The weight of them is becoming an issue in car parks. The scrunching and chewing up of the surface from EVs turning without moving at any pace.
Its presented an opportunity for one of my mates who sells an elastic-tarmac product but thats only being bought by people that give a shit about potholes in their car park
'analysis found that any extra wear is “overwhelmingly caused by large vehicles – buses, heavy goods vehicles”. Road wear from cars and motorcycles is “so low that this immaterial”, they said.
'However, in the longer term, the assumption that electric cars will always be heavier is also open to question. Auke Hoekstra, an energy transition researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology, estimates that batteries are cramming twice as much energy into the same weight every decade. If that continues, the weight problem will disappear before it has started.
T&E’s Mathieu said governments should incentivise smaller cars through policies such as taxes and parking charges. That would have benefits far beyond road wear: it would use fewer resources, limit carbon emissions, and make car park scrapes less likely.
“It is not inevitable that EVs are much heavier” than internal combustion engine cars, Mathieu said. “We can and should shift from [internal combustion engines] to EVs, while at the same time reversing the SUV trend.”
The verdict
Extra weight from electric cars could cause some problems at the margins, and in the short-term. However, most EV drivers are unlikely to ever experience problems directly.
Some car park owners may be affected, and if electric trucks are heavier when they become widespread that could add to road maintenance costs.
But almost all of the direct costs will be borne by infrastructure maintenance budgets. The ECIU’s Walker said concerns about extra weight for EVs were simply “massively overstated”. However, he added that carmakers do have a responsibility to produce smaller electric cars, after years of focusing on the most profitable SUVs.
The extra weight of electric cars is not likely to accelerate the destruction of roads, bridges and car parks. Weight concerns threaten to be a distraction from the ultimate prize: cutting carbon emissions to net zero.
Potholes
'Motoring organisations The AA, RAC and FairCharge have hit back at claims that the weight of electric vehicles is responsible for a decline in the quality of roads.
According to the latest Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey report by the Asphalt Industry Alliance more than half of the local road network in England and Wales is reported to have less than 15 years’ structural life left, with the amount needed to fix the backlog of carriageway repairs increasing to a record high of £16.3 billion.
Following the publication of the report some national media outlets have put the blame for the deteriorating road network on heavier electric vehicles and larger cars which they say are helping push Britain’s crumbling roads to ‘breaking point’. This is despite the ALARM survey not even mentioning electric vehicles at all.
According to one report “EVs cause twice as much stress on tarmac because they greatly outweigh their petrol or diesel equivalents”.
The RAC’s Head of Policy Simon Williams labelled the assertion that EVs are partly to blame for the poor quality of the UK’s roads as “misguided”.
He said: “A long-term lack of investment in local roads from central government is unquestionably the cause as this has led to a 45% reduction in maintenance carried out by councils in England in the last five years alone.
“Shockingly, government data shows 60% of English councils didn’t carry out any life-extending surface dressing work on their roads in the 2022/23 financial year which means existing defects have simply been left to deteriorate. If water gets into any cracks in the road and freezing conditions follow, surfaces crumble and potholes appear as vehicles of any weight pass over them.
“Any attempt to say the weight of EVs is responsible for a decline in the quality of our roads is a distraction from the reality that our roads have been neglected for too long. We badly need to start treating our roads like the national assets they are, instead of poring good money after bad by just filling potholes which are, of course, purely the symptom of a far deeper problem.”
Edmund King, AA President, said the recent headlines “beggared belief”.
He said: “The current state of the roads is due to years of underspending, sub-standard repairs, roads only being resurfaced every 80 years, and all of this exacerbated by record rainfall over the last nine months. To suggest that the one million EVs on the roads, out of 41.3 million licensed vehicles, are to blame for the potholes is barking. Obviously 44 tonne trucks can add to wear and tear, but it is estimated that on average an EV is about 300lbs heavier than a comparable petrol car, that is the weight of one heavy passenger.
“Perhaps the next headline should be ‘heavy passengers cause potholes. It beggars belief.”
Quentin Willson, motoring broadcaster and Founder of FairCharge, said:
“The notion that heavier electric cars are causing a pothole crisis on our roads makes no sense at all. What about all the vans, trucks, fuel tankers, car transporters and 44 tonne HGVs – not to mention all the two tonne SUVs? EVs are definitely not the heaviest vehicles on our roads by a massive margin. This is just another nonsensical EV myth.”
Craig Andrews, Technical Director for leading highway and runway maintenance specialist Foster Contracting, said:
“The failing UK road network is nothing to do with electric vehicles. It’s decades of under funding before EVs ever hit the roads. Cars of any kind have very little impact on a pavement. It’s the HGVs that cause the stress and do the damage.”
Colin Walker, Head of Transport at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said:
“Attempts to pin the blame for the UK’s pothole problems on electric vehicles shows that media misinformation about EVs isn’t going away. Rather than making alarmist and unevidenced claims, wouldn’t it be better if our media used its influence to help its readers access the benefits and savings that come from EV ownership? After all, EVs can save their owners as much as £1,300 a year to run – handy savings in the midst of a cost of living crisis. And, increasingly powered by electricity from British windfarms rather than oil imported from abroad, EVs can help secure our energy independence and protect us from future global price shocks.”
Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) Chair Rick Green commented:
“Our Annual Local Authority Road Maintenace (ALARM) survey reports are based on both qualitative and quantitative feedback received from those responsible for maintaining them and have for many years highlighted the link between highway maintenance funding and the condition of the local road network.
“ALARM 2024, once again, reports that local authorities don’t have the funds to keep the carriageway to their own target conditions and that lack of investment is the reason for continued deterioration and a network in decline.
“Reasons identified by local authority engineers needing to deal with unforeseen costs included rising traffic volumes and increased average vehicle weights on a deteriorating network. Feedback received from local highway authorities (LHAs) indicates a perception that there may be an impact due to heavier vehicles (with whatever drivetrain) especially on evolved, unclassified roads that would not have been designed to deal with today’s larger and heavier vehicles, let alone HGVs’ total and axle weights.'
I'm talking about car parks and the way vehicles are turned on their axis without moving and you've found a hatchet piece about roads
But according to the experts, slightly heavier EVs are NOT the problem. It is probably down to poorly maintained car parks and heavier cars in general, particularly larger SUVs.
Many purchased as totally unnecessary status symbols by those who feel the need to flaunt their assets to impress others.
The weight of them is becoming an issue in car parks. The scrunching and chewing up of the surface from EVs turning without moving at any pace.
Its presented an opportunity for one of my mates who sells an elastic-tarmac product but thats only being bought by people that give a shit about potholes in their car park
'analysis found that any extra wear is “overwhelmingly caused by large vehicles – buses, heavy goods vehicles”. Road wear from cars and motorcycles is “so low that this immaterial”, they said.
'However, in the longer term, the assumption that electric cars will always be heavier is also open to question. Auke Hoekstra, an energy transition researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology, estimates that batteries are cramming twice as much energy into the same weight every decade. If that continues, the weight problem will disappear before it has started.
T&E’s Mathieu said governments should incentivise smaller cars through policies such as taxes and parking charges. That would have benefits far beyond road wear: it would use fewer resources, limit carbon emissions, and make car park scrapes less likely.
“It is not inevitable that EVs are much heavier” than internal combustion engine cars, Mathieu said. “We can and should shift from [internal combustion engines] to EVs, while at the same time reversing the SUV trend.”
The verdict
Extra weight from electric cars could cause some problems at the margins, and in the short-term. However, most EV drivers are unlikely to ever experience problems directly.
Some car park owners may be affected, and if electric trucks are heavier when they become widespread that could add to road maintenance costs.
But almost all of the direct costs will be borne by infrastructure maintenance budgets. The ECIU’s Walker said concerns about extra weight for EVs were simply “massively overstated”. However, he added that carmakers do have a responsibility to produce smaller electric cars, after years of focusing on the most profitable SUVs.
The extra weight of electric cars is not likely to accelerate the destruction of roads, bridges and car parks. Weight concerns threaten to be a distraction from the ultimate prize: cutting carbon emissions to net zero.
Potholes
'Motoring organisations The AA, RAC and FairCharge have hit back at claims that the weight of electric vehicles is responsible for a decline in the quality of roads.
According to the latest Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey report by the Asphalt Industry Alliance more than half of the local road network in England and Wales is reported to have less than 15 years’ structural life left, with the amount needed to fix the backlog of carriageway repairs increasing to a record high of £16.3 billion.
Following the publication of the report some national media outlets have put the blame for the deteriorating road network on heavier electric vehicles and larger cars which they say are helping push Britain’s crumbling roads to ‘breaking point’. This is despite the ALARM survey not even mentioning electric vehicles at all.
According to one report “EVs cause twice as much stress on tarmac because they greatly outweigh their petrol or diesel equivalents”.
The RAC’s Head of Policy Simon Williams labelled the assertion that EVs are partly to blame for the poor quality of the UK’s roads as “misguided”.
He said: “A long-term lack of investment in local roads from central government is unquestionably the cause as this has led to a 45% reduction in maintenance carried out by councils in England in the last five years alone.
“Shockingly, government data shows 60% of English councils didn’t carry out any life-extending surface dressing work on their roads in the 2022/23 financial year which means existing defects have simply been left to deteriorate. If water gets into any cracks in the road and freezing conditions follow, surfaces crumble and potholes appear as vehicles of any weight pass over them.
“Any attempt to say the weight of EVs is responsible for a decline in the quality of our roads is a distraction from the reality that our roads have been neglected for too long. We badly need to start treating our roads like the national assets they are, instead of poring good money after bad by just filling potholes which are, of course, purely the symptom of a far deeper problem.”
Edmund King, AA President, said the recent headlines “beggared belief”.
He said: “The current state of the roads is due to years of underspending, sub-standard repairs, roads only being resurfaced every 80 years, and all of this exacerbated by record rainfall over the last nine months. To suggest that the one million EVs on the roads, out of 41.3 million licensed vehicles, are to blame for the potholes is barking. Obviously 44 tonne trucks can add to wear and tear, but it is estimated that on average an EV is about 300lbs heavier than a comparable petrol car, that is the weight of one heavy passenger.
“Perhaps the next headline should be ‘heavy passengers cause potholes. It beggars belief.”
Quentin Willson, motoring broadcaster and Founder of FairCharge, said:
“The notion that heavier electric cars are causing a pothole crisis on our roads makes no sense at all. What about all the vans, trucks, fuel tankers, car transporters and 44 tonne HGVs – not to mention all the two tonne SUVs? EVs are definitely not the heaviest vehicles on our roads by a massive margin. This is just another nonsensical EV myth.”
