The guardian wants you to write about electric & hybrid cars for it..

[Stinsy]

A new Costa has been built near me. Not a High St one, a drive-through with car park and sit-in cafe. Very difficult to approach on foot. However it has no EV Charing points. None.

Why not fit a dozen 100kW chargers? They’d get customers for their £3 cups of warm milk and £1.50 chocolate muffins as well as making markup on the electric.

[Mr Gus]

If we seriously want EVs to become a mass transport option though we do need to make re-charging as simple as filling with petrol, with no need to plan the journey with an app, or create accounts, check the type of cable etc, etc.

trees

Desp, are we saying that "the great British public" (as bj would lie) don't already suffer confusion at petrol stations filling up with diesel instead of tax heavy ethanol /petrol mix?

The app is there precisely because they aren't on every corner like a petrol station (used to be) before the market closed in, that's just conditioned expective behaviour forged over time, plus the micro benefit of that map fitting on your phone & not ruining the lines of your liesurewear, plus the fiscal commodification of you & data.

May I remind folk that running out of fuel has always been a big thing that necessitated the early saluting rac boys to carry loads in their sidecars, & in part the need for all those telephone boxes they & the AA had all over the place.
IF, they weren't on an app these days that too would be madness, though I suppose we could all get for Xmas a paper copy of a map of the UK with petrol stations et al, handily marked on the 100 or so pages that you could vector in on ..if clever enough

If folk are too stupid to do the baby block shape /hole matching game, who was stupid enough to give em a drivers license? .. cos pretty much that's what charging amounts too

[Stinsy]

The problem I have is that this article is fundamentally misleading. Most EV owners will charge their 200-300mile EV every night and rarely do more than 30-50 miles in a day. They might drive to Cornwall, or Great Yarmouth, or wherever once-a-year, in which case a 25-30p/kWh fast-charge might be required. However most people, almost all of the time, will charge at home. Driving from Lands End to John O’Groats just isn't representative of anyone's EV usage and anyone doing that trip would conduct extensive research on the route as well as rest/refuelling stops nomatter how their vehicle is fuelled.

There are people who live in houses/flats who cannot charge-at-home. For these people a lamp-post slow charger, workplace slow charger, or fast-charge once-a-week at the supermarket (or wherever) will fulfil their needs.

I get that private operators of fast chargers need to see a profit. This can be by charging a premium on the wholesale rate of electricity or by providing free/cheap electricity in exchange for custom (I bet IKEA would see a profit on the few £ worth of electricity on a typical £500-1500 shopping trip). However a small monthly fee followed by 15p/kWh (as charged by the lamp-post companies), or 25-30p/kWh (as charged by many fast-charge operators) is perfectly reasonable. I see no possible justification for the usurious and exploitative 70p/kWh as charged by some operators. I hope their chargers sit completely unused!

[Ken]

All this is old hat, might have been true once but not now. I have no anxiety to drive Lands End/John o groats to day but i have to say that is with 4yrs of EV driving under my belt and the better understanding of the workings of on route charging.

I do not believe there is much of a business model for on route charging except for motorway stuff. As said 95% of mls is going to be from home but just imagine what its going to be like with destination charging the norm, at work,at friends and relatives,hotels and eateries,stations, gym etc. Then on route charging will just be 1% of mls travelled -yes 1% is my guess.

The modern EV can do 200mls + so charge at home and then at destination job done. For many people its pretty difficult to drive 200+ mls without falling in the sea.

Ken

[AE-NMidlands]

If we seriously want EVs to become a mass transport option though we do need to make re-charging as simple as filling with petrol, with no need to plan the journey with an app, or create accounts, check the type of cable etc, etc.

Anything less will just put people off taking the plunge, especially with regard to the higher cost of purchase, taking the piss and branding people as too dim to cope with a confusing array of charging points isn't a great selling tactic either

...but we (I) don't. Definitely. Which bit of step-change in energy use (reduction) don't you understand?
Most people currently using cars have perfectly good alternatives - if they can be a****d to use a bit of forethought, public transport and some muscle power. If they aren't prepared to buy in to it then they shouldn't be allowed to travel - or should be made to pay for it and compensate the people not wasting energy. Part of "the solution" has to be travelling less, and transporting less "stuff" too.
I find I am getting more extreme in my views as I get older - but I have read that's usually towards the right wing! I am going the other way - if left / right can be attributed to it. Lots of people are stuck with the house they live in and can't do much about it, but regarding transport I would go for Carbon tokens, saleable to others by the people who don't travel much, or only use public transport or who have no car.
A

[nowty]

We have a BMW i3 (usable 30kWh) with a range extender holding 9 litres of petrol. It has a range of between 80 and 120 miles on electric depending on time of years and speed driven. Typically its about 100 miles with air con or heating on at motorway speeds. The range extender allows a speed of around 55mph without further loss of battery level and allows roughly another 70 to 80 miles or so. And the beauty is you can keep filling it up if your desperate.

