EV range

MacPingu1986

MouldyOldDough said:

Deleted_User said:

I don’t like keeping the Trolls fed but I’ll answer the question again. 

For your 90 year old father or whoever lives in a concrete Forrest with no leccy or parking space can simply use a public rapid charger once a week. 

There will be plenty available just like petrol stations now. 

It’s simple really isn’t it?

So. You're accusing me of being a troll - really? 
My father does have a garage but no electricity anywhere near the garage
The local petrol station has no charge points and due to lack of space probably never will 

Again - you're not allowing for the fact that EVs are not restricted to re-charging at petrol stations - your 90 year old father could charge at local charging points where-ever they might be. This could be on a nearby road, a public car park, the supermarket, etc... 

As EVs continue to grow in popularity the charging infrastructure will continue to increase -  as the ICE refuelling infrastructure grew during the birth and growth of ICE cars for mass motor ownership.

Car_54

MacPingu1986 said:

MouldyOldDough said:

Deleted_User said:

I don’t like keeping the Trolls fed but I’ll answer the question again. 

For your 90 year old father or whoever lives in a concrete Forrest with no leccy or parking space can simply use a public rapid charger once a week. 

There will be plenty available just like petrol stations now. 

It’s simple really isn’t it?

So. You're accusing me of being a troll - really? 
My father does have a garage but no electricity anywhere near the garage
The local petrol station has no charge points and due to lack of space probably never will 

As EVs continue to grow in popularity the charging infrastructure will continue to increase -  as the ICE refuelling infrastructure grew during the birth and growth of ICE cars for mass motor ownership.

I don't think anyone doubts that the:infrastructure will grow: the issue is that it is not good enough at present. The installation  programme(s) is lagging behind demand, rather than anticipating and encouraging it.

FWIW the converse of this expansion is that the petrol/diesel infrastructure will shrink, and probably very rapidly when the tipping point is reached. The die-hard ICE users need to be aware of that.

ComicGeek

Car_54 said:

MacPingu1986 said:

MouldyOldDough said:

Deleted_User said:

I don’t like keeping the Trolls fed but I’ll answer the question again. 

For your 90 year old father or whoever lives in a concrete Forrest with no leccy or parking space can simply use a public rapid charger once a week. 

There will be plenty available just like petrol stations now. 

It’s simple really isn’t it?

So. You're accusing me of being a troll - really? 
My father does have a garage but no electricity anywhere near the garage
The local petrol station has no charge points and due to lack of space probably never will 

As EVs continue to grow in popularity the charging infrastructure will continue to increase -  as the ICE refuelling infrastructure grew during the birth and growth of ICE cars for mass motor ownership.

I don't think anyone doubts that the:infrastructure will grow: the issue is that it is not good enough at present. The installation  programme(s) is lagging behind demand, rather than anticipating and encouraging it.

I definitely don't see that local to me - I always look at charging points while I'm driving around, and have never once seen anyone queuing for one. I have driven past many petrol station queues. It's not realistic to have infrastructure that means that there will never be queues for chargers at key locations/times - that's not how any other parts of transport systems are designed.

From the Independent: There were 420,000 pure-electric cars on UK roads at the end of February, according to the comparison website Next Green Car. There were, however, only 29,600 public charge points in the UK on 1 March, according to data company Zap-Map.

So 1 charger per 14 EVs, but not fairly spread across the country. But I, like a lot of EV owners, don't use public chargers on a regular basis so this isn't a very useful statistic - I used one in March/April for 20 mins, probably won't use another this year. I'm not sure anyone has got a handle on how many chargers are actually required, given how infrequently some drivers may use them - so I'm not sure that anyone can really say if the roll-out is on track, ahead or behind, which is a bit worrying!

iwb100

MacPingu1986 said:

MOD - What exactly is the point you're trying to make here? Your argument appears to be that because of the specific situation of your father and his very a-typical driving patterns - that EVs shouldn't be adopted.

But that's not the case, as various other posters have repeatedly explained at length - for the vast majority of car owners these are either not problems at all, or problems that can be easily solved and are small in comparison to the wider benefits of EV ownership.

Home charging makes EV's particularly convenient, but even if home-charging is impossible there are workarounds which most people will be able to utilise in one way or another - charging at work, charging during weekly grocery shop, charging during any other type of trip whilst you run an errand, have a coffee etc... 

For the vast majority of homes with off-street parking, it's not difficult to add charging capacity - chargers are a simple technology, some installations will be more complex than others sure, they'll be the odd parking space some distance from a mains link etc... - but for the most part its easy and straightforward (and will only get more-so with wider adoption)

As EV numbers increase and more people who can’t have home charging or for whatever reason have them and need to charge elsewhere or just choose to the idea of just bobbing out to do some shopping and charging there will become people queueing for the local charger.

