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.

@MIdgebabe electric cars can now do several hundred miles on a charge and then recharge in under 30 minutes at the services, so are a great option for long distance driving as well as about town.

I have a Nissan Leaf. I commute 50 miles a day and charge the car every night. It's no more hassle than remembering to put your phone on charge.
I have a 100% renewables electricity tariff.
Costs me about £40 a month in electric to drive 1000 miles.
One thing people never say is that electric cars are amazing to drive, the acceleration from a standing start is great and I can burn anyone off (up to about 30mph anyway)

@stucknoue that’s no problem at all. The latest electric cars will already do that kind of journey.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7592485/Father-eight-invents-electric-car-battery-drivers-1-500-miles-without-charging-it.html?ito=native_share_article-top

The link is about a battery just developed that will last for 1500 miles. The size/shape and type of the electric cars will improve. What is needed is the incentive to buy them, or lease them etc.

My electric car does just over 350 miles. My previous electric car did over 300, and in the 6 years I had it only lost 6% range, something that’s improved on newer models.

There’s nothing wrong with the tech, the billboards you’ve seen just aren’t advertising that. They’re advertising cheap city cars. It’s like complaining about seeing billboards for tiny smart cars because you personally need a large car. The billboards you’re seeing just aren’t for you, that’s fine.

Given how many posters here talk about a 30 mile trip as though it’s a huge, daunting and exceedingly rare undertaking I think there’s probably a pretty sizeable market for cars made for little more than driving around town.

@Mintjulia there are plenty of electric cars out now that will do over 200 miles, so your 78 mile itinerary would be a doddle.

We have charging points local but I cant afford an electric car I was told it's ok it costs about the same as a basic BMW seriously I've just lost my job I'm a single parent I can't afford a "basic BMW"

From talking to colleagues, range under optimal conditions is not what you get on a cold day with the battery a year old.
And the battery waste is highly toxic
And the uk actually isn't self sufficient in "green" electricity. Even if you pay a green tariff, it's like sustainable palm oil, the overall electricity use in the uk is a mix, and the more that is used, the dirtier that mix gets

Yes if you have 2 cars I can see that. 87% of households have a car, but less than a third have 2 cars

But a 1/3 of households could be a heck of a lot of electric cars though.

Can't scroll back, but your comment about not many people being able to park on their own drive / in front of their own house is very town dependent. In some areas no, but in a lot of places it is very much the norm.

But there was a piece on telly recently saying that the place in the UK with one of the highest rates of electric vehicles is Orkney

My family are in Orkney and they all have electric cars. If you live in Kirkwall (biggest town with 7K people) everything is within walking distance. Most people on the islands live in detached houses so have no problems with charging at home. There's a big reuseable energy culture, some of the earliest experimental wind turbines were there 40 odd years ago, and now there's a lot of research on wave energy. The islands are dotted with wind turbines, lots of the islands have a big community turbine, most farms have a small turbine for their own use. The islands produce more electricity from wind than they need. Ground source heating is pretty common for new builds. So the electricity for recharging your car is renewable. The journey from the Point of Buckquoy (north west) to Burwick (south east) is 40 miles so even with a 100 mile range you are fine. It's a perfect storm for electric cars.

I do think electric cars are a good option for rural communities where there is no public transport. Towns and cities should be improving public transport and we should probably be replacing all the railways we tore up in the 60s. There's no one perfect solution, we need a combination of solutiins for different scenarios.

About a third of UK electricity comes from renewables. When you add nuclear that means that less than 50% comes from fossil fuels. By contrast 100% of petrol and diesel comes from fossil fuels. And the introduction of car batteries into the system for storage makes it easier to add additional renewables into the system - either in a straightforward way like the PP who used her solar panels to charge her car for free, or in a more sophisticated national way. So it’s not the case that switching to electric cars will just make us burn more coal in power stations.

It’s also a big reduction in city pollution.

We run two cars and would love to swap to electric, but can't because

1. DH's daily commute is more than the range and there are no charge points at work
2. My car is only a cheap small run around for ferrying DC around, so the cost of an electric car is far far too much for us to consider

I love the idea it's just not practical/financially feasible for us

The future of electric cars is not necessarily everyone owning one, it it is also reducing the number of cars overall with collective EV car shares, and EV rental becoming just another public transport option.

