Electric cars

buglawton

DrEskimo wrote: »

I live in a victorian terraced with no parking (in fact it's single yellow outside my door) and I plan to get an EV.

I sold my car over 18months ago and since I commute to London I have been managing just fine with sharing my OH car. My only miles driven are Sat when out and about, and Sunday when I visit my family. Probably 50miles a week in total. My plan was to get an EV charger installed at my parents and just top it up for the hours I am there. Alternatively there is a free charger at Tesco, and a rapid charger that costs just £1 for access.

My OH has a small petrol Mini that she uses for her 15mile round commute to work. So even if she used the EV and we parked the Mini to save on fuel, it would only do about 125miles a week. 40kWh Zoe would handle this just fine with only a weekly charge. 60kWh Kona could possible do it every other week!

With larger capacity batteries, and short commutes that allow for periodic charging, there are plenty of options for EV ownership even without direct access to home charging. Not to mention the fact that my house is only 2 bed, so will likely move in the next year or so to somewhere where we can charge at home.

Good post but I think you've proved how minority a use-case can be.

buglawton

Herzlos wrote: »

Put the charging bays at the back so that only the people who need to charge will use them.
Make it an offense to park in a fast charger when not charging.

You're highlighting a social problem and not a technical one; less than 10% of the cars in any given supermarket car park will need to charge at that point in time.

Nope it's a physically real fact, if anyone imagines that charging at the supermarket could be a realistic alternative to home charging.

buglawton

Martyn1981 wrote: »

The UK already has lampost charging.

Whilst induction charging is not yet ready, it has already reached levels of efficiency into the 90%'s.

Also we are seeing a resurgence of battery swops / battery leases in China.

So I doubt we'll have to wait till 2090.

In reality, can you confirm that 100% of the spaces are supersized for disability use/access?

I think you'll have to explain the question properly before I can confirm anything about the 3/4 local supermarkets I know about.

All I do know is, driving around once or twice is needed to find a rare parking space and on finding it, it's not spacious.

Martyn1981

buglawton wrote: »

I think you'll have to explain the question properly before I can confirm anything about the 3/4 local supermarkets I know about.

All I do know is, driving around once or twice is needed to find a rare parking space and on finding it, it's not spacious.

Your claim is that all spaces will need chargers as people will park in them regardless, so I've asked if all spaces are now currently super sized for disability access since people currently park in the disabled spaces (in your local supermarkets) despite not being disabled?

Herzlos

Assuming that supermarket chargers aren't viable for you somehow. Where else do you take the car?
Retail park? Multi-story cars parks? Work car park? Shopping centres? Gym? Cinema?
You could charge at any of them. You can charge literally anywhere that has power (lamp posts), so the only places that it'll be hard to get charged at will be deep into national parks, out on coastal routes, etc.

Even a solar panel on the roof will give you some charge if you live south enough.

It's a pretty well solved problem already, for all but a few very obscure edge cases (Like Adrian), if you don't ignore the solutions.

buglawton wrote: »

Good post but I think you've proved how minority a use-case can be.

You've got it the wrong way round. The minority is people who won't already spend enough time at charging facilities to cover their mileage. Those few will need to change their routine or wait as a fast charger for a big longer than they do at a petrol station now.

Not it's only the 150 mile range cars need charged once a week, as ranges increase the frequency of charging will reduce.

Maybe there's a market for mobile fast charging for those that somehow don't have any access to charging and can't go to a charger. It'd be expensive though.

DrEskimo

buglawton wrote: »

Good post but I think you've proved how minority a use-case can be.

I'm not sure it proves/disproves anything...? Just highlighting that EV ownership is possible even without home charging.

We know from national statistics that 150miles is fairly typical as a weekly mileage, so as battery capacity increases, the need to charge daily, or even weekly is less pressing. I'm sure there are plenty of examples, where people live close to a charger, have charging at work, or can use chargers at pubic places that they visit as a matter of routine (gym, food shop, etc.).

I originally was going to go for a 24kWh Zoe, but even for my needs of 50miles a week, it would have been a stretch to consider without home charging. A 42kWh Zoe makes it a non-issue instantly. It even opens up the possibility of replacing our ICE in our particular circumstance. Again, one person commuting by train, and one having local work commutes <30miles is not extraordinary!

