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I have a question, have the government/the national factored in a potential high growth of EV sales into their energy strategy? The VW ID3 (due to price, range etc) makes me think that we are going to see the end of internal combustion cars for personal use, sooner rather than later.
Cheers! Before I read it - will the government actually listen to the National Grids advice? Or are we going to get the usual dithering and incompetence?
I assume that's a rhetorical question!
I expect many of these decent range cars will recharge overnight which will help - back to more common off-peak pricing again to encourage it? Doesn't answer your question though.
Won't the majority of cars be charged overnight when the grid is doing not very much anyway?
I assume that’s a rhetorical question!
Given our competent response to brexit, I think rolling blackouts and riots are guaranteed.
According to the many EV threads on here the reply from those that work in the field the answer is yes and the grid can manage anyway.
Yes, to the question is it in plan: National Grid ESO and the regional networks have had it in plan for years.
Horror stories aplenty referring to a GB peak demand exceeding 80GW (vs the current winter peak of ~46GW) but that’s assuming full electrification of residential heat and all EVs want to charge at peak too.
There is likely to be a lot of off-peak (overnight) charging and associated incentives** as that is when there is adequate generation capacity available from wind and existing gas CCGTs perhaps supported by storage/batteries.
No solar at night obviously.
**(Perhaps that should read high costs to charge at peak to discourage!).
Appropriate government policy? I very much doubt that will come any time soon from bojo.
The desire for electric car will grow quicker than people's ability to charge over night at home. While people will off street parking will have no issue, being able to charge overnight while parked on street outside residential properties will require some direction and organisation from government. Pretty sure that will control the growth to a sustainable level.
Will it really be that much of an increase to what already happens at 5 to 9am most days when 10s of thousands of canteen kettles/computers/workshops/etc are switched on simultaneously?
see the end of internal combustion cars for personal use, sooner rather than later.
This kind of stuff makes me nervous - how soon do we think? I was about to “buy” my current 2.0d out of the PCP, but should I really be thinking of seeing out the next 2 years and swapping it to a hybrid / EV when the term is up?
plan is/was to keep the car as a high mileage oil burner for 9 years before it gets scrapped...
Whilst I'm sure the grid has plenty of capacity for overnight charging for quite a while to come the government does need to start investing more in local generation and battery storage, they seem more interested in fracking at the minute though.
plan is/was to keep the car as a high mileage oil burner for 9 years before it gets scrapped…
Arent you London based? I can see Diesels becoming uneconomical to keep for taxation reasons long before 9 years (including bans on city centres etc). Even Derby is considering a ban on Diesels. Doesnt mean it will happen soon but I think Diesels will get devalued because of the issues and the usage restrictions will make EVs more useable day to day anyway.
plan is/was to keep the car as a high mileage oil burner for 9 years before it gets scrapped…
If resale value isn’t ever going to be a concern, what is it that’s making you nervous about other people switching to EV’s over the next ten years ?
Arent you London based?
Yes but I don't drive around London in it. It's for regular high milage motorway trips for work and biking events so very suitable for the purpose. I just don't want to end up paying a ridiculous VED in 5 years time or have it forced to be scrapped, nor do I really want another round of PCP. Yet I can use todays "balloon" monies to toward the hybrid / EV in 2 years which os starting to feel more sensible.
On the Grid point - aren't all the chargers low voltage by default, albeit they can be ramped up for quick charge? So in reality we might see an averaging of usage yet albeit higher energy usage overall throughout a 24hr period.
This kind of stuff makes me nervous – how soon do we think? I was about to “buy” my current 2.0d out of the PCP, but should I really be thinking of seeing out the next 2 years and swapping it to a hybrid / EV when the term is up?
plan is/was to keep the car as a high mileage oil burner for 9 years before it gets scrapped…
Kryton- nothing is going to happen that quickly in the UK. There's plenty of IC cars to run into the ground as EVs behind become more popular/suitable.
Your 9 year plan sounds reasonable enough, EVs will of came on along by then and be more feasible.
I was just reading this:
...agreeing therefore with Breadcrumb. ICE not ruled out until 2040 in the UK, way beyond my 9yr plan and the point about infrastructure is very relevant. Surely we need to wait for fast chargers to be commonplace on garage forecourts before mass adoption by the likes of me (Sales reps for example) trawling the motorways in confidence.
On a current decent range car I may be able to make an example journey from London to Liverpool in my 2019 EV (one of a choice of about 5 cars IIRC), but once I'm at my clients office / hotel where would I charge it to make the journey back?