This is the thing about infrastructure. It needs to improve because already the ratio of chargers to EVs is dipping considerably and as more adoption is seen we will see a more imperfect situation and a higher demand on each charger per car as more who cannot charge at home enter the market.

Petriix

I'm afraid I can't find any clear information about how many people actually have access to a feasible home EV charging facility. Many articles cite the 60% assumption but none that I've found back this up with clear data. It is, therefore, possible that those of us with access to cheap charging are a minority.

As I've stated many times, I'd only (currently) recommend an EV to someone with reliable access to cheap charging. There are some edge cases with high business mileage where it also makes sense. But, from a money saving perspective, cheap charging is fairly crucial to making the numbers add up.

As also stated many times, those of us with access to cheap charging mostly don't need to use the public charging network very often at all. I've used paid rapid charging exactly 5 times, and paid destination charging just once in 16,000 miles over the last 18 months of EV ownership. 

MouldyOldDough

What about people with poor mobility?
Are we supposed to sit in our cars for the hours that they are on charge for?
The fact is that at the moment - I can call in at my local garage and someone fills my car for me - I am on my way within 5 minutes but if I have to wait an hour plus to top up - what do I do in the meantime?
Also how do I plug my car into the socket?
Will there be attendants to help? 

shinytop

The thing that annoys me is the pretence that the BEV ownership experience will be the same as ICEV ownership in terms of convenience and expense.  It won't be; BEVs will be more expensive and less convenient. That doesn't mean we shouldn't change to BEVs but let's stop pretending.  It's going to be very difficult for some people, mostly those with the least money.  

Herzlos

BEVs may actually be cheaper and more convenient for most people.

With my higher-than-average commute of 100 mile return, I could charge at home every night and never need to stop and queue at a petrol station at 7am once or twice a week.

My commuting costs would drop from about £15/trip to about £3/trip, which would more or less pay for the finance on the EV.

For my sister, who has a 20 mile round trip commute she'd only need to charge at home maybe once or twice a week. She wouldn't save enough on the fuel costs to pay for the car, though, but usually changes lease every 3 years anyway so the EV may not actually cost much more.

For my parents, who are retired and maybe do 2000 miles a year, they can charge at home every few weeks and never need to detour via a petrol station.


I don't think I actually know anyone personally who'd find an EV less convenient.

Though the caveat there is that all of the people I know with an EV also have an ICE, but the EV is the first car to get used and the ICE is only really used when both partners needs to drive at the same time or they are going on a long trip.

Herzlos

MouldyOldDough said:

What about people with poor mobility?
Are we supposed to sit in our cars for the hours that they are on charge for?
The fact is that at the moment - I can call in at my local garage and someone fills my car for me - I am on my way within 5 minutes but if I have to wait an hour plus to top up - what do I do in the meantime?
Also how do I plug my car into the socket?
Will there be attendants to help? 

I don't see why you wouldn't be able to get an attendant to plug you in. I don't know why you seem to think that would take hours though unless you're deliberately missing the point.

Lots of destination chargers are fairly slow (up to 22kw), because people spend a lot of time there anyway (like a shopping centre), which means a full charge of a standard 50kwh car could take about 2.5 hours

All of the charging station chargers will be rapid chargers (100kw+) and will charge the same car up to 80% in under 30 minutes.

So you *could* just sit in the car for that half hour if you were stuck. Or you could just charge it wherever you were taking the car anyway, assuming sufficient mobility to plug the charger in, but at the risk of sounding contraversial if you don't have sufficient mobility to plug in a charging socket I'm not sure if you'd have enough mobility to operate a car.

Worst case I guess, is that you could get someone to come and charge the car up for you every week. Such services will probably start appearing as soon as there is demand for it. It'd be much easier for someone to bring a battery van to customers than a fuel tanker.


Interestingly, motability are making a large push towards EVs, so they don't seem to think it's a problem.

[Deleted User]

MouldyOldDough said:

What about people with poor mobility?
Are we supposed to sit in our cars for the hours that they are on charge for?
The fact is that at the moment - I can call in at my local garage and someone fills my car for me - I am on my way within 5 minutes but if I have to wait an hour plus to top up - what do I do in the meantime?
Also how do I plug my car into the socket?
Will there be attendants to help? 

I’m sure help would be readily available for the disabled. Why wouldn’t it be? I would think the new EV stations would have a disabled charging bay where assistance will be available. 
Rapid chargers generally take no longer than 30 minutes to charge up, not hours. 

Next scenario please?