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?

I'm sure the poster's point is that they couldn't charge an electric car at home because there is no parking space outside it. Even if covered gulleys or other arrangements for a lead to cross the pavement were available.

There are apps which tells you in advance how many chargers there are and how many are available.

I always find a few alternative options just in case, and you never plan to get down to the wire with the range. If she was driving from the north to London charging somewhere in the Midlands would have made more sense. There are several with fast chargers around Birmingham, Leicester, Warwick. Sounds like bad planning if she had run out of range and had to wait six hours. I've never had to wait for a charger anywhere, and I've driven from Kent to Cornwall and Kent to Sheffield and Manchester several times, and from Brittany to Bergerac last summer.

I have had an electric car since March 2023 and have queued for a charger ONCE and that was for 10 minutes.

The UK definitely needs more and cheaper chargers though, particularly in the SW. I wouldn't drive to Cornwall in an EV in the summer as you would be waiting for chargers. Much better in France.

Oh do jog on. My point if you'd actually bothered to read my post properly instead of getting on your high horse, is that instead of putting the bike hangar directly outside my house, meaning I now cannot park outside my house to charge an EV, they could have put the hangar on the other side of the road, where there are no houses. I can't park on the other side of the road and charge an EV from my house.

I have three friends who have changed to EVs and all three got so fed up they went back to normal cars.

This 100%. Exactly the same as us.

What part of the UK do you live in?

Hackney council have been installing them in our neighbourhood. They also have lots of in road charging points some owned by council others owned by electric hire companies.
you join a scheme and then pay per charge

www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-4607870/amp/A-1-000-conversion-turn-lampposts-EV-chargers.html

@MumonabikeE5 Thanks. I should have known it was in London. They get everything first.

That's great.

As has been pointed out previously, London is relatively well provided for in terms of charging points, despite having half the car ownership rate of the rest of England.

It's just a shame that most of the population of the UK don't live in London.

I wonder how they are going to generate all this extra electricity.

The people of Hackney have voted for a socialist local government and have supported all schemes designed to improve air quality and reduce traffic.

@MumonabikeE5 My city has been Labour left wing for ever. London gets way more funding for infrastructure than other parts of the country.

I've been saying for ages that it won't work. The infrastructure just isn't in place at the moment for everyone to have EVs. I live in a low rise block of flats (2 stories high),so obviously no driveway,above a parade of shops. There is a total of 18 flats, and I reckon that most of us have one car,some have 2. There are 3 charging points outside by the shops, and they are nearly always in use when I walk past. If they are that busy now when only a small percentage of people have EVs,what will it be like when people have no choice but to have an EV? It will be chaos. Dozens of people fighting over 3 charging points. And it's not as if the charging only takes a few minutes,it takes hours! It will be even worse for residents in high rise blocks,where you can have 80 or more flats. I just can't see how it's going to work.

Yep Then moan at everyone else for not having it and that it would only happen if we just tried a bit harder

We live in an area of large terraced houses. It is in a Residents' Parking Zone, but parking outside your own house is not guaranteed. No one has a driveway and there are very few (Victorian) lamp posts. Luckily, the petrol station around the corner is building an electric charging station, but I imagine that, if people buy more EVs, this will soon be over-subscribed. I would love an electric car when it's time to change mine, but it is going to be very difficult for people in many areas.

They're talking about it on the news now.

In London there are charging points everywhere. There's little off street parking where I leave, but more and more of the on street parking is dedicated to electric vehicle charging points. Petrol stations have charging points. So do car parks. There are lots of places to park bicycles too, and with ltns normal cars become less desirable.

We won't in ex council estates. I've already had it out with our council. Emailed our MP this morning funnily enough.
They've got 150 homes to install chargers for in communal car parks in our street alone. We're getting one charger next year. They either force supermarkets and businesses to have almost one charger per space or force councils install tens of thousands of them in all the ex council estates. They're in denial basically. I hope I'm long gone from this shithole before it reaches crisis point.

Lots of "socialist" local governments don't provide the same standard/level of public transport options and EV charging options, so it's nothing to do with socialism or not.

People in London ARE going to be supporting traffic reduction etc because they benefit from the best public transport systems in the country. In other areas, locals aren't as supportive because the public transport is often crap and driving is the only viable option to live a normal life, go to work etc.

People will not move their cars once finished in this estate. They'll keep the space until their mate neighbour needs it then they'll swop.
There will be epic fights about it around here unless every communal car park space has a charger. We can't trail cables out to the car park as we are in the inner part of a council estate, can't see the road from many houses.

@thatsawhopperthatlemon
I read this on the National Grid website
The highest peak electricity demand in the UK in recent years was 62GW in 2002. Since then, the nation’s peak demand has fallen by roughly 16% due to improvements in energy efficiency.
Even if we all switched to EVs overnight, we estimate demand would only increase by around 10%. So we’d still be using less power as a nation than we did in 2002 and this is well within the range the grid can capably handle.
https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero-stories/can-grid-cope-extra-demand-electric-cars

I can also programme my EV car to charge at certain times e.g. non-peak hours.

Let's look at the People's Republic of Sheffield.

236 public charge points, 67 of them rapid
79 are operated by Sheffield City Council, 50 of them rapid

In March this year the council announced that it would be adding 22 more charging points.

For a population of 556,500 (at the 2021 Census).