EV Charging Network

Sea_Shell

Out of interest...

What's the current situation regarding access to public chargers exclusively for Blue Badge holders?

Extra wide spaces, close to the facilities etc.

 

Petriix

So much FUD it burns...

There are obviously a subset of people - a significant minority I believe - who can't reliably charge at home or work. It's worth noting, however, that it's perfectly legal to run a cable over the pavement with suitable safety measures; in Norwich you can buy a permit to do so.

I'll happily accept the argument that EVs currently wouldn't be sensible for some people. But there's a ridiculous tendency for people to make the non-sequitur argument that the issues faced by a minority make EVs unworkable for everyone.

We can all agree that the public charging infrastructure is not currently as good as we would like. But the thing people (perhaps wilfully) miss is that the vast majority EV drivers do the vast majority of their charging at home.

We don't need the 10 rapid chargers nearby to all be working, we just need to be able to plan around using a known-to-be-reliable hub at around 150 miles (+/- 30 miles) into a long journey. Because the network is patchy, we have to plan. Almost all the anecdotes about bad charging experiences are because people didn't plan.

Meanwhile 12,000 miles in 2022 cost me £170.

dobbers

For balance, I suggest you search on YouTube Chris Harris from Top Gear speaking to Graeme Cooper from the National Grid. Yes there are problems at the moment with some public charging but that should not stop folks from moving forward and ditching fossil fueled cars as soon as they can as time is running out for the planet. Even if you don't agree with saving the planet then for the sake of our lungs (especially at this time of year) then making the switch will help reduce the air pollution in our towns and cities which is terrible.

Belenus

Petriix said:

Meanwhile 12,000 miles in 2022 cost me £170.

How much did those 12,000 miles cost versus the cost of a similar ICE car when you take into account all the costs of running a car?

Fuel is just one part of the costs of owning and using a car.

Are electric cars much pricier than ICE cars of otherwise similar specification and quality etc or is there not much difference?

Are service costs lower, similar or higher?

What are the costs of replacement batteries in the future?

What other differences are there?

JKenH

Petriix said:

So much FUD it burns...

There are obviously a subset of people - a significant minority I believe - who can't reliably charge at home or work. It's worth noting, however, that it's perfectly legal to run a cable over the pavement with suitable safety measures; in Norwich you can buy a permit to do so.

I'll happily accept the argument that EVs currently wouldn't be sensible for some people. But there's a ridiculous tendency for people to make the non-sequitur argument that the issues faced by a minority make EVs unworkable for everyone.

We can all agree that the public charging infrastructure is not currently as good as we would like. But the thing people (perhaps wilfully) miss is that the vast majority EV drivers do the vast majority of their charging at home.

We don't need the 10 rapid chargers nearby to all be working, we just need to be able to plan around using a known-to-be-reliable hub at around 150 miles (+/- 30 miles) into a long journey. Because the network is patchy, we have to plan. Almost all the anecdotes about bad charging experiences are because people didn't plan.

Meanwhile 12,000 miles in 2022 cost me £170.

“We can all agree that the public charging infrastructure is not currently as good as we would like.” This is what frustrates me. So many advocates of EVs roll out this response when the EV network is criticised. If we admit how bad it really is, hardly anyone without a home charger will buy one. We don’t want to discourage EV take up by admitting just how unreliable the public charging network is. ZapMap won’t admit how bad it is because they want to see more EVs on the road. How do you sell something like electric cars if you admit that chargers are oversubscribed and unreliable. Campaign groups like Transport and Environment maintain there are already enough chargers. They just want to see the end of ICE vehicles sooner rather than later. Any admission there are problems with switching to EVs undermines the cause. 

The government make vague promises about expanding the network but do nothing. Why not have an OFCHARGE as we do for other infrastructure network operators? It would be perfectly feasible for the government to tie any further central funding in to minimum performance requirements regarding the percentage of chargers working and penalise those networks who underperform. It should mandate that any chargers that lose connectivity default to free vend. 

“We don't need the 10 rapid chargers nearby to all be working”. Why not? What is unreasonable about expecting 10 charging sites to be working? 

