UK switching to electric vehicles discussion

[Peter Sarf]

I was watching a video the other day where they referred to charging times in a way that put it into perspective for me - the latest Tesla can charge at 500 miles per hour!

That is really the useful measure - obviously does not account for driving styles and size/weight of the car but it is still more meaningful.

To charge in one hour to get 500 miles range looks bearable.

 

[Sun Chariot]

To charge in one hour to get 500 miles range looks bebearable.

The cynic in me compares that statistic to the sub 2-minutes to brim my diesel car. I get 720 miles range on the indicator; and a real-world 600+ miles of short and longer journeys.

 

[Peter Sarf]

The cynic in me compares that statistic to the sub 2-minutes to brim my diesel car. I get 720 miles range on the indicator; and a real-world 600 miles of short and longer journeys.

I should say it is bearable in the context of an existing stop for a break where I would like to be in and out in twenty minutes - as 250 miles would get me to my next stop. As for paying motorway service station prices or hunting around for a charging point (granted I do not look for them currently) those would be an issue.

 

[johncrossley]

At least chargers at motorway services are used by regular consumers. The prices for petrol and diesel are obviously priced at a huge premium so they are only used by people on expenses or fuel card users who don't actually pay the advertised rate.

 

[trebor79]

I was watching a video the other day where they referred to charging times in a way that put it into perspective for me - the latest Tesla can charge at 500 miles per hour!

Mine charges at over 1,000mph when the battery is empty. Slows to about 500mph by 60%.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 25 Dec 2024 ==

The cynic in me compares that statistic to the sub 2-minutes to brim my diesel car. I get 720 miles range on the indicator; and a real-world 600+ miles of short and longer journeys.

Yeah but you have to do that after having your toilet and tea break. And it's more like 10 minutes by the time you've paid etc.
I plug in, have my widdle, buy a cup of tea and walk back to the car. By that time it's good to go without further ado.
Long journeys take less time than by ICE.

I should say it is bearable in the context of an existing stop for a break where I would like to be in and out in twenty minutes - as 250 miles would get me to my next stop. As for paying motorway service station prices or hunting around for a charging point (granted I do not look for them currently) those would be an issue.

There's no "hunting" involved. On the Tesla and many other EVs it's all integrated into the navigation. And there are apps that will plan your journey with charge stops if your car isn't one where it's integrated.

 

[Mawkie]

Mine charges at over 1,000mph when the battery is empty. Slows to about 500mph by 60%.

I read the V4 superchargers are offering 1300 miles per hour, but that was for an 800v architecture Cybertruck, which can accept 500kW.

So I bow to your greater knowledge of 1000 miles per hour.

Either way, as @Peter Sarf acknowledges, we're already at a point where 15 minutes would give me a week's worth of average driving.

 

[Sun Chariot]

Yeah but you have to do that after having your toilet and tea break. And it's more like 10 minutes by the time you've paid etc.

Trust me. Select pay at pump and a faster flow pump means I'm out in less than 2 minutes

 

[trebor79]

Trust me. Select pay at pump and a faster flow pump means I'm out in less than 2 minutes

Whatever. It's still longer than I need to stop for and some idiot has always managed to get diesel on the pump handle.

 

[Sun Chariot]

Whatever. It's still longer than I need to stop for and some idiot has always managed to get diesel on the pump handle.

My wife did a 450 mile round trip yesterday and moaned that someone had left a diesel waft in the ladies. Beggars belief.

 

[bspahh]

There aren't enough ANPR cameras to effectively charge everyone per mile, but perhaps more of a zonal type charge. More congestion zones all over the UK?

How serious is a pay per mile scheme? It needs to be secure and accurate and all cars would need the equipment fitted, including ones on the road already.

There could be a pay per mile scheme, with a fall back to a daily charge if you pass an ANPR camera. The pay per mile rate could be cheaper, to encourage people to use it, and it could be based on either the car or the user's phone.
ANPR cameras can be used to sanity check the measurements from the pay per mile measurements, with a fine if

It would need careful planning, so you don't divert traffic onto back streets, country roads and green lanes.

