208 - The Q and A Episode

Gary C

Hi, I'm Gary and this is EV musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles, and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today we'll be looking at evey questions and answers. Yep, it's a Q and A episode

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s of a larger overall pie. In: 2022

Colin Walker

I feel there's a real effort to jump on the figures that suggest that sales of new EVs are kind of the rate at which they're increasing is slowing a little bit and it has in a few months and I suppose the figures in terms of overall market share of new car sales or EVs has been a little disappointin. What's forgotten in that reporting is for example, in January EVs are the second fastest growing fuel segments in terms of new car sales. They grew year on year by over 20% and petrol was like now at 7%, and diesel fell 10%. The fastest growing is plug in hybrid electric vehicles at the moment. So obviously still have a battery. But then. so then. so this efforts to try and say, Oh, but the secondary market is crashing, it's always like that is literally not backed up by any data Autotrader have said, they're finding that demand for secondhand EVs in over the past year has increased by over 60%. Used EVs are the fastest selling fuel segments on their site, an EV will spend less time being advertised before it's sold than any other type of car.

Gary C

So question two, when will we see public wireless charging, or any charge point operators developing it? Well, excellent question there from Tim O'Neil. More specifically, what is the future of public charging outside the current 'throwing as many charges at it as possible mentality? What about plug and charge? Is this being discussed within ChargeUK, for example? Well, I spoke recently to Chris Pateman-Jones, who is the new chair of ChargeUK about these topics?

Chris Pateman-Jones

Yeah, I think that's a really, really interesting question. And again, I suppose I speak from from a members perspective, our interest is in trying to deploy the charging infrastructure that is out there, that sells vehicles that are out there on the road that people are able to buy. There is a chicken and egg situation here, which I think in the event that wireless charging is a part of the future, that the chicken and egg is that automakers are not going to deploy this within their cars, if the charging infrastructure isn't there. And the charging infrastructure providers are not going to deploy this at scale, because the cost involved is huge, of deploying any major infrastructure, unless there are vehicles that are able to try and sort of actually use the facility that you're deploying. So I suppose with either hat on at the moment, I would be saying I don't see this coming anytime soon. And when I do see it coming, I think it would be in some specific user cases. So I can see use cases for it, for example, for taxis, where you've got a vehicle who may be sitting in a location for a while, but moving in that location along a queue of vehicles, for example, I could see that working. I could also see it working from an accessibility perspective for some disabled drivers. Although as is regularly pointed out by the likes of Motability, access able designability, disability varies dramatically from person to person. So one disabled person's needs are very different from another. So I can see some use cases for it, I suppose, when I put my critical hat on is is plugging in your vehicle that difficult? And is this actually something that is needed? And and really, for the cost and the transition? Is it something that's going to happen? I don't I don't know. I suppose again, from a ChargeUK perspective, whatever the direction of travel is the ChargeUK members will be trying to respond to ensure that EV charging is as easy as possible for our users.

Gary C

. Surely this cannot be so in: 2024

Chris Pateman-Jones

Again on that one, I need to I don't think ChargeUK has a view on that that will be down to our members to decide the best possible route for their users. None of us are incentivized to make this difficult. I do think there is a and this was pointed out by charge UK last year in terms of the move away to having to have everything contactless when you move to a contactless contactless experience, the very nature of that being contactless means that it's difficult to do receipt. So I think that is one that we're going to continue to work with the government on to try and make it as smooth as possible, but with the intent that every member has to try and make the user experience as simple as possible.

Gary C

Question four personal favourite of mine. Everyone likes a Tesla plug and charge functionality. Why can't every charger do plug and charge?

Chris Pateman-Jones

So I'll make a caveat on this when I say with me being relatively new in roll. This is one of the areas I'm still trying to get up to speed on for for connected curb. It's not such a big issue. So it's not an area where I've had a huge amount of expertise for coming to the scenario I'm trying to get up to speed on, I suppose what I can say confidently is anything that helps improve the user journey for our users across the charging industry is something that our members are going to support. I think you're right to highlight some of the technical barriers. And also I suppose, how you make sure this is fair and equitable for all parties involved, and that you don't start CPOs is being pushed sort of out of the connection with their users. I think that would probably be a concern for some members. But as I say, that's a that's a topic that I am looking to try and increase my knowledge on.

