Ban on new petrol/diesel cars by 2030 - AIBU to be excited?

[almostautumn]

The government are set to announce a ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. As someone who lives in a polluted city (London) and worries about the effect that carbon emissions are having on my family’s health, I’m so excited by this news because I think it will really change our children’s lives for the better. And it’s fantastic that it’s only 10 years away!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54981425

@Sexnotgender

I have two Dteenagers (5ft 5in+) and a DW with a wheelchair. We can all get in a Nissan Leaf.

Any of these people in car seats? No? Thought not.

The DTeenagers were once DBabies and DToddlers and I got car seats into smaller cars than the Leaf. In fact, I moved up a size and got a Leaf rather than a Zoe because the DCs were getting bigger all the time.

@DynamoKev I agree, we are lucky to have a lovely big double garage plenty big enough for 2 cars a large drive way for 6 cars, built this year, it wasn't even an add on extra? But they helpfully put a media plate in that Sky can't use and a "eco friendly" heating system you need a rocket science degree to work it

Im on the edge of a city and there are 5 charging points in a 10 mile radius of my house

You’re lucky there’s 3 charging points within an approx 20 miles radius of my house. One of them, however, is in Southend on Sea. I’m on the Kent coast. So that 20 miles is across the Thames estuary. I guess as long as the EV I go for is also an amphibious vehicle, I’ll be ok 😂

I do also wonder how the national grid will cope when we all get home at 5.30 (obvs. generalisation) and put the cars on charge and put the kettle on...
We charge ours overnight from 11.30 pm on cheap rate electricity, so fully charged the next morning and cost effective.

But it costs a lot to charge a car at a service station (works out around 12 pence a mile, more than fuel for many cars), and you need the time to be able to wait for it to charge. Many people who are travelling between clients don't have time to piss about at service stations.

Yes up until last year DH had a PHEV plug-in. Charging at a motorway service station used to be free but now they charge and it became cheaper to just buy fuel. It was fine for him driving 10 miles to work everyday but a trip down to my parents in the SE would make the mpg plummet due to the weight of the battery etc. making it less fuel efficient. And despite DPs living in busy London commuter land there was only one local charging point at the local Sainsburys which was usually broken.

I don't think it will happen anyway because of the infrastructure problems cited by just about everyone but if it does I'll be buying a new car in 2029 just because I like driving a manual car. Hopefully that will see me out (may switch to using taxis after that!)

It’s good news on the whole. We’ve been driving an electric for about 5 years. Lovey machines.

However the public charging infrastructure is woeful. And the cars remains quite expensive. Range remains an issue for most modes.

9 years is a long time. Hopefully we’ll be ready.

@winterwoolies sorry to jump in at your comment directly and if it's already been addressed, but electric cars will be perfect for rural muddy environment. The car has a single gear and instant torque. Which means it's always primed for the situations you list. We just need some more robust style suvs designing. Which is starting to happen with the enyaq so it won't be long before the brands popular amongst the farming communities start rolling out similar. The main blocker for current suv design is they're not very aerodynamic so weren't feasible with battery tech until recently to get a useable range.

@Judashascomeintosomemoney

Im on the edge of a city and there are 5 charging points in a 10 mile radius of my house

You’re lucky there’s 3 charging points within an approx 20 miles radius of my house. One of them, however, is in Southend on Sea. I’m on the Kent coast. So that 20 miles is across the Thames estuary. I guess as long as the EV I go for is also an amphibious vehicle, I’ll be ok 😂

Im sure someone will be along in a minute to tell you, you're just looking for problems and if you tried hard enough you could make it work.

@LittleMissLockdown

People keep saying there is more charging points around than we realise. But in most places I’ve seen them there are only one or two in each car park , which is fine for now but useless when most vehicles are electric.

I think people who say there are more charging points than you think must live in very populated areas. Im on the edge of a city and there are 5 charging points in a 10 mile radius of my house of which 1 of them appears to have not been working for quite some time. Even if they put in another 200 charge points there wouldn't be enough for everyone to use them and that's just in my tiny part of the country. The amount of infrastructure needed will be just unobtainable.

