Electric Vehicles

Car manufacturers have called for urgent action to reignite the switch to electric vehicles, after sales figures showed slowing demand among ordinary motorists for battery-powered cars.

While overall UK registrations grew by 1% in April year-on-year to 134,000, the increase was caused by fleet sales, with private buyer sales down by almost 18% on last year.

Manufacturers are alarmed by slowing sales growth in battery electric vehicles, which in the first four months of 2024 have only increased market share by 0.3% from the same period in 2023, to 15.7%, despite the rapid take-up in previous years.

While the industry expects the figure to improve this year, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said that BEV sales would be below government targets of 22% of all new cars, and called for steps to “re-enthuse” buyers, including tax cuts, incentives and more chargers.>

The journalist and electric vehicle campaigner Quentin Willson has said he is "staggered" after the Government did not cut VAT for EV charging in the budget.

He explained: "FairCharge is staggered that the Chancellor is prepared to spend £5billion on a fuel duty freeze and continuation of the 5p cut, yet won't spend 125th of that - circa £40million - on cutting the VAT on public EV charging.

"Why wouldn't you support a drive for cleaner air in our towns and cities? Might it have something to do with an election, we wonder."

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/7575755

The Mr Bean actor was name-checked in the House of Lords on Tuesday during its environment and climate change committee meeting.

Thinktank Green Alliance gave its views on the main obstacles the government faces in its bid to phase out petrol and diesel cars before 2035, and said a comment piece by the Johnny English star published in June 2023 was damaging to the cause.

The pressure group told peers in a letter that was shared: "One of the most damaging articles was a comment piece written by Rowan Atkinson in The Guardian which has been roundly debunked.

"Unfortunately, fact checks never reach the same breadth of audience as the original false claim, emphasising the need to ensure high editorial standards around the net zero transition."

The 69-year-old actor's piece was headlined: "I love electric vehicles - and was an early adopter. But increasingly I feel duped."

Atkinson wrote that EVs were "a bit soulless" and criticised the use of their lithium-ion batteries.

He suggested solutions like drivers keeping the same car for longer periods of time and increased use of synthetic fuel would negate the need for EVs, saying: "Increasingly, I'm feeling that our honeymoon with electric cars is coming to an end, and that's no bad thing."

The actor, who described himself as a "car person" having got a degree in electrical and electronic engineering, said he advised friends to "hold fire for now" on EVs unless they have an old diesel vehicle.

"There is an anti-EV story in the papers almost every day. Sometimes there are many stories, almost all of which are based on misconceptions and mistruths, unfortunately."

MFG EV Power charging hubs coming to Morrisons fuel forecourts!

Oxford is launching an electric fleet that will make the city one of the UK’s leading adopters of zero-emission buses.

The 159 new battery-powered buses will give Oxford more electric buses per capita than other cities including London, Glasgow and Leicester, under a pioneering arrangement in which the council will guarantee private operators faster journey times in return for investment.

From Monday, the first buses will officially enter service after a ceremony to mark the launch. Only buses that are zero-emission will be allowed within the city when the entire fleet is operational, with more restrictions on other types of traffic to cut congestion as well as improve air quality.

...

The partnership, in which both Go-Ahead and Stagecoach electric buses will be rebranded in the same livery, will be underpinned by further traffic measures in the city to reduce bus journey times by at least 10% compared with 2019 speeds – a contractual commitment from the council to ensure the investment is viable for the private companies.

The city already has a number of “bus gates”, which prohibit most other vehicles, and more traffic filters will be introduced by the end of 2024 to push people towards public transport or active travel where possible.

Oxford has already implemented several low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs), which have been the focus of heated protests by campaigners and conspiracy theorists.

Further more nuanced details here, but I didn't want to lead with a site people might not be familiar with: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2024/01/bt-start-uk-trial-to-convert-broadband-street-cabinets-into-ev-chargers.html

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/6354036

The number of new cars registered in the UK has jumped by nearly 18% but electric vehicle demand is flatlining, prompting the industry to call for a VAT cut to stimulate sales.

Annual figures released by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) on Friday show 1.9m new cars were registered last year, well up on the previous year’s figure of 1.6m and the highest level since the 2.3m registrations of 2019.

The increase is a boost for the automotive industry after the pandemic led to supply chain problems and a shortage of vital computer chips that slowed production.

