Government must get down to the details of its strategy for electric cars
SIR – Your leading article on electric cars (August 22) rightly highlights the huge challenges of power generation and distribution yet to be addressed (never mind solved).
There is nothing inherently wrong with Michael Gove’s vision of an all-electric Britain; but without a strategy to realise it and a plan to execute the strategy, the vision is useless and probably dangerous.
When can we expect Greg Clark, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, to tell us how we are going to get from here to Mr Gove’s electric wonderland? Dermot Flaherty
Southampton
SIR – I too wonder about the difficulties in bringing about the “electric dreams” to which you refer.
One angle I haven’t seen discussed is what happens when electricity fails – as it often does after a storm, or might do after some terrorist outrage or hack from a hostile power. In an all-electric world, nothing could move. Surely at least the police, armed forces and emergency services would need some fossil-fuel-driven back-up? Len Shackleton
Shoeburyness, Essex
SIR – The National Grid has warned of the possibility of blowing the household main fuse when charging an electric car (report, August 22).
My wife and I live in an all-electric house, relying on night storage heaters. We already have the maximum permitted 100-amp main fuse – so in the winter there is no way we could charge an electric car, even using the lower-wattage charger. John Barefoot
Derby
SIR – I charge my electric car overnight at home, and have had no problems.
I have never tripped out my electricity supply. In a typical day I will do no more than 80 miles – and to recharge overnight, it takes less than three hours. I programme the car so it charges during the early hours of the morning, when there is a much lower demand on the National Grid. The Grid could encourage this by reducing the price of off-peak electricity.
Solar energy and battery technology are improving at an exponential rate, and the costs are falling. I expect that, in the next few years, I will have enough solar panels – with a battery system to store the power generated – to charge my car and boil a kettle. Charles Sandison
Marlow, Buckinghamshire
SIR – I live in a terraced house with no front garden. My car is parked in the road outside. This is governed by a residents’ parking scheme, which allows me to park near but not always outside my house.
How are homeowners like me going to “plug our cars in” to charge the batteries? Alternatively, has anyone calculated the acreage of the charging sites at which owners would be forced to park their cars for hours at a time? Christopher Pratt
Dorking, Surrey