49% of people polled might pave over their front gardens to park +charge EVs
In the News
Aren't electric cars supposed to be greener ?
Then why are more and more homeowners considering ripping up their lawns so they can park their EVs in front of their homes to charge them?
Not only destroying nature but causing more flooding by concreting over natural grass that allows water to drain
If you take into account all the other negatives concerning EVs , price, charging , battery disposal , being too big and overweight for car parks and roads etc, they have a much larger carbon footprint than conventional cars
It makes you wonder if any thought has gone into the long term effects of these costly monstrosities ?
www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/1805373/electric-car-infrastructure-charging-bays-homeowners
Only rich people or people with no understanding of nature would even consider doing this. So much for saving the planet!
Can't deny Agenda 2030 when people are willingly doing it.
People are getting rid of what little land they have for electric cars. 
PhilipMarc I think EVs are the biggest mistake ever P, as you have probably realised by my past comments about them
The environmental damage is huge
I have thought this for a long time, way before people needing to park electric cars. People were digging up their gardens just to park their ‘normal’ cars
eyeballkerry Thats true E, now the reason is to charge them
I saw another article last week where people who have apartments for example and have to park on the street are trailing electric cables out their windows and wrapping them around lamp posts to charge their cars
One picture showed someone hooked up to a lamp post
telmel This is a major problem with owning an electric car, where to plug it in. I also wonder if you visit a friend with your electric car, is it ok to plug it in at their home. Would you offer money or expect to get it free?
eyeballkerry it's too expensive to expect it for free but you probably couldn't get home without it !
eyeballkerry Thats one thing i was thinking of E , friends and family visiting and wanting to plug in their EVs
It would be a bit awkward if say you were on a night tariff and they needed to charge during the day for example
If you compare to present it would be like them asking you put some petrol in their car , it wouldn't happen
Sensationalist nonsense from The Express as usual. That headline is actually hilarious, I burst out laughing as soon as I read it.
'Hundreds of drivers prepared to destroy their houses to cater for electric cars'
"Destroy" their houses, really? 
You don't have to bulldoze your house to fit a charging port.
Published a typo in the first paragraph too.
The they change their rhetoric again in the second paragraph - "Hundreds of homeowners are prepared to destroy their front gardens",
and then they go on to refute both things they just said by saying -
"Of those who already own electric vehicles, a whopping 70 percent have already made changes to the front of their homes to accommodate them"
Of course they have, a charging port goes on the exterior of your house, on the wall. You don't need to destroy your house or your garden to fit one. Though there can be complications in some cases, for sure.
"This includes 22 percent of owners who have admitted to cutting back on green space"
So now the real figures come out. Cutting back on greenspace can be as simple as widening your drive to create a path, or running a cable duct through your garden.
I see no issue here, just as I would see no issue with somebody turning their front garden into a patio, if that's what they want to do. And a lot of people do just that, not everyone wants a garden, let alone two gardens.
I do not have a problem with electric vehicles. They are not ideal in terms of environmental impact, but they are nowhere near as bad as fossil fuel vehicles. I DO have a problem with the government trying to force everyone to get an EV, or take costly, unreliable public transport instead. Clean Air Zones, ULEZ - It's all just for revenue.
If you're worried about greenspace in this country, (I know I am), EV's are not the things you should be angry about.
Try being angry with the government, allowing greedy developers to build horrible, cheap and nasty newbuild estates absolutely everywhere with impunity. They actually are destroying our local environment. They are built by cowboys, using cheap materials, everything is botched because the workers are given a time limit to complete. New home owners then pay unbelievably extortionate prices, pay off a mortgage over thirty years, all while spending years paying to fix everything that was done wrong. The housing economy is an absolute state for everyone except developers, who are essentially getting (even more) rich off the back of killing the environment and trapping normal people in debt for life
The problem is F people need to have their vehicles close to a charging port , or you will get the problem i mentioned , trailing cables from the house to the road , both unsafe , unsightly and prone to vandalism
So the only alternative is to either park next to the charging point , if you have a grassed front garden with no parking you need to create one, or just use public chargers costing you three times as much
I cannot vouch for this but i doubt if public chargers use off peak tariffs as you might have at home
Heres an article about the charging difficulties, apologies it is from the sun newspaper, it happened to have the best images 
telmel if you can't park your vehicle next to a charging port, an EV shouldn't even be considered. I've always said this. Make sure you can put your car next to your charging port before you buy. If you can't do that, the EV is a waste of time.
That being said, I have absolutely no issue with people paving over their lawn to park an EV. If it saves them £10K a year in fuel and running costs, it makes all the sense in the world. Especially if they also have a back garden.
