EV cars and the network

[Specmaster]

This just popped into my suggested viewing on YT and the points raised in this video are really concerning when the weather turns nasty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhtzSMzVkZs

[mansaxel]

Fucking whiner that one. Winter driving does not come naturally to all. Not to me either. But, I always plan for ending up stuck in snow drift, unable to keep warm by running the car, and therefore I carry wellies, a large down parka, blankets, a snow shovel, drinking water, and refill of washer fluid. Regardless of car. This goes in the car as soon as I fit winter wheels. If I'm going for an extended trip, I carry more food and water, a Trangia with fuel, and some more insulation.

Once, in autumn weather, I ended up with a broken thermo sensor on the car, resulting in the dash computer saying STOP CAR NOW, and had to wait for a tow for nearly 2 hours. I froze like crazy. But no, I did not whine about never again to own a car with a cooling system afterwards. I owned the problem and packed clothes.

[MED6753]

Fucking whiner times 10. It's winter you idiot. Pay attention to the weather forecasts. Always carry a snow brush, shovel, gloves, an emergency kit, blanket, etc. Some vehicles are better in snow than others, regardless if gas or electric. I'll bet that Porsche had high performance tires totally unsuitable for snow. No surprise it wouldn't handle the deep stuff.

The situation he got himself into is 100% his fault and not the vehicle.

[Specmaster]

Well, he had just flown back to the UK from Benidorm where he had been holidaying, and he had charged the car to 97% capacity. We don't get snow very often over here, so he wasn't expecting it. The heater drained the batteries much quicker as it was electric and when he pulled into a charging centre, as he pointed out, they don't have canopies unlike the fuel pumps do, so it was already in deep snow drifts of 30+cm, and then it was out of service, he then went to a few others that were showing on the phone app in the area, and they were also out of service, (something that seems to happen a lot here).

So he found a hotel with a charger and stayed there overnight, and as it happened the next day as well, as the hotel only had a slow charger (I'm guessing a basic 7KW job) or it was his own cables which restricted the charge rate, forcing him to stay even longer at the hotel.

The point he was trying to illustrate was the real life problems of having an EV car for use away from cities. Long journeys are their Achilleas heel, they don't have the range that ICE cars have, and you can't pull into a fuel station, fill the tank and be on your way in 5-10 minutes, it's hours to charge the batteries. Then there is the problem that chargers are few and far between, outside city centres and often there is a queue of cars waiting to use them, (often there is 1 or 2 chargers but 8 or more fuel pumps), or as he pointed out, not working. Also batteries don't perform at all well in cold weather, so having to use lights and heating in an EV car just add to the problems of range, further depleting the battery. This is something I notice particularly in my cameras, on a trip to an airbase for a day photographing military planes, on a cold day I can get through about 6 of the Canon batteries but in the summer I can get away with just 2 batteries.

battery.jpg

[Specmaster]

Fucking whiner times 10. It's winter you idiot. Pay attention to the weather forecasts. Always carry a snow brush, shovel, gloves, an emergency kit, blanket, etc. Some vehicles are better in snow than others, regardless if gas or electric. I'll bet that Porsche had high performance tires totally unsuitable for snow. No surprise it wouldn't handle the deep stuff.

The situation he got himself into is 100% his fault and not the vehicle.

I don't even carry those items, we get snow like that so infrequent. I don't know about the tyres, or his driving style, it might just be down all season tyres (which I have all year), the fact that on Porches they are so bleeding fat that they might not get a decent grip without some downforce, and it might also be a factor with EV cars that massive torque is present even at very slow speeds, who knows.

We also get thieves cutting the charging leads of public chargers in order to extract the copper to sell as scrap, rendering them useless.

[Cerebus]

Also batteries don't perform at all well in cold weather, so having to use lights and heating in an EV car just add to the problems of range, further depleting the battery. This is something I notice particularly in my cameras, on a trip to an airbase for a day photographing military planes, on a cold day I can get through about 6 of the Canon batteries but in the summer I can get away with just 2 batteries.

