There seems to be a presumption that there will be an inexhaustable supply of electricity to power this electric vehicle programme, the BBC article mainly witters on about how to access the power and the level of charging capacity etc.

The national grid predicts up to 26 million electric vehicles on the roads of the UK by 2050.

So that's 26 million vehicles that are presumably going to have to be charged on a daily basis, unless some wondrous new technology emerges before then.

I wonder where the source of this power to charge all these vehicles is going to come from?

That's, where is the power going to come from, when it is needed, not, if the wind happens to be blowing, or the sun happens to be shining, when you want to charge your electric car.

The solar power thing is not going to help much, in winter, in the UK, when it's possible to go a week or two without seeing the sun, which in winter is very low in the sky and has very little heat energy in it.

Unless, that is the constraint that is going to be placed on your electric car, that is, you will only be able to charge it when there is power available to do so?

If this was a real problem we'd already be hearing about people blowing fuses while charging their Nissan Leafs or Tesla Model S's and boiling a kettle at the same time. I haven't read any such stories.

250,000 Nissan Leaf's have been sold, 150,000 Tesla Model S and over 10,000 Tesla Model X,, 50,000 Renault Zoe. Add in other types of electric cars and the total must be well over half a million. Surely we'd have heard about the kettle problem by now.

Then there's all the plug-in hybrids which have smaller batteries that charge in a shorter time - but the kettle problem, if it existed, would have cropped up with them too.

Many good points here, though we've actually only recently discussed this topic on the forum, so I won't go into much detail on my post this time (search for the other threads).

A couple of things to add:

Charging infrastructure would be very expensive to install, and would be nigh on impossible for existing flat blocks and many houses (terraces with on-road parking or ones with communal car carks and no driveways) - it should be noted that all brand new flat blocks are BY LAW having car parking spaces removed, often to below one per property.

The lithium used in batteries is a scarce and rapidly-diminishing resource. Most comes from one area of a country in South America, and supposedly will have problems sourcing it within the next 25-50 years (see Wiki entry) when demand from electric vehicles, mobile phones and computers easily outstrips supply. It is also difficult and expensive to recycle old batteries with it in. I suspect that we'll have to find alternative sources or materials to fill the large void.

I think the generation capacity and robustness of supply (poor at present) is a HUGE factor. Note that many power stations have maintenance done over night when demand is low, so if if charging occure at that time, more will have to be built to compensate and/or have more daytime switch-offs. I would also be worried about physical terrorism and cyber warfare, given how useless governments and large firms are at dealing with both.

Thinking on a more intimate scale, how will people charge their vehicles if their car is kept overnight in anywhere but a garage? Even if there were charging points installed outside people's homes would you really want to leave your car charging there? I can just imagine people coming out to their cars in the morning to find the cable unplugged and the trip computer giving two miles of range.

"Sorry, I can't come to work today as my car takes thirteen hours to charge."

"Sorry, I can't take my wife to the hospital as it's three miles away".

Until electric cars offer the convenience of petrol and diesel, they simply don't work for the majority of us.

Edited by Bicycle_Repair_Man on 24/08/2017 at 16:12