domhnall

three years ago one or two chargers was enough, lots of the hubs have been expanded and will continue to be expanded. But each charger costs 6 figures, keeping it connected even if no one uses it costs £1k every year and most of the operators are loss making, so askign them to build well ahead of demand is just hopelessly naive. It will not happen. Especially right now when most EV owners charge at home other than maybe a couple of times a year. (and yes I know, flat dwellers etc etc but the majority of EV charging is done at home).

well I do cal it a hub. In 7 years I have yet to encounter a queue because you can see before you get there whether there are available chargers so queuing is for people too lazy or stupid to check or who have an old EV with no option due to very short range. Here's another hub https://www.drivedundeeelectric.co.uk/princes-street though you will disagree with the description. What you prefer? "Hublet"?

my diesel manages around 390 miles. Which is about 60 miles more than my EV

I drive as fast as the limits and the traffic conditions permit. I always have comfortably more range than I can manage. I never achieved WLTP in any of my petrol cars and my diesel also gets nowhere near its WLTP figures. That;s not what WLTP is meant for. It is meant to allwo you to make like for like comparisons when choosing a vehicle. I tend to drive all my vehicles in the same way and on the same routes. I don't drive like they do in the WLTP tests but I know that car A will do X and Car B will do Y in the test then I know how they will compare when I drive them in my way on my routes. WLTP ain't an EV thing.

the cost of EV charging has not been helped by the Government increasing VAT from 5 to 20% on electricity supplied away from home. Nor the 100% increase in frid connection charges ober the last 12 months. Tesla can cross subsisidise from car sales, BP and Shell could do that too but for obvious reasons would prefer to keep selling expensive liquid fuels instead so not in their interests to make it more attractive.

that's not how probability works. You could have double the number of EVs as petrol cars on the roads and the probability of an ICE car spontaneoulsy combusting would still be greater. The proportion of ICE cars versus EVs catching fire has nothing to do with the relative number of each type on the road.

I know the price too which is why I tend to stick to Ionity or Tesla as theyare cheapest. Even as a business driver because we now only get 20p per mile I hunt down the cheapest fuel sources because the mileage rate doesn't cover the full cost any more and you have to remember to fill out a form at the end of the year to get the tax back from HMRC. But that also involves working out how many business miles you did. I spent an hour of my employer's time yesterday compiling this. They have saved 25p per mile on what they pay me but then it cost them an hour of my time which is worth more than they saved. Go figure.

unless you're on Octopus in which cae it is 73p. I wouldn't use them any more than I would buy Shell or BP diesel as it is too expensive. I was just makign the point that charger hubs are't hidden out of the way as @Graham Butcher was saying they often are. Like here at Alnwick, just off the A1 and right beside a BP station. Funnily enough charger hubs go right where filling stations are because that's where they are needed. This one has an excellent gastro pub and McDonalds right beside it so covers lots of dietary tastes.

hard to say how many mikes I am adding per charge because I don't do long trips every day but the most I ever add at home is around a fiver's worth. Yesterday for example I tarvelled first to Edinburgh and then home and then to Glasgow and home. Last night I refilled for £1.12 (16 kWh at 7p on Intelligent Octopus Go). The other benefot for me is that when I plug the car in thenn the cost of runnign the central heating plummets. Last winter our most expensive month for total energy for the house and the car was £131 in January. My wife spent more than that on petrol alone whereas that figure included all my mileage plus the household cost of heating, lighting, cooking etc

wipe the fact that I can charge at home? If we're going to start chaning the facts we can get any outcome you like. If I wipe the fact that there are filling stations then I can conclude that ICE cars are hopeless and will not go anywhere, or you could wipe the fact that public chargers exist and then conclude EVs can't venture more than half their estimated range from home base. That's just stupid. Charger hubs tend to be located along trunk roads, right beside the likes of starbucks, McDonalds, Costa etc or they are in every single motorway service area thanks to the government monopoly originally given to Ecotricity. That's now opened up and you have Tesla, Ionity, BP, Applegreen, Gridserve and others all providing service. Because petrol filling stations need electricity there's usually not much of an issue installing chargers which is why many filling stations like all of my local BP garages now have banks of ultra rapid chargers . This is one of our local filling stations. this is one that I used at a Shell garage in Thirsk (they offer cut price charging but not petrol after 10pm) Basically, I only use public chargers that are either at my destination (hotel or office) or are at the roadside. I simply do not recognise this scenario you describe. Given that it costs £1000 per charger per year to have electricity connected, plus the cost of site rental etc I simply cannot see any investor wanting to build hubs in places that are not highly convenient for passing motorists.

that's expensive, I normally get 330 for a fiver

yes I was starting from Livingston but I was addressing the original point you made at some point when this was a semi private argument between you and @Ootohere and yiu suggested that PFS were roadside whereas charging hubs tend to be further away and need a diversion off route. All of the PFS were away from my route and would have needed a diversion whereas the charger on my driveway needs no such diversion. I have found over the last 7 years of driving EVs that I tend to take comfort breaks only when on long trips and I choose to just add some charge while I'm doing that. When I;m in the diesel I don't fill up when taking a comfort break because the fuel is much more expensive in motorway service areas. The electricity is not, it costs the same on or off the motorway but if it was excessive there then I would have to divert off the motorway in the EV too. The VW has no sat nav but of course I could use my phone but I only do that when I need a sat nav, not when I know fine where I am going.