Has it not occurred to you that the manufacturers of EVs might just have considered that thermal management of the batteries was an important thing? EVs have liquid battery heating/cooling circuits to do whatever is needed to keep them within their optimum temperature range. Starting off in the cold? Then waste heat from cooling the motor and inverter will be used to warm up the battery. Battery getting too hot? Run the circuit in cooling mode, maybe even use the waste heat for cabin heating before dumping the rest off to the environment.

Case in point, here's the liquid cooling/heating system from a Taycan:


Of course this has nothing to do with the case in hand which can be summed up as "Man baby sets off unprepared on journey without adult supervision, and blames it all on his EV". If he'd been in the petrol equivalent he'd still have been just as fucked because he would have been just as unprepared. Checking the weather forecast before setting out on a cross county journey comes naturally to us adults, and sometimes we modify our plans to take predicted possible bad weather into account. Chuck some clothes and supplies in the car maybe. Grab some snow chains, perchance. Or go "I've got a dirty great fat overweight sports car on summer tyres, perhaps I shouldn't chance it". Then finally he overdramatises his situation as "nearly froze to death" but weirdly in his rambling tale there is no part about where he went to hospital for hypothermia treatment.

He apparently, in his own words, was "literally in tears". He must live a very, very soft life if a little inconvenience drives him to tears. Pathetic. He needs to grow a pair and take responsibility for his own stupidity.

[Cerebus]

The heater drained the batteries much quicker as it was electric

I should point out that the pure electric cabin heater in most EVs is on the close order of 1kW. That's plenty to get the cabin toasty, if you don't believe me try sitting in front of a 1kW fan heater for a few minutes before you get too hot. Compared to the power required to drive a vehicle along 1kW is nothing and doesn't perceptibly increase the rate of battery drain. Of course heating at full whack continuously is unrealistic, especially given that once you've been a few miles the car's cooling system will have acquired enough heat to warm the cabin without using the electric heater at all. You might realistically see a 1-3% difference in range because of needing the electric heater operating for part of your journey.

I've used the facility on my BMW to "precondition" the interior both in very hot and very cold weather. It'll run for a maximum of 30 minutes. The most I've seen it use equates to about a mile in range terms if left running for the full 30 minutes. So another way of looking at the drain caused by fully electric heating or cooling, with no input from the battery/drivetrain cooling system is that it reduces your range by 2 miles for every hour you have it on.

The battery management on my BMW is actually quite sneaky. If you turn the ignition on, but don't make the car "drive ready" and just sit there, it will spool up the heater after about 30 seconds. If you jump in, turn it on and drive off, it actually waits longer to run the heater up. I reckon that they've figured out that people's experience of ICE vehicles means that they're prepared to wait "for it to warm up" before the heater "works" if you're moving, but will notice the lack of heat if you're just sitting there. So they can eke a tiny bit more life out of the battery by emulating an ICE heater if you're moving and minimise the auxiliary heating needed by waiting for the cooling system to have warmed up a bit before they activate the heating at all. If you're just sitting in a cold car freezing your nuts off and turn it on to get warm or to defrost windows, they turn the heating on quickly and you get warm quickly. Dirty psychological trick, quite clever.

[tggzzz]

Here's a sensible letter from the latest "Which?" magazine (like the US Consumer Reports, I believe). That organisation doesn't always get things right, but they are a good starting point about which questions I should ask and answer, and lemons to be avoided. They are unbiased and prepared to accept and very publicly acknowledge criticism.

t0005.jpg

[Specmaster]

@Cerebus, Yes I did understand that makers think about battery optimisation and the motors need cooling and the heat that they generate could well be used to both heat batteries and the car's interior in the winter. But I cannot help but believe that you are still missing the actual point the blogger is making. You're living in an area where you can find far more charging points, and are less likely to be vandalised or been hit by copper thieves etc because you live in a well populated part of the country.

The blogger was driving in the North of the country, going from East Midlands airport, the car had 97% of its charge left, to Warrington and returning home in Mansfield, some 160 miles, should have a buffer of 120 miles. So with that in mind, how did he get down to 3% battery left when he reached Buxton on his way home, that's just a distance of 130 miles covered, which should have had 141 miles of range left.

