How Will People Charge Electric Cars If They Dont Have A Driveway

[Cyclecar 24]

Cars run on energy. You either generate that in the vehicle with an internal ccombustion engine or, in the case of an electric vehicle you generate it elsewhere (wind trubine, solar panel, Drax, etc) and send it through wires to your charging point. It isn't free, to charge up your EV at a motorway service station it currently (sic) costs about £6.50 for enough to get you down the road for another 100 miles, although costs can vary dramatically. 

 

When a politician airily promises that all garages will soon have a row of charging points he won't tell you how thick the cable from the substation needs to be.....  And he isn't paying for all those installations, the EV motorist will shell out. 

 

As all the above posters confirm, there are more questions than answers at the moment.  Oh, and no free road fund licence once that revenue evaporates.

[Longcol 596]

5 hours ago, butlers said:

Think electric cars are now 20 percent of new car sales, so obviously the push will be on for more charging points .

4 of my pals gave already swapped over.

 

Until a 5 minute charge can deliver 400+ miles then we're going to need one helluva lot of charging points.

 

Is there any sign that electric motors are going to be able to power HGV's (or say delivery vans) for any distance in the near future?

[tinfoilhat 11]

,

6 hours ago, ECCOnoob said:

The OP raises a very good question and one which I often think myself whenever I see MPs, do-gooders and celebrities spouting their grandeous statements about some electric car revolution which we all must adhere to immediately.

 

It's the very question I ask myself every time I read some story about proposed government regulations, taxes or other penalties they intend bringing against anyone who dares to drive a petrol or diesel powered vehicle.

 

I see lots of blue sky thinking and fantasyland announcements about this mass infrastructure which is going to suddenly appear out of nothing so everyone can drive an electric car. I see artist impressions of fantastical technology where people can "nip" into a "rapid" fuel station with the "convenience"of being on their way again in ohhh at least less than an hour 🙄  

 

What I do not see is much in the way of a reality check.  The reality that most average joes who are commuting, travelling for work or travelling to a specific place for a specific purpose don't have a convenient 30 minutes or so to sit in a fuelling station or the reality that your average Joe doesn't have a nice underground garage or purposely equipped driveway with a modern charging point readily available.  We then have the question of where is all this extra electricity going to be generated from. If everyone suddenly switches to electric vehicles there are going to be huge surges in consumption particularly overnight when everyone at home is desperately trying to top up their cars.   That electricity has to be generated from something and it's certainly not fairydust.  Are we going to start opening up the coal mines again to make up for it or maybe we going to go nuclear.... perhaps we could litter the Peak District with miles and miles of huge wind farms.... I'm sure that would please the environmental lobby.

 

Add on final and most telling fact that in this country we can't even get a bloody railway line built in less than 30 years - do they seriously think all this infrastructure is going to pop up out of thin air tomorrow.

 

Don't get me wrong, I am not against electric vehicles.  I will welcome then when the time is right. However, I don't expect to be bullied and penalised into getting one until I can buy one at a reasonable cost, use it, fuel it and keep it running with a realistic comparator to another ordinary car.  

 

Despite what a handful of eco mentalists living in Hampstead think..  in the real world that circumstance ain't gonna happen for a long time. 

Oxford services didn't have a single space on the tesla chargers when i was there the other day.  40 mins (a lunch break) will give you about 80%. 

 

Is it ideal? No. Not by a distance. Is it improving? Yes, rapidly. The range and charging times now compared with a decade ago are huge.  Can we change how we work where reps aren't doing 500 miles a day, every day? Yes, the last 12 months have proved that!

11 minutes ago, Longcol said:

Until a 5 minute charge can deliver 400+ miles then we're going to need one helluva lot of charging points.

 

Is there any sign that electric motors are going to be able to power HGV's (or say delivery vans) for any distance in the near future?

Do you drive 400 miles a day?

[Guest busdriver1]

1 hour ago, tinfoilhat said:

,

Oxford services didn't have a single space on the tesla chargers when i was there the other day.  40 mins (a lunch break) will give you about 80%. 

 

Is it ideal? No. Not by a distance. Is it improving? Yes, rapidly. The range and charging times now compared with a decade ago are huge.  Can we change how we work where reps aren't doing 500 miles a day, every day? Yes, the last 12 months have proved that!

Do you drive 400 miles a day?

I regularly do 300. Electric is not an option. 

[AndrewC 306]

6 hours ago, ECCOnoob said:

That is true. But let's not forget that filling up with petrol or diesel literally takes minutes. For those using self service they can be in, filled up and out in less than 3 minutes.

 

Nothing in the electric vehicle refilling can compete with that right now. Even the best, top of the range and most expensive refill stations for the Premier of electric cars still is at best 15-minutes. For others it can be anything up to at least an hour before your fuel can be reasonably topped up.

 

We have all seen the queues that happen in a normal petrol station on a Saturday afternoon, how on Earth do we think people are going to cope when there are 15 to 30-minute turnaround per vehicle.

 

I'm sure like everything it will evolve but we are talking long-term here.   In my opinion there is currently a clear inbalance with the pace of EV infrastructure being way behind the pace of the rhetoric, bullying and penalizing of people into buying and driving EV.

 

That imbalance is simply unjust.

There's certainly still a lot of questions to answer - and another good reason why simply having fewer cars on the road would help in easing the transition - but just to pick up on the worry about the recharging technology; as tinfoilhat says above, it is advancing at an incredible rate. Manufacturers and governments know that people are demanding consumers, and they'll work hard to keep getting more miles out of quicker charges.

