Re: The charger numbers seem a bit low.
Imagine all the infrastructure needed to get oil out of rock miles below the north sea, get it to shore, refine it, distribute a toxic explosive liquid around the country to enough cars that every household can use one.
Do recall that in the early days of automobiles, there was no infrastructure as such - petrol was sold at chemists in the same way you'd buy lamp oil. Over time, as owning a car started filtering down from a rich mans play thing to a tool for the masses, then the infrastructure started appearing. But the important thing - the infrastructure didn't need to be there from the outset as petrol was just a different form of oil that was already widely distributed.
Also, to build a petrol station is basically very simple. You find a site with road access, put some tanks in, add the pumps, and you have a petrol station that can service however many cars can come through at something like 5-10 minutes each. To build that petrol station doesn't need access to a fuel pipeline - it comes by tanker.
Charging is a different matter. Yes, at the moment people are putting in chargers that just need to tap into the local distribution network that's already there. But there's a finite amount of spare capacity in those networks, and pressure on that will come from other demands as well. Upgrading that, as will be needed if we go all electric as fast as is being suggested is going to be very expensive and very destructive.
I'm lucky - I have my own off street parking and overnight charging would be a doddle. Looking down the street, I'd say only about 1/3 of us have that, and most don't have enough spaces as they have cars. Most people can't even guarantee to park outside their own house. And that's typical of this part of town.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
