EV recommendation

My car has its own voice control, which is dismal. Using the phone linked to the car via android auto is good enough for "navigate to XYZ" on the satnav.

The plus 8 had the 3.5L Rover V8 as I recall. I fitted a 1498cc Corsair GT motor when the old sidevalve developed piston slap. That was quite quick enough for me!

I'm aware in some European countries, multi-phase isn't uncommon, but that would be where a modest house used electricity for heating.

Assuming our transmission and generation system is uprated, it could well become the norm. Others may plant their head firmly in the sand in ignorance.

Interestingly, I have 2 phases incoming - but use only one.

Ignorance of what? Many folk at present are quite happily managing to charge their EVs and run their heat pumps on a single phase supply.

Nobody has a domestic high speed DC charger capable of 100kW+ so all this talk of our supplies being inadequate is moot.

Even if we had three phase supplies given the £10,000 + cost of said chargers is just not going to happen.

Tim

And it's pointless anyway. Unless you're a taxi driver, 95% of the time cars are parked. On a regular 7kW domestic single phase charger, they can refill their average daily driving in a couple of hours. If you do a road trip it might take more like 8-10 hours overnight to refill, but most people don't do road trips every day.

Add in a 2-3kW demand heat pump, that's no more than boiling a kettle.

If you have multiple cars it doesn't make a difference because one person can only drive one at once, and it's miles driven that causes consumption (you may need N chargers but they can sequence / load balance).

If you're a family with 4 teenage kids all with their own cars and everyone using them to go 50 miles to work every day then that might require a slightly beefier supply. But that's quite a niche use case - the limiting factor being driveway space aside from anything else.

About the only time it might get sticky is with HMOs where there are lots of adults in a single house, but most of them will be street parking because there's not enough driveway.

Basically in most houses you're more likely to run out of drivers or driveway before you run out of supply capacity.

Theo

Many commutes are road trips when it comes to EV range.

Again, that depends on the size of house.

Yes each person in that household can only drive any one car, which can mean many cars or one very well used car requiring a full overnight charge.

I agree for 80% of the time, but ..............

Most EVs now have 200-350 miles range. That's one hellish commute to be doing every day.

If you have a 100 mile city EV it'll only have a 20-30kWh battery, which can be filled by a 7kWh charger in about 4 hours.

At a COP=3-4, a kettle's worth of electricity gives you 9-12kW heat. That's enough for most houses.

Which is easy to manage.

It's a non-problem for most people most of the time. There will be a small number of outliers (large households all driving long distances on a regular basis) but they can make their own arrangements (likely a 3 phase supply and a bank of chargers for multiple EVs).

Theo