Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...

[sokoloff]

Oh I see, so it is equal challenge to providing every household with a stationary 3kg box costing 500USD that needs 50W of power from standard (already there) outlet to function. You literally could not have found worse comparison.

I'm pretty sure the 50W figure is in error somehow, but I'm not sure what you're talking about to know what it should be. Surely not 50kW (not available from a standard outlet), but I also can't figure out what you could do with only 50W that's relevant to BEVs. Could you clarify?

[gnuarm]

No problem at all... in a dream fantasy 
The reality is that selling 50 BEVs instead of 25 is a 100% increase. And for sure there is a niche market segment waiting to be filled by BEVs. There are some rumours BEV sales are levelling off in the Netherlands because the market for BEVs starts to become saturated. We have to wait until the end of 2023 to draw some conclusions on that though.

LOL!  I bought my BEV four years ago when the people who already had BEVs told me I wasn't an early adopter, they were the early adopters.  Now I am told I am part of a niche market.  Yeah, just like cell phones in the 90s, or the VCR and microwave in the 80s, or color TV in the 60s. 

If you just stop resisting for no reason, and pay attention to the advantages of BEVs, you will see they are a slam dunk.  But don't take my word for it.  Give it ten years and you will see how very few new ICE are still sold.  If for no other reason, that once the numbers drop off enough, models will be discontinued left and right.  Car makers simply can't make money on low volume sales of low end models. 

[tom66]

As for when people are charging, you can see the pattern by looking at parking patterns.  Pretty much, it will be happening overnight. All of them at the same time.
When they are home from the office, and all other activities. 7 kW is not enough power though, you need at least 16kW to charge it in reasonable time. Average of 50km is not important again, but a peak drive.. If I have to go Rijeka-Zagreb two days in a row (something very common here) I need to charge for 2 X 360-380 km in two days. And that has to be range, about 400km on a charge.

There aren't many EVs (or any currently made, that I'm aware of) that go above 11kW, or 16A x 3ph, so I'm not sure 16kW is a near-term requirement.  Of course, it could change.

The capacity issue is mostly down to average usage though.

There is nothing in principle wrong with using the average journey distance to calculate grid loading - so if the average daily usage is 20 miles then a user will need 5kWh per night in charging.  That is 7kW for less than an hour, or 3.6kW for just under two.  The grid already handles - with some margin for capacity - peak times when cookers are switched on, or morning time if you have electric showers (9kW+ per home) and similar. 

The point of using the average is of course there will be cases where you need 7kW x 8 hours twice in a row - but it's unlikely everyone on the street will need it.  And most homes in Europe have at least 40A single phase service so can support 16-24A EV charging.  Many homes in Europe have 3ph in which case EV charging is even better because it sits equally across all three phases, even at lower powers.  No diversity or phase-balance calculations to make.

The biggest issues are not on the cables to each home but at the distribution network between those - it's common that there might only be a 300A x 3ph  cable feeding a whole street.  This may need to be replaced, depending on the load, but that can be monitored and upgraded as needed.  At the low-voltage to medium-voltage transformer, it's possible there will need to be larger transformers fitted, or upgrades to the 11kV (or other AC voltage) lines - that could get expensive.  But I'm not sure I'd be that worried by space for a bigger transformer.  Transformer design has only improved since some of those have been installed.  A 3MVA transformer fits in a 2m x 2m box, and that's enough to support an Ionity fast charging station.

For what it's worth I know two people who work in the distribution network here - National Grid plc - and they both tell me they are very on board with EVs.  They are giving their employees who have a driveway a company electric van, and are converting the fleet to EVs.  See, the distributor gets paid the more kWh's flow, so it really is in their interest to make sure they can allow it.  Their biggest short-term concern, for the UK, is building more HV transmission lines to allow the renewable power in Scotland to make it to the rest of the UK, as at present there are only two 400kV (~10GW each) links connecting the two halves. 

[gnuarm]

I agree with the 25% number. However what worries me is whether electricity becomes a scarse commodity at some point. More scarse compared to keep using oil in very efficient hybrids. Switching to hybrids will already cause a huge decrease in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

LOL!!!  Hybrids are still terrible compared to BEV when it comes to efficiency.  Hybrids only look good when compared to the worst possible alternative, ICE autos! 

