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

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

If you're still wondering how it would work, go into a shop and pay for something with a contactless card. Now go into a different shop and pay for something else with a contactless card

Somehow the money came out of your bank account without you having to drag the bank into the shop.

It's amazing; it's like there's some way for the shop's computers to talk to their bank's computers to talk to your bank's computers and arrange for the exact amount of money needed to pay for the item, to just pass virtually from you, post identifying yourself to the shop's computer by waving a bit of plastic.

In the next shop, it's literally Next and you have a store card for that one; a quick run through the till and you're heading out in some shiny new threads, that you'll get a statement for at the end of the month and pay them. It's not Next that runs that scheme by the way, they farm it off to CapitalOne or whoever

How about if you park your car on the street, and don't have any coins for the parking meter, but instead you text your reg to the phone number in the side of it, and you get an SMS that costs you £1.50, coincidentally the same price as an hour's parking, the fee goes on your mobile phone contract bill to be settled at the end of the month and the traffic warden leaves you alone

If you're feeling super generous, you could wave your allstar fuel card on a public charger for someone who has an EV; the money to pay for the electricity goes on your itemised fuel statement that you pay at the end of the month, without you needing to haul the charger home and plug it into your meter..

You live in a world where you're surrounded by things you can consume that don't have to flow through a measuring device bolted to your house. You can use their (the shop's) measuring device, networked payment or item allocation system to acquire items that you will at some point pay for when you're sent a bill for them

I promise, electricity is no different and car chargers are more than just a fancy electrical socket - they have a backing management system that can do all this already; you identify yourself to the charger, and it will tell eon to put a line on your electricity bill, eon will collect the money from you and pass it to whoever is the energy supplier for whatever charger it was. It's the same process as paying for anything with a card, where your bank and the shop's bank are not the same bank
 
You still don't get it, or rather, as I'm sure you aren't so stupid that you really don't get it, you are ignoring my questions and denying the reality of issues which you cannot magic away, in the (utterly vain) hope that they will go away if you do that.

SPOILER ALERT: The world does not work like that - you do not have the ability to bend reality.

I promise, electricity is no different and car chargers are more than just a fancy electrical socket - they have a backing management system that can do all this already; you identify yourself to the charger, and it will tell eon to put a line on your electricity bill, eon will collect the money from you and pass it to whoever is the energy supplier for whatever charger it was.
And how much do they collect?

If it's the same rate that people charging from home pay, then where does the money to pay for the chargepoint owner's return on investment come from? Where does the money to pay for his costs of maintaining his physical assets come from? Where does the money to pay for the electricity he is selling on come from? Where does the money to give him a profit to make it worth his while getting into the EV chargepoint business in the first place come from?
 
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".
There's always been the question of how to organise "road taxes".

Do you charge per vehicle? If so, do you charge the same for all, or with different tariffs according to certain vehicle characteristics?

Do you charge per mile of road use? Ditto Q about rates.

Do you put duties on fuel?

If you want to incentivise, or disincentivise, certain behaviours or choices, how do you tweak things?

Should you charge people who live in rural areas where a car is absolutely essential less than you charge people in urban areas where it isn't?

Should you charge disabled people for whom a car is absolutely essential no matter where they live less?


EVs don't change any of those.
 
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And how much do they collect?
If it's the same rate that people charging from home pay, then where does the money to pay for the chargepoint owner's return on investment come from? Where does the money to pay for his costs of maintaining his physical assets come from? Where does the money to pay for the electricity he is selling on come from? Where does the money to give him a profit to make it worth his while getting into the EV chargepoint business in the first place come from?
Indeed. As I wrote in response to your first mention of this ...
Quite so - and not just their 'profit' - also the actual cost of obtaining, installing, maintaining and administering the public charging stations.
...... 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 so - and not just their 'profit' - also the actual cost of obtaining, installing, maintaining and administering the public charging stations.
.
.
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.
Looking back, it appears that robinbanks doesn't care if some people have to pay more to charge their car if they don't have off-street parking.

