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

[morqthana]

I must say that I thought it was you who had started moving down that road ...

Where?

... as above, I would think that's a start of movement down 'that road'. What else do you think should be "public investment"? In addition to EV charging, you've already mentioned roads and schools, and we obviously already have things like the NHS and 'emergency services', 'defence' and all sort of other things, so we've already dipped more than the tips of our toes into that.

I don't see how public investment in roads, bridges, tunnels, street lighting, signage, crash barriers, pavements, chargepoints, traffic lights etc is starting down the road of abolishing private ownership of cars.

More specifically, if you feel that public EV charging should be "public investment", one doesn't have to move far from that to suggest that the same should be the case for fuel (petrol/diesel/LPG) used by vehicles?

No, any more than (at this stage) I'd advocate public investment in rapid charging facilities.

But one of the key messages to EV doubters who say that charging is a problem is "almost everybody will almost always be able to charge at home overnight". Except there are potentially 8.4M EV owners who won't be able to.

The same argument used by the pro- crowd, that long journeys are very rare, so charging at home means that the logistical issues of using public facilities are not in practice much of a problem, means that people who don't do long journeys will have to fit charging into short journeys, and whilst stopping for 5-10 minutes on the way to/from work, or a shopping trip, is easy to accommodate, the longer EV times are not, particularly when a charging location is not as readily accessible as a fuel station.

If the convenience of home charging is to be cited, we should not design a system which denies that convenience to several million people.

And given the size and importance of the infrastructure we need to create, I think it needs to be a public investment.

In particular, in terms of the 'inequalities' you feel need to be addressed, in the case of oil and LPG, the VAT charged when this is used for vehicles is much more than when it is used for heating a home.

That's not the same sort of inequality. People who live in houses with driveways do not pay less VAT on their petrol/diesel than those who don't.

Are you not here implying what I suggested - that maybe the 'inequality' needs to be addressed by increasing the cost of home EV charging (e.g. charging an EV from a shower circuit)?

I was voicing a few immediate thoughts on what your suggestion might require. Maybe the cost should be levelled up, rather than down, but you can't dye electricity, so we'd need a thief-proof way to bill home EV charging at a different rate from other home use.

One solution might be, as part of the installation of all those pavement chargers, we replace the ones on people's houses with ones wired to the street supply, and bill the homeowner for usage using the same card-waving/RFID/ANPR based system and rates as for street chargers.

Still need to find a way to stop people who only need 50-100 miles per day from using a 13A socket.

 

[ericmark]

Shurely shome mishtake?

View attachment 383919

No that's why I went for option B as to set dishwasher, washing machine etc, to start in that 3 hour slot not going to be easy, better to have 5 hours.

 

[morqthana]

Ah - that'll be me not reading your post properly - I looked at the chart and thought it was a tariff.

 

[JohnW2]

I don't see how public investment in roads, bridges, tunnels, street lighting, signage, crash barriers, pavements, chargepoints, traffic lights etc is starting down the road of abolishing private ownership of cars.

I was merely pointing out that there are already countless things that are funded by 'public investment' (i.e. paid for by taxpayers in general), generally quite reasonably, since the things concerned are largely to the benefit of most people in society. There are, of course, some 'anomalies' (like people who don't drive cars, don't have children or make little/no use of the NHS etc.) but, in general, it works. As the proportion of taxpayers who drive EVs increases, it could well become reasonable to fund EV charging in that same fashion.

For example, it;'s always struck me that, in recent decades, TV licences are daft. Since we reached a stage at which the vast majority of households had licences, iut would have been much more sensible to simply collect the required money from general taxation, so that 'everyone would pay', broadly to the extent that they could afford to pay, and removing the need/cost for ll the bureaucracy of administering and policing licences ... and so it could come to be with EV charging?

But one of the key messages to EV doubters who say that charging is a problem is "almost everybody will almost always be able to charge at home overnight". Except there are potentially 8.4M EV owners who won't be able to.

I've never disputed that that "almost everybody..." statement is simply not correct ... and similar in relation to what you go on to say about long road journeys being rare.

I was voicing a few immediate thoughts on what your suggestion might require. Maybe the cost should be levelled up, rather than down, but you can't dye electricity, so we'd need a thief-proof way to bill home EV charging at a different rate from other home use. ... One solution might be, as part of the installation of all those pavement chargers, we replace the ones on people's houses with ones wired to the street supply, and bill the homeowner for usage using the same card-waving/RFID/ANPR based system and rates as for street chargers. ... Still need to find a way to stop people who only need 50-100 miles per day from using a 13A socket.

Indeed, but those are issues which need to be addressed anyway. This whole discussion started because of my comment about the honeymoon currently being enjoyed by EV users because they are avoiding the fuel excise duty (or equivalent) that they would be paying if they were driving ICEVs. As EVs proliferate, that has got to be addressed by some sort of technology, such as per-mile charges or some fairly reliable way of identifying which electricity was being used for EV charging. Once that is achieved, then it would be trivial to add on some sort of 'premium' to 'level up' the cost of home EV charging so that it was closer to (or equal to) the cost of 'public charging'.