I can see any government incentivising a move to EV by changing VED though, and as above this does need a thought and investment as to how electric power can be sustained for 24hr periods though the grid. I was looking at Volvo's new Recharge range the other day. 55hrs charge through a 3 pin plug for 250 mile range, yet and extra payment of £5000 for a fast charger gets you 5.5hrs to 80% at 11kwh.
So, 5.5hrs at 11kwh - thats sounds to me like a lot of people leaving the car in the garage at 11kwh overnight to prevent range anxiety in the morning. I doubt most households are drawing that overnight today. In perspective, thats 11 x 1000w kettles being boiled continuously for 5.5 hours, approx £1.75 per hour and £9.60 a night.
The UK has just laid a massive cable to France (from around the corner from me) so it can get electric from that there Uirope..
So, those who intend to buy an EV can go ahead... Uirope will bail us out.
And as I wrote my post the scale of this starts to reach my brain
On a current decent range car I may be able to make an example journey from London to Liverpool in my 2019 EV (one of a choice of about 5 cars IIRC), but once I’m at my clients office / hotel where would I charge it to make the journey back?
So perhaps IHG/Premier Inn/Hilton etc will start to need to think about installing charging equipment in their car parks for this kind of thing? Huge long term private investment that will only be made at the point of certainty, not to mention the business process of tariffs to apply and manage. And when visiting Liverpool, I bet there no Muti story that can accommodate but a few cars to be charged.
On our road of 60 houses there 5 cars less than 3 years old, so that's around 3% replacement each year it's going to be a slow process before the even half our street has a car less than 6 years old let alone an EV. There is 1 plug in hybrid, but that can hardly be classified as a EV due to the very low range it will have on an electric charge. Probably 1/3 of those cars do not go to 9-5 jobs.
There are at least 10 houses of the 60 with a PV system. PV is getting cheaper and more efficient year on year so the supply of home generation should grow faster than EV and you could have at least 1/3 of those portable batterys available when they are needed to store the PV energy.
So the control of the demand for peak energy is really down to the automotive manufacturing industry to provide a suitable product that will smooth power demand.
The reason streetlights remain on overnight is that they use the power generated by the big base power stations that take hours or days to come on-line so can't be turned off overnight. There's other users of course that similarly can't turn on/off over short timescales. I don't know just how much is soaked up this way but it's there to be diverted to EV charging.
Looking at current usage of ICE vehicles they mostly aren't used for long journeys so most charging would be simple "top-up" to account for the sub ten mile commute in the morning rather than a complete charge from empty.
This kind of stuff makes me nervous – how soon do we think?
I would imagine it will happen about as quickly as when everyone* switched from petrol to diesel about 15 years ago.
We're not at the beginning of the end of the death of the ICE Car, more the end of the beginning.
VW Group is just releasing it's latest model line-up there's been a new Passat, Golf, Octavia, Leon and Ibiza and a few others released in the last 18 months or so, they wouldn't do that unless they expected at least a 5 year life out of them.
They've also released their ID range too, they had an EV Golf before, but no one bought it, the problem with making EV versions of ICE cars is they have pretty different requirements for packaging and an EVised car is usually pretty expensive and not great.
I think VW group will be one ones to make EV mainstream, they've got the numbers and they've out-Tesla'd Tesla - on the face of it their 800v tech is better than Teslas, smaller, lighter, cooler, faster recharging.
but it’s there to be diverted to EV charging.
This touches a bit on the industry I work in. Lighting manufacturers and suppliers are already building and offering charging points into their columns to further utilise that energy source.
current usage of ICE vehicles
Current yes, but we need to think of the big picture here, which is can The Grid sustain the grown in EV usage and range being promoted?
The VW ID3 (due to price, range etc) makes me think that we are going to see the end of internal combustion cars for personal use, sooner rather than later.
Not really. Most people are not spending £25k on a car. A lot of people are still buying used cars at £10K or less.
Strange that £25k is seen as low price, to me a low priced electric car would be nearer £10 so could match the lower priced ICE cars.
Kerley makes a good point.
As a real example, the replacement XC40 Recharge to replace our 2008 Kuga (not that I'd buy a new new car) is predicted at £46k plus £5k for the fast charger. A replacement 2.0d Ford Kuga is £24k RRP, and I'd predict I'm not paying that for it with a little negotiation.
A very big difference.
