Octopus makes changes to its smart tariff
And lots of other EV news from the past week!
Hello, I’m Tom Riley, and welcome back to the second half of this week’s Fast Charge EV newsletter.
The top story this week... was published on Monday. If you missed my story about which local authorities did and did NOT apply to use DfT’s funding to deploy pavement channels for residents, there’s a small summary below.
Elsewhere... Lots of latest EV news, including that Octopus has changed its cheapest EV tariff, Ford is bringing back the Fiesta, and a statistic that made me disappointed in Britain.
As ever, if you have any comments or feedback, please reply to this email or message me on LinkedIn. Also, apologies this week that your normal one email has been split across two days. I thought DfT might publish the list below before I did!
1 in 5 local authorities shun pavement channel fund (as a huge 81 councils take it up!)
On Monday, I revealed that 19 local authorities decided not to apply to take up money from the UK government to deploy pavement channels to their residents. 11 of those 19 were London councils, which, as the image below demonstrates, has left a little bit of a postcode lottery for millions of people who live in areas where this solution is most needed. It was great to see GB News pick up this story today too. Read more.
Since publishing the story on Monday, I have also been reminded that, despite NOT applying for their allocation of £238,000 from the Department for Transport, Cornwall Council DOES allow residents to have and apply for a pavement channel. The council charges £175 for a licence (see here). I can’t imagine residents will be too pleased to know their council didn’t apply to get financial support. See the full council list at the link below…
Latest EV news...
🐙 One of the UK’s most popular EV home charging tariffs is Octopus’s Intelligent Go. However, from the end of January, the tariff that offers cheap off-peak rates will be automatically time-limited for six hours (read here). For most drivers, Octopus suggests they will see no difference, though some users on Reddit suggest this is spin for what could ultimately be an increase in cost. Clearly, they don’t want the same headlines OVO got when it increased its EV tariff.
👊 In better charging news, the Mole Valley District Council, which has more than 90 public chargers in car parks across Dorking, Leatherhead, Ashtead, and Bookham, is lowering its rates. They will drop from 55p per kWh to 49p per kWh. Holy Mole(y), it’s a Christmas miracle. Read more.
💷 Speaking of Christmas. The comparison site MoneySupermarket has suggested EV owners visiting family and friends over the festive period should offer to cover any charging costs, as they will prevent tensions with the host about who pays the leccy bill, according to a survey they commissioned. Read more.
☹️ In a similar vein, BYD commissioned a survey about who should pay for charging on a shared journey. Weirdly, more people (30%) said the driver should pay alone compared to those who suggested the cost should, err, be shared by all those in the car (27%). That is the saddest statistic I’ve read this year. BYD surveyed other etiquette behaviours. Read more.
🤖 In lighter news, autonomous vehicle company Waymo has started testing on London roads, ahead of its launch next year. See the image below.
Small ask: I am very keen to expand my AV knowledge, so if you have expertise I can learn from, please drop me an email!
🔋 Gridserve has installed new and hugely powerful 400kW chargers in Bristol. They come with an enormous 32-inch touchscreen. Bigger is better. Read more.
⚡️ Hounslow Council may have shunned pavement channels, but they want to go gangbusters with rapid chargers. This week, they announced the appointment of Zest to deliver a new network of rapid devices across the borough. It’s suggested that 100 sites have been identified. Read more.
🔌 In other council news, next Monday is a big day for the drivers of Rotherham, as the authority looks set to approve funding for 1,500 public chargers in the area. Read more.
👍 Moving down South, the London Borough of Greenwich has lots of charging news. Firstly, they’ve revealed that Shell-ubitricity and JOLT have been appointed to install 800 on-street chargers. More details are coming down the track soon as Greenwich, alongside fellow Sarfff Landon council Lewisham, are tendering for 1,150 more on-street chargers. Finally, they are launching a cross pavement trial. All the information is here.
🚙 This week, it was announced that Ford was partnering with Renault to bring back affordable models from 2028, such as the Fiesta in EV form. Read more. It’s lovely news, as who didn’t love the Fiesta? However, it also lends weight to the argument that Ford’s UK strategy to focus on premium models/buyers was, in fact, a triple D-sized boob all along.
📉 In other car news, the entry price of a Tesla Model Y in the UK has been cut by £3,000, according to Autocar.
If you missed it, do check out my piece last week about Tesla’s secret company to mitigate its risk over its UK performance.
🤫 A new study by the University of Leeds has found there’s no significant difference in pedestrian casualty rates between EVs and traditional petrol or diesel cars on UK roads. In the early days, it was often a joke that you couldn’t hear an EV coming, though in reality, nearly all do make a soft hum or moo noise to alert pedestrians, especially at low speeds. Read more.
⛏️ Due to restrictions established in February on exports of cobalt by the DRC, the price has jumped more than 100%. The price rises plus restrictions could impact countries like China, which are building one hell of a lot of EVs. Read more.
🏭 The Sunday Times has a long feature asking if the drive to EVs has run out of energy? It centres on conversations with manufacturing suppliers who are seeing their sales hit, but also veers into conversations around mandate penalties and what’s happening in the EU, which is reportedly going to delay their ICE ban from 2035 to 2040. Read the Sunday Times story here (paywall).
📊 Talking of worries, I recently attended an event with Char.gy where they shared findings from a September survey suggesting 8 in 10 drivers still believe that EVs are too expensive and that charging infrastructure is lacking. Which really underlines the importance of continued myth busting. Check out the findings yourself here – there’s 90 pages of data!
🚗 Going from new to used... Autotrader’s latest data for November shows a 5.5% year-on-year drop in average EV values. According to the marketplace, EVs took an average of 27 days to sell in November, two days quicker than a year earlier. Read more.
🤑 Finally... Charging operator InstaVolt, well-known to be one of the, if not the most expensive network around (standard price is £0.89p per kWh), revealed that a lady called Rebecca Parramore has already used InstaVolt’s Superhub in Winchester more than 175 times since March this year. Obviously, this is great news for the site. However, it’s hard not to think about how big her credit line must be. Read more.