Nearly 90 per cent of non-EV owners would be encouraged to buy one if they had access to overnight charging, according to a new report.
Commissioned by EV charging provider Connected Kerb, the study found that the ability to slow charge where cars are already parked is a fundamental driver of ownership. The survey – carried out amongst 500 people who were EV owners or interested in EV ownership – revealed that 67 per cent of those who had bought EVs would not have done so if they had to rely on public chargers. But according to Chris Pateman-Jones, CEO of Connected Kerb, the UK government is prioritising rapid charging points over regular charging points that could be used overnight.
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“The relative cost of our kerbside chargers, even in the most expensive scenarios, are a small fraction of the cost of deployment of rapid chargers, which are expensive both because of the charger costs themselves, and also because of the need to upgrade power grid infrastructure,” Pateman-Jones told The Engineer.
“It’s also important to remember that – regardless of the cost of deployment – we need to consider the cost of not deploying…in that, as our report shows, if we don’t deploy these chargers [to support those without the ability to charge at home], people will be reluctant to adopt EVs at scale.”
According to Pateman-Jones, the rollout of more extensive, more accessible overnight charging will require coordination akin to that of broadband installation, where the core infrastructure is installed and endpoint connections can be added later as people come online.
“We need to move from the piecemeal ‘stick some chargers in’ approach to being more strategic and coordinated (as industry, govt. and landowners),” he said. “This needs backing and investment from central government but will mostly be led by local councils and housebuilders.
“Broadband deployment provides a good model; an upfront investment is made in laying the fibre in an area, then homes are gradually connected by simply and cheaply connecting an endpoint (a router) to the fibre. Likewise, the connectivity to the grid can be delivered beneath the road, then charging endpoints can be cheaply added as demand increases.”
You need to be able to pay by contactless debit card, rather than being forced to download a unique app for each & every provider.
2000 pounds to get a kerb drop in my area. No overnight charging without it. What good is the rest of the discussion if disincentives like this are to be ignored?
I really hope that the item on the pavement on the left of the first photograph is not a proposed design. If it is I will have to retrain as an injury lawyer because broken legs and arms due to trips and falls are going to be a lot more common.
Simple answer is to build more two story steel frame car parks – cost is less than £10K per space usually. See one at the Marlow Club in Bucks.
Lots of fast and overnight charging can be provided + larger spaces for big or “exotic cars”.
Pavement blocking of the disabled – elderly and pushchairs could be stopped.
Completely misses the point! Overnight charging providing you can park next to one is not the problem. The real issue is being able to charge at a reasonable rate in a reasonable time mid journey. EVs are still only practical for short round town trips where the maximum radius is defined by half the charge available. It is the lack of viable remote infrastructure that holds back widescale adoption.
There is a delicious irony about two items on EV charging effectively being contradictory in today’s bulletin!
Having to download multiple apps to be able charge an EV is more about “surveillance capitalism” than anything about providing a service to users. My Ecotricity app which is required to use their chargers wants permission to access my camera, location and storage on my phone. Location I can possibly understand but why the other two?
A few points to ponder:
1. If I run an extension out of my home to charge my car overnight, I pay the domestic electricity tarriff. What will be the tarriff If I use a public charge point, or if I fast-charge in a motorway service station (given that fuel in these service stations is more expensive than other fuel stations)?
2. The government charges tax on petrol & diesel which will be lost when EVs replace internal combustion vehicles. How will the lost revenue be replaced?
3. When many workers get home at 17:30, they will all plug in their cars. Do the power generation stations and distribution system have the capacity to handle the extra peak load?
70% of UK households have off street parking.
You can get overnight cheap charging tarifs of 5p per kWh or evn get paid a couple of pence per kWh to charge your car on windy nights when there is too much electricity on the grid.
Over 50 EV’s available now to suit all tastes and pockets.
I wonder what the real reason that is holding people back? Maybe all the Fear Uncertainty & Doubt about EV’s spread by the usual suspects in media perhaps? 🙂
Driven my R110 ZE40 Zoe 21.5k miles now in 13 months of ownership, once you own an EV you don’t have range anxiety, you have charger anxiety! But in all those miles, I’ve never been caught out. As with all things always have a plan B and C and Zap Map is your friend and you will go far. Electric Vehicles are great fun, but not for the un-adventurous!
Great that Tom Foreman is keeping us up to date with his experiences with his EV, as rumours and propaganda abound.
For me the decision is based on the 550 mile range of my diesel-engine car plus price of course.
I’m planning to replace with another second-hand diesel as they are better value following the governments mad policy statement.
I love Simon Crookes point no. 3 about everyone getting home at 5-30 and plugging in
Just like people do now…. 31 million cars, 9,800 petrol stations, 36 mile queue at each one at 5-30pm to get one gallon of petrol
As we know, diesel cars use more electricity than electric cars as we can’t put crude oil into a fuel tank, we need to refine it (high temperatures, lots of electricity used) so as we will need fewer power stations when we all switch to electric, we could keep them as when a few people do plug in the replace their daily commute fuel, ie plug in for six minutes to top up their battery, these stations would balance the grid. I assume people would be cleverer than that though and set their six minute charge to occur in the middle of the night when rates are lower!