UKH

Hello. Adding to the UKC library of many many car threads here.

I am in the unplanned situation of replacing my car (overnight hit-and-run on my parked Citroen C3 Picasso appears to have written it off)

I've always said "I can't go electric yet because I can't park near my house to charge it from home, and there are no public charging points on the street where I park, 100 metres away". 
Whilst browsing Autotrader yesterday and feeling pangs of guilt at least when looking at diesels, I wondered if I am just "making excuses". 

I know various UKC regulars have experience of running EVs. 

Does anyone have experience of running an electric car as sole vehicle, without convenient charging close to home?

I admit to knowing next to nothing about charging infrastructure.
I know supermarket car parks etc have charging points but I think these are just for light top-ups while you shop. 
The site where I will spend most of my working days when not working from home, is 40 miles away and has charging points so the car can charge all day there. 

Is there a good website that shows a map of decent local public charging points? I did Google this last night but got a range of results the first two of which were not that helpful. I'll head out on my bike today and have a nosey around town. Also is there a way to find out the schedule of planned installation of charging points? I live in Loughborough. 

At the moment due to needing to get a replacement fairly soon, and all the above points, it looks like another ICE for now but this somehow feels "wrong" in 2023. Bear in mind also that I don't really want to stretch much beyond £7-8k. I've seen Nissan Leafs (the only EV I looked up so far on Autotrader) in this range but don't know the ins and outs of used EVs. 

Thanks!

We have been in temporary accommodation (static caravan) for a few months with a 30 min drive to anywhere with a charger.

Our van has a teeny weeny baby battery, and that is a bit of a pain. By the time we drive home from any charge point, you are having to think about the next charge! But, to go anywhere from where we are, you have to drive past one of these charge points anyway (we are properly in the arse end of nowhere).

The car has a decent sized battery (a 2020 plate Renault Zoe), and it is no bother. You just stick it on charge when shopping or something like that. 

If we lived in a town, I don't think I would find it any hassle at all without a home charger, even with the van. 

The hassle we have had this week, however, is that the car has developed a charging issue and it turns out that not all dealerships will take in an EV! I had, naively, assumed that any Renault dealership would deal with any Renault car. As it is still under manufacturers warranty, I can't just take it to any HEVRA garage (which there are plenty of that I could go to), as I would have to pay. So maybe check out what you have around you from that point of view! 

To find chargers, ZapMap is what you're looking for.

I'd be hesitant (and I say this as a massive advocate of EVs) because public charging is expensive.  My home charging overnight is 12p/kWh (or about 3p/mile).  But public chargers are now regularly 50p/kWh and I've seen 70p (12-18p/mile).  That's OK for the odd top up on a long range trip but painful if it's your only source of charge.

So, unless your work charging is free (or at least at a sensible cost) and you are there for long enough each week to keep topped up, and you know you won't be changing your job, I'd be wary of the costs.  EVs are expensive and only really make financial sense when you consider their entire running costs.

Other possibilities might be a mate with a driveway who'd be amenable to some sort of deal, or if streetlamp charging is being rolled out soon.

Thanks. The work thing is a bit of an unknown (too complicated and tedious to go into in detail but let's just say it's not my official work place, just a large industrial site where I am expected to be in attendance quite often at least over the next 6 months, and then tailing off). I have assumed it is free but as described, it's not to be relied on really.  I don't think I can rely on local friends, none has a driveway and the only one that I can think of where the street parking could work out for this, is in a street with quite tight parking anyway so I wouldn't want to be an interloper there. 

I used to have a simple little spreadsheet for car shopping, which often yielded surprises. I'd put in the capital outlay then work out the cost for running the car for x number of years based on mpg from HonestJohn "Real mpg", VED and a quick insurance estimate from a comparison site. Not factoring in intangibles like service costs and how much they chew through tyres etc as that gets complicated. 

There may be a "which ICE to get" thread coming up soon! 

We are a two EV household but are fortunate to be able to charge at home.

HOWEVER, I have two friends who run EVs and can’t charge at home.  Their strategies are 1) tie charging in with a dog-walk.  She has an encyclopaedic knowledge of charging points near places she likes to walk the dog.  And there’s also one about half a mile from her house on “can’t be bothered” days.

2) Other friend doesn’t use her car so much so only charges once or twice a week.  She ties charging in with a visit to supermarket.  There are local authority chargers in the car park opposite the shops.  She puts car on charge while she does her shopping.  If it’s not done by the time she’s finished, she’ll treat herself to a chapter of her book.

There are two types of chargers found in public places.  Fast, or Destination chargers.  They are quicker than charging your car at home, but still take several hours to get your car from empty to full.  Rapid chargers are much, much quicker, they’ll usually fill your car in 30-45 mins.

Cant help you with pricing because that is in the hands of whoever owns and operates the charger.

If you are in Scotland, Chargeplace Scotland have an app which includes the vast majority of chargers, location, whether they are currently in use, broken or whatever and can help you get them going remotely if there’s a problem.  They also bill you for use.

I believe things are more complex south of the border.

I think that compares favourable with a trad petrol/diesel engine.

By my rough calculations from https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/new-and-used-cars/article/driver-calculator...

Petrol (assuming 40mpg at 150 p/litre highest london price according to the AA) = 0.17p/mile

Diesel (same assumption, obviously millage will vary, London price 171p/litre) = 0.19p/mile

What I haven't allowed for is charging time and charge holding capacity. My old petrol car will sit for days without being used and the fuel, barring slight evaporation will remain more or less the same. I don't know how long modern EV batteries will hold charge (my devices at home lose battery charge even if I don't use them.)

Oh, absolutely.  Cost per mile on public charging is more or less comparable to ICE.

My point, perhaps not well made, is that buying an EV is bloody expensive so you need the running costs to be low to counter for that.  This is possible charging at home for 3p/mile but not on public chargers.

For me, it worked out surprisingly similar when I did the spreadsheet exercise that BS suggests.  The difference between my last three ICE cars (taking into account all the petrol/service/road fund etc) and my brand new lease EV was about 50p/day, so for me the switch to EV was a no brainer.  But that's based on driveway charging.

As far as I can tell, over a period of days there is more or less no self discharge, by the way.  I've never left an EV sitting for more than a week or so and can't say if it's a problem for longer periods.

Well, you remember what happened the last time you took my advice on an ICE..!

I was very politely not bringing that one up! FWIW when it was running, it was really nice

(Jamie in 2013 persuaded me to get an MG ZTT, perhaps innocently not knowing that the gearing on the diesel with the dreaded dual mass flywheel, was made of margarine )

I'm sorry..! 

Thanks for the reply.

I expect EVs to come down in price eventually and wonder what the secondhand market for them will be? If I bought one it would have to be secondhand.

The holding charge thing is something i am interested in.

Currently I mostly use my electric bike at home and only use the car for longer journeys of fetching bulky items. It can stand unused for most of the week

The first gen Leaf won't do a 40 (80) mile return trip in the real world (I have one) and I'm not sure £8k gets you a second gen version which will comfortably (it's a very nice car, my folks have one).

Google's charger map is pretty useless, it tells you where they are but doesn't seem to distinguish between genuine public chargers and for example chargers available to hotel patrons. I think my folks use ZapMap which seems to work.

I've had very little need for public charging but my recent experience has been mixed. There are fast (50KW) and faster (might be Tesla only, not sure) units. My 24KWh Leaf charges at 33KW on the fast charger so would take a little over half an hour from nearly flat to nearly full, a bigger one would charge faster but need more. 3miles to a KWh in winter seems to be roughly what I get. User interface is crap and bank card payment seems pretty unreliable (BP Pulse chargers), I guess the apps and charge card options work better.

I could definitely live with public charging a 150+mi range EV but daily charging my little Leaf off site would be a ballache.

Public chargers are a lot more expensive than a good home EV tarif but such is life. I charge mine at work anyway.

I bought a diesel last year as a second family car, big battery EVs were still just too expensive (I don't do finance deals).

Second hand wise, I have ~60k on the Leaf and it doesn't get close to it's headline range figures currently but that isn't all age, I don't use the eco settings and wet roads eat power. I don't think it's aged badly at all so far. 

Jk

I'll save you the bother.

Skoda Octavia Estate.

Thank me later.

That is the big question for me too. How appealing will an EV be with a battery at the end of its life? Probably about as appealing as an IC car with 100,000 miles on it. So the used EV will be cheap,  but not a great proposition, especially as I don't get the impression manufacturers are that interested in providing sensibly priced replacement batteries or designing the car to facilitate easy fitment. 

As others have said, zap map is the best app for locating chargers.

Im an EV driver but I do the vast majority of charging at home, moreso since I moved to the western lake district, as it's a bit of a charger desert.

Not sure I could manage around here without my home charger.

If you do go electric, another useful tool is 'a better route planner' as you can tell it about your cars battery size, efficiency etc and it will take this into consideration when planning a journey.

I strongly suspect most EV batteries will outlive the car.  My little old Leaf has now done just shy of 80k miles.  It has lost one of its 12 bars of battery which makes about 5-8 miles of difference to its range (I hadn’t actually noticed a change in range but wondered why my dashboard display looked different).

It is 9 years old.  Given I live and work in a very maritime environment (car is parked on a pier all day), my vehicles usually succumb to rust somewhere between 10 and 12 years.

What about a plug in hybrid. Run it on electric when you can, but you're not bound by it when it's not convenient. 

As charging gets more accessible your plug in hybrid will get better.

Both ours are second hand. The oldest one is now 8 years old, and over 90% state of health on the battery. Body work fails before batteries generally. 

As Sealwife says, anecdotal evidence suggests EV batteries are lasting longer than the cars, with decent capacities remaining usable.  Famously the Gatwick Airport Teslas had 300,000 miles put on them in three years, and were still running at 80% of their original range.

In reply to montyjohn: PHEVs are a bit of a an edge case, only really suited for people who drive small amounts every day and very occasional longer trips.  Once the battery is flat, they are heavy cars getting generally poor mpg.  I ran an Outlander PHEV for a while, and it worked for me, but only because my daily commute was < battery range, so I could go all week on battery by topping up every night.  On a long run it only got 30mpg.  Overall I got just over 100mpg out of that car, but someone who did longer runs would see that absolutely plummet.

Interesting.

10 years is usually our starting age for any car (price wise) ours is currently 14-15 years old. So it is good to hear batteries lasting

I think the electric range of a plug in hybrid is very short indeed, they have a market (people who do the majority of their driving as relatively short inner urban journeys) which I don't fit. So I'd be using the fossil fuels to haul around the weight of a battery pack on my mostly extra-urban journeys. This is just from some light reading around the subject; I may be wrong....


[edit] oops I hadn't seen Jamie's second paragraph in his 15:00 post, saying similar. 

Your right, missed the bit in your OP about work being 40 miles away. For a PHEV you wouldn't really want much more than a 20 mile round trip.

I think a lot depends on your situation and the specifics of your life. 
I have an ev, no charge at home. But a 50mile commute to work each way. I assumed i would tie Charging in with doing shopping on way home or going for a run. Which I was doing for a while but quickly adding an hour to the journey to charge on way home is a pita when you work long hours. 
I have found some supermarket chargers almost always free and others always in use, no way of predicting. Moving to plan b costs time. 
the cost of Charing is more than petrol for high mileage - meaning I can’t afford the time for the cheaper charges as they are too slow. All the rapid chargers near me are 70-89ppKw. The 89 is a decent bit more than petrol. 
factor in Charing and battery life significantly affected by cold, (my car has 25% less range)
Anyway long and short of it is i haven’t been able to make it work for me and back to a dirty diesel. Which is old, uncomfortable and unreliable but still preferred 
Hopefully we can move and make the home Charing work, as overal the EV is a great experience but as ever devil in details.

worth checking electric prices if you change tarif too as they have gone up compared to some of the figures quoted above, no way I have found anything comparable. Given this when looking for houses suddenly solar is extremely appealing 

Current edition of Octopus Go is 12p/kWh overnight.  Not that this is helpful to the OP (or to you if you can't currently charge at home).

