I confess to sniggering so much at the image that I found the article somewhat difficult to concentrate on. Er anyway, yes, I see that UK.gov capacity to plan things properly is on its usual schedule. To be a massive cock-up.

They could probably get a greater uptake in people wanting to use cars that need charging points if they were situated in places with amusing names. Maybe.

Edit: for the nth time to correct my previous edits. D:

Well for a start, having a dump charge at Shitterton on the A35 would be worth a day for the photo...

Surely the ultimate utopian solution to this problem is to figure out how to generate electrical power from the hot air and ego that can be produced from owning an EV?

You know what I mean - the whole "this journey cost me £2 to make because I just charge the car at home and away I go" -> capture that, turn it in to something meaningful like electric power to power their car. The monster then feeds itself, the more they can power it from their own hot air, the more their ego inflates, the more hot air is produced.

The REAL challenge is not where to place the chargers, it's where on Earth to get all the extra electricity generation needed, and baseload rather than fickle wind and solar.

As importantly, the current network cannot handle the extra load required.

As for all UK "strategic" planning in the recent decade or two, it's just pie in the sky because it's not a proper plan and it certainly won't be properly executed.

Far more logical would be to use LPG as a fuel, it's available already and existing cars can be easily and cheaply converted to it, we've had it for 3 decades. Then increasingly scale up hydrogen as a fuel, and both to be made available from the existing fueling infrastructure / locations.

Problem solved, and no digging up of Andean salt flats needed, nor kids digging in central African deep pits for rare earth metals to keep Elon's factories busy.

Couple of my near neighbours in UK have EV cars and their solar panels give enough power for that (& far more home power use besides, even in Winter). Though they do have advantage of plenty of South facing roof to mount panels on.

No EV or solar for me as I'm not rich like my near neighbours so cannot afford either... (a long wait before EV cars in the cheap old banger price range..)

"(a long wait before EV cars in the cheap old banger price range..)"

Yes, because there are vanishingly few end of life EVs... Over the next decade(s) that will significantly change.

and avoid buying a 10+year old tesla

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbrIQioiv8k

One thought that has occurred to me (although I confess I don't know enough about solar panels to know if it could work, and frankly can't be arsed to find out) is what if all cars after 2030 had to have a solar panel on them? I'm not suggesting it could completely charge a car, but it might be enough for the daily commute and a trip to Tesco. EVs are already so terrifyingly expensive another couple of grand probably wouldn't make any difference...

Also means HMG wouldn't need to build half a dozen new power stations to supply all the 'leccy!

As importantly, the current network cannot handle the extra load required.

How long have you been away on your hermits retreat? Whether this is true somewhere else, the national grid has repeatedly said that this is not a problem.

”https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/5-myths-about-electric-vehicles-busted”

Problems with using LPG as a fuel source include the fact that we would still be generating CO2 which is a bad idea and the fact that it is even more dangerous that the petrol it replaces. The hydrogen that is pushed by people like Toyota is not neatly made by electrolysis. It is mostly made from more fossil fuel generating even ,more CO2!

Don't worry about Elon Musk. His cars are still largely built in the USA which is not exactly famous for the quality of its engineering! Once we start getting them from China and (even better) Germany things will look up for quality and that will only leave us with iffy US design to consider.

The REAL challenge is not where to place the chargers, it's where on Earth to get all the extra electricity generation needed, and baseload rather than fickle wind and solar.

That's a correct albeit unpopular assessment.

So here's what you do ...

Put the effort to site and build charge points out for public bid. If you require the successful bidder to have actual experience in siting and provisioning charge points, very likely the only acceptable bid will be from Tesla. Will Elon bid? Almost for sure. The man has never seen a subsidy he didn't like. Can he do the job? Almost for sure he can. And since this is something his company has done reasonably well before, he'll probably do a good job.

But Musk is going to point out (as you have) that the chargers require adequate power. And I imagine he will suggest huge banks of solar panels and humongous backup batteries. All of which he can sell you.

But England is way too far North to power its transportation grid with solar energy especially in Winter? Of course it is. Any teenager who has mastered basic arithmetic and trigonometry can work that out in a few hours. But that's not Elon's problem. It's yours. It just means that you need a LOT of solar panels and an enormous number of batteries. And it'll cost a bloody fortune? You bet. Maybe you should have looked at the invoice for zero emissions before you signed on.

I'm not an Elon Musk fan BTW, but as I see it, he's the about only guy with any realistic chance of bailing you out of the mess your folks are creating. Like they say, "Any port in a storm."

