The big fat Electric Vehicle bashing thread.

Martyn1981

Herzlos said:

Ibrahim5 said:

Transfer of battery responsibility on to the owner typically takes place at 8 years old. After this point you would either have to cope with a rubbish battery or pay a big repair bill. I would buy an 8+ years old EV but want a big discount. With current prices owners of new EVs get low fuel & VED costs. If prices remain high they also get low depreciation costs. Buyers of old EVs will then get high depreciation, rubbish battery and lots of risk. It's not clever buying old second hand EVs at top prices. I would question whether the owners of newish EVs on this forum are actually trying to artificially inflate second hand prices for their own benefit and cleverly dumping them before the 8 year deadline.

An 8 year warranty doesn't make the battery junk the day after, just like a 3 year mechanical warranty doesn't mean the engine will blow after 37 months. 

The remaining range will be priced in, though at some point it'd degrade below a usable point for everyone. 

It'd certainly be wise for anyone buying an out of warranty EV to test the battery condition before payment though.

11 year old Leafs (which have a pretty primitive battery monitoring system and no cooling) have about half of their original range, so more modern cars with better battery management will likely see less depreciation that that - maybe 3%/year.

I actually suspect it'll be something other than the battery that'll cause most EVs to be scrapped. 

Tesla's 2021 Impact Report has just come out. For their older tech in the S and X models, they are showing about 87% battery capacity after 200k miles (see page 67), they suggest that ICE's are typically scrapped at 200k miles in the US, 150k in Europe. Degradation is actually greatest in year one.

Martyn1981

mgfvvc said:

Benny2020 said:

There isn't enough raw materials for everyone to have an EV, Nickel in particularly short supply.

I think about 50% of world EV battery supply is LFP (Lithium, Iron, Phosphorous), that number might be wrong, but Chinese manufacturers are switching a lot of production to LFP. Tesla is the only Western manufacturer to be using it, as far as I know, but the higher Nickel and Cadmium prices go, the more cars will use LFP. Regular charging to 100% does not degrade LFP batteries in the way that it degrades Nickel/Cadmium chemistries. It might have lower peak output, making it less suitable for high performance vehicles. It may also have a slightly lower energy density until CATL's latest battery comes out with an 80% (IIRC) increase in energy density, later this year.
Sodium Ions, sulphur cathodes, graphene cathodes and solid state batteries may be the next big thing in batteries, but they haven't graduated from pie in the sky yet.

Yes to everything you said. Multiple types of batt technology, and more going forward. LFP was, I believe in some sort of Chinese patent protection, which is now ending, so hence expect to see much more of it.

Also a need to move away from Cobalt, since some of it is produced using child labour, a point that the oil industry has made much of recently with the roll out of EV's, but seemed to worry them little when using it to produce low sulphur petrol and diesel in their refineries for decades.

Hiya Grumpy, the cost of each Tesla Powerwall II battery is about £8k, plus £1.4k one set of additional hardware, plus the install cost. Go to the Tesla site and seek a quote. But almost impossible to get since demand for their batteries (cars + Powerwalls + Megapacks (3MWh each)) is greater than they can produce.

iwb100

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

Herzlos said:

DB1904 said:

Herzlos said:

I don't mean travelling over 100 miles without stopping is extreme, just that for most people it's not really an issue as they can have a coffee/lunch/explore or whatever. 

I do get that EVs may not be suited to a once a year trek across the country and back (although many EV owners don't find it a problem), but I'm not sure it's that big a deal to that many people given the inconvenience is twice a year. It's also worth noting that many households have multiple cars, so many people have the option of using the other ICE car for the holiday road trip.


As for freedom, people can already live and visit where they want; they just tend to want to live close to work and shop close to home and so on.

I'm not convinced anyone can get 12p/mile out of an ICE car now.  50mpg at £1.50/l is 14p/mile

Explore a motorway services. Are you serious?

Be a bit more imaginative. You can charge places that aren't motorway services, so break road trips up by stopping at nice places whilst you charge. 

After 2 hours sat in a car then a short walk around a lake or beach or whatever will do everyone good. We usually do that when traveling with the kids anyway.

