Interest only, electric car charging points 7 kW or 22 kW?

[morqthana]

It's entirely different because you are confusing two unrelated situations.

No, I'm not.

You are assuming that the way people will use their EV is different from how they would use an ICEV.

For the 30% of households/30-50% of drivers who have no access to off-street parking, and don't go to a "destination" every few hundred miles, how do they charge their car?

They visit the EV charging equivalent of a filling station. They have the potential to be much more flexible in where they are located than pumps delivering petrol or diesel, but drivers will still have to visit them, and when they do they will be visiting just to charge their car, not to park-oh-and-while-i'm-here-i'll-charge-my-battery.

What I'm saying is that it is problematic when the only off-motorway locations are in chargeable car-parks when drivers are there not because they've decided to go for a Nandos, or to buy a sofa in DFS, or a roof-rack in Halfords, or to do bit of 10-pin bowling, or to watch a film, but because they need to fuel their car and there is nowhere else they can go.

Most EV charging should be on AC destination chargers, where it could take 2,4,6 or even more hours.

How many people regularly have "destinations" where they spend that log there?

You drive to wherever it is you are going.

They're going to a charging point.

You plug in to charge.
When you have done whatever it is you went there to do, your car has been charged and you can drive to the next location.

The "whatever" is charging their car.

How long it took to charge is irrelevant.

"2,4,6 or even more hours" is not an irrelevant amount of time.

So is whether it was charged to 100% or not.

Ignoring the advisability of charging to more than 80%, it is not irrelevant whether you've now got a car you can use for a week or only 3-4 days.

You drive to a hotel to stay overnight.
You park in the car park. That may or may not require payment.
You plug in your car.
The next morning, the car is charged.

I don't drive to hotels to stay overnight, or even for an afternoon.

How many people do on a weekly-ish basis?

Replace hotel with any other location, and overnight with any other time period of a couple of hours or more.

I don't drive to locations where I spend a couple of hours or more. How many people do?

Most cars spend most of their time parked somewhere - that is where most charging should be done.

Mine spends most of its time outside my house, but I'm not one of the 30% of households/30-50% of drivers with no off-street parking, so I could charge an EV there.

Currently there are a severe lack of such charging facilities - but more are being installed every day.

If they are installed in "car parks" there are always going to be problems. If EV charger spaces are not reserved for EVs then EV drivers will arrive to find no free bays with chargers. If they are reserved then there will be a reluctance on the part of the car park owners/operators to have many of them because then they are cutting the number of spaces available to the over 95% of cars which are ICEVs. EV drivers will again arrive to find no free bays with chargers, and then the problems start because the mindset of the car park operator is "you went past that ANPR camera because you came here to park", when actually the driver went past it because he went there to charge his car.

The concept of driving to a special place to obtain fuel is a requirement of diesel and petrol cars.

It's also a requirement for people who cannot charge at home and who are not all the time visiting these "destinations" where they remain overnight or for several hours.

EVs are not used like that, and anyone attempting to do so will have massive problems very quickly.

People who cannot charge at home and who are not all the time visiting "destinations" where they remain overnight or for several hours have no choice but to use an EV like that.

 

[Avocet]

IIRC the problem reported by the guy on ftla was that he turned up, there were no empty charge points, and by the time he'd waited for one and then charged his car, he was over the time. I don't think either he or anybody else was hogging a space. It would be a bit like those times when there are petrol shortages, and you have to queue for the pumps for half an hour but then get ticketed because ANPR had you there for more than the 20 minutes you're allowed....

I've never queued for a charger. If there are none available, I just go elsewhere. People will need to learn charger etiquette. I see people trying to use a public fast charger to charge to 100%. The charging rate falls off a cliff to protect the battery so they could be typing up a (say) 200kW charger, but charging at 20kW. The last 50 miles of range will take longer to add than the first 200!

 

[ReganAndCarter]

Some people would pay good money for that.

