Rishi! Sunak!

For those of you predicting charging petrol stations I don’t think you have any idea of the cost of the onsite and offsite infrastructure for rapid chargers which has to be passed onto the consumer. For example a 22kw 3 phase AC charger, around 2k, 50kw DC rapid charger (which isn’t really rapid), £27k. Put in 6 100kw chargers and you need onsite sub stations as well. Cabling into the site and grid connection also has to be massively increased to cope with a lot of fast connections at the same time.

Weve got to get the idea of quick charging as the norm out of our heads, sub stations are already running out of capacity. Economic charging is going to be slow and at home and probably offset by home generation through solar PV.

The trouble is then the people who just don’t have the ability to home charge. We need to think about slow overnight charging close to where people live. Supermarket car parks being prime  candidates but I know for a fact it’s not on their agenda.

Our distribution grid is way behind where it needs to be and needs massive and rapid investment. The government know as well and have no intention of addressing the issues.

It’s probably relevant to remember that if the ZEV mandate stays in place then 80% of cars sold will have to be EVs in 2030 in any case.

Brutal.

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/21/sunaks-bold-climate-plan-wait-until-2047-then-push-the-panic-button

Stumpyjon hits the nail on the head. 2030 was never going to happen because the national grid and local transmission can’t yet cope with the power requirements. Substations need upgrading etc etc. All sunak has done is turn a post election failure into a pre election sales pitch that the many many voters are really pleased about

Jesus wept, I got a 3 for Standard Grade economics and even I know that argument is utter mince.

even I know that argument is utter mince.

explain why then.

Sunak’s got real “headboy who’s not made it to his first choice university course” vibes hasn’t he?

So they’re not going to implement policies they started? And at the same time they’re going to stop things that never started?

So. Much. Double. Thinking. And. Bullshit.

Sadly, I can imagine a lot of people will like this…

Conservatives will never impose the wild policies some are calling for.

Our approach to Net Zero will be pragmatic, proportionate, and realistic. pic.twitter.com/sJaCzNqpP4

— Conservatives (@Conservatives) September 20, 2023

Yeah I’d be interested to know as well considering I’m actually involved in the design, installation and running of charge points. Even a housing estate like mine will struggle if every house runs a 7.5kw charger overnight. Average household consumption of electricity is 2800kwh, a 7.5kw charger run for 8 hours overnight every other night will use 10800kwh, if it’s a 2 car household it could be double that. Do you think the grid is currently running at 25% capacity, news flash it’s already maxing out in places.

If your utter mince comment was directed at the cost of rapid charging see above, figures quoted are what it costs us at the moment for charger points. Basic economics dictates there’s a lot more overhead to pay for during rapid charging in addition to the power cost.

I’m pro EV by the way, we just need to be realistic about implementing it and we should have started properly some time ago.

Stumpyjon hits the nail on the head. 2030 was never going to happen because the national grid and local transmission can’t yet cope with the power requirements. Substations need upgrading etc etc. All sunak has done is turn a post election failure into a pre election sales pitch that the many many voters are really pleased about

It will not happen completely even after 2035, hence the curve ball to Starmer.

Starmer is banking on enough “number” to support his “stealth” approach but his opponents saw him coming miles away. The bloke has no new ideas. LOL!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66872827

My understanding, although I left the industry several years ago now, was that the transmission network had enough headroom for EVs and heat pumps, although that prob depends on smart appliances (so they avoid peak periods). It’s the local distribution network that needs reinforcement, as people are saying above.

Graeme and some other engineers I know are still saying this on Twitter. Obviously, there’s massive network investment needed to get to 2050.

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero-stories/can-grid-cope-extra-demand-electric-cars

Jamze thats also my understanding, that and getting renewables connected to the grid at the generation end.

While he’s on a roll….Education next for the Rishi treatment.

https://www.ft.com/content/d62fde2b-0803-4211-805e-4bd571714600

I’m going to place a bet that when they lose the next election they go all out – ban any immigration, NHS privatisation, privatise UK government pensions investments etc

@stumpyjon I was talking about Daz, not you, well aware you’re at the pointy end of distribution.

@dazh it already was explained on the last page, I’m not for regurgitating it.

