As much as I agree that this is irritating and bloody dangerous what other choice do they have? The infrastructure for EV cars is years away from being in place, especially for those houses without driveways which is a third of households. I have heard ideas about utilising lampposts but this still leaves cables exposed as a trip hazard, to be unplugged or pinched. Not all neighbourhoods are in nice low crime middle class areas.
> It added it was ‘imperative’ for car charging to take place on the road with ‘no cables present’ on ‘any part of the pavement’
With our current infrastructure, this is impossible.
Further evidence for the need for tighter controls on on street parking and new developments to have seperate mandatory parking areas
Genuine question, isn’t this something you’d realise would be an issue when you live without off street parking and so dissuade you from buying an electric car?
Whilst having an electric car may be more environmentally friendly, this behaviour is selfish.
What we really need is petrol stations to start transitioning over to become charging stations. Neither of the two near me have a single charging point. We’ve got 2 public chargers in a town of 30k people
I bought a hybrid because I live in a street with no off road parking and even if I could park near my house often enough to charge it I wouldn’t want the cable running across the path. We need more charging points because the selling of petrol cars ban is not really that far away. Lamp posts already have electricity they could possibly use that and change them to chargers/lights
Electric cars are a massive green washing exercise anyway, the only real solution is just less cars completely
Just wanna have a moan about my council.
They’ve decided to put 5 EV charging spaces on our road. On the face of it, this is a good thing. But the issue is that.. Well… I live on a council estate. Most are unemployed, the next biggest majority would be people earning under the national average. Most can’t afford to own a car at all. There’s not a single EV on our road, and parking is limited as is. Probably 60 spaces, for 150 blocks of flats. And now 5 spaces are earmarked for EV’s that don’t exist..
It’s very annoying.
What’s more annoying is the richer bit of our area isn’t even particularly far from us. They could have just done it a few roads down, and actually found some EV drivers.
It’s so tone deaf on behalf of the council.
Also, the road has been full of potholes for years, and they decide to spend money on this?
Someone has filled in the poles where the electric bits are supposed to go soon, with expanding foam. Someone else has painted over the ‘electric cars only’ signing on the road.
I don’t think this is a battle the council are going to win, and it’s an utter waste of money.
So stupid.
Seems pretty minor compared to widescale pavement parking though
What the fuck do you expect people to do when they have no other means to charge their cars.
This would be an issue for those who are blind or have poor vision, or in wheelchairs, which sucks, but people don’t have any other choice, credit is due to those who’ve put the trip hazard sign and the ramped trunking to minimise the hazard.
Sure you could do under pavement channels for cables, but councils aren’t going to grant permission to do that.
>dice with death walking in road
Isn’t this a tad over the top?
Fury at “selfish” petrol/diesel car owners polluting the planet
The state of pavements in general because of people parking on them is out of control. Electric car charging cables laying around is probably nothing compared to the amount of arseholes blocking entire pavements.
Lack of investment in infrastructure for the EV market. As per the UK is behind rather than in front.
Here in the Netherlands, it is just not allowed, unless you have permission from the council. Then you have to have a mat over the cable so that it doesn’t cause any hindrance to pedestrians. If you do it without permission the fine is (2022) €259. Then it becomes a really expensive charging session. You also get people, such as I read a couple of months ago, who removed the access panel from a street light and wired up a charging cable to charge a Tesla. He was caught, and I believe the fine was high. Luckily enough in the council district where I live they have made some good steps. There is a parking garage in the centre of town where you pay the parking fee, €1 an hour I believe, or you can purchase a day or month card, but then charging is totally free. Further up on the street when you charge your car, you don’t have to pay the parking costs of nearly €3 an hour. I got my EV in 2020, but it wouldn’t have been an option if I didn’t have my own driveway. Also, employers are also getting charging facilities placed in the car parks of their companies.
We have about 3 people on our road who do this. It’s fine, and nothing like the pictures from that article. They put proper cable covers across the cable, yes that means there’s a bump on the pavement but no bigger than the tree roots.
Let’s not talk ourselves into a backwards step just because of a few bad examples.
Ignoring all the hysteria, there are some really nice drop in cable channel products on the market for just this problem.