Also keep in mind that under current EU regulations each BEV sold in the EU is equal to a car that emits 90 to 95 grams (don't know the exact number currently in effect) of CO2 due to the fact that car manufacturers have to meet a CO2 emission goal for their cars on average. IOW: for each BEV sold, an ICE car which emits more CO2 is being sold.

LOL!!!  You are really reaching!  I can't even respond to this with an answer that would not be insulting to your intelligence. 

Why not just say every BEV made kills a kitten? 

[gnuarm]

No one says 100% BEV by tomorrow.  It will transition over the next 15-20 years.  There will still be ICE on the road in 2040.

The power generation argument is idiotic.  VW e-Golf is 4 miles per kWh... average let's say of 12,000 miles per year... So we need an extra 3,000kWh per car.

UK has 30 million cars - so extra generation of 90TWh.  Country generated 323TWh last year.

So yes... It is a lot... But also it is not that much - about 25% of total generation.  It seems completely feasible over the course of 20 years that generation could increase by 25%.  It will, after all, need to increase as gas heating is phased out.    The beauty of EVs is they can charge any time they are parked up, so they are great for soaking up excess renewables.

You might want to ease up on calling things idiotic, while ignoring data you don't like...

Generation IS a problem. But not the biggest one. Grid needs to be taken to the streets. And grid is NOT specified by kWh, but by peak power... THAT is the problem.

Ah ha!  You are so close to the truth, if it were a snake, it would have bit you!  YES!  What matters is PEAK power.  BEVs are mostly charged at night, at OFF-PEAK times.  So the 20-25% increase in electric generation will use idle generation capacity that otherwise is wasted capital... which still must be depreciated and shows up in the high per kWh rates at peak times! 

So charge BEVs at night (when no one has to sit around waiting...) and you also use fallow capital, decreasing the cost of electricity for EVERYONE! 

So BEVs will increase electric production by 20%.  Assume a high number of 5% of BEV charging will be done at peak time.  That increases peak demand by just 1%.  I expect BEV charging at peak time will be more like 1% (people on trips) which would be just 0.2% increase in production required. 

[gnuarm]

And further more is there actual proof that the CO2 is the true and only culprit for climate change? How about methane which is far more a greenhouse gas than CO2. Waste disposal sites in South America are emitting a but load at the moment.

The sheer magnitude of CO2 emissions dwarfs everything else that is part of the problem.  Yes, there are methane emissions, but not the massive, continuous emissions from transportation, building and many other human endeavors.  Once you explore the problem and get a feel for how large the magnitude is, it's amazing.  Just making concrete releases CO2, independent of the source of the energy involved.  I believe that is a non-trivial part of the problem, around 8%. 

[gnuarm]

I'm just saying the present lack of overnight charging is not the huge, impenetrable roadblock that people try to make it out to be.

It is for those who do not have it. The difference between 'now' and 'some indeterminate time in the future with no concrete plans' seems lost on you.

LOL!  "No concrete plan" applies to nearly everything we do.  The point is there are no unforeseen hurtles.  This is not rocket science, no new technology is needed.  We just need to install some EVSE units.  As far as apartments and condos, they will be motivated by economics.  The ones that install EVSE will have renters and buyers.  The ones that don't, will end up empty.  Yeah, that's real.  Just like cable, Internet and even phone lines.  At one time they did not exist.  Places that didn't have them were the ones the ended up with fewer renters and buyers and lost money.  Now they are universal. 

This is such a trivial problem to overcome.

I look forward to your detailed plans to resolving this issue for the majority of the affected population base. It's clearly simple, you should have those sorted by next week.

I just gave it to you.  What details plans do they prepare to deal with traffic congestion when new homes are built?  None, nada, zip, zilch.  Yet, they eventually build roads and people get where they need to go.

[gnuarm]

As for when people are charging, you can see the pattern by looking at parking patterns.  Pretty much, it will be happening overnight. All of them at the same time.
When they are home from the office, and all other activities. 7 kW is not enough power though, you need at least 16kW to charge it in reasonable time.

Nonsense.  BEVs mostly get around 4-5 miles per kWh.  In the US the average drive is 40 miles, or 10 kWh.  I can do that on a 120V outlet overnight!  In fact, that is what I do and my car is a glutton at 3 miles per kWh.  A 4 kW EVSE (16A @ 240V) gives 16 mph charging rate and will provide 200 miles in 12.5 hours.  Is that not fast enough?

