"The infrastructure just isn't really there"

[Midgex]

This year (2024) there are 8353 petrol stations in the UK. That's 36% reduction since 2000.
A slow decline continues.
One day each of the 2000+ towns in the UK will have a petrol station.
And a while later, not all of them will.

Hardly any of them are at home (farmers may be an exception) and only some at work, so people with ICE cars have to go somewhere special to refill publicly.


This year (2024) there are 72 000 public EV charging points in the UK.
They are somewhat evenly spread, and still being steadily added to.
One day, every street might have one.

But most drivers don't often need them, they charge at home, using the 900 000 private charging points, or in some cases from a 13 Amp socket, of which the UK has ... several.

I can't see this combustion car thing taking off, I suppose you can just about manage to get around with one, if you adapt your life to it, but the usefulness is just falling off steadily. Sensible people would only do it for fun.



https://www.statista.com/statistics/312 ... ingdom-uk/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... nt-funding
https://www.theguardian.com/business/ar ... tallations

[Raxacorico]

[Boattrainman]

Funny post, very clever, but a serious point all the same.

In Ireland, we've just kicked the Green Party out of government, although many of their policies are now being promoted by the major parties.

I can't see some of the commitments we have signed up to for 2050 being reached unless there is serious additional incentives, including lots more rapid charging infrastructure in 'unusual' locations.

Pretty much all our family and friends have a least one EV or at least a plug in hybrid, but as I look around our estate, there are not more than a dozen EVs, in fact there's a vocal opposition to them from some of our neighbours.

Roll on 2025!

Rob

[MotMot]

It’ll be interesting when and also where the tipping point happens. There is a hell of a cost in petrol delivery chain. Specialist tankers, refinery, special handling. Tanks under garages etc.. all of which has to be regularly maintained and inspected. When the volume of fuel sales falls below a point this will all start to become much much more expensive. Which also means petrol stations becoming fewer and further between (esp in rural areas) and this becomes even more expensive etc..

[Midgex]

...
... as I look around our estate, there are not more than a dozen EVs, in fact there's a vocal opposition to them from some of our neighbours.

Roll on 2025!

Rob

Wild supposition: your neighbours buy second or third hand cars.
EV sales have tended to be first cars.
2-4 years later, the supply of nice second hand EVs is increased, but they are 1/10 to 1/5 of the cars available, therefore of the cars bought.
2-4 years later than that, the supply of third hand EVs is increased, 2nd ditto, but still they are a smaller minority of second and third owner cars than they are of cars bought new that year.

Vocal opposition is pretty stupid, but the wrinkling of the nose and the cupping of a hand over an ear as petrol cars go past is not yet frequently compared to the unabated breathing and listening as an EV goes past. That'll also sink in. As will the early morning starting clatter.

[Boattrainman]

Good points Midgex.

I think as per Motmot that some kind of tipping point will arrive, where buying and running an ICE just won't make sense due to the lower cost of a similar EV. Unfortunately, we seem to be quite a way from this at the moment, and we are still having nonsensical disussions around range anxiety. When I explained to someone recently that about 65% of all private car journies are under 30km, they thought I was mad!

Rob

[Crishev]

In the interest of balance I don't think range anxiety is 'nonsensical'. It is probably the main reason for poor adoption. It's great for commuting but long journeys at the weekend or holidays is a different story. I recently embarked on a trip to see relatives in Scotland (331 miles) in my 77kwh Launch Edition 4 and was left traumatised with charge points not working, queuing, car not recognising charger, car diverting miles off the route to charge, really poor motorway range, cost of charging away from home ( more expensive than diesel) etc., so much so that unless battery technology has significantly improved at replacement time I will be going back to diesel, 10 minute fill up and enough range for Scotland and back. That convenience and the confidence it brings is worth every more expensive penny. For sure, people on here have toured Europe with no problem and I'm not attacking EV's but it simply doesn't fit everyone.

[Repfigit]

There are two real issues that do come up with the EV transition here and I don't think people have been thinking much about them.

Firstly, the best time and place to charge a car is when it is plugged in anyway. This isn't very controversial. But, plugging in means the car (a thing that can move) has to be matched against a charger or socket (a thing which does not move) for hours or days on end. This is not a problem if you have plenty of space to store a car, like on your own driveway. It is a bit more of a problem if you don't have a driveway and rely on on-street parking. When the council starts planning how to install chargers along streets, they need to plan what parking spaces there will be - it isn't good enough any more just to allocate a 50m row; you need to actually divide it up into individual bays. How many cars will be able to fit there now?

There's already a growing problem in many areas where cars are getting wider and so it is increasingly impossible to have cars parked on both sides of the street. Eventually the road may get narrow enough that a fire engine won't be able to make it down, and so the council has no real choice but to impose double yellow line restrictions. And, the escape valve of people pavement parking is going away as well due to the problems it causes for pedestrians.

