5 ms·

This is utterly ridiculous. I live in the UK and have been renting for many years, I've lived at 15+ addresses and not at a single one could I have powered the

This is utterly ridiculous. I live in the UK and have been renting for many years, I've lived at 15+ addresses and not at a single one could I have powered the car from home. Not one. The UK is small, cars are squeezed onto tiny roads and most people do on-street parking, i.e. you park where you can. When I last had a car I could only park around the corner from my flat (which was set far back from the road). Having off-street parking is a luxury here that only a small % of people have, and even then if you have a block of flats it still makes charging from home more or less practically impossible. Unless the govt intend to install charging points at every car parking spot on every residential road in the entire country in 9 years (!) or whatever the full timeline they have in their minds for everybody to have electric then this is not feasible. That's not to mention the fact that charging electric cars requires very significant current to do so in a reasonable timeframe. Electrical substations in the UK simply could not cope with anything close to full electric car deployment without the entire electrical network being upgraded. And this is before we get on to practicality issues around cars breaking down, longer trips or how petrol stations might be used given charge time. I think there is some kind of shared delusion that this is some easy way of reducing CO2 emissions. It's not easy, and there are very big questions and trade-offs that nobody appears able to address. Before people suggest 'well people need to use public transport then' - while the UK has better public transport than e.g. much of the US (I went to Austin without a car once, that was tough) - outside of London public transport is extremely expensive, very very unreliable (our trains for example are the most expensive and least reliable in all of Europe), slow and entirely impractical for many areas. I am not anti-electric car, in fact I wouldn't mind using one (that acceleration, consistent torque, so much more reliable) - it's just there are huge practical issues that the govt seem never to address. I personally think the appropriate compromise is to move forward with very efficient hybrid vehicles.