 

[ericmark]

I've never queued for a charger. If there are none available, I just go elsewhere. People will need to learn charger etiquette. I see people trying to use a public fast charger to charge to 100%. The charging rate falls off a cliff to protect the battery so they could be typing up a (say) 200kW charger, but charging at 20kW. The last 50 miles of range will take longer to add than the first 200!

You are assuming the car is owned by the driver, and when that is the case it is likely they can charge at home, but next door had an EV for a week, so not able to charge at home, he had to select where to charge so there is some thing else to be doing while it charges, or get his wife to collect him and take him back once the car has charged.

I want an EV tariff for my battery which is part of the solar panels, at the moment with British Gas, but Octopus is cheaper, so looked at moving to them, but they will not give me the EV tariff without details of the EV car and charger fitted, so I would need car first, before I can set up home charging, chicken and egg situation.

The other neighbour who had an EV an early Kango, it had a range of 140 miles on paper, he used it for a milk round fixed distance of 68 miles, and some times it would run out before getting home, forget the last 50 miles of range, it was the first 50 miles which mattered, just because your car has an extended range does not mean all EV's have an extended range. His problem was if he did not get home early enough, then he could not fully recharge for the next day, and the charge rate for the van was not even 7 kW seem to remember 3 kW did not matter what he plugged into to charge it, so if the public fast charger is the only charger in range, he would be forced to use it at 3 kW as that was all the van would charge at.

I think if it was mine I would carry a generator in the van, but that does kind off defeat the whole idea of an EV.

 

[IT Minion]

If you don't have off-street parking and there are no on street bays near you, don't get an EV. Wait until your local authority starts installing on street ones and then look at buying one. You'll just be stuck with expensive ICEs until then.

 

[flameport]

People who cannot charge at home and who are not all the time visiting "destinations" where they remain overnight or for several hours have no choice but to use an EV like that.

Who are these people that own a car, but never drive anywhere other than the local shops for 5 minutes a week?

The answer - people who don't need a car.

What I'm saying is that it is problematic when the only off-motorway locations are in chargeable car-parks when drivers are there not because they've decided to go for a Nandos, or to buy a sofa in DFS, or a roof-rack in Halfords, or to do bit of 10-pin bowling, or to watch a film, but because they need to fuel their car and there is nowhere else they can go.

The problem today is that most places where cars are parked do not have AC charging.
That problem is solved by installing AC charging in the places that cars are parked.
Not by convincing people to drive to special charging locations and then complaining about how much it costs and how long it takes.

 

[morqthana]

I've never queued for a charger. If there are none available, I just go elsewhere.

And if you can't because you have no range left because the last "elsewhere(s)" also had none available?

People will need to learn charger etiquette. I see people trying to use a public fast charger to charge to 100%. The charging rate falls off a cliff to protect the battery so they could be typing up a (say) 200kW charger, but charging at 20kW. The last 50 miles of range will take longer to add than the first 200!

Indeed they will, but also it should not be beyond the wit of man to design fast-charge points which just shut off below a certain minimum draw.

 

[flameport]

And if you can't because you have no range left because the last "elsewhere(s)" also had none available?

The same problem as those who inexplicably run out of petrol/diesel.

You don't drive until the vehicle has no fuel/no charge and then hope that it might somehow make it to a suitable filling emporium.
Those that do can be stuck at the side of the road for however long it takes for some 'breakdown' service to arrive.

 

[morqthana]

Who are these people that own a car, but never drive anywhere other than the local shops for 5 minutes a week?

The answer - people who don't need a car.

Or people who drive to "local" shops for more than 5 minutes but nowhere near your "2,4,6 or even more hours."

Or people who drive to nearish but not very "local" shops, again don't stay for "2,4,6 or even more hours" but unaccountably find it awkward to get an entire trolley-load (or more) of shopping home on the bus.

Or people who drive to doctors/dentists/hospitals but don't stay for "2,4,6 or even more hours". (Actually, with A&E they would).

Or people who visit friends/family but don't want to always be blagging their electricity.

Before I retired, many of my journeys were to visit customers. Do you think that people in business should expect their customers to charge their cars for them, or even worse, people who they are trying to get to become customers?

