If 75% of commuters are travelling less than 10 miles, then why use a car? Wouldn't something like this (https://www.mypodride.com/podride-videos) be far better? Exercise, green...(well blue in the video)....
wild edges said: I wish they'd concentrate on using the new tech to replace the high mileage vehicles, heavy polluters and public transport first.
As in a lot of these issues, we're a long way behind our neighbours. We spend a lot of time blathering about the problems (there definitely are some) and not looking for solutions. Depends whether you start from "It's difficult, I'm not doing it" or "we need to do it, let's find a solution" I suppose.
I have an EV. I can charge at home from our solar panels, but for a long journey the ideal is to have a charger at the office or wherever I'm going. Charging on the way is a last resort (it's very expensive compared to charging at home), but when I have stopped at services, it usually takes about 20 - 30 minutes to go from around 30% to the normal 80%. I only charge to 100% at home because the last 20% takes longer.
Public chargers often have a charge structure which penalises you for overstaying, so, for example, you can charge for a maximum of an hour or until a full charge and then it charges you x pence per minute you stay connected beyond that.
I think the idea of us all having electric cars is a long way off. Far to expensive to buy new, and no idea as to the lifespan of one of these. I can't see people being prepared to wait an hour to recharge, when filling with petrol takes five minutes. If we have charge points at home, how much does that add to the average monthly electricity bill, compared to the average monthly petrol bill?
Can I ask what is the life of your EV's battery and what is the cost to replace it?
Isn't that something that has to be factored into a second hand market? I have never had the money to buy a new vehicle (well, not that I want to spend on a car) and have typically bought cars that are 5-6 years old and then kept them for 10-15 years. I have just replaced a 2004 car. But, apart from the replacement being old and having potential mechanical issues, typically I don't worry about the whole power source being replaced.
What value will there be in a 2nd hand EV when it's close to it's battery change time?
I think the idea of us all having electric cars is a long way off. Far to expensive to buy new, and no idea as to the lifespan of one of these. I can't see people being prepared to wait an hour to recharge, when filling with petrol takes five minutes. If we have charge points at home, how much does that add to the average monthly electricity bill, compared to the average monthly petrol bill?
If we already had electric cars and the talk was about converting to fossil fuels people would be saying "No one is going to want to have to stop at a special shop to fill up with fuel all the time when I can just charge at home/work". If an average EV has a range of over 200 miles then how often will you be travelling a greater distance in one go? A twenty minute stop for a comfort break can top the car up with enough to go another 100 or more miles.
The bigger question is where will we all be hit with extra tax to make up with lost revenue from fossil fuel? For people like me who work from home and hardly ever drive then I expect we will be facing a tax rise that would have been paid for by someone's gas guzzling Range Rover.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
The thoughts of sufficent charging points for everybody to be able to charge their vehicle whenever they want is likely to be decades away. Likewise houses smothered in solar panels feeding the excess back into the grid. Look what happened when solar panels did gain popularity, the price paid for feedback was slashed. People were effectively conned into installing them as they were led to believe they would get quick payback, not 20 to 25 years.
Last year we drove to York, roughly 200 miles, and the place we stayed didn't have any charging points for electric vehicles. At present I would have to go out searching for one and then kick my heels while the batteries recharged.
The day may come when everybody using electric vehicles is a truly practical proposition, but we are nowhere near that point and I don't believe we will be by 2030. Charging points is likely to be a minor issue compared to electricity generation to meet demand.
....but 50% of the population may have difficulty charging at home...so they may not be saying what you quoted....
As for the distance - totally agree - I tend to do two >300 mile round trips a year. I am used to that taking me a certain amount of time and giving me time to spend at the destination, before heading back. I can leave home all but empty currently and still guarantee I turn up within a few minutes of my expected time after filling up on the way.
It's a bit odd talking about a proportion who do have access to hard standing when Gove was on the radio talking about more houses in cities on brown belt - he wants higher density apparently. Watch that plan and see how many are built/converted with charge points thought about. My daughter recently moved into a new build - gas boiler, no solar, no charge point.....
I can just imagine the NHS (don't they charge nurses to park in their car parks?) converting all their car parks to cater for EVs (and do you then lose parking space?). Ditto in car parks - what space will be lost - and how will that affect cost of parking? Or will multi storey car parks not be converted?
To my simple brain, the poorest people drive the oldest cars. They buy old cars because they're cheap. They're cheap because they're old. Do these people then have the resource to put in a charge point at home (do they have an option in a rented property?) and will it be viable for them to buy old EV's when the EV's batteries are old and potentially need replacing? And what range do you get with 6....7...8 year old batteries anyway (do they fade like batteries in laptops?)?
Wouldn't smaller battery EV's be better - with this:
...the battery in the car only used to get you from one 'wired' road to the next? Does that have a double whammy? The car needs less power to carry the battery..the car could run without battery over a looped road, giving a vast increase in potential range.
Posts
https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/23574485.will-new-treliske-hospital-women-childrens-unit-built/#
As in a lot of these issues, we're a long way behind our neighbours. We spend a lot of time blathering about the problems (there definitely are some) and not looking for solutions. Depends whether you start from "It's difficult, I'm not doing it" or "we need to do it, let's find a solution" I suppose.
I have an EV. I can charge at home from our solar panels, but for a long journey the ideal is to have a charger at the office or wherever I'm going. Charging on the way is a last resort (it's very expensive compared to charging at home), but when I have stopped at services, it usually takes about 20 - 30 minutes to go from around 30% to the normal 80%. I only charge to 100% at home because the last 20% takes longer.
Public chargers often have a charge structure which penalises you for overstaying, so, for example, you can charge for a maximum of an hour or until a full charge and then it charges you x pence per minute you stay connected beyond that.
Batteries are recyclable Are electric car batteries recyclable? | EVBox
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
I can't see people being prepared to wait an hour to recharge, when filling with petrol takes five minutes.
If we have charge points at home, how much does that add to the average monthly electricity bill, compared to the average monthly petrol bill?