Journal Editorial Report: The electric-vehicle bubble starts to deflate. Image: Jae C. Hong/Associated Press
Compton, Calif.
Electric trucks are supposed to save the world, but they’re wasting Mike Stanley’s time. Mr. Stanley, a longtime trucker whose rectangular beard flows down to his chest, now leads operations in the main Los Angeles office of IMC, a Tennessee-based drayage trucking company that carries cargo to and from U.S. ports and rail yards.
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December 30, 2023 at 12:52AM
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Opinion | Electric Mandates Have California Truckers Charging Overtime - The Wall Street Journal
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One of my favorite parts of perusing Alibaba for fun and outlandish electric vehicles is seeing just how creative the designers can become. In this case, I’ve found what looks like a mini-minivan that took an extra spin or two around the window factory before emerging complete.
In this case, we’ve got what looks like an imitation Pontiac Trans Sport. Or at least it still gives me those Dust-Buster vibes. But instead of a 3.2L V6 that my parents’ Pontiac minivan came with, this Alibaba version has a 4,000W electric motor ready to clock in for a union job driving around those snot-nosed kids every day. And this time, when the kids get car sick and Dad yells back “just look out the window!”, they’ll have plenty of options.
This car – if you can call it that – is positively surrounded by windows. Or rather, it’s almost constructed of them.
Instead of doors, you’ve got windows. And there are even sliding windows mounted inside the fixed window doors. You’ve even got front and rear quarter windows! The rear units look like they’re barely a hand wide and the front is perhaps half of that again, but the designers definitely weren’t about to spend a penny more on body panels than they had to. I’m surprised there’s even a ‘hood’ panel and not just more glass showcasing an empty frunk up front. At least you’d never have to wonder if you left any groceries in there.
And just in case this tiny little van is too tall for you, a set of running boards on either side creates a convenient step-up, or perhaps tripping hazard, that you can take with you on the go.
The surprisingly large 48V 180 Ah battery offers 8.6 kWh of capacity, or enough for around 85 km (53 miles) of range. At a top speed of barely 30 km/h (18 mph) though, that sounds like a pretty long time to be stuck inside this mobile greenhouse.
There are four seats, allowing you to bring along your friends or perform school drop-off duty with the kids. But if you’ve got a local neighborhood carpool going then you might want to opt for the six-seater version.
At US $6,300, this is one of the pricier electric vehicles I’ve featured in this column, but those windows don’t grow on trees. If you want the best panoramic view on Alibaba (or close to it), then you’re going to have to pay for that pleasure.
Though like I always say, please don’t pay for it. These articles are a tongue-in-cheek exercise in window shopping. This is far from street-legal and also likely costs at least twice as much just in taxes, customs, and freight fees. And that’s not to mention the decent chance it gets seized at the border. So let’s enjoy it from a distance as we round out a fun year of Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicles!
FILE - The sub station at Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility, May 24, 2022.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
Portland General Electric customers are set to see an 18% increase on their bills starting Monday.
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This comes as the Oregon Public Utility Commission approved pending adjustments and rate decisions Thursday that locked in PGE’s rates for the start of the year. Residential customers will see the biggest increase of an average of 18% on their bills, or about $24 more a month.
Commercial customers will see a 14.4% increase and industrial customers will see an 12.5% increase.
“The rate increase reflects the need to invest in the reliability and resiliency of PGE’s system, advance policy objectives like equity and clean energy, and the reality that PGE faces inflationary pressures and high market power prices,” Megan Decker, the Public Utility Commission chairperson, said in a press release Thursday. “We recognize how significant this rate increase will be for families and businesses.”
The increases are due to upgrades to the power grid and transmission lines, tree and vegetation maintenance, and an increase to power costs. It’s the company’s largest rate increase in more than 20 years. PGE said the price hike is also due to the company’s investment in renewable energy to phase out fossil fuel use.
In October, the Public Utility Commission approved most of PGE’s rate increases. At the time, residential rates were estimated to increase about 17%.
Customer advocacy group urges postponement of rate increase
Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board, a group that advocates for customers, said the increase may make it difficult for some households to pay their bills as the month of January is typically the highest bill people receive in the year. Executive Director Bob Jenks said despite how hot it gets during summer months, heating costs in the winter tend to be much higher.
