How to migrate to full EV usage (or not)

[Stopeter44]

How Norway did it

Nice article from the guardian. 

The bit I like the most is about what Norway did with oil income.

[Cyker]

"You just need lashings of money, a political system that responds to public opinion and a government that knows what it's doing."

Oh dear.

 

[Stopeter44]

56 minutes ago, Cyker said:

"You just need lashings of money, a political system that responds to public opinion and a government that knows what it's doing."

Oh dear.

 

And your point is ?

[Red_Corolla]

Here in the UK, we can't help where we are. We don't have the physical geography to support a fully renewable electrcal energy infrastructure, nor do we have a big pot of gold in terms of fossil fuel reserves to cover the cost of building the nuclear alternative. It's still a long, hard and expensive road before fully electric vehicles begin to make any environmental sense here, IMHO.

[Cyker]

58 minutes ago, Stopeter44 said:

And your point is ?

We have no money, our politicians don't listen to us and they don't know what they're doing  

So basically the opposite of the quote in that article  

 

12 minutes ago, Red_Corolla said:

Here in the UK, we can't help where we are. We don't have the physical geography to support a fully renewable electrcal energy infrastructure, nor do we have a big pot of gold in terms of fossil fuel reserves to cover the cost of building the nuclear alternative. It's still a long, hard and expensive road before fully electric vehicles begin to make any environmental sense here, IMHO.

Not fully, but we could have a lot of renewable energy - We do well for wind, have access to some powerful tides and I reckon if the government helped everyone put solar panels on their roofs, at the least in every major city, we could cut our use of gas turbines to just base load (And reduce the incredible heat-soak cities currently get in summer).

 

At the moment, EVs have a narrow band of utility - There are ones that are only good for city use, but they are far more expensive than an ICE car, esp. as most people in cities can't charge them at home as most of us live in flats or are stuck with on-street parking, so they don't make economical sense. I think my Mk4 Yaris is actually cheaper to run than most EVs on public charging, and has a £10k+ head start already - That buys a lot of fuel!

Outside cities, where people do have the space for garages and driveways for personal chargers, the cars often don't have the range to be used exclusively with the home charger, so rapid chargers are still needed which raises the running costs, esp. as these longer-ranged landboats tend to be extremely inefficient on electricity.

In my view, two things need to happen before they become practical for the majority and not just the privileged:

1) The range needs to be 300miles of real world, minimum, with 400+ being enough for the majority, and this has to be available for Zoe/Yaris-sized cars, not just land barges! If they could make a Yaris-sized EV with 500-600 miles of range I'm in!! Thankfully it does look like this may happen sooner than I pessimistically thought, if this 800-mile lithium iron phosphate structural Battery that's been in the EV news recently doesn't turn out to be a load of codswallop (I am hopeful, but the website for the company doesn't inspire confidence, being full of jargon and nonsense buzzwords...)

2) Every retail park and supermarket car parking bay has to have a charger, so the large number of people who *can't* charge at home can at least charge while they are shopping. The current direction, i.e. dedicated charging hubs, is an utterly impractical waste of time for anyone who actually works for a living and has a family. Integrating their charging time with an essential task, i.e. shopping, will make the long charging times opponents of EVs like to talk about a non-issue, and put people who aren't gifted with a big house on a more level playing field with those who do, i.e. so they won't have to waste yet more time in their lives just for charging.

Other possibilities like mass-Street charging would turn into a nightmare of tangled cables and arguments, and if current street chargers are anything to go by, the lack of proactive maintenance would mean the majority of them would be out of action a lot of the time anyway.

 

But this is what I mean about we don't have money, our government doesn't listen and they don't know what they are doing  

Case in point, literally *every* driver knows that all-lane running smart motorways are the worst thing to ever have happened to our road network, but they are *still* trying to push it and insist they are safer than normal motorways despite the massive increase in collisions, near-misses and closures! So much so they are literally lying now to get them rolled out - They keep saying they have halted them pending an investigation, but from what I see construction is still proceeding! Most likely they just need more time to cook up and twist more BS 'statistics' to 'show' they are safer.

And don't get me started on our lying snake of a Mayor Sadiq Khan's road policies...

[Stopeter44]

13 hours ago, Cyker said:

We have no money, our politicians don't listen to us and they don't know what they're doing  

So basically the opposite of the quote in that article  

Like politicians in many places in the world, it's not a UK unique phenomenon. With population density that Norway has, plus access to a lot of renewable they have a clear advantage. The choice of using oil wealth for the public good, seems in retrospect farsighted.

