If I ever have trouble sleeping, I think I will try reading this thread, particularly some of @lol-lol recent posts. They are so long and full of random facts that I'm sure I'd nod off within a couple of minutes. 🥱

1 hour ago, lol-lol said:

 

I would not say a few, I would have thought going on for half.  Where I live in Worcester, an area called Warndon Villages, built mainly in the nineteen nineties, as with a huge number of big builds done towards the end of the last century and even in to this century these are massive estates and with nearly all the houses with driveways, this estate added about 10% in to the population of Worcester and this is a smaller development than such as Bradley Stoke Bristol which added housing for 20K whereas my estate added around 10k.  There are many hundreds of such estates round the country and this added to the housing from the 1930s onwards that tended to have drives, such as my parents houses I lived in in the sixties and seventies.  All capable of having EV charges for the off road parking. Then there are the massive schemes by Source London, and in Oxford and several other cities to put charges on kerbside posts and lampposts and the like.  My company owned Source London before selling it to Texico and the rollout was certainly challenging, much more so than what we did in Paris.  So there are solutions for both those with off road parking and street parking.  I have seen this schemes charging half the motorway EV charging prices. Another option done here in Worcester is at the local community centres but also the super markets and fast food outlets are increasingly got EV charging to pull you in and at lower than other places rates.

That guy with Porsche is a click bait kn**.  No sympathy for the twonk.  I have full EV, full hybrid and mild hybrid.  I am much happier taking the EV for service than the hybrids, it simply is much cheaper as there is so little to do.  Ah, change the cabin filter and kick the tyres for service A and B.  One has to be careful as dealerships will try and charge for brake fluid changes, when it might not need it, over priced 12v lead acid battery replacement, no thanks I will get Halfrauds to do it, or National, with my trade discount thanks.  JUst simply much cheaper to service as they are much simpler motors, no engine oil, no oil filter, no fuel filter etc etc. 

Companies are making workers come back to work at least 3 days a week, some now pushing for 4 so more miles being done.  This is evidenced by there being much more accidents last year, much more accidents claims and now car premiums up by half or more as insurers losing money.  We have a bank of ten 7 kw chargers at Heathrow, some are suppose to be 22kW but not wired up correctly. Sometimes, if visiting some of my warehouses I just park near the warehouse big doors or a side window and us my Granny cable to get some charge, that is the beauty 30M location I can charge at ie most businesses as well as family and friends.  Pay family/friends 40p per Wh, VAT at only 5%, and we both win.

With Items 4 the price of EVs, particularly TESLAs, are in a steady lowering path as the batteries become cheaper and cheaper. Should affect all other car firms who can tap in the Chinese Li-Fe-Ph batteries and maybe even "Na" ones soon.  Those firms that seemed to have missed the bus ie VW, Ford, Stelantis etc need to do deals pronto to get a source for these cheaper, but better performing batteries else they will be bankrupt by the end of this decade.

I do not think EV drivers mind paying road tax.  It was and is an incentive as was the government subsidy on buying the car and towards the install of the charge, very nice thank-you government and other UK tax payers.  About £100 would be fine, £8.34 a month, fair enough.  Present UK government has failed to keep UK Excise duty on fuel increasing with inflation so definitely like to see the abolition of the 5p per litre pandemic reduction and then excise duty on both petrol and diesel rising with inflation.  With the UK in such an economic mess with national debt rising from below 50% in the noughties to its current sky high level which we have only previously seen during the Depression and during WW2....

An EV is much cheaper and I can see this owning one along side ICE cars over the last two years.

 

   

 

   

 

So once again you use your own well off leafy suburb position as reflective of the rest of the UK...   It isn't! 

 

The split between those with off road parking and those without nationally is 60:40 but in many places is the other way round or worse. 

 

As for things like lamppost charging that is only possible where street lights are on a three phase supply.  Many now are on a low voltage 24 supply for low wattage led lighting heads and that supply won't do EV charging. 

@lol-lol Generally agreed with a lot of what you said, however the locations you specifically mentioned are by and large relatively modern estates and also likely to be largely private housing and not social housing, looking at Google Earth for your village that certainly looks to be true, and also you mentioned Bradley Stoke which I know to be the same. I used to work on the Aztec West Industrial Estate but there are loads of places in the older parts of the older established towns and cities that have streets similar to the one shown below (2023 image) and these are also privately owned there are no driveways and there are loads of social estates with houses just like these or high-rise tower blocks and there is no charging points available. 