“In the middle of winter, on the worst bills possible, raising them 18% is going to create problems for people,” he said. “If the month of January is cold, it’s going to be really problematic for folks, people are going to get bills they are not expecting.”
PGE rates are expected to rise again by 2% in April to address wildfire mitigation costs.
Jenks said the Citizens’ Utility Board asked the Public Utility Commission to delay these costs to avoid even higher bills during the winter months.
Customers should do what they can to prepare for the rate hike next month to avoid being surprised when they open their bills, Jenks said.
PGE, which serves about 900,000 customers statewide, offers discounts for low- to moderate-income households as well as energy efficient incentive programs through partnerships with Energy Trust of Oregon.
Oregon Public Utility Commissioners are also expected to approve rate increases for Pacific Power on Jan. 9. That company’s customers could see an increase of about 13% to their bills.
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December 29, 2023 at 07:37AM
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Portland General Electric hikes residential rates by record 18% - Oregon Public Broadcasting
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December 29, 2023 at 06:08PM
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Electricity in the air for one Cuban couple's two-wheeler wedding procession - Reuters
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Neri Diaz thought he was ready for a crucial juncture in California’s ambitious plans, closely watched in other states and around the world, to phase out diesel-powered trucks.
His company, Harbor Pride Logistics, acquired 14 electric trucks this year to work alongside 32 diesel vehicles, in anticipation of a rule that says that after Monday, diesel rigs can no longer be added to the list of vehicles approved to move goods in and out of California’s ports. But in August the manufacturer of Mr. Diaz’s electric vehicles, Nikola, took back the trucks as part of a recall, saying it would return them in the first quarter of the new year.
“It’s a brand-new technology, first generation, so I knew things were going to happen, but I wasn’t expecting all my 14 trucks to be taken back,” he said. “It is a big impact on my operations.”
Trucking, an outsize source of carbon emissions, is where California’s green revolution is meeting some of its biggest challenges. Electric trucks, with their huge batteries, can cost over $400,000, and they can’t do long hauls without stopping for long charging periods, which can undermine the economics of a trucking fleet.
But California sees the port trucks as an opportunity to take a big step forward.
The electric trucks on the market today can travel from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach — the nation’s busiest hub for container cargo — to many of the warehouses inland without stopping to charge. And cleaning up the port trucks could have a big impact. With some 30,000 trucks registered with the ports, introducing green vehicles could lead to a substantial decrease in carbon emissions and the particulates that can cause illnesses in the communities through which the trucks travel.
Nancy Gonzalez and her 25-year-old son, Juan, who has Down syndrome and rheumatoid arthritis, live in the Wilmington neighborhood, just north of the ports. Huge rigs going to and from nearby truck yards roar constantly a few feet from the house.
The truck traffic got much heavier about four years ago, Ms. Gonzalez said, and now she cleans twice a day to get rid of the dirt it produces. Ms. Gonzalez says that she has problems with her sinuses and that her son’s eyes started tearing about two years ago.
“Nobody opens their windows,” she said in Spanish through an interpreter. “Nobody.”
Nancy Gonzalez, who lives near the port complex, says she cleans twice a day to get rid of the dirt from cargo trucks.
Ms. Gonzalez’s son, Juan, with his nephew. The family has experienced a number of health problems.
California hopes that its stringent rules combined with financial support — truck purchase grants from state agencies can total as much as $288,000 per vehicle, operators say — will help spur truckers, automakers, warehouse landlords, utilities and charging companies to make the investments needed to create a carbon-free port truck sector by 2035, when all diesel trucks will be banned from the ports. And success at the ports could help the state meet its goal of decarbonizing all types of trucking over the next two decades, and be a model for similar efforts in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington.
“In the long run, I am quite confident we can decarbonize the heavy-duty truck sector,” said James Sallee, a professor in the department of agriculture and resource economics at the University of California, Berkeley, referring to California’s plan. “But I don’t know that the industry is ready to overcome the various barriers to rapid deployment.”
The port fleets have barely started the transformation.
In November, 180 electric trucks, a mere 1 percent of the total, were registered to operate at the Port of Los Angeles. There was a single truck powered by hydrogen fuel cells, the other technology used to power big rigs.
