I will be quite happy to buy an electric car but the genuine range will have to be 600 miles (430 miles plus a safety margin). I have no desire to split my twice a year trip to Scotland into several segments while I queue for a charging point and then wait hours for the charge. Charging while we are there should not be an issue, will just need a long enough extension if there are no dedicated charging points locally. At present they seem to have them at most cafes and garden centres but yet to see a single car charging.

In the near future, EVs will have longer ranges, there will be more charging bays and charge time will come down to minutes.

Charging in minutes will only be possible via heavy-duty cabling. Copper doesn't come cheap, and I don't imagine many domestic owners will want to upgrade their grid connection.

And as you notice yourself, charging bays are usually freely available, so why the statement that you'll have to queue for them?

They are freely available out in the sticks at present since no one has an electric car.

Motorway services are usually busy and if every single one of those cars needed a charge whilst the driver/passengers had a comfort break just imagine the number of charging points required to avoid a queue. It simply no feasible to imagine that number of points.

In my experience as an actual electric car user, motorway service charging bays are a long way from 'usually' busy. I've never seen them full, I've never waited for one, I've never seen anyone else queuing for one. Every car park space in a motorway service station can have a charging point in the future. It is nothing like unfeasible. They will be installed by private companies who will charge for their use, just like existing points.

You do realise that electric cars ONLY NOW make up 1% or so of all car sales, NOT the total number on the road. Imagine the cost and disruption cause by installing the infrastructure to deal with 30% or 50% or higher in just a few years. These points aren't cheap, especially the 'rapid' (still far slower than filling up with fuel) chargers.

I am emailed regularly by several companies with whom I am registered, listing dozens of newly installed charging points around the country. It is happening, I can see it because I'm looking for it.

My second hand Leaf is in perfect battery health, and so far as I know Nissan have not had to replace any battery packs on any cars, and they've been on sale since 2011. Compare that to failed engines and gearboxes in ICE cars. Ecoboost, anyone? DSG?

Look, they're cars, with components, which may fail. This is true of all cars, however electric cars have fewer moving parts are proving, in the real world, much more reliable than ICE cars. So there's a risk of a failed battery pack on a second hand car. The risk in minimal, and is far smaller than the risk you take buying a second hand ICE car.

Speed of charging and charging infrastructure are the big drawbacks, and these are being addressed in the time between now and any future ban on ICE cars being sold.

Folks, you may not like it, but they will be suitable for just about everyone very, very soon, and some people might have to make minor adjustments to their motoring habits. This is absolutely no big deal in the great scheme of things. 12 years to prevent climate catastrophe, right? Can we just carry on burning oil for ever? No.

Have a look of this video about Tesla, food for thought!

www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-10-17/what-engi...o

Note: I had to use Chrome as it wouldn't play on Firefox.

Edited by nick62 on 19/10/2018 at 16:00

Unless you spend telephone numbers electric cars are fairly useless as s means of going anywhere other than round the corner. Best wait a hundred years or so.

Edited by Ethan Edwards on 19/10/2018 at 18:34

So we ban the IC engine completely in 32 or whatever. Now on a completely unrelated point why are all the car manufacturers going out of business? Must be Brexit.

This is what you get when you elect politicians with little technical knowledge. I bet most have degrees in English etc.

...or Geography or PPE.

The big breakthrough in technology that we need is the ability to charge remotely EVs parked in the street. EVs are at their best advantage in towns and cities, where most people live in houses and flats wioth no driveway.

We're starting to get there with charge pads which can be laid in a road: but I can't see this as a widespread solution, as they will be expensive to install, and you can be sure that if you need to charge your EV, Arthur Punter will have parked his diesel Astra atop the pad.

But hopefully this will come - but I agree that if it does, we'll need a lot more power stations.

We will not necessarily require MORE power stations...in summer . Solar power + battery storage will work quite well for charging vehicles at night. And with Smart Meters, it's easy to charge much higher prices for High Drain fast charging in the daylight hours - probably with increased VAT charged on ALL High Drain home electrical installations..

Vanadium looks like it will replace lithium as the choice of the next generation of batteries for large scale battery installations..