Not everybody can have a (home chargepoint) because of a lack of offstreet parking capacity at their house

a lack of offstreet parking capacity at their house
Another argument I've never held much regard for.
 
Looking back, it appears that robinbanks doesn't care if some people have to pay more to charge their car if they don't have off-street parking.
Maybe - but, as I wrote, it is inevitable that they will have to pay more unless someone 'subsidises them' - and, in practice, if they were 'subsidised, it would probably be (one way or another) the EV users who do have off-street parking who would effectively be doing the subsidising - i.e. those with off-street parking would pay more so that that those without off-street parking could pay less.
 
The world does not work like that
It really already does
you are ignoring my questions
I'm only ignoring the really irrelevant ones, just to try and keep things from wandering all over the place. I've responded to silly non-problems like "where will the people in this tower block park and charge their ev?"

You're inventing problem after problem and keep shifting goalposts around, seeming not to grasp the core of what I'm saying, which hasn't changed

where does the money to pay for the chargepoint owner's return on investment come from?
Oh, you want a full business plan presenting, when the debate started from a "technological possibility" viewpoint. OK, I guess that's you setting out your stall of the level of effort I have to go to to get you to understand. I'm not really willing to go that far because I'd like you to fill in some of the gaps/you're not a dragon I'm pitching to, but I'll respond on a few more points. I am reaching the point where I'll choose to stop responding, not because I agree with you or think you're right, I just have other stuff I need to be getting on with. If you want to take that as me saying you're right, I can cope with that

To keep it simple, let's say that the homeowner pays for access to the pool of street ChargePoints. After all he'd have to pay for one if he had a driveway, so in this system I'm proposing where there is a pool of them and one can use any, let's have them pay for install of one, keep things equal. Maybe if there is some financial shortfall you'd be keen to jump on as your next halting problem, let's charge them a bit more; after all houses without off street parking are cheaper but we're trying to close the functionality gap here so paying a little more to solve the problem the cheaper house has and put it nearer the standing of the dearer house seems fair
Where does the money to pay for his costs of maintaining his physical assets come from?
Same place as his drivewayed neighbour. Or a different place. These are just a couple of charge points after all, broadly the same maintenance requirements etc.
Where does the money to pay for the electricity he is selling on come from?
The electricity is the same electricity that would pass through his meter, except it comes through a different meter that he temporarily claims ownership of when charging. It goes on his bill, like all his other electricity. It doesn't have to pass through the meter bolted to his house to appear on his bill

Where does the money to give him a profit to make it worth his while getting into the EV chargepoint business in the first place come from?
Where does the money to maintain the phone masts, or the national grid, or the visa network, or.. come from?
Looking back, it appears that robinbanks doesn't care if some people have to pay more to charge their car if they don't have off-street parking.
I can only refer you to previous commentary. I would implore you to put your seemingly innate problem-generating thought processes on hold for a moment, and consider other avenues that could resolve your invented problems (for example, for all these pooled cars that the energy suppliers/govt/someone could control and not only charge but also discharge to balance out the grid, trade energy and pay the driver for doing so) but I suspect you can only view the world through the lens of what you already know of how it works

"That could never work because [morqthana] cannot conceive how the finances would work" does not mean that it cannot work
 
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Where does the money to maintain the phone masts, or the national grid, or the visa network, or.. come from?
It comes from the payments that all people using services which require those bits of infrastructure, the 'cost per service bought' being essentially the same for all of them.

If there were some equivalent of (true) 'home EV charging', then people who did that would not have to pay those charges for use of the infrastructure. In terms of the things you have suggested, I suppose that people who generated all their own electricity, without a connection to the national grid, would be one example of that
 
a backing management system that can do all this already; you identify yourself to the charger, and it will tell eon to put a line on your electricity bill, eon will collect the money from you and pass it to whoever is the energy supplier for whatever charger it was.
Not only is this possible, it is already in use and has been for years.
https://electroverse.com/ approaching 1 million public charge points across the UK and Europe which are operated by hundreds of different companies.

