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 Government needs to invest a lot more in fast chargers for people who cannot charge at home.

Huh? No one is suggesting you need a house with a drive to have an electric car. There are lots of options for charging and although the reach of the schemes is not sufficient for everyone right now, in time they will be. One option which has been mentioned multiple times is charging points in lamp posts which would work well for people who need to park on the street.

@Icanttakethisanymore Charging points in lamp posts will help. But people will still have to plan. There is 1 lamp post for about every 4 car parking spaces on my street and finding a space is challenging.
It is not impossible, people can work around this. But there will be complaints, just as there were many complaints when the ULEZ in London was widened and many people could no longer afford to drive.
I think this will decrease car ownership overall. Which is good for the environment. But will cause issues outside of London. When I was young lots of poorer people did not have cars. So they lived close to work or on a main bus route. Any employment that is harder to get to by bus or jobs like home carers are going to struggle to recruit.

Our street has 40 terraced houses and 4 lampposts. Even with double chargers on each one they could only charge 8 cars. Lamppost chargers can only deliver up to 3kWh and take 8 to 10 hours to fully charge an electric vehicle.

Not everyone will need to charge every night, but I still don't see that working.

I appreciate the infrastructure is not currently adequate for everyone to own an EV, obviously more charging points on street will be required. My point was this discussion is not demonstrating people's 'privilege' as suggested by the person I was responding to because there has been lots of discussion about charging facilties which would be appropriate for people who live in flats or terrace houses with no drive.

Interestingly I took (yet another) Uber to the hospital yesterday. A quick look at my logs shows that out of 18 journeys since September, 10 were in different Priuses. It really is the car of choice for a hard working Uberist. The reason I logged this is yesterday, when I got there, my driver pulled up behind another Prius-Uber. This got me chatting on the return journey (in a Prius).

I did have one driver in a fully electric MG. Less said the better - he was not a happy camper.

The others have been a variety of ICE cars. They may have been hybrids - one I remember was a Toyota Auris as I had one once as a courtesy car.

Electric cars will obviously take over. But not until other factors (including a radical shift in public attitudes) have played out.

As for "better batteries" ... well, fusion power is just 15 years off. Same as it was in 1970, 1980 1990,2000,2010. You cannae break the laws of physics, and getting c. 500KWh of energy down a cable - let alone into a battery - is best done at a distance if you want to do it in less than 10 minutes.

the reach of the schemes is not sufficient for everyone right now, in time they will be

This basically. It will happen gradually. It may be that local authorities have to provide gullies in pavements and also allocated parking for one car per household outside their house - with associated costs obviously, and also the potential for fines for anyone misusing the allocated parking, they might be on board with that tbh, for coffers purposes. Existing blocks of flats need more thought of course, but lots of those have parking associated so again, allocation needs to be introduced (and enforced). The one issue with other on street charging (that is not allocated and accessible to the home of the car owner), that I can forsee, is it will create a two tier system where homeowners, with a drive, will be able to access cheaper providers for overnight EV charging and everyone else will be beholden to whoever the provider is for on street charging, and their prices.

@SerendipityJane You talk about a radical shift in public attitudes as if people are just being stupid and resistant, when there are good reasons for peoples attitude.
If I bought an EV tomorrow I would have to find much more money than to buy a petrol car, and I would have to plan for when and where I charge it. I can't do the former, I could do the latter although it would be annoying.

If I bought an EV tomorrow I would have to find much more money than to buy a petrol car

You would (and this was always the barrier to me getting one) but the longer they're around, the more second hand vehicles will be available. And many companies are do huge deals now to encourage the uptake. And there's always leasing. Also, they are a real benefit when bought/leased through a company. That is certainly a huge part of the EV market for some marques.

Leasing cars of any kind is far more than I can pay. And EV cars do not last as long as petrol cars so even second hand effectively cost more.

Like I said, I did a fucktonne of digging into this a while back for the insurance industry. And I am well aware of the principle reason for the glacial take up of electric cars now we've hit the first tranche. And it's mainly centred around the fact that "electric" cars aren't really cars. Despite the looks and leather. They lack range and crucially convenience.

Their day will come. But there are a lot of moving parts to this future.

Fans of progress will know that Henry Ford often said that if he had bothered to listen to "the market" then he would have made faster horses.

Well, many hybrids don't need charging and 2million out of around 34million cars isn't much.
Of course oil will run out and yes IF battery tech improves then all well and good BUT its simply not there yet.

Personally, having worked in the IT sector for many years, i'll stick with "Don't buy into first gen technology"

When a battery can be charged from 10% to 100% inside 10mins and has a range of 500miles, weighs far less than they do at present, a mid range car is around £24k & the battery pack is user changeable and costs less than £2k... then i'll buy one.

