We are not set up for electric vehicles in this country

[Pollyannaatemyjelly]

We have an electric vehicle. We tend not to do too many long journeys but today it was inevitable. We have visit a very popular destination via major motorways but there is not one fast charger available on our route. I've just stopped on the M5 on what is supposed to be a dual charger (so more than one vehicle can charge) but it's not working. I've had to wait 20 minutes for the vehicle next to me to charge before I can even begin to charge mine. There is no chance this county can become all electric when the infrastructure is so poor.

@CasperGutman I know. Council tower blocks often have a car park. But it is more comes than with individual houses as you often talking about mixed tenure.
Not impossible but not straightforward either.

The roads that charge a car as you drive sound amazing. I am sure londoners will enjoy them. In my city the council can't even sort the many large potholes. Our roads have really deteriorated.

The roads that charge a car as you drive sound amazing. I am sure londoners will enjoy them. In my city the council can't even sort the many large potholes. Our roads have really deteriorated.

Part of the problem with this thread is that most people don't understand how EV charging works, it isn't the same as filling with petrol.... You charge when your car has downtime, whether that is at home overnight, at work, when you visit the supermarket, visiting the loo on a long journey....Personally even on a long journey I am rarely "waiting for it to charge", it charges while I am doing other things.

The cost of it trips people up too, unless you have one and see how it works. The cars themselves are more expensive but the running costs are much much less. Until people get their heads around the fact that you have to add the two together you will continue to see posts about how the cars are too much money to buy.

You also have to look at an equivalent for what you have as nowadays they aren't even that different in price - you often see people comparing the cost of the 10 year old Corsa they have to a new Tesla and declaring it "unaffordable"...

I do gey ht. You have to have a certain lifestyle to make it work. I can envisage the user journey now.

Even if an EV did work out cheaper over its lifetime compared to a diesel or petrol equivalent, it's the upfront cost which is a barrier to many.

I don't think that anybody sane really believes that it is feasible or affordable for everyone in the UK to switch to an EV now. The charging infrastructure, whilst improving rapidly, is still inadequate and I certainly wouldn't have a fully electric vehicle at the moment if I couldn't charge at home. But everyone is going to have to swap eventually (or to alternative non fossil fuel powered vehicles if/when they're developed) so solutions to the problems need to be found. We can't resist change indefinitely.
Obviously if you are someone who travels extremely long distances on a regular basis and has a bladder of steel, a co driver with whom you do Le Mans style driver changes, or your regular routes only take you through areas that are known to be devoid of chargers then an EV is not currently for you. But realistically, this is not how most of us live or drive is it? We did a nearly 400 mile round trip in our EV yesterday. We didn't charge at all on the way there and had one 15 min charging stop which coincided with a toilet visit on the way home. Most of our longer trips pan out similarly, and on a day to day commuting/ going to the shops/taking kids to clubs kind of basis I find no practical difference whether I'm driving our EV or our diesel - apart from the fact I don't need to go to the petrol station.
Public charging facilities do need to improve, but they are getting there, and charging and battery technologies are improving all the time too. A lot of the horror stories people tell are old, or could have been avoided with better planning, though of course with any relatively new technology you'll expect some glitches. I'm old enough to remember the switch from leaded to unleaded petrol and I remember it being a bit of nightmare to fill our first unleaded only car in some places initially. It takes time for change to filter through to everywhere, but it will.
Cost and lack of domestic charging facilities are the real barriers in my opinion, and where policy makers need to focus efforts. If you can afford an EV and can charge at home then they will work fine for most people most of the time even now.

You have to compare like with like.

The cheapest new electric Corsa costs £31,945 or £355.05 a month.

The cheapest new 5 gear petrol Corsa costs £19,125 or £180.06 a month.

For the EV to be even equivalent in cost, the savings on fuel and maintenance would have be £175 month, or a total of £20,020 minus resale value over the time you owned the car if paying up front to own it.