Even a housing estate like mine will struggle if every house runs a 7.5kw charger overnight. Average household consumption of electricity is 2800kwh, a 7.5kw charger run for 8 hours overnight every other night will use 10800kwh, if it’s a 2 car household it could be double that.

Hence smart chargers. Very few people will need to charge 8 hours overnight, it’s going to be 1 or 2 in most cases and with smart chargers this can be staggered. But it will need managing and planning of course.

Weve got to get the idea of quick charging as the norm out of our heads

It’s not in the heads of most EV drivers at the moment, almost everyone only rapid charges occasionally. But you are right about people with no driveway. However, charging needs to be in street where people live, a lot of people e.g. women won’t want to park up in a car park and walk home late at night.

And why would you need to charge your car every night or ever other night anyway. If by 2030 the typical EV can cover 200 miles between charges who is doing 200 miles every 2 days? I don’t even do 200 miles a week most weeks and I feel like I drive quite a bit.

The real point is that commitments need er, commitment. To hit the 2030 goal would need infrastructure investments, changes to lifestyles etc,. and there was ~10 years to try and do that but so far they have done **** all and over the next 7 years would probably have done **** all. Still, no rush is there.

But you are right about people with no driveway.

This is the crux of the issue. With a 2030 deadline we’ve got 10 years to install all the infrastructure for on-street charging. Can anyone seriously see that happening? The alternative is telling people who aren’t rich enough to have a driveway that they need to get the bus. Good luck with that.

I’m not against EVs or getting people out of their cars. I spent most of my youth campaigning against car culture and road building. I am realistic though, and the reality is that transitioning to EVs is a very complex problem to solve and we currently have no strategic plan or investment about how to do that other than ‘leave it to the market’. I think we all know how that will end.

With a 2030 deadline we’ve got 10 years to install all the infrastructure for on-street charging. Can anyone seriously see that happening? The alternative is telling people who aren’t rich enough to have a driveway that they need to get the bus. Good luck with that.

Alternatively build massive charging complexes where people can go and charge their cars. Much easier than on street charging.

And again, 7 years is a long time in EV development and who knows what charging times and range will be like for a new EV in 2030 and beyond combined with the fact that the new petrol cars purchased in 2029 will have another 10+ years of life left in them. Why is anyone having to get the bus.

Alternatively build massive charging complexes

Ohhhhhh, okay, well that’s easy enough then.

@dazh it already was explained on the last page, I’m not for regurgitating it.

Well I just had a quick scan through the last two pages and there’s nothing explaining other than ‘poor people don’t buy new cars’. Even without the problems around charging infrastructure EVs are not magically just going replace ICE cars because you remove the supply. Without sufficient scrappage schemes and other plans to incentivise working people to switch there will be a stampede to buy up the remaining ICE cars in circulation, the result will be massive increase in prices for used ICE vehicles.

And again, 7 years is a long time in EV development

7 years might be a long time in vehicle development but it’s a blink in the eye when it comes to ripping up every street in the country to install on-street charge points and add all the substation infrastructure.

with the fact that the new petrol cars purchased in 2029 will have another 10+ years of life left in them.

I see 15-20 year old cars on the road these days that look practically new. It’s only the tech inside them that dates them.

2029 will have another 10+ years of life left in them.

My ICE car is 15 years old and has about 100k on the clock. It has had (touch wood) no major mechanical issues yet.

It will be replaced by a small electric van in the next couple of years, paid by for by corporation tax allowance.

…new petrol cars purchased in 2029 will have another 10+ years of life left in them. Why is anyone having to get the bus.

You’re forgetting that there will most likely be very few ICE cars available to buy by then. That’s what Ford’s complaint is all about, they’re gearing up to replace their whole range with EV’s across Europe so their ICE range will be limited by 2027/8. They’re not going to continue manufacturing old models until 2029 (as per the old rules) as they then risk having stock they cannot sell so your buying choices will be limited. Don’t forget the killed off the Fiesta, Focus and Mondeo and their replacements will be EV and that will have been planned a few years ago. Add in that we drive in the opposite side to a lot of countries and that makes the prospect of UK ICE models not commercially viable. This current cycle of models with ICE power will most likely be the last we see in our showrooms. Us pushing back the cutoff date will make no difference to them. We might get lucky and have a few hybrid models to choose from but the manufacturers will dictate what’s available now and that will be driven by their sales in other markets.

