OK, so to try and help those of you who may be interested in getting an EV and are not sure where to start here is a simple guide, and we have tried to address they key issues I experienced and have quickly found they really are not issues, especially if you are sensible. 


Step 1, go and test an electric car if you have not already and be prepared to possibly be surprised.

Step 2, time to get informed, a good place to start is the 'Maddie Goes electric Podcast' on Robert Llewellyn's Fully Charged on youTube

Step 3, time to consider whether you want a new or used EV, new at present this can mean waiting, for some models this can be anything from 3 month to 18 months. Buying a used EV is not necessarily that bad an idea, especially if you search for what you like and go for 1-2 years old, however the used EV market values have risen recently. I could probably sell my Tesla M3 for £5-6K more than I purchased it for 3 months ago, but I am not going to do that.

Step 4, if you liked step 1 and step 2 and made you feel more comfortable with the idea of owning an EV, start investigating what Marque, Range and price range floats your boat. The EV-Database is an excellent place to start, as are reviews of EVs on "Fully Charged" on youtube. If you get a company vehicle or car benefit then leasing an EV through you company can be very cost effective and save anything from 25% to 35% on payments, octopusev.com and www.electriccarscheme.com are good places to look into this and they have more power at getting better deals and availibility.  If you decide on used then auto trader is a great search engine to find what you want, if you find the right one at the right price be prepared to travel many miles to make the deal, looking locally at present is unlikely to reap rewards unless you get lucky, the good ones do not hang around for long so you need to be ready to go and be pro-active. 

Step 5, you have decided to get an EV, time to order ASAP a home charge and get it installed, if you can. From what I have read and general views online the OHME or Myenergi chargers are probably the best on the market at present. OHME is recommended by Octopus, so if you are considering going to Inteligent Octopus for your electricity to get cheap EV charging (7.5p/kwh) then this is the one. The MyEnergi Zappi has lots of flexibility and is great if you have SolarPV. 

Step 6, before your EV arrives join Electric Juice and get a card, this will allow you to pull up at a very large number of all the major EV charging network sites and not have to join them and download multiple apps or get a card for each. At present there are 15 Tesla superchargers sites currently available to be used by non-Tesla owners and can only be used via the Tesla app, so for these you will need to download the Tesla app and set up an account see non-Tesla supercharging. In the UK 15 Tesla stations contain 158 individual charging points capable of delivering power at over 150kW that non-Tesla owners can use, the rest of the network is planned to be opened up by Tesla to all EV owners over the next 2 years, and at least doubled in size.

Step 7, download onto your mobile device Zap-Map and create an account, enter your EV car details, and now you can route plan your long range journeys and choose where and when to charge your EV, and see which chargers are working and currently available en-route.

Step 8, time to enjoy your EV 


A couple of things that are important to note:-

EV Range Anxiety - do not get hung up on this, there are plenty of EV chargers out there to use, and if you are charging at home you will find the majority of your charging will be done there unless you are doing regular daily trips for work which involve more than than cars range for the day.

EV Charging anxiety- primarily this is about how long it takes to charge a car up and will you find a charger not in use, both are really not a big deal.

How quickly an EV will charge is affected by 2 main key factors. How much power the battery/car can take on, this determined by the effetivness of the inverter on the car and the type of Lithium battery in the car. The other is the power output of the charge or supercharger. In brief the simple way to understand this is if a car has a 70kwh usable battery, then it you charge it with a 7kwh(home charger) then generally it will charge the cars battery with 7Kw in 1 hour, it is best to avoid letting the battery go below 10% charge, so if you charge a 70kwh EV from 10% to 100% on a home charger this will take around 9 hours, but most people find they just top it up a daily basis, as they only travel 50-60 miles, about 12-15kwh of power to put back at home in around 2 hours. Superchargers put much higher voltages and current into a battery and hence charge an EV much quicker, this is limited by the inverter that is in the car and controls the battery charging, so the faster charging cars can take higher voltages and currents. Superchargers are generally considered to start at 50kwh, then you get 120kw, 150kw, 250kw and 350kh at present. When charging a Lithium battery at higher voltages it is best to charge it to only 80-90% of its capacity to max its life, but not all manufacturers recommend this. So for example if we go on a long journey and run our EV (78kwh battery) down to 10-20% and go to a 150Kwh Supercharger it will get to 80% in about 22 minutes, that is (70% of 78kwh)/150kwh * 60 minutes, this is putting back around 200-224 miles of real range depending of driving and weather conditions.  Usually we put about 60% back which from real experience takes no more than 19 minutes, time for a comfort break, stretch the legs and a quick coffee, simples.

