On a street i own a property the local council allocated several charging points after one (incredibly wealthy) resident campaigned for it because he wasn't able to charge his Tesla. So they put 2 outside my property and 1 near his house.
Except the footpath (this is london) with this obelisk monstrosity was less than 2ft wide. I couldn't push a wheelchair past it.
The solutions I've seen are part of a never decreasing blight on the urban landscape. It should be within our grasp to design these more sympathetically.
It’s funny how rare it is for people to realise the obvious - that the chargers should be in the road, not taking the little amount of public space not given to cars
(Of course outside london driving and parking on the pavement is the norm so it’s a moot point)
It is, in some streets where I live. I've complained about it - it's against the law. Well, it's a law that apparently can be circumvented by local byelaws, and the Council's claim is that the residents have nowhere else to park.
Well, that's true; they don't. But then they shouldn't be buying/renting a home with no parking! The Council is an idiot; the left hand says there's too much traffic in this town, the right hand says that residents with no parking should be allowed to park on the footway. This Council is run by an executive committee, the only (purported) benefit of which is joined-up decision-making.
> It’s funny how rare it is for people to realise the obvious - that the chargers should be in the road, not taking the little amount of public space not given to cars
Work has already started on the tech to allow this. They plan on using wireless charging. Mostly it's planned for supermarkets and what not just now, but I suspect it'll get added to standard roads over time. The main issue is getting car manufacturers to support it but they seem to be looking to add it over the next few years.
Chargers should be by the road, not in the road, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be designed to minimize their intrusion. Such as integrated charge points in lamp poles, or ones that rise out of the ground or ones that drop from telephone poles.
Electric cars get about 3-4 miles per kWh and efficiency is only going to get better, not worse. People aren't expected to drive substantially more in distance than they already do. So the overall energy needs of electric cars aren't really expected to go up. There's immense demand for improvements in range, but that's just a buffer; overall mileage (and therefore energy consumption) isn't expected to change.
Cars also spend most of their time parked, and this isn't expected to change either. So ordinary 7kW AC chargers are adequate, and expected to remain adequate, at places where cars spend most of their time parked such as at homes and car parks.
Therefore, there's basically no reason to expect a regular 7kW AC Type 2 electric charger to be obsoleted in the future. Just as a typical home in the UK hasn't needed its 100A incoming supply upgraded in a long time either.
Rapid charging demand is very different. This is relevant for places like motorway service stations, and where electric car owners don't have a charger at home and have to charge en-route. But if anything the demand for rapid charging will go down in urban areas as "slower" chargers increase in density in places where cars are typically parked. That leaves places like service stations. These will probably need to be upgraded regularly as you suggest, but that's a very different proposition to having to repeatedly upgrade every lamp post.
AC charging won't really change over the next couple decades. There's limits to how much power you can supply from a house, and essentially all AC charging is basically fancy extension cables.
> The solutions I've seen are part of a never decreasing blight on the urban landscape. It should be within our grasp to design these more sympathetically.
Charging stations vary in sizes. I've seen some really small ones. But I've also seen really large units.
But the issue so much the size of the units, it's that the streets of the UK aren't exactly well designed in the first place. And now they're adding extra things which were never met to be there in the first place. It's not the units that need work, it's the british cities that are footpaths or varying sizes next ot each other, not enough room to drive and park. Many streets it's basically one way traffic because there is only enough room for one car at a time.
> Many streets it's basically one way traffic because there is only enough room for one car at a time.
My street is like this. The problem is there are already too many cars. We have a constant flow of traffic 12 hours of the day and most of this is people using our street as a rat run or as a free alternative to parking all day in the town centre which is less than a mile a way. A couple of times I've seen people park outside our house using two spaces (intentionally so no one can park in front or behind) and then pulling out a bike.
We have a driveway but it's not uncommon for somone to park in front of it and block you in so not entirely reliable.
The chances of any suitable charging points for actual residents being developed in such situations are near to none.
Wireless charging has the lowest footprint and is the best option when there isn't much room, though not many EVs can charge wirelessly yet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq7SP18sPKw
100%. Footpaths should be reserved for people. Parking (as someone pointed out), utility poles, charging points, even bike parking, etc should be put there only as an absolute last resort. Unfortunately this is almost never the case.
