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

[DustyBin]

Yes, but that's another 'issue' if you have those long cables you need to store in your car. They always show them nicely stored under the main boot cover, which isn't exactly convenient when the boot is full up.

I guess car makers will learn as time goes on and adapt designs to improve the charging process in a number of ways. It's still relatively early days.

Thinking about it I imagine wireless charging will be the next innovation in this regard, possibly?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Thinking about it I imagine wireless charging will be the next innovation in this regard, possibly?

It's already been done for buses, but for cars it would be a costly option involving digging your drive up as against the very small effort of plugging in a cable, so I can't really see it being that big a thing.

 

[reddragon]

To be fair I’ve noticed a few EV charging areas that can become congested with people waiting and I can see how it does make manoeuvring slightly awkward. A couple of these are ones I’d probably use which is partly what put me off an EV this time around as I simply don’t have time to wait for a bay, during the week anyway.

The general idea with Shell is the wait across their entrance until the charger is free.

If you enter the site, you get a fine, if you stop anyone else getting fuel, you don't and they get the hint about more chargers

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Jan 2022 ==

Thinking about it I imagine wireless charging will be the next innovation in this regard, possibly?

It works, but the energy losses are huge compared with direct DC charging

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Jan 2022 ==

Yes, but that's another 'issue' if you have those long cables you need to store in your car. They always show them nicely stored under the main boot cover, which isn't exactly convenient when the boot is full up.

I guess car makers will learn as time goes on and adapt designs to improve the charging process in a number of ways. It's still relatively early days.

They can go under the bonnet or in the frunk / froot

 

[DustyBin]

It's already been done for buses, but for cars it would be a costly option involving digging your drive up as against the very small effort of plugging in a cable, so I can't really see it being that big a thing.

I was thinking more in public charging bays, sorry I should have said. I'm not really clued up on this sort of thing but could we see wireless charging via a "post" as opposed to a surface "pad"? It will depend on how close you need the batteries and charging interface to be I imagine?

 

[Meerkat]

That's why the issue of charging won't exist in the future, because businesses won't want to miss out on the business opportunities, or indeed to lose custom from people not going to their establishment because they can't charge there (I refer to countryside pubs, camps etc - not your local One Stop).

Sure businesses will have chargers, but will they have them for all their spaces or just for the few spaces that are used every day?

And that's where car clubs come in. On most terraced streets there's room for each house to have one small car alongside their own house, with a few of them ending up round the corner alongside the "long side" of the houses. The problems occur when a household has more than one. Yet a good many households need something like 1.2 cars - most of the time one suffices but sometimes a second one is useful. This is where car clubs come in.

Can't do car club if more than one person needs a car every day (and with kids not being able to afford houses and staying with their parents that is an issue)

It's a minor tweak to your day so an asthmatic kid isn't suffering as much from your particulates.

Its a major tweak to the day, and the rest is hyperbole

It'd be better if people used public transport or the organised away coaches for football trips anyway - the large number of cars often parked on-street in areas not well suited for that causes no end of problems. So if this pushes you not to drive, good.

Public transport is very expensive and inconvenient (I do go by train if reasonable, even if I have to get across London). Organised football coaches are awful, and one of the main reasons I stopped using them is being forced to sit around in service stations for ages.......

Even replacing 70% of the country's car fleet with EVs (allowing newer ICE cars to filter down as used, so those who don't have a driveway drive newer, less polluting ICE cars) would bring massive benefits, so that sounds good to me.

That is a worthy cause as long as it isnt achieved by forcing people to in a way that penalises the poorest most.

Or even better, if feasible for that trip, you take the train for the trunk journey,

Have you seen how much junk families take with them these days! (market opportunity for delivery companies??)

 

[Bletchleyite]

Have you seen how much junk families take with them these days! (market opportunity for delivery companies??)

Clearly not going to work for a camping trip, but the same families are seen on Ryanair all the time with one hand luggage bag each.

 

[jon0844]

Thinking about it I imagine wireless charging will be the next innovation in this regard, possibly?

Yes, I can see this being a thing on streets to allow wirefree charging - but there are quite large losses I believe? It is likely to be fine for vehicles that sit around for some time, rather than some rapid charging solution.