A colleague at work has a new XF, no end of problems with it. Not surprising JLR don't have a great track record with electrics. 

Thanks, what you describe is pretty much the scenario of fast regret that I was foreseeing - sorry that you had to actually learn it by experience but thanks for sharing. Lifestyle is the key word - girlymonkey seems to make it work but I think it would soon be a drag for me. 

I have an EV and I really like it, however I have charging available at work and at home. The other car in the household is an old desiel Volvo. I have two trips to Scotland coming up (from South Wales) and I'll be taking the Volvo. I also have a trailer that gets used occasionally that the EV can't tow. Public charging is still hit and miss, so if I was in your situation I'd go ICE. Its so much more flexible. 

Designed by Paul Morley and Trevor Horn?

yes we looked at that one, that’s certainly the headline figure, but it is only that for 4 hours, then 44p for 04:30-00:30. We are too with octopus, when we spoke to them they told us if we got a charger we would still be better off staying on our current tariff. Just saying it’s in the detail, if you are doing high mileage per day and have a 7kw home charger you will end up charging beyond the 4 hour window too - in which case Tesco may be cheaper. 

Still, it’s worked out well for my wife who has unexpectedly got a nice new car. And it works quite well for her doing lowish milage. It’s great, don’t get me wrong and is the future but it won’t work for everyone just yet 

4 hours a night at 7kw will give you around 600 miles a week at 4p a mile. That is a saving approaching £3k a year on fuel compared to petrol or diesel if you are doing that kind of mileage.

I appreciate that you may be doing more and that your mileage may not reflect those charging patterns, but even at 44p it will be cheaper than petrol or diesel.

300,000 miles is impressive,  do the motors last as long?

And for those doing more than 40,000 miles per year (!) there's a six hour flavour of Octopus Go.

Nikoid, they don't mention replacing them so I imagine so.

I think it depends on which brand and age you go for. Tesla's are known for having batteries that don't degrade very much. The early Nissan Leafs however are terrible and gave EVs a bit of a bad rep. I'm not sure if they've fixed this for the later models. I assume they have.

If I was in the market for a second hand EV I'd be researching which cars are known to have batteries that don't degrade.

No reason why not; an electric motor is way simpler, with so many fewer moving parts and components than an ICE. The only moving contact points are the brushes / contacts and the shaft bearings, the rest of it is just a lot of wiring and some magnets. And note there are not many ICE's that can do 300k miles without some major maintenance / parts replacement. Its an "interesting" exercise to see how much you would spend on maintenance / servicing to get an ICE to 300k miles.......for e.g. my car requires 8 litres of oil every 15,000 miles at approx £5.30 / litre, so £800 in oil alone, 20 filters at £6 each = £120, and then labour to do the job, at approx £50/hr (independents, merc main dealer = £160 / hr, which is ridiculous.) 2 x cam chain replacements at approx £700 each, plus everything else. So by the time the battery / motor needs replacing, balance the cost against the servicing savings. It might not equal it, but it should also be considered as part of the cost of ownership.

It's not necessarily "wrong" to buy an ICE. Bear in mind that if you're buying used, most of the environmental hit (manufacturing) has already been done and if you can keep your fuel use down, you can minimise your personal impact. You'll also get a lot more choice on your budget. Compare that with the env impact of electric, bearing in mind the issues with mining lithium/cobalt and that much of the electric used to charge them comes from gas anyway (should be decreasing, as we move to renewables, but that's longer term).

Also, the weight of electric, compared to ICE, means they're heavy on tyre use and icrease wear on the roads.

https://www.wnd.com/2022/06/driving-electric-car-immoral/

We've got an EV on order (wife's company car scheme), but I'm in no hurry to get rid of my diesel Audi.

Pretty much everything under £8k will be a gen 1 Nissan Leaf.  When new it had a theoretical range of 109 miles. The reality in real world conditions was closer to 80. Battery management in these cars was poor and the batteries degrade quite badly. 

My mate bought a ten year old one with 65k miles on it and in winter the range is less than 40 miles. It doesn't bother him as he is disabled and just uses it to pootle to the nearest town, a round-trip of less than 10 miles. 

Realistically you need to spend a lot more than your budget to get anything that would be suitable. 

I've done these sums again recently. Diesel currently costs me ~13p/mile (Duncan, how are you only getting 40mpg from diesel?!). I did the experiment of driving as if I had gripping range anxiety and got that to under 10p/mile at constant 60mph.

For me any savings from going electric would be blown away by the insane price gouging at motorway fast chargers on the long trips I do, like going climbing for the weekend. Even though it's not all my mileage (and I do a little below average mileage) it's enough to unsave most if not all of the money, and that's starting from the assumption that my time is valueless. Given that I'm not the sort of person who naturally hangs out in motorway services it'd be adding a good hour or 90 minutes to the total travel time on every weekend away. Which even if you don't want to put a monetary value on free time, to measure it a more relatable way you could say that in order to get the same amount of climbing time I'd have to do something like 10 weekend trips instead of 9.

It's all moving in the right direction and I'm hopeful and confident the changes will come, but there are a few things that really need sorting out before all use cases are covered. Most importantly some solution for the huge number of people who can't charge at home who shouldn't have to pay 4 times as much per kWh. Always interested in people's experiences and calculations on this. The day will come but I don't think it's quite here yet.

I am very unconvinced that the transition to EV's is going to go as intended in the planned time-frame. Also, governments are not likely to tolerate the loss of tax revenue on petrol and diesel for long, and will probably increase taxes on EV usage. So projecting costs of EVs versus ICEs on current rates is probably wishful thinking. Hopefully, I am wrong. 

I've had an EV with no home charging for close to a year now and it works for me, but certainly wouldn't for everyone. As it happens I've now moved house, have a driveway, and will be fitting a charger soon.

Why it works for me?

-I only use it to commute 2-3 times a week, about 15 miles each way. In the summer I'd only need to charge once a week for this, currently it's more like two with all the other driving I do.

- I have what is probably still the most efficient EV, a 2018 Hyundai Ioniq. It has a tiny battery compared to most modern behemoths, but because of the small battery it doesn't take long to charge. Because of the efficiency its range matches that of a contemporary Leaf with a much larger battery. Nb. for long journeys you can actually travel faster on average than it's later, longer range sibling as it can charge at a faster rate.

-I live in Sheffield, which by no means has a good charger network, but it's good enough. Where I used to live I was close to one of the council rapid chargers next to Waitrose, which aren't perfect but are actually cheaper than the price cap right now. Currently I can leave the car at a slow charger about 10 minutes walk from the house. 

All in all I have had a few frustrating moments where the rapid charger I wanted wasn't available or working, which means I haven't got home when planned. I've had one moment so far when I got in the car to go to work and gone 'O shit I haven't charged the car'.

Ps. I don't want to own a car, but for work and play I have no other choice. I passionately believe car dependency has ruined our towns, cities, and quality of life, not to mention the environment. I have an EV because it's the least bad option, but if everyone who has an ICE car gets an EV, we're doomed!

I'd be amazed if you are wrong. Infrastructure progress alone seems makes UK government targets a fairy story (maybe a Labour government would help cut the reality gap) and you are right to point out the problems of reducing tax revenue (mainly from ICE fuel taxes). There are huge inequity impacts from compulsory EVs based on the ability (or not) to charge cheaply at home. I hope for the sake of the climate all of this can be resolved but it's hard to be optimistic.

It's worth noting that those Gatwick Teslas were looked after perfectly - they were only ever slow charged, and never had to cope with 50kW.

Conversely I bet that a relatively high fraction of Gen 1 Leafs had tons of rapid charging, because their short range forced you to use motorway rapids all the time.

I wonder if that's part of the reason they've not held up so well.

OH and I have a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV and a diesel Skoda Yeti. The Outlander is cheap to drive when it's commuting to OH's work (11 miles away) and to the stable where we keep our horses (7 miles away). We have an outside plug, which means the car gets charged overnight.

When it does long trips, however, it uses more fuel than the Yeti. It gets 30-mpg, while the Yeti can easily achieve mid-40s driving from Glasgow to Glencoe or wherever.

OH drove a hybrid Toyota RAV4 around for a couple weeks, thanks to a DPD van rear-ending the Outlander. It was fixed (tough car... good to know), but it was off the road for a little while. We thought it was an interesting comparison because the RAV4 is a similar sort of vehicle, but not a plug-in. It does its own thing with charging as you drive it around.

Our conclusion: The Outlander makes more sense and is cheaper to run, at least in our current situation. The daily commute stuff (horses and work) is within its electric range, and that accounts for 90% of the driving. We could make do with something like a Zoe, but we like 4x4s, and the Outlander is better than the Yeti (or a Leaf or Zoe or other small car) for moving hay bales around. You can fit eight square bales of hay in it. We still have the Yeti for long trips, but we have the option of using the Outlander as well without the hassle of range anxiety.

That all said, the Toyota was a clever vehicle and could be the ideal car for a lot of people. You don't need to plug it in, ever, and its MPG was well into the 50s for rural driving and mid-to-high 40s for urban driving. That's great for a mid-sized SUV. If you had a long daily commute or regularly drive it up north for camping/climbing/hillwalking trips, it's more efficient than the PHEV Mitsubishi or a diesel SUV like the Yeti.

It can only hold seven bales of hay, though. The interior space isn't as well thought out.

Most of Toyota's cars have a non-plug-in hybrid version. I think you can get estates and hatchbacks like the Avensis/Auris and obviously the Prius, one of the first hybrids.

What makes you say that?

While the loss of fuel duty income point is valid, the pricing of air pollution from road fuel will likely increase in step with increasing taxes on EVs to maintain pressure toward cleaner motoring. Assuming of course we maintain some semblance of responsible government.

jk

The sheer magnitude of what has to be achieved, and the tension between energy security and protecting the environment. Is the vast developing world really going to by-pass petroleum? In our country, a sizeable proportion of the population doesn't care a shoot about the environment and is going to be very reluctant to give up ICE cars.

The last thing I want to do is maintain our populist government! I would like to maintain a much more responsible, forward-looking government. 

I just calculated the cost of driving the fort William. 96 quid using super fast chargers or 70 quid using my petrol car. A bit disappointing.

Nobody appears to have pointed out that batteries are only about 60percent of max efficient at  4degrees c. My electric car journeys are virtually free in summer as I charge off my solar panels and don't drive much. In winter it's f'ing expensive. 

On the other hand my buddy has installed 15,kwpeak solar panels and can charge his car for free in winter too. 

If you have home charging, you leave the house on 100% and on the way home only charge up enough to get you back so you likely wouldn't need the full £96. 

The idea is that rapid charging is just there to get you to your next stop. It's inefficient, expensive and bad etiquette to sit there filling up. 

I've had a Tesla model Y since last summer and have done 20,000km. The app calculates so far a €1,500 fuel saving over my old diesel which with my back of an envelope calculations seems about right. It includes a couple of 3,000km round trips to the UK and back (from the Alps) so says 24% of my energy spending comes from rapid supercharging. 

Depends on the car. Mine's got a heat pump and managed plenty of driving around in -15° without a huge drop in efficiency if you preconditioned the battery before heading out. 

I see 250 miles summer, 200 winter. The only the I've got my range below that was in a horrendous blizzard headwind.

Doesn't seem to bother the Norwegians - 80% of new cars they bought in 2022 were fully electric.

https://elbil.no/norway-celebrates-another-record-breaking-year-for-electri....

What rate are you using to calculate your charging price? CPS chargers are not particularly expensive. I think most rapid units are less than 50p/kWh. Certainly, the ones I use regularly are. 