Others are thinking about high tech solution to this, but as a start whenever there is on street parking just reserve 10cm between some of them and put all the utilities there.
We could also do with much less signage, outside of the ones for the speed limits (we would need a lot less of them with a 30km/h speed limit in cities… but I digress), road type (one way) and hazards I struggle to think of any others that is useful.
I had my garden remodelled with a private parking space. And when I had an electrician in, I had him install cabling to the parking space, so that an EV charger could be installed (the sparks also provided a fuse-box for the charger).
I moved out. I now let that home, and my tenant doesn't drive; so he doesn't drive an EV. If he did, I'd have my sparks install a charger at no cost to my tenant.
I also would object to obelisks blocking the footway. There's already too much crap blocking the footway (recycling bins; electric scooters). The crap makes people angry - especially blind people. Doesn't surprise me at all.
Funny story. A company told the Swedish gov they were going to install X number of charging stations. Very ambitious project.
So they just started reporting how many they had done, and kept getting grants from the government and the EU.
Until someone actually went out and tried to find the charging stations. That's when they fled. They had a front in Switzerland I believe. Most of them got away with it.
Unfortunately paywalled[1] and I can't even read it myself to verify if it's the right article. But it was in HD, a local newspaper.
I have some inside info, which is how I heard about it. This guy Folke Straube that the article mentions is part of the scam. But they had another guy in Switzerland acting as a front so Folke actually got away with it.
The article I linked is just about the many complaints raised against him and his business practices. And I believe they mention the charging stations as part of it.
There was a project in Sweden called Klimatklivet where you could get grant money for anything that would combat fossil fuel consumption. So they applied for this and got money from both Sweden and the EU to build a lot of charging stations.
Really the gov is at fault for approving this because as far as I can recall it was a very ambitious number of charging stations, national coverage. And only a few were built, the rest of the grant money was just taken.
I worked in the electric vechile industry for 3.5 years. I firmly believe Shell are going to dominate. They've bought up some serious assests within the EV world while other companies are all fumbling around.
It is a strange turnaround. Ten years ago, they were regarded as comically mismanaged.
But I think what happened was: top tier firms like XOM did well, the market started softening in the mid-2010s, the top tier were more exposed to that, Shell had already botched it so they couldn't really get any worse, they were therefore in a fairly good place to latch onto new trends because they weren't fire-fighting.
Tbf, their returns haven't been much different to XOM except over the last year. I don't really invest in natural resources but have been considering SHEL as a diversifier (I am down very bad on everything else) because they do seem to be switched on (and are being pushed by Third Point).
Isn't Volkswagen's Electrify America far ahead of any other network? They have the only fast DC charger in my town. Since I'm contemplating a Hyundai Ioniq 5 it seems like the only suitable service.
It isn't just about having the network. Realistically, very few people would sign up just to use a single network or Charging Point Operator (CPO) is they're known in the industry. They then sign up to EMSP (eletric mobility service providers) and the EMSP have contracts and connections to a bunch of networks. Then there are hubs, the CPOs depending on their size can't handle all the work that comes with being connected to all the EMSPs.
Shell as far as I can tell own a major EMSP and building their own network.
Makes sense. They've a tonne of real estate in terms of petrol stations. Repurposing it with fast charging + maybe a coffee shop seems like a relatively easy way to utilise that space.
They only have a few thousand petrol stations. It looks like all or the vast majority of the charging stations will be the roadside/lamppost variety (incredibly cheap and quick to install as there’s already power next to the road)
I wasn’t sure myself so checked before commentating and read that it’s a mix of franchise/owned by the petrol company. That could easily be wrong though.
When it comes to EVs, I think the Pilots and TAs are right candidates for most metros in US along with Grocery stores and Malls.
There is little or no hope for 7-11 style EV charging stations.
Of course, people in apartment complexes may get some kind of interesting set-up similar to their shared laundry for electric vehicles.
Except the footpath (this is london) with this obelisk monstrosity was less than 2ft wide. I couldn't push a wheelchair past it.
The solutions I've seen are part of a never decreasing blight on the urban landscape. It should be within our grasp to design these more sympathetically.
The resident has now sold his house and moved.