more damage to road surfaces.
This is about e-bikes and e-kickscooters and e-boards and the like, not electric cars. They are absolutely environment friendly - the amount of materials needed to build an e-bike or e-scooter is nothing compared to a car. They’re ideal for dense, urban, human-scale cities because they use the same infrastructure as bicycles for travel.
There are scenarios where this is reasonable. If cars are parked below housing units. The risk of fire from the electric battery that can’t be controlled, might be too great for their insurance carrier.
Maybe if it were 2009 lol. EVs don’t randomly catch fire anymore. Even if it were true, with what Toronto landlords charge, they can afford an insurance bump.
You mean Canadian landlords. I pay more for a town house in London Ontario than most people in Toronto 😂. Canada is fucked.
Ah, a fellow victim of the London housing market. Shame how the only thing less than 450k is a literal burned out crack den.
I’m a fan of EV’s but I was surprised when I read this in the article:
Toronto Fire Services (TFS) told CBC Toronto that it has responded to 47 fires involving lithium ion batteries this year, 10 of which took place in residential high-rises.
Is this not a tiny, super fraction of a number? The average household probably has 10x lithium batteries around in various things.
Toronto Fire Services (TFS) told CBC Toronto that it has responded to 47 fires involving lithium ion batteries this year, 10 of which took place in residential high-rises.
Without clarification that this is specifically related to EVs, this statistic is worthless. I have 7 different devices involving lithium-ion batteries in front of me right now, and none of them are vehicles.
The remaining fire risk/safety issues tend to be with dodgy cheap batteries used as replacements in ebikes and the like, and there are ways to mitigate even those risks (fireproof charging lockers, anyone?). Electric cars are much more heavily safety-tested, and I would say that at this point in their evolution they’re no more likely to catch fire spontaneously than an ICE car.
Plus, some of those parking spaces are probably reserved for visitors, right? You think they’re going to go out and rent an ICE car just to visit this place? There will be EVs on the premises anyway, as they gain market share in general.
Car battery fires use something like 10x the water to put out and take longer to put out.
Car batteries are great, until they are on fire
Because you don’t put out metal fires with water. Powdered salt is supposed to be used to smother class D fires.
While this seems to be more aimed at scooters and the like, I’ve been waiting for electric vehicles and renters to become an issue.
Landlords are going to try to avoid putting in electric car charging points for as long as they can. They simply don’t want to spend the money.
The issue is a little more nuanced than that. Most buildings can only install a few EV chargers before they need to upgrade the mains, and if that needs to be done, the transformers likely aren’t adequate, and the local grid may not be able to withstand it as well.
The owners costs ends at the transformers, taxpayers and the energy corp are in for the rest, and until the energy corp upgrades the grid and transformers, building owners can only do so much.
No worries it’s a concern for even single family homes as well, a transformer can normally supply 4-6 houses, but put an EV in every house and they can only do 2.
Most people in non-modern homes will likely need a new panel and mains, same issue applies to the transformers and beyond there as well. Homeowner is responsible to the transformer.
The problem is somewhat exaggerated though.
The technology already exists to share charge across multiple cars, and since most cars don’t need that much charging, that’s not really a huge problem.
It wouldn’t be as fast as a dedicated charging spot, but for at home charging that’s fine for most.
Also, on 2400w an EV can charge a significantly large amount overnight. You mightn’t need a charge point in the first place.
2400W x number of occupants is still some series draw on their main panel.
Their point still stands that their mains would need an upgrade.
Seems unfair to make everyone pay for Chargers only the wealthier people who can afford EVs use
Most buildings we have installed them they’ve made the people that want them pay to install them, now this may cause an issue when they leave and fight that the charger is theirs, but at least the wiring is in place for the next.
Some buildings are installing public ones, and it’s no different than other amenities, no one in a building utilizes all the amenities. It’s a red herring in the end to claim that.
That talking point is a bit out of date - the average price for a car int he USA (for example) is quite a bit higher than base EVs now. They’re cheaper to manufacture and gas vehicles won’t be able to compete. The only missing piece is infrastructure for charging in some places.
It won’t be long before EVs are the cheap option. Tesla for instance is supposedly putting out a cheap option soon, but I’m not holding my breath.
