French lessons

By Brian Clegg

Having recently driven around 2,000 miles in France it was informative to experience a pricing structure that surely we should be following in the UK if we are serious about the move to electric vehicles.

Petrol in France was typically significantly dearer than in the UK. On motorways it was often well over 2 euros per litre, and I never saw it less than about €1.65. The equivalent in pounds would be well over £1.80 and never below £1.45. Currently it is £1.32 at my local garage.

By contrast, electric car charging was a bargain. Here in the UK you will rarely find a public charger at under 60p per kWh, and a high speed charger is likely to be around 89p – I’ve never looked on motorways, but I suspect they may be even higher. Note that to be cheaper than petrol, electricity needs to be under around 45p/kWh.

The cheapest we found in France (Lidl) was 39c (34p) for a high speed charger and even on a motorway, where petrol was over €2 I found a high speed charger at under 50c (44p). You can pay, say 65c (57p) elsewhere, but nothing approaching UK pricing.

Then there’s the matter of availability. I rarely need to use public chargers in the UK as I have a plug-in hybrid and can charge at home, but my first attempt at trying out chargers on a break in Cornwall was painful, and a second attempt recently was just as bad. 

The railway station charger I tried to use last time had disappeared entirely as the car park it was in was temporarily closed. The Shell Recharge I used last time had also vanished while the filling station was rebuilt. I did find on a map an alleged 16 chargers on a Hayle business park. When I got there, I could only find four. Of these, three were in disabled bays and the fourth was inaccessible because a (diesel) van had parked across it. 

I did again use the National Trust chargers at Killerton (I was disappointed how few NT sites have chargers), but that is now significantly more expensive, and the first charger I tried didn’t work, needing a move to a second one.

Getting a decent network in place, with effective pricing, is an absolute essential if we are to move away from fossil fuels. We don’t seem even to be trying.

This has been a Green Heretic production. See all my Green Heretic articles here.

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.