On street vehicle charging points

[mustang1]

Mine doesn't.

I was in London town a while back and read a news story about people complaining of humming chargers on the street. I never noticed it until I read that story and then went into town and discovered it. On the face of it, theres not much sound but I can understand residents having to put up with a background hum for the whole day. I wouldn't like that outside my home.

But I noticed other chargers, for example at the car parks, do not seem to hum, or at least i havent noticed it.

 

[oldworld]

My electric bill for the car is about 25% of the petrol I put in my 1.2L petrol. There's less to go wrong with an EV as well.

Batteries can be analysed and dodgy cells replaced - it's not that common though so it's pretty rare. I daresay with extra numbers there will be more firms offering this.

Certainly far less moving parts in a EV.
Given they are considerably more expensive than a petrol car that extra cost must be the battery. When batteries age they lose their ability to deliver the same reserve of power. At some point it'll mean a new one or expensive repairs. On an old car neither would be worth doing. Poor people buy cheap cars and they are often old. EV car saving is not just about the running costs.

 

[Trickedem]

There's one of the problems for me there in that pic. If we have to have these things, put the charging points in the road not on pavements. Why do we have to give over yet more public space to bloody cars? Then there's all the wire's draped over the pavements causing more obstruction for peds. Put all this crap in the roads (and not in cycle lanes).
Of course we all know drivers are too dumb not to drive over them within a week but that's their problem. We don't need endless different types of cars but we do need fewer cars.

I agree. Not sure why we were pictured with that charging station thing, as the whole point of this system was that the whole battery was replaced at the equivalent of a petrol station. They showed this was actually quicker than filling up with petrol

 

[fossyant]

I was in London town a while back and read a news story about people complaining of humming chargers on the street. I never noticed it until I read that story and then went into town and discovered it. On the face of it, theres not much sound but I can understand residents having to put up with a background hum for the whole day. I wouldn't like that outside my home.

But I noticed other chargers, for example at the car parks, do not seem to hum, or at least i havent noticed it.

Quite a few I've passed have a loud 'fan' noise coming from them, even when not in use.

 

[fossyant]

I'm going to have to get that V8 Hemi lust out of my system before the infernal combustion engine get's banned.

 

[DRM]

Yep. But when you drive electric you develop new habits. The car / van starts every day full, unlike your gas guzzler which is only full at the petrol station forecourt. That does make a difference.

But fully charging a li-ion battery every day is the quickest way to kill it, a private car may only need charging every 2 to 3 days, this would be going from flat to full everyday, a typical lifespan is 500 cycles, that’s a lifespan of approximately 1.9 years, as I put previously a cost replace a 24 volt li-ion battery on a pedestrian Fork lift was quoted at £14,000, suddenly that EV is a money pit, I have it on good authority that the hybrid buses in London are now running around on their small 4 cylinder diesels as the batteries have packed up at a cost of £50,000 to replace, they can’t afford to replace them, so the pollution is now through the roof, as for filling up the van, I can do it quite easily, anywhere once the level drops near empty

 

[DRM]

Certainly far less moving parts in a EV.
Given they are considerably more expensive than a petrol car that extra cost must be the battery. When batteries age they lose their ability to deliver the same reserve of power. At some point it'll mean a new one or expensive repairs. On an old car neither would be worth doing. Poor people buy cheap cars and they are often old. EV car saving is not just about the running costs.

Far less moving parts but wait till the a/c chopper box dies, or the control pcb the price of those will make your eyes water, never mind a new a/c traction motor, there will be loads of ev”s scrapped on that basis alone, the batteries cost a fortune to replace too.

 

[DRM]

Also, as demand for petrol / diesel falls, the demand for petrol stations decreases and cost of diesel / petrol goes up. There will be fewer places to refil gas guzzlers and it will get more and more expensive. Of course the corollary is that costs of electric charging will likely go up, but possibly not to the levels that oil has now reached. Research on solar is working in tandem with research on battery storage. Musk is already talking about Tesla vans with solar roofs to minimise reliance on the grid and achieve larger ranges.

As demand for fossil fuels drops, so will the price, it did in lockdown 1, the other thing is they will tax the EV’s to death too eventually , they always do, diesel was supposedly fantastic till everyone started buying them, the government walloped them with tax because after all with automated taxis where is the dole money coming from for unemployed taxi drivers

 

[cougie uk]

I only fill my battery once or twice a month and don't think I've ever gone from zero to full.

Battery life isn't an issue which is why you get such long warranties on them.

No idea about the hybrid buses - o do know that a lot of hybrids never actually used their charging cables at all as the owners just ran them on petrol all the time but there's no accounting for people.

You really need to change your mindset. You don't fill an EV in the same way as you have to fill your petrol cars. Its lovely not needing to pump fuel on a biting cold winters night.

