Getting electric supply to garage across public highway for EV charging

MWT

Gerry1 said:

Therefore the bottom line is that anyone who thinks that any government will happily forgo forever this vast amount will be unpleasantly surprised when most cars on the road are EVs and it's no cheaper than driving an ICE vehicle.

Personally I don't need 'forever', I'm happy to enjoy the way things have been for the last 7 years that I've owned an EV and for as many years going forward as I can get of the low energy costs that I benefit from as a result..

I am sure at some point you will be proved right, but by the time that happens I, and others like me, will have been enjoying the low costs for many years, which feels a lot more beneficial than resisting the changes and ignoring the savings while they are there to be made.

Gerry1

MWT said:

Gerry1 said:

Therefore the bottom line is that anyone who thinks that any government will happily forgo forever this vast amount will be unpleasantly surprised when most cars on the road are EVs and it's no cheaper than driving an ICE vehicle.

Personally I don't need 'forever', I'm happy to enjoy the way things have been for the last 7 years that I've owned an EV and for as many years going forward as I can get of the low energy costs that I benefit from as a result..

I am sure at some point you will be proved right, but by the time that happens I, and others like me, will have been enjoying the low costs for many years, which feels a lot more beneficial than resisting the changes and ignoring the savings while they are there to be made.

I'm not resisting the changes, I'd quite like a pure EV (non Tesla) but IMHO they're still in their infancy.  More expensive to buy (most bust the never-increased-with-inflation £40k luxury car barrier, resulting in humongous VED for many years), non-local journeys risk range anxiety + charging delays + twice the cost of petrol to fill up.  At present a self-charging hybrid is the right balance for me.

Spoonie_Turtle

Gerry1 said:

Nothing evasive, just a logical statement.

The answer is very difficult to find explicitly.  My belief is that your charger will have had this functionality baked in unless it's old.  The regulations are clear as mud unless you're a lawyer, 

How old is 'old'?  This part seems pretty clear:

2) These Regulations do not apply to—

(a)the sale of a charge point before 30th June 2022;

(b)the sale of a charge point which is to be exported outside of Great Britain and which is not intended for use within Great Britain at any time; or

(c)the sale of a charge point by an individual acting for purposes that are outside that individual’s trade, business, craft or profession.

[The reference to keeping records of sales for ten years was sales of relevant charge points, i.e. charge points that are covered by the regulations.]

Qyburn

Grumpy_chap said:

Gerry1 said:

By law, home chargers must have a built in SIM that snitches how much electricity you've used and when you used it. 

News to me - I am not aware that my EV charger has this functionality.

Product documentation will tell you. There's no secret network they're all connected into. Having the capability doesn't necessarily mean it's enabled in any particular case.

Edit to add the regulation only requires 10% accuracy, not good enough in my opinion for tax collection.

Qyburn

FreeBear said:

The earth fault detection circuit in an EV charger can be used to detect fused relay contacts. Not something that can be achieved with an RCD or RCBO.

I wouldn't mind a bit of information on that just for my interest. Searching around mostly brings up references where "fused" means "protected by a fuse". I guess you're referring to contacts welding together, meaning the relay doesn't open. And that creates a fault which doesn't result in an imbalance between incoming L and N, so can't be detected by an external RCB. Something along those lines?

gefnew

From the Ohme spec page.

FreeBear

Qyburn said:

FreeBear said:

The earth fault detection circuit in an EV charger can be used to detect fused relay contacts. Not something that can be achieved with an RCD or RCBO.

I wouldn't mind a bit of information on that just for my interest. Searching around mostly brings up references where "fused" means "protected by a fuse". I guess you're referring to contacts welding together, meaning the relay doesn't open. And that creates a fault which doesn't result in an imbalance between incoming L and N, so can't be detected by an external RCB. Something along those lines?

Yes, welded relay contacts - There are safety implications if you can not isolate both Live and Neutral should a fault develop on the vehicle side.

Pat38493

Qyburn said:

Grumpy_chap said:

Gerry1 said:

By law, home chargers must have a built in SIM that snitches how much electricity you've used and when you used it. 

News to me - I am not aware that my EV charger has this functionality.

Product documentation will tell you. There's no secret network they're all connected into. Having the capability doesn't necessarily mean it's enabled in any particular case.

Edit to add the regulation only requires 10% accuracy, not good enough in my opinion for tax collection.

Yes - These replies are making the assumption that the motivation behind such regulations is future tax revenue.  There are other reasons why such regualations might be in place e.g. safety or load balancing considerations.

Also as others have pointed out, trying to tax EV charging activity in the home would be much harder to universally enforce as there are various obvious ways to bypass it.

I don't disagree that the government will need to find a way to replace lost fuel tax revenue, but it will probably be done by placing additional taxes directly on the vehicles, either fully or partially based on the number of miles driven.  The best approach might be to harmonise tax on charging across the board, and then tax people on the miles driven each year.  Of course this would be a hard sell as it will be portrayed as a completely additional tax by opposing forces, rather than a way to replace tax that people were paying anyway through their fuel bills.  

If you look on EV forums, you can quite often find people who go back to petrol or diesel from EV because their home electricity bill "went through the roof", but they clearly have not bothered to factor in the amount of money they saved at the petrol station.

MWT

Gerry1 said:

MWT said:

Gerry1 said:

Therefore the bottom line is that anyone who thinks that any government will happily forgo forever this vast amount will be unpleasantly surprised when most cars on the road are EVs and it's no cheaper than driving an ICE vehicle.

Personally I don't need 'forever', I'm happy to enjoy the way things have been for the last 7 years that I've owned an EV and for as many years going forward as I can get of the low energy costs that I benefit from as a result..

I am sure at some point you will be proved right, but by the time that happens I, and others like me, will have been enjoying the low costs for many years, which feels a lot more beneficial than resisting the changes and ignoring the savings while they are there to be made.

I'm not resisting the changes, I'd quite like a pure EV (non Tesla) but IMHO they're still in their infancy.  More expensive to buy (most bust the never-increased-with-inflation £40k luxury car barrier, resulting in humongous VED for many years), non-local journeys risk range anxiety + charging delays + twice the cost of petrol to fill up.  At present a self-charging hybrid is the right balance for me.

Picked up a brand new, unregistered Nissan Leaf for less than £17k in September last year, increasing numbers of full EV's below £20k and many below £30k so the prices really are falling.

The fear of range anxiety is harder to deal with than the actual range anxiety which usually fades quickly.

Linked to that of course you have the cost of charging away from home, and the impact of that is often greatly over estimated unless you really do make frequent journeys beyond the range of your EV, if it is just a few times a year then the average cost over the year is still going to beat petrol by a considerable margin.

Charging delays continue to fall but the same point about how often you need to charge away from home applies.

Even in 2018 when I got my first EV, a drive from just outside London to Dundee resulted in no more frequent stops than were required for comfort/food breaks, these days it is often the case that the charging takes less time than the comfort break, which also has some negative aspects

Either way, it is an individual choice for each of us to figure out what makes the most sense for them, we only own EV's now and that works very well for us.