crispyporkbites 6y ago
> I personally think the appropriate compromise is to move forward with very efficient hybrid vehicles. which is exactly what this legislation allows for
- barnacled 6y ago
  Thanks, I actually missed that. However: >The sale of hybrid cars and vans would be banned from 2035 under the new plan. This is still a ridiculously tight timeframe.
throwaway69123 6y ago
Doesn’t the power come from the street? Seems like adding metered street parking wouldn’t be a big deal and a great source of revenue for gov to replace fuel tax that is lost
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  London has added a lot of free/cheap charging points but they're not necessarily in convenient places for where people live. I think you can get a subsidy for adding a fast charger to your house but for people in flats, that's probably not an option (and also doesn't help if you have to park 300m away because there's just no room any more.)
- barnacled 6y ago
  There is a limited amount of current available from the electrical substations that serve any given area (and thus any given street), you can't just magic up enough current to be able to charge vastly more electric cars, it requires massive infrastructural change. All the existing street chargers I've seen (there's a couple up the road from me) are like 1 or 2 here + there. Probably no more than 1 per thousand parking spot (might even be being generous there). You'd have to install these chargers (which appear to require a fair bit of work to install) at every single parking spot in the UK to make it practical. Which is not really practical even if we had the money to do it...
  - kjksf 6y ago
    And yet we manage to build skyscrapers. Almost as if in the last 100 years we mastered the art of generating more electricity, laying out high voltage cables and constructing enough electrical substations to meet the demand, whatever that demand might be. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_(Great_Britain)#/media/File:UK_Historical_Net_Electricity_supplied.PNG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_(Great_Britain)#...
    - barnacled 6y ago
      The problem is breadth not depth. In the case of a skyscraper that requires more power you then have only to upgrade a localised substation. In order for the entire country to consume considerably more _current_ that requires a global upgrade everywhere. There are 400,000 substations in the UK. I'm also not saying it's impossible, it's just something that the govt has to do first for this to even be feasible. It also makes the timeframe very impractical. The govt doesn't appear to ever address this or even begin the work required.
zimpenfish 6y ago
> i.e. you park where you can > off-street parking is a luxury here that only a small % of people have That would indicate there's just too many cars and we should be prioritising public transport improvements. > outside of London public transport is extremely expensive, very very unreliable 100% agree - it's always a shock when I go up north and have to use public transport - but that's why we need to divert money from the road and car subsidy schemes into massive public transport improvements.
- barnacled 6y ago
  There are many places where public transport simply isn't practical. I also do not see how investment is going to fix a lot of the issues - for example in my home town in the SW of England (rural area), the already highly subsidised + regulated bus service was consistently late and unreliable. Not to mention didn't actually go to many places in the local area. Perhaps increased public transportation is part of the issue but if you consider the scale of the issue and the numbers involved not to mention the fact you're now entirely privileging rich people with off-street parking (class/economic issues there) who CAN get electric cars, and do all of this in 9 years (or maybe 19 let's say if people are buying 2nd hand) while bankrupting every single (non-electric) car-related industry shortly after one of the biggest economic shocks of the modern era AND you still need to provide considerably more infrastructure no matter how you slice the pie it's still equally as huge a logistical challenge.
perfunctory 6y ago
> This is utterly ridiculous. I live in the UK and have been renting for many years, I've lived at 15+ addresses and not at a single one could I have powered the car from home. Not one. Oh boy. I just picture someone from the early 20th century riding a horse and complaining about not being able to tank a car for the lack of gas stations.
- barnacled 6y ago
  I think you've missed the point here. At none of those could I have charged from the house with a cable, as they either had off-street parking, or I was in an upper storey flat, or there was no parking available at all, etc. I think that kind of dismissive comment is entirely the problem here. You do realise that the entire electrical substation infrastructure needs substantial upgrading for it to even be possible? And that's not an easy problem? And that every single residential street in all of the UK needs to be dug up and have chargers installed? In 9 years' time (or maybe 19 if we say 10 years lifetime of 2nd hand cars)? The whole issue is the govt acts as if all they need to do is ban petrol cars + our CO2 issues are solved, and do not address these serious practical issues. Also on a personal note - this comment came across as somewhat snide and ridiculing, I respectfully refer you to the HN guidelines: "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." By all means, disagree with me but you could have made this comment less unkindly.
- dazc 6y ago
  But you don't have to charge the car from your house, just as you don't need to have your own personal petrol pump. So rather than being utterly ridiculous, it just requires a different mindset and acceptance that many more charging points will be available in the next ten years than there are currently.
  - barnacled 6y ago
    Apples and oranges really - the difference in time at pump vs time charging is orders of magnitude. In order for this to work you'd need vast numbers of charging points and the entire electrical grid to be upgraded. This is not something the govt or commentators appear to mention very often. It'd truly be one of the biggest infrastructure projects the UK has ever seen and likely run into the £100's of bns. The disruption would be like nothing ever seen before (you can't just upgrade substations or dig up basically every residential street in the country without disruption). I think many like to comment on this from the position of being one of the few who owns an electric car and has the luxury of finding places to charge. That does not scale without truly colossal infrastructure changes.
kjksf 6y ago
If charging is as much of a hassle as you claim then hybrids would be the worst of both worlds: you would get under-powered ICE car with a small and yet unnecessary batter that would never be charged because, as you just described, charging is not a hassle. You have 10 years to enjoy your oil hungry, polluting ICE car and then you can buy ICE car in 2030 and have it for 10 more years since the ban only extends to new car sales. And then let's hope that 20 years is enough time to put chargers everywhere. Somehow we manage to put several connectors to the grid in every house and apartment, connect street lamps and parking meters which suggests that it's a solved problem. We just need to do it and 20 years seems like enough time.
Mvandenbergh 6y ago
Two thirds of UK car-owners have off-street parking so it simply isn't true that "most people do on-street parking" on a national level. In London, sure it's much rarer. You point out that public transport is bad outside of London. Certainly true but it is also the case that we are then left only with the problem of places that have poor public transport and very little off-street parking as the most problematic areas. That's quite a step down from needing a charger at every parking spot. The real meat of this is the additional £1.3bn of funding for on-street charging. That is enough for hundreds of thousands of simple Ubitricity style lamp-post chargers which will go a long way since private companies are also installing chargers on concession contracts with local authorities and at shopping centre car parks and other convenience charging location. I don't doubt that further charging funding will be required. It is true that fast and rapid charger roll-out requires reinforcement of the electrical distribution infrastructure which makes them substantially more expensive to install but that is because they are both high current and "must run" - when you plug into one you want it to charge your vehicle immediately as fast as possible, not decide to wait until 2AM. Most on-street chargers on residential streets will be for slow, overnight charging which can be co-ordinated to do the bulk of their charging during the low-load overnight period. Then there is the timing: this is a ban on new sales from 2030 which means that there will be substantial petrol and diesel cars on the road until late into the 2030s. New hybrids are not banned until 2035 in the current plan. So even properties that are still not near a charging point by 2035 will still have access to brand new hybrids and five year old ICE vehicles. The current share of electric cars as part of new vehicle sales is 8% already and without this intervention probably would have reached more than two thirds anyway, the whole point is to signal that this is coming well ahead of time to accelerate that transition.
kilroy123 6y ago
Last weekend I spent a weekend on an island here in Turkey. This entire island did exactly this – they banned all cars and horses and went 100% electric. Before, most people got around via horses(!) I heard it was a smelly mess. It's pretty neat actually. They have these little electric buses that go around the island. Everyone has electric little cars and scooter type vehicles. [1] I laughed when I saw the solution to this problem you're talking about. Extension cords everywhere. That's right, almost every street you saw long extension cords going from the house to the street to charge all the vehicles. Is it perfect? No of course not but it's "good enough for now". Yes, I realize a small island with a few thousand people is not the same a the UK. My point is, people will figure out how to make it work. [1] https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/electric-vehicles-hit-roads-in-princes-islands-157296 https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/electric-vehicles-hit-road... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes%27_Islands#B%C3%BCy%C3%BCkada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes%27_Islands#B%C3%BCy%C3...