..” we just need to be able to plan around using a known-to-be-reliable hub at around 150 miles (+/- 30 miles) into a long journey.” That’s what Tesla drivers thought over Christmas and look how well that went. Queues of up to 4 hours and people getting penalty notices for overstaying at service stations. And that is with the Rolls Royce standard of charging. With a petrol/diesel car you can fill up a day or a few days before your long trip and pretty much guarantee you can drive to almost anywhere you are likely to want to go without having to worry about finding somewhere to refuel, whether it will be working or whether there will be a queue. No hassle! Cost, yes, but hassle, no! It is pretty much accepted nowadays that one can expect to queue (not all of the time but) at least some of the time for an electric car charger and unlike when queuing for petrol you could be there for 30 minutes or an hour. 

Because the network is patchy, we have to plan. Planning has to be done in advance and  the status of chargers changes. You can’t access your mobile phone (legally) unless you have a passenger to keep a check on the status. The charger might be free as you take the slip road off the motorway but such is demand that by the time you pull up a minute later someone else has plugged in. But why should we need to plan? I have never in my life had to check the status of a petrol station before setting off on a journey. Having to plan is not progress, it is not better. 

“Almost all the anecdotes about bad charging experiences are because people didn't plan”. What possible grounds have you for saying that? Have you any idea how patronising and supercilious that kind of statement sounds? It is from someone in denial of the real practicalities of public rapid charging.

It’s certainly not the reason for my poor charging experiences. I used to plan, meticulously. On one trip I made a list of around a dozen chargers for a trip to Wales and a dozen on the way back. and still had issues. On one occasion when I was pretty desperate for a charge I checked the status of the charger when I was ten minutes away but when I arrived someone had just plugged in. You would not believe the stress I have had with chargers not working when Zap-Map says they are. 

You have obviously been very fortunate with your public charging experiences. I have not. 

I'll happily accept the argument that EVs currently wouldn't be sensible for some people. Well that’s progress. Any idea how many some might be? What is it going to take to make it sensible for everyone? An awful lot more charging infrastructure needs to be rolled out than at present. It is going to get worse before it gets better with the current expansion of EV sales. People are currently being bribed with generous tax incentives to buy/run EVs and will put up with a bit of inconvenience for the financial benefits on offer but to get Joe Public into EVs we are going to have to make the charging experience a lot better or accept that EVs will just be for the middle classes with home chargers who don’t venture very far and those less fortunate will have to take the bus. 

But there's a ridiculous tendency for people to make the non-sequitur argument that the issues faced by a minority make EVs unworkable for everyone. No they are not unworkable for everyone. They are fine if you have a second petrol car or never drive beyond the range of your car. They are fine if, in the user’s eyes, the savings on fuel outweigh the inconvenience of charging. The grumble, at least for me and many like me, is that the switch to EVs will be forced on us without the infrastructure in place to make them work as well as our ICE cars. I say this as someone who voluntarily made the switch to EVs 3 years ago with a secondhand one and enjoyed the experience so much I bought a new one and ditched my two ICE cars. In the last two years the number of EVs on the road has increased so quickly and the reliability of chargers deteriorated that the experience of long journeys that require charging are now something I am no longer prepared to put up with. 

Meanwhile 12,000 miles in 2022 cost me £170. Well that’s alright for you then. Presumably that statement is meant in some way to indicate the cost savings compensate for the inconvenience of running an EV. But how many other people setting out on the EV journey today could enjoy those costs? Presumably you are just looking at the cost of fuelling your car. Am I right in thinking you have solar panels? If so, have you factored in the cost of them or what you could earn from exporting your electricity instead? Someone could I believe still get a very cheap overnight EV tariff at around 5p/kWh but would pay more for their electricity during the day. Do your figures take this into account? Presumably at those figures you rarely public charge and that is really what this discussion  is about - having to rely on public rapid charging - not how cheaply some of us can charge our cars at home.