I would sometimes drive to a train station, not a "local" one I might commute from, but one several 10's of miles away, because that's the nearest one where I could get on the right train line to do the bulk of the 4-500 mile round trip by train.

One where using public transport to get there would be impossible or utterly impractical.

Should I have tied up a charge point in the station car park for the 9-10-whatever hours I was parked there?

The problem today is that most places where cars are parked do not have AC charging.
That problem is solved by installing AC charging in the places that cars are parked.

As I pointed out earlier, that is never going to happen, or at least not for decades until the % of cars which are EVs increases hugely, because it isn't realistic to have parking bays reserved for EV charging.

My nearest town centre has 2 "shopping centres" serviced by 3 integral car parks. One has 2 car parks, each with about 450-500 spaces, and each with 1 AC charge point (3-ish kW). How many should it have?

The other has 1500 spaces, and a heady 5 charge points, 2x7-ish kW AC, and 3 Tesla Superchargers. How many should it have?

The EV charging infrastructure in this country is a classic example of how the ideology of leaving it to the market as that is always the best way is a complete fiasco.

Not by convincing people to drive to special charging locations and then complaining about how much it costs and how long it takes.

You're trying to convince them that they should go to special locations (i.e. special in that they happen to have chargers) which they weren't necessarily going to go anyway and/or weren't necessarily going to stay at for very long, where they have to pay just to enter the space and where they are penalised if other people had got there before them and they have to wait.

 

[morqthana]

The same problem as those who inexplicably run out of petrol/diesel.

You don't drive until the vehicle has no fuel/no charge and then hope that it might somehow make it to a suitable filling emporium.
Those that do can be stuck at the side of the road for however long it takes for some 'breakdown' service to arrive.

That's not the same at all.

The correct analogy is a driver who has not inexplicably run out of petrol/diesel, hasn't even got dangerously low, and arrives at a filling station to find it temporarily closed or out of fuel, or with hour-long queues for the pumps, decides to go to another one, finds the same problem but then, or after yet another iteration, finds that he is now dangerously low.

And then a week or so later gets a PCN in the post because he was there for "too long".

 

[ericmark]

Who are these people that own a car, but never drive anywhere other than the local shops for 5 minutes a week?

The answer - people who don't need a car.

Nearly true, I need a car because the buses do not run to local town Shrewsbury giving enough time between arriving and departing to do my shopping, considering most the shops are outside the town centre, even more local Welshpool can in Summer catch a train, they don't run in Winter, and there is very little time first bus into town to last bus out of town, so we need a car for the 8 miles or 27 miles to local towns.

However yes we could likely do without a car, we would need to go by ambulance for medical runs.

So hospital return run to Telford is 86.8 miles, and so most runs a 100 mile range would do, but yes we could use an ambulance or taxi.

Where that would not work, is going on Holiday, wife likes the craft hotel at Okehampton so one way 258 miles, we will normally travel over night, and the nearly 500 miles range of the Kia is ample to be able to do whole trip without filling up, there are clearly motorway services we could use, and do, and likely that time of night we would not have a problem finding a charging bay, however return trip the last 100 miles is across country, not motorways, and we know we must refuel at some point so enough to get us home after crossing the Seven, as all night garages are hard to find, and likely will require a detour to refuel. So we refuel around Okehampton so no need to stop.

It seems likely the EV would in some ways be better, as EV charging points tend to be open 24/7, however 5 minutes to refuel with diesel, and hours with electric, so would need to charge at the hotel, and they have 200 rooms, and two charging points, what chance would I have to recharge, at home OK can get a lift to and from charging station. Not so easy on holiday. Looking at % local to % long distance the car is used, likely ends up around 50% as so little is clocked up local.

So only real option would be simply not driving, but the age of the train is long gone, and even if a could use the train, still using coal, and diesel for a big hunk of the run, so may as well stick to a diesel car.

What would be a possible way is to either have two cars, or hire a car for long trips, so yes there are ways around it with a limited range EV, but why would I want to?

