Where is everyone going to charge their electric vehicle?

[TeapotCollection]

On the way to work I saw a car on charge, parked on the road with the cable trailing over the footpath. I’d be worried about someone tripping over it, or someone stealing the cable! But then I thought what are people meant to do?

Hadn’t thought about it before but this just isn’t going to work is it?

The trouble is, people don't want smaller engines. Cars have been getting bigger and bigger over time, and smaller engines simply won't power them (to go at the speeds people want to go).
At the end of the day, it's supply and demand - no manufacturer is going to go first with smaller engines because they'll lose sales/share.

I don't actually believe hybrid is the answer either - you've got a car with a heavy engine AND a heavy battery, so neither power source can be as efficient as they could be in a lighter car, and there are twice as many things to go wrong.

I ve hired 1litre SEAT Arona's - a mini SUV, they cruise at 80 easily, my current car is an Skoda Octavia 1.6l TDi - Euro 6 engine - it will hold 80 and return over 65 to the gallon, 55 to 60 on A and B roads.

People can be encouraged to buy these cars easily, via tax breaks, my 1.6tdi costs £00.0 to tax, my DD's C1 was also £00.00 but ehn from 2017, the stupid Govt took away the tax breaks for low emission ICE cars....

What people don't need to massive great SUV's which obviously do need large engines and return shit fuel economy/hi emissions.

But agree on hybrids, double the weight and complexity.

We have a drive. We also have a social housing landlord who won't fit (or allow us to fit) a charger. So that's 60 houses with driveways who will be mooching about other streets looking for chargers.

Our road is off a main trunk road with double yellows, and then opposite is a private estate with parking restrictions. It's quite a distance to a road with chargers (and that's always full).

In the other direction is an area where there might be space but if I had to leave it any length of time I would have to walk through a very dodgy area to get home, and get back again. If I finish work about 8pm that'd mean going back after midnight to collect. Or doing this charade at about 5am I guess. I drive for a living, so I guess I'd have to this a lot. If I left the van overnight I guess I'd also have to change my (already extortionate) insurance to reflect this.

We have a drive. We also have a social housing landlord who won't fit (or allow us to fit) a charger. So that's 60 houses with driveways who will be mooching about other streets looking for chargers.

You see it's nonsense like this which makes me wonder quite how "real" climate change is. If we really were facing the apocalypse being promised, then things like this simply wouldn't happen.

For comparison, I wonder how many landlords prevented tenants fitting blackout blinds during the war ?

For comparison, I wonder how many landlords prevented tenants fitting blackout blinds during the war ?

I very much doubt blackout blinds were a thing. Most people had thick curtains. Those who only had thin ones used stuff like cardboard or layers of newspaper over the windows.

But regarding your point about the climate crisis, it is real, but bodies like public authorities and social landlords won't do anything difficult and/or expensive until they are made to by properly enforced laws, unfortunately.

Our delightful management company charge us an absolute fortune for the most basic things. A £10k quote to have some hedgerow trimmed back is one example. Should we ever be in a position where we have to have EV charging points installed I dread to think what they’d charge. So far there hasn’t been any interest because most people rent so are only here 6 months or so but I suspect some landlords would think it was a good plus point when attracting tenants.

That's not how supply and demand works.

Who said anything about scrapping ICE cars?

Traditional cars carry on running for decades? How many cars from the 1980s or '90s do you still see on the road? Incidentally, electric trains and trams typically last far longer than diesel-powered rolling stock, chiefly due to their mechanical simplicity.

Certainly, we have become a throw-away society, but that's not the fault of EVs. For a long time now, cars have been written-off because the cost of a repair, even a minor one, exceed the vehicle's resale price.

Internal combustion engines have been in mass production, and continuously developed, for well over 100 years, yet they still only achieve 30-40% thermal efficiency, i.e. 60-70% of the fuel burned is wasted. For practical reasons, they'll never get much more than 50%. Imagine if your central heating boiler was this wasteful.

Yes quite, number flights set to treble, UK expanding airports.... SFA being done about that nor about cargo ships or plastics...