So perhaps IHG/Premier Inn/Hilton etc will start to need to think about installing charging equipment in their car parks for this kind of thing?
Erm, why? Why should it be left to businesses to supply charging points? The whole EV charging infrastructure should be lead by a government who is committed to it and one that leads from the front in both the organisation of charging facilities but also build them.
As is, we have a government that likes to talk shit, lie and frankly do pretty much **** all when it comes to actually put in place anything from a manifesto...
We’re all savvy to this now, so anyone who thinks ICE cars will be off the road in less than 10 years is frankly hallucinating into their bacon rolls. 30 years and half EV with commercial and all government vehicles (incl taxis/ambulances/police/rubbish collection/grass cutting/one call doctors and the many myriad of council vehicles/army/RAF/Navy etc.) first, then we should see a commitment from a government that will encourage private users to switch over.
Don’t forget it was the Conservative government who put the axe on the East Coast mainline electrification...
Which says it all doesn’t it.
There is no one way of tackling Climate Change or any other initiative of this magnitude, it needs to be a cohesive direction with ICE and EV working together as transport solutions.
Smart chargers will help. If you plug in your car at 7pm and need it at 7am, but it only needs three hours to actually charge, the grid can talk to all these smart chargers and schedule charging so that everyone's car is ready in the morning.
The ID.3 won't even be £25k, it will be at least £30k and likely £35k+ if you want the mid-range battery and floor mats. So yeah EVs are arriving that are more and more tempting and the ID.3 is one of those but it's very far from the game changer that will trigger mass adoption of EVs
The reason streetlights remain on overnight is that they use the power generated by the big base power stations that take hours or days to come on-line so can’t be turned off overnight. There’s other users of course that similarly can’t turn on/off over short timescales. I don’t know just how much is soaked up this way but it’s there to be diverted to EV charging.
From what I understand isn't this current base load a mix of gas/coal/nuclear? And here in lies the problem for a move to a more EV / carbon free world - that we need to reduce the reliance on those fossil fuel generators but the plan to have 3-4 new nuclear stations (to supply the base laod that compliments the renewables) is now down to 1 at Hinckly and that's running late/over budget.
Early days for them but I really love Gravitricity as a mechanism to store excess renewable energy and release it overnight for EVs or peak times. Doesn't need water storage solutions that we don't have many locations for in the UK. Small land footprint, Uses old mine shafts (must be some ex-fracking holes ;->), can be replicated/scaled-up (if drilling holes is viable)...
Just looking at the loading for this. An electric car charges at around 7kw overnight (average). That’s a 30-36amp load. Street lighting should be wired in 16mm swa, so should be man enough for the job. Just got to watch how many charging points you put in on a circuit. So install a % of new street lighting poles with an EV charging point. Government has to give local councils a grant to do that. Domestic properties currently can get a grant to install an ev charging point. Hotels will have a business case to install ev charging points as they can charge a premium for the service to guests.
Grid load would have to be spread. Overnight charging as previously mentioned would work fine. Smart meters would provide enough information for off peak tariffs so no need for the old off peak meters/consumer units.
Lots of Holiday Inns have Polar rapid chargers already.
Mean price of a new car in the UK is just over £33k. Many of the repmobiles on the motorway and school run SUVs are way more than that. Lots of affordable EVs at that or below. No, it’s not Dacia Duster cheap yet but with running costs factored in lots of EVs make a decent case for themselves next to the ICE equivalent.
National Grid will be fine. They already pay several companies to take away excess generation overnight, EVs on cheap overnight tariffs will start soaking that up. Smart meters make even more flexible pricing possible too, my energy company offers a tariff that tracks the wholesale cost every half hour. It’s 9-10p most of the waking day, jumps to 25p-ish between 5 and 7pm, then way down to a few pence overnight (sometimes it goes negative and you get paid to take it).
Oh, and there’s vehicle to grid trials already running in some areas, I was going to do the Octopus one but they’ve been taking their time and wasn’t sure I’d get a car when I needed one.
Plug in when you get home, let the local grid take spare power from the car to manage the evening peak, put cheaper overnight units back in when it all calms down again.
Makes excellent use of what are effectively big storage batteries on wheels.
@aberdeenlune Pretty sure I saw a video on Fully Charged youtube channel implementing the street lamp charging thing.
Looking at current usage of ICE vehicles they mostly aren’t used for long journeys
Point is, as the cars get better, more available and the infrastructure expands to support it that will change. I appreciate that most people will still only be driving 10 miles here and 10 miles there though as that's the vast majority of journeys.