crispyporkbites 6y ago

> I personally think the appropriate compromise is to move forward with very efficient hybrid vehicles. which is exactly what this legislation allows for

barnacled 6y ago
Thanks, I actually missed that. However: >The sale of hybrid cars and vans would be banned from 2035 under the new plan. This is still a ridiculously tight timeframe.

throwaway69123 6y ago

Doesn’t the power come from the street? Seems like adding metered street parking wouldn’t be a big deal and a great source of revenue for gov to replace fuel tax that is lost

zimpenfish 6y ago
London has added a lot of free/cheap charging points but they're not necessarily in convenient places for where people live. I think you can get a subsidy for adding a fast charger to your house but for people in flats, that's probably not an option (and also doesn't help if you have to park 300m away because there's just no room any more.)
barnacled 6y ago
There is a limited amount of current available from the electrical substations that serve any given area (and thus any given street), you can't just magic up enough current to be able to charge vastly more electric cars, it requires massive infrastructural change. All the existing street chargers I've seen (there's a couple up the road from me) are like 1 or 2 here + there. Probably no more than 1 per thousand parking spot (might even be being generous there). You'd have to install these chargers (which appear to require a fair bit of work to install) at every single parking spot in the UK to make it practical. Which is not really practical even if we had the money to do it...
- kjksf 6y ago
  And yet we manage to build skyscrapers. Almost as if in the last 100 years we mastered the art of generating more electricity, laying out high voltage cables and constructing enough electrical substations to meet the demand, whatever that demand might be. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_(Great_Britain)#/media/File:UK_Historical_Net_Electricity_supplied.PNG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_(Great_Britain)#...
  - barnacled 6y ago
    The problem is breadth not depth. In the case of a skyscraper that requires more power you then have only to upgrade a localised substation. In order for the entire country to consume considerably more _current_ that requires a global upgrade everywhere. There are 400,000 substations in the UK. I'm also not saying it's impossible, it's just something that the govt has to do first for this to even be feasible. It also makes the timeframe very impractical. The govt doesn't appear to ever address this or even begin the work required.

zimpenfish 6y ago

> i.e. you park where you can > off-street parking is a luxury here that only a small % of people have That would indicate there's just too many cars and we should be prioritising public transport improvements. > outside of London public transport is extremely expensive, very very unreliable 100% agree - it's always a shock when I go up north and have to use public transport - but that's why we need to divert money from the road and car subsidy schemes into massive public transport improvements.

barnacled 6y ago
There are many places where public transport simply isn't practical. I also do not see how investment is going to fix a lot of the issues - for example in my home town in the SW of England (rural area), the already highly subsidised + regulated bus service was consistently late and unreliable. Not to mention didn't actually go to many places in the local area. Perhaps increased public transportation is part of the issue but if you consider the scale of the issue and the numbers involved not to mention the fact you're now entirely privileging rich people with off-street parking (class/economic issues there) who CAN get electric cars, and do all of this in 9 years (or maybe 19 let's say if people are buying 2nd hand) while bankrupting every single (non-electric) car-related industry shortly after one of the biggest economic shocks of the modern era AND you still need to provide considerably more infrastructure no matter how you slice the pie it's still equally as huge a logistical challenge.

perfunctory 6y ago

> This is utterly ridiculous. I live in the UK and have been renting for many years, I've lived at 15+ addresses and not at a single one could I have powered the car from home. Not one. Oh boy. I just picture someone from the early 20th century riding a horse and complaining about not being able to tank a car for the lack of gas stations.

