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?

Clearly a lot of people do own these types of cars.

At end December 2023 there were 33.93 million cars registered in the UK.

Of which 2,116, 707 were BMWs. So just under 6.4% of all the cars in the UK.

From vague memory, some of these vehicles are actually built using the battery for structural integrity. Or so the excuse for not making them swappable went.

The real reason (of course) is like printer ink, there is a desire to lock consumers into a particular brand. (Yet) another exhibit in the "Climate Change is bollocks" line of thinking that I'm inclined to. If EVs really are the saviour of net zero then manufacturers wouldn't be allowed to play silly games like that.

Imagine the extinction of mankind simply because no one could agree the film rights ?

Chinese manufacturers are already doing this, and opening battery swap stations. Chinese Premium brand Nio are planning on branching out in to more locations in Europe too.Tesla also tried this out years ago, they didn't continue because consumers preferred charging at home as presumably the location they were testing it in all had houses with driveways. If it becomes an issue that there are hundreds of thousands of people who will not buy an EV because of the home charging issue, then some or all marques will move to the removable or maybe rentable, battery model.

I wonder what a fire at a battery storage location would look like ?

You replied to me, mentioning BMWs!

I live on the fifth floor in a block with no charging points so that rules out an ev for me.

Many flats have communal parking areas also so those will add chargers for shared use of flats

Is this yet another cost that leaseholders are going to be lumbered with?

(Apologies if this has already been discussed, haven't got time to read 14 pages)

How can they do that if all spaces are currently allocated to flats and there are no "spare" spaces to install a charger? Do you really think that some kind of "musical cars" would work where residents go out and swap spaces? Unless there are empty/unused spaces, it's a non starter unless there's space to put chargers onto individual reserved spaces which is probably not possible due to limited space, narrow pathways etc.

Does the sales patter on EVs tell you that if you're stuck in traffic in freezing temperatures, you can't heat the car, because it would drain the battery very quickly?

That EVs weigh much more than petrol cars?

That they cannot be towed without raising the wheels off the ground?

That the batteries are costly (to the environment) to make, and to dispose of?

And the risk of fire?

I think there's a lot that we're not being told about EVs.

Interestingly, I had a book explaining electricity to children, printed in 1976, with the usual experiments with batteries and bulbs, but also describing the electric cars that would be with us in 1997. It did not describe "charging points", but instead a "filling station" took the form of the battery being removed robotically from under your car, taken away for charging, and replaced with a freshly charged battery. Fascinating.

While I am extremely sceptical about EVs in their present form becoming mainstream for a good while yet, I would advocate "shared cars" becoming more of a thing, electric or otherwise, which could solve the problem of lots of people living in flats needing to charge their cars. If they were available in my small town, I would use them; but they're only available in large cities. It pains me that DH and I have to have separate cars.

@scalt You can have the heating on. It will make very little difference. You'd have to be very close to topping up for it to be an issue.

And fires... no more of an issue than for ICE cars which carry around huge tanks of highly flammable fuel.

How do you envisage it working?

Do you mean "shared" as in a few people getting together to jointly buy a car.

Or do you mean some kind of organised car pooling system where you use an app to "rent" a car for a certain period of time? A bit like some of the city bike rental schemes in bigger cities.

If the former, it'd be a nightmare and totally impractical.

If the latter, I'd imagine it would have to be very expensive to cover the costs of buying the cars, the infrastructure, admin & management, maintenance, etc. They'd need huge numbers of cars to cope with demand peaks and need a small army of workers to move them around when they end up in unpopular locations or for refuelling, charging, maintenance, etc. The hire charge would also have to cover pretty hefty insurance. The admin side would need to check every driver signed up to the app had a valid UK driving licence.

Sounds good in practice, but I don't see how it would be practical and affordable.

There's the Enterprise Car Club, on offshoot of the Enterprise vehicle rental firm.

You have to pay for annual membership, after being approved as you would be for ordinary rental, then pay upwards of £4.95 per hour. You pick up the vehicle from its parking spot and have to return it to the same spot you took it from. Of course, there's no guarantee the vehicle you want will be available for the time period you want. They have 1,300 vehicles across 220+ towns, cities and communities

https://www.enterprisecarclub.co.uk/gb/en/about/how-car-club-works.html

I wonder what a fire at a petrol station, oil refinery or oil rig would look like? Actually, I don't need wonder, they've all happened and I've seen the horrific aftermath. The Creeslough explosion in Ireland is a recent example.

