UKC

who also lives in a house with limited or no direct road access to their home? Eg flat, house with already congested street parking, no nearby street parking, We live in a 1960s bungalow which about 200 yards away from a public road cul de sac which generally becomes heavily congested by parking. There is a shared public twitten giving pedestrian access to us and the neighbouring bungalows, We do not actually own the twitten nor the open green land it runs through, so laying any permanent electricity supply to the roadside parking is outside of our control, and anyway because of the parking congestion we could be parking anywhere in the road every time we try to park, so never know where a charging point could be installed. Laying a temporary cable would be dodgy  because it would have to cross the public twitten or adjoining green used by the public, mostly dog walkers.

There must be hundreds of thousands of car owners in a similar situation to ourselves. How are we going to  be able to home charge our vehicles? Several of our neighbours have bought hybrids to overcome this problem, but it seems that the future for hybrids is not looking good, and they seem to be controversial, 

The answer is that you don't home charge.  You charge at work, at the supermarket, at other times when your car is parked somewhere there is a charger.  You don't after all have a petrol pump just inside your front door, do you?

The downside is that it costs a bit more, though I can see regulation coming in to reduce that as it is rather a barrier to entry on EVs.  The ability to use your home tariff to charge at any location (including someone else's home you're visiting) with perhaps a small one off supplement to cover the cost of the added infrastructure would be rather a killer app.

I don't have an EV but I have learnt a new word.😁

Thanks for that - good analogy with buying petrol!   There are chargers at our local supermarket, obviously I've not used them, but I've noticed that the charging bays are nearly always in use with cars waiting to use them. How long does a charging take? If people leave a car charging and go shopping, to the loo or whatever, does it result in space hogging to the detriment of others waiting, or is it quick similar to using a petrol pump? You do of course get queuing at times for petrol pumps, but this is generally just a few minutes.

'twitten.' I just learnt a new word.

Alleyways are like barmcakes - everywhere has a different word for them!

I don't have an EV so don't have personal experience on availability, but typically cars charge to 80% in about half an hour on one of those fast chargers, so the norm is to park there charging while doing your shopping.

I have a plug in hybrid - 50 miles electric for all the local weekly running around and 450 miles in the petrol tank. Had it 3 years and its been terrific.

If charging or range anxiety is a problem for you it seems a possible option although it depends what you main driving patterns are.  Not entirely sure why you think these cars are controversial? 

Public transport, pool cars, cycling, walking, there are lots of alternatives to car ownership.

Our streets were never planned for onstreet parking, the sooner it ends the better.

This is the issue.. you can measure charging speed in miles (of range gained) per hour. Most supermarkets etc still have mainly 7kW charging which only gives you about 25mph charge rate. 22kW is 75mph but harder to find. Couple this with most EV bays at shops having normal cars parked in them most of the time , and broken chargers, specific apps everywhere, lack of WiFi (needed to initiate charge/pay), and public charging becomes a huge PITA. Hence I minimise it, or plan very carefully using known good locations. Motorway charging is often unachievable (different if you have a Tesla apparently - I don’t), so 95% of charging is at home. If I couldn’t do that I’d just have a petrol car tbh.

This is the issue.. you can measure charging speed in miles (of range gained) per hour. Most supermarkets etc still have mainly 7kW charging which only gives you about 25mph charge rate. 22kW is 75mph but harder to find. Couple this with most EV bays at shops having normal cars parked in them most of the time , and broken chargers, specific apps everywhere, lack of WiFi (needed to initiate charge/pay), and public charging becomes a huge PITA. Hence I minimise it, or plan very carefully using known good locations. Motorway charging is often unachievable (different if you have a Tesla apparently - I don’t), so 95% of charging is at home. If I couldn’t do that I’d just have a petrol car tbh.

This is the issue.. you can measure charging speed in miles (of range gained) per hour. Most supermarkets etc still have mainly 7kW charging which only gives you about 25mph charge rate. 22kW is 75mph but harder to find. Couple this with most EV bays at shops having normal cars parked in them most of the time , and broken chargers, specific apps everywhere, lack of WiFi (needed to initiate charge/pay), and public charging becomes a huge PITA. Hence I minimise it, or plan very carefully using known good locations. Motorway charging is often unachievable (different if you have a Tesla apparently - I don’t), so 95% of charging is at home. If I couldn’t do that I’d just have a petrol car tbh.

