All posts by Repost

Royal Mail seeks to ‘strengthen advantage’ with plans for ten-fold increase in EVs

June 24, 2021Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, SalesRepost

Royal Mail is to boost its UK electric vehicle (EV) fleet ten-fold as part of its plans to slash emissions.

An additional 3,000 vehicles are to be rolled out, with EV charging points to be installed at all the Delivery Offices set to receive the vehicles.

It follows the launch in May of Royal Mail’s first ever Delivery Office to feature an all-electric fleet of collection and delivery vehicles. Six electric charging posts and 12 charging points were installed to support the electrification of the 23 diesel delivery and collection vans at The Bristol East Central Delivery Office.

Now, other Delivery Offices across the UK are being considered for similar fleet makeovers in the coming months, with a particular focus on those in places with existing Clean Air Zones, or plans to introduce them.

In early 2020, Royal Mail signed a three-year deal with EDF for the provision of EV chargers to support its fleet electrification. The following month, the French energy firm acquired EV charging company Pod Point, having already acquired battery storage and EV charging company Pivot Power.

Royal Mail, meanwhile, has been involved in several trials and fleet electrification projects, including the Optimise Prime project exploring how to mitigate the impact of commercial EV electrification on networks. It was also part of London Electric Vehicle Company’s real-world testing and trial phase for its VN5 alongside DPD and Octopus Energy.

Read more: CURRENT

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New Analysis Suggests We Have Already Hit Peak Internal Combustion Engine

June 23, 2021Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, SalesRepost

A new analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) suggests that global sales of gas-powered cars likely peaked in 2017, marking a major milestone in the shift to electric vehicles.

Demand for conventional vehicles fell in 2018 and 2019 before dropping sharply in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic. While sales are likely to rebound as the pandemic ebbs, growing demand for plug-in vehicles means that gas-powered cars are almost certainly in “permanent decline,” according to the report.

BNEF projects that global EV sales will go from from 3.1 million in 2020 to 14 million in 2025, driven by falling costs for lithium-ion batteries and new policies that encourage the adoption of electric cars. The analysis finds that, in the business-as-usual scenario, EVs will account for a majority of new car sales by around 2035. To reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, however, electric cars will need to account for 100 percent of new sales by 2035. To reach that goal, governments must enact new policies to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles and instate new regulations on electrifying heavy trucks, according to the report.

“The growth of electric transport is an amazing success story to date, and the future of the EV market is bright. But there are still over 1.2 billion combustion cars on the road and the fleet turns over slowly,” Colin McKerracher, head of the advanced transport team at BNEF, said in a statement. “Reaching net zero by mid-century will require all hands on deck, particularly for trucks and other heavy commercial vehicles where the transition has barely started.”

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Electric cars: switching tariff could save £300-plus a year

June 22, 2021Charging, Electric Cars, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

Many motorists charging their vehicle at home don’t even know special cost-cutting deals exist

You’ve taken delivery of a shiny new electric car, and the plug-in charger is being installed next week. You’re almost ready to go – just don’t forget to switch to a specialist electricity tariff. If you don’t, your bills could end up at least £300 a year higher than they need to be.

Over the past few years, most of the big electricity suppliers have launched tariffs aimed at the growing number of electric vehicle (EV) owners who need to charge them up at home.

These tariffs, which are reminiscent of the Economy 7 deals popular in the 70s, typically reward drivers who are happy to charge their cars during the off-peak hours with the lowest prices. With most cars parked at home overnight, this is likely to apply to many owners.

Instead of the 12p-15p/kWh that most of us pay for each unit of our everyday electricity, users on the specialist tariffs can reduce the cost to 4.5p-5p/kWh at night. In some rare cases, owners will even be paid to charge their cars because there is excess capacity in the grid.

Despite the big savings, a surprising number of EV owners haven’t cottoned on to the fact that these tariffs even exist, and are therefore overpaying for their electricity as a result, say experts.

“You’d be amazed at the number of people who spend hours researching which electric car to buy or lease but don’t consider how they are going to charge it up at home,” says Laura Thomson, a co-founder of the specialist comparison website PowermyEV.co.uk. “Getting yourself on a specialist EV electricity tariff is not only one of the greenest things you can do, it will also save you hundreds of pounds a year.”

Until recently, Octopus Energy was the go-to electricity supplier for anyone charging an EV at home, with its Go tariff offering the best rate. While its tariffs will still be the cheapest deal for many EV owners, the company is facing growing competition from firms such as EDF, which has been pushing its new GoElectric 35 EV tariff.