Next the anxiety about not being able to find a charger not in use or working, personally we have never experienced this, every time we have charged it has been on or near a major motorway and every time at least half the chargers have been free and working. There are chargers locally to us in council car parks and at Tesco and we have yet to see them all in use at one time. There are several EV forums where owners discuss this aspect and from what I have read it generally is not considered an issue, most of the gripes are about chargers not working when an app has indicated they are working, or the owner has run his battery so low that it has insufficient power left to get to another charger, no different if you take your ICE vehicle to near on zero fuel and there is no filling station nearby. See Zap-Map charging stats 18641 fast (7-22kW), 4215 rapid (25-99kW) and 1802 ultra-rapid (100kW+).  

There are now more than 42,000 charge point connectors across the UK in over 15,500 locations - that's more public places to charge than petrol stations! See www.edfenergy.com/electric-cars/charging-points. By the way the UK has to 8,378 operational petrol stations and those under development

So my advice on EV range anxiety is choose a car that has sufficient range for your main daily usage, and accept that like an ICE car if you go on a long journey you will need to top it up, just like you would a petrol or diesel vehicle, remember most people only average at most 50-60 miles a day locally, unless they commute to work more than 30 miles. 

For charging times look at how long the cars you like take on charge at maximin charging capability, often quoted in mph, ie 300mph meaning the car can take on enough charge on a supercharge to put back 300 miles of range in 1 hour. A Tesla M3 Dual Motor will charge in the time I have indicated above at a maximum rate of 450mph, the Kia EV6 Hyundai Ioniq 5 long range are around 50% faster to charge. Currently a large number of EVs charge at around 300mph, so in the example I have given 27 minutes for 220-240 miles range would take about 40 minutes, quite a few of the very expensive cars(over £60K) have high charge rates but not all. 

If I recall correctly Tesla told the Dept of Transport/Grant Shapps in a meeting in April 2022 discussing variosEV roll-out issue and support for them that they were committed to crippling the Tesla Supercharger network over the next 3 years in  the UK, the current Teslasupercharger ar about 20% of this ein the Uk. One main  stumbling block was the DNO(District Network Operators (like Western Power and others) who were not prioritising installation and connection of large substation and grid connection, the government has put in legislation to cut this down to months not 12-18 months for a site to be implemented. 

Gridserver another large network is undertaking similar growth with huge investment in Solar and batteries storage to build a massive EV charging network, others such as ShellEnergy are doing the same, smaller existing ones are getting swallowed up and like fossil fuel I expect we will see 5 or 6 main suppliers be there in around 5 years or less. With sales on EVs going as they, if manufactures can keep up we could easily see another 1.2 million EVs on the road by this time next year and if EV sales growth continues as it is then by 2025 I would expect this to have reached 5 million or so, but I could be wrong. Then next 5 years I think you could expect to see another 10-15milion come onto the roads, so this would leave around 10 million fossil fuelers around at 2030, based on the supply and demand principal I would anticipate that fossil fuel prices will escalate over that period as manufacturers want to maintain their profitabitliy as the volume of sales lessons, the captive market syndrome. 

All relating to the above there is in my opinion from what I have read, a lot of guff said about the viability of EVs and establishing a charging network, the existing network is no where near over used, and is actually already pretty big. Yes there are some localised shortfalls, and less inhabited areas that could do with some more supercharger sites. Both these issues are being dealt with by the government and suppliers, if you look at the numbers of chargers in Holland, France and Germany for example this shows that a large scale EV charger set up can be achieved in a relatively short time.  Remember most people will charge their EVs at home for lower cost or free if from Solar, even in large cities 7Kw lamp post chargers, as they are known are being rolled out now, so the argument about people without drive/garages will be negated, I believe some councils and London boroughs are very keen to be involved in this as they realise it is an opportunity to make some revenue from suppliers and networks.

In answer to your question, I and others are optimistic in fact are very optimistic that it will happen and is happening, there are and always be naysayers and those that have vested intersts to play it down but personally I think it is accelerating at a fast rate, that is EVs and the charger network, whether people realise it or not or want to admit it.

