EV cars, would you, wouldn't you?
Poll: EV cars, would you, wouldn't you?
Total Members Polled: 427
Discussion
I think Tesla Models S and X are too big for Europe. When I had a poke around a Model S it was lovely but it was bloody huge.
Their planned Model 3 could be a game changer in that respect.If When electric models begin to become more widespread and price points fall a little, I can see myself in one.
Their planned Model 3 could be a game changer in that respect.
300bhp/ton said:
I need to look further into this, but I just can't get the figures to work out. Been looking at the Leaf and Zoe and to do any sort of meaningful annual mileage, the battery rental just rapes you on monthly costs.
Then don't rent the battery. Lease the entire car then walk away once done.otolith said:
300bhp/ton said:
Not too mention just having electricity at your workplace, doesn't grantee you can charge it. As you'd
1) Need to be able to park close enough
2) Either need an outside electric point (highly unlikely) or the ability to run cables outside to the car. Again probably doubtful for many places of work
3) Running cables outside obviously has potential hazards, such as trip hazards, electrocution and so on. Of which the company would be potentially liable, so unlikely to want you to do it.
3a) If you run a cable from inside to outside, you'll need an open door or window, so potential security risks too.
4) Cost. It might not cost much to charge a car, but it will still cost. Will a company really be happy giving it away?
5) Most things that plug-in to the mains at a business will need to be PAT tested as a minimum, so again may create barriers to simply plugging in your car when you get to work.
My wife's workplace already has electric car charging stations. 1) Need to be able to park close enough
2) Either need an outside electric point (highly unlikely) or the ability to run cables outside to the car. Again probably doubtful for many places of work
3) Running cables outside obviously has potential hazards, such as trip hazards, electrocution and so on. Of which the company would be potentially liable, so unlikely to want you to do it.
3a) If you run a cable from inside to outside, you'll need an open door or window, so potential security risks too.
4) Cost. It might not cost much to charge a car, but it will still cost. Will a company really be happy giving it away?
5) Most things that plug-in to the mains at a business will need to be PAT tested as a minimum, so again may create barriers to simply plugging in your car when you get to work.
300bhp/ton said:
So what sort of real world range does a Nissan Leaf actually have? And is it better/worse than the French offerings?
60-80 miles.Renault Zoe is approx the same, perhaps 5 miles more.
However Nissan have just released a Leaf with a bigger battery which should give a real world 90-110 mile range
Mr2Mike said:
TransverseTight said:
I'm currently doing 86 miles a day round trip. So anyone can do it. Well anyone who's work place has electricity.
That's probably a tiny bit less than "anyone". What do you do if you want to take a longer trip? Keep a second car on the road, hire a car? Sounds expensive and/or inconvenient.As to longer journeys... I have 3 options.
1 use free rapid chargers on the motorways. They won't be free for ever though - expect about 25-40p kWh eventaully - which still works out cheaper than dino juice.
2 use the petrol range extender. Bascailly a 650cc scooter engine strapped under the boot with a generator where the gearbox would be. you can switch it on when the battery is less than 75% or wait till it runs down to 6.5% and it will start itself. Depends on how far you are going and how fast you want to drive whether you fire it up early and use petrol. It also means if public chargers aren't working when you get there just nip to BP... only if you can't run an extension lead out the window of the person you are visiting and leave them a couple of quid / cake / bottled real ales ;-)
3 use my X-Trail ;-) Won't be getting rid of that until someone brings out an EV with 50+ miles range that can tow and doesn't cost £60k+.
What usually happens is I fill the REX tank and keep a 10 litre jerry can in the car the REX only has 9litres
. Drive about 150 miles to a rapaid charger, which empties both the battery and most of the REX, then stick it on a charger, nip to gregs (I regularly stop at Chievely on the M4/A34 on the way to mum and dads on the south coast). Then come back and the car has 80% charge or more, fill up the REX tank from the jerry can and drive the rest of the way. Uses about half the second tank. I can live with that 1 duel fill stop VS 3 rapid stops in pure EV.Regarding towing... sadly there's only 2 cars with electric motors that can tow:
The Outlander can tow up to 1.5 tonnes but only has 25 mile real world EV range + hundreds on petrol
The Model X can tow 2.5 tonnes. But costs over £60k. And won't be landing in the UK for a few months yet.
