Is the sun also setting on the electric vehicle empire?
Even with a $8,200 credit, there are only 2,500 electric vehicles on British roads — way short of the 2020 goal of 1.6 million, reports The Guardian.
Once reason for low sales is the lack of infrastructure — which the government is backpedalling on:
… the government urged more homes and businesses to install charging points, as it backpedaled on a previous promise to lead a nationwide rollout, saying the points would be “underutilised and uneconomic”.
Rule internal-combustion-engine! The ICE rules the roads!
The biggest problem with electric vehicles in mainstream use is the introduction of human error into the recharging system. ICE vehicles are fine, as you get told to top up and it’s almost an immediate thing. But how many people will get home after a hard days slog (both at work and the slow drive home) and forget to plug the car in? Next morning no charge, no go. Only a decent induction charging system for cars will make this go away. And what are the stats on battery memory whereby the battery is only half discharged when it is next charged and it begins to think that that is normal and will only discharge halfway from then on.
There was a report on BBC TV News today, trumpeting a new initiative by the UK government (by definition a collection of highly paid twits no matter what party they are in) to address the issue of the electric car’s limited range, which is about 80 miles before re-charging – and that’s on a good day as Paul Penrose points out.
Anyway, the great scheme unveiled by esteemed minister, was the opening of a charging point at a motorway service area (freeway rest stop?) , consisting of two – yes two – charging points. This is on one of the busiest freeways in Europe, by the way and not that far from London. Only trouble is, the fast charge takes two hours and I tell you that no-one wants to spend two hours at South Mimms service area. Say three electric cars arrive together for a charge and you’re driving the third car in the queue? Bloody hell, you’d be there for four hours minimum!
We’ve had electric powered milk delivery trucks for many, many years but you never see them on the freeway and they don’t have heaters (or doors for that matter). And they probably never go more than 10 miles from home.
Somehow I think that the ICE is going to be around for some time to come, no matter what our totally dotty politicos do or say.
I don’t even think they work in desert climates, like south Texas. We have two new Volts at our Chevy dealer collecting dust……
No, they failed in England for the same reason they don’t sell many where I live: it gets cold in the Winter! It takes a lot of juice from the batteries to electrically heat the interior of the vehicle and that reduces the range to a point where it is impractical. Not that the range on these things is very good in the first place, but for some people it might work for their daily round trip (recharging every night) in the warmer months.