Have electric vehicles been "oversold" to the detriment of public transport, walking and cycling?

[Factotum]

Consider this:
a) vehicles don't have to be charged all the time, (they will be used occasionally)
b) where charger squatting is a problem, a time-related penalty cost could be levied active once the vehicle charging has been completed
c) non-charging parking could be penalised
I'm sure there are other measures that could be legally imposed to control anti-social behaviour on street chargers.

Given that all other forms of illegal parking - yellow lines, pavements, double parking on narrow roads, near junctions, are rarely punished your number 2 is not really useful.

 

[gg1]

It looks like the charger in question is a "bring your own cable" arrangement, which makes sense compared to leaving a few metres of cable on the end of it at all times, cluttering up the pavement further. It would be useful if the charger had a more obvious way of warning that it was plugged in, but I honestly cannot say I've seen many people walk along between a lampost (at least, that close to pavement edge) and parked cars unless they were getting in the car - so not sure how big of an issue it is?

Ah okay, I wrongly assumed it was a tethered cable.

 

[Meerkat]

Consider this:
a) vehicles don't have to be charged all the time, (they will be used occasionally)
b) where charger squatting is a problem, a time-related penalty cost could be levied active once the vehicle charging has been completed
c) non-charging parking could be penalised
I'm sure there are other measures that could be legally imposed to control anti-social behaviour on street chargers.

You are going to demand that people come out at 2am and rep their car?

Well of course there isn’t - cars that need plug in charging only make up about 2-3% of the GB car population*. To have installed that much charging infrastructure now would be a colossal waste of money at this time. Far better to spend on the charging infrastructure shortly before it is needed, rather than having it sitting there not earning a return for several years. The point is it can be done, easily.

* New SMMT figures out today, market share of Battery EV registrations in September was 15%. That has doubled in a year.

How many EVs there are now is irrelevant - when there are more they aren’t going to plant a lamp post per car (and the lamp posts are against the fences anyway with pavements too narrow for roadside posts).
If roadside posts were viable and acceptable to the disabled lobby the number of chargers available would still need to be way higher than the proportion of EVs due to the competition for parking - there are next to no spare spaces overnight.

 

[Bletchleyite]

How many EVs there are now is irrelevant - when there are more they aren’t going to plant a lamp post per car (and the lamp posts are against the fences anyway with pavements too narrow for roadside posts).
If roadside posts were viable and acceptable to the disabled lobby the number of chargers available would still need to be way higher than the proportion of EVs due to the competition for parking - there are next to no spare spaces overnight.

To me it is a good opportunity to switch to one-way systems and herringbone parking in such streets. Then each bay could have a post.

 

[reddragon]

To me it is a good opportunity to switch to one-way systems and herringbone parking in such streets. Then each bay could have a post.

In cities, streets rammed with parked cars will have to end. Apart from the waste of asset, and environmental impact it costs owners far more than they should be paying.

Dedicated bays for hire by the hour EVs at dedicated chargers would cover at least 75% of car owners in these areas.

At peaks, like the school runs parents might even discover things that allow them to walk the short distance to school! They are called legs


In September EVs outsold every group of cars except Petrol even outselling mild hybrids

 

[Domh245]

In September EVs outsold every group of cars except Petrol even outselling mild hybrids

September also saw the smallest number of vehicles registered since 1998, down over a third even on last year. It would seem that there's still significant supply chain issues so we can't really read too much into the data (much as I would love to see new car sales plummet and lots of people switch to EVs!)

 

[reddragon]

September also saw the smallest number of vehicles registered since 1998, down over a third even on last year. It would seem that there's still significant supply chain issues so we can't really read too much into the data (much as I would love to see new car sales plummet and lots of people switch to EVs!)

It is a standard change of tech curve.

The sales of EVs in September matched the sales of EVs in all of 2019. The standard S curve of adoption is now entering the exponential phase of growth.

The sales of ICE cars and vans are plummeting. This is because buyers are stopping buying ICEs preparing to change to EVs. Who wants to but old legacy tech when new tech is imminent? Many companies have just stopped buying ICE cars and vans, simply awaiting availability of EVs.

The chip shortage whilst relevant is being used as an excuse to cover change and in part driven by the fact that EVs need slightly different chip designs to ICEs.