 

Working from home is still a big thing around here as some bosses have come to realise through the pandemic that the work still got done and therefore maybe they didn't really need to have such a large office after all. In this part of the country, many office blocks are now being converted into luxury flats, some of which have now been requisitioned by the Home Office to house asylum seekers.

 

Good luck if you think the Government will stop at a £100 as the acceptable level for EV VED.  Extra EDIT: My current car has a VED of just £35 but I fully expect that will sky rocket in time too.

 

If I had to choose between a Hybrid and a EV, I'd take the EV as it is likely to be the cheapest to run overall and also more than likely the most reliable as a daily runner. With a Hybrid, when it comes to servicing you have effectively 2 cars to service, an ICE and an EV, ouch.

 

EDIT. In the street below, there are just 8 lampposts and the street itself is 260 metres in length and this view point was from the middle looking south. Lamppost charging is not the answer here either. The infrastructure is a long way off being suitable for an EV future.

 

Edited 26 August, 20232 yr by Graham Butcher

40 minutes ago, skomaz said:

Many now are on a low voltage 24 supply for low wattage led lighting heads and that supply won't do EV charging. 

How certain about the 24v supply are you? I'm not so sure, the street lights around here are now largely LED heads as you say, but they are fed from the normal 240v supply to the pole base and then terminated via a time clock and the photocell at the top (belt and braces in case the time clock gets welded contacts leaving lights on 24/7) into the LED driver and then the LED head. Lamppost charging in my street I would suggest is a non-starter with just 4 lampposts, in a street 140 metres in length and 20 houses, each with at least 1 car and 2 houses with no fewer than 5 cars each. There would be pitch battles over who gets to charge their cars overnight. 

Edited 26 August, 20232 yr by Graham Butcher

1 hour ago, skomaz said:

 

So once again you use your own well off leafy suburb position as reflective of the rest of the UK...   It isn't!   The split between those with off road parking and those without nationally is 60:40 but in many places is the other way round or worse.   As for things like lamppost charging that is only possible where street lights are on a three phase supply.  Many now are on a low voltage 24 supply for low wattage led lighting heads and that supply won't do EV charging. 

 

I have just said that many modern houses built since the 1930s do have drives as this is when the advent of the motor car, but also not forgetting motorcycle as in these periods motorbikes were as common as cars, but older houses need a difference solutions.  So, as mention with my work with Source London and my company's work in Paris and other cities the charging post can be seen in their tens of thousands as so in London  (and these charge posts in Paris and Singapore etc) .... ...

Big picture is with our Blue cars we built with Alpine and Pininfarina. The French company Total now continue as owner of Source London to continue the expansion across London.   

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Gill Allen/Shutterstock (9229938e) Five newly installed electric vehicle charging points by Source London,

SSE Green Renewable Energy on Haldane Place Electric car charging points, London, UK – 18 Nov 2017

 

 

 

No easy job as London has over 40 Boroughs so the roll out was much more administratively diverse than it was in Paris which is a unitary authority.  Tapping in to single phase and sometime three phase, the cost of the hardware would surprise many just what a massive exercise it is but there are now over 2,000 such charge points in central london and some of the outer london areas in addition as well.  My company is not in this world although we still work in solid state batteries and hold several key patents. 

 

 

 

 

3 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

How certain about the 24v supply are you? I'm not so sure, the street lights around here are now largely LED heads as you say, but they are fed from the normal 240v supply to the pole base and then terminated via a time clock and the photocell at the top (belt and braces in case the time clock gets welded contacts leaving lights on 24/7) into the LED driver and then the LED head. Lamppost charging in my street I would suggest is a non-starter with just 4 lampposts, in a street 140 metres in length and 20 houses, each with at least 1 car and 2 houses with no fewer than 5 cars each. There would be pitch battles over who gets to charge their cars overnight. 

 

Very...   I've specified them historically for new road schemes and lighting upgrades.

1 hour ago, lol-lol said:

the charging post can be seen in their tens of thousands as so in London 

 

Err there are around 2000 in London not rens of thousands...???

35 minutes ago, skomaz said:

 

Err there are around 2000 in London not rens of thousands...???

The tens of thousands he was referring to is for Paris. In the closing paragraph he said there's 2000 or so in London. 

