To think a 100 mile range is not a lot?

[jennymanara]

Where I live we are being encouraged to buy electric cars through billboard adverts. These say things like electric cars can travel 100 miles before needing to be charged and that the average charging time is half an hour.

That sounds fine if all you want is a run around for a city or town to go to the supermarket and work, but pretty impractical for a lot if people. Especially given how few charging places there are. It would in reality mean that I could never drive more than 100 miles before going nack home to charge up the car.

we should leave it to the market to promote these cars to the small demographic who would actually be interested in buying them.

Surely that's the Tory mantra ... trust the market ? We don't want any of these dangerously socialist poisons like subsidies unless it's to our mates in the city

The technology is not yet fully mature or ready for mass role out. But it will not reach maturity without the early adopters. We have 2 cars - cannot get by with 1. 1 is electric and it works really well for us. Dh had a 30 mile commute. If he needs to do more driving we swap.
There are problems with battery disposal, but there is no silver bullet. Public transport will never replace cars, and is only less polluting than cars with good occupancy so will never meet all the needs or rural communities. Electric cars aren't THE solution, but are part of the solution.

I'd like an electric car but live rurally, often have to drive over 50 miles for work to places with no charge points. When technology and infrastructure improve I will reassess.

It wouldn’t work for me.

Today is pretty normal. I did the school bus run, 14 miles, then went to work, 6 miles, where I picked up some exhibition bits and went to a venue, 7 miles, then back to work, 7 miles, off to a meeting next 11 miles each way, then to the tip at lunch time 4 miles each way, and then I’ll do school run again making 78 miles.
If I nip to the supermarket on the way home or need to drop off one of the boys at their home, I’d run out.

And that’s a day when I haven’t gone further from home than about 10 miles.

I have a drive so could charge from home, but I need a minimum range of 250 miles to be practical.

My next car will be petrol unless something changes fast.

@jennymanara

Do you work in marketing? How do you know the demographic is small?

LeasePlan did a survey this month which said 51% of UK car buyers favour zero-emission driving. Of those people who were looking to lease a car, 40% of them said they would choose an electric vehicle.

I'm not saying that the government campaign is or isn't a good use of money.

It's just frustrating to read stuff like "the small demographic interested in buying them"........it feels like it could be based on a personal assumption that electric cars are niche just because "everyone I know drives a fuelled car" or something like that.

Public transport will never replace all cars, but there is no real attempt to replace some car journeys with public transport.

@gindaddy Because of the practicalities. I would have said in a survey a while ago that I would consider an electric car. But when we replaced our car I looked at the practicalities and realised it was totally impractical. There are only 25,000 car charging points across the whole of the UK. I suspect in terms of the environment, most people who are using these cars would be better using public transport. Because they will be based in cities.

No adaline if you choose to live miles from civilisation then you'll have to compensate for your filthy vehicle in other ways

@jennymanara

....and yet Doncaster Council have just put £50 million into a city wide initiative for Sheffield etc with public transport at the heart of it; Hertfordshire County Council have just today announced their public transport initiative due to concern around climate emergency..

People are doing things, but your original post, and I keep coming back to that because it's what you posted, was around the range of electric cars (100 miles) being unsuitable.

A journey of a thousand miles starting with a single step etc, makes me think that surely we should be pushing both options?

A 100 mile range is on the short end and tends to be found in hybrids anyway. Newer electric only cars have a much longer one.

Maybe it would be more realistic at this stage to push hybrid cars?
I don't live in these cities so did not know about this, but that is hopeful. I hope other places follow suit. And I wish Government would put more money into public transport.

There are plenty of people based in cities who still find public transport just doesn't work. For them, electrics can be ideal.
DH is like this - we run a few small businesses which are a couple of miles from our house. DD is at school 1.5 miles away, but in the opposite direction. Nearest proper supermarket is about 2.5 miles.

A totally normal day for him can be taking DD to school, then going to our office, then back to my work at lunch so I can feed baby, then down to one of the businesses, then back to get DD, then back to business, then home. None of those journeys is more than about 2 miles and they're all individually walkable, but with hills and a pram they're probably all about 40 minutes. He doesn't have the time in the day to do 6-8 on foot journeys. None are on direct bus routes from A to B either.

There are plenty of people like us who live in a city but who logistically need a car. An electric/hybrid is ideal for that. They're not perfect for everyone but I think the only reason the take up isn't higher here is that our council are being very slow to address charging points, the whole city centre is a conservation area and they currently aren't approving proper chargers on houses. Our hybrid will be fine charging from a standard plug which is part of the reason we're going for that.

Why do people think they can only be charged at charging points? I think many can get plugged into a standard socket too.

