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.

That's great! It's just that "we are so dependant on oil" often becomes "no point in stopping". A plan that's on track is very different.

But none of those would work for me, or for thousands (at least) of others. In order:

I don’t want to have to walk at least half a mile from the nearest shop car park, especially in winter. What about safety?
Roadside where? Narrow terraced streets or a main road are the only options h near me. Neither would work.
Petrol forecourt - 6? There are more than 6 cars at my nearest garage nearly every time. I can’t wait for 4 people in front of me to talk 20 mins before taking my own 20 mins.
Nobody anywhere near me has space for a charger - it would be an even longer walk.

So no, you don’t have a mix of solutions. You have a mix of impracticalities which won’t work for many, many people. EVs can never be the answer. It’s impossible for them to be until they can charge as quickly as filling a tank with petrol. And that’s before we consider all the harm they do in construction and scrapping, and the fact that essential components are not a renewable resource, and that most of the electricity they use is polluting.

@PuzzledObserver
And also - cost? How much would these fictitious chargers charge? More than you pay on your home one at off peak times. Unfair. Hitting those with smaller houses/city dwellers/people in flats.
I don’t work at regular places, so a work one wouldn’t help - plus are they supposed to have enough for every employee? Shops - again, one in every space? Otherwise it’s a lottery.

Great. But I bet every single house still has a car. You can’t travel far on an electric bike/scooter. And you just made it more inconvenient and possibly dangerous for everyone. Still doesn’t solve the charging issue - a charger 8n that space would charge one car….

Those bike owners still have cars. Do you live in a terraced street?

What will happen is that driving will be only for the rich, or for special jobs.

They hate motorists.

An electric car is still very much a niche product. The industry, AND the national infrastructure has got a LONG way to go before the MAJORITY of people have gone electric.
I'd say it'll be at least another decade, and likely closer to two.
I bought a new car last year, and TRY and keep them for the better part of a decade. I said at the time, that maybe my next-next car might be electric.

Another poster somewhere on ths thread said there are 300k home chargers, thats quite a high figure. What does that mean, the chargers installed on driveways or is it just 300k people have drive ways and therefore could run a plug outside?

My mum is a very fit and active 67 year old. I VERY much doubt she'll ever have an electric car for instance.
If I had to make a bet, I'd say that everyone currently under 50ish will likely drive/own an electric car at some point. People much above that, probably won't.
Of course, I'm talking about "the majority of people" here. So don't come at me with "my 90 year old dad went electric from the word go!"

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?

I agree with you there - Government need to do more. The programme I mentioned talked about the challenge of dealing with multiple local authorities, each with their own rules/process for the planning aspect. Government could fix that so it was streamlined, and of course - funding.

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

It is, as it happens. There’s an Israeli company, can’t remember the name, expecting to bring 100x3 batteries (add 100 miles of range in 3 minutes) to market next year, and 100x5 (add 100 miles of range in 5 minutes) by 2028. Obviously that will only be in new cars, and no idea of the cost. They would need new ultra high power chargers as well, though.

The vast majority have off road parking? Seriously? Have a look how many people live in flats and terraced houses…
Haven’t read the rest because this is so laughable.

Of course it’s not going to happen in 6 years time 🙄 Neither will getting rid of Gas boilers any time soon.
EV charging might be reasonably priced at home but if you have to use public chargers it costs a bloody fortune, we’ve just done a trip to Southampton from the midlands, we used £50 in petrol in our mild hybrid Hyundai. DD’s partner has a fully electric Skoda, it cost them £30 to charge up at home before the trip, £30 on the motorway and £75 to use the hotel fast charger to come back. It’s using £8 every 10 minutes.
There aren’t nearly enough public chargers and they are often not working or there isn’t a decent 4g signal for the app you need .

You’ve never lived in a terraced house have you? I’m often not on my own street, never mind not near my house. And a charger every 3 car lengths? That’s a lot of trailing wires. What about vandalism (of both the charger and the wires?). On street charging isn’t practical.

Don’t forget you have to pay £700ish to have a home charger installed too.

@cardibach are the narrow terraced streets near your house where you park at the moment? If so, I fail to see why a kerbside charger there wouldn’t work for you.

Car parks - don’t need a charger in every space. I think there’s a calculation that one in ten would be more than enough. It needs some sort of enforcement to avoid those spaces being used for parking without charging, but that is doable.

And you don’t have to walk half a mile from a car park if you don’t want to. It is one among several options, which will work for some (not all) people. It worked fine for me at my previous house, it was 7 minutes walk from my house, but nice and open and perfectly safe. If it hadn’t have been, I wouldn’t have used it. Car park charging is an option in places that you are going to anyway and where you are going to spend several hours. Do you ever go to the cinema? I went to watch Oppenheimer the other day, 3 hours plus adverts and trailers, could have added over 100 miles in that time.