Craig Andrews, Technical Director for leading highway and runway maintenance specialist Foster Contracting, said:
“The failing UK road network is nothing to do with electric vehicles. It’s decades of under funding before EVs ever hit the roads. Cars of any kind have very little impact on a pavement. It’s the HGVs that cause the stress and do the damage.”
Colin Walker, Head of Transport at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said:
“Attempts to pin the blame for the UK’s pothole problems on electric vehicles shows that media misinformation about EVs isn’t going away. Rather than making alarmist and unevidenced claims, wouldn’t it be better if our media used its influence to help its readers access the benefits and savings that come from EV ownership? After all, EVs can save their owners as much as £1,300 a year to run – handy savings in the midst of a cost of living crisis. And, increasingly powered by electricity from British windfarms rather than oil imported from abroad, EVs can help secure our energy independence and protect us from future global price shocks.”
Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) Chair Rick Green commented:
“Our Annual Local Authority Road Maintenace (ALARM) survey reports are based on both qualitative and quantitative feedback received from those responsible for maintaining them and have for many years highlighted the link between highway maintenance funding and the condition of the local road network.
“ALARM 2024, once again, reports that local authorities don’t have the funds to keep the carriageway to their own target conditions and that lack of investment is the reason for continued deterioration and a network in decline.
“Reasons identified by local authority engineers needing to deal with unforeseen costs included rising traffic volumes and increased average vehicle weights on a deteriorating network. Feedback received from local highway authorities (LHAs) indicates a perception that there may be an impact due to heavier vehicles (with whatever drivetrain) especially on evolved, unclassified roads that would not have been designed to deal with today’s larger and heavier vehicles, let alone HGVs’ total and axle weights.'
I'm talking about car parks and the way vehicles are turned on their axis without moving and you've found a hatchet piece about roads
But according to the experts, slightly heavier EVs are NOT the problem. It is probably down to poorly maintained car parks and heavier cars in general, particularly larger SUVs.
Many purchased as totally unnecessary status symbols by those who feel the need to flaunt their assets to impress others.
Which brings me back full circle. They are unobtainable
I have never gotten strapped up with PCP and have intention of doing so, used EVs are not trusted as proven by the arse falling out of them as soon as they leave the forecourt. The government have had another go at motorists with another vehicle tax rise for non lithium ion powered cars to boot.
Imagine being a youngster getting started in the world now, get an apprenticeship on dog money, get a driving licence then immediately need to get lumped with a debt which is what finance is to get a vehicle so up to their ears in debt before they have had a chance to put any money away for god forbid their own home
The biggest issue I can see with a en mass switch to EV’s still come down to charging for literally millions of people. I just Google Earthed a typical (?) suburban street and for those who want to check it’s Melling Street in Plumstead which is incidentally where my father in law lives. I counted the lampposts on either side of the street and the total is six. Given that lampposts are seen as a way of providing on street charging points in addition to dedicated charging points, I don’t see how it helps much. How would someone living in one of the terraced houses in that typical street hope to charge their EV ? Lampost charging would be chaos with cars competing for the space to charge and how exactly would people charge vehicles from a charging point from their property even if it was practical to have one fitted. These are not small issues that need resolving but massive issues that are duplicated up and down the country for millions and millions of car owners.
Can't the terraced house/non driveway plebs make do with public transport?
If you can't afford a proper abode, you have no right to use the new EV technology.
keep it for the elite.
I live in a terraced street where there are quite a few EVs. Every lampost has been adapted with a charger, but a lot of owners run a cable out overnight. They put a cover over the cable, and don't drape the cable as shown in the photo above.
Serious question. What’s the legal position if someone trips over one of those cables accross the pavement even if covered ? Surely still a trip hazard?
The biggest issue I can see with a en mass switch to EV’s still come down to charging for literally millions of people. I just Google Earthed a typical (?) suburban street and for those who want to check it’s Melling Street in Plumstead which is incidentally where my father in law lives. I counted the lampposts on either side of the street and the total is six. Given that lampposts are seen as a way of providing on street charging points in addition to dedicated charging points, I don’t see how it helps much. How would someone living in one of the terraced houses in that typical street hope to charge their EV ? Lampost charging would be chaos with cars competing for the space to charge and how exactly would people charge vehicles from a charging point from their property even if it was practical to have one fitted. These are not small issues that need resolving but massive issues that are duplicated up and down the country for millions and millions of car owners.
Can't the terraced house/non driveway plebs make do with public transport?
If you can't afford a proper abode, you have no right to use the new EV technology.
keep it for the elite.
I live in a terraced street where there are quite a few EVs. Every lampost has been adapted with a charger, but a lot of owners run a cable out overnight. They put a cover over the cable, and don't drape the cable as shown in the photo above.
Surely people can pay an electrician and / or build to run a cable from the house to the road in a small trench. Might cost the same as a couple of full tanks of petrol!
At your peril I’d suggest. Digging up the pavement is the responsibility of the local authorities not individual households. In any case. What’s to stop someone else parking outside your house rendering your efforts pointless.
Tis nearly the season where all electric cars are rendered useless.
Not if you buy yourself a nice warm puffa jacket, then you can avoid sticking the heating on 😁
In Scandanavian countires, where they know what a proper winter is like, EV's are all the rage.
Careful with that. Its most obviously true in Norway, and that’s because electricity is very cheap thanks to investment in hydro and wind, and the EV infrastructure befits a rich and cohesive society. In 2023, 54% of new car sales there were EV. In Sweden the figure was 30%. The UK, 17%, and Denmark came in at 20%, Finland at 15%.
The weight of them is becoming an issue in car parks. The scrunching and chewing up of the surface from EVs turning without moving at any pace.
Its presented an opportunity for one of my mates who sells an elastic-tarmac product but thats only being bought by people that give a shit about potholes in their car park
'analysis found that any extra wear is “overwhelmingly caused by large vehicles – buses, heavy goods vehicles”. Road wear from cars and motorcycles is “so low that this immaterial”, they said.
'However, in the longer term, the assumption that electric cars will always be heavier is also open to question. Auke Hoekstra, an energy transition researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology, estimates that batteries are cramming twice as much energy into the same weight every decade. If that continues, the weight problem will disappear before it has started.
T&E’s Mathieu said governments should incentivise smaller cars through policies such as taxes and parking charges. That would have benefits far beyond road wear: it would use fewer resources, limit carbon emissions, and make car park scrapes less likely.
“It is not inevitable that EVs are much heavier” than internal combustion engine cars, Mathieu said. “We can and should shift from [internal combustion engines] to EVs, while at the same time reversing the SUV trend.”
The verdict
Extra weight from electric cars could cause some problems at the margins, and in the short-term. However, most EV drivers are unlikely to ever experience problems directly.
Some car park owners may be affected, and if electric trucks are heavier when they become widespread that could add to road maintenance costs.
But almost all of the direct costs will be borne by infrastructure maintenance budgets. The ECIU’s Walker said concerns about extra weight for EVs were simply “massively overstated”. However, he added that carmakers do have a responsibility to produce smaller electric cars, after years of focusing on the most profitable SUVs.
The extra weight of electric cars is not likely to accelerate the destruction of roads, bridges and car parks. Weight concerns threaten to be a distraction from the ultimate prize: cutting carbon emissions to net zero.
Potholes
'Motoring organisations The AA, RAC and FairCharge have hit back at claims that the weight of electric vehicles is responsible for a decline in the quality of roads.
According to the latest Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey report by the Asphalt Industry Alliance more than half of the local road network in England and Wales is reported to have less than 15 years’ structural life left, with the amount needed to fix the backlog of carriageway repairs increasing to a record high of £16.3 billion.
Following the publication of the report some national media outlets have put the blame for the deteriorating road network on heavier electric vehicles and larger cars which they say are helping push Britain’s crumbling roads to ‘breaking point’. This is despite the ALARM survey not even mentioning electric vehicles at all.
According to one report “EVs cause twice as much stress on tarmac because they greatly outweigh their petrol or diesel equivalents”.
The RAC’s Head of Policy Simon Williams labelled the assertion that EVs are partly to blame for the poor quality of the UK’s roads as “misguided”.
He said: “A long-term lack of investment in local roads from central government is unquestionably the cause as this has led to a 45% reduction in maintenance carried out by councils in England in the last five years alone.
“Shockingly, government data shows 60% of English councils didn’t carry out any life-extending surface dressing work on their roads in the 2022/23 financial year which means existing defects have simply been left to deteriorate. If water gets into any cracks in the road and freezing conditions follow, surfaces crumble and potholes appear as vehicles of any weight pass over them.
“Any attempt to say the weight of EVs is responsible for a decline in the quality of our roads is a distraction from the reality that our roads have been neglected for too long. We badly need to start treating our roads like the national assets they are, instead of poring good money after bad by just filling potholes which are, of course, purely the symptom of a far deeper problem.”
Edmund King, AA President, said the recent headlines “beggared belief”.
He said: “The current state of the roads is due to years of underspending, sub-standard repairs, roads only being resurfaced every 80 years, and all of this exacerbated by record rainfall over the last nine months. To suggest that the one million EVs on the roads, out of 41.3 million licensed vehicles, are to blame for the potholes is barking. Obviously 44 tonne trucks can add to wear and tear, but it is estimated that on average an EV is about 300lbs heavier than a comparable petrol car, that is the weight of one heavy passenger.
“Perhaps the next headline should be ‘heavy passengers cause potholes. It beggars belief.”
Quentin Willson, motoring broadcaster and Founder of FairCharge, said:
“The notion that heavier electric cars are causing a pothole crisis on our roads makes no sense at all. What about all the vans, trucks, fuel tankers, car transporters and 44 tonne HGVs – not to mention all the two tonne SUVs? EVs are definitely not the heaviest vehicles on our roads by a massive margin. This is just another nonsensical EV myth.”
Craig Andrews, Technical Director for leading highway and runway maintenance specialist Foster Contracting, said:
“The failing UK road network is nothing to do with electric vehicles. It’s decades of under funding before EVs ever hit the roads. Cars of any kind have very little impact on a pavement. It’s the HGVs that cause the stress and do the damage.”
Colin Walker, Head of Transport at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said:
“Attempts to pin the blame for the UK’s pothole problems on electric vehicles shows that media misinformation about EVs isn’t going away. Rather than making alarmist and unevidenced claims, wouldn’t it be better if our media used its influence to help its readers access the benefits and savings that come from EV ownership? After all, EVs can save their owners as much as £1,300 a year to run – handy savings in the midst of a cost of living crisis. And, increasingly powered by electricity from British windfarms rather than oil imported from abroad, EVs can help secure our energy independence and protect us from future global price shocks.”
Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) Chair Rick Green commented:
“Our Annual Local Authority Road Maintenace (ALARM) survey reports are based on both qualitative and quantitative feedback received from those responsible for maintaining them and have for many years highlighted the link between highway maintenance funding and the condition of the local road network.
“ALARM 2024, once again, reports that local authorities don’t have the funds to keep the carriageway to their own target conditions and that lack of investment is the reason for continued deterioration and a network in decline.
“Reasons identified by local authority engineers needing to deal with unforeseen costs included rising traffic volumes and increased average vehicle weights on a deteriorating network. Feedback received from local highway authorities (LHAs) indicates a perception that there may be an impact due to heavier vehicles (with whatever drivetrain) especially on evolved, unclassified roads that would not have been designed to deal with today’s larger and heavier vehicles, let alone HGVs’ total and axle weights.'
I'm talking about car parks and the way vehicles are turned on their axis without moving and you've found a hatchet piece about roads
But according to the experts, slightly heavier EVs are NOT the problem. It is probably down to poorly maintained car parks and heavier cars in general, particularly larger SUVs.
Many purchased as totally unnecessary status symbols by those who feel the need to flaunt their assets to impress others.
Which brings me back full circle. They are unobtainable
I have never gotten strapped up with PCP and have intention of doing so, used EVs are not trusted as proven by the arse falling out of them as soon as they leave the forecourt. The government have had another go at motorists with another vehicle tax rise for non lithium ion powered cars to boot.
Imagine being a youngster getting started in the world now, get an apprenticeship on dog money, get a driving licence then immediately need to get lumped with a debt which is what finance is to get a vehicle so up to their ears in debt before they have had a chance to put any money away for god forbid their own home
Young people are probably never going to be able to afford their own homes without huge financial help from parents but that's a different topic. I agree and I think the government need to introduce more schemes to help make these cars obtainable for young people. I'm in the fortuitous position where I have an EV scheme at work. I passed my driving test last year and it costs me ~£275 a month for my EV, insurance, servicing, etc. Appreciate that isn't necessarily cheap but just the insurance alone for a first time driver isn't a million miles off that
The biggest issue I can see with a en mass switch to EV’s still come down to charging for literally millions of people. I just Google Earthed a typical (?) suburban street and for those who want to check it’s Melling Street in Plumstead which is incidentally where my father in law lives. I counted the lampposts on either side of the street and the total is six. Given that lampposts are seen as a way of providing on street charging points in addition to dedicated charging points, I don’t see how it helps much. How would someone living in one of the terraced houses in that typical street hope to charge their EV ? Lampost charging would be chaos with cars competing for the space to charge and how exactly would people charge vehicles from a charging point from their property even if it was practical to have one fitted. These are not small issues that need resolving but massive issues that are duplicated up and down the country for millions and millions of car owners.
Can't the terraced house/non driveway plebs make do with public transport?
If you can't afford a proper abode, you have no right to use the new EV technology.
keep it for the elite.
I live in a terraced street where there are quite a few EVs. Every lampost has been adapted with a charger, but a lot of owners run a cable out overnight. They put a cover over the cable, and don't drape the cable as shown in the photo above.
Serious question. What’s the legal position if someone trips over one of those cables accross the pavement even if covered ? Surely still a trip hazard?
It would absolutely 100% the fault of the idiot who dragged a cable across a footpath and left it overnight. Imagine if a worksite was left with cables and pipes everywhere unprotected deliberately.
Also I'd love to not have to dig up footpaths, just leave cables covered in a rubber guard whenever I couldn't be arsed to do it properly or safely
Also given that my stereotypical view of cyclists and EV owners is they are exactly rhe type of people to stand where I am working just filming me on their phone as if that is socially normal and not in any way totally unacceptable they would be the first to grass up a worlk party they left an open worksite like that
The biggest issue I can see with a en mass switch to EV’s still come down to charging for literally millions of people. I just Google Earthed a typical (?) suburban street and for those who want to check it’s Melling Street in Plumstead which is incidentally where my father in law lives. I counted the lampposts on either side of the street and the total is six. Given that lampposts are seen as a way of providing on street charging points in addition to dedicated charging points, I don’t see how it helps much. How would someone living in one of the terraced houses in that typical street hope to charge their EV ? Lampost charging would be chaos with cars competing for the space to charge and how exactly would people charge vehicles from a charging point from their property even if it was practical to have one fitted. These are not small issues that need resolving but massive issues that are duplicated up and down the country for millions and millions of car owners.
Can't the terraced house/non driveway plebs make do with public transport?
If you can't afford a proper abode, you have no right to use the new EV technology.
keep it for the elite.
I live in a terraced street where there are quite a few EVs. Every lampost has been adapted with a charger, but a lot of owners run a cable out overnight. They put a cover over the cable, and don't drape the cable as shown in the photo above.
Serious question. What’s the legal position if someone trips over one of those cables accross the pavement even if covered ? Surely still a trip hazard?
It would absolutely 100% the fault of the idiot who dragged a cable across a footpath and left it overnight. Imagine if a worksite was left with cables and pipes everywhere unprotected deliberately.
Also I'd love to not have to dig up footpaths, just leave cables covered in a rubber guard whenever I couldn't be arsed to do it properly or safely
Also given that my stereotypical view of cyclists and EV owners is they are exactly rhe type of people to stand where I am working just filming me on their phone as if that is socially normal and not in any way totally unacceptable they would be the first to grass up a worlk party they left an open worksite like that
Well absolutely. Leaves the question of how millions of car owners in average suburban homes are going to charge their EV’s when they eventually become the norm. We’re not set up for it and the progress being made still looks to me like pissing in the wind. We can’t as a society afford to get someone to see a doctor or have a vital surgical procedure so quite where the money comes from to turn every street into an EV charging heaven is to me pie in the sky.
The biggest issue I can see with a en mass switch to EV’s still come down to charging for literally millions of people. I just Google Earthed a typical (?) suburban street and for those who want to check it’s Melling Street in Plumstead which is incidentally where my father in law lives. I counted the lampposts on either side of the street and the total is six. Given that lampposts are seen as a way of providing on street charging points in addition to dedicated charging points, I don’t see how it helps much. How would someone living in one of the terraced houses in that typical street hope to charge their EV ? Lampost charging would be chaos with cars competing for the space to charge and how exactly would people charge vehicles from a charging point from their property even if it was practical to have one fitted. These are not small issues that need resolving but massive issues that are duplicated up and down the country for millions and millions of car owners.
Can't the terraced house/non driveway plebs make do with public transport?
If you can't afford a proper abode, you have no right to use the new EV technology.
keep it for the elite.
I live in a terraced street where there are quite a few EVs. Every lampost has been adapted with a charger, but a lot of owners run a cable out overnight. They put a cover over the cable, and don't drape the cable as shown in the photo above.
Surely people can pay an electrician and / or build to run a cable from the house to the road in a small trench. Might cost the same as a couple of full tanks of petrol!
Think you’d need permission from the council. And what would cover the trench? A grille? Perhaps that could catch on if councils allowed it. But as Carter says, it’s not straightforward.
The weight of them is becoming an issue in car parks. The scrunching and chewing up of the surface from EVs turning without moving at any pace.
Its presented an opportunity for one of my mates who sells an elastic-tarmac product but thats only being bought by people that give a shit about potholes in their car park
'analysis found that any extra wear is “overwhelmingly caused by large vehicles – buses, heavy goods vehicles”. Road wear from cars and motorcycles is “so low that this immaterial”, they said.
'However, in the longer term, the assumption that electric cars will always be heavier is also open to question. Auke Hoekstra, an energy transition researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology, estimates that batteries are cramming twice as much energy into the same weight every decade. If that continues, the weight problem will disappear before it has started.
T&E’s Mathieu said governments should incentivise smaller cars through policies such as taxes and parking charges. That would have benefits far beyond road wear: it would use fewer resources, limit carbon emissions, and make car park scrapes less likely.
“It is not inevitable that EVs are much heavier” than internal combustion engine cars, Mathieu said. “We can and should shift from [internal combustion engines] to EVs, while at the same time reversing the SUV trend.”
The verdict
Extra weight from electric cars could cause some problems at the margins, and in the short-term. However, most EV drivers are unlikely to ever experience problems directly.
Some car park owners may be affected, and if electric trucks are heavier when they become widespread that could add to road maintenance costs.
But almost all of the direct costs will be borne by infrastructure maintenance budgets. The ECIU’s Walker said concerns about extra weight for EVs were simply “massively overstated”. However, he added that carmakers do have a responsibility to produce smaller electric cars, after years of focusing on the most profitable SUVs.
The extra weight of electric cars is not likely to accelerate the destruction of roads, bridges and car parks. Weight concerns threaten to be a distraction from the ultimate prize: cutting carbon emissions to net zero.
Potholes
'Motoring organisations The AA, RAC and FairCharge have hit back at claims that the weight of electric vehicles is responsible for a decline in the quality of roads.
According to the latest Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey report by the Asphalt Industry Alliance more than half of the local road network in England and Wales is reported to have less than 15 years’ structural life left, with the amount needed to fix the backlog of carriageway repairs increasing to a record high of £16.3 billion.
Following the publication of the report some national media outlets have put the blame for the deteriorating road network on heavier electric vehicles and larger cars which they say are helping push Britain’s crumbling roads to ‘breaking point’. This is despite the ALARM survey not even mentioning electric vehicles at all.
According to one report “EVs cause twice as much stress on tarmac because they greatly outweigh their petrol or diesel equivalents”.
The RAC’s Head of Policy Simon Williams labelled the assertion that EVs are partly to blame for the poor quality of the UK’s roads as “misguided”.
He said: “A long-term lack of investment in local roads from central government is unquestionably the cause as this has led to a 45% reduction in maintenance carried out by councils in England in the last five years alone.
“Shockingly, government data shows 60% of English councils didn’t carry out any life-extending surface dressing work on their roads in the 2022/23 financial year which means existing defects have simply been left to deteriorate. If water gets into any cracks in the road and freezing conditions follow, surfaces crumble and potholes appear as vehicles of any weight pass over them.
“Any attempt to say the weight of EVs is responsible for a decline in the quality of our roads is a distraction from the reality that our roads have been neglected for too long. We badly need to start treating our roads like the national assets they are, instead of poring good money after bad by just filling potholes which are, of course, purely the symptom of a far deeper problem.”
Edmund King, AA President, said the recent headlines “beggared belief”.
