The article depicts a charger for street parking, and this is the first time I’ve seen one. That’s a good step, now you need to install millions of those everywhere before you can expect the cars to be bought.
Half the time they don't work, mostly it seems because the credit card reader doesn't seem to work or the pole isn't able to process payment for some other reason. The kicker is that you still have to pay for parking, and should the pole not be working you can't use the spot anyway lest you get fined for parking and not charging. In a city where parking spots are generally few and far between this is supremely annoying.
Another thing that's supremely annoying is that cars have their charge inlets placed in different spots, meaning people will park in whatever way is convenient for them to charge, no matter if that now means two other spots are blocked. Tesla owners seem to be the worst offenders in this regard, in my experience, presumably because their charging ports being placed in the back right (like on an ICE car) just makes it really awkward to use these poles that generally seem placed to optimize for plugging in to the front of the car.
Teething issues aside, I'm glad to see these things popping up.
The place I just moved to is already pedestrian-hostile, who needs it getting worse because we shoehorned electricity into our transport?
Don't get my wrong, I'm a big nerd, I want an electric car, but the way we're doing it doesn't seem right.
I really want an electric vehicle, it ticks lots of boxes for me, but unlike an ICE vehicle that I can top up in seconds, and which are usually engineered with a decent amount of longevity, the battery in an electric vehicle is likely to be next to useless within 5 or so years of buying it; even if it's good enough for me, who would want to buy it when the advertised second-hand range is down to 50 miles per charge?
They seems like an utterly terrible investment to me, and at £50k+ (luxury car price bracket according to UK gov), it is an investment to me if I'm spending that much.
People didn't just throw up hands and sit in a corner when petrol stations weren't every 15km of their road and when there was no electric rail anywhere.
The only reasonable way I see, without affecting productivity of the nation as a whole, is to charge while we sleep, as we do with our phones usually.
When I pull in to Shell now to stick Diesel in my car, I see someone sat in their EV playing on their phone while they wait for their vehicle to charge; presumably for an hour plus? this isn't what I want for our futures.
Nope, this is an anti-EV myth. Car batteries are not like your phone battery: in most cases they will probably outlast the vehicle itself. Most car manufacturers guarantee the battery for at least 8 years, and in reality they should last a lot longer than that.
I need to do some more reading; one of the biggest things that have put me off are people (claiming) to have lost 30%+ capacity in 3-5 years.
> Luxury cars are never a good investment, EV or otherwise. That's not why people buy them.
This was not my point, my point was that a "decent" EV in the UK runs you the price of a luxury-car (according to UK gov brackets for what is considered a "luxury car"). A Polestar 2 for example is £50k which puts you in luxury car tax bracket, and also you lose any government incentives for buying an EV because it's a luxury EV. But is a PS2 any more luxury, other than being electric, than a specced Mondeo, Vectra, or Passat?
This was true for some early model EVs, like the early-2010s Nissan LEAFs. But they used different battery technology (chemistry) to todays EVs, and the battery packs lacked thermal management, leading to rapid degradation.
> "But is a PS2 any more luxury, other than being electric, than a specced Mondeo, Vectra, or Passat?"
I know which I'd rather have. If you were going to spend £50k on a new car today, you'd be mad if it wasn't electric.
Well that's my point; why would I spend £50k on a car ;because it's electric; when I could spend say, £35k on a very nice, probably more specced one that isn't?
2. You'll save a lot on running costs (even at current inflated electricity prices, it works out much cheaper than fueling up with petrol in the UK).
3. You'll also save a lot on tax. £0 annual car tax even on cars over £40k. That's more than £2500 savings over the first 5 years on a £40k car, and potentially a lot more if it qualifies for benefit-in-kind (BIK) tax or you drive in a congestion/low-emission zone.
4. It's likely the residuals will be better as an EV bought today will probably depreciate less than a similar diesel or petrol, given the high demand for EVs.
5. Feel-good factor about being able to drive around with less harm to the climate and local air quality!
I want to go all-electric, but I cant get on board with the glaring issues that are battery-tech and all-touch interior-controls; Gone are the days where you can buy a car and it'll last 20+ years with maintenance, you buy an electric, at a premium, get a crap interior and a battery that won't hold charge within 5 years, so you can't drive it, and you can't sell it.
Today's EV batteries will last for 15-20 years, which is the approximate lifetime of most combustion cars today in the UK. Some emerging battery chemistries, like the LFP cells used in some Teslas, may last considerably longer.
I wonder how this will affect resale value compared to odometer values on ICE vehicles now.