I was in an ICE hire car last week as my Zoe threw a hissifit (that's another story!), and I was appalled at how loud it was and just generally unpleasant! I had forgotten how much better an EV is to drive!

I think the tax on an ice car in Norway is about 100percent of the purchase price. 

I'm not being critical of electric. My Zoe is great but it is current more expensive to drive than my wife's ka. That is disappointing as it was a lot cheaper the first year. 

Compared to the continent we are years behind for a well supported and integrated, public charging network with a well developed infrastructure for payment and location finding. EV charge point mapping for Europe is littered with blue dots, the UK, not so much, and even less outside of major cities and even there lamppost charging points are like gold dust - user anecdotes of driving around in the early hours to find a free charge point.

Number of EV’s on the road far-outstrips the number of working charge points. This is everywhere, forecourts, supermarkets, work, anywhere. There aren’t enough, and they are not well maintained.

You will almost constantly have range fear - hence the Polstar going back. I went to do a site visit aaaaaand no working charge point. My feedback session with the senior stakeholders in the business was interesting to say the least.

There is no app ecosystem for cross provider charging of any note. You will need many apps!

ICE is still going to be your go to for the next 5 years. Investment in EV is down on previous years, in ICE it’s up. The whole green energy thing touted by big oil is a bit ‘meh’ given their oil based profits of late.

Wait for the likes of Octopus to roll out their charging infrastructure, my insider research shows that they have a much better approach to partnering with other charging providers, HW suppliers and local authorities, will test their propositions with fleet EV’s first, and then roll-out wider for street use. The oil supermajors in the UK are trying to get ahead of the game, but aren’t really doing so in a customer focused way, they’re just playing a numbers/vanity game right now.

Thank you for this detailed post from the inside! 

I think people hear 'battery' and then just assume that a 50k car is going to behave the way of that torch in the bottom of your drawer or even your mobile phone.

There's a massive amount of hardware and software dedicated (on most cars) to keeping the battery in optimum health - whether that's cooling in hot weather, or heating it up so it takes charge more efficiently, as well as overall health monitoring.

My car does lose charge when not being used but only for stuff I don't strictly need - eg the a/c will kick in to stop the car getting too overly hot in summer (but you can deactivate this), the alarm system monitors the cameras for movement but again you can turn it off and just have it act like standard alarm. Every time I open the phone app it of course wakes up the car as well using a little bit more power - but when I've left it unplugged for a few days like that (say at the airport) it has been in the order of 1-2% per day loss.

If you're* using a car so infrequently that you're worried about it losing charge, and you have difficulty charging at home (say you live a city apartment for instance) I wonder whether owning a motor vehicle of any kind really makes economic or practical sense. 

*not you, just mean generally.

I test drove a Toyota Auris hybrid and didn't like it - and then, by coincidence, had a trip to North Wales in one (friend's company car) and STILL didn't like it. I just found the whining of the motors very intrusive and wasn't that impressed with the handling and drivability.

Not to mention the salesman wouldn't take "no" for an answer and kept phoning me for weeks afterwards offering me various deals.

That said, I think plug-in hybrid is possibly the best compromise for the UK at the moment, but company car schemes don't seem to like it as an option.

Depends on how far you drive. A three pin socket can provide 2kw. And if the journey is to work there is likely a charger there?

I’m now on my fourth hybrid car. My present one is two years old, my partner has my last 12 year old one and my son has my former 17 year old one. Don’t t know what happened to number 1 but that was quite old technology. All three cars are still averaging around 60 mpg and have never had any repairs other than the normal brakes, tyres and exhausts, oh and a stolen cat on one.

My nearest and only charging point is at Tesco and on my last three visits all of the chargers were in use. I can’t see any viable future for electric cars and notice that manufacturers such as Nissan seem to be advertising hybrids more and Toyota don’t seem interested in electric. 

I have a Toyota PHEV. Very happy with the efficiency, performance and flexibility of "both worlds". Would be nice if the price of electricity fell though. 

We only have 4 public charging points where I live with the next 2 being 10 miles away, then it's over 30 miles to the next one. In summer these chargers are regular full with cars waiting. One thing you may want to think with the rise of EV's is, are there enough chargers in your area or future provisions?

The local petrol station here is very busy in summer. Close to 1000 cars fill up each day. When fossil fuel cars are banned the filling station will need to provide well over 100 charging points to cope with this.  

And the only way that would be physically possible would be to build a charging station outside of towns on what are currently either green fields or food growing fields. So not only will extra electricity be completely wasted getting there and back on a regular basis - just imagine the mileage to do this at our major conurbations ! - this so-called eco-friendly system will concrete over yet more of the countryside.

(Mind you, it may bring back book reading as drivers will need to do something when they're waiting at the charging stations, and listening to the car radio would just increase charging time).

No it won't.  This is a common complaint by the anti-EV brigade, but the situation is not directly comparable.

Every ICE car has to visit a petrol station to fill up, every time.  Nobody has a petrol pump at home.  But most EV charging is done at home.  My car does around 95% of its charging on my driveway; expensive rapids are used only if it's necessary.  So the demand for rapid charging is at least an order of magnitude lower than that for petrol filling.

The challenge for getting someone in the OP's position to be able to adopt EV is not providing more rapids.  It's providing alternatives to the slow, everyday trickle charging. 

Yes, honeypot locations where you get sudden concentrations of people all needing to recharge are going to need more rapids, but by and large this should be done on the motorway network wherever possible.

Except they dont. The vast majority of customers put a fixed amount in their car each time, rather than fill up. Our average spend was approx £24 at all our stations except the one near a motorway junction where it was £36.

When fossil fuel cars are banned the filling station will need to provide well over 100 charging points to cope with this.

Good luck to them. We looked into getting some charging points at one of our sites in a village with bad parking for residents - the idea was to rent the spaces out overnight with charging facilities. Approx £15k per charger wasnt a deal breaker (but still expensive compared to approx £11k for a high flow 4 nozzle fuel pump), but the cost of over £200k to get 6 chargers connected to the grid made us laugh a bit. Yes, we were expected to pay everything. Until there is a concerted effort to provide a charging network, which means funding from central government, we are going to continue to struggle for EV acceptance.

Do you think you'd have seen a viable future for the internal combustion car in 1900? Literally no supporting infrastructure existed yet within twenty years it was arguably the technology which defined the century. We're already miles further on than that with EV's. They're just going to quietly become the norm without sceptics even really noticing which is fine because you don't need to convince everyone all at once in order to rapidly grow the market and fund the development of the supporting ecosystem.

Aren't Toyota currently more invested in Hydrogen? We'll see if that pays off for them, I have my doubts but they shouldn't struggle hugely to shift tack to battery storage if it doesn't, most of the technology crosses over freely.

Hybrids are an evolutionary dead end, they currently have a very limited technical justification (stop start use in vehicles that have little downtime, taxis, fleet cars/vans etc). If mild hybridisation didn't gift gas-guzzlers a free pass into emissions control zones I think they'd be well on their way to extinction already. I doubt they'll be a thing (in car form) in 15 years time.

The EV infrastructure we have now makes a modern electric car pretty easy to live with and it is only going to get better and more convenient over time like the infrastructure supporting the ICE did. It's all got so very convenient but it's not hard to think back to a time when you had to plan to have cash to buy enough fuel before the station shut to get you through a Sunday. Now you can check your phone to find your nearest outlet 24/7, turn up at a robot energy outlet, plug a pipe into the car and tap a card. Pretty much the same process whatever it is you're buying.

jk

It costs me about 1.5kWh round trip from my urban home to my extra-urban charging hub if I need to use it. Big deal. I do have a petrol station a little closer but they've had a 130 year head start.

As actually happens, we'll continue adding charger outlets to spaces already dedicated to the car rather than duplicating the spaces.

The biggest chargers near me are now capable of up to 175kW, that's adding range at well over 500mi/hour to a car. Even my little first gen EV, not really designed or owned for making long trips charges 33kW, significantly over 100mph.

jk

I lived in Sheffield,  probably half the city is street houses, no drive ways,  and nose to tail parked cars with no promise of ever been able to park outside our house

how to the EV brigade suggest all those people charge their cars?

The only reason EV cars seem a success to their owners at the moment is that the owners are generally wealthier folk with space to park and charge their cars.

 

At the risk of flippancy: you'll find out soon enough but the answer will be more mixed than where do you go to pump gallons of highly flammable, highly refined hydrocarbon shipped half way round the world from where it is drilled. The thing is, if you were looking at that supply chain from distant foreign seafloor/desert to local 24H Tesco forecourt before it had been developed you'd never ever believe it could be as simple for the consumer as it now is. That's engineering and economics for you, if it's possible (it is) and there's money in it (every which way!) then it'll happen and people will compete to make their version happen best.

Don't forget, those terraced houses you reference were mostly built without sewerage, gas or electricity, built for a world still moved by horse and man. Big jobs putting those in but it happened and now you cannot imagine them without those services.

If I had to place a bet: I reckon within 10 years shared use roadside trickle charger will be very common, largely because they'll allow the generators to implement virtual storage but also that on-route fast charging will be so commonplace you won't even remember the time when you couldn't imagine it working.

I park mine on the street. I charge it at work from a 13A outlet. Nothing fancy about that. When more of us get EVs we'll probably have to put a new circuit in for them.

jk

I have to disagree with your optimism, most homes don't have access to home charging  (being there in 10 years time is rather too late) and various other parts of necessary infrastructure growth is starting to look impossible on current official deadlines (if you excuse the pun).  We should have been looking at infrastructure changes a decade back, including major improvements to greener public transport, for those who don't want or can't afford an EV.

They’re planning on installing around 24 street side chargers on local roads near me. 6 planned for my road.

This will only increase in number over the coming 3/4 years

I disagree with your pessimism! 

In a high density city street, bringing the car to the home in order to charge it is not going to work.  We have to ask where the car is going to be, and take the charging there.

That'll be solved in a multitude of ways.  Workplace charging, lamp post charging, supermarket car parks, bigger batteries that charge faster... driveway charging is obviously the easiest way and that's why take-up is largely limited to households with driveways so far.  Once you've got the low hanging fruit you have to start thinking about getting a ladder.  It isn't necessary for EV ownership to be possible for everyone all at once.  We'll still be selling ICEs for another seven years, they'll still be running for many years after that.

Can't disagree with that.

We won't need it. That said, I do still think we'll see a big drive toward providing infrastructure for 'off-duty' EV's to remain grid connected. Not because they absolutely need to be for convenience but because there is a valuable win-win possible here for both consumer and provider (cheaper electricity in exchange for the ability to shape demand).

I'm not passing comment on official deadlines. Honestly I think they're neither here nor there at this point, the shift to electric drive has momentum for technical as much as regulatory reasons. Try as it might to pretend otherwise, government can no more set or even really manage the pace than it can control the tide.

UK urban public transport is poor, rural worse, but what there is of it has been quietly cleaning up for years. It has an important place but we inherit a world built for personal transport, I don't think, however nice it might be in theory to change that, that we'll actually manage. I'd say better to get cars off local journeys by promoting much lighter personal or shared use electric vehicles. Probably also coupled with on demand (ish) public transport for those who need it.

jk

I agree with your sentiments (and Jamie's) but I guess my real concern is government have set a deadline that looks totally unrealistic and voters are going to be pretty pissed off being forced to invest in more expensive technology if it shifts a lot (which looks inevitable to me). Departmental spending budgets look incredibly tight for most of the next seven years and HS2 hasn't finished 'eating all the pies' as yet from transport.

The stats I am finding suggest 70 - 75% of homes do have off street parking. I presume this is UK wide, so obviously smaller percentage in cities etc. Also a higher percentage of people in cities who already choose not to own a car, so there is no reason why that would change.

Stirling (which pretends to be a city, but it's not really) has a big charging hub at the park and ride. So no new tarmac required, and it also reduces the incentive to take cars into the center, which seems like a win to me. 