Things will also be driven by the much longer useful life by business of an EV versus and ICE. ICEs are sold at 3-4 years as they become unreliable for businesses to own. EVs don't have that issue until much later in life, so expect the average life of a car / van to increase. Many early EVs are hitting huge mileages with little maintenance. Early LEAFS used as taxis' are being sold with 300k miles because their interiors are worn. High miler Teslas are beginning to hit 1m miles again with little maintenance or issues. The world is changing.

 

[Meerkat]

To me it is a good opportunity to switch to one-way systems and herringbone parking in such streets. Then each bay could have a post.

Have you got an example of this? I am struggling to picture how it would fit and what the capacity would be. Are there standards for pavements etc - wondering if changes would mean having to meet those and making things tricky. There is also an issue with random houses having drives which makes herringbone tricky.

Dedicated bays for hire by the hour EVs at dedicated chargers would cover at least 75% of car owners in these areas.

Do you have stats to back up that assertion? What percentage replacement strategy are you thinking - ie how many hire cars for each ten prior owned ones?

 

[reddragon]

Do you have stats to back up that assertion? What percentage replacement strategy are you thinking - ie how many hire cars for each ten prior owned ones?

Who needs statistics? Walk along any city street and you have wall to wall parking, day, night, weekends, peak times with no spaces.

You really do not need to know anymore than that! But if you need data: -

https://www.racfoundation.org/motoring-faqs/mobility

Q1) How many vehicles are there in Great Britain?

A1) At the end of March 2021, there were 38.6 million licensed vehicles in Great Britain, a 0.8 per cent increase compared to the end of March 2020. This increase in licensed vehicles follows four consecutive quarters of year on year decline.

Cars make up the majority of licensed vehicles. In Great Britain, there were 31.7 million cars (82.1 per cent), 4.26 million LGVs (11 per cent), 0.48 million HGVs (1.2 per cent), 1.27 million motorcycles (3.3 per cent), 0.14 million buses & coaches (0.4 per cent) and 0.77 million other vehicles (2 per cent) licensed at the end of March 2021.

Q5) How often is a car in use or parked?

A5) The average car or van in England is driven just 4 per cent of the time, a figure that has barely changed in quarter of a century.

For the rest of the time the car or van is either parked at home (73 per cent) or parked elsewhere (23 per cent), for example at work.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Have you got an example of this? I am struggling to picture how it would fit and what the capacity would be. Are there standards for pavements etc - wondering if changes would mean having to meet those and making things tricky. There is also an issue with random houses having drives which makes herringbone tricky.

I'm thinking more of the traditional terraced streets where nobody has room for a driveway. In places where houses do, the easiest fix would be to provide assistance for everyone to convert (with porous surfacing) then you can just sort yourself out and the road is no longer clogged to the same extent.

You would have herringbone parking along one side with the angle adjusted to allow enough room to drive through on the other side.

 

[reddragon]

I'm thinking more of the traditional terraced streets where nobody has room for a driveway. In places where houses do, the easiest fix would be to provide assistance for everyone to convert (with porous surfacing) then you can just sort yourself out and the road is no longer clogged to the same extent.

You would have herringbone parking along one side with the angle adjusted to allow enough room to drive through on the other side.

London has again this morning suffered from extreme flooding due to climate change with a weather event beyond the achievable limit of any city drainage capabilities. Paving driveways even with "porous" finishes makes matters far worse.

We need less cars and more importantly less waste allowing affordable cars for those when they need them.

 

[Bletchleyite]

We need less cars

You can forget that. It isn't even worth considering it, however much better you may think it will make things, because it simply is not going to happen (beyond households reducing from 2 cars to 1 in some cases).

Reducing use of cars is the only worthwhile hope, which is why the whole "it costs 45p a mile to run a car" thing is useless, and thus "fuel and parking" is the number you need for the comparison of cost.

 

[MattRat]

It will be interesting to see the stats for rail use when they cover this “petrol panic period”.

I reckon rail will be making hay from those taking trips out of town and unwilling to take the risk of having to search for petrol in an unfamiliar town, where they don’t know the petrol retail offering very well.

This country is too car dependent to think like that. It's getting as bad as the USA.

You do still need to plan and check operability of chargers. If you stick to Gridserve / Instavolt you are fine, other networks less so. Old Ecotricity are bad as in Beaconsfield

It's a sad statement currently against EVs if you have to check in advance whether the EV Charging stations en-route are actually working or not, in my opinion that is currently even worse than a petrol station running out of fuel as there are so little EV Charging points available in comparison. Apparently this guy also spent some time on the phone to technical support who tried a remote reboot to no avail, and he had to get a relative to collect the family in their diesel whilst he waited in the queue for a working charge point.