Some truck operators say they have stockpiled diesel trucks and registered them with the ports ahead of the Monday cutoff, though this does not show up in port statistics. In November, there were 20,083 diesel trucks with access to the Los Angeles port, down from 21,310 a year earlier.
Large companies, with deep pockets and big facilities, are best positioned to make the green transition. Mike Gallagher, a California-based executive at Maersk, the Danish shipping giant, said the company had a fully electric fleet, comprising some 85 vehicles made by Volvo and BYD, the Chinese automaker, for transporting goods up to 50 miles out of the ports of Southern California. And it has worked with landlords to install scores of chargers at its depots.
“We’re well ahead of the curve,” he said.
But smaller trucking fleets do most of the port runs — accounting for some 70 percent at the Los Angeles port — and they are going to find the transition hard. The California Trucking Association has filed a federal lawsuit against the state’s trucking rules, including the one focused on port trucks, contending that they represent “a vast overreach that threatens the security and predictability of the nation’s goods movement industry.”
The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach form the largest container cargo hub in the nation.
Electric trucks can use a lane reserved for zero-emission trucks, significantly reducing their wait.
Matt Schrap, the chief executive of the Harbor Trucking Association, another trade group, said the port truck rules lacked exemptions that would help smaller businesses survive the transformation. Getting access to chargers is particularly difficult for smaller fleets, he said: They are expensive, and the truck yard landlords may be reluctant to install them, forcing the operators to rely on a public charging system that is only just getting built.
“The landlord is, like, ‘There’s not a snowball’s chance in Bakersfield that you’re going to tear up my parking lot to put in some heavy-duty charging,’” Mr. Schrap said.
Concern exists beyond the trade groups. Mr. Gallagher, the Maersk executive, said that if the clean truck rules caused serious problems for smaller operators, it could be “a significant disruption to the supply chain.”
Forum Mobility is one of several companies that believe they can help the smaller fleets, by building public truck charging stations and leasing electric trucks. The company has secured permits to build a depot at the Long Beach port, expected to open next year, that can charge 44 trucks. The depot will run on nine megawatts of electricity, enough to power most sports stadiums, but Forum Mobility executives say that charging all the port trucks would require roughly the amount of power produced by Diablo Canyon, a California nuclear power station, and thousands of chargers.
“We need a real Manhattan Project on interconnection,” said Adam Browning, executive vice president for policy at Forum Mobility.
Chanel Parson, director of building and transportation electrification at Southern California Edison, a large power utility, said building out the truck-charging infrastructure would be helped if state agencies streamlined the issuing of permits and accelerated spending approvals, and if trucking companies communicated their charging needs.
But she added that her company was undaunted by the task. “There’s not this concern that this is really difficult,” she said. “It’s what we do.”
Mr. Diaz, the operator whose Nikola trucks were recalled, said that charging the trucks cost roughly 40 percent less than diesel, and that he was impressed with their performance. Even with the help of state grants, he estimates that the electric trucks cost him as much as 50 percent more than diesel models. During the recall, Nikola has been covering the payments on the loans Mr. Diaz took out to buy the trucks, but he said he was concerned about the truck maker’s financial situation.
Neri Diaz, the chief executive of Harbor Pride Logistics, acquired 14 electric trucks, but they were recalled by Nikola, their manufacturer.
Some costs have risen for Hight Logistics as it brings drivers onto its payroll and reduces its reliance on contract drivers using their own diesel trucks.
Steve Girsky, Nikola’s chief executive, said a new infusion of capital in December showed that investors believed in the company. “This will get us a long way,” he said in an interview. “Everything this company’s talked about is coming together in the fourth quarter.”
Some trucking executives say not only that they are used to responding to California’s ratcheting up of regulations over the years, but also that they believe in the environmental goals of the port truck transition.
Rudy Diaz, president of Hight Logistics, said the new regulations had pushed up some of his costs as his company brought drivers onto its payroll and reduced its reliance on contract drivers using their own diesel trucks.
“It’s extra headaches, extra costs,” he said. “But consumers are asking for products that are more sustainable, and they’re willing to pay the price.”