What's the alternative? Nuclear power I suppose. But humanity has managed to dink around for half a century without coming up with an inexpensive, easily replicated, safe, nuclear reactor design that does not easily support nuclear proliferation. Perhaps you folks should consider holding off on saving the planet until you have a proper toolset?

But England is way too far North to power its transportation grid with solar energy

Then power it with wind! Relatives in Orkney tell me that they produce 130% or their electrical needs from renewables. This is an area where tourism is a major part of the economy so it has to look nice. No trouble with NIMBYs and Luddites there!

Far more logical would be to use LPG

Liquid Propane will work -- on paper at least. And it should generate substantially fewer greenhouse gases than gasoline and diesel. I do wonder if modern computer driven ignitions are entirely compatible with LPG. I doubt anyone is likely to develop and certify new LPG capable hardware for older cars. Too small a customer base? And where is all the necessary Propane (and, in warmer climates Butane) going to come from? At what cost?

The other alternative is Compressed Natural Gas. It's apparently widely used in cars in Iran and Pakistan as well as a few specialized applications in other countries. I remember that the service manual for our 1998 Toyota Camry had an extensive section on the CNG version tucked away in the back.

Problems I'm aware of: Propane is heavier than air. Some tunnel and underground parking operations ban Propane because of its potential for pooling at the lowest levels of the structure. Oh yes, and Propane and CNG are probably more of a fire hazard in an accident than gasoline or diesel. And in really cold weather (-15C) Propane probably needs to be thawed -- at least I have had to throw Propane cylinders into a sink full of water a couple of times to get them to work.

How dare you bring any real knowledge of power generation and supply into this discussion? Your arguements can only be based on what you read on Facebook or what you overheard some bearded and be-sandalled (socks optional) green hippy say down the pub after half-a-dozen pints, suggestions or observations involving actual knowledge of how these things work in the Real World are not permitted!

Sir, your "Fickle wind and solar" comment is a bit "last century" - It now accounts for 43% of the UK's energy demands overtaking fossil fuels - reference (otherwise it is just heresay): https://www.offshorewind.biz/2021/03/25/renewable-energy-outperforms-fossil-fuels-in-uk/

Well, for many cars there is a reasonable amount of solar radiation available... Certainly not enough to do everything, but a couple of thousand miles a year isn't to be sniffed at.

Then there is the question of who needs to charge what where...

"a staggering 24.6% of households don’t have access to off street parking."

So that more than 75% of households without an issue.

Then look at car ownership:

"In England overall, 23.9% of households don't have a car"

This number is a bit skewed by London, but even outside London 20% don't have a car. But then the number of households without off street parking is also likely to be skewed.

The overlap between those groups will not be perfect, but I would suggest it will be better than random, since both are likely to be either situational (e.g. London) or related (e.g. low income family in a tower block without a car).

So we don't need to charge 32 million cars (current registered total) using public infrastructure.

Probably we need to charge ~3-4 million, but they only need ~5kWh/day (national average distance is ~20 miles, and 4m/kWh is easily done, various vehicles will do substantially more), or 35kWh/week.

That's only 5 hours a week on a 7kW charger (which is what most slow chargers provide).

Add in workplace / station / park and ride slow charging (since you're leaving the car there for several hours anyway) and you've cut the number who need down significantly further.

Will we want/need more public slow charging? Yes

Are fifth floor flats an issue? Not really - blocks of flats frequently have parking available, so provision of charging points in the car park isn't a difficult operation. It's fairly easy to have RFID authentication to have the charge correctly billed by the property management company (or a provider like pod point), with cheap rates for the residents and "public" rates for visitors using a contactless card.

Terraces are the greater challenge...

At some point you then fall back on other places people regularly drive - supermarkets, shopping centres, cinemas, theatres etc and the car parks nearby. For supermarkets there is probably a benefit to having a slightly faster rate, since visits are somewhat shorter than they would be to other venues - I'd reckon that simple three phase AC (22kW) would go a long way, needing 90 minutes a week, so probably a couple of visits to somewhere with such a facility.

Having a small number of rapid chargers (50kW+) would be good for two reasons:

- It would make them easy to find and universally available if they were in all supermarket car parks

- For those who really have nowhere else to charge it's a local and convenient option, requiring about a supermarket visit a week...

Shouldn't need them at every space, because only a few people will need that speed.

We're not looking at a ridiculous amount of charging infrastructure, but it does need to be installed in sensible places. I don't necessarily see lampposts as a great idea, because sodium lamps were already pretty damned efficient, so their connections aren't that substantial.

