Induction charging, cool, but it ain't gonna happen...

We all know about "range anxiety" and other worries about how long it takes to charge your EV, and availability of charging places and.. oh my!  So wouldn't it be cool if you could keep your EV running just by driving along a special road?  Yes, yes, it would, that'd be great, and that's the idea behind induction charging.

Induction is an electrical phenomenon that can create current in a circuit when it passes close to another that's carrying a charge.  The important point being that the two circuits don't need to be in contact so it's ideal for something like vehicles.  Apparently the UK government is actually considering this as an option, as the image on the left (courtesy Highways England) shows.

So what's the problem?  This is wonderful news isn't it?  Er... no.  Let's think about this.  To use an induction system you need two things; cars that use the system to charge and roads that have the system installed.  No country is going to agree to do the work on installing this to their roads unless they know it's going to be used and vital to the economy, that means there will have to be an agreement from all vehicle manufacturers to build using the system.  They'll need to agree upon a standard, at the very least at the country level but in Europe, probably Europe-wide (there's no point in a French driver being unable to cross the border into Italy or Spain). Bear in mind as of today, these manufacturers haven't even agreed on a standard plug and socket for charging.  OK, let's imagine we somehow pull off this diplomatic miracle and get all manufacturers to sign up, now we need the roads.

The picture above is very pretty, but what does it actually show?  Ignoring the actual power cables, what we're looking at is rebuilding an entire lane of the motorway.  Now, we don't need to install this to every road in the UK, that would be unnecessary and silly, so let's just install it to the "A" roads and the motorways.  We don't really need it installed to every mile of these roads either, so let's just aim for 50% or so.  In the UK, that's over 15 thousand miles of road.  Yes, 15,000 (see here).  Wow, that's a lot of roadworks, but it can be done, can't it?  Consider the M3.  Right about now they should be just finishing the upgrade to "smart motorway" between junctions 2 - 4a.  That's 14 (one four) miles where they're effectively replacing the hard shoulder, so it's a good comparison for what's needed for fitting the induction system, digging up one lane.  It's taken 19 months to complete and cost £160 million.  What do we need to do?  Oh yes, 15 thousand miles so that's er... 1696 years of roadworks and a cost of around £170 trillion (I may have rounded these figures a bit).

Of course, you can't effectively use your induction charging car until the induction charging lanes are in place so if my math is correct above, the manufacturers should be getting their first sales by July of 3712, by which time England should have competed in 424 World Cups and may possibly have won one.

OK, this is an argumentum ad absurdum but it's really not that extreme.  Even just 300 miles of motorway is going to take decades to install and cost billions.  You can argue that a project lasting decades is worthwhile if the results are good, but what's going to happen to EV technology in 30 years?  Going right back to the start of this post, the whole push for induction charging is to relieve range anxiety and charging issues we're experiencing today (if you believe the media, which is another story entirely).  Are we still going to have those worries in 30 years time?  I seriously doubt it.  Look at how ranges have improved in just a few years since the introduction of the Tesla S, look at the huge interest in battery technology, exciting inventions almost on the market and think about what may be invented in 30 years that we aren't even thinking about now.

Is the government really going to invest billions of pounds in a project that'll span lifetimes, only to see that it becomes the biggest white elephant ever made?  Sorry, it's cool, but it ain't gonna happen.

Why the Media Love a Tesla Crash

On the 1st of July 2016, Joshua Brown, was driving through Florida when he was involved in an accident that, tragically, ended in his death.  Mr Brown was one of many that died that same day across the US, and one of approximately 33 thousand people that die every year on their roads, yet Mr Brown made headlines around the world; why?

The answer is simple, Mr Brown was driving a Tesla Model S using the "autopilot" feature.

But why was the car so important?  The answer to that question is, regrettably, that the media fundamentally misunderstand the technology, or perhaps worse, make use of general public mis-understanding in order to create sensational headlines.  What most of the stories really wanted to say was that Mr Brown was killed by his car through no fault of his own, that he was let down by technology and that driverless vehicles are unsafe.  Autonomous vehicles are a hot topic and a large proportion of the driving readership are apprehensive about their introduction, so such an event would be "big news".  However, the truth is more mundane, if still tragic.

Firstly, let's look at Tesla's "Autopilot".  The name is perhaps unfortunate because it does conjure an image of autonomous driving, but the reality is that the technology involved is common in many other cars and has been around for many years.  Tesla's Autopilot really does only three things:

• It acts as an "adaptive" cruise control, maintaining a set speed and responding to the speed of vehicles in front of it.
  
• It can maintain position within a lane using the steering.
  
• It can perform lane-changing maneuvers triggered by the driver.