EVs as mentioned upthread are manageable - they are mostly charged off-peak and provide a significant resource back to the grid. Get enough of them operating smartly and you have a virtual power station.
No, the bigger problem is the need to stop using gas. It's the dominant source of domestic heating and needs to be replaced by electrically powered sources, operating at peak times. This is going to need significant grid reinforcement and significant new renewable plant.
Lighting manufacturers and suppliers are already building and offering charging points into their columns to further utilise that energy source.
There's a couple of streetlights in the road around the corner from me that have got EV chargers in them. Not everybody on that road has a driveway so makes sense.
Looks quite neat. Not sure what stops the local scallys from robbing your charging cable though...
Simple answer to this is NO. There is ZERO chance of the grid being able to cope with a complete EV roll out throught Europe. There are some recent papers by the EU commission which are now publicly aavailble, that despite the 2050 "goal", there will still be a 70% reliance on liquid fuels accross the entire energy markets (this inlcudes electric, liquid fuels etc). To hit the equivelant "electric" only option would require the European grid cpacity to increase by a factor of x10 - this will NEVER EVER happen.
Pure EV have a place for local emission controls, but that's it. The only way to secure a sustainable more greener future is through liquid fuels produced using electric (off-grid) using carbon and biomass capture.
CNG is an alternative solution for small vehicles, but the infrastructure to cope with this is extremely complex, and the life cycle assesment means that at a cradle to grave level it would struggle against liquid fuels. Pure EV's if you read all of the research are the devil in disguise..
Not really. Most people are not spending £25k on a car. A lot of people are still buying used cars at £10K or less.
Strange that £25k is seen as low price, to me a low priced electric car would be nearer £10 so could match the lower priced ICE cars.
The market has changed a lot in recent years, people aren't buying £50k cars, £25k cars or £10k as much, they're buying £500, £300 and £150 a month PCP deals. Yeah there's still a healthy cash/loan market, but it's getting smaller.
Obviously there has to be a new market for a second-hand market to exist, I've never bought a new Car and doubt I ever will.
Maybe the ICE car will never die, hell if half the cars on the road were EVS it would make a huge difference.
There is likely to be a lot of off-peak (overnight) charging and associated incentives**
Earlier this week on linkedin I saw this post:
"Last night, we saw cashout prices go negative for the first time in November. At 00:30, cashout dropped to -£25/MWh whilst at 01:30 it dropped to -£3.50/MWh.
This means that our battery customers were again being paid to take energy off the system and charge their batteries"
Seems battery storage is more advanced than I and other posters had maybe realised. link to EDF site giving more info: https://www.edfenergy.com/large-business/energy-solutions/battery-storage
Maybe the ICE car will never die, hell if there were half the cars on the road it would make a huge difference.
FTFY 😉
Don’t forget one major point in switching over to an EV... whilst today it might be seen as relatively “free” (no VED & £7.00 to charge over night at home) the government will need to fill the £28bn in lost income revenue from VED and VAT on fossil fuels...
Who do you think will have to stump up the difference?
Yip, EV owners.
Expect a levy or cost-per-mile or some other form of taxation to be landed on EV’s.
Simple mafs innit.
Enjoy “free” motoring whilst you can.
interesting thread. My current diesel has a year left on it's PCP. For roughly the same money (after fuel saving) per month I could get a nice long range EV, like a Tesla 3. I do wonder though if technology and infrastructure is still at an early stage such that another diesel estate on a 3 yr pcp would make more sense..
I'm in a similar position Iainc but with the lucky position to be able to pay it off an own the car now and save some interest. I don't need a new car and I'm looking for some financial flexibility, so thats what I'll do.
If I can stretch it out until the kids leave home me and Mrs K can consolidate to EV du jour in 9/10 years time when no-doubt the picture will be clearer.
Expect a levy
Lithium Tax?
Strange that £25k is seen as low price, to me a low priced electric car would be nearer £10 so could match the lower priced ICE cars.
Having paid 25840e for a Zoé with its battery these are my comparsion sums over five years at 12000km/year (UK average):
-
Zoé fast charge in blue
25840e on the road at today's exchange rate is roughly £22.2k.
Electricity at 12.5kWh/100km and 13p/kWh = £975
Total = £23.2k
-
Dacia Sandero Stepway with a similar spec to the Zoé
13730e + 750 in tax etc.+ 50e malus = 14530e = £12.5k on the road
Petrol at 5.8l/100km and £1.26/litre = £4384
The extra servicing cost approx 10e/month for a service and extended guarantee pack compared witht the Zoé = 600e = £517.
