Electric cars

Martyn1981

Soulginge wrote: »

There is nothing that would convince me to buy an electric car right now, certainly not a Tesla. Far too overpriced for a glorified iPad on wheels that creaks like an old bed frame. I was stung once before by listening to so called "experts" and bought a diesel car that, by the time I came to have to move it on, had a resale value no where near the petrol version because of stories of jacked up tax prices for diesel cars.

The Infrastructure for electric cars just is not there at the moment, and won't be for a good long time. I happen to live in a small block of flats where there is no scope whatsoever for charging an electric vehicle overnight unless I run a cable from my bedroom window. There certainly won't be a charging point in the car park any time soon and you can bet that if there was, there would be no guarantee of being able to park in the correct space and I'd be screwed.

No chance.

I think all of your points have been thoroughly mythbusted already on this thread, though it would be a long read, but perhaps worth it to find out how it all works and allay your many fears.

buglawton

Is the idea that local authorities in the UK won't be providing any serious on street charging for flat dwellers and endless rows of Victorian terraced houses with no driveways, for the next 10 years at least, a myth?

Herzlos

buglawton wrote: »

Is the idea that local authorities in the UK won't be providing any serious on street charging for flat dwellers and endless rows of Victorian terraced houses with no driveways, for the next 10 years at least, a myth?

That'll be one of the hardest ones to do, but realistically there's no reason that you couldn't have a charging point available for every proper on/off street parking space (maybe not for cars up on pavements, in unused ground, double parked, etc). Even if not council run, some private company would take advantage of the opportunity sooner or later.

Failing that, there's likely to be a high probability of finding a charger at the other end (work car parks, supermarkets, multi-stories, train stations). Then there'd be charging stations for people that still fall through the gaps.


At some point once critical mass kicks in, it'll be harder to fill up on petrol/diesel than electricity.


There are already mobile charging facilities for those that run out of charge.

Martyn1981

buglawton wrote: »

Is the idea that local authorities in the UK won't be providing any serious on street charging for flat dwellers and endless rows of Victorian terraced houses with no driveways, for the next 10 years at least, a myth?

Work, supermarket, cinema, gym, DIY centre, car park, lamp post ......... anywhere that can make money from your charging, or your retail/recreational £'s whilst visiting ....... perhaps?

Maybe even a loss leader like some supermarket petrol deals already, in fact doesn't / didn't Lidl offer free rapid charging to customers? Hard to beat free.

But I'm sure this has all been discussed (to death) before.

RichardD1970

Strangely enough, on this very topic, this popped up on my local Facebook page today.

http://www.solihull.gov.uk/news/ArtMID/820/userid/45/ArticleID/2238/Electric-cars

Be interesting to see how it pans out.

buglawton

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Work, supermarket, cinema, gym, DIY centre, car park, lamp post ......... anywhere that can make money from your charging, or your retail/recreational £'s whilst visiting ....... perhaps?

Maybe even a loss leader like some supermarket petrol deals already, in fact doesn't / didn't Lidl offer free rapid charging to customers? Hard to beat free.

But I'm sure this has all been discussed (to death) before.

Been discussed with no actual practical solution for anyone wanting to charge up ready for their real world morning commute when they live on many of the UK's urban mean streets.

A high current charger at every workplace and shopping car parking spot? Have any of the idealists actually run the £ numbers?

Herzlos

buglawton wrote: »

Been discussed with no actual practical solution for anyone wanting to charge up ready for their real world morning commute when they live on many of the UK's urban mean streets.

A high current charger at every workplace and shopping car parking spot? Have any of the idealists actually run the £ numbers?

Even with 100% of cars on electric you probably don't need any more than about 1 in 10-20 spaces being fast chargers. The average car will only need slow charged once a week or so..

Once there is the demand and paying customers it'll roll out fast enough.

The numbers have been run a few times on here.

haversonk

I am another retired solar panel owner with a 24 kW Nissan Leaf, which I bought new three years ago. I will never go back to an old technology noisy internal combustion engine! My normal daily journeys are below 80 miles, with an occasional longer one. I charge on an Economy 7 tariff overnight in winter and during the day in the other seasons when it is sunny. So far, my annual mileage of 9000 miles has cost me just over £100 per year. So I have now calculated that I have compensated for the extra cost of going for an electric car, from now on it is pure saving.
Apart from the money saving, electric cars are really great to drive, very responsive, smooth and quiet. And you feel you are doing your bit for the planet!
Electric car and charging technology is moving really fast. The new Leaf goes almost twice as far as mine and there is a clever device called Zappy which optimises your charging when your solar panels produce enough or the night time tariff is cheap.
But the most important change is in your head, which doesn't think about petrol stations any more, but plugs in your car when you get home at night.

Martyn1981

buglawton wrote: »

Been discussed with no actual practical solution for anyone wanting to charge up ready for their real world morning commute when they live on many of the UK's urban mean streets.

A high current charger at every workplace and shopping car parking spot? Have any of the idealists actually run the £ numbers?

I think solutions coming, or already here have been discussed, however I agree that there is no practical solution for those determined to keep arguing the opposite as the answers are most likely ignored or forgotten as they don't support the ideological approach of those moaning.

As Herzlos points out, you wouldn't need rapid charging every day.

As explained by many, many times, the average UK mileage is approx 7,900 pa, that's 152 miles per week, or approx one cycle of a 40kWh battery pack. So for 40kWh+ EV's, one slow charge whilst at work, or one fast charge at the supermarket, cinema, gym (etc etc), would suffice at a pinch, but more than one opportunity per week is more likely ... yes?

Do you recall my posting that one supermarket (Asda I think?) had installed 40 chargers, each at the center of 4 spaces. So that's 40 chargers and 160 possible spaces, so a great example of providing for current and future vehicular needs.*

These solutions may not seem complete to you today, but they are possible, and will of course expand as EV ownership expands, won't they?

So you can deny the facts and the info posted on here, and suggest there simply are no solutions, and none coming, or you can look to reality and a developing technology and infrastructure that will continue to expand and improve as the EV world matures.

*And before you (or others) try to spin what happens when more EV's exist - I think we can safely assume more 1 in 4 chargers being installed, and then when that's not enough across a whole car park, we'll see 1:2 (and so on) installs.

Demand doesn't always follow supply of a product, but supply always follows strong demand.

buglawton

Nothing is technically impossible, that's not the point.
The point is that the government has decreed that all new cars should be 100% electric by 2040, just 22 years away.
The biggest single UK infrastructure change for the last 100 years, perhaps since domestic electrification itself.
Yet that same government doesn't have the ghost of a plan to make that change even vaguely possible by 2040.

There's a big difference between what's idealistically possible and what UK governments would be capable of - especially considering their track record on infrastructure in general.