The big fat Electric Vehicle bashing thread.

[Deleted User]

And if you think I'm being nit picking or biased, then let's hear from Zap / Gov on the situation:



And then the confusion over pricing and different network providers:




And let's not forget people with different needs - I find a lot of the EV owners have an "I'm alright jack" attitude because it works for them without considering other people and their different needs from transport. Examples in this thread like "I just charge at home" when 40% can't, "I get free elec from my solar panels" when 97% of houses don't have them, "I got £25k at 2% on my mortgage" when only 28% of houses (not people) have a mortgage and many can't get finance on that scale.

You said "stuff happens" when I referred to experiences drivers faced charging - what if those "stuff happens" things are happening to face additional challenges in their life? 



Source:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6038f899d3bf7f039403e924/Zap-Map.pdf

Martyn1981

Flight3287462 said:

Jeez this thread is like being at gathering of newly converted Jehovah Witnesses on an urgent quest to convert the nonbelievers.

BEV owners get paid by the Illuminati to post positive comments. [But don't tell anyone.]

Bonniepurple

yessuz said:

Deleted_User said:

yessuz said:

Situation with the public chargers near you NOW does not mean it will be same in a year or two. You might have lamp lost chargers. Or actually you can install stand alone charger at the place (near the street) where you live or whatever. Zap map comments are not made by all users who use the charging point, nor it is most up to date.

Will it though? Public chargers have been around for 10 years and they still don't work as reliably as fuel pumps. No moving parts yet they fail more than fuel pumps! EV owners claim the EV is more reliable because there are fewer moving parts - well the chargers don't seem to follow suit.

Comments earlier in this thread are about how easy it is just to open up Zap map and charge up but the users don't seem to agree. Even when it worked it took one person 15 mins to even start a charge. All those users turned up because the charger was showing as operational on Zap map yet it wasn't.

And the charger I picked on from the comments is not some oddball out of the way charger, it is the nearest rapid charger to the biggest airport outside London on a Shell forecourt, only a few miles from a city centre in a densely populated area among the highest for EV owners in the UK. My area supposedly has the highest ratio of electric chargers to EV's outside London.

yessuz said:

But you argument about planning os just wrong. Instead of 25 miles commute it became 80... And this has to be problem exactly why? Cars do 300 miles on a single charge easily these days, even in winter. So how some odd 80 mile journey suddenly becomes an issue?!

Again based on comments earlier in this thread telling me that the average driver does 20 miles per day so can charge up once a week - no they can't, you simply can't allow an EV to go to near empty like an ICE when you need to have your car available for a short notice / emergency journey. That effectively reduces the range of the car - I had to do 55 extra miles without any time to charge - on a 200 mile range EV that means effectively it is only 145 miles range if I need to keep 55 miles in reserve for emergencies or short notice.

I once had to drive 240 miles to Portsmouth following a phone call from a family member in an emergency - I'd need to keep my EV topped up to max every day - I don't have home charging so I have to rely on those public chargers that don't seem to work.

yessuz said:

1) !!!!!! happens. But it does not mean that this happens absolutely every time amd with everyone. But there are many other options. You can have ICE, run on fumes and when arrive at the pumps - it's not operating. 
2) 3) and 4) same one. You might come to pump and it not working. You should not take some anecdotal events as a constant 

5) eh!? 

If you want a really good channel for EVs, then watch Bjorn Nyland from Norway. He does various EVs and cruicially - a 1000 km (600+ miles) challenge. This one is particularly good if you want to understand HOW this works and how ot is different mindset to ICE

1, 2, 3, 4 - yes I've drove past a fuel station and see a sign saying closed but didn't need to stop and get out of the car and spend 15+mins faffing about to realise I wasn't going to get fuel. One of the comments said 5th charger they had tried that night - that doesn't happen with fuel pumps, it is not a !!!! happens scenario it is a total lack of decent infrastructure.

5 - Not sure where you live but car jacking is a daily occurrence where I live with over 400 per year and 6,000 annual car thefts - it is something we are all aware of and take precautions - I wouldn't feel safe going to an unattended charger in a empty / dark street / car park with my shiny new EV. 

Firstly, for example All tesla superchargers work flawlessly. Moreover, you can wee each and every supercharge occupation (how many stalls remaining). Other manufacturers have similar info with other networks. main point being that you use fast chargers only when needed and for normal charges (99% of the time) you use slow one at home.

