Electric Vehicles-Infrastructure

[NewcastleFalcon]

Down at The Tesco Pod-Point Watering hole with a Nissan Ariya, a Polestar, and a Jaguar e-pace Just a few 5 minute freebies couldn't remember my pod-point password...

...so a first for this, known as "Connected Kerb" and workable with our Octopus Electroverse card

Neil

[CitroJim]

Lovely cottage in thee background

[mickthemaverick]

An aspect of EV driving came up this morning in one of Harry Metcalfe's videos. This link will take you to the relevant part which begins a few seconds after the start. It hadn't occurred to me before but is well worth being aware of :

[bobins]

The fact that range dramatically plummets on most - though not all* - EVs is well known and rules out 'serious' towing for most. I've only watched the bit from Harry about the range, so don't know if he covers this drawback as well, but another issue is MTM / MTW / GVW / whatever you wish to call it. Large EVs are already relatively heavy and that can have an effect on your maximum vehicle weight / available towable weight. It certainly was the case until recently that 'ordinary' EV cars weren't rated for towing much weight, but I don't know if that 'feature' has been overcome now.

* - Can't remember which manufacturer, but one of them managed to get away with the range only mildly plummeting when towing - as opposed the more normal dramatically plummeting

[myglaren]

[Dormouse]

Steve from the Roaming Radfords recently did the NC500 over the top of Scotland in some of the worst gales and wintry weather. Better him than me!

However, if you persevere with the whole series of videos that cover the 1600 mile drive from the Watford Gap up to Inverness then through the NC 500 and back home again, you get an idea of the diabolical state of the hodge podge of charging facilities throughout the UK, especially the VERY rural sparse system that exists away from the populated areas.

For me, the takeaway "de force" is the £340 charging bill for covering the 1600 miles. You only have to watch his face when he is searching for reliable charging points to see he is disguising his anxiety poorly.

[Dormouse]

If you think Steve's bill was high, have a look through this video.




A bit different from the usual EV charging stories.

[myglaren]

BT scraps EV charging point scheme having only installed one

BT has abandoned its scheme to turn green street cabinets into electric vehicle (EV) charging points having completed only one of the 60,000 conversions it initially said it was aiming for.

The metal cases, seen on streets around the UK, are usually used for phone and broadband cables.

When it announced the project in April 2024, BT said repurposing the cabinets was a "unique opportunity" to address a "key barrier" to people switching away from petrol and diesel cars.

Beeb.

[CitroJim]

It's not really surprising. Although the cabinets might have a mains supply, in no way is it beefy enough for EV charging... The same issue exists with using street lights as charging points...

BT would have had to install an awful lot of new cable if they wanted to use these cabinets as EV chargers and it's dubious, given the size of cable needed, if there's even room in the ducts for it.

And, most of these cabinets, at least locally to me, are not ideally sited for EV charging...

[Gibbo2286]

Too many other suppliers beat them to it so they walked away and found a different use for the redundant cabinets.