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.

But what would the purpose of that be?

How are the binnies going to do their jobs from home?

I think they're more double for a 2 car household where the main car is just a normal car

I looked at them when thinking of changing my car recently.

My house could have a charging point, but it's the horrendous queues I've seen a motorway service stations that are a problem.

I do a long journey regularly to see relatives and at the moment I'm not prepared to risk adding so much extra time to the journey.

We have had our electric car around 18 months. No issues. Have done 1000+km road trips this summer, crossing multiple countries in Europe and charged easily.

Our small town of 3000 people already has chargers at supermarket, in parking lots, outside hotels, the school and nursery, outside play park, doctors, and several large employer office or companies like plumbers have own on site chargers. Many homes are flats here, but those flats with private parking are also adding communal chargers . That’s not including any own private chargers on individual driveways. We charge mainly at home, but know several people who charge out and about easily.

The local AA equivalent in next large town over is building a massive solar roof electric charging area. It’s like a multi story car park for Charging

I see a lot of news with journalists slamming EV. Every single story is "I had an EV for a week and hated it". I've had mine for a year and a half. 13,000 miles later (touch wood) I've never once have I had any issues with charging and we do long road trips to a family home in the other end of the country. It just requires a total change of thought process. I had a hybrid and for 2 months tried just using the 37 mile range between charges and calculated how much petrol I would go over it by each day. From that I knew an EV would work.

Never had to wait at a charging station as I plan road trips trips to ensure I use ones off beaten tracks, even if it means a slightly longer trip. Don't have a charger up north so I just wake up early and get to the local Lidl on a weekend an hour before it opens as it's always empty.

At charging stations I meet a lot of folks who haven't or can't have chargers at home. Those seem to be the people complaining the most about EVs. Makes me wonder why bother with EV if they cannot charge at home! If you can, that's 90% of your daily driving needs covered. Same goes for people that do 200 mile daily commutes. Diesel will be better and probably cheaper overall. Due to low BIK I've saved a lot of money but for most people, the saving they would make Vs the initial outlay would mean having to rely on expensive public charging would leave them out of pocket!

EV are still comparatively new - the range and charger availability, speed will improve as the technology improves, but for now you need to think carefully if your lifestyle and needs are compatible with one as while there are many pros to having one there are also limitations.

We have one and it is fantastic for what we use it for, but if we had a long journey somewhere (unusual for us) we have access to an ICE car and would use that instead.

Sounds like bollocks to me. Source?

Are they also banning range rovers?

I like that electric is everywhere. I can easily charge my car on long distances in day a hotel car park or in a multi-storey car park in busy city.
Car can be charged off regular home plug if needed like visiting remote family, yes it takes longer but doesn’t matter if your staying overnight.
Where as petrol stations can be large gaps in between and often only on motorways or big towns.

First one built in 1884.

On long journeys never plan to charge up at a service station. Find a town with a couple of super fast charging points with a cafe or pub nearby (or a big supermarket which has both)

I'm in Australia and we seem to be getting quite organised with the infrastructure needed for EV. Most people have a garage, so it's easy to install the fast charger at home . And there are multiple charging stations in most suburbs - I've looked it up on the EV web site and there are heaps of them. In my area there is a large one at the hospital car park and two at the local shopping centres, as well as a few random ones . Service stations along the highway have them, so it's not such a worry if you are going a long distance. So yes it's possible to get organised for the advent of more EV's.

It’s a fairly disadvantaged London borough, nothing special.

This. It’s not the lack of infrastructure for electric cars that I’m worried about so much as the lack of viable public transport options for many of those who will be pushed out of car ownership.

I’d not heard if this but lots of articles. Here is one-

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/electriccars/article-11956197/Ageing-multi-storey-car-parks-collapse-weight-heavier-electric-vehicles.html

Yanbu.
Our council are ignoring enquiries from me and a local councillor about how they plan to install hundreds of on street chargers in the ex council estates that don't have driveways or personal parking spaces. There's at least 100 homes in my street along that need chargers. It's going to devalue places like mine if there is no home charging available

The long journey will be a lot longer if you have to factor in leaving motorways and driving into towns, especially at busy times.

If you Google ‘15 min city’ you’ll see the utopian vision and what they are trying to achieve. My irritation is it’s another blow to our personal freedoms and I’d rather they were just honest about it. However I know that climate activists see it as the progressive way forward and anyone pushing back are right wing zealots.

ok, the popular uptake of EVs is comparatively new, but it was obvious to most what I meant 🙄

I agree, there needs to be a pre-emptive boost to the infrastructure - not just wait until more people have EVs and then go 'ahh, it seems we need more chargers/facilities, who could have predicted this??'

If they wait for the demand to rise, it'll either be a disaster (because suddenly there'll be insane queues at service stations as 40 cars wait to use 5 chargers) or the demand will just never happen because people will hold off buying an EV until the infrastructure is better. But pre-emptive planning/work isn't something the UK govt is very good at...

There is so much misinformation in this thread. I also drive an EV, we are an all electric family.

We have driven to the South of France in the EV, several times and have had no issues. We have driven from London to Liverpool, no issues. London to Scotland, no issues.

There are rarely queues to charge - just like occasionally you come across queues to get petrol...but not often.

There are planners that tell you where to stop.

The "weight in car parks" is complete fiction. Do people not know what Range Rovers weigh? Some old car parks are just that, old. Modern SUV's of any description are very heavy. EV's are heavy but not compared to a Range Rover, that is heavier.

"causing potholes" complete fiction. it's just roads not being repaired as often and generally more SUV's.

"needs different tyres" again, uses similar tires to existing petrol vehicles.

"uses more tyres" - Nope

Oh and it's PETROL and DIESEL that is up to 20 times more likely to catch fire than electric. That one always shocks people and it is completely true!

The only way it’ll work is standardised removable batteries. So you drive to a ex petrol station, take out the battery, replace with a charged one and drive off. Takes 2 minutes just like topping up with petrol. Also gets round the issue of ageing batteries being the most expensive part of the car. But the car manufacturers don’t want it because it’ll damage their profit margins.

Have you seen the size of an EV battery? It generally is built into the chassis for space and weight distribution and the size of the full floor of the car.

It would need some major technical advances and investments to get to that stage and I expect won't be in my life time! We need to crawl before we can run.

I totally agree. We've got an EV but for exactly that reason we've got a second diesel car for longer journeys and only ever charge the EV at home. Kind of defeats the object!

I agree with you. We have a Tesla and it's great locally. It's also generally great long distance if we plan around Tesla fast chargers on motorways (it's rare we've found them all full).

As soon as we have to use public non-Tesla chargers it's incredibly stressful. The chargers are full, broken, or there are issues with yet another app. We avoid them as much as possible. We went on holiday to Lincs a while ago and the first FOUR charging locations weren't working. We almost ran out of charge because the fifth was miles away, and that was a trickle charger. You can't function like this.

We’ve got an EV and I know what you mean. We’ve got a home charger so 9/10 use that but have had the odd problem with public chargers. Range anxiety is definitely a thing if you haven’t been able to find somewhere and you’ve got 3 miles to home and only 3 or 4 miles left on the car 😬