Remix.run Logo
hdgvhicv 3 days ago

I found https://www.racfoundation.org/research/mobility/still-standi... a fascinating report, especially how nearly half of London has off-road parking.

grey-area 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Most of inner London doesn't need a car at all.

zeristor 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thanks, this link therein looks very impressive, about the usage of space for parking, and the roads needed to connect them too:

https://www.racfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/spa...

politelemon 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The "or with the potential to have" is hiding away a lot, to the point of being misleading. Most homes, especially in flats and terraced housing, which are the majority, won't have the infrastructure support for charging point conversion.

edent 3 days ago | parent [-]

I don't think that's quite accurate.

Flats and terraced homes aren't the majority - about 55% of people live in detached or semi-detached houses. See the ONS Census data at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/...

My terraced house has off-street parking, as do most of them in my area.

Houses with separate garages are also fairly easy to upgrade - we had an armoured cable buried in a new trench to connect our old property.

Similarly, most flats with car-parks are especially easy to add chargers to. They can either be 7kW points or just regular plugs. We had slow chargers installed in our old flat.

Yes, there are many properties with no easy way to add charging. But none of those places have a petrol pump attached either.

ageitgey 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In my (generally affluent) zone 4 neighborhood in London, the number of green plate EVs had multiplied like rabbits over the past few years, but few houses have off-street parking. A huge percentage of the cars parked on street are EVs.

But since you can plug in to charge at many street lamp posts and since most people don't drive their cars much on a day to day basis, it all works fine even without off-street parking. There are also several reserved medium-speed charging spots around the neighborhood and lots of fast chargers at the local large grocery store.

quickthrowman 3 days ago | parent [-]

> But since you can plug in to charge at many street lamp posts

Are these the standard UK 230V 13A fused single-phase receptacles? Those put out about twice as much power as a 120V 15A circuit protected by a breaker, 3kW vs 1.5kW

230 * 13 = 2990W

120 * 15 = 1800 * .8 = 1440W

Using those for L1 charging would be a lot better than US L1 charging.

ageitgey 3 days ago | parent [-]

No, they are 3.5kW - 5kW standard EV chargers. But it's probably easy to install them using the existing power run.

But you are right that standard wall charging is much more viable in a 230V system here than in the US. Some people just run a cable from inside to their car if they don't have a 'real' charger yet.

mytailorisrich 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

"London" covers a quite large area and outside of central London houses are the most common type of housing.