Tesla is probably a good one to bank on, though. The gigacasting process shaves a LOT of manufacturing cost.
Man, it’s really unfair to make me pay for the roads on the other side of town. I never drive on them!
This is no different from the widespread adoption of electric clothes dryers, water heaters or domestic home air conditioning. Electrical distribution is never static.
It is far different, the scales at play just aren’t the same and a lot of distribution centers are already near capacity even if the grid can supply enough.
Your not wrong that it’s not static, but it’s ignorant to believe that it’s even on the same scale as any of those adoptions.
Add in there has been a transformer shortage since before covid started…. Yeah it’s not the same.
“The grid can’t handle it” is a bullshit argument that is easy to sell to people who want to keep their IC cars. The difference between highest demand and lowest demand in Ontario this week was 7000MW, if everyone charges their car at night there is power available AND it helps increase the base load which is good for the gird operators.
Even individual buildings may not need to upgrade their main service even with rapid chargers, the operators just need to keep in mind not to run the oven, dryer, AC and car charger at the same time.
Yes the power plants can pump out enough, but not all transfer stations are able to handle the load, each individual hub, may not be able to handle the load.
It’s far more nuanced than this even, but don’t believe everything everyone is selling you, everyone has an agenda and no one is going to tell you the entire truth.
If an entire block suddenly goes EV one night the infrastructure isn’t there, it’s slowly being updated which you don’t see, but there’s issues out there.
If the infrastructure can’t handle it, then upgrade the fucking infrastructure! Politicians will fall at voters’ feet to build new roads, highways, etc., but when it comes to the green energy transition, there’s no problem too minuscule to be ignored!
I’ll happily admit that there are going to be many issues in the green energy transition; we should acknowledge them, but we should also strive to address them, rather than throwing our hands up in the air and idly promulgating the status quo.
They are upgrading it, as people need it and as fast as they can ahead of planned upgrades.
There shortages on parts, so most are being done as required, but to think it’s not being upgraded (in most places, local bullshit aside) is just pure ignorance.
Switching from one type of car to another isn’t a green transition. Car production still creates enormous co2 emissions, paving everything for cars makes heat islands, tires produce piles of particulate pollution, and so on. Fixing the car pollution problem means moving to other forms of transportation, not just slightly-less-bad automobiles.
Which is why BEVs won’t be 100% of the market as some are imagining. It’s simply impossible for a mostly inflexible idea to replace everyone’s transportation needs. It requires a vast amount of cooperation and extra resources being spent. It’s highly unlike to happen past a certain point.
I own an electric car and I accept maybe I’ve been luckier than most but my last basement suite the landlord put it in completely of his own will and his own dime at my request. He reused some old hot tub wiring and it worked great. And my current apartment I had them pick their preferred electrical company and paid for it myself since it was just a plug like 3 feet down from their sub panel.
So far I’ve not had a ton of issues finding places. It definitely limits where you can live with some places only having street parking or just not having the capability of putting in a charger or plug but there are definitely places out there
Look, if the rich don’t want you to have a house, they certainly don’t want you have a car.
In all seriousness, this is why it’s called late-stage capitalism: because at this point, it’s going to be fatal to it’s host. We’re nearing the point where there less and less value to extract from labour because they’re already underpaid for the value they generate and over-leveraged because debt was an easy substitute. At the same time, the wealthy are increasingly desperate for ever-larger returns.
Electric cars, if not personal transit in general, are probably going to be the iceberg that the ship of capitalism breaks on: the wealthy don’t want to pay taxes for roads and charging infrastructure, and they don’t want to pay for public transit, but they also don’t want you to have a home where you can charge your own car. But they want you to buy stuff, and they expect electric cars to sell for higher prices than gas ones.
Something has to give, here.
117 comments and I can not find mine and only see maybe 20 of those. Edit: now they are back, 2 hours later.
And the top comments are all boomers typing “what about electrical fires!” never mind that half the people these days seem to sleep with a wired lithium-powered phone fast-charging next to them, if not in bed with them. Those batteries might be smaller, but that’s surrounded by flammable wood and fabric not a concrete parking garage. But that’s my phone and e-bike riders are other people.