 But most people can’t be imaginative. If your journey is on a bank holiday down the M6 and M5 for example with your family and all and sundry are also on the road you aren’t going to get people taking detours. They need to get from Cumbria to Cornwall or wherever and they aren’t driving miles out of their way with their young kids in tow. So you need an infrastructure to support the weight of motorway traffic when the majority of it is EVs that allows people either far greater range than exists or simply has charging points in sufficient numbers to support the on road traffic in these sorts of peak scenarios. Service stations each need hundreds and hundreds of working charging points. I don’t think that’s contentious or even necessarily the full extent.

Once that happens I think majority EV ownership might become viable. But it’s an infrastructure issue. And as much as you now talk about ‘oh change your route and lifestyle to accommodate it’ that doesn’t work for most people and also doesn’t work as the number of EVs on the road increases. You aren’t going to want hundreds and hundreds of cars pottering off into Warwick cos they need a charge and it’s better to explore. It’s just backing up problems. People need ready charging on route. I think people can sacrifice charging taking half an hour. Over say 10 minutes to fill up. But they can’t be expected to queue for an hour for a charger then hang around another half hour. Doomed to failure without the infrastructure. 

Obviously that is true but the infrastructure wasn't there for petrol to replace horses. Why didn't that fail?


(I'm not arguing that infrastructure doesn't need improving - it does, and improvement is hit and miss).

Will hundreds of chargers actually be needed at each service station in the long term?
New electric cars have not dissimilar ranges to ICE vehicles. So surely electric cars will only need to charge as regularly* as cars fill up. But as you say takes longer if we use 30 minutes versus 10 minutes would mean 3x the number of rapid chargers needed as petrol pumps?  (Having not been through how many petrol pumps does a service station have 10? 20?) 

*will actually be lower than the number of petrol cars needing to fill up since many cars will charge overnight** and some will never/rarely need to use rapid chargers. 

**this infrastructure needs improving/a solution for those w.o. off-street parking - could argue is actually the bigger issue.

I suspect because the introduction of automobiles was very gradual and had time for the infrastructure to catch up. You now have 30 odd million cars on the road and growing….

I think the problem is bigger than you think. Currently on a long journey like that I’d probably fill up at the services after we’d stopped for a half hour lunch and toilet break. So get to services. Bob in for a sandwich, change and toilet the kids. Back into car, top up at station, which I think on a normal day is under 10 minutes, and then off.

That’s 40 minutes break.

I think you could achieve that in an EV only if there is a charger there and ready waiting for you. Which is obviously the challenge. 

Then you have the problem of what happens when you get where you are going. I’m not convinced that if we are staying with the in laws in rural Devon who don’t have ev charging will be happy for us to plug into their wall sockets…

This is the challenge for infrastructure…it’s fine now for early buyers. It becomes less fine unless the infrastructure improves in line with adoption. And we know already it isn’t. 

As I said I'm not arguing with the need for improved infrastructure (it is improving by the way), but I think you are exaggerating the problems with your claim that 'hundreds and hundreds' of chargers are needed at every service station, maybe I am missing something but I don't see why this many will actually be needed. 

Obviously there is not much anyone can do if the ability to charge a car exists cheaply but people don't take advantage (e.g outside 3-pin plug on a separate circuit costs a few hundred pounds - also useful for any other electric items one might use outside).

At one point we had a charger per every 4 or 5 EVs. Now it’s 1 per 11. And going in the wrong direction. There has been a lot of coverage even within the EV favourable media outlets. It’s becoming a problem for some people already. And that’s still a tiny tiny minority of EV cars out there. Imagine when we are talking 20M on the roads….I think early adopters can only see how it is now. Rather than imagining 5 cars all competing for one charging point. 

All you are doing is repeating that infrastructure needs to keep improving, and needs to improve more than it is - I don't see anyone arguing with that. But I don't see how you arrived at hundreds of chargers being needed at service stations which was your original claim. Any chance you might shed some light on how you arrived at this number?

The average time to get a car through a pump is 5 minutes. At a large services with say 16 pumps that means a max capacity of 192 cars through. 

So to replicate that sort of rate you would need more than 192 charging points. Because as things stand 30 minutes is NOT the average charge time. And you factor in people will disappear leave their car longer. So because the time is longer you have to somewhat reduce the rate. 

That of course assumes ice range and ev range are the same. Which they currently aren’t. It also assumes same behaviour. People are happy to travel on and fill up later. Suspicion is this will be less the case with charging as we already see the behaviour of ev owners being to grab charge more often when the chance presents itself. So busy periods where long motorway journeys are common and queues on motorways likely I suspect that the number of chargers to get even close to fuel times will be in the 100’s. 