The solution is buying a Tesla. Until other manufacturers figure out the problem is their charging, not their cars, Tesla will own the market.

 

[reddragon]

I am not forgetting that, I was simply pointing out that your comparison figures up thread were not an accurate comparison.

Out of interest, does charging at home accommodate multiple EV Charging points? There are four adults in my house, each with the possibility that they would want to charge their EV in the future, so would multiple charging points at home be a possibility? I only ask because I've only ever seen adverts with one home charging point

You do not need 1 petrol pump for each car so why 1 for each EV? As you will not need to charge each night, 1 should suffice most homes.

If you do want 4 fast chargers you can. The set up allows for grid limits to be set and for device prioritisation to be set. This can be in a priority order or equal priority. A 100A supply could service 2 at full power or 4 at half power. You can also use timers so each car charges at different slots if you really wanted to.

I have my solar divert set up is as P1 to car, P2 to hot water, P3 spare and the limit is the excess generation.

Some public chargers are set like this. Full power when 1 is charging, slightly reduced for 2, halved for 4 etc

This all begs the question why the government is not suggesting motorists use the transport system rather than their own cars for the duration of the petrol panic. It kills several birds with one stone:

• Reduces the pressure on fuel deliveries
• Increased fare revenue would reduce the subsidy to public transport in place since last March with the pandemic.
• Shows commitment to zero carbon for COP21.
• Draw a line under the debunked myth public transport is unsafe for COVID.

Effectively a win-win-win-win. Why the radio silence from government and opposition. What am I missing?

Bang on, why have we not seen this advice?

The solution is buying a Tesla. Until other manufacturers figure out the problem is their charging, not their cars, Tesla will own the market.

Yes Tesla are 5+ years ahead of the rest.

 

[AM9]

Given that all other forms of illegal parking - yellow lines, pavements, double parking on narrow roads, near junctions, are rarely punished your number 2 is not really useful.

On the contrary, to use the charger, the driver will need an account with the provider. Embedded in the contract could be a condition that 'overstaying' charging time wouild attract a charge. So that deals with charger hogging. There are penalties for parking on disable spaces and those who ignore the notices find a reminder of their new debt, courtesy of a warden or a fixed camera. Just as charging parking spaces in car parks are now marked as such, it would be simple to (legally) do the same for on street charging spaces with the appropriate 'encouragement' to break the habit.
Bear in mind that in a few years, the majority of private vehicles will be EVs, so the majority of residents in an area will likely be in favour of such a change.

 

[reddragon]

Many charge points come with a traffic order which includes a fine for parking without charging or an overstay.

Some rapid chargers have a penalty for charging over 1 hour too! Others charge by the minute.

Most street chargers are charged per minute with a free overnight period (in time not charge)

 

[BananaRepublic]

......There are four adults in my house, each with the possibility that they would want to charge their EV in the future, so would multiple charging points at home be a possibility? .....

......As you will not need to charge each night, 1 should suffice most homes........

The average motorist will only need to charge (usually at home) once or twice a week at most.
For some only once a fortnight.
Most EV's can be programmed to charge at a certain time, or within a time window and smart home chargers can also be programmed, so the likelihood of multiple users needing to charge at home, at the same time, will be in the minority.

As for comparing the number of public charging points to the number of filling stations etc, don't forget that the number of filling stations has been falling on a continuous basis for decades, from 40,000 plus in the 1960's to just over 8,000 today.
There are 3 former filling station sites with a couple of miles of here, that were closed about 10 to 15 years ago.
2 are now used car lots and the other is a car wash (still manned by Eastern Europeans).

On the other hand, new public charging points are being opened every month.
619 new chargers in the last 30 days alone.

As of today (5th October), according to Zap-Map, there are....
44,733 connectors, on....
26,095 chargers, at...
16,402 locations.