Note I do not mention windpower which works 24 hours a day but is a lot more fickle.. but solar power in winter IS a problem . Anyone who says renewables can supply 100% of our future energy needs - in the UK- can be safely ignored. It cannot happen...physically impossible.in winter. (Unless you spend £1000Bs on storage over the summer)

Anyone who says renewables can supply 100% of our future energy needs - in the UK- can be safely ignored. It cannot happen...physically impossible.in winter. (Unless you spend £1000Bs on storage over the summer)

It could be done in Scotland - their climate, terrain and history gives opportunity for hydro and wind power although they may need to convert some hydro schemes to pumped storage - if you include nuclear as non-carbon power then it's probably close now.

Nuclear is going to be the only way to get the extra power we need, wind power on the south coast is with no wind - zero-, no good if you need power at certain times, solar as mentioned next to zero in winter unless the panels produce electric in cloudy conditions but will have to convert as much as in the sun, which isn't going to happen

As much as people are against nuclear, I think its the only way unless the scientists can replicate what happens on the sun to make power, so until EVs take off Hybrid is the way to go for a few years!

Anyone who says renewables can supply 100% of our future energy needs - in the UK- can be safely ignored. It cannot happen...physically impossible.in winter. (Unless you spend £1000Bs on storage over the summer)

It could be done in Scotland - their climate, terrain and history gives opportunity for hydro and wind power although they may need to convert some hydro schemes to pumped storage - if you include nuclear as non-carbon power then it's probably close now.

Nuclear is going to be the only way to get the extra power we need, wind power on the south coast is with no wind - zero-, no good if you need power at certain times, solar as mentioned next to zero in winter unless the panels produce electric in cloudy conditions but will have to convert as much as in the sun, which isn't going to happen

As much as people are against nuclear, I think its the only way unless the scientists can replicate what happens on the sun to make power, so until EVs take off Hybrid is the way to go for a few years!

Not necessarily. There are methods to store energy including batteries (worn out car batteries are suitable) and pumping water uphill.

Many parts of the UK are unsuitable for pumped water storage, few places to build a reservoir and already taken by drinking water reservoirs

I considered an electric car when I changed cars last year, my daily commute is 80 miles with no option for charging at the office. Then I remembers an upcoming visit to London to see parents, 75 miles each way, no charging point. I quickly realised that the present set-up with electric does not work for me. Probably the best solution would be for removable battery packs that could be swapped in and out within 5 minutes - a bit like the old days when horses would be changed every so many miles.

It has been tried: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company) I guess it might work, who knows.

Probably the best solution would be for removable battery packs that could be swapped in and out within 5 minutes - a bit like the old days when horses would be changed every so many miles.

Even with miraculous new battery technology, which we are assured is not far away, those batteries will be pretty bulky articles. Standard car batteries are awkward enough to lug around for the average home owner. Maybe we each need two cars, one on standby ... :-)

I considered an electric car when I changed cars last year, my daily commute is 80 miles with no option for charging at the office. Then I remembers an upcoming visit to London to see parents, 75 miles each way, no charging point. I quickly realised that the present set-up with electric does not work for me. Probably the best solution would be for removable battery packs that could be swapped in and out within 5 minutes - a bit like the old days when horses would be changed every so many miles.

Battery packs weigh 300 to 600kgs..And are all different sizes.

Will not work .

There is nothing that concentrates the minds of Industry more than the threat of their current products being outlawed. I remember reading many years ago that the only way to move us away from a fossil carbon economy was to set a timescale when the burning of fossil fuels would be outlawed.

Banning new internal combustion engines from say 2040 or as suggested 2032 will force industry to invest in the research needed to make it happen. Let's not be scared by it, modern cars are full of new technology that 30 years ago would have been considered pie in the sky science fiction that belonged on the starship Enterprise.

The Aluminium battery already promises a range of about 1200 miles with a lower weight than lithium ion. They are not rechargeable in the car, but could easily be swapped at a service centre. They can then be remanufactured. The economies of scale will then kick in together with a standardisation of the battery so one size will fit all.

The elephant in the room for the UK is not batteries or charge points - it's where is all this electricity is going to come from? No recent UK government has taken this subject seriously - their current (sorry) answer seems to be to stick windmills up everywhere to placate the ecoloons.

It's renewables that will provide all this extra electrical power according to Gove and co.

It's not practical - they won't provide anything like the energy density to run the UK.

Read all about it here - it's long, it's got a lot of maths in it, with explanations, and it makes sense.

"Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air" a free book by the late Professor David McKay

www.withouthotair.com/cft.pdf