13 hours ago, Cyker said:

We do well for wind, have access to some powerful tides and I reckon if the government helped everyone put solar panels on their roofs, at the least in every major city, we could cut our use of gas turbines to just base load (And reduce the incredible heat-soak cities currently get in summer).

All good, but @Red_Corolla Corolla's points are something I hadn't considered before joining this forum, the infrastructure investment required to support a full on migrations to EVs would generate a lot of jobs, and would make use good use of public money. Yes ? Or is that heretical these days to use public money for the common good ?

 

[AJones]

14 hours ago, Red_Corolla said:

Here in the UK, we can't help where we are. We don't have the physical geography to support a fully renewable electrcal energy infrastructure,

It isn't all bad, most countries don't have the natural resources to go fully renewable but the UK is fortunate to have great off-shore wind resources, where the development is really just getting started, the amount of off-shore wind is going to grow substantially.

14 hours ago, Red_Corolla said:

nor do we have a big pot of gold in terms of fossil fuel reserves to cover the cost of building the nuclear alternative.

That's not a problem though because in practice new nuclear is not financed by governments, but by global investors and companies, so if it makes financial sense then the funding can be obtained either from UK investors or abroad. The big issue to date has been nuclear's costs making it uncompetitive, but if some of the recent increases in energy costs remain then that can only help the case.

14 hours ago, Red_Corolla said:

It's still a long, hard and expensive road before fully electric vehicles begin to make any environmental sense here, IMHO.

EVs already make environmental sense in the UK today, the UK's current electricity mix combined with EV's greater efficiency means the carbon emissions per mile and over whole life are already a lot lower than even regular hybrids. Plus they work well with renewable energy because they are flexible on when they can charge up, so with time of use tariffs and in future smart charging, can use surplus renewable generation. 

[Stopeter44]

20 minutes ago, AJones said:

EVs already make environmental sense in the UK today, the UK's current electricity mix combined with EV's greater efficiency means the carbon emissions per mile and over whole life are already a lot lower than even regular hybrids. Plus they work well with renewable energy because they are flexible on when they can charge up, so with time of use tariffs and in future smart charging, can use surplus renewable generation. 

I watched a documentary a few years back, and someone had the idea that using a charging system with same proximity, let's say, as parking meters, electric cars' batteries could also be used to supply domestic homes electricity when no solar was available.

[Cyker]

Yeah I never understood how excitable EV people keep saying you can use your EV car to power your house like this is a good thing... so your car is discharged from the journey home, but rather than charge it up you deplete what charge remains to power your house in the dark then in the morning.... you can't drive to work?

I can see it working if you don't work and have solar panels, as you can charge the car during the day and discharge it at night, effectively using it as a very expensive static Battery storage, but for people that use their car for transport I just don't understand why anyone would do this!

99% of EV owners will charge their cars overnight to use in the day so

 

7 hours ago, Stopeter44 said:

Like politicians in many places in the world, it's not a UK unique phenomenon. With population density that Norway has, plus access to a lot of renewable they have a clear advantage. The choice of using oil wealth for the public good, seems in retrospect farsighted.

All good, but @Red_Corolla Corolla's points are something I hadn't considered before joining this forum, the infrastructure investment required to support a full on migrations to EVs would generate a lot of jobs, and would make use good use of public money. Yes ? Or is that heretical these days to use public money for the common good ?

 

I think there is some misunderstanding - I was just saying that that article says "theses things are needed for a migration to full EV usage", whereas our government has the opposite of those things, therefore we (And other, similar governments as you infer) won't be seeing full EV usage here for a long time!  

And sadly yes, we are under a conservative government at the moment, and using public money for the common good is literally against their entire credo. What you're talking about is a more socialist idea, which is why the scandinavians have been so much better at it!

Frankly, if it wasn't for covid, we probably wouldn't even have an NHS now if they had their way - They've been trying to turn it into a private system for years, like they're currently doing with schools, and how they've already done with transport, power and communications!

[Stopeter44]

6 minutes ago, Cyker said:

And sadly yes, we are under a conservative government at the moment, and using public money for the common good is literally against their entire credo. What you're talking about is a more socialist idea, which is why the scandinavians have been so much better at it!

Frankly, if it wasn't for covid, we probably wouldn't even have an NHS now if they had their way - They've been trying to turn it into a private system for years, like they're currently doing with schools, and how they've already done with transport, power and communications!

Things are in a sorry state in the UK, I hope it doesn't get worse before it gets better.