We have had the car 2 years now and have driven about 10,000 miles in it. The 9 litre tank has been filled three times, once when we picked it up because it was empty, once because I was doing a long distance drive and had two charger failures en route, and once when we were desperate and had 5 consecutive charger fails. The petrol tank is now half full and it does force you to do 10 min range extender stints on it every couple of months for maintenance. So in two years I have only consumed about 15 litres (3 gallons) of petrol in it.

Because of the range extender I have absolutely no range anxiety whatsoever. But when my friend was driving us back from Gatwick in his Tesla, he was sh*****g bricks getting to the next supercharger, he turned the air con and radio off and was crawling along the dual carrageway at 40mph at under 3% SOC.

What concerns me is in the future is, you drive to the west country with the rest of the population for the July Summer hols, its charged up when you set off and empty in say Cornwall. Is the grid going to cope with countless thousands of vehicles trying to re-charge, either fast chargers or slow chargers in camp sites or B&B's etc.

My opinion is a range extender may be the solution, because you only need it once or twice a year. But if you need it and haven't got one................

[AE-NMidlands]

What concerns me is in the future is, you drive to the west country with the rest of the population for the July Summer hols, its charged up when you set off and empty in say Cornwall. Is the grid going to cope with countless thousands of vehicles trying to re-charge, either fast chargers or slow chargers in camp sites or B&B's etc.

My opinion is a range extender may be the solution, because you only need it once or twice a year. But if you need it and haven't got one................

Why not just drive there (if you really have to take your tin box with you - why can't you go by train or coach as I did 40 years ago?) Then just stay put and enjoy where you are. Walk or use public transport for excursions from your accommodation. Splurging energy merely for personal indulgement is (should be) a thing of the past.
Greta certainly still needs to get through to more people. I don't think many have woken up yet - even here!
A

[spread-tee]

If we seriously want EVs to become a mass transport option though we do need to make re-charging as simple as filling with petrol, with no need to plan the journey with an app, or create accounts, check the type of cable etc, etc.

Anything less will just put people off taking the plunge, especially with regard to the higher cost of purchase, taking the piss and branding people as too dim to cope with a confusing array of charging points isn't a great selling tactic either

...but we (I) don't. Definitely. Which bit of step-change in energy use (reduction) don't you understand?
Most people currently using cars have perfectly good alternatives - if they can be a****d to use a bit of forethought, public transport and some muscle power. If they aren't prepared to buy in to it then they shouldn't be allowed to travel - or should be made to pay for it and compensate the people not wasting energy. Part of "the solution" has to be travelling less, and transporting less "stuff" too.
I find I am getting more extreme in my views as I get older - but I have read that's usually towards the right wing! I am going the other way - if left / right can be attributed to it. Lots of people are stuck with the house they live in and can't do much about it, but regarding transport I would go for Carbon tokens, saleable to others by the people who don't travel much, or only use public transport or who have no car.
A

The bit I don't understand is your sarcasm thanks, but...........
|I do agree with your very well made point, we do need to do a lot less of everything, travel, red meat, rampant consumerism, etc etc as you say.

The big problem is selling that to the population, I think especially when it comes to cars, which for years have been willy replacement therapy.
In reality society is closely built around our ability to go anywhere anytime, and a lot of people rate that highly, and I count myself in with them. If as you suggest we ban lazy people from travelling the economy will collapse in short order and all our green hopes will go up in smoke

We obviously have to try to gradually create a new way of life that will include easy and convenient EV use, a £100/tonne carbon tax would help pay for it too and be redistributive too, or else a large proportion of the population will not vote for it. And if there ain't no votes in it the politicos ain't interested.