 

[AM9]

As an aside - anyone believe that the state would replace road tax with pay per mile ?.
I suspect it would be both - particularly for ICE !. A bit harsh on those of us that do a very low mileage.

Pay per mile, possibly shaped to discourage journeys where alternatives modes are available would be among the fairer methods. A fixed charge similar to current ICV VED would be reasonable for all drivers if a PPM was present, i.e. low mileage drivers would pay little over the annual tax.

 

[GusB]

There are also ethical concerns. It would be like only allowing new computers sold in the UK to be pre installed with phone home malware to report power usage to the government.

Eh? Surely if computer power usage is to be reported to the government it would be done via existing electricty meters. Even then, smart meters don't actually know what each individual appliance is using. My supplier's app tries to break down my electricity consumption into heating/cooking, etc.; they can probably guess what's happening by using known patterns (eg, if something is using 3kW for a minute or two, it's fairly likely to be a kettle), but an electricity meter only records the overall energy used and cannot detect what individual appliances are using.

If we do move to a price-per-mile model, any system that is set up to record the mileage will be no different to those that we already use to record electricity and gas consumption. The technology to monitor distance travelled already exists - lorries and coaches already have it installed to ensure that driver hours and breaks are recorded.

You mention ethical concerns and you do have a valid point. Most, if not all, petrol stations will have CCTV installed. The government can, if it suspects you of carrying out any dodgy activity, monitor your financial transactions. While it may not be possible to exactly record how many miles you do, if you do happen to be under suspicion you can bet that there's someone with sufficient expertise on hand to work out how much you're spending and where you spend it. Driving an EV isn't going to make much difference in this case.

Your concerns are far too late, I'm afraid!

(Smart meters and government surveillance in general aren't really on-topic here and should be discussed elsewhere)

But how long would be required for each charging stop ?. Also I do like to keep plenty "in the tank" for emergencies.

How many times does it have to be explained to you that you do not have to have a full tank/battery at all times in order to deal with emergencies? My remaining family are around 150 miles away. Do I ensure that the petrol tank in my car has sufficient fuel at all times? No, I don't. I keep enough in the tank to ensure that I can get to the nearest 24-hour filling station and it takes a few minutes to fill it up with enough juice in order to complete the journey. It may take slightly longer to do a top-up charge with an EV, but a 15-minute stop isn't really going to make a huge amount of difference.

What could happen is ANPR data being used to match the pay per mile devices records. If you could hack the pay-per-mile device to lose journeys BUT ANPR showed you were on a particular road then alarm bells would ring. Relies on the pay-per-mile device recording whole routes not just the number of miles travelled.

Relying on ANPR is a non-starter. It doesn't exist everywhere in the country.

There's no "hunting" involved. On the Tesla and many other EVs it's all integrated into the navigation. And there are apps that will plan your journey with charge stops if your car isn't one where it's integrated.

Indeed. There's Ovo's "Charge Anywhere":

Get ready to Charge Anywhere

Recommend "All you need for EV charging on the move. Power up your car wherever you are, plan your route, and pay – all with Charge Anywhere. You don’t have to be an OVO customer. J

www.ovoenergy.com

Charge Anywhere is the only thing you need for EV charging when you’re out. It lets you:

Search from 34,000+ UK chargers, and 400,000+ chargers in Europe
Find out if a charger is available and reliable
Pay for your charging directly through the app
Access the UK's biggest charging networks – like Osprey, MFG, Ubitricity, Source London, Allego, FastNed, and Ionity

It's also possible for someone with a home charger to rent it out to other EV users, although I can't remember the name of the scheme. Essentially, it allows users to park at the home of someone who is signed up and they pay an hourly rate for parking with charging included.