Average of 50km is not important again, but a peak drive.. If I have to go Rijeka-Zagreb two days in a row (something very common here) I need to charge for 2 X 360-380 km in two days. And that has to be range, about 400km on a charge.

Or you stop for 10-15 minutes along the way, have a coffee and hit the bathroom.  You can get up to 200 miles or even 321 km in that time.  If you are going to whine that this is not reasonable, then I guess you can keep your gas burner and be the last guy driving an ICE in 2050. 

[gnuarm]

Even L2 charging isn't free or anywhere near free once you price in the wiring to it.  Streetside charging, even if only outlets, is a pretty big capital outlay.  I'm not sure there is enough copper available.

LOL.  Ok, if you say so.

You clearly have no idea about infrastructure costs. We're talking about places where you need to dig to install new electricity connections, none of that third world pig on a pole stuff.

The average cost of a new supply connection from existing street cables to a dwelling in the UK is £1790, most of that cost is digging in metalled roads and making good. There are 52 roadside parking spaces down my typical residential London street. That's a minimum of 26 type 2 charging points, at a minimum of £1000 a pop for the supply, £1000 a pop for a twin socket charging pillar, so ~£50,000 plus for one street.

If you include all the streets that London Licensed Taxi drivers are required to learn there are over 30,000. That's only the streets within six miles of Charing Cross. London is about 30 miles across, give or take. Which leads to a crude estimate of 180,000 streets. There's 9200 miles of roads in London (not an estimate). So that's on the order of £9 billion, just for London. Over £1000 for each man, woman and child that lives in London. The current property taxes for London total about £5 billion a year.

I'm sorry, I really have no idea what you are talking about.  "new supply connection from existing street cables to a dwelling"  Are you planning to build a new house just for your car? 

This is the sort of stuff people from the UK give me all the time.  There are some who have BEVs and discuss rationally how they charge in their garage or driveway.  None of them have needed new feeds from the street!  You must think a BEV requires a direct connection to a nuclear power plant to charge!  I charge my Tesla model X from a 120V, 15A outlet that provides 1.44 kW to the car which puts just 1 kW into the battery.  In the UK, you don't even have such low power outlets, do you?

This is why I typically don't discuss BEVs with people from the UK.  They managed to essentially run the world at one point, but today can't seem to be able to wire a 240V outlet.

[nctnico]

@gnuarm: please stop. I'm pissing my pants here 

[tom66]

This is the sort of stuff people from the UK give me all the time.  There are some who have BEVs and discuss rationally how they charge in their garage or driveway.  None of them have needed new feeds from the street!  You must think a BEV requires a direct connection to a nuclear power plant to charge!  I charge my Tesla model X from a 120V, 15A outlet that provides 1.44 kW to the car which puts just 1 kW into the battery.  In the UK, you don't even have such low power outlets, do you?

I'm charging my PHEV from an extension lead run out of the kitchen window!   That's 2.3kW.  About the lowest you would normally charge a car on around here...  Still, it shows that you can install EV charging even if you rent.  The total cost of the infrastructure was... about £20 for a heavy duty waterproof lead from the DIY store.

I'll put a proper EV charger on the wall once I move in to the new place.

[gnuarm]

No one says 100% BEV by tomorrow.  It will transition over the next 15-20 years.  There will still be ICE on the road in 2040.

The power generation argument is idiotic.  VW e-Golf is 4 miles per kWh... average let's say of 12,000 miles per year... So we need an extra 3,000kWh per car.

UK has 30 million cars - so extra generation of 90TWh.  Country generated 323TWh last year.

So yes... It is a lot... But also it is not that much - about 25% of total generation.  It seems completely feasible over the course of 20 years that generation could increase by 25%.  It will, after all, need to increase as gas heating is phased out.    The beauty of EVs is they can charge any time they are parked up, so they are great for soaking up excess renewables.

There will be some offset by this:
"it takes around 2 to 3kWh of electricity and 2 to 3kWh of heat energy (DOE figures) to produce a gallon of gas"
If the numbers are correct then it is a significant portion of the electricity needed for EVs when switched from ICEs

I've looked for substantiation of these numbers and it is not to be found.  The "heat energy" is not particularly relevant unless the source of that energy is given.  The 2 to 3 kWh of electricity is probably more like 0.5 kWh.  If I find the sources of this info, I'll post it here. 

Vanadium flow batteries are around for at least a decade yet is anywhere any working installation?

