Re: What does Kryten think?
That's the sort of infrastructure that will be needed - with points in all sorts of places. Until now the publicity has naively referred to people plugging the car in at home overnight, when it's on the drive or in the garage. What proportion of people fit that model? A fair few people use on-street parking.
The idea of charging points in car parks is obvious (not necessarily IKEA) - perhaps at station or office/factory car parks where a car is left for 8 hours or so - and which can therefore make use of perhaps a 7kW charger. The problem is that the ultra-fast 30-min charge jobs pull a hell of a lot of current (80 amps or so?). A car-park full would need a private power station (e.g. motorway service station, where people will want a full charge not just a 20% top-up.)
Long term? It'll be interesting to see how it develops. I'm worried that we'll spend billions on infrastructure for the EV version of our existing car ownership model, and then discover that we all get rid of private cars and just call an electric self-driving Smart car when we want one. After all, the pattern of car ownership after a few decades was very different to the ownership of horses and carts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