@jennymanara

I'm trying to have a reasoned debate about something when everything is generalisations or pointing us towards completely other debates.

Not everyone who buys an electric car lives in a city. If you want car-free cities, you have to legislate for this at council level.

There are people who will want electric cars for living in towns with a few thousand people. Their job takes them 25 miles on a ring road to an out of town business park where there is no public transport. They do that journey and back five times a week, plus a few trips further afield to family and attractions.

There are thousands of Brits like this, they don't live in cities, and they don't have spurious reasons for owning a car.

Are these people allowed to consider electric transport?

I like the idea of an electric car, but I don't see how it would work living in e.g. a terrace or apartment. I don't always get a spot on my street never mind outside my house! So I'd presumably be trailing a cable out of my front door/window to wherever my car is? Across pavements and roads which could trip people up? And leave my house unsecure at the same time.

Has there been any solutions floated for people like me with no designated parking space?

Why do people think they can only be charged at charging points? I think many can get plugged into a standard socket too.

I know that, but that won't work if you have to park your car halfway up your street because you don't have private parking. One car near here is electric and the charger runs under their front door, but if someone else is parked outside their house, they can't do anything about it.

100 miles is no way doable for us. We're very rural. 80 miles to the nearest city and, AFAIK recall, only one charging point en route.

Has there been any solutions floated for people like me with no designated parking space?

Longer term infrastructure ideas include building charging points into lampposts, I think. I don't know if this exists anywhere yet. But even then, the spacing is quite large.

SouthernComforts - My sister lives in a town centre terrace with permit parking only and often she has to park streets away from her house. Her local council has fitted electric charging points in the local car parks and said that electric car owners without designated parking can get a permit to leave their cars in these car parks charging overnight for a (quite modest) monthly fee.

I guess that'll work while there aren't many people with electric cars!

It still amazes me that these cars are being pushed as a replacement for diesels. Our last diesel cost £3k to buy and will do hundreds of miles on one tank. It was bought because by DH works 50 odd miles away so does big distances especially as we have no family locally so have to do big drives to see them. As we have to park on the road we couldn't charge an electric car without causing a trip hazard.

Once you start seeing electric cars coming down into the lower end of the second hand car market, so they're affordable to the people who have diesels they're just driving until the government bans them, you might get bigger uptake. By that point you won't be able to charge it whilst you shop in Sainsbury's as all the charging points will have been taken.

@SayOohLaLa

Are they being pushed as "a replacement for diesels?"

As I said earlier in the debate, I have a friend who does 120 miles a day. For him, a 1.6 diesel automatic is perfect - it sips fuel, all the nasty particulates are thrown out onto the motorways, his company pays for repairs etc... diesel definitely has its place.

Why however can't we have people who need electric cars, take them up? No one is forcing anyone to buy them, but promotion (and then adoption of them by those who take on board the marketing) is only a good thing, as like you said more used examples will appear, making it more affordable.

We have an electric car as our second car. It wouldn't work as our main car (long journeys needed), but it's perfect for the way we use it. It does school runs, children's activities and any other short journeys.

We tend to only charge at home because we've found the public charging network too unreliable - either busy or just not working - and if you're running low on charge it's not like you can just wait 1/2 hour for someone else to charge and then 1/2 hour to charge yourself. It's a different mindset - instead of going out to a garage and getting fuel in a few minutes when you're low - you put it on to charge at home when you have a couple of hours.

It works for us because we have a charging point on our driveway and also solar panels, which are especially helpful in the summer.

So when it comes to used electric cars, will the batteries still be viable?

Would people who live rurally be "allowed" a bigger footprint?

No, that would defeat the purpose. If you need to travel more miles, that's a cost that needs to be factored into you decision to continue living where you do.

We have two cars. An estate that gets used for trips to see family etc and a Renault Zoe which replaced our 'small' car.

My husband uses the Zoe every day to do his commute and the nursery run. I've used it for longer journeys and we've got 120 miles on a single charge - ours is an older model with a smaller battery. New versions have much bigger batteries. We now use it for most local journeys as it's a dream to drive. We're in rural Sussex and it's nippy in the lanes (instant torque) as well as round town.

We have a fully renewable energy tariff and rent our battery from renault who guarantee a min 80% efficiency or they'll replace it. Most EV batteries are guaranteed for 100,000 miles anyway. I know very few people who keep their ICE cars that long. And once used most batteries now go in to power banks - attached to solar power or similar where the source isn't constant and 60-70% storage is still useful.

We even worked out that if we had two of the Zoe for day to day use, the cost saving would allow us to rent a tesla for when we go further afield.