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Show HN: Open-source UK fuel availability tracker

fuelfinder.uk

11–20 of 79 posts

Re: Show HN: Open-source UK fuel availability tracker

#12
post #6

The fuel crisis in the UK has been great at being EV advocates out of the woodwork, but our infrastructure for charging cars is appalling and as I cycled I rather smugly saw queues at the ev chargers too. But something like this for EVs that also shows the cost of charging would be great. Yes I know about zap map, etc... But in my area the choices are poor, the availability difficult to discover (rate limited and pol…

Without a network of nuclear power plants I fear the EV revolution will not come to fruition. The government seem to have jumped on the bandwagon without thinking it through.

Re: Show HN: Open-source UK fuel availability tracker

#13
post #6

The fuel crisis in the UK has been great at being EV advocates out of the woodwork, but our infrastructure for charging cars is appalling and as I cycled I rather smugly saw queues at the ev chargers too. But something like this for EVs that also shows the cost of charging would be great. Yes I know about zap map, etc... But in my area the choices are poor, the availability difficult to discover (rate limited and pol…

Probably not exactly what you're looking for but we do have an API for that https://m3o.com/evchargers/api#Search

Re: Show HN: Open-source UK fuel availability tracker

#14
post #8
post #5

For those not in the UK wondering what this is all about: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/24/what-is-cau...

The overriding sentiment right now is isolated shortages have turned into widespread shortages because of panic buying, not actual shortages or HGV driver shortages.

...actually, its people who did not fill up last week and now have no choice.

Re: Show HN: Open-source UK fuel availability tracker

#15

Nice idea. I get my info from the local facebook group, which seems to have a thread in the morning and evening. A couple of thoughts: 1) I live in the middle of a number of ESSO stations, it's hard to know which one it is, based on a distance, and I dont want to click through to directions. Local facebook group users just give the neighbourhood it's in. 2) The information is very time sensitive, you could order resu…

Thanks, these are great ideas.

Names and locations of fuel stations are coming from openstreetmap, and it most cases it doesn't have good addresses.

I will add ability to edit locations and addresses of the fuel stations when submitting the updates. Eventually this could be added back to OSM.

Information here is fully crowdsourced, and the project is around 8 hours old. The more people contribute, the better it gets.

Re: Show HN: Open-source UK fuel availability tracker

#16
post #10

This is great but I feel like it's more important to educate people not to panic-buy fuel since that's adding a significant strain to the problem (thanks to the media). If people filled up when they normally would have the problem wouldn't have been so huge. Also, why do I have to share my location? What happened to the good old days of just being able to enter postcode or town?!

>it's more important to educate people not to panic-buy fuel since that's adding a significant strain to the problem

I wonder how true this actually is, certainly a useful narrative for the government. But surely, if fuel supply at point of sale is down 30%, there is 30% less fuel, no matter how you dress it.

There were isolated reports of people bringing jerry cans to petrol stations, and I agree this is artificially inflating demand, but I'm not sure this is very widespread.

Re: Show HN: Open-source UK fuel availability tracker

#17

Might need to work on your heuristics for finding petrol stations a little bit. The site suggested Refuel near me in Soho, London but that’s a bar/restaurant :-) https://www.firmdalehotels.com/hotels/london/the-soho-hotel/...

Thanks!

I think I know what is that :) I was grepping for "fuel" in osmconvert csv dump (as in ameniity=fuel)

Re: Show HN: Open-source UK fuel availability tracker

#18
post #10

This is great but I feel like it's more important to educate people not to panic-buy fuel since that's adding a significant strain to the problem (thanks to the media). If people filled up when they normally would have the problem wouldn't have been so huge. Also, why do I have to share my location? What happened to the good old days of just being able to enter postcode or town?!

If everyone is panic buying, the only solution to your own fuel problems is to buy as well.

This is ultimately worse for society, but the only rational response as a single actor.

Re: Show HN: Open-source UK fuel availability tracker

#19
post #13
post #6

The fuel crisis in the UK has been great at being EV advocates out of the woodwork, but our infrastructure for charging cars is appalling and as I cycled I rather smugly saw queues at the ev chargers too. But something like this for EVs that also shows the cost of charging would be great. Yes I know about zap map, etc... But in my area the choices are poor, the availability difficult to discover (rate limited and pol…

Probably not exactly what you're looking for but we do have an API for that https://m3o.com/evchargers/api#Search

Not far from what I'm looking for!

Just needs:

* Is it publicly accessible, and if restrictions exist based on time what times is it accessible (i.e. chargers in car parks that aren't open 24/7)

* Can members of the public PAYG with no membership required? If so at what rate? And is this via contactless or requires a specific app?

* Is it free right now and known to be in working order?

Some of this you've covered... but there is no single view of this I can find, and things like Zap Map are partial and have some incorrect data (it's not unusual to be caught out by opening hours of a car park for example).

Re: Show HN: Open-source UK fuel availability tracker

#20
Whilst I applaud the sentiment, this demonstrates one of the flaws with crowdsourced data (I presume).

The result list for me (that goes as far as 7.5 miles away) shows 'unknown' for every garage, which therefore renders the list useless. No doubt it would improve as more users offered up information, but unless there is a way to automate the data the majority of more rural areas (perhaps even anywhere that is not a large city centre) will never find any use for this.

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