Extra insurance cost. For me the Zoé saved 80e/year so 480e extra for the sandero= £413
Total £17.3k.
So the Zoé costs 6k more. What they'll be worth on the second-hand market in five years time it's hard to say, on the basis of current EV second-hand values it'll be worth more than the Sandero but not by 6k. On the same basis for eight years (the end of the battery guarantee) the difference closes to less than 3k. I'm prepared to pay 3000/8 = £375 a year more to drive a Zoé than a Sandero Stepway.
Edukator I thinks is fair to say that your personal circumstance which allow you to rely on the Zoe are different from the generalities which are being quoted here.
I think we all accept that a short trip/home charging scenario kind of works now in the UK. But the medium/long trip away from home is not supported or sustainable, and the type of vehicle desired to support that has a far greater cost ,margin to ICE that you example. Currently.
Is that fair?
Check out the charge network using something like Chargemap, Kryton. I've travelled around France, Garmany, The UK (just two weeks) and Spain with the Zoé 40 and it's getting easier all the time. With fast charge and another 10kWh it's going to be a lot easier. So "support" OK and getting better all the time.
As for "sustainable", that's the whole point. In my example even a Sandero driven very gently gets through two times its own weight in petrol in five years.
I'm not suggesting you buy an EV now, Kryton. From your description of the driving you do, about the only EV that would not be an inconvenience would be a long range 75 kWh Model 3 Tesla. And that is beyond your budget if I've understood correctly. I'm hoping that the next time you change your car there will be an EV that fulfils your needs that you can afford.
This area is my new Job.
In the next 5 years, domestic smart chargers will probably be mandated to be controlled via the smart metering infrastructure. This will mean that your energy supplier and other energy market participants will be able to control the start and end of charging within around a minute.
In practical terms this will mean that as a user, you will set a % charge you want and by what time and the infrastructure will stagger start and end times to optimise the load according to local DNO constraints. This will avoid unnecessary upgrade on the system.
Smart chargers will arrive out of the box set to charge off peak this way, you will have the option to over ride this, there will be an additional charge for this. This will probably be mandated by gvnt.
In addition to this, I think a market will emerge for EVs sitting on your drive doing nothing. These big batteries have the ability to sit at around 50% charged and absorb/discharge in response to National Grid frequency modulation requirements. This could be with c£500 to householders in 5-10 years time.
The final thing to think about is that many are predicting a move away from car ownership towards mobility as a service, the car club model, meaning that these cars will be charged on commercial infrastructure.
Even with all this planning, our demand for electricity could rise by 40% by 2050 so we are going to have to build a lot of new renewable and nuclear capacity as well as local embeded generation and storage (big batteries)
Thanks for the clarity. Its interesting that as a non EV user I (we) clearly haven't felt the need to explore the infrastructure so an awareness of this is important. And...
I’m hoping that the next time you change your car there will be an EV that fulfils your needs that you can afford.
...me too. I don't want to enter into a £50k EV PCP agreement just to satisfy the environmentalist which is not to stay that stance isn't important, but its a balance of paying the mortgage and providing for two kids. When there is more parity in ICE vs EV overall that decision would be much easier to make.
I think the %age of new vehicles sold as electric (currently very low - 2 or 3%) will jump hugely next year as a result of the BIK changes..
Currently a 320D msport company car (pretty normal fodder) would cost a 40% tax payer £4800/year in tax. From next year, a tesla model 3 (or vw ID3, or whatever) has zero bik - thus for the same cash impact to your salary, you can effectively spend £200/month extra on the 'car'.
An electric car tends to cost ~£50-100 more per month on a new lease than a base-engined ICE car - so the 'default' choice will now become electric on purely financial terms - you'd have to really want an ICE to pick one over the electric car, I'd suggest the reverse is true today.
It's quite a headache for residential blocks as they will have to up their incoming supply on the worst case scenario that at some point the car park is full of EV's all wanting to charge.
I'd argue a large chunk of the people who can afford brand new electric cars also fit into the suburban house with a drive demographic. The on street charging will only start being a problem when the second hand market is filling with EVs at less thank £10k
Interesting that some public infrastructure cannot already meet demand. This was South mimms services yesterday, there was a queue too.
