....and how many charging points will there be? Two probably. Not good if you've pulled off the motorway to find the bays occupied, other cars queuing and no option but to park up and wait. Oh and remember that at Motorway Service Areas you need to pay £10-£12 if you park for longer than 2 hours.

If you're lucky enough to get to a charging point (on the optimistic assumption that EVs become popular), places such as Welcome Break will charge a huge premium for this service. There is a pants-down rip off culture with motorway services in the UK. Fuel for instance is often a good 50c-$1 per gallon more, so expect electricity to be similarly priced at a premium.

I think I'll stick to my plan to by an efficient Diesel for my next car thank you!

"Every charging post will be powered by renewable electricity from Ecotricity’s 54 windmills and solar farms across the country."
How will the ensure that they only use renewable electricity -
will they run a special "renewable electricity" cable to the charge point ?
What if I want to charge when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining? Do they fill a reservoir ?
Sounds like typical "green energy supply" lies to me.

These electric public recharging stations are inneficients, buggy, unrealistics. I give an efficiency of 1% compared to an hydrogen station that can fuel over 100 cars per day. This electric station could't recharge more then 1 or 2 car a day. They are paid by big oil and politicians to construct a mess with green energy and prove to the average consumer that the green dream is impossible, this is a constructed disaster from the start. I said that it take hydrogen infrastructure instead, is it clear now. It's easier to do hydrogen with windmills and solar panels then to recharge an electric only car(bov).

This website is just a petrol retail outlet maintained by madscientists that fear energy to the peoples and are paid exclusively by goverments manipulated by big oil obama and bush and also hitler and goering. You won't convince me a second that bov( battery only vehicle) are a good thing and a sincere try to compete petrol. Every decent folk that study bov for 1 minute can see that it's way inferior then hydrogen and also it's more inneficient then gasoline. At least with gasoline or hydrogen you can refuel in minutes, cannot say that with batteries. Batteries have long recharge time and few range, that's why it will never serve for bigger apparetus then cars used only to go to work once a day. hydrogen on the other hands can replace gasoline and diesel and is overall better then what it replace.

This website just spread confusion, economic depression, general madnest. This website show the problems and show that finnally there is no solution and that politic, goverments will try with huge taxation that it cannot change a single thing whatsoever, this is the works of madscientists.

Poe's law.

Where did all you whiney little B|TCHES come from today?

It won't be efficient, it won't be enough stations, it won't be clean, it won't do windows, it won't walk the dog, whine whine whine.

Wow, it's hard to even read all the drivel coming from such a bunch of whiney little twits, it makes me want to throw up.

Look at the numbers.

His 32A fast charger is rated at about 8 KW.
20 minutes @ 8 Kw is 2.6 KwA, or about 10 miles of driving (@ 4miles / KwH).
Not much of a top up.

A 2 hour refuelling is only 16 KwH or say 64 miles of driving which will take about 1 hour, so you spend 2 hours recharging for every hour spend driving (with these chargers).

A Nissan Leaf can recharge at 50 Kw, which is a bit more like it, but if you assume 80 miles between stops, you will have to stop every hour and a quarter to recharge.

A petrol pump can "charge" a car at 22 MW (40 L/Min @ 35 Mj / Litre / 60 seconds / minute).
This is 400 times faster than a Leaf fast charge and demonstrates that pure electric cars are really no good for long runs (at present).

EVs are very good for shorter runs, especially if you can get there and back on one charge, and then charge at home on low rate electricity.

For longer runs, you really want liquid fuels in some form, be it HEV, PHev or just a diesel.

Yes, BEVs will not be good for longer trips for the next five years or so, and I don't understand why people are even talking about that limitation, much less building charging stations along highways. I drive less than 20 miles per day; BEVs are ideal for that sort of driving (up to 80 miles/day). I now resent getting in my ICE car in the morning to run errands and finding the tank near empty, and having to drive two miles opposite to where i want to go in order to buy gas. Usually the traffic is bad and it takes at least 10 minutes in each direction with the lights, and then another five minutes or so to fill up. So a half hour out of my day to buy gas. Not sure why people keep saying a few minutes to fill the tank (and not sure why they never mention the maintenance a complicated ICE requires). Two more years till I'm in a BEV, charged overnight and ready to go when I am.