I have just checked and it’s similar situation for me - also on edge of big northern city. You could easily have a situation where you drive to two or three charge points in city centre to find them all full and people have parked up and gone to work for the day. Bit crap if you don’t have a driveway and could end up with same situation at home.

Also , people keep here have said on long journeys you can stop for a wee and sandwich while car charges but surely that means the charging stations are going to have slow turnover?

I have a driveway and a 12 mile commute so I could use one for day to day but I wouldn’t want to rely on finding a free charging station on longer journeys.

The DTeenagers were once DBabies and DToddlers and I got car seats into smaller cars than the Leaf. In fact, I moved up a size and got a Leaf rather than a Zoe because the DCs were getting bigger all the time.

And car seats now are massive compared to many years ago. Plus they are in them for much longer.

No booster seat for toddlers. It’s now recommended to rear face until at least 4.

This makes a massive difference to the space required.

I have a toddler and am pregnant. I have a teenager. I physically could not fit the 3 of them in the back seat.

I absolutely GUARANTEE they wouldn’t have fitted in the back of your leaf.

Lots of good first hand info from elec car users on this thread which is worth taking note of.

We've been fortunate to use first a plug in hybrid and now a fully electric Kia E-niro through my husband's work.

10 years is a long time. Both for technology development and infrastructure developments.
Saying that, we have had no problems with either with our current car.

The Kia has a range of 240 miles. As others have said, unless you do huge mileage every day, you wouldn't need to charge very often. On a long journey We stop at a fast charger and eat our lunch/go to loo while it charges.

We were able to have a charging point fitted at home. We can set it to charge overnight - our current electric tariff incentivises is to do this. Sometimes it is free, normally it only costs a few pounds.

This is now - in 10 years time I expect both charging infrastructure and car tech will have moved on even further than we can imagine.

This of course needs to be taken in the bigger context of better walking/cycling/public transport routes, decarbonisation of electric supply etc. It is not one stand alone solution, and, as other posters have said, there is a lot to do around it.

It varies depending on what kind of unit you pick. There are schemes in place already to reduce the cost. Anywhere from £400-£1k+ depending on what type you go for. The higher end tends to have sleek, discreet designs

As I already said, I am broadly in favour - but another thing I've noticed is that out only local charging point for 2 cars in our ASDA car park is always occupied by non-electric vehicles. I know this is minor and not insurmountable - but seeing this and the queues at motorway charging points (and the numbers out of order) means that even if they get a lot cheaper, the infrastructure will need to be a lot better before I'd be happy to set off on a long trip in an EV.

I do want to go electric though - really hoping the prices get more sane soon.

... for example... if you are using your car to drive somewhere (presumably not driving around and going home!), you will end up using the charger in the car park at work/supermarket/town centre/national trust. These are few at the moment as elec cars are few. The infrastructure will increase as car numbers increase.

@megletthesecond

Yes, it's a good idea. But how are people who live in flats or have shared car parks going to charge their cars? I never drive to the supermarket or work (I walk) so can't charge there. I assume all the car parks on our estate will need to be pulled up to install cables. And there isn't enough parking anyway. It's going to be a nightmare. Funnily enough our local council have just had a climate change consultation and I put this down as a point to consider.

Quite. I live in a block with 46 other flats, our block shares a car park with the row of 10 flats opposite. There isn't the space for all the cars anyway, and a lot of us park on the main road, it's not remotely viable for us all to have electric cars. And I work nearly 50 miles from where I live, public transport or cycling is laughable 🙈

Also , people keep here have said on long journeys you can stop for a wee and sandwich while car charges but surely that means the charging stations are going to have slow turnover?

Added to which since the non-TESLA charging points tended to be nearest the eating places, loads of lazy non-electric drivers would park there anyway - we once nearly witnessed a punch up because of this.