On a cold fall day, several electric vehicle drivers were waiting for a turn to plug into one of the public chargers at a strip mall parking lot in South Philly.
“It's like, man, you got to be here 40 minutes, 50 minutes, and then you got to spend another hour here to charge,” said Kevin Taylor, an Uber driver who two months into using an electric vehicle was already considering switching back to gas.
Abe Burger was also waiting. He was eyeing up a spot taken by a city vehicle.
“It does like plug up and really kind of backlog the people that are waiting,” he said, referencing the city cars.
The NBC10 Investigators went down to the South Philly public charging station several times. Almost every time city workers driving electric vehicles were there charging or waiting to charge in the middle of their workday.
Some of the workers did some paperwork while others said their jobs required them to be at site inspections. Sitting in a car for 40 minutes or more was a loss of productivity.
This led to a domino effect of other drivers waiting for the city workers to finish charging.
“It would be nice, you know, for them to have a way to charge overnight in like their own facility,” Burger said.
It turns out they do.
The city owns 107 electric vehicle chargers for its EV fleet of 261.
While some of the chargers are located in the parking lots for corresponding departments such as The Free Library and the Water Department, many of the chargers are located in fleet shops where cars would go if they break down. They aren’t regular charging spots.
Other chargers are located at facilities that aren’t even assigned electric vehicles-- such as police districts and the prisons complex.
A review by the NBC10 Investigators of the city’s chargers revealed that none of them were installed with the required electric permits.
The city’s Licenses and Inspections Department has issued violations and $300 fines to at least 46 of the 57 city sites that have EV chargers.
“These charges were installed by each different department,” said Dominic McGraw, the city’s deputy director of energy services, who oversees the city’s electric vehicles and infrastructure.”I think that there was just some confusion around the need for permits, and we're currently rectifying that.”
L&I, which has the most EVs in the city at 115, doesn’t have any chargers at its office buildings and parking lots.
Instead, they are told to use the chargers owned by EVGO, which has Philly locations in South Philly, Fishtown and Port Richmond.
“The EVGO charging contract is to supplement charging while we increase our charging infrastructure,” McGraw said.
McGraw also oversees the city’s implementation of the Clean Fleet Plan.
In 2021, Philadelphia released its Municipal Clean Fleet Plan, a document that would guide the city in switching its 5,000 gas-powered vehicles to clean and electric cars.
The plan ranked departments by top fuel consumption in an effort to prioritize which cars would switch to electric first.
The recommendation was to start with the Water and Parks and Rec departments -- both of which have some EVs -- 33 and 16, respectively.
L&I was not mentioned as a priority in the plan. And yet, not only did they get the most EVs but they also assigned 102 of their EVs as take home vehicles with no chargers assigned to them.
“It is not for us to know the operations of the department,” McGraw said.
But part of the city’s own plan was to create a Clean Fleet Committee to oversee the procurement of vehicles and the deployment of charging stations.
McGraw said that while the Clean Fleet Committee does exist and meet, the plan was just a guide and not something that would be followed in its entirety.
“We're figuring things out as we go and seeing what works, what works and what doesn't,” he said.
That's not how it’s supposed to work, according to experts we spoke with, including Kelly Reagan, the fleet manager in Columbus, Ohio. That city was cited in the city’s plan as a model for EV deployment and infrastructure.
He said before the city and surrounding counties rolled out their fleet of 300 EVs, they made sure to have charging infrastructure in place for every vehicle.
“What we do is make a charger available for that particular vehicle where that particular operator resides, where they clock in and clock out. So they've got charging infrastructure,” Reagan said.
Sean Greene is the manager of the office of freight and clean transportation at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission. He advises municipalities on EV fleet and infrastructure. He did not work on Philly’s current plan.
He also says municipal chargers should be placed in the locations where the city cars park overnight.
“When the vehicle is not being used, of course that's the best time to charge,” he said. “And the cost may actually come down because there is less demand on the electric grid over that time.”
Greene says using the public fast chargers is usually discouraged for municipal cars.
“When you go to these fast chargers, that's either equal or more than the cost of gasoline,” he said.
Philly is paying $0.49 per Kilowatt at the EV-GO fast chargers, which can take up to an hour to charge.