Admittedly, a lot of those public chargers are only Fast and Slow chargers, with limited numbers at many sites.
The push needs to be on installing more Rapid and Ultra-Rapid devices and replacing the older and often unreliable Slow & Fast ones.
Clearly a long way to go, but it's heading in the right direction.






x

 

[SickyNicky]

Out of interest, does charging at home accommodate multiple EV Charging points? There are four adults in my house, each with the possibility that they would want to charge their EV in the future, so would multiple charging points at home be a possibility? I only ask because I've only ever seen adverts with one home charging point

You might run into problems with the main fuse for the home supply. My EV charger runs at 32A and I had to get permission from Western Power Distribution to install it. They came and checked the fuse before OK'ing it.

Modern chargers can sense the total power draw though, and adjust the current down, but I'm sure the power distribution companies wouldn't allow it.

If you want multiple chargers you're almost certainly looking at a three phase supply, which will cost a fortune. I suppose you could put in DC fast chargers then, though. Again, very pricey.

 

[Ediswan]

If you want multiple chargers you're almost certainly looking at a three phase supply, which will cost a fortune. I suppose you could put in DC fast chargers then, though. Again, very pricey.

A friend of mine decided they want to install two fast chargers (32A). Unsurprisingly, the existing supply can't handle that. Converting the existing supply to three phase would have been both expensive and involve a lot of disruption and knock-on changes to existing circuits. Their decision was to install an additional separate single phase supply dedicated to EV charging. Also not cheap. They have got as far as finding a supplier who will do that and getting an estimate from them.

 

[gg1]

You might run into problems with the main fuse for the home supply. My EV charger runs at 32A and I had to get permission from Western Power Distribution to install it. They came and checked the fuse before OK'ing it.

Modern chargers can sense the total power draw though, and adjust the current down, but I'm sure the power distribution companies wouldn't allow it.

If you want multiple chargers you're almost certainly looking at a three phase supply, which will cost a fortune. I suppose you could put in DC fast chargers then, though. Again, very pricey.

One solution could be a charger which had multiple sockets but designed to only charge one vehicle at a time, allowing you to plug in say 4 vehicles in the evening and charge each sequentially so you have 4 fully charged vehicles in the morning. I'm not sure if such a thing exists at the moment but wouldn't have thought it's too difficult to produce one if there's felt to be a market for it.

 

[Cowley]

Edit: This was being written when post #586 was made.

Actually I’ve moved a few posts over to this thread to tidy things up so it’ll be a different post number now @Ediswan.

 

[The Ham]

I'm thinking more of the traditional terraced streets where nobody has room for a driveway. In places where houses do, the easiest fix would be to provide assistance for everyone to convert (with porous surfacing) then you can just sort yourself out and the road is no longer clogged to the same extent.

You would have herringbone parking along one side with the angle adjusted to allow enough room to drive through on the other side.

Herringbone parking will typically NOT increase on Street parking over kerb side parking, even in the few locations where it might only be a very small amount.

It's rare to find a street which is 8.7m wide (5m for the herringbone parking and 3.7m for the through lane), even if you do then you've reduced the length against which you can park by 50% and so you need the herringbone parking to be at 3m centres (compared to 6m centres on both sides of the roads). However at 45 degrees you need more than that (as the spaces is 2.4m).

 

[87 027]

This idea of having to vacate on-street parking bays once the charge has been completed sounds like a right old game of musical chairs to me!

 

[trebor79]

Given that all other forms of illegal parking - yellow lines, pavements, double parking on narrow roads, near junctions, are rarely punished your number 2 is not really useful.

Actually Tesla already do just that. If you stay in the charging bay after your charge has finished, they charge you a punitive per minute fee.
Some charge networks charge a lower fee for a slower charge. That's a bit bonkers. I get obviously they are profiteering from the convenience factor of a faster charge, but what it really means is they have to spend more capital putting in more stations to sell electricity at a lower price. They should be charging punitive rates for a slower charge to encourage people to charge their EV as fast as possible to increase the charger utilisation.
It's a bit all over the place at the moment but the market will consolidate in the next few years.

If you want multiple chargers you're almost certainly looking at a three phase supply, which will cost a fortune. I suppose you could put in DC fast chargers then, though. Again, very pricey.

For reasons none of us have ever fathomed, my house and our two neighbours have three phase supplies to our meter box. There's only a fuse in one if the phases, but when I had my smart meter fitted recently they confirmed all three phases were live and it would be relatively simple and cheap to upgrade to a 3 phase supply.
Even so, a 50kW charger isn't going to leave much in reserve. Charging the car, cooking a meal and boiling the kettle would about max it out, unless there was some system to reduce the output of the car charger when other stuff was demanding power.