Again, ideal for overnight parking and for public transport vehicles, but perhaps that's going to take a while longer given the cost of digging up roads. Driveways might be great at home, but best ensure you don't employ some cowboy firm to install!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Jan 2022 ==

They can go under the bonnet or in the frunk / froot

On many cars yes, but not all. Especially some vehicles that started out as ICE and were adapted to EV.

 

[seagull]

Out of interest, as thinking of getting some electrical cable laid near drive to an outbuilding: is there yet a standard "supply box" which can be fitted for charging, or would it be better to just stick an above-ground junction box in at this stage?

 

[reddragon]

Out of interest, as thinking of getting some electrical cable laid near drive to an outbuilding: is there yet a standard "supply box" which can be fitted for charging, or would it be better to just stick an above-ground junction box in at this stage?

You need a 32A fused cable & connection point, ideally 40A cable if you want to use it in the outbuilding too.

A charger can be connected to that, but there maybe a requirement for a dedicated fuse / line.

 

[seagull]

Ok, cheers. Might be worth just getting two cables put in the ground, one solely to a charging point, in that case. Even if left as a simple terminated end for now.

 

[reddragon]

Ok, cheers. Might be worth just getting two cables put in the ground, one solely to a charging point, in that case. Even if left as a simple terminated end for now.

A simple terminal end on a 32A cable, 40A if the cable run is longer with a dedicated fuse. Might also be worth adding a CT clamp & feed cable to the outlet as well to ensure no mains supply overload.

Any electrician can install one, they are plug & play unless you want a more complex one.

 

[Meerkat]

Clearly not going to work for a camping trip, but the same families are seen on Ryanair all the time with one hand luggage bag each.

Hand luggage for a week?! Might work somewhere warm and dry but holidays in Britain require more variety of clothing unfortunately!

 

[Bald Rick]

Hand luggage for a week?! Might work somewhere warm and dry but holidays in Britain require more variety of clothing unfortunately!

Routinely. When we make our trips ‘up north’ for a week (and more), my kids take a cabin bag each, and that has everything they need, all times of year.

Mrs BR takes a bag that I suspect has a gravitational field broadly equivalent to one of Jupiter’s more senior moons, but that’s another matter.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Routinely. When we make our trips ‘up north’ for a week (and more), my kids take a cabin bag each, and that has everything they need, all times of year.

Remember that kids' clothes and shoes are probably about a third of the volume of my XXL, 35" leg trousers and size 14 shoes. People laugh at me about having a big bag when going places for a short time, but when you think about it...

(Of course I'm not limited to hand luggage size on a train, indeed I know for a fact that a 110 litre, 25kg rucksack will happily fit on the overheads of CAF and Hitachi stock! )

 

[Bald Rick]

Remember that kids' clothes and shoes are probably about a third of the volume of my XXL, 35" leg trousers and size 14 shoes.

One of my kids has a 34” inside leg. But I don’t suppose you’d wear the skirts she does.

 

[Bletchleyite]

One of my kids has a 34” inside leg. But I don’t suppose you’d wear the skirts she does.

And I was the same size (other than that my feet have grown two sizes) age 15. But I'd not call a 15 year old a kid in that sense, really, even if they legally and mentally are, and a 6 foot plus 15 year old can easily handle a full size trolley case on a train.

 

[GLC]

I wonder if anyone will think to install more than one charging socket (rather like many laptops can now charge from the left or right hand side USB-C socket). That way you could do front and back, or front and side, to make charging more flexible at home and away.

Possibly an option at extra cost.

The Porsche Taycan (and maybe whatever the mirror Audi is called) already has this feature. I want to say early Tesla Model S cars had it as an option but I can’t find any record of that.

Personally though, I would be happier with a longer cable. I recently used an Ionity charger (at 69p per kWh ), and although the charger cable was incredibly long, for the life of me I could not work out how to detach the cable from the top of the unit, leaving me with half the length to use. Ended up having to turn the car around so the charger would reach

 

[Bletchleyite]

One at the front and one at the rear would work best. Allows you the choice of forward and reverse parking (as it will vary from car park to car park which is more convenient), and less chance of it being knocked or damaged when someone squeezes past.

