Practicality of electric cars in SE23?

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Our next car will probably be electric and we’re planning to get a power point installed in the drive.

bell green probably wont give enough charge in a short time to the model 3 and having worked in Amsterdam this week where you have to queue for a supercharger its turning out more challenging than whats marketed.

the trip guard is an option if you can guarantee parking outside your house

the council could be lobbied to get one or two spots locally which would help the local businesses as well however their doesnt seem to be a great solution for London yet.

btw - my model 3 is on order

You don’t even need to go as far as Bell Green, apparently there’s 3 charge points at the car park at the Forest Hill Salisbury’s!

Here’s a handy map of all the publicly available charge points across the country - there’s actually quite a lot more than I would have expected; https://www.zap-map.com/live/

yes, but the issue we have is a general lack of off street parking which makes having an electric vehicle and relying on local infrastructure difficult as sainsburys in forest hill only allows 3hours of parking which is fair but that would only give you the equivalent of a 1/3 of a tank meaning that usage levels would be very high.

rambling on the move however hopefully it makes sense

I could run a cable to an electric car in my drive. I have seen charging points located in roads.

Is it this easy? Do you need to upgrade your house’s electrics? How long does charging take this way?

I’ve been looking at a couple of options recently with the bigger 64kWh batteries to get the range I want - they generally quote in excess of 24hrs to get from 0 to 80% charge on a 3 pin plug - no upgrade required, should be just like running an extra kettle all day.

Charhe time drops to under 10hrs if you have a 7.2kW home charger.

4 posts were split to a new topic: “Tesla Model 3” in the opt-in “geeks” category.

Sounds promising:

ULEZ comes to Lewisham and Forest Hill in less than 20 months. Highly unlikely we’ll even see a charging point in every ward by then.

Has anyone tried any of the electric car subscription services like Elmo or Onto locally? We are very keen to try them out but wondering if it’s practical to get one if we only have access to on street parking and charge only at public charging points.

Looks pricey to me, you could own a Tesla model 3 for similar money per month.

This is true. But we are just testing the waters. We haven’t found the need for a car in London in the 7 years we’ve lived here. But Covid/lockdowns this year are making me rethink this. I am still hopeful that once things settle down post vaccine, we can go back to public transport for the most part.

Subscription services are a good short term solution and maybe also a way of figuring out how much use we might get out of a car and what type/model will suit our family if we do decide to buy one eventually.

It’s definitely a good way to see what car would suit you and whether the charging network is viable.
Unfortunately for me I have no way of charging from my home to keep costs down and would have to rely on street charging networks.

I didn’t notice if there was a minimum subscription term or a final payment if you want to end early.

We have the same issue with not being able to charge from our house. But considering we will only use the car for weekend jaunts within the city and Kent for the most part, maybe this is not a deal breaker. As far as I understand you get on a rolling monthly contract and can cancel with 28 days notice. I don’t think there is a termination fee.

I don’t live in SE23 yet, but I was walking to Lee Green Sainsbury’s, and going up Chalcroft Road I saw two of these. On a residential street outside people’s houses. I wonder how they got them?

The Zap-Map app is your friend. Shows all chargers, prices, availability and how good/bad drivers find them. NB Bell Green Sainsburys has free Type 2 (slow 7Kw) chargers.

This looks like a great idea. I think I’ve seen one or two near Bovill Road too.

I run an electric London Taxi. Unless you can install a home charger it is pretty inconvenient to find a charger, put it on and go back and take it off (you can’t just leave it there all the time). It is also not that cheap to use on street chargers as a rule. It’s working out more expensive charging up than to run on the range extender engine on my vehicle!
Would recommend to buy a ‘plug in’ with a range extender to avoid any ‘range anxiety’. Most give enough range to cover all journeys around town, with a top up charge each day at home, then on a long trip just use the engine.

That makes sense if you need to drive your car every day and don’t have a driveway.

If every car on the road was a least a hybrid that didn’t emit pollution in traffic that would be transformational.

Unfortunately, I think there will be a cut-off point for hybrid cars probably sooneer than you expect.

Good idea having power points on lampost, trouble is since the council had new lamposts fitted in Lewisham a lot of the posts in my street and adjoining streets have had the lamposts fitted away from the kerbs and closer to Houses apparently to use the light better to illuminate the pavement.
Dont suppose they will want trailing leads from post to vehicle across paths/pavements

They also replaced the old lampposts with fewer posts. Some of them are now so close to trees that they give very little light during the summer.

I think charging posts will need to be installed in roads close to the kerb.

In Lee, it looked like this.

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