Charging Towards Electric Motoring
The UK government has stated that a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars will come into effect from 2030 with the sale of new hybrids being illegal from 2035. After these dates, new car buyers will have a choice of either battery-electric vehicles or hydrogen fuelled vehicles. You will however, still be able to buy or sell used, petrol, diesel or hybrid cars after these dates.
The Plug-in Car Grant, or PICG, was a government incentive scheme aimed at encouraging drivers to switch to electric vehicles. It was a grant, initially of £5,000 that was applied to a selection of fully-electric vehicles, but it had been reduced over time to £1,500, and the eligibility was changed, to cars with a price of £32,000 or less. It was finally dropped in June 2022, with the government citing the fact that it had done its job in encouraging the public to switch to electric vehicles and the money would now be redirected to improve the network of available public charging points.
The sales of electric cars is growing rapidly in the UK, accounting for around one in five new registrations. Last year saw the biggest annual increase in the number of registrations, with more than 395,000 battery-electric cars registered, this represents a growth of 92% on 2020. As of the end of May 2022 there were more than 480,000 battery-electric cars registered in the UK. By 2030, it is anticipated that there will be somewhere between 8 million and 11 million hybrid or electric cars on the UK roads. These figures are good news all round; good for government as they are committed to electric vehicles as the future of motoring and good for the motorist because as the production volume of electric vehicles increases, the more likely it is that the prices will fall, making electric motoring more affordable.
If the cost of electric cars is one of the main perceived barriers to owning an one, the other main concern is that of charging the vehicle and the spectre of running out of charge before the end of a journey. Electric vehicles all have a published range, over which their batteries will take the vehicle on a fully charged battery, in the same way as our petrol or diesel vehicles display information on how many miles we will be able to travel on the fuel in our tanks. If we behave toward our electric vehicle in the same way we treat our electronic devices such as laptops, tablets or mobile phones, most of us will, as a matter of course, charge up the battery in our electric vehicle overnight, assuming there is access to a home charging point. Moving away from home and out on the open road the government says that drivers of electric vehicles should have access to an anticipated 300,000 public electric vehicle charge points, which is equivalent to almost 5 times the number of petrol or diesel pumps on our roads today. Given that we manage our petrol and diesel fuelled journeys without running out of fuel, surely we can manage our battery consumption so as not to run out of charge.
Charging overnight at home is the best way to keep the vehicle’s battery charged. It is faster, most electric vehicles charge at around 7kW at home. This is because the majority of homes in the UK have a single-phase electricity supply that will provide up to 7kW of power to the vehicle, which means that a medium sized electric vehicle with a 50kWh battery would take around seven hours to achieve a full charge. For a typical electric car with a 60kWh battery and ~200 mile range, charging at home could cost about £15.10 for a full charge. * Average domestic electricity rate in the whole of the UK is about 28p per kWh* but most energy suppliers have rates specifically designed for electric vehicle charging and this would reduce the cost substantially.
Prices for the installation of a home chargepoint will vary. It is possible to use a standard extension cable and a three-pin socket to charge a vehicle although it is not the most efficient way of charging, as it is extremely slow and can take up to 24 hours to charge a medium sized vehicle. It would not allow you to take advantage of the special EV charging electricity tariffs which are available.
Electricity prices are expected to rise substantially again later this year and many use this as an argument against electric vehicles, but the price of petrol and diesel have also risen to new record highs and are not expected to fall any time soon. If you are concerned about future running costs, consider linking your charger to solar photovoltaic (Pelectricians/electric-vehicle-chargingV) panels, which generate electricity that can be stored in batteries for use at a later time, such as overnight. Solar power is free after installation of the panels, so this would substantially reduce your running costs if you recharge at home.
There are various ways to access public chargepoints, although some in workplace or supermarket car parks are free to use and are simply plug in and charge.
App enabled chargepoints require you to download an App to your smartphone which gives you access to the chargepoint. The down side of these is that different networks can require different Apps and areas of poor signal can also be an issue. These can be found in public access chargepoints, workplaces and rapid charge points.
A Radio Frequency Identification Card, or RFID card gives drivers an alternate way to pay for charging sessions. RFID cards are linked to a driver account and give secure access to a network via a card. These are easy to use, even in areas of poor signal, but again different networks can require different cards. RFID access is often available in public access chargepoints, workplaces and rapid charge points.
A contactless payment card where you pay with a tap of your debit or credit card. There is no sign-up, giving quick access although each usage may incur a transaction fee. These are normally used for access to rapid chargepoints.
All major companies normally associated with traditional petrol and diesel retailing are providing rapid chargepoints at their forecourts with some offering ultra-fast charging, Shell alone are claiming that they will “have 100,000 UK public electric vehicle charge points by 2030. Around 11,000 of these will be rapid chargers at sites such as forecourts and supermarkets”. For those who do not have access to home charging when they need it, chargepoints are being installed on lamp-posts and roadside bollards in streets up and down the country, this is being part funded by government grants to local authorities.
Love them or hate them, electric vehicles, be they cars, vans, trucks or buses are the future. Managed properly they should be less expensive to run than their petrol or diesel forerunners and as the production lines work to meet the increased demand for them, purchase prices will inevitably drop. It is almost easy to forget that the whole point in moving to electric powered vehicle is not to cut motoring costs but to cut down on carbon emissions in a bid to avert global warming and its dire consequences