Is the issue unrealistic targets issued by Government regarding the transfer of power from petrol and diesel to electric?
I’m struggling to find a new place to live because I refuse to do this, the alternative is buy a traditional vehicle but my EV saves me about 3k a year in costs.
Only can think of a portable battery I can charge, take outside and plug in. They exist but they’re not affordable and very stealable.
They never mention this when they tell us to get electric cars…
Remember, when we were told to buy diesel cars to save the environment?
It’s like no one in government knows what they are doing and make it up as they go along…
I work for a BEV manufacturer. The government will not implement a roadside charging solution because it will be obsolete in 5-10 years. Charge rates will be high enough (20-30 m/min) that fuel stations will do the job instead.
Just think what it’ll be like when more folk have EVs. Next stage will be cables across roads when people can’t park outside their houses. Time to rethink ‘electric only’ future and allow other low / no carbon options for vehicles post 2030.
They already use public space to store their car. Now they want more public space to store cables.
If you dont have charging facilities, then an electric car is perhaps not a wise purchase. That said, I live in an apartment and can charge at the local Asda supermarket or a short 5-10 minute walk from my home.
There is a level on entitlement with some that they must park outside their house. Fine if it’s in your property. Not fine if its public space.
I tripped over a cable whilst running during lockdown. It was semi dark and the cable wasnt flush to the floor. It was a trip hazard even for people walking.
I rang the doorbell covered in blood and they didnt care, but also said it should have been flush to the ground. They didnt apologise.
Put me out of action for a few weeks! No loss to me because when i told my house about it one jumped on his bike and keyed the car. Silly billys.
Brings the question, what happens if you trip over? who’s liable? Is it the council for not clearing the hazard away or the one that needed to charge their EV car and made it unsafe?
I had a dragons den idea to have chargers fitted to terraced houses wired through a huge hinged hanging basket bracket thing.
This time next year…
I don’t understand why you’d insist on buying an EV if you don’t have a driveway?
Work offered me an electric van and I turned it down, I don’t have a drive so I recognise it’s completely impractical.
I’d rather my neighbours did this than poison my street with killer fumes.
There are an estimated 9,000+ deaths per year in London from poor air quality, and that’s not counting all of the people whose health gets worse in a way that doesn’t kill them but reduces their quality of life.
Sort the charging infrastructure out. But don’t blame the people who are taking steps to stop polluting our air!
Welcome to our future!
There is sod-all infrastructure for all-electric, and people without front driveways literally have no other choice. Swathes of our towns are lined with terraced housing with no off-street parking, and then there are more rural locations where there will never be any infrastructure. The government has basically sat on its hands while the death-knell for petrol/diesel nears.
I have a front garden but no drive, and the only way I could charge a car is to drape a cable over my neighbour’s front yard, across an access drive to properties behind, to the patch of land where my car is parked. The lane I live on is not wide enough to park outside my front garden, and the garden is too small to be a driveway.
Oh come on, how many times a day do you have to walk over a window cleaners hose. Or someone working in a driveway, or the side of the road. Leads across pavements isn’t a new thing. I’m a bit more concerned about rabid dogs and tik tok wannabes on e scooters when walking down a pavement than I am about a bloody extension lead.
So many arseholes on our estate park so they are fully blocking the pavement anyway, the cables will make no difference at all.
Well the owners will be liable for personal injury claims from trips and falls. .
If its the la’s job to prevent pavements being unsafe, then they’ll have clamp down on the practise and Sue the owner, if they are sued by the public.
Great big shit storms are forecast, and ambulance chasing solicitors are rubbing their hands, as they watch a new market opening up
I’m surprised there hasn’t been any claims yet for tripping over the cable
The government keeps pushing EV car sales and the fact of the matter is a lot of households don’t have a drive/anywhere to charge them and we don’t have the charging infrastructure to handle it.
Stories like this will continue.
What i find more selfish is drivers who park there cars so far onto the pavement its a struggle to get past them
Just so people know This is Money is part of the daily mail.
36 comments
As much as I agree that this is irritating and bloody dangerous what other choice do they have? The infrastructure for EV cars is years away from being in place, especially for those houses without driveways which is a third of households. I have heard ideas about utilising lampposts but this still leaves cables exposed as a trip hazard, to be unplugged or pinched. Not all neighbourhoods are in nice low crime middle class areas.