Most of the issue isn't specifically to do with EVs. It's about there being many more cars on the road. E.g. households now having 2 or 3 cars instead of just 1, but no more driveway space and maybe even after converting a garage to be another living room. Newer cars are also bigger, so you can't fit as many of them in the same space. The need to install EV chargers ends up being just the straw that broke the camel's back because of how the electrical infrastructure needs to be basically permanent and we can't fudge it any more.

The only non-physical solution is to cap the number of cars that can be parked in an area, so that they can all fit in the available (charger-equipped) parking spots. But that is going to be spectacularly controversial when people are used to having a car, and they won't be able to. If there are 15 people on a street wanting to park a car and only 10 spaces, then in the end it'll only be the 10 who are willing and able to pay the most for that space who will be able to get it. Private parking spaces and/or garages already cost an arm and a leg in some desirable areas but chargers on streets means the same allocation problem will have to happen pretty much everywhere.

The actual underlying issue is that our housing stock wasn't designed for a world where most people own a car. Most of our newer housing is also not really designed for it either. It's fine when people don't have a car but now a lot of people expect to be able to have a car even if they live somewhere that wasn't designed for that. It can only really be fixed by building more car parking spaces, but this isn't really that easy in residential areas unless you're also willing to replace buildings. It's not technically that hard to build flats above ground floor or basement car parking, but you can't retrofit either onto Victorian terraced housing. Our housing stock is already too old, so demolishing it and replacing it with better (parking-equipped) replacements isn't actually a problem in itself, but pretty much nothing in our society is set up to deal with comprehensive redevelopment of desirable private housing today. It's easy to fix the EV problem if we fix the housing problem, but we haven't thought too much about how to fix the housing problem!

The second issue is that EVs mean a net increase in inelastic electricity consumption. The high cost of electricity is due to the high cost of gas, and the cost of trying to power London by using wind farms in Caithness. A deep and comprehensive trickle AC charging network (which is difficult, as stated above) goes some way to help with intermittent wind power. If we could keep basically the entire EV fleet at 80% SoC all the time, then we'll have a good buffer against dunkleflaute conditions where electricity will be the most expensive. If we have V2G then we can go beyond delayed charging and actively power the grid. But a world of on-street parking and using DC public charging like a petrol station means we need more despatchable electricity supply. We can do that by burning fossil fuels, like the petrol and diesel that previously had to go into cars. That will still be more efficient overall because of how much more efficient EVs and immovable power stations are than ICE vehicles. But it does limit the benefit of an EV compared to what it could be.

Some of these issues are very specific to the UK and that's a real risk. Politicians will see that other countries (like the hydroelectric Norwegians) are doing fine with the EV transition and that they don't need to think about any of the harder problems (housing/car storage, electricity production). It might just seem to work, ish. But we may well be left with a situation that isn't really that much better than what we had before. If things aren't fundamentally better than we had before, then the EV transition becomes a slog and will happen slower and with more disruption (e.g. people not being able to afford what they used to).

[Boattrainman]

Crishev - sorry to hear you may revert to an ICE, but by 'nonsensical' I was referring to the discussion not the issue, if you can't convince a family with four cars in the driveway (his, hers and 2 kids) to consider a single hybrid or EV leaving the other ICEs for long trips, then I think the discussion has become nonsensical.

Repfigit - great points, but urban planning is almost always planning for the now and not the future. However, I think all your points are solveable, there are lots of clever people out there, and if there is a buck to be made out of it, then solutions will come.

I was very impressed to see charge points in road side light standards on my recent trip to London, none here in Ireland that I have seen. Kerb chargers are the solution, surely its not beyond the wit of governments to implement such schemes.

Just to give another example of how we can affect change, in Stansted airport I noticed every single seat in the main waiting zone now has a charge point, something that would have been inconceivable ten years ago.

Rob

[Andyjor63]

Either are the cars had my id3 family pro 2 years now and is ok currently can charge at home but am moving into a retirement village so got to public charge so will be going back to petrol so much easier than the hassle of finding a charger that actually works so this country no where near and why should we net zero is so false our tiny little country will make no difference at all when you look at the real super powers who don’t really care or bother unfortunately

[MotMot]

This year was my third ID3 trip for a family Xmas in London and by far the easiest. rugby Gridserve had spare chargers on the way up and down - and I managed some reasonably priced destination charging at some new Swift branded chargers in Hackney.

It is SO much better than it was even a year ago. It’s close to the point where I don’t have to make a plan C for charging - but still keep a plan B

[Repfigit]

Repfigit - great points, but urban planning is almost always planning for the now and not the future. However, I think all your points are solveable, there are lots of clever people out there, and if there is a buck to be made out of it, then solutions will come.