Connect vehicle, tap plastic card on the device. The cost appears on your next Octopus electricity bill.
For those not with Octopus - add any other payment card once, and that will be used as payment when you charge.
Not doing any charging for a while - pay nothing.

Public charging is more expensive that charging at home and always will be - but this is inevitable and applies to everything else.
Houses with driveways are more expensive than those without.
Electricity in London is cheaper than electricity in Exeter.
Petrol in Bournemouth is more expensive than petrol in Liverpool.
 
Public charging is more expensive that charging at home and always will be - but this is inevitable and applies to everything else.
Houses with driveways are more expensive than those without.
Electricity in London is cheaper than electricity in Exeter.
Petrol in Bournemouth is more expensive than petrol in Liverpool.
Exactly - as morqthana and myself keep telling him - but he either doesn't understand, or doesn't agree with, that or else is so obsessed with telling us that the technology to deal with payments already exists (which we already know) that he ignores everything else.
 
It really already does
No it really does not.

It really does not work on the basis that YOU can magic away real life problematic consequences of ideas YOU propose simply by ignoring everyone who points them out and pretending they don't actually exist.

I'm only ignoring the really irrelevant ones, just to try and keep things from wandering all over the place. I've responded to silly non-problems like "where will the people in this tower block park and charge their ev?"
That's not a "non-problem".

It is a very REAL problem when the response to concerns about lack of an EV charging infrastructure equivalent to the fossil fuel one is "doesn't matter, because almost everybody can charge their vehicles overnight at home because hardly anybody drives so far in a day that they would exhaust the range they can add at home".


You're inventing problem after problem and keep shifting goalposts around, seeming not to grasp the core of what I'm saying, which hasn't changed
I'm not inventing them - I am pointing them out.

And I know full well what you are saying.

Nor am I shifting goalpoasts around, and if I keep on asking you "well what about {something new}?" it's because of an (increasingly stupid, it seems) hope that you might grasp the problems which lie at the core of your proposals.


Oh, you want a full business plan presenting, when the debate started from a "technological possibility" viewpoint.
No.

But I do want some evidence THAT YOU HAVE ACTUALLY THOUGHT THINGS THROUGH.


OK, I guess that's you setting out your stall of the level of effort I have to go to to get you to understand. I'm not really willing to go that far because I'd like you to fill in some of the gaps/you're not a dragon I'm pitching to, but I'll respond on a few more points. I am reaching the point where I'll choose to stop responding, not because I agree with you or think you're right, I just have other stuff I need to be getting on with. If you want to take that as me saying you're right, I can cope with that
Be aware that none of that bluster negates the fact that I am correct, nor that your refusal to stop responding is based on anything other than the realisation, which you cannot bear to recognise, that I am. Or at the very least that you have NOT thought this through and you do NOT have a solution to the problems with your proposals.


To keep it simple, let's say that the homeowner pays for access to the pool of street ChargePoints. After all he'd have to pay for one if he had a driveway, so in this system I'm proposing where there is a pool of them and one can use any, let's have them pay for install of one, keep things equal. Maybe if there is some financial shortfall you'd be keen to jump on as your next halting problem, let's charge them a bit more; after all houses without off street parking are cheaper but we're trying to close the functionality gap here so paying a little more to solve the problem the cheaper house has and put it nearer the standing of the dearer house seems fair
If you want to engage in social engineering to make housing more equitably priced there are probably more efficient ways to do it than via differential running costs for EVs. Although it seems that you want to raise the overall cost of cheaper housing to bring it closer to the more expensive.

Would you be OK with ICEV owners who live in cheaper housing without off-street parking being made to pay more for their petrol/diesel when they fill up than ICEV owners who live in more expensive housing with such parking, on the grounds that their cheaper housing means it's OK for them to pay more?