 

[flameport]

As I pointed out earlier, that is never going to happen, or at least not for decades until the % of cars which are EVs increases hugely, because it isn't realistic to have parking bays reserved for EV charging.

Yes, it will take a long time.
3% of cars in the UK today are electric. The other 97% are not.
Of that 3%, many won't need to use public charging.
That's why today there are only a few EV charging devices in locations such as car parks.
The number of charging facilities increases with the number of vehicles that will use them.

Should I have tied up a charge point in the station car park for the 9-10-whatever hours I was parked there?

Yes. That's what AC charging facilities in car parks are for.
Slow charging over a long period of time when you are parked there anyway,

You're trying to convince them that they should go to special locations (i.e. special in that they happen to have chargers) which they weren't necessarily going to go anyway and/or weren't necessarily going to stay at for very long, where they have to pay just to enter the space and where they are penalised if other people had got there before them and they have to wait.

I am not convincing people of anything.
If you want to twist things around and make excuses why EVs are not suitable for your purposes then carry on - buying an EV or any other type of vehicle is not compulsory and never will be.

People must make their own decisions based on what is suitable for them - but most importantly based on facts. Not made up stories about every EV charging facility having permanent queues, people needing to drive 600 miles without stopping and all the other rubbish that's regularly circulated here and in many other places.

 

[StephenStephen]

Nearly true, I need a car because the buses do not run to local town Shrewsbury giving enough time between arriving and departing to do my shopping, considering most the shops are outside the town centre, even more local Welshpool can in Summer catch a train, they don't run in Winter, and there is very little time first bus into town to last bus out of town, so we need a car for the 8 miles or 27 miles to local towns.

However yes we could likely do without a car, we would need to go by ambulance for medical runs.

So hospital return run to Telford is 86.8 miles, and so most runs a 100 mile range would do, but yes we could use an ambulance or taxi.

Where that would not work, is going on Holiday, wife likes the craft hotel at Okehampton so one way 258 miles, we will normally travel over night, and the nearly 500 miles range of the Kia is ample to be able to do whole trip without filling up, there are clearly motorway services we could use, and do, and likely that time of night we would not have a problem finding a charging bay, however return trip the last 100 miles is across country, not motorways, and we know we must refuel at some point so enough to get us home after crossing the Seven, as all night garages are hard to find, and likely will require a detour to refuel. So we refuel around Okehampton so no need to stop.

It seems likely the EV would in some ways be better, as EV charging points tend to be open 24/7, however 5 minutes to refuel with diesel, and hours with electric, so would need to charge at the hotel, and they have 200 rooms, and two charging points, what chance would I have to recharge, at home OK can get a lift to and from charging station. Not so easy on holiday. Looking at % local to % long distance the car is used, likely ends up around 50% as so little is clocked up local.

So only real option would be simply not driving, but the age of the train is long gone, and even if a could use the train, still using coal, and diesel for a big hunk of the run, so may as well stick to a diesel car.

What would be a possible way is to either have two cars, or hire a car for long trips, so yes there are ways around it with a limited range EV, but why would I want to?

...because it would perhaps be cheaper in your use case not to own a car, instead to just use taxis and hire cars (all of which could be EV or hybrid or ICE)

 

[ericmark]

...because it would perhaps be cheaper in your use case not to own a car, instead to just use taxis and hire cars (all of which could be EV or hybrid or ICE)

You are likely correct, if I add up the cost of insurance, tax, fuel, and maintenance, that will likely be more than using a taxi once a week. However I go down to railway at gala on my e-bike, due to parking restrictions, but I would not want to do it on a regular basis, its up hill down here, and have to push hard even with an e-bike to get up these hills.

 

[Brigadier]

I've been to the Ludlow Food Festival on Friday, staying in Tenbury Wells.

Started with full charge, which I did at home over Thursday night, for less than a fiver.

Drove from nr Lichfield to Tenbury, left the car at the hotel and taxi'ed to the. FF and back, and drove back today. With a divertion via Carding Mill.
AC on most of the time.

Just gone shopping, and am now in the pub for a swift pint, with 120 miles of range left.
I'll charge it back up overnight.

Suits me