Not easy to follow I agree but he's not incorrect 👍

If the number of EV chargers being switched on in the UK was to increase by 50% each year then that would be getting on with things.

& a better distribution around the UK with less of a priority being given to London.

http://zap-map.com/ev-stats/how-many-charging-points

 

I would question Zap-maps publishing of statistics considering how many weeks or months it can take for them to actually show new chargers / hubs or update the sites location or tariff when being told updates are required by users that bother to let them know.

 

Edited 26 August, 20232 yr by toot

2 hours ago, lol-lol said:

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Gill Allen/Shutterstock (9229938e) Five newly installed electric vehicle charging points by Source London,

SSE Green Renewable Energy on Haldane Place Electric car charging points, London, UK – 18 Nov 2017

Considering the above photo was dated 2017, there has not any further movement to provide charging posts and considering the size of the entire housing complex, those 5 posts are no where enough as what the photo does not show nor does the text explain it, but Haldane Place is just 1 side of a massive 4 story housing estate. As far as I can see there is not even a parking space allocated to each dwelling so it would seem that some tenants would not be able to have a car even if they wanted one. And this scenario is played out across the whole of the UK in large urban areas with social housing as opposed to private estates, which do usually have driveways as claimed. But there are many more older private and social estates where that is not remotely possible. The only way that can happen is to demolish every thing and build afresh, highly unlikely.

?

How many of the 5 @ Haldane Place are still in service?

Nobody bothered posting comments on them on ZapMap for a year or on PlugShare for 4 years.

1 hour ago, @Lee said:

The tens of thousands he was referring to is for Paris. In the closing paragraph he said there's 2000 or so in London. 

Not easy to follow I agree but he's not incorrect 👍

 

Thanks...   I'd missed that when I read it for the third time ( I find his posts difficult to read due to the rambling, and the many grammar and spelling mistakes / wrong words which I guess is spell check doing its usual best to bugger stuff up)

@tootI have no idea how many of those 5 are still working but it does make a good illustration as you confirmed that ZapMap and PlugShare are nowhere up-to-date with their information, so when that guy with Porsche is a click bait kn** as stated by @lol-lolmade a video about how he got caught out when using ZapMap, 5 months ago claiming he almost froze to death (which is clickbait I admit, but thats just what the MSM does all the time and people get their info from the biased MSM), it seems that he was actually telling the truth about the infrastructure is not fit for purpose. 

 

Its hardly a good advocate to help encourage people switch to EV. The key players in this push towards having no new ICE cars for sale in 2030 and net-zero by 2050 have really got to grab hold of their socks and pull them up double quick. It does bugger all to help either when the PM has just ordered a new Audi A8 (ICE) as his official car, he should be leading from the front as should the entire government and be using EV cars.

Edited 26 August, 20232 yr by Graham Butcher

There are many like Davy / MacMaster that do not bother to learn anything about the cars or chargers.

 

He was driving past Rapid & Ultra Rapid charger hubs and then expecting to get miles / range with a Taycan on a 7 kW charger. 

 

He is just part of the cashing in on EV,s with positive or negatives and he does it by pretending to be a Rodney.

 

I might offer to take him on a proper chip shop tour. I will drive and he can pay.

 

Lets help him pay his Lease that he has to BUY a car to vlog about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 26 August, 20232 yr by toot

1 minute ago, toot said:

There are many like Davy / MacMaster that do not bother to learn anything about the cars or chargers.

 

He was driving past Rapid & Ultra Rapid charger hubs and then expecting to get miles / range with a Taycan on a 7 kW charger. 

 

He is just part of the cashing in on EV,s with positive or negatives and he does it by pretending to be a Rodney.

 

But isn't that just like the vast majority of drivers. Not many drivers that I'm aware of any idea of what happens under the bonnet of their cars or the differences in the grades of petrol or diesel for that matter. Most just drive along, even when they are getting low on liquid fuel, will wait until they get the warning bong and pilot light telling them to refuel and then they will pull in at the next petrol station and if they forget to pull in, will attempt to push on to the next one along their route?

Like many utter twits yes.

Like some that really need to but Guide Dogs for the stupid.   But he makes a living out of it.  Not as stupid as he acts then. 

 

He likes WAZE.

Well fandabydozy do not use 'a better route planner' or anything like the Porsche system on the car, 

ignore Ultra Rapid chargers or Porsche Dealerships for charging when near any. 

http://abetterrouteplanner.com

 

 

 

 

Edited 26 August, 20232 yr by toot

Very few chargers near me, mostly 7Kw, some 22Kw and a couple of 50Kw.