ComicGeek

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

Herzlos said:

DB1904 said:

Herzlos said:

I don't mean travelling over 100 miles without stopping is extreme, just that for most people it's not really an issue as they can have a coffee/lunch/explore or whatever. 

I do get that EVs may not be suited to a once a year trek across the country and back (although many EV owners don't find it a problem), but I'm not sure it's that big a deal to that many people given the inconvenience is twice a year. It's also worth noting that many households have multiple cars, so many people have the option of using the other ICE car for the holiday road trip.


As for freedom, people can already live and visit where they want; they just tend to want to live close to work and shop close to home and so on.

I'm not convinced anyone can get 12p/mile out of an ICE car now.  50mpg at £1.50/l is 14p/mile

Explore a motorway services. Are you serious?

Be a bit more imaginative. You can charge places that aren't motorway services, so break road trips up by stopping at nice places whilst you charge. 

After 2 hours sat in a car then a short walk around a lake or beach or whatever will do everyone good. We usually do that when traveling with the kids anyway.

 But most people can’t be imaginative. If your journey is on a bank holiday down the M6 and M5 for example with your family and all and sundry are also on the road you aren’t going to get people taking detours. They need to get from Cumbria to Cornwall or wherever and they aren’t driving miles out of their way with their young kids in tow. So you need an infrastructure to support the weight of motorway traffic when the majority of it is EVs that allows people either far greater range than exists or simply has charging points in sufficient numbers to support the on road traffic in these sorts of peak scenarios. Service stations each need hundreds and hundreds of working charging points. I don’t think that’s contentious or even necessarily the full extent.

Once that happens I think majority EV ownership might become viable. But it’s an infrastructure issue. And as much as you now talk about ‘oh change your route and lifestyle to accommodate it’ that doesn’t work for most people and also doesn’t work as the number of EVs on the road increases. You aren’t going to want hundreds and hundreds of cars pottering off into Warwick cos they need a charge and it’s better to explore. It’s just backing up problems. People need ready charging on route. I think people can sacrifice charging taking half an hour. Over say 10 minutes to fill up. But they can’t be expected to queue for an hour for a charger then hang around another half hour. Doomed to failure without the infrastructure. 

Obviously that is true but the infrastructure wasn't there for petrol to replace horses. Why didn't that fail?


(I'm not arguing that infrastructure doesn't need improving - it does, and improvement is hit and miss).

Will hundreds of chargers actually be needed at each service station in the long term?
New electric cars have not dissimilar ranges to ICE vehicles. So surely electric cars will only need to charge as regularly* as cars fill up. But as you say takes longer if we use 30 minutes versus 10 minutes would mean 3x the number of rapid chargers needed as petrol pumps?  (Having not been through how many petrol pumps does a service station have 10? 20?) 

*will actually be lower than the number of petrol cars needing to fill up since many cars will charge overnight** and some will never/rarely need to use rapid chargers. 

**this infrastructure needs improving/a solution for those w.o. off-street parking - could argue is actually the bigger issue.

I suspect because the introduction of automobiles was very gradual and had time for the infrastructure to catch up. You now have 30 odd million cars on the road and growing….

I think the problem is bigger than you think. Currently on a long journey like that I’d probably fill up at the services after we’d stopped for a half hour lunch and toilet break. So get to services. Bob in for a sandwich, change and toilet the kids. Back into car, top up at station, which I think on a normal day is under 10 minutes, and then off.

That’s 40 minutes break.

I think you could achieve that in an EV only if there is a charger there and ready waiting for you. Which is obviously the challenge. 

Then you have the problem of what happens when you get where you are going. I’m not convinced that if we are staying with the in laws in rural Devon who don’t have ev charging will be happy for us to plug into their wall sockets…

This is the challenge for infrastructure…it’s fine now for early buyers. It becomes less fine unless the infrastructure improves in line with adoption. And we know already it isn’t. 

As I said I'm not arguing with the need for improved infrastructure (it is improving by the way), but I think you are exaggerating the problems with your claim that 'hundreds and hundreds' of chargers are needed at every service station, maybe I am missing something but I don't see why this many will actually be needed. 

Obviously there is not much anyone can do if the ability to charge a car exists cheaply but people don't take advantage (e.g outside 3-pin plug on a separate circuit costs a few hundred pounds - also useful for any other electric items one might use outside).

