Electric Car Charging Gov to Invest £Billions

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UK Construction Week - News (constructionbuzz.co.uk)

Who drives electric? More and more electric vans, buses and even lorries around these days, which is all good. I'm thinking of electric next March, but how do you cope with the 500 mile round trip? That's a couple of stops of an hour or two each innit? And how will this work when there are half a dozen cars lined up waiting for the charger?
 
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UK Construction Week - News (constructionbuzz.co.uk)

Who drives electric? More and more electric vans, buses and even lorries around these days, which is all good. I'm thinking of electric next March, but how do you cope with the 500 mile round trip? That's a couple of stops of an hour or two each innit? And how will this work when there are half a dozen cars lined up waiting for the charger?

Depends on how you plan to use it. It's fine to drop the kids off and the local shopping. How many 500 mile round trips do you do?

Wall chargers are not that expensive these days - not sure if the OLEV grant is still kicking around. Trickle charge works fine for low mileage use.
 
Trying to work it out I reckon about 75% of my work journeys are 30, 40, 50 miles in and around town in the day, which is ideal for electric. 20% between 50 and 200 miles. I do about 5 or 6 bigger trips a year; by that I mean 400+ miles. TBH I can't think of the last 500 miler but I did Leeds twice last year - that's just over 400 miles.
 
Tesla Model 3 will get you 250 miles + on a full charge and then you can top it up at a rate of 10 miles / minute on a super charger and a bit less on a 100kw charger. Given traffic, you are unlikely to want to drive more than 3-4 hours without a 20 minute break anyway, so you really don't need to worry about range.
 
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If you can afford one of the longer ranged EVs with decent fast charging like Teslas, iPace, Ford Mustang, E-Tron, VW id3 or 4, KIA Miro or Hyundai Kona, then as long as you're able to find a fast charger on your route then long distance isn't a problem.

But if you can't afford one with a large battery, or one without the ability to fast charge then properly long journeys will be more awkward and you can end up having to waste too long at chargers, or have to spend more time planning your trip around your vehicle.

The main challenge to long distances at the moment is that the charger networks are still a bit too unreliable. Tesla Superchargers are the gold standard but for everyone else there's too many examples of chargers being broken or out of service to make it worry free. But it's changing.
 
I won't be giving up petrol or diesel until I'm forced to. Still the cheapest and most practical transport. When everyone's charging cars and using their ASHPs to warm their homes, the windmills will never keep up.
 
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What happens if you drive 250 miles, stop at a service station with chargers and there's a queue for them?

Not much good if you have to wait 3 hours for a super rapid charger to come free.
 
If only electric cars were 'green'.
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Wall chargers are not that expensive these days - not sure if the OLEV grant is still kicking around. Trickle charge works fine for low mileage use.

OLEV grant has recently been reduced from £500 to £350 to install a home charger point.
 
Not much good if you have to wait 3 hours for a super rapid charger to come free.
It's hard to imagine what the situation is going to be like when the number of EVs is twenty or thirty times what it is now.
 
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