He said: “The current state of the roads is due to years of underspending, sub-standard repairs, roads only being resurfaced every 80 years, and all of this exacerbated by record rainfall over the last nine months. To suggest that the one million EVs on the roads, out of 41.3 million licensed vehicles, are to blame for the potholes is barking. Obviously 44 tonne trucks can add to wear and tear, but it is estimated that on average an EV is about 300lbs heavier than a comparable petrol car, that is the weight of one heavy passenger.
“Perhaps the next headline should be ‘heavy passengers cause potholes. It beggars belief.”
Quentin Willson, motoring broadcaster and Founder of FairCharge, said:
“The notion that heavier electric cars are causing a pothole crisis on our roads makes no sense at all. What about all the vans, trucks, fuel tankers, car transporters and 44 tonne HGVs – not to mention all the two tonne SUVs? EVs are definitely not the heaviest vehicles on our roads by a massive margin. This is just another nonsensical EV myth.”
Craig Andrews, Technical Director for leading highway and runway maintenance specialist Foster Contracting, said:
“The failing UK road network is nothing to do with electric vehicles. It’s decades of under funding before EVs ever hit the roads. Cars of any kind have very little impact on a pavement. It’s the HGVs that cause the stress and do the damage.”
Colin Walker, Head of Transport at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said:
“Attempts to pin the blame for the UK’s pothole problems on electric vehicles shows that media misinformation about EVs isn’t going away. Rather than making alarmist and unevidenced claims, wouldn’t it be better if our media used its influence to help its readers access the benefits and savings that come from EV ownership? After all, EVs can save their owners as much as £1,300 a year to run – handy savings in the midst of a cost of living crisis. And, increasingly powered by electricity from British windfarms rather than oil imported from abroad, EVs can help secure our energy independence and protect us from future global price shocks.”
Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) Chair Rick Green commented:
“Our Annual Local Authority Road Maintenace (ALARM) survey reports are based on both qualitative and quantitative feedback received from those responsible for maintaining them and have for many years highlighted the link between highway maintenance funding and the condition of the local road network.
“ALARM 2024, once again, reports that local authorities don’t have the funds to keep the carriageway to their own target conditions and that lack of investment is the reason for continued deterioration and a network in decline.
“Reasons identified by local authority engineers needing to deal with unforeseen costs included rising traffic volumes and increased average vehicle weights on a deteriorating network. Feedback received from local highway authorities (LHAs) indicates a perception that there may be an impact due to heavier vehicles (with whatever drivetrain) especially on evolved, unclassified roads that would not have been designed to deal with today’s larger and heavier vehicles, let alone HGVs’ total and axle weights.'
I'm talking about car parks and the way vehicles are turned on their axis without moving and you've found a hatchet piece about roads
But according to the experts, slightly heavier EVs are NOT the problem. It is probably down to poorly maintained car parks and heavier cars in general, particularly larger SUVs.
Many purchased as totally unnecessary status symbols by those who feel the need to flaunt their assets to impress others.
Which brings me back full circle. They are unobtainable
I have never gotten strapped up with PCP and have intention of doing so, used EVs are not trusted as proven by the arse falling out of them as soon as they leave the forecourt.
That’s nonsense. Unless you have stats you can point to, it’s purely anecdotal.
The biggest issue I can see with a en mass switch to EV’s still come down to charging for literally millions of people. I just Google Earthed a typical (?) suburban street and for those who want to check it’s Melling Street in Plumstead which is incidentally where my father in law lives. I counted the lampposts on either side of the street and the total is six. Given that lampposts are seen as a way of providing on street charging points in addition to dedicated charging points, I don’t see how it helps much. How would someone living in one of the terraced houses in that typical street hope to charge their EV ? Lampost charging would be chaos with cars competing for the space to charge and how exactly would people charge vehicles from a charging point from their property even if it was practical to have one fitted. These are not small issues that need resolving but massive issues that are duplicated up and down the country for millions and millions of car owners.
Can't the terraced house/non driveway plebs make do with public transport?
If you can't afford a proper abode, you have no right to use the new EV technology.
keep it for the elite.
I live in a terraced street where there are quite a few EVs. Every lampost has been adapted with a charger, but a lot of owners run a cable out overnight. They put a cover over the cable, and don't drape the cable as shown in the photo above.
Surely people can pay an electrician and / or build to run a cable from the house to the road in a small trench. Might cost the same as a couple of full tanks of petrol!
Think you’d need permission from the council. And what would cover the trench? A grille? Perhaps that could catch on if councils allowed it. But as Carter says, it’s not straightforward.
And perhaps expensively pointless if you can’t secure the parking space in front of your house which in many streets and roads is very much the case.
The weight of them is becoming an issue in car parks. The scrunching and chewing up of the surface from EVs turning without moving at any pace.
Its presented an opportunity for one of my mates who sells an elastic-tarmac product but thats only being bought by people that give a shit about potholes in their car park
'analysis found that any extra wear is “overwhelmingly caused by large vehicles – buses, heavy goods vehicles”. Road wear from cars and motorcycles is “so low that this immaterial”, they said.
'However, in the longer term, the assumption that electric cars will always be heavier is also open to question. Auke Hoekstra, an energy transition researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology, estimates that batteries are cramming twice as much energy into the same weight every decade. If that continues, the weight problem will disappear before it has started.
T&E’s Mathieu said governments should incentivise smaller cars through policies such as taxes and parking charges. That would have benefits far beyond road wear: it would use fewer resources, limit carbon emissions, and make car park scrapes less likely.
“It is not inevitable that EVs are much heavier” than internal combustion engine cars, Mathieu said. “We can and should shift from [internal combustion engines] to EVs, while at the same time reversing the SUV trend.”
The verdict
Extra weight from electric cars could cause some problems at the margins, and in the short-term. However, most EV drivers are unlikely to ever experience problems directly.
Some car park owners may be affected, and if electric trucks are heavier when they become widespread that could add to road maintenance costs.
But almost all of the direct costs will be borne by infrastructure maintenance budgets. The ECIU’s Walker said concerns about extra weight for EVs were simply “massively overstated”. However, he added that carmakers do have a responsibility to produce smaller electric cars, after years of focusing on the most profitable SUVs.
The extra weight of electric cars is not likely to accelerate the destruction of roads, bridges and car parks. Weight concerns threaten to be a distraction from the ultimate prize: cutting carbon emissions to net zero.
Potholes
'Motoring organisations The AA, RAC and FairCharge have hit back at claims that the weight of electric vehicles is responsible for a decline in the quality of roads.
According to the latest Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey report by the Asphalt Industry Alliance more than half of the local road network in England and Wales is reported to have less than 15 years’ structural life left, with the amount needed to fix the backlog of carriageway repairs increasing to a record high of £16.3 billion.
Following the publication of the report some national media outlets have put the blame for the deteriorating road network on heavier electric vehicles and larger cars which they say are helping push Britain’s crumbling roads to ‘breaking point’. This is despite the ALARM survey not even mentioning electric vehicles at all.
According to one report “EVs cause twice as much stress on tarmac because they greatly outweigh their petrol or diesel equivalents”.
The RAC’s Head of Policy Simon Williams labelled the assertion that EVs are partly to blame for the poor quality of the UK’s roads as “misguided”.
He said: “A long-term lack of investment in local roads from central government is unquestionably the cause as this has led to a 45% reduction in maintenance carried out by councils in England in the last five years alone.
“Shockingly, government data shows 60% of English councils didn’t carry out any life-extending surface dressing work on their roads in the 2022/23 financial year which means existing defects have simply been left to deteriorate. If water gets into any cracks in the road and freezing conditions follow, surfaces crumble and potholes appear as vehicles of any weight pass over them.
“Any attempt to say the weight of EVs is responsible for a decline in the quality of our roads is a distraction from the reality that our roads have been neglected for too long. We badly need to start treating our roads like the national assets they are, instead of poring good money after bad by just filling potholes which are, of course, purely the symptom of a far deeper problem.”
Edmund King, AA President, said the recent headlines “beggared belief”.
He said: “The current state of the roads is due to years of underspending, sub-standard repairs, roads only being resurfaced every 80 years, and all of this exacerbated by record rainfall over the last nine months. To suggest that the one million EVs on the roads, out of 41.3 million licensed vehicles, are to blame for the potholes is barking. Obviously 44 tonne trucks can add to wear and tear, but it is estimated that on average an EV is about 300lbs heavier than a comparable petrol car, that is the weight of one heavy passenger.
“Perhaps the next headline should be ‘heavy passengers cause potholes. It beggars belief.”
Quentin Willson, motoring broadcaster and Founder of FairCharge, said:
“The notion that heavier electric cars are causing a pothole crisis on our roads makes no sense at all. What about all the vans, trucks, fuel tankers, car transporters and 44 tonne HGVs – not to mention all the two tonne SUVs? EVs are definitely not the heaviest vehicles on our roads by a massive margin. This is just another nonsensical EV myth.”
Craig Andrews, Technical Director for leading highway and runway maintenance specialist Foster Contracting, said:
“The failing UK road network is nothing to do with electric vehicles. It’s decades of under funding before EVs ever hit the roads. Cars of any kind have very little impact on a pavement. It’s the HGVs that cause the stress and do the damage.”
Colin Walker, Head of Transport at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said:
“Attempts to pin the blame for the UK’s pothole problems on electric vehicles shows that media misinformation about EVs isn’t going away. Rather than making alarmist and unevidenced claims, wouldn’t it be better if our media used its influence to help its readers access the benefits and savings that come from EV ownership? After all, EVs can save their owners as much as £1,300 a year to run – handy savings in the midst of a cost of living crisis. And, increasingly powered by electricity from British windfarms rather than oil imported from abroad, EVs can help secure our energy independence and protect us from future global price shocks.”
Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) Chair Rick Green commented:
“Our Annual Local Authority Road Maintenace (ALARM) survey reports are based on both qualitative and quantitative feedback received from those responsible for maintaining them and have for many years highlighted the link between highway maintenance funding and the condition of the local road network.
“ALARM 2024, once again, reports that local authorities don’t have the funds to keep the carriageway to their own target conditions and that lack of investment is the reason for continued deterioration and a network in decline.
“Reasons identified by local authority engineers needing to deal with unforeseen costs included rising traffic volumes and increased average vehicle weights on a deteriorating network. Feedback received from local highway authorities (LHAs) indicates a perception that there may be an impact due to heavier vehicles (with whatever drivetrain) especially on evolved, unclassified roads that would not have been designed to deal with today’s larger and heavier vehicles, let alone HGVs’ total and axle weights.'