 

[AM9]

Even so, a 50kW charger isn't going to leave much in reserve. Charging the car, cooking a meal and boiling the kettle would about max it out, unless there was some system to reduce the output of the car charger when other stuff was demanding power.

Actually, if you maxed out a normal single phase 100A domestic supply that would give 24kW. Although alarge 3 phase charger would help balance out any local phase differences, it may only be viable using that amount of power overnight.

 

[trebor79]

Actually, if you maxed out a normal single phase 100A domestic supply that would give 24kW. Although alarge 3 phase charger would help balance out any local phase differences, it may only be viable using that amount of power overnight.

Oh yes, got my sums a bit wrong!
Actually I think if the supply point is there I can just use it up to the rated 100A (so long as a ihave a 3 phase meter out in, of course). As far as I know domestic properties are not subject to interruption in the same way as some industrial consumers.
The fact it was put in 30 years ago, probably been forgotten about by the DNO and subsequent development possibly means the local grid can't take these 3 properties possibly consuming 225kW isn't my issue.

Anyway, I won't because it would be overkill to put in a 50+kW at a domestic property. There will be little difference to utility with a 7kW charger, which is more suited for domestic use, smaller and cheaper.

My next car will be an EV for sure. Just a question of when they become cheap enough. There are cars on the market now with around 300 miles range and between £25k-£30k. Another couple of years and I think we will start to see the gap between IC and EV close further. Perhaps there will be some reasonably priced second hand models by that time too.

 

[AM9]

As far as I know domestic properties are not subject to interruption in the same way as some industrial consumers.

Industrial users accept the risk of disconnection as a trade-off for reduced costs per unit, I e. the ultimate peak-rate cost of no power vs much lower normal rates. There are industries that cannot tolerate outages and sometimes they have their own emergency generators.
With smart meters becoming almost universal in the future, virtually all domestic users will eventually be on variable rates.

 

[Bald Rick]

My next car will be an EV for sure. Just a question of when they become cheap enough. There are cars on the market now with around 300 miles range and between £25k-£30k. Another couple of years and I think we will start to see the gap between IC and EV close further. Perhaps there will be some reasonably priced second hand models by that time too.

That depends on your preferred ownership model, and how much you’ll use it. For average mileage, EVs are about the same price as ICE now if you lease and go by typical monthly costs, including ‘fuel’, tax, maintenance etc.

Buying upfront will be more expensive for a while yet, but then second hand values are also going to be higher too.

 

[trebor79]

Industrial users accept the risk of disconnection as a trade-off for reduced costs per unit, I e. the ultimate peak-rate cost of no power vs much lower normal rates. There are industries that cannot tolerate outages and sometimes they have their own emergency generators.
With smart meters becoming almost universal in the future, virtually all domestic users will eventually be on variable rates.

Similarly with gas, although for some reason I couldn't fathom the logic of, a lot of industrial gas users supplies were made "uninterruptable" just over a decade ago.

That depends on your preferred ownership model, and how much you’ll use it. For average mileage, EVs are about the same price as ICE now if you lease and go by typical monthly costs, including ‘fuel’, tax, maintenance etc.

I don't know about that. if fuel is say 15p per mile, that's only £1,500 of additional lease cost per year that can be absorbed that way for 10,000 miles (and that assumes you can charge for free, which is possible for some people). So about £130/month additional lease fee to break even. The price differential for anything with a decent range (over 200 and preferably over 250 miles) is much more than that. I mean I know you can get a Leaf with a rubbish battery and 5,000 annual mileage for about £250/month but that doesn't really float my boat.

 

[DustyBin]

I don't know about that. if fuel is say 15p per mile, that's only £1,500 of additional lease cost per year that can be absorbed that way for 10,000 miles (and that assumes you can charge for free, which is possible for some people). So about £130/month additional lease fee to break even. The price differential for anything with a decent range (over 200 and preferably over 250 miles) is much more than that. I mean I know you can get a Leaf with a rubbish battery and 5,000 annual mileage for about £250/month but that doesn't really float my boat.

This is the point I made previously; they are still quite expensive. The example @reddragon posted was for an MG5 which has a much better range than a Leaf but is otherwise not an enticing prospect, and won’t tempt people out of their £30k mid-range German Hatchbacks (A3, 1 Series etc.) in my opinion.