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?

You don’t need to part outside your house, it’s very easy for multiple charging points to be installed on terrace streets. Many streets in London already have this.

Its always people who have no idea what they’re actually talking about who make the bold “this isn’t going to work claims”

How does one pay for charging through a lamppost?

Card or using your phone I'd imagine.

Where K live there is one 50kwh and one 100kwh charger in a 10 mile radius. I'd like to adopt electric but it's pretty difficult around here at the moment without being inconvenient.

Much the same way you would pay for parking or an unmanned petrol pump. Why would it suddenly be more difficult for charging?

I’ve never seen a lamppost charger, so I was curious. Thank you for your answer.

Also, we don't use the car daily or even weekly - we walk or take public transport or have deliveries. We don't park at supermarkets or at work.

We are the very opposite of the "most journeys are short local ones" family.

I gather that 1/3 of households in this country DO NOT have off-street parking, so I’m really doubtful that many of them will get EV’s. Hybrids, maybe - I think that’s probably way to go for most as then at least you have the option of petrol or electric charging.

I can think of quite a few problems with EV’s. Think of the thousands and thousands of miles of cable that will be required to install sufficient quantities of chargers around the country. Not very environmentally friendly.

Also, if you do happen to park next to a lamp-post in your street with a charging point, are you really going to go out and move your car in the night when you have finished charging (so that someone else can use it?)

What about multi-story car parks when you go on holiday for 2 weeks? Is every one of the thousands of spaces going to have a charger? Rather a bummer if you get back from holiday in the middle of the night, then have to queue to charge the car before driving home!

2/3 of UK car owners do in fact have offstreet parking. There are ways to make charging work for those who don't, like gulleys and on-street chargers. The vehicles will only get more efficient, meaning that charging away from home will get easier as well. There are ways to make this work.

The idea is that as EVs become more widespread the Local Authorities will install neighbouhood network charging points so there will be an accessible point within a cars length of whatever parking space you find on a street of terraces like this.

This. The privilege shown by many on this thread is quite amusing 😄

Is it one/2 charge points per lampost? Because I fail to see how you can have one charger per car parked on a tightly packed terrace street.

Many authorities are bankrupt. If they can’t afford to fix potholes and other maintenance such as tree work and clearing footpaths, where are they getting the money from to install thousands of chargers?!

Yes you would move your car after it’s finished charging. It’s a charging point, not a parking space.
Would you park at the pump for hours when you have finished filling up?

I don’t get why some of you are acting like this ludicrous and impossible thing.

Your airport analogy doesn’t even make sense, why would every space be a charging point?
Why would it be different between petrol or a EV if you have allowed your car to be empty knowing you would return in the middle of the night? You would still need to find a petrol station and fill up in the middle of the night if you parked it nearly empty.

How much cable do you think is required when all these areas already have electricity?

No it’s actually the ignorance by some that’s amusing.

The big issue with the on street charging etc is the eye watering costs and 20% VAT. I charge my car on the drive using an ev tariff at 7p per KWh, at a motor way service station it can be 79p per KWh. It makes the differential between service station petrol and diesel pumps and Supermarkets seem insignificant.

Move your car, are you for real. Have you ever lived in a northern working class terraced street?

Cars are parked bumper to bumper. There is no extra space.

My husband has a fully electric car. It's great for him. We have a large drive and he works in a large city.

Not so for others like fil.

My employer has charging stations in the work car park. It's very convenient and free!

60% of households have driveways. Employers currently get massive tax breaks if they include electric charging points in their carparks for their employees. Petrol stations will increasingly move to having charging points. Lampposts increasingly have chargers in them. It's a change from one system to another and it'll be a sigmoidal curve, slow at first then things will start changing fast then suddenly it'll be imposible to find a petrol station.

I often find people who don't have electric cars think it's way more hassle than it is!

I think the logistics vary dramatically depending on location. We live in a small fishing village in Scotland. In the bottom half of the village (where we are) most people don't have drives or front gardens. There are no lamp post chargers and when asked about points being installed, the Council said there are no current plans. Given the amount of things they're currently planning on closing (schools/libraries etc), I'm not sure I see that changing.
Dh takes the train into the office 2 days a week. The station carpark doesn't have a charging point. Neither does his office car park. At the moment shopping is visiting a local farm shop for vegetables, popping into the butchers and bakers in a neaby town which also doesn't have any chargers.

We are considering a hybrid but the infrastructure would need to improve a lot before we bought an electric car. Ideally so would the range. My fil has both an electric car (small journeys, supermarket/restaurant etc) and a diesel car which can do 700 plus miles to the tank. He also lives a lot less rurally than we do but finds the lack of infrastructure frustrating and uses the diesel for everything which isn't local driving even though he has a charging point at home.

The local authorities that are cutting back services to just the ones they are statutorily obliged to provide because they are so short of cash?

My council has installed 18 if its own chargers for a city of over 360,000 people
It claims there are currently 200 publicly accessible charging points in the city and its outskirts.

It has said recently that it will support the installation of up to 100 new chargers in the next year in 10 areas of the city, so up to 10 in each, including my area, which has a population of over 14,000. Most of these will be standard chargers (7kW) - how long do they take to charge an EV battery, isn't it about 8 hours?

Where's there's a will - there's usually a way.

I think a big problem currently is the lack of will - hence the increasing presentation of problems.

But if charging becomes as easy as filling up with petrol - and is cheaper or free, there's no road tax etc - the will May increase.

Also worth noting that a charger at home is about £1000 to buy and install. And EV are not cheap. I think the whole thing has to be made far more accessible for it to become usable for the majority.

I wonder if there was the same conversation around the time that cars became more than just a rich person's toy. "My nearest petrol station is miles away and grass for my horse is there for free in the field, I won't be changing."

I think there will be a tipping point, probably when the price of electric cars comes down, when there will be so many electric cars that it's worth the time and effort to come up with and implement creative solutions. The universal network of petrol stations didn't spring into life fully formed at the start of car usage, it responded to demand. If places like supermarkets can make a margin by installing chargers in their car parks then they will do it. In Norway where the take up of electric cars is much higher all the petrol stations have charging bays because they have found that they make more profit from sales from the garage shop than they did from petrol, so by having lots of fast chargers they still make the shop sales plus a small margin on the electricity.

I would say complain where it will be heard. Complain to your council. Tell the supermarket head office that you went to the supermarket and couldn't get onto a charger so you went to a different supermarket instead. One complaint won't make a difference, but a pattern from different people will.

It is very unfair at the moment that rich people benefit the most from the move to electric, because they are more likely to have driveways. For instance I pay €0.07 per kWh to charge at night on my driveway, but if I could only access fast chargers because I had to park on the street I would be paying around €0.55 per kWh. Also, because I can afford to pay more up front to get a longer range car I'm less likely to have to charge en route with the expensive electricity. But the technology will improve and become more available and cheaper.

But if charging becomes as easy as filling up with petrol - and is cheaper or free, there's no road tax etc - the will May increase.

Charging is becoming rapidly more expensive, especially for those who can't charge at home. And from next April, electric vehicles will hace to pay VED, commonly known as "road tax".