You can't fix stupid, as they say. Inevitably you will get people trailing cables all over the place because they were idiotic enough to buy an EV while living in a rented third floor flat. Inevitably you will get useless councils mandating lamp posts as charge points, contravening their own stupid health and safety regulations when it suits them.
None of this is the fault of EV's themselves, but people in general. I do think that until proper infrastructure is fitted, your property should have to meet certain criteria to own a EV. But regulation like that would be impossible to pass with environmentalist morons blocking streets in protest and fighting it in the courts. You'd be hard pressed to convince a court that rich home owners deserve cheaper transportation, while rented flat tenants do not.
At the end of the day, if the government wants to push everyone into low/zero emissions vehicles, it is up to them to provide safe infrastructure to do so, not to mention make it affordable fir average people.
These things are inevitable in the short term. Longterm, we simply can't keep relying on fossil fuels, and we have to start somewhere, unfortunately for some.
FearLoathing I agree with most things you said F except the people are at fault for buying EVs
In some places like London you have no choice, either buy one or use public transport and taxis or get hit by emission charges
We are all being forced off the road by government legislation , there is no choice
I agree that fossil fuels are damaging the environment, but so are EVs , in some ways moreso , and we are expected to pay 3 times as much for them
As i said previously , there has not been enough thought put into life after EVs
telmel unless you work in transport in London, the metro is actually the easiest way to get around, albeit unpleasant. London in general is horrible for a multitude of reasons. But if I did live there, there's no way I would commute by car unless I absolutely had to. Motorcycle, metro or bicycle. But obviously then you have to worry about your bikes getting stolen too - as I say, London is horrible in general.
EV's are absolutely nowhere near as bad as fossil fuel vehicles in terms of environmental impact, despite what big oil lobbyists funding the mainstream media would like you to believe. EV's are far from perfect, but there is absolutely no grounds to suggest they damage the planet anywhere near as much as fossil fuels.
I do think we should be putting more money into researching hydro vehicles, though. We already know they are viable, it's just that the technology doesn't allow for them to be cost effective as an initial purchase for most people. At least not yet. But they would require no lithium mines, no charging, incredibly minimal fuelling, and produce no emissions (other than water).
I the interim, EV's are a far less polluting stepping stone than fossil fuel vehicles. We do have to act now if we want human life to remain sustainable on this planet
Unfortunately our government is incapable of seeing past generating revenue as first priority. This is where most of the problems stem from.
FearLoathing Totally agree with you on all points F, especially concerning hydro power
Now that technology would be super efficient and zero emissions
Too late for that now , they are steaming fully ahead with EVs
The only consolation is they are developing batteries half the size now with shorter charging cycles giving longer distances
Another reason to hold back buying the older technology, they will become worthless when they bring this in
telmel I wouldn't say it's too late. Hydro technology simply isn't in a place where it would be viable for average consumers to buy into it. It's only really viable in large vehicles like HGV's and buses. Aberdeen in Scotland is actually running a fleet of hydro powered double decker buses right now, with hydro fuelling points dotted around the city.
Toyota are investing a fair amount into hydro research, with the aim of eventually making hydro vehicles available for average motorists.
And yes, batteries will continue to get smaller and range will continue to increase. This kind of progress can only be made if people continue to buy EV's, though. As more people buy them, more will be invested into improving the technology, the same as anything else - mobile phones being a prominent example.
FearLoathing Lets hope its sooner than later F, those older multi storey car parks are groaning under the weight of EVs at the moment
Saying that hospitals and schools are in danger of collapse also due to the inferior concrete used, so we cannot blame Evs for that one
telmel EV's aren't to blame for increased vehicle weight either. Consumer demand for more luxuries in vehicles is. For example, a Tesla model 3 weighs around 1700KG, a Nissan leaf weighs 1600KG, and a diesel powered BMW 3 series also weighs 1600KG.
A Nissan Qashqai only weighs 1400KG, and that's a hybrid with a large battery.
You know what weighs more than all of these things? Most 4X4's, range rovers driven by mums on the school run, white vans full of working gear.
Besides all of that, with the extortionate prices that both private car park owners and councils charge motorists, they should be made to pay for structural improvements anyway. The profits private car parks make off the back of motorists is disgusting. They can afford it. No sympathy from me, other than for the poor saps who buy an EV to be economical, only to be told they can't park it in the city because parking firms are too greedy to pay for necessary improvements
If you don’t have a garage then you need the nearest point to your home to charge the vehicle. How flat dwellers are supposed to charge theirs especially as it some time to fully charge?
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