The big fat Electric Vehicle bashing thread.

Tranboy

I don't know if this is old news but I've just been on the Eon next website  and they have a tariff called Eon next drive that claims to cost 4p per kwh between midnight and 4am. It's a Vestel Ev04 charger that runs 7.4 kw on single phase with £949 for installation.

Petriix

Tranboy said:

I don't know if this is old news but I've just been on the Eon next website  and they have a tariff called Eon next drive that claims to cost 4p per kwh between midnight and 4am. It's a Vestel Ev04 charger that runs 7.4 kw on single phase with £949 for installation.

Sadly it's a bit of scam. They force you to take an extortionate dual fuel tariff, then they give you credit to bring your EV charging down to 4p per kWh for those 4 hours. Your home usage is all at the peak rate. Not a good deal at all, unless your home electricity is practically nothing.

Tranboy

Ah well, another thing too good to be true. I've been trying to find the tariff rate for their online v14 as they seem to reckon it will be cheaper when my fix ends and I default to the SVR. Should I do nothing in light of Eon next being rather loose with the facts....

grumiofoundation

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. 

Your logic doesn't really make sense to me.

16 pumps, x 5 minutes per car = 192 cars I understand (although does assume all pumps in constant use which is obviously not the case).

Assuming people need 30 minutes per charge thats 96 chargers. 
 
Not sure where the claim that this therefore means more than 192 charging points are required comes from? If there are enough chargers the average charge time will average out and start to approach the time needed to charge the battery, I thought that was the point at discussion of how many chargers are actually needed? You can't apply an overinflated time due to there not being enough chargers to a calculation of how many chargers are actually needed. 

That would like campaigning for all motorway services to have 96 pumps because there were drivers queuing half an hour for petrol earlier this year. 


Edit: And regarding the range this is not really a relevant point for a couple of reasons - 1) at the point the majority of cars on the road are electric the % of electric cars with <300 mile range will be much lower than than it is currently and 2) a car with a smaller range takes less time to charge so will not block a charger for a s longer.

ComicGeek

grumiofoundation 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. 

Your logic doesn't really make sense to me.

16 pumps, x 5 minutes per car = 192 cars I understand (although does assume all pumps in constant use which is obviously not the case).

Assuming people need 30 minutes per charge thats 96 chargers. 
 
Not sure where the claim that this therefore means more than 192 charging points are required comes from? If there are enough chargers the average charge time will average out and start to approach the time needed to charge the battery, I thought that was the point at discussion of how many chargers are actually needed? You can't apply an overinflated time due to there not being enough chargers to a calculation of how many chargers are actually needed. 

That would like campaigning for all motorway services to have 96 pumps because there were drivers queuing half an hour for petrol earlier this year. 


Edit: And regarding the range this is not really a relevant point for a couple of reasons - 1) at the point the majority of cars on the road are electric the % of electric cars with <300 mile range will be much lower than than it is currently and 2) a car with a smaller range takes less time to charge so will not block a charger for a s longer.

Agreed. And in my case I've gone from guaranteed filling up for 5mins per week to 1 possible charging session of 30mins per year. Completely different profile.

We apply diversities for large district heating systems and electricity distribution systems, whereby the probability of people using energy at the same time significantly reduces as the number of people increases. It's the same here, except also factoring in that most people will be fully charged before starting their journey anyway.

There will be destination points, like Cornwall for example, which will probably need a higher proportion of charge points to cope with the higher tourist numbers expecting to charge before leaving.

TooManyPoints

And of course, none of this has actually explored where the (not inconsiderable) additional supply is to come from (especially when it's dark and/or the wind isn't blowing).

Petriix

TooManyPoints said:

And of course, none of this has actually explored where the (not inconsiderable) additional supply is to come from (especially when it's dark and/or the wind isn't blowing).

Please tell us how much this 'not inconsiderable additional supply' requirement will be. How have you calculated this? 

[Deleted User]

Just to be clear I'm not anti-EV, I'd love a Tesla Model X as I said in an earlier thread but I am pro-EV-truths and I think this thread is actually helping with some of the topics being discussed like this and helping some ultra pro-EV people just be a bit more honest about things... anyways, I'd like some engagement on....

Hidden EV costs.

1. Quote from an earlier post - "I charge my car with solar so it is free"
   Yeah, so how does that work when solar panels take 13-24 year to break even according to an article on the main MSE site?
   
   Also, how does that work when my car is away from home during daylight hours and comes back home for the overnight when there is no sun?
   
   
2. Extra wear and tear - EV cars are on average 250kg heavier - sometimes more, the EV version of the tiny Fiat 500 weighs in at a massive 1400kg. Tyres, brakes, suspension, road surfaces all taking a hit. Must be some extra costs here, heavier cars wear tyres more quickly.
   
   
3. Quote "I pay 5p / 7.5p etc per unit for my overnight charge" - How long do you think cheap rate will exist for overnight? It is cheap now because typically demand overnight is about 10-20GW less than daytime but as we get more EV's charging overnight, that balance will swing the other way and we will end up using more at night than daytime so the cost will be the same as the day rate - currently heading upwards above 30p a unit. That's about 4-6 times that cheap rate you enjoy now - may even end up more expensive at night because there is no solar.

Total grid capacity for EV charging.

So to demonstrate point 3 above I did some maths - please check. Based on the 2019 government figures for all car & vans (not HGV, buses etc) - if all were EV and did 4 miles per kWh then these are the amounts of electricity required to charge them. (I used 2019 because 20/21 are pandemic skewed)

miles per year	333,700,000,000
kWh per year	83,425,000,000
MWh per year	83,425,000
GWh per year	83,425
TWh per year	83
kWh per day	228,561,644
MWh per day	228,562
GWh per day	229
GWh per hour	9.52

So the two key figures - 83 TWh per year compared to the 2019 annual demand for electricity in the UK which was 309 TWh - so we will need to make and supply 25% more electricity with EV's.

Peak winter demand can be up to 60GW at 5-6pm - if all cars charge up evenly throughout the day, we need another 10GW but people won't, they'll plug their cars in at the end of the working day so we could be looking at 20-30 GW around 5-6pm pushing well over the 75GW capacity.

Ok, so we'll all charge overnight from midnight to 5am as per the EV tariffs - so lets say 75% of the 229 GWh per day is pushed into those 5 hours, that would increase demand by 35GW overnight - taking us well above the typical daytime usage (night is 20+ summer / 30+ winter) - so in winter the overnight charging would hit 65GW which exceeds the current highest daytime peak!

No chance of getting that at 5p a unit - enjoy it while you can!

Not including the fact to we need to generate 10% more than demand to cover transmission losses so the above numbers are on the conservative side. Also 10% charging losses not included. And I've not included lorries and buses because I don't know their miles per kWh. I also used 4 mile per kWh to be optimistic as that is considered very efficient.

So my above numbers are on the low end of estimation.

The government is expecting two thirds of our energy will be renewable by 2030 so we will be relying on solar (none overnight) and wind which will be unpredictable.

Benny2020

"Also, how does that work when my car is away from home during daylight hours and comes back home for the overnight when there is no sun?"

The Sun exists at night.

[Deleted User]

Benny2020 said:

"Also, how does that work when my car is away from home during daylight hours and comes back home for the overnight when there is no sun?"

The Sun exists at night.

I thought it was switched to standby mode by remote control until morning, that's why you see the red light at sunset / sunrise.