 

[Milkfloat]

But fully charging a li-ion battery every day is the quickest way to kill it, a private car may only need charging every 2 to 3 days, this would be going from flat to full everyday, a typical lifespan is 500 cycles, that’s a lifespan of approximately 1.9 years, as I put previously a cost replace a 24 volt li-ion battery on a pedestrian Fork lift was quoted at £14,000, suddenly that EV is a money pit, I have it on good authority that the hybrid buses in London are now running around on their small 4 cylinder diesels as the batteries have packed up at a cost of £50,000 to replace, they can’t afford to replace them, so the pollution is now through the roof, as for filling up the van, I can do it quite easily, anywhere once the level drops near empty

I don't know of an automotive company that does not offer a very long warranty on their batteries - for example Tesla 8 years, that is independent of charging cycles.

 

[icowden]

But fully charging a li-ion battery every day is the quickest way to kill it, a private car may only need charging every 2 to 3 days, this would be going from flat to full everyday, a typical lifespan is 500 cycles, that’s a lifespan of approximately 1.9 years,

They aren't fork-lifts. Read the article about C&C Cars in Cornwall. They are constantly charging and have had no appreciable drop in range after years of use. The key thing they did notice was that maintenance was much much cheaper. Brakes wore out less, clutches didn't fail etc. Here's their post on Wizzy, their first electric taxi:-

Wizzy has now done more than 170,000 miles and is still used daily. Soon to be pensioned off and replaced by a 30kwh. Thought we would post a picture to show the resilience of the LEAFs battery. Even now in the winter we can get about 65 miles. It has a lifetime average of 3.9 miles per kw.
Has much gone wrong on the car over 170k miles?

A couple of track rod ends, each lower arm, 2 link rods, 1 front shock and the car has never failed us in all it's miles. Drivers seat has seen better days. Car is still on it's second replacement pads front and back. Never ever replaced the discs.

Wizzy' has been rapid charged 3786 times & L2 charged 8925 times. We think it has lost about 26% of the battery.

We have seven 30kWh LEAFS. One has done 62,000 miles already.

Wizzy has now retired from taxi life. We might still use it as a runabout so it will amass a few more miles. It has far exceeded our expectations and has never broken down (maybe ran out of power a couple of times) still has it's original 12V battery and other than a couple of track rod ends, each lower arm, each link rod, one front shock failure (about 120,000m, we replaced both for safety), pollen filter, 3 set of wiper blades, two sets of brake pads front and rear and tyres. The car is still running on its original motor, battery pack and reduction gear. We hope this instills confidence in all owners of LEAF and maybe help people considering the leap into the EV world. You will wonder why you ever drove diesel/petrol polluting our world. Thank you all for following Wizzys adventure. Who knows how long Wizzy will go on....

There's no magic to how we managed 174,000 miles out of 'Wizzy' and only lost 2 bars. Wizzy has been rapid charged more than 3500 times. This is our take on battery degradation- An idle battery grows dendrites and probably faster at higher states of charge. The closest analogy is a rolling stone gathers no moss, because we were constantly either using the battery or charging the battery there was less time for the dendrites to grow. We also feel there are greater or lesser loses which we can't explain by driving/charging an EV without the battery being at the optimum temperature. This is where battery (pre)conditioning would help (not sure if that makes sense).

Tesla are already working on a million mile battery. EV Battery lifespan isn't a problem. It's only a problem for EVS that are now fairly old, and which were developed in the youth of the modern EV.

 

[icowden]

As demand for fossil fuels drops, so will the price, it did in lockdown 1

It only dropped because at that stage there was a surfeit of fuel. If overall demand drops, less gets made, the price goes up.

 

[figbat]

It only dropped because at that stage there was a surfeit of fuel. If overall demand drops, less gets made, the price goes up.

Indeed - the lockdown drop in demand was and is expected to be temporary, albeit with long-lasting ramifications.

In all of this let's not forget that ICE vehicles will remain in the majority for some time to come. Not only older cars, motorbikes etc, especially in countries with an older typical vehicle parc, but also in the commercial sector. Whilst there are examples of prototype and even production electric versions, the ICE will still be dominant (and therefore need a hydrocarbon fuel) in trucks, coaches, construction vehicles, agricultural vehicles, ships, trains (in many places), stationary powergen and aircraft (off the top of my head). So refineries are still going to be turning out hydrocarbon fuels for decades to come.

 

[DRHysted]

Prices will fall with availability. There will be more second hand EVs around.

If someone can drive from Lands End to John O Groats with 90 mins of charging - what are the 10% of journeys you do that an EV couldn't ?

I'd hazard that the self driving taxis would have a place for cargo/muddy dogs.

I doubt private cars would ever be banned but it would be up to individuals. Spend £1000s on the car, fuel, insurance, tax or say £5 every time you make a journey.

It'll make sense for a lot of us to not own a car full time.

600 miles towing 1.6 tonnes!
EVs have a place, but are not the solution, and are not currently available for the masses. Until their retail drops to below £5k they are not available for the vast majority of the nation. Reading your comments enlightens me to how different some people’s worlds are. Financially yours is nowhere near mine, please don’t take that asan insult, it isn’t meant as one, we’re just worlds apart.

 

[cougie uk]

It's not that long ago that just having any car was the exception rather than the rule. Thinking back to when I was a kid perhaps there would be one car in a family. Now there's families with more cars than drivers.

We are in the very early days of EV production. The landscape will look very different in 10 years time plenty of secondhand EVs around.