The city is paying $0.14 per Kilowatt for its own slower chargers that take 8 to 10 hours to charge.
Reagan says that unlike Philly, Columbus doesn’t use public chargers for its fleet.
“When you've got city people sitting here doing this,” he said as he twirled his thumbs, “‘Well, gee, I wonder when I could get plugged in and get my charge?’ You know, that's no way to run a city.”
Plus, the city’s own consultants for its Clean Fleet Plan advised against the fast chargers, saying: “it takes 30-60 minutes to get a full charge on a DCFC depending on the battery size of the vehicle, which means staff would have to likely wait around during the charging session, reducing productivity.”
McGraw says the city is working on a new plan for comprehensive citywide charging.
“We're working on that and it's not without hiccups,” he said. “And so, we're trying to rectify where we can.”
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December 28, 2023 at 10:42AM
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Philly buys hundreds of electric vehicles but not enough chargers - NBC 10 Philadelphia
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More than 8,400 PPL customers lost power in Allentown on Wednesday evening after an unknown issue sparked a fire at an electric substation in the city.
The cause of the outage, which is still being investigated, caused the fire within the substation at around 5:32 p.m., according to PPL spokesperson Alana Roberts. The fire was extinguished, and there were no injuries. There was no danger to the public, Roberts said.
Video shared to social media showed flames emanating from the electrical substation at 14th and Green streets. Other videos and photos showed a flashing bright green light in the sky from blown transformers.
Shawn Schwoyer was working at the Haja Rose Bowl bowling alley nearby on Sumner Avenue at the time of the fire. He and others inside the building heard a loud buzzing noise and were trying to figure out what it was.
They noticed the bright light coming from outside, and went outside to check it out, Schwoyer said. That’s when he captured video of the fire.
Power inside the building came back on about 5 minutes later, Schwoyer said. Others on social media reported having power restored within 10 to 15 minutes after the fire.
The bulk of the 8,450 power outages were in Center City and eastern portions of the city’s West End, according to PPL’s outage map. Power was restored to all customers by 6:16 p.m., Roberts said.
The outages affected multiple traffic lights and street lights, according to a post by Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk on Facebook. Tuerk said the city’s traffic department placed temporary stop signs at intersections, and reminded drivers to treat any intersection with a traffic light that was not working as a four-way stop.
The fire came as rain was falling across the area, though it’s unknown if weather played a factor. PPL crews remained on scene Wednesday evening and were evaluating the equipment to determine the extent of the damage, Roberts said.
The power outage and fire marked the second incident this week involving an electric substation in the Lehigh Valley.
A Whitehall man was charged after police said he damaged equipment while trying to steal copper from a PPL substation in Allen Township, Northampton County. The man became trapped for hours and had to be rescued by emergency responders, police said.
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Allentown electric substation fire cuts power to 8,450: Update - The Morning Call
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Electric vehicles are coming to the grid. It's time for a plan, regulators nudge - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.
Going electric does not solve our problems, it only deepens them. As engineers, we must say the opinion of the professionals in the industry is contrary to the mainstream, and for good reason, Zsolt Horváth and Tamás Ignácz write.
We’ve known for a long time that our GDP addiction and capitalist economic model are incompatible with life on Earth.
Scientists kept saying that for decades, yet very little happened. A few years ago, the electrification of passenger vehicles had begun its journey, hoping it could reduce CO2 emissions to save the planet.
Not only does it not help — it worsens the situation, and yet we keep heading towards a disaster.
Hoping for a deus ex machina
There are many examples of the emerging problems that come hand in hand with the electrification of cars.
While producing an electric car, you still end up emitting greenhouse gases into the air. The resources required to build a sustainable and efficient system for electric transportation are way too costly, especially for smaller countries or emerging countries. There is no clear strategic plan on how to finance or maintain it.
The price of an electric car is extremely expensive compared to its predecessors, the internal combustion engines, and the efficiency is nowhere near them if you look at just how many improvements still need to happen to make an electric car run the same as its non-electric counterpart.
The recharging process is time-consuming, and the battery replacement is too costly and can happen too early compared to the promised overall lifetime of the electric cars.
The amount of energy that switching all traffic to electric vehicles requires is unimaginably high and can not be produced without further CO2 emissions unless we bring back the likes of Nikola Tesla and their magical deus ex machina inventions. The question is, who would purchase that?