That's it.  That's the lot.  So how different is that from any number of other modern cars?  Adaptive cruise control has been around for at least 12 years.  Mercedes were fitting a version to their cars as early as 2004 and it is now a common feature on most higher-spec cars.  So it's common, and not specific to the Tesla.

Lane keeping is available from Ford, Mercedes and VW to name but three.  So no, that's not specific to the Tesla either.

Actual lane-changing seems, for now, to be the preserve of the Tesla, but it's coming to Mercedes (of course) in the next E-class and others will follow.  Importantly, in the case of Joshua Brown, it appears no lane-changing was involved and, since the move requires driver action (you have to indicate), it's about as far from "autonomous" as you can get.

So, in short, although the accident was awful and a man died, ultimately it was little different from any of the other accidents that occurred that day, and could happen, has happened and will happen many more times to drivers of other vehicles.  Of course, these accidents won't make headlines around the world because, well, they're not really news are they?

Norway ICE free by 2025?

This story has been doing the rounds for some time (as I believe it's been debated on and off) but for some reason it's hit the headlines again today.  Norway's political leaders are pushing to ban the sale of all, yes ALL, internal combustion engined cars by 2025.  Read all about it here in The Independent.

It's worth noting that the decision will be (when it's made) to ban the sale of new ICEs, not to ban existing vehicles (which some of the more scaremongering blogs and posts have sought to suggest).  This may still seem like a draconian move, but bear in mind that 2025 is still 9 years away and given the progress that has been made in the availability of EVs from major manufacturers, the (too slow) but steady increase in charging infrastructure, improvements in range and battery technology in the last 9 years, it's quite possible that come 2025 the idea won't seem as odd as it does now.  There's also the likelihood of a much more interesting second-hand market by then (currently second-hand EVs seem to cost almost as much as buying new).

So is it a reasonable idea?  Whether it's a good idea or not, it's undeniably the sort of thing that's likely to give a boot to those major manufacturers currently dragging their heels in producing a decent, affordable, EV into their range.  While manufacturers may currently be eyeing the increase in EV sales with interest (particularly in Germany where sales are beginning to take hold in what is a fairly strong petrol-head region), there's a big change when an entire country says it'll no longer buy any of your ICEs in what is a fairly short date.

The question is now, will other countries, especially the UK, be bold enough to consider such a step?

Jumping on the Recharging Bandwagon

While it's becoming clear that electric vehicles of all flavours are becoming more common on the UK roads, it's also clear that there seems little development in terms of charging points.  Most UK motorway service stations have had some form of charging spaces for years, but usually only two and, as time has passed, it seems increasingly common to find at least one of these to be out of order.  Tesla Motors are, of course, deploying their wonderful supercharging network but that deployment is far from rapid and in some areas still non-existent.  So, as the number of EVs on the road increases but the opportunities to keep them going begin to fall behind, is a business opportunity opening up?

Although there's a lot of technology behind charging an EV, at the end of the day it's just a power socket so it would seem that the ability to add a charging station to your business should be reasonably straightforward.  There are several companies out there already in the UK who specialise in providing EV charging equipment and Tesla themselves offer options for businesses to become "Destination Charging" points.  So the question is, what benefits could a company receive from installing such charging points and, crucially, will those benefits end in a profit?

Of course, the first benefit is the fee for charging itself but you're going to have to have those points busy night and day to make any real money, I suspect, so that should probably be dismissed.  Much more interesting is what it means in terms of a "captive audience".  Fossil fuel stations have long realised the benefits of having some form of shop on-site, in fact some now have shops that rival local stores in terms of range and size, and here we're only talking about people who must spend at least a few minutes on site in the process of filling and paying.  With EV charging, even at Tesla Supercharger speeds (which can deliver about 80% of a charge in around 40 minutes), you're still looking at one or more humans wandering around looking for something to do for at least half an hour, more likely an hour or more.

The decision to install charging points is therefore going to be influenced by your business and what it can offer someone who finds themselves trapped for an hour on your premises.  If you've already got a cafe of some kind that's a good start, but that cafe has to be attractive, it has to have wi-fi for the travelling business user (or non-business social media addict).  It needs to be comfortable and, ideally, be in a good position with relation to the charging points (not only might customers want visibility of their car while it's charging, some might have apps that connect to the vehicle and need to be within a certain range).  So the obvious is refreshment based.  But why stop there?  If you run any kind of retail store (within reason), if you can attract people to your store because you offer a rare service, you may find an extra customer or two.

So, if you've got space and power on your site, and at the very least something to occupy a random visitor for an hour or so which might result in them handing you some cash, why not consider installing an EV charge point?