So where did that capacity go to? The logical conclusion is that the low temperature degraded battery performance, using heating and heated seat, further took a toll and the fact it was dark also means lights were being used. Now then, as he rightly points out, and indeed I have done the same before in these discussions, with an ICE car, unless there is fuel shortage, such as when the tanker drivers go on strike, you can always get access to fuel from garages along the route, of which there are plenty, most of which will have 8 or more fuel pumps. Very few will have charging points and those that do, will normally have at best 2 points, and will normally have other cars queueing for them. Many of these chargers will not be functioning because of faults or vandals etc, and you have a situation which is rapidly becoming bleak.

Porsche don't normally supply their EV cars with charging leads, they come as optional extras, relying on the chargers at their dealers and other public chargers and people's home chargers which have their own leads permanently connected.

Now, if he'd been in a petrol equivalent, he would not have been fucked because his main issue was not that he couldn't get traction (the only time that was mentioned was at the charging points which are not covered unlike fuel pumps and the snow had drifted up around the chargers to about 30cm and that's why his wheels were spinning. On the highway, the roads would have been gritted, and the traffic clears the main roads pretty well anyway. His problem was low power, so a petrol equivalent would be running low on petrol, and a 5-minute stop at a garage would have provided a full tank of fuel and be back on the road once again. The infrastructure is not in place to enable large scale uptake of EV cars outside of main built-up areas such as London, for example. If your journeys are mainly short one to the shops, hospitals in the local area etc then a EV might well be the ideal car (once they become more affordable). Today, I was going to go to Lincoln (RAF Waddington) to shoot some photographs of visiting air forces taking part in a Nato exercise, that trip door to door would have been 280ish miles and for me would have been half a tank of diesel and could have completed that journey non-stop twice on a single tank of fuel, guaranteed, show me a EV car which can do the same, they are just not suited to long journeys.

I don't and have never carried extra blankets, shovel etc and I have driven hundreds of thousands of miles up and down the country, to just about every corner of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland as a professional driver, in all kinds of weather, included some of the harshest blizzards and have never yet been stuck for traction etc, by driving to suit the conditions and keeping the tank topped up so if I had to stop, I could keep the engine running and keep warm.

[Specmaster]

Here's a sensible letter from the latest "Which?" magazine (like the US Consumer Reports, I believe). That organisation doesn't always get things right, but they are a good starting point about which questions I should ask and answer, and lemons to be avoided. They are unbiased and prepared to accept and very publicly acknowledge criticism.

t0005.jpg

This has also been the finding of most EV drivers, some of the family drive EV cars (not hybrids) and they all tell me that they have to charge more in the cold weather, despite what the makers state, if your trips are just a few miles long each time, in cold weather, the motors don't get particularly hot because the cold air takes away the warmth almost as fast as it builds up. I witness this aspect with my diesel powered car, they take much longer to warm the engine up and my car has oil temperature monitoring and in the summer it reaches 100C with ease on reasonable trips. In this weather, even driving around 100 miles, the oil temperature will sit around 70C, diesels do not run as hot as petrol / gas engines do.

When I was working on the buses as an apprentice, those buses were powered by Gardeners diesel engines and these engines will run for a long time without any coolant, especially in cold weather, one of the reasons why they are very popular with the travelling fanfares as mobile generators, because of their high tolerance for extreme conditions.

[Cerebus]

@Cerebus, Yes I did understand that makers think about battery optimisation and the motors need cooling and the heat that they generate could well be used to both heat batteries and the car's interior in the winter. But I cannot help but believe that you are still missing the actual point the blogger is making. You're living in an area where you can find far more charging points, and are less likely to be vandalised or been hit by copper thieves etc because you live in a well populated part of the country.

The blogger was driving in the North of the country, going from East Midlands airport, the car had 97% of its charge left, to Warrington and returning home in Mansfield, some 160 miles, should have a buffer of 120 miles. So with that in mind, how did he get down to 3% battery left when he reached Buxton on his way home, that's just a distance of 130 miles covered, which should have had 141 miles of range left.

