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Electric cars

If you're going to go electric car, might as well just build proper car storage, I'm sure you could integrate the charging points.

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I’m sure someone will be along soon telling us it is quite right that new builds in the UK come with insufficient or even no parking for residents to discourage car ownership, anyway.
 
T & P said:
I’m sure someone will be along soon telling us it is quite right that new builds in the UK come with insufficient or even no parking for residents to discourage car ownership, anyway.
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Developers love this point as it means they can save money by not including parking. We had developers in our town submit an application which included far fewer parking spaces than the planning regulations stipulated. They argued that fewer people drive cars these days so there was no need to comply with the planning regulations. They even showed case studies to prove this was correct. However, the studies were focussed on large urban centres and not small suburban towns like ours. This along with a few other problems (including giving misleading data on flooding issues) meant that they withdrew their application.

We should be reducing car dependency but I think the way to do it is to improve infrastructure for active travel and public transport. We also need to reduce the reasons why people travel as far as they do - bringing workplaces and workers closer together, decentralising community facilities, retail etc. so people can access everything more locally.
 
T & P said:
I’m sure someone will be along soon telling us it is quite right that new builds in the UK come with insufficient or even no parking for residents to discourage car ownership, anyway.
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This has been going on for years anyway in London and it makes perfect sense.

In London as we've moved away from low rise housing to tower blocks the population density has increased massively. Take a couple of examples near me at Brentford and Mortlake. Brentford is undergoing a housing revolution and so many flats have been built and loads more will appear in the next few years. Even if you ignore the pollution aspect and magically everyone drove an EV the gridlock in the area would make the roads unusable.

You simply can't create thousands of new homes all with cars but just bumble on with the existing road infrastructure. The South Circular junction at Kew Bridge is already horrible there is no way it could function at all if every new flat brought a new car with it. Besides a lot of people who live in flats in London don't run a car anyway. If you do need a car (as I do as I'm obliged to have one for my job) you either pay extra for a space or live somewhere else. There is no way I'd run a car in London if it wasn't for my job.

The redevelopment of the old Stag Brewery at Mortlake is utterly mired in planning at the moment and a primary problem is cars and how many more cars it will bring into an area which is already struggling. It is sandwiched between the level crossing at Mortlake / East Sheen and Chalkers (chokers) Corner and Chiswick Bridge. Its already bottle neck central as it is. There is no way you can fix the roads in this area to suit more vehicles even if there was the will which there isn't for obvious reasons.

Even the most pro-private car person should appreciate that the roads are no use if they can't be used because of 24/7 gridlock. This is without even talking about air quality.

This is of course London and this strategy is not suitable for everywhere (see Leafster comments above) but its absolutely the right thing to do in London and wherever else it can be done.
 
Teaboy said:
The redevelopment of the old Stag Brewery at Mortlake is utterly mired in planning at the moment and a primary problem is cars and how many more cars it will bring into an area which is already struggling. It is sandwiched between the level crossing at Mortlake / East Sheen and Chalkers (chokers) Corner and Chiswick Bridge. Its already bottle neck central as it is. There is no way you can fix the roads in this area to suit more vehicles even if there was the will which there isn't for obvious reasons.
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I looked at Mortlake as a place to move to a few months back and I don't think I've seen such jammed up roads in all of London. Obvs, it doesn't help that Hammersmith Bridge is closed but OMG it was mental. It massively swung me against the area. And I don't even own a car.
 
skyscraper101 said:
I looked at Mortlake as a place to move to a few months back and I don't think I've seen such jammed up roads in all of London. Obvs, it doesn't help that Hammersmith Bridge is closed but OMG it was mental. It massively swung me against the area. And I don't even own a car.
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Imagine it with another 1250 homes with just 50% car ownership...

Still, on the plus side the level crossing may not be down as much as it traditionally has been. Thanks SW Railway...

Anyway, I think we can all agree that EV's are not the answer to overcrowded road infrastructure.
 
teuchter said:
It's a no-brainer.
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Yet enabling as many car owners as possible to park their cars in their own garages in non-UK cities such as Tokyo is a wonderful thing for all concerned, apparently.

So what is it going to be? Is having as many garages as possible a good thing or not?
 
Anyway electric cars.

Here's a brief-ish video which looks at the common objections to EV's and responds to them. Forget the click bait title its actually reasonably balanced and whilst it doesn't really bring anything new that most here won't know already some my find it useful as an overview. It kinda glosses over public charging but its only an 11 minute video.

 
T & P said:
Yet enabling as many car owners as possible to park their cars in their own garages in non-UK cities such as Tokyo is a wonderful thing for all concerned, apparently.

