My techie friend, who has read Greer, thinks that electric cars are the future and will prove Greer and the other peak oil "doomers", including myself, wrong in the coming years.One thing that will have to change with charging points is the fragmentation of the market. There are eight big networks of them now and many more smaller ones, with drivers usually requiring a different membership for each.
Melanie Shufflebotham, director of Zap-Map, said: “The early adopters have been prepared to put up with it, but the mass market won’t.� She envisages a shift to pay-as-you-go through services such as Apple Pay and Android Pay, because “it isn’t sustainable as it it is�.
Another big question for the electric car revolution is where the power will come from.
Ministers said earlier this year that even in their relatively small numbers today, electric car batteries are putting pressure on the grid. One thinktank warned that as few as six electric cars in one neighbourhood could risk a “brownout� – an unexpected drop in voltage.
Those electric car hotspots in affluent areas have not materialised yet, according to the operators who own local electricity networks – but they are coming.
Should you join the charge and buy an electric car?
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SSEN, which runs such networks in the south of England and Scotland, has found that nearly a third of its distribution networks will need upgrading once 40% of customers on a circuit are charging their car battery at home.
Stewart Reid, head of innovation at SSEN, said: “There are two ways we can support the increasing number of EVs (electric vehicles) charging on the network – the first is to do traditional network reinforcements, such as installing new infrastructure and upgrading capacity. The second is using a smart solution, such as demand side management.�
Experts generally agree that the big problem is not the extra power capacity needed for electric cars, but managing the demand if all EV drivers try to charge at the same time, such as plugging in at the office at 9am, or at 6pm when they return home.
Is he right or is the electric car revolution just one more techie fad that will fade away in the coming years as the economic costs and energy challenges prove to be insurmountable?
