PHEV v EV.

[Rigsby]

4 hours ago, AJones said:

The majority of homes in the UK do have off-road parking, it's around 30-40% of homes which don't, so a substantial minority.

But things are developing pretty fast, London and Coventry are rolling out on street charging using lamp posts to charge in residential streets, look at Zap Map and there's a forest of these on street charge points. It's getting there.

 

 

Truth is Electric Vehicles will not work for many, if your 30 - 40% is correct there are many millions of motorists unable to charge their vehicles at home at as already mentioned, public chargers may well be “hogged” by some motorists, particularly at railway stations and the like.

Then there’s the infrastructure and the capacity (we are currently seeing that when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing we’re screwed) so green energy alone isn’t the answer.

We need an alternative to the EV be that Hydrogen or something else.

[Broadway One]

Hi all.....some great points raised as the EV charging debate continues.

Easy one first; lamp post charging points. Street lighting circuits even with smart management will be insufficient to cope with electrical demand IMO. Think streets of terraced houses both sides, limited lamp posts, cables straddling pavements, vehicles hogging points*. Interested to learn how the roll out by Ubitricity is progressing pre the EV Tsunami heading to our streets.

Flatcoat touches on an interesting point re local networks ie what's under the pavement passing your property. In some instances we are talking 50 year old cables. Yet again all the rhetoric around mass EV ownership becomes clouded as we peel back the practicalities. 

From earlier postings you will be aware of my situation living in a high rise gated new build of 50 high end apartments. The ground floor houses a great 50 space secure indoor car park, bicycle store, etc. but not a single 240v socket anywhere. There is also a small visitors outdoor car park for 6 cars, a blue Badge space & a Rolec 2 socket pedestal charging point. There is no other EV charging, post build infrastructure in the block, an oversight IMO.    

I collect a new RAV PHEV Dynamic Monday, would have seriously considered an EV if Toyota had a model available. I am currently trying to work up a scheme that will provide a self funded option for residents to install a wall mounted charging point in their parking space. Firstly needed to establish the capacity of the main feeder that supplies the block, is there any margin ? Queried this 4 weeks ago from local network owner, informed yesterday that apartment blocks are not their responsibility, directing me to another private provider, why didn't they tell me 4 weeks ago 😖 ? Sure this will reveal more problems as alluded to in Flatcoats recent posting. Okay to have a shiny new cable feeding a new build but that final connection under the pavement to an old network of cables Erm ! Interesting days ahead. 

I will continue with postings on how things pan out with fingers crossed. Not forgetting that should my project be a goer there remains the politics & agreement of neighbours for final success.

* Re vehicles plugged in hogging charge points. I believe several networks levy a higher fee on fully charged vehicles remaining tethered.

Barry Wright Lancashire.      

  

      

       

 

   

[Cyker]

It's interesting to think about adding charges to those 50 car spaces...

If they were all 7kW, the maximum on single phase AC, that would be 350kW.

If they were all 22kW, the maximum on three-phase AC, that would be 1.1MW

If they were all 50kW, the lowest common DC rapid charge rate, that would be 2.5MW!

That's a lotta watts!

And that's without taking into account transmission and conversion losses...!

 

[Nick72]

18 minutes ago, Cyker said:

It's interesting to think about adding charges to those 50 car spaces...

If they were all 7kW, the maximum on single phase AC, that would be 350kW.

If they were all 22kW, the maximum on three-phase AC, that would be 1.1MW

If they were all 50kW, the lowest common DC rapid charge rate, that would be 2.5MW!

That's a lotta watts!

And that's without taking into account transmission and conversion losses...!

 

They're going to need to put big diesel generators in to power their charger points!