So what is it going to be? Is having as many garages as possible a good thing or not?
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That's a pretty interesting interpretation of Tokyo, which I've always understood as intentionally limiting the number of cars by limiting the number of garages and requiring all car owners to have a garage space. The point being (a) not too many cars to overload the infrastructure and (b) no space given over to on street parking.

So having the "right" number of garages is good because it means strictly limiting the number of cars. As long as the allocation of car spaces is done by need anyway, which afaik it isn't as it's about ability to pay in Tokyo, but they may well have schemes to help people with mobility issues that hugely benefit from having a private vehicle.
 
I was talking to a friend who has a PHEV. He says it is fantastic most of the time. It's quiet, comfortable and economic to use. But every journey has to be planned. When he goes shopping in the nearest supermarket he must plan to go with a near full charge. There's not enough charge points to risk it being low, especially in winter when you need lights, wipers and heaters.

The you've got to have the right lead for the charger you are using. They're £250each.

Once a month he has to drive across country to N Wales. If he goes without a full tank, and charge he risks being unable to charge, or being forced to run all petrol.

All this aside he likes it. He gets, on full petrol, 50mpg. On a mix he fills just on his long trips. He wouldn't buy EV because its just not viable outside towns. But every trip needs to be planned for charge.

I suppose he could just move into a town to stop the problems with shopping. But then he'd have to commute much more for work. I suppose he could move permanently to Wales, but he'd still have to travel the other direction.

Simply, we need far more charge points, and with a common, affordable, plug. And this isn't going to happen soon enough to make EV viable for most.
 
PHEVs have much smaller battery/range than full EVs though as that's kind of the point isn't it? That the battery is there for your pootling around town type trips and the petrol engine for longer journeys.

Sounds like it's working as designed tbh.

But yeah we do need more charge points and standardisation. I think it can happen a lot quicker than you do but we'll see over the next 10-15 years.
 
dessiato said:
I was talking to a friend who has a PHEV. He says it is fantastic most of the time. It's quiet, comfortable and economic to use. But every journey has to be planned. When he goes shopping in the nearest supermarket he must plan to go with a near full charge. There's not enough charge points to risk it being low, especially in winter when you need lights, wipers and heaters.

The you've got to have the right lead for the charger you are using. They're £250each.

Once a month he has to drive across country to N Wales. If he goes without a full tank, and charge he risks being unable to charge, or being forced to run all petrol.

All this aside he likes it. He gets, on full petrol, 50mpg. On a mix he fills just on his long trips. He wouldn't buy EV because its just not viable outside towns. But every trip needs to be planned for charge.

I suppose he could just move into a town to stop the problems with shopping. But then he'd have to commute much more for work. I suppose he could move permanently to Wales, but he'd still have to travel the other direction.

Simply, we need far more charge points, and with a common, affordable, plug. And this isn't going to happen soon enough to make EV viable for most.
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Some of this seems pretty confused and I can't quite work out what the issues are here.

On PHEV's in general I actually discounted them because to get the most out of them you need to charge them more regularly (though they take less time to charge) then an EV because there batteries are small and can typically only do around 30 miles when running in EV mode. Without home charging they were less attractive to me than an EV because I would just end up running on the petrol engine most of the time as the vast majority of PHEV's do.

But, if you're man is using the battery in town and the petrol engine on longer journeys well that's just how PHEV's work. This is why they are little more than a stop gap and won't be around for very long.

I don't accept that his once a month journey couldn't be done in an EV. It just takes a little planning and there will be charge points along the way its just that we don't like building breaks into our journey. Though if its such a long journey that should be happening.

With regard the charging cable that's already pretty standardised already though it should be enshrined in laws rather than relying on the manufacturers themselves. We off course need more chargers but their growth is exponential at the moment and in a few years they will be everywhere. All petrol stations will have them for sure.

Anyway, there are already cars in development that will have a 600 mile range on a single charge.
 
Teaboy said:
Some of this seems pretty confused and I can't quite work out what the issues are here.

On PHEV's in general I actually discounted them because to get the most out of them you need to charge them more regularly (though they take less time to charge) then an EV because there batteries are small and can typically only do around 30 miles when running in EV mode. Without home charging they were less attractive to me than an EV because I would just end up running on the petrol engine most of the time as the vast majority of PHEV's do.

But, if you're man is using the battery in town and the petrol engine on longer journeys well that's just how PHEV's work. This is why they are little more than a stop gap and won't be around for very long.