He has range to get on a 50 kW charger for maybe 30 minutes if he bothered to the next day.

Or plug in that 3 pin charger for 10 hours and 'mony a mickle maks a muckle'  or just all you need. 

There are 100+ kw chargers before he gets where he is going. 

 

PS

Things have moved on in the Electric Highway that is the M1 since The MacMaster was touching cloth or that busy making videos that he could not grasp the concept.

Edited 26 August, 20232 yr by toot

Yes, but correct me if I'm wrong but I think he did say that he had driven to a 50 or 100Kw charger but when he got there it was out of order but his app never showed it was out of service, so maybe we had better give him the benefit of doubt. 

@Graham Butcher

Many are out of order and the choice is few and far between in much of Scotland with less chargers than the 8 million population of London gets. 

But that does not mean the same as saying it is a desert for chargers in Yorkshire because you move away from the M1.

 

I had an issue years back.

Using a LPG vehicle going down south to the desert that was / is England.

and that had no petrol tank and a limited range for a while before getting a very big tank fitted.

I planned ahead.  

 

 

Odd, one learns, or do they forget?

 

Choosing the Spiral Weave in Dunfermline was fine, and if you want to pay the price of the Osprey Charger that is another choice rather

than the good few other CPS chargers he could have gone to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 26 August, 20232 yr by toot

22 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

You still don't understand, the reserve tank on some IC cars was not there for normal use, it was designed purely for emergency use, be it a national emergency or the type of emergency caused by missing your junction on a motorway and having to drive that bit further before being able to refuel the car. This reserve tank had to be switched in by the operation of a special switch when the car started spluttering due to fuel starvation. In the case of your Tesla it is not there as a design feature for your benefit, but for Tesla's benefit so they only had to make one model for both standard range and enhanced range versions, the latter was only unlocked once the owner paid the extra fee.

..... I wasn't clear. I meant to say one is something you've already paid for, the other is something that is understood to be locked when purchasing.

 

Morally, it's on same level as BMW heated seats. But in practice, it's no different to everything else that can be software locked, had been software locked. Eg. I turned on my Octavia cornering fogs using OBD, otherwise it was a software locked feature. Many software have locks unless paid. Even computer hardware had software unlocks.

 

10 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

VED becomes payable on EV cars and so that means that the customer could be paying an increased tax because the extra capacity could be unlocked at any point by software.

Software unlocks don't count towards the £40k VED threshold.

VED also doesn't take into account of battery size, IMHO unfortunately.

 

I personally think taxation need to focus people's minds on efficiency. Fuel duty does this. pre-2017 VED also does this to some degree. There's no such tax for EV and it's a shame. If it were up to me, I'd put something similar to expensive-car-tax based on battery size.  (eg big battery car pay more for first few years)  Efficiency is everything.

 

9 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

The other issue with Tesla's flirtation with direct selling to customers and cutting the dealers out of the loop, is what happens if the customer has problems with the car, the dealer will not want to get be involved as they have made zero out of the sale.?

 

Problems problems.

I suggest you do some research before drawing your "problems" conclusion.

 

Here is how it works with Tesla, just make an appointment via the app. They run their own "service centre" and "rangers"

https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/support/vehicle-maintenance

  

6 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

There would be pitch battles over who gets to charge their cars overnight. 

For what it's worth, I've been doing fine charging 3 EV's using a single charge point (old one installed in 2017 no less) only using overnight tariff, been going on for about 2 months now.

My 78 kWh MY, my wife's ~18 kWh Leaf, my neighbour's new ~78 kWh Genesis something EV until they get their charge point and smart meter sorted.

 

Yes, it's different to street parking lottery. Ultimately I have the final say who gets to charge tonight. But with some friendly whatsapp messages, it's all very manageable. Similarly at workplace, we have a whatsapp group for the 8 charging spots, about 20 EV's charge using it throughout the day, works out okay.

 

  

4 hours ago, lol-lol said:

What happened to those? I used to see them around the city (London). I don't remember seeing one in recent years.

 

  

1 hour ago, Graham Butcher said:

The key players in this push towards having no new ICE cars for sale in 2030 and net-zero by 2050 have really got to grab hold of their socks and pull them up double quick. It does bugger all to help either when the PM has just ordered a new Audi A8 (ICE) as his official car, he should be leading from the front as should the entire government and be using EV cars.

