A company that recently installed charging points for every parking spot in a 90-unit condo complex at a cost of just $405/unit is back, with a newly updated charger with more capabilities that should make apartment charging even easier.

You may remember a post we did about how a condo complex installed an EV charger in every parking spot for just $405/unit, after a utility incentive that covered $2k per unit.

The basic idea was, through use of a low-cost (and lower speed) charging outlet, a budget installation could meet the needs of most drivers at a much more affordable rate than putting whiz-bang dedicated fast chargers with dedicated service for every unit at higher cost. And by installing it for every unit, the project would benefit from economies of scale.

The chargers are capable of charging at “level 2” speeds, but will often throttle down to lower speeds based on availability of electrical capacity.

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Finally, with available incentives from a local utility, the complex was able to bring the cost down to almost nothing. At $405/unit, that’s less than a single month’s worth of the complex’s HOA fees.

At the time, with 90 units, it might have been the largest apartment EV charging project in the nation with “100% coverage,” that is, where all parking spots in the complex are covered by EV chargers.

But now Pando’s offering is getting an upgrade with a bunch of new features, but also a higher price.

Pando’s new “Gen2 Smart Outlet” starts at $649 per unit, whereas the Gen 1 started at $599 and is currently discounted to $449. But it will be phased out in favor of the new tech.

The new smart outlet has better tap-to-charge integration, allowing easy starting of charging sessions without having to pull out your phone to start the charge from Pando’s app. It also improves connectivity, so there’s less chance the system will lose contact with home base, with a stronger antenna and the ability to use a driver’s phone as a wi-fi bridge. Finally, it has a manual mode that doesn’t require any connection to cloud services in case the charger is in a really difficult spot to reach wirelessly.

In addition, Pando is announcing the Pando+ Modular Charger, which has all the features of the Gen2 but with an included modular cable attached, for sites that would rather include a cable instead of having drivers bring their own. But, in order to solve the reliability problems associated with maintaining a cable attached to a charging station, the cable is easy to swap out and doesn’t require an electrician to do so.

The Pando+ charger also interfaces with a new feature called “Pando Pulse” which can dynamically manage building loads, understanding just how much electricity is available to push to the chargers. It can then set charging speeds based on how much electricity is available, better ensuring that everyone gets the electrons they need when they need them.

Electrek’s Take

These options are more for building managers than renters, but this is just another step towards helping to make charging easier for apartment-dwellers. If you’re looking for more resources for apartment EV charging, either as a owner or a renter, find more on that here.

I’ve long said that the only real problem with EVs is charging for people who don’t have access to their own garage. Whether this be apartment-dwellers, street-parkers or the like, the electric car charging experience is often less-than-ideal outside of single family homes, at least in North America.

There are workarounds available, like charging at work, or using Superchargers in “third places” where you often spend time, but these still aren’t optimal. The best bet is just to charge your car wherever it spends most of its time, which is your home. When you do that, EVs outshine everything in convenience.

So there’s a need for solutions in this space, and Pando’s seemed like a pretty good one when I first heard of it, and seems even better now with these new upgrades. My one misgiving when I first heard about it was the need to use Pando’s app, but it seems like these upgrades will have full tap-to-charge functionality, directly from Apple/Google wallet, without the need to have cell service enter the equation. That’s a huge plus for usability and reliability.

Other companies do have similar solutions, like a 143-unit project that just broke ground yesterday at Bayview Condos in Millibrae, CA. This one will apparently cost nothing out of pocket for the HOA, thanks to the same utility incentive from the same utility, Peninsula Clean Energy. It uses GoPowerEV chargers, a competitor to Pando, and we’re sure we’ll hear more about it as the project proceeds.

Hopefully the more competition we see in this space, and the more big projects like these get off the ground successfully and at low cost, the more we can finally move towards solving the problem of apartment charging once and for all.

And, frankly, we also need legislation/building codes to hop in and require this sort of thing, so it becomes the rule rather than the exception and apartment dwellers can feel secure that they’ll be able to find a place to charge. And the lower install costs get, the more realistic a legislative requirement would be.

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