to think the penny hasn't dropped yet, for many people, that the trade in new petrol and diesel cars is really ending in 6 years

[JadeClade]

I think the price of second hand cars will go through the roof, at first, when new cars are no longer available, and people buying new homes now really do need to be factoring in where they are going to charge an electric car, and all sorts of preparations and plans are simply not being made

YANBU - we need to be planning and preparing, as individuals and society.
YABU- we don't need to think about it.

With the Freemantle Highway car transporter ship still on fire off the Dutch coast, (and containing 498 electric cars, rather than 25 as erroneously reported), it won't be long before there are calls to have the sale of EVs banned in 2030 too.

When is the penny going to drop that the government don't want the oil to stop because they are a huge payer into the treasury...

@cardibach - there are option though and the vast majority of current car owners also have off road parking- the few who don’t have off road parking (so can’t easily get a home charger) and don’t regularly drive to a location they can charge up (like a work car park or supermarket) and can’t find a spare 20minutes once a week to sit at a fast charging station - are going to be a small number.

particularly if street side charging points are rolled out quicker.

Like the OP said about making long term plans that factor this in - given your unique circumstances, and given there are a shortage of teachers in large parts of the UK, is staying as a supply teacher a practical decision for you? If you reach the point of not being able to replace your petrol car with another petrol one, or not being able to easily access petrol stations, not being able to change an EV at home and not having a set work location to be certain you can charge at - would you need to apply for permanent roles? (Ideally at a school you can walk to or has charging points in the staff car park)

Is it a small number who dont have off street parking?

Don't know about the practicality or vandal proof operation of street side chargers or the room for them.

I just don't see how we can get the charging infrastructure in place in the time scale required, its not as if its happening now at any sort of pace......

There are some 300,000 private EV chargers in UK homes, compared to around 42,000 public charging points. However, while the government expects the majority of EV charging to take place at home, around 40 percent of households have no access to off-street parking to install a charger june 2022

There are approx 25m Dwellings and 34m cars in the UK

We need a shift away from personal vehicular transport but thats probably harder than installing millions of chargers.

The issues of charging points for people living in flats is the same as the issue of parking spaces for people living in flats - there have long been initiatives to reduce car use - we looked at a lovely apartment block in london but ruled it out as it was car free - if you lived there there was no car parking and you were barred from getting a council permit for on street parking as well.

Infrastructure for charging points can be rolled out fast. I live in a fairly affluent village & a high proportion of residents have bought EVs, most have solar panels with large batteries too. Its shifted at a huge pace in the last 5 years and will continue to.

The price of the cars will be managed exactly how the likes of bmw have kept people buying their expensive cars - finance plans and leasing schemes.

You've always needed to be organised about filling up your tank before a journey and EVs will be no different. Most people will plan to ensure they can charge. My sibling does long journeys in hers and its easy - they start with it fully charged, and stop for a coffee/toilet at a fast charger and then continue. There will be more and more chargers.

I do think people will need to change travel habits though. More people could and should cycle and roadworks etc should be planned with a view to improving cycle infrastructure at the same time.

Imagine, for example, that streets built without driveways had a charging point concealed in the kerb every 3 car lengths or so, and you had been supplied with a special cable which plugged into it and to your car - with your details already coded into the device, so billing happened automatically.

There was a snippet on a programme the other day about a company installing exactly that in parts of London. If you could get a spot to park on your street, you could charge, because the cable would be long enough that you wouldn’t need to be right next to the charger.

There ARE solutions to charging away from home. Not enough yet - but they’re coming. Swappable batteries are interesting - the technology does already exist and is in use at a small scale, in China I think. I would prefer them still to be chargeable at home, because that is far and away the most convenient. But on a long journey away from home, yeah, why not.

However, better battery technology is also coming, which will allow double the range we currently have and much faster charging speeds. A 600 mile battery, full in 20 minutes. The average UK car does 8,000 miles a year, or 160/week. So take your pick - go to the charger once a week for 5 minutes, or once a month for 20.

Can we stop the nonsense about battery fires, please? BEVs are far less likely to catch fire than a petrol car is. Yes, they are difficult to put out once they are on fire. This just means that we need to adjust safety protocols/ fire suppression systems in certain situations.

There will need to be. The future if everyone has an electric car will be scrums and long queues for charging points when people are trying to go on holiday at peak times.

It isn’t actually nonsense though is it? As you say yourself if they catch fire it’s harder to put out. And the figures are based on all car fires, petrol cars are not more likely to spontaneously combust while parked. They are more likely to catch fire while being driven.

I trust the evidence of my own eyes. We had a car transporter go up locally with brand new electric range rovers and it took hours to put out and was carnage I’m very glad it wasn’t on a ferry.

Well, the UK needs approx 700 charging points installed per day until the end of the decade (and beyond) at present, we are doing about 46 per day, we ve 7 years to get from 42k to 3m chargers.....

The problem here is we are relying on the private sector to meet a Govt target & they wont do that unless there is money in it for them, who is even available to do this work? provide the equipment?

Significantly improved battery tech is a must but its not on the horizon.

Swappable batteries? do you know how heavy these things are? not going to happen.

Average UK car mileage is actually lower than you say at around 7k, whether that'll increase as petrol prices fall... hope not.

And also because the oil is required to make EVs, and thousands of other uses other than burning it.

Yes, it makes me laugh when people talk about just stop using oil blah blah.
I work in oil and gas and we have one FPSO processing 30,000 barrels of oil A DAY.

People really have no idea how much oil and gas is used in actual life.

The danger from battery fires is hugely sensationalised, so deserves to be called out as the nonsense it is. And yes, of course a fire on a car transporter took hours to put out! What did you expect?

Meanwhile, 5000 people die each year in the UK from the effects of air pollution from car exhaust.

And this is why it needs to stop. All that is going into the atmosphere, into our lungs or heating the planet. That figure is horrifying.

obviously coincidence it was evs

obviously coincidence that we’ve had major multi-storey fires in the past 5 years when previously this was considered unlikely.

the level of some people’s critical thinking skills dooms the human population.

why are EV’s and heat pumps the answer not trees and nature? Pretty obvious to me.

(awaits the predictable non-evidenced rant about ‘deniers’) 🥱

What are you talking about?

@LameBorzoi so you don't use oil and gas or anything made from oil and gas?

The other thing is I don’t think it is ‘sensationalised’ at all if anything the opposite is true. I didn’t know anything about the fire on the boat for example whereas the fires on Rhodes and the heatwaves you cannot escape.

Wow if you really can’t understand my post that really does say it all 🙄

Of course I do. But I try to minimise it. And I want to live in a society that makes it possible for me and everyone else to use less.

@LameBorzoi ha I reckon you completely underestimate how much oil and gas is used for.

And how are you planning on heating 85% of British homes?

There was no thread of logic.

I acknowledge that battery fires are hard to put out. Of course. But it's a minor factor when compared to air pollution and oil spills.

Multi storey fires? A new thing? Really?

And no, EVs are not "the answer". But they are better than ICEs.

Electricity, probably. 100 years ago, everyone used gas or oil lighting. Now we all use electricity. I'm not pretending it's going to happen overnight. However, it will likely happen eventually, and it will happen faster if there is political pressure

We wouldn't manage to live if we just stopped right now.
Its going to take years to build up alternatives.

The company I work for has a net 0 carbon target by 2050. We are well on track for this. So it's not like pip and gas are just contributing to the issues without doing anything to negate it. That's what people don't understand