Electric vehicles

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from people who seem to be trying to find any excuse to carry on driving conventional ICE vehicles.
I don't think anyone will mind driving EV's if the whole thing had been properly planed and the right infrastructure put in place but at the moment it is chaos. Round here no main dealers will repair an EV, they get sent many miles to one of the OEM's repair centres who specialise in that type of vehicle, ok one day things will change but just like when ICE's came onto the scene it took a while to get them to a good all round standard so why be one of the first to jump on the bandwagon and try new technology at the higher cost, wait until it falls.
 
Facts are boring but important to avoid selective generalisations which simply reinforce pre-conceived views. The requirement will not be for all EVs to have access to fast chargers.

The total housing stock in the UK is 28m, of which 15m are detached, semis, and bungalows. These will largely have off road parking and thus the capacity to charge at home.

Of the remainder, 8m are terraced, and 6m flats. The former generally don't have off street parking. Modern flats are often designed with residents parking which could be equipped with charging.

Overall I would estimate that ~55% of dwellings could charge off road. Charging at work, shops, hotels, park and ride etc may satisfy many (but not all) of the rest.

It will be ~20 years before the full transition to EV is complete. Currently EV and hybrids account for ~2-3% of cars on the road and ~ 30% of current sales. By 2032 (10 years) I would guess ~40-55% of cars on the road will be EV or hybrid.

Complacency is not acceptable, but green electrical generation and distribution entirely soluble - a plan and incentives need to be put in place.

There are challenges to be overcome in battery costs, capacity, use of expensive/rare minerals, recycling etc. Progress has already been rapid - over the last 10 years the cost of batteries has fallen by over 80%, and the range of a typical EV increased 3-5 fold.

I tend to be glass half full but - it seems unlikely the progress made over the last two decades will come to a sudden grinding halt, even if the rate of progress changes.

There will be some for whom EV will still not be a solution - possibly very high mileage, farming and very rural, towing caravans, boats and horses etc. There may need to be very limited exceptions.

That new EVs are unaffordable for most is not a barrier - most folk buy s/h cars. Availability of s/h EVs are a function of new sales 1-4 earlier. I fully expect as new EV sales grow, so will availability of affordable s/h EVs.
 
I think that for any serious fast charger you will need three phase, that can be a lot more than £900 and we must not forget that the electrical distribution system that supplies many housing estates will not have been designed to handle a large proportion of them charging electric vehicles. This issue will continue back up the grid with each supply point potentially being stretched to it's limits.
My daughter has an EV, provided by her company. She travels around the UK doing sustainability studies for companies who wish to improve their environmental footprint. Her company wishes to demonstrate that they practice what they preach, hence the EV.

It's a Kia e-Niro. With a little planning she manages to travel throughout the UK with little range anxiety. It does around 250-260 miles between charges.

She lives in a flat with no on-site parking, so her company has paid for a single-phase charge point to be fitted at my house, a half-mile walk away. The car charges overnight at the cheap rate and it's no hassle for me at all - an app tells her how much it costs (a LOT less than a petrol or diesel fill-up!), and she reimburses me monthly.

The car itself is amazing. A very comfortable mid-size SUV. Every modern bell and whistle imaginable. The performance in sport mode is quite something.

I'm an old petrol head, love my old MX-5, but it's the future, there's no getting away from it.
 
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But the wind does blow some of the time, and the sun does shine sometimes. Just need a way to store it all. That's where electric cars and smart chargepoints come into their own.
Child labour in lithium mines is surely a soluble problem, albeit incurring extra costs, but it's not some immutable law of physics that states lithium has to be dug out by children.
As for efficiency, show me an ICE engine with near 100% efficiency and I'll show you my everlasting bottle of Guinness.
It just might be that the fundamental issue ( which no one seems to talk about ) is that there are just too many people.
To halve the world pollution ( of any energy supply ) - just halve the population !
 
It just might be that the fundamental issue ( which no one seems to talk about ) is that there are just too many people.
To halve the world pollution ( of any energy supply ) - just halve the population !
Yebbut/maybe but which half? It would make much more sense if the wealthy "first world" and all it stands for/consumes was decimated. And the meat eaters! They are just not sustainable.
 
