I work in the industry installing car chargers and their infrastructure, soon all new car chargers will be smart chargers and the DNO (leccy board) will have the power to control and limit them as they see fit. So rather than upgrading and investing in our netowrk they’ll just turn everyones chargers down…..they are investing but we are currently massively behind much more advanced countries like India and China, our networks are just too old.

You also don’t buy an electric car to save money, you buy one to save the environment or more specifically move the pollution away from cities or away altogether by using renewable energy

I work for a DNO.

I’d challenge the idea our networks are too old. Some assets are old, but they work.

And they are pretty much big enough except in very specific places.

My suspicion is that generation will be a bigger issue than network capacity – unless folk want to charge a 100kWh car once a week at a super fast charger in which case all bets are off.

Be interesting to see how predictable some of the electricity demand becomes.

I’d love my next car to be an EV, but with no charging at work, no drive or garage, and I can’t always park outside my house (or even on my street) – until some kind of ‘streetlight’ solution comes I’d worry.

Our car does ~75 miles Mon – Fri, so if we could charge once in a week then, normally, no problem. But once or twice a month we do a 250 mile round trip to friends or family or the beach. So we’d want a full charge on a Thursday night – I imagine others might be the same. Would a Thursday night charge become like the spike in demand at half time in the FA Cup final when everyone puts the kettle on at the same time?

Good to hear from a DNO perspective, the ones we deal with are very negative tbh and my info comes from them 🙂