 

[miami]

From what I see you're getting about 3-4 miles per kWh. If you have a 40 mile daily trip, that means a 10A plug in a normal mains socket providing 2kW (even with a low-ball 80% efficency) would charge you in 6 hours. An overnight charge would give you 100 miles, which even if it were just 5 days a week would be 25k miles a year, over twice as high as the average car mileage.

Why do you need a rapid charger at home, unless you are frequently doing long trips? Even if you just pull 1kW each for 2 cars, the range on both will top up by 40 miles in 12 hours, and you can pull more than 2KW

Now if you're doing a 500 mile trip then sure, you'll want a rapid charger to top up half way there.

Vast majority (>72%) of cars are parked offroad overnight, 65% of households have or have potential for offroad parking.

 

[NoRoute]

From what I see you're getting about 3-4 miles per kWh. If you have a 40 mile daily trip, that means a 10A plug in a normal mains socket providing 2kW (even with a low-ball 80% efficency) would charge you in 6 hours. An overnight charge would give you 100 miles, which even if it were just 5 days a week would be 25k miles a year, over twice as high as the average car mileage.

Why do you need a rapid charger at home, unless you are frequently doing long trips? Even if you just pull 1kW each for 2 cars, the range on both will top up by 40 miles in 12 hours, and you can pull more than 2KW

The home 7kWh chargers are generally referred to as 'fast' chargers, rapids are the 50+kW public DC chargers, but yeah many lower mileage drivers could probably manage quite easily with just a slow <=3kW charger. It works ok for PHEVs.

Main advantage of the faster charging is more flexibility for back-to-back journeys, arriving from a long distance drive during the day and then needing a top up for a journey after work, or a couple of long distance business trips in quick succession over a few days. It also provides more flexibility when using some EV time of use tariffs, which have a short off-peak slot of 3-5 hours each night, at the cheapest time of day, getting more charge done within that lowest cost time of day. But equally there's tariffs with longer off-peak periods, like Economy 7 or EDF do one with a 9PM - 7AM off-peak weekday nights and all day weekends, so minimum 14kWh / 30-40ish off-peak miles each day.

 

[Bald Rick]

which even if it were just 5 days a week would be 25k miles a year, over twice as high as the average car mileage.

Getting on for 4 times average mileage, which is a shade under 7k miles.

 

[Shrop]

Just wondering what rates people are getting for their electric charges, and also how many miles you would expect to get per kWh. My electric rate with Bulb has recently gone up to 25.61p per kWh day rate, and 7.49p per kWh night rate. The night rate is only available 2am-6am, but for my PHEV that's just about long enough with a standard household socket.

I'm getting just a shade over 2 miles per kWh, which seems quite low compared to the electric car range, which I believe is more like 3-4 miles per kWh, although all electric cars don't of course lug around a petrol engine.

I like the PHEV as I can just revert to petrol for occasional longer trips, but I am thinking about all electric in the future. I hope I would then get nearer to 4 miles per kWh, but then I'd have to think seriously about getting a fast charger to use the 2am-6am period (or change supplier), as a standard household socket would take nearer to 12 hours.

I also wonder what sort of costs I'd be looking at per kWh at charging stations around the country?

 

[37424]

Just wondering what rates people are getting for their electric charges, and also how many miles you would expect to get per kWh. My electric rate with Bulb has recently gone up to 25.61p per kWh day rate, and 7.49p per kWh night rate. The night rate is only available 2am-6am, but for my PHEV that's just about long enough with a standard household socket.

I'm getting just a shade over 2 miles per kWh, which seems quite low compared to the electric car range, which I believe is more like 3-4 miles per kWh, although all electric cars don't of course lug around a petrol engine.

I like the PHEV as I can just revert to petrol for occasional longer trips, but I am thinking about all electric in the future. I hope I would then get nearer to 4 miles per kWh, but then I'd have to think seriously about getting a fast charger to use the 2am-6am period (or change supplier), as a standard household socket would take nearer to 12 hours.

I also wonder what sort of costs I'd be looking at per kWh at charging stations around the country?

As I said in an earlier post my overnight rate is going up from 5p per KWh to 20p in March.

