Electric cars - BBC

[Howard]

That kind of sums up the problem. If you're located in a conurbation or you're a motorway network user or you have a drive+charger then BEV a practical option But 12 million people live in a definable rural location (21.3%) and the infrastructure is poor to non existent with no coherent plan to correct the situation. If you are of the opinion that the current direction of travel is equitable, sadly I have to disagree, hence my opinion that 2030 roll out of an ICE ban is doomed to failure, and an unnecessary failure at that.

Surely most of the 12 million people in rural locations will have space to be able to plug the car in at home? Then if it is like ours it's always fully charged with a 250+ mile range whenever they need it for a longer journey. If that entails a motorway, a city or a friend's house with a charger a longer journey isn't much of a problem.

How many elderly worriers, nervous of new technology, are regularly making lots of 300+ mile trips across rural wildernesses? For them, it's true, a BEV doesn't make sense.

The problem surely is for the millions of city dwellers who don't have the space to charge at home. So for them, generally speaking, a BEV probably isn't suitable at the moment.

By the way, reading this thread just after coming home from a flight. What do the worriers think about all the safety technology on planes? They virtually fly themselves.

Do you all yearn for the days of Tiger Moths?

regards

Howard

PS We do have an ICE car too, ironically with virtually all the same tech as our BEV. And, yes, it has an app! It's a real fag having to go to Tesco to fill it with expensive petrol. We've got used to the BEV charging itself overnight in our garage.

[Lootman]

By the way, reading this thread just after coming home from a flight. What do the worriers think about all the safety technology on planes? They virtually fly themselves.

Do you all yearn for the days of Tiger Moths?

I suspect that airbus330 knows a lot more about flying planes than I do.

But BEV tech reminds me of the Boeing 737-MAX tech, which thought it knew more about flying planes than pilots until they started falling out of the sky.

Driver tech should assist but never override. And I should be able to switch it off, which the MAX pilots could not do.

[Mike4]

We've got used to the BEV charging itself overnight in our garage.

Luxury!

Like a lot of my neighbours whose gardens are on opposite side of the lane to their cottages, my parking space doesn't have a power supply.

I don't even have a garage but if I did, it would be full of bikes, boiler spares, tools, woodworking machines, garden machinery etc - just like my workshops


(Edit to add two missing words.)

[Lootman]

I don't even have a garage but if I did, it would be full of bikes, boiler spares, tools, woodworking machines, garden machinery etc - just like my workshops

There is a special place in hell for those for have garages and park their car on the street.

[Howard]

We've got used to the BEV charging itself overnight in our garage.

Luxury!

Like a lot of my neighbours whose gardens are on opposite side of the lane to their cottages, my parking space doesn't have a power supply.

I don't even have a garage but if I did, it would be full of bikes, boiler spares, tools, woodworking machines, garden machinery etc - just like my workshops


(Edit to add two missing words.)

Do you have one of these in your workshop?

https://hyundaipowerequipment.co.uk/hyu ... f8QAvD_BwE

If so, one dark and stormy night, it might be easy to lay a cable under the lane to your parking space without disturbing the neighbours?

It needs petrol, apologies for not finding an electric version!

regards

Howard

[bungeejumper]

I imagine we've all seen Justin Rowlatt's (relatively) rose-tinted BBC documentary on https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0fzlswg , which basically says it'll all be all right in the end as long as we build a battery industry, sort out the yawning structural supply gaps in the national grid, and also invent a lot of new stuff. Fair enough, as the BBC's environmental correspondent that's what we'd expect. (I daresay it would help if Justin's windmill arm-waving and air-punching could be harnessed in some way?)

Perhaps it was in the interests of balance, then, that Panorama had put on Richard Bilton's slightly more down-to-earth appraisal of the situation a month earlier? https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m ... ime-to-buy . The scenario at 4 minutes 50, in a tourist town on one of the most heavily trafficked roads in the Cotswolds, expresses the problem more succinctly than mere words on a discussion forum could ever do? (Spoiler: the entire region's chargers have blacked out. Again..... )

Somehow it doesn't really help very much to know that things will get better one day, when the private sector finally believes it can make a good enough profit to improve charging services away from the conurbations. The fact that the government is moving to banish ICE cars for everybody puts some of us between a rock and a hard place.

What was that saying? "If you build it, they will come". And if you don't?

BJ

[airbus330]

You know the BEV project is in trouble when all the problems discussed in this thread are being expressed on R4 Today programme this morning with little pushback from the presenters. The segment interview with the CEO of Moto Service Stations was particularly pithy.

[JohnB]

The world is doomed. In spite of experts near-universal predictions of calamity for 30 years, and actual climate breakdown occurring now, the political response is always too little, too late, and its even politically acceptable to many (see the Republicans in the US) to do nothing, or switch sides if politically expedient (Sunak). All greenhouse gas mitigation solutions get bogged down, even for the enthusiast, and news stories like "The truth about heat pumps and the power needed to run them" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66359093, give people strong reasons to do nothing, as do the discussions here.