At one point we had a charger per every 4 or 5 EVs. Now it’s 1 per 11. And going in the wrong direction. There has been a lot of coverage even within the EV favourable media outlets. It’s becoming a problem for some people already. And that’s still a tiny tiny minority of EV cars out there. Imagine when we are talking 20M on the roads….I think early adopters can only see how it is now. Rather than imagining 5 cars all competing for one charging point. 

All you are doing is repeating that infrastructure needs to keep improving, and needs to improve more than it is - I don't see anyone arguing with that. But I don't see how you arrived at hundreds of chargers being needed at service stations which was your original claim. Any chance you might shed some light on how you arrived at this number?

The average time to get a car through a pump is 5 minutes. At a large services with say 16 pumps that means a max capacity of 192 cars through. 

So to replicate that sort of rate you would need more than 192 charging points. Because as things stand 30 minutes is NOT the average charge time. And you factor in people will disappear leave their car longer. So because the time is longer you have to somewhat reduce the rate. 

That of course assumes ice range and ev range are the same. Which they currently aren’t. It also assumes same behaviour. People are happy to travel on and fill up later. Suspicion is this will be less the case with charging as we already see the behaviour of ev owners being to grab charge more often when the chance presents itself. So busy periods where long motorway journeys are common and queues on motorways likely I suspect that the number of chargers to get even close to fuel times will be in the 100’s. 

I disagree. With my previous ICE I had to fill up once a week, sometimes more frequently. I never filled up at motorway service stations as they are the most expensive. For long journeys I would fill up near home at a cheap supermarket, and then near my destination in another cheap forecourt.

I now will probably use a public charger 2/3 times a year. I won't be using chargers at service stations, I will be using chargers at retail parks, restaurants, hotels etc. I might use a service station charger if it's cheap, but it's not going to be.

It's not the same situation. It might be for some people, but definitely not for all. No one is going to build infrastructure that doesn't have queues at the busiest times - roads, trains, airports aren't designed that way either, and we all have to adjust our behaviour/expectations to suit. 

And, if the motorways are busy and I have to drive slower, I can probably get another 60 miles out of my battery!

iwb100

ComicGeek said:

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

Herzlos said:

DB1904 said:

Herzlos said:

I don't mean travelling over 100 miles without stopping is extreme, just that for most people it's not really an issue as they can have a coffee/lunch/explore or whatever. 

I do get that EVs may not be suited to a once a year trek across the country and back (although many EV owners don't find it a problem), but I'm not sure it's that big a deal to that many people given the inconvenience is twice a year. It's also worth noting that many households have multiple cars, so many people have the option of using the other ICE car for the holiday road trip.


As for freedom, people can already live and visit where they want; they just tend to want to live close to work and shop close to home and so on.

I'm not convinced anyone can get 12p/mile out of an ICE car now.  50mpg at £1.50/l is 14p/mile

Explore a motorway services. Are you serious?

Be a bit more imaginative. You can charge places that aren't motorway services, so break road trips up by stopping at nice places whilst you charge. 

After 2 hours sat in a car then a short walk around a lake or beach or whatever will do everyone good. We usually do that when traveling with the kids anyway.

 But most people can’t be imaginative. If your journey is on a bank holiday down the M6 and M5 for example with your family and all and sundry are also on the road you aren’t going to get people taking detours. They need to get from Cumbria to Cornwall or wherever and they aren’t driving miles out of their way with their young kids in tow. So you need an infrastructure to support the weight of motorway traffic when the majority of it is EVs that allows people either far greater range than exists or simply has charging points in sufficient numbers to support the on road traffic in these sorts of peak scenarios. Service stations each need hundreds and hundreds of working charging points. I don’t think that’s contentious or even necessarily the full extent.

Once that happens I think majority EV ownership might become viable. But it’s an infrastructure issue. And as much as you now talk about ‘oh change your route and lifestyle to accommodate it’ that doesn’t work for most people and also doesn’t work as the number of EVs on the road increases. You aren’t going to want hundreds and hundreds of cars pottering off into Warwick cos they need a charge and it’s better to explore. It’s just backing up problems. People need ready charging on route. I think people can sacrifice charging taking half an hour. Over say 10 minutes to fill up. But they can’t be expected to queue for an hour for a charger then hang around another half hour. Doomed to failure without the infrastructure. 

Obviously that is true but the infrastructure wasn't there for petrol to replace horses. Why didn't that fail?


(I'm not arguing that infrastructure doesn't need improving - it does, and improvement is hit and miss).