Gary C

It's a complex issue, and I hope to go into it into a little more detail in a future show but suffice it to say that we can do plug and charge already here in the UK, Ionity have enabled it for certain cars, BMWs and Volkswagens and Porsche. The devil though, as always is in the details. To make plug and charge work, you need all the parts to be speaking to each other: the charge point operator, the charge of making the vehicle and the payment provider. This is happening bit by bit. And this is why you can plug and charge a VW ID.3 on an IoT charger. But you can't plug in charge the same vehicle into an Instavolt charger. Question five. What is V2G? And why is it important moving forward? V2G stands for vehicle to grid and it's one of a number of different ways of taking energy which is stored in a vehicle battery and using it outside that vehicle. Now to talk a little bit more about this, I want to bring in Mark Potter, who is the Chief Technology Officer of today's episode sponsor, 3Ti

Mark Potter

. So when it comes to the new: 15118

Gary C

So there we are plenty of discussions with various different people about various different topics. Let me know if you like this sort of Q&A format, and I'll put one into the calendar for next season. This season, we're looking at raising the awareness of carbon literacy with our listeners. And one way we're doing that is with a carbon fact, as read by carbon literacy trainer, Anne Snelson

Anne Snelson

The top 10% of the world's population accounts for half of total emissions, the bottom 50% accounts for just 10% Think you're not in that top 10% Think again, that's equivalent to a salary of less than 30 grand a year.

Gary C

It's time for a cool EV or renewable thing share with your listeners. Oil Company Shell is looking to expand its offerings for EV charging by transforming 100 petrol stations into EV hubs. It is committing to installing 200,000 chargers worldwide, many of which will be in place of existing petrol station pumps that are being removed. But before you get to cock-a-hoop about this the devil as always, is in the detail. Firstly, the majority of shells charges are currently in China and will continue to be so. Secondly, the impact and expanse of these in Europe is unknown. And thirdly in the one location where Shell have already done this in the UK, which is the Shell Recharge site at Fulham in London. The process was long and laborious and took almost two years to bring to fruition. But as with anything related to EV charging, if they can make it work, I will be over the moon for them. If you ever get a chance to visit the Fulham site, please do it's pretty cool and I was the first paying customer to use it on the day it opened. And that's the show for today. Hope you enjoyed listening to it. If you want to contact me I can be emailed at info@evmusings. dot com. I'm also on Twitter MusingsEV. If you want to support the podcast and the newsletter, please consider contributing to becoming an Eevee amusing patron. The links in the show notes. Don't want to sign up for something on a monthly basis? Well, if you've enjoyed this particular episode, why not buy me a coffee, go to ko-fi.com/evmusings, and you can do just that. K A - F I. COM/evie musings takes Apple pay to have a couple of ebooks out there she wants something to read on your Kindle. So you've got electric is available on Amazon worldwide and measly sum of 99p or equivalent, and it's a great little introduction to living with an electric car. If you're looking for installing solar panels storage, battery and heat pump try so you've gone renewable, also available on Amazon for the same 99p. And if you've got Amazon Prime and you can use the Kindle lending library, you can read them for nothing. Why don't check them both out. Links for everything we've talked about in the podcast today are in the description. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe. It's available on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave a review. It helps raise our visibility and extend our reach in search engines. If you reach this part of the podcast and are still listening, thank you. Why not? Let me know you've got to this point by tweeting me EV Musings EV with the words. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. #ifyouknowyouknow. Thanks as always to my co founder Simon. You know he's teaching me the best way to play three dimensional chess. He reckons it's easy enough. You just need to be able to hold 130,000 possible combinations of moves across three layers for every move you make anticipating what your opponent could do five moves ahead. Having said that, he did tell me:

Chris Pateman-Jones

None of us are incentivized to make this difficult.

Gary C

Thanks for listening. Bye

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