Nightmare! (Supercharger queues)

[yessuz]

I think though the reason a lot are trying to hit the magic 70 mile range is the BiK is then 5%. Not quite as good as 2% but not terrible either.



Got to be that it's just not as cheap / easy as sticking a battery in the boot and an electric motor into the gearbox is all. Pretty sure it's technically the better approach. I think Mazda have one coming out with a Rotory engine soon and rumours suggest the next lower end Land Rover models might have this as an option along with full EV models. I imagine to reduce battery size and costs or just to work for people that have issues charging.



It's moving far too slowly if you ask me. Tesla's done a good job but even they aren't keeping up and opening their network up to other brands cars will make this much worse.

Don't disagree that mankind needs to push forwards but some large, complex infrastructure tasks just take a long time. Could we do it quicker with more money on the table, sure but money is finite.

Consider all the issues here to solve:

• Around 1/3 I think of cars are parked on the street, if they cannot charge at home we need enough public chargers to cover them charging
  • Also do not forget that a lot of these without driveways probably are not quite as wealthy, the cost of public charging could well put them off along with the inconvience
• Electricity grid and the issues of having lots of EV's charging from houses. Lots of studies on this but it'll also be a major issue that's not cheap to solve
  • We already know also planning and lack of HV cables in places is slowing down the rollout in this country.
• Additional land and space for all EV chargers, we'll need far more of these than we ever did petrol / diesel pumps.
• Quantity of chargers and maintaining the network is going to be expensive. Currently for petrol / diesel pumps you've someone onsite to know when they stop working and get a repair organised. This works well as how often do you go to a petrol station and a pump isn't working?
  • When EV chargers are spread all over the country it requires people to report the issues and operators to have deeper pockets to get people out to so many locations to repair them. More chargers vs pumps will equal more repairs. No one with eyes on them like at petrol stations will result in some being vandalised. This by the way I suspect is what is going to make public charging very expensive if they cannot hugely increase the reliability.
• The cost of electric cars is too high for a lot of people. The cheaper cars can have something like 100 miles of range where a cheap petrol / diesel would cost less and probably have a tank for 300 miles even on a little city car. Prices will come down but enough in 7 years? A lot rides on new battery chemistry being able to come to market to improve the energy density of batteries.
• Electric cars have a much higher environmental impact to make, only have a lot of miles in a petrol / diesel are they better. Making a lot of electric cars isn't a perfect answer but yes it is likely an improvement.

Yes but it's rare. Obviously been the odd time where panic buying or lack of lottery drivers have caused a shortage but very rare. Once or twice I've pulled into a station and all pumps have been full and had to wait 5 minutes to get in. Most of the time though it's straight in, pay at pump and out.

Don't have to worry about broken stalls, filling up at half the speed because someone else is parked at the pump besides me, slower filling up because my battery is cold, etc.

Electric is going to get better, no doubt. But by enough for 2030 which is just 7 years away? I don't believe that's possible for a moment personally.

regarding the grid:
take into account that single car charging @7 kw is like having 2 kettles running.

now we have 2 major peaks every day. - one in the morning, another in evening.

we will have a plateaued curve during the day (charging at work) and it will be much less of the peak every night, grid can cope no issues, really.

 

[ACarneiro]

regarding the grid:
take into account that single car charging @7 kw is like having 2 kettles running.

now we have 2 major peaks every day. - one in the morning, another in evening.

we will have a plateaued curve during the day (charging at work) and it will be much less of the peak every night, grid can cope no issues, really.

That's right in the grand scheme of the whole grid. The problem is that you're shifting 10GW of daytime load from industrial sites with plentiful transmission capacity to thousands of residential sites with transformers and distribution systems designed with 2kW-per-household calculations.

In my housing estate we have a transformer and I am told that each phase has a 400A fuse.

At 32A single phase draw, it would only take about 13 cars charging to overload that fuse. For the 3 phases let's say the whole housing estate of 100+ houses would only manage 40 cars charging simultaneously. Some of these 100+ houses will more than likely have more than one car.

I am glad that I managed to get my EVSEs and batteries installed early, as I would imagine the DNO is going to start looking very closely at capacity calculations. Between charging cars, batteries and heating water with off-peak energy I am already hitting the 100A limit on my supply for 5 hours every night (in the winter. Summer is a different story)

There will definitely need to be some sort of upgrade done closer to "the edge" of the electrical network once home energy supply for mobility, heating and cooking becomes exclusively (or nearly exclusively) electric.