 

[Harpers Tate]

I do use motorway service stations but never pay their prices for petrol. I wonder if the charges for an electric charge will be more reasonable ?. Currently not apparently. I would be one of those wanting to use every opportunity to charge BUT I do not want to pay over the normal price !.

My re-assurance is if I get stuck in a traffic jam. Not going to get a charge if stuck in a jam on the motorway for an hour or two. Not going to be able to walk down the road with a Jerry can full of motion lotion.

Roadside chargers cost (ballpark) about the same per mile as liquid fuels. The important "different think" here, though, is that elsewhere (such as, at home where you have that option) you can get fuel at say 10% of that cost - something you can never (realistically) do with liquid fuel. Thereby, the overall running costs end up being typically far lower, even with the overpriced roadside machines. In my case, net cost over ~40k miles in my current car has been under 2p/mile.

As to traffic hold-ups, as another has said, you can restart after a several-hour hold-up in a jam having used only a tiny proportion of your fuel. So, unless you were dumb enough to arrive at the jam already almost dead, you will come out of it. The relatively small battery in my car (38.3kWh) will take me +/- 200 miles. If I'm down to 25% charge (=~9kWh) then I still have ~40 miles plus some "limp mode" remaining. My ASHP heater draws 0.5kW from cold; thermostat cycles once cabin temperature is reached. Even running constantly, 3 hours stationary will use ~1.5 kWh, which will reduce my remaining range by about 8 miles. In reality, 5 miles is probably closer.

To charge in one hour to get 500 miles range looks bearable.

It's probably better phrased, not as 500mph, but as 300 mp{36 minutes} since it's obviously limited by battery capacity and there are few 500-mile EVs. Realisitically as I said earlier, it's more like 200 miles per 30 minutes, since charge speeds are not constant; they slow, the fuller the battery is. It's not efficient use of time (unless you are otherwise occupied, in which case it's not time wasted) to stay beyond around 80% full. But again - a nominal 300-mile car becomes a nominal 500 mile car with one such 30-minute gross (likely, much less or zero, net) stop.

 

[E27007]

Thinking of the future logistics of charging a ZEV at an intermediate point in a journey,
A large motorway service station can handle the refuel-ling of 200 IC cars per hour, each Ic car arrives with a couple of gallons in the tank and the driver departs having fueled with 8 gallons extending the range by 400 miles per car. 200 cars x 400 miles is 80000 miles of range .

If the cars are ZEV and there are no petrol pumps, only fast charging points in the same service station , how many cars per hour and, how many charging points to give 80000 miles of added range to the users?
Also how many MW of electrical power would be required to deliver 80000 miles of range to the users of the service station/

 

[trebor79]

Thinking of the future logistics of charging a ZEV at an intermediate point in a journey,
A large motorway service station can handle the refuel-ling of 200 IC cars per hour, each Ic car arrives with a couple of gallons in the tank and the driver departs having fueled with 8 gallons extending the range by 400 miles per car. 200 cars x 400 miles is 80000 miles of range .

If the cars are ZEV and there are no petrol pumps, only fast charging points in the same service station , how many cars per hour and, how many charging points to give 80000 miles of added range to the users?
Also how many MW of electrical power would be required to deliver 80000 miles of range to the users of the service station/

Very roughly speaking, 20MW.

 

[AM9]

Very roughly speaking, 20MW.

And will 20MW peak demand per station be achievable, say on the M1 between the M25 and Catthorpe junction, (i.e. 4 service stations), in the future?

 

[Harpers Tate]

A large motorway service station can handle the refuel-ling of 200 IC cars per hour, each Ic car arrives with a couple of gallons in the tank and the driver departs having fueled with 8 gallons extending the range by 400 miles per car. 200 cars x 400 miles is 80000 miles of range

The question is not necessarily what it can do. It's more properly considered as what it will need to do, which may be less (I don't know in fact). We can't exactly map ICE activity onto EV activity.