> It added it was ‘imperative’ for car charging to take place on the road with ‘no cables present’ on ‘any part of the pavement’
With our current infrastructure, this is impossible.
Further evidence for the need for tighter controls on on street parking and new developments to have seperate mandatory parking areas
Genuine question, isn’t this something you’d realise would be an issue when you live without off street parking and so dissuade you from buying an electric car?
Whilst having an electric car may be more environmentally friendly, this behaviour is selfish.
What we really need is petrol stations to start transitioning over to become charging stations. Neither of the two near me have a single charging point. We’ve got 2 public chargers in a town of 30k people
I bought a hybrid because I live in a street with no off road parking and even if I could park near my house often enough to charge it I wouldn’t want the cable running across the path. We need more charging points because the selling of petrol cars ban is not really that far away. Lamp posts already have electricity they could possibly use that and change them to chargers/lights
Electric cars are a massive green washing exercise anyway, the only real solution is just less cars completely
Just wanna have a moan about my council.
They’ve decided to put 5 EV charging spaces on our road. On the face of it, this is a good thing. But the issue is that.. Well… I live on a council estate. Most are unemployed, the next biggest majority would be people earning under the national average. Most can’t afford to own a car at all. There’s not a single EV on our road, and parking is limited as is. Probably 60 spaces, for 150 blocks of flats. And now 5 spaces are earmarked for EV’s that don’t exist..
It’s very annoying.
What’s more annoying is the richer bit of our area isn’t even particularly far from us. They could have just done it a few roads down, and actually found some EV drivers.
It’s so tone deaf on behalf of the council.
Also, the road has been full of potholes for years, and they decide to spend money on this?
Someone has filled in the poles where the electric bits are supposed to go soon, with expanding foam. Someone else has painted over the ‘electric cars only’ signing on the road.
I don’t think this is a battle the council are going to win, and it’s an utter waste of money.
So stupid.
Seems pretty minor compared to widescale pavement parking though
What the fuck do you expect people to do when they have no other means to charge their cars.
This would be an issue for those who are blind or have poor vision, or in wheelchairs, which sucks, but people don’t have any other choice, credit is due to those who’ve put the trip hazard sign and the ramped trunking to minimise the hazard.
Sure you could do under pavement channels for cables, but councils aren’t going to grant permission to do that.
>dice with death walking in road
Isn’t this a tad over the top?
Fury at “selfish” petrol/diesel car owners polluting the planet
The state of pavements in general because of people parking on them is out of control. Electric car charging cables laying around is probably nothing compared to the amount of arseholes blocking entire pavements.
I’d guess the UK has around 15-20 years to sort their shit out regarding building infrastructure for EV’s. Who knows if that will happen though. It will be interesting from 2030 when [no more petrol or diesel vehicles can be made.](https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/108960/uk-2030-petrol-and-diesel-ban-what-it-and-which-cars-are-affected)
Lack of investment in infrastructure for the EV market. As per the UK is behind rather than in front.
Here in the Netherlands, it is just not allowed, unless you have permission from the council. Then you have to have a mat over the cable so that it doesn’t cause any hindrance to pedestrians. If you do it without permission the fine is (2022) €259. Then it becomes a really expensive charging session. You also get people, such as I read a couple of months ago, who removed the access panel from a street light and wired up a charging cable to charge a Tesla. He was caught, and I believe the fine was high. Luckily enough in the council district where I live they have made some good steps. There is a parking garage in the centre of town where you pay the parking fee, €1 an hour I believe, or you can purchase a day or month card, but then charging is totally free. Further up on the street when you charge your car, you don’t have to pay the parking costs of nearly €3 an hour. I got my EV in 2020, but it wouldn’t have been an option if I didn’t have my own driveway. Also, employers are also getting charging facilities placed in the car parks of their companies.
We have about 3 people on our road who do this. It’s fine, and nothing like the pictures from that article. They put proper cable covers across the cable, yes that means there’s a bump on the pavement but no bigger than the tree roots.
Let’s not talk ourselves into a backwards step just because of a few bad examples.
