Summary
Starting in 2026, California will require all new residential units with parking spaces to be EV charger-ready, significantly increasing access to electric vehicle charging.
Multi-family developments must equip at least one EV-ready spot per unit, while hotels, commercial lots, and parking renovations will also face new EV charging mandates.
Advocacy groups praise the policy, emphasizing its balanced approach to affordability and infrastructure needs.
The initiative aligns with California’s 2035 ban on new gas-powered car sales, aiming to address key barriers to EV adoption and support the state’s transition to electrification.
This is fantastic. It’s not super expensive either. Just an extra 240 volt 50 amp cable with a 14-50 outlet. If done at the build stage it’s a few hundred bucks.
It’s even cheaper than that. The minimum according to the article is 240v/20a. That smaller than a dryer outlet. You could literally use standard 12 gauge wire to it, just like you would to a dishwasher
Now if only PGE would stop charging 60 cents / KwH
Nothing ever added to building code is inexpensive. It’s always many times the cost of the simplest way of doing it because it has to be done to code.
The rampant expansion of building code is a major reason for the expense of housing.
Downvote away but you know it’s true.
Lmao. If you ever worked in construction you’d know that 1. code compliance is not that hard 2. you do not want the random contractor chucklefucks making it up on the fly without a sanity check from the inspector. Be glad your house doesn’t burn down because knob and tube isn’t code compliant.
You know why we have 99% of the regulations we do? Because without them houses we’re catching fire and killing everyone inside, or collapsing in a stiff breeze killing everyone inside.
Generally regulations exist because uncountable numbers of people died first.
While I agree, there is a line where the addition of more safety features just adds up little by little over the years and makes houses unnaffordable.
And at some point people dying on the streets from being homeless will surpass how many lives are being saved by said safety features.
Now, if we have reached that point yet I cannot say but the line is there and it will be crossed at some point if we haven’t yet.
Sure, but then at some point it became a nightmare of expensive stupid things like running conduit for every electrical line line in a wall or ceiling (Chicago) that some bureaucrat put in to justify a pay raise. It’s raised the cost of building a house several times faster than inflation, and a major reason there’s a housing shortage.
You can’t install an electrical outlet if it’s not to code now. The “code” for electric circuits has been set for decades, and when updated, affects them all.
Requiring another circuit on a building with dozens/hundreds of circuits already doesnt add any extra burden, especially at the build stage like the commentor above said. Adding electrical when the walls are open is easy as shit.
Making up a regulation boogeyman about mundane, everyday building projects doesnt actually make them difficult, no matter how much you want to pretend they are.