Charging ahead

[DrFfybes]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59369715

"New homes in England to have electric car chargers by law".

Not just homes, also most new buildings.

I suspect the Fuel Cell isn't on Boris' radar any more, and any Hydrogen will go towards home heating.

Paul

[AF62]

"New homes in England to have electric car chargers by law".

It will be interesting to see the detail rather than the headline.

For many years the government had a policy to limit the car parking spaces on new developments to reduce dependency on car ownership and promote public transport and cycling/walking.

Now every home has to have a car charger, which given the charging takes place overnight, means that every new home now needs a car parking space.

That will be interesting to deliver by the housing developers looking to squeeze the maximum number of houses onto the smallest of sites, and presumably means the end of any sort of terraced housing or flats unless they have a dedicated parking space for each property, whether they want it or not. So an interesting side effect of delivering this policy will be to push house prices even higher as the housing density will be lower.

[staffordian]

Interesting...

Does it apply to upper floor flats and new terraced housing without off street parking?

Ironically, I believe it has been government mandated planning policy for several years to reduce the parking spaces available in new builds, to discourage car ownership. Thus making charger provision a little more difficult than it might otherwise have been.

Edit: AF62 and I are thinking alike. Great minds think alike, or Lemon Fools never differ?

[dubre]

Which charger will they fit or are they all "universal"?

[swill453]

It's absurd to imagine the government will be outlawing apartments and terraced housing. So the reality of the new regulations will end up being rather less than today's soundbite headline.

Scott.

[AF62]

Which charger will they fit or are they all "universal"?

Pretty much - the EU mandated that all new electric cars had to be able to charge with a ‘Type 2’ connector, although obviously there are still some older EVs still on the road that use ‘Type 1’ (only some manufacturers, not all, historically used Type 1).

So it is this ‘Type2’ connector is the connection that home chargers and workplace car parks have.

Chargers with ‘Type 2’ connectors will deliver as little 3.6 kW the same as you get from a 3 pin plug socket (although these are not common), but most charge at 7.4 kW as that is straightforward to supply from a domestic electricity supply. Charging at that rate will take hours to charge from empty to full, so will need a dedicated overnight parking space.

There are chargers with ‘Type 2’ connectors which deliver 22 kW or even 50 kW but they are not usually installed in domestic premises as they need a three phase supply.

Most new EVs also have a ‘CCS’ socket which is a combination of a ‘Type 2’ socket (so you can plug that in if that is all that is available) but with an additional section of socket with additional pins, and this allows a combination plug to be plugged into both sockets and allows the charger to deliver up to 350 kW to the car (the maximum charging rate being dependent on the car and what it has been designed to take). As you would expect, delivering that amount of power needs an electricity supply you would never find at domestic premises.

There is another type of plug, CHAdeMO, but similarly to CCS as this is designed to deliver up to 62.5kW, then again you won’t find those installed in domestic homes.

And then there is Tesla with their dedicated ‘supercharger’ network, but they can also take a ‘Type 2’ plug.

So the issue with charging an EV isn’t “will the charger fit”, because it undoubtedly will, but ‘is it the right sort of charger for the need I have now’.

Do you want to charge overnight or whilst at work, in which case a 3kW or 7kW charger will do.

Are you stopping for lunch during a long journey, in which case those won’t but you will need at least a 22kW ‘fast’ charger and preferably a 50 kW ‘rapid’ charger.

Are you stopping just for a coffee during that long journey then you will need at least that 50 kW ‘rapid’ and if your car accepts it then an ‘ultra rapid’ delivering whatever the maximum your car will take.

And it is that ‘right sort of charger’ not ‘right sort of connector’ which is the issue the government needs to be solved to ensure the ‘right sort of charger’ is available where people need them.

Mandating home and workplace chargers is one step, but unless there are rapid and ultra rapid chargers where people need them to top up on long journeys, then ‘range anxiety’ will continue to inhibit the move to EVs.

[DrFfybes]

Did anyone see "Dispatches - the truth about electric cars" last night?

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the ... dispatches

I think it was intended to highlight the shortcomings of the current charging system(s) and supposed to be an attempt to promote public outrage to push the Govt into doing something.

Came across as an ill written agenda driven whige against getting an electric car.

Paul

[redsturgeon]

Am I correct in thinking that it is not good to always be charging your car with a super fast charger in terms of battery health?

Also keeping the battery between 20 and 80% is recommended.

John

[DrFfybes]

Am I correct in thinking that it is not good to always be charging your car with a super fast charger in terms of battery health?

Also keeping the battery between 20 and 80% is recommended.

