Power Generation

This article appears to be missing the biggest hole of all. Dense charging networks aren't going to be much use if you don't have the electricity generation available. The country is already faced with power shortages in the next decade due to the number of power plants which are to be decomissioned in that time, including most of the nuclear capacity. Given the lead time for nuclear, then we could well be forced into rapif fill-in with fossil-fueled plants just to meet current requirements (pun unintended). I suppose the batteries in the electrically powered cars might usefully soak up some of the peaks from notoriously variable renewables, but I think that's a side-show and would require an intelligent network (and also demonstrated that hybrids will be the real need).

To put the numbers in perspective, if we have 1m cars (a small fraction of the total vehicle usage in the UK) powered primarily by electricity, and these each use 20Kwh per day (enough for a moderate daily commute) then that's 20GWhrs per day of extra generation capacity or over 7,300GWhrs per year. That's approaching the total output of Sizewell B just for a very small percentage of national transport needs.

The power generation and distribution side of this equation had better be considered if more than a few percent of cars, buses and lorries are to be considered.

I have a feeling that a far larger and quicker saving in CO2 usage and energy consumption could be made through policies that promoted efficient cars more quickly. The electric vehicle side of this equation is no quick fix.

Yes, of course.

Shouldn't one expect "vehciles" from the DfT? Which is pronounced daft, I presume.

Catch the trolleybus

If you do not have to pay road tax, insurance and vehicle maintenance, and you travel alone, you can afford to catch a bus. Once you have a car, taking the bus is out of the question. If we loose road tax (and increase fuel tax to match), and switch to insurance/mile instead of insurance/day, there is some incentive for people to consider buses. Break the bus route monopolies, and prices will become competitive. With lower prices, you get more people one buses, and a more frequent service, which makes buses a useful choice for more people.

More people on buses means fewer cars, so we do not need to widen all the motorways. Divert road widening funds to overhead (or trenched) power cables, and you can run electric buses (with tiny batteries to take divertions when the normal powered route has roadworks).

http://www.trolleybus.co.uk/futures.htm

Missing it

If the government want to spend £250 million of our money on electrifying something, they should try electrifying the rest of the freaking railways *first*. And maybe put a tram system in every city, for good measure.

Microwave pyrolysis using wind energy

Though this wouldn't provide all the energy needed for transport, it needs much less in the way of breakthroughs and infrastructure than Geoff and Mandy's plan.

As an alternative to incineration, pyrolysis has the potential to turn domestic and agricultural waste into biodiesel, syngas for peak electricity generation and heating, and biochar. Used for soil remediation in appropriate situations the biochar is both cost-effective and energy efficient in its own right; by reducing fertiliser waste and improving crop yields. It also sequesters carbon.

Though the idea of growing biofuel came a cropper, turning waste into fuels rather than burning it directly to make electricity does have advantages - including the opportunity to store some of the cheap but erratic wind energy that the taxpayer has subsidised.

New Drivers need not apply.

Has anyone checked the newer licences(last 5ish years).

They specifically DON'T allow new drivers to drive electric vehicles.

So even if they meet the targets ( a long shot), it will only be anyone that has had a licence for a few years that will benefit.

Diversion from the economic crisis

As a degree qualified electronics engineer, I can say that this whole idea is complete crap.

An announcement of £5K to be given to people to buy electric cars which don't even exist!

Johnson wants to put in 25,000 chargers, what does he think the peak demand current is going to be? I bet they're assuming that of that 25,000 perhaps only 20% will all be occupied and delivering current at the same time. I suspect in reality, for the Olympics, people will drive to the car parks with the charging points before olympic events, plug in, and then all leave around the same time. And if it's not the olympic games, people will drive to work before 9am, plug in and all leave sometime after 5pm.

So, the chances are, it could be a much higher percentage of the charging points will be in simultaneous use.

So, perhaps 80% of the chargers in use simultaneously?

F**k me, someone do the maths, it doesn't take genius to work it out..but even without doing the calculations I'm willing to bet there's no friggin way on earth the national grid infrastructure can cope with that kind of current!!

So it's not going to be new charging points that need to be built, the 6KV transformers on the street corner will need to be replaced with bigger ones ( and what if there isn't enough space in the current enclosure to fit them?), the understreet cables will need to be ripped up and replaced, or new ones laid down.

The 30KV national grid transmission system is going to need upgrading, new pylons,...planning permissions sought...

If they decide to upgrade existing 6KV transformers, how are you going to do that without interrupting supply to Joe Public, the hospitals etc, companies?

Ah, install new additional higher current transformers...but where's the space to put them alongside the existing ones?

This whole thing is going to be one big can of worms.

And the argument about it's clean, environment friendly.....yes, it will reduce pollution levels in the city, that's the only conceivable reason for doing it.

The argument about climate change is complete BS, we're increasing the generation of electricity and burning coal/gas to do it.

Far better to invest millions into fuel cell technology,

All this is a desparate attempt for the Labour party to cause a diversion from the current economic climate and the mess that Gordon Brown is in with the emails sent by McBride.

It's been put together by a bunch a muppets who don't know the first thing about electricity.

