Well, actions to force things towards the average are the way to make this actually feasible. Certainly the overnight charging situation is completely unmanageable if you let people charge when they feel like, but comes close to solving the whole problem if you get the charging spread through the available hours (by offering an appropriate tariff - Economy 7 is already helping here).



Yes, public rapid charging will, and should be, expensive - but the need to use it should be rare. 60 miles is already at the lowest end of the available capacities, and I'd expect such cars (if they continue to exist) to be bought only in the 2nd car/commuter car role. It's generally considered that 200 miles range is needed for mass-market acceptance (and such vehicles are within sight from multiple manufacurers). With that sort of range, you only need public charging a few times a year, and have spare capacity much of the rest of the time to make the averaging work better.



Where do you get that figure from?



Which is why tariffs and control systems need to arrange that those 4 cars (each doing only 20 miles a day and so needing 30A for only an hour) charge sequentially rather than all at once.

That 600A over 8 night-time hours can deliver 16kWh to each house (with 2kWh spare to run their fridges etc). That's about 60 miles, enough for 3 cars per house doing an average 20 miles each.

Yes, there will be hot-spots, estates with above average commuting mileages on account of where they are located, and some reinforcement work will be required; equally, there will be areas where there's no extra needed at all.


I wouldn't claim that the Government have a joined-up strategy here - they plainly don't - but from an engineering perspective this is achievable if there is reason to do it.