EV chargers

[matacaster]

There has been a lot of talk about lack of public EV chargers and the cost of both public and private chargers.

Forgive me, but individuals who can afford an EV at anything from £28k to £100k should not be being subsidised by taxpayers and or council tax payers who not only can't afford a new EV, but also a used one. Most of the owners will not be eco warriors, but company car drivers and pretty wealthy types well able to finance the provision of chargers.

Discuss!

 

[Bletchleyite]

There has been a lot of talk about lack of public EV chargers and the cost of both public and private chargers.

Forgive me, but individuals who can afford an EV at anything from £28k to £100k should not be being subsidised by taxpayers and or council tax payers who not only can't afford a new EV, but also a used one. Most of the owners will not be eco warriors, but company car drivers and pretty wealthy types well able to finance the provision of chargers.

Discuss!

EVs are to be encouraged, thus there should be incentives to switch to one. Input at the top of the market filters down to the bottom.

 

[matacaster]

EVs are to be encouraged, thus there should be incentives to switch to one. Input at the top of the market filters down to the bottom.

These early adopters are wealthy enough to not need incentives. Companies have bought small fleets because they thought they were going to save money, nothing to do with green stuff. Anyone moaning about lack of chargers should invest in companies that provide them or set up a new company to do that themselves. How many petrol forecourts were created out of public funds when motoring started?

 

[Bletchleyite]

These early adopters are wealthy enough to not need incentives. Companies have bought small fleets because they thought they were going to save money, nothing to do with green stuff. Anyone moaning about lack of chargers should invest in companies that provide them or set up a new company to do that themselves. How many petrol forecourts were created out of public funds when motoring started?

You're missing the point entirely. Without incentives, they'll continue to buy petrol and diesel cars.

It's not about what they can afford, it's about driving behaviour.

 

[stuu]

There has been a lot of talk about lack of public EV chargers and the cost of both public and private chargers.

Forgive me, but individuals who can afford an EV at anything from £28k to £100k should not be being subsidised by taxpayers and or council tax payers who not only can't afford a new EV, but also a used one. Most of the owners will not be eco warriors, but company car drivers and pretty wealthy types well able to finance the provision of chargers.

Discuss!

If a council installs a (paid-for) public charger then it makes some money from it, instead of the money going to the oil companies. What's not to like?

 

[sannox]

There has been a lot of talk about lack of public EV chargers and the cost of both public and private chargers.

Forgive me, but individuals who can afford an EV at anything from £28k to £100k should not be being subsidised by taxpayers and or council tax payers who not only can't afford a new EV, but also a used one. Most of the owners will not be eco warriors, but company car drivers and pretty wealthy types well able to finance the provision of chargers.

Discuss!

I don't mind a degree of public funding to get infrastructure in place, especially as some areas will be challenging to provide for. There is no need for free charging and it's too expensive for that now. It also can hold back private charging provision.

We still have some free chargers near my house (you pay for the parking space during the day) and I laugh watching the folk in expensive cars hovering around it like bees around the honeypot when it isn't in chargeable hours and queueing for it rather than just using the pay chargers down the road! It is the same with the charger near my work which is basically a plug point - there is virtually no point in plugging an EV in there.

I do have an issue with the disparity in pricing we're seeing- even among private operators as some is incredibly expensive. Chargeplace Scotland released a tariff update for March where one operator is charging £2 per kWh, which is eye-wateringly expensive. Not to mention silly minimum tariffs.

 

[matacaster]

You're missing the point entirely. Without incentives, they'll continue to buy petrol and diesel cars.

It's not about what they can afford, it's about driving behaviour.

Bearing in mind that only a certain proportion of the country's population can afford new cars, a simpler and indeed fairer solution would be to simply apply a much greater tax on new petrol and diesel cars. That would give the incentive companies need, but would not cause the poor to pay for chargers, but the wealthy who can easily afford to.

If a council installs a (paid-for) public charger then it makes some money from it, instead of the money going to the oil companies. What's not to like?

The investment in chargers requires significant borrowing. Councils are notorious for their ineptness. London is crawling with chargers in comparison to other parts of the country. Petrol stations started with an AA one, why expect council tax payers to fund the rich.

 

[ac6000cw]

The investment in chargers requires significant borrowing. Councils are notorious for their ineptness. London is crawling with chargers in comparison to other parts of the country. Petrol stations started with an AA one, why expect council tax payers to fund the rich.

Are you sure the chargers you are talking about have actually been paid for & are fully owned by the local council, rather than a local council just facilitating or partnering with a private company to install them on public land e.g. in car parks, roadside parking, laybys and verges (and maybe taking a cut of the revenue generated by them)?

 

[Class 317]

Are you sure the chargers you are talking about have actually been paid for & are fully owned by the local council, rather than a local council just facilitating or partnering with a private company to install them on public land e.g. in car parks, roadside parking, laybys and verges (and maybe taking a cut of the revenue generated by them)?

Private provision in public car parks with a revenue cut for the council is the way Bracknell Forest have rolled out chargers. As the EV roll out develops they will turn into nice little earners for the council's that have installed them.

 

[ac6000cw]

Private provision in public car parks with a revenue cut for the council is the way Bracknell Forest have rolled out chargers. As the EV roll out develops they will turn into nice little earners for the council's that have installed them.

Yes, just like car parking charges are for councils in high-demand areas

 

[NoRoute]

Forgive me, but individuals who can afford an EV at anything from £28k to £100k should not be being subsidised by taxpayers and or council tax payers who not only can't afford a new EV, but also a used one.

Not sure where you got your EV prices from but you can get a used EV or PHEV for a lot less than that. The sums of public money spent on EV charging infrastructure are trivial compared to other areas of transport spending and it is mostly pump-priming type investment, to get a basic EV charging infrastructure in place to get EV ownership to a point where it's viable for private companies to start rolling out charge-points, many of which are now doing this in highly used/traffic-ed locations. A lot of council public charging infrastructure is beneficial in helping those less affluent drivers without off-road parking access EVs, such as those living in terrace housing or flats access who would otherwise struggle to charge.

You could apply the same argument to the railways, where the biggest users and beneficiaries of taxpayer subsidies are those in the highest income groups.