Quite a few supermarkets now have a few chargers, this is bound to increase in number too. 

I would also anticipate pretty much every car park getting chargers installed in the coming years. It won't happen all at once, but it will gradually happen. 

I would also hope for (but sadly not likely with they current a****oles in power) more affordable public transport, good cycle infrastructure and maybe car free town centres to encourage people out of cars anyway. 

I think England is nearer 60% and where I've seen your numbers it includes 'could haves'. ONS has English accommodation with roughly a quarter each as: detached, semis, terraced, and the rest.

With the current a****oles and development times it's impossible to achieve major infrastructure change for public transport in the next 7 years. They won't even increase fuel duty with inflation.

They're gone in a year gods willing. The economic damage and constraints will remain of course but the focus should shift gradually.

Also this is almost certainly going to end up driven by the market more than central government anyway. We'll see a rush for fast charge hubs first from a variety of commercial providers and partnerships.

Not far behind but not as immediately profitable or necessary for ongoing sales I think we'll see the distributed storage project get going providing widespread on-street slow charger access at lower prices with strings attached.

jk

And a short lesson from history. In the late 1970s gas fields were discovered under the north sea. At the start of the year everyone who had gas used coal gass. Within. 12 months the gas was being piped from under the ocean floor through gas rigs, through subsea pipes to Scotland and then on to every town and city and many villages into houses. It was a massive effort that was all complete within 12 months. 

Electrical distribution is already in place. It goes into every house and into every bit of street infrastructure. Yes the country is not in the dire straights it was in the 1970s but given that the distribution is already in place i cannot conceive of any significant problems installing a few charging sockets every few meters along the pavement or verge throughout the land. 

But it's not big enough to cope. It hasn't been upgraded sufficiently . Most of the distribution network is still the same as what was put in the ground 60-70 years ago. Some houses share their service wire. The physical size of these cables isn't large enough to carry the extra load. I've said all this on here before, but the usual know it all's pooh-pooh what I say. If two semi detached houses share a service and one of them wants a charging point, both houses have to have their own service, because the size of the service wire isn't big enough to take the load of two houses plus a charging point. It's causing chaos.

Who's going to pay for these charging points every few metres ?? It's not just a case of sticking a point on the side of a lamp post when the cable feeding the lamp post is only 4mm. Whole new cables are going to have to be installed. Can you imagine the disruption this will cause. Yes we did it when fibre was installed, but that was a new service, everyone already has electric and I'd imagine most of them wouldn't want their pavements and drives digging up so the DNOs can install new services so we can all have a charge point. New housing estates aren't even installing service cables that are adequate for the job, nobody wants to pay for it. It's a right mess.

https://www.speakev.com/threads/m1-leicester-services.174460/

Post No 3 for those who need a link.

https://www.speakev.com/threads/looped-supply.176006/

Unlooping.

FYI, I own an EV, so not really part of an anti-EV anything. Like you I have the luxury of a driveway to charge my car overnight. Without this luxury I don't think I would have bought an EV. My comments were directed at the millions of people who live in flats or just have on street parking. 

Just for clarity I also own a diesel car which I use for longer journeys.

Actually they do. The vast majority of people who use this filling station are tourists who are on longer journeys than the daily commute so they most definitely do fill up. Anyway, many people don't fully top up their batteries so not sure about your point.

My point is time, not amount. It take a long time to charge 1000 cars. We have the infrastructure of petrol stations around the country. At the begining of the EV boom if car manufacturers and governments had thought more about charging we would have petrol stations changing to battery stations. Drive in, have an attendant swap out your flat battery for a fully charged one, drive off. The current system of sticking chargers in car parks while people sit around for hours waiting for a charge is clearly moronic.

I think you're conflating the issues with rapid charging and destination/home slow charging.  We needs lots and lots of the latter, and multiple solutions for rolling it out to those who don't have driveways.  Not so much of the former (I mean, we need more rapids than there are at the moment, but not in insane quantities).

It's a nice idea but, given that the weight of the battery means it has to built into the frame of the car, this would have been a nightmare to implement.

i cannot conceive of any significant problems installing a few charging sockets every few meters along the pavement or verge throughout the land. 

The pavement in my street is approximately 2 feet wide ! This is not unusual in terraced streets. Considering any Connection Point needs to be both safe and preferably not in such a location that persons using them have to go down on their knees to connect up then such Points are going to use up an awful lot of the remaining pavement.

Please note, the current trend in new vehicle purchase is for big chunky vehicles  - and EV's are most definitely of such type - along with the percentage of d1cks who manage to park on the pavement so often - means that delicate Charging Points will not last 5 minutes before they become a danger.

Nio in China are doing just this. They already have close to 1500 battery swapping stations and are adding another 1000 this year alone. It can be done and is being done. 

To say nothing of kids and idiots pulling out plugs for a laugh.

They opened the first one in Germany last year and more being built ( might be finished for all I know), they also install 500kW chargers at the same time.

Modern EVs lock the cable in, which is a bit frustrating when someone has finished their charge but hasn't returned to their vehicle! 

Our van can be unplugged, but the car can't be 

That still isn't most people not having off street parking. Most people do have off street parking, which does not mean that we don't need to come up for solutions for those who don't! It just means that these solutions don't need to serve every car, as there are a smaller number of people who will rely solely on them. 

And, as I said previously, there is a higher percentage of people living in cities who don't have cars anyway, so it reduces that problem a little more anyway. 

No one is saying there is no problem to solve, but we are saying that it can be solved, and is not quite as big a problem anyway as some people like to make out.

I can lock my cable but it needs a padlock. Cables are quite expensive so if cars are charging on the street it seems wise to lock up the cable.

Or indeed that other places aren't already coping with it. I live in Oslo, a city of almost 1 million people where >33% of cars are EVs and a larger proportion of people live in apartment blocks than anywhere I've lived in the UK. Yet the charging network hasn't ground to a halt nor have they had to build massive charging fields. We now have flat with a parking space and charger but till recently were reliant on public chargers and it was fine; you can tell from the apps if somewhere is full and either drive further or charge another time but this was pretty rare. A quick look at plug surfer suggests the density of chargers per person is already higher in London than Oslo. This seems to be a problem more in theory than practice.

Not in most towns and cities they don't. And that's where most people live.

Nope, UK wide, 70% of homes have off street parking. 

Someone up thread complained that in England it was only 60%. 

Both of these count as most!

And, as I have already pointed out, car ownership is lower in cities anyway, so a lower number of those without off street parking will be needing charging anyway. 

no one had to dig up my driveway when I put in a 7kW charger. The only cable upgrade I had to do was when I installed a induction hob and that was only to the fuse box.  And why assume everyone is going to charge at the same time? The smart meter version 2 and the software in the charger can already take account of and use batteries in cars and solar installations. You are wrong in thinking nothing has moved on since 1960. 

Off-Street parking doesn't necessarily mean directly outside a house and therefore with easy access to a personal charging point, etc.
For example, I have off-street parking, but it's in a communal car park for about twenty cars and with two lamp posts which I assume would be the only easy way to install charging points. i.e. two charging points for twenty cars.
To further complicate it, the car park is semi-private (designated parking bays on the lease), but the lamp posts are owned by the council.
Who would pay for the charging points to be installed and how much would charging cost?   

And how will this help a block of 400 flats?
Probably if there were 100 charging points each taking 3 minutes to full charge. 

i currently live in a village of 700 houses,  there are zero street chargers planned.

tell that to the double parked terraced streets in Sheffield. 
1.5 cars per house with one lamp post every 20 or so cars.

 

Yep, no one said there won't be tricky spots! I know what Sheffield is like for cars, I went to uni there and know exactly what those terraced streets are like.

That doesn't change that fact that UK wide, we are not in an awful position for being able to sort it EV charging and that most people can do some sort of home charging. 

I presume Sheffield will need to sort out a lot more charging hubs, supermarket chargers and work place chargers etc.

But there is a car park with 20 bays, so potential for 20 chargers! Each bay could have a charge post installed. Of course, the question of who pays for the installation etc is a whole other problem and I suspect it might not be an easy one. The fact remains though that a parking space can have a charge post in it.

And all of the problems that need solving pale into insignificance when compared to the problem of global climate change, and since people don't seem willing to use their cars significantly less (in fact the biggest complaint we're getting about EVs is that lack of charging means people won't be able to use them enough) then surely electrification is our best approach. 

The thread seems to be stuck between people who don't have EVs, proposing problems that are either surmountable, something we can live with or frankly simply not a problem (eg. On modern EVs you can randomly pull out the cable). 

The only people I know who have range anxiety are people without EVs. I've a friend who lives in a terraced house in Bristol with horrendous random on street parking who manages just fine charging up once a week at the local supercharger. 

Battery swaps aren't needed and are just too complex (different brands, models, sizes etc, the old batteries still need charging) so outside of things like taxis or trucks just aren't going to happen. 

If you have a PHEV and do most of your daily driving on the battery then you could have a full EV and a better experience. They're currently a cop out so brands can continue selling ICEs but under the guise of 'doing something' and to be honest I find these are the biggest blight on blocking charging hubs.

My father in law bottled getting a BEV despite having private parking, loads of money and most his driving is a 30 mile radius of home because he was worried about the twice yearly 200 mile trip to Harrogate. In the 3x 1000+ mile roadtrips I've done in mine, not once have I been waiting for the car to finish charging - every time the car has said 'ok let's get going' going before I've finished getting a coffee stretching my legs etc. 

The other thing is market forces. As fewer people are buying petrol then service stations will be repurposed to rapid charging to keep the legacy oil companies in business. I just read an article this morning that in France Total are going to convert 1600 petrol stations to rapid charging hubs. 

Finally think how advanced the latest Tesla is compared to a Nissan Leaf from 2010. Night and day. Tech is improving all the time (induction charging is being trialled meaning induction loops could be laid under roads with for street parking or while actually driving). 

This isn't about an EV 'brigade' (nobody told me, do I get a uniform or at least a badge?) but just the fact this technology is already here, is proven and can work. Compared to China or Norway our EV sales (% or total) are miniscule in comparison and there of course is vested industry interest in squeezing as much revenue out of the old tech as possible, just as cigarette companies tried their best to keep people smoking long after we knew it was a very bad idea. 

What I said was, "Not in most towns and cities they don't." 

So the answer is...Yep.

Take London. 43% live in flats. Are you saying that of the other 57% almost all of them have driveways? That's far fetched at best.

25% of the population as a whole live in flats. 

I own an EV and have pointed out some problems so your initial paragraph is just wrong.

I own an EV and have major range anxiety. If for example I drive north the closest charger that I pass is 84 miles away. 

Get a fuel economic small engined petrol car that's a few years old but not "old". Run it for 3 years. Probably then will be the right time for you to switch to EV.

Yet it does. Just not here. 

Worldwide we have a massive network of petrol stations. It would be possible to adapt these to change batteries. Replaceable batteries can also be recharged so owners can top up at home and never ever visit a swap station if they don't wish.

The different brand, models thing just doesn't wash. If they were regulated (probably from the start) then it would be like changing a fossil fuel car battery. Half a dozen different types sitting on shelves in a swap station. EV chargers outside of the station in case they don't have the correct battery. 

The batteries still need charging. That's obvious.

You might want to look at what percentage of Londoners own cars. I know in Manchester, thousands of flats are being built in the city centre without parking spaces, people living in these properties don’t own cars as they don’t need to.

Does your car have a range < 84 miles?

Only 42% of inner London residents even have a car.  Yes it's a problem but the possible solutions are many. We'll find ways around.

And some of those flats have parking spaces. In a rare case of this govt doing the right thing, there's grant money available to electrify them. I'm in the middle of arranging cabling between each flats CU and parking space on the estate I live on - after the grant it'll be about £100/flat.

My previous (MY2016) car locked the cable in place. There's surely not an EV you can buy today that doesn't?

