"From today subsidies cut on all EVs including commercials see "latest news" posted on this site."

Important bits of the article are:

"From today, 15 December, the Government will provide grants of up to £1500 for electric cars priced under £32,000. Grants for commercial vehicles have also been cut to £5000 for large vans and £2500 for small vans.

The grant for plug-in hybrids has been scrapped altogether. Previously vehicles with CO2 emissions of less than 50g/km and can travel at least 70 miles without any emissions would qualify.

Motorcycle and moped grants will also change, with the Government now providing £500 off the cost of a motorcycle, and £150 for mopeds."

I'm in two minds about it - partly I think those who can afford the new prices of Tesla etc should not be subsidised but then the other side of the coin is the subsidies are being used to encourage a new direction and those new cars will be available to less well-heeled motorists in the future.

Edited by Xileno on 15/12/2021 at 20:39

those new cars will be available to less well-heeled motorists in the future.

With much degraded battery pack.

Problem with subsidies like car, stamp duty holiday etc. is that it simply pushes the price up as sellers want more profit, thus negating the advantage of the subsidy.

Use the free App called Zap Map. Tells you where the charge points are and if they are available. Also the cost.

Yes, but in simple terms: if you are there, you can see for yourself; and if you still need to get there, will they still be available ?

Dropped in at Hopgood services for a sarnie on M42 yesterday. Three guys standing around their car by the Ecotricity chargers scratching heads and fiddling with phones. Car not connected. A few minutes later they leave. Both chargers out of service. Meanwhile 16 Tesla chargers all operational with cars coming and going. Go figure.

But with the state of the infrastructure in the UK I can see service stations installing diesel generators to cope with the demand.

Defeats the object doing that, but then the rescue services use them to get EVs going again if they run out of juice....I thought Tesla were going to let other cars use the charging network? or has that not happened yet?

"I thought Tesla were going to let other cars use the charging network?"

I would be very surprised of they did that, it would undermine their biggest USP. Imagine how annoyed a Tesla driver would be if they couldn't charge up as there was another make using the charger. Maybe they will only have a few that can be shared.

Sounds like the whole idea of EVs is flawed. With no market in cold climates and lack of necessary infrastructure the way forward to net zero emissions we have got to look towards Hydrogen.

The Grid could not cope if half a million cars plugged in to fast charge at night in winter.

The Grid could not cope if half a million cars plugged in to fast charge at night in winter.

Perhaps this is another reason the subsidy is being reduced. Too many electric cars too quickly will not help the electric cause. The grid is only just hanging on by the skin if its teeth this winter.

Not so certain about the grid not coping. I read today that we have an interconnector with Norway as well as other countries so that electric can be "bounced" back and forth depending on demand. That is not to say that other countries will need to charge their own EVs but a system is there and improving all the time. The theory sounds good but lets get through this winter!

Boring though it is, a few objective numbers may help distinguish reality from rumour and unevidenced assertion..

An EV does ~3-4 miles/kwh. A range of ~200 miles needs a 50-65 Kwh battery. Average mileage of 10k pa means charging once per week (or partial charge 2-3 times).

There are currently ~350k EV on UK roads. Over the next 5 years assuming EV account for 50% of sales there will be ~5m in use.

Averagely charging (say) 70kwh once per week is 10 kwh per day. So electrical demand will be an additional 50m kwh (50 gigawatts) daily.

UK demand over the last year averages ~32 GW/hour - total output of ~750 GW per day. As I write current output when dark, december and chilly is ~40GW.

Providing power for 5m EV in say 5 years time will add ~7% to total electrical demand in the UK. If in the future (15-20 years) there are 30m EV on the road the increase in demand will be 40-45% higher than current.

Conclusions:

• electrical output can be increased to cope with additional EV demands. Needs some investment in capacity and distribution over the next 20 years
• averages are simplistic - there will be peaks and troughs over the 24 hour day, weather may influence range, holidays alter demand patterns etc.
• pricing will inevitably evolve to allow owners to charge flexibly and save money, or charge fast and pay more. This will moderate the peaks.
• some owners will want or need frequent fast charging, for many (probably most) slow charge rates will be entirely satisfactory overnight, at work etc.
• fear-mongering about mass electrical failures with millions stranded at the side of the road for want of a few kilowatts is patently daft.

