The number of people in the UK and Ireland that have to park overnight on the street is way too high to start banning ICE vehicles within the next decade. Electric infrastructure isn't enough, they will have to completely revamp entire neighborhoods to provide space for permanent and predictable overnight parking for residents.
> The number of people in the UK and Ireland that have to park overnight on the street is way too high to start banning ICE vehicles within the next decade.
You're not wrong (and I too am a "garage orphan"—neither a garage or even a driveway), but there are some options being developed. The YT channel Fully Charged featured two a while back:
After street lighting was upgraded to more energy-effective LEDs there's surplus capacity. Making every pole available for slow overnight charging does not mean to "completely revamp entire neighborhoods". The possibility to sell the electricity might even become attractive for municipality or utility.
Also, parking is going to be overhauled anyway, after decades of cars occupying every nook and cranny, there's a strong push to free the streets.
I lived in London until 2015 and took a recent look on Street View where I lived (Search for E10 6QB if you want to see) . It was a typical London street where everyone parks nose to nose. There's about 20 cars for every lamp post.
No way could you charge every car that way. With the typical 50-70% street occupancy. You'd be lucky to find a spare lamp post.
But surely the majority of those cars have a short commute. We have a BMW i3 which has a relatively small 33kWh battery, and we usually charge it less than twice per week.
A car with a longer range wouldn't need to be charged that often.
>But surely the majority of those cars have a short commute.
That is irrelevant. If you cannot always get a parking spot where you can charge then from time to time you would end up not being able to change when you absolutely need to. It's like parking at work and there's no charging available and you have to drive around for 20 minutes and turn up late for work. No, there's a need for either always available charging in every single area or a system that is a direct replacement for gas stations (IE. charge in a couple of minutes every week or so).
I have lived in an area like it (luckily I moved) and the amount of time I have driven around in circles just to get a parking spot is more than I'd like to know. If only some of them had charging people with cars would be forced to either move away or drive around in circles for hours on end every day.
