Humble civil servant: Name public electric car chargers after me The minister in charge of Blighty's latest driverless car law has suggested that public charging points be named after him. "It seems to me absolutely right that when one drives down a street, one should be able to spot an electric charging point rather as one can spot a pillar box or Belisha beacon," said Conservative MP John …
Be worth doing just for the pun! +1
Sadly in the real world we're up against the laws of physics. Serious EV-charging from the mains just ain't gonna happen, and solar would need a hell of a lot of panels unless you're in the middle of the Arabian desert, where demand is somewhat limited.
Strange that between April and October I've charged my PHEV at home. Most of the power has come from my PV Array. If I could have fitted another two panels the PV Output would have exceeded the drain by the mains connected charger. From my observations, I have spent around £3 to charge my car 28 times which gave me around 500 miles of driving.
I'm getting a 35KWh Battery system installed next month along with further 2.5KWh of PV on my garage roof. It will grab all the PV output and store it for use in the evenings or to charge my new car (Nissan Leaf). Again and by being careful I would expect to drive for most of the year at zero leccy cost.
But naturally and according to you, I'm dreaming because I'm living at 51N and not at 39N.(lat of Jeddah)
Looks like it will work for you at home - well done. But public points (which is what the article is about)? To recharge many vehicles in a day - from the same PV panels? In winter, in an urban area, when a 1kW peak panel is producing about 100W? No, I don't think so.
You have an entire rooftop to devote to charging a single car.
I remember that, at one point, Honda were doing a demo of a home-hydrogen generation unit. The idea is that you have solar panels drive hydrogen cracking/storage unit where the hydrogen could be used in a fuel cell during the hours of darkness to generate electricity.
Any suplus hydrogen could be used to refuel a hydrogen-powered fual-cell car.
Shame it came to nothing :-(
harge my car 28 times which gave me around 500 miles of driving.
That's nice but if you've only driven 500 miles between April and October, why do you even have a car? Surely a taxi would be much cheaper? And if you absolutely need a car, why not buy an old banger for £500 - would also be much cheaper and less polluting overall than anything remotely new.
Just curious.
But 28 charges for 500 miles for £3 - not sure that would work for me. 500 miles in a day is not unusual, and 500 miles a week is a rather slack week.
Jeddah is closer to 21N ... Silly Con Valley is ~37N ... I'm ~38N here in Sonoma. Just to give my fellow Yanks a sense of how far North the British Isles actually are, 51N is just about the Southern boundary of Greater London. Calgary, Alberta, Canada is also at 51N ...
North the British Isles actually are, 51N is just about the Southern boundary of Greater London. Calgary, Alberta, Canada is also at 51N
ISTR that Edinburgh is roughy at the latitude as Moscow. It's kept (relatively) warm by the Gulf Stream and North Sea.
Until the gulf stream diverts itself due to decreasing salinity caused by the melting polar ice cap anyway..
Obviously it's government-ese. so hard to say, but reading the act it looks like
If it's insured, then the insurer is liable.
If it's not insured, then the owner is liable (unless it's excluded from needing insurance due to being in some government vehicles category, like military vehicles I guess.).
The owner or insurance company is not liable if someone (who isn't the owner) switched the vehicle to "autonomous mode" inappropriately . In that case that person is liable (unless they are a minor/diminished responsibility etc. then blame the parents/legal guardian).
If the manufacture is at fault due to making a faulty vehicle/software, they can still be liable/negligent/sued/arrested, but by the insurer / owner /police, not by the victim(s) of the accident.
It's not clear if the government can just not pay anything in the case of an automated government vehicle running someone down. It seems that way as there is no liability assignment in section 2 for that case, so presumably the manufacture gets directly sued by the victim in that case?
There are no mention of changes to the driving license system.
Sure.
Haven't you slipped your "plug" in a John at least once in your live? *
Just slipping out to "take the dog for a walk," so to speak.
As for no liability for the car mfgs. He really does sound like the best politician money can buy.
*Depending entirely on you PoV to resolve any ambiguities in that sentence.
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I'm not convinced "sorry, love, I'm running a bit late. I need to find a Vacant Bellend Charge Point™" is going to improve the lot of already unpopular electric vehicles, either, especially when they grow another two connections (I2C, I'm assuming, although this is the Government so they'll probably have to spend a quarter of a billion to make a new standard that doesn't work) to slurp your mileage for road pricing...
Please note that Vacant is part of the name, not the charging facility's actual state. So, to specify one that you can actually use would mean "I need a vacant Vacant Bellend Charge Point™"
Basically, he's been shuffled consistently around fairly junior government posts in a wide variety of departments. He seeming has no particular areas of specific interest, or indeed abilities. He's a member of the 'Countryside Alliance', the pro-hunting lobby who are too cowardly to admit it, and pretend to be 'pro-countryside'. He's also a member of the 'Society for the Protection of Unborn Children', and therefore against women's rights to decide about abortion and also bizarrely, against assisted suicide and same sex marriage (which have fuck all to do with unborn children as far as I see, but still). Astoundingly, in the true spirit of Yes Minister's 'Sir Arnold' he's chairman of the British Caribbean Society, which I'm sure he takes advantage of 'during the winter months'. Summary : he's a low achieving bigot who's occupying a safe, rural seat. In short, a classic Tory. Unworthy of having a single shit named after him.
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No-One with an electric car will want to drive round looking for a charge point. They will want to look on their cars nav system, see where the charge points are, and see if they are free.
Don't you just love it when our leaders really get this IT nonsense?
And Apps to do this are already available.
