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If you're living in a terraced house with a front garden that is too small to put a drive in then you are probably living in a dense neighbourhood that can support frequent public transport. In cities like London, Newcastle, Liverpool or Glasgow that's already going to be a metro/subway/tube line. In one of the smaller neglected northern towns that could be a tram-train than can travel on street but achieve 80mph on a grade separated right of way to take you into the big city or to the major transport interchange or wherever. Just rent a car when you go on holiday, walk the kids to primary school and pick up your shopping on the way back from the station or get it delivered like it used to be in the old days. If everyone in that neighbourhood gets an electric car they are probably going to have to dig up all the streets to replace the ancient power cables to support the on-street charging which would cause even more chaos than putting in a tram. It would help solve the obesity epidemic with everyone walking a bit more and save the vehicles for people that need them like people who are mobility impaired, builders, etc.

> If you're living in a terraced house with a front garden that is too small to put a drive in then you are probably living in a dense neighbourhood that can support frequent public transport.

Pick a random terraced road in Bristol [1] or Birmingham [2] or London [3] or Norwich [4] and you'll find terraced house residents are not yet living without cars.

If our nation's goals require such people to live without cars, I would say we're a long way off - and we're not particularly moving in that direction either. Hell, the current government's plan for the next election is essentially the opposite.

[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/JUVD3xy4qRuP78VP8 [2] https://maps.app.goo.gl/CGfDGEibG3zQij8MA [3] https://maps.app.goo.gl/TXZYFuuQC3aQiam56 [4] https://maps.app.goo.gl/srs27pyGuzobhp1V9

>> probably living in a dense neighbourhood that can support frequent public transport.

Not always a thing. Plenty of "dense" neighbourhoods have less-than-ideal transport systems. Few of even the most dense run 24/7 bus/train service. Not everyone works a 9-5 job near a bus station. Im in a dense area, in an apparment building beside the largest hospital. Bus service doesn't start until 6am, meaning it isnt an option for my work. Nearest passenger train is hundreds of miles away.

This notion of "just rent a car" is so stupid and unrealistic. Most rental cars are kind of crap unless you spend a lot, which quickly eats up any savings. The agencies don't reliably honor reservations and don't always have the specific model that you wanted. Getting to and from the rental car agency is a huge hassle and time suck, and then you have to drive it back to your house to pick up the rest of the family and luggage. Who has time for that?

Where I am in London there're 7.7kW chargers built into some lamposts. It's about 30-40p per kWh depending on when you start. There's also a couple of other providers with roadside chargers in random residential roads. I think they've got the scaling about right for the current demand but if everyone in the area had an electric car it wouldn't work.

I can go 290 miles at £0.016/mile when charging at home. At the (expensive) motorway services it's then £0.15/mile to rapid-charge. The unleaded at that services is £1.60/l so at 42 mpg (guess) it's about £0.17/mile. The EV version of my car is more expensive than petrol but it's not 2x. A petrol car is more expensive to run and fuel (in the UK, at least).

> 290 miles at £0.016/mile when charging at home.

Is that from solar? Or some tariff granting 6p/kWH delivered?

https://octopus.energy/smart/intelligent-octopus-go/

Thanks. Is that energy and delivery-of-energy combined for 7.5p/kWh? (Here we are charged separately for each of those tasks and, for me, the delivery of energy is over 59% of the total bill. Any alternate supplier is competing only for the supply of energy.)

That's the energy only. The delivery of it is fixed charge which doesn't come into this analysis since it's unavoidable in either case.

When you're computing your total cost per mile to compare against petrol or against a commercial fast-charging alternative, it does come into the analysis (assuming it's a per-kWh cost rather than a per-month fee).

That assumption is incorrect. I said

> fixed charge

I pay the same fixed (daily) standing charge regardless of how much electricity I use. This is normal here. To include it in the calculations makes no sense.

Assuming a fixed cost is per kWh makes no sense and I'm quite confused that someone upvoted it.

We have competitive supply here. The charge for distribution is fixed with regard to which energy supplier you choose, but is not fixed with regard to energy consumption.

I asked, because if I chose Octopus supply, my energy supply price per kWh would vary according to the supplier but the price per kWh for distribution would not. (And Octopus would naturally only quote the price that they are charging for the part of the total picture that they're involved with.)

Being the total (excellent!) rate, I'm a little surprised that Octopus customers aren't running LiFePO4 battery banks to power their daytime usage from the nighttime tariff.

Some Octopus energy customers have batteries and do this but it's a hefty investment.