Infinite growth in a finite system is the root cause of our problems
The issue is no joke, because not only it is inefficient and expensive, but it also empowers those countries that have the necessary base materials and energy to produce the technology electrification requires and weakens the European Union.
It also strengthens countries like Russia and China, our direct economic competitors. This alone makes it hard to believe the political elites because their actions are contradictory.
For example, the EU regulations state you need to store and recycle accumulators where you produced them, which is a real hit to the environment. It is nowhere near being environmentally friendly. And all of this is happening to fulfil the prediction of reaching 22% less CO2 by 2050 instead of being completely “carbonless”.
But what about the other sectors? Nobody knows, or nobody talks about it with equal importance.
We have more serious issues. Most of the greenhouse gases come from aircraft, ships, and heavy traffic vehicles as well as from anti-environmental energy-producing technologies like coal-based thermal power plants.
Another major problem is the 1.5-million-km2 waste island in our oceans destroying the ecosystem, and completely overshadowing the sealife of our planet which is the basis of life.
Again, nobody talks about it, and very little happens on merit. The capitalist economic system is also incompatible with life, where GDP must keep growing to infinite in a finite system, which is impossible.
Nobody has come up with alternative systems that would be mutually beneficial for the cultures across the planet.
Railways should be prioritised as the solution to the problem of supply chain CO2 emission because a lot of materials are still supplied by ships — the most polluting method, not only for our atmosphere but also for our oceans.
The GDP can't be eaten
If we really wish to protect the environment and the Western bloc's and the EU's economic role in the world, we must understand the real root causes of our problems.
We must stop making economic decisions based on ideologies or personal desires. We must take steps towards pure logic and strategically compatible decisions that are in our best interest.
We must take into consideration alternatives that are compatible with our current systems and require less additional production, including options like hydrogen-based engines for passenger vehicles — alternatives for clean electricity production, and alternatives for our current economic systems.
Going electric does not solve our problems, it only deepens them. As engineers, we must say the opinion of the professionals in the industry is contrary to the mainstream, and for good reason.
It is not too late. We are inviting those in charge to reconsider the direction of technological progress of the EU.
To paraphrase a Native American saying, “When we cut down the last tree, poison the last river, and catch the last fish, only then will we realise that GDP cannot be eaten.”
Zsolt Horváth and Tamás Ignácz are Hungarian automotive application engineers and construction executives.
At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at view@euronews.com to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.
From the bottom of Max Berman’s garden in High Wycombe, he can see the M40 motorway, with cars shooting between London and Birmingham up one of England’s great asphalt veins. On some days, Berman says, he can see the diesel fumes suspended in the air.
It was this awareness of pollution that led Berman, a 50-year-old working in the film industry, to switch to an electric vehicle (EV) in 2019. He found a pre-owned Volkswagon e-up! for £6,500 on eBay. Now Berman’s car is one of more than 940,000 fully electric vehicles on UK roads, according to government data.
Most electric cars are already cheaper over the long term than petrol or diesel, according to research organisation Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and the UK government’s Climate Change Committee said in October that EVs “will be significantly cheaper than petrol and diesel vehicles to own and operate over their lifetimes”.
That means Berman’s EV switch is one that many households are considering. And from 1 January, carmakers must ensure at least 22% of new UK cars sold are fully electric, which raises incrementally to an eventual 100% by 2035.
But there are drawbacks. There are 52,602 public charging points for EVs in the UK, government figures show, up by 44% on last year, but still well below the 2030 target of 300,000 public stations.
Nearly half of EV drivers still suffer “range anxiety”, a YouGov poll found. And EV purchases are on average more expensive than petrol or diesel cars upfront, a significant roadblock for lower-income households.
Expensive cars were cited in September by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, for delaying the ban on petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035, a move which attracted scorn for a U-turn on a popular green policy. The “upfront cost is still high, especially for households struggling with the cost of living,” Sunak said.
Ahead of the new 22% EV requirement on 1 January, the Guardian spoke to drivers who got in touch to share their plans.