No doubt this plonker will want to tax all chargers and then tax the Electricty they deliver at 20% VAT + 90% Fuel Duty ++++ whatever HMRC can come up with to replace the income lost by decreasing amounts of Petrol/Diesel being sold.
Then they'll add £400/year onto your Council Tax if you have a CP at home.
i.e Shoot themselves in the foot but they will get well rewarded by their Koch Brothers (and the rest) paymasters from the Oil/Gas Industry.
"And Apps to do this are already available"
The cars already do it. Our Leaf has a constant net connection and we can just press a button that navigates us to the nearest charging point. It does all kinds of checking on driving, battery usage and range and if it thinks you're in danger of running out of juice will ask you if you want it to find a charger.
Still - this is of limited use here in rural Somerset. I wonder how many chargers will be seen here?
"Still - this is of limited use here in rural Somerset. I wonder how many chargers will be seen here?"
Already quite a lot: https://www.zap-map.com/live
"Already quite a lot: https://www.zap-map.com/live"
That''s not a lot. The closest publicly accessible one to us is 14 miles away! The closest rapid charger is 21. I can't see Londoners driving from Watford to Richmond to charge. Though it does show that you can still drive electric without public chargers.
But you would surely have a charger at home? 14 miles to the next hop doesn't seem too bad. Even the worst EVs can do 14 (0r 21) miles without needing their next top up.
As many workplaces are also starting to install chargers, for many people covers most of their commuting needs.
@DaL "But you would surely have a charger at home? 14 miles to the next hop doesn't seem too bad. Even the worst EVs can do 14 (0r 21) miles without needing their next top up."
Yes. But who would like to be told that they need to do a 30 or 40 mile round trip to charge? I am fortunate in that I have a drive and a charger at home. What if I lived in a flat?
I can imagine an autonomous vehicle governed by Asimov's laws, but I'd have real issues, if the legislation and charging points were named after him, having to get into a car governed by Dipstick's law and plugging into a plonker's charging point.
Why did we let politicians get involved in this, it was going well until these idiots got involved, now it's going to be a complete farce.
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There was a johnny in the street and I parked next to it.
That would be slang for "a gentleman's prophylactic contraceptive".
I don't remember whether "john" is UK or US slang for a prostitute's client. That would be who had left the prophylactic in the street.
Worth cruising around for? It depends whether you get a charge out of it.
That was also my question. Was he thinking of some comely Pilar? There's also the mysterious Mr Pelican of the pelican crossing, not to mention Mrs Zebra. And lovely Ms Amber Light? We need more details. And Sir Level Crossing? Why do we not know more about these illustrious forebears?
I don't understand why the article is headlined for a minor, discardable comment made in introducing a far more serious and significant debate around the issue of liability.
I also don't understand how we reach the conclusion that liability is placed on a driver *or an insurance company*, if the driver is insured. This is a specious misinterpretation of what is proposed which is that the DRIVER is the one held liable. The insurance company is there as a back stop to the driver liability, just as they are when a driver screws up and causes an accident.
What makes no sense at all is that if the insurance is for the driver in the case of the driver causing an accident, how is it the drivers responsibility to insure against the manufacturer of the vehicle causing the accident through a defect in the control software ?
If an accident is caused by a failure in a mechanical system resulting from a manufacturing defect in the vehicle then the manufacturer is liable, not the driver and so the driver's insurance is not claimed upon (or may recover their losses from the vehicle manufacturer).
Why is this different when the defect is located in software ?
I suspect the answer is to be found in the power of the lobby.
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>> "It seems to me absolutely right that when one drives down a street, one should be able to spot an electric charging point rather as one can spot a pillar box or Belisha beacon," said Conservative MP John Hayes. <<
If there are to be enough public charging points to cater for all cars being electric, we're going to need more or less continuous rows of charging points along all streets where parking is allowed. If there's anything that needs to be clearly marked, it will be those parking places where the charging point is missing or not working. So the 'Hayes hole' will be the one that's of use to almost no-one.
Where the electricity is to come from, is not at all clear.
If charging points are only as common as Belisha beacons, we're not going anywhere. Literally.
Couldn't we supply electricity directly to the cars and avoid the deficiencies of battery technology?
A slot down the middle of each lane could be lined with metal strips and have a small metal brush on the front of a car. The cars could be made autonomous by a series of small boys alongside the road with triggers.
It's at this point, I remember Porsche's first attempt at these.
Quite famous for catching fire when being trialled against the alternative design from another company which lost them the contract.
Of course Porsche had already begun building a few hundred of them and had to re-purpose them. They still didn't work very well and kept breaking down.
Interestingly enough, we Brits were also working on the same technology. The vehicle it was mounted in was a failure, but the mechanics worked!
FYI, yes, I am talking about the VK 4501 (P) and the TOG II*
If they are going to line the pavements with charging points, this is going to stop people parking half on and half off the pavements.
A good thing some might say, however there are a lot of roads where this is the only way for the residents to park and still leave enough room for vehicles to drive down the road.
"While Knight accepted that insurance companies and the police should "have the right to access the data log", he added: "Will others be able to seek access to it[...]"
No matter what controls are put in place for this data, local councils will find a way around it so they can monitor every car in town to find out who let their dog crap in the playing field.
We have too much street furniture generally, it creates a very confused view of the road which can be hard to parse while driving a car and trying not to kill pedestrians.
It'd be better to have ubiquitous charging points that you can assume will be wherever you can park rather than ones with a ruddy great neon sign above them hiding the traffic lights just behind the variable speed limit next to the intermittent bus lane where the double red lines turn into double yellow ones by the start of the congestion charging zone.
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