 

 

Just to clarify something regarding the 2030 'ban' mentioned by a few people above, with a slight suggestion of '9 years until everyone is in an electric car'. That's not the reality.

 

2030 will see a UK ban on sales of new petrol/diesel cars; it doesn't extend to second-hand sales of petrol/diesel cars (though I'm sure that will follow at some point, maybe 2040-2050), nor is it an outright ban on using petrol/diesel cars on the road. In fact, given only a small portion of cars on the road any given year are new, the vast majority of people won't see that ban impact their choices until we move one, two, three or more years down the line, as those new electric cars from 2030 onwards filter through the market. Hybrids too can still be sold until 2035, and still thereafter if they meet certain specifications.

 

 

Another factor about all this which we haven't touched on yet, is radical changes in the way we own and use cars full stop. Obviously there are traditional methods of reducing car use (investment in public transport, active travel etc., better urban planning (15-minute cities etc)., but another thing to consider is that for many the traditional concept of owning your own car, parking it up at home (where you may or may not have to plug it in to charge etc.) may well become an old-hat style of car use anyway. Expect rentals, car sharing etc to increase. It may well be when you need a car in the future, a fully-charged car is delivered to your street!

[Ant68 21]

My brother has a company car. Its due for renewal. He has 3 choices.

 

1 An electric car

2 A hybrid

3 Choose not to have a company car, and ‘sort yourself out’.

 

Option 1 and 2 are out due to the exact reason the OP brought up. He lives in a rented house, on a terraced street. He’d have to get permission from the property owner to have a charging point installed (at his own cost, his company wont help) but the cable would have to trail across the pavement - thats assuming he can park outside his own house with the congestion on his street.

 

His company have refused to have charging points installed at his workplace, so he can’t even charge it there during the day (he works for a large vehicle rental company, who’s parent company is a well known vehicle manufacturer).

 

So I guess hes left with option 3 - buying a petrol / diesel car.

 

Technology does move on at an alarming rate sometimes, but with things the way they are currently, I’d like to see the solution to the hundreds of cars that currently use every service station on the motorway on a daily basis. Its not a ‘splash and dash’ like we currently have, its a plug and hang about for 20 mins or longer!

 

Not enough thought put into it as usual.......

 

I’ll stop there before my blood pressure gets too high

 

[kevvy 12]

15 hours ago, Mr Bloke said:

Hmmm...

... why not get a portable diesel generator and charge it from that?

🤣🤣

15 hours ago, Mr Bloke said:

Hmmm...

... why not get a portable diesel generator and charge it from that?

🤣🤣

[kevvy 12]

Another Part thought out idea. !!   Put this stuff out in the market then deal with the consequences later ???   I am of the mind that all this " Climate change"  is the Earth's  cycle. We've had Ice Ages  and Heat waves over the Millenia, why is "Now" any different ???   

[dave_the_m 61]

1 hour ago, kevvy said:

 I am of the mind that all this " Climate change"  is the Earth's  cycle. We've had Ice Ages  and Heat waves over the Millenia, why is "Now" any different ???   

You are are aware of "the earth's cycle" specifically because climate scientists have studied it and shown there to be such a cycle. Those same scientists are saying that the current changes aren't part of a normal cycle.

[willman 10]

2 hours ago, Ant68 said:

My brother has a company car. Its due for renewal. He has 3 choices.

 

1 An electric car

2 A hybrid

3 Choose not to have a company car, and ‘sort yourself out’.

 

Option 1 and 2 are out due to the exact reason the OP brought up. He lives in a rented house, on a terraced street. He’d have to get permission from the property owner to have a charging point installed (at his own cost, his company wont help) but the cable would have to trail across the pavement - thats assuming he can park outside his own house with the congestion on his street.

 

His company have refused to have charging points installed at his workplace, so he can’t even charge it there during the day (he works for a large vehicle rental company, who’s parent company is a well known vehicle manufacturer).

 

So I guess hes left with option 3 - buying a petrol / diesel car.

 

Technology does move on at an alarming rate sometimes, but with things the way they are currently, I’d like to see the solution to the hundreds of cars that currently use every service station on the motorway on a daily basis. Its not a ‘splash and dash’ like we currently have, its a plug and hang about for 20 mins or longer!

 

Not enough thought put into it as usual.......

 

I’ll stop there before my blood pressure gets too high

 

He could buy a self charging  Hybrid - i did. No charging point needed - obviously when they remove the self charging hybrid from sale in 2030 i might need to rethink it ,if i'm still here and if im still working.

[tinfoilhat 11]

10 hours ago, busdriver1 said:

I regularly do 300. Electric is not an option. 

No breaks? That sounds fun. 

 

But for 300 mikes a day electric, at the moment, isn't viable unless it's a top end tesla.

[old tup 30]

I see no one has mentioned hydrogen cars ,they would take the same time to fuel up as a petrol or diesel,the car produces its own electricity eliminating the worry with charging times!.Up to just the technology is dragging behind the push for EVs and is expensive to purchase a hydrogen car but it makes more sense to me than all the problems mentioned on here!.I think this will be the choice for HGVs in the future it is already being used on bus services at this time in several towns,I think at the moment there are only a few filling stations in the UK Sheffield being one of them!.In my humble opinion we ought to be pushing this technology not the present one with all its problems!.