So where did that capacity go to? The logical conclusion is that the low temperature degraded battery performance, using heating and heated seat, further took a toll and the fact it was dark also means lights were being used. Now then, as he rightly points out, and indeed I have done the same before in these discussions, with an ICE car, unless there is fuel shortage, such as when the tanker drivers go on strike, you can always get access to fuel from garages along the route, of which there are plenty, most of which will have 8 or more fuel pumps. Very few will have charging points and those that do, will normally have at best 2 points, and will normally have other cars queueing for them. Many of these chargers will not be functioning because of faults or vandals etc, and you have a situation which is rapidly becoming bleak.

No, the capacity disappeared because he was bumbling around in conditions that he wasn't prepared for, just the same as his petrol would have gone down had he used a petrol car in the same conditions in the same way. The only way that it being an EV affected it is that the idiot driver didn't take into account his limited ability to refuel, and plan accordingly. It's all about the driver and none of it about the car. If he'd left his £75,000+ Taycan at home, and taken Chris' £3000 shitbox and an extra coat he'd have been fine. If you can afford a £75,000+ Taycan you can afford a cheap second car for times that the Taycan is not the appropriate vehicle for the journey you're planning (or rather, not planning but just charging into in this case). Lack of planning, lack of thought, lack of taking responsibility for his own actions and/or failings.

Porsche don't normally supply their EV cars with charging leads, they come as optional extras, relying on the chargers at their dealers and other public chargers and people's home chargers which have their own leads permanently connected.

So you go out and buy one. Simple. My PHEV didn't come with a standard charge lead, just the home one that plugs into a 13A socket. What do you think I did in my first week of owning it? Yes, that's right, ordered a standard charge lead so that I could use public charging points. Again, driver's responsibility. And in fact he had bought one, so why the fact that this hugely expensive Porsche comes without a standard charge lead even a question? Unless the question is "How cheap are Porsche?" or "How useless do you have to be not to get Porsche to throw in a £100 lead on a £75,500 new car purchase?". Complete and utter red herring.

Now, if he'd been in a petrol equivalent, he would not have been fucked because his main issue was not that he couldn't get traction (the only time that was mentioned was at the charging points which are not covered unlike fuel pumps and the snow had drifted up around the chargers to about 30cm and that's why his wheels were spinning. On the highway, the roads would have been gritted, and the traffic clears the main roads pretty well anyway. His problem was low power, so a petrol equivalent would be running low on petrol, and a 5-minute stop at a garage would have provided a full tank of fuel and be back on the road once again. The infrastructure is not in place to enable large scale uptake of EV cars outside of main built-up areas such as London, for example. If your journeys are mainly short one to the shops, hospitals in the local area etc then a EV might well be the ideal car (once they become more affordable). Today, I was going to go to Lincoln (RAF Waddington) to shoot some photographs of visiting air forces taking part in a Nato exercise, that trip door to door would have been 280ish miles and for me would have been half a tank of diesel and could have completed that journey non-stop twice on a single tank of fuel, guaranteed, show me a EV car which can do the same, they are just not suited to long journeys.

Again, as always, it's clear that you just look for opportunities to say "EVs bad". There's no need to keep going over the many ways in which this is the driver's fault or arguing the details in the video that jibe with what you've just said because you're not interested in that. You've found a video that you can hang that "EVs bad" on and when the general consensus is that the video says not "EVs bad" but "driver idiot" you still persist.

Remember that this guy ended up in Buxton? Check out "buxton drivers trapped snow" as a search and check out how often people get stuck in snow around there - it's infamous for it. So much so that I, a Londoner, know the risks. Then try and tell me that anyone who comes from around the area and goes out unprepared in winter is not an idiot. The whole thing centres around "idiot" and not "EV".

I don't and have never carried extra blankets, shovel etc and I have driven hundreds of thousands of miles up and down the country, to just about every corner of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland as a professional driver, in all kinds of weather, included some of the harshest blizzards and have never yet been stuck for traction etc, by driving to suit the conditions and keeping the tank topped up so if I had to stop, I could keep the engine running and keep warm.

