How The Hell Do You Charge An Electric Car ?

Where does the electricity come from?  It always amuses me at motorway service stations to see bays of charge-up points.  Always empty.

I have heard that these electric charging points increase the value of the property so you could have a word with whoever is in charge of maintaining the site.
Your option is not a car as such but a pedlec you can take the battey pack out and charge it indoors, But pedlecs are expensive and not that practical as yet but in year or two things shoul improve

Not only the electricity which must leave some environmental footprint but the batteries are made of lithium and the scramble to mine it (it is shooting up in price of course) is causing major enviromental damage in 3rd world countries already.
The law of unforeseen consequences. Just like diesel cars were so much friendlier because they used less fuel,until we found out they were poisoning the atmosphere.

Oh that sounds fun macarony. I have a heart condition and a bad knee. It's quite a way to walk from my flat to my car. I struggle with the supermarket shop once a week. And if and when I got the thing to my car I would probably have to call a mechanic to put it in as I can drive a car but not assemble it.

It seems an awful lot of hassle having to keep charging up your car even if you do have your own charging point, which would be a minor detail to have installed.

I'll hold out using petrol as long as I can.

Possibly luckily I have reached an age where even if I am alive in 20 years time I don't see myself driving. I might get to the point where only new electric cars are sold in which case I'll just make a nuisance of myself in an old petrol banger,which I can't see them making illegal before 2040. Although.....

one taxi firm my way are all electric or hybrids but mainly electric.Anyone with a diesel or petrol car were given a year to take it off the firm and replace it with a hybrid or electric car

I have no ambition to be a taxi-driver.

how often will you be driving? sure you can buy solar 110v chargers if your a once or twice a week to shop sort of a chap, on longer trips there are always other places to charge the car while go about your bussiness

i saw a report from a woman who was talking at some eco warrior summit taking place on a weekend, she charged her electric car to get her there. she also checked which service stations on the way had charge points as it was far away and she wouldnt get there on one charge. she stopped at her chosen motorway service station to recharge only to discover no chargers were working, she wasnt worried as there was another service station about ten miles away where she could charge her car. she got there to discover it wasnt working either. so she rang a friend who came in their petrol car and took her to the conference. on the following monday she went back to her abandoned vehicle having rung the operator of the chargers and expected it to be fixed. sadly it still wasnt working so she had to get a recovery company to take her home.

No wonder all the motorway service station charge-up points are empty when it  takes several hours for a decent charge, nobody's going to want to hang around a petrol station for all that time?

apparently some of the people who run them dont have enough cash to fix them at the weekend.

you couldnt make this sh1t up

Apart from this suggestion that you can turn mechanic and remove your battery every night and re-instal it every morning I have seen no answer to my original query. My own block of flats are owner-occupied so it wouldn't appear to benefit the freeholder to instal charging points in the car park.

its an ill conceived policy salmon spray. if you buy one i think the manufacturers offer help to put one in your property, but as you say its no good to those who live in flats. apparently the latest generation of diesels are much less polluting than older ones, but its too late for them.

i am a london cabbie and we are being forced into them. at the moment we have a choice of only one that retails for about £63 000. they only have a range of about 50 miles so have a little petrol engine too hence they are not quite as green as could be and no doubt will be obsolete in a few years time.

the roll out of charging points in london is at best haphazard, so far there are only about 300 throughout london yet tfl expect there to be 9000 of these cabs on the road by the end of next year.

Invest in a house next to a lamp-post, in the future charge-points could be installed in lamp posts next to parking bays.

There is wireless charging of mobile phones and even electric toothbrushes.

Can we not put inductive chargers in all our cars and harness the vast free power from all the 5G DEATH RAYS?

Induction charging is probably the way to do it but the infrastructure would cost a lot to install. Where will all the copper come from and at what environmental cost? As we seem to be inexorably moving towards using windmills to generate electricity, it's likely there won't be enough power to keep the lights on let alone propel millions of vehicles around the country.

used to be about a grand to get one installed at your home.
ive got a static caravan and someone,s had one installed through the lecy supply on his van,with a plug underneath on the outside

how big are the batteries,easy to fit etc, could they not sell them with a spare that you keep charged up and could take it wiv you if you get caught short

they only have a range of about 50 miles so have a little petrol engine too

Has anyone tried removing the dead weight of the battery, and just running it off the little petrol engine?

The battery in the Nissan Leaf weighs 272 kg.