I just don't think you can tell people to "do this or else"

Desp

[spread-tee]

If we seriously want EVs to become a mass transport option though we do need to make re-charging as simple as filling with petrol, with no need to plan the journey with an app, or create accounts, check the type of cable etc, etc.

trees

Desp, are we saying that "the great British public" (as bj would lie) don't already suffer confusion at petrol stations filling up with diesel instead of tax heavy ethanol /petrol mix?

The app is there precisely because they aren't on every corner like a petrol station (used to be) before the market closed in, that's just conditioned expective behaviour forged over time, plus the micro benefit of that map fitting on your phone & not ruining the lines of your liesurewear, plus the fiscal commodification of you & data.

May I remind folk that running out of fuel has always been a big thing that necessitated the early saluting rac boys to carry loads in their sidecars, & in part the need for all those telephone boxes they & the AA had all over the place.
IF, they weren't on an app these days that too would be madness, though I suppose we could all get for Xmas a paper copy of a map of the UK with petrol stations et al, handily marked on the 100 or so pages that you could vector in on ..if clever enough

If folk are too stupid to do the baby block shape /hole matching game, who was stupid enough to give em a drivers license? .. cos pretty much that's what charging amounts too

The world according to Gus, everybody is stupid except him,,,,,,,,,,,,say no more

[Mr Gus]

For someone with a lot of brain injury I seem to be more damned observant than many these days precisely because I make a big damned effort to, it was how I learnt to walk properly again & live with my weakened arm.

What's your beef exactly desp because nothing was aimed at you in a pi55y manner but that's how you seem to have interpreted it.

Fact, once you've found a couple of charger "shapes" hanging off a multi use unit, it really is that easy, you pick it up, look at the shape, maybe grab the other one, ..it's not something that is going to baffle anyone beyond the first use or two, so it is a symptomatic of non EV users lack of initial knowledge

& when you compare the similarity of a diesel nozzle compared to that of a petrol nozzle, is that not a design that could be made better by slight adaptation? ...so instead of a badly fitting connection it doesn't deliver electricity, compared to wrong fuel dispensed into your tank, hardly taxing, hardly humiliating, and a very quick lesson.

Are you saying folk don't put diesel in petrol cars ever then? ..you, I and the whole driving world know that's a reality of ownership.
for instance
(Police personnel mistakenly filled patrol cars with the wrong type of fuel nearly 300 times in 2017, costing more than £53,000 in repairs.... )

The AA & RAC carried petrol around from the outset due to fuel shortage (sourced often from a chemist / apothecary when patrols started in 1901 because it soon became apparent that was a significant amount of call outs never mind early mechanical unreliability of the various automobiles being pushed to the limits on "roads" worse than today.

The first petrol station in the UK (probably not open on Sunday either) was owned & operated by the AA selling British-made benzole fuel
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/ ... ng-station

I DO spot new owners & whether it is pouring with rain or not invariably go over & check they are ok & know how to charge, in fact the fist thing I advise is for folk in families to go out & screw up the first attempt at public charging together & then laugh at themselves, invariably they have not used the granny plug (yet) at home & that is a damn sight easier to then reassure yourself that you can do it with a bigger cable & maybe a choice of 3 connectors of which one fits your vehicle.

& here are the paper maps with petrol / "motor spirit" availability
https://web.archive.org/web/20070207011 ... tional.htm
Sometimes folk need reminding what paper did back before the web proliferated & what they now keep on their phones would be a pile of books that rationally no-one wants to keep on them unless its a planned measure as a prepper or similar.

Also, petrol stations have bloody great big canopies (solar installs begging to happen) they are big, they are lit up, ..compare that to the majority of pre-existing chargers which can be "anywhere" small through to petrol pump size but rarely a stack unless its a tesla charging venue ..for now, therefore an app like Zap map makes sense to map them, they may be round the side of a building, in the Bedfordshire countryside we have a public chademo unit within a University campus for instance.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Atlas-Britain- ... 419&sr=8-1
unless you biro in stuff you find, its out of date the moment you buy it, (233 pages of MAP that you've got to essentially join the dots on, harder for many these days (unless a cub scout maybe) than the "shape block" aspect of a charger that it seems journo's are padding out "stories" over, a continuation of what Top gear set in stone with their News? / entertainment? ..drip drip into the public psyche until it is fact, which it isn't, ..just bloody annoying tropes that after a decade should be put to bed.

The likes of zap map is a book in a modern age that remains more relevant based on frequent updates.