By "around" you mean they were invented a decade ago.  So?  Why is that relevant?  The application of grid storage is very recent and every technology for that purpose is relatively new.  Lithium ion batteries are only used for grid storage because of the advances in production from Tesla's use in autos.  Now we need similar advances in production for vanadium flow batteries. 

Hydrogen storage might a necessity in European conditions
Because you need to withstand a winter when you have minuscule solar power and wind can stop blowing for weeks (it happens quite commonly)
So to be able to have fossils as a backup for the worst case you need about 1 week of storage (for peak draw power as it happens in the same time)

Sorry, that doesn't make sense.  How does a need for "fossils" turn into storing hydrogen?  If you are going to use fossil fuel, why not just store that?

And to be 100% renewable + nuclear it will have to be at least one whole month worth of energy
There is no way around it. Sahara solar farm is not a realistic approach as it is not a stable region. And you won't be able to transfer energy across Europe anyway.
So some huge chemical storage is a must.
In the US it can be significantly different.

Don't forget that nuclear requires storage.  It has the opposite problem of renewables which are intermittent.  Nuclear is not easy to scale back.  Not only is that uneconomical, but if you try to ramp it up and down for the daily cycle, you end up xenon poisoning the reactor.  So it needs to store energy at the slack demand times so it doesn't get throttled back, then it needs the additional energy reserve to power the peak times.

The US also has political instability issues.  Texas, a very large region, is an independent grid.  So the rest of the US has to operate around them, even though they are an ideal location for wind power.  I'm hoping they will secede so we can treat them as a foreign country, possibly hostile.

[gnuarm]

As for when people are charging, you can see the pattern by looking at parking patterns.  Pretty much, it will be happening overnight. All of them at the same time.
When they are home from the office, and all other activities. 7 kW is not enough power though, you need at least 16kW to charge it in reasonable time. Average of 50km is not important again, but a peak drive.. If I have to go Rijeka-Zagreb two days in a row (something very common here) I need to charge for 2 X 360-380 km in two days. And that has to be range, about 400km on a charge.

There aren't many EVs (or any currently made, that I'm aware of) that go above 11kW, or 16A x 3ph, so I'm not sure 16kW is a near-term requirement.  Of course, it could change.

The capacity issue is mostly down to average usage though.

There is nothing in principle wrong with using the average journey distance to calculate grid loading - so if the average daily usage is 20 miles then a user will need 5kWh per night in charging.  That is 7kW for less than an hour, or 3.6kW for just under two.  The grid already handles - with some margin for capacity - peak times when cookers are switched on, or morning time if you have electric showers (9kW+ per home) and similar. 

The point of using the average is of course there will be cases where you need 7kW x 8 hours twice in a row - but it's unlikely everyone on the street will need it.  And most homes in Europe have at least 40A single phase service so can support 16-24A EV charging.  Many homes in Europe have 3ph in which case EV charging is even better because it sits equally across all three phases, even at lower powers.  No diversity or phase-balance calculations to make.

The biggest issues are not on the cables to each home but at the distribution network between those - it's common that there might only be a 300A x 3ph  cable feeding a whole street.  This may need to be replaced, depending on the load, but that can be monitored and upgraded as needed.  At the low-voltage to medium-voltage transformer, it's possible there will need to be larger transformers fitted, or upgrades to the 11kV (or other AC voltage) lines - that could get expensive.  But I'm not sure I'd be that worried by space for a bigger transformer.  Transformer design has only improved since some of those have been installed.  A 3MVA transformer fits in a 2m x 2m box, and that's enough to support an Ionity fast charging station.

For what it's worth I know two people who work in the distribution network here - National Grid plc - and they both tell me they are very on board with EVs.  They are giving their employees who have a driveway a company electric van, and are converting the fleet to EVs.  See, the distributor gets paid the more kWh's flow, so it really is in their interest to make sure they can allow it.  Their biggest short-term concern, for the UK, is building more HV transmission lines to allow the renewable power in Scotland to make it to the rest of the UK, as at present there are only two 400kV (~10GW each) links connecting the two halves.

I understand that it is very common for the majority of homes to switch on the kettle at the same time during commercials on the TV, especially for football matches.  I think that is 2 kW per house, 9 amps, right?

You can actually charge a BEV quite well on that power level.  I'm getting by with less.