Here's a new threat to EVs...

Homes in London under threat as datacenters pull in all the power

www.theregister.com/2022/08/01/london_electricity_supply_barrier_to_housing/

I think you need to consider that all new housing requires planning and also that the developer goes to the local power supplier, in this case the SSEN and necessary the National Grid. To determine whether the existing grid can meet planned new demand or not.

thelondonpress.uk/2022/07/28/west-london-faces-new-homes-ban-as-electricity-grid-hits-capacity/

"But the problem is likely to become more widespread, according to O’Leary, because of new rules which mean that new homes must support low-carbon technologies such as heat pumps and electric vehicles, which will place additional strain on the grid.

The GLA, SSEN and the National Grid are working on a solution to unblock development. Options include reviewing the needs of individual customers, incentivising electricity usage at low-demand times of day, revising regulations governing the number of possible connections and installing cables to connect to less-constrained grids nearby."

It may be that the SSEN is telling the developer that they have to put 3 phase power into the new homes to meet future requirements, this certainly is common practice down here with Western Power. I have heard some local grid suppliers in some instances they base this on installation of 7kwh car charges, completely ignoring any load balancing and that most EVs will be charged at night when electricity is at its cheapest. As far as I am aware there is no legislation for 7kwh charges requiring a 3 phase supply, but is for 11kwh and above. The actual load on a home network of a 7kwh or 11kwh charger is actually not that great in the scheme of things, an induction hob can easily be 25 to 35amps with all rings on. Often to compound this developers often put cheap electrical heating units into new developments to meet ECO planning requirements, not Air Source Heat Pumps(ASHP), these use far more power and are inefficient using more Kwh, higher overall ampage, and combined with other home electricity demands overall, even with load balancing allowances, can make a 80amp breaker fuse at peak a challenge to meet the legal requirements. The reason that local grid suppliers do this is because they get more money for installing a 3 phase supply to a home, the cost of the materials is actually not that much more than a single phase, but they charge a great deal more for it, 2-3 times more, also it enables them to push the cost of down the line of infrastructure upgrading onto the customer developer or individual, so for example if they have a 50 year old sub-station that is already creaking and they should have replaced years ago they will try and offset the cost of it in this manner. So I suspect this may be an aspect of what is happening here, the developer is being told to cough up many thousands for the new power supply, but he is fighting it and pushing it back to saying that its due to other existing users such as the Datacenter, the capacity was more than likely there when the datacenter and other new users came on board to the grid but now it is not without improving the electrical infrastructure.

We experienced something similar with our own home when renovating in relation to installing an ASHP and EV charger. Western Power tried to tell us we had to have 3 phase electric, a snip at £4.5K to them, actually it was completely unnecessary, our electrical engineer proved through calculation following the detailed regulations, which allow for redundancy, that the maximum electrical load would be less than 80% of the 80amp breaker fuse, so single phase was fine. 

Thanks, Adrian, good insight there.

Absolutely, Adrian, if hydrogen is not produced from clean electrolysis then you are better off burning gas at the point of use as hydrogen has a lower 'energy density'. It is good to hear that there is some activity in increasing grid supply into some cities and improving the current carrying capacity of the 'last mile, but to get the whole country up to where it needs to be to be only electric, especially in places where local solar is not an option, is going to be very challenging in the time-scale required and with the majority of the existing housing stock.

No, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Recently saw an interview on TV where several folks were asked where electricity comes from... a surprisingly large number of them said that it comes from wall sockets.

The figures I read stated that Italy imports 40% of its gas from Russia and about 50% of their electricity generation is through gas-fueled power stations, but it will take them a while to transition to other sources.

Germany imports more, but the larger issue is the use of gas for heating and in industrial processes as only 12.6% of electricity was generated from gas-fueled power stations in 2021. Germany is also in a better position to transition away from Russian gas and to more 0-carbon electricity generation than Italy as it is further ahead in that already. The first of the 'moth-balled' coal-fueled power stations has just started generating again under a permit that will allow it to operate until April 2023. This, and various actions to save energy, is hoped will allow the storage system for gas to reach the target ready for winter. The government has already guaranteed that priority will be given for the gas supply for domestic heating over industrial use.

But... learn from Australia and their coal barons.