 

[Mrklaw]

IMO fast charging (7kw or even 3.6) should be government regulated to be the same as domestic grid electricity prices. If necessary paid for by levies on domestic energy or other so everyone gets a fair crack at it. and they need tons more of them obviously.

 

[Adopado]

I'd got it from this Autocar article.

Autocar - Scotland 2032

If it's inaccurate they've not updated it yet.

As a thought though. If it's only Scotland is that enough new car sales for car manufacturers to keep their RHD efforts going for 2 more years? Almost can see them saying it's not cost effective and forcing EV's on you anyway from 2030. Think it needs a joint up UK approach on this one.

Not sure where they build cars for the few other RHD markets in the world but might be a bit of a shipping distance. You'd also get your Australian cars delivered on their roofs

Scotland has not changed its date for ending of selling ICE vehicles. To be fair to Autocar the mistaken dates were in the Scottish Government document which has now been corrected. I couldn't find any other references (other than in the Autocar article) who picked up on this date but there may still be some spin off if other sites start quoting Autocar rather than the original source. If you are a registered user on the Autocar site you could do them a favour and point out that their article requires to be changed/deleted.

 

[FastLaneJB]

queuing + filling + queuing to pay + waiting for people to do their weekly shopping. It can easily take 10 minutes. Perhaps it doesn't feel like it because you're doing lots of little things keeping you active - like going the long way round with less traffic can feel quicker?

You can pay at pump but even if you don't do that, it's normally in and straight to paying in my opinion. Now it probably does take me 10 minutes as I've an 89 litre tank so if it's low it takes a while to fill. However, that's 600 miles of range so it's not common I have to fill up for the most part.

IMO fast charging (7kw or even 3.6) should be government regulated to be the same as domestic grid electricity prices. If necessary paid for by levies on domestic energy or other so everyone gets a fair crack at it. and they need tons more of them obviously.

Well, need to consider the elephant in the room of fuel tax. Once this is gone that's going to leave a ~£25 billion hole for the treasury. They are going to have to fill this with a pay per mile kind of scheme I suspect or vasty increase road tax per year. The cost of running an electric car is still quite a low tax affair but it won't last.

That's right in the grand scheme of the whole grid. The problem is that you're shifting 10GW of daytime load from industrial sites with plentiful transmission capacity to thousands of residential sites with transformers and distribution systems designed with 2kW-per-household calculations.

In my housing estate we have a transformer and I am told that each phase has a 400A fuse.

At 32A single phase draw, it would only take about 13 cars charging to overload that fuse. For the 3 phases let's say the whole housing estate of 100+ houses would only manage 40 cars charging simultaneously. Some of these 100+ houses will more than likely have more than one car.

I am glad that I managed to get my EVSEs and batteries installed early, as I would imagine the DNO is going to start looking very closely at capacity calculations. Between charging cars, batteries and heating water with off-peak energy I am already hitting the 100A limit on my supply for 5 hours every night (in the winter. Summer is a different story)

There will definitely need to be some sort of upgrade done closer to "the edge" of the electrical network once home energy supply for mobility, heating and cooking becomes exclusively (or nearly exclusively) electric.

Agreed this is an issue and while there's the comment about it being just 2 kettles. Our house has 3 cars, maybe we need to charge 2 at once when all are EV's so that's 4 kettles and not just running for the length of time to boil water but for many hours at a time.

It definitely is a major issue, there are all sorts of programmes being run to look into how this all might be solved.

Scotland has not changed its date for ending of selling ICE vehicles. To be fair to Autocar the mistaken dates were in the Scottish Government document which has now been corrected. I couldn't find any other references (other than in the Autocar article) who picked up on this date but there may still be some spin off if other sites start quoting Autocar rather than the original source. If you are a registered user on the Autocar site you could do them a favour and point out that their article requires to be changed/deleted.

Thanks for info, clearly mislead by the Autocar article.

Still I think the UK as a whole will need to push back, I suspect they'll start with aligning with the EU at 2035. 5 years will help but maybe still not enough for this country.

