tomo

I'm sure you are right about the unwary getting stung - and I think it will be more than just the occasional rip-off chargers. For the moment a lot of the EV adopters are clearly enthusiasts, often very keen on tech and handy with it. They seem to enjoy delving into multiple apps to plot journey routes with charging stops. Controlling just about every function of the car via a touchscreen suits them. Finding the best deal on home chargers and then signing up for a good tariff is a challenge they enjoy.
The average punter who is used to just getting into the car and driving, with the occasional stop for fuel when required is going to have a rude awakening. I expect there will be numerous episodes of forgetting to plug the car in overnight, mis-setting the charging app, crawling along at 30 mph trying to reach a charger, finding that the charger doesn't work, yadda, yadda.
Then there is the risk of being an early adopter. The technology is improving fast so, once the novelty factor has worn off, depreciation is going to bite - like trying to sell a 3-year old phone. Again, the canny folk are leasing, not buying, so the risk lies with the lease company.
As/when adoption takes off we can expect lots of fun and games with new taxes, infrastructure issues and the like.
Like your Norwegian contacts, EVs will work best as second cars for city use, local errands, commuting, etc..

I plan to watch with interest!

Today's announcement on banning petrol and diesel car sales from 2030 puts a focus on how our car industry is placed to switch over to BEV production.
It does not look good because we are lagging well behind in the establishment of battery manufacturing. Here are some excerpts from a report by the Faraday Group:
"Whilst Asia remains the stronghold (China alone is projected to hit 800GWh of annual manufacturing capacity by 2025) Europe is expanding rapidly. Based on current plans – which include the construction of facilities in Germany, Sweden, Poland and Hungary – continental Europe will have 450GWh / year of production by the end of the decade.
To the growing of concern of many in the UK, there are currently no firm plans for this country to follow suit: something of a surprise given its growing EV manufacturing base and historic expertise in the field (the lithium battery was invented in Oxford and the battery plant alongside Nissan’s Sunderland car factory was once the first of its kind in the Europe). To give a sense of how rapidly things have moved on, whilst that same plant remains the UK’s largest facility, its annual 2GWh capacity is dwarfed by the scale of the planned pipeline elsewhere in Europe.
To avert this scenario, and tap into the huge opportunity presented by the UK’s growing EV market, the group claims that the UK will need to build at least seven 20GWh gigafactories by 2040. The question is: can it be done, and is there the political and industrial will to make it happen?"
Bringing the deadline forward by 10 years won't make it any easier!
The first such facility for the UK has been announced by Britishvolt, it is to be built in S. Wales with production possibly starting in 2023.....

On the range issue, I've just read a post which gave the following figures for a journey to Scotland in a Tesla:
Distance: 403 miles
Driving time: 6 hrs 11 min
Charging: 31 mins (2 stops of 19 and 12 mins)
Total Duration: 6 hrs 42 min

That's not so different from what I would expect with a conventional car. Even without refuelling most drivers would stop at least once so there is probably only 20 mins extra for the EV.

In contrast to my previous post, here's a horror story of a couple taking 9 hours to get back home (130 miles) from Brighton:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/nov/28/electric-cars-porsche-charging-network

tomo: Expensive, and it looks like the same colour Taycan!
Surprised the automatic braking didn't kick in.

tomo; that study is controversial. There have been a number in the same vein, giving varied results. There are so many variables it is a tricky exercise before any partisanship creeps in.

tomo: absolutely! One of the most common failings with those studies is that they use the country's present power mix to run their comparisons. Pointing out that they should use the source of incremental power does not go down well in some quarters!
If only there was an "Observer" version of McKay's excellent book - it would make a great Xmas present for Boris!

This post is copied from an EV forum. It rather confirms the infrastructure concerns. As background, "Podpoint" is a supplier of domestic chargers: the poster has been liaising with them.

<< Podpoint said:
"Limited power supply capacity, costly upgrade, means inadequate charging provision
The available supply to a development is sized according to the likely peak demand
from the electrical loads prior to the provision of charging infrastructure, with a little
headroom. Dedicated charging infrastructure, most often providing 7kW of power
per outlet, represents a significant additional load. Not only this, but un-managed a
large proportion of charging can take place during the early evening when demand
is already at its peak.

These factors do not apply universally across DNO jurisdictions (we recommend
checking with the relevant DNO), even with them applied it is often not possible to
simply install a 7kW chargepoint for each resident’s parking bay without cumulative
demand exceeding capacity.
It may be possible to introduce additional capacity in relatively low cost ways, e.g.

applying to the DNO to uprate service fuses etc, but ultimately available power is limited
by downstream hardware (local transformers, substations etc). The cost of reinforcing
DNO hardware is non-trivial, and usually prohibitive for existing and new developments
alike. Furthermore, it is unlikely that there will be any immediate benefit to residents of
the development, particularly while demand for charging is in its early phases."

This was provided after we inquired about adding EV charging to our apartment building. They also go on to say (as a poster in this thread has already mentioned) that early adopters in the buildings may well snatch up any spare capacity leaving others unable to install charge points as the supply is limited without cost prohibitive upgrades.

