Over at The Future is EVs, Mark drew my attention to a piece in the Observer by Ros Coward, Professor Emerita (Journalism) at Roehampton. Ros is an EV owner without off-street parking. She’s had her Renault Zoe for four years, and is considering replacing it with another EV. Saith the sub-head:

I assumed it would get easier to run an EV, but without a decent infrastructure it’s getting harder and harder

Now that by itself is an interesting claim. For surely, however bad things are for EVs now, they are trending better? There are more and more public chargers by the day. More on that in a mo. But how was learning to use an EV?

We experienced – and overcame – range anxiety (will the car go as far as the battery says?), only for it to be replaced by charge anxiety (can you find a charger that works?).

To me, that is a distinction without a difference. The question is, can you recharge before your car dies?

What we assumed then [autumn 2021, after 1 year of ownership] was that the government would steadily make things easier for electric vehicles. But while we are now used to the electric way of life, many of the original difficulties and disadvantages remain.

Those difficulties may be innate.

Returning to their dealership, the salesman assumes they are after a hybrid.

“Everybody else is.”

But Ros and her partner are seriously considering a new EV. To me, it seems an absurd option. With no off-street parking, they rely on Wandsworth’s lamp-post chargers for a shot of juice. And they use the Zoe for long journeys, not just shopping trips.

The dealer is surprised we didn’t chuck it in ages ago.

I’m somewhat surprised at how honest the dealer is. The rumour is that there is pressure on to shift the sparky cars because of the ZEV mandate (22% of all sales this year, remember). You would more expect them to open with an “I’m surprised. Most people are coming in for a new EV,” directed at beaten-down EV riders hunting for a hybrid, than for them to tell an ambivalent EV hunter that everyone else has thrown in their sparky nag for something less annoying.

Now Ros makes one of those sweeping generalisations which, in the sweeping, buries crumbs of nuance that in some circumstances would combine to form a refutation of the point.

But our experience has been genuinely mixed. Electric cars are technically uncomplicated, so there’s much less to go wrong.

Technically, there is lots to go wrong on a new EV. Not that new ICEs are short of unnecessary electronic gizmos that, out of warranty, probably cost a fortune to fix. A couple of years ago our neighbour lost a headlight bulb. Taking it to his usual garage, they were apologetic. You can’t change the bulb any more. You have to change the entire unit at the main dealer. Main dealer: £200. Neighbour: You’re crazy. Main dealer: These bulbs don’t break, so we didn’t make them easy to replace. Neighbour: This one’s broken. Main dealer: *shrug*. £200. [He eventually got a front unit stripped off a wreck, and his usual garage fitted it cheaply.]

My feeling re: all these electronic gizmos is that once your car is out of warranty, you’re better off getting a new one on lease. However, a rational choice would be to get a 20-year-old car, without the gizmos, with light bulbs you could change by yourself. [It would also be a greener choice, if anyone cared about that.]

Ros moans about the lack of a coherent charging system. Charging a sparky is not like fuelling a smoker. You don’t just rock up and stick the hose in. You need apps for each company, etc.

There is still no single card with which to pay at all chargers, and journeys out of home territory are likely to require downloading further apps. There are still areas that are charger deserts. We recently abandoned the idea of driving to East Yorkshire because of the lack of chargers.

East Yorkshire! EV chargepoint desert. Well, it is a bit sparse. According to our government’s stats, there are 189 public chargers in the East Riding, and another 124 in Hull. I mean: let’s say you’re driving to Hull in an ICE. You don’t inspect the map to find out how many petrol stations there are, do you?

When she does venture forth, Ros often finds queues at motorway charging banks. Yes. Do you know why? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s because there are busy times, and quiet times. No business is going to lay on a bank of a hundred chargers, just for the two occasions per year that it has 100 EVs in need of a charge. It would be insanity. It would be like a coffee bar using an aircraft hangar for its premises, and having a hundred tables, and twenty baristas.

[Asterisk. If 100 chargers were available and in use, the amount of leccy would end up being divided out so that, even if more cars could plug in, they would charge much more slowly. By which I mean that a site with 20 chargers could probably process the same rate of cars as a site with 100 chargers, if they both had the same grid connection.]