I'd be more concerned with getting micro reactors at most of the 150 odd motorway services (decent grid connections, away from centres of population but close enough to be useful) so that there was easy access to a significant bank of the latest rapid chargers (350kW). That then deals with long journeys trivially, and they'd also provide basic grid support as well.

You see.... Proper thinking like this is what we need...

"Oh, Johny Tory can't charge his Chelsea Tractor in Pimlico as there's no dedicated parking"

"But where does Johny take his tractor, err, car"

"He takes is to waitrose"

"well, lets put charging points at waitrose then"

Probably we need to charge ~3-4 million, but they only need ~5kWh/day (national average distance is ~20 miles, and 4m/kWh is easily done, various vehicles will do substantially more), or 35kWh/week.

You cannot reason in term of average to dimension the electricity network but in term of peak.

"You cannot reason in term of average to dimension the electricity network but in term of peak."

That's true, but you can look at what is possible, and it is trivial to have cars charge at times when it is most convenient to the grid.

There are a couple of methods:

- Simple time based metering (e.g. economy 7, Economy 10 etc)

- Wholesale based smart metering (e.g. Octopus Agile)

- Smart demand management (cars are great for that, reasonably large load that can easily scale and is generally attached to a decent computer)

The overall energy required is 5kWh*32M ~150GWh/day

Gridwatch suggests that we have a peak production (in the last year) of ~47GW, and we averaged 29GW yesterday...

That's 18GW*24h = 432GWh that we could have produced, nearly three times as much as is needed.

Obviously we can't rely on being able to produce over 45GW continuously, but we are capable of it, without the country exploding

The "duck" curve is also nicely balanced for the majority of that demand being overnight.

"So we don't need to charge 32 million cars (current registered total) using public infrastructure."

As that sentence is utter bollocks, the rest of your fantasy novel, is just fantasy bollocks.

I was looking at getting an EV for my next car.

Then I started looking at charging point info on my most used routes, it's a complete fucking mess.

everyone with an EV seems to be complaining, that chargers are generally an unrealiable fuckup.

everything from other EV's left charging all day, blocking others to chargers not syncing with car and not charging or charging for 5mins then when they come back an hour later still having a flat battery.

So I think I'm back to ICE cars

"everyone with an EV seems to be complaining, that chargers are generally an unreliable fuckup."

Erm, not at all.

Ecotricity had a very bizarre notion that no one used motorways outside of office hours... that's changed with the takeover of their network by GridServe.

There are still too many chargers that aren't fully functioning - and more importantly there isn't an obvious way of knowing - ZapMap do a reasonable job, but not all networks push their charger status to them (or have a sane API).

The issue I see at the moment is that too many chargers have dodgy network connections, and I think that we should force the operators to configure the chargers to provide *some* free vend in the event that their network fails (even just 15 minutes on a fast charger will get you easily to the next handful of charge points). It would incentivise them to actually fix the things when they lose connection.

PodPoint have a good setup on their slower chargers, where you start charging and then get 15 minutes to authorise payment.

I have no interest in ever going back to an ICE vehicle, but what do I know, I only drive the thing. You looked at a map once.

I explored zapmap for hours, literally every charger had comments marking it as fucked in one way or another, within last 2 weeks or less.

Not sure about you but my times valuable, and sitting around drinking over priced coffee waiting for a car to charge isn't my idea of fucking fun.

and with that fucking attitude, don't want to become one of that fucking stuckup club!.

You're absolutely fucking correct, the charging is a fucking mess although why the fuck you need to fucking make your fucking point so fucking aggressively is beyond me.

I've also done the ZapMap route planning, because it's currently necessary. That's the price EV owners have to pay, currently. Everyone, including the Govt and apparently now even Ordnance Survey are aware of this and one presumes Something Will Be Done about it.

"I have no interest in ever going back to an ICE vehicle, but what do I know, I only drive the thing. You looked at a map once."

It's snarky comments like this from *some* EV owners, rather than upfront costs, range anxiety etc, that will put some people off joining the EV community...

So what if the OP might never have driven an EV, by the sounds of it they've at least done enough research (certainly more than just "looking at a map once" as you so dismissively put it) to come to a reasonable conclusion that an EV isn't currently the right solution *for them*. Don't take it out on them because they've come to that conclusion based on whatever information was available to them, take it out on whatever caused them to come to that conclusion - the lack of charge points in their area, the actual/perceived unreliability of whatever charge points are available at the moment etc.

