Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Time for Electric Power?

Okay - Apparently there were 276m vehicles registered in the US according to this
https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/

The average is 24.9mpg on the US registered vehicles fleet but I don't think this is necessarily representative of the real world given that the US tends to have more older vehicles which would drag it down a bit.
According to the US EPA https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-trends-report.

I did not spend long enough to see if that included all the trucks (there are LOTS of those) buses and big stuff in this number.
Love those old 15mpg Oldsmobile's and Cadillac's, maybe not on UK roads.

So at that point I bail rather than try and draw any conclusions. Even if I take my socks off and borrow the good ladies fingers and toes I am not going to be able to count that high

As the 2020 USA petrol consumption levels may have been lower due to Covid at 337 million gallons per day, for 2019 it was closer to 400 million gallons per day (exact 2019 figure not given)

From a local paper - personally I may have worked out the charging thing before ordering, but it does highlight the point I've made several times....

Charging problems

Yes, it's tempting to point out that he should have thought about this before ordering, but it's unfair to blame the council.

The council has no duty to provide charging points, any more than it has a duty to provide petrol stations, but it does have a duty to ensure people using public rights of way are not unreasonably put at risk. I suspect the reason he hasn't heard back from the council is because they haven't yet developed a policy on this kind of thing.

He might be better off contacting his parish council first and finding out who is in charge of the neighbourhood development plan, in case anyone is already thinking about the issue. Other than that it's going to have to be a wall box on his property and a channel under the pavement - assuming they'll give him planning permission, which I guess would largely depend on existing utilities under there.

Whole can of worms there .... setting up your own kerbside charger powered from your house .... cluttering pavement for mums with prams and people with sight and mobility impairment, public liability, your right to privately add something to the public thoroughfare in the first place .... and you don't own the street parking outside your house so a neighbour or random motorist can just park over it. ...... needs a holistic approach rather than individual action.

There are insoluble problems to grafting 21st century charging needs over a 19th century urban base .... city folk largely won't be using personal transport .... going to be a fact of life.

K

Yes indeed, I only mention it because it's an option being considered in our parish's neighbourhood plan, but the costs would have to be born by the individuals/resident groups and would be pretty high, and of course would be highly location dependent.



Absolutely correct - at least, not in the sense of owning their own car or similar vehicle. Lots of scope for personal electric transport powered by removable rechargeable batteries though.

We do have a few EV charging points installed on the Promenade, unfortunately day tripper cars which avail of them tend to leave their car there all day, as by the time the cars have recharged there are usually no other available parking spaces left by mid morning . So the effective availability of a charger is greatly reduced, due to the lack of sufficient parking to meet the needs.

There are considerable challenges to providing charging infrastructure whether in a terraced street, high rise building block as already mentioned, without the damage that will result from equipment being open and accessible to the inevitable vandalism that will follow.

It's definitely the case that at the moment the charging infrastructure is pretty piss-poor. But just watch how quickly things change when petrol become unaffordable for ordinary people - which it will, and very quickly too, if we are to have any chance of meeting our climate commitments.

Among other things we have yet to understand the impact of the now frequent and more common place raging forest fires around the world and the extent of the subsequent carbon release, which is increasing the acidity of the oceans, the lungs of the world............which is predicted to take thousands of years for the increase in ocean temperatures to subside.

With China currently producing 28 times the UK carbon dioxide and still commissioning coal power stations, no matter what we do I doubt it will impact very much, not with standing that we have to change. I've yet to see a model of what our/future generations lifestyles will become, but I get a feeling its going to be very different to today. I think recharging EV's is going to be the least of our problems.

I just watched the Guy Martin episode on the fastest EV. Car built by the people in Mid Wales who did the Vintage Voltage series.
He did a “real life” test journey to John O’Groats and back with planned recharge stops. The outcome was long distances are prone to problems.
He struggled to reach planned stops and had to find stop-gaps. Some charging points didn’t work, the ultra fast ones were EXPENSIVE. The journey took a long time. It highlighted the shortfall in recharge infrastructure that needs serious work. Also the oft missed costs of pay to charge while out and about.
Healso showed the improvements in battery safety and how EV fires are dealt with.
Basically, short local journeys with home charging is the current ( no pun intended) benefit of EV.
He also tested other vehicles, a bus, van, off road bike. The bus looked a huge urban plus point.
Up front cost is still another hurdle though.
EV for the masses still has basic problems and barriers to overcome.