Only when you know with some degree of certainty what the requirement actually is, can you consider how to meet that requirement. That requirement can be based on what the present ICE activity is, but will need to be adjusted by factors such as:
- of those who are refuelling ICEs on their outward trip - by how much is the requirement reduced by the option to start the journey from home, full, every time (which isn't an option with an ICE)?
- ditto those who are en route home who may not need a recharge until they get there
- or en route to a workplace or other destination where there is charging
- or intend to stop elsewhere en route (eg to get lunch at a pub, etc.) where there is charging
and so on.

 

[trebor79]

And will 20MW peak demand per station be achievable, say on the M1 between the M25 and Catthorpe junction, (i.e. 4 service stations), in the future?

I don't see why not. Places like Exeter and Rugby already have 50+ high powered chargers, so could theoretically pull 15MW.
But it's highly unlikely that every charger will be running at full power at the same time.
Some other places have battery storage to augment the grid supply.

 

[vikingsmb]

Not realistic sorry, well not for me anyway
too expensive, range is poor and no capacity to tow ribs (powerboats) I will stick with my 57 plate passat diesel estate thanks

 

[AM9]

I don't see why not. Places like Exeter and Rugby already have 50+ high powered chargers, so could theoretically pull 15MW.
But it's highly unlikely that every charger will be running at full power at the same time.
Some other places have battery storage to augment the grid supply.

I was asking a simplistic question assuming a positive answer. When broken down, the M1 south is only likely to be carrying a load of cars requiring 80,000 miles worth at each of four service areas for a relatively small part of each day. Add to that that part of the M1 run's quite close to much of the National grid's 400kV spine, and many 132kV lines also cross it. Land and plannig permission is unlikely to prevent the additional connections to the grid along the M1,s corridor.

 

[jon0844]

Just as I avoid motorway services for all but a toilet stop, and maybe to stretch legs, getting petrol somewhere cheaper nearby, I will do the same for EV charging. It's no surprise BP and Shell want to charge a fortune for EV charging, as it not only doesn't make their fuel prices look so bad - but also discourages too many people to switch from fossil fuels.

Competition is now bringing charges down, along with some interesting subscription services, and as most EVs will plan your route with charging stops on the way, you absolutely do not need to just use motorway services.

The grid appears to be getting some sizeable upgrades now, which won't happen overnight, but should make huge differences by 2030 - and I'm still really excited to see what offerings will be available to people buying cars with V2G support. It's a shame many car makers are still hesitant to include it on their new cars, likely because it's not widely supported yet (chicken and egg), but imagine the situation when a chunk of those EVs parked up could power the grid at peak times? Or even just power my own home for as much as three days (with no need to turn anything off) in the event of a power failure, or if energy costs are high due to a lack of wind/solar.

 

[GLC]

At the other end of the spectrum however, I’m staying in some accommodation in the Peak District, which has on site EV chargers, which are priced at 75p per kWh for a 7kW charger. It’s nice they have charging available, but at that price, I’ll take my petrol car next time. Gridserve is currently 79p per kWh on their rapid chargers, which can be up to 350kW. I don’t mind paying a premium for motorway services, and the speed of a rapid charger, but 75p for an overnight charger is ridiculous

 

[trebor79]

Yeah 75p for AC charging is ridiculous. I hope that you and others tell them that they are pricing themselves out of the market and consequently not making the return on investment that they could be.

 

[E27007]

I'm guilty of not being up to speed with this thread and all the posts on it.

The posts I have read, are focused on the EV infrastructure and EV vehicles.
My question, though, is about the effect on HM Treasury's revenue streams.

Fiscal Year 2023-24, UK fuel duty receipts totalled £24.83bn. That is a slight drop on the previous year's fuel duty receipts of £25.1bn.
More EVs and fewer ICEs surely = less fuel duty revenue? Less fuel duty revenue surely means taxes created or raised elsewhere, to meet the shortfall?

I believe "pay per mile" taxation model has been taken off the agenda, for now, by all UK political parties. I've not found any clear info on how HM Treasury's revenue gap will be closed.
All information I found via online searches, is speculative not concrete.