I'm talking about car parks and the way vehicles are turned on their axis without moving and you've found a hatchet piece about roads
But according to the experts, slightly heavier EVs are NOT the problem. It is probably down to poorly maintained car parks and heavier cars in general, particularly larger SUVs.
Many purchased as totally unnecessary status symbols by those who feel the need to flaunt their assets to impress others.
Which brings me back full circle. They are unobtainable
I have never gotten strapped up with PCP and have intention of doing so, used EVs are not trusted as proven by the arse falling out of them as soon as they leave the forecourt.
That’s nonsense. Unless you have stats you can point to, it’s purely anecdotal.
The price of used EVs is evidence enough, too much risk too little reward.
The weight of them is becoming an issue in car parks. The scrunching and chewing up of the surface from EVs turning without moving at any pace.
Its presented an opportunity for one of my mates who sells an elastic-tarmac product but thats only being bought by people that give a shit about potholes in their car park
'analysis found that any extra wear is “overwhelmingly caused by large vehicles – buses, heavy goods vehicles”. Road wear from cars and motorcycles is “so low that this immaterial”, they said.
'However, in the longer term, the assumption that electric cars will always be heavier is also open to question. Auke Hoekstra, an energy transition researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology, estimates that batteries are cramming twice as much energy into the same weight every decade. If that continues, the weight problem will disappear before it has started.
T&E’s Mathieu said governments should incentivise smaller cars through policies such as taxes and parking charges. That would have benefits far beyond road wear: it would use fewer resources, limit carbon emissions, and make car park scrapes less likely.
“It is not inevitable that EVs are much heavier” than internal combustion engine cars, Mathieu said. “We can and should shift from [internal combustion engines] to EVs, while at the same time reversing the SUV trend.”
The verdict
Extra weight from electric cars could cause some problems at the margins, and in the short-term. However, most EV drivers are unlikely to ever experience problems directly.
Some car park owners may be affected, and if electric trucks are heavier when they become widespread that could add to road maintenance costs.
But almost all of the direct costs will be borne by infrastructure maintenance budgets. The ECIU’s Walker said concerns about extra weight for EVs were simply “massively overstated”. However, he added that carmakers do have a responsibility to produce smaller electric cars, after years of focusing on the most profitable SUVs.
The extra weight of electric cars is not likely to accelerate the destruction of roads, bridges and car parks. Weight concerns threaten to be a distraction from the ultimate prize: cutting carbon emissions to net zero.
Potholes
'Motoring organisations The AA, RAC and FairCharge have hit back at claims that the weight of electric vehicles is responsible for a decline in the quality of roads.
According to the latest Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey report by the Asphalt Industry Alliance more than half of the local road network in England and Wales is reported to have less than 15 years’ structural life left, with the amount needed to fix the backlog of carriageway repairs increasing to a record high of £16.3 billion.
Following the publication of the report some national media outlets have put the blame for the deteriorating road network on heavier electric vehicles and larger cars which they say are helping push Britain’s crumbling roads to ‘breaking point’. This is despite the ALARM survey not even mentioning electric vehicles at all.
According to one report “EVs cause twice as much stress on tarmac because they greatly outweigh their petrol or diesel equivalents”.
The RAC’s Head of Policy Simon Williams labelled the assertion that EVs are partly to blame for the poor quality of the UK’s roads as “misguided”.
He said: “A long-term lack of investment in local roads from central government is unquestionably the cause as this has led to a 45% reduction in maintenance carried out by councils in England in the last five years alone.
“Shockingly, government data shows 60% of English councils didn’t carry out any life-extending surface dressing work on their roads in the 2022/23 financial year which means existing defects have simply been left to deteriorate. If water gets into any cracks in the road and freezing conditions follow, surfaces crumble and potholes appear as vehicles of any weight pass over them.
“Any attempt to say the weight of EVs is responsible for a decline in the quality of our roads is a distraction from the reality that our roads have been neglected for too long. We badly need to start treating our roads like the national assets they are, instead of poring good money after bad by just filling potholes which are, of course, purely the symptom of a far deeper problem.”
Edmund King, AA President, said the recent headlines “beggared belief”.
He said: “The current state of the roads is due to years of underspending, sub-standard repairs, roads only being resurfaced every 80 years, and all of this exacerbated by record rainfall over the last nine months. To suggest that the one million EVs on the roads, out of 41.3 million licensed vehicles, are to blame for the potholes is barking. Obviously 44 tonne trucks can add to wear and tear, but it is estimated that on average an EV is about 300lbs heavier than a comparable petrol car, that is the weight of one heavy passenger.
“Perhaps the next headline should be ‘heavy passengers cause potholes. It beggars belief.”
Quentin Willson, motoring broadcaster and Founder of FairCharge, said:
“The notion that heavier electric cars are causing a pothole crisis on our roads makes no sense at all. What about all the vans, trucks, fuel tankers, car transporters and 44 tonne HGVs – not to mention all the two tonne SUVs? EVs are definitely not the heaviest vehicles on our roads by a massive margin. This is just another nonsensical EV myth.”
Craig Andrews, Technical Director for leading highway and runway maintenance specialist Foster Contracting, said:
“The failing UK road network is nothing to do with electric vehicles. It’s decades of under funding before EVs ever hit the roads. Cars of any kind have very little impact on a pavement. It’s the HGVs that cause the stress and do the damage.”
Colin Walker, Head of Transport at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said:
“Attempts to pin the blame for the UK’s pothole problems on electric vehicles shows that media misinformation about EVs isn’t going away. Rather than making alarmist and unevidenced claims, wouldn’t it be better if our media used its influence to help its readers access the benefits and savings that come from EV ownership? After all, EVs can save their owners as much as £1,300 a year to run – handy savings in the midst of a cost of living crisis. And, increasingly powered by electricity from British windfarms rather than oil imported from abroad, EVs can help secure our energy independence and protect us from future global price shocks.”
Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) Chair Rick Green commented:
“Our Annual Local Authority Road Maintenace (ALARM) survey reports are based on both qualitative and quantitative feedback received from those responsible for maintaining them and have for many years highlighted the link between highway maintenance funding and the condition of the local road network.
“ALARM 2024, once again, reports that local authorities don’t have the funds to keep the carriageway to their own target conditions and that lack of investment is the reason for continued deterioration and a network in decline.
“Reasons identified by local authority engineers needing to deal with unforeseen costs included rising traffic volumes and increased average vehicle weights on a deteriorating network. Feedback received from local highway authorities (LHAs) indicates a perception that there may be an impact due to heavier vehicles (with whatever drivetrain) especially on evolved, unclassified roads that would not have been designed to deal with today’s larger and heavier vehicles, let alone HGVs’ total and axle weights.'
I'm talking about car parks and the way vehicles are turned on their axis without moving and you've found a hatchet piece about roads
But according to the experts, slightly heavier EVs are NOT the problem. It is probably down to poorly maintained car parks and heavier cars in general, particularly larger SUVs.
Many purchased as totally unnecessary status symbols by those who feel the need to flaunt their assets to impress others.
Which brings me back full circle. They are unobtainable
I have never gotten strapped up with PCP and have intention of doing so, used EVs are not trusted as proven by the arse falling out of them as soon as they leave the forecourt.
That’s nonsense. Unless you have stats you can point to, it’s purely anecdotal.
The price of used EVs is evidence enough, too much risk too little reward.
So providing you get suitable rewards you’ll be happy to play your part in saving our planet ?
The weight of them is becoming an issue in car parks. The scrunching and chewing up of the surface from EVs turning without moving at any pace.
Its presented an opportunity for one of my mates who sells an elastic-tarmac product but thats only being bought by people that give a shit about potholes in their car park
'analysis found that any extra wear is “overwhelmingly caused by large vehicles – buses, heavy goods vehicles”. Road wear from cars and motorcycles is “so low that this immaterial”, they said.
'However, in the longer term, the assumption that electric cars will always be heavier is also open to question. Auke Hoekstra, an energy transition researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology, estimates that batteries are cramming twice as much energy into the same weight every decade. If that continues, the weight problem will disappear before it has started.
T&E’s Mathieu said governments should incentivise smaller cars through policies such as taxes and parking charges. That would have benefits far beyond road wear: it would use fewer resources, limit carbon emissions, and make car park scrapes less likely.
“It is not inevitable that EVs are much heavier” than internal combustion engine cars, Mathieu said. “We can and should shift from [internal combustion engines] to EVs, while at the same time reversing the SUV trend.”
The verdict
Extra weight from electric cars could cause some problems at the margins, and in the short-term. However, most EV drivers are unlikely to ever experience problems directly.
Some car park owners may be affected, and if electric trucks are heavier when they become widespread that could add to road maintenance costs.
But almost all of the direct costs will be borne by infrastructure maintenance budgets. The ECIU’s Walker said concerns about extra weight for EVs were simply “massively overstated”. However, he added that carmakers do have a responsibility to produce smaller electric cars, after years of focusing on the most profitable SUVs.
The extra weight of electric cars is not likely to accelerate the destruction of roads, bridges and car parks. Weight concerns threaten to be a distraction from the ultimate prize: cutting carbon emissions to net zero.
Potholes
'Motoring organisations The AA, RAC and FairCharge have hit back at claims that the weight of electric vehicles is responsible for a decline in the quality of roads.
According to the latest Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey report by the Asphalt Industry Alliance more than half of the local road network in England and Wales is reported to have less than 15 years’ structural life left, with the amount needed to fix the backlog of carriageway repairs increasing to a record high of £16.3 billion.
Following the publication of the report some national media outlets have put the blame for the deteriorating road network on heavier electric vehicles and larger cars which they say are helping push Britain’s crumbling roads to ‘breaking point’. This is despite the ALARM survey not even mentioning electric vehicles at all.
According to one report “EVs cause twice as much stress on tarmac because they greatly outweigh their petrol or diesel equivalents”.
The RAC’s Head of Policy Simon Williams labelled the assertion that EVs are partly to blame for the poor quality of the UK’s roads as “misguided”.
He said: “A long-term lack of investment in local roads from central government is unquestionably the cause as this has led to a 45% reduction in maintenance carried out by councils in England in the last five years alone.
“Shockingly, government data shows 60% of English councils didn’t carry out any life-extending surface dressing work on their roads in the 2022/23 financial year which means existing defects have simply been left to deteriorate. If water gets into any cracks in the road and freezing conditions follow, surfaces crumble and potholes appear as vehicles of any weight pass over them.
“Any attempt to say the weight of EVs is responsible for a decline in the quality of our roads is a distraction from the reality that our roads have been neglected for too long. We badly need to start treating our roads like the national assets they are, instead of poring good money after bad by just filling potholes which are, of course, purely the symptom of a far deeper problem.”