I’m on my second EV car having had the first for three years, drive around 8k a year in it and have a drive. Planned to get a fast charger installed but have not bothered as plugging it in to my outside three pin supply has always been enough. I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve used a fast charger when travelling and from my experience there’s as many broken as there are working but that’s another story!

Sunak is a twot btw.

but it’s a blink in the eye when it comes to ripping up every street in the country to install on-street charge points and add all the substation infrastructure.

Again, why do you need to do that. Why not build massive charging areas rather than digging up every street.

Very easy to do if the will is there.

Why not build massive charging areas rather than digging up every street.

Because people want to park their cars outside their house. Try to change that and they’ll vote against it. It might be stupid and illogical from an infrastructure point of view but that’s the reality.

Because people want to park their cars outside their house. Try to change that and they’ll vote against it. It might be stupid and illogical from an infrastructure point of view but that’s the reality.

You can still park you car outside your house but will need to go somewhere else to charge it, you don’t have a petrol supply outside of each house.

And people can’t vote against something if that is all they are offered can they. Which is what was happening with the 2030 objective until this week. Tory and Labour were both supportive of it.

This needs a bit more imaginative thinking rather than just “you can’t do it because” nonsense.

You can still park you car outside your house but will need to go somewhere else to charge it, you don’t have a petrol supply outside of each house.

My nearest petrol station is a 25 minute walk from my house. If you think people are going to park their car a significant walk away from home to charge it for 8 hours then you’re deluded. The only way replacing existing petrol station infrastructure with EV charging will work is if charging your car takes the same time as filling up with petrol. It’s just not going to happen.

And people can’t vote against something if that is all they are offered can they

Again the reality is that you’ll never get the political consensus to force something through. As we have seen this week, politicians will always sieze an opportunity to win votes. Even if labour and the tories agree, then someone else like Farage will appear and we all know what happens then, you get stuff like brexit happening.

Funny how a party that’s been in power for 13 years and literally legislated for all these ‘green’ initiatives, set the timelines and is now delaying them plus hasn’t actually put in place the environment (charges, grid, subs etc) is still the party that (some) folk trust to run the country.

I had a long drive yesterday so had LBC on inbetween music sessions, felt like gammon central listening to the majority of them quite frankly talking utter rubbish – have they got no critical thinking skills whatsoever?

1. you can go out and pick up a leaf for ~10k sh

2. The average car journey in the UK is 7 miles.

3. There is an electricity supply to the vast majority of houses, and street lights on the vast majority of roads you can combine in to the charging network. For most use cases you don’t need to charge from flat to 100% in 20 minutes so most chargers can be slow ones.

4. For most journeys there is a start and a finish. Given average journey length and idle time of most cars you can charge at the other end. If you need to do a long journey you can fast charge on the way.

5. I think most people have seen we need to do **** something!

I’ve done 10k miles since 21st July for work so ev’s for me will be bloody hard to implement. I’m driving from Shrewsbury to Inverness and back for one days work next week, installing operating theatre equipment with specialist kit so there’s no real way around it.

I’d like to see more freight on the railways but that would need to be like the channel tunnel, roll on roll off trains. Why didn’t they do this for hs2?

<span style=”background-color: #eeeeee; color: #000000; font-family: Roboto, ‘Helvetica Neue’, Arial, ‘Noto Sans’, sans-serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ‘Segoe UI’, ‘Apple Color Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Symbol’, ‘Noto Color Emoji’;”>My nearest petrol station is a 25 minute walk from my house.</span><span style=”background-color: #eeeeee; color: #000000; font-family: Roboto, ‘Helvetica Neue’, Arial, ‘Noto Sans’, sans-serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ‘Segoe UI’, ‘Apple Color Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Symbol’, ‘Noto Color Emoji’;”> </span>

And that’s relevant for what reason?

For those interested – when I first started driving there were about 23,000 petrol stations in the UK (down from 40k in 1970), now there are less than 9,000.  One reason, cars just didn’t have the range they have now.