On these deals, EV owners are typically paying a little over 1p a mile to power their cars. The last time driving costs were that low was the early 1970s, according to EDF.

So how do you find the right EV tariff for you?

As ever with energy deals, the best deal will vary according to your circumstances and consumption requirements. The Power My EV website is not perfect but it’s a great starting point that will calculate which tariff is best for your particular usage.

To find a deal you need to input details of your car, how much you drive, and your other home energy use, and the site does the rest. For ease, we found that it was better to exclude gas usage from the calculation.

We found a Renault Zoe owner who drives 10,000 miles a year, including a commute four days a week, and charges up at their Hertfordshire home would save more than £330 a year by being on the cheapest EV tariff.

PowerMyEV calculated that Octopus Energy’s Agile tariff at £617 would be the cheapest option – this compared with £950 a year on their supplier’s standard tariff. These figures assume a medium-sized home, with average electricity consumption apart from EV charging.

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Here’s What it Will Take for EVs to Take Over the Car Market

June 21, 2021Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, SalesRepost

BloombergNEF, an energy research firm, says 70 percent of new vehicles will be EVs by 2040. But governments will have to work harder to get to net zero emissions.

A new report from BloombergNEF (BNEF) estimates that, even with no new economic or policy initiatives put forth by global governments, EVs and other zero-emissions vehicles will account for 70 percent of new-vehicle sales by 2040, up from 4 percent in 2020.

But to meet the goal of having net-zero emissions by 2050, a goal stated in the current policies of countries including Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, BNEF estimates there will need to be policy measures to encourage further adoption of EV and other zero-emissions vehicles, especially in the heavy-duty truck fleet.

Some policies encouraging EV adoption are already in place, but more will need to be adopted to meet the most aggressive emissions goals.

For all the news from carmakers about new and future electric vehicles, you’d think EVs already made up a big part of the global vehicle fleet. But you’d be wrong. Though sales of EV passenger cars are on the upswing—especially in Europe and China—EVs still only account for a small percentage of new-car sales and an even smaller share of cars on the road. A new report from research firm BloombergNEF (BNEF) projects that things could look quite different by 2040, when BNEF says 70 percent of passenger cars could be EVs or other zero-emission vehicles such as fuel-cell vehicles. But even that huge growth won’t be enough for the governments that say they’re targeting net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

BNEF’s report tallies three million global passenger-car EV sales in 2020. The report predicts that those sales will rise to 14 million by 2025 and will account for almost 70 percent of new-car sales globally and 90 percent of new-car sales in Europe by 2040, even without new investment or enticement from global governments. But some governments, including Canada, the European Union, and the United States, have announced ambitious plans to produce net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. And even given BNEF’s rosy estimates, there would still be internal-combustion-engine (ICE) cars on the roads gobbling up fossil fuels and spewing out carbon emissions by that date.

How to Electrify the Commercial-Truck Fleet?
To avoid a smoggy future, BNEF says governments will need to nudge the hand of the market by subsidizing EV infrastructure, setting stricter limits on carbon dioxide emissions, and implementing mandates for the electrification of commercial truck fleets, which have so far been much slower to electrify than the passenger-car segment. The report also suggests limiting vehicle traffic in urban centers.

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Why it’s the end of the road for petrol stations

June 20, 2021Charging, Electric Cars, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

The big worry for most people thinking about buying an electric car is how to charge the thing.

But the real question you should be asking is how you’re going to refuel your petrol or diesel vehicle if you don’t go electric.

That’s because electric cars are going to send the petrol station business into a death spiral over the next two decades, making electric vehicles the default option for all car owners.

Why? Because charging electric vehicles is going to become much more straightforward than refuelling petrol and diesel cars.

This isn’t just because the government has banned the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030.

Imagine we were going the other way, replacing electric cars with fossil fuel power.

You are writing the risk assessment for a new petrol station. You want to dig a big hole in the ground in the middle of town, put in some tanks and fill them up with an enormous amount of highly flammable fuel.

Then you’re proposing to attach a really powerful pump and invite in random members of the public.

They’ll arrive in vehicles with hot engines. You’ll hand them the really powerful pump that sprays the highly flammable liquid.

Without any supervision they’ll use it to transfer large quantities of the highly flammable liquid into their hot vehicle, they’ll pay you and drive off.

Are you OK to sign off on that? Do you think Health and Safety will give it the green light?

My point is that fuelling cars with petrol and diesel is dangerous, which is why we do it at specially-designed centralised refuelling points.