Edit: I apologise if that all sounded a bit aggressive. 

fred990

mgfvvc said:

fred990 said:

EV is the future Mike.

but for now, they are not for a lot of people. Another 10 years of battery development, infrastructure build and a wider range of cars and it will be the obvious choice for most new vehicles. Right now, they don't make an EV that fits my requirements and the second hand choice is even poorer. I'm looking forward to the electric future, but it's still the future for me.

You edited out the reference to the boss of toyota.....his views are not in line with EV fans!
The irony was obviously lost 🙄 

Grumpy_chap

Sea_Shell said:

Out of interest...

What's the current situation regarding access to public chargers exclusively for Blue Badge holders?

Extra wide spaces, close to the facilities etc.

 

I can't answer the question as I have never seen an EV charge point specifically identified for Blue Badge holders.
It may be that there are none - I do not know.

However, most of the public EV charge points that I recall seeing in car parks are wider spaces than a standard car park space.  Maybe that would mean that specific Blue Badge EV points are not necessary.

Herzlos

Sea_Shell said:

Out of interest...

What's the current situation regarding access to public chargers exclusively for Blue Badge holders?

Extra wide spaces, close to the facilities etc.

 

It's pretty dire from what I can see. All of the chargers nearest to me are standard width, end on spaces, rarely at the end of a row and unstaffed, so will be a nightmare for people with mobility problems. Yet Motability are pushing people towards EV's and offering a free home charger.

Of all the charger sites I pass regularly, they all appear to be working since there's usually at least 1 car plugged in, and there's almost always available spaces except for the one across from a school which is usually full of ICE cars whose occupants don't want to walk an extra 20ft. I haven't stopped to explicitly test them as I don't have an EV yet, so it could be that some of the empty spaces don't work, but given the connected cars are randomly distributed I don't have any reason to believe they are broken.

So I wonder if it's a regional thing, where some local councils are doing a really good job, and others don't. Given how much inaccurate hatred there is for EV's, I wouldn't be surprised if some councils are actively sabotaging uptake by providing poor facilities. 

In my random nowhere town just outside Glasgow there are 4 sites with 4 spaces each, and then further sites at pretty much every supermarket, large car park, train station, shopping center, and service station that I pass regularly. With a range of 100 miles I get the impression I'd have to try fairly hard to run out of battery here. 

TooManyPoints

There are obviously a subset of people - a significant minority I believe - who can't reliably charge at home or work.

It is quite a significant minority. Most figures suggest that 40% of car owners have no facilities to charge at home or work. With around 32m cars on the road, that’s over 12m cars that would have nowhere to readily charge.

It's worth noting, however, that it's perfectly legal to run a cable over the pavement with suitable safety measures;

All fine and dandy - providing, of course, you can park adjacent to, or within spitting distance of your home. Huge numbers of people cannot.

But the thing people (perhaps wilfully) miss is that the vast majority EV drivers do the vast majority of their charging at home.

That’s probably true – at the moment. Nobody in their right mind would buy an EV if they had nowhere convenient to charge it. That figure would change – dramatically – if EVs were the only option.  

The plain fact is that adequate public charging facilities will be necessary if EVs are to be the norm. It's no use saying "but they will have no choice." As pliable as the UK electorate is, they will simply not tolerate being unable to move about and political pressure will come to bear if insufficient EV facilities are available if people are compelled to switch to them. Drivers should not have to plan their journeys meticulously to avoid being stranded. Many drivers have to make journeys at short notice or are given little or no notice of their travel commitments. It is simply crass to suggest that it will be their fault if they do not plan their journeys properly - especially when those plans have no guarantee of success.   

Sea_Shell

Interesting on the point of having to 'plan' ones journeys in an EV more than you may otherwise have to in an ICE vehicle...

Some people are unable to plan, even with an ICE, otherwise why would anyone ever need an expensive motorway fuel station?!?   Why do they not 'plan' better to fill up at a cheaper supermarket etc.   But if they all did that, they'd be less need for motorway services.

I wonder how many ICE cars fill (top) up every hour at one of the busy motorway services....and how those same people would be catered for in an EV, where the refuelling time taken is 10s of minutes, not minutes.