Plan for dozens of electric car charging points across Plymouth

“I can just imagine children and their mischievous games of the 21st century...... unplugging all the cars that have been left charging in the car park!”

“With a large percentage of people living below the average national wage, I cannot honestly see the market for it, let alone the ability to pay for these type of cars. Look around and you will see a large amount of older cars in Plymouth; the only new ones are from professional types and tourists.
However, if you can plug a mobile phone in, then great idea!”

“Genius - just as we hear that manufacturers aren't bothering with electric any more and are going to concentrate on more efficient petrol engines.”

“Do you remember when they introduced black cabs and they kept breaking down because of the hills in Plymouth. I can't help wondering how long an electric car will last in Plymouth compared to a flat bit like London.”

“Its going to work really well in most areas of Plymouth, most home do not have off street parking, then there are too many cars for the space available. Can you imagine the scene around a terrace street at night. If all the cars had enough battery power to get them home. Then trying to park outside your house so you can plug your car to the mains to recharge your battery. There would be a lot of cables running from houses to the cars, so any one trying to walk, let alone push a pram or someone in a wheel chair would have a nightmare trying to get past. Then once is goes quiet, some idiot would come along and unplug all the cars. So you are stranded for the next three to eight hours waiting for the battery to recharge.
Well done PCC another fantastic idea to put this city on the map.”

“iamajc it would actually be very simple. The government only has to restrict the electric vehicle subsidy to those cars that conform to the standard battery specification. They would all implement it as soon as they could. You'd just have a standardised jack point and mechanism to swap the battery. Nothing amazing needed. It would be no more difficult than changing a wheel.”

“Currently (another pun) batteries cost a lot to manufacture and contain some pretty toxic substances. Their manufacture is complicated and involves more carbon-costly toxic processes.

Assuming a life of approximately 2-3 years, that will leave us with a huge recycling and toxic waste problem. Good for some industries but not for our environment.

This knee-jerk reaction is far worse than using conventional fossil fuels.

And, in the Times this week, it is reported that battery car manufacturers are rethinking their future development. I wonder why?”

“I wonder how much you willed be charged (excuse the pun ) to charge your battery?”

“Tim they'd hardly be easy to change if they are under the car though. Most batteries are heavy and some are dangerous. We don't even have standardised batteries for starting cars, so to expect manufacturers to start using standard batteries for running cars isn't going to happen. Maybe in years to come batteries will become smaller and more efficient it maybe possible. Swapping out is probably never going to be a quick option.
Using an internal combustion engine in a car is the worst way to use an engine of this type as they work best at a constant speed with quite a high load on them, this is how they are used in ships. Some ships now use a large engine at constant speed to generate electric to power electric motors to drive the propellers, this could be adapted for road vehicles until batteries are really suitable. I think some have been built in this manner with very small engines driving a generator to increase the range after the batteries have died.
A battery that is suitable for a g-wiz is not going to be suitable for a larger family car, even in a g-wiz they only give a range of 50 to 75 miles before requiring an 8 hour charge and are still very expensive to buy.
The only electric vehicles I've ever seen in Plymouth have been milk floats and you don't see them anymore :-)
Until we stop burning fossil fuels to generate our electricity I can't really see the point.”

“Plymouth city council Please note, I recently bought an lpg fueled(auto gas) car, there is not one petrol station sell`ing auto gas within the city limits of plymouth, there is one company sell`ing auto gas in stonehouse, these auto gas fueled cars are low emission so why is there not a net work of auto gas outlets in plymouth, could the council provide an outlet at thier cattedown site? plus other sites it could provide a profit to the council, if there is to be a sortage of plugged in places has with auto gas outlets I can see cars stopedall over the city out of charge, still the parking camera car should make a fortune, what a joke this city is auto gas can be bought out side of plymouth ie saltash, ermington , ivybridge newton abbot, torquay, I could go on. sad sad sad”