I have to admit I'm astonished at that Chinese car with removable batteries. I'd thought the engineering compromises and sheer cost were insurmountable.  Still - there's yet another part of the solution.

I'm not quite sure how the economics of it works but I suspect partly people overestimate the frequency with which city car owners need to charge, and underestimate the flexibility drivers build into their charging routines.

In Oslo 70% of people live in apartment blocks (according to the Sentral Statistikk Bureau - basically the OBS) and 35% of cars registered in Oslo are plug in electric. Look at any of the freely available charging apps - the network in Oslo is good but no better than e.g. London and certainly nothing like every lamppost, a long way from every street even. Yet there aren't any major complaints about lack of chargers and people keep buying electric cars.

As an example our entire road is apartment blocks. Two have off road parking (in ours only 8 of 48 spaces have chargers though, not sure about the other). On road the cars are parked nose to tail the whole way except in the charging bays; probably 250 cars with at least 100EVs. Charging bays are 8 slow public chargers. Yet for the 6 months they were our main charging source only twice were they busy and nearly every other occasion there were multiple free. The next chargers are several streets over so probably the catchment is bigger than just our street too

Our 2016 env200 doesn't lock it in, but I would be amazed if anything newer didn't. 

Currently.

How many electric connections per house when they were built? Or foul drains for that matter?

Jk

As I type, no. It has a range of 95 miles. Yesterday my wife drove to Inverness and back, it was late, raining and dark when she got home so didn't plug the car in. I would not trust a 95 mile charge for a 84 mile journey. 

I work 34 miles from home so I normally plug the car in every second night just to be safe. But I sure do have range anxiety.

We will, but surely battery swapping should be high on the list?

I referred to London, not inner London.

Its definitely the future but not for me yet. 

I can get a Citroen Relay for £24k and I get 600 miles for £170 in diesel and it takes me 5 minutes a time to fill up twice a week. 

The E relay is £71k with an advertised range of 140 miles, at 45p per kW that's £168 per 600 miles and a 50kw rapid charger apparently will charge to 80% in 1 hour. So for the 1200 miles I drive a week I'm losing about 10 hours in charging time instead of 10 minutes. That's £600 lost plus the profit on the parts I would have installed during those 10 hours.

This is all assuming the 140 mile range is correct, I drive a 3.5 ton van and the tools and equipment I carry give me a might of 3.2 ton, some how I don't think the posted WLTP numbers take in to account a van close to fully loaded. 

So to sum up, almost 3 times the capital cost, same running cost, about a grand a week lost in loss of productivity whilst charging. 

I would love to change all my vans to EVs but it's not affordable at the moment. Fortunately my current fleet isn't due replacement for another 3 or 4 years so hopefully the situation will have changed by then. 

But why? Those batteries have to be shipped around (like petrol now) to meet supply with demand.

Again. Why? It's a solution looking for a problem. Electricity from a cable doesn't work differently for a Tesla Vs Polestar vs Twizzy unlike a battery would. I can charge from say 15%-65% in 25 minutes on a rapid charger after 3 hours of fast motor way driving giving me maybe another hour and a half. I just don't see a problem with that. 

So you say, but frankly what you say doesn't compute with the experience of anyone with a decent, recent EV. 

Absolutely, makes sense for you right now. But you know it's the future just looking at the number of taxis going electric. The companies have done the maths and it's a no brainer. 

I can charge overnight with 500km of range (which I will get around town) for around 9€

A taxi doing that every day or even being used for multiple shifts will easily pay for the EV premium quite quickly. I've already save €2,5k on fuel since July just doing 20k of ordinary driving. 

I think the same is happening with electric road haulage where major costs are fuel. The middle ground like you where your vans aren't moving 100% of the time so you're slower to recoup the extra cost will probably be last to be viable. 

How many decades did those connections take to make? I'm old enough to remember a number of outside loos ( especially in old mining areas). My dad reminds me of village sess pits that risked contamination of well water.

None of the critics on this thread are anti EV, they are just pointing out: the government timescales are impossible (unusual, although the UK does unrealistic as a norm); their incentives often benefit ICE (esp yet another fuel duty freeze); EV purchase costs are unrealistic for many and total costs are uneconomic for many more.

How many €2.5k saving years does it take to meet the extra purchase price (cf an equivalent ICE ,or hybrid)? If I'm cash poor but need a car what EV can I buy second hand for around a grand?

  Hydroge fuel cells fall in the same trap.  They are so much harder to implement than battery charging

Absolutely. It's a bit like when digital cameras first appeared. They were pretty crap but as time went on they improved enough for most people to change. Hopefully EV's will do the same. I think when they hit the 500 mile range as standard and come down in price, (because let's face it, most EV's are mainly for the rich) then more people will buy them.

The point is you can charge Nio's with a cable. You can also change the battery. What on earth is wrong with that combination? It gives massive flexibility. 

Nio do 30,000 battery swaps per day, have stations in Germany, Sweden, Holland and Norway and plan 1,000 in Europe. They have built a factory in Hungary building the stations and a deal with one of the fuel multis to install them at their petrol stations. What wins in the end is anyones guess but most industry experts think there won't be a winner it will be a multitude of solutions each suited to local conditions and different users. The boss of VW said it was going to be a100% battery solution. They sacked him and and reverted to the multi-solution idea (battery, hydrogen and synthetic/ bio fuel).

Hydrogen the same, whether it's fuel cells or combustion is undecided, most companies are thinking it will be cell hybrids for cars and combustion for heavy applications, for example JCB are going to to i.c for plant applications as charging batteries is unrealistic and the large truck manufacturers are going the same way.

That's fair enough, but you have decided to buy a town car with a very small battery.  If you wanted to regularly do motorway trips then a different vehicle would have been a better call.  I bought a car with a 250 mile range, and that's a bit of a pain when I need to get to Lands End or Northumberland.

Possibly.  I don't know what compromises had to be made to get this to work.

Sure, but the ratio of flat:house shifts out there.  In the place where it's mostly flats, people have less cars, as a rule.  The problem is real but surmountable.

As yorkshireman says, your sort of use case is perhaps the hardest to solve (that or the travelling salesman who does 600 miles every single day).

If you have a depot, then your vans are going to be charging to full there every night, so the lost time isn't an issue (in fact you're gaining the time spent refueling every week).  The Ford e Transit is £38k and has a claimed range of 200 miles.  WLTP is pretty accurate for car EVs but I bet it falls down with vans.  So this is going to be good for a day of local deliveries, but I suspect not yet good enough for the sort of motorway distances you do.  

The big problem for business use is the charging costs.  I get 12p/kWh overnight on my domestic tariff, but I don't know if there is a business tariff with cheap overnight rates?  Electric taxis seem to manage but I have a sneaking suspicion that they're all being filled up on domestic tariffs.

What?

A new block of flats will only get approved with parking for those flats. Charge points can be added to parking.

No idea why you'd need 3min (wtf!) charge times, cars sit in domestic (and workplace) parking for many hours, often days at a time between uses. 

Jk

Has anyone requested any?

Jk

The time for standards driven rapidly interchangable lease batteries was 25 years ago. Even 15 years ago I might have agreed with you but It didn't happen, for the best really. Tech improved, ideas move on.

Jk

Me and the lads take our vans home, 3 out of 6 of us could charge from home, the other 3 would need to visit public chargers so A we would be paying premium charging costs and B they would have to either charge in work time or I pay overtime. 

I only know 1 person who runs an EV van and loaded up he gets half the WLTP but 1 person is hardly a fair sample. Based on that I could head out with a full charge but as my typical day is 200 to 250 miles (sometimes a lot more) I would need at least 1 x 1 hour 80% charge to get home again. Putting it on slow charge at home is fine unless I get a call out, finding a rapid charger at 1am then waiting around will piss me off. 

My typical day is 1 to 1.5 hours motor way heading out, 3 to 4 hours of Country roads then 1 to 1.5 hours home again with 5 or 6 hours working on various different sites in between where I won't be able to charge because most have zero plug sockets. 

It's definitely the future but like I said, not for me yet. 

Been as good, popular and future-proofed as the Euro standard battery for power tools was! The time for standardisation will be 20 years from now when the whole technology has matured enough (alternatively Nio have by default established the standard and others will piggy-back onto their system, one manufacturer is reportedly already working in this direction). The truck guys have their own system, the E700 made by XCMG (another massive heavy plant and truck company you never heard of) already sell an artic tractor unit with a swap-out 250kW pack.

It won't be long before you can charge at 1.21 Gigawatts. That's the future.

What an odd response to the point I was trying to make, but if you're genuinely interested in knowing I gave you all the figures so you can go and work it out. I was talking about commercial vehicles where the major cost is fuel. You will probably have to wait a long time to get a decent EV second hand for a grand.

I know in France they were going to make Dacia Springs available for lease for 99€ per month for those on low incomes which seemed like a good idea, because frankly EVs are heavily weighted to those with the means to pay for them which probably contributes to some of the pushback - its seen as a smug middle-class thing which I get. 

However I know a few people driving around in Renault Zoes (really popular here in France, not sure if they really took off in the UK) that you can pick up for about €8-9k for a 2015ish model which I know isn't a £1k but really isn't an unreasonable amount of money for a decent daily driver.  

I'm not saying that everyone must or can get an EV. I'm saying that those that could (afford it, charge it at home etc), probably should help the shift to electrification of private transport.

It appears that the people who own ev's are supportive.

And the rest of us have questions.

So 

Other than the lack of charging.

The lack of distance (I drive 400 mile days)

The time spent waiting for it to charge.

The extra cost

And then missing 5 or so powerstations to provide the needed Lecky.

We are well on track for the guv target lol.

If anyone is interested in a wager.

I am very happy to bet the date gets put back, by at least a decade. And then put back again.

What, dump the entire output of a nuclear power station into one battery? This I've got to watch.

Pretty sure it has to be done at 88mph

Jk

And that isn't changing your questions? 

People with EVs are telling you this is, mostly, a non issue.

That's a lot. Pretty sure there's a former UKCer who occasionally pops back to report doing similar in a Tesla. 

I call it working, sleeping or occasionally I read for 20min. Awful. 

Yes they're expensive to buy. Doesn't stop loads of people rolling around in £50k+ Germans on finance

Simply nonsense. 

Which target specifically are you sniffing at? 

Again, which date?

Jk

i work at clients houses,  

do i pop in and ask them all if i can blag some of their electricity while i work? 

and where exactly do you imagine the power to charge 32.7 million cars overnight (thats the current number of cars in the UK)

your point about people inn 50k cars.  for every one of those there are thousands in 1 grand bangers.  just making ends meet.

EV may well work for you.  in fact it may work for a good few people,  but for a long long time it will not work for a heck of a lot of people.

 

In your position I would just wait until the infrastructure catches up with your requirements. Most people do very few daily miles so it isn't an issue for them. Let them get the EVs first. Before EV sales start to drop the infrastructure will be there for you.

Since we use a lot less energy at night reviews into this have concluded that our current peak capacity isn't far off what it would need to be if we only had EVs on the road.

Since we're not all going to switch to EVs in a day there's plenty of time to monitor changes is usage and adapt as required.

It may also solve a separate issue around energy storage if everyone is plugged in overnight.

And apparently do 400 miles a day. What the hell do you do?

Out of interest I just plugged in a 400 mile trip from Oxfordshire, up to east Yorkshire as I know it's 200 miles as a used to do it often, and back again, into ABRP. It's 7hrs 11 mins of driving with a 20 minute charge in Newark in each direction, both after a couple of hours of driving so a good time to stop. Does that seem unreasonable?  

Straw man fallacy. You've already said that EVs are out of reach of most people so how do you think we're going to switch immediately to those kind of numbers? Also conveniently forgetting that most people won't charge 100% every day at the same time, many will start to invest in home solar with battery storage (if I was doing 400 miles a day I'd be keen on free electric) etc. 