People who need to travel long distances will drive something else; why do they criticize BEVs for not satisfying their needs? It's not as if someone if forcing them to buy one.

Sorry, but IMHO, this project is not practical. PHEV is a far more practical solution to the range issue associated with BEV's. BEV's should be used mainly in the cities.

Furthermore, in colder climates like Europe, waste heat from the ICE in the PHEV is essential to keep the occupants comfortable in the winter. Frequent use of the ICE (or fuel cells) in the winter is essential, since the waste heat is free, especially for the long-range driving like this project is aiming at.

@ToppaTom
Classic bit of selective quoting there. Let's put it in the context of what Dale goes on to say:
'Classic chicken and egg stuff. We’re hoping to break that impasse'

RE various poster's comments on speed of recharge/refuelling:
1) The Renault Fluence does support battery swapping
2) ICEs do not start their journey with a full tank unlike EVs which charge up overnight. It is a different fuelling model and pattern.

I don't see anyone going on about the time wasted filling up at petrol stations once a fortnight for normal driving. That 2.5 hours per year could cover a fair bit of top-up charging on the rare occasions (for a lot of drives) that the EV range is exceeded on a longer trip.

@majoni
The Reg is great for IT coverage but it a bit risky quoting them hen they stray outside their core competency. Reading those 2 articles, they clearly have Dale in the cross hairs.
So they say he 'speculating that a UFO might have been responsible for a spectacular failure in one of his wind turbines' without mentioning that this was clearly a joke complete with very tacky flying saucer photo montage with the turbine. I suppose 'Dale has sense of humour' is not sneery enough for The Reg.

On the figures 20 minutes = 10 miles may not sound significant but on a 120-130 mile journey (centre London-Birmingham), it could make all the difference with the current EV crop. Certainly, for my longest standard trip, visiting the old folks, a 30 minute top up (15 miles range each way) would be the difference between using an EV or not.

As for PHEVs, why would you not top up them up as it will boost your full trip fuel economy.

I tiny-tiny step forward won't 'save mankind' so why the vitriol express in some posts here as if ecotricity were pretending it would?

@ Nick lyons: These electric public recharging stations are inneficients, buggy, unrealistics. I give an efficiency of 1% compared to an hydrogen station that can fuel over 100 cars per day. This electric station could't recharge more then 1 or 2 car a day. They are paid by big oil and politicians to construct a mess with green energy and prove to the average consumer that the green dream is impossible, this is a constructed disaster from the start. I said that it take hydrogen infrastructure instead, is it clear now. It's easier to do hydrogen with windmills and solar panels then to recharge an electric only car(bov).

This website is just a petrol retail outlet maintained by madscientists that fear energy to the peoples and are paid exclusively by goverments manipulated by big oil obama and bush and also hitler and goering. You won't convince me a second that bov( battery only vehicle) are a good thing and a sincere try to compete petrol. Every decent folk that study bov for 1 minute can see that it's way inferior then hydrogen and also it's more inneficient then gasoline. At least with gasoline or hydrogen you can refuel in minutes, cannot say that with batteries. Batteries have long recharge time and few range, that's why it will never serve for bigger apparetus then cars used only to go to work once a day. hydrogen on the other hands can replace gasoline and diesel and is overall better then what it replace.

This website just spread confusion, economic depression, general madnest. This website show the problems and show that finnally there is no solution and that politic, goverments will try with huge taxation that it cannot change a single thing whatsoever, this is the works of madscientists.

Is it clear now?

@ A D

Hitler and Goering gave us the Autobahn and Fisher Tropsch coal to liquids fuel synthesis on a comercial scale so don't knock them.

Future on-the-move wireless charging + much higher energy density batteries will solve the range issue. By 2030, properly equipped BEVs may have unlimited range on many equipped roads