Electric car pulling a caravan

We definitely need to continue to build out both slow and rapid chargers around the country. Most modern EVs can charge from 10% to 80% in around 45 mins or so. Having a bank of just 6 chargers would mean one frees up roughly every 8 minutes. Where chargers are being installed in 12s or even 16s in high usage areas that turnover time is down to an average of a few minutes.

As I have said before, things are improving.

An availability application sounds useful. That will be in real time so there is no guarantee any charger will still be vacant on arrival.  Perhaps the next logical stage would be to be able to book an appointment to use a charger.

The availability applications already exist. Where charging companies publish their availability via an API, they are integrated. Look at Zap-Map, WattsUp, ABRP (a better route planner), PlugShare, Plugsurfing or a number of others.

Booking a slow charger is possible where some chargers allow it. With rapids, not so much. The answer there is more chargers…

In my post yesterday I missed out a word and that word was time.   We believe that we have spent LESS time charging than we would have refuelling an ice car.   The cost saving for the fuel if you can charge at home is indisputable.  

Absolutely. I estimated it cost us about £13 to 'fill up' with about 150 (solo) miles worth of lekky. Even when our fixed rate tariff ends, it’s going to still be far cheaper than petrol. Of course, the Govt will find a way of taxing us one day🙄

I have a PHEV and I charge from home as much as possible. However to say less time is spent charging than refuelling an ICE is spin at its best. Please explain where and how? It takes my home charger about 3 hours to fully charge my PHEV giving about 55 miles of EV range. It doesn’t take 3 hours to put a gallon of petrol in. The costs of charging at many motorway charging stations is now being commonly reported at 50p kw/h or more which is on a par with petrol costs. And that is without the taxation applied to petrol. 

If an EV works for that is great for you but at present there are far too many impracticalities and affordability issues for EV’s to replace the entire ICE car pool. 

Had you considered the fact there may be charging options with far more advanced systems than you have, & even more advanced EV’s. Take Tesla as a ‘for instance’. Tech moves in great advances in months not years or decades. I’m quite savvy re tech but seeing some constructs that are proven theories/underway & coming to market are almost science fiction🤷🏻‍♂️

Flatcoat, the point is while you charge at home, you are not "waiting", you are doing something else more productive, like sleeping or eating or just getting on with life. The actual time it takes us to charge each time we have to is about 20s. 10 to plug in and 10 to unplug. Thats it. So for the roughly 12,000 miles I had driven over the last year, which have been home charged, I simply have not had to wait at all for the car to charge. Most of it I have been sleeping. 

To drive 12,000 miles on my old XC90 would have required filling the tank some 40 times (getting roughly 300 miles to a tank). Each of those 40 occasions would have meant stopping at a station, queueing, filling, paying, and getting back on route or driving home. At absolute best, that is a 10 minute activity. So roughly 6 and 3/4 hours dedicated to filling. For the EV, even if I had to charge every single day (which I don't, its more like 3 time a week), its 2 hours. of plugging and unplugging. With only 3 times a week, thats about 50 mins of activity dedicated to charging a year as opposed to 6 3/4 hours.  

Thats not "spin" of a saving of about 6 hours. It's real. When I went to fill up my daughters Picanto a couple of weeks ago, it was the 1st time I had been in a petrol station in about 11 months, the previous time was putting diesel in the PHEV. It took at least 10 mins. The diversion to the station from our route. Finding a pump, pumping the fuel, going into the station to pay (no pay at pump at BP), queueing, paying (contactless is fast), heading back to the car and heading home. We were only a few hundred meters away from the station on route home, but it was still a 10 minute delay from if we had simply been able to drive straight home. 

For costs, 50p (well 49p) per kWh is common at rapid chargers. Thats about 3 miles range for me. I.e. just under 17p per mile. Diesel is what. 199p per litre (8.95 a gallon). To be on a par, you would have to match or better 52mpg. I have never had a diesel that would average 52mpg in mixed driving.  

But thats not what I pay. At home I charge for 7.5p per kWh (was 5p before April), or 2.5p per mile. MPG equivalent? 358mpg. 

The affordability of EVs up front is not yet on a par with ICE cars, but is getting closer all the time. It will clearly be many 10s of years before EVs replace the entire ICE pool, but thats ok. Nobody has suggested they will overnight. And for those in the market for a new or nearly new car, maybe they have access to mechanism that makes it as or more affordable than an ICE. Like a company car or salary sacrifice scheme. Lots of this is down to personal circumstances. 

If only the real world of charging an EV was that easy ,when as in our area we have no access to overnight charging,from our terrace houses 

And is it a fact because of the heat generated by fast and ultra fast charging systems it is not recommended. To be done on a regular basis?

The up to miles per charge  as per OHs son is very much not the case in traffic or when any of the  in car comforts are used ,he has a VW 3?

I have a PHEV and I charge from home as much as possible. However to say less time is spent charging than refuelling an ICE is spin at its best. Please explain where and how?

OK.    It works like this, we get home and decide the car needs, a charge plug it in time taken 30seconds it is not a race after all.  and generally it does nothing because it waits until 8 30pm because that is when our cheap rate electricity cuts in.   Get on with our lives and when we get up unplug the car and drive away.   It doesn’t matter how long it takes because like most peoples,  most of the time, our car sits in the drive.    So it takes one minute out of our life every few days so therefore it is quicker for us than an ice car.