And before you start yet again with your fingers-in-your-ears "I can't hear you", the above is NOT me inventing problems or shifting goalposts, it's me responding to WHAT YOU ARE ACTUALLY SAYING about the idea that people should pay more to charge their car if they don't have off-street parking because their houses are cheaper.

[ASIDE]I do sometimes wonder where you live, if you think that houses without off-street parking are necessarily cheaper than those with.[/ASIDE]


Same place as his drivewayed neighbour. Or a different place. These are just a couple of charge points after all, broadly the same maintenance requirements etc.
Oh for pity's sake.

If I have a chargepoint installed, I pay to buy it. I pay to have it installed. I pay for any maintenance needed. I pay for the electricity it delivers, at whatever my domestic tariff is.

Those are all costs for me. But at least one cost I don't have is the need to install and maintain any IT systems to bill myself for the electricity it delivers.

If you try to run a business where all you have are costs, then after quite a short space of time you will have no business.

If the Acme EV Charging Company installs public chargers then the capital costs of acquiring them are investments, and they MUST make a return on those. And they are bound to be more expensive than my one.

The costs of installing them will be higher than the costs of installing mine as they will be engaging in street furniture installation, risk assessments, project management. They'll need permission for full or partial road and footway closures. They'll need to do excavations and making good, not just drilling a hole in a house wall for a cable to run through. They'll need utilities involvement as they can't just flip a switch on a CU while they connect the chargepoint. They'll need all the business admin infrastructure to run a commercial operation.

And when they go into operation, the prices they charge will have to deliver a profit margin over the operational costs, and to provide a return on those investments which make the whole enterprise worthwhile.

But all you do is to say "well we have ways to bill the people charging their cars", which is not something I dispute, but that's all you keep saying (apart from the let-them-eat-cake philosophy of "well let them pay more, then"), and that's what I, and I suspect JohnW2, mean when we criticise you for ignoring real problems.


The electricity is the same electricity that would pass through his meter, except it comes through a different meter that he temporarily claims ownership of when charging. It goes on his bill, like all his other electricity. It doesn't have to pass through the meter bolted to his house to appear on his bill
The electricity is the same.

The price is not.

This:
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;
is completely false


Where does the money to maintain the phone masts, or the national grid, or the visa network, or.. come from?
Do you really believe that bogus "analogies" like that are going to make people think you've got a point?


"That could never work because [morqthana] cannot conceive how the finances would work" does not mean that it cannot work

Let's summarise how this all started.

It grew out of discussion of the point about whether people should be able to have single-phase chargepoints which are rated at >7kW if they want. You and Flameport both said that 7kW ones are absolutely fine for most people's needs, which I don't disagree with, and nowhere will you find me saying that I do disagree.

But when I pointed out to you that

Not everybody can have a 7kW system because of a lack of offstreet parking capacity at their house,

You replied

Another argument I've never held much regard for.

And given what you've said since then we can expand that reply to say

"Another argument I've never held much regard for, because all we need to do is to put in place a billing technology solution, and it really won't matter if public chargepoint users pay an order of magnitude more to charge their vehicles than people with offstreet parking."
 
Public charging is more expensive that charging at home and always will be - but this is inevitable and applies to everything else.
And that becomes a real problem which cannot be ignored when for millions of people charging at home is simply unavailable.

Houses with driveways are more expensive than those without.
Maybe in Poole.

Not necessarily (far from it) in London, nor, I suspect, in many other cities.

Electricity in London is cheaper than electricity in Exeter.
Petrol in Bournemouth is more expensive than petrol in Liverpool.
And eating out in London is more expensive. Theatres are more expensive. Large supermarkets are cheaper than the Nisas in small rural towns/villages. Beer is cheaper outside London. Public transport is much cheaper in London.

None of that negates the problem that we really should not be embarking on an entirely new private transport infrastructure with structural inequalities which make it orders of magnitude more expensive to access for some than others.
 
No, I have better things to do with my life than trying to help you understand if you're going to persist with viewing it through the lens of public charging and straw man it, sorry!
 
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