I would bet you very good money, not only that someone would try, but that there would also be a lawyer willing to press their claim for compo
Why would it strike you as "odd", that London gets the lion's share of investment?
It's par for the course
But we're not Germany, and we may have a different litigation culture to them.
Of course they will! But as you've seen in Post# 1073, they can trip over petrol hoses too. And I daresay there will be some ambulance-chasing scumbag lawyers, who would try and make a quick buck on such an incident too. Yet I don't hear anyone telling me that petrol pumps will never take off because someone, somewhere, will trip over one?
You're getting desperate over these trip hazards, @Avocet .
Show me a petrol pump hose, slung across a pavement and left unattended for even an hour, and I'd begin to give your point some credence.
Even more so, if you showed me multiple hoses similarly laying there.
I'm alright though, as I have a driveway.
There are valid arguments, and hills upon which to die.
Defending charge leads across pavements is one such hill, IMHO.
If anything, I'm actually incredibly sanguine about these trip hazards. It's everyone else who seems to be getting their knickers in a twist over them.
Did the bloke trip over the petrol pump hose, or did he not? Do you think someone bent on trying to get a bit of "compo" would only pursue a claim if involved an EV charging lead? Nobody is advocating charging leads across a pavement.
As do most UK homes.
Except I'm NOT defending charging leads across pavements!!!! I'm talking about kerbside chargers! Look at the photos in Post#1058. None of those leads cross a pavement. There is always a clear thoroughfare for prams, pedestrians, wheelchairs, etc.
Department for Business and Trade published its Battery Strategy, which sets out how it hopes to develop an integrated industry from manufacturing to recycling in the UK, along the lines of those in China and Germany. Recyclus Group’s lithium-ion battery recycling plant in Wolverhampton* was, however, the only one in the UK, the Government admitted, with most EV batteries having to be dismantled and shipped to Europe. New EU regulations will force UK manufacturers to seek more recycled content because in August it decided to incentivise battery recycling by establishing mandatory minimum levels of recycled content for batteries. These must contain at least 16% cobalt, 6% lithium and 6% nickel that comes from recycling, with these percentages rising to 26%, 12% and 15% respectively by 2036.
MRW.co.uk
*The firm’s Wolverhampton plant will be the first of six battery recycling facilities it plans to launch within the next five years. It also plans to sell its processing systems to car makers and gigafactories. Meanwhile, thanks to a £1.9 million fund awarded by Innovate UK, Recyclus is also working with the University of Birmingham on the development of a mobile version of its recycling plant that could be transported on the back of a truck to customers including EV garages. Depending on the battery’s chemistry and its state of charge, Recyclus charges customers up to £8.40 per kilo to receive and recycle their lithium-ion batteries. On the open market the black mass that is extracted fetches £5000-£6000 per kilo.
CatMag.co.uk
There are a very limited number of EV battery recycling facilities worldwide, with only two existing in Europe. As of December 2023, China was by far the global leader in terms of battery recycling capacity, with more than 500,000 metric tons. The U.S. and Europe trailed behind with around 200,000 metric tons of capacity each.
Statista.com
Stop getting your knickers in a twist.
I'm for EV.
I just am very dismayed by the UK's habitual tardiness in creating and maintaining decent infrastructure.
(and your petrol pump point is so invalid as to be laughable: fleeting, attended, in a very specialised setting, been around for decades.
And, the "been around for decades" is the clincher, in many ways. The old "if they tried to do it that way from now, they'd ban it!" holds true.
My money would be that, if they invented the filling station today, we'd have hoses suspended from above: no trip hazard )
Recycling in the UK is pitiful and in the case of plastic waste needs to improve drastically if we're to make a difference - a proposed facility near Oxford has protestors swarming all over it but if not there - where? In 2021, the recycling rate of plastic packaging waste in the UK stood at around 44 percent, after more or less stagnating in the past five years.
Only one plant for recycling EV batteries is not going to cut the moutard, either, so more green space will need to be used in order to deal with the increasing volume generated by more vehicles. And i suppose someone will want a new house sometime soon. No wonder the UK can't cope with anymore Channel migrants...we're going to run out of room, soon.
So am I, but I think some of the blame for that, has to lie at the feet of those complain vociferously about petty and hugely exaggerated perceived hazards in doing so, don't you think?
And that's the difference between us. The whole reason you see my petrol pump example as "laughable", is precisely because they've been around for decades and you've had a chance to get used to it. By the time kerbside EV charging has "been around for decades" you'll look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.
No, I don't.
It's political ideology.
And (enough of) the population wanting stuff, but baulking at paying for it.
You've missed the point.
It's not about that "we've got used to petrol pumps".
It's that petrol pumps were already well-established before the UK evolved to its current risk-averse position.
If EVs had been introduced 50 years ago, and were charged with leads strung all about, all would be fine.
Because the litigious nature of the in which we now reside didn't exist back then.
You can't just go "yes, I know you might trip / get electrocuted, but get used to it!"; that's a total non-starter.