EVs are just the straw that breaks the camel's back on this problem. We already are in deep trouble because of how inadequate our housing stock is. It can be fixed, absolutely, and with basically no government funding either. All that is required is for us to make it easier and indeed encouraged for older, worse housing to be demolished so the land it sits on can be recycled and used for newer and better housing.

We don't seem to have any qualms about knocking down council estates under the guise of regeneration. But that's largely because the ownership is wholly or mostly still under council control, and it is relatively easy to force any private owners to go along with a scheme. Social tenants get a newer home, and most of the private homes are rented out anyway so eviction isn't a real issue.

The problem is the private housing that people own and occupy and actually like. And, in many cases, people who don't live there like as well. Fixing this problem means knocking down lots of old houses which might seem pretty but are actually not very good.

The extent of modernisation that most old houses need now to meet modern requirements is such that all that's really left is the front facade. Everything behind ends up being replaced to allow modern room arrangements and so on. In London, almost every house will end up growing to max out what's allowed under permitted development - side return extensions, dormer conversions for the roof and so on. But there's not much you can do to fix the parking problem unless you knock down the whole street and start again.

There's nothing really to stop us making sure the replacement buildings are just as nice to look at as the old ones. But people don't like change, even for the better. Most of these schemes are only possible if you do multiple houses at the same time but then you have the problem of people not wanting to sell up. In the worst cases though, this is only possible because we aren't taxing people based on what their property is actually worth. If we did, then many people would have little choice but to sell up to a developer who can go in and replace their house with multiple flats above basement parking.

[Boattrainman]

Motmot, I've a delayed trip from Dublin to London prob now going in February, subject to Holyhead getting sorted, looking forward to seeing how it works out.

Rob

[sidehaas]

We went for a family trip up to the lakes yesterday, us in our ID4 and my mum, brother and his family in her Kona. It was the first time she had driven it far enough to need a public charge. I suggested stopping twice to try two types of chargers/CPOs while I could stop with them and help out if necessary. In the end both Lancaster Gridserve and MFG Crow Orchard had plenty of free chargers in a busy period and she managed to work the chargers fine without my help. Success all round
Like MotMot I think the infrastructure is much improved now and for long journeys there is generally little to complain about.

There still needs to be a lot more done for people without home charging but I think Repfigit significantly overstated the scale of the problem and is far too prescriptive in what they suggest needs to happen. A plentiful mix of urban rapid charging hubs, lamp post chargers and car park AC chargers should be adequate, with a target that no one has to walk more than 5 minutes from home to find a free charger. There is absolutely no need to match the number of cars with chargers on a narrow victorian street, or to allocate spaces. Having lived in a street like that for quite a few years in the past, I can say pretty confidently that approach would fail.

[MotMot]

My experience from London charging (visited this last week) the local hubs (ie MFG’s, any use Tesla etc..) are very busy most of the time - and public slow chargers (inc lamp post one’s) are rarely if ever used.


Its purely my subjective view - but there seems more appetite for rapid hubs where you maybe charge once a week or every few days rather than in residential streets…

[Repfigit]

We know what it looks like to separate parking and "charging", as we have petrol stations today.

It takes maybe 5 minutes to fill up and few cars will manage less than 300 miles - e.g. a VW up! has a 35 litre tank and officially does 5.7L/100km (49.6mpg) so it can drive 614 km/381 miles between fill-ups. A Skoda Superb has a 62 litre tank and can also do about the same MPG, so it can go 1087km or 674 miles.

Not everyone is brimming the tank each time they fill up, but the time needed to get the fuel in the tank doesn't dominate the overall time needed to refill the car (e.g. driving to a petrol station, paying for the fuel). It'll be around 3-5 minutes to fill up, depending on exactly what you do.

Let's assume that people drive the same amount in the 100% EV world. From the stats for the up! and the Superb, it seems reasonable to assume EVs will end up with approximately half of the range of their ICE equivalents. That's not a problem when it's possible to charge from home, so the range is only important on relatively rare long distance journeys.

DC fast charging seems like it'll be sticky around the 30 minute refill mark. I don't think it's likely we'll see batteries capable of charging at power rates much higher than what they can output. When AC charging will dominate around the world, it doesn't make much commercial sense to prioritise ridiculously fast recharging on most vehicles.

So realistically we're talking about charges needing to be at least twice as common, and taking around 10 times as long. Therefore we'd need around 20x the number of charging hubs as we have petrol stations today, to end up with the same overall capacity utilisation.

We can take away the charging demand that is provided by home/workplace AC charging. That probably halves the demand, so we're back to a simple 10x figure.

This isn't by any means impossible. But the sad issue is that all of the DC infrastructure needed is going to cost a fair bit, and reduce the benefit of having an EV in the first place. It isn't going to undo it completely and by no means is it going to block the transition. It just means we're going to have something a bit suboptimal.

