Electric Car No Driveway

[Squishybopbadobop]

Ourselves and the house we are attached to are the only ones on the street with no driveway so if we asked for electric charging points to be put outside our house, would it give us any right to park in the spaces outside our house (on the road) as we don't have a driveway? Presumably the council would only install them outside our houses as everyone else could install them on their driveways but not sure how this would work?

If it is on the public highway, then once the correct procedure has been followed, it is then available to anyone correctly using their blue badge.

If people want to start reserving parts of the highway, the law will need a change.

However many chargers are installed it is not going to make it your personal parking place though which I think is what OP wanted.

My council are putting them in 5 named streets with no procedure to make requests. All of the 5 streets are at least 9 miles from me. It's going to be a long time before this area is ready for 2030. Questions to my MP just come back with cut and paste blurb from a Conservative press release that doesn't help at all. Doesn't matter how specific the questions are everyone gets the same response. I'd quite like an electric vehicle but I would need to be able to charge it in my own village where many properties don't have a drive and not rely on making a special trip 8 miles away every time.

It's one thing to have chargers.
It's another thing to have access to them.

As a matter of policy the law could be changed to allow councils to reserve sections of the public highway for owners of electric vehicles - and indeed with planning permission some retail high streets have exactly that.

However it would be problematic to do the same in a residential road.

And without a change in the law, it would not be possible to provide a space devoted to one household or resident.

General public policy the past 30 years has been to discourage anything that might promote private motoring. Hence the toy garages with anything built since 1994. So it would be quite a sea shift for a massive policy that explicitly promotes private car ownership.

Yes, even for the personal disabled bays that my Council offer, they are obliged to go through a full statutory consultation process and 3 month period to allow objections to be made before granting one. And that is for people who have trouble getting from their house to their car! Can’t see how just owning an electric car would put you in a better position that someone with a disability.

Please can you quote the law that prohibits this? The law specifically applicable to London Borough of Haringey please?

https://www.haringey.gov.uk/parking-roads-and-travel/parking/dedicated-disabled-parking-bay#who-can-use

Countrygirl99 - that is very disappointing. 9 miles away is just no good unless they're fast chargers and you have business going that way regularly. And even then, you still want the capacity to charge close to home.

What we've got a lot of here (in London) recently is fast chargers at petrol stations. But still needs a fair bit of hanging about at not very interesting spots. Looking forward to the fictional charging station in Ambridge (see the Archers thread on Radio Addicts) for a haircut, artisanal coffee etc while I charge in the Borsetshire countryside....

I quite agree, together with the infrastructure just not being there. However it won't belong until we have no choice, and then what?!

This is going to be a huge issue in the future in places like London where most homes don’t have a dedicated parking spot.

Thanks everyone for your replies. I don't really want to change to an electric car anytime soon, I was just trying to work out how it would work if we had to replace our car and weren't allowed to buy another petrol or diesel as the laws change. Just to be clear, I don't think I'm entitled to park outside my house, I just couldn't see how it would work but as others have suggested, maybe the only option would be supermarkets, although I currently get shopping delivered! I'm sure someone will work it out by the time it becomes necessary but if we do have to change our car, its helpful to know there are other options which aren't perfect but would work.

And for those who have suggested that the council won't just give me a charger because I don't have a driveway, this idea wasn't coming from a place of entitlement, it's a scheme being run by our council that got me thinking.

@Flopsythebunny are you saying thats not true , do you not know how they get lithium ?

@JustFrustrated depends where you live , very few by us and we son’t have spare hrs to sit an wait for it to charge, takes me 5 mins to get petrol. Even on a long trip of 200 miles and a stop we stop for an 30 mins maybe not couple hrs
for those that can’t charge at home its really hard to have one, plus we had talks of power cuts last year due to using heating , how about when half the country is charging a car , the infrastructure is nowhere near ready, then all batteries need to be disposed of they don’t last a cars life time , not convinced they are much better for the environment either , need better options

Mum has one in a lamp post on her street - terraced housing with no drive ways. There are always cars parked there but I haven’t actually seen anyone charge a vehicle there. The spaces near the charging point are for anyone to use.

200 miles is below average range of an all electric car.
All services have fast chargers. Even in the north.

People are putting obstacles in the way.

I walk to work, the supermarket and the gym so won't be charging a car there. But I need a car for a school refuser, kids activities and family. Our council appears to be sticking it's head in the sand about electric charging for people with no driveways. The local councillors think the 2030 deadline will have to be pushed back.

Hahaha. Even worse

Of course I know. In the course if his work, my son recently had to visit the biggest one in the world. There certainly were not any children working there

It's not worth me changing my 2016 Fiesta for an EV as I only do under 2k miles a year and it's one of those with no tax, even EVs are going to have to pay road tax from 2025. It would take me years to break even, I'll be dead first

@Flopsythebunny what he visited one of the mines ? Ans thats the only one and only source ?

@JustFrustrated its a fact we were sue to have power cuts because the grid couldn’t cope , without everyone having a car, not everywhere has fast chargers and what do you call fast and how many miles does that give
its not the future and something else will come along and the 2030 deadline will get pushed back as its just over 6 years away and we are not ready for large amounts of people to have electric cars and won’t be by then
i know couple disabled people almost forces to have as a mobility car but don’t have a drive and charging at tesco etc is very hard for them , its not been well thought out at all.

It's not "what I call a fast charge" it's what the stats say.

Why are you arguing with me about the state of chargers? You don't have an EV and I have 2. So I'm going to say I'm a bit better placed to have a real time understanding of it.

But to answer your question.

Home charges are usually 3.6kw meaning you'll charge from EMPTY to 80% over night. But most people don't charge from empty.

A 22kw, which is typically associated with PhEvs will charge from empty to 80% in 3-4 hours (including EVs)

A fast charger is 50kw and will typically take about 30 minutes to take it to 80%

And a rapid charger, above 50kw even faster.

Most supermarkets have a 22kw charger. So you can do your shop whilst charging.

Service stations, have fast and rapid chargers.

The current role out of chargers is focussed on rapid and super rapid. There is even one 350kw charger which will give you 100 miles in less than 5 minutes.

I don't necessarily disagree about the power situation, but again, that's my industry so I know a fair bit about that.

But what we do know for a fact, is diesel and petrol is on the way out.

I don’t disagree that the infrastructure needs to be upgraded but things are vastly improving all the time.

the fast charger we stopped at today took us from 30% to 80% in SIX minutes, that’s pretty good going for a 270 mile trip (our range is actually over 300 so we were being extra cautious). We went to northumberland and to our surprise there are public chargers all over the place up there, whereas North Yorkshire council have huge blackspots with none at all. Some areas are doing great, others a long way behind but I have seen for myself how much stuff has come along in the four years I’ve had an EV. Right now the improvement is almost exponential. Ten years from now things will be hugely better again. I see no reason to delay new cars being EV only, of course for many years after that people will still be driving round petrol cars.

if you don’t want to get one yet that’s perfectly fine but I think you will be surprised how many people get on pretty well with EVs, even when they don’t have their own home charger.

You should worry more about the mica in your makeup and wax melts. That is mined by children!

I can only give my own experience, having no driveway, but an electric car and family in London and Suffolk. You do not need a reserved space, but you do need to plan, in the same way that you wouldn't set off in a petrol car with no petrol. The Richmond (and Oxford) schemes for cable channels across the pavement are an affordable and quick way forward. You would only need to park directly outside your house once a week or so and even in london, we can do that. We would happily pay for one to be installed ourselves.