Did your powerlines get privatized?

This probably explains it better than I can: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/what-do-i-need-to-know-abo...

As far as I know, the distribution has for a very, very long time been managed by a private, regulated monopoly utility.

I can easily go much longer than an EV battery without needing a break.

A modern minivan can get myself, 3 passengers and all their luggage from the bay area to LA without even stopping for gas. In the event that we start without a full tank, the gas stop in middle adds 150 seconds to the trip.

This simply isn't possible yet with an EV. I expect it will maybe happen someday, but not yet.

As for putting the most miles on long trips: Say I drive 10 miles a day to work and back, and I drive to LA only once a month. Hey presto, most of my driving miles are on the rare but long journey.

SF->LA with no stops, not even to piss? If you tried that with most folks you'd need a steam cleaner.

You really can't hold it for 6 hours? Especially if you go before you start?

And let's say we do make bathroom stops (kids or whatever); why should the needs of the car dictate when and for how long we stop?

When I was a kid my dad would threaten to leave us behind if we took over 10 minutes dragging out a bathroom stop. I don't see any reason to tolerate a car that takes twice that long to recharge.

On a recent trip I did pull over for a bathroom stop at a gas station. The prices were too high (understandable, only option for many miles) so I didn't buy any gas. In and out, no time lost.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic?

Unless I'm dehydrated, no, I generally have to piss more often than every 6 hours, and it's unreasonable to ask a passenger to hold it that long unless they specifically say that can.

Why are you in such a rush to get to your destination on a road trip?

Sometimes I need to be there on time. Other times I can set a leisurely pace.

At no time do I want to park in the back of an economically depressed store to sit in my car for 20 minutes watching a crack head defecate in the next parking stall over. If I have time to stop, I want to stop at scenic overlooks and the like.

Look, all I'm saying is when EV charging (or battery swap, or whatever) gets to the turn around time of a gas station I'll be all over it.

Yeah, but why do the miles count? So you need to stop for half an hour every 300 miles, is that such a big deal? You've still spent less time per month refueling your car.

No, I put a whole tank through heading down, another coming back, and one more tank for the rest of the month.

That's less than 15 minutes a month at a gas station. Still beats the pants off the 20 minutes each way for the ev on the long trip.

You're driving an entire tank without a break? Maybe you need an EV just for that.

Good idea, I'll get an inferior vehicle to enforce the breaks a random person online prescribes me.

And you're doing this on a daily/weekly basis? Why not move closer?

Yeah, yet another bullshit EV post. I just Googled the distance between two unrealistic endpoints in SF & LA: Union Square (SF) and Union Station (LA). It is 380 miles. When they stop to use the toilet and stretch halfway, they can recharge in Central Valley. In 10 years of talking to "EV deniers / haters", nothing you can say will convince them. And, seriously, how often is the _general_ population driving 380 miles to between two major cities? Once or twice a year at max.

Yeah, I don't understand this article. Who doesn't want an electric? I drive around the city all the time, 100 miles once a month, more than 400 maybe once a year. The disadvantages affect me once a year, the advantages every day.

To me, an EV is a no-brainer, in fact I was test driving the Mercedes EV just yesterday. The only thing stopping me from getting one is that my ten-year-old car is still fine. Definitely not getting a new ICE, though.

I, for one. Even though I live in a house with a driveway where I charge my PHEV, I had driven it too many times with zero charge to be wanting to get a non-hybrid electric car. While some of these times might not have happened with a bigger battery, many still would: having construction taking over the driveway and unable to charge, staying in a hotel and unable to charge, the city losing power and unable to charge would have happened with a bigger battery too.

I don't want an EV. Not because of a disinclination to have an electric car -- in theory, it would be fine. But I can't charge at home and all of the EVs I see on the market have at least one showstopper about them.

People who have no easy way to charge?

Seriously. I live in a huge city and chargers are still so rare. Even when they put them in new construction parking garages, thats like six spots with a charger for the entire garage of a couple hundred other spots. If you don’t have your own charger I can’t imagine a single landlord fronting the 10k to install one. Even if the laws forced their hand with it, thats just going to be passed to the renter somehow and we are already quite rent burdened here on average.

>>can’t imagine a single landlord fronting the 10k to install one

I don't know where you got this number from - a new 7.2kW charger is £400, and I'm sure you can get it cheaper if you buy several hundred of them. They are hardly expensive devices now. Yes there's the cost of installation too - but 10k is an extremely unreasonable number.

I don't need to stop and stretch. I'm a healthy young person.