Ignoring all the hysteria, there are some really nice drop in cable channel products on the market for just this problem.
​
https://www.construction-supplies.co.uk/thresholds-joinery-seals/964288-stormguard-ev-charge-cable-gully-5017259017197.html
Is the issue unrealistic targets issued by Government regarding the transfer of power from petrol and diesel to electric?
I’m struggling to find a new place to live because I refuse to do this, the alternative is buy a traditional vehicle but my EV saves me about 3k a year in costs.
Only can think of a portable battery I can charge, take outside and plug in. They exist but they’re not affordable and very stealable.
They never mention this when they tell us to get electric cars…
Remember, when we were told to buy diesel cars to save the environment?
It’s like no one in government knows what they are doing and make it up as they go along…
I work for a BEV manufacturer. The government will not implement a roadside charging solution because it will be obsolete in 5-10 years. Charge rates will be high enough (20-30 m/min) that fuel stations will do the job instead.
Just think what it’ll be like when more folk have EVs. Next stage will be cables across roads when people can’t park outside their houses. Time to rethink ‘electric only’ future and allow other low / no carbon options for vehicles post 2030.
They already use public space to store their car. Now they want more public space to store cables.
If you dont have charging facilities, then an electric car is perhaps not a wise purchase. That said, I live in an apartment and can charge at the local Asda supermarket or a short 5-10 minute walk from my home.
There is a level on entitlement with some that they must park outside their house. Fine if it’s in your property. Not fine if its public space.
I tripped over a cable whilst running during lockdown. It was semi dark and the cable wasnt flush to the floor. It was a trip hazard even for people walking.
I rang the doorbell covered in blood and they didnt care, but also said it should have been flush to the ground. They didnt apologise.
Put me out of action for a few weeks! No loss to me because when i told my house about it one jumped on his bike and keyed the car. Silly billys.
Brings the question, what happens if you trip over? who’s liable? Is it the council for not clearing the hazard away or the one that needed to charge their EV car and made it unsafe?
I had a dragons den idea to have chargers fitted to terraced houses wired through a huge hinged hanging basket bracket thing.
This time next year…
I don’t understand why you’d insist on buying an EV if you don’t have a driveway?
Work offered me an electric van and I turned it down, I don’t have a drive so I recognise it’s completely impractical.
I’d rather my neighbours did this than poison my street with killer fumes.
There are an estimated 9,000+ deaths per year in London from poor air quality, and that’s not counting all of the people whose health gets worse in a way that doesn’t kill them but reduces their quality of life.
Sort the charging infrastructure out. But don’t blame the people who are taking steps to stop polluting our air!
Welcome to our future!
There is sod-all infrastructure for all-electric, and people without front driveways literally have no other choice. Swathes of our towns are lined with terraced housing with no off-street parking, and then there are more rural locations where there will never be any infrastructure. The government has basically sat on its hands while the death-knell for petrol/diesel nears.
I have a front garden but no drive, and the only way I could charge a car is to drape a cable over my neighbour’s front yard, across an access drive to properties behind, to the patch of land where my car is parked. The lane I live on is not wide enough to park outside my front garden, and the garden is too small to be a driveway.
Oh come on, how many times a day do you have to walk over a window cleaners hose. Or someone working in a driveway, or the side of the road. Leads across pavements isn’t a new thing. I’m a bit more concerned about rabid dogs and tik tok wannabes on e scooters when walking down a pavement than I am about a bloody extension lead.
So many arseholes on our estate park so they are fully blocking the pavement anyway, the cables will make no difference at all.
Well the owners will be liable for personal injury claims from trips and falls. .
If its the la’s job to prevent pavements being unsafe, then they’ll have clamp down on the practise and Sue the owner, if they are sued by the public.
Great big shit storms are forecast, and ambulance chasing solicitors are rubbing their hands, as they watch a new market opening up
I’m surprised there hasn’t been any claims yet for tripping over the cable
The government keeps pushing EV car sales and the fact of the matter is a lot of households don’t have a drive/anywhere to charge them and we don’t have the charging infrastructure to handle it.
Stories like this will continue.
What i find more selfish is drivers who park there cars so far onto the pavement its a struggle to get past them
Just so people know This is Money is part of the daily mail.