A bit of a curveball on this thread but my current thinking is that in the next year i might get a hybrid to bridge the gap for the next few years while the EV market/grid improves. I also live in a flat so i cant run a cable out the window and down the street to charge up. Enter the hybrid - the best and worst of both worlds
Thanks djglover. Interesting stuff!
Err, might have missed it - BIK?
Currently a 320D msport company car (pretty normal fodder) would cost a 40% tax payer £4800/year in tax. From next year, a tesla model 3 (or vw ID3, or whatever) has zero bik – thus for the same cash impact to your salary, you can effectively spend £200/month extra on the ‘car’.
Hang on, isn't it already like that? BiK on electric cars already very low due to zero emissions?
i might get a hybrid
Good solution IMO. Most PHEVs can do 30 miles or so on electricity - that'd be good enough for our daily use, for sure. We'd only need petrol for our weekend trips which are usually 160 miles round trip to my parents or long distances at holiday time.
Err, might have missed it – BIK?
BIK is a tax you pay if you have a company car, basically a percentage of the value of the car is classed as 'income' (somewhere between 15 and 35%, based on emissions, typically around 20%), and taxed (ie taken off your salary as a deduction) as such. For example, if you have a 40k car with a bik rate of 20%, its assumed the same value as £8k of extra income, and you (if you're a 40% rate payer) will pay £3200 in tax per year
Hang on, isn’t it already like that? BiK on electric cars already very low due to zero emissions?
the current bik rate is 16% for electric cars, which is lower than a diesel (which probably sit at 24% or so for a clean one) and might save you a grand or so per year - the discount coming in next year is much more significant
I’d argue a large chunk of the people who can afford brand new electric cars also fit into the suburban house with a drive demographic. The on street charging will only start being a problem when the second hand market is filling with EVs at less thank £10k
As someone who now falls into "the suburban house with a drive demographic", my first foray into EV ownership is likely to be a used one, well under £10k, primarily for local use.
We certainly can't afford to piss £30k+ away on a car, we've got a stupid big mortgage to pay.
And unfortunately I can see us having an ICE car for quite a long time to come, in order to cover long distance journeys and due to their being relatively cheap to buy (used)...
TBH There's not that many used EV's about for sale, those that there are, are priced high due to demand. It's going to take several years for truly affordable EV's (new or used) to be a thing. Of course once you start dangling finance in front of people their understanding of "affordability" can change quite remarkably....
Good solution IMO. Most PHEVs can do 30 miles or so on electricity – that’d be good enough for our daily use, for sure. We’d only need petrol for our weekend trips which are usually 160 miles round trip to my parents or long distances at holiday time.
Pretty much where we're at. 30 miles covers my commute. The cost of second hand PHEVs isn't quite down to our range though (5k - 7k ish). Mitsi Outlander is very much on the radar for that point in time though and only a few years deprecation from that price. Next car maybe.
I'm not sure the 'rented mobility' thing will have a huge takeup. People do so very much just love their shiny toys.
The market has changed a lot in recent years, people aren’t buying £50k cars, £25k cars or £10k as much, they’re buying £500, £300 and £150 a month PCP deals. Yeah there’s still a healthy cash/loan market, but it’s getting smaller.
There are already signs that the bottom is dropping out of the PCP market, dealers are struggling to sell new cars, there’s a huge glut of ex-lease cars around now and nobody’s buying those either.
It’s showing at work, the number of cars coming in at the moment is way below what it was earlier this year, around March; we were getting 200+ cars in a day for a while, we were run off our feet, and struggling to find space for them.
Now, we might get 50, we’ve got big empty spaces in our off-site storage areas which were crammed in March/April, one area had over 1000 cars, there’s probably about a third of that now.
Dealers now have overflow storage to hold the overflow from the overflow from the main storage area! One driver I was talking to today went to pick up a car from an overflow storage site at a dealership, there were several Skoda Yetis there, brand new, with moss growing around the windows and green algae on the paintwork.
Hmmm.
Question needs defined better.
Can your service cable cope? The local distribution grid? The transmission grid? The generation fleet?
Overnight charging helps with today’s network and generation fleet, but less so if solar (and to some extent wind) become a larger proportion of our energy source.
V2G services mentioned previously by someone is a spectacular resource but difficult to access at scale - it will happen but possibly as a way for a homeowner to buy their electricity when it’s cheap and plentiful and use it when they want.
Merchant storage to soak up solar in the day and then charge cars at night will have its place but it’s expensive, it will soak up available battery production and will lose 10% of your solar generation due to round trip efficiency.
