3 minutes ago, widdershins said:

I also think the best motorway option would be to start by building some intermediate EV only services in the style of gridserve.  Especially on the long distance N/s and E/W routes where demand would be highest from longer distance journeys.

Peak Summer demand for EV charging on the M5 through Somerset & Devon, and on the M3 through Surrey & Hampshire, could both be challenging when EVs are the majority. In a normal year (i.e. not in 2020) the queues on both those motorways can be 30 miles long on peak travelling days.

Hopefully this will improve motorway charging options, not just in England. 

 

 

At 3:40. That's the single outdated Chademo+Type2 charger at Leigh Delamere. It's a horrible stop where other nearest charger are ~20 miles away each way. I have stopped a few times because it's the perfect location for London-Bristol for my Leaf. But EVERYTIME I am extremely anxious approaching this place. 

 

Great news, long overdue! 

Excellent news.  I have a thought on how to improve charging at motorway services. 

 

Firstly let us look at what will actually be needed during the ICE>EV transition.  Logically no pumps could be removed for 10+ years since the transition to EV will take longer than that.  Even if Govt mandated that only EV's be sold from today on, most ICE cars would still be on the road in 10 years.  Secondly if an ICE car can refuel from empty to full via pay at pump in say 5 mins and, at best, an EV like the new Hyundai Ioniq could recharge empty to full in say 25mins, it would mean that when the EV transition is completed around 5 times as many filling stations would be required.  Except an EV has half the range when fully charged of an ICE car, so actually the number of EV charging stations would need to double again.

 

That means that at least 10 times as many EV charging stations will be required as current number of petrol pumps at the same location.  How can this be achieved whilst the ICE pumps are still needed.  Simple, rather than the gridserve model with cars parked in a line at a dedicated EV forecourt, just reline the  existing services car park area and leave a 3 foot space to put an EV charger in between where the cars park nose to nose.  One charger could serve a car on either side of it facing end on.  It would take up very little additional space in the car park doing it this way, be easily extendable as EV adoption increases, and without disrupting the petrol forecourt.  In addition as EV's would require a longer stop anyway, it would put them right beside the shops and restaurant so the operator of the services would benefit from increased footfall in the shops, increasing revenue.

Not England, but Castleview Park & Ride Stirling will have lots of chargers and solar canopies.

It is a great pity that while building the 32 charger bit  they left just 2 chargers to use. they could have bunged in a couple more in the mean time.

https://www.stirlingnews.co.uk/news/18674943.work-ongoing-transform-stirlings-castleview-solar-energy-hub

 

Still not enough Rapid Chargers for those travelling the A9 North / South and heading to England or coming into Scotland.

The Electric A9 is an absolute joke still for travelling in an EV.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 21 March, 20215 yr by e-Roottoot

Hopefully when they are finished they will police it to prevent ICE'ing adn also EV'ing of the rapid chargers.  Pre COVID, the park and ride's round here had very few empty spaces, and it wasn't uncommon to see an EV charging spot occupied by something that shouldn't be there simply because there were no other spaces.

Hopefully not policed with the likes of the 'uniformed person' that is at Dunblane EV charging beside Tesco & the Train Station that tells people it is OK to park their hybrids for 2 hours at Rapid Chargers.  Because nobody explained to him what the difference is between the chargers at that A9 Electric Highway Hub.  

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry-news-environment/electric-highways-opens-uk’s-largest-ev-motorway-charging-station

 

http://bbc.co.uk/news/business-57225856

 

(Anyone wanting a City Break might be not find any that has Kirkwall as a destination is not even if called a City & Burgh, same as with Brechin.)

 

Edited 24 May, 20215 yr by e-Roottoot

Some rough maths says that 24_000 chargers in the UK is about 1/6 the charger density of the Netherlands (all numbers except areas taken from your cite).

Like with any statistics or numbers you get from the UK or any official body you need to drill down into the actual numbers.

Public chargers that are actually in working order and the types / speeds are rather important to the public.

 

@ 15,229 locations.

(In Scotland they say over 1,500 'charge points'.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 24 May, 20215 yr by e-Roottoot

Shared on SpeakEV, UK's faster-than-50kW (that isn't a Tesla or ultra-expensive CCS-only Ionity) charging points mapped:

https://voltonomics.com/maps/new-gridserve-ecotricity-ev-charge-points-at-uk-motorway-services/

 

Also this user-generated map tracking Electric Highway upgrades

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?hl=en&hl=en&mid=1otTlinrsR3oWlKaGIiXX8YorukkiS38V&ll=52.846660634122244%2C-0.16879083836845332&z=7

 

Great news: Gridserve is completely buying out Electric Highway

https://www.gridserve.com/2021/06/08/ecotricity-completes-electric-highway-sale-to-gridserve/

 

"And the Electric Highway needs a growth spurt, to make sure that it stays ahead of driver demand and continues to play it’s key role, as the network that delivers more miles every year than any other. For this the Electric Highway needs an owner with access to serious funding and real commitment to the cause – I’m delighted to have found the ideal company to hand the baton to, in GRIDSERVE."