barnacled 6y ago
I think you've missed the point here. At none of those could I have charged from the house with a cable, as they either had off-street parking, or I was in an upper storey flat, or there was no parking available at all, etc. I think that kind of dismissive comment is entirely the problem here. You do realise that the entire electrical substation infrastructure needs substantial upgrading for it to even be possible? And that's not an easy problem? And that every single residential street in all of the UK needs to be dug up and have chargers installed? In 9 years' time (or maybe 19 if we say 10 years lifetime of 2nd hand cars)? The whole issue is the govt acts as if all they need to do is ban petrol cars + our CO2 issues are solved, and do not address these serious practical issues. Also on a personal note - this comment came across as somewhat snide and ridiculing, I respectfully refer you to the HN guidelines: "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." By all means, disagree with me but you could have made this comment less unkindly.
dazc 6y ago
But you don't have to charge the car from your house, just as you don't need to have your own personal petrol pump. So rather than being utterly ridiculous, it just requires a different mindset and acceptance that many more charging points will be available in the next ten years than there are currently.
- barnacled 6y ago
  Apples and oranges really - the difference in time at pump vs time charging is orders of magnitude. In order for this to work you'd need vast numbers of charging points and the entire electrical grid to be upgraded. This is not something the govt or commentators appear to mention very often. It'd truly be one of the biggest infrastructure projects the UK has ever seen and likely run into the £100's of bns. The disruption would be like nothing ever seen before (you can't just upgrade substations or dig up basically every residential street in the country without disruption). I think many like to comment on this from the position of being one of the few who owns an electric car and has the luxury of finding places to charge. That does not scale without truly colossal infrastructure changes.

kjksf 6y ago

If charging is as much of a hassle as you claim then hybrids would be the worst of both worlds: you would get under-powered ICE car with a small and yet unnecessary batter that would never be charged because, as you just described, charging is not a hassle. You have 10 years to enjoy your oil hungry, polluting ICE car and then you can buy ICE car in 2030 and have it for 10 more years since the ban only extends to new car sales. And then let's hope that 20 years is enough time to put chargers everywhere. Somehow we manage to put several connectors to the grid in every house and apartment, connect street lamps and parking meters which suggests that it's a solved problem. We just need to do it and 20 years seems like enough time.

Mvandenbergh 6y ago

Two thirds of UK car-owners have off-street parking so it simply isn't true that "most people do on-street parking" on a national level. In London, sure it's much rarer. You point out that public transport is bad outside of London. Certainly true but it is also the case that we are then left only with the problem of places that have poor public transport and very little off-street parking as the most problematic areas. That's quite a step down from needing a charger at every parking spot. The real meat of this is the additional £1.3bn of funding for on-street charging. That is enough for hundreds of thousands of simple Ubitricity style lamp-post chargers which will go a long way since private companies are also installing chargers on concession contracts with local authorities and at shopping centre car parks and other convenience charging location. I don't doubt that further charging funding will be required. It is true that fast and rapid charger roll-out requires reinforcement of the electrical distribution infrastructure which makes them substantially more expensive to install but that is because they are both high current and "must run" - when you plug into one you want it to charge your vehicle immediately as fast as possible, not decide to wait until 2AM. Most on-street chargers on residential streets will be for slow, overnight charging which can be co-ordinated to do the bulk of their charging during the low-load overnight period. Then there is the timing: this is a ban on new sales from 2030 which means that there will be substantial petrol and diesel cars on the road until late into the 2030s. New hybrids are not banned until 2035 in the current plan. So even properties that are still not near a charging point by 2035 will still have access to brand new hybrids and five year old ICE vehicles. The current share of electric cars as part of new vehicle sales is 8% already and without this intervention probably would have reached more than two thirds anyway, the whole point is to signal that this is coming well ahead of time to accelerate that transition.

kilroy123 6y ago

Last weekend I spent a weekend on an island here in Turkey. This entire island did exactly this – they banned all cars and horses and went 100% electric. Before, most people got around via horses(!) I heard it was a smelly mess. It's pretty neat actually. They have these little electric buses that go around the island. Everyone has electric little cars and scooter type vehicles. [1] I laughed when I saw the solution to this problem you're talking about. Extension cords everywhere. That's right, almost every street you saw long extension cords going from the house to the street to charge all the vehicles. Is it perfect? No of course not but it's "good enough for now". Yes, I realize a small island with a few thousand people is not the same a the UK. My point is, people will figure out how to make it work. [1] https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/electric-vehicles-hit-roads-in-princes-islands-157296 https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/electric-vehicles-hit-road... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes%27_Islands#B%C3%BCy%C3%BCkada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes%27_Islands#B%C3%BCy%C3...