[Flatcoat]

The situation I refer to is from a letter a few months ago in Autocar. The writer had ordered an EV. They live in a small village in the sticks and ordered a home charging point. The power company said it couldn’t be installed as the village was at the limit of the local supply and needed a new substation at costs in excess of £100k. I work on housing developments getting quotes of over £300k for a sub sta to future proof the new homes for EV charging. That is almost £6k house additional build costs for social housing where most residents can’t even afford an elderly ICE car let alone an EV. I don’t recall ever being asked in any election if I wanted all this EV nonsense but the woke elite in London seem determined to foist it upon the population at large without any assessments of unintended consequences. 

[Rigsby]

22 minutes ago, Flatcoat said:

I don’t recall ever being asked in any election if I wanted all this EV nonsense but the woke elite in London seem determined to foist it upon the population at large without any assessments of unintended consequences. 

Don’t get me started on the government’s proposal to ban gas boilers and replace them with Air Source Heat Pumps.

Ive worked in the Heating industry for 50 years mostly as a design engineer, they will not work if retrofitted for a number of reasons.

[ernieb]

Off topic but related, we’ve just had the gas people changing the old metal pipes for plastic. It’s been over two weeks for about 20 properties to be converted the disruption has been massive with massive vacuum diggers and multiple trucks.  We still need for them to make good the holes so another week or more to go.

If the electrics were redone I’m sure that the whole road would need digging up again as many of the properties do not have the capacity rating most around 45amps.

video might be interesting for some, better than a Dyson?

 

 

[Broadway One]

54 minutes ago, Nick72 said:

They're going to need to put big diesel generators in to power their charger points!

Hi again......big emergency diesel on the ground floor to supply the lifts on loss of supply. Why do I have a feeling about this winter ?

Barry Wright Lancashire.    

[Catlover]

Surely a home charger would only need to be low power, even a 13amp socket would charge overnight. What happens during the day would be up to businesses to cope ie office chargers etc.

[ernieb]

6 minutes ago, Catlover said:

Surely a home charger would only need to be low power, even a 13amp socket would charge overnight. What happens during the day would be up to businesses to cope ie office chargers etc.

On my PHEV the mains charges 12.5Kwh in approx 7.5 hours if the car was pure EV without the ICE I guess it might do 70+ miles depending on car size.  This would not  be much use for other than local trips anything long distance would need to be a faster charger 7.7Kw and above, the 7.7kw charges the PHEV Battery in under 3 hours.  Toyota are designing a 22Kw charger to meet the needs of the BZ series.

None of this is going to be easy as the comments in this thread have established but right now I see nothing that is being planned or being done that is going to make the dates the Government has established as achievable.  There needs to be a radical plan and funding to make things happen and guess who’s going to end up paying for it all? 
My only hope is that the technically possible really fast charge that’s being talked about, Toyota/Panasonic 80% charge in 10mins, this would make a practical range achievable with very similar speed to filling a tank?

[Rigsby]

19 minutes ago, ernieb said:

 

None of this is going to be easy as the comments in this thread have established but right now I see nothing that is being planned or being done that is going to make the dates the Government has established as achievable.  There needs to be a radical plan and funding to make things happen and guess who’s going to end up paying for it all? 
 

I purchased my new RAV4 Dynamic HEV in June my choice to go hybrid over EV is the same thinking as yourself above ( Didn’t go for the PHEV as it was £11k more and increased RFL).

Ive seen very little since to make me feel I’ve made the wrong choice, apart from the local MacDonalds installing a coupl fo charging points 👍

[AJones]

18 hours ago, Cyker said:

@AJones - Maybe up north where there is more land, but certainly here in London street-parking is the norm for the vast majority!

I don't think it's a regional issue, there's homes in the London suburbs and South East with off-road parking. Just as there's lots of houses in town and city centres outside London which face the same situation with on-street parking being dominant. London is generally in a better position, as always, because it's been getting more investment in public charging infrastructure/

18 hours ago, Cyker said:

I still think the best way is to prioritise major car parks - supermarkets, retail parks, conference/event/stadium-type locations.

It will likely be a mixture of solutions; home charging where possible, street charging in residential areas, work-place charging, destination chargers at venues and car parks. The outcome isn't determined yet, it will develop as sales grow and the technology evolves.