That just means you've been lucky, not that you were well prepared. I've never been caught out either, but I've always been well prepared if I should be caught out. "It's never happened to me" does not prove that it never happens to anyone or could not happen to you. I've never claimed on my home insurance, does that mean I don't need it? Packing extra gear in potentially shitty weather is insurance. One day I'll be the lucky one returning home unharmed with a tale of an awful night and you'll be in hospital treated for hypothermia, if you're lucky.

Always kept in the boot of my car, every time it goes out, even on a blazing summer's day: two foil survival blankets, two orange survival bags, softshell jacket, fluorescent safety yellow hoodie with retroreflective stripes, hat, spare shoes, first aid kit, drinking water, torches (2).

[Specmaster]

@Cerebus, nope, sorry your reply just demonstrated that either you did not watch the video or if you did, you never listened to what he said in it. I have driven through all kinds of blizzards in my time in cars, coaches and lorries and never once has my fuel usage shot up to the extent that the range went to less than 50% of normal. He never complained about the lack of grip / traction with the car apart from the time in Buxton when he attempted to get into and away from the various chargers which had not cleared or gritted and as he said, he had to clear away snow with his bare hands to the rough depth of 30 to 40 cm where the wind had created drifts, some of which could be seen in the hotel grounds.

Also sorry but all the public chargers that I have come across have all had the charging cables firmly and permanently attached to the chargers, unless the flipping thieves have been at them and cut the cables off to extract the copper, so you will see from the photo that there is nowhere to plug your own cables in.

Are you cables that you brought designed to be plugged into a 13A socket outlet, I wonder. If so then there is noway that you are ever going to be to fast charge the car and if I'm not mistaken yours is a Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicle, which is a completely different system to a complete fully electric vehicle, designed to charged from a system with which I think starts at 7KW and can go upto 250KW with the right charger fed from a 3 phase supply.

You are not comparing apples with apples here, more like apples with acorns.

Edit, Also the car did not cost him £75,000+, it as he stated it is a lease vehicle and as such can be returned and a deal done to cancel the contract. It is not to do with his inability to plan his journey around the ability to recharge his car, he started off with at the worst case scenario (according to Porsche), enough battery to do something in the order of 280 miles and the round trip he was doing is only 160 miles, hence I said he should have had another 141 miles left in the battery, i.e, about 50% charge, not the 3% he said.

I'm also aware of Buxton and its snow, I used to drive it monthly when I was driving a lorry for a couple of years and drove through there many times in the snow, and I was sleeping in the cab of the lorry in all kinds of weathers with my trusty dog riding as shotgun. Seeing as the idiot driver lives in Mansfield, I expect he is well versed with the problems of snow.

Public chargers.jpg

[AVGresponding]

He didn't say "EVs bad", he said the infrastructure for a mass changeover to EVs isn't there yet, which is quite correct.

My own opinion is that the timeline is hugely optimistic, and I suspect a fair bit of government backpedalling will happen as it becomes increasingly clear that more time and money is needed to achieve what they desire.

I'd be quite surprised to see a practical EV to cover my use case, within my employment lifetime (barring considerable changes to my working needs or retirement age).

[mnementh]

*peeks in from working on his own little EV*


mnem
muh balls ache enuf already...

[Cerebus]

@Cerebus, nope, sorry your reply just demonstrated that either you did not watch the video or if you did, you never listened to what he said in it.

Please do not make ridiculous claims when I very obviously did watch it, otherwise how would I know where he'd ended up, or that he DID have a charging lead with him.

I have driven through all kinds of blizzards in my time in cars, coaches and lorries and never once has my fuel usage shot up to the extent that the range went to less than 50% of normal. He never complained about the lack of grip / traction with the car apart from the time in Buxton when he attempted to get into and away from the various chargers which had not cleared or gritted and as he said, he had to clear away snow with his bare hands to the rough depth of 30 to 40 cm where the wind had created drifts, some of which could be seen in the hotel grounds.