Across the year, 315,000 new battery electric vehicles were sold. That was 50,000 more than 2022, but the number being bought as a share of total registrations failed to grow as expected. They represented just 16.5% of the total, slightly down on last year’s 16.6%.

Just saw this in Tesco!

I was considering buying a Chevy Bolt lately to use as my daily commuter but found out it collects a lot of data and phones it back. It's hard to do research on what kind of EV I could buy that doesn't collect your location data so I'm hoping someone here might have some good suggestions.

Between 2200-2359 today, get 40% off Ionity and Osprey.

at the birstall retail park, Raw Charging are doing a promo for a week at their new x10 rapid hub.

lots of restaurants and places to eat, its just like Le Mans trying to reach any of them so bring your sprint spikes in case a petrol SUV tries to mow you down in a perverted sense of justice rage

its an absolute monster- 44 rapids, solar canopies, the full works. In an area which is pretty shit for charging, its excellent news

We're very pleased to announce that Zapmap has taken its first step outside of the UK and the Republic of Ireland – and has started mapping charge points in mainland Europe.

From our survey, we know that around 18% of Zapmap users drive abroad – typically to France, as well as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany – with the past year seeing a 28% increase in the number of people travelling to mainland Europe in their electric car.

Now, EV drivers travelling to the continent can use the app and desktop map to search and filter for certain charge points in France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

The roll out is going like the clappers. All these sites have opened since spring, which is incredible

Source: https://www.speakev.com/threads/pick-your-favourite.181562/ (apparently originally from Facebook - there are a couple of others in the link)

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/4828515

Figures show there are 131 publicly available EV charging devices

I think that charging stations should display their prices like fuel stations.

I don't mean the ones on pavements or hotel car parks, but locations with 6 or more outlets.

Anyone else agree with me?

to my mind, its the most obvious place to put chargers. supermarket car parks were often always built for an imaginary capacity which would never be fully used, and in any case most people park close to the doors leaving the outer areas empty most of the time. Morrisons were the first to put rapids into their car parks and will replace those heaps of crap with MFG hubs in the coming years, Tesocs had the excellent but expired free charging VW/Podpoint tie-in but Sainsburys are actually rolling out high power hubs today. Asda are putting in machines at some sites, but mostly at their petrol station sites. Lidl and Aldi likewise have the same idea as Morrisons but are now woefully behind the curve.

Sainsburys have 7 hubs we can find information on, all opened from summer to this week:

Bristol Castle Court x7 (150KW kempower units) Bristol Emerson Green x9 Crayford x16 Exeter x8 Harrogate x8 Ludlow x8 Westwood Ramsgate x10

EV chargers cables owned by BP Pulse and Osprey Charging reportedly stolen from The Maltings Retail Park, Waitrose, Appletongate and Albert Street in Newark – with Nottinghamshire Police said to be investigating

Wow! Didn't expect this. Although the article is a bit confusing as to whether it's the network or just Tesla hardware. When I heard it on the radio this morning they specifically mentioned the supercharger network.

I cant argue with someones' nan's facebook feed telling them outright lies, but there is a hell of alot of misinformation being peddled - and not just from anti-EV people. Some very pro-EV people also talk total shit. If you havnt considered it, why not?

For those interested here is the UK portion of the EU wide Ten T Core network which is the infrastructure plan, road and rail for the transition to net zero. Since Brexit we have not been included in the formal plans because of reasons, but the plan is still being enacted here because those same HGVs and trains will still be arriving here, and will require the same network setup. This gives businesses some scope to plan as the scheme advances.

Basically in a nutshell the idea is to have rapid charging provision for cars, vans and HGV every 40-50 miles along the route, as well as rail freight integration at some stage - note the Eurostar franchise rights being up for negotiation with other operators for example, so it may become possible to travel with different operators through the tunnel. If that connects to Glasgow for example via HS2, or what’s left of it, then that service could be very popular for both passengers and freight. And ultimately now that Russia has moved its rail gauge to be compatible with the EU and the UK, you could potentially travel to Shanghai. Perhaps in our lifetime.

You can read about the wider project here https://transport.ec.europa.eu/transport-themes/infrastructure-and-investment/trans-european-transport-network-ten-t_en

absolute hole. They even removed the slightly interesting Blue Boar name. Put a microbrewery and 40 rapid chargers in and i’ll basically be living there

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/4062479

The project would involve changing the use of the half an acre site, installing 18 electric vehicle charging points, with landscaping, resurfacing and other external works