And cost - you’re right, it needs to be economic for people. Government could do more on that, e.g. provide grants for the capital cost, so the operator only needs to cover running cost. Personally I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect public charging to be as cheap as home charging, because there are additional costs in payment systems, customer care and maintenance - which home chargepoint owners either don’t have, or cover themselves separately from the cost of the electricity. Plus home ChargePoint owners have paid to have it installed.

If I couldn’t charge at home, the cheapest option near me would be at Tescos - it happens to be 300m from my house, so I would have no issue with leaving the car there for the permitted 3 hours and then picking it up. 44p/kWh, which translates to 11p per mile. As against 15p/mile for a 45mpg petrol car.

Actually, the cheapest option would be the free to use ones in the car park of the country store. But they’re for customer use, and I’m not the sort of CF who thinks that the fact I walk down and pick up the odd item now and again gives me the right to unlimited use of their chargers whenever I fancy.

11p vs 15p is not the saving it needs to be given the vast difference in purchase price (if we are talking solely economics)

@PuzzledObserver what do you mean are they near where I live? They are where I live. And nobody yet has suggested a method of having on street chargers for terraces streets which doesn’t lead to risky trailing wires or the risk of vandalism. Or explained how we can all afford more for our charging than people with a drive.
It. Isn’t. Practical.
And EVs aren’t green anyway.

The terraced streets around me often have 2 or 3 cars belonging to each house.
My street has houses and bungalows with huge drives and people STILL park on the road because they can’t be arsed to play musical cars of an evening or do what we did and take out a section of wall to allow 2 cars side by side.

My DD’s partner only has an EV because it’s a company car but there is no charging allowed on his work car park. It used to cost him £60 in diesel a week for his own car and now costs him £80 in electric, it only works financially because of the BiK tax break for EVs.

The difference in purchase price is narrowing, and is expected to disappear.

Remember we’re not talking about everybody having EV’s tomorrow. We’re talking about no sales of new ICE cars after 2030 or hybrids after 2035.

Yes, 70% of UK properties have off road parking. I would argue that 70% is the majority. Not all of the 30% of properties will be car owners. 22% of UK households don’t have a car, I would presume those are most likely to be concentrated in those who live in cities with good public transport, and/or smaller properties, so corresponding with those without off street parking.

Most people in the UK will be able to fit a home charger and so won’t need to routinely use public chargers, unless they are going further afield than normal.

There are no end of posts on here about people who can't park outside their own home on the road.
What do they do if they come home and the car needs charging and someone has parked, legally, in the space outside their house.
Where do they charge their car?

I mean, where you park your car at the moment. If it’s on a terraced street - which is what I have inferred from what you’ve said - then why would a kerbside charger, if there was one there, not work for you?

It is possible for that to be done without wires trailing, I’ve already referred to one such scheme. Without vandalism…. sorry, haven’t found a cure for human nature. But reducing vulnerability to vandalism is one of the things that ChargePoint designers and operators are working on.

You don’t have to afford more for your charging than people with driveways. You have to afford up to as much as it costs to run a petrol car.

You are determined that it won’t work. I truly believe it will, although I can’t tell you when. Shall we leave it there? You will be able to buy a pure petrol car until 2030 and a hybrid until 2035, at least. And obviously second hand ones for many years afterwards.

You’ve probably got at least 20 years before cars you can put petrol in start to become hard to find second hand. The charging infrastructure will be radically different by then.

Im a bit shocked at some of the prices being set out here for electric charging, how on earth can it cost more to charge up with electricity than diesel?

I'm not sure where you're getting the statistic that 70% of homes currently have off street parking

The figure from the RAC is 75% have off street parking or the potential for off street parking - which presumably includes anyone with a front garden that they don't want to tarmac and no dropped kerb. It will also include renters who have a front garden, and a landlord with zero interest in changing it.

This figure also changes vastly with areas - it's down to 44% in London.

https://www.racfoundation.org/media-centre/cars-parked-23-hours-a-day

Near me there are streets upon streets of Coronation Street esque terraces with no chance of installing off street parking, and even on street parking can be hard to find despite a residents parking zone limiting it to two cars per building.

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)

You're ignoring the fact that as a society, we need some people in some jobs to be mobile - supply teachers are the tip of the iceberg. People really can't be choosing a career based on their proximity to a charging point. We need everyone to be able to charge up at home, overnight. That's non-negotiable.