EVs - are we going to be forced into this before time?

henry24

Maybe you can store electricity but how do you store enough for maybe days. When I travel to work I pass wind turbines that haven't moved for days due to lack of wind 
I agree some plastic is unnecessary but I'm writing this on my phone how will that be made without oil by products. I'll try and find the list of things made from oil so you can explain how we manage without them 

[Deleted User]

henry24 said:

Maybe you can store electricity but how do you store enough for maybe days. When I travel to work I pass wind turbines that haven't moved for days due to lack of wind 
I agree some plastic is unnecessary but I'm writing this on my phone how will that be made without oil by products. I'll try and find the list of things made from oil so you can explain how we manage without them 

Tesla already make a storage bank using older EV batteries for charge/recharge, you can use pump stations etc. You don't need to store it for days.

If you're driving to work and taking time to carefully check each one hasn't moved at all vs the last time you passed then you should pay more attention to the road. They may well turn when you're not around and they just happen to stop in a similar position.

Trying to suggest that what we do now, is what will be the case in 2030 is silly.

[Deleted User]

TooManyPoints said:

It can take a bit of planning but the necessity of a 40 minute stop every 150 miles is not exactly a hardship...

Try telling that to a couple with two toddlers and a dog in the back.

...otherwise it's a case of finding a public charger to use, and there are many to choose from.

At a rough count, within a two mile radius of my house (in a well populated area) I reckon there are a dozen (points, not sites) tops. I'll be generous and say 20. That's 20 in 12 square miles. In that same area I estimate (going on the average population of my local authority area) there are about 60,000 residents. Even at one car for every six people (probably an underestimate) that's 10,000 vehicles chasing each charging point. Not what I'd call "plenty to choose from".

This strategy will transpire to be a monumental folly, alongside the utter foolishness and abrogation of responsibility exhibited by successive governments with our energy policy (or lack thereof). This country sits on coal and gas and was a world leader in nuclear energy production. Yet in the coming months most people will be hit with energy bills that are set to double or treble and next winter for many on low incomes it really will be a choice between heating or eating.. The reason for this is because over 50% of its electricity is generated from gas supplied from countries who, let's be kind and say do not have the UK's best interests at heart. Another 10% comes from burning freshly felled timber, processed and shipped 5,000 miles to be burned in Yorkshire. Meantime ICE cars are to be banned in eight years time and huge extra demand will be placed on those electricity supplies. And all the time China continues to burn more coal than the rest of the world combined. It would be an absolute joke if it were not so serious and usually be filed under "you couldn't make it up".

What you "reckon" may not tally up with reality / what you could find if you looked at a map of charge points. Not everyone needs to charge their car at the same time, just as not everyone fills up with fuel at the same time.

2030 is nearly 9 years away and no-one is suggesting on 1/1/2030 every ICE will be banned, it is just the sale of new ones. ICE cars made in the late 2020s will be running to 2040, maybe 2050 with good maintenance, the only factor will be whether you can get fuel or parts.

[Deleted User]

sheramber said:

What do those who live in flats  and  those who cannot park on their own drive. Will there be lengths on cable running down buildings  or across pavements? Not likely to be allowed so wha is the answer? 

How long do you have wait when there are 6 people in front of you wanting to 'refill' to continue there journey of  possibly hundreds of miles if going on holiday.

Do you want to spend time on your holiday searching out charging points and again possibly waiting in a queue.?

There will need to be a lot of infrastructure put in place before it becomes practical for everyone.

1) Use a public point e.g. the flat car park could have 1 point installed per 5 flats or whatever. Consumer demand will lead it to be a requirement. Some form of wireless charging might be possible in 2030 - we have been able to charge toothbrushes and phones this way for years, 9 years is a long time.

2) Assuming the structure now will be the same in 2030 and beyond is not a valid argument. EV charging will replace fuel stations, you'll have tens of thousands of them by then

3) Do you plan your holiday looking for fuel stations? Replace fuel stations in 2022 with EV in 2030. By then you will be using EV with 1000+ mile ranges that charge a decent amount in 15 minutes, you will be planning your holiday around trying to use the fuel stations by 2030 while EV drivers have a huge choice

4) Yes and people are well aware of that, it will be a lot different by 2030

Herzlos

Penelopa.Pitstop said:

1. It's in no way practical or convenient to stop every 150 miles for minimum of 40 minutes, assuming no one else is occupying charging station and it's not broken. It you can't charge, you have to look for another charging point while running low on "fuel".

