[ClumsyPilot]

What is stupidly expensive in your book? Whats the total cost of parts for installing a socket, even with electronics, £50-£100? Average car owner spends £160 a month in UK.

Petroleum fuel is more expensive that eqivalent electricity because they have to pay for massive oil refineries, etc. It costs a fortune and you seem to totally ignore. Once you net out these costs, petroleum will not come out on top.

[gambiting]

>>Whats the total cost of parts for installing a socket, even with electronics, £50-£100?

According to the latest version of the electrical regulations, any external socket used for charging a car(and that includes regular domestic 3-pin sockets) has to have earth independant of the supply earth. Meaning that a separate earth stake has to be installed for each socket. I've gotten several quotes to do this recently and they all came back at around £400-500 mark. But even ignoring that, you are completely off the mark when it comes to parts, proper external armoured sockets and cables cost a lot more than "£50-100". That's dumb sockets that don't do anything. Commercial charging points that provide just regular 13amp charging without anything fancy go for multiple thousands of pounds, but you think a £50 socket would do? Have you considered why it might not? If you want to do it on the entire street then multiply that number + add the costs of digging up the street which can be a small fortune(ask OpenReach how much they charge per metre of groundworks, it's not uncommon to get bills for £100k for a 50ft of cable laid in ground).

>> It costs a fortune and you seem to totally ignore.

Uhm, I don't, but I just don't see how that's relevant. I'm also not saying that we should continue using petrol. Just that building this infrastructure in our cities is going to be incredibly expensive, and our councils already struggle so much to provide any support to our streets and roads. But somehow there are people who believe that by 2030 councils will magically pull the money out of their backsides and build it. I just don't believe that will happen.

[ClumsyPilot]

I am absolutely in agreement that initial installation will be expensive, and cannot happen without a national initiative/funding pot. Thank you for providing clarity on numbers, which I did not have.

I am hoping arguing that, on average, charging points should last decades so the running costs should be minimal and the system would save money in the long run, purely when you consider physical resources involved.

To further reduce running costs and put it on commercial footing, we could try a modular approach - Maybe we could have a system where we dig up the street, and install something like a metal frame in the ground covered by a (miniature) manhole, which includes a fixture, electric cabling, etc. It's just a dumb and robust connector, nor electronics.

Then different charging points could be installed there by private companies, or by homeowners, etc at a fee. The idea is to have like a standard connector - any maintenance would (normally) be needed on the charge point only, metering is done by the charge point and upstream at street level. Maybe we can mandate smart metering like we are doing for houses right now.