DC fast charging is always going to be more expensive than AC. We can see the gap today. I don't think the gap is going to get any smaller, especially when we consider the time-of-use tariff issue. DC fast charging needs to be available at any time of day or night. If people start all trying to go when the electricity is cheaper, then the competition for the available chargers will end up undoing most of the charging cost differential just through congestion pricing for chargers (more demand = higher cost).

To have a car, you need to be able to store it. For the reasons I discussed earlier that are independent of the EV transition, it seems likely that the cost of storing a car is going to increase - unless we do something radical to build a lot more parking spaces. Couple that with it being the best opportunity to benefit from cheap charging, and I see the demand for private parking going through the roof. Properties with private parking and the ability to charge overnight will become more valuable and properties without it will become less valuable.

If properties with private parking/charging opportunities are more valuable than properties without it, then it should add to the incentive to redevelop existing housing. It's no different really than the way that homeowners can add £50k value by spending £30k on the dormer extension.

[Batterdry500]

I've been driving an EV for three months.

It so happens that I have time to burn these days so if the infrastructure lets me down I really don't care.

And I enjoy the bit of fear that comes with a long journey..fear about whether planned chargers will work, and will I actually make it home etc. And I get a kick out of locating charger and it working. Yep..it doesn't take much to excite me !

But I can see that currently it's probably not good enough for people who HAVE to be at some place at a specific time.

And more importantly, right now, I would never recommend my other half move over to an EV given (1) the question mark over finding a charger that works and (2) chargers often being in somewhat dark and lonely corners of car parks and service stations which I find a bit unnerving myself at times. At the end of a day she's a adult who will decide for herself...but I will continue to advise against it.

[sidehaas]

And more importantly, right now, I would never recommend my other half move over to an EV given (1) the question mark over finding a charger that works and (2) chargers often being in somewhat dark and lonely corners of car parks and service stations which I find a bit unnerving myself at times. At the end of a day she's a adult who will decide for herself...but I will continue to advise against it.

In my opinion there really is no need for that. We have no ICE left now and use our IDs for everything. We have been to the continent twice and done many long trips in them without trouble. I recently helped my mum (72, lives alone, still does a few long trips each year) buy her first EV, a Kona. If you do a bit of planning and stick to rapid charging sites that have at least 6 chargers and adjacent facilities- which is easy to do now - then the liklihood of them all failing is tiny and they are almost always well lit.
There has still only been one occasion in a total of 35000 miles of EV driving when I actually needed a 'plan B' site after planning my trip per the above criteria, and that was because my ID3 didn't seem to work with Tesla Superchargers when it was on 3.0 (or the Tesla app just didn't work on my phone for a while...either way I couldn't initiate a charge on any supercharger). Many times I have seen one charger down or been unable to get one to start, but I've always successfully got a charge by trying again or moving one over.

[DumfriesDik]

We have never had an issue with public charging on long road trips. Combining charge stops with comfort breaks works really well for us. We have done splash and dash 40 miles from home, overnight slow charge at a destination and the 10% - 80% charge en-route.
I appreciate that just because this is my experience, it might not be the norm. And that is a shame.
I hope never to go back to an ICE car.

[g320y]

We spent Xmas in a large village (small town) in Northern Leicestershire - 4000 souls. Nearest petrol/diesel retailer now a 13 mile round trip but nearest public charging a similar distance.
Having had our id3 for 16 months we have had no issues with charging and have done long trips from London to West Wales, Scotland, N Yorkshire, Devon with a cumulative wait time for chargers of 5 minutes. Would never buy another ICE.
Sweeping generalisation alert here I suspect my profile is similar to most other forum users; off street parking available, well informed balanced view of climate transition, organised (love a list, planning etc etc). If you meet these criteria I think it's pretty difficult to make a case against EVs (unless you have a rep style driving pattern of routinely travelling hundereds of miles a day).
But:
- if you don't have off street parking/charging available then the economics and time commitment to use a public charger isn't compelling yet; fast charging at c.80p/kwh (inc 20% VAT) is more expensive than petrol/diesel and a totally different economic proposition to 7p/kwh (5% VAT) with Intelligent Go;
- if you don't have a balanced view of climate transition and related infrastructure then you may well be concerned about range anxiety (eg routine "stories" about 5 hour wait for a public charger on the way to Cornwall) and power cuts when everyone has an EV etc etc etc;
- folk still run out of petrol due to lack of planning so will do the same with EV and satnav still occasionally trys to send me to a broken charger or an inaccessible one (eg Tesla or Porsche).
So what to do? Spread the word that many concerns are unfounded, acknowledge for some that concerns are real, lobby your MP re VAT rate on public chargers and local councillors on installing more chargers.