He was driving in an EV with a limited range and ran low on charge because he hadn't planned and ignored the impending weather and ended bumbling about for hours. That's it. If he isn't adult enough to deal with planning for the limited availability of charging, or smart enough to plan for it, that's down to him. At the extreme he could carry one of the charge leads that will operate from a standard 13A socket, keep it in the boot (I do) and negotiate with anyone who has a 13A socket to charge from it for a small consideration to get enough charge to get to the next place he was guaranteed a fast charger. They cost less than £300, his Porsche £75,500+. He got stuck because he didn't plan, and didn't take the limitations of his vehicle into account, End of story.

Also sorry but all the public chargers that I have come across have all had the charging cables firmly and permanently attached to the chargers, unless the flipping thieves have been at them and cut the cables off to extract the copper, so you will see from the photo that there is nowhere to plug your own cables in.

Let's get this right, you're telling a guy that you know has a plug-in EV, who has charged it at public points many times (last time yesterday), that you, a man who has never plugged his car in to charge it, that you have better knowledge of the public EV charging infrastructure in the UK. OK, good luck with that. How about this: I have ONLY EVER plugged my car in to charge at public charging points with my OWN charging cable, NEVER using a fixed one. The sockets are quite small, they are almost always there in addition to the fixed cable at charge points with fixed cables, you just don't know to look for them, and the majority (90%) of charging points do not have fixed cables at all (e.g. the bank of 10 chargers at the local supermarket are all plug in cables cable only, no fixed cables.). If there is a fast DC charger that doesn't have a Mennekes socket on it, I'll bet that there are several in adjacent parking bays - you just don't notice them because the fast DC chargers are huge, the AC chargers with Mennekes sockets on are small, usually just a rather fat post serving two vehicles.

My car charging, along with 4 others, with 5 charging bays free. Can you even spot the charge points? Hint, there's only one you can see, the rest are obscured by vehicles.

Cars charging.jpeg

Are you cables that you brought designed to be plugged into a 13A socket outlet, I wonder. If so then there is noway that you are ever going to be to fast charge the car and if I'm not mistaken yours is a Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicle, which is a completely different system to a complete fully electric vehicle, designed to charged from a system with which I think starts at 7KW and can go upto 250KW with the right charger fed from a 3 phase supply.

You are not comparing apples with apples here, more like apples with acorns.

Is the object to get going after you've backed yourself into a corner, or only to get going with a full charge? An hours charge at 10A on a 13A plugin 3kW charger, will get you perhaps 4 miles. An overnight charge at the same, at any bed and breakfast, 32 miles. An overnight charge on a free 7kW charger (exactly the same as I charge from at the supermarket, making my journey there free) at a Travelodge or similar 74 miles. If you've planned your journey so that it doesn't put you within range of a fast charger if you're going to possibly need one then you shouldn't be allowed out in an EV without adult supervision.

EVs have range limitations, the current charging network is sparse compared to petrol stations. If you don't take that into account when you set out you will get the shit that you're asking for. His guy got the shit that he was asking for, and is whining like a baby because he didn't think.

For the record, what rate of charging you can get using just the standard Mennekes (type 2) 'slow' AC cable is limited by your vehicles built in AC charger, the rating of the cable you carry around with you, and the current limit set on the charge point. Free charge points tend to abstemious, 32A single phase for 7kW charging rate. BUT, you can get up to 80A single phase, or 3 x 63A three phase on AC charging over the standard Mennekes (type 2) 'slow' chargers. That's 18 kW single phase, or 43 kW three phase - 22kW three phase (32A) is a common (limited) option. No fancy DC chargers, just a suitably beefy standard 230/440V hookup to the local mains.

It's really simple, Mr. Idiot put himself in this position by failing to plan for the weather and the type of vehicle he set out in, and yet somehow it's the fault of the vehicle, or the government, or no doubt the bloody illuminati that it all went pear-shaped.

Edit, Also the car did not cost him £75,000+, it as he stated it is a lease vehicle and as such can be returned and a deal done to cancel the contract.