- 0: EV or hydrogen (a.k.a Zero Emission Vehicle)
- 1: plug-in hybrid, LP gaz, EURO-5 or EURO-6 petrol (2011 onwards)
- 2: EURO-4 petrol or hybrid (2006-2010), EURO-5 or EURO-6 diesel (2011 onwards)
- 3: EURO-2 or EURO-3 petrol or hybrid (1997-2005), EURO-4 diesel (2006-2010)
- 4: EURO-3 diesel (2001-2005)
- 5: EURO-2 diesel (1997-2004)
- unranked: anything older
There are two cases where it can apply, on specific geographic Low Emission Zones:
- 24/7/365 rules
- air quality degradation peaks with more stringent rules for the duration of the event (depends on event magnitude, usually it's capoed at 2)
My local LEZ has the following timetable:
- 2020: unranked soft-forbidden (warned, not enforced)
- 2022: unranked forbidden (enforced), 5 soft forbidden
- 2023: 5 forbidden, 4 soft forbidden
- 2024: 4+ forbidden, 3 soft forbidden
- 2025: 3+ forbidden, 2 soft forbidden
- 2028: 2+ forbidden
Which leaves us on the road (not sales!) with a soft ban on diesel in 2024, enforced in 2025, and modern petrol+ZEVs in 2028, with full ZEV looming over for 2030.
This in turn has effects on sales way before each ban because no one in their right mind would buy a car (new or second hand) that can't be used a couple of years down the road (nor resold, because no one would buy it)
I mean, if one buys a diesel today it's going to be soft banned in a little over a year and fined to death (through automated license plate reading) in two years, so essentially some indirect sale ban is already in effect. Apply that reasoning in the 2025-2028 period and it would probably not be a good idea to buy a petrol car either, leaving only ZEVs (i.e EVs since there's no hydrogen powered car on the market yet)
Also note that this is not about residency, merely passing through the LEZ makes one eligible for a fine, so this has rippling effects outside the LEZ.
That said, the EV infrastructure is heavily underdeveloped, and I have a hard time seeing that change enough in the next 5 years. I mean, it's possible but to scale in time with demand it needs to start happening now... which it doesn't.
I mean the proper use of EV is to charge at rest (e.g parking lots), not at gas^Wpower stations. So in the next years there's going to be tension between getting a throwaway hybrid/petrol car or go EV but suffer from contention on charging spots.
Now, personally I'm a bit annoyed because my corner case of a car is peculiar: we own two, one rank 1 low emission daily driver and one seldom driven EURO-4 petrol sports car (so, rank 2) that'll be banned in 2028 but wanted to keep as a collector, which happens at 30y, and it'll be "only" 20 by then.
To boot there's no exception (yet?) for such (or any actually) collector vehicles, which means they're being made illegal, and should theoretically go to the grinder, or forever be relegated to barns or museums, which is a real shame.
Actually, I don't quite understand why so many people in big cities have a car. I live in Poland, have lived in two very large cities (Poznań and Warsaw) in their various regions, with my primary mode of transportation being either tram, metro or train depending on where exactly I have lived. I had used public transport to ride to school, university and work every day for many years. I have a driving license. I can afford a car. I just never felt an actual need to own it.
I would certainly get one if I lived in a remote village and had to go to the nearest town anytime I wanted to do some bigger shopping, or even reach the train station. That I can fully understand. But in a city with properly functioning public transport? Many of my friends with lifestyle similar to mine own cars, and unless they have a dedicated garage their primary purpose appears to be spending time on trying to find a parking spot.
Is this a consequence of cars being seen as a proxy of social status? I don't get it.
I am using taxis at times, but rarely and I usually go out of my way to not use them at traffic hours, because then it's often much slower than going by train or tram (not even speaking about metro [Warsaw] or fast tram lines [Poznań], which are hard to beat even outside of traffic hours). Also, when I'm sitting in a public transport, I'm free to spend my time somewhat productively or even just relax by, say, playing a game on a console - while driving a car is tiring, stressful and you can't really do anything else at the same time, so it seems to me that it actually wastes much more time. And what you sometimes gain by traveling faster, you often lose searching for a parking spot anyway.
If you're just driving around in a city for relatively short distances every day, EVs can go weeks without charging.
It's also why this scheme will fail and the next conservative wave will overturn this ruling.
Yes, that's true and openly communicated.
> or preferably stay at home
Where did you get that?
All autocratic regimes - and make no mistake: ecologist politicians ultimately must be, for the common citizenry will always work towards their own goals, which are incompatible with ecological goals - want to limit mobility and thus the right of assembly for their subjects. Subjects with limited mobility can't cause trouble. Ecologist politicians will sell it to the general public as not travelling being eco-friendly, and thus mandatory.
See: GDR's de-facto crippling of individual car ownership, Chinese Hukou system, the Soviet Passport Statute.