Furthermore, if I did want to include such stops, why would I want to confine myself to the dingy dirty corner of some backwater Walmart parking lot?

With my high range ice car I can stop anywhere along the scenic way for as long or as short as I want.

>>I'm a healthy young person.

You know that this is only a temporary condition, right?

>>why would I want to confine myself to the dingy dirty corner of some backwater Walmart parking lot?

I don't know, why would you? Are those the only charging options you have?

>>With my high range ice car I can stop anywhere along the scenic way for as long or as short as I want.

You can do that in an electric car too.

When I get old, I can buy an EV of the future. It will for sure have better range and faster charging that what's on the market now.

Most busy corridors like sf-LA have the well known charge stations full and backed up making the delay multiple times longer.

The point about stopping wherever is that my stops won't have to be near any out of the way chargers. Of course an EV can stop wherever, but it also requires a pilgramage to somewhere I never wanted to go.

> I don't need to stop and stretch. I'm a healthy young person.

Don't do it and health problems could quickly appear. Like back pain, herniated discs, at the very least. Not to mention the risk of drowsiness induced car accidents.

I don'l like to refuel in a busy gas station either, but stopping and stretching is recommended.

Weekend custody exchanges are a pretty common case.

People around me have started running cabled from the house over the pavement, protected by those anti-trip mats, when charging. So far the council haven't taken any action against them. Not sure it's a long-term practical solution though, what with safety, vandalism and no guarantees that you can get a parking space outside your house.

Perhaps mandated 50% charging places in every supermarket carpark?

In bigger cities there are a lot of streetlight chargers popping up, like these ones: https://www.fmconway.co.uk/our-services/surecharge

It will take some time to be more widespread, but I think this and small 7kW stations here and there (like the ones from Source London) charging will be the technical solution.

As for how this will be incentives, I don't expect to see much until ICE are banned. 65% to 75% of households in the UK have off-street parking, that's more than enough for charging providers to get established and have different types of cost effective chargers. Once ICE are banned, then there will probably be incentives to cover dead zones. Unfortunately, that's usually how it goes and people living there are usually getting things last, like for broadband, 5G.

> if you live in UK and don't have a private drive then I have no idea how you're using an electric car

I have a friend in this situation. He charges it at other places, although the council are apparently going to dig a small trench in the pavement (free of charge) to allow him to run a charging cable from his house to the car without disrupting foot traffic.

But that's still contingent on being able to park right outside his house, which is a rare luxury.

>Most people use their car to do a school run and commute to work, usually no more than 30-50 miles a day.

I assume that to be true in most places, however, one has to consider that even those people occasionally make long distance travels.

What happens if for whatever emergency I have drive 500 mi across the state, keep an ICE just in case? Hit the hay to wait for my car to recharge?

>>What happens if for whatever emergency I have drive 500 mi across the state, keep an ICE just in case?

Uhm, you either rent a car locally if that's an option, or in any modern EV realistically you'd drive for 250 miles, then do a 45 minute stop to recharge and then do the other 250 miles. It would end up being marginally slower than in a normal car.

Also depends on the emergency, right - at 500 miles that's at least 10 hours of driving, it can't be that urgent. If someone is literally dying you'd get there faster in a normal car, I suppose - but somehow I don't pick my cars based on some incredibly rare situation. If you regularly have to address "emergencies" 500 miles away then I guess yes, don't buy an EV.

500 mi is a 8 hours drive on a highway with light traffic, unless you are make-shift ambulance it sounds within reasonable limits of an urgency.

>I don't pick my cars based on some incredibly rare situation. If you regularly have to address "emergencies" 500 miles away then I guess yes, don't buy an EV.

Mr. Joe may also want to take his family for a summer trip, or attend some business at the capital city, it's not as unreasonable or rare as you think for the average person to account for the 1-2 times per year he might want or need to make a long distance trip when making their purchase.

>in any modern EV realistically you'd drive for 250 miles, then do a 45 minute stop to recharge

I'm not getting this kind of number, Google claims charging time is 31h–39h (220V) for an ID.3 and 21h–32h (220V) for a Nissan Leaf.

You are moving the goal post, just saying.

> Mr. Joe may also want to take his family for a summer trip, or attend some business at the capital city, it's not as unreasonable or rare as you think for the average person to account for the 1-2 times per year he might want or need to make a long distance trip when making their purchase.

No, it is not unreasonable or rare to do two long-distance trips a year. But what holds true for an emergency that requires you to drive 800km holds also true for a leisure or business trip where you can plan a little more beforehand.