Will hundreds of chargers actually be needed at each service station in the long term?
New electric cars have not dissimilar ranges to ICE vehicles. So surely electric cars will only need to charge as regularly* as cars fill up. But as you say takes longer if we use 30 minutes versus 10 minutes would mean 3x the number of rapid chargers needed as petrol pumps?  (Having not been through how many petrol pumps does a service station have 10? 20?) 

*will actually be lower than the number of petrol cars needing to fill up since many cars will charge overnight** and some will never/rarely need to use rapid chargers. 

**this infrastructure needs improving/a solution for those w.o. off-street parking - could argue is actually the bigger issue.

I suspect because the introduction of automobiles was very gradual and had time for the infrastructure to catch up. You now have 30 odd million cars on the road and growing….

I think the problem is bigger than you think. Currently on a long journey like that I’d probably fill up at the services after we’d stopped for a half hour lunch and toilet break. So get to services. Bob in for a sandwich, change and toilet the kids. Back into car, top up at station, which I think on a normal day is under 10 minutes, and then off.

That’s 40 minutes break.

I think you could achieve that in an EV only if there is a charger there and ready waiting for you. Which is obviously the challenge. 

Then you have the problem of what happens when you get where you are going. I’m not convinced that if we are staying with the in laws in rural Devon who don’t have ev charging will be happy for us to plug into their wall sockets…

This is the challenge for infrastructure…it’s fine now for early buyers. It becomes less fine unless the infrastructure improves in line with adoption. And we know already it isn’t. 

As I said I'm not arguing with the need for improved infrastructure (it is improving by the way), but I think you are exaggerating the problems with your claim that 'hundreds and hundreds' of chargers are needed at every service station, maybe I am missing something but I don't see why this many will actually be needed. 

Obviously there is not much anyone can do if the ability to charge a car exists cheaply but people don't take advantage (e.g outside 3-pin plug on a separate circuit costs a few hundred pounds - also useful for any other electric items one might use outside).

At one point we had a charger per every 4 or 5 EVs. Now it’s 1 per 11. And going in the wrong direction. There has been a lot of coverage even within the EV favourable media outlets. It’s becoming a problem for some people already. And that’s still a tiny tiny minority of EV cars out there. Imagine when we are talking 20M on the roads….I think early adopters can only see how it is now. Rather than imagining 5 cars all competing for one charging point. 

All you are doing is repeating that infrastructure needs to keep improving, and needs to improve more than it is - I don't see anyone arguing with that. But I don't see how you arrived at hundreds of chargers being needed at service stations which was your original claim. Any chance you might shed some light on how you arrived at this number?

The average time to get a car through a pump is 5 minutes. At a large services with say 16 pumps that means a max capacity of 192 cars through. 

So to replicate that sort of rate you would need more than 192 charging points. Because as things stand 30 minutes is NOT the average charge time. And you factor in people will disappear leave their car longer. So because the time is longer you have to somewhat reduce the rate. 

That of course assumes ice range and ev range are the same. Which they currently aren’t. It also assumes same behaviour. People are happy to travel on and fill up later. Suspicion is this will be less the case with charging as we already see the behaviour of ev owners being to grab charge more often when the chance presents itself. So busy periods where long motorway journeys are common and queues on motorways likely I suspect that the number of chargers to get even close to fuel times will be in the 100’s. 

I disagree. With my previous ICE I had to fill up once a week, sometimes more frequently. I never filled up at motorway service stations as they are the most expensive. For long journeys I would fill up near home at a cheap supermarket, and then near my destination in another cheap forecourt.

I now will probably use a public charger 2/3 times a year. I won't be using chargers at service stations, I will be using chargers at retail parks, restaurants, hotels etc. I might use a service station charger if it's cheap, but it's not going to be.

It's not the same situation. It might be for some people, but definitely not for all. No one is going to build infrastructure that doesn't have queues at the busiest times - roads, trains, airports aren't designed that way either, and we all have to adjust our behaviour/expectations to suit. 

And, if the motorways are busy and I have to drive slower, I can probably get another 60 miles out of my battery!

But see again this is the early adopter thing where charging points are relatively plentiful compared to cars, everyone who buys an ev has one at home (that can’t always be the case in the future) and people have gone in wanting to adapt to an ev and understanding what that is. 