The problem is that the economics of running an EV depend on the cheap overnight charging on a domestic EV tariff; using fast chargers is more or less the same price as petrol, and for some people that's a deal breaker.

Are there lampposts nearby?  Some councils are setting up charging through them, and that's at a more reasonable price (still not as good as domestic rates).

I am in your situation. We had an EV. It was totally impractical, worked out more expensive and more inconvenient than petrol. We got rid of it asap despite being a much nicer car and the environmental benefits. Just didn’t work with life 

I have an EV now for 5 years and only charge at home. The cost of charging outside of home is crazy and I would never consider getting an EV if I could not charge at home. 

I don't have an ev.

I see people on here raving about how great they are, and have no reason to doubt their sincerity.

Almost every day at work, I see the ev-users scramble for access to the chargers, moan about the chargers or the app that controls them not working, and often stress about whether they'll get where they need to. Earlier this week my boss had to divert to a garden centre for 45 minutes to charge up as he wasn't able to use the charger at the site he'd unexpectedly had to go to. (I'm in central Scotland, but mostly not in either city).

They also complain about the economics of them worsening as they have to pay more for charging, and now have to pay road tax too. And one's car has restricted features that they can only unlock with an extra monthly subscription; I know enough about IT to expect that we'll see a lot more of that coming in.

I have to conclude that evs are great for the people they're great for (depending on location, lifestyle, job and preferences), and a massive pile of extra stress for everyone else. I don't fancy getting one yet, but I imagine things will keep improving (at least in some areas of the country - much like ever-so-gradual broadband rollout!)

Our inner city streets were planned for people who worked 6 days a week (from dawn to dusk and then some) at the neighbouring factory, where children were expected to work at the same factory from the age of 14 at the latest, holidays didn't practically exist, and Sundays were reserved for going to church.

We're no longer serfs - or do you happen to be one of those with money who think that we of the working class should be no better than that in the 21st Century.

Of course it could well be that you're one of those nimbies who live in the suburbs and expect to dump your car in town whenever you want to - for free of course - whilst going ape if anyone dares to park near your house.

I meet your description but can charge reliably and for a reasonable price at work. I wouldn't have bought one if I couldn't do that. There is, unusually, a free to use charger at a supermarket a few minutes walk from my home but unsurprisingly it is rarely available. Public charging is typically a rip off (Tesla Superchargers excluded) and inconvenient because it will take substantially longer to get a decent charge than you want to spend in a typical shop, or than the length of time that you can leave the car there for. There may be convenient fast chargers where you will live but there is some debate about how much using these regularly degrades the battery and they are usually expensive

Something else to look out for, if you do buy a car assuming that you can use a 22kW charger of which there are quite a few, check that your car can handle 22kW AC. Many (most?) can only handle 11kW AC even if they can handle 250kW+ DC. The charger will still work, it will just take twice as long as you expect.

https://www.zap-map.com/ will give you an idea about whether public charging is a feasible solution where you live

Bad day at the Lawn Bowls club, Fred?

It's more difficult but you probably just have to rely on public charging in that situation unfortunately. Solutions for people to charge safely on pavements next to their home (without a driveway) are starting to be rolled out but if your house is too remote from the parking spot, that won't work.

There are many people in London who have EVs and rely only on public charging already because they have loads of on street AC chargers there, but in most of the country you need to be quite lucky with local infrastructure for it to be at all convenient. There is an app called zapmap that you could download to see what chargers are in your area.

Twitten is a Sussex word, great isn't it? Near me we have a street called Mytten Twitten. I'd like to move there just for the address. But then I wouldn't be able to charge my car. ☹️

To the OP. I love my EV, but it honestly only makes sense because 99% of my charging is at home. If I couldn't charge at home I'd get rid of it. Public charging is getting better, to the point where it is perfectly practical, but it's so expensive that it just doesn't make economic sense to run an EV solely on public chargers.