Electric Cars - Am I The Only One Having Reservations?

[MysticMeghan]

The news is full of stories about electric cars, how marvellous they are for the environment and how wonderful it's going to be when we all have them. But as someone of modest means, I can't help wondering if this is going to be something that is embraced by the wealthy and those of us who can't afford to shell out £30,000 for a new car are going to be left behind.

I know there is car leasing, but you have to be able to be loan worthy to qualify for that. If you are on UC or working a part time minimum wage and you NEED a car to get to work because you live in a rural area or work unsocial hours, what are you going to do? There's not going to be much of a market in 2nd hand electric vehicles, so buying an old banger for £500 (or cheaper) to get around isn't going to be an option anymore.

The other thing that occurred to me was charging. I live in a street of terraced houses where we fight to park outside our own house because there are no driveways. We all park on the same side of the street to let fire engines and buses get by. Even with occasional charging, there are still going to be electric cables trailing across pavements. What about people across the road? How do they charge from home? Trail their cable across the road? What about blind people or wheelchair users trying to get along pavements? The estate is just streets and streets of tightly packed houses built in the 1950s. There is simply nowhere to install public charging points even if we wanted to.

At my work, we have 250 spaces for about 500 staff. People who arrive late have to park on the street. We currently have about 8 electric charging points for which there is fierce competition and already loads of problems getting people to move mid morning so that others can get in and charge because there is simply nowhere for people who move their vehicles to actually go. I have no doubt our employer would pay to convert the entire car park, but it needs to be at least double to size to allow everyone to charge. We are on an industrial estate with lots of parking restrictions. I realise that the simple answer to this is public transport, but for me to get to work by public transport in time for a 6am start simply isn't going to happen because the buses and trains for those distances don't exist at that hour of the morning. I work in Edinburgh but live in a different region (county) because I just can't afford Edinburgh house prices.

DH works in a rural area where there is ONE public charging point shared between about 17 villages. He has to commute further than the the range of a current electric vehicle and he uses tools and is an only able to work during daylight hours, so parking miles away and walking a cement mixer up the street just isn't practical. Assuming technology could improve to the extent that the range of vehicles could be increased and he could find on street charging near to where he is working, there's still going to be large sections of the day when he is likely to be hanging around waiting to charge a vehicle where he isn't actually earning.

The government are actually REMOVING the subsidy for purchasing electric vehicles in March so there doesn't seem to be much joined up thinking going on. And whilst I'm sure that electric vehicles are going to be a real boon in cities, I can't help thinking that in rural areas, where people NEED cars and there isn't even a proper mobile phone network or even mains gas in some places, people are really going to struggle. Where DH works the area earns most of its revenue from tourism, with people driving considerable distances but then just mainly staying for the day. Are they REALLY going to put in 40/50 charging points in a remote fishing village? Or will people have to beg the use of someone's private supply so they can drive home?

I recently read an article where an electric car user admitted that driving to visit his in-laws in Norfolk was quite inconvenient because he had to stop and charge about 5 times (and no doubt stay overnight somewhere as well). But he said as he only does that once a year he can live with it. What if you have to drive considerable distances every day or every week to look after sick relatives? There is this assumption that everyone lives identical lives with at most a 15 mile commute. That nobody really drives long distances very often. That's not my reality at all.

I know by the time all this happens, cars will have a better range and need less charging, but whereas you can easily integrate electric cars into a fairly modern country like Norway, this is Britain with our creaking Victorian and post war infrastructure and short of turning the country into one huge car park how is this going to work? Even in Norway they had problems. Affluent city dwellers with great public transport links embraced the changes. The rural poor have had to radically re-think their lifestyles, with less opportunity to travel, work and socialise they are more or less stuck in areas with very few facilities.

Please tell me there is someone else out there who thinks this 2035 ban is just a load of swank and the government are going to have to massively back track as the deadline gets closer?

PS If you are a Hybrid user I bet you are mad already!

@DGRossetti - if heaters and headlights take off 100km range, it still doesn't matter. Nobody will be driving safely if they are trying to do 400km in one go. The Tesla roadster has a 1000km range, doesn't matter that they say it goes 1000km, nobody will be able to drive 1000km without stopping to pee at some point!

Regardless, its an example. Just saying that yes some early models of electric had a bad rep of only doing say 90-100km, but they were 10 years ago. Since, even the cheapest models have increased with battery development. By 2035, the problem of 'distance' won't be an issue.

At the moment 100% of drivers have to refuel at a petrol station. In the future, it will change habits. Those who can will charge at home, some will generate own electricity via solar and battery storage, some with land will opt to have public chargers on property as they will get small profit back, and current petrol stations will turn into electric charging stations for those who can't charge elsewhere. Car parks, office spaces, streets will also have options. It will simply be that people charge in 20 different types of places depending on their circumstances, instead of everyone at a central station.