Wat is more sinister is that You nit-picked comments (only bad ones!) - tell us which charger you chose for the comments!?) And what is even wotse - these are from different chargers/networks and some of them are on the completely different systems/standards (cvs and chademo for example) and only one of them is compatible with the specific car. Once again, you just nit-pick bad comments, and some of them are irrelevant.  Show here, which ones you picked.
Moreover all EVs (new ones) have certain networks already coded into the sat nav (kia ev6, hiunday iconiq 5, others). So that again, in this case shows that it is not necessary to use zap-map. By the way, zap map does not show all the charging points

And if you really want to stick to zapmap, then I can tell you that nearest public charger has 37 comments, of which only 1 is stating that it was not working, followed by another few days later that it is working fine... And these are like 1 year old. And shedloads of good comments. Same is for the nearest fast chargers, which had issues in the past but now works fine. So again - nitpicking

Secondly, cars have let's say 300 miles range. Even odd longer commute is perfectly fine. You can charge you car when you need. If you live in Scottish highlands and nearest petrol station is 30 odd miles away you never keep you fuel tank below that range, do you?
I also once drove across Europe. So based on that I should never get an EV? You drive when you need and stop at nearest fast charger to top up in order to reach your destination. And on contrary what you are saying here, we known that public chargers do work, especially the fast ones.

And for the last bit: 1, 2, 3, 4 - you just nit-pick bad comments. Until proven different. Btw - when I come to charger, it works. Miracles happen I suppose.
And for 5 - well bad luck then.  Use chargers during daylight or when they are at well illuminated area? I am not mentioning that you can lock/unlock cars with phones these days (as well as block from driving) and in worst case there's insurance for that. Never had a single issue with parking/charging in various areas. But I do not use a steering wheel lock t-bar either.

In short - if you want to find negatives, and if you will look for them, yeah, you will find. But this does not reflect a reality.

Either that is the reason why the chargers aren’t working or a novel approach to electricity generation!

ElefantEd

One point regarding the negative comments on Zap-Map. You are far more likely to leave a negative comment than a positive one saying that all went smoothly, because that's what you expect. I am guilty of this myself! Partly it's human nature, partly that telling people that a charger isn't working is far more useful than telling people that it is. And you will likely get multiple people complaining about the same charger in a short space.

So the zap-map comments are not likely to be representative of the overall experience of that charger, or of chargers in general.

Petriix

There are numerous factors which impact the practicality of EVs for each unique situation. Some of these are more imaginary while others are very real.

I wouldn't currently advise anyone without access to reliable, cheap (or free) charging to switch to an EV. I would, however, recommend being creative about addressing that possibility. If you can adapt your front garden to allow home charging then it's definitely imaginary to claim that as a limiting factor.

One significant oversight from all these tales of woe about the public charging infrastructure is simply that most people only very occasionally have any requirement to actually interact with it. That probably helps to explain why so many people seem to make the novice errors of poor planning or just assuming that a charger shown on a map will be available and reliable.

Another factor is that services like Zap-Map are more used to share useful information than provide a live status of the whole network. People are vastly more likely to report an issues than a successful charge. Then a charger will stay showing 'issues reported' until someone else reports a successful charge - even if the issue was actually user error, a failure of their own equipment (car or cable etc.), or just a temporary glitch.

As you become familiar with the various charging options, you learn which ones to avoid, which ones to consider and which ones you can depend on. Just because it's confusing, doesn't make it impossible. 

Some of us are happy to become more flexible in order to gain the benefits of driving EVs. My 400 mile round trip this weekend has ended up costing about £8. I don't mind having to do a bit of creative thinking to achieve that. 

yessuz

[Deleted User] said:

yessuz said:

Wat is more sinister is that You nit-picked comments (only bad ones!) - tell us which charger you chose for the comments!?) And what is even wotse - these are from different chargers/networks and some of them are on the completely different systems/standards (cvs and chademo for example) and only one of them is compatible with the specific car. Once again, you just nit-pick bad comments, and some of them are irrelevant.  Show here, which ones you picked.

I didn't need to nit pick comments, even the successful ones had a negative slant.

You have just highlighted another problem, the compatibility - that just makes things worse when you say only one of them is compatible with a specific car but I'm not sure how that negates all the bad experiences people have had? How do these chargers being on different networks make the issues drivers were having any better?

The charging station I used in the example has the 3 main types of charger - I'm no expert in the types but I guess most EV's should be able to use one of these 3?




Still none of them working when I checked again this morning - how hard can it be to supply electricity to a box?

No, you nitpick bad comments only.
And regarding the standards, there are two, and in future only ccs/type 2 will be there. And you put comments from chademo. That is irrelevant. That's why I am saying that you nitpick bad ones only.

Again - public charger near me. 37 comments, only one that it was not working a year ago.

[Deleted User]

Petriix said:

One significant oversight from all these tales of woe about the public charging infrastructure is simply that most people only very occasionally have any requirement to actually interact with it. That probably helps to explain why so many people seem to make the novice errors of poor planning or just assuming that a charger shown on a map will be available and reliable.

This is a significant point and relates to the current situation with the earlier adopters of EV's being those fortunate enough to have the ability to home charge. I had a Google and found a Which article that said 93% of EV owners in the UK can charge at home, so clearly those currently choosing and EV have the facilities to make it easier. 