It's still a £75,500+ car, whether he's leasing it or bought it outright. What do you think the monthly lease payments on £75k+ are? Chickenfeed? No, n initial payment of £14,759.29, then £789 a month for 35 months if you lease the base model Taycan from Porsche. Total expenditure over 3 years £42,374.29 or £1177.06 per month amortised over the 36 months. You'll also pay 14.4p per mile over 10,000 miles in a year. If at the end of the lease you opt to purchase the car you'll cough up another £50,556.16.

So Mr. Numbnuts is not short of a bob or two, but that doesn't manage to compensate for him being short of brains, or the inability to accept responsibility for his own fuckup. The car did nothing unexpected. The charging points didn't fade away in the night. The possibility that some charging points might be out of action didn't suddenly appear out of nowhere (which is why people use facilities like zap map, where users will leave a note if there's problems with an individual charger). Neither did the snow magically appear without warning in a area of the UK that is notorious for traffic chaos if it snows.

[MED6753]

Next trip he should bring these ladies along to help him out.



Or perhaps team up with this mental midget.

[Specmaster]

Sorry Cerebus, I concede I have never plugged a EV in, nor have I driven one, but there were indeed some range errors I made, due to misleading information on Porsche websites. You are right, there are indeed some public chargers where you can use your own leads, I did a bit more digging last night.

However, I still can’t see how the infrastructure outside of mayor cities is really fit for drivers who use their cars for longer journeys than a few miles out from a city/major town.

Yes you need to use an app like “Zap”, which the driver of the Porsche was using and had planned to recharge in Buxton (approx @ 60% of full charge) which is the first place on his route home, outside of Manchester with the high speed CCS chargers which could top his battery in just over an hour to hour as opposed to a type 2 charger which would be about 9 hours to recharge.

As the driver stated, the selected chargers were “out of service” that would recharge his car without having to wait in a strange place for hours on end and at night while the battery is charged. The Zap app also shows that there are just 2 of the high speed chargers in Buxton and digging a deeper, it also reveals that both of were out of service 2 weeks ago, just as the driver said in his blog.

Temperature does indeed play a major role in the battery performance of EV cars, despite the makers taking steps to minimise this as per your first post and Porsche have a range calculator that takes temperature into account.

Yes, he was being a bit dramatic saying that it nearly killed him etc., but that is clickbait to get you to watch the video, nothing new there, it is common practise, but it does highlight the problems with electric cars and the hopelessly inadequate infrastructure necessary to support their adoption for longer journeys outside of large built-up areas. Part of the problem with EV cars is that there are lots of different interfaces as the Zap app shows what type of interface each charger has and it also shows how many there are, not many chargers. If the plan is to convert people over to electric cars than this minefield of different interfaces and charge systems needs to change and do so rapidly.

Just imagine how ludicrous it would be if the current fossil fuel types of each grade of fuel had its own dedicated interface system, and also limited numbers available.

Currently the best solution to resolve the issue surrounding EV cars is the Hydrogen Fuel cell, all cars could be refuelled in minutes from any of the available pumps at any location but there are not enough of those but that seems to be the way forward and resolves a lot of the CO2 and NOX issues as well. Or for the current position, a PHEV as you can switch electric mode when required.

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[Specmaster]

Next trip he should bring these ladies along to help him out.

Now those ladies look to be a real dirty pair, could be intereasting

[bd139]

Well, he had just flown back to the UK from Benidorm where he had been holidaying

That says more than the video does.

[Specmaster]

Well, he had just flown back to the UK from Benidorm where he had been holidaying

That says more than the video does.

Yep, with the car being in the Loughborough area while he was away, he was therefore unable to prepare with shovels etc before his trip to Warrington to take his friend back home before he himself could return to his home in Mansfield, so he was totally unprepared for the turn in the weather.

[Zenith]

I can't say I find EVs a remotely attractive proposition and I have off road parking.

[Specmaster]

I agree, part of the problem with them, putting their range and infrastructure not being there, to one side, is the price, they really need to get the pricing down to that of ICE cars before people can afford to buy them for the majority of people and if wages don't keep up with the cost of living then that take up will not happen. The other problem they have is the appalling conditions that workers have to endure in the mining of the raw materials for the batteries and the tremendous CO2 footprint that the batteries are producing during the manufacturing and transporting process of both raw materials and finished product before they get anyway near a car.