I'm not sure what point you're referring to but there's no argument from me. I already said EVs are mostly aimed at the wealthy - that's because small, cheap cars have very low margins for the manufacturers so they start with the profitable high end.

This was always Tesla's explicit goal - sell an expensive roadster or Model S for 100k+, put the profit and learnings into the more affordable (but still expensive) Model 3 and Y and then work downwards to mass market. 

Again, I'm not sure anyone is saying anything controversial. The argument seems to be that we're talking in generalities then you get annoyed that it doesn't work specifically for you. 

You come across quite angry and defensive but all I'm saying is I think generally, the move to EVs is a good thing. It's certainly better than continuing with ICE vehicles (and that includes waiting for a 'perfect' tech to come along). 

Aplogies I'm only talking about the UK. The French plans at least look possible with some sensible action on affordability.

My contribution fwiw. I've been driving electric for 14 months /14000 miles now. I know the OP already has his answer.

- if you have a home charger it's very convenient and very cheap day-to-day. You can get time of use tariffs that give a big discount per kWh overnight. You can also reduce some of your non driving electric costs by shifting things like washing machines and dish washers to run at night in your cheap period.

- rapid charging on longer trips is getting more and more straightforward as lots more big fast rapid charging sites are being built, but it's essential to be clued-up on what the better charging providers and sites are. If you just turn up at many motorway services you can quickly find yourself with a long delay. The best app to find chargers to start with is zapmap, wattsup and ABRP are also good in their own ways. I took our EV from Liverpool to Font without any problems at all. It's rare that I have to stop for longer to charge than I would have stopped for anyway, especially with the family in tow.

- rapid charging is quite expensive but obviously you fill up to 100% at home first so the overall average cost is still lower. In my mid spec ID3 I currently break even with an efficient ICE on a return trip from Liverpool to Southampton. Shorter and the ID3 is cheaper. Longer and it's more expensive - but if you do longer trips regularly you can get a subscription to bring costs right down.

- if you don't have charging at home or work, it's obviously less convenient and for most people more expensive. You really need to assess local options on zapmap. Some areas still have free or cheap chargers abounding, but they are gradually getting fewer. There needs to be a new solution for people without driveways long term. My preference would be either banks of reserved cheap chargers in council car parks or a voucher scheme for off-peak charging at big local rapid charger sites.

- having said all of the above, if your primary aim is to save money, I would not recommend an EV. The main reason should be not spewing out fumes. Used prices are coming down and becoming more realistic but most decent EVs are still only up to about 2-3 years old. If you need to save money, buy a older used ICE. OTOH if you are someone who buys a new car every 3 years on PCP, an EV makes a lot more financial sense.

- in addition to not spewing out fumes, a good EV is fast, smooth, very easy to drive, generally more spacious and quieter than an equivalent ICE. They are great cars. I prefer our ID3 to our Octavia in every way except they don't make an estate version.

The tyres thing is guff. Tyre wear depends totally on what car you buy and how good the tyres are. There can easily be a much bigger difference between two identical ICE cars on different tyres than between those and an equivalent EV.

Many EV tyres have harder compounds to reduce rolling resistance too. Our EV tyre treads were 6mm deep new and have lost about 2.5mm in 14000 miles - that's a lower wear rate than almost any car I've owned, even though it has over 200 bhp.

You can't. And for people who really only spend a grand on a car, there probably still won't be any EVs available in 2030, or ever. The batteries will be worth more than that to be put to other uses when the rest of the car falls apart. People like that will buy used ICEs for longer and eventually have to save a bit more money in all likelihood. However the number of people who really only spend £1k on a car is minimal.

You can now buy a decent EV with moderate mileage (not just an old Leaf) for around £15-20k, which is a lot of money but a lot less than it cost 6-9 months ago, and brings them in to the range that a lot of people are happy to spend on a 2-3 year old car. Give it another 18 months and there will be loads more choice in that bracket too. By 2030 there will be lots of choice in the sub-£10k bracket. There will still be used ICEs on the road for 20 years after that for the few who rely on them.

Again my arguments are not about what will be possible they are about affordability in the next few years and equitably  (as that impacts voting... and we could do with more populist anger like a hole in the head) and the realism of being able to stop UK ICE car sales by 2030.

Some data on population planned car expenditure illustates the problem (when taken alongside our current workforce crisis and a disposal income contaction worst than anytime since the 1950s):

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/consumer/articles-reports/2021/08/01/how-much-d...

There is fairly little reason from a consumer perspective imho not to stop new car sales earlier, maybe 2025. The reasons not to the impact on industry and the lack of supply capacity. From a consumer perspective, if you can afford a new car you can afford an EV. By 2030 there will be no sensible reason for someone to want to buy a *new* ICE - none.

"Populist anger" is badly misinformed and needs countering.

Of course EVs are expensive, because they are new, and new tech comes in at the top of the market.

There are no sub £1000 EVS, because the very oldest (modern) EVs are barely ten years old yet, and are still fairly sought after.  

Mind you I see there are now first gen Nissan Leafs available sub £4k.  I think Si dH might be right and the value of repurposing the batteries might prevent their values from falling all the way (although I note that Powervault have halted their trial of repurposing them into house batteries for now - maybe it's harder than first thought).

People seem to be reacting as if ICEs are going to be made illegal to drive in 2030!  It's only the sale of new ones that's being banned... what on earth does the buyer of sub £1000 cars care about what's happening in the brand new market?  The cars being sold new in 2030 won't be hitting the £1000 used market until, what, 2045?  If you really, really want to keep playing bangernomics, there will still be MY2030 diesels on the roads in 2050 and beyond.  But by then there will be four decades worth of EVs on the used market and I doubt the ICEs will have any attraction at all.

Another strong incentive not to delay the 2030 date, if you needed one, is the charging infrastructure. At the moment it's developing fast because there is a big incentive for people to invest. Most charging companies are racking up big losses to get sites in the ground because they can see the market that is coming. This despite a lot of hurdles with power supplies, which are slowing things down. If you moved the 2030 date the commercial risk would suddenly seem much higher and those companies would stop investing in the way they are now. It's a crucial issue because although,min my opinion, the infrastructure is now getting itself in a reasonable place in most areas, it will still need to continue to grow as more EVs come on the road.

I agree but infrastructure is already behind growth in EVs. Plus those purchasing EVs now are predominantly the middle classes who can afford it. I genuinely think 2030 is looking impossible for the UK in both respects and that's ignoring major equitably issues (read many angry people... have we progressives not learnt from brexit?).

Perhaps Britain will roll out it's own standard design for a charger noone else uses to make it hopelessly complicated and unnecessarily expensive so it can 'take back control'

What has been interesting throughout the thread is that, unless I overlooked a post, EVERYONE has focused on the running costs (plus of course - and including me - capital outlay).

When I wrote the OP I didn't realise that realistically I'd be looking at a minimum of £15k as I hadn't looked into the market for used EVs, and I admit I hadn't looked at the cost of public and rapid charging. HOWEVER my long term aim w.r.t. EV is to stop belching out fumes when I drive (yes the power is generated elsewhere in a polluting manner but that's a whole other argument). Back to the thread, I have been really surprised that it's taken a week for anyone to mention that it should be about not spewing out fumes. 

For what it's worth, I am buying a diesel ICE and I feel a bit dirty for it. Ironically my de facto current main workplace is an EV battery research centre...the one 40 miles away as mentioned in the OP. 


Out of courtesy to the many helpful contributors I am quickly running some figures through (this is the first time I am using ZapMap etc so I might not be being 100% accurate here, I am doing my best over Sunday morning coffee)

A quick look at ZapMap shows that my nearest public chargers are in a car park about a mile from my home, there are 2 BP Pulse chargers there. Ignoring the fact that my de facto workplace has chargers at site (as I don't how long I'll be regularly there, so let's look at home life) and going back to the OP, I can see how you could try to start to fit this into some sort of domestic routine. Parking is 60p 6pm-midnight and then chargeable (no pun intended) from 6am, 3 hours for £2.20 to collect car between 8am and 9am. Putting in "used Nissan Leaf 40kWh Acento" on a 7kWh charger at 44p per kWh I get 128 miles range for £14.40 which takes 5 hours. Obviously this depends on those chargers being available, also I hopefully would not be charging from "empty" so all the timings can be adjusted. I am not making any point here, just running numbers and a scenario through as an exercise for future reference really. 

Thanks again

It's a crude attempt to subsidise their car industry, the EU will probably force them to open it up to all car manufacturers.

There probably is in the major conurbations - London, Manchester, Glasgow, etc.. After all, these areas actually have functioning public transport systems. However in the rest of the country - smaller towns of less than 200k persons, "new" towns like Telford, Milton Keynes, Redditch - public transport is a sick joke and private transport is the only way to get anywhere at all.

You've obviously never checked the rules.

They are basically 0.75 parking spaces per flat, irrespective of whether the flat in question is one two or three bedroom. Also irrespective of whether the flat is in Inner London (which has buses, underground & main line trains, along with all facilities accessible) or a small county town that has zero public transport and most recreational and trading outlets either outside town or in the next (bigger) one.

When these multi-bedroom flats (outside of London etc.) have multi separate occupants - because the occupants can't afford a flat near work and have to flat-share somewhere else that's cheaper ! -that means the need for more than one parking space or else people can't even get to work.

How many people who own & drive a £50k+ car are also those who own an EV (and maybe a third car) and have a detached house with a double garage let alone "just" off-street parking ?

The rest of us have second hand cheapo's that we run for as long as possible.

I think it's unlikely that ICE vehicles will be welcome in any urban areas in 2050. Clean air zones will become more common, will cover larger areas, modern ICE vehicles will no longer be exempt from them, and the cost of taking an ICE vehicle into them will get increasingly unaffordable.

ICE vehicles will still be legal to drive, but you probably won't be able to drive them into any towns or cities (which is where the vast majority of the people who can only afford bangers live).

There shouldn't be much/any need to redistribute batteries by driving them between stations. Any requirement for redistribution can be easily solved with differential pricing structures.

It would be a like-for-like swap so the number of batteries in each station would always be constant. The only variable would be the proportion of batteries at each station that are fully charged. So when a station has lots of fully charged batteries, the price could be reduced and when a station is low on charged batteries, the price would increase. Couple that with a decent app showing current pricing, and your customers will pay you for the privilege of doing your shipping for you.

The E-scooters in my town have been using differential pricing for years to incentivise the distribution they want: If you park a scooter somewhere where there is currently high demand for them, or you take a scooter from somewhere where there is low demand, you get a discount on your journey. If you take a scooter from somewhere that is in high demand, or park it where there is low demand, you pay a premium on your journey.

The E-scooter scheme has been running on this system for 5 years. I live in the town centre and my commute takes me past the central train station twice a day. I have never seen any scooters having to be redistributed by staff, and I have never seen any branded vehicles from the scooter providers so my presumption is that redistribution is not necessary.

The DNOs are the elephant in the room when it comes to rolling out these installations. DNO upgrades are very expensive, and the DNOs do not have the manpower or the infrastructure themselves for the quantity of upgrades that are needed. There are huge backlogs for upgrades with most of the DNOs, and very little is being done to improve their capacity.

Taking the business park that our office is in as an example: There are 36 businesses, each of which has 30 parking spaces, plus there's ~100 shared spaces. The power supply to each business is only capable of supporting 1 charger. The quote from the DNO to upgrade was a large 6 figure sum, with a long lead time.

As with most commercial real estate, most of the businesses rent their offices rather than own them. So the businesses won't pay for it. The landlords won't pay for it, unless we reach the point where it becomes impossible to rent out commercial space without large numbers of chargers. If we reach that point, the demand will increase the cost of the DNO upgrades further.

