When are you going fully electric?

[McPhee]

Anyone got an EV but no driveway? Can usually get parked near if not directly outside but it's obviously a concern.

What cabling etc would I need to run it over the pavement? Seen a few people doing this for charging mobility lifts in normal cars but don't know if I'd need anything special?

You need the council to install on-street charging (not likely to happen). Or you buy a charger, pay a local sparky to install it, drape your cable across the pavement, and accept that you're liable if someone trips over it.

Unfortunately, there hasn't been much progress for those without driveways. As I understand it, central government needs to pass legislation to make it easier for chargers to be installed at the road side. Until then, if you live near a Virgin Media cabinet then this may be applicable:

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.p...irgin-media-rollout-1200-ev-car-chargers.html

Obviously you are joking but these last few comments about residual value are a very real thing and I know I read an article about Nissan being very aware of the is fact

Those articles looked at depreciation vs list, which is of course terrible on cars regularly sold for £8k-£12k below the list price. That's why the Leaf and Zoe were always the worst offenders in these articles; they were sold at huge "discounts". Depreciation vs typical retail pricing hasn't been anything unusual.

 

[jpaul]

Substituting those numbers in, we get a very different picture. The Civic comes out at 65.06p per mile, while the Leaf comes out at 46.56p per mile. The Leaf can drop another ~3p per mile by charging at night on an EV tariff.

yes you're right the >70p/km leaf is wrong compared to this hotuk deal I was just glancing at, too -
https://www.bluechillicars.com/car-...back/110kw-acenta-40kwh-5dr-auto?lease_type=2
which gives 36p/km 30k/3year for just 'depreciation' so even close to 40p all-in. ... just, circuitously comes back to range fear ... which I guess explains the deals

edit: for the all-in calculation one issue is insurance cost .. leastaways, had a quote on an M3 that was ~£600 . 50% more than a 320i, which does take the edge off.
with the potential after life of batteries stealing one to strip them could become attractive .. how complex is that task ?

 

[chaparral]

You need the council to install on-street charging (not likely to happen).

Surely this has got to happen if they want people to change to electric cars

Someone got to install on street charging or people like myself that only have street parking are not going to buy an electric car..

 

[smilertoo]

They might roll them out with next gen street lights.

 

[chaparral]

They might roll them out with next gen street lights.

But there no where near enough street lights for that..

Were I live there must be about 40 to 50 cars per street light

 

[Nasher]

They only just replaced the streetlights in many places with LED ones. It'll be decades before they do it again now.

 

[smilertoo]

Yes that's right, the gov might do something about it in 30-40 years.

 

[Russinating]

Yep, there's a big discrepancy between congested and polluted areas and off-street parking. I would hazard a guess that at least 90% of residences in Bristol's planned clean air zone don't have off-street parking.

Yet it'll be all the homes outside of the centre that do where air quality isn't an issue.

Simple solution for homeowners like myself would be for the council to create reserved spaces for a property's EV, similar to disabled spaces (just normal size). Would allow charging at home and encourage EV ownership even further via the perk of a reserved space.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

The problem with EV bays is that other residents get peed off. Its no different to the bunch who will park in disabled or parent and child spots at a supermarket, they will park in EV spots if it suits them more. Unless your going to have loads of traffic wardens or some other tech to police it then they are just going to do it.

They should focus on getting the places where its easier first, spots at supermarkets, carparks etc

To my mind until we get a bit higher on adoption and other possible sources of power such as battery packs get eliminated (looks likely but should be considered already finished) then a large roll out of council led expense on charging should be down the list of roll out plan. Putting them in places where more people will go more often (such as large out of town retail parks) will get far more usage from people than a street one that may see someone every few days in reality.

Most people don't need to charge every night. You don't brim your car with petrol daily, in fact I am surprised frequently by how low people will go on fuel.

 

[Nasher]

Going low on fuel is different, you can fill up anywhere in minutes. If your EV cant make it to work and back by morning your in trouble.

 

[McPhee]

Surely this has got to happen if they want people to change to electric cars

Someone got to install on street charging or people like myself that only have street parking are not going to buy an electric car..

Not sure if you've noticed, but the legislature in the UK is a bit distracted at the moment. Unless a bill is hugely important, or the pet project of someone with considerable influence in the Commons, it doesn't get a look in.

a large roll out of council led expense on charging

Legislation could remove the need for local councils to do anything. There are private companies who want to install charging on UK residential streets. But at present, there's a lot of red tape making life incredibly difficult.

 

[beachBOYken]

About to purchase a new petrol car soon, so I think about 8 years from now I might consider it again, was thinking about electric and hybrid recently but it's out of my budget, plus the infrastructure needs to improve greatly for electric cars on the road.

 

[bloodiedathame]

I wouldn't have an EV without a driveway to charge it on. Thankfully I do. We've had the Leaf for two years now, no issues with it whatsoever (other than the crap Nissan Connect app).