Currently it seems it is OK to create pollution and endanger people's lives as long as it somewhere else far away from our shores, so we get the benefits at others cost.

Also, a thought just struck me (ouch that hurt ) our own Cerebus has a PHEV which frankly I think is the best overall solution of the current options on offer if we have to go down that path, now I think I'd be correct in saying that his car would exempt from both the congestion and the ULEZ charge simply because it has the ability to driven in pure electric mode for a while. Now supposing the car has a problem, or runs out of battery power, he could easily drive it in ICE mode, in which case he would be just the same as anyone else with an ICE car but not be liable for the charge. Yes I know his car is quite possibly a Euro 6 engine, but Euro 7 engines are about to be launched so it only a matter of time before they include Euro 6 in the ULEZ charge, so how will that pan out with it being a PHEV??

[bd139]

I can't say I find EVs a remotely attractive proposition and I have off road parking.

Even worse here. I've got gated secure underground parking now. EVs are banned by the insurers because of the risk they can't be effectively extinguished in the time the building's fire rating is exceeded. The outcome is that the entire building would likely have to be knocked down rather than repaired if one went up and you're talking £25 million in insurance pay outs just for this block potentially without having to pay to rebuild it which is another £12-13 million on top.

I suspect I'm going to keep my modest little 1L Citroen until the thing won't work any more. Already got my eye on a touring bike. Can use that and/or the train to get where I want to from here, safely as well thanks to the river paths.

[Specmaster]

I can't say I find EVs a remotely attractive proposition and I have off road parking.

Even worse here. I've got gated secure underground parking now. EVs are banned by the insurers because of the risk they can't be effectively extinguished in the time the building's fire rating is exceeded. The outcome is that the entire building would likely have to be knocked down rather than repaired if one went up and you're talking £25 million in insurance pay outs just for this block potentially without having to pay to rebuild it which is another £12-13 million on top.

I suspect I'm going to keep my modest little 1L Citroen until the thing won't work any more. Already got my eye on a touring bike. Can use that and/or the train to get where I want to from here, safely as well thanks to the river paths.

Wow, I hadn't even realised that was even an aspect, so that effectively also rules out a PHEV as well then? It makes you wonder if they can ever really ban ICE cars once these problems are brought out into the public eye, maybe as it gets closer to 2030 there might well be a hell of a lot of back peddling being done around the world.

[bd139]

I can't say I find EVs a remotely attractive proposition and I have off road parking.

Even worse here. I've got gated secure underground parking now. EVs are banned by the insurers because of the risk they can't be effectively extinguished in the time the building's fire rating is exceeded. The outcome is that the entire building would likely have to be knocked down rather than repaired if one went up and you're talking £25 million in insurance pay outs just for this block potentially without having to pay to rebuild it which is another £12-13 million on top.

I suspect I'm going to keep my modest little 1L Citroen until the thing won't work any more. Already got my eye on a touring bike. Can use that and/or the train to get where I want to from here, safely as well thanks to the river paths.

Wow, I hadn't even realised that was even an aspect, so that effectively also rules out a PHEV as well then? It makes you wonder if they can ever really ban ICE cars once these problems are brought out into the public eye, maybe as it gets closer to 2030 there might well be a hell of a lot of back peddling being done around the world.

PHEVs/hybrids etc are banned as well. If you violate this, your insurance and everyone else's in the block is voided. So before you can even get an allocated parking space in the building, you have to have your vehicle registration taken and checked. The permits are issued per registration plate and checked monthly by estate management to make sure it's the same registered vehicle.

Notably EVs and PHEVs can be allocated parking as well but only outside the building in marked spaces only. But there is absolutely no chance of there being chargers put out there for them. The people who do own them tend to park down a side road away from the building.

In 2030 it's going to be pretty quiet. I suspect the underground parking will be converted into more living space.

We have built in secure bike storage for about 40 bikes in the building too. They are nearly full. The car park is only half used. That says everything.