Colin Herron is worth reading up on - bright man and starting to do a “Without got air” type analysis of the EV market.
In short, the “grid” can cope, probably, though fast charging will not help. The generation fleet may be able to cope. The question is multi-faceted and needs capable people to keep working on it.
Which isn’t a simple answer.
The UK has just laid a massive cable to France
I just layed a big cable.
Anyway...
As above I do LSO wonder about our domestic electrical systems. In Germany, Poland, Belgium and I and sure other countries 3phase is common. With all of the push for no gas boilers plus electric cars I think that our household supplies will need to be upgraded.
Anyway #2...
I am not convinced electric cars are the answer. They are part of the answer but not the answer. I think they will work for probably the majority of people but a very significant minority number of people they will not work. There is a fundamental problem with any battery powered system that a full battery weights the same as a empty battery and to get good range you need a big heavy battery. A form of liquid fuel is required for medium to long journeys, heavy loads even most medium vans. This may be hydrogen fuel cell or Some form of manufactured hydrocarbon.
The Zoé 52kWh weighs 1475kg, the Brick, less than some versions of the Golf. And the top of the range Land Rover Evoque 1880kg.
Energy recovery on braking means that the impact of weight on energy use is less than ICE cars. Even hybrids have limited energy recovery compared with full electrics.
Batteries are getting lighter as technology improves. The original 23kWh battery in the Zoé weighed 290kg, the second generation 41kWh battery 305kg. Nearly double the range for 15kg more. I don't have the weight for the latest 52kWh battery but the car weighs only fractionally more than the original 23kWh car.
If weight is a problem for you the first type of car to attack is the ICE 4x4 SUV.
There are already signs that the bottom is dropping out of the PCP market, dealers are struggling to sell new cars, there’s a huge glut of ex-lease cars around now and nobody’s buying those either.
id say thats a good sign that the markets confused more than anything.
What do you buy today if you want a new car.
expensive EV ? a small turbo petrol ? the last of the diesel interceptors ?
there was no clear good option when i looked so i kicked the ball down the pitch and bought second hand again and in 10 years time when my current car is at end of life ill look at the options again.
Overnight charging helps with today’s network and generation fleet, but less so if solar (and to some extent wind) become a larger proportion of our energy source.
I guess that's where the intelligent chargers come in?
I think they will work for probably the majority of people but a very significant minority number of people they will not work.
Such as, almost everyone who lives in an inner city type environment, and does not have ready access to the 2.4 children semi detached urban driveway. That's a lot of people.
What electric cars do do for us is move us off the fossil fuel dependency. Long term there is nothing bad about that.
What replaces the fossil fuel network, we don't yet know.
What replaces the fossil fuel network, we don’t yet know
Cables and sockets where possible and inductive chargers where not.
mrmonkfinger
Overnight charging helps with today’s network and generation fleet, but less so if solar (and to some extent wind) become a larger proportion of our energy source.
I guess that’s where the intelligent chargers come in?
Sadly intelligent charging on its own will do very little here. Still good to have though.
Won’t the majority of cars be charged overnight when the grid is doing not very much anyway?
Except that if cars are all recharging at night, it willbe doing something.
There are already signs that the bottom is dropping out of the PCP market, dealers are struggling to sell new cars, there’s a huge glut of ex-lease cars around now and nobody’s buying those either.
It’s showing at work, the number of cars coming in at the moment is way below what it was earlier this year, around March; we were getting 200+ cars in a day for a while, we were run off our feet, and struggling to find space for them.
Now, we might get 50, we’ve got big empty spaces in our off-site storage areas which were crammed in March/April, one area had over 1000 cars, there’s probably about a third of that now.
Dealers now have overflow storage to hold the overflow from the overflow from the main storage area! One driver I was talking to today went to pick up a car from an overflow storage site at a dealership, there were several Skoda Yetis there, brand new, with moss growing around the windows and green algae on the paintwork.
I'm not surprised it's slowing, it's like Smart Phones, at some point everyone's got one and the market is saturated so you only really see growth in line with population growth. I can only speak for people I know these days, but everyone I think would go that way, has (and quite a few who I thought would never 'rent' a car or get into 'debt' for one.
I don't think it's because everyone's suddenly seen 'sense' and is handing back their PCP'd Smart Hatch or SUV to go back to buying 5 year old cars with hard earned savings or a bank loan, or swapping for a cycle or bus pass, but given everything going on in the UK and globally I would guess a lot less people are dancing into the showrooms to chop in their PCP early for another one. I heard the other Day that Ford let one of their customers keep their Fiesta for it's entire term the other day, unheard of!