The Costing the Earth R4 episode "Steve Backshall Goes Off Grid" https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001m4rs, is worth listening, as an well-informed enthusiast says it cost 3 times what he expected to get a Green home.

People haven't been persuaded to change their lifestyles, and will reap the consequences. I'd urge all LF reader to put aside substantial sums to ensure they are living in 20 years time in a well-insulated home with air-con, off-grid power backup and access to public transport, well away from the sea, woodland or floodplains, plan for private access to essential services, and harden their hearts to stories of disaster elsewhere.

[88V8]

You know the BEV project is in trouble when all the problems discussed in this thread are being expressed on R4 Today programme this morning with little pushback from the presenters. The segment interview with the CEO of Moto Service Stations was particularly pithy.

And Richard Holden - a Transport Minister - woffled unconvincingly about the VAT disparity between home and public charging, which may not be significant for the majority of Lemons with their own garages and drives, but is yet another issue for folks with neither.

My gut feeling is no matter how many EVs are sold the number of public chargers will always lag behind, and a significant proportion will not work/fit your car when you get there.
I can't see any incentive for Big Business to ever correct the current situation.

An opportunity for Labour... something else to nationalise

V8

[Howard]

You know the BEV project is in trouble when all the problems discussed in this thread are being expressed on R4 Today programme this morning with little pushback from the presenters. The segment interview with the CEO of Moto Service Stations was particularly pithy.

Yes, did I hear him correctly? I believe he said that if all the Moto fast chargers he is installing next to motorways were used at once they would take one quarter of the output of a nuclear power station. Not surprisingly he also said that he was waiting for the energy authorities to connect a lot of Moto chargers to the grid.

Was the PM who promised all these wonderful green initiatives knowingly misleading voters?

regards

Howard

[Mike4]

You know the BEV project is in trouble when all the problems discussed in this thread are being expressed on R4 Today programme this morning with little pushback from the presenters. The segment interview with the CEO of Moto Service Stations was particularly pithy.

Yes, did I hear him correctly? I believe he said that if all the Moto fast chargers he is installing next to motorways were used at once they would take one quarter of the output of a nuclear power station. Not surprisingly he also said that he was waiting for the energy authorities to connect a lot of Moto chargers to the grid.

Was the PM who promised all these wonderful green initiatives knowingly misleading voters?

regards

Howard

Sounds about right to me. The man in the street has no concept of the sheer amount of energy contained in petrol and diesel which needs to be matched when charging a car. And during ultra-fast charging or whatever it is called, hundreds of Amps are being drawn by every car, each car being ultra-fast charged probably demanding about the same amount of power as the whole of the rest of the motorway service station.

At the Tesla charge park in Earley, Reading they fitted several huge dark green container-sized boxes. I imagine they are full of LiFePO4 batteries to smooth out the demand and reduce grid load when several of the Tesla fast-charging points are in use at the same time. Just a guess though.

And the PM you mention was insanely successful initially because of his habit of telling people whatever they wanted to hear, with no intention of ever fulfilling. Didn't you realise?!

[Tedx]

Atomic Batteries. Similar to those that powered the Voyager spacecraft and in the movie 'The Martian'.

Note, I know nothing about these things other than the fact they produce heat then electricity from decaying nuclear waste. The Russians have used them to power remote lighthouses according to WIki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisot ... _generator

They produce relatively low amounts of power but go on for a looooong time and we have shed loads of nuclear waste.

So forget Elons weak assed second hand house batteries, I propose a Tedx Atomic PowerWall for every property in the UK.

What could possibly go wrong?

[mc2fool]

I imagine we've all seen Justin Rowlatt's (relatively) rose-tinted BBC documentary on https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0fzlswg , which basically says it'll all be all right in the end as long as we build a battery industry, sort out the yawning structural supply gaps in the national grid, and also invent a lot of new stuff. Fair enough, as the BBC's environmental correspondent that's what we'd expect. (I daresay it would help if Justin's windmill arm-waving and air-punching could be harnessed in some way?)

Perhaps it was in the interests of balance, then, that Panorama had put on Richard Bilton's slightly more down-to-earth appraisal of the situation a month earlier? https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m ... ime-to-buy . The scenario at 4 minutes 50, in a tourist town on one of the most heavily trafficked roads in the Cotswolds, expresses the problem more succinctly than mere words on a discussion forum could ever do? (Spoiler: the entire region's chargers have blacked out. Again..... )

Far from rose tinted, what came across to me was Rowlatt highlighting, yeah, it'll be ok if we do all that stuff, but we are far from doing so and, as it stands, it doesn't look like we're going to make it for 2030. And did you miss the section starting around 26m40s with people complaining about much the same as the Panorama section:

"Attempting to get from Littlehampton on the south coast home to Tunbridge Wells, seven chargers were not working. There's basically only a few places you can actually get charging and then half the time they're full up. So you have to either wait for, like, 30 minutes or even longer...