Does any reader know more?

Much of the technology for pay-per-mile is within the modern car, the external connectivity infrastructure is present too.
Within the modern car is the mandatory "SOS" distress function which uses mobile phone and GPS technology to contact and report to the emergency services the location of the vehicle.
The Galileo EU GPS navigation system, for which UK made a significant contribution to the EU budget for the project, is a two-way communication system, the vehicle tracks its location using the GPS satellite signals and can report location to land-based systems .
I think you will realise where this is leading, a further step is to develop software to process the vehicle location data and you are on the path to a vehicle tracking pay-per-mile road usage system.
With the erosion of £24 bn fuel duty revenue over the next decade as ZEV substitutes for IC, what other options are there to plug the revenue hole?

 

[Noddy]

Thinking of the future logistics of charging a ZEV at an intermediate point in a journey,
A large motorway service station can handle the refuel-ling of 200 IC cars per hour, each Ic car arrives with a couple of gallons in the tank and the driver departs having fueled with 8 gallons extending the range by 400 miles per car. 200 cars x 400 miles is 80000 miles of range .

If the cars are ZEV and there are no petrol pumps, only fast charging points in the same service station , how many cars per hour and, how many charging points to give 80000 miles of added range to the users?
Also how many MW of electrical power would be required to deliver 80000 miles of range to the users of the service station/

There is an issue with this point in that when you fill up at a MSA most folk (certainly those I know) don’t fill up all the way but only enough to reach their destination/another cheaper fuel station. Likewise, when using public charging you only charge up enough to get to your destination (where there is/should be cheaper AC charging). So while 80000 miles of range for cars may be an achievable capacity for a MSA fuel station it is also unlikely to ever be reached/needed.

A bigger issue is that hydrogen for land transportation in the UK is dead so MSA will also need to be charging points for electric lorrys. These will have much much bigger power requirements than cars.

 

[MotCO]

There is an issue with this point in that when you fill up at a MSA most folk (certainly those I know) don’t fill up all the way but only enough to reach their destination/another cheaper fuel station. Likewise, when using public charging you only charge up enough to get to your destination (where there is/should be cheaper AC charging). So while 80000 miles of range for cars may be an achievable capacity for a MSA fuel station it is also unlikely to ever be reached/needed.

A bigger issue is that hydrogen for land transportation in the UK is dead so MSA will also need to be charging points for electric lorrys. These will have much much bigger power requirements than cars.

The other issue is the comparison in the time taken to 'recharge' ICEs and EVs and the quantity of 'supplies'. To give an example at random. Clackett Lane eastbound services, according to the website, has 8 EV charging points, and 20 fuel pumps. Given that it probably takes 5 minutes to use the fuel pumps, but at least 30 minutes to use the EV chargers (and assuming everyone does not want to charge to 100%; but would you rather queue up on numerous occasions for a small top-up, or once for a full top-up?), the chances are that you would be more likely to queue up for an EV charge, and for longer, than queuing up for a fuel pump.

 

[AM9]

The other issue is the comparison in the time taken to 'recharge' ICEs and EVs and the quantity of 'supplies'. To give an example at random. Clackett Lane eastbound services, according to the website, has 8 EV charging points, and 20 fuel pumps. Given that it probably takes 5 minutes to use the fuel pumps, but at least 30 minutes to use the EV chargers (and assuming everyone does not want to charge to 100%; but would you rather queue up on numerous occasions for a small top-up, or once for a full top-up?), the chances are that you would be more likely to queue up for an EV charge, and for longer, than queuing up for a fuel pump.

So that is the situation now. I have no absolute figures, but say there were 30 chargers in 2026, and 50 chargers in 2030, all of which take about 30 seconds to start and 15 seconds to end. The actual charging time being driver's free time for a comfort break, drink/bite and maybe phone call/e-mail check etc. In the case of a stop for petrol, all of those times are in series with refuelling.