The financials of owning an EV are – how shall we say – swings and roundabouts. The purchase price was high. The depreciation is shocking. Electrifying, maybe. Recharging is cheap (the price of £11 per 230 miles for a slow charge is mentioned, and “£33 on fast”). On a long run, some ICEs beat the latter, and that is with more than half the fuel cost consisting of tax. Living in London, there is the ULEZ advantage, and no VED and no congestion charges (changes afoot here).

Regarding our toothy friend depreciation,

Crucially, our purchase looks like a bad buy because the value of secondhand electric cars has crashed. Having anticipated that the car would easily hold its value because of increasing demand, we owe the finance company more than our EV is worth – fortunately, we can hand back the car. Enthusiasm for electric cars has stalled.

It seems to me that Ros has noted the symptoms accurately, but has rather misdiagnosed the malaise:

What’s causing the price drop is the convergence of an increasing supply of cheaper EVs from China (and Tesla reducing its prices) at the same time as initial willingness to adopt electric has worn off in the face of the fact that nothing much has changed in the driving experience.

Here’s my answer. The initial whoosh of EVs was because there was a number of excitable early adopters. There were also tax breaks that were unsustainable, and that favoured the well-heeled over those getting by with a clunker. Many – most – EVs are leased. That means that the lessees have no interest in how much their car will depreciate, unlike owners like Ros. Leases were set on the expectation of high demand when their three years were up. Unfortunately, the buyers set the market, and the buyers are reluctant to buy three-year-old EVs. (A secondary lease scheme might help there.) The advantages of there being someone else responsible for your car’s mechanicals and electronicas are obvious. [Another side note: a friend recently bought a three-year-old EV. He lately received an email, telling him that the car’s premium features were about to be turned off, unless he cared to pay the on-going subscription.]

Will Ros and her partner stick with an EV? She wants to, but the drawbacks of an EV are pulling her away.

…there are so many things it would be nice not to have to worry about – from “hunt the working charger” to the planning needed for long journeys.

Mmm. Could try an ICE?

Her conclusion?

I’m still hoping the government will incentivise EV driving. Wouldn’t it be nice if the virtuous driver were rewarded rather than disadvantaged?

[Was rather than were there.] Perhaps this closure is what they teach you to do at Roehampton’s School of Journalism? To, in effect, do a reality handstand so that the blood rushes to your reader’s head and they collapse in a heap? We are all aware of the ways that the playing field is tilted in favour of EVs. In fact, Team ICE are having to play like the Corinthians, the ref is in EV XI’s pocket, and we’re still 3-0 up at half time. I am not going to list the ways in which EVs are advantaged. But I will dwell for a moment on the much-lamented lack of charging infrastructure. This is what you might call putting a little bit of context on the claim that the “virtuous” driver is being “disadvantaged.”

First on the numbers of chargers. According to the DoT, as of July 2024 there are 64,632 public chargers in the UK. That’s up about 5,000 on the quarter. For petrol stations, the number is about 8,000. Giving each an average of 8 fuel pumps would produce a nicely symmetrical 64,000 petrol/diesel pumps. So far we’re even. But we know that a lot of the chargepoints are dodgy.

Now, the herds. In Q2 2024 there were 1,089,222 BEVs on the UK’s roads (DoT link: Table veh0142). This compares to 10,958,700 diesels and 19,259,100 petrols (Ibid: Table veh0105). [Cars only.] Roughing it out gives a 30:1 ratio between ICEs and BEVs.

And they have roughly the same number of fuelling points. But it gets better, because EV drivers mostly charge at home. Ros is in a minority – maybe 20% – of EV drivers with no off-street parking. Those who can charge at home, do. It’s not 1,000,000 BEVs hunting for juice among those 60,000 chargepoints (i.e. a mere 16 for each), but some much lower figure. 400,000? Who knows. If anything close to true, that would give us less than 7 leccy cars per public chargepoint.

Not enough chargepoints!

What about the ICEs? We’ve got about 30,000,000 of them, and they can’t fuel at home (other than via a jerry can, that was first itself fuelled at a pump). Divide those cars among the fuel pumps, and you get the thick end of 500 vehicles per pump.

Disadvantaged virtuous drivers!