I own a Nissan Leaf. It's a 2014 model which I bought just before it turned 3 years old. It's shortly going to turn 6 and I have put a little over 30,000 miles on it before I bought it, when it had 12,000 miles.

The sticker price at the dealer was £11,500, although I only paid £5,500 cash plus a trade-in on my previous car. That put it much in line with a similarly specified Focus or Golf of the same age and mileage.

So far the only things that have gone wrong on it are a washer jet and a puncture, and the only real maintenance it has needed has been new tyres all round. The range is a little low by current standards, at about 90 miles in summer and 70 in winter, but it is enough for nearly all my needs and I can put up with the inconvenience of charging occasionally at a public charger as a price to pay for all the benefits. I do have off-road parking (like 66% of the population) and normally charge it from the 3-pin outside socket that we put in for a lawnmower and Christmas lights.

As things currently stand, hydrogen is pretty well a non-starter for cars, as it is overall much less efficient than batteries. There are whole websites which explain this and Google is your friend if you want to know why. Hydrogen may yet have a role to play for trucks, trains and ships; the picture is not yet clear on that.

But fundamentally, this is a change that has to happen. We have to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and (being an asthma sufferer) we certainly need to get rid of NOx and PM2.5. I appreciate that this will be more difficult for those who are poorer, but I have to ask why someone's poverty should give them the right to continue polluting the environment for the rest of us.

There's not a lot of joined up thinking going on. Example: the government subsidy for electric vehicles is being withdrawn in March and whilst it will probably be reinstated we have no clarity when or if it will even be as generous. Another example: Hybrid cars just became an extremely bad long term investment in terms of both purchase and R&D because no-one could have predicted that they would be banned as well.

There's no certainty that by 2035 that the UK will have the infrastructure in place to facilitate overnight charging if that's what people want to do or that cars will be cheap enough for poorer people to afford them or that rural areas won't get left out in the cold as they currently are for Broadband.

We ASSUME that by the time 2035 rolls by that all cars will be able to drive huge distances on a 15 minute charge, that there will be lots of places to charge them, that electricity will be plentiful and still be cheaper than petrol and that people won't suddenly run out of charge due to cold weather and needing to carry lots of people/luggage with all the heaters and lights on.

The thing is, we don't know any of these things. We DO know that huge investment is going to be needed to make even a fraction of these things happen and there is no clarity who is going to pay for this. And we also know that the Governments who plan these things are in no position to make promises about anything because they are never in power long enough to deliver on any of these promises.

I think we will see the end of private ownership of vehicles, with driverless cars being standard.

More pandemics, perhaps?

but I have to ask why someone's poverty should give them the right to continue polluting the environment for the rest of us.

And the poor might reply: Why does some people having nice air mean we have to starve ?

And then, before long, you'll get some drippy idiot asking even more stupid questions like "Why should anyone be poor ?". At which point it's game over ...

I think we will see the end of private ownership of vehicles, with driverless cars being standard. [] More pandemics, perhaps?

At the current rate, we could see all flying banned anyway ....

Sorry, was a bit random there- DS is poorly!
I meant- more use of public transport, increase in germ spreading. People using shared vehicles will not feel responsible to keep them clean inside, so increase in germ spreading. (And I am clutching my pearls at the thought of what some people will use driverless cars for shooting up, having sex when they can't afford hotels or private accommodation)

Urgh, and now my strikeouts didn't work either

I meant- more use of public transport, increase in germ spreading. People using shared vehicles will not feel responsible to keep them clean inside, so increase in germ spreading.

I must admit, that wasn't my first thought when it came to reasons not to save the planet.

I'm really surprised by the general resistance to this. I can't see why it's so unrealistic for the necessary changes to creep in over the next few years.

If people still keep cars at the same rate, 66% of people will usually charge on their drives. 33% could fast charge at dedicated stations, similarly to how they refuel now at petrol stations. If they are fitted in supermarkets, then it can be combined with a shop. Otherwise there will be neighbourhood charging stations in the area they are needed.

I don't think people will own cars at the same rate, though.

And the poor might reply: Why does some people having nice air mean we have to starve ?

But it's not just "nice", is it? It's 40,000 premature deaths in the UK and unknown damage to the climate and future generations.

But it's not just "nice", is it? It's 40,000 premature deaths in the UK and unknown damage to the climate and future generations.

shrug

well we're putting up with it so far - and have done for years. Which suggests it's not in the top priorities of government.