We are one of 3 businesses there who are in the EV space, yet none of us have more than one charger. At the moment, we just about manage with people swapping around and sharing a single charger, but we're already at the limit of how many vehicles can be charged in that manner, despite most staff still having ICE vehicles. It's embarrassing when we have multiple clients visiting and they are unable to charge their vehicles.

It's a problem that can be solved but it isn't a priority for this government.

Ultimately, for EVs to be a realistic option for most people, they need to either be able to regularly charge at home, or they need to be able to regularly charge at their destination(s). This isn't the case for a lot of people. We've already had the easy wins of rolling out EVs to those for whom it is easy but more needs to be done for the large numbers of people who are left behind.

With all due respect, I suspect I have a better view of EV infrastructure than you do, and I disagree. It needs to grow a lot more, but the situation for long journeys in the UK now is much better than a year ago despite the increased numbers of cars on the road.

The challenge is that unless you are actively engaged like I am, it's difficult to know where the latest charging hubs are popping up. Zapmap etc are useful, but the more sites there are, the more these apps also need to develop. It's also difficult for a new EV driver to know which are the good charging providers without joining a forum. Basically the challenge is education and information transfer. It's easy once you know how.

This is a useful map of six-charger fast hubs that was created by a user on an EV forum I use, if it's helpful to anyone:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1DOswN-GODssM2XmKV4oQ9r-mkGcbGno&...

I really don't understand your issues about the transition to EVs being fair/equitable. What is unfair about it? You are focusing on the cost of driving for the poor, but banning new sales of ICE will have no effect on that for many years. Used prices are already starting to look more realistic for cars that are available in higher volumes and that situation will now continue to improve; by 2030 the market will be unrecognisable to now. There is a fairness issue associated with a lack of dedicated parking at for many homes; there needs to be a solution to that or else those homes will become relatively less desirable in years to come. I suggested a couple of possibilities above. But that doesn't seem to be your concern.

Hallelujah.

Someone else who can see the problem.

Is it actually possible for two lamp posts to provide enough electrical load to supply twenty chargers?

Being inequitable is the current reality and will remain so for several years. Labour admit their way more ambitious plans need time after any election (and assuming they have a working majority to enact them). So 2025 maybe when we start to play catch-up, subject to the torys not doing even more damage.

You can appeal to authority all you like, but we will see by 2025. I'm hardly ignorant: my professional organisation is IET and most of my ex colleagues and students work in EEE, many in various aspects of green energy. We pretty much all want to see EVs do well but despair with the way the chances of meeting UK 2030 aims seem to be receding and how government nudges are less than they could or should be. For middle class people EV take up will be fine but these proposals are for a big majority. In parallel where is the big England wide public transport investment planning, outside the money pit that is HS2?

Huge numbers of the poor being constrained to drive second hand ICE, with no carrots and all sticks, because without subsidy they don't have a choice, simply isn't progressive politics and IMHO really risks feeding more dangerous populism.

You say it's inequitable and that the 2030 date is impossible to meet but I'm honestly not sure what your particular concern is that gives you this view.

People who don't currently buy new cars will continue to have the same choices they have now, but with more variety.

If your concern is that we need to do more to make new EVs cheaper (further driving down used prices), then in principle I'd support that but I'm not sure how and I wouldn't see it as essential.

That's shockingly bad in my opinion. The legal level is 1.6mm so your 6mm tread only has 4.4mm useable tread, you have lost 2.5mm in 14k and you only have 1.9mm left, 24k your looking for a new set. I'm gutted if I don't get 50 to 60k out of a set of tyres on my van, they start life with 8mm.

Unless I've misunderstood 2030 is ICE only ban*, most sales in 2030 may well still be mild hybrids not EV which are essentially IC anyway. It's pretty unambitious really. Sure it'll be another opportunity for Faragiste grifters but they can make those from nothing anyway, no point fearing doing something right because of them.

* I'd bet the EU and therefore the UK will fold to Italian supercar lobbying so small volume or less likely high value ICV will end up exempted.

Jk

I'll repeat them then:

'Low hanging fruit' EV purchasers already have them (generally richer progressives). Many people who can afford them are still sceptical about EVs and a significant minority are opposed. We are heading into the biggest cost of living squeeze for ordinary people since the 1950s. The government won't increase fuel duty until after the election and seems reluctant on further EV subsidies. Price equivalence probably won't be there for 5 years.... in this background sales rates need to accelerate.

Problems with infrastructure for home charging, especially for those without drives/garages (and in a minority of cases that includes electrical supply issues to the street). The rate of improvement for chargers for longer distance travel is well behind where it should be (given the many more EVs that will be on the road in 5 years).

Real pressures on the % who need a cheap car (as per link above but with the poor getting more numerous and poorer) and the impact just before and after 2030, especially as carrots and sticks shift more heavily in favour of EV.

Numerous potential legal and contractual problems with funding for public charging points that have already slowed things in some places.

https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2021/05/uk-faces-huge-challenge-r...

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/comment/electric-vehicle-...

https://www.autotraderroadto2030.co.uk/#109

I have had one car that went through a set every 10k. I've never had a set of tyres last more than 20k. It's all relative but the wear rate thede on mm/year is very low. These particular tyres do start at a low tread depth but that's a different (and specific) issue.

I still don't understand how this is relevant to the EV transition, because to repeat, the new rules only affect new cars. It doesn't add to the cost of living crisis at all. Those sceptics and opposed minority will eventually be won over when they actually drive and live with one.

There are challenges to public rapid charger rollout but they are ultimately being overcome. There are loads of new large rapid hubs going in all the time (these are game-charging for long journeys). There are some specific parts of the country where things are behind but they will catch up easily before 2030. There are also issues with information transfer like I said earlier, but again, these will be overcome. I'm afraid that your post comes across just like classic fossil fuel industry motivated FUD sowing stuff. I know that's not where you are coming from, but you are writing the same stuff, and it's not true. Anyway, didn't mean to come back here just to get in an argument

Yeah, all this Oil industry FUD mesmerising green engineers and supporters of EVs.... latest:

Lloyds Banking Group’s transport managing director Nick Williams

“It’s disappointing that today’s Statement from the Chancellor announced no new support to strengthen the UK’s electric vehicle charging infrastructure. It remains impressive that electric vehicles are entering the roads at record rates, but to meet this growing demand we need a charging network that can deliver, both in terms of availability and reliability. To achieve this, rapid expansion will be key.

“With the upcoming Zero Emissions Vehicle mandate also incentivising manufactures to bring more electric vehicles to the UK market, the call for an expanded charging network will be even greater, so the lack of support in today’s Statement is a big setback. We’re hopeful that the government will reveal more plans ahead of its implementation next year, or we risk impacting the longer-term uptake of electric vehicles as confidence in our country’s infrastructure waivers.”

You could find a 100 articles saying it needs to expand quickly and another 100 saying more support should be provided. I wouldn't argue with either, but the fact remains, it is already expanding quickly. You also need to decide what support is required to make it go even faster or to continue expanding to 2030 and beyond. It isn't cash - there is plenty of investment. Have listened to interviews with the CEOs of some of the charging companies where they were honest enough to say this. What they need is suitable sites.

The rate limiting step is usually provision of sufficient supply capacity by the DNO. There are quite a few banks of rapid chargers sat installed and waiting in various places around the country because of delays with the DNO. There are also some examples now of companies installing chargers where they aren't actually really needed with today's EV numbers, but they want to get them in the ground now to reserve market share in that location for the future, and it's a location plentiful power supply. A good example is Banbury where there are now 32 Instavolt, 6 Osprey and about 8 or 10 public Tesla chargers all within a mile of a single motorway junction. The last 16 Instavolts have just gone in. I've stopped there four or five times as it's a good location to charge to get us to the south coast. I've never seen more than six or seven cars charging at the Instavolt site at once. Realistically these chargers would be better spread out at sites along the M40 in groups of 8 ish, but they go where the power supply and a good site is. (In fairness a new bunch recently got installed at Cherwell Valley too).

That would be part of those contracting and legal delays

Why not fund the new electric infrastructure with a 10p levy on petrol and diesel. 

That would provide funding and shift the cost balance in favour of electric as well, encouraging even faster take up.

A win for a greener planet.

I think most people would struggle to justify a tax that would be paid mostly by the poorer sections of society to pay for infrastructure that can currently only be used by the richer sections of society. 

That's a stick rather than a carrot and doesn't help the less well off make the transition.

That sounds like normal Tory policy TBH.

I don't think they need direct funding, there is loads of investment available.

Speeding up of the process for getting power supply upgrades would work better.

For what it's worth here is some data on growth of ultra rapid chargers, which zapmap defines as 100kw+. These are the ones that matter for long trips. 50kw is going to become obsolete for this purpose and anything slower is useless. I'm sure you'll agree an 82% year on year increase is pretty good, and I can confirm based on personal experience there are a substantial number of new sites since the beginning of 2022 that make a difference on journeys I sometimes do.

"As of February 2023, there are 7426 rapid and ultra-rapid charging devices, across 4170 rapid and ultra-rapid charging locations in the UK.

Last month, 377 new rapid and ultra-rapid charging devices were added to the Zap-Map database.

Since February 2022, there has been a 82% increase in the number of ultra-rapid devices across the country."

https://www.zap-map.com/statistics/

You didn't mention the ethics of mining conflict minerals. The latest sources I read state that 60% of all mined cobalt depends on slave labour, some of which are children. That has to be a substantial blocker to 'green' transition for many who's faculties for compassion are sensitive.

Is there a declared ethical vehicle manufacturer - the equivalent of fairphone for portable phones ??

I'm not going to get in to the debate of whether the best solution to labour conditions in the Congo is to stop buying their goods (personally I think probably not); nor what can be done to improve labour conditions and regulation in areas controlled by Boko Haram. This is obviously a problem. However, if it's a significant concern for you, you can buy an EV with an LiFePo battery, which does not contain cobalt. There are increasing numbers around.

If one serious expert who cares about green energy raises evidenced concerns I'd trust them over a hundred eco puff pieces. 

Look at data on chargers...

https://www.zap-map.com/statistics/

In detail this looks like cherry picking expansion. The government target was 300,000 chargers by 2030 but they need to be distributed proportionaly to where vehicles will go. Currently 31% in Greater London (which does have a good public transport network).  We need to double 3 more times....and spread the system out much more .... mainly where chargers will be less profitable and contract problems likely greater.

I don't disagree with you at all, my comment was a bit tongue in cheek.

But there is a big conversation to be had about how we fund these big infrastructure changes, not just electric cars but the whole energy sector. Domestic heat pumps age not cheap and their take up is proportionally more expensive, prohibitively so, for the poorer in society. 

Be nice to think it would be government led, as part of the improvements to the fabric of society. The reality I fear is a bunch of private companies trying their utmost to pay dividends to their shareholders with their customers a distant second thought.

That's not important. We need to spend a vast proportion of the infrastructure money so a few people can go very fast between Birmingham and outer London from the mid 2030s (sarcasm).

One might even think a big reason why the government are not offering more incentives is they know it will blow back as infrastructure can't cope.

Why does it only seem to be EVs that trigger this compassion for slave labour among certain people?

Cobalt is used globally to refine petrol and diesel (to take out the sulphur) but whereas that just gets burnt and blown out the tailpipe of billions of vehicles every day, at least cobalt in batteries is infinitely recyclable. 

https://electrek.co/2022/04/22/tesla-using-cobalt-free-lfp-batteries-in-hal...

Tesla, and I'm sure others will follow, have already switched to batteries that don't use cobalt. That's the thing with EVs, they're evolving at the rate computers do whereas an ICE is fundamentally the same thing that spluttered out of Henry Ford's factories 100 years ago. 

Have you not been following Sadiq Khan's policies on transport. Taxing those that drive older vehicles is Labour through and through at the moment.

Aluminium tech is your answer to that issue. It's not just EVs that need massive increases in batteries.... the damage worldwide will be huge and China hold all the best mining cards. If the UK wanted to help the poor they would invest more in regional public transport, not EVs.