That won't be the case when mass adoption occurs so these supposedly infrequent interactions with public chargers (15%) will change given that an estimated 40% won't be able to charge at home rather than the current 7% of owners. Potentially 50-70% will need to use public chargers if you extrapolate those numbers.

It shouldn't be too much to expect a charger shown on a map is available and reliable, as I said in an early post, how difficult can it be to provide electricity from a box - they should be aiming at 99.99% uptime for these devices and that isn't an unreasonable ask of a modern electronic device.

Petriix said:

As you become familiar with the various charging options, you learn which ones to avoid, which ones to consider and which ones you can depend on. Just because it's confusing, doesn't make it impossible. 

Same point as above, why would anybody need to learn to avoid chargers? They should just work first time every time. Novices and experts alike should be able to use a public charging stations, it should be as simple as plugging the kettle and not require a level of expertise.

In particular my earlier comment about one-third of disabled EV users having difficulty finding a suitable charging location. 

Currently the 1.2% of all car owners in the UK that have an EV are likely to be people where it works well with their lifestyle, budget, facilities and transport needs. They are also willing and able early adopters that are prepared to go the extra mile to make it work for them.

The other 98.8% of the car owners that haven't yet moved to EV will have vastly different needs, facilities and capabilities than the 1.2% early adopters.

Just a reminder - I'm not anti EV, I would absolutely make a Tesla Model X work for me if I was in the market for a £50k 2nd hand car, but I don't think we are approaching the next decade correctly if we are sitting back saying there is nothing wrong with the current EV charging infrastructure and all the issues around reliability, availability, compatibility are ok.

Current EV owners should be championing an improvement rather than accepting the status quo and saying it is all ok, "look at my local charger with 37 positive comments" and "my 1 trip to xyz that was perfect" - you represent the needs and abilities of just 1.2% of motorists so you are far from being a representative sample of the population of drivers.

[Deleted User]

yessuz said:

No, you nitpick bad comments only.
And regarding the standards, there are two, and in future only ccs/type 2 will be there. And you put comments from chademo. That is irrelevant. That's why I am saying that you nitpick bad ones only.

Again - public charger near me. 37 comments, only one that it was not working a year ago.

That charger in my example hasn't been working since I last checked on the 7th May.

8 days out of service is not nit-picking. The next nearest charger from that provider is also showing 3 connectors faulted, the next showing 1 of 2 faulted.

Out of 5 fast or rapid chargers (>7kW) in a 5 mile radius of me all are out of service except for 2 of which 1 has a partial fault and the other is a Tesla dealership and service centre with only 4 of 8 operational. 

yessuz

It does not matter what provider is there

 It's like to look at status of all shell petrol stations around and do not take the esso, tesco, Morrison's, Saintsbury's and others into account.

And of course one single anecdotal case =100% of all others. All ev owners who use chargers and have no issues is a non-argument. Gotcha

Get a bus ticket then I suppose  

Yet again you are not buying new car anyway, so why should you care at all?

Ps.s those tesla ones - I can guarantee that All of them are operational.  Tesla shows how many are free and not occupied. I yet to see tesla charger to be out of order 

But whatever, you agenda is clear here

[Deleted User]

yessuz said:

It does not matter what provider is there

 It's like to look at status of all shell petrol stations around and do not take the esso, tesco, Morrison's, Saintsbury's and others into account.

In the 5 mile radius search I've included all providers so I have taken others into account. My comments were two separate observations, the GeniePoint which was my nearest has been out of action of at least 8 days and the next 2 nearest GeniePoint are out of action - more than 5 miles away.

In a 5 mile radius I included all providers, Instavolt had 1 of 2 working at a location, other than that just the Tesla only site.....

yessuz said:

Ps.s those tesla ones - I can guarantee that All of them are operational.  Tesla shows how many are free and not occupied. I yet to see tesla charger to be out of order 

That comment looks a bit silly now when an actual Tesla owner reported this recently at the station I was referring to:



You aren't doing EV ownership any favours when you are in complete denial that a Tesla supercharger could be out of service it just diminishes the value of everything you are saying. There are lots of comments on the location saying it was slow and they were getting only 57kWh despite being advertised as 250kWh.

I care because I want to own an EV and most likely my next car change in 3-5 years will be EV if the current situation improves.

And my agenda is as per my earlier post, make sure the public challenge the current situation and demand better support and infrastructure for EV's instead of the dream world that some current EV owners seem to live in where they think 100% of chargers are working 24/7 and everything will be ok.

As I said, current EV owners represent only 1.2% of all car owners, your experiences can't count for the 98.8% of other car owners that have different needs, facilities and abilities.

You still haven't commented on the difficulties for disabled drivers I mentioned earlier?