We would have to get an additional car if one of ours was electric. Literally the only thing we could use it for would be the school run (although that would be a good enough reason to get one if we were going to have three cars anyway but at the moment I commute by train instead so we only need two). It’s moot anyway because we have nowhere to charge one so no electric car for us.

Its just that at present they're expensive and there is this worry about range and charging.

Before we bought ours my DH did a spreadsheet (nerd) with various options. When you factored in the cost of the car and fuel over 5 years with his commute a new electric car was cheaper than a second-hand petrol car. It depends on the cars though obviously.

The range is improving all the time so hopefully at some point that will cease to be a worry and we've been amazed at how many charging points there are around when you look. DH makes a point of using them at every opportunity to make the most of the free electricity!

I’m an EV owner and love it!

It is a fabulous choice for anyone with off street parking and daily driving needs under 50miles each way. For those that need a one-off longer driving distance it requires a different mind set of hiring for those rare circumstances. We are currently debating if it is feasible for the family car to be all electric ourselves.

A lot of us simply will have to recognise our own impact purely from driving ie the poster doing 150k a year (not picking on you personally but hope you get what I mean).

About a third of UK electricity comes from renewables.

www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

currently having wind as 18% with biomass 5% and hydro 1% ....

When you factored in the cost of the car and fuel over 5 years with his commute a new electric car was cheaper than a second-hand petrol car

But it's the upfront cost that's important. Some people can only afford, say, £1000 upfront. Telling them that long-term, the 5k electric car is better value is pointless if they don't have 5k to begin with!

#walkinthepark electric cars (ones with 200+ mile range) are perfectly suitable for long trips. I've taken mine up to the Scottish highlands and down into France with no hassle at all.

Funnily enough there’s zero solar in that mix at the moment. Can’t think why.

How 'specialist' a job is it to have a charging point put on your drive way, if you bought one and didn't want a cable hanging out your window every night ?
Would any electrician be able to do it or is there something particular about it ?

It does say on that page that not all wind is included, and solar is an estimate on the demand side rather than separated out.

www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/25/low-carbon-energy-makes-majority-of-uk-electricity-for-first-time suggests the 1/3 is about right

IIRC it's way higher in Scotland, I think about 70%

We had an electric charging point put in by the company that supplied the charger!

We have a hybrid. It’s a Mini. I’m still not ready to drive any old ugly electric car. We are quite keen on a Porsche or the Jaguar ipace though. Ultra extensive cars but I really don’t want a Nissan.

For those of you who want to charge in cities, the bays are often blocked by non EVs. The borough where my DD lives in London is considering residents only charging so no charging for us when we visit. On motorways you might have to queue for a charging point. Ones we use cannot take more than one car at a time. It’s frankly useless.

DH takes the mini to work and charges it. I take it shopping. I love it. We have 4 other cars though and we won’t be stopping all the time to charge a EV every 90 minutes. Who has the time? What luxury. We might change to a decent EV but at the moment I’m not excited.

I very much like the idea of Electric motor transmission like what its done for rail vehicles but the primary power isn't there as yet.

I don't think the magic battery is here yet, or round the corner sad to say and the the grid isnt capable as yet even if it will ever be.

Someone refered to the excellent Gridwatch one, this other site is this one;

earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=-0.73,50.04,1792

Might have to copy and paste. The renewable input has a while to go yet and even then it needs backup there are such things as blocking highs over the UK from time to time under high demand conditions the grid is almost out of capacilty.

We really must get the Nuclear act together, yep its going to cost France has done it a rather differing mix to the UK. You'll note that France tops up most all other european grids even Germany where the stupid Green lot shut their Nukes down and started building and using Lignite power, very CO2 poluting.

Heres the French version

www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/

One day a really good practical proposition but for now maybe suited to short around town hops and lets hope we don't have a cold winter eh?.

I suppose there is an element of chicken and egg about it - if more people had electric cars then charging points would presumably become more common, but until they are more common, many folk won't consider one.