True cost of "filling" an electric car?

[whisky-dave]

The car charging system would know how much current it is taking and hence power, so would send the meter that value, and that's what it would use for evaluating how much to charge you.

I'm not sure you could do that without being detected.

Might work if you can affod the UPS, I have one here beeping in teh lab at me, they aren't cheap. it'd cost £1000s.

It will need that anyway to regulate the charge.

It really isn't that difficult.

it's already being worked on, and really isnt that difficult. Even the simplest of systems would work, when the meter 'see's a sudden cur rent surge in current as a car battery charging will have that effect, the rest is just simple calcluations.

another method would be to use the car itself. Now the govenrment some how know how much fuel you put it, they can work out the electric too by having a meter in teh car.

But if there are problems the govenrment would just set ther same VAT on al l electicity supplied to your house as it does 'currently' ;-P. It's not like the government will be doing it either they'll but the probl em on the the electic companies.

But it does give me an idea for a student project.

[whisky-dave]

What makes you think the tax on electicity for cars will be any diffent from taxing the rest of the house. The govenrment have managed to tax electricity you use for years now, so why would taxing electricity for cars be any differnt ?

[harry]

Which is why it will be some sort of GPS based device. Which is what I said right at the begining.

[harry]

You must have a very boring job. Better to take the train.

[charles]

It wasn't a job - I've been retired for nearly 20 years.

I had a car full of items.

When I do the same journey in May I will be going by train - tickets already booked, but then it will only be me, a laptop computer and a change of clothes.

[3899jk]

But the car chargers have to be.

Wrong.

Nope, just that the chargers that take more than 13A from the mains to get a decent recharge time will obviously be observable by the smart meter due to the length of time they take that much power for.

Not when the smart meter just observes the power use.

Which is useless when you want a fast charge.

You just have the smart bit in the charger.

Perfectly possible to have the chargers meter the power used and report it to the taxing authorities, like smart meters do right now.

[Tim Watts]

It might not be "that hard" in a lab.

Neither is coming up with a universal smart meter that all suppliers can plug forumlaic tariffs[1] into, provides user friendly in house readout units with facilities for visually impaired users. This particular scenario seems quite easy to me - but it hasn't happened and probably won't for a long time, just because it's hard getting a dozen stakeholders to agree on anything.

[1] Because no one is going to be happy with "simple time based" - they are going to want their own special blend of ways to charge their customers - possibly adapting in real time to system load. So you need a fairly general solution.

Now you are talking about retrofitting smart metering that logs particular specific loads as well as the grand total plus all the funky tarrifs, which not only involves all of the above stakeholders but also has another (by the time they do this) several dozen or more stakeholders (car manufacturers) - and that's just for cars. Imagine extending to the socialist's utopia of having remote switching and charging of various load classes (eg water heating and storage heating as lowest priority through to "life support" as highest priority).

It's just not going to happen in the real world - not in my lifetime, just due to the fact there are too many people involved, the government are proven crap with defining IT standards so they won't just do it either plus the immense installation base.

You then have to ask the question: Is there an easier way to solve the problem (tax electric cars). Well, several have been proposed in this thread that sound vaguely workable with varying degrees of tradeoffs, so why would anyone proceed with the hardest solution?

[DJC]

Quite, it is easy to tax road fuel, it all comes from a few refineries, what little of it is used for other purposes can be marked: apply the tax at those pinch points and it becomes hard to avoid on a significant scale.

>

[Tim Watts]

And your smart meter can be sure it's a car and not several storage heaters taking charge?

And for people that don't do that much milage?

Bollocks - with all due respect :)

[DJC]

Or simply change the basis of taxation for all vehicles to a road pricing/toll/congestion charge model. With enough APNR points in use it becomes possible to create tax cells: the ability to hop from one to another without detection would be rather limited in most cases unless you were really prepare to be forever going the long way round to everywhere.

[Vir Campestris]

I pay a hell of a lot less for heating oil than the pump price for Diesel. The taxing of that sort of stuff is already pretty different for road use than domestic.

I'm sure they'd love to be able to tax electricity like that. Trouble is you can't dye it red.

Andy

[3899jk]

There are other approaches that would work too like requiring chargers that can't just be plugged into a normal 13A outlet to record what power was used and report that like smart meters do.

Or using the ANPR cameras to slug electric cars like they already do with congestion taxes.

Maybe not but that is more likely because they might want to encourage the use of electric cars as they already do by not charging for the MOT etc.

No reason it couldn?t apply to just new ones.

Makes a lot more sense to charge by use so those who use their electric cars a lot pay a lot more than those who only use them much less often, say just for shopping instead of to work and back every day etc.

[harry]

Why do you drivel on about topics when you don't even have an electric car? Charger fall into two types. AC (small) chargers use the car's onboard rectifier with a current limiting device. Mine limits to Kw 2.2

DC (fast) chargers that just have a current limiting device. These are around 60Kw & there are not many around. I don't use them anyway.

[harry]

nce power, so would send the meter that value, and that's what it would use for evaluating how much to charge you.

at me, they aren't cheap. it'd cost £1000s.

current surge in current as a car battery charging will have that effect, the rest is just simple calcluations.

He's a complete idiot. Anything like that would be easy to defeat in any case.

[dennis]

Funny all the electric cars I looked at recently need a 32A charging point and they actually fit them free if you buy a new car.

the DC charger is an optional extra on some of them costing a few hundred more.

Most don't even come with a 13A plug unless you pay extra.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You snipped the bit the 200 mile commute was referring to.

[tim...]

No, it means that it is no bloody use for that journey

But you didn't say how often you do that journey and if it is a one off hiring a car for the day (or 2) makes sense

Note that I am not making any point about the usefulness or otherwise about ECs, just picking you up on your incomplete point.

Then.....

I drive 55 miles round trip to work, so I could use an EC for that, and hire a car to go on holiday with.

That would leave me putting 11,000 per year on the EC.

As per a PP, is that enough use to justify the very high additional purchase costs? I suspect not.

And I couldn't actually do it anyway as I live on an estate with communal parking places and no means to install the kit to recharge the battery.

Councils are going to have to take a long look at this (what seems to be preferred) model of new builds if we are all going to be encouraged to buy ECs. Cos the two don't fit together

tim

[charles]

Not really. With my own vehicle, I can load up the night before and I can start when I want. Otherwise, 8 miles to the nearest car hire depot which means I will set off at least an hour later. At the other end of the journey I use the car for storage, so I'd have to hang on to it for the week I was away and have it overnight when I return home since it was nearly 8pm when I got home. And hiring large estate cars isn't like getting a Group A one.

Come to think of it, could I get my harp into an electric car anyway? That's needed at least once week.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've just been to beyond Morpeth and back. But did stop overnight, due to having a given time to pick up what I was collecting. In the old Rover. ;-)

[Andrew]

I see Ofgem are proposing charging a higher rate of VAT on heavy users of electricity (or a variable rate depending on usage). There is an article in the 'i' about it.