[2N3055]

Or you stop for 10-15 minutes along the way, have a coffee and hit the bathroom.  You can get up to 200 miles or even 321 km in that time.  If you are going to whine that this is not reasonable, then I guess you can keep your gas burner and be the last guy driving an ICE in 2050.

There are very few chargers on the way. All of them are slow and usually taken by desperate ones.... Also I don't have time to faff around. I need to get there and back without wasting additional time..  15 minutes charge on slow charger is not helpful. 2 hours I don't have just because I made a wrong decision to buy a car the doesn't serve my usage patterns..

I don't serve my car purposes. It is the other way around. Until BEV serves my lifestyle as well as gasoline burner and is affordable to me to buy, no BEV for me. And that is how it is for 90% of all population. THAT is the reason why there no more BEVs on the street. These people are not anti green. They just cannot afford it. In more ways than just price to purchase it.

[Monkeh]

And I'm sure you're quite happy to go and invest tens of thousands of dollars into a vehicle which is impractical for you with no foreseeable change to that fact. The rest of the world has other ideas.

This is why I typically don't discuss BEVs with people from the UK.  They managed to essentially run the world at one point, but today can't seem to be able to wire a 240V outlet.

The issue here is that you are arguing from a point of profound ignorance as to the reality of living in this country.

Running cables to a dwelling was brought up as an example of the cost of running underground cabling. The reverse would be required for a house to provide its own charging point at the roadside, or similar work required to provision charging up a street on behalf of the houses there by, say, a local council, or a private company providing charging facilities.

[Someone]

I have asked about the actual numbers in another thread, but no one seems to know. Categorized per system emitting CO2 what the actual values are. The main focus at the moment is on the car and the households using fossil fuels to run. Some say this only takes up a very small share in the total CO2 emission the human race is responsible for.

So is there a chart that shows how much CO2 a human or other big animal produces by eating and pooping, how much industry produces, how much house holds produce, how much cars produce, etc.

That sort of data is readily available:
https://www.csiro.au/en/research/environmental-impacts/climate-change/climate-change-qa/sources-of-ghg-gases
reported in co2 "equivalent"
Private transport is somewhere around 5-10% of total Australian emissions by that measure. Still a bigger opportunity for change than things like LED bulb replacement (and the carbon offsets that were shuffled around on that).

[Cerebus]

Even L2 charging isn't free or anywhere near free once you price in the wiring to it.  Streetside charging, even if only outlets, is a pretty big capital outlay.  I'm not sure there is enough copper available.

LOL.  Ok, if you say so.

You clearly have no idea about infrastructure costs. We're talking about places where you need to dig to install new electricity connections, none of that third world pig on a pole stuff.

The average cost of a new supply connection from existing street cables to a dwelling in the UK is £1790, most of that cost is digging in metalled roads and making good. There are 52 roadside parking spaces down my typical residential London street. That's a minimum of 26 type 2 charging points, at a minimum of £1000 a pop for the supply, £1000 a pop for a twin socket charging pillar, so ~£50,000 plus for one street.

If you include all the streets that London Licensed Taxi drivers are required to learn there are over 30,000. That's only the streets within six miles of Charing Cross. London is about 30 miles across, give or take. Which leads to a crude estimate of 180,000 streets. There's 9200 miles of roads in London (not an estimate). So that's on the order of £9 billion, just for London. Over £1000 for each man, woman and child that lives in London. The current property taxes for London total about £5 billion a year.

I'm sorry, I really have no idea what you are talking about.  "new supply connection from existing street cables to a dwelling"  Are you planning to build a new house just for your car? 

This is the sort of stuff people from the UK give me all the time.  There are some who have BEVs and discuss rationally how they charge in their garage or driveway.  None of them have needed new feeds from the street!  You must think a BEV requires a direct connection to a nuclear power plant to charge!  I charge my Tesla model X from a 120V, 15A outlet that provides 1.44 kW to the car which puts just 1 kW into the battery.  In the UK, you don't even have such low power outlets, do you?

This is why I typically don't discuss BEVs with people from the UK.  They managed to essentially run the world at one point, but today can't seem to be able to wire a 240V outlet.