‘The biggest shock was the huge savings’
After going electric, “the biggest shock with electric driving was the huge savings,” Berman says. He estimates reductions of about £1,000-a-year on fuel and hundreds on service fees. It costs roughly 1p-a-mile to run, he says, compared with about 16p for his old petrol VW.
Berman says EVs make total sense for short journeys. But he travelled 420 miles – and back – to collect his mother from Stirling, Scotland, for Christmas, which meant two stops at roadside charging stations.
“My mum’s about to experience motorway electric driving for the first time as well, which might be a bit of a hair-raiser,” he said, speaking before the trip. “We’re in the hands of the gods.”
Yet overall, he is happy to be electric. “I love it,” Berman says – feeling like he’s making an effort not just for the wider push towards a net zero carbon future, but decreasing local pollution and smog for his two children, too.
‘It feels the right thing to be doing’
Don Sims, a 51-year-old doctor in Birmingham, will switch to electric in 2024. He is buying a new Kia Niro EV with a £30,000 upfront payment.
“It feels like its a no-brainer” for the environmental benefits, Sims says. He does feel some range anxiety, over visiting his daughter at university, but “it feels the right thing to be doing,” he says.
Sims hopes with far fewer moving parts, the maintenance will prove much cheaper over the vehicle’s lifetime – after being forced to splash out £1,200 last month on a clutch for his current Ford Focus – and estimates the on-the-road costs will be 25% to 50% lower than fuel expenditure.
Sims enjoyed test-driving the Niro. “Quiet, smooth, easy to drive – but automatic, which is just weird I think,” he says.
‘It’s totally impossible’
Yet many people cannot afford the upfront fees. South Wales pensioner Stephen Coates, 74, said he would like to swap his 15-year-old VW Passat for an EV but prices are too high and charge points too sparse.
“I’m someone who believes we need to look after our environment – we need to look after the plants and the trees and everything – and with six young grandchildren now, I need to be aware that what I do now will probably have a great impact upon them in the future when they’re young adults,” Coates says. Yet the £23,000 for an EV he checked out is too expensive.
Coates says he and his wife are on the fixed income of the state pension and two private pensions and the initial cost of going electric makes it “totally impossible”. “Obviously now with all the cost of living things, food going up, it makes it just manageable to get through the month with buying the food and paying the utility bills.”
Moreover, Coates says, the terrace houses in his Welsh town make it difficult to charge EVs, unless you “run cables across the pavement,” which would be “quite dangerous”. Coates says there are only six public sockets nearby.
‘Electric cars for me are a long way off’
Sue Horton-Smith says she realised it was time to replace her nine-year-old diesel Renault Clio when she got fined for driving in Bristol’s clean air zone recently.
But when Horton-Smith, a 67-year-old retired from the education sector, began looking at options, she says EVs did not seem possible. She lives on a terraced road in Greater Manchester, often travels long distances to Cornwall, and feels there has been a lack of government investment in electric infrastructure. She says a decent scrappage scheme for older fuel-guzzling cars would have been helpful to incentivise going greener.
“I honestly can’t see how I’ll ever be able to have an electric car, compared to people like my brother who has a garage and off-street parking,” she says. “Really, electric cars for me and my circumstances are a very long way off.”
Instead, Horton-Smith opted to buy a secondhand hybrid this autumn – a Renault Clio again – and is very happy with it. The only difference to get used to was the automatic gear system.
‘The infrastructure is getting there’
Darren Fox-Hall, a 53-year-old in Lincolnshire who works for an IT outsourcing firm, will go electric with a Škoda Enyaq in March next year.
Fox-Hall says his transition is smoothed out by it being a company car, which means he will pay a £560-a-month lease over four years but face no initial outlay, except installing a home charge socket for £1,500. That is slightly more than his monthly lease of £460-a-month, he says, but with fuel and tax significantly less, costs are lower.
He says his one worry is charging availability on longer journeys, such as taking his wife and three children on holiday to Cornwall.
“Doing a little bit of research, people [are] saying they’re financially slightly better off, which is great, but I don’t want to be stranded on the motorway because there’s no chargers,” Fox-Hall says.
However, he adds, “the infrastructure is getting there”.
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Driving home for Christmas? Then spare a thought for a tourist town that has become a black hole for electric cars.