Hey Gordon, do us all a favour, lick your fingers, get a metal knife and stick it into the two lower pins of a plug socket please.

It's ok mate, it's safe, it's only 230V. Knowing my luck he'll have an RCD in the consumer unit and he won't be electrocuted..but..wait..we're talking 10 Downing street..they're so backward they might not have a modern fuse box using MCBs and an RCD.. hopefully!

Tough on E Vehicles

WHY has no one looked at Electric Bicycles and Scooters. They are ENORMOUSLY popular here in China. They are ultra cheap to run, cheap to buy, used by countless small businesses in thousands of ways, and they are GREEN. Yes they do need a power station somewhere to provide the energy to recharge them but they do their recharging AT NIGHT from the power station base load ! The batteries store that otherwise "wasted" energy and discharge it during day/business hours keeping City streets minimally polluted, reducing traffic volumes, saving car parking space - the benefits are endless!! An electric Scooter in China RETAILS at around £275 !!! Imagine that in Britain. And it doesn't mean scrapping your car - just use it less!

Generation and reticulation

Steve Jones only identifies a small part of the generation & distribution problem. The assumption made above is that the car recharging can be spread evenly over 24 hours.

In reality that's going to be hard to achieve. 1M cars all get home somewhere between 6pm and 10pm and all get plugged in simultaneously and all want to be charged ready for the morning. That compresses the power consumption into approx an 8-12 hour period meaning that the required generation and reticulation capacity needs to be scaled up by a factor of 2.5 or so.

Sure some "smart grid" thinking can spread the charging a bit, but the cars still need to be recharged in that 8-12 hour window.

Power generators hate peaky power consumption because they have to keep building generation for the highest demand and have them sitting idle during low consumption periods. That really sucks from a use of capital perspective.

UK led the world in electric vehicles

Not sure if this is still true but a few years ago our fleet of electric milk-floats made us leaders in battery vehicles. But yes this is just another bit of political headline grabbing.

Commuting by push bike is faster than bus/car but I live in a hilly area, arriving covered in sweat means a shower and change of clothes and then there's the secure storage problem for the bike once you arrive.

I drive because the bus service is unreliable - and I'm close to routes with allegedly a bus every 10 mins or more. It's unreliable because there are too many cars causing congestion so bus intervals can be 30 mins. For longer journeys I don't use the train because it costs more than driving (certainly for a family of 3), station parking is expensive and insecure. If I've got heavy luggage a taxi to the station adds a lot to the cost, bus dumps me a good half mile away and both taxi and bus add 30 minutes to the journey time compared with driving to the station.

Long distance by coach is cheap but can be slow and there are no parking facilities at the coach pick-up, not even proper drop-off facilities.

What is needed is integrated thought-through plans not addressing the bit of the problem that's going to play well with the electorate (to the idiot in the street it reads like "Government is going to give you £5000").

Individual bus routes should be auctioned - having 3 companies serving the same route in competition is stupidity. Part of the deal should be a service committment with a no-strike deal with the union.

Electric cars do nothing to help reduce road congestion and only shift the pollution problem to power generation facilities and battery manufacture/disposal. I believe there may even be a problem with the supply of the metals used to manufacture batteries - stuff like lithium, nickel, cadmium.

Incentivise commuter season tickets - but with a distance limit. It is just plain stupid that housing is so remote from workplaces, I knew someone doing a 5 hour daily commute, Birmingham to London: car to station, train, tube. I used to live in Bourneville, Cadbury's built housing for all categories of employee and for the related community like teachers and doctors all within about 3 mile radius of the factory. That meant many could walk/cycle to work, decent bus service and not much traffic so those that needed to drive, e.g. doctors making house calls, could do so.

The only losers from making public transport usable are car makers, road builders, and the petrol supply chain. What Government loses from fuel duty it will make up from speed cameras - reduce congestion and we might actually get to the position that it's possible to pass a speed camera travelling in excess of 30mph!

More "free money" from HMG

And you lot are suprised when another New Labour "great idea" turns out to be more full of crap than an entire slurry farm? Now wait a few days and they'll tell you they are announcing *another* £250 million for E-vehicle stuff, plus another shedload (garage-load?) of jobs to design, build and maintain the e-fleet.

But then they'll buy second-rate junk from overseas that cannot do the job as well as what we've got now, and the OEMs will refuse to let us have the information necessary to maintain them ourselves, and they will continue to reannounce the "new" money every few months until they find another trumpet to blow (or they get kicked out in the next General Election when more people realise what a bunch of useless shysters they really are).

Worked with JSF , hasn't it?

Nonsense all round / non-science too

"So you need a dense charging network"

No, what we need is cars that run off Methanol or other easily handled liquid FUEL. Batteries are a stupid idea for most users, and at best a poor choice in the best cases.

@Flocke Kroes

"Break the bus route monopolies, and prices will become competitive"

Price is not the problem for me. It it the fact that busses only come once per hour, often don't come at all, and take one - two hours to do a journey that I can do in 35 - 40 minutes by car. No amount of further de-regulation is going to help that - for one thing, more busses means lower efficiency, and given the long detour that they do, that is already borderline.