At least Ecotricity CEO is up front about his lack of commitment over last few years.

This is not surprising but I'm glad it has. I don't think Ecotricity have been interesting in car charging for years.

It is good to see that Gridserve are keeping to their word with regards to upgrading the old Ecotricity chargers. So far close to 30 sites upgraded. There has been grumblings of less Chademo connectors with the new chargers and no AC charging at upgraded sites, but Gridserve have said they will rectify this. Apparently Gridserve have a big announcement tomorrow, so lets see what comes next.

On 12/03/2021 at 11:54, wyx087 said:

At 3:40. That's the single outdated Chademo+Type2 charger at Leigh Delamere. It's a horrible stop where other nearest charger are ~20 miles away each way. I have stopped a few times because it's the perfect location for London-Bristol for my Leaf. But EVERYTIME I am extremely anxious approaching this place. 

 

Great news, long overdue! 

Now upgraded 

Edited 30 June, 20214 yr by Luckypants

https://gridserve.com/2021/06/30/gridserve-launches-the-gridserve-electric-highway/?LeadSourceCode=crm1017

Looks like the big announcement is for Gridserve to re-launch Electric Highway under their own brand. 

https://electrichighway.gridserve.com/

 

Also, their chargers will be enabled for dual-charging soon. Similar to Tesla chargers (Tesla chargers are hidden, their stalls are numbered 1A and 1B which share the same charger), where 2 cars can use a single charger. As one car charging slows, the second car ramps up, rising charger hardware utilisation and improving customer experience. 

 

If Tesla takes any longer, I might as well buy a Enyaq instead of Model Y as Supercharger advantage shrinks, thanks to Gridserve. 

Was about to post the same link 

I agree that if Gridserve pull this off, Tesla's advantage in charging is greatly diminished. Plus Gridserve will be more ubiquitous due to having the locations from Ecotricity, something Tesla is a bit limited on. Will Tesla open up their network to other marques to avoid ending up with redundant infrastructure?

I watched the live stream of Toddington Harper (Gridserve CEO) and Robert Llewelyn (Fully charged Show) discussing the Gridserve announcements made today. Very interesting and some extremely exciting developments coming. Hopefully this is not empty promises.

If you want to see it... 

 

The Gridserve replacement of Ecotricity chargers has slowed down quite noticeably. It seems unlikely that they will hit the target of replacing all the old charger with the new ones by the end of this month. There has also been moans about reliability of the new chargers on Twitter and Zap-map. I hope these are teething troubles.
 

I found out something interesting about the new Gridserve chargers going in on the Electric Highway network (mainly on motorways). They are advertised as 120kW chargers, but can only achieve this on 800V cars. The rest of us mere mortals will have to put up with 60kW. There is more to charging speeds than the headline speed. I also saw the same issue on another MFG's high speed chargers, 160kW for 800V but 'only' 80kW for normal 400V cars.

 

Edited 6 September, 20214 yr by Luckypants

Another excellent development in charging infrastructure is Osprey's introduction of Kempower chargers. First one will be live in Wolverhampton next month. These are very clever sharing the total power available for the hub between the vehicles charging dynamically to make the most of the grid connection. Not sure if this development has made it onto this forum so here it is 
 

 

On 06/09/2021 at 10:52, Luckypants said:

Another excellent development in charging infrastructure is Osprey's introduction of Kempower chargers. First one will be live in Wolverhampton next month. These are very clever sharing the total power available for the hub between the vehicles charging dynamically to make the most of the grid connection. Not sure if this development has made it onto this forum so here it is 
 

 

 

That's really good, as long as you have redundant everything in the central cab, plus a pair of cabs each sharing half the chargers.

Otherwise you basically end up with nothing if the control logic in the central cab fails...

Boris has spoken. not a details man!

http://bbc.co.uk/news/business-59369715

 

 

So BY LAW,

All new homes & building in England will 'from next year' have to have an EV charger.

 

I suspect that is  not actually all homes or buildings, but mostly houses, detached, semi, terraced etc where the car can get near the property and not every new home, there might be chargers near but not for every home.

 

Chargers single or 3 phase are available at the likes of Tool Station for not much money, and the New Homes are getting wired anyway as are New Buildings.

The cost of Chargers can easily come down as can the cost of installation as there is a bit of a con going on with that and Government Grants so Tax Payer's money providing the Hen that lays the Golden Egg. 

 

 

 

 

@ 9mins 30, Chargers.

 

Blowing wind out his rear as usual, he has to move his jacket to let it go.

@2 mins 30 ,  6 mins 30 just his usual muppetry.

 

 

More here on Major Renovations and 'over 10 parking spaces'.  

The actual details coming out on the 23rd November or later will be important. 

Edited 23 November, 20214 yr by roottoot

COP26 has been and gone so we start to that much was just talk before it.   

The largest Builders & Property Companies that are Government sponsors will have put their foot down.

https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/government-back-tracks-on-plans-for-electric-chargers-in-all-commercial-buildings-1371568