So why would anyone buy an EV now, when that technology isn't widespread?

How many different brands of EV out there? ie different types of battery...

The NIO station can hold 23 packs...

As i said earlier, the tech isn't there yet.

Plus, do we really want to be putting our transport needs into a country that many governments around the world are saying is a threat to trade and security?

@MemorableTrenchcoat Yes the fire argument is a red herring.

So only good for a round trip and if you want it for commuting you have to pay all day and find somewhere to park it. Not to mention having to travel to pick it up. Doesn’t sound a great option.

No one is forcing anyone to buy an EV now. There will be secondhand ICE cars available for years even if new ICE cars weren’t sold (which isn’t likely soon).

EVs will however become the norm. Charging will become ever easier and quicker.

Our latest car is petrol. I expect when we change it in 5/6 years or so we’ll buy an EV.

FGS you wouldn’t use a car club for commuting. You’re being argumentative for the sake of it.

We hired one recently as we needed an extra car to ferry children in two different directions for school events and we only own one car.

We have two Zipcars within 5 minutes walk of home. Very easy!

Zipcar - only available in London, I note.

Car clubs are basically just like traditional car rental except that you may be able to pick up and drop off a car from a location nearer your home than a rental firm's base, you can collect at a time when its office is closed, and you can hire by the hour rather than the day (the day rate for Enterprise Car Club is much higher than its normal rental rate). And pay a membership fee for the privilege, obviously.

Yes so useful for a short term hire not for commuting!

You also don’t have to pick up the keys as the cars unlock with apps. Far more convenient for a short trip than walking to the local hire place.

And yes Zipcar is London based but there are lots of other options nationwide.

In my city there's only one car club, and only four cars stationed within walking distance of our house.

Well, I say walking distance - 25 minutes walking time to the nearest one according to Google Maps, because you have to trundle over to a bougie suburb.

We looked into car clubs when we were between cars a few years ago and wondering if we really needed to get another one (we are in London). Completely useless for our requirements as they were all either small cars or vans, nothing suitable locally for a family with 3DC!

25 minutes is not a long walk.

You do have quite the chip on your shoulder about London and now bougie suburbs.

Personally (and professionally) I think the posters that have gently probed (oo errr missis 😁) the concept of car sharing are fumbling towards a possible future.

The other leg of the dog is autonomous cars that are able to do the boring bit of finding a charger and waiting 2 hours by themselves. Ideally overnight.

When those two ideas coalesce then we'll see nothing but EVs - and fewer of them.

Uber driving will have turned out to be a temporary phenomenon as the world twigs that an empty car meandering around for a charger may as well make a few quid as a taxi on the way. This will spur on a trend of groups of people clubbing together to buy an electric car (or technically "shares" in an electric car) so that they can rake in a share of the profits as all it does all day long is act as a JohnnyCab.

This is pretty much what I put in my work back in 2014. It was on the edges of horizon scanning, but woven from the threads of established technology (a perk of the job being visiting loads of nerd heaven outfits 🤓)

Really, the pandemic came a little too early - if it had waited until around 2028 then it might have turbo charged the concept.

Of course clubs of people putting money into car purchasing (or leasing) means the prices can stay high enough to freeze out the riff raff. But no one really paid attention when I added a "social concerns" section. As a very senior director once said "that's for other people to think about".

Currently the main drag is a flood of "It's all about me" which tends to be easily dealt with. Less easy is the industrial and financial volatility that is extant in the world at the moment. If I were a tinfoil hat wearer, I'd almost believe it was a deliberate move to slow down the onset of the future. Which is a tad paranoid, but has well founded historical precedents.

When I was role playing an objectionist to this, a colleague countered pointing out that we all happily line up to share space with people we wouldn't cross the road for to place ourselves at the mercy of a machine none of them could afford (in fact most airlines can't afford) which is going to practically autonomously fly (FFS !!!!) them hundreds of miles through atmospheric conditions that rival a spin around Hanger Lane for a week of overcharged customer service and bad food.

E2A: in a thoughtful voice .... "But I could be wrong ...."

It's not a chip, it's a factual point about how easy or difficult it is for many in the population to adopt electric cars, or in this case, to use car clubs.

Geographical and financial factors really do matter, as other posters have also noted.