Despite being a world heritage site attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors a year - and home to 10,000 people - Caernarfon in Gwynedd does not have a fully working public charging point.
The only fast charger in the town broke months ago - and eight new charge points installed by the council have never been connected to the electricity grid.
The area has been described as a "charging desert" by drivers searching online maps for electric hook-ups.
An expert in low-carbon innovation said it showed just how large the challenge was to make the switch from petrol and diesel-fuelled cars to electric vehicles (EV).
"The amount of EV charging points we are going to have to have across Wales is going to be huge, and an awful lot more than we've got now" said Dr Debbie Jones.
She manages low carbon projects at the M-SParc, the Bangor University science park that sits across the Menai Strait from the Gwynedd town.
"It's going to be one of the biggest challenges we face as we transition from petrol and diesel cars to electric vehicles," she said.
"I think we really need to look at how we accelerate the positioning of that infrastructure across regions - especially rural regions - such as north Wales, to ensure we have the capacity to do that."
Businessman Aled Jones travels from Bangor to his office in Caernarfon every day in an all-electric car.
But a lack of chargers in the town means he has to make sure he keeps topped up from home.
"You have to be quite organised and plan your trips," he said.
He said the situation in Caernarfon was "a disappointment" - but could also prove to be an opportunity.
"When I travel and stay away in hotels, I always look for whether the hotel has a charging point," he said.
"So it could be an opportunity for businesses in the area to put in the infrastructure so it serves the population better.
"But next year, when there are more and more electric cars on the road, there will be even more pressure on the public charging points."
Across the UK there are currently 49,000 EV charge points in place - with the vast majority in England, with 42,500 charging spots.
Metropolitan London having the highest number per population.
Looking at what that means for populations, for every 100,000 people living in inner London, there are 321 charging points.
In Wales, the county with the highest number of charging places per head is Ceredigion, which has 175 places per 100,00 people.
It means Wales is in third place when you count the number of charging points for the population - with only Northern Ireland below it.
In Neath Port Talbot - the area with the fewest charges points - it is just 15.5 charging points for every 100,000 residents.
But both the Welsh capital Cardiff, and Wales' newest city Wrexham find themselves languishing in the bottom five for charging hotspots in Wales.
But as in the case of Caernarfon - the statistics only tell part of the story.
Gwynedd as a county sits in the top five places for charging points in Wales - at 124 per 100,000 - well above the likes of Birmingham (44 charging spots per 100,000) or Manchester (just 33 per 100,000 in the city itself).
But of 145 actual charging points stretching across the two Senedd seats that make up Gwynedd - Arfon and Dwyfor Meirionydd - just 39 are in the Arfon constituency, which includes Caernarfon and the university city of Bangor.
Bangor itself fairs relatively poorly - with just one fast charger available on a retail park for the entire city.
And again, at one major supermarket chain in the city, its charging points have not worked for well over a year.
The local authority, Cyngor Gwynedd, has pledged to improve the public charging position - with so much of its geography geared towards tourism and the visitor economy, including much of the Eryri national park, also known as Snowdonia.
It plans to develop more than 100 charging points at sites under its control in the coming months.
"Our aim is is to encourage and facilitate sustainable travel in the county by encouraging the use of electric vehicles by local residents and visitors to travel to all parts of Gwynedd," it said.
But it admits it is not always an easy project - stating the so-far powerless site in Caernarfon has "proved challenging".
The eight brand new charging points were installed at the town's long-stay car park at Victoria Dock back in the summer.
There is still no sign of them being connected to a working electricity supply.
The council initially said it was "doing all we can to urge Scottish Power... to complete the necessary work".
However, the electricity firm, which operates under the name SP Energy Networks in Wales, said it was forced to refund a contract for the connection work back in August because the necessary permissions had not been finalised by the council.
Both parties say they are now in direct talks to resolve the situation.
"We hope that the necessary work can be completed by Scottish Power as soon as possible," added the council official.
Realistically, it will be the new year before the connections are made and Caernarfon can be pulled out of its charging black hole.
Which will bring little Christmas joy to those making the journey to visit friends and relatives, or taking a festive break.
At least one special visitor will be prepared - as we all know - Santa's sleigh relies on magic and reindeers - not EV charging points.