Edmund King, AA President, said the recent headlines “beggared belief”.
He said: “The current state of the roads is due to years of underspending, sub-standard repairs, roads only being resurfaced every 80 years, and all of this exacerbated by record rainfall over the last nine months. To suggest that the one million EVs on the roads, out of 41.3 million licensed vehicles, are to blame for the potholes is barking. Obviously 44 tonne trucks can add to wear and tear, but it is estimated that on average an EV is about 300lbs heavier than a comparable petrol car, that is the weight of one heavy passenger.
“Perhaps the next headline should be ‘heavy passengers cause potholes. It beggars belief.”
Quentin Willson, motoring broadcaster and Founder of FairCharge, said:
“The notion that heavier electric cars are causing a pothole crisis on our roads makes no sense at all. What about all the vans, trucks, fuel tankers, car transporters and 44 tonne HGVs – not to mention all the two tonne SUVs? EVs are definitely not the heaviest vehicles on our roads by a massive margin. This is just another nonsensical EV myth.”
Craig Andrews, Technical Director for leading highway and runway maintenance specialist Foster Contracting, said:
“The failing UK road network is nothing to do with electric vehicles. It’s decades of under funding before EVs ever hit the roads. Cars of any kind have very little impact on a pavement. It’s the HGVs that cause the stress and do the damage.”
Colin Walker, Head of Transport at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said:
“Attempts to pin the blame for the UK’s pothole problems on electric vehicles shows that media misinformation about EVs isn’t going away. Rather than making alarmist and unevidenced claims, wouldn’t it be better if our media used its influence to help its readers access the benefits and savings that come from EV ownership? After all, EVs can save their owners as much as £1,300 a year to run – handy savings in the midst of a cost of living crisis. And, increasingly powered by electricity from British windfarms rather than oil imported from abroad, EVs can help secure our energy independence and protect us from future global price shocks.”
Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) Chair Rick Green commented:
“Our Annual Local Authority Road Maintenace (ALARM) survey reports are based on both qualitative and quantitative feedback received from those responsible for maintaining them and have for many years highlighted the link between highway maintenance funding and the condition of the local road network.
“ALARM 2024, once again, reports that local authorities don’t have the funds to keep the carriageway to their own target conditions and that lack of investment is the reason for continued deterioration and a network in decline.
“Reasons identified by local authority engineers needing to deal with unforeseen costs included rising traffic volumes and increased average vehicle weights on a deteriorating network. Feedback received from local highway authorities (LHAs) indicates a perception that there may be an impact due to heavier vehicles (with whatever drivetrain) especially on evolved, unclassified roads that would not have been designed to deal with today’s larger and heavier vehicles, let alone HGVs’ total and axle weights.'
I'm talking about car parks and the way vehicles are turned on their axis without moving and you've found a hatchet piece about roads
But according to the experts, slightly heavier EVs are NOT the problem. It is probably down to poorly maintained car parks and heavier cars in general, particularly larger SUVs.
Many purchased as totally unnecessary status symbols by those who feel the need to flaunt their assets to impress others.
Which brings me back full circle. They are unobtainable
I have never gotten strapped up with PCP and have intention of doing so, used EVs are not trusted as proven by the arse falling out of them as soon as they leave the forecourt.
That’s nonsense. Unless you have stats you can point to, it’s purely anecdotal.
The price of used EVs is evidence enough, too much risk too little reward.
So providing you get suitable rewards you’ll be happy to play your part in saving our planet ?
The biggest issue I can see with a en mass switch to EV’s still come down to charging for literally millions of people. I just Google Earthed a typical (?) suburban street and for those who want to check it’s Melling Street in Plumstead which is incidentally where my father in law lives. I counted the lampposts on either side of the street and the total is six. Given that lampposts are seen as a way of providing on street charging points in addition to dedicated charging points, I don’t see how it helps much. How would someone living in one of the terraced houses in that typical street hope to charge their EV ? Lampost charging would be chaos with cars competing for the space to charge and how exactly would people charge vehicles from a charging point from their property even if it was practical to have one fitted. These are not small issues that need resolving but massive issues that are duplicated up and down the country for millions and millions of car owners.
Can't the terraced house/non driveway plebs make do with public transport?
If you can't afford a proper abode, you have no right to use the new EV technology.
keep it for the elite.
I live in a terraced street where there are quite a few EVs. Every lampost has been adapted with a charger, but a lot of owners run a cable out overnight. They put a cover over the cable, and don't drape the cable as shown in the photo above.
Serious question. What’s the legal position if someone trips over one of those cables accross the pavement even if covered ? Surely still a trip hazard?
It would absolutely 100% the fault of the idiot who dragged a cable across a footpath and left it overnight. Imagine if a worksite was left with cables and pipes everywhere unprotected deliberately.
Also I'd love to not have to dig up footpaths, just leave cables covered in a rubber guard whenever I couldn't be arsed to do it properly or safely
Also given that my stereotypical view of cyclists and EV owners is they are exactly rhe type of people to stand where I am working just filming me on their phone as if that is socially normal and not in any way totally unacceptable they would be the first to grass up a worlk party they left an open worksite like that
Well absolutely. Leaves the question of how millions of car owners in average suburban homes are going to charge their EV’s when they eventually become the norm. We’re not set up for it and the progress being made still looks to me like pissing in the wind. We can’t as a society afford to get someone to see a doctor or have a vital surgical procedure so quite where the money comes from to turn every street into an EV charging heaven is to me pie in the sky.
EVs will never become the norm acros the uk for several reasons.
The weight of them is becoming an issue in car parks. The scrunching and chewing up of the surface from EVs turning without moving at any pace.
Its presented an opportunity for one of my mates who sells an elastic-tarmac product but thats only being bought by people that give a shit about potholes in their car park
'analysis found that any extra wear is “overwhelmingly caused by large vehicles – buses, heavy goods vehicles”. Road wear from cars and motorcycles is “so low that this immaterial”, they said.
'However, in the longer term, the assumption that electric cars will always be heavier is also open to question. Auke Hoekstra, an energy transition researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology, estimates that batteries are cramming twice as much energy into the same weight every decade. If that continues, the weight problem will disappear before it has started.
T&E’s Mathieu said governments should incentivise smaller cars through policies such as taxes and parking charges. That would have benefits far beyond road wear: it would use fewer resources, limit carbon emissions, and make car park scrapes less likely.
“It is not inevitable that EVs are much heavier” than internal combustion engine cars, Mathieu said. “We can and should shift from [internal combustion engines] to EVs, while at the same time reversing the SUV trend.”
The verdict
Extra weight from electric cars could cause some problems at the margins, and in the short-term. However, most EV drivers are unlikely to ever experience problems directly.
Some car park owners may be affected, and if electric trucks are heavier when they become widespread that could add to road maintenance costs.
But almost all of the direct costs will be borne by infrastructure maintenance budgets. The ECIU’s Walker said concerns about extra weight for EVs were simply “massively overstated”. However, he added that carmakers do have a responsibility to produce smaller electric cars, after years of focusing on the most profitable SUVs.
The extra weight of electric cars is not likely to accelerate the destruction of roads, bridges and car parks. Weight concerns threaten to be a distraction from the ultimate prize: cutting carbon emissions to net zero.
Potholes
'Motoring organisations The AA, RAC and FairCharge have hit back at claims that the weight of electric vehicles is responsible for a decline in the quality of roads.
According to the latest Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey report by the Asphalt Industry Alliance more than half of the local road network in England and Wales is reported to have less than 15 years’ structural life left, with the amount needed to fix the backlog of carriageway repairs increasing to a record high of £16.3 billion.
Following the publication of the report some national media outlets have put the blame for the deteriorating road network on heavier electric vehicles and larger cars which they say are helping push Britain’s crumbling roads to ‘breaking point’. This is despite the ALARM survey not even mentioning electric vehicles at all.
According to one report “EVs cause twice as much stress on tarmac because they greatly outweigh their petrol or diesel equivalents”.
The RAC’s Head of Policy Simon Williams labelled the assertion that EVs are partly to blame for the poor quality of the UK’s roads as “misguided”.
He said: “A long-term lack of investment in local roads from central government is unquestionably the cause as this has led to a 45% reduction in maintenance carried out by councils in England in the last five years alone.
“Shockingly, government data shows 60% of English councils didn’t carry out any life-extending surface dressing work on their roads in the 2022/23 financial year which means existing defects have simply been left to deteriorate. If water gets into any cracks in the road and freezing conditions follow, surfaces crumble and potholes appear as vehicles of any weight pass over them.
“Any attempt to say the weight of EVs is responsible for a decline in the quality of our roads is a distraction from the reality that our roads have been neglected for too long. We badly need to start treating our roads like the national assets they are, instead of poring good money after bad by just filling potholes which are, of course, purely the symptom of a far deeper problem.”
Edmund King, AA President, said the recent headlines “beggared belief”.
He said: “The current state of the roads is due to years of underspending, sub-standard repairs, roads only being resurfaced every 80 years, and all of this exacerbated by record rainfall over the last nine months. To suggest that the one million EVs on the roads, out of 41.3 million licensed vehicles, are to blame for the potholes is barking. Obviously 44 tonne trucks can add to wear and tear, but it is estimated that on average an EV is about 300lbs heavier than a comparable petrol car, that is the weight of one heavy passenger.
“Perhaps the next headline should be ‘heavy passengers cause potholes. It beggars belief.”
Quentin Willson, motoring broadcaster and Founder of FairCharge, said:
“The notion that heavier electric cars are causing a pothole crisis on our roads makes no sense at all. What about all the vans, trucks, fuel tankers, car transporters and 44 tonne HGVs – not to mention all the two tonne SUVs? EVs are definitely not the heaviest vehicles on our roads by a massive margin. This is just another nonsensical EV myth.”
Craig Andrews, Technical Director for leading highway and runway maintenance specialist Foster Contracting, said:
“The failing UK road network is nothing to do with electric vehicles. It’s decades of under funding before EVs ever hit the roads. Cars of any kind have very little impact on a pavement. It’s the HGVs that cause the stress and do the damage.”
Colin Walker, Head of Transport at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said:
“Attempts to pin the blame for the UK’s pothole problems on electric vehicles shows that media misinformation about EVs isn’t going away. Rather than making alarmist and unevidenced claims, wouldn’t it be better if our media used its influence to help its readers access the benefits and savings that come from EV ownership? After all, EVs can save their owners as much as £1,300 a year to run – handy savings in the midst of a cost of living crisis. And, increasingly powered by electricity from British windfarms rather than oil imported from abroad, EVs can help secure our energy independence and protect us from future global price shocks.”
Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) Chair Rick Green commented:
“Our Annual Local Authority Road Maintenace (ALARM) survey reports are based on both qualitative and quantitative feedback received from those responsible for maintaining them and have for many years highlighted the link between highway maintenance funding and the condition of the local road network.
“ALARM 2024, once again, reports that local authorities don’t have the funds to keep the carriageway to their own target conditions and that lack of investment is the reason for continued deterioration and a network in decline.
“Reasons identified by local authority engineers needing to deal with unforeseen costs included rising traffic volumes and increased average vehicle weights on a deteriorating network. Feedback received from local highway authorities (LHAs) indicates a perception that there may be an impact due to heavier vehicles (with whatever drivetrain) especially on evolved, unclassified roads that would not have been designed to deal with today’s larger and heavier vehicles, let alone HGVs’ total and axle weights.'
I'm talking about car parks and the way vehicles are turned on their axis without moving and you've found a hatchet piece about roads
But according to the experts, slightly heavier EVs are NOT the problem. It is probably down to poorly maintained car parks and heavier cars in general, particularly larger SUVs.
Many purchased as totally unnecessary status symbols by those who feel the need to flaunt their assets to impress others.
Which brings me back full circle. They are unobtainable
I have never gotten strapped up with PCP and have intention of doing so, used EVs are not trusted as proven by the arse falling out of them as soon as they leave the forecourt.
That’s nonsense. Unless you have stats you can point to, it’s purely anecdotal.
The price of used EVs is evidence enough, too much risk too little reward.
So providing you get suitable rewards you’ll be happy to play your part in saving our planet ?
Transitioning to EV's will help cut carbon emissions over time and I expect they will become the norm here and elsewhere, but it frustrates me to see so much emphasis going on making that one change when there are so many other things individuals can do that will have a significant effect.
On driving alone, there are many other options for those who want to reduce their carbon emissions, like switching to smaller cars and driving more conservatively, or using the car less often and choosing public transport alternatives where available.
I've done, and I'm doing, most of those. As a retired couple, we got rid of our second car which was no longer needed, and replaced the other with a second hand, supposedly eco friendly one (high mpg). Next time I change, if I ever need to have another car, which hopefully won't be for years due to our low mileage, I expect I'll buy a second hand EV, but I feel no guilt in not changing sooner and rate as a 'climate hero"* based on my current carbon footprint, ICE car emissions included.
*Admittedly I have reservations about using these free online assessment tools, which I can see have serious limitations, but I'm trending in the right direction for reducing my emissions.
The biggest issue I can see with a en mass switch to EV’s still come down to charging for literally millions of people. I just Google Earthed a typical (?) suburban street and for those who want to check it’s Melling Street in Plumstead which is incidentally where my father in law lives. I counted the lampposts on either side of the street and the total is six. Given that lampposts are seen as a way of providing on street charging points in addition to dedicated charging points, I don’t see how it helps much. How would someone living in one of the terraced houses in that typical street hope to charge their EV ? Lampost charging would be chaos with cars competing for the space to charge and how exactly would people charge vehicles from a charging point from their property even if it was practical to have one fitted. These are not small issues that need resolving but massive issues that are duplicated up and down the country for millions and millions of car owners.
Can't the terraced house/non driveway plebs make do with public transport?
If you can't afford a proper abode, you have no right to use the new EV technology.
keep it for the elite.
I live in a terraced street where there are quite a few EVs. Every lampost has been adapted with a charger, but a lot of owners run a cable out overnight. They put a cover over the cable, and don't drape the cable as shown in the photo above.
Serious question. What’s the legal position if someone trips over one of those cables accross the pavement even if covered ? Surely still a trip hazard?
It would absolutely 100% the fault of the idiot who dragged a cable across a footpath and left it overnight. Imagine if a worksite was left with cables and pipes everywhere unprotected deliberately.
Also I'd love to not have to dig up footpaths, just leave cables covered in a rubber guard whenever I couldn't be arsed to do it properly or safely
Also given that my stereotypical view of cyclists and EV owners is they are exactly rhe type of people to stand where I am working just filming me on their phone as if that is socially normal and not in any way totally unacceptable they would be the first to grass up a worlk party they left an open worksite like that
Well absolutely. Leaves the question of how millions of car owners in average suburban homes are going to charge their EV’s when they eventually become the norm. We’re not set up for it and the progress being made still looks to me like pissing in the wind. We can’t as a society afford to get someone to see a doctor or have a vital surgical procedure so quite where the money comes from to turn every street into an EV charging heaven is to me pie in the sky.
EVs will never become the norm acros the uk for several reasons.
I think the die is cast on that already. Manufacturers are already scaling down ICE production and while there will be ICE vehicles on the road for many years after production has stopped I think they’ll be taxed into oblivion. Interested to know why you use the word never.
Having just gone EV and happy to be road tax exempt. Just found out that ends next April. In April 2025 EVs registered before will have to pay £190 per year (might go up) and those registered after April 2025 will have to pay a first year premium which will then goto £190 in subsequent years. Not too bad I guess but does reduce the incentive to go EV.
The biggest issue I can see with a en mass switch to EV’s still come down to charging for literally millions of people. I just Google Earthed a typical (?) suburban street and for those who want to check it’s Melling Street in Plumstead which is incidentally where my father in law lives. I counted the lampposts on either side of the street and the total is six. Given that lampposts are seen as a way of providing on street charging points in addition to dedicated charging points, I don’t see how it helps much. How would someone living in one of the terraced houses in that typical street hope to charge their EV ? Lampost charging would be chaos with cars competing for the space to charge and how exactly would people charge vehicles from a charging point from their property even if it was practical to have one fitted. These are not small issues that need resolving but massive issues that are duplicated up and down the country for millions and millions of car owners.
Can't the terraced house/non driveway plebs make do with public transport?
If you can't afford a proper abode, you have no right to use the new EV technology.
keep it for the elite.
I live in a terraced street where there are quite a few EVs. Every lampost has been adapted with a charger, but a lot of owners run a cable out overnight. They put a cover over the cable, and don't drape the cable as shown in the photo above.
Surely people can pay an electrician and / or build to run a cable from the house to the road in a small trench. Might cost the same as a couple of full tanks of petrol!
At your peril I’d suggest. Digging up the pavement is the responsibility of the local authorities not individual households. In any case. What’s to stop someone else parking outside your house rendering your efforts pointless.
Just have the on/off switch in the house!
I'm basing this on when they decided to put cable TV into my area around South Norwood in the 1980s.
It was a non-event. Some guys came round and ran an underground cable into to every house in the street through a small trench in the pavement. Probably not worth it for crappy TV but well worth it for the car industry.
The biggest issue I can see with a en mass switch to EV’s still come down to charging for literally millions of people. I just Google Earthed a typical (?) suburban street and for those who want to check it’s Melling Street in Plumstead which is incidentally where my father in law lives. I counted the lampposts on either side of the street and the total is six. Given that lampposts are seen as a way of providing on street charging points in addition to dedicated charging points, I don’t see how it helps much. How would someone living in one of the terraced houses in that typical street hope to charge their EV ? Lampost charging would be chaos with cars competing for the space to charge and how exactly would people charge vehicles from a charging point from their property even if it was practical to have one fitted. These are not small issues that need resolving but massive issues that are duplicated up and down the country for millions and millions of car owners.
Can't the terraced house/non driveway plebs make do with public transport?
If you can't afford a proper abode, you have no right to use the new EV technology.
keep it for the elite.
I live in a terraced street where there are quite a few EVs. Every lampost has been adapted with a charger, but a lot of owners run a cable out overnight. They put a cover over the cable, and don't drape the cable as shown in the photo above.
Surely people can pay an electrician and / or build to run a cable from the house to the road in a small trench. Might cost the same as a couple of full tanks of petrol!
At your peril I’d suggest. Digging up the pavement is the responsibility of the local authorities not individual households. In any case. What’s to stop someone else parking outside your house rendering your efforts pointless.
Just have the on/off switch in the house!
I'm basing this on when they decided to put cable TV into my area around South Norwood in the 1980s.
It was a non-event. Some guys came round and ran an underground cable into to every house in the street through a small trench in the pavement. Probably not worth it for crappy TV but well worth it for the car industry.
And if you can’t park outside your house because there are too many cars and too few spaces ?
The weight of them is becoming an issue in car parks. The scrunching and chewing up of the surface from EVs turning without moving at any pace.
Its presented an opportunity for one of my mates who sells an elastic-tarmac product but thats only being bought by people that give a shit about potholes in their car park
'analysis found that any extra wear is “overwhelmingly caused by large vehicles – buses, heavy goods vehicles”. Road wear from cars and motorcycles is “so low that this immaterial”, they said.
'However, in the longer term, the assumption that electric cars will always be heavier is also open to question. Auke Hoekstra, an energy transition researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology, estimates that batteries are cramming twice as much energy into the same weight every decade. If that continues, the weight problem will disappear before it has started.
T&E’s Mathieu said governments should incentivise smaller cars through policies such as taxes and parking charges. That would have benefits far beyond road wear: it would use fewer resources, limit carbon emissions, and make car park scrapes less likely.
“It is not inevitable that EVs are much heavier” than internal combustion engine cars, Mathieu said. “We can and should shift from [internal combustion engines] to EVs, while at the same time reversing the SUV trend.”
The verdict
Extra weight from electric cars could cause some problems at the margins, and in the short-term. However, most EV drivers are unlikely to ever experience problems directly.
Some car park owners may be affected, and if electric trucks are heavier when they become widespread that could add to road maintenance costs.
But almost all of the direct costs will be borne by infrastructure maintenance budgets. The ECIU’s Walker said concerns about extra weight for EVs were simply “massively overstated”. However, he added that carmakers do have a responsibility to produce smaller electric cars, after years of focusing on the most profitable SUVs.
The extra weight of electric cars is not likely to accelerate the destruction of roads, bridges and car parks. Weight concerns threaten to be a distraction from the ultimate prize: cutting carbon emissions to net zero.
Potholes
'Motoring organisations The AA, RAC and FairCharge have hit back at claims that the weight of electric vehicles is responsible for a decline in the quality of roads.
According to the latest Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey report by the Asphalt Industry Alliance more than half of the local road network in England and Wales is reported to have less than 15 years’ structural life left, with the amount needed to fix the backlog of carriageway repairs increasing to a record high of £16.3 billion.
Following the publication of the report some national media outlets have put the blame for the deteriorating road network on heavier electric vehicles and larger cars which they say are helping push Britain’s crumbling roads to ‘breaking point’. This is despite the ALARM survey not even mentioning electric vehicles at all.