 

[Peter Sarf]

Thinking of the future logistics of charging a ZEV at an intermediate point in a journey,
A large motorway service station can handle the refuel-ling of 200 IC cars per hour, each Ic car arrives with a couple of gallons in the tank and the driver departs having fueled with 8 gallons extending the range by 400 miles per car. 200 cars x 400 miles is 80000 miles of range .

If the cars are ZEV and there are no petrol pumps, only fast charging points in the same service station , how many cars per hour and, how many charging points to give 80000 miles of added range to the users?
Also how many MW of electrical power would be required to deliver 80000 miles of range to the users of the service station/

This seems to be turning into a large demand on the UK electricity supply infrastructure.

Just as I avoid motorway services for all but a toilet stop, and maybe to stretch legs, getting petrol somewhere cheaper nearby, I will do the same for EV charging. It's no surprise BP and Shell want to charge a fortune for EV charging, as it not only doesn't make their fuel prices look so bad - but also discourages too many people to switch from fossil fuels.

Competition is now bringing charges down, along with some interesting subscription services, and as most EVs will plan your route with charging stops on the way, you absolutely do not need to just use motorway services.

The grid appears to be getting some sizeable upgrades now, which won't happen overnight, but should make huge differences by 2030 - and I'm still really excited to see what offerings will be available to people buying cars with V2G support. It's a shame many car makers are still hesitant to include it on their new cars, likely because it's not widely supported yet (chicken and egg), but imagine the situation when a chunk of those EVs parked up could power the grid at peak times? Or even just power my own home for as much as three days (with no need to turn anything off) in the event of a power failure, or if energy costs are high due to a lack of wind/solar.

My ICE range means I can take rest breaks more often then fuel stops. So I can use a motorway service station for the loo and no more BUT I don't need to drive around off the motorway for fuel if I am expecting to get fuel later in the journey nearer to being within a city. But I am unlikely to want all my rest breaks to be off motorway so frequent charging is not feasible.

You mention V2G - Vehicle to Grid ?. Now this worries me because if a car can power the home for three days that tells me that cars that are being used regularly are going to be a significant demand on the electricity supply network. Could we be in danger of sleepwalking (well driving) into power cuts due to lack of generating capacity or even network ?.

An interesting statistic would be to see what proportion of ICE and EV cars are being used for long trips and what proportion for short trips. It could be that most EV users are just doing short trips and that ICE cars are being relied upon for longer more frequent trips. I would hope for ecology's sake it is the other way round.

 

[dcbwhaley]

How many times does it have to be explained to you that you do not have to have a full tank/battery at all times in order to deal with emergencies? My remaining family are around 150 miles away. Do I ensure that the petrol tank in my car has sufficient fuel at all times? No, I don't.

Au contrair. I never allow my ICE tak to get below half full. That is 4 gallons or at least 150 miles. If one has to make that hypothetical journey to a dying Aunt in the wee small hours one can't rely on finding an open filling station.
And if, God forbid, I end up with an EV my attitude would be the same: at least 100mile range

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Dec 2024 ==

With the erosion of £24 bn fuel duty revenue over the next decade as ZEV substitutes for IC, what other options are there to plug the revenue hole?

No reason why the loss of fuel duty revenue has to replaced by a tax on motor vehicles
3p on the basic rate of income tax would raise £22.5bn.
Raising VAT by 3% would raise £27bn.

 

[bspahh]

You mention V2G - Vehicle to Grid ?. Now this worries me because if a car can power the home for three days that tells me that cars that are being used regularly are going to be a significant demand on the electricity supply network. Could we be in danger of sleepwalking (well driving) into power cuts due to lack of generating capacity or even network ?.

V2G helps the electricity supply network.

If you have an electric car with a big battery for occaisional long journeys, then it has capacity you won't use the rest of the time. It can then be charged up cheaply when its sunny or windy, and send the charge back to the grid when its dark or calm.