I'm obvious talking about kerbside charging, which is a necessity for the majority of city dwellers in European cities to be able to use BEVs at any scale as practical everyday transport as the vast majority of city dwellers do not have a drive or a garage. Have you ever been to a European city? Perhaps people from the UK give you this "sort of stuff" because they live there and know the conditions and you don't. You sit in your little corner of Puerto Rico and just imagine that the rest of the world works just the same, well it doesn't. The population density of urban London overall is twice that of San Juan, Paris 7.5 times that of San Juan, Barcelona 5.7. Heck the urban population of London is 3 times that of the whole of Puerto Rico, and population density 16 times that of Puerto Rico as a whole. The London metro area has a population 4 1/2 times that of the whole of Puerto Rico

My house is a very typical victorian London terraced house built circa 1850 which is 7m odd wide, as is my neighbours, and so on until the end of the road, and the next street, and the next street in both directions for a mile either way. No driveway, no garage, I have to park on the street in front. Perhaps 1 in 100 houses in my borough (population density 25,000/sq mi, 3.5 times that of San Juan) has a drive or a garage. It's a 2000 year old city, that has been crammed into a river basin. Most UK cities are slightly less packed, but still most of the housing and the residential roads were built well before motor cars were invented; and the average city dweller didn't have a stable for a horse and cart or any attached land that could be repurposed for a drive or a garage.

Here's a typical London street of Victorian terraced houses, similar to mine, ~6 miles from the centre of town.



I've been very lucky, my neighbours are considerate, and I get to park in front of my house almost all the time, and so can cobble together charging at the kerb, running a cable under a safety yellow tread strip. But as soon as there are a few people in my street needing to do that you can bet your last dollar that the local authority will ban it on safety grounds, and probably rightly once these become a common hazard to foot traffic rather than a rare one.

All you are doing by your handwaving and saying that nothing is a problem and everything is all so simple to fix is betray your parochiality and ignorance of the world more than a few thousand feet from your own front door.

[Cerebus]

This is the sort of stuff people from the UK give me all the time.  There are some who have BEVs and discuss rationally how they charge in their garage or driveway.  None of them have needed new feeds from the street!  You must think a BEV requires a direct connection to a nuclear power plant to charge!  I charge my Tesla model X from a 120V, 15A outlet that provides 1.44 kW to the car which puts just 1 kW into the battery.  In the UK, you don't even have such low power outlets, do you?

I'm charging my PHEV from an extension lead run out of the kitchen window!   That's 2.3kW.  About the lowest you would normally charge a car on around here...  Still, it shows that you can install EV charging even if you rent.  The total cost of the infrastructure was... about £20 for a heavy duty waterproof lead from the DIY store.

I'll put a proper EV charger on the wall once I move in to the new place.

I just upgraded from that to a purpose made extension cable made out of 2.5 mm² "arctic" cable (for the lower I²R losses) and a pukka IP66 socket for the outdoor end of it. Combined with the IP66 rated charge cable (with integral 3 pole disconnect ELCB) that came with the car I can now charge the car without keeping an eye on the weather (which I was being ultra cautious about before). I wasn't very happy with either the low IP54 rating of the commercial "waterproof" extensions or the whispy thin 1.5mm² cable - used to get way too warm for my liking (even though I'd obviously done the correct thing and unravelled the whole thing for heat dissipation).

[nctnico]

I've been very lucky, my neighbours are considerate, and I get to park in front of my house almost all the time, and so can cobble together charging at the kerb, running a cable under a safety yellow tread strip. But as soon as there are a few people in my street needing to do that you can bet your last dollar that the local authority will ban it on safety grounds, and probably rightly once these become a common hazard to foot traffic rather than a rare one.

Yup. In the city where I live you get a 259 euro fine for putting a cable over the side walk (to charge your EV). Even if it is in a safety strip.

[gnuarm]

I'm pissing my pants here 

Yes, I gather that's par for the course.

[gnuarm]

Or you stop for 10-15 minutes along the way, have a coffee and hit the bathroom.  You can get up to 200 miles or even 321 km in that time.  If you are going to whine that this is not reasonable, then I guess you can keep your gas burner and be the last guy driving an ICE in 2050.

There are very few chargers on the way. All of them are slow and usually taken by desperate ones.... Also I don't have time to faff around. I need to get there and back without wasting additional time..  15 minutes charge on slow charger is not helpful. 2 hours I don't have just because I made a wrong decision to buy a car the doesn't serve my usage patterns..