Number of UK passengers is going from 284 million to 435 million by 2050, there is no "current" battery technology that can used to power a passenger plane.

Governments responses around the globe to climate change is all bollox along with EVs, just a means to make some people extremely rich.

Well, supply and demand isn't working is it? people don't want them and aren't buying them in the numbers required.

& you re making the case to continue research into ICE efficiencies, which had only really just begun in the last 10 or 20 years, current laws are the industry can offset ICE sales IF they improve efficiency BUT they cannot sell any after 2030....so they will not do more R&D into this.

Rail is totally different to cars, which have to carry their own batteries.

Modern engines can easily do 200k, thats around 25 years of average motoring.

Do you honestly think an EV will be running efficiently after 10 or 15 years?

We need better battery technology for EVs to make sense... talking of which, when that happens, will the current chargers being rolled out even work with these newer batteries.

The deciding factor for us against an EV was that we have 2 medically fragile people in our house who can need to attend a&e ASAP.

It's not an ambulance job...in fact an ambulance would take longer in the circumstances the NHS is in right now but they need drugs IV immediately once the medical event takes place.

A petrol (self charging hybrid here) is always ready to go - we are always in top on keeping it filled with petrol. Whereas a EV might not have enough charge to get us there, and no time to wait.
I know from friends that cold weather can drain the battery to have less charge than you may think you have.

Also a few years ago my Great Aunt tripped on a lead like these on the pavement that was covered by a proper protective cover. She broke her hip and it sadly lead to her death as she too old to recover properly. Before the fall she was 97 and living independently. I would say they could be a real hazard for elderly and disabled people.

We keep our EV above 100 miles at all times and its usually around 200+.
EV's aren't compulsory and its purely down to choice but I do find it slightly annoying when people go out fo their way to give reasons why they CAN'T have one. Most people can, they just prefer not to (or can't afford one) and thats fine.
Sticking to petrol/diesel is not something that needs to be justified.

It's not working well at the moment, but that is not evidence that EVs are a non-starter. Video cassette recorders were outrageously expensive when they were first launched; that was very much not the case after a few years on the market.

Don't be ridiculous, manufacturers have always been interested in improving the efficiency of their engines, particularly after the oil crises of 1973 and 1979. Around this time, consumers started demanding better fuel economy, and governments started mandating it.

Yes, rail is different to cars, although some trains are now incorporating battery technology. However, the fact remains that they are mechanically simpler, and therefore more reliable and durable. They don't have to lug around an engine, turbocharger, intercooler, alternator, air filtration system, cooler group, exhaust system, silencer and fuel tanks, only the electric motors and associated electrical equipment.

Yes, I think an EV will be just as energy efficient after 10-15 years as it was when new. The battery may require some attention, or replacement, but the vehicle will still be serviceable.

The electric motors in cars can probably do a million miles or more. Again, with trains, the electric motors are sometimes removed from old trains and fitted to their replacements!

No, i'm not being ridiculous, really changes in engine efficiency has only occured in the last 20 or so years, CR diesels, ERG vales, DPFs even the humble cat has only been a legal requirement for 30 years and all that did was clean up emissions.

I didn't say EVs are a non starter, i said the tech isn't there yet, let alone the charging infrastructure.

A Tesla battery pack costs anywhere between 15k and 22k plus fitting.

VW will only guarantee their ID batteries to be above 70% & just for 7 years, at 60% a battery wont even work.

So at around 10years, its likely an ID car will need a battery pack, so what will be the resale value of these cars as they approach this age?

Who even knows if we will be able to buy spares for the huge number of Chinese EVs now being sold?

Madness & all in the name of "saving the planet" you really couldn't make it up.

My colleague has just had to replace all 4 tyres on his electric SUV. They had done 13,000 miles from new. When he challenged the garage on why he'd got half the mileage he'd got on a same model diesel that he'd had prior to this, garage says it's because of the extra weight of the car. Another extra cost I wouldnt have thought of

Also the force of acceleration is more - so more wear on tyres.

Where do people think these potholes are starting ?

SerendipityJane - structural engineers I work with are being asked to look at multi storey car parks to establish if they need to be strengthened to cope with the increase in EVs, and the extra weight that will entail.