I'm not against electric cars, but the practicalities are simply a long way off for many people and there needs to be a lot more carrot or else the stick of forcing people to go electric is going to be very detrimental to their way of life.

And lets not forget, 100 electric cars in a queue is still a traffic jam, so simply swapping cars powered by one type of fuel for another isn't going to solve the transport infrastructure by itself, far from it.

^Quite. I live in a block with 46 other flats, our block shares a car park with the row of 10 flats opposite. There isn't the space for all the cars anyway, and a lot of us park on the main road, it's not remotely viable for us all to have electric cars.
And I work nearly 50 miles from where I live, public transport or cycling is laughable^

Solar panels on the roof of your block is going to be woefully inadequate for the charging demand too.

I live in a block with 46 other flats, our block shares a car park with the row of 10 flats opposite. There isn't the space for all the cars anyway, and a lot of us park on the main road, it's not remotely viable for us all to have electric cars.

Situations like this aren't unusual, and we know that once parked up for the night very few people would bother to move their car to allow others to use the limited charging points. Add to this many work places who don't have carparks, or very limited parking and it's not hard to see how electric cars for all isn't possible.

@Ifailed

DH knows a lot about batteries, I’ll be vague, he says the chemicals that go into them are horrendous. He said he would never own one.

Gosh, it must be difficult in this day and age to go without batteries, no mobile phone, tablet, laptop etc. Did you send your post in by telegram?

The batteries aren’t the same. He’s working on the new car batteries (they need longer life than a laptop). They aren’t the same. The chemicals are not the same.

10 years is a long time
It’s not 10 years, it’s 9.
9 years is a long time
Ok then, but I completely disagree, 9 years is no time at all for the the immense amount of infrastructure changes required for people to wholeheartedly embrace this (and to be practicably able). Crossrail was approved in 2007 - it won’t be opened until 15 years later, in 2022 (if then) - that’s one rail solution in one city (and let’s not mention HS2). This infrastructure is required across the whole of the country and they won’t just start ‘building’ stuff now, there’s the years of planning and approval stages, in-fighting and arguing to go through first. That’s this government plus the next one, whoever that maybe. 9 years is nothing.

Sorry I said ‘same’ a lot - getting over a bad head!

... for example... if you are using your car to drive somewhere (presumably not driving around and going home!), you will end up using the charger in the car park at work/supermarket/town centre/national trust. These are few at the moment as elec cars are few. The infrastructure will increase as car numbers increase.

What about work places that don't have car parks? My workplace charges you £70 a month to park and there is a 2 year waiting list for a space.
I park on the street or on a bit of waste land someone has turned into a car park of sorts .... it's not even got proper bays so I can't see them adding charging points.

I'm not against this in principle but as a rural dweller with a long commute and not a particularly high earner I am very very worried this is going to cause a lot of expensive difficulties if councils aren't given the funding to start planning for this immediately. I have a 60 mile commute and no driveway, and where I live this is pretty common so there is going to have to be a massive investment in public charging points and/or public transport is going to have to be completely overhauled (ie nationalised, probably) so that it becomes usable for anyone who actually needs to get to work.

These things aren't insurmountable but anyone who's ever worked for or with local government knows that these things will take time and planning. 10 years is not actually that long when you think about the scale of the work needed and there is no money. Rural councils will be particularly hard hit as they will need more charging facilities due to the population being so spread out.

Part of me is also pretty annoyed that as someone who lives a pretty low carbon lifestyle anyway, partly for environmental reasons and partly due to being skint, I'm now going to be significantly inconvenienced because some people think they have a god-given right to drive enormous off road vehicles round city centres and fly half way round the world to lie on a beach twice a year.

I completely disagree, 9 years is no time at all for the the immense amount of infrastructure changes required for people to wholeheartedly embrace this (and to be practicably able).

I agree. I know to some 9 years seems an eternity but for the amount of work needed 9 years is no time at all and it's utter madness to think the infrastructure will br in place and that car designs will have developed enough and decreased in price a substantial amount in this time.