My daughter has an EV, provided by her company. She travels around the UK doing sustainability studies for companies who wish to improve their environmental footprint. Her company wishes to demonstrate that they practice what they preach, hence the EV.
.....
It sounds like she is utterly unsustainable and a complete contradiction in terms. It's become known as "greenwashing".
 
It just might be that the fundamental issue ( which no one seems to talk about ) is that there are just too many people.
To halve the world pollution ( of any energy supply ) - just halve the population !
Why does everyone who brings this up have to add a parenthetical "which nobody wants to talk about"? I know lots of people who talk about it, and I disagree with most of them. Why? Because those people, the ones you don't want to talk about, they're not the ones driving Range Rovers, or flying about in private jets, or living in air conditioned houses.
If you think we should have a cull, or compulsory birth control, (which I don't)maybe it should be based on carbon footprint.
 
Yebbut/maybe but which half? It would make much more sense if the wealthy "first world" and all it stands for/consumes was decimated. And the meat eaters! They are just not sustainable.

The problem is reproduction, not the already reproduced who will ultimately cease to be, and may already be too old to reproduce more.

We can target meat consumption. We can also recycle water, provide balanced nutrition through full industrialisation of of food production, restrict travel, build smaller housing units etc etc.

This has all the characteristics of a factory farm for humans - maximising the number who can be clothed, housed, fed and watered at the minimum environmental cost and maximum efficiency.

It is a somewhat philosophical point - is the purpose of life to just exist, or explore and enjoy the diversity of experiences which culture, climate, geography, food etc have made possible.

Personally I would choose the latter every time - the problems wrought by over population have been evident for centuries. Engineering ever more complex artificial technological solutions is treating the symptoms not the cause of the stress.
 
Many thanks, v.clear.
Looking round at (nearly) new PHEV cars, I don't see anything under £10K though.
30-40 m/day would do me 95% of the time.
It's just the initial cost that hurts :-(
Autotrader has a decent selection. I'm not up on which are the best PHEV, but I know that the usual "EV's need far less maintenance" is still true for the electric half and that the issue with longer EV range PHEV's longevity wise can be lack of use of the engine side. Often they are barely used, so the equivalent to leaving a traditional car unused for months except the 12v would still be fine.
I saved so much money running my low range first EV that I was able to put a substantial chunk into my savings for my Tesla. I'd recommend sucking up a slightly older one and see it as a stepping stone. ATrader has 6 under 12k that are 2016 or newer atm.
 
Yebbut/maybe but which half? It would make much more sense if the wealthy "first world" and all it stands for/consumes was decimated. And the meat eaters! They are just not sustainable.

The problem is reproduction, ......
No it is not. Reproduction is the solution.
The greater the population the more likely the chance of survivors when things go pear shaped.
It's nature's way - individuals don't matter and are disposable, as long as there are survivors
It's common throughout the living world that stressed populations have strategies to survive. The first organism you learn about at school is the amoeba. When things are OK they reproduce steadily by budding, when the pond dries up they "encyst" and subdivide many times over. Come wetter weather and the cyst expands breaks up and there's millions of the little boogers.
Works similarly with homo sapiens, destabilised societies (e.g. war etc) tend to reproduce more. Stable societies even have falling populations causing them anxiety.
Think on!
 
I have had two Kia Niro selfcharging hybrids with which I have been more than pleased and driven properly return over 70 mpg in the the summer. However,I am about to take delivery of the PHEV version which I can charge at home at a very good rate 7.3 p/unit instead of about 29/30p/unit. Also,because the off-peak time I am offered -9-30pm to 12.30am - I can run my washers at that rate and everything else (lights,TV etc. at that rate. I have fixed the tariff for 12 months so,although the daytime rate is 7p a unit dearer I think this will soon be swallowed up by the October and April price cap hike.
One of the reasons I have invested ( PHEVs are more expensive) in PHEV is that,being retired,most of my journeys are short so can charge at home cheaply and when I go on longer journies I might set the regen braking at level ! and get the first 30 miles or so for free but I believe that you know when you have lost EV power as the car seems to lose power as it reverts to it's 1.5 litre engine.
As a tech teacher,we raced hybrid and electric vehicles nationally inclluding Goodwood endurance and Huddersfeild University hill climbiing endurance and the one thing we had to strees to the kids was NOT to push the pedal down as the wheels would simply spin and eat up the amps! I believe EV cars get through tyres very quickly!
Ironically, I don't believe that full EV is the answer in the long term and the infrastructure will continue lag so "range anxiety" will not go away - I have several full EV neighbours who have come unstuck.
 