EVs might work brillianrly well for *your* specific driving requirements, but don't fool yourself into thinking that your experiences speak for everyone. Some people can transition from ICE to EV today with little or no difficulty, some could transition with a bit of change in their daily routine, whilst others (too many right now) genuinely could not. And until we deal with the reasons, for there are many, why there are so many people in that last category, no-one should be having a go at anyone who can come up with reasonable justification for continuing to be pro-ICE/anti-EV, *especially* not someone who's come to that conclusion having put in the effort to see if switching to EV could work for them - i.e. someone with genuine interest in becoming an EV user as opposed to a rabid petrol/dieselhead who would sooner die than drive an EV.

a staggering 24.6% of households don’t have access to off street parking

Given that we've got to this point in the history of personal transport without actually having the infrastructure to keep that personal transport from being dumped on the public highway most of the time, I'm not optimistic about solving the charging problem.

From a logical (and environmental) perspective, it's probably easier, cheaper and more effective to get as many cars off the road as possible - eg by providing subsidised and frequent public transport. Might be a problem finding enough bus drivers, mind.

Agree absolutely - EVs are great, but only when compared with ICE cars.

Fewer cars is a far bigger win, and requires actual leadership.

I don't have facts and figures to make a robust counter-argument, but I do feel several of the points seem counter-intuitive to some general observations.

1) In my nearby "average town" most residential streets seem to be lined with cars - so households relying on on-street parking.

2) Newer build estates often provide car-ports, which is not the case for many areas of older housing stocks.

3) In some areas separate garage blocks are provided - but do not have an electricity supply; not an insurmountable problem, but seems likely to be a large job that is going to make FTTP look like a walk in the park.

4) Many households have multiple cars, particularly when there are also adult children in the household (something that already aggravates the street-parking situation).

The problems of switching over to EV seem complex. Interpretting data, and applying it meaningfully in any planning is likely to be challenging. Rough calculations based on general data might give some indication of the scale of what is needed, but I feel that there are many devilish details that need to be worked through.

I've heard of councils insisting on less than one car parking spot per residence to nudge people to other forms of transport (bus, bike, walk, etc)

PS - I'm not saying I agree with this policy. I can see the flaws in it. No need to flame me.

There was an (in)famous case of a call centre for a mobile network where planning permission severely restricted parking - as you say, to nudge people to other forms of transport. The obvious and predictable result was when it opened, all the local streets were clogged with parked cars.

The figures I've seen bandied around by pro-EV organisations tend to settle on around 30% of all *car owning* households not having access to off-street parking, so it might be more like 10 million cars needing regular charging from public points just based on the simple "on street vs off street" metric.

You'd also need to account for EV drivers who, for whatever reason, don't have the facility for at-home charging despite falling into the "off-street parking" category (e.g. allocated space in a private car park where the landlord refuses/hasn't yet got around to install charge points in the car park, and where stringing an extension cable out the window to your car is utterly impractical) and so can *never* charge at home, plus those who would *normally* charge at home but need an ad-hoc top up whilst out.

It's still doable, just not as easily doable as it might seem based on a quick glance at the headline figures.

It's weird because around my neck of the woods (admittedly very few EVs thanks to the non-existent charging infrastructure) the people with egos to massage seem to do so by ragging a 1.2l Renault Clio with a missing exhaust up and down the main road.

You might want to re-read your original post because it makes you sound like a bit of a prick.

When I was a kid we used to start the car with the handle at the front - maybe we can now charge the car with a little more effort?

I think this is a wind-up!

... which was collected at the Taxpayer's expense, AMIRITE?

which was collected at the Taxpayer's expense

A major difference between Left and Right Pondia.

US: The taxpayer paid for it, they get it free.

UK: The taxpayer paid for it, they will pay again to get access.

Also:

US: The taxpayer funded medicine research, they'll pay over the odds for it.

UK: ....

>US: The taxpayer funded medicine research, they'll pay over the odds for it.

But is was Canadian taxpayers that discovered insulin and gave it away for free.

That's why you need to charge $1500/month - cos of foreigners

>US: The taxpayer paid for it, they get it free.

>UK: The taxpayer paid for it, they will pay again to get access.

That's the difference between a socialist democratic republic and a monarchy.

The USA is most certainly NOT, repeat NOT a socialist democratic republic.

The GOP is heading in the direction of becoming a Fascist Party with Death de Dantis at its head.

The UK is far more socialist than the USA. The wailing and gnashing of teeth over in USA land when someone like Bernie Sanders suggests "Medicare for all" can be heard all the way over here.

