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Wiki UK and Ireland Supercharger Site News
- Thread starter WannabeOwner
- Start date
Mark-R
Member
It's not just EV uptake in Norway, it's the number of Teslas there. Before I visited Norway in August 2019, Tesla seemed to me to be like a obscure, specialist car company, and certainly not mainstream, so I was planning to get a VW ID3 when they launched in the UK (to replace my 7yr old petrol Golf). But I saw a LOT of Teslas in Norway - it wasn't unusual to see several in a queue of traffic or parked together, and this convinced me that Tesla was far more mainstream than I had thought. At that point I decided I would get a Model 3, which I ordered late January 2020 and collected in March.
cezdoc
Member
Ah, good news: if we use Superchargers/1000 km2 the UK wins with 0.27/1000 km2 vs Norway on 0.17/1000 km2 (using Wikipedia's area figures). England alone is even better: 0.43/1000 km2, Scotland trails a bit on 0.12 and Wales once again disappoints on 0.05 (pity Northern Ireland though!). I guess this illustrates how important the regional spread is, the ideal network needs to have a minimum density everywhere and then be beefed up along busy corridors.
Norway is a good model for what the future could look like in the UK. I used to visit regularly ~10-15 years ago and even then they were busy getting heating electrified and the taxis were dominated by Prius's because of the influence of tax incentives which subsequently switched to drive the uptake in EVs.
I think you need to compare the habitable areas of each country. The UK has about 15% at a guess, of uninhabitable are. Norway, I expect the figure to be much more like 40% or more.
There's no single comparable metric that will give you the true picture. All you can do is take various sensible ones and draw reasonably informed conclusions from them.
I'm not entirely sure habitable areas as a meaure is that useful, especially if you are just guessing the figures ;-) . Measuring the total distance of trunk roads could be useful, perhaps more useful than the area measurement I suggested earlier.
I'm not entirely sure habitable areas as a meaure is that useful, especially if you are just guessing the figures ;-) . Measuring the total distance of trunk roads could be useful, perhaps more useful than the area measurement I suggested earlier.
Hopefully this years Xmas mass transit (lockdown possibilities aside) will result in less queues at the Superchargers with the recent surge in new sites.
Although I don’t think Woodall will have had its strain reduced. Still crazy it’s one of the UKs most popular sites and also has one of the lowest-peak kW rating.
Northbound’s site permission will likely be expired soon. The deal with Moto will likely also be a factor (installing at rival Welcome Break).
Where’s the virtual smart queuing system Elon!?
Although I don’t think Woodall will have had its strain reduced. Still crazy it’s one of the UKs most popular sites and also has one of the lowest-peak kW rating.
Northbound’s site permission will likely be expired soon. The deal with Moto will likely also be a factor (installing at rival Welcome Break).
Where’s the virtual smart queuing system Elon!?
As a Welshman in exile I've been embarrassed by the state of play there regarding EV charging, especially rapid charge units (Superchargers or others). Maybe the Senedd are using Northern Ireland as their benchmark. I don't know if there are specific issues in the principality - I have read that power supply is a problem for a proposed Supercharger site near Builth Wells.
Norway isn't a fair comparison either though, Google tells me the plug in car market share there is more than 50% (over 80% in September) compared with 9% in the UK. Places like Norway and California do show what's possible though, and closer to home even Scotland has built up (and continues to reinforce) a reasonable nation-wide single operator public network. So come on, Wales, pull your socks up!
Wales might have an excuse for Mid-Wales but not for Anglesey and Pembrokeshire, both have 400kV lines.
Network route maps | National Grid ET
Just doing a Google search suggests that its 70% of Norway that uninhabitable.. that will skew the figures!
cezdoc
Member
I haven't been over to YouTube/Twitter to read the comments but I expect it's been pointed out that the transformers (in fact all the power supply equipment including the charger cabinets) are there but they are behind the security fence as shown in @Medved_77 's pictures.
Do you mean uninhabitable or uninhabited? Almost the whole world is inhabitable, but lots of it is uninhabited. Scotland being a good example of a sparsely populated country.
Uninhabitable.. mountains inaccessible regions as much of central Norway is. (Yes I know there are the occasional Hytte but they're only occupied for the holidays).the islands as well tend to be mountainous with habitation round and flat areas on the shore. Theres not a lot of area in the uk where you cant live. I was just saying you need to compare apples with apples.
Half of Devon and Cornwall is only used during the summer
But seriously, measuring Superchargers per unit of land is not very useful. You don't turn up at a SuC to find a small dairy farm hogging the stalls. It's Teslas that do that. A more useful measure of how well the UK is doing is Teslas/SuC.
As far as I| can see both Norway and UK have the same number of SuCs, but Norway has more than twice the number of Teslas. So UK doing well there. Which is to be expected as there is clearly a lot of room for growth in the UK market with potentially 10x the number of customers as Norway. It will be interesting to see how this figure changes in the coming months/years.
I think Birmingham is uninha..... Mmmm No I won't post that.
cezdoc
Member
Norway just edged further in front with a new Supercharger at Varangerbotn (now Norway 67 - 65 UK on the supercharge.info chart).
Never mind, say, Thurso or John o'Groats : this is a seriously impressive location geographically: in the Arctic close to the border with Finland and Russia, looks like it's the most northerly Supercharger in the world. Slightly OT but good to see what "the competition" are up to!
Apparently Newcastle Service Centre has had an "assessment" for a Supercharger, but has power restrictions preventing them going ahead. Even the destination chargers are on a load-balancing setup due to the power constraints.
Also I notice Thurso has dropped off the TOGUK map TOGUK Supercharger Map - Google My Maps
Also I notice Thurso has dropped off the TOGUK map TOGUK Supercharger Map - Google My Maps
SpareHeadOne
Member
That's surprising, the site is one what used to be a big manufacturing area that would have had large power requirements in the past. I wonder if it's been disconnected/removed as the factories closed and were demolished?
cezdoc
Member
Looking through TOGUK posts, I think this is because two chargers matching the description of the Aviemore Two (4A & 4B) have turned up on a pallet & been installed at a logistics/delivery firm near Banbury (I guess the business activities include moving Teslas around the country, maybe for fleet customers?).
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