16 hours ago, Broadway One said:

Easy one first; lamp post charging points. Street lighting circuits even with smart management will be insufficient to cope with electrical demand IMO. Think streets of terraced houses both sides, limited lamp posts, cables straddling pavements, vehicles hogging points*. Interested to learn how the roll out by Ubitricity is progressing pre the EV Tsunami heading to our streets.

You can see the roll out just by going to Zap Map, there's thousands of these on-street charge points being installed by Ubitricity and Char.gy so while there may be challenges, they're evidently overcoming them.

16 hours ago, Broadway One said:

Flatcoat touches on an interesting point re local networks ie what's under the pavement passing your property. In some instances we are talking 50 year old cables. Yet again all the rhetoric around mass EV ownership becomes clouded as we peel back the practicalities.    

The distribution network operators have done a lot of research into this topic and generally they find the issue is manageable, so long as smart charging is used to shift that charging away from existing periods of peak demand in the evening, into the night period when demand is low and the networks have unused capacity. 

[Yugguy1970]

Yeah, there's a lot of terraces up north.

For me EV is only part of the solution but has.been fixated on by the government as a magic wand.

This is the case in so many things where the planners who live in London think the rest of the country is just like there 

[ernieb]

The continued problem with many chargers where they are available is the need to either have an account and/or they don't fit your car or are not working.  The variety of different chargers and capabilities makes for long distance planning a nightmare.  Even the motorway system is still poorly served.

I know someone with an EV and his journeys have to be planned around his charging points and as he has repeatably said it's a right pain in the BTM if they are being used or do not function. It can and does add hours to a journey.

[Flatcoat]

Why should we be restricted to charge at night? What about those who drive and work through the night? What if the following day a long journey is involved? There are so,so many reasons why giving energy companies (via the govt) control over when and where we can access electricity is the stuff of China and Russia. We will regret it if we allow this virtue signaling in the name of climate change to take such control of our lives. 

[robo1]

 

1 hour ago, Flatcoat said:

Why should we be restricted to charge at night?

In an ideal world we should not have to. Problem is generating capacity. We consume on average 30 GW of electricity ( some  days 40GW in the winter) .We can generate 45 GW on a good day. So we have little spare capacity to charge the millions of electric cars which are going to appear. Overnight consumption drops to 20 GW hence spare over night capacity. 
We need more guaranteed capacity. Interesting that France can generate 80GW with 55GW from nuclear power. They have more spare capacity and export power to the UK.

[Rigsby]

2 minutes ago, robo1 said:

 

In an ideal world we should not have to. Problem is generating capacity. We consume on average 30 GW of electricity ( some  days 40GW in the winter) .We can generate 45 GW on a good day. So we have little spare capacity to charge the millions of electric cars which are going to appear. Overnight consumption drops to 20 GW hence spare over night capacity. 
We need more guaranteed capacity. Interesting that France can generate 80GW with 55GW from nuclear power. They have more spare capacity and export power to the UK.

Not forgetting the government’s plans to outlaw gas appliances in new homes (boilers, ovens, hobs etc) the vast majority will be electric appliances.

Then as existing boilers reach “end of life” they too will be replace by ASHP’ or the like, but again more than likely electric powered.

So not only is the plan to have all vehicles electrically powered but to have every home / building  completely heated and powered by electricity, I honestly can’t see how we are going to achieve that with Wind Turbines and Solar Panels.

[philip42h]

I suspect that there is, maybe, a little too much focus on home charging. When I drove a diesel, I didn't keep 60 litres of fuel at home so that I could fully refuel overnight (or at any other time of the day). In fact, I've never stored diesel at home at all and always relied on there being a convenient filling station available when I needed it - which, bar the last couple of weeks, was almost always true.

