Motorists to be paid £3,000 to give up cars

These sort of schemes always bump up the price of used vehicles.. if you were trying to offload a junker you had sitting in your yard for a few quid, you would now want a lot more.

Duncann wrote:

I hope there's more to it than reported here but it looks like a good incentive to go out and buy an old banger!

It might be, however the outcome will be the same. Whoever scraps the vehicle will get the bounty, but in any case the vehicle is scrapped and out of circulation.

zeeridesbikes wrote:

Made the mistake of reading he comments on the DM for this article. Doesn't sound like folk are too keen take this up. Not the target audience I guess. 

LOL you'd think that they're being forced to give up their Smokey Joes.

It's probably equally as addictive. 

fwhite181 wrote:

So if I buy a WankPanzer (TM) sorry...Range Rover, can I get £3k to spend on bikes?

Good idea, how much is a Wan****, sorry, Range Rover?

More to the point, if I spend £300 on some rusting shitbucket can I have £1500+ to spend on bikes?

Fewer cars on the road -> less congestion and hence less pollution

Driven at operating temperature nearly 100% , so less pollution

Could be hybrid/ full electric too.

Sort of, most cars spend more time parked, sometimes off street.  Taxis often drive around looking for business, or park on street waiting to be contacted.

The Black Cab drivers that wait in the taxi ranks at Reading station, where the council have placed no engine idleing signs on posts, mostly have their dirty deisel engines on, in all seasons.

People would drive their own cars for trips they wouldn't call a taxi for, so there may be benefit in fewer car-borne trips overall.

The taxi option may also be useful in persuading people to take up the scheme - even if they don't actually use them very much.

I've seen someone daisy chain 3 extension leads at their summer cottage here in Norway to do overnight charging of their Nissan Leaf. Most however simply use the plentiful rapid chargers when away. Many don't have facilities to charge at home, so either use the rapid chargers, or some can charge at work. 
Daisychaining leads is not only dangerous however, the losses in the cable means it becomes more expensive to charge.
 

Not a good idea. Only gives a slow charge.

They would be better off trying to get a grant for a proper high speed charger installed outside.

Could you imagine when 2030 comes, and only electric cars are sold? How dangerous will shared paths be alongside residential streets, particularly rows of terraced houses? There will be electric charging cables across the shared paths from the house to the car parked on the street. 

I know we need to address the air quality, but the infrastructure needs to be in place before 2030. And I cannot see how virtually all houses can have a charging point installed. And that is before we get to the point of where all the electricity will be generated.

My boss has a couple of electric cars. He was charging the Tesla and closed his double garage at the rear. The electric wall heaters came on once the door shut, and after a few minutes of them blasting heat out, the electric tripped, the Tesla was pulling so much power, the rest of the electrics couldn't cope with the surge from the heaters. His dad has had the same issue with his electric cars, and has had to have three phase installed. 

The electric car revolution does sound wonderful, but has a long, long way to go. And I feel it is being rushed through.

Anyone remember the electric strikes of the 70s? Get your candles ready for when the grid starts to trip out.

Why would you have wall heaters in a garage?

I thought some research had gone on about charging and the grid. Didn't think it was a doomsday scenario.

Why would all houses need a charging point?

Most cars will need to be charged less than once a week so if 1/7 spaces had access to a charger that would be sufficient.

Repurposing street lamps as charging stations would pretty much get you to that point without any other changes needed.

That's assuming no great advances in vehicle range or modal shift over the next decade and no access to charging anywhere else other than your house.

Rich_cb wrote:

Why would all houses need a charging point? Most cars will need to be charged less than once a week so if 1/7 spaces had access to a charger that would be sufficient. Repurposing street lamps as charging stations would pretty much get you to that point without any other changes needed. That's assuming no great advances in vehicle range or modal shift over the next decade and no access to charging anywhere else other than your house.

Assuming that other drivers are considerate enough not park in front of lamposts when they don't need to charge their cars.

A level of consderation beyond most, who will pull up across a side road when in queueing traffic because it is too uncomfortable to leave a 3.5m gap, thus preventing oncoming cars turing right and creating congestion. I have found that drivers are more likely to let someone pull out in front of them which puts them further back in the queue than allow other drivers to turn across them which makes zero difference to their journey.

I believe that current technology allows cars to be charged a parking fee once they are fully charged, billed via the same mechanism as the charging.

Make that fee high enough and you've either solved the problem or provided the funds to increase the number of charging points.

Lamp post supplies are designed only to supply enough current for old sodium discharge lamps, and it's not all that much. Even if all lamps were replaced by LEDs and the spare capacity used for charging, it would be slow as anything.

My local council will not allow a charging cable over the pavement, so I'm going to ask if there's any other solution, eg cutting a channel in the pavement and running a cable through a conduit. On pre-covid usage I could be fully electric for most journeys even with a plug-in hybrid.

Almost no point in asking when public charging points are likely within walking distance of my house because their sole achievement in this field so far is to produce a document (in 2017) with an aspiration to specify a toolkit which will facilitate (given appropriate funding) progress towards a framework for transformative action.

However, the perfect is the enemy of the good. If we started by getting charging points in workplace car parks then perhaps we could get more of the high mileage polluters onto EVs before small fry (3,000 miles a year, less than I cycle) like me.

At 3000 miles a year it's probably not the best option to change to electric right now anyway, you'd be better off with a second hand ICE car from a CO2/PM perspective.

You'd obviously need to upgrade the electrical supply to the lampposts to make them viable chargers but they are already in the right locations and already have electrical connections so I think they're the perfect candidate, do it well and they could even provide a small income for the council thus covering their own costs.

We have on-street charging from lamp posts in my area. But these are slow chargers. Several of my neighbours have EVs or plug-in hybrids now and while some use the chargers provided, others trail cables across the pavement between the vehicle and their home. This doesn't strike me as being very safe, considering there are old and infirm in the area too. 

I did note yesterday that a BP filling station not far away on the S Circular is being upgraded with high speed charging points. It's the only one in the area that sells LPG and I know a few people who use that (low emission fuel) so I hope that is retained.

But the UK will need more generating capacity to switch to EVs. We need more offshore windpower facilities. It also seems like we'll end up with more nuclear plants too.

I don't drive much but do have a car (bit of a banger now). I've been thinking that my next car could well be an EV and most likely, a Nissan Leaf or a Renault Zoe. But as my car is parked on the street, charging will be an issue. Oddly enough, replacing my petrol motorbike with an electric one would be simpler. 

jasecd wrote:

How about just build more cycle lanes and enable active travel? This will benefit everyone, not just those who can afford to own a car. The more infrastructure there is, the more people will use it.

I'm sure a government spokesperson will be along shortly to claim that they are doing both.  However, not to be too carping, this is a step in the right direction.