Forty-five minutes ago, I was drumming my fingers on the steering wheel of my petrol Volkswagen Golf while stuck in a queue at my local filling station.
Now here I am at one of the UK’s busiest public electric vehicle charge points, and it’s deserted. Forty minutes later, it’s still deserted.
So much for my plan to record a day in the life of a charge point. I swear Chargemaster, the UK’s biggest charge point network that was recently bought by BP, told me this Polar-branded location was one of its busiest. Its actual busiest, believe it or not, is Harvester Flamstead, just off junction nine of the M1. Makes sense, I suppose: busy execs catch a coffee while their Nissan Leaf gets a shot of juice. Twenty-five minutes later, emails answered and calls made, they’re on their way.
I should be there, but Harvester doesn’t want a reporter and his photographer bothering customers. That rules out Chargemaster’s second-busiest location: Harvester Warwick. Which leaves its third: The Runnymede on Thames Hotel and Spa in Egham, just off junction 13 of the M25. The hotel has no issues with our presence, so here I am with photographer Luc, and only a charging point, two empty bays and the drone of the M25 for company.
Then, at precisely 9.10am, a Nissan Leaf slips silently into one of the bays. Its driver, Peter Trapmore, tells me he lives 60 miles away on Hayling Island. He makes the journey to Heathrow airport once a month and is flying to the US today.
“I always top up the Leaf here so that when I fly back into Heathrow, I can go back home without delay,” he tells me.
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Another myth dispelled
People have been saying BEVs will never get a significant % because of the charging infracstruture, well no queues here and what EVs there were in this article were MK1(?) LEAF's, SOUL etc, with some of the lowest rangem, new cars will improve on this.
Why, well at nearly £7.45 a month membership alone (you could fill it up twice for that) then any charge onto of that potentially. Then there's the price per Kwh which can be at least 40p which is 5 times what you could get it at home. Afterall would you pay £24 a gallon?
As I've said for the most part they'll be used as top up and emergency.
Over time, by means of market
Over time, by means of market forces or taxation, the cost of energy tends to equalize. Any cost advantage energy for electric cars currently enjoys will be eroded. They will find a way that doesn't kill pensioners.
I do wonder how they could
I do wonder how they could make up the tax loss. Very hard to control domestic use and you can't ramp up domestic energy cost any more without masses of people actually dying!
I can envisage a law enforced use of government monitored 'smart meter chargers' at home, there are already plenty out there that are mobile network enabled and report usage back to the companies office.
Of course this will lead to a Black market of non connected chargers.
The government will retaliate forcing car manufacturers to fit charge ports with encrypted handshake to try and block illegal charger use.
This will lead to a new market of 'vehicle hackers' probably an extra service adopted by the engine remappers out there, their industry is pretty ingenious at that sort of thing, hacking car ECU's to enable charge from any source.
Then what about people charging from their own sources? generators or solar panels, how do you tax that?It will lead to a new army of government busybodies like the TV licence bunch. Turning up at homes who are not on file as paying the levvies and looking for evidence of unregistered charging...Of course if I had my way we would have built a huge nuclear powered energy system giving our businesses a great international competitive edge and our population better living standards. It would also have enabled an era of EV travel to have taken off by now. 2p/kwh everywhere.
I do wonder how they could
I do wonder how they could make up the tax loss. Very hard to control domestic use and you can't ramp up domestic energy cost any more without masses of people actually dying!
I can envisage a law enforced use of government monitored 'smart meter chargers' at home, there are already plenty out there that are mobile network enabled and report usage back to the companies office.
Of course this will lead to a Black market of non connected chargers.
The government will retaliate forcing car manufacturers to fit charge ports with encrypted handshake to try and block illegal charger use.
This will lead to a new market of 'vehicle hackers' probably an extra service adopted by the engine remappers out there, their industry is pretty ingenious at that sort of thing, hacking car ECU's to enable charge from any source.
Then what about people charging from their own sources? generators or solar panels, how do you tax that?It will lead to a new army of government busybodies like the TV licence bunch. Turning up at homes who are not on file as paying the levvies and looking for evidence of unregistered charging...Of course if I had my way we would have built a huge nuclear powered energy system giving our businesses a great international competitive edge and our population better living standards. It would also have enabled an era of EV travel to have taken off by now. 2p/kwh everywhere.