The real issue is the cost. Like a lot of people I only ever have second hand cars. Our current car is 7 years old and has a lot of years in it still. I can't see how the current second hand car in petrol cars can possibly operate with EV cars. If you are saying EV cars only last 7-10 years and are already more expensive, then a lot of people who drive will not be able to afford a car.

I have done 13500 from new and just sent DH out to check my tires, plenty of tread on them.

Those gains have been fairly marginal though. Realistically, ICE engines are never going to get much better than around 50% thermally efficient (even power stations, with all sorts of extra equipment and processes, can't get much above 60%). That is a hell of a lot of wasted energy, and additional pollution.

I would suggest the tech is more or less there. There are now more than 2 million EVs and hybrids in the UK. That's quite a lot for a technology you claim isn't ready and lacks infrastructure.

The infrastructure will improve. Battery technology will improve. Oil will eventually run out. EVs are the obvious solution.

It will become easier to charge them faster with new battery tech. And not only that but the new battery tech has greater range.

The real issue for me is that charging is expensive if you do it off drive, unless you have free charging access.

Part of the compensation you get for having an electric car is that it is cheap to charge it off your own electricity. If you can't do that, then they are pretty much as expensive to run as petrol cars. Which means the extra price you pay for them no longer gets recovered in fuel costs.

I have a plug in hybrid and it's great. I do the majority of miles on electric as it has a 40 mile electric range. If I couldn't charge it on drive though it would be a pain in the ass and I would hardly use the electric drive.

Smaller engines and more efficient petrol engines WERE developed. The average modern petrol car has massively reduced emissions compared to cars just two or three decades ago. We were actually heading in a pretty good direction compared to the much older, highly polluting and inefficient cars of, say, the 70s and 80s.

We have emission controls, catalytic converters, etc, mild hybrids, etc. Smaller engines are capable of pretty good speeds. Back in the 70s/80s, a 1000cc car may well have struggled with glacially slow acceleration and trouble getting up to high speeds, yet a modern 1000cc petrol car can have pretty nippy acceleration and speeds high enough to achieve maximum UK speed limits without much trouble.

Trouble is that such technological advances and development has been abandoned when governments announced bans of petrol car sales, so the innovation re petrol engines basically stopped overnight!

This is the worrying bit. An average petrol car on the road last 13 years. A sizeable proportion make it to 20 years. If electric cars aren't going to last that long, they're not going to be affordable at all for lower earners, such as carers and minimum wage workers who currently buy "old bangers" typically 10 years old plus for just £2-£3k. Unless the electric cars are going to depreciate a lot quicker so that they'll be down at that kind of price point at say 8/9 years old in which case people won't want to buy new or nearly new as they'll be depreciating too quickly!

I don't know the argument about EV lifetime.

But I have spoken to a number of people who have EVs who say the maintenance costs are much much less than ICE. That's because you have less to go wrong, less moving parts.

And if the claim is that the batteries won't last, I think they are finding that the batteries are lasting longer than anyone ever envisaged with relatively small drops in capacity over the cars lifetime.

The thing everyone has to remember is there are an awful lot of people out there tied up in businesses that revolve around ICE management. A lot of this is going to die. And they are not happy about it and putting out a lot of negativity about EVs in general in the hope people will not transfer. But EVs are here to stay and they are eventually going to replace ICE whether people like it or not.

@GasPanic I know there is a lot of vested interests putting out negative publicity. And I understand about less maintenance. But at 7 years old my very reliable petrol car does not need much maintenance. I get rid of cars once the maintenance costs are too high and that is normally at 110,000/120,000 miles. That is far older than EV car batteries last. That makes any car far more expensive. I buy second hand outright cheaper cars. I don't care about lease prices as I could never afford them anyway. The cost of my car purchase is about equivalent to £100 a month.

So a second hand EV would have to be cheaper than the equivalent petrol car. I am concerned as I really do not want to go back to using buses. It will severely impact my life. And I won't be the only one.

Even if I could afford it, car charging in my city at the moment is too difficult. There are not many public car chargers. But I know that will change.
The real issue linger term is cost.