I don't accept that his once a month journey couldn't be done in an EV. It just takes a little planning and there will be charge points along the way its just that we don't like building breaks into our journey. Though if its such a long journey that should be happening.

With regard the charging cable that's already pretty standardised already though it should be enshrined in laws rather than relying on the manufacturers themselves. We off course need more chargers but their growth is exponential at the moment and in a few years they will be everywhere. All petrol stations will have them for sure.

Anyway, there are already cars in development that will have a 600 mile range on a single charge.
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The problem, he says, is that you arrive at a charge point. There's four actual points, but they're in use. You get coffee, maybe a sandwich, and half an hour later you're still waiting for a charge point. Then you have to spend half an hour charging, depending on how much you need to top up the battery. So every long trip you have to anticipate at least another hour or two. With petrol in half an hour you've had your coffee and sandwich, filled the tank, and are back on the road. This is a significant problem if you have to do a long trip regularly.

He also says that it's fine to look at the headline range figures. But they don't reflect the actual range you get, much like ICE vehicles. Winter especially quickly drains the battery, demisting, heater, lights, wipers, all use a lot of power.
 
dessiato said:
The problem, he says, is that you arrive at a charge point. There's four actual points, but they're in use. You get coffee, maybe a sandwich, and half an hour later you're still waiting for a charge point. Then you have to spend half an hour charging, depending on how much you need to top up the battery. So every long trip you have to anticipate at least another hour or two. With petrol in half an hour you've had your coffee and sandwich, filled the tank, and are back on the road. This is a significant problem if you have to do a long trip regularly.

He also says that it's fine to look at the headline range figures. But they don't reflect the actual range you get, much like ICE vehicles. Winter especially quickly drains the battery, demisting, heater, lights, wipers, all use a lot of power.
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It sounds to me like his expectations of how he thought a PHEV would work is different to the reality.

I think they're basically designed to potter around doing really short journeys on the battery and to rely on the petrol engine for anything else. If there's charge in the battery on a long journey then you get the benefit of very high mpg, if not, you don't.

The claimed mpg figures are ridiculous and only possible in ideal conditions and only for part of a long journey.

Out of interest, what PHEV has he got? I know with some of them you can switch modes - just battery, hybrid and probably ICE only. Obviously, with just battery, you only get a really short range but if you're just nipping to the local shops or other really short journeys you may be able to do they all on the battery alone (assuming you can charge at home).

I'm pretty sure I read that with the BMW PHEVs they are designed to optimise battery use when you need it. So, for example, if you a plan a route into a congestion charge zone, the car will know to conserve the battery until you enter the CC zone so you don't have to pay the CC charge.

Ah, I've just found the article: BMW launches world-first eDrive zones in the UK | Discover BMW
 
Leafster said:
It sounds to me like his expectations of how he thought a PHEV would work is different to the reality.

I think they're basically designed to potter around doing really short journeys on the battery and to rely on the petrol engine for anything else. If there's charge in the battery on a long journey then you get the benefit of very high mpg, if not, you don't.

The claimed mpg figures are ridiculous and only possible in ideal conditions and only for part of a long journey.

Out of interest, what PHEV has he got? I know with some of them you can switch modes - just battery, hybrid and probably ICE only. Obviously, with just battery, you only get a really short range but if you're just nipping to the local shops or other really short journeys you may be able to do they all on the battery alone (assuming you can charge at home).

I'm pretty sure I read that with the BMW PHEVs they are designed to optimise battery use when you need it. So, for example, if you a plan a route into a congestion charge zone, the car will know to conserve the battery until you enter the CC zone so you don't have to pay the CC charge.

Ah, I've just found the article: BMW launches world-first eDrive zones in the UK | Discover BMW
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It's a Mitsubishi, but I don't know which one. It's very nice, I'd consider buying one, I like everything about it.
 
I don't really know the politics of local car parking.. not being a car owner. I would assume the only other option was having some sort of charging unit that you sat inside the car to recharge the thing. :confused:

I don't know how legal are the people just drapping a charging cord over the pavement at the moment..
 
alex_ said:
That’s kind of clever and kind of stupid - you can’t guarantee you can park there…
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Exactly. It’s half a solution. When I had a parking permit for my (terraced) road it did not guarantee a space and sometimes I had to park a few roads over.
 
Hollis said:
Once you reach a critical mass it does become a solution..
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How? If the charger is connected to your supply, and your neighbour is parked there, its useless, unless everyone has access to everyone's socket, but then you're paying for other people's fuel.
 
Yeah - I get it needs some work.. but its still a solution in the making - especially if it gets supported by councils/ new build houses have them..
 
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