We go on holiday in, like, Wales and Devon cos we're eco people, we decided we won't fly any more. You pull into a service station and they're all broken. And then you go on to the next one, Exeter, that's got ten chargers, but it's got 40 people waiting. Do you stay? Do you wait? How long will it be? After queuing for three hours with all the other furious electric car owners, just looking over at the people at the petrol ones just going "glug, glug, glug", and they're on - so jealous of them."

[AF62]

As for the number of chargers, well that is supply and demand. Until there are sufficient EV drivers demanding to use them then the commercial suppliers won't be providing them - but that is happening where people are using them, just take a look at any motorway service area and the ranks and ranks of new chargers.

So to say that the situation in rural Wales is typical of the situation across the whole of the UK is a bit of a stretch.

Yeah, I'm sure everything's lovely for people who use motorways, with all that lovely traffic constantly passing by.

But for those of us who depend on more out-of-the-way rural routes, the calculation is whether or not I dare to attempt a journey across Salisbury Plain/North York Moors/mid-Wales, in the full knowledge that there's a goodish chance that the charging station on my map won't be working, or won't want to work with my particular car. Or that I can't get a mobile signal when it matters.

Is Salisbury Plain a couple of hundred miles across? It wasn't the last time I drove over it so I am not sure why you would think it an issue to drive across in a BEV.

The very idea of needing a mobile signal to refuel a vehicle or else be stranded in the middle of nowhere is insane.

With the vast majority of chargers you can simply pay by contactless card.

As is needing one to unlock your car doors or start the engine.

Why? Those don't require a mobile signal.

[Lootman]

As is needing one to unlock your car doors or start the engine.

Why? Those don't require a mobile signal.

They still require a phone that I might not have with me, or I might have lost, or have just dropped and broken, or it freezes, or .

Having a car dependent on a phone in any way is a deal-breaker for me.

[tjh290633]

By the way, reading this thread just after coming home from a flight. What do the worriers think about all the safety technology on planes? They virtually fly themselves.

Do you all yearn for the days of Tiger Moths?

I suspect that airbus330 knows a lot more about flying planes than I do.

But BEV tech reminds me of the Boeing 737-MAX tech, which thought it knew more about flying planes than pilots until they started falling out of the sky.

Driver tech should assist but never override. And I should be able to switch it off, which the MAX pilots could not do.

One feature of the Tiger Moth was, given enough height, if you took your hands and feet off the controls, it would sort itself out and get you out of trouble, usually a spin. That is far from a case with the modern fly by wire aircraft.

TJH

[XFool]

One feature of the Tiger Moth was, given enough height, if you took your hands and feet off the controls, it would sort itself out and get you out of trouble, usually a spin. That is far from a case with the modern fly by wire aircraft.

Is it? I readily confess I have exactly zero knowledge in this area, but I would have thought a fly-by-wire aircraft ought to be able to automatically get itself out of such a situation (if the aircraft flight dynamics allow it). Or avoid getting into it in the first place.

[AF62]

Why? Those don't require a mobile signal.

They still require a phone that I might not have with me, or I might have lost, or have just dropped and broken, or it freezes, or .

Having a car dependent on a phone in any way is a deal-breaker for me.

Or you might lave lost, dropped, or broken your car keys, so you would be in a worse position than having a car that gives you an *option* of unlocking and starting with a phone.

[bungeejumper]

The very idea of needing a mobile signal to refuel a vehicle or else be stranded in the middle of nowhere is insane.

With the vast majority of chargers you can simply pay by contactless card.

The vast majority? That's odd. The Which survey (https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/new-and ... srN5Z94jfE) says:

Only a minority of charging points in the UK allow you to pay directly by credit or debit card. No companies accept cash

Depending on the network, you'll either need to download an app, go to a website or have a pre-registered RFID card

To get a charge going, you'll typically need to download a network specific app and follow the instructions to initiate and pay for the charge.

Are we to take it that the Consumers Association don't know what they're talking about? Or that they're really quite badly out of date? Could be, I suppose, but the web link was updated only in April and features a picture of the super-duper new station that Justin Rowlatt has been salivating about, so any hard info on this important aspect gratefully received. I promise not to even mention that payment by card generally comes at a hefty price premium.

BJ

[Lootman]

They still require a phone that I might not have with me, or I might have lost, or have just dropped and broken, or it freezes, or .

Having a car dependent on a phone in any way is a deal-breaker for me.

Or you might lave lost, dropped, or broken your car keys, so you would be in a worse position than having a car that gives you an *option* of unlocking and starting with a phone.

You cannot really break a metal key, although I suppose you could bend it if you really tried. And I have a spare key anyway. Far more can go wrong with a device than a piece of metal.

I am much more likely to lose or drop a phone because it gets used much more. But my keys rarely leave my pocket.

And again, it is not unusual for me to choose to not have my phone with me if, say, going for a swim or popping out to the shops. I want that option.

It is rare for me to ever put myself in a situation where I cannot function without a working phone.