I don't see any reason why this isn't a similar situation for streets of house or even large estates. I know some posters run 3 showers, several electric heaters and 4 oven for hours each day with no issues but I'd suggest Podpoint know what they're talking about.
It is an issue and I can only think if you're even remotely interested in having an EV and have off street parking get your main fuse upgraded ASAP to grab that capacity to mitigate any possibility of being denied in the future.>>

tomo; that study is controversial.

The study, which has since been widely debunked by experts, was presented as “groundbreaking” third-party research and appeared to show that electric cars would have to travel as far as 50,000 miles before matching the carbon footprint of a petrol model.
Thursday’s report was commissioned by companies including Aston Martin, Bosch, Honda and McLaren shortly after the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, called for a ban on the sale of new fossil fuel vehicles from 2030, and presented as the work of Clarendon Communications.

But it can be revealed that the same companies that were credited with commissioning the study collaborated to write the report themselves, and the communications firm is a company registered under the name of Rebecca Stephens, who is the wife of Aston Martin’s government affairs director, James Stephens. The company was set up in February and registered to the address of a property jointly owned by the married couple

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/02/aston-martin-pr-firm-anti-electric-vehicle-study

Phil; Despite its dodgy provenance, that study's claims have been substantially confirmed by Polestar which is an EV specialist, spun off from Volvo:
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/analysis-polestar-lifts-lid-lifetime-ev-emissions

They compared their Polestar 2 EV to a Volvo SUV and reached this conclusion:
"If the 2 is charged from what Polestar calls the ‘European grid’ – the average electricity mix across 28 countries – the EV has to travel 50,000 miles before its lifetime carbon footprint is lower than the petrol XC40’s.
Clearly, the mix of wind and nuclear power across Europe significantly helps to reduce the CO2 load when recharging an EV. Polestar’s calculations, based on the average global energy mix, show it would take 70,000 miles before the 2 had a CO2 advantage over the petrol XC40."

In my view, even the second figure is dubious because it is the CO2 intensity of the incremental demand which should be used, not the average mix on the grid. As things stand, an incremental demand will be met by gas in the UK and many other countries since all of the available zero-CO2 electricity is always fully allocated as it is prioritised onto the grid, behind only nuclear.
Using that metric, the typical EV has about the same CO2 per km as a modern 2-litre diesel. Add in the greater manufacturing CO2 and they never match ICE cars, let alone improve on them.

As pointed out above, there are many studies available all with different assumptions. This one found a Nissan Leaf driven in the UK has around one-third the lifetime emissions of an ICE equivalent. Polestar also found the EV is better over the lifetime of the car. Not sure I agree with the point about incremental electricity, as countries decarbonise electricity supply the advantage of EVs both in manufacture and driving emissions is only going to increase - the autocar article continues to observe that VW have started making cars in a factory powered by hydro, solar and wind.

Here's a new pitfall, quoting from a post on an EV forum:
"I have a leased Audi A3 e-tron and during overnight charging the car was been damaged by a power surge. The car has been unable to be fixed by Audi under any form of warranty and from their final written response the liability for any such damage lies with the owners of vehicles - i.e. the car has no surge protection and users are responsible to get surge protection fitted to their homes!"

From the subsequent comments, surge protection on a high-current device like a charger costs serious bucks - probably a lot more than the charger. Also lots of comments that the car should not have been so damaged as it should meet EU standards which cover this issue.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It is potentially more of a problem in rural areas with above-ground local distribution.

Phil C: " Not sure I agree with the point about incremental electricity, as countries decarbonise electricity supply the advantage of EVs both in manufacture and driving emissions is only going to increase - the autocar article continues to observe that VW have started making cars in a factory powered by hydro, solar and wind."

I agree that the EVs case gets stronger as the CO2 intensity of the power supply decreases. My point was that, in the UK at present, any incremental demand will not be met with zero-CO2 power. There's none available as it is all fully allocated. The same point applies to all of these plans for universal electrification and this will continue until we have so much power available from nuclear + renewables that there is a consistent surplus above the existing demand and - a big challenge - the means to store it.
We are a long way from that point and, imho, renewables will struggle to compensate for the imminent retirement of over 6 GW of nuclear, let alone give us more capacity. Taking capacity factors into account, it will take roughly 18 GW of wind or 60 GW of solar to replace the lost annual output of those nukes.

VW have been "de-carbonising" their manufacturing for a while, as have the other big German companies, long before they started making EVs. The problem is the batteries: there's not a lot of European capacity yet. So much of the requirement is imported, largely from China or Korea with commensurate CO2 content.

tomo; apologies - I should have included a bit more info. It was a lightning strike nearby which, apparently, sent a surge through the charger to the car, ignoring the house earth rod.
If you are interested in the details and the commentary, here's the thread:
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=247&t=1888598
The owner is stranded between Audi, the provider of the charger and the power company - none of whom accept any responsibility.

The EU is putting forward new standards for EV batteries. Under the cloak of making them more "sustainable", the measures will probably serve to protect European manufacturers by blocking or penalising external suppliers, esp the Chinese who presently supply about 80% of the batteries.
According to Reuters:
"Under the proposals, rechargeable electric vehicle (EV) and industrial batteries sold in Europe must disclose their carbon footprint from 2024, and comply with a CO2 emissions limit from 2027.
An obligation to disclose the content of recycled raw materials in those batteries would apply from 2027, followed by requirements to use a minimum share of recycled cobalt, lithium, nickel and lead from 2030."