> I'm not getting this kind of number, Google claims charging time is 31h–39h (220V) for an ID.3 and 21h–32h (220V) for a Nissan Leaf.

Of course not. You are looking at charging times for plugging in an extension cord from a household outlet (which in Europe is 220V AC at 16A, therefore ~3500W). It's like saying that refueling your 30t truck with a garden hose is taking really long. Well, duh!

The fast chargers you find on highways are usually DC chargers with varying specifications. IIRC, the smallest DC chargers you can find (at least in mainland Europe) are 500V at 125A, so ~62000W. These load your average car battery in less than an hour, IFF your car can do it (not all new ones can, so watch out). Really high-performance EV like Porsche Taycan or Tesla S can charge much faster, if the DC charger allows it. There are modells that go up to 240kW, which would charge a recent Tesla S with 100kWh battery in less than 30 minutes from empty to 100%.

>Mr. Joe may also want to take his family for a summer trip

This is goal post shifting, you said "emergencies". Vacation trips aren't emergencies. Tens of millions of us rent cars anyway for such trips since they involve flying.

>I'm not getting this kind of number, Google claims charging time is 31h–39h (220V) for an ID.3 and 21h–32h (220V) for a Nissan Leaf.

Did you seriously just use 2.3kW emergency home wall plug as your number for a stop vs 77-400 kW DC chargers (which are what are actually found at stops)? Or even a proper 7-22kW home charger? The very first hits I saw on Google for charging an iD.3 [0, 1] both showed the correct range of options, and other cars (including Teslas) are capable of handling more power. I'm curious how you arrived at the idea that owners were all accepting 1-2 days for each charge of an EV.

----

0: https://pod-point.com/guides/vehicles/volkswagen/2020/id-3

1: https://evbox.com/en/electric-cars/volkswagen/volkswagen-id3

Yes, 220V charging isn't practical if you are planning to continue driving. DC fast charging delivers power much more quickly. For instance, the Leaf will fast charge in 40-60 minutes:

https://www.nissanusa.com/experience-nissan/news-and-events/...

I didn't look at what editions of the Leaf support DC charging, but it's safe to expect that new electric cars will almost all support it, and that it will get easier (in the sense of finding and paying for it).

I sometimes I have to do journeys that exceed the range of my EV. I break the journey and charge but I don't need to go to sleep while that's happening.

Personally I can't imagine an emergency where I need to travel 500 miles as fast as possible but I suppose I'd either fly, take a train, or rent an ICE car. I personally wouldn't invest in a dedicated emergency car because that would cost far more than the other three options.

I think a lot of Americans are a little paranoid sometimes! Obviously most of us have never needed to drive 500 miles on short notice, but you never know...

One scenario I could imagine is an evacuation for wildfires or hurricanes, but often there is plenty of warning with those events. Having one gas car topped off during hurricane season is probably good safety if you live on the Gulf coast.

For terrace houses it comes back to who owns the pavement and creating a compelling proposition for the customer and the EV charging provider

In the short term very thin flat cables are being tested. But this assumes you can park opposite your house.

Councils are happy to lease pavements to providers but it's not a lucrative proposition right now for 95% of UK streets, it's also victim to a negative feedback mechanism where home owners won't buy EVs because charging is hard which creates low demand

Councils can't solve it without investment, most likely it will solve itself when the majority of high income charging locations have been constructed. Most charging companies are operating on long-term investments leveraging debt. It's going to take years to solve, and that's without worrying about the grid infrastructure

A lot of people who drive Teslas are middle-class office workers, and charge at the office car park.

My office has about four chargers to support a few hundred drivers. They can't be reserved. Is this unusual?

Many gas stations are buying chargers.

BP just order $100m of Tesla chargers.

QuickTrip (gas stations) around me have 2+ chargers.

Gas stations will need to have chargers to stay in business (and electrification will impact their business); With 5% electrification, gas stations have already lost ~5% of their business, if they can recoup 2% from people without high speed charging at home or for road trips, they can make up in margins (especially as a 20 min charge up is more likely to get a user in store than a 5 minute fill up)

Grocery chains, working locations, state parks, county parks have been incentivized to put chargers. So have local shopping centers.

It will be very easy in the longterm: Charging at work, at the super market, publicly etc.

Supercharging in itself is easy enough too.

My EV has a big battery (given) but im charging publicly for nearly 2 years but my company already plans charging stations next year and other locations of my company already have them.

Charge at the grocery store during the weekly shop.