OK, the analogy may not translate to EVs exactly but the real impediment / enabler to the mass adoption of EVs is the equivalent availability and convenience of charging stations. And since the typical range of an EV is around half that of a fossil-fuelled car (so you'd have to recharge more often for any given journey) and the charge time is at least twice than of a refuel stop we are going to need a lot more charging stations (that work) than we currently have petrol pumps. We are also going to have to accept that journeys may well take just a little longer. And this is, I suspect, the only real solution for the road warrior and those who can't charge a home.

But home charging isn't quite a difficult' as some would make out. According to the statistics, the average car journey is 8.4 miles - which is of no value to us at all. I include it only because it is interesting short (I think) and to note how unhelpful statistics can be. It is difficult to get meaningful data ... the average car does 7,400 miles per year (2019 pre-pandemic figures) which is oft quoted as 20 miles per day (7,400 / 365 = ~20) - averages don't help much here.

90% of cars do less than 15,000 miles per year - meaning that the 10% who do more are going to be highly reliant on the public charging infrastructure. If I assume that those 15,000 miles are evenly distributed over 50x5 = 250 days of the year that would suggest that a daily demand of 60 miles would satisfy 90% of the population. If my assumption is false, throw rocks now! 🙂

Current EVs can recharge at a rate of 7-8 mph via a domestic 13A socket using a 2.3kW / 10A charger. Every home already has such a socket available even if out-of-reach for those with no off-road parking or in flats etc. The 60 mile per day demand would be met in around 8 hours. So, overnight (or even daytime) recharging is a realistic possibility with the domestic infrastructure that we already have.

And providing roadside "parking meters" equipped with a 'double socket' doesn't sound that unreasonable to me - but it won't happen overnight.

The obsession with 7kW, or even 22kW, home chargers we see today is to meet the expectations of the EV pioneers who cannot rely on getting recharged en route. Hopefully, these will remain useful but become less critical once the public charging infrastructure is established. And the likes of BP, Esso and Shell will need to build that infrastructure or simply go out of business ... 😉

[Rigsby]

23 minutes ago, philip42h said:

 

Current EVs can recharge at a rate of 7-8 mph via a domestic 13A socket using a 2.3kW / 10A charger. Every home already has such a socket available even if out-of-reach for those with no off-road parking or in flats etc. The 60 mile per day demand would be met in around 8 hours. So, overnight (or even daytime) recharging is a realistic possibility with the domestic infrastructure that we already have.

 

I understand what you are saying Phil, but I fail to see the analogy of keeping a supply of diesel at home, the point of a filling station is that you don’t need to.

Also while every home may well have an abundance of 13 amp sockets they are of little use for charging your car if you live on the 7th floor of an apartment block or tower block or you live in a townhouse/ terraced house where the front door opens directly onto the pavement with no allocated parking outside your home and you’re not allowed to run cables across a public footpath.

As I’ve said in previous posts, EV’s are part of the answer for some of the motoring population, there needs to be an alternative for those who don’t have easy access to charging points, whether that is Hydrogen Fuel Cell or something else only time will tell.

[Goinker]

When I last looked at EV's not long ago, there were apparently no less than 11 different plug/socket configurations in use on different brands of cars. There needs to be a worldwide agreement on establishing one standard type for universal fitting........I won't hold my breath!

Where I live in a rural Derbyshire village, a large proportion of the village properties (including mine) are fed from 1950's installed overhead lines. Around 12 years ago, one final bungalow was built at the end of the lane and the architect  (getting it built for his son) was told he would have to pay for a new underground cable to be installed from the substation 400 yards away to feed this new property as the existing infrastructure couldn't support any extra load. The cable was duly installed and the supply authority intimated that within 18 months, the rest of the existing properties would be transferred from the ageing overhead lines to the new underground cable. We're still waiting, so anyone on the lane wishing to buy an EV will need to budget for a lot more than the cost of car and charger! After 50 years in the Electrical Industry, nothing surprises me, especially post-privatisation!

                            Keith.