If we stopped paying people to have children, maybe, just maybe some would think twice, I think it is an antiquated means of increasing the work force.
Nonsense. It's the poor and deprived who tend to have more children, around the globe.
In stable "welfare" states you tend to get falling populations causing anxiety.
One way to increase the work force is to allow free movement - people go where the work is. Always have, always will (or try to). And as a result economies flourish wherever there are immigrants.
 
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I think that for any serious fast charger you will need three phase, that can be a lot more than £900 and we must not forget that the electrical distribution system that supplies many housing estates will not have been designed to handle a large proportion of them charging electric vehicles. This issue will continue back up the grid with each supply point potentially being stretched to it's limits.
Jacob said:
Even home charging needs an installation (£900 or so?) unless 2.4kw and 30 hours plus is acceptable

Home chargers don't need 3phase, they use a 12mm lead and cost £600 now all the subsidy has gone but Direct Line and others offer discount bundles bringing the real price down to around £450.
They charge overnight, very few need it every night, but even if you did, this is an actual calculation for our second EV on our home 7kW charger assuming it needed a 0-100% charge (which you would almost never do) from EV Carshop | Electric Car Lease Deals and EV Charging
Your charging time4.2h
kWh added30kWh
Range added216.0 miles
Your charge cost£7.13
Cost per mile3.3p

There's a thriving market in charger/parking space sharing (Chargy, Plugsurfing etc). I live on a terraced street where few have off road parking, there are chargers each end of the road and since most EV drivers only need to charge about once a week, with the combination of these, there will be enough chargers for the next 3-6 years by my observations of EV take-up locally. The council are planning to install more roadside chargers as take-up increases to stay ahead of the need.

The impact on the grid is actually the opposite of the concerns which were initially quite understandably raised. The pilot for car to grid peak demand management scheme went well and is being rolled out now. So for many, you will get home, plug in, donate your excess to the grid 5.30pm to 9.30 for a good return then charge up overnight when demand is low and prices are much cheaper. The National Grid often currently have to turn off wind overnight because they've not got the storage for, so it's likely to take our renewable average generation from just above 50% where it is now to 70% plus as it takes out the need to spin up peaker plants early evening which are most of the non renewable need.
 
Home chargers don't need 3phase, they use a 12mm lead and cost £600 now all the subsidy has gone but Direct Line and others offer discount bundles bringing the real price down to around £450.
They charge overnight, very few need it every night, but even if you did, this is an actual calculation for our second EV on our home 7kW charger assuming it needed a 0-100% charge (which you would almost never do) from EV Carshop | Electric Car Lease Deals and EV Charging
Your charging time4.2h
kWh added30kWh
Range added216.0 miles
Your charge cost£7.13
Cost per mile3.3p
So that's a 30A feed for the charger? With a 32A cabled to my garage, I'd better not do anything else (also need a new dist board!).
Not workable overnight on a 13A plug? Did you consider that?
 
So that's a 30A feed for the charger? With a 32A cabled to my garage, I'd better not do anything else (also need a new dist board!).
Not workable overnight on a 13A plug? Did you consider that?
They run a dedicated 30A 12mm cable from the board to the Charger as they install it. Unless your board is very old it doesn't need a new one.

Yes it's OK on 13A plug, just very slow and is a big draw over a long time from thin cabling to use it as a permanent solution. You use the 13A plug adapter when you visit friends overnight etc. or when you first get your EV/PHEV if the charger is not installed first.

The dedicated chargers also have smart features that let it manage things like Vehicle to Grid, so as that's now rolling out from trial to mainstream, a dedicated charger will save it's cost pretty quickly in selling back electricity at peak prices and buying overnight on the cheap.
 
The dedicated chargers also have smart features that let it manage things like Vehicle to Grid, so as that's now rolling out from trial to mainstream, a dedicated charger will save it's cost pretty quickly in selling back electricity at peak prices and buying overnight on the cheap.
Why would you want to put charge into the grid from the vehicle? Doesn't seem to make sense? Just stock market type jockeying?
 
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