In other words, if you carried a spare battery around with you, it would be the equivalent of carrying 4 or 5 extra adult passengers in your car.

So the range of your first battery would be even more severely diminished.

just asking,

I wonder if the charge-points cable plug that connects into a car has a locking mechanism or can anyone just secretly unplug a charging car for a laugh?

are the charge points like road signs etc solar powered ?

no I think each one is wind-powered by its own little mini turbine.

they look like large egg wisks

screaming

there is a nissan taxi with a leaf battery due to launch soon but there is a backlog related to the battery holding up production.

i also think the battery life on electric cars isnt great and they cost a lot to replace???

we will probably end up with people peddling and rubber bands transferring the power to the wheels

Nuclear powered cars are the future you cretins

I get a billion miles to a gallon of plutonium

and you glow in the dark

Finally thinking of taking the plunge and buying a Sinclair C5 are you, salmon spray?

the large leaf battery fits underneath the seating area,

can see it now the 3 R,s turbo
RAMPANT RENAULT RABBIT,

WTF would want a line of them Things along their road ,they are unsightly

@Salmon spray
How often will you using the car?
If it is once or twice a week for shortish trips then 110 volt solar drip charger that fits on the car could be the solution with the odd trip to a fix charging point somewhere else.

@ jollyswagman

Do tje mini cab drivers and uber also now have to use electric cars or is it just another kick in the teeth for black cabs?

On my electric bike the battery is the removable cassette type about the size of a book now a car uses  much larger batteries because todays electric cars are basicly a normal heavey care with the power source swapped out, but some of the smaller electric car/pedlec builders are taking a very dicverent approach they are macking small fly weight cars minimalist in design and the battary can easily be removed for charging.

I am retired but use my car most days and in the summer drive around all over the country.
I suspect a lot of electric cars ARE used for short city journeys by people who either have another car or use and can afford taxis when necessary.

macarony, they dont have this regulation but there is an ultra low emissions zone coming soon so they need to get rid of diesel vehicles. their current weapon of choice is the hybrid prius (which is cheap as chips), often seen travelling in the wrong direction on london's roads. we are heavily regulated whereas private hire have been encouraged to do what they want.

about 13,000 uber drivers were found to not have the correct disclosure barring service police check, we were told by a senior tfl bod they would all have to reapply and that all would be up to scratch (how someone can guarantee that people will pass police checks is beyond me) but tfl gave up on dealing with the backlog. this means there are over 10,000 private hire drivers cruising around london who havent been police checked.

yesterday i learnt that our impartial regulator (tfl) have a deal with uber to get discounts for their staff, imo the corruption is blatant. we had a judge make decisions in two cases in favour of uber whose husband has interests in companies that work for uber, she also wanted to deal with any future uber cases, i wonder why?

we have three court cases on the go at the moment but as far as i can see it just means some other establishment judge will say 'move along here nothing to see'.

we're fecked.

the basic point salmon spray has highlighted is that we just dont have the infrastructure to move to all electric vehicles any time soon. imo, its all a bit of a farce.

electric Nissan leafs been used for taxis  a few years in my area now.they also have six seaters now drivers say normally takes about 15-20 mins for a charge.the newer models have nearly double the range than the first cars the owner bought

on this website it shows the six seaters

https://www.google.com/search?q=premier+taxis+blackpool&oq=premier+taxis&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0l4.6098j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

@jollyswagman
The double standards in this country is one of reasons people are angry. Would I be right in thinking that these uber drivers are the type of people the elitists love to to suck up to?
@ Salmon spray my advice is to hold off buying an electric car for a year or two maybe then these cars will be more practicle

They'll be breaking into the cars to steal the batteries if they're expensive.

The batteries are not easily accessible

but are `cars' electric? only mine's broke down and now I've nowhere to charge.

When you can get a taxi for 35p/mile there will be no need to own a car. When we have driverless electric cars, in the forseeable future, taxi firms will race to the bottom with their prices, no driver wages, a few pence per mile for electric, the rest for admin servicing depreciation and profit.

What you say there is one of the reasons why car manufactures are starting to make plans for a serious drop off in sales. We now own our own cars but it looks like future generations will not.

I can see reasons why that would be ideal macarony,but the disaster that public transport has become makes one suspect it will be the rich who will be able to swan around easily,while the plebs have to put up with the sort of chaos you get at airports now if you can't pay for special treatment.