Electric cars might be fine if you driving around your area, but certainly not for weekend trips or longer euro-trips. Going to camp site 100 miles away and no electricity there, how do I go back? Have to waste time to find a way to charge my car. I drive every summer min. 1000 miles one way and electric car will never be good for that. I will be that stubborn person, that will keep diesel/petrol car as long as possible. I loved 3.0 V6 diesel, it could take me across Europe on one tank.

150 miles is 2 hours @ 75mph.
Fast chargers should get you up to ~80% range in 30 minutes at most.
As demand for EV's increases, more chargers will become available. 

Anyone on a Euro road trip will presumably be passing something that resembles a petrol station or service station every few hours.
We're already at EV's with 400+ mile ranges, give it another 10 years and they'll be nearly double.

1000 miles one way is going to be very different in an older EV, sure, especially with a caravan. But it's going to impact almost no-one.
Most people will presumably also want to stop every 3-4 hours to stretch their legs, grab some food etc, so it's not the big concern you think it is.

Ditto with the hypothetical "what if I need to drive 100 miles into the middle of nowhere, with no power anywhere and then get home". I'm sure that right now you could go up into the highlands and figure out a route that would get you completely stuck with an EV with 100 mile range. But with a 200 mile range that'd be much harder.
Realistically you may need to adjust route slightly to get it to work, but I'd be stunned if you couldn't find available power within maybe 20-50 miles of anywhere you'd camp.

https://www.zap-map.com/live/ is a map of EV charging points, and I can't see any reasonable route into the highlands that doesn't go near something.
Most of the islands have charging stations, and even somewhere like Campeltown has 2, with another 3 you'd need to pass to get to the peninsula.

And that's just dedicated EV charging. With an 2kw 3-pin charger you should be able to recharge literally anywhere with electricity.

For those really extreme cases, you could always get some solar panels ("ah, but what if I want to go camping at night in the middle of winter?").

In that case, you might need to take a generator with you.

2. Most people don't, but there are people driving longer distances than school, shop, work around corner.

Sure, but the average UK drivers mileage is 7800/year or about 20 miles/day. To most drivers an EV is a total non issue with having to recharge it once or twice a fortnight.

henry24 said:

Just a couple of points I don't understand we get told we can rely on wind power for our electricity but what happens when the wind doesn't blow, it's not that many weeks ago they had to start a coal fired power station as the wind wasn't blowing. 2nd thing when they refine oil the by products make about 6000 other things so how will these things be made 

Wave power is a lot more consistent.
There's also various energy storage mechanisms, simple stuff like batteries and pumped water storage where you use excess electricity to pump water to the top of a dam and then when you need electricity to let it run back down to the bottom and drive turbines.

born_again

ElefantEd said:

You can store energy from times when there is excess wind/solar energy and use it when there are lows. Some countries (Costa Rica, Iceland) already use 100% renewable energy. The wind is always blowing somewhere!

Usually out of a politicians orifice.

Yes wind will be blowing somewhere, but we do not have a world connected by power cables to move it around. Then look at the current Gas situation. Always a country somewhere that will hold the rest of the world to ransom.

Why not fit every roof in the UK with Solar panels & battery storage. 

MacPingu1986

Penelopa.Pitstop said:

Petriix said:

Let's dispel a few myths:

1. EVs can't do long journeys... Well there is such a thing as a rapid charger (of which there are thousands throughout the UK). It can take a bit of planning but the necessity of a 40 minute stop every 150 miles is not exactly a hardship. And, guess what, you don't have to drain your battery by driving everywhere at 70+.
2. People who can't charge at home can't have an EV... Except most people don't drive 200 miles per day, every day. With average mileage of 10k per year, that's less than 30 miles per day so one full charge per week to 10 days. In practice we charge a small amount whenever we can. 40% of my charging is free from supermarkets. People can often charge at work, otherwise it's a case of finding a public charger to use, and there are many to choose from.
3. EVs are expensive to charge... Only if you solely rely on rapid chargers or have an extortionate home electricity tariff. Octopus are still accepting people onto their Go tariff for EVs. It's 7.5p off peak now. That's about 2p per mile in an EV.