Ubiquitous power
Electricity, by contrast, is pretty much everywhere already. Where’s your car now? Do you think it might be near an electricity cable? Exactly.

The only challenge is how to bring that electricity a few feet to the surface so you can start getting it into your battery.

And you don’t need to be Thomas Edison to work that out.

If you live in a flat or a house without a drive, don’t worry. The aim is to have an electric vehicle (EV) charging point at virtually every parking place.

Erik Fairbairn’s electric vehicle recharging company, Pod Point, wants to be part of this effort to rewire the UK.

“You’ll get to a point where you barely ever think about energy flowing into your car again,” he predicts.

Of course, we’re a long way from that utopia, and that should be no surprise.

We’re just at the beginning of the electric revolution: just 7% of new cars are electric and they make up a tiny fraction of vehicles on the road, so there isn’t a huge market.

But, as I argued in my previous piece, change is coming fast and investment in charging infrastructure is coming with it.

There will be good profits to be made when millions of us want to recharge, just as there was a boom in petrol station construction at the dawn of the age of the car a century ago.

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Ecotricity ‘hands the baton’ to GRIDSERVE as it acquires the Electric Highway

June 19, 2021Charging, Ecotricity, Electric Cars, GRIDSERVE, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

Following the acquisition of a 25% stake in March, GRIDSERVE has now fully taken on Ecotricity’s Electric Highway electric vehicle (EV) charging network.

When it took its initial stake in the network, GRIDSERVE announced it would be replacing all existing Electric Highway chargers, as the existing infrastructure had become outdated in the decade since it was created. In fact, it was ranked the worst public charging network in a survey of Zap-Map users in January, with common complaints including that the chargers are old, poorly maintained and frequently out of service.

GRIDSERVE said it is “ramping up investment” in the network through the replacement works, with the new chargers to feature all the latest advances including contactless payment. Indeed, last month the first high-power charging facility was opened at Moto’s Motorway services at Rugby, with this site featuring 12 350kW chargers.

Speaking to Current± following the initial replacement works being announced, Toddington Harper, CEO of GRIDSERVE, said the company was “moving heaven and earth as fast as possible to get new chargers in place in hopefully every location”.

The Electric Highway offers an 80% charge in half an hour for compatible vehicles

Having now completely handed the network off to GRIDSERVE – who Ecotricity founder Dale Vince described as the “ideal company to hand the baton to” as the network needs an owner with “access to serious funding” – Ecotricity is now able to focus on its core green energy business, with plans to bring forward a series of solar and battery storage projects to be built without government support.

“We’ve reached an interesting point in the electric car revolution, exponential growth is just around the corner, the technology for charging has evolved with one standard and an incredible rate of charging now being possible – using an electric car is almost on a par with using a fossil powered car, where you can just top up once every week or two,” Vince added.

In January, the energy supplier signed a power purchase agreement with Geothermal Engineering, becoming the first UK supplier of geothermal electricity.

It is also looking to expand its Sky Mining facility, a world first carbon capture and storage process that turns atmospheric carbon dioxide into diamonds.

Read more: CURRENT

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How Can Switching to an Electric Vehicle Help the Planet?

June 18, 2021Electric Cars, Energy and Climate Change, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

We all need to do a lot more to help the planet. We shared a guide on sustainable living to help people know what steps they can take. There are a lot of ways that you can live an eco-friendlier lifestyle, but you might not be willing to take the initiative.

One idea that you should try is switching to a vehicle that doesn’t leave as large of a carbon footprint. Cars are responsible for a large amount of pollution, so moving to a more sustainable vehicle can do a lot.

More and more motorists are making the switch to electric vehicles and this is for a few different reasons. One of the main reasons is that people are becoming more environmentally aware and making changes in their life with driving being an activity that can be particularly damaging. Everyone knows that electric cars are much cleaner, but not everyone knows exactly why they are better for the environment than regular petrol/diesel-powered vehicles.

No CO2 Emissions
CO2 emissions are responsible for a lot of the environmental problems that we have faced in recent years. CO2 contributes more to global warming than most other greenhouse gasses, so finding ways to lessen these emissions is very important.

Electric vehicles run on batteries that power the engine, which means that there are no tailpipe emissions with these vehicles. Petrol and diesel-powered vehicles emit a huge amount of CO2 into the atmosphere, which is a major contributor to environmental damage and climate change. A study shows that one electric car on the roads for one year saves an average of 1.5 million grams of CO2 – the equivalent of four return flights from London to Barcelona.