This, I totally agree 👏

😱

1 hour ago, toot said:

Like many utter twits yes.

Like some that really need to but Guide Dogs for the stupid.   But he makes a living out of it.  Not as stupid as he acts then. 

 

He likes WAZE.

Well fandabydozy do not use 'a better route planner' or anything like the Porsche system on the car, 

ignore Ultra Rapid chargers or Porsche Dealerships for charging when near any. 

http://abetterrouteplanner.com

 

 

 

 

Hmm, yes well, I presume that you just now checked for chargers in the Leyborn area that he mentioned? How certain are you that these you found aren't new ones. His vid was in October 2021, things might well not have been as they are today, back then?

3 minutes ago, wyx087 said:

What happened to those? I used to see them around the city (London). I don't remember seeing one in recent years. 

 

We had a few in London, dozens I recall, but we had over 5,000 in Paris and we still have some in Singapore but these car projects were not economically viable at the time so we pulled out and disposed of the cars, selling them off mostly.  We still are involved in 6m and 12m buses in several locations around the world and still make solid state lithium metal polyamide batteries and have licences which are used by Mercedes bus division.  We concentrate on Media more now and have even sold my division of logistics to another massive French logistics and shipping line.    The large scale Paris car sharing scheme Autolib could take up to 100,000 cars off the road in a day, some cars could be hired, in 6 minute slices, up to 40 times a day. Paris authority paid us a subsistence of a few tens of millions of euros, as I presume London did to a much lesser extent but eventually did not want to continuing playing ball.  

 

It was an interesting experiment that had much merit but it was not the right time or perhaps right paradigm or did not get enough support and of the right kind.

One day we there might be much less personal ownership and much more cars, probably TESLAs, which will arrive at ones house, driverless, and then take you where you want to go and then return to the pool of cars.  Probably only need a tenth of the cars we currently have, virtually no individual ownership.  Times a changing.

 

@Graham ButcherThe Gridserve was not there for him, but he is haming it up. 

I am watching and am as stupid as others are and many will be just to pick up on the pretend stupidity of it all.

He has a big following & it will be many sadists among them / us.

 

Dont turn off the AC if needed, but if you think you have to 'eek out range' at least see if it makes a difference, but then if you want the radio dont put that off.

 

If time is short, forget filming in the car saying how long it takes, get charging and then talk.

But the videos pays for the charging. 

 

53 minutes ago, wyx087 said:

..... I wasn't clear. I meant to say one is something you've already paid for, the other is something that is understood to be locked when purchasing.

 

Morally, it's on same level as BMW heated seats. But in practice, it's no different to everything else that can be software locked, had been software locked. Eg. I turned on my Octavia cornering fogs using OBD, otherwise it was a software locked feature. Many software have locks unless paid. Even computer hardware had software unlocks.

 

Software unlocks don't count towards the £40k VED threshold.

VED also doesn't take into account of battery size, IMHO unfortunately.

 

I personally think taxation need to focus people's minds on efficiency. Fuel duty does this. pre-2017 VED also does this to some degree. There's no such tax for EV and it's a shame. If it were up to me, I'd put something similar to expensive-car-tax based on battery size.  (eg big battery car pay more for first few years)  Efficiency is everything.

 

I suggest you do some research before drawing your "problems" conclusion.

 

Here is how it works with Tesla, just make an appointment via the app. They run their own "service centre" and "rangers"

https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/support/vehicle-maintenance

  

For what it's worth, I've been doing fine charging 3 EV's using a single charge point (old one installed in 2017 no less) only using overnight tariff, been going on for about 2 months now.

My 78 kWh MY, my wife's ~18 kWh Leaf, my neighbour's new ~78 kWh Genesis something EV until they get their charge point and smart meter sorted.

 

Yes, it's different to street parking lottery. Ultimately I have the final say who gets to charge tonight. But with some friendly whatsapp messages, it's all very manageable. Similarly at workplace, we have a whatsapp group for the 8 charging spots, about 20 EV's charge using it throughout the day, works out okay.

 

  

What happened to those? I used to see them around the city (London). I don't remember seeing one in recent years.

 

  

This, I totally agree 👏

😱

 

Just out of interest what are his thoughts on the Genesis...   For some reason I find them quite interesting and an attractive design with the massive Hyundai Kia conglomerate behind them.