Batteries, diesel, petrol …thats so “yesterday” 
This is the way to go, just needs to be miniaturised (remember server rooms of the 80’s)?
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The rates of recharge are not constant, the battery cannot yet fast charge passed 80% so the time spent on the last 20% doesn’t justify the wait. Better to charge to 80% then a top up somewhere else on route. Better for the present battery tech as well.
My customer with the Tesla 3 said the journey is 45- 50 mins longer for his French Trip, on the route planner app I look at to see charge station implementation a VW id4 would add an extra hour to our journey (I do stop for comfort breaks, coffee and something to eat) so the hour is in addition to this. Looking to plug in at shops on the route as we normally shop before arriving at the house so it wouldn’t be a wasted wait.
I am not sure spending an additional £6,000 for a long range battery that I would only need for a few French trips is worth it as my max is about 200m per week and its not every week.
Whenever a Tesla catches fire anywhere in the world it makes a headline yet if that was done for ice cars we would probably never set foot in one. Yes they burn and require fire depts to understand water and lithium is a bad mix but they dont explode!
The solid state batteries when they get here should alleviate most of those isues.
There was experimentation on changing the motor windings to improve the magnetic flux and reduce the slow points thus improving the overall efficiency. These were being trialled in Formula E cars.
Unfortunately lots of fast charging will reduce the battery life but Tesla claim 50% in 20 minutes for the 150kW superchargers. It’s a mind-blowing amount of electrical power to dump into something the size of a Tesla battery - over 300A at 480V
However, as we’re onto charging away from home - it’s another weakness of EVs at present. It’s getting better - some 38k “connectors” is currently claimed but if we assume 30 minute average charge time it’s still a lot fewer than equivalent petrol pumps - lets say 5 mins to fill up, 9k forecourts with (guess) 8 pumps per forecourt = 9kx8x6 or 432k charging connectors needed to match the current hydrocarbon infrastructure.
There are increasing complaints by EV drivers or queues, lack of maintenance or ICE vehicles blocking the charging points.
Undoubtedly the next car, or the one after that will be an EV but, as I said, not yet.
The future?
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Probably and progress is welcome but 100 over 5 years is not much of a dent in what’s needed.
Remember the UK’s EV “fleet” is ~ 1% of the total (373k cars out 35million, 10k vans out of 5 million).
Also, how long before that 24p per kWh attracts the attention of the government and HMRC.
Yes indeed, thats why home charging from my own solar PV is massively attractive.
All of the supermarkets I have been to in the last year or so have charging points for electric cars, there are quite a few scattered around towns as well, many of my erstwhile favourite 15-minutes-free-parking spots have been turned into charging points.
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The infrastructure here in Brittany is really impressive - there are charging points in almost every village. If I only used a car here I would definitely have chosen all-electric, but I agree that if you sometimes go on longer journeys - especially to the UK - a rechargeable hybrid currently seems the best step towards all-electric. There’s also reassurance in having 2 sources of power!
A timely short video to explain the biggest difference between Electric vehicles and fossil fuel vehicles.
Telegraph.co.uk: How I used my electric car to power my home – and cut my energy bills.
How I used my electric car to power my home – and cut my energy bills
Excuse the adverts but interesting view of the Chinese Nio car and the automated battery swap meaning full battery in 8 minutes.
Yes - the obvious solution to the battery charging time problem is standardising battery design so you can just drive into a garage and change batteries.
Why does it take the Chinese to action this, glad someone has done it though because now the lazy “designers” can copy the Chinese for a change 
One of the central myths of liberal-democracy-capitalist ideology is that it enables innovation and economic ‘progress’. In fact, if you look at real economic history instead of abstract mathematical models (which all make absurd assumptions) what you find - as Ha Joon Chang has shown (not Chinese by the way, but a brilliant Oxford professor of economics) market economies that have a lot of state intervention and regulation outperform more ‘free’ market economies, especially on innovation.
The totem of free-market brexiters, Singapore, is actually one of the most state-owned, controlled and interventionist economies in the world - it’s only its external international trade that is relatively ‘free’. It might well, indeed, have been the model for the current Chinese economic model! (And there is some suggestion that this might be exactly what Gove/Cummings had in mind!)
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What sticks in my throat is when things are going well business don’t want regulation ,the instant the shit hits the fan they are all there with their hands out saying the state should pay.
Yes Grenfell is a prime example.
Everyone involved in the refurbishment and cladding got rich and it is they who should pay, not us, not the tenents.
It’s one of the many things in the UK at the moment which should be a national scandal but just doesn’t get aired in the media.
There are 1000’s of people stuck paying mortgages, and increased service costs on properties that are worthless (literally with valuations of £0) and are being expected to pick up the bill for replacing the cladding as well.
Subscriber only link John!
Except the people who paid for the work are the real culprits because they will have approved all the changes and they will have approved the changes to save money,the conservative council wont get prosecuted