That’s a very very different situation to 25million EVs on the road cos it’s the only choice people have with many who can’t easily charge at home and more people who do those long journeys with their kids in the back who do just fill up when necessary at the motorway services cos it’s convenient. 

I absolutely think it’s doable, I just see little sign of the infrastructure plans to really sort it. 

Ibrahim5

I just think it illustrates how differently people use cars. Our standard family holidays were just over 1000 miles. 1st day North of England to Champagne region of France. 2nd day south of France. I always used to price up flying but the car was a fraction of the price. With electric cars we would just have to fly or go to Llandudno instead of the Cote d'Azur.

iwb100

Ibrahim5 said:

I just think it illustrates how differently people use cars. Our standard family holidays were just over 1000 miles. 1st day North of England to Champagne region of France. 2nd day south of France. I always used to price up flying but the car was a fraction of the price. With electric cars we would just have to fly or go to Llandudno instead of the Cote d'Azur.

I mean there is no reason you’d have to do that IF we have the infrastructure sorted. 

TooManyPoints

It's quite simple really. If you arrive at a filling station and there are two cars in front of you, you will wait perhaps ten minutes maximum. If you do the same at an EV charging point you'll wait probably an hour (plus your own charging time). That's why you need six times as many EV charging points as  you do fuel pumps to see the same throughput. It doesn't matter what the charging habits of those in front of you are. If they are in front of you you have to wait.

Herzlos

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

Herzlos said:

DB1904 said:

Herzlos said:

I don't mean travelling over 100 miles without stopping is extreme, just that for most people it's not really an issue as they can have a coffee/lunch/explore or whatever. 

I do get that EVs may not be suited to a once a year trek across the country and back (although many EV owners don't find it a problem), but I'm not sure it's that big a deal to that many people given the inconvenience is twice a year. It's also worth noting that many households have multiple cars, so many people have the option of using the other ICE car for the holiday road trip.


As for freedom, people can already live and visit where they want; they just tend to want to live close to work and shop close to home and so on.

I'm not convinced anyone can get 12p/mile out of an ICE car now.  50mpg at £1.50/l is 14p/mile

Explore a motorway services. Are you serious?

Be a bit more imaginative. You can charge places that aren't motorway services, so break road trips up by stopping at nice places whilst you charge. 

After 2 hours sat in a car then a short walk around a lake or beach or whatever will do everyone good. We usually do that when traveling with the kids anyway.

 But most people can’t be imaginative. If your journey is on a bank holiday down the M6 and M5 for example with your family and all and sundry are also on the road you aren’t going to get people taking detours. They need to get from Cumbria to Cornwall or wherever and they aren’t driving miles out of their way with their young kids in tow. So you need an infrastructure to support the weight of motorway traffic when the majority of it is EVs that allows people either far greater range than exists or simply has charging points in sufficient numbers to support the on road traffic in these sorts of peak scenarios. Service stations each need hundreds and hundreds of working charging points. I don’t think that’s contentious or even necessarily the full extent.

Once that happens I think majority EV ownership might become viable. But it’s an infrastructure issue. And as much as you now talk about ‘oh change your route and lifestyle to accommodate it’ that doesn’t work for most people and also doesn’t work as the number of EVs on the road increases. You aren’t going to want hundreds and hundreds of cars pottering off into Warwick cos they need a charge and it’s better to explore. It’s just backing up problems. People need ready charging on route. I think people can sacrifice charging taking half an hour. Over say 10 minutes to fill up. But they can’t be expected to queue for an hour for a charger then hang around another half hour. Doomed to failure without the infrastructure. 

Obviously that is true but the infrastructure wasn't there for petrol to replace horses. Why didn't that fail?


(I'm not arguing that infrastructure doesn't need improving - it does, and improvement is hit and miss).

Will hundreds of chargers actually be needed at each service station in the long term?
New electric cars have not dissimilar ranges to ICE vehicles. So surely electric cars will only need to charge as regularly* as cars fill up. But as you say takes longer if we use 30 minutes versus 10 minutes would mean 3x the number of rapid chargers needed as petrol pumps?  (Having not been through how many petrol pumps does a service station have 10? 20?) 

*will actually be lower than the number of petrol cars needing to fill up since many cars will charge overnight** and some will never/rarely need to use rapid chargers. 

**this infrastructure needs improving/a solution for those w.o. off-street parking - could argue is actually the bigger issue.

I suspect because the introduction of automobiles was very gradual and had time for the infrastructure to catch up. You now have 30 odd million cars on the road and growing….

