So… I went down to Sainsbury’s today just before noon to get a click and collect order (wine’s 25% off if you buy 6 bottles or more before next Wednesday) and it was chaos. Car park was rammed with people driving round to find a space to park.
The reason being they’d got what I’d estimate to be 20% of the car park barriered off as they’re installing public EV charging points. How many do they need ffs, certainly not that many would be my guess. I’ve just had a look on google at the charging stations in Kidderminster and every site has free chargers at them, some are showing ALL their chargers are currently not being used. Can’t help thinking Sainsbury’s will loose a load of trade as a result of this.
I guess they are expecting sales of EV’s to ramp up in the next few years. As for their sales, people will adjust the times that they go to beat the parking issues or just go to Aldi.
As we have a big Tescos with a bigger car park, 2 Aldis, a Morrisons as well as a small Asda I can see them loosing customers as people are creatures of habit and shop at set times. The cynic in me chuckled at where they are putting them, well away from the store and a stones throw from the local canal in case one self combusts and the fire brigade are called to put it out.
I’m in support of more chargers there aint enough at the moment to keep pricing competitive. As long as they are putting in DC chargers it makes good sense as the turnaround per charge is quicker with less hanging around.
supermarkets generally offer the best kW hr cost versus Bp, Shell any service station and most other public places. In the long run it will either cause supermarkets to increase costs or others to lower theirs.
To put it into perspective my home is 25p per kW hr and i’ve seen up to 90p per kW hr at public locations.
My car does 250 miles per charge with a 64kW battery so 250 miles at home costs around £16 whereas
more expensive chargers could cost me anything between £37 and £57 to do 250 miles.
This outstrips the cost of petrol and diesel.
I’ve recently purchased a full hybrid car. Only filled it up twice. It has a 55 ltr tank so on the first fill I topped it up with about 45 ltrs and I travelled 634 miles before filling again. Done about 60 miles and the car computer is saying 612 miles to fill up time.
The manufacturer reckons up to 683 miles on a tank, which looks like it is achievable so 60mpg.
I think that’s the way most drivers will go eventually, certainly the older generations anyway as a hybrid seems to offer the best of both worlds without the downsides associated with full EVs, but as I only do about 4k a year in my Skoda petrol motah it makes more sense to keep using that for at least the foreseeable future.
And for a lot of people without the benefit of having a home charger it makes EVs a very expensive proposition doesn’t it once you take account of the initial cost, depreciation a d ever increasing insurance costs at the moment. I guess Sainsbury’s are looking for such customers so they can plug in their flying fridge and charge it up while doing their shopping (at their store) but I suspect almost all current private owners of EVs have a home charger so will only use public ones when they absolutely have to?
Likewise only about 5k miles/yr so sticking with my ULEZ complient diesel here.
I’ll be dust blowing in the wind before I need to worry about finding my nearest charging point.
There’s an article on pages 54/55 of this edition of Open Road, the MAG magazine, that may be of interest to those looking to plot a route to The Future.
Interesting read that.
If I understood it correctly, what is detailed is a proposal, so it remains to be seen if it is implemented.
Having said that it is likely that governments will force manufacturers to move more production to EV’s and once the balance has moved from ICE to electric, bikes will quickly follow.
Agree with the prior posts if u are not doing many miles a year you really need to account for many factors. It took approx 6 weeks for my home charger to be sorted, I ended up doing a lot of ground works and other upgrades in order to facilitate the charger.
Not being able to charge at home created a lot of stress. My nearest public charger was no quicker than a 13A socket and the next nearest had a 2 hr limit, which made it useless as the charge time needed was more like 8 hrs.
My reason for going for a full hybrid is driven by the problems you have encountered with a plug in electric car. And because I don’t see any significant improvement in the range/mileage on them or charging points being available.
The single biggest thing I am constantly seeing is charging points being installed for the sake of it.
What I mean by this is installing 7.2kW AC chargers in locations where time is an issue it makes no sense from a business perspective or a consumers perspective.
Example 1
A location has a 7.2kW charger. The location has a 2 hr parking limit. 2 hrs would give a single vehicle 14.4 KW of charge based on my car that equates to approx 50 miles of charge.
The company which owns the charger makes money on the amount of electricity used. Lets say they charge 50p per kW hr to a customer and the company is charged 30p per kW hr by their energy company thats £7.20 gross profit and £2.88 net excluding any fees so in a 10 hr day £28.80 and in a year approximately £10,000 based upon 10hrs 365 days.
Note in order to achieve this profit only 5 cars a 10 hr day will receive 2 hrs charge.
Example 2
A location has a 50kW charger. The location has a 2 hr parking limit. 2 hrs is more than enough to charge my car. My car would be charged to 80% capacity in around 45 minutes. For the sake of simplicity lets say a vehicle per hr. Thats 100kW in 2 hrs.
The company which owns the charger makes money on the amount of electricity used. Lets say they charge 50p per kW hr to a customer and the company is charged 30p per kW hr by their energy company thats £50 gross profit in 2 hrs and £20 net excluding any fees so in a 10 hr day £200 and in a year approximately £73,000 based upon 10hrs 365 days.
Note there are advantages to both the consumer and the company 10+ cars can receive a full charge and can also achieve 50 miles in little over 15 minutes versus 50 miles in 2 hrs given in example 1. Less waiting around by the consumer and more profit for the company.
Caveat yes the DC charger costs significantly more however when u consider the kW hr charge I am quoting is on the low side the profits available to companies could be huge.
Based on the above no AC charger should be installed in public space which is less than 22KW imo its just false economy for everyone yet people are still doing it……