<span style=”color: #000000; font-family: Roboto, ‘Helvetica Neue’, Arial, ‘Noto Sans’, sans-serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ‘Segoe UI’, ‘Apple Color Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Symbol’, ‘Noto Color Emoji’;”>”I’ve done 10k miles since 21st July for work so ev’s for me will be bloody hard to implement. I’m driving from Shrewsbury to Inverness and back for one days work next week, installing operating theatre equipment with specialist kit so there’s no real way around it.”</span>

It’s 3 days work really, a day driving up, a day doing the installation and a day back down – did you bring the equipment with you, or just your tools?

FWIW my Son #2 does 50-60k PA, folk like you and him are the exception, the 1% – I’m happy for you lot to have opt-outs.

I did 400 miles yesterday, and over my lunch stop I could’ve fast charged enough to get me home – I’m not in an EV, but it’d probably only cost me 15 mins more if I was.

Del has it.

Even a brand new supermini is around £30k, some over some a bit under. Battery warranty looks like 8 years for most manufacturers. Write it off over 8 years? just under £4k/year, or what, £350 a month?

Range 150 in winter looks like market average, with 40-ish kWh battery, so for the small 3 pin plug is around 16 hours from zero to full.

What’s the average commute – under 20 miles? That’s a 40 mile round trip… which will needs about 4 hours on a billy basic 3 pin plug by my maths. Entry level chargepoint, more like 2 hours.

That’s pretty much 99% of personal journeys covered.

For those who don’t have off street parking to charge, I’d suggest that “remote” charging facilities would need to be within the same walking distance as what your nearest bus stop should be. Without getting into the argument of current bus service provision,  in new build estates the max walk distance from a dwelling to a bus stop should be 400m.  Even if that were possible in existing residential areas, you’d then get into the battle, both socially and financially of do you put a charging station or housing on it?

And of course this requires people to be socially responsible to plug only when they need it and not top up every night when you only do 10 miles/day and to unplug promptly when they have filled the battery to give others a chance.

And that’s relevant for what reason?

Because for a lot of people that will be too much, so they will vote for politicians who tell them they won’t have to do that.

That’s pretty much 99% of personal journeys covered.

But people will still want to do the 1% of journeys where they have to go further. For someone like me that’s visiting relatives, going somewhere nice for the weekend or a random day trip to the lakes or somewhere similar to go riding. Good luck to any politician who tries to tell people that those 1% of journeys are going to be much more difficult and inconvenient than they currently are.

Because for a lot of people that will be too much, so they will vote for politicians who tell them they won’t have to do that.

No they won’t. If Labour get in with a big majority they can bring back the 2030 plan by quickly doing a press event similar to Sunaks one the other day. If people don’t like it, tough as Labour will be in until 2030 so they can’t vote any other way can they.

If they care so much about that one thing I guess the tories will be pulling an unexpected win in next election.

People are not going to do these things all by themselves and rely on infrastructure and prodding from the government.

“<span style=”background-color: #eeeeee; color: #000000; font-family: Roboto, ‘Helvetica Neue’, Arial, ‘Noto Sans’, sans-serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ‘Segoe UI’, ‘Apple Color Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Symbol’, ‘Noto Color Emoji’;”>But people will still want to do the 1% of journeys where they have to go further. For someone like me that’s visiting relatives, going somewhere nice for the weekend or a random day trip to the lakes or somewhere similar to go riding. Good luck to any politician who tries to tell people that those 1% of journeys are going to be much more difficult and inconvenient than they currently are.”</span>

I’ve news for you, they already are and have been getting more difficult for years.

In the late 80’s/90’s and early 00’s I use to reckon on been able to maintain a +70mph average on long journeys (fast car, less traffic, only mobile cameras to worry about and used a radar detector), now it’s near 55mph – and I was doing +40k pa in those days, so this wasn’t a 1% issue, but my everyday.

So your 1 long trip a year takes you 30 mins longer, get a grip.

Good luck to any politician who tries to tell people that those 1% of journeys are going to be much more difficult and inconvenient than they currently are

Why would they? I mean they wouldn’t be much more difficult or inconvenient.

 they will vote for politicians who tell them they won’t have to do that

Yeah, you’re right. Let’s just forget the whole thing and carry on partying like it’s 1999 :roll: