Can I add an EV charger for a PHEV to this CU

[JohnW2]

For the fifth time, ROAD TAX. And yes, I know that they call it Vehicle Excise Duty.

The 'honeymoon' I referred to related to Fuel Excise Duty, not Road Tax/VED. In fact, although I didn't realise at the time I wrote (although I said that I expected this to happen soon), since a couple of months ago, EVs over here (previously exempt from Road Tax) are also being charged the same Road Tax as petrol/diesel vehicles - so the same situation as in your country.

However, as I said, I've been talking about Fuel Excise Duty. I think that the 'average' petrol/diesel car owner currently pays something like £450 fuel duty (+VAT) per year (about 700 litres) but owners of EVs pay no such tax/duty at all. That has got to change before long, and it's when that happens that the honeymoon will end.

 

[morqthana]

I didn't say it was the same cost as Diesel (although the road tax unjustifiably is).

I assume you can show how an EV uses the roads differently from, and impacts the roads differently from, an ICEV, such that it is unjustifiable for them to be taxed the same?

 

[JohnW2]

I assume you can show how an EV uses the roads differently from, and impacts the roads differently from, an ICEV, such that it is unjustifiable for them to be taxed the same?

Quite so.

However, I have to say that I've always regarded it as a very silly tax. It would surely be better (and cheaper for government) to simply add a little onto the fuel excise duty - not only would that avoid the (probably massive!) cost of administering and policing the 'car/road tax' but it would also mean that what people paid would be road-use-dependent, which would seem eminently fair?

 

[morqthana]

But that's the kind of thinking that keeps proposing "EV problems" like "you have to have off street parking to charge an EV and make sure the right person pays for the electricity"

Without significant infrastructure/street furniture changes, people who don't live in ground level dwellings with off street parking are not going to be able to use home charging facilities.

Have you seen recent city housing developments? How many people living in a flat here could charge an EV "at home"?

Pause for a moment to consider how you, as an EV owner, end up being billed for the electricity your car consumed while it's parked in Aldi's car park, plugged into a "public" charger.

The wire that charger is connected to did not route through your house

You and I both know how they get billed and neither of us need to pause to consider that.

But I admit I did have to pause before I realised that either you are proposing that people genuinely charging at home should pay the same rate as people using public chargers (and pause again to wonder how they could be billed).

Or you are proposing that businesses installing commercial public chargers would be made to only sell electricity at the rate that people pay at home (and pause again to wonder why they would install the chargers).

And that makes them more impossible to connect a pavement mounted charger to how?

I would remind you that my reply was to

Highly likely the wires that carry electricity to the houses pass under where the car is parked,

So unless the car is parked on the pavement, the cables don't pass under where the car is parked

All chargers have a meter inside, they can have an RFID reader in, a payment terminal in, and they connect to a central coordinating system that does cool stuff like balance the load on the grid and offer you an app to control the charging of the car. That system receives reports of energy consumed, and it knows who you are because you identified yourself by RFID card, bank card or mobile app. One day it'll even just know the car from a built in unique identifier in the car

This isn't pie in the sky; it exists today in nearly every charger you see

All of that is true.

And none of it addresses the structural inequality in the system you suggest could work

This means we can stick 20 chargers in a pavement down a street, we can let the home owners park and plug in anywhere and we can bill the correct person, because they identify themselves when they start the charge.

At what rate do we bill them?

I have neighbours with EVs and off-street parking, and chargepoints on their houses.

Please explain which you would rather try to do:

a) Convince them that they should pay 50p/kWh for charging at home

or

b) Convince the operators of public charging points to sell at 25p/kWh or 7p off-peak.

All the technology is there. We can even stop people from 3 streets over parking on this street and using these chargers, because these chargers are software gated to only be usable by residents of eg this street and the two neighbouring ones

And lo - all the barmy fantasies of the swivel-eyed conspiracy loonies about geofencing to control and restrict peoples freedom of movement get a boost.

Well done.


Also, what are your proposals to deal with the reality that in some places it is so hard to find a parking space that parking "3 streets over" is not unheard of?

 

[morqthana]

Quite so.

However, I have to say that I've always regarded it as a very silly tax. It would surely be better (and cheaper for government) to simply add a little onto the fuel excise duty - not only would that avoid the (probably massive!) cost of administering and policing the 'car/road tax' but it would also mean that what people paid would be road-use-dependent, which would seem eminently fair?

Just have a pay-per-mile charge, maybe with different bands according to vehicle size/weight. That way someone with 2 cars in which he does a total of 10,000 miles pa does not pay twice what someone who has 1 car in which he does 20,000 miles.

 

[Risteard]

I assume you can show how an EV uses the roads differently from, and impacts the roads differently from, an ICEV, such that it is unjustifiable for them to be taxed the same?

No it isn't justifiable. There should be a reward for reduced environmental impact. Also never before has free tax been changed. Therefore it is my right to have free road tax for life for that electric van.

 

[robinbanks]

However, I have to say that I've always regarded it as a very silly tax.

I classically, and perhaps cynically, considered that (in the days of paper tax discs) it was a way of attempting to police and ensure that all the relevant documentation regarding a vehicle was up to date - does it have an MoT? Does it have insurance? A probably-genuine person has verified these two things (well, looked at two pieces of paper that could be faked and handed out a third piece of paper that could be faked) and the check is complete, most people abide by the rule, and most people don't change things after they've done the admin to set them up. The revenue collected went towards paying for the running of the scheme as well as other admin processes relating to vehicle use and registration on a simple "bigger car, richer person can afford more"

Fast forward and we don't need any of that manual, fallible check now we have ANPR and MID, eMoT etc but things seem to cost more so we not only need to carry on scalping people for VED, FD etc but open many more avenues for the DVLA to rake the cash in, selling reg marks and handing details out to unscrupulous private parking companies etc..

So unless the car is parked on the pavement, the cables don't pass under where the car is parked

Oh crumbs, if I publicly beg you to see the word "under" and replace it with "very close to", will you dial down the pedantry some?

The point being made was that the wire is in the road (or the pavement) and thus within an incredibly short excavatory distance from where the car is parked and thus far easier to connect a charger to than going all the way into the house, smashing a variety of things up to get a cable to come from the meter, all the way back to the street, to this exact space here which the car must then always be parked in in order to ensure that Mr Jones pays for the electric that charges his car. It's inflexible and lunacy to try and force the off street parking model into the on street problem space. There are other, better ways of solving this problem, using virtualisation

Have you seen recent city housing developments? How many people living in a flat here could charge an EV "at home"?

You appear to be conflating two distinct problems; space to park any vehicle (which may be limited in the high rise you have pictured) and ability to charge an EV. Nothing about the vehicle fuel resolves the space issue. I'd argue that your point is senseless; how many people living in that tower block right now even own a car? Where do they park it? If eschewing the city life benefits of everything being in easy reach of walking, cycling or public transport, and focusing on car ownership was high on the list of priorities for them, a huge tower block with no parking is probably not an ideal place for them to live, and the fuel the vehicle uses is irrelevant

you are proposing that people genuinely charging at home should pay the same rate

No, you are again imagining some irrelevant scenario and trying to make argument from it. The meter that charges the car knows how many kWh are consumed. It knows the person that caused the consumption. It tells the energy supply company the person is subscribed to who the person is and how many kWh they consumed. The energy supply company puts another line in their energy bill for "EV charging" and bills them however it has been agreed politically/legislatively/contractually. None of that energy had to flow through the meter in that person's house and because it is a separated, known quantity it can be treated in any way chosen

At what rate do we bill them?

What rate do you want to bill them? You're inventing problems and I'm not sure why. There is nothing magical or different about the energy that flows through your home meter as flows through a public charger. It doesn't use different wires, it isn't a different colour, it isn't more viscous.. it's just a metered quantity of stuff and the price of it is not dependent on the point at which it comes out of the wire; it's chosen not arbitrarily but with a number of factors in mind some of which may be the whims of a marketing department somewhere

Also, what are your proposals to deal with the reality that in some places it is so hard to find a parking space that parking "3 streets over" is not unheard of?

I should learn that saying something like "it would even be possible..." to try and break someone out of their blinkered mode thinking and start to wonder about how present technology could solve problems, will actually just flip them into problem generation mode and engage in a whole load of whataboutery to argue against a "solution" that wasn't even being proposed..

I don't necessarily think we should limit it so someone from 3 streets over can't charge here (but you've seen resident parking zones right? People from zone B with a zone B permit can't park on this zone A street?), I was just trying to open your mind up to this wonderful world of technology that really can solve various problems (if they're deemed problems) if only people will stop insisting everything needs to be done how it always has been

 

[ericmark]

You don't need high rise flats, and to be frank, I lived in Hong Kong for a time, and I would not have dreamed of getting a car, the public transport was so good there was no point.

But this little sleepy village, has houses directly against the main road, and there is a car park a distance from the houses for the residents cars, not ideal but it works, car park I think owned by council, and they have taken 9 parking spaces and converted it to 6 EV charging points, and the residents have been up in arms, as these 9 slots were the closest to the houses, and were now empty as non of the residents at this point have electric cars.

The council told residents they were not yet commissioned, and they could park non electric cars in the spaces, it seems this has continued even after the charge points were commissioned, and since no one has electric cars why not. However these are of course public charging points, and not restricted to the residents, there are two other EV charging points in the village, but abuse means they are only open when the heritage railway is running.

I do hate it when people say "They should do this or that." Who is the they? So to have cheaper public charging would be near impossible to set up, as first point is they are commercial units, so they pay commercial rates for the electric to start with, and second in the main you are using them at peak times.

My sons firm offers incentives to go green, push bikes, e-bikes, and electric cars, the latter is a two year at a time lease, so he will have an EV charging point fitted at home, and he has a drive which at a squeeze will take two cars. So charging will be off-road, but the question is what happens after the first two years? He is unable to leave the firm as they paid for his degree, so first two years not a problem, but I have had the problem of company vans and cars, and what to do when you change jobs, and are left with no car. However they will not remove the charging point, so he does then have the option.

But the next step is solar panels and battery, and it all gets linked together, so we have the haves and the havenots, as he can only install solar, batteries, and EV charging point as he owns the house.

So as a home owner I look at electric bill of maybe £50 a month average, and the non home owner, £120 a month. Most of the homes in the village who have to use that public car park, are rented, and the push for solar panels, batteries, heat pumps, and EV's is resulting in a bigger and bigger gap between those who own their home and those who rent.

In theory the person who rents can move at the drop of a hat, in practice that is no longer the case, finding a small home to rent is hard, want a mansion not so much of a problem, but affordable housing is becoming more and more of a problem, and the push for solar panels, batteries, heat pumps, and EV's is making it worse.

 

[JohnW2]

At what rate do we bill them?... I have neighbours with EVs and off-street parking, and chargepoints on their houses.
Please explain which you would rather try to do:
a) Convince them that they should pay 50p/kWh for charging at home
or
b) Convince the operators of public charging points to sell at 25p/kWh or 7p off-peak.

In an attempt to put the numbers into some sort of perspective ...

IF (per my suggestion) one wanted to replace Fuel Excise Duty with a tax/duty on electricity used to charge EVs which resulted in the generation of the same amount of revenue, then, if I've got my extremely rough back-of-a-ciggie-packet calculations correct (see below) I think users would have to pay something like 21p per kWh in addition to whatever was the prevailing cost of the actual electricity.

Even with a "7p off-peak" cost of the actual electricity, users would therefore have to pay at least about 28p per kWh. However, very cheap 'off-peak' electricity costs will presumably not persist in the long-term, since increasingly large numbers of people charging EVs at what are currently low demand ('off-peak') times of day will eventually turn those periods into ones which are not "low demand ('off-peak') times of day".

[ Assuming, very roughly, that an EV does about 3.3 miles per kWh and an ICE vehicle about 10 miles per litre of petrol/diesel, that would mean that 1 kWh of 'EV electricity' was equivalent to roughly 1/3 litres of petrol/diesel.
The excise duty of 1/3 litres of petrol/diesel is (with 20% VAT) currently about 21p ]

 

[morqthana]

Those figures are all well and good for the replacement of current fuel taxes.

But where will the profit for the installers and operators of public charging stations come from?

 

[morqthana]

No it isn't justifiable. There should be a reward for reduced environmental impact.

That reward could be on the cost of "fuel", which is where it logically belongs.

I know it's been a while since it was hypothecated (was it ever?), but road tax is to do with road usage, road maintenance, road construction,.. and those are not lower for EVs. In fact they are higher, because of the weight of EVs.

Also never before has free tax been changed. Therefore it is my right to have free road tax for life for that electric van.

Of course it isn't - don't be ridiculous.

 

[JohnW2]

Those figures are all well and good for the replacement of current fuel taxes. .... But where will the profit for the installers and operators of public charging stations come from?

Quite so - and not just their 'profit' - also the actual cost of obtaining, installing, maintaining and administering the public charging stations.

So, yes, I was just guesstimating the minimum pricing that would be required to just replace the fuel taxes. In the case of 'public charging stations', the cost of them (obtaining, installing, maintaining, administering and 'profit') will obviously have to be added to that minimum. However, I wasn't talking specifically about public charging stations, so in the case of ('genuine') home charging (however 'administered', little more than that 'minimum would probably be required.

For those reasons, there's presumably really no escaping the fact that electricity from 'public charging stations' has got to be more expensive than if the charging were being genuinely at home, on one's own land.

 

[morqthana]

Oh crumbs, if I publicly beg you to see the word "under" and replace it with "very close to", will you dial down the pedantry some?

OK.

You appear to be conflating two distinct problems;

Not at all.

space to park any vehicle (which may be limited in the high rise you have pictured) and ability to charge an EV. Nothing about the vehicle fuel resolves the space issue.

EV charging adds another dimension to it.

I'd argue that your point is senseless; how many people living in that tower block right now even own a car? Where do they park it? If eschewing the city life benefits of everything being in easy reach of walking, cycling or public transport, and focusing on car ownership was high on the list of priorities for them, a huge tower block with no parking is probably not an ideal place for them to live, and the fuel the vehicle uses is irrelevant

Remember the swivel-eyed conspiracy loonies I mentioned? They are already convinced that "15-minute cities" is code for "geofenced ghettos outside of which people will be forbidden to move", that EVs are an integral tool for making that work, and that engineering things to make car ownership harder or impractical is part of the "you will own nothing and be happy" plan.

Suggestions like yours will make them say "See? I told you so" and there will never be a shortage of populist politicians eager to exploit them, so be careful how you make them.

No, you are again imagining some irrelevant scenario and trying to make argument from it.

No, I'm posing real questions about real, practical issues, which need answers.

The meter that charges the car knows how many kWh are consumed. It knows the person that caused the consumption. It tells the energy supply company the person is subscribed to who the person is and how many kWh they consumed. The energy supply company puts another line in their energy bill for "EV charging" and bills them however it has been agreed politically/legislatively/contractually. None of that energy had to flow through the meter in that person's house and because it is a separated, known quantity it can be treated in any way chosen

Who is going to pay for the increased administration costs given that the energy supply company charging the user via his bill is going to have to pay that money to, and account for the usage to, a different supply company who is billing the owner/operator of the chargepoint.

By all means try to wave some magic "technology will solve everything" wand at problems like that, but please don't expect not to be questioned on specifics.

What rate do you want to bill them? You're inventing problems and I'm not sure why.

I'm not inventing problems. I am spotting potential ones. And asking questions about them. Questions to which you must surely have answers? I mean, you have thought this through?

I don't have any particular rate I want to bill people at, but I do want to know how the rate could be the same if Fred plugs his car into a charger on his house wall and uses electricity which has gone through his meter or if he plugs into a public chargepoint where the underlying electricity prices paid by the chargepoint owner/operator are different, and when that business needs to make a return on it's capital investment, and on its supply of electricity, and at the very least cover its ongoing costs of operation of its physical assets.

There is nothing magical or different about the energy that flows through your home meter as flows through a public charger. It doesn't use different wires, it isn't a different colour, it isn't more viscous.. it's just a metered quantity of stuff and the price of it is not dependent on the point at which it comes out of the wire; it's chosen not arbitrarily but with a number of factors in mind some of which may be the whims of a marketing department somewhere

It's price is very much dependent on whether it comes out of a privately owned and operated point on someone's house or a commercially owned and operated one on a lamp post, or bollard, or car park wall.

I should learn that saying something like "it would even be possible..." to try and break someone out of their blinkered mode thinking and start to wonder about how present technology could solve problems, will actually just flip them into problem generation mode and engage in a whole load of whataboutery to argue against a "solution" that wasn't even being proposed..

I guess one person's "problem generation mode" and "whataboutery" is another's "realism".

Which side of that coin you look at probably depends on how satisfied you are with vague "technology will solve everything" wand-waving and suggestions which are utterly bereft of realistic details.

I was just trying to open your mind up to this wonderful world of technology that really can solve various problems (if they're deemed problems) if only people will stop insisting everything needs to be done how it always has been

I'm trying to open your mind up to the fact that there are problems which are not susceptible to "technology", and that you should stop insisting that there aren't.

 

[morqthana]

For those reasons, there's presumably really no escaping the fact that electricity from 'public charging stations' has got to be more expensive than if the charging were being genuinely at home, on one's own land.

Quite.

Unless we just "decide" that it won't be.

Unfortunately "public charging" tends to be a lot more expensive than residential charging. There are a number of reasons for this.
.
.

I understand what you're saying, but they're all political problems that can be done away with legislatively

Post being assessed to have no off street parking home owners on street X can plug their EVs into any on street charger within Y miles of their house, tap their RFID card/app/bank card and get billed for the energy consumed by the charger, which does so happen to be connected to the wire serving their neighbour's neighbour's house but it doesn't matter because has its own meter, and the central server it communicates with puts the kWh it consumes on their own bill at 5%, etc. Software can solve all these problems, connecting the chargers to power is the trivial part

There is nothing magical or different about the energy that flows through your home meter as flows through a public charger. It doesn't use different wires, it isn't a different colour, it isn't more viscous.. it's just a metered quantity of stuff and the price of it is not dependent on the point at which it comes out of the wire; it's chosen not arbitrarily but with a number of factors in mind some of which may be the whims of a marketing department somewhere

Just don't ask him for any details of how any of that could work in reality.

 

[JohnW2]

Just have a pay-per-mile charge, maybe with different bands according to vehicle size/weight. That way someone with 2 cars in which he does a total of 10,000 miles pa does not pay twice what someone who has 1 car in which he does 20,000 miles.

If one assumes (obviously not actually correctly) that all vehicles have similar fuel consumption then that would work out the same as simply doing it all (probably at less bureaucratic cost) with a "fuel (or EV electricity) excise duty".