A lot of the fast DC Public chargers have also gone up, Gridserve from 30p to 39p per KWh, while instavolt has gone up to 45p from 40p per KWh.

3-4 miles per KW is normally what my EV averages except when its really cold, if you get a pure EV then yes you really need a proper home charger.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Don't forget fossil fuels are also going up - over £1.50/l in some places now.

 

[DustyBin]

Don't forget fossil fuels are also going up - over £1.50/l in some places now.

They certainly are, although I managed to find Shell V-Power for £1.49 the other day which was nice.

 

[paul1609]

Economy 7 for my heritage railway has recently gone up to 38p/Kwh day, 26p/Kwh night. Make the most of the capped domestic rates whilst you can!

 

[Shrop]

As I said in an earlier post my overnight rate is going up from 5p per KWh to 20p in March.

A lot of the fast DC Public chargers have also gone up, Gridserve from 30p to 39p per KWh, while instavolt has gone up to 45p from 40p per KWh.

3-4 miles per KW is normally what my EV averages except when its really cold, if you get a pure EV then yes you really need a proper home charger.

Thanks, yes I saw that, it seems outrageous to hike the overnight rate from 5p to 20p, I was hoping other providers may be cheaper. I fully understand that energy prices are set to rise, but just imagine the outcry if petrol suddenly quadrupled in price.
If I have to pay 20p overnight at home, and 30p or more per kWh away from.home, I will be thinking strongly about reverting to petrol, or even diesel (while it's still available). Surely Government aren't so detached from reality that they will allow these rises, whilst still claiming to encourage people to electric cars?

 

[Bald Rick]

If I have to pay 20p overnight at home, and 30p or more per kWh away from.home, I will be thinking strongly about reverting to petrol, or even diesel (while it's still available). Surely Government aren't so detached from reality that they will allow these rises, whilst still claiming to encourage people to electric cars?

At those prices, electricity for your car will still be cheaper than petrol on a per mile basis. Comfortably so.

And Goverment has to play a fine line between setting a cap that helps consumers and also keeps energy companies solvent. Given that the wholesale cost of electricity right now is 20.8p /kWh, (compared to 7p this time last year), it’s a difficult call.

 

[JamesT]

Thanks, yes I saw that, it seems outrageous to hike the overnight rate from 5p to 20p, I was hoping other providers may be cheaper. I fully understand that energy prices are set to rise, but just imagine the outcry if petrol suddenly quadrupled in price.
If I have to pay 20p overnight at home, and 30p or more per kWh away from.home, I will be thinking strongly about reverting to petrol, or even diesel (while it's still available). Surely Government aren't so detached from reality that they will allow these rises, whilst still claiming to encourage people to electric cars?

The wholesale price of gas has massively increased over the last year - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58090533 . This has fed into the electricity prices as half our generation is gas at the moment. The electricity companies are mostly butting up against the government price caps, if those weren’t in place we’d probably be seeing even higher rises. I suspect the big rise you’re seeing in the overnight is because your provider has raised the day rate as far as they’re allowed, so they’re having to look at the night rate to recoup the losses they’re making.

The price of crude oil has almost doubled over the last year if I read https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/ correctly. (Setting the time range to 1 year). The difference is that the vast majority of the price you pay for petrol is taxes on a per litre basis, so changes in the oil price have a much smaller effect.

There’s very little the government can do in the short term. The price caps protect consumers from the worst of it, but until Putin opens the taps or we get a sustained period of renewable-friendly weather then we’re at the mercy of the global gas price. As we’ve seen from the number of providers going bust, selling electricity for less than the price you buy it doesn’t work for long. I doubt they’ll entertain the idea of directly subsidising energy prices as that’s merely putting the taxpayer on the hook.

 

[gg1]

Thanks, yes I saw that, it seems outrageous to hike the overnight rate from 5p to 20p, I was hoping other providers may be cheaper. I fully understand that energy prices are set to rise, but just imagine the outcry if petrol suddenly quadrupled in price.

The overnight rate was historically so low because of equally low demand, the increasing popularity of EVs has ensured overnight demand has increased so it was inevitable the price would follow, even without the recent sharp increases in wholesale energy prices.