[Cyker]

The reason for that is home charging is the one big advantages of EV's over ICE cars - This stupid fuel crisis is a good highlight, but even under normal circumstances it's really really convenient being able to 'fuel' your car at home without having to go out of your way to do it. It's also *vastly* cheaper than doing it at a public charger, and far more likely to actually work.

I do resent having to go out of my way to refuel my car - I see it as a waste of my time, but it's just something you have to accept as part of the price of car ownership, and esp. with the car I have now it's only a few minutes wasted out of my day (That 30L tank...!). If I had to sit there waiting for over an hour to fill up every few days I would not be so accepting, so being able to do something, anything else (Sleep, shopping, watching an event) while that's happening to mitigate what would otherwise be a colossal waste of time is very desirable.

Almost every early adopter of an EV has been able to home charge their EV which is why they are so happy with them - If 90% of your journeys are within the range of your EV so you never need to use a public charger you'd make a genuine saving in running costs and time.

The 'obsession' with higher-powered chargers is just common sense - A 3-pin plug can deliver what, 3kW tops? I worked out I'd need a bare minimum of about 80kWh of Battery for my hypothetical Yaris EV - That's nearly 27 hours of charge time from empty! I'd be using the car during the day so I suspect I'd barely break even with the charge going in with what I use! Useless! With 7kW that is cut down to 11, which is much more acceptable. 22kW would be nice but hardly anyone has 3-phase to their house.

With public chargers 22kW would be a bare minimum for it to have any use - 50kW+ would be much better, but then you're stuck with every supermarket car park needing 10 megawatts of electricity... Apparently we have something like 7000 supermarkets, so that'd be roughly 70gigawatts of potential power required if all those spaces were used at once!

Of course these numbers are made up and not everyone would charge at once, but given we only generate about 40-50GW usually that shows the massive hidden energy contribution ICE fuels provide...!

[Stopeter44]

4 minutes ago, Cyker said:

The reason for that is home charging is the one big advantages of EV's over ICE cars - This stupid fuel crisis is a good highlight, but even under normal circumstances it's really really convenient being able to 'fuel' your car at home without having to go out of your way to do it. It's also *vastly* cheaper than doing it at a public charger, and far more likely to actually work.

...

Almost every early adopter of an EV has been able to home charge their EV which is why they are so happy with them - If 90% of your journeys are within the range of your EV so you never need to use a public charger you'd make a genuine saving in running costs and time.

Many people won't do more than say 100 miles on any given day, for the most part it would be the daily commute and/or puttering around for shopping. For a two car household, one EV makes a lot of sense, and especially if home charging is not a problem. For my daily needs an EV would be fine, but we are a 1 car family, so the occasional 200 ± roundtrip makes me nervous. I don't need or want a car bigger than a Yaris, and the Zoes and E-208s just don't have the range to calm my anxiety. 

 

[robo1]

Perhaps the answer is generator trailers that we attach to the car for the long trips😀

[philip42h]

1 minute ago, robo1 said:

Perhaps the answer is generator trailers that we attach to the car for the long trips😀

I've got one of those - it's called a self-charging hybrid ... 😁

[philip42h]

13 minutes ago, Stopeter44 said:

Many people won't do more than say 100 miles on any given day, for the most part it would be the daily commute and/or puttering around for shopping. For a two car household, one EV makes a lot of sense, and especially if home charging is not a problem. For my daily needs an EV would be fine, but we are a 1 car family, so the occasional 200 ± roundtrip makes me nervous. I don't need or want a car bigger than a Yaris, and the Zoes and E-208s just don't have the range to calm my anxiety. 

 

How about a Kia Soul EV? (hypothetically) It's at least Yaris sized but not much larger (I think). Real world range is 225 miles so your occasional 200 mile round trip shouldn't be a worry ...

We are a two car family so one of them really ought to be an EV (but we're not that good at sharing) and our occasional round trips tend to be 300+ miles ... 😞

As you say, range anxiety is the thing; the solution is a decent public charging infrastructure ...