That's mainly a different issue. We had allowed our vehicles to poison the air in cities. Something had to be done. We all know you're not a fan of public health interventions and often spin misinformation about such things.

Can we stop treating drivers like cash cows. We pay plenty of tax. Worse is when goals posts are changed. 

Since petrol and diesel directly affects our economy I'd rather it not be hiked any higher right now.

The switch to EVs is going to happen. Patience.

At the moment they can't be built any faster due to a limitation on raw materials.

Since there are so many benefits with EVs let it just happen naturally. It will anyway.

Trying to force it through faster will just make it more expensive and will likely draw resources away from other countries so the net adoption rate globally probably won't be any different.

I think hybrids should be out focus at the moment.

Since there is a limitation at the moment on resources for batteries, if you want to get an many miles driven as possible powered by electric, plug in hybrids is the way to do it.

The battery is roughly a quarter of that of an EV. Most journeys are short. It's the way to go.

The real trick that's being missed however is that plug in hybrids should be designed to be converted to EVs in the future. 

Remove engine, put more batteries in. This can be done anyway but manufacturers get in the way with closed source software so only popular models get cracked. It's a shame as it's a real missed opportunity.

Sooner or later batteries won't be an issue and all the hybrids will be redundant. It's a waste and it's stupid.

I know it's a different issue. Same logic regarding the solution that Khan has implemented though isn't it?

Don't try and sweep it under the carpet. I'm pro EVs and I'm looking forward to owning one maybe 10 years, but the cobalt issue is an EV issue.

EVs have more than doubled the global demand for Cobalt which has pushed up the price and with the price and demand has pushed mining into areas of exploitation.

We'll get past it with cobalt free alternatives (as well as other materials) but it's a genuine EV issue that you shouldn't ignore.

Er no. It's predominantly incentivising changes that reduce congestion, increase public transport use (and keep this affordable) and improve public health.

I see your point and agree with bits but I still disagree re hybrids, they're an evolutionary dead end we're already moving past for cars. For most use cases hybrids are fundamentally wasteful, you have to build a full ICE and a full EV drivetrain albeit minus a fraction of the battery. Then you have one part or the other of that drivetrain holding its partner back for most of the vehicle's life and you have to maintain them both. The energy recovery and performance boost is respectable (why every other taxi seems to be a Prius) but we're nearly there anyway in MPG and performance terms with small capacity, high boost turbo petrols. They're simpler and lighter and much cheaper.

I do think it's a shame battery packs are getting quite so big in BEVs, there is a negative feedback loop there with weight and performance meaning more and more battery is needed just to push battery around. Plus, pouring huge resources into limited numbers of excessive performance prestige vehicles where the performance (range and go) won't be used 99.9% of the time is wasteful but that's what the market delivers when it's given free rein.

Even if the hybrid-BEV midlife swap was a simple insurance friendly, smooth paperwork, crate part & 2H labour job I simply don't see it happening. It'll be too expensive too late in a very limited vehicle life. You're thinking like a collector, not a consumer, far easier to sell it on and get the next thing.

Have you seen Mazda's mad last hurrah for their rotary? They're building a single rotor unit into into a series hybrid (basically an EV with genset) using the generator under computer control to vary the instantaneous angular velocity of the rotor throughout its cycle allowing them to get variable valve timing and different combustion cycles from the fixed porting. Clever but horrible simultaneously. God knows what it'll sound like given it's basically constant speed!

jk

As I recall the tax was on emissions rather than age.

I lived in London for many years. We managed with one car for a family with four drivers. London public transport is amazing compared to the rest of the country. The cycling infrastructure is good.

Not saying this would work for everyone but increasing the cost encourages some to look at alternatives.

I'm not. I agree mined cobalt can be bad but we've found a solution to not using cobalt anymore in batteries so it should stop being an issue (I know there are others). Now we've agreed cobalt can stop being an issue I'm sure you'll find another objection because, reasons. 

We haven't found a solution for not putting it in petrol. For those 10 years until an EV is right for you, you will be putting thousands of kgs of CO² into the atmosphere which will be there for centuries. 

And like I said, when those batteries are recycled we can use the cobalt again - and new batteries don't need it so it can be used for other things. 

They're definitely an evolutionary dead end as you put it, but with a suitable plan to re purposes them they're wastefulness would be kept to a minimum.

My fear with EVe is it's going to be a very slow grind before we see mass adoption.

Perhaps there will be a few more critical battery breakthroughs that will speed the process up soon, but that's almost leaving it to chance.

 I won't argue with this, but I will say the world needs more collectors.

 I think Engineering Explained covered it. I thought it had some merit. It keeps batteries small. Rotary is a tiny unit for its power output, and it makes the car more useful to more people.

Rotaries in the RX8 used to burn a lot of oil however. Can't remember if this was addressed in their new incarnation. If not it's a real issue as any oil burning is horrendous for emissions.

Objection to what? I'm not against EVs.

Buy me an EV and I'll start driving it tomorrow.

I can't see this happening. 1) An EV uses typically 6x the minerals (with own intrinsic value) to fabricate compared to an ICE. 2) These minerals and increased sophistication require more energy and here the cost is only rising.  3) If attempts are made to make cobalt mining ethically correct this will also raise prices

Bravo ! electric bikes make complete sense and consume rather less in minerals and energy to fabricate

Try to keep up, Sehol (VW) and BYD are already showing cars with sidium-ion batteries.

thats the value of a forum thanks

but it's hard to know the real potential of the newest innovations; I was just reading this article about motors which don't use copper or magnets (which often use cobalt also) but again can't say how they've been taken up by the mfrs

https://www.electrichybridvehicletechnology.com/news/motor-technology/uk-co...

Environmental and human rights issues are a problem with mining for EVs. As is China's stranglehold on mineral resources and extraction technology.

There are mines under development that will go some way towards improving this. There are also alternative battery technologies hitting the market / under development that will reduce/eliminate a lot of the conflict minerals: LiFePO4, sodium ion, aluminium ion, solid state etc.

I find it interesting how many people find EV mining problematic, but are quite happy for ICE vehicles to continue to prop up the regimes in Saudi, Russia, Abu Dhabi etc.

That's dishonest whataboutery... anyone like me arguing for a more holistic green approach, better focused on affordable public transport, will despise the behaviour of Saudi and Russian governments, and ICE will be a good way down the reasons for that.

Switched reluctance motors are ancient tech. Substituting aluminium windings for copper makes sense given their densities, cost and weight but it's hardly ground breaking stuff. Given their robust simplicity, lack of difficult materials and reasonable performance there'll be a good reason they're not widespread in EVs already, I'd guess it's low torque density.

I'm interested in where your '6x' figure came from for mineral use in new BEV vs ICV and what it specifically refers to? Presumably it can't be whole lifecycle since most ICV will burn between 10 and 15 Tons of refined fuel over their lifespan (eg: 150k/50mpg > 11.5T), none of which is recyclable.

jk

This is not obviously dated, but I believe it's 2022. Things are moving fast in hi tech, so we must hope that ethics are improving.

https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-t...

The 6x ref re-stated here; also states that fabrication energy is close to 2x that of ICE. Can we win that back before the battery life is up ?? the article further highlights a greater pollution problem with EVs - microplastic tyre wear due to greater vehicle weight.

https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/transport-travel/shopping-guide/ethical-car...

The problem with that paper is the author doesn't know what 'minerals' are and clearly you don't either. 

Which of those minerals in your view are not minerals? A Mineral is a really broad term so I would find it hard to argue that any of them in that image are not minerals.

If you begin to speak of fuel burned by an ICE then you must compare it to whatever fuel was burned by the power station to produce electricity for the EV, no ?

Yes. Easily. From your link:

Average estimates are about 6-7 tonnes of CO2e for an ICE car, and 10-11 for an electric. (10 tonnes is about the average UK per capita annual carbon footprint).

Back of an envelope an average ICE vehicle will spew out around 3 tons of Co2 every year (15,000 miles) so the break-even point seems to be 1.5-2 years. Although that is actually much less because the ICE vehicle will be emitting CO2 after it is made (3 tons per year) while the BEV is emitting nothing but a lovely hum and feeling of smugness.

https://www.eea.europa.eu/highlights/average-co2-emissions-from-new-cars-va...

It's also worth noting from your link:

However, a lot of the extra is the electricity used in making the battery, meaning that a battery made in Tesla’s solar powered factory in Nevada will have a significantly lower impact than one made in China with its coal-powered grid electricity.

And finally the local air pollution in cities will stay better.

Spurious - we've said already that EV makers are generally focusing on higher end, therefore bigger cars. A Tesla Model Y is just shy of 2000kg - my old Land Rover discovery Sport was the same weight despite being slight shorter, slightly narrower and a lot more polluting.

Yes, like for like they're heavier, and fine particulates need to be addressed but this is a) applicable to all heavy vehicles and b) something I would take over global heating driven by CO2 any time.

Absolutely. Though I would add the emphasis on 'burned' is yours.

I see from your earlier post the 6x figure appears to refer specifically to select materials, not minerals, and not including the steel and aluminium which actually make up the bulk both EVs and ICVs. I see now how we arrive at such an apparently striking figure.

jk

I think the tire wear point can be unfair as although EVs are heavier they use regenerative breaking.

Wrong way round! As jkarran astutely pointed out oil burned in an i.c. engine is also widely considered a mineral ( it's not called mineral oil for nothing) as in fact is the natural gas burned to make the electricity for e.v's. 

ahhh, I see.

Upper tier smugness ? I seeing a lot of commentary about the two-tier privilege of owning an EV

Otherwise the calcs depend on how your power station is fired. Britain's best hope for clean energy is windpower. It should be noted that as for EVs, wind turbines also have a their own break-even in-service delay - lengthy due to those minerals used in fabrication. Somewhat longer for offshore - presumably the lengths of copper conductors consumed getting the energy back onshore and into the grid.

So I suppose we could also count engine oil in the mix with it's 12 - 20k km changes ? Do EVs save on engine oil ?

Last night I wrestled with my Berlingo oil change - some bar steward designer placed the semi rigid water pump pipe obstructing manual access to grapple with the oil filter. Strewth ! Our other car, a Dacia isn't much better. So just tell me that EVs don't need sump oil and motivation to trade up will take a big step up

EVs don't need sump oil. 

The only 'wet stuff' that goes into an EV is window washer fluid.  

Mine doesn't even have a service schedule, rather just relying on alerts from the car if something needs looking at. Brake discs might need changing in 5 years or so since regen means they're not used much, but being in the mountains I probably have to use them more than most on descents. 

Not having to faff with maintenance was yet another tick in the plus column for an EV. I just want my car to get on with doing it's job and not need mollycoddling with maintenance to just keep running.

It's another reason why legacy car makers (and dealers) have been slow to push EVs as they make so much follow up money on servicing and maintenance. 

And the coolant, and refrigerate (kinda wet) and diff oil (if it has a diff).

This does sound appealing.

Coolant is sealed and apparently doesn't need replacing for the lifetime of the vehicle under normal circumstances. No idea what diff or diff oil is but guessing I'll be told if/when it's an issue. 

I think they changed the coolant in my E-Niro at the 30k service. However, there is so much less to go wrong with an EV. 

Sealed for life means it will last until the warranty runs out. Manufacturers are guilty of this when it comes to auto gearboxes. They say they are sealed for life, but they really need oil changes to give them a chance of lasting the life of the vehicle.

A differential (box of gears, but not a gearbox) 

I think battery coolant doesn't need changing normally but a/c fluid top up yes because it's just like on a normal car. 

I'm pretty sure it was battery coolant. It took ages to get it all out. 

Some Kia and Hyundai cars have a scheduled battery coolant change. I've not heard of it with any others. Definitely not a requirement for VAG cars.