Pig in a poke?
 

It’s a funny old world. Electric cars are given the electric treatment by the ad men and manufacturers by lauding them as being everything from magic carpets to planet savers.

Most of them carry prices that bring tears to your eyes, there is an absence of adverts concerning future longevity or even, bless ‘em, the cost of regular services or component replacement. Pigs in a poke?

Unfortunately pigs come in various sizes and colours. A report today, I forget where I heard it I was so busy laughing, a commentator raised the question of daily charging and the necessity of having a domestic charging point at owners’ homes.

Think of it, every electric car owner with their shiny progressive greenie machine coming home from work, then the evening meal, then a snatch of telly, then the charging switch in the garage or on the driveway. And, er, what about the poor blighter with only the road to park in?

Multiply that by a growth factor as yet unknown and suddenly the Grid network is in crisis and could be compromised overnight, the only possibility being selective shutdown of the national grid.
All that coming straight after so many current warnings of large rises in energy costs.

What price progress. That particular pig can get poked.

Always remember Top Gear reviewed an electric car, Clarkson ended the piece by saying how "green" the car was then the camera went from the charging plug in the car to the wall socket, along the main, overhead power lines ending with a power station belching all kinds of cr@p into the atmosphere.

I suppose it depends where you live.
In Scotland a lot of electricity is generated fr renewables.

Don't forget the high rise apartment(s)!
Last week the Grid was so close to shut down that the NP had to pay £50 million to grease a suppliers hand - ROI and France (who had their own overload situations) - refused power via the interconnecctors. Hence the high price of energy at the moment and we've not had any cold weather yet. Could it be light winds responsible? Apprently, a energy "insider" stated we'll be o.k. once we've doubled our wind turbine builds. Must be a brown envelope job as any fool knows it dose not matter how many windmills there are if the wind is light then it will not provide adequate generation!

Kev

Under regulations that will come into force in May 2022 , new domestic electric car chargers in the home and workplace will be automatically set not to function from 8am to 11am and 4pm to 10pm. Public chargers and rapid chargers, on motorways and A-roads, will be exempt. To prevent the grid melting down at peak use and avoid black outs.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e...outs-jnm2m86pz

Whatever the source, can't help but wonder just how that (renewables) would prevent overload during high consumer need? Surely the means of production is irrelevant. Not only that it just ain't free.

So, just when the demand for travel is at it's height, they don't operate. Then, supposing by some miracle there is enough charge retention, and there hasn't been an overnight outage which there is likely to be, when you get to work or even for hours after finishing work, they do not operate. Brilliant.

A friend works for a company that decided to go electric a couple of years ago, he initially liked it a lot. Could charge it at the office or home and on the weekly trips away could usually find a charger so the return trip was no problem.

Recently how ever as they have become more popular charging more than of a problem. Only a couple of weeks ago he got home at midnight because of this problem. He was told to put it down as overtime. Apparently the boss is not going to replace the electric cars with more and plans to buy a fleet of ICE vehicles before the cut off date.