Problem is that you don't take into account:

1. How many people live in houses (e.g. terraced) or homes (flats or houses) with remote 'allocated' spaces or having to rely on on-street parking. No chance in charging their EV at home but will be forced into buying one if their ageing ICE car cannot be reasonably kept going (mine will be 24 years old by 2030).

2. Most workplaces have either no car park or whatever they do have is normally only for about 5-50% of the staff. The rest have to park, as above, mostly on the street or in pay car parks.

3. Most car parks or housing development allocated space car parks have little to no room to install charging points, and most do not have the funds to do so.

Even where adding points is physically possible, doing so gradually is also very costly due to either expensive up-front costs (which may be unaffordable in the short term of need to be financed by [expensive] loans over the long term) because of the need to install new underground cabling for future charging points or having to dig up and modify the previous year's cable mods, which is inefficient.

Most firms lease their property, and thus the car park is not owned by them and you'd need laws to push owners to install them.

4. Charging stations - the equivalent of ICE filling stations, would need to have ultra-rapid chargers (i.e. charging take the same time as the 5 mins to fill up and pay for an ICE car) to be viable. That tech is still some years away, and the 'rapid' chargers are still about 3x as slow as filling up with fuel and they cost a lot to install to take into account the slower recharging time (extra points needed = extra land).

5. Most people in the categories that have no home or work charger would likely - as now with their ICE cars - want to charge on the way to and most likely from work or when shopping on the weekend. This would concentrate demand, as would those with slow-speed (relatively) home chargers doing so in the evening/overnight when they return home.

This would add a considerable electrical grid load to an system already teetering on the brink at peak times around 6-8pm because of the change to non-base load 'green' generating tech and the phasing out of end-of-life nuclear power stations without sufficient new capacity of the same type to take its place.

There will be, at best, a period of at least 10 years with electricity demand rising for many reasons whilst generating capacity, especially base load for winter, either staying constant or dropping.

I'm amazed at how politicians of all hues in the 'mainstream' are contemplating both the rapid phase out of ICE vehicles, gas boilers and other fossil fuel tech whilst replacement tech is not always an affordable, practical or viable dalternative and where electricity generating capacity, especially base load, is far from being assured to cope with this extra demand.

When both policy avenues will cost an absolute fortune, all the while they all advocate for more Pandemic spending, shutdowns and restrictions on business that will obviously reduce our ability to pay or do all these things (much of the western world is well on the way to stagflation and bankrupcy) - when much fo what they are doing now is already pushing electricity prices up way faster than normal inflation rates.

Contrary to 'common' belief, the world won't end in 2040 if we don't all change to EVs.

And by then Global warming may well start reversing and go back to normal, but I suspect I will get told I`m wrong but I cannot see into the future or know whats going to happen like some that think the worst

whatever happens, it will, regardless of what anyone does or thinks.....

Sticking your head in the sand won't make a difference that's for sure.

I despair that there are people that still don't think humans are having an affect on the climate.

You are free to believe that oil and gas are the only feasible solutions for the foreseeable future.

Won`t be available if it runs out anyway, but we need alternative ways to generate electricity so we don`t have to rely on wind and solar, though oil will still be needed for other materials so its not as though it won`t be needed

Hydrogen as I have said before may well replace what gas we use now and as part of the gas supply percentage has been Hydrogen in the past won`t be a problem for our pipes so boilers can still run once converted, and maybe used for running engines which I still think think will happen in time, so no I do not believe oil and gas will last as it was said years ago it will run out fairly quickly...

They are being forced into it by governments in the US and the EU and and here as well...they make out like that they always wanted to do it but am pretty sure they would not if they didn't have to.

The soon to happen change in the leadership of the Conservative Party is likely to see a reversal of policy: especially after Lord Frost's resignation