thanks for your mature and constructive contribution to the discussion

I wasn't talking about the simple number of fires, I meant the proportion of fires among that type of vehicle , more ICE vehicles catch fire than EVs but also there's a far higher proportion of ICE cars on the road that catch fire, ie you are more likely to see an ICE on fire. Widely reported but ths is from Top Gear on the Swedish study The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) reported 23 fires in 611,000 EVs during 2022, or 0.004 per cent in a year, which makes it 20 times less likely to happen than ICE car fires, which burned 3,400 times in 4.4 million cars, or 0.08 per cent. MSB has also recently proven a new way to extinguish battery fires fast. then there's the also widely reported insurance study which shows that Hybrids are most likely to catch fire, followed by conventional ICE cars and then the lowest risk is from EVs https://www.autoinsuranceez.com/gas-vs-electric-car-fires/

nailed it, this is my point. The EV charges while it would be parked up anyway. The ICE vehicle would also be parked up, so the deivation from route etc is identical. The only additional deviation is when you have to come off the route specifically to refuel. Your 5+20 example illistrates this perfectly

you can have one or the other but not both or the car won't know which one to use

so I no longer have a tesla, the "database" in my Enyaq is irrelevant, I was in my VW transporter which has no sat nav. I thought the Esso station you mentioned had closed years ago, it certainly was at one point, in any event that too would have required a diversion off route and then it's not on a junction so in heavy traffic quite awkwrd to get back on to my route. I drive a Skoda which simply involves plugging in and then walkign away, I dodn't faff about with payment, plug and charge does that for me. And I think at last you're beginning to grasp my point about time spent filling. At no point since I ditched the Nissan Leaf have I sat waiting for my car to complete a charge. Driving from here to Milton Keynes I stop at Carlisle. I plug in, go to the loo, grab a coffee and then unplug and go. I don't even drink the coffee at the chargepoint, I get on my way. Then I typically stop around the Lancaster area for lunch, Again, plug in, go into McDonalds, grab an (un) healthy meal, eat it, pee and then get on the road. That's it. Why on earth would I want to prolong my long journey by sitting fiddling with my phone or whatever. The only time I do that is if I have to join a meeting on Teams in which case I pull in and do the call while sitting still. If possible I do that at a charger so that I make most efficient use of the time. I have made plenty journeys in both vehicles. Regardless of fuel type I tend to stop at roughly the same places for the same time. But in the diesel I need to make an additional stop for fuel because as well as not havign a sat nav the VW also refuses to refill itself.

Not sure where the Esso one is that you mention, I certainly never saw anything. The Sainsburys one is about 50m from the costco one but costs a lot more. I paid £1.22 a litre at the weekend filling up my son's fabia. My point is not the time it physically takes to put the nozzle in (I mean on that basis the ev takes seconds) but rather by how long is the journey prolonged by the fuelling process. In this case is would have been more than 20 minutes shorter had I been in the Skoda. As for the fire risk, you are far more at risk from laptops and phones that have zero thermal management. The stats from the insurance industry are perfectly clear. Fossil fuelled cars catch fire 20 times as often as battery powered cars. If you're concerned that EVs may somehow be more polluting I would be fascinated to understand on what basis that is.

excuse me? I was not going to Costco, I was driving down South, heading for Otterburn, I had no reason to go to Costco. The PFS in Livingston at Lizzie Bryce has closed down, the next one I pass without turning back on myself is Costco and at 10p per litre saving it's just the best option. I do not sit either in my car or in a service area waiting for my car to charge. I do what I need to do and then head back to the car. Because I typically am only doing 375 miles I don't need to stop for more tan 10 minutes and walkign to and from the loo takes longer than that. My car can reach Northampton from Edinburgh without stopping but I am simply unable (and unwilling) to drive for 5 or 6 hours without stopping. As I say I have employer rules that tell me I must stop for safety reasons for a 15 minute break every 2 hours. I just apply that to my private mileage too. If I stop for fuel that is longer than not stopping for fuel, I had to turn off the A720, head for costco and then back again to the A720. My journey did not involve passign any roadside filling stations, so filling up with diesel involved a diversion off route. That diversion off route takes time, time which adds to the journey time. Like I said before had I been in the Skoda then I would have arrived at my destination sooner than I did using the diesel. Splitting hairs abotu which minutes were paart of the journey and which were part of the refuelling process is just silly. Arrival time in the Skoda would have been earleir than arrival time in the diesel VW. That's all there is to it for me as the driver. In the diesel it cost me more and took longer. Simple. As for rubbishing ICE cars and drivers, I rarely see that. What I do see is posts about EVs being jumped on by luddites who are desperate to tell EV drivers how stupid they are and how inferior their cars are. There's even a bingo sheet EV drivers have for these occasions.

You're quite the angry man aren't you? Do you just like arguing? Filling up a fossil car takes time whatever way you cut it. I own both and the difference is that with my ev I plug in and it takes a couple of seconds. I can then do whatever else it is I need to do. When I fill up my diesel I need to stand there holding on to the lever. I had to do it yesterday with my son's fabia too. We queued for 10 minutes to get filled up.

If you have an ev and a heat pump with home battery then IOG is still best

here's the problem with that theory. Filling up before setting off......I don't have a diesel pump at home so I need to add in that time to go and fill up. The journey took 22 minutes longer than if I had taken the EV. It's just as simple as that. The Skoda I could fill up before leaving home, the diesel VW I cannot.

@Ootohere I've paid for polling and research before. You don;t get to tell them what the answer should be that's not how polling works, independent means they need to get paid. Kudwig is independent, but someone needs to pay for them to work

he?? They're a big consultancy outfit