@SerendipityJane There were companies still using horses up until the 1970s for transport. The switch over took a long time. But the switchover in the UK is imminent.

When a battery can be charged from 10% to 100% inside 10mins and has a range of 500miles, weighs far less than they do at present, a mid range car is around £24k & the battery pack is user changeable and costs less than £2k... then i'll buy one.

Who knows physics ?

It is the cost that is still an issue.

Yes thats kinda my point, it isn't going to happen.....

Mass transport needs to be relatively easy and affordable, EVs are neither.

So I am going to end up waiting at bus stops for buses again in 10 years time. It will be shit.

I agree. One of our cars is 16 years old and has not needed any maintenance other than annual servicing and replacement of consumables such as tyres, brakes, a battery, a couple of sets of spark plugs and bulbs etc. Just passed it's MOT again with no problems, no advisories etc.

One of our previous ones managed to hit around 195,000 miles before it gave up the ghost, again, with just basic consumables etc in annual services, and I think a few minor "extras" to do with the wheels/suspension, such as suspension arms, "boots", etc.

In 40 years of driving and owning cars, we've never had to replace a gear box or clutch, or even an exhaust and that's typically buying new or nearly new and running them to they drop which is typically 10-20 years depending on the mileage. I honestly just don't recognise it when people go on about hugely expensive repair bills or unreliable cars. In those 40 years, I think we've had to call out breakdown services maybe 2 or 3 times which, if I remember rightly, has been when the car hasn't started and just needed a jump start or some tweaking under the bonnet (distributor I think was one), another was a diesel car that just needed a squirt of WD40 under some cap or other.

I think the EV crowd are massively over-stating the unreliability and cost of petrol/diesel cars.

I agree with all that. I've never "bought into" new technology and have always sat on the side lines observing until all the "teething" problems have been ironed out.

I also think this transition from fossil fuels to electric is happening far too fast, and don't believe the planned "bans" of petrol/diesel cars will happen when planned - I forecast a delay of 5-10 years, probably just pushing back a year or two at a time. Look at what happened with digital radio - the old "analogue" radio system continued for years and years beyond the stated end date.

As for oil "running out", I don't think that will ever happen as there are still vast oil reserves. The trouble is whether it's economical to extract as it will just get harder and harder due to where it is, in terms of depth and location (i.e. lots still under the sea bed in very deep sea locations). I used to be the accountant for a firm that manufactured and installed electrical connectors for the oil and gas industry - some connectors costing £25k per connector, and there was massive amounts of R&D on designing electrical connectors that could withstand the huge pressure at the bottom of the ocean and also the gases and acids down oil wells. It was ALL about cost versus benefit which basically compared the costs of the infrastructure to drill wells and get the oil/gas ashore compared with the amount of oil and gas in the well. Lots of oil and gas fields were simply, at that time, uneconomically, due to the selling price of oil/gas at that time - some of those fields have now been developed, some havn't. If we really "Want" the oil and gas, it's there, we'll just have to pay more for it.

A lot of EVs have a range of 200 miles plus. So if you live in a city like Birmingham where the average daily commute in a private vehicle is 36 miles (20% higher than the national average) and you drive another 14 miles per day for personal reasons, then that is about 50 miles a day. Then you only need to charge four times a week. Not everyone would need to use the chargers on a street at the same time. Many workplaces will have chargers in the future so people will be able to charge at work if they have a workplace car park. Supermarkets already have chargers so people can charge while buying food. Some drive-by coffee shops and takeaways have chargers.
I admit not being able to charge at home would lead to some anxiety though. I hope by 2035, most EVs will have a range of 300 miles +. Then for most people they could just charge during a weekly shop to a supermarket or out of town shopping mall.

Surely for relatively short journeys in major cities, we should be making public transport a more viable alternative rather than a car? After all, it's the major cities were public transport can be provided at more reasonable cost due to the sheer number of people who'd use it. A completely different scenario than a smaller city, town or village, where public transport is problematic because of far fewer people wanting to use it and far more diverse origins and destinations.

I’ve got a bus stop right outside my flat. However the buses don’t go where I want to go! To visit my mum less than 4 miles away would take a 90 minute round trip on public transport. Or I can get in my petrol car and do them same journey in 10 minutes each way. Bit of a no brainier really.

I drive the smallest most economical car I can. It’s 16 years old, has done 24k miles and not failed an MOT yet. I don’t feel at all guilty for using it whenever I need to.

In west London almost every lamppost has a charger in it...that type of thing works if people rotate parking and don't hog

I think the cost of replacing an EV battery is +/- £8,000. If that happens when the car is over 10 years old, it would make it a write off.

I think the lamp post chargers cost more than charging from home.