John

I think the fast charging thing is less of an issue now it is better understood by manufacturers, but still a problem with older stuff. But who cares, it's a lease car going back before it becomes a problem.

That was one of the 'points' of the progrem last night - you should only really use 60% of your capacity. They then did a remarkably flawed experiment by trying this on 9 year old Nissan Leaf to 'demonstrate' that is eally only had about 30 miles of range. A bit like Top Gear demonstrating that towing a caravan uses more fuel.

However what the program did show was that if buying a 10 year old electric car with a full service history you are really at the mercy of how the previous owner treated it far more than buying a similarly serviced 10 year old diesel.

Paul

[redsturgeon]

Am I correct in thinking that it is not good to always be charging your car with a super fast charger in terms of battery health?

Also keeping the battery between 20 and 80% is recommended.

John

I think the fast charging thing is less of an issue now it is better understood by manufacturers, but still a problem with older stuff. But who cares, it's a lease car going back before it becomes a problem.

That was one of the 'points' of the progrem last night - you should only really use 60% of your capacity. They then did a remarkably flawed experiment by trying this on 9 year old Nissan Leaf to 'demonstrate' that is eally only had about 30 miles of range. A bit like Top Gear demonstrating that towing a caravan uses more fuel.

However what the program did show was that if buying a 10 year old electric car with a full service history you are really at the mercy of how the previous owner treated it far more than buying a similarly serviced 10 year old diesel.

Paul

I'm not sure you are totally impervious to a previously mistreated ICE car though.

Would it not be relatively easy to test the battery condition of a second hand BEV?

John

[AF62]

Would it not be relatively easy to test the battery condition of a second hand BEV?

John

It is. Just plug the car into the dealers diagnostic system and it will give you a 'state of health' reading.

And if you don't want to pay the dealer to do that, then for some cars like mine then people have developed an app that will talk to an OBDII dongle and will give the same information.

But then like anything else, if you know to check that sort of thing then that is great. But how many people buy a second hand car because they like the colour and the wheels, but don't think about that low mileage diesel car being used for a two mile each way journey every day and was never warmed up properly.

[JohnB]

I wonder if 3-phase will become standard on new builds, as they will be drawing more power for electric cars/ASHPs. I could imagine blocks of flats having a charger for every space, but not a space for every flat, as retail space rapid chargers would be fine for most once ranges go over 300 miles for even the cheaper cars.

[AF62]

I wonder if 3-phase will become standard on new builds, as they will be drawing more power for electric cars/ASHPs.

Possibly for some homes where they want to charge multiple EVs at the same time. But for most people then single phase powering a 7.4kW charger is probably sufficient even if they did have more than one EV.

I could imagine blocks of flats having a charger for every space, but not a space for every flat, as retail space rapid chargers would be fine for most once ranges go over 300 miles for even the cheaper cars.

If deliberately not providing a parking space meets the government target of providing a charger for every new home, on the basis of 'no space, so no charger' then I can see developers stopping providing any dedicated parking spaces.

The problem with using retail chargers and not home chargers is the price - 30p/kWh (or more) retail vs 5p/kWh at home, and it isn't a good look for the government to pushing 'poor people' who can only afford a terraced house to pay six times more to run their car than the 'rich person' who can afford a house with a drive and their own charging point.

[JohnB]

Its unwise to assume current pricing will continue. In the long term I expect public chargers will change from free/expensive to be much closer to the spot price for electricity plus a small markup for the infrastructure, and home prices will be spot based too, so the premium will be small, and hardly worth the £500 installation cost if home access is hard. Charging when shopping at 7pm might cost more than charging at home at 2am, but that might change to charging when windy becomes cheap. Your car learns your charging point pattern and normal driving, you tell it about special trips, and it grabs cheap power when it can, selling power back at a premium if you aren't likely to use it.

This nirvana is certainly the goal of a smart grid, we shall see whether it happens in practice, or if everyone gets burned by an AI failure and tells their car to keep at 100%, never mind the battery degradation.

[9873210]

I can't see spot pricing at public chargers as solving the problem for people without a dedicated charger.

If you're charging at home the car is plugged in for say 16 hours a day. It may only need to charge for 2 hours. With dynamic pricing and a little bit of smart grid a smart charger can pick the charging window(s). If the prices are set correctly this also helps balance the grid, varying prices over short time frames (minutes) could be useful. How will that work without a dedicated charger, preferably near home (or work if you work 16 hour days)?

The rule should probably be something along the line of a charger for every* parking spot instead of a charger for every home. Or perhaps a socket for every parking spot, the charger can go with the vehicle.

* Or every other or every tenth depending on how common BEVs are.