Now that bridge to Ireland on the other hand ....

My son is a dr of engineering and works in the industry developing new powertrain technologies. He is firmly in the camp that electric vehicles arent the whole answer, and believes research should be being done on alternative fuels, apparently plenty of his colleagues are of the same opinion, but as the government is funding research into ev's it seems unlikely to become mainstream to look for other solutions.

@picklesdragonisawelshdragon the plan to ban fossil-fuel vehicles in 2035 includes cars like your plugin hybrid though. Personally I think PHEV could be the most affordable way to go electric since they reduce the issue of battery cost and lifespan, but they're not part of the government's long-term plan!

I’m about to get my third EV, have had them for 6 years. Cheap to lease and never had any range issues. I commute 12k miles a year.
I live very rurally too so not just for cities.

My latest one arrives late March, £210 a month plus £20 to charge at home, almost 250 mile range. I’d never go back to ICE

@Megan2018 what car do you lease?

@safariboot that's about right- it shows every sign of hanging in that long. We'll be ready for an ev before then. I don't think car manufactures are investing in phev right now, but they'll benefit from the EV tech advance anyway. Future phevs will have better batteries without anyone needing to invest in the tech right now.

I can't imagine any situation that an ev wouldn't work for, in 15 years. Most houses will have chargers fitted- ours was tricky as the drive isn't near the house. New builds should definitely be thinking about where the meter is in comparison with the drive, to make fitting chargers easy.

There are plans to set up a private network charging system, in the same way you can hire someone's drive to park, you charge at someone else's charger.

It's not a big deal, IMO.

shrug

well we're putting up with it so far - and have done for years. Which suggests it's not in the top priorities of government.

Gordon Brown promoted diesel, apparently knowing how bad it was for people's health. Boris Johnson is trying to phase it out sooner than previously planned.

@LoopyLu2019

I had a BMW i3, BMW i3S and the one I am waiting for is the new ZOE i GT Line R135, due late March (in build but not got delivery date yet)

Gordon Brown promoted diesel, apparently knowing how bad it was for people's health. Boris Johnson is trying to phase it out sooner than previously planned.

We knew in the 70s that car pollution was killing people. So you really need to scale your expectations to that level of "action".

Remember: we need the car industry, ICE or not, to sell lots and lots of lovely cars to people so that there's some of that lovely tax to go around. Why do people think public transport is so pisspoor ? How else do you force people buy - and rely - on cars ?

We knew in the 70s that car pollution was killing people. So you really need to scale your expectations to that level of "action".

The fact that errors were made in the past is not a justification for sanctioning their continuance now.

The fact that errors were made in the past is not a justification for sanctioning their continuance now.

I didn't say errors were made. I said we knew in the 1970s that air pollution was killing people and have done very little since. I think 50 or so years is long enough to have built any number of train lines, introduced bus routes and worked to minimise the need to burn fossil fuels. After all the Victorians managed to lay 20,000 miles of track between 1830 and 1880, and they only had a toothbrush and a donkey.

Most houses will have chargers fitted

I live on one of the largest council estates in Scotland. Hundreds and hundreds of tightly packed houses. All terraced. About 0.5%, mainly the end terraces, have a driveway. Most have very steep steps up to the front door, most people park their cars across the road from their house. So PLEASE explain to me how "most houses will have chargers fitted". It's a VERY sweeping statement.

It might not be a "big deal" to some people, but I bet all of those people who think we are all making a "fuss about nothing" have some sort of a driveway or means to park their car close by their house. Or neighbours with driveways they can "borrow". Don't make me laugh. We don't all live like you.

Most of the people who think there is "no problem" live in nice houses in suburban areas, can afford to buy a nearly new vehicle every few years, park close to their houses, think "poor people" are just spoiling it for everyone else by clinging to their polluting old bangers and have probably never seen the inside of a food bank.

I think electric cars are going to widen the gap between rich and poor even further than it goes already. With public transport in the state it is in, depriving working class people of cars means in many cases that they can't work. Because the working hours and distances they have to travel mean they CAN'T work or use the bus and they can't very easily re-train for a new career at the drop of a hat.

Walk or use the bus not work or use the bus.

A few points I cannot get my head around

1)I heard that something like 37% of houses do not have parking attributed, therefore unlikely to be able to charge electric. How are these people going to be able to charge their electric cars?
2) How is the electricity to be generated to power these cars? In winter how will the National Grid cope with the extra demand and at what cost?
3) How is it greener to build a new electric car to replace perfectly serviceable working cars already on the road - what is the greenhouse gas emission difference involved in a) building the new car and b) disposing of the old car & is that greater than the cost of running the old non electric car for how many years it will last?