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.

We'll get to 2030 and hydrogen cars will be palatable again.

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?

They park further down the road where there is a space near a charger. Or they use one of the apps which enables EV owners to contact one another to say they need to charge and request the other car move when it’s full. Or, they drive to a nearby rapid charger and get enough of a top up to see them through the following day and hope they can charge tomorrow night.

And, they get in the habit of not allowing their charge level to get so low that not being able to charge on any given night would be a problem.

@LameBorzoi the government will never truly make it a priority when they benefit so much in O&G tax!

And as a btw the oil companies invest a lot in renewable energy and electrification. The change is happening but it slower than people are being promised.

Well they will just tax electricity the same, thats not a barrier

The issue is that it will hit domestic users, how do you differentiate between usage becuase you're charging up your car overnight or usage for the washing machine

There are good reasons why hydrogen is not the solution for cars - although it probably is for heavy haulage. Fundamentally, you get 1/3 the miles per kWh of electricity which is used to generate hydrogen from water as you do if you put it into a battery and use it to drive the car directly. Hence you need three times as much renewable generation capacity for the same number of miles travelled.

Don’t get me wrong - I’m not ideologically opposed to hydrogen at all. If it became practical and economic for cars, I would be open to using it. But unless we find a new and incredibly cheap way of generating zero carbon electricity which doesn’t require use amounts of land to accommodate it, I can’t see it being superior to BEV’s.

Something will have to get taxed.

Hydrogen mix boilers will be more suitable for more people than heat pumps, which are worse than useless for the majority of our housing stock.

Well they will just tax electricity the same, thats not a barrier

The issue is that it will hit domestic users, how do you differentiate between usage becuase you're charging up your car overnight or usage for the washing machine

With smart charge points, it is possible to distinguish electricity used for charging from other uses - indeed, Ovo have an EV add-on tariff which does exactly that. They give a discount on the bill to bring the cost for EV charging down to 10p per kWh - multiply the discount amount by the number of kWh used for charging.

The issue with taxing home EV charging through that mechanism is that people would use their granny chargers instead to avoid paying the extra tax. A per-mile element added onto VED is a more likely solution, in my view.

@bellac11 I am referring to the fact O&G companies pay 75% tax on exploration. That's a lot of money.

We really need to upgrade our housing stock, don’t we?

There are a few companies that will (legally) cut a small channel in the pavement outside your house. The channel is covered with a moveable flap. You have a EV charger installed on your house and park your car in the road outside. The charging cable is temporarily placed under the flap in the pavement. Only problem is this currently costs around £2000. This is my DS's plan B. He currently charges his electric car on one of the two public chargers in his road.

Imagine the parking threads on MN when people get home from work and find others parked in their spaces.

@LimeCheesecake
Someone else has quoted something from your post to me, so I read it. This bit is utter arrogance. 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?
I’m a supply teacher because I’ve done 35 years full time and it’s my phased retirement over the next about a decade, not that it’s any of your business. How dare you tell people what is and isn’t a suitable way to be employed?
And aside from that, if there weren’t any supply teachers schools would be stuffed and children would be without education. Schools might have to shut year groups with little notice. We all have the same transport issues. You think we can all just stop? And what about carers? They have to travel about a lot. Should they all stop? Agency nurses? Locum doctors?
If your ‘green’ policy (it isn’t that green anyway) means the collapse of all these employment pools, maybe it needs a rethink. My circumstances are in no way unique.

Great. Except I rarely park right outside my house, so most days I wouldn’t be able to use it. Honestly, some people are just not thinking.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

For me it's having the opposite effect. I'm thinking of replacing my pickup with a new one in a few years and hanging onto that as they're one type of vehicle that I trust to keep going indefinitely.

Current one is an '09 plate with well over 100k on clock and I expect it'd easily do 250k. I'm in a local truck club and plenty of people have trucks from early 00s with mileages in excess of 200k - one guy's replaced a few engine bits and is on 440k!

The panels usually start to rust before the engine goes but they can be replaced for peanuts from breakers yards. I've replaced a door, the tub, had a new oil sump fitted, and one of my wings will need done soon. Parts cost me peanuts and work was mostly done by the guys from my club for free beer - they love a good project.

Some people really don't want the tiniest bit of inconvenience and expect the solution to a burning choked up planet to be handed to them on a plate, cost free and with no impact on their lives. We are all going to have to change the way we live, work and travel over the next couple of decades. But you come across as someone who doesn't give a fuck so I don't know why I'm wasting my time.

So what do you suggest, knock the lot down.

Tiniest bit of inconvenience? The only way offered for charging on road that sounds even slightly plausible won’t work…I couldn’t charge an EV. Leaving aside that they aren’t green, and that my car would be ULEZ compliant if I drove to London in it.
How arrogant to say I don’t give a fuck because I’m pointing out that one suggested method of addressing global warming is impractical. Where do you live? How will you be charging your EV?

I don’t think some people who live in lovely leafy places have any idea how many people live in terraces and flats, and how impossible it would be to house them all with any other set up. I used to live rurally, so I do have an understanding of the issues EVs will cause there - principally charging away from home.

Maybe just toddle off then

So let's inconvenience the poor. Yet again.

While it will inconvenience the poor, it isn’t just the least advantaged groups. I wouldn’t say I’m poor - I have my teacher’s pension taken early (with actuarial reduction so it’s lower than it would be if I’d continued before anyone starts) and as many days of supply as I want to supplement it while I’m still able. I’ve paid off my mortgage. I do ok. Still live in a terraced house though and don't spend as much on my car as I’d need to to get a comparable EV, and couldn’t charge it anyway

The danger from battery fires is hugely sensationalised, so deserves to be called out as the nonsense it is

Well well well. That IS a change of tune since the mobility scooter threads that were on here after Grenfell

Is the risk of battery fire any worse than the risk of sitting on top of a large tank of highly flammable liquid?