My apologies - it has Democrats and Republicans and a life expectancy of one of those countries that call themselves the "Democratic Republic of ..." - so naturally I was confused

The USA is most certainly NOT, repeat NOT a socialist democratic republic.

Agreed. One out of three is not good enough...

Goddamnit, my taxes helped pay for that Eurofighter, I DEMAND to be allowed to take it for a quick spin... Oi, stop pointing that SA80 at me, don't you know my taxes helped buy it for you, I DEMAND you hand it over so I can go shoot some tin cans... Ohjesushchristthathurts, I know my taxes helped pay for that ammo, but I didn't ask you to give it to me...

As for the OS data sets, ever since they got onboard with the Open Data scheme some years back, they've been providing steadily more and more of their data for free use by anyone, to the point now where the majority of the broadly useful data is open and the stuff you still have to pay for is in the minority.

Yes but the problem with the Ordnance survey charging for their data was that the main customer was the UK government and so the overhead of billing themselves and arguing with themselves over licensing terms cost more than collecting the data

Then you had UK companies, especially startups, who couldn't afford to use the data to develop new ideas. So they were beaten in the market by US companies who just bought satellite imagery to make their own inferior maps.

It's more like Oxford University Press charging British users for using British spelling.

"Yes but the problem with the Ordnance survey charging for their data was that the main customer was the UK government and so the overhead of billing themselves and arguing with themselves over licensing terms cost more than collecting the data"

The same could, I'm sure, be said about any number of other government departments which provide services to other government departments, some of which existed only to provide services to said departments and not also to the general public/companies/A.N.Other paying customers who could be used to generate an additional revenue stream.

Not that this necessarily makes it OK for one arm of government to charge another arm for an internally provided service, but it's certainly not something the OS is uniquely guilty of. And the problem isn't then that the OS charges for access to all of its data, it's just that it charges other arms of the government for access to it - earning additional revenue for the country by selling the data to outside parties, whilst making it freely available to other arms of HMG, doesn't seem like a bad idea.

"Then you had UK companies, especially startups, who couldn't afford to use the data to develop new ideas. So they were beaten in the market by US companies who just bought satellite imagery to make their own inferior maps."

I'm missing something here - either the UK company has enough resources to be able to afford the same lower quality data as their US competitors ended up using, or they can't even afford that and need the data to be available for free, in which case what stops their competitors taking advantage of free access to the data as well?

Is this like the shutdown of analogue radio broadcasts in the UK in 2015? Then 2022. Then 2032. Then not at all.

The petrochemical cars and vans deadline was carefully chosen so that the current crop of political leaders will all have happily retired to their mistresses, mansions and lobbying contracts by then, comfortable in the knowledge that the next generation of politicians will get the blame for kicking the ball down the road.

After all, who are they expecting to buy the fruits of the new Scottish Cambo field?

More precisely it's in the n+1 parliament.

You don't have to anything now or even if you win again, in the one after that it's either the other lot or you have such a slum majority the bill will fail and you can blame the opposition

Climate change is the never a problem deadline. A 75year old promises to his 70year old voter base to do something about it in 30years time

"For instance, how are we going to be able to manage the needs of potential EV owners who need to charge their car at home but live on the top floor of a block of flats, or planning car charging points in a terraced street where parking spaces are already in short supply?"

Wait until self driving cars are capable of driving themselves in the dead of night to local charging centers like big supermarket car parks or purpose built sites.

Or wait for Minority Report style vehicles that can go up the sides of buildings so you just chuck a lead out of the window.

"My car said it just wanted to buy cigarettes, but afterwards I remembered it didn't smoke"...

Seriously, this would be a nightmare: Imagine all cars of a big city (London, New York) trying to reach some fairly distant charging center, and then coming back in the morning. Because of course real estate prices won't allow those centers to be downtown, they will rather have to be built in some quite distant industrial area. Think of the road congestion and noise during all night! It would also be the birth of a new excuse for being late at work: "I was ready to go, but my car wasn't back yet."

(Didn't downvote you.)

>Imagine all cars of a big city (London, New York) trying to reach some fairly distant charging center, and then coming back in the morning

The cars will be linked by mesh network and a common data standard allowing them to communicate and cooperate.

British cars will form an orderly queue which will be completely gridlocked by the two cars at the front sending "after you", "no after you", "no I insist", "no I couldn't possibly"

American cars will simply form a deathrace to get their first, ramming other vehicles out of the way until all cars built by US makers will resemble robot tanks built by a 14year olds in GameWorkshop