Other Tailpipe Emissions
Although CO2 is the worst greenhouse gas for the environment, others contribute as well. Fortunately, switching to an electric vehicle can reduce the amount of these greenhouse gases as well.

On top of CO2, suffer dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter are also emitted from vehicles and these are bad both for the environment and our own health. Noise pollution is also reduced with electric cars as they are much quieter, which is particularly welcome in busy cities where noise levels can be high.

Financial Benefits
It is clear that driving an electric is much better for the environment than a petrol or diesel, but this is not the only reason to switch. You can make huge savings in the long term when you make the switch as you obviously no longer have to fill up at a petrol station, plus you will also pay no road tax with an electric car.

Greater Choice
There are also now many different types of electric vehicles available, so choosing an environmentally friendly vehicle should not be too challenging and you can even lower the price with a Government grant. The charging network is constantly growing with charging points outnumbering petrol stations, so range anxiety is less of an issue these days too.

Bans
There is also a plan to ban the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030, along with an increasing number of cities introducing bans and fines on polluting vehicles. This means that now is a smart time to make the switch and start reducing your environmental impact as well as reduce your car’s running costs.

It is worthwhile being aware of how electric vehicles are better for the environment and hopefully this will encourage you to make the switch. Electric cars are not just better for the environment either as there is also a range of other benefits and many terrific cars to choose from, so those considering making the change should start taking a look today.

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European EV Drivers Travel More In A Year Than ICE Drivers, Study Finds

June 17, 2021Electric Cars, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

A recent study commissioned by Nissan found that owners of electric vehicles on average travel 630 km (391 miles) more per year than owners of ICE-powered vehicles.

The results are impressive as they show that range anxiety about may not necessarily be a factor of electric car ownership.

“This research reiterates that electric driving is not only a smart option beneficial to the environment but also a fun, exciting, and convenient choice for the owners,” says Arnaud Charpentier, VP of product strategy for Nissan Europe. “It is no surprise that people now drive EV further than ICE cars. We are confident that with more EVs on the road dispelling myths, range anxiety will soon be in the past.”

The study found that owners of ICE vehicles travel an average of 13,600 km (8,450 miles) per year, while owners of EVs travel 14,300 km (8,885 miles) per year. Italian EV owners were the most eager to use their cars, averaging more than 15,000 km (9,320 miles) per year, with the Dutch close behind, moving more than 14,800 km (9,196 miles) per year.

On the whole, EV drivers sound pretty happy about the experience, too. One of the biggest fears keeping people out of EVs is anxiety about charging infrastructure. The study found, though, that 69 percent of EV owners are happy with the current infrastructure. Moreover, of the 30 percent of ICE-powered car owners who are unlikely to consider an electric vehicle, 58 percent cite driving range as their main concern. However, 70 percent of existing European EV drivers said their experience of range had been better than expected.

As more drivers make the switch to EVs in Europe, the infrastructure will be more heavily burdened. At the same time, though, as the market grows, so too will the availability of chargers.

To highlight the fact that European EV owners are less concerned about range than ICE drivers, Nissan has published a series of testimonial videos featuring Leaf owners around Europe, including the owner of the 500,000th Leaf, Norway’s Maria Jansen.

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World’s largest domestic V2G trial finds hardware costs still too high despite ‘significant financial rewards’

June 16, 2021Electric Cars, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

Aggregated electric vehicles (EVs) participating in Dynamic Containment could earn consumers up to £725 a year, but hardware costs must reduce.

These are some of the key findings of a three-year trial – Project Sciurus – run by OVO Energy, Cenex, Nissan and Indra. It saw between 300 and 400 vehicle-to-grid (V2G) chargers installed, a number which was lowered from 1,000 due to limits of the number of consumers with compatible EVs.

Project Sciurus found that V2G chargers could save consumers £340 compared with £120 when using one-way smart charging. Additionally, by enabling the V2G chargers to provide grid services via Kaluza’s platform, the figure rises to £513 for Firm Frequency Response (FFR) and £725 for Dynamic Containment.

However, there are significant challenges to implementing Dynamic Containment with a portfolio of V2G chargers, with a number of conditions adding both cost and complexity. These includes the requirement for the initiated response to be within 0.5 seconds with a full response within 1 second, assets needing to be aggregated up to 1MW and 20Hz settlement to be installed, among other requirements.

Additionally, while costs of the V2G hardware have come down significantly, they are still too high both for most consumers and for the financial business case to stack up for the operator. By the end of the trial, the V2G hardware and installation cost was around £3,700 higher than that of a smart charger.