Would you propose this "local car" being something privately owned, or something that could be rented- like a car version of the boris bikes?

privately owned. The point is it isn't a 'car' as we think of it, that is why I am saying we need to think outside of the box.

You aren't going to get people out of their individual cars.
It is a false analogy to say many european cities have public transport. You need much more fundamental changes to both city (which are already built) and to culture). And actually how many of us do not live in a big city? We live in smaller and mid sized towns and they do not have decent public transport.

• the netherlands - everyone cycles. No school drop off after about age 7 as they cycle. Most Ducth housing is newer than British housing. So when it was built (most post war) they included cycle paths. Yes it would have been lovely if we had done the same, but we didn;t and we can't go back and rebuild our cities. The Dutch rarely have to cycle directly on a road. But also IT IS FLAT. Unless you have lived in The Netherlands and used an bike compared to living in Uk and using a bike, I just don;t think you can understand the vast chasm of difference between the two. Brits are never going to get on their bikes like the Dutch
• Most kids in Germany / Sweden etc walk to school from aged 6. Without parents. Good luck trying to get that off the ground here.
• Britsh housing is very expensive. This means that in Uk most parents both work full time. That puts massive pressure on our time. People use cars because they are fast. It takes me 10 minutes to drive and park and get into centre of town. It takes 3 times that long (at least) on the bus. That is with a bus that works, ie there is one from the end of my road and it goes directly to the town centre. But to get to the swimming pool 15 minutes drive and about an hour and a half on the bus, and pricey, because it is 3 buses. Our time is pressured, we want speed.
• I wil not cycle or bus late at night where I live. Even if I wanted to, most buses have stopped by 9:30. So good luck getting back from an evening at my friends house, and if that friend lives in the same direction as the swimming pool, forget it. But in The Netherlands I would cycle home at that time. Paths are safer and well lit and busy.

Im not sure I 100% understand your idea, but I agree we need to start thinking differently. I think I'd struggle to live without a car where I currently live, as there isn't adequate public transport. I'd love to see this change but I don't think the will is there currently to improve it. We definitely need something new. The sad thing is though without access to a car I'd be struggle to get to work, medical appointments, a supermarket etc. We currently rent and the idea of investing in an EV, then having to move and not being able to guarantee being able to charge at home puts me off. If I owned a home I'd probably be less cautious as we could make longer term decisions.

The issue is not that we can't be, just that too often it is all guns blazing and no infrastructure. We now have developments with no transport or community infrastructure, issues with water and sewage, lack of electricity supply due to huge data centres consuming more power than we can produce, high streets dying and yet local authorities no longer wanting cars to access them or be able to afford to! Electric vehicles have been rushed into use and perhaps we should have been looking at better technologies for these vehicles and ways to slowly introduce into our society, without trying to push them onto those that can't charge them, afford them and may find that they also have little or no resale value either. Much of this new technology is incredibly polluting, damaging, energy hungry and barely tested and even issues of fires from electric vehicles are being hidden, with concern re. how we deal with the heavier vehicles damaging our road surfaces, causing damage to structure not designed for their weight or indeed recycling and end of product life issues. Someone, somewhere is getting very rich on pushing through which should be given more time to get right and not potentially lead to more issues that it seems currently to be solving.

You’re successfully high lighting one of the problems with this utopian vision. All the shops are shutting.

And in our case it's £5 a day, 7 days a week, thanks DC!

Well, they’d stop shutting if they had a market in the form of a local population who had less ability to drive. In my own city, where there is little driving in the urban center, our “high streets” are actually clusters around train stations, and of course they all do well because people shop around the train station before and after getting on a train!

Something a lot of people don't consider is how a lot of disabled people will cope.

Getting access to the few charging points available in some areas is often impossible because of how many are designed eg steps, lack of space between vehicles etc. That is before you consider the physical weight of the charging cables themselves.