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Legislation could remove the need for local councils to do anything. There are private companies who want to install charging on UK residential streets. But at present, there's a lot of red tape making life incredibly difficult.

Oh I know totally. This is a bit like when we had the cable companies enabling everyone to get cable as it was better than a BT line. Now what do the majority still use? Yep a BT line
So for years we constantly had people digging holes and causing disruption enabling everyone in some areas to have cable and whilst a fair few switched many who did ended up going back to BT

Unless its properly controlled we could well see the same, different companies installing different equipment. Then what, you suddenly find that "awesomepower" has installed down your street, who just happen to be the most expensive provider, with equipment that fails and they seem to have no engineers to fix them.

We really need someone to take this seriously and not rush it. The disruption and mess for something to be rolled out that may end up superceded pretty quickly, and yet leave the mess behind doesn't bear thinking about.
There is a real risk the council will end up having to fix the issues if these private companies install stuff then go bust.

Still far more logical to install chargers where people are driving to.
Doctors surgeries, small shops, carparks (of all types), etc. Because when people arrive they can top up, so a trip to the docs is normally what 20-30 mins? Perfect for a top up. Plus out of hours the locals can use the car parks with the chargers.
The utilisation would be much higher generating a return far more quickly, and hence not needing to charge such a premium. I think on street for locals on parking would have a pretty terrible return on average when you consider how many chargers would need to be installed and how much energy in general for the average driver they would need per year.

 

[Little_Crow]

Unless its properly controlled we could well see the same, different companies installing different equipment. Then what, you suddenly find that "awesomepower" has installed down your street, who just happen to be the most expensive provider, with equipment that fails and they seem to have no engineers to fix them.

We really need someone to take this seriously and not rush it. The disruption and mess for something to be rolled out that may end up superceded pretty quickly, and yet leave the mess behind doesn't bear thinking about.

Absolutely this.
You only have to look at the rushed rollout of SMETS1 smart meters and their limitations for a cautionary tale; and the ways in which an on-street charging rollout could go wrong outstrip that massively.

I'm considering an EV as my next car so have been taking an interest in various Youtube videos about them. The overriding theme has been the number of disparate charging networks, and the availability/reliability of the points themselves.
This isn't a particular issue for me as I have a driveway and a short commute, but I can understand it being a frustratng barrier for entry for those without the ability to charge at home.

 

[McPhee]

The charging network problem is improving. Off the top of my head, Instavolt, Engenie, Shell Recharge, and Polar (Ultrachargers) are all quite reliable. And of those, the first three take card payments directly on the charger. The big problems come from Ecotricity, and the older units from companies that were early to market (PodPoint, GeniePoint). A lot of old units need to be replaced.

What's funny is InstaVolt, Engenie and Shell Recharge charge a lot more than earlier networks. Yet most EV owners would sooner use them than the cheaper alternatives. Speaks volumes really.

There was supposed to be some legislation mandating that all chargers (or was it just rapid chargers?) take card payments. Pretty sure it was meant to be passed in 2017 with a view to having card payments on all chargers by the end of last year. But the legislation is stuck in the Brexit backlog.

 

[Russinating]

The problem with EV bays is that other residents get peed off. Its no different to the bunch who will park in disabled or parent and child spots at a supermarket, they will park in EV spots if it suits them more. Unless your going to have loads of traffic wardens or some other tech to police it then they are just going to do it.

The benefit here is that Bristol's (planned) Clean Air Zone is already patrolled by wardens as they're all within the more expansive Residents Parking Zone. But yeah, I get that, but I wouldn't mind if my neighbour had a bay for one so long as it's 1 per residence. Disabled bays can just be a bit annoying because they need more than a standard bay length and therefore take more space; you couldn't even fit 1 per house I don't think.

 

[jpaul]

offish topic ... Brexit's pervasive
well it was a great irony that Boris was lauding it in the electric taxi factory (owners let him in !) as Tesla announced their German factory, citing Brexit as a negative
it was unclear if a Giga factory was on offer, but an addtional UK ev source would have helped the cause.
Do we know yet if either party is promising anything particular for EV's ?

 

[Jonnycoupe]

Interesting point on the potential of a UK giga!. There’s a few projects ongoing but not sure anything has appeared in manifesto yet.

UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) in Coventry has started. JLR have started on battery assembly plant at Hams Hall and also the Wolverhampton engine plant.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

I said the same thing in the GE thread - the Tesla EU factory was never really on offer for the UK, Brexit just makes it a complete 'no brainer'. The rumors were always centered around Germany, Netherlands and Eastern Europe. You only need to look at the Tesla's operation in Europe to realise this.

Headquarters - Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Grohmann Engineering (they make a lot of the assembly lines) - Prum (Germany)
Model S/X Assembly - Tilberg (Netherlands), there are also other assets in Tilberg.

It just made little sense to put Giga EU in the UK when the rest of your operation is in the 'core' of Europe. The German's automotive talent pool is also objectively much larger than the UK's.