 

[Mrklaw]

Well, need to consider the elephant in the room of fuel tax. Once this is gone that's going to leave a ~£25 billion hole for the treasury. They are going to have to fill this with a pay per mile kind of scheme I suspect or vasty increase road tax per year. The cost of running an electric car is still quite a low tax affair but it won't last.



Still I think the UK as a whole will need to push back, I suspect they'll start with aligning with the EU at 2035. 5 years will help but maybe still not enough for this country.

oh sure at some point. My main point being on-street parking due to circumstances shouldnl't be disproportinately more expensive just because you don't have a driveway. I'd expect them to go pay per mile in some form which gives additional flexibility to charge more at peak times to try adn reduce congestion and/or per road type (more for motorways?).

I don't think the government needs to change the 2030 goal. We're likely to see most pure Diesels basically stop being bought by 2025 and if the DNOs can get power improvements into key areas the charge points will follow for rapid charger improvements

there are also levers between the two of these - you have the entire existing fleet of ICE vehicles still paying fuel duty which you can increase/decrease as a soft tool depending on the transtiion progress and that can also help mitigate loss of fuel duty from new EVs - ramp up fuel duty while you prepare your alternative plans around road pricing etc.

 

[FastLaneJB]

oh sure at some point. My main point being on-street parking due to circumstances shouldnl't be disproportinately more expensive just because you don't have a driveway. I'd expect them to go pay per mile in some form which gives additional flexibility to charge more at peak times to try adn reduce congestion and/or per road type (more for motorways?).

I don't think the government needs to change the 2030 goal. We're likely to see most pure Diesels basically stop being bought by 2025 and if the DNOs can get power improvements into key areas the charge points will follow for rapid charger improvements

there are also levers between the two of these - you have the entire existing fleet of ICE vehicles still paying fuel duty which you can increase/decrease as a soft tool depending on the transtiion progress and that can also help mitigate loss of fuel duty from new EVs - ramp up fuel duty while you prepare your alternative plans around road pricing etc.

I like your optimism on this and honestly hope you are right.

Not sure I can see us fitting all our path in areas where people park on the road with chargers. I do suspect they'll need to go somewhere to charge. Now eventually this won't be much of an issue as batteries will be cheap enough and have enough range like an ICE plus charging speeds could also be quicker that the charge time could be not far off the fill up time of an ICE. That's more than 7 years away though in my opinion.

I suspect it might not go down well with the masses if you try to tax them out of their ICE vehicles into EV's that are more expensive to the point maybe out of their price range. There's a lot of people that could be priced out of car ownership due to this transition.

 

[Mrklaw]

short bollards with sockets at 2-car spaces, tapped into the street light circuits. Power share if necessary down to 3kw (enough for trickle charging overnight). Needs financing but I think infra-wise the move from Sodium street lights to LED helps a lot - may be a shortfall in capacity but hopefully not insurmountable.

Biggest problem here is likely government assuming its the council's job and the councils not having a clear template to work from or any funding to do so

 

[ACarneiro]

Not sure how much more efficient LEDs are compared to Sodium Vapour lights.
I, for one, will sorely miss that light. LEDs tend to be overly harsh and focused. I dislike them quite a lot.

 

[init6]

IMO fast charging (7kw or even 3.6) should be government regulated to be the same as domestic grid electricity prices.

No way! Public charging is cheaper than domestic prices for me. Even Rapids aren't that much more expensive.

 

[Jason71]

That's right in the grand scheme of the whole grid. The problem is that you're shifting 10GW of daytime load from industrial sites with plentiful transmission capacity to thousands of residential sites with transformers and distribution systems designed with 2kW-per-household calculations.

In my housing estate we have a transformer and I am told that each phase has a 400A fuse.

At 32A single phase draw, it would only take about 13 cars charging to overload that fuse. For the 3 phases let's say the whole housing estate of 100+ houses would only manage 40 cars charging simultaneously. Some of these 100+ houses will more than likely have more than one car.

I am glad that I managed to get my EVSEs and batteries installed early, as I would imagine the DNO is going to start looking very closely at capacity calculations. Between charging cars, batteries and heating water with off-peak energy I am already hitting the 100A limit on my supply for 5 hours every night (in the winter. Summer is a different story)

There will definitely need to be some sort of upgrade done closer to "the edge" of the electrical network once home energy supply for mobility, heating and cooking becomes exclusively (or nearly exclusively) electric.

I am thinking we will get to the point where DNO's start refusing people permission to install EV chargers on the basis the local grid cant cope in their location

 

[GRiLLA]

Consider all the issues here to solve:

Rolls up sleeves.

• Around 1/3 I think of cars are parked on the street, if they cannot charge at home we need enough public chargers to cover them charging
  • Also do not forget that a lot of these without driveways probably are not quite as wealthy, the cost of public charging could well put them off along with the inconvience

Imagine if only 1/3 as many cars needed to use Petrol stations as do today. It takes at least 5 minutes to fill up, navigate the maze of chocolate bars and pay, so say people spend 15 minutes charging. Given the average daily distance is 20 miles a day, 140 a week, 35KWH, so charge at 140KW and there would seem to be ample capacity. Add some workplace charging, shopping, train stations etc. and it really doesn't seem hard to imagine once petrol stations change.

• Electricity grid and the issues of having lots of EV's charging from houses. Lots of studies on this but it'll also be a major issue that's not cheap to solve
  • We already know also planning and lack of HV cables in places is slowing down the rollout in this country.

I really think this is a doom assuming myth if demand systems can stagger cars appropriately. Again 20 miles per day is less than an hour charging at 32amp, 12 hours, it's really not very hard to see how it can work without significant wiring changes. We are already starting to mandate the home chargers are demand mangement capable.

• Additional land and space for all EV chargers, we'll need far more of these than we ever did petrol / diesel pumps.

See above, really we won't need more space.

• Quantity of chargers and maintaining the network is going to be expensive. Currently for petrol / diesel pumps you've someone onsite to know when they stop working and get a repair organised. This works well as how often do you go to a petrol station and a pump isn't working?
  • When EV chargers are spread all over the country it requires people to report the issues and operators to have deeper pockets to get people out to so many locations to repair them. More chargers vs pumps will equal more repairs. No one with eyes on them like at petrol stations will result in some being vandalised. This by the way I suspect is what is going to make public charging very expensive if they cannot hugely increase the reliability.

But by your example companies are able to maintain petrol pumps which seem to be pretty complex compared to EV chargers. Why shouldn't EV charging be manned in the same way? Also Tesla seem to be able to do it even if other companies don't.

• The cost of electric cars is too high for a lot of people. The cheaper cars can have something like 100 miles of range where a cheap petrol / diesel would cost less and probably have a tank for 300 miles even on a little city car. Prices will come down but enough in 7 years? A lot rides on new battery chemistry being able to come to market to improve the energy density of batteries.

We need to reduce the CO2 we emit from transport, the global temperature increase doesn't care about the cost. It will be far more expensive for each of us to deal with the environmental and political consequences of climate change. I do agree that we need a broader strategy than just replacing cars, make all public transport free etc.

• Electric cars have a much higher environmental impact to make, only have a lot of miles in a petrol / diesel are they better. Making a lot of electric cars isn't a perfect answer but yes it is likely an improvement.

People generally underestimate the in-life impact of petrol/diesel cars, even by the most pessimistic numbers across their life EVs emit 2x less total CO2, more optimistic is like 10x lower.

 

[qwickshot]

I am thinking we will get to the point where DNO's start refusing people permission to install EV chargers on the basis the local grid cant cope in their location

You don’t have to notify the DNO for a commando socket or a granny charger.

If the connection is reaching capacity, it’s their job to deal with it. It’s no different to an electric shower or any other high load appliance.

Fortunately not all cars will be charging at the same time. Most people only drive 25 miles a day or less.

 

[GRiLLA]

That's right in the grand scheme of the whole grid. The problem is that you're shifting 10GW of daytime load from industrial sites with plentiful transmission capacity to thousands of residential sites with transformers and distribution systems designed with 2kW-per-household calculations.

In my housing estate we have a transformer and I am told that each phase has a 400A fuse.

At 32A single phase draw, it would only take about 13 cars charging to overload that fuse. For the 3 phases let's say the whole housing estate of 100+ houses would only manage 40 cars charging simultaneously. Some of these 100+ houses will more than likely have more than one car.

Using average mileage of 20/day, that's less than an hour of charging per car/day. You've got plenty of capacity if some Intelligent Octopus like system scheduled the charging across the night.

 

[Zilla91]

queuing + filling + queuing to pay + waiting for people to do their weekly shopping. It can easily take 10 minutes. Perhaps it doesn't feel like it because you're doing lots of little things keeping you active - like going the long way round with less traffic can feel quicker?

I mean I can count the number of times I've had to queue for petrol in the last 10 years on two hands.

The act of filling itself only take 2 minutes or so and then even if you're queueing to pay that's like another minute or 2, but again, most places have an app or pay@pump so there's no need to go in to pay

 

[Adopado]

Not sure how much more efficient LEDs are compared to Sodium Vapour lights.
I, for one, will sorely miss that light. LEDs tend to be overly harsh and focused. I dislike them quite a lot.

"2.2 Low-power (≤150W) street lamps​

The effective luminous efficiency of sodium lamps (included in the overall efficiency of 0.55) is about 45~551m/W, while the led road light is still calculated at 170 lm /W, the LED can achieve 75% energy saving than sodium lamps. Up to 80%."


I suspect the reason for streetlamp LED harshness is that those are the ones that run most efficiently. LEDs are not all the same (as we know from home lighting) and you trade some efficiency for a better quality of LED light of equivalent brightness. If we can take a lower brightness level then it is possible to have the warmer light at the same power rating. I understand that even just changing all traffic lights to LED saved huge amounts of money on electricity.

 

[DaveNN]

regarding the grid:
take into account that single car charging @7 kw is like having 2 kettles running.

now we have 2 major peaks every day. - one in the morning, another in evening.

we will have a plateaued curve during the day (charging at work) and it will be much less of the peak every night, grid can cope no issues, really.

It is like having 2 kettles running but for a long period.
Add an EV, Heat Pump, 12Kw shower/ induction hob ( neither of which the DNO have to know about) + the thousands of looped supplies ( me being one) ..admittedly looped supplies should be unlooped with an EV.. the next few years are going to be fun.

 

[Adopado]

It is like having 2 kettles running but for a long period.
Add an EV, Heat Pump, 12Kw shower/ induction hob ( neither of which the DNO have to know about) + the thousands of looped supplies ( me being one) ..admittedly looped supplies should be unlooped with an EV.. the next few years are going to be fun.

Could be worth investing in companies that make substation transformers!

 

[DaveNN]

Could be worth investing in companies that make substation transformers!

The substations should be OK

It's the cables thereafter.

 

[WannabeOwner]

What are you doing to take 5-10 mins to fill up at a petrol station?

As I said: "per week". That was based on 35K miles p.a. and was typically 2x per week, and 16 supercharges per year. Any average-ratio of the two needs to take into account the battery size (smaller = more road-trip charges) and the number of out-of-range journeys that the car makes - for a "city car" that might be zero, for a travelling-salesman quite possible "Lots".

The act of filling itself only take 2 minutes or so and then even if you're queueing to pay that's like another minute or 2

I seriously doubt that you can actually achieve that average in practice, you also have turning-off-the-highway and in some cases going-out-of-way to get there (as you do with Supercharger, but not with home charging, and not with e.g. Supermarket charging which are plug-in and walk-away). I agree that pay-at-pump is faster, but I don't often see people actually using that ... maybe they need some ciggies ...

queuing + filling + queuing to pay + waiting for people to do their weekly shopping. It can easily take 10 minutes

Plus a bit more if the forecourt is not right-next-to-the-route; some people are probably going out of their way to buy cheaper, and for me the Esso garage on my direct route to anywhere closed and I had to take a short detour for my regular local Diesel fillup. Thankfully I haven't had to bother with that, nor the smelly forecourt, for half a dozen years

Also do not forget that a lot of these without driveways probably are not quite as wealthy, the cost of public charging could well put them off along with the inconvience

I do suspect they'll need to go somewhere to charge

I'm the perennial optimist but ...

My starting point for this is that we have dug up the roads for Water, Sewage, Phone, Cable, Fibre ... against that those services would have been easy to sell to everyone-in-the-street, whereas car charging might take someone 10-20 years before their ICE is swapped for an EV, so not everyone is a buyer on day one.

Of the street parkers some percentage will be "city cars", and maybe they would choose to charge at e.g. supermarket once a week instead of on the street. Some others will be able to charge at work (and likely that day-time charging will become the cheapest option, at least during summer "When sun shines and wind blows")

on-street parking due to circumstances shouldnl't be disproportinately more expensive just because you don't have a driveway

I wonder how many people (who park in the road) will use street-charging? Certainly those commuting to work (unless they can charge at work), and travelling-business-folk ... but for city-car folk they may charge at Supermarket.

Anyway Elon tells me that Tesla self-driving ride-hail cars will be along shortly so no need for a car, road parking, or self-charging ... I'll get my coat !!

Electricity grid and the issues of having lots of EV's charging from houses

I think time-of-use rates will solve that. My Tesla starts charging at Off Peak - bang on. It might only going to be adding a couple of percent ('coz parasitic use has fallen below the threshold), but its going to do it right at the start of Off Peak. Plenty of opportunity for software to "negotiate" a suitable time, based on range-needed and so on. Could also charge at lower AMPs if the rest of the housing estate has a lot of charging to do that night ...

... but, yeah, quite a lot of "collaboration" required by the software to achieve that.

I wonder how Norway has got on? They have unlimited hydro, but their infrastructure must have been like ours and based on each house using a kettle at different times?

I'm a heavy overnight consumer in the Winter (fill car and PowerWall), but in Summer I get 1,000 miles a month into the cars off the roof. Clearly I'm an outlier - more PV than most, and also I work from home and car is parked at home during the day and available for charging.

We have EV charging at work (for about 1/3rd of the car park) and are talking of covering the roof in PV (could/should have done it sooner, delayed because we decided that if doing PV we should also use the opportunity (scaffolding etc.) to take the whole roof off and improve the insulation ... but that cost was prohibitive. We are now at the point of "Just do the PV".

France has mandated all public car parks to be covered with PV (the bigger car parks have only around 2 years to comply ...)

Additional land and space for all EV chargers, we'll need far more of these than we ever did petrol / diesel pumps.

Car Parks would be my preference to deal with non-road-trip top-ups. Motorway service stations have plenty of parking. Existing Forecourts definitely not, but in combination with Supermarkets I think we'd be OK in towns? Supermarkets are incentivised as it will bring them footfall. Waitrose near me has recently been significant "revamped" for the entrance / exit (which was ridiculously tight), and having been pleased they did that it then became apparently that had included infrastructure for Shell Re-charge chargers, of which they have a dozen or so (a few of which are 350kW ... that's going to be a very short shop!)

Currently for petrol / diesel pumps you've someone onsite to know when they stop working and get a repair organised

I'm a software engineer. I don't understand why the 3rd party have such lousy maintenance. The statistics for "No car has charged at THIS stall for XX hours" should be enough to trigger an alert that it might be bust, rather than expecting a user to report it. Add to that if a car plugs in and then fails to charge which is be an even more useful data point in conjunction with "No car charged in XX hours"

Same with a central heating thermostat. It comes on and "demands heat" ... what if the temperature carries on falling? What does it do? It just carries on "demanding heat". Useless. What should it do? Send me an email saying "Your boiler isn't working" ... I don't know if even a fancy Nest thermostat does that?

Prices will come down but enough in 7 years?

There is a cost to not doing this - the cost of cleaning up the environment of the extra emissions from any delay. Never known Government to spend money now to avoid having to spend more money later ... but they could.

Electric is going to get better, no doubt. But by enough for 2030 which is just 7 years away?

Norway has got there in about that time. When they started there were only two choices: a Model-S at £100K+ or a Nissan Leaf ...

... at least we are starting with a decent range of choices. I'm seeing large numbers of EV green-flash number-plates - more than I think I would have expected; way more of my mates are in the real-soon-now camp, whereas before they were envious on the one hand but resistant on the other. More the fool them, I've had loads of benefit from being an early-adopter - not least the referral swag from Tesla

I can count the number of times I've had to queue for petrol in the last 10 years on two hands.

I've used Superchargers (according to TeslaFi) 134 times. I've queued once, and that was for 5 minutes. That of course disguises the problem of increasing EVs if the rollout of Chargers doesn't keep pace ... and also the pinch-point of holiday traffic (which is probably always going to exceed capacity, and given charging times of 20 minutes is far worse in EV than ICE)