Ok, then you live in a country that isn't ready for BEVs.  Perhaps you can join the rest of us in anther 10 years or so.  In the US, Tesla has made a point of building a very good charging network that is very effective.  They are still continuing to expand it.  I know in Australia, not so much.  People live around the perimeter mostly, yet have to drive across the inner parts to reach other parts of the perimeter.  They don't have so many Teslas yet, so not so many trip chargers.

I don't serve my car purposes. It is the other way around. Until BEV serves my lifestyle as well as gasoline burner and is affordable to me to buy, no BEV for me. And that is how it is for 90% of all population. THAT is the reason why there no more BEVs on the street. These people are not anti green. They just cannot afford it. In more ways than just price to purchase it.

Yeah, I get that.  Not everyone is ready for BEVs.  But don't invent numbers where you have none.  The only thing currently limiting the number of BEVs on the road is how fast they can make them, literally!  There is a year backlog on many models. 

[gnuarm]

And I'm sure you're quite happy to go and invest tens of thousands of dollars into a vehicle which is impractical for you with no foreseeable change to that fact. The rest of the world has other ideas.

You seem to have snipped something you wanted to reply to.  But my BEV is not impractical in any way.  It works very well and charging is nearly everywhere. 

This is why I typically don't discuss BEVs with people from the UK.  They managed to essentially run the world at one point, but today can't seem to be able to wire a 240V outlet.

The issue here is that you are arguing from a point of profound ignorance as to the reality of living in this country.

Running cables to a dwelling was brought up as an example of the cost of running underground cabling. The reverse would be required for a house to provide its own charging point at the roadside, or similar work required to provision charging up a street on behalf of the houses there by, say, a local council, or a private company providing charging facilities.

Yes, there are many countries I am ignorant of.  I have found that by the description of the electric grid in the UK, by the people who live in the UK, it is not unlike the grid here in Puerto Rico, constantly on the edge of crashing and putting everyone in the dark.  I hope you can find a path forward that will resolve your grid problems and BEVs can be used as in the more advanced countries in the EU. 

[gnuarm]

Cerebus:  I'm not handwaving.  I just know that this is not such an insurmountable problem.  It only requires a bit of innovative thinking rather than not looking past the roadblock. 

Ok, that is what I have said several times.  Many, but not all people from the UK, who discuss this seem to think it is an intractable problem.  I'm willing to bet that in 10 years, solutions abound.

[Monkeh]

And I'm sure you're quite happy to go and invest tens of thousands of dollars into a vehicle which is impractical for you with no foreseeable change to that fact. The rest of the world has other ideas.

You seem to have snipped something you wanted to reply to.  But my BEV is not impractical in any way.  It works very well and charging is nearly everywhere.

There was nothing of substance to reply to, merely the presence of your attempted reply.

Your BEV may be practical - you are missing the issue that for many people it simply would not be and no change to this is in sight despite your assertion that there is no problem. Nobody is going to buy a BEV which they cannot practically use based upon the dream that someone else will shortly turn up and fix it.

Cerebus:  I'm not handwaving.  I just know that this is not such an insurmountable problem.  It only requires a bit of innovative thinking rather than not looking past the roadblock. 

Ok, that is what I have said several times.  Many, but not all people from the UK, who discuss this seem to think it is an intractable problem.  I'm willing to bet that in 10 years, solutions abound.

It is an intractable problem for those who have it, and the vast majority of those are not in a position to keep changing their vehicles.

[EEVblog]

Cerebus:  I'm not handwaving.  I just know that this is not such an insurmountable problem.  It only requires a bit of innovative thinking rather than not looking past the roadblock. 
Ok, that is what I have said several times.  Many, but not all people from the UK, who discuss this seem to think it is an intractable problem.  I'm willing to bet that in 10 years, solutions abound.

To the person making a decision ot buy an EV it doesn't matter that the probem can be solved, or may be solved in the future, it's a simple fact that it doesn't work for them NOW.
And solving street parking charging is not as easy as solving say a home charging problem. Installing an extra power in your garage or outside your house and running an extension lead is trivial, you can do it yourself or just hire an electrican to do it fairly easily, so it's no impedement to buying an EV.
But if you are forced to park on the public street you don't have the same easy options. And regardless of how much effort oyu put into solving this problem, there wil ALWAYS be people who are unable to buy an EV because of the charging issue.

EV's will never reach the convenience point of getting 500km range in 2 minutes at a petrol station like ICE cars. So you need to be a certain kind of buys to go for an EV. This will not change for the forseeable future.