Just seen this elsewhere:
It's a smartphone app that lets you order fuel for your car, and a bloke in a transit-sized van delivers it. It covers only a few postcodes in London (see link), and only delivers diesel, due to legal restrictions.
Is London totally devoid of petrol stations? (I have no idea on that) Surely this cannot be economic, even if we ignore the environmental horrors?
You're supposed to leave your fuel cap open for them ... doesn't seem too sensible.
It's possibly coloured red.
Around a year ago there used to be a place on my route to work advertising recycled bio-diesel at a lower price than the surrounding filling stations. Perhaps this is a similar operation.
Given the areas covered, the target market looks more like distress purchasers
"Oh Dahhhling ?"
"Yes Dahhhling ?"
"Dahhhling did you remeber to fill the Disco ?"
"Oh sorry Dahhhling it competely escaped my mind"
"Never mind Dahhhling I'll call up my little man. It may be ?5 a litre but at least it saves you coming home smelling of that Ghastly Diesel. And having to mix with those horrid people buying their sweets. And they deliver those delicious organic artisan baguettes for only ?10 each.
"OOOOH Darling you are so clever"
....
I give it 3 months
michael adams
...
I wonder what they do with the misfueled fuel? ;-)
Cheers, T i m
They say on the site that they buy from a major wholesaler. Of course, that doesn't rule thuings out ;-)
Very many in inner London have closed in the past 30 years. Part competition from supermarkets and part (I think more) the value of the land they were on making them uncompetitive. You can still get fuel at a few places in central London (eg Park Lane) - but not at ASDA prices :(
Same thing's been happening with car dealerships. The yield from a showroom/forecourt, even with London prices, can't compete with the yield from a block of flats/offices/shops.
Roll on EV's where you can tank up at any lamp post.
Not casting doubts of course, but is there not a scam where a bloke drives around siphoning fuel out of vehicles into a tank and then flogs it off before it gets missed?
Brian
And a £10 per hour parking charge for the car to remain there (as long as it's not a bus or cycle lane).
I added 640 miles to my car's range in less than 5 minutes on Sunday. Will I be able to do that at a lamp post?
If you are going to park there anyway, does it matter?. If not then find another lamp post and work it into your day.
Obviously not. A bit of forward planning would allow you to charge the car:-
1) At home 2) Outside your house at a lamp ost if no offroad parking 3) At a car park 4) In town at a lamp post while you shop 5) At a motorway service are while you have a piss/something to eat/drink/stretch your legs.Which all costs 0 minutes - plus would be a darn site cheaper to fill than a fossil engined vehicle.
Maybe but a dedicated high power circuit is best. You can only get 3kW out of a 13A socket so an 8h charge will extend range by ~75 miles. That is enough to be useful.
Lamp post wiring at present is rated for under 500W load so it might add at most 1kWh for every hour parked = 3 mile range extension. JOKE! Some newer lampposts may be 200W max as are the old sodium ones.
Iff you can get onto the 2 or 3 spaces for electric cars.
Same problem as with lamp posts anywhere - they were never designed to provide power beyond that needed for high efficiency lighting. JOKE!
Subject to finding a charging point that is available to use when you need to use it. If not you may have to stay there until the thing has charged up to the point where it can actually get you home.
The turn around time for extending a diesel cars range by 800 miles is around 5 minutes including paying for it.
An fairly standard electric car will add something like 60 miles range per hour and the fanciest supercharger can do 150 miles range in 20 minutes (with questionable thermal effects on the battery chemistry).
It might cost a lot less to fuel, but it depends how you cost the depreciation of the vehicle and its *very* expensive battery. It takes an age to put the energy into the battery and despite what the makers claim I am not convinced that ultra fast charging (and related heating) does not come at the expense of long term battery lifetime/capacity.
I needed a distress purchase of a replacement battery
IIRC the "we come to you" battery replacement outfit wanted 80 quid for a replacement that cost 35 from my local garage.
Had they offered a one hour service I would have paid it.
But they had a phone line that only answered calls between 9-5 and having called them at 9 would only promise to be with me "some time today".
I got no worse a service from my garage for the 35 quid
tim
Most LIPO will recharge in about an hour without any damage.
Its the 5 minute charge that is being worked on
Same with pubs - and indeed many businesses that require some land, rather than just a phone. But it is always housing that land gets used for - never any commercial, unless planning forces them to.
I do wonder where all the people who can afford to buy them come from.
These lamp posts are going to need to be pretty close together as more people get electric cars. The cabling to supply them all will be getting chunky too.
Diversity. EV's don't need charging 24/7 when stationary.
In a city an EV will need charging once every one or 2 weeks for a couple of hours.
Already happening:-
You reckon? Ubitricity sockets reportedly provide 3 to 5 kW. 2 hours at
5kW gives 10 kWh. That's a third of a charge for a Nissan Leaf. That gives between 50 miles (if you take Nissan's best case) and 30 miles (from one real life test in London in the cold)[1].If this is accurate:
"Some users may have concerns for security though, as there seems to be no way of preventing someone of stealing the expensive cable or simply removing it to charge their own car at your cost."
then the schemes not fit for purpose. Geneva or Oslo possibly. But across London it'd be a joke.
I also question if there 30 minutes to fit a socket takes account of upgrading the supply to the lamp post.
Those long cables left dangling also make me wonder how much "trip for cash" we'd see.
[1]HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.