EVs have been the preserve of suburbanites who have off street parking and a charger connected to a home or business. This is a significant problem for anyone who lives in an apartment and in Europe a lot of people live in quite densely populated urban centres. Another factor is the standards for electricity supply. In the UK single phase power is norm, 3 phase is the exception for domestic supply. So charging is an overnight process.
In London I take careful note of how many EV chargers there are in my area of inner London. Little posts with blue lights next to street lamps are starting to sprout up on the kerbside. These charge at a fairly modest rate(4 to 6Kw). But they can solve the domestic charging problem for apartment dwellers.
The project to install them is a publicly funded Go Ultra Low Cities Scheme to install 1300 of them on streets across London. Street lamps have been converted to LED which use a fraction of the power. Steet lamps have a 25amp supply and I guess this spare capacity on an existing supply network can be used for charging.
The other signs of changes are the London taxis and buses. There is new design for taxi cabs that is becoming a common sight on the streets of London. These new designs are well regarded by drivers because they are comfortable, practical and cheaper to run. But they complain about the lack of reliable chargers. There are some quite strict rules coming in regarding a London Low Emission Zone that will price older cars out of the market. Yes you can drive an old polluting gas guzzler in the new Low Emissions Zone, but it will cost you £12.50 a day. It will be enforced by traffic cameras linked to a database of vehicle registrations. This is a very established technology in London, it has been running for many years in the central London congestion zone. The Low Emission Zone is going to be massively extended to cover a large part of London from 2021. I can see the rules being tightened progressively in years to come.
Fully electric buses are still quite rare, there will be about 250 operating by the end of 2020. There are also a handful of hydrogen powered buses. But there are 2,600 diesel-electric hybrids out of a total of 9,200 buses. The plan is to make all buses in London zero emission by 2037.
Politicians ploughing public money into these public transport projects has a huge influence. It is very difficult to wean motorists off big deisel SUVs unless there is a credible alternative.
But the combination of the Dieselgate scandal, which has weakened the influence of Big Auto on Environmental policy. Better monitoring of pollution and how it undermines public health during an emergency such as Covid.
All of this has concentrated the attention of politicians in a perfect storm. There is a cross party consensus in the UK that Environmental policy should be high on the politcal agenda and it looks Boris Johnson is running with it. The UK is hosting the UN Climate Change Conference this time next year and Boris wants to make a big splash, presenting the UK as power in the Green economy.
However, UK polticians are well known for their PR scams. Relabelling of budgets, lots of studies and hot air rather than real money and resources being directed into feel-good policies. There is a lot of cyncism, time will tell if it is justified or is the government going to put its money where its mouth is?
Part of today’s announcement is £1.3 billion to accelerate the roll-out of chargepoints for electric vehicles in homes, streets across the UK and on motorways across England, so people can more easily and conveniently charge their cars. Charging vehicles will become second nature and a part of everyday life, just like charging your mobile phone is today.
To meet future demand, the government is providing grants for homeowners, businesses and local authorities to install chargepoints, and is also supporting the deployment of rapid chargepoints. This had already supported the installation of over 140,000 residential chargepoints and 9,000 chargepoints for staff parking at businesses. Government has also already supported the development of a network of over 19,000 public chargepoints, including over 3,500 rapid devices, in partnership with local authorities and private sector investment, making it one the largest networks in Europe.
EV charging points announcement
I will be more convinced when all public transport of EV and the big car and delivery van fleets go electric. 10 years…9 years now. Will that be time enough for the auto industry to retool? Most European auto manufacturers are some way down that road but the cars are way too expensive and few models are in volume production.
The UK government is also saying that home natural gas boilers that provide much of domestic hot water and central heating will be replaced with electric boilers or converted to a hydrogen mix. The UK gas network is very extensive and pipes methane from the North Sea to just about every home. Consequently the UK uses half the electricity of similar sizes country such as France.
This is where I get a bit skeptical. That is a massive undertaking and could double the UK domestic electricity demand and this is going to come from a hugely expanded Wind energy program.
I guess we all need some good news in this time of Covid and Brexit but I worry about how these massive infrastructure projects are going to be paid for. Tax increases and bigger electricity bills?
It is a bold and ambitious plan, but is it credible?