A reduction to the incremental cost of a V2G chargepoint is therefore necessary, the project found. In order to make the business case viable, an additional revenue stream as well as tariff-based optimisation must also be considered, with FFR, Dynamic Containment or the Balancing Mechanism possible ways of providing these opportunities.

Conor Maher-McWilliams, head of flexibility at Kaluza, said: “V2G is a compelling example of how intelligent electric car charging can create significant financial rewards for customers, while enhancing the resilience of the grid as we transition to net zero.”

The trial – which was funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV), also found that price spikes occurring in the wholesale market provide a significant opportunity for revenue through V2G. In weeks with price spikes, V2G was able to capture twice the revenue of an average week.

With the trial stretching into 2020, data collected was impacted by the lockdowns, with an increase in the plug-in availability. The annual availability during 2020 was 70%, a significant jump from the 57% seen in pre-lockdown. Despite this, both represent a behaviour change compared with the non-V2G plug-in availability of around 30%-40%.

OVO laid claim to the world’s first domestic V2G charger install in late 2018 as part of Project Sciurus. It has since launched OVO Drive to “lead the way” in the EV market through the expansion of its EV offering as well as the development of new products and propositions.

The financial viability of V2G has been explored in a number of studies and projects, with a report led by Element Energy and released in 2019 finding that it could be economically viable in the near term and save hundreds of millions of pounds in grid costs, but only if the industry can deliver specific conditions.

These largely surrounded reductions in hardware costs, the need for high plug-in rates and the requirement for revenue streams to be stacked efficiently to bolster the business case for each V2G install.

A review of nine European V2G projects – including Sciurus – in 2020 by Cenex found that the traditional model for V2G of generating revenue through energy trading is only one of a number of opportunities for the technology, with other key value propositions being resilience, the benefits to society, enhanced battery management and self sufficiency.

It also found that using V2G for grid services that are based on power availability but have low energy usage will have a limited impact on battery degradation, a key concern surrounding V2G.

This echoes the findings of Sciurus, with participants in the trial reporting that their initial concerns over battery degradation, reliability and costs were alleviated, with this showing demand for the technology according to the companies involved.

Read more: CURRENT

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Strong sales streak continues for BEVs with 441% jump

June 15, 2021Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, SalesRepost

Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) sales have once again seen a significant increase, with a jump of 441.3% recorded last month when compared to May 2020.

The latest figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) show that 13,120 BEVs were registered in May 2021 compared to 2,424 the same month a year prior.

However, despite the jump in sales, BEVs held only 8.4% of the market in May 2021 compared to 12% in 2020. The SMMT suggested this was partly due to the May 2020 performance being distorted by the COVID-19 lockdowns as new cars could only be purchased through click and collect or delivery, giving rise to variable purchasing patterns.

The lockdowns also had a marked effect on petrol and diesel sales, plummeting -97.3% in April 2020 to allow for BEVs to scoop a 31.8% share of the market.

Looking at 2021 as a whole, 54,051 BEVs have been sold compared to 22,054 in the same period in 2020, representing a 145.1% change and 7.5% of the market compared to 4.3% in 2020.

Mike Hawes, SMMT chief executive, said: “Demand for electrified vehicles is helping encourage people into showrooms, but for these technologies to surpass their fossil-fuelled equivalents, a long term strategy for market transition and infrastructure investment is required.”

The SMMT figures come on the same day as separate statistics looking into electric vehicle (EV) sales were released from New AutoMotive, which instead found that there were 11,769 sales of BEVs in May 2021 compared to 2,224 in May 2020. This puts the market share at 8.36% compared to 12.29% for May 2020.

Tesla led sales in the month, with 1,648 purchases, followed by Volkswagen with 1,560 and Hyundai with 1,065.

When it comes to the percentage of a manufacturer’s total registrations, however, Porsche held the top spot, with 37% of all new Porsches being fully electric. Other brands to have solid sales were Renault, Hyundai and Nissan, with 26%, 19% and 16% of their new car sales being fully electric.

Meanwhile, geographically, New Automotive found sales of new EVs are growing fastest in North East England and Oxfordshire where sales have jumped from 4% of the market to 11% and from 8% to 19% in the last year respectively.

In May, it was announced that Oxford will be the home of Europe’s most powerful EV charging hub, with a range of 300kW, 250kW, 7kW and 22kW chargers to be installed at the site, which is the first of 40 such Superhubs to be created by Pivot Power.

Read more: CURRENT

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