This is a normal residential street in central London. Clearly you don't need a drive and on street charging does work in city centres.
If weight is a problem for you the first type of car to attack is the ICE 4×4 SUV.
It weight relative to the car. Of course SUV are inefficient. My point is not that electric cars are bad but as I said it's that they are part of the solution not the solution. Except that they are not the answer for many problems. The weight and energy density is why they don't work very well for medium to long distance travel and and medium to heavy weight transport. You can't change that. Different solutions to different problems.
IMO trying to put bigger and bigger batteries in is an example of trying to fix this problem with electric cars. Keep them short to medium range, say 150 ish range (allow for battery inefficientcy in cold) and have a different solution for the the medium to long range. Smaller battery mean greater efficiency, cheaper to buy and maintain.
inductive chargers where not
The coupling on this is too poor for high power. This is why transformers (which is what inductive chargers are) have iorn or ferrite cores and physically really close.
I worry that some of these solutions are like the solar roadway bullshit that was going around a few years ago.
Well BMW have a 3.2kW inductive charger that works. it's not ideal which is why I said cables and sockets first and inductive where not. Inductive works for phones.
Gas and Electricity consumption in the UK has actually dropped by over 20% (10% electric) in the past 10 years and CO2 emission have dropped by 30% in the last 15. All that despite a more than 10% increase in population.
However, I think peak generation capacity might also have dropped? We have reduced our trade deficit to the EU by around 8% by reducing the amount of electricity that we import...
Be careful with the terms power, energy and consumption. They are related but not the same. It is quite possible for peak power to fall while energy use rises.
Power generation capacity and energy generation capacity are two different things too. Think about a 10MW solar or wind farm for a while.
Both energy use and peak power have dropped - about 15% over the last ten years on our network. Around a third of this (5% out of the 15%) is, we believe, self generation. The rest is energy efficiency and lifestyle changes. We think. Quite difficult to track power / energy that wasn’t used.
EVs in the UK (or GB I’d have to check my figures) will add around 300TWh to our existing average daily use of 800TWh - rough figures and assuming nothing else changes.
Such as, almost everyone who lives in an inner city type environment, and does not have ready access to the 2.4 children semi detached urban driveway. That’s a lot of people.
Yes, but those people on average probably have shorter commutes as they already live in the city. Thus draw fewer kW's to charge their car.
So either:
On street charging points, or charge at the 'petrol' station, or at work, or at the coffee shop, gym, supermarket. If there's a demand, someone will figure out how to capitalize it. It's probably worthwhile for most shops/car parks to offer charging.
Basement car parks in blocks of flats get charring points, and related to my first point, they won't all be rep's Teslas needing to go from 0-100% overnight, it'll be leafs going from 50-75%. I'd have thought the average load would be less than say the electrical heating in the morning, or everyone putting the oven on at 6pm.
EV's might have a few problems if they can't mine enough Cobalt and other rare metals for the cars' batteries. Currently deep sea mining is being tested for cobalt as it apparently mainly comes from one mine !
I'm sure i've seen something on the TV about deep sea mining and it didn't look like it was any good for the environment down there.
Reckon it was either Octonauts or Go Jetters!!
EV actually could provide the solution and not the problem to our grid and it's energy resource!
As EVs get ever bigger batteries (over 2 times the average energy capacity compared to 4 years ago) people don't actually drive any further. In fact, thanks to increasing traffic densities, IT infrastructure costs, people are driving less distance on average than they used too.
Take my "little battery" i3. It has just 22kWh, and my daily commute is 32 miles, which would be considered a long commute (average uk commute is ~11 miles). I average just over 4 miles per kWh, so my daily driving energy requirement is 8 kWh. That means, even with my 4 year old, small battery EV, i have something like 10 or more kWh i carry around with me, that could be used for short term storage and load levelling.
Today, most people are at work during the day, and at home at night, which means for example that solar generation is of no use to most private transport needs. But, if we made laws / gave tax incentives to install solar at our places of work, we could charge our cars where they sit in the day, and take the power home with us to run our houses over night. And that "storage" is, effectively free for the network. The vehicle owner can earn money by letting the network access their excess energy buffer, and can minimise their costs by buying 'lecy when it's cheap, and selling when it's expensive.
It's worth remembering that a typical passenger car in the uk is actually parked up for typically 98% of it's life! Using that time makes sense to me 🙂