The other important point was that it would only be temporary. I was happy to do this in the interim knowing that it was highly likely in the near future that I would be moving to a house where home charging was possible.

buglawton

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Your claim is that all spaces will need chargers as people will park in them regardless, so I've asked if all spaces are now currently super sized for disability access since people currently park in the disabled spaces (in your local supermarkets) despite not being disabled?

Like all supermarkets there is a handful of disabled wide slots at those near me.
People hunt for a space, park, leave. If one in 10 bays had a charging point, people would do exactly the same thing, ignoring that they are blocking a not needed charging point, because there are hardly any spare spaces.

No doubt one day there will be charging hose at every supermarket/town car park slot, with all the (shared) electronic gubbins below ground. Same at work. I might live to see that day but it will probably be in an Asian or Nordic country with a focused EV policy. For the UK, expect 2090.

Herzlos

buglawton wrote: »

No doubt one day there will be charging hose at every supermarket/town car park slot, with all the (shared) electronic gubbins below ground. Same at work.

But even at 100% EV ownership you don't need 100% charger coverage. Not that it'd be impossible for everything with marked bays since very few cars in them would need much power for long.
Self driving cars may change that need anyway if they can self organise and self charge, which avoids the selfish use of charging bays.

I might live to see that day but it will probably be in an Asian or Nordic country with a focused EV policy. For the UK, expect 2090.

You won't be able to buy an ICE car from 2040 (legally), but ICE sales will have stopped hugely long before then. Do you really think it's going to take 50 years for the infrastructure to keep up with demand and people will spend decades with cars they can't use?
Every time a car park is built or refitted it'll have EV charging capacity added. Every generation of car will have range and efficiency improvements.

buglawton

Herzlos wrote: »

But even at 100% EV ownership you don't need 100% charger coverage. Not that it'd be impossible for everything with marked bays since very few cars in them would need much power for long.
Self driving cars may change that need anyway if they can self organise and self charge, which avoids the selfish use of charging bays.

You won't be able to buy an ICE car from 2040 (legally), but ICE sales will have stopped hugely long before then. Do you really think it's going to take 50 years for the infrastructure to keep up with demand and people will spend decades with cars they can't use?
Every time a car park is built or refitted it'll have EV charging capacity added. Every generation of car will have range and efficiency improvements.

Nope, I'm expecting the go-EV date to be constantly shunted back.

Technically a charging hose not needed at every single bay, true. But such car parks will have a massive competitive advantage. A charging hose is cheap and if a group of hoses are connected to a substation with all the electronics, it'll automatically free a virtual charging point elsewhere once an allotted charge has been done.

Plenty of technical solutions but ain't gonna happen in a hurry without real government policy input.

AdrianC

Herzlos wrote: »

You won't be able to buy an ICE car from 2040 (legally)

Not quite true, even if you qualify that to new vehicles.

The government has a formal goal of zero new IC cars by 2040, with <50g/km vehicles forming 50% of cars, 40% of vans by 2030. But - even now, more than 20 years away from that date - there is no "ban" being talked about.

The most recent government policy doc - this July - talks about the “majority” of new cars and vans sold in 2040 will be completely zero emissions, and all new cars will have zero emissions “capability”.
https://www.ft.com/content/30f7e328-8372-11e8-96dd-fa565ec55929

The UK alone is not a big enough market to drive availability alone, anyway. Europe, together, maybe... but...

Meanwhile, the extent of the farce of subsidies for plug-in hybrids is undeniable...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46152853

BBC wrote:

Mileage records from 1,500 models, including Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Volvo vehicles, showed an average real-world mpg of 39.27, against an average manufacturer advertised mpg of 129.68.

...which is as much a failure of the way in which the old NEDC testing dealt with hybrids (plug-in or not) as anything more.

And remember, because the vast majority of those hybrids have been developed for global markets which are diesel-averse (especially the US and Japan), they're petrol - so are using more fuel than the non-hybrid diesel-only equivalent, even without factoring the extra weight in.