Using an Audi Etron as an example of EV efficiency is a bit like using a Landrover as an example for MPG. I'm averaging around 3.8 miles per kWh in total over 10k miles. It's cost under £120 in charging, although I do put quite a lot of effort into minimising the cost where others wouldn't bother.

The fact is that EVs would be impractical for a small proportion of drivers and they are currently financially out of reach for many. As longer range EVs hit the market (range seems to be doubling every 3-4 years), there will be more options for everyone and far less need to really think about charging.

1. It's in no way practical or convenient to stop every 150 miles for minimum of 40 minutes, assuming no one else is occupying charging station and it's not broken. It you can't charge, you have to look for another charging point while running low on "fuel". Electric cars might be fine if you driving around your area, but certainly not for weekend trips or longer euro-trips. Going to camp site 100 miles away and no electricity there, how do I go back? Have to waste time to find a way to charge my car. I drive every summer min. 1000 miles one way and electric car will never be good for that. I will be that stubborn person, that will keep diesel/petrol car as long as possible. I loved 3.0 V6 diesel, it could take me across Europe on one tank.

2. Most people don't, but there are people driving longer distances than school, shop, work around corner.

3. What about others without driveways and charging points at work?

BTW, there are no public charging points in my area. I haven't seen any on the street or supermarket car park. And it's town within M25.

If ability drive 500+ miles with no or next to no stopping is *the* key factor in a car choice then sure - EV's won't fit the bill for some time and ICE may remain their preference, but that's only an issue for a very small % of people. Most people overwhelmingly just use their car for short local journeys and can factor in stopping time to charge and stretch legs on the occasional long journey.

For people without driveways or work chargepoints... there are other options like charging the car at the supermarket on the Sunday shop, points installed in local car parks etc... there's an sustained roll out of charging infrastructure being built across the UK. Some people will be early adopters, some late adopters, but that's OK - petrol stations arn't vanishing anytime soon either.

MattMattMattUK

henry24 said:

Maybe you can store electricity but how do you store enough for maybe days. When I travel to work I pass wind turbines that haven't moved for days due to lack of wind 

Battery, gravity water storage, you also have a diversity of supply, so nuclear, wind, solar, some tidal and hydro and yes some gas for at least the next 30 years. 

henry24 said:

I agree some plastic is unnecessary but I'm writing this on my phone how will that be made without oil by products. I'll try and find the list of things made from oil so you can explain how we manage without them 

The vast majority of plastic is unnecessary, cheaper certainly, but perfectly viable alternatives exist. Phones for example now contain more metal and ceramics as part of the body, although still do contain plastic, nearly all plastic could be eliminated from food packaging relatively easily, it would somewhat reduce convenience for a limited number of products and would increase costs as the environmentally friendly alternatives are somewhat more expensive, although that should change as production fully scales. 

I agree there are some cases where we absolutely need petro-chemicals, plastics and fossil fuel by-products, but if we eliminate the usage where there are alternatives then that will be enough to stop the temperature rising too much, as well as significantly reducing environmental degradation. 

Belenus

Deleted_User said:...

1) Use a public point e.g. the flat car park could have 1 point installed per 5 flats or whatever. Consumer demand will lead it to be a requirement. Some form of wireless charging might be possible in 2030 - we have been able to charge toothbrushes and phones this way for years, 9 years is a long time.

I can see a possible flaw in that.

Resident 1 gets home from work first, parks his car at the charging point, plugs it in and leaves it there until he wants to go to work the following morning.

The other 4 residents who arrive home later are possibly unable to charge their cars that day if all the other charging points are also occupied long after the cars are fully charged.

Disciplined usage rules and rotas etc could be agreed but there will always be some selfish or bloody minded person who will not follow the rules.

Maybe it will be better to have a dedicated charge point for each flat or a charge point at every parking space.

henry24

The other thing with a roster at flats could be who's going to be the one getting up at 2am to charge the car or you agree one person has it each night but then you have a long journey and still have 3 days before it's your turn