OK, this is not a religious text. The capitalisation is intentional, in this case the EV in EVangilisation means Electric Vehicle. We bought one a few weeks back. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely car and an absolute delight to drive, but it’s an electric vehicle. If the government sticks to its plans, by 2030 these will pretty much be the only vehicles allowed on the road, so eventually if you want the independence you are going to have to replace your petrol vehicle with an electric one.
In my simple mind, there are three components involved;
- The car
- The Battery
- The Infrastructure
The car is a delight to drive, it is quiet, smooth and surprisingly powerful, with excellent acceleration. It has all the gadgets that any petrol car has Absolutely no complaints there.
The battery, ah yes the battery. The Car Requires Active Participation. Now, I’ll give you a clue. I don’t normally swear on this blog, so if you are inclined to take the first letter of the first four words of the previous sentence, you will discover what I think of battery technology today. I am suffering from two afflictions with this car; Range Anxiety and Petrol Envy. In reality, they both boil down to the same thing, the ease with which a petrol car can be refuelled and the lack of need to plan a long journey because of the fuelling requirements. I don’t know how they are going to do it, and I accept that it “may always” take a bit longer to re-charge an EV, but at the moment, it really does take too long.
The Infrastructure, I went to a local fast charging point early this morning. I opened up one of the several different apps that I have to cater for the many different service providers – why isn’t there one app that covers all, which the providers are required to sign up to? There is an app, but signing up isn’t a requirement. There needs to be many more (almost literally millions) – every second or third lamp post should be a charging point for on street charging. The several thousand that are promised are utterly inadequate. This document describes the approach the UK government is taking. I acknowledge that I have only done a cursory read; https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7480/CBP-7480.pdf but what I read do appear to be the right words. What we need is the government to get on and deliver. It has to be a lot better than it is today.
It’s going to be a bit of a journey, and – this is where the evangelistic bit comes in, I intend to keep an eye on it.
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