According to one report “EVs cause twice as much stress on tarmac because they greatly outweigh their petrol or diesel equivalents”.
The RAC’s Head of Policy Simon Williams labelled the assertion that EVs are partly to blame for the poor quality of the UK’s roads as “misguided”.
He said: “A long-term lack of investment in local roads from central government is unquestionably the cause as this has led to a 45% reduction in maintenance carried out by councils in England in the last five years alone.
“Shockingly, government data shows 60% of English councils didn’t carry out any life-extending surface dressing work on their roads in the 2022/23 financial year which means existing defects have simply been left to deteriorate. If water gets into any cracks in the road and freezing conditions follow, surfaces crumble and potholes appear as vehicles of any weight pass over them.
“Any attempt to say the weight of EVs is responsible for a decline in the quality of our roads is a distraction from the reality that our roads have been neglected for too long. We badly need to start treating our roads like the national assets they are, instead of poring good money after bad by just filling potholes which are, of course, purely the symptom of a far deeper problem.”
Edmund King, AA President, said the recent headlines “beggared belief”.
He said: “The current state of the roads is due to years of underspending, sub-standard repairs, roads only being resurfaced every 80 years, and all of this exacerbated by record rainfall over the last nine months. To suggest that the one million EVs on the roads, out of 41.3 million licensed vehicles, are to blame for the potholes is barking. Obviously 44 tonne trucks can add to wear and tear, but it is estimated that on average an EV is about 300lbs heavier than a comparable petrol car, that is the weight of one heavy passenger.
“Perhaps the next headline should be ‘heavy passengers cause potholes. It beggars belief.”
Quentin Willson, motoring broadcaster and Founder of FairCharge, said:
“The notion that heavier electric cars are causing a pothole crisis on our roads makes no sense at all. What about all the vans, trucks, fuel tankers, car transporters and 44 tonne HGVs – not to mention all the two tonne SUVs? EVs are definitely not the heaviest vehicles on our roads by a massive margin. This is just another nonsensical EV myth.”
Craig Andrews, Technical Director for leading highway and runway maintenance specialist Foster Contracting, said:
“The failing UK road network is nothing to do with electric vehicles. It’s decades of under funding before EVs ever hit the roads. Cars of any kind have very little impact on a pavement. It’s the HGVs that cause the stress and do the damage.”
Colin Walker, Head of Transport at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said:
“Attempts to pin the blame for the UK’s pothole problems on electric vehicles shows that media misinformation about EVs isn’t going away. Rather than making alarmist and unevidenced claims, wouldn’t it be better if our media used its influence to help its readers access the benefits and savings that come from EV ownership? After all, EVs can save their owners as much as £1,300 a year to run – handy savings in the midst of a cost of living crisis. And, increasingly powered by electricity from British windfarms rather than oil imported from abroad, EVs can help secure our energy independence and protect us from future global price shocks.”
Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) Chair Rick Green commented:
“Our Annual Local Authority Road Maintenace (ALARM) survey reports are based on both qualitative and quantitative feedback received from those responsible for maintaining them and have for many years highlighted the link between highway maintenance funding and the condition of the local road network.
“ALARM 2024, once again, reports that local authorities don’t have the funds to keep the carriageway to their own target conditions and that lack of investment is the reason for continued deterioration and a network in decline.
“Reasons identified by local authority engineers needing to deal with unforeseen costs included rising traffic volumes and increased average vehicle weights on a deteriorating network. Feedback received from local highway authorities (LHAs) indicates a perception that there may be an impact due to heavier vehicles (with whatever drivetrain) especially on evolved, unclassified roads that would not have been designed to deal with today’s larger and heavier vehicles, let alone HGVs’ total and axle weights.'
Enough with your facts. I want unfounded alarmism.
The biggest issue I can see with a en mass switch to EV’s still come down to charging for literally millions of people. I just Google Earthed a typical (?) suburban street and for those who want to check it’s Melling Street in Plumstead which is incidentally where my father in law lives. I counted the lampposts on either side of the street and the total is six. Given that lampposts are seen as a way of providing on street charging points in addition to dedicated charging points, I don’t see how it helps much. How would someone living in one of the terraced houses in that typical street hope to charge their EV ? Lampost charging would be chaos with cars competing for the space to charge and how exactly would people charge vehicles from a charging point from their property even if it was practical to have one fitted. These are not small issues that need resolving but massive issues that are duplicated up and down the country for millions and millions of car owners.
Can't the terraced house/non driveway plebs make do with public transport?
If you can't afford a proper abode, you have no right to use the new EV technology.
keep it for the elite.
I live in a terraced street where there are quite a few EVs. Every lampost has been adapted with a charger, but a lot of owners run a cable out overnight. They put a cover over the cable, and don't drape the cable as shown in the photo above.
Surely people can pay an electrician and / or build to run a cable from the house to the road in a small trench. Might cost the same as a couple of full tanks of petrol!
At your peril I’d suggest. Digging up the pavement is the responsibility of the local authorities not individual households. In any case. What’s to stop someone else parking outside your house rendering your efforts pointless.
Just have the on/off switch in the house!
I'm basing this on when they decided to put cable TV into my area around South Norwood in the 1980s.
It was a non-event. Some guys came round and ran an underground cable into to every house in the street through a small trench in the pavement. Probably not worth it for crappy TV but well worth it for the car industry.
And if you can’t park outside your house because there are too many cars and too few spaces ?
If you check out the middle link (Trojan) of those I posted above you will see a possible solution. I recall seeing the solution, installed, on TV.
The biggest issue I can see with a en mass switch to EV’s still come down to charging for literally millions of people. I just Google Earthed a typical (?) suburban street and for those who want to check it’s Melling Street in Plumstead which is incidentally where my father in law lives. I counted the lampposts on either side of the street and the total is six. Given that lampposts are seen as a way of providing on street charging points in addition to dedicated charging points, I don’t see how it helps much. How would someone living in one of the terraced houses in that typical street hope to charge their EV ? Lampost charging would be chaos with cars competing for the space to charge and how exactly would people charge vehicles from a charging point from their property even if it was practical to have one fitted. These are not small issues that need resolving but massive issues that are duplicated up and down the country for millions and millions of car owners.
Can't the terraced house/non driveway plebs make do with public transport?
If you can't afford a proper abode, you have no right to use the new EV technology.
keep it for the elite.
I live in a terraced street where there are quite a few EVs. Every lampost has been adapted with a charger, but a lot of owners run a cable out overnight. They put a cover over the cable, and don't drape the cable as shown in the photo above.
Surely people can pay an electrician and / or build to run a cable from the house to the road in a small trench. Might cost the same as a couple of full tanks of petrol!
At your peril I’d suggest. Digging up the pavement is the responsibility of the local authorities not individual households. In any case. What’s to stop someone else parking outside your house rendering your efforts pointless.
Just have the on/off switch in the house!
I'm basing this on when they decided to put cable TV into my area around South Norwood in the 1980s.
It was a non-event. Some guys came round and ran an underground cable into to every house in the street through a small trench in the pavement. Probably not worth it for crappy TV but well worth it for the car industry.
Just like in the links I posted above. Old idea but new application.
Nobody is chucking out alarmism or hyperbole. Its a discussion and people are putting points across until the defensiveness starts.
Have you any suggestions how we might get around the defensiveness of the I-won't-get-an-EV crowd ?
How about ignore them, or nod along with their points, disagree with some of them, agree with others or don't
I take on board everything someone says who had the financial clout to buy an EV and only does a short journey everyday, can park on their drive overnight to charge it. Great. Clearly those vehicles will work for them.
They are still vehicles on the road, heavier ones as school run mums aren't doing the school run in Nissan Leafs, loads of people don't have access to home charging or even charging at work, the batteries on them are a legitimate concern, range is a legitimate concern, the cost of charging on public chargers v the range gained is now more expensive per mile for our work vehicles and has affected us operationally.
Forget the fact that kids don't seem to walk to and from school anymore, these clean air EVs still cause congestion on the road.
EVs have a place in the world but I don't believe they are the final solution
Comments
I have never gotten strapped up with PCP and have intention of doing so, used EVs are not trusted as proven by the arse falling out of them as soon as they leave the forecourt. The government have had another go at motorists with another vehicle tax rise for non lithium ion powered cars to boot.
Imagine being a youngster getting started in the world now, get an apprenticeship on dog money, get a driving licence then immediately need to get lumped with a debt which is what finance is to get a vehicle so up to their ears in debt before they have had a chance to put any money away for god forbid their own home
Also I'd love to not have to dig up footpaths, just leave cables covered in a rubber guard whenever I couldn't be arsed to do it properly or safely
Also given that my stereotypical view of cyclists and EV owners is they are exactly rhe type of people to stand where I am working just filming me on their phone as if that is socially normal and not in any way totally unacceptable they would be the first to grass up a worlk party they left an open worksite like that
My initial thought was “where there’s blame there’s a claim”
https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/10-15-october-2022/pdd-trojan-energy-hidden-ev-charging-points/
https://gul-e.co.uk/
On driving alone, there are many other options for those who want to reduce their carbon emissions, like switching to smaller cars and driving more conservatively, or using the car less often and choosing public transport alternatives where available.
I've done, and I'm doing, most of those. As a retired couple, we got rid of our second car which was no longer needed, and replaced the other with a second hand, supposedly eco friendly one (high mpg). Next time I change, if I ever need to have another car, which hopefully won't be for years due to our low mileage, I expect I'll buy a second hand EV, but I feel no guilt in not changing sooner and rate as a 'climate hero"* based on my current carbon footprint, ICE car emissions included.
*Admittedly I have reservations about using these free online assessment tools, which I can see have serious limitations, but I'm trending in the right direction for reducing my emissions.
I'm basing this on when they decided to put cable TV into my area around South Norwood in the 1980s.
It was a non-event. Some guys came round and ran an underground cable into to every house in the street through a small trench in the pavement. Probably not worth it for crappy TV but well worth it for the car industry.
I take on board everything someone says who had the financial clout to buy an EV and only does a short journey everyday, can park on their drive overnight to charge it. Great. Clearly those vehicles will work for them.
They are still vehicles on the road, heavier ones as school run mums aren't doing the school run in Nissan Leafs, loads of people don't have access to home charging or even charging at work, the batteries on them are a legitimate concern, range is a legitimate concern, the cost of charging on public chargers v the range gained is now more expensive per mile for our work vehicles and has affected us operationally.
Forget the fact that kids don't seem to walk to and from school anymore, these clean air EVs still cause congestion on the road.
EVs have a place in the world but I don't believe they are the final solution