I think the problem is bigger than you think. Currently on a long journey like that I’d probably fill up at the services after we’d stopped for a half hour lunch and toilet break. So get to services. Bob in for a sandwich, change and toilet the kids. Back into car, top up at station, which I think on a normal day is under 10 minutes, and then off.

That’s 40 minutes break.

I think you could achieve that in an EV only if there is a charger there and ready waiting for you. Which is obviously the challenge. 

Then you have the problem of what happens when you get where you are going. I’m not convinced that if we are staying with the in laws in rural Devon who don’t have ev charging will be happy for us to plug into their wall sockets…

This is the challenge for infrastructure…it’s fine now for early buyers. It becomes less fine unless the infrastructure improves in line with adoption. And we know already it isn’t. 

As I said I'm not arguing with the need for improved infrastructure (it is improving by the way), but I think you are exaggerating the problems with your claim that 'hundreds and hundreds' of chargers are needed at every service station, maybe I am missing something but I don't see why this many will actually be needed. 

Obviously there is not much anyone can do if the ability to charge a car exists cheaply but people don't take advantage (e.g outside 3-pin plug on a separate circuit costs a few hundred pounds - also useful for any other electric items one might use outside).

At one point we had a charger per every 4 or 5 EVs. Now it’s 1 per 11. And going in the wrong direction. There has been a lot of coverage even within the EV favourable media outlets. It’s becoming a problem for some people already. And that’s still a tiny tiny minority of EV cars out there. Imagine when we are talking 20M on the roads….I think early adopters can only see how it is now. Rather than imagining 5 cars all competing for one charging point. 

All you are doing is repeating that infrastructure needs to keep improving, and needs to improve more than it is - I don't see anyone arguing with that. But I don't see how you arrived at hundreds of chargers being needed at service stations which was your original claim. Any chance you might shed some light on how you arrived at this number?

The average time to get a car through a pump is 5 minutes. At a large services with say 16 pumps that means a max capacity of 192 cars through. 

So to replicate that sort of rate you would need more than 192 charging points. Because as things stand 30 minutes is NOT the average charge time. And you factor in people will disappear leave their car longer. So because the time is longer you have to somewhat reduce the rate. 

That of course assumes ice range and ev range are the same. Which they currently aren’t. It also assumes same behaviour. People are happy to travel on and fill up later. Suspicion is this will be less the case with charging as we already see the behaviour of ev owners being to grab charge more often when the chance presents itself. So busy periods where long motorway journeys are common and queues on motorways likely I suspect that the number of chargers to get even close to fuel times will be in the 100’s. 

I've never seen a petrol station get all double pumps in use at once, because you can't drive to the front ones whilst the rear ones are being used. I also get the impression that most cars aren't filling the tank but are putting in £5/10/20, especially at service stations where people put enough in to get them home.

Beyond that the math seems fair, but the usage model is totally different; there's nowhere else to get petrol/diesel whereas you can in theory charge anywhere, so a large number of holiday makers can charge at their home and destination, leaving the charging bays for those that need it.

Electric charging is also a lot more dense space wise as you can use regular parking spaces. So a 16 bay forecourt can probably fit nearly 100 spaces in by putting in rows of end on bays. 

We definitely need a lot more infrastructure, but competition will see to that. As soon as a supermarket, shopping centre, restaurant, etc starts losing business because their competition has chargers, they'll catch up too.

Is infrastructure keeping up with the huge increase in demand right now? I don't know. It seems to be up here as most charging bays are empty. I actually see more ICE cars parked in bays than charging EVs up here, but it was probably a bad idea to put a row of EV chargers across from a school.

Thrugelmir

grumiofoundation said:

Thrugelmir said:

grumiofoundation said:

DB1904 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

Herzlos said:

DB1904 said:

Herzlos said:

I don't mean travelling over 100 miles without stopping is extreme, just that for most people it's not really an issue as they can have a coffee/lunch/explore or whatever. 

I do get that EVs may not be suited to a once a year trek across the country and back (although many EV owners don't find it a problem), but I'm not sure it's that big a deal to that many people given the inconvenience is twice a year. It's also worth noting that many households have multiple cars, so many people have the option of using the other ICE car for the holiday road trip.


As for freedom, people can already live and visit where they want; they just tend to want to live close to work and shop close to home and so on.