Currently there are no electric WAVs (wheelchair accessible vehicles) due to the additional weight & access required on those already for ramps or lifts.

Don't start me on the hazards those running charging cables directly over kerbs poses.

Driving isn't what has killed the highstreet. The internet has done that.

I'm pretty sure that shops not actually stocking basic things is what is killing the high street. I've been in a large town and have been unable to buy basic items such as a plant pot and a pair of shoes that fit me. It also annoys me when the item you want is cheaper on the shop's website than it is in the store and when it doesn't let you see which locations have the item that you want to buy in stock.

What would help reduce shorter trip car use is better designed towns for pedestrians. DS is starting an Xmas job less than a mile from here, large town centre. Due to the stupid isolated footpaths and two hidden underpasses I'll have to pop out in the car and pick him up when he finishes at 9. If there was a well lit path (no gloomy energy saving lights either) running alongside the road route he could walk it. Everyone in our estate has to use the car to get to "that" part of town as it's too scary to walk. Basically every route out of the ring road is isolated and creepy after dark.

Depends on the town. Out of town retail parks and supermarkets HAVE killed the High Street in many towns, long before internet shopping became so popular. M&S, Tesco and several other chain stores left our Hight Street in the 90's!

I agree retail parks are still popular here. But they have free parking.

I think it would take hours because on busy days there are queues for petrol pumps. It takes 5 minutes to fill a car with petrol and pay. It takes significantly longer to charge a car so you could be waiting a very long time.

Ah, you 'think' it will take hours. So they are imaginary queues. I see

Queues at service areas in the middle of the summer holidays are not the figments of my imagination! For goodness sake. Have you ever driven along the A303 in the summer, for example?

And why so aggressive? All you need to do is say that in your experience there haven't been queues.

Don't start me on the hazards those running charging cables directly over kerbs poses

Not ideal but people parking on pavements is even worse and the government seems very unwilling to do anything about that, given that the consultation ended 3 years ago.

I use the superchargers at Solstice services on the A303 regularly and have never had to wait.
So yeah in my experience, queuing for a charge is not an issue.

This, really. i'll never have a lifestyle where EV will be a viable option. Luckily as i adore the sound and driving experience of a petrol manual car. i dont own cars just as i mode of transport and i havent stepped foot on a bus since i was 16. I also kick, scream and sulk if i have to get a train which i can count on two hands

Selfishly, the decline of the High street doesn't have an impact on me, or my parents. We've never had a life where you go wandering on an afternoon through shops.
I love the out of town retail parks, free parking, can whizz over, run in the shop, get back in the car and carry on with my day.

Our company car fleet has declined from a full EV fleet to just 3 EV's and 8 Hybrids and the rest petrol. The lure of cheap tax got them in,but the practicality of the massive mileage our Ops managers do wasnt realistic, it was a logistical nightmare. they are all back to petrols and a few hybrids now.

Lively city center hubs seem to work OK in Asian and European cities that are designed around public transport. The train/tram/metro stations become hubs for shopping and services; we all use them before and after getting on a train. It works well and is nice. Everything can be put together in one place because cars and parking do not clog everything up and there is no need for areas to be cluttered up with car parks. Controlling parking tightly means that people can live near stations and shops without the fear of “Oh no, it’ll be a nightmare with people parking all over your street,” which in turn means you have most things you need within walking distances.

I come back to the UK each summer and get more depressed each time I come. British people moan non-stop about the problems caused by their car-addicted society - obesity, the decaying urban centers, fat coddled kids with no independent mobility, chronic illness caused by lack of outdoor time and movement, the parking wars with neighbors, the hours spent taxiing children and elderly parents around because they can’t go anywhere by themselves - but look at you in horror if you suggest that maybe it’s time to design cities differently and shift away from car use. They want to continue driving absolutely everywhere and parking everywhere, and they also want the problems caused by all this to just magically go away by themselves. I give up. I’ve decided to go to meet my family in Europe this year instead.