I'm not convinced anyone can get 12p/mile out of an ICE car now.  50mpg at £1.50/l is 14p/mile

Explore a motorway services. Are you serious?

Be a bit more imaginative. You can charge places that aren't motorway services, so break road trips up by stopping at nice places whilst you charge. 

After 2 hours sat in a car then a short walk around a lake or beach or whatever will do everyone good. We usually do that when traveling with the kids anyway.

 But most people can’t be imaginative. If your journey is on a bank holiday down the M6 and M5 for example with your family and all and sundry are also on the road you aren’t going to get people taking detours. They need to get from Cumbria to Cornwall or wherever and they aren’t driving miles out of their way with their young kids in tow. So you need an infrastructure to support the weight of motorway traffic when the majority of it is EVs that allows people either far greater range than exists or simply has charging points in sufficient numbers to support the on road traffic in these sorts of peak scenarios. Service stations each need hundreds and hundreds of working charging points. I don’t think that’s contentious or even necessarily the full extent.

Once that happens I think majority EV ownership might become viable. But it’s an infrastructure issue. And as much as you now talk about ‘oh change your route and lifestyle to accommodate it’ that doesn’t work for most people and also doesn’t work as the number of EVs on the road increases. You aren’t going to want hundreds and hundreds of cars pottering off into Warwick cos they need a charge and it’s better to explore. It’s just backing up problems. People need ready charging on route. I think people can sacrifice charging taking half an hour. Over say 10 minutes to fill up. But they can’t be expected to queue for an hour for a charger then hang around another half hour. Doomed to failure without the infrastructure. 

Obviously that is true but the infrastructure wasn't there for petrol to replace horses. Why didn't that fail?


(I'm not arguing that infrastructure doesn't need improving - it does, and improvement is hit and miss).

Will hundreds of chargers actually be needed at each service station in the long term?
New electric cars have not dissimilar ranges to ICE vehicles. So surely electric cars will only need to charge as regularly* as cars fill up. But as you say takes longer if we use 30 minutes versus 10 minutes would mean 3x the number of rapid chargers needed as petrol pumps?  (Having not been through how many petrol pumps does a service station have 10? 20?) 

*will actually be lower than the number of petrol cars needing to fill up since many cars will charge overnight** and some will never/rarely need to use rapid chargers. 

**this infrastructure needs improving/a solution for those w.o. off-street parking - could argue is actually the bigger issue.

I suspect because the introduction of automobiles was very gradual and had time for the infrastructure to catch up. You now have 30 odd million cars on the road and growing….

I think the problem is bigger than you think. Currently on a long journey like that I’d probably fill up at the services after we’d stopped for a half hour lunch and toilet break. So get to services. Bob in for a sandwich, change and toilet the kids. Back into car, top up at station, which I think on a normal day is under 10 minutes, and then off.

That’s 40 minutes break.

I think you could achieve that in an EV only if there is a charger there and ready waiting for you. Which is obviously the challenge. 

Then you have the problem of what happens when you get where you are going. I’m not convinced that if we are staying with the in laws in rural Devon who don’t have ev charging will be happy for us to plug into their wall sockets…

This is the challenge for infrastructure…it’s fine now for early buyers. It becomes less fine unless the infrastructure improves in line with adoption. And we know already it isn’t. 

As I said I'm not arguing with the need for improved infrastructure (it is improving by the way), but I think you are exaggerating the problems with your claim that 'hundreds and hundreds' of chargers are needed at every service station, maybe I am missing something but I don't see why this many will actually be needed. 

Obviously there is not much anyone can do if the ability to charge a car exists cheaply but people don't take advantage (e.g outside 3-pin plug on a separate circuit costs a few hundred pounds - also useful for any other electric items one might use outside).

How many do you think will be needed to cope with weekend holiday traffic?

*new electric cars already have similar range - by the point being discussed electric cars ranges will likely be greater

At what cost?  The battery and drive motor account for around a third of the cost of building an EV. That's the stumbling block that needs to be overcome.  Tesla didn't recruit a large number of ex Apple employees for nothing. Selling a branded lifestyle to a cult is easier than selling a plain old motor. Far greater profit margins too. 

Comments about cults come across a bit silly really and don't really add to the discussion.

Some people are happy to pay for a  must have "brand".  That's a fact of life. Something that some companies exploit ruthlessly. As it makes them more profitable. Why would a car manufacturer employ ex Apple employees other than than to tap into the psychology. Corporate US business is ruthless.