Potentially the Audi E-tron and Golf GTE can as well but it depends who you ask!
Range will be affected the same way as when towing in a dino burner. Expect about 30% less with a fully loaded box trailer or big caravan.
Expect a 5-10% less if you have a small camping trailer with some camping gear or a towbar mouinted bike rack (the real reason I want to capability! LOL)
The biggest problem for Telsa owners - is how do you fit in a Supercharger with a 24ft caravan on the back? Unhitch? Leave the caravan sticking out? LOL
Hopefully by the time they arrive in the UK they'll have rebuilt them so they look like petrol pump and you pull up alongside and drive off again.
ORD said:
The answer re renewable generation is that every plausibly sane step is already being taken in this direction. A huge proportion of consumer bills is attributable to clean energy generation and transmission, and it will increase massively over the next 10 years. It is arguable that we already have more than the economically optimal amount of green generation, but we will be paying through the nose for a little bit more of it. It is astonishingly expensive stuff.
If we were to accept that consumer energy bills should go through the roof (i.e. thousands of pounds per household), we could increase renewable energy generation a lot more.
Seriously… this is the most incomplete incorrect fob off of all answers I’ve ever seen anywhere on the internet. Green energy is actually getting cheaper and cheaper and will before 2020 become cheaper than fossil powered energy. Which means petrol will get cheaper too as it takes 6kWh of electric to make a gallon of petrol! You could drive 24 miles in an EV using that!
Don’t read blog posts made by people arguing about whether using fossil fuels is a good idea. There are PR companies that are paid to contribute misleading evidence to the debate on how quickly we should move away from fossil fuels. With billions of pounds a year at stake they can afford to pay millions to a PR agency that employs dozens of full time bloggers to write BS in any site where “the public” may be reading and can be conditioned into thinking what the companies want. The messages get picked up and repeated ad-infinitum. The best example to mind is the article the Daily Mail ran on deforestation caused by nickel smelting by the supplier for the Prius batteries. Daily Mail had to pull the article from their website when it turned out the Sudbury plant had cleaned up its act with smoke stack scrubbers 30 years earlier and has since won awards for environmental regeneration. you may not realise it but there's been a long running PR battle run by companies such as this: www.edelman.co.uk/about/ or more open bloggers like this... www.desmogblog.com/alex-epstein . Be careful you aren't passing on messages that big corporates want you to believe. I've seen example sin marketing literature where they have several thousand accounts on different web platforms that are maintained as regular users, but allow you to slip in messages here and thre for a fee. For all you know I could be one of them working for the electric car industry ;-)
You have to do your own back ground reading.
That’s said here’s how you know a Green Energy supplier gets you green electricity . The idea that green electricity comes from coal or nukes or gas is just misplaced.
I’ve got about 15 years experience of working in Electric, gas and water billing systems so have a rough idea of what I’m talking about – this is off the top of my head so some bits may be a bit fuzzy.
To be a market participant or Retail energy supplier you need several things…
A contract with a generator to buy electricity.
A contract with a shipper to ship your electricity using national grid and the DNO (distribution network operator).
As a meter operator to measure the consumption of your customers.
There’s a process where the units that have clocked up on everyone’s meter needs to be accounted for and the costs apportioned to the relevant supplier. At the moment the only fudge factor is that the domestic reads aren’t half hourly but annualy – so say if you drive an electric car and have high usage but go on holiday for 2 months every December – they might think you use 1000 units a month in December and January but in fact you use zero. That’s because currently they use a standard profile for residential customers. So for example if you are a green electric supplier and have 100,000 electric customers, then at 5pm-5:30pm on a December night if the profile is for a demand of 5kW you need to make sure you have somewhere you can buy 500MW of green electric from. That’s why I’ve noted Good Energy have started using a lot more biogas than they used to when they had less customers. It's its dark and not windy they are down to hydro and biogas.
Energy companies have an energy trading team that prepurchases energy from their chosen suppliers under contract, and if you get caught short at settlement time you then end up paying a horrendous spot price. AS more and more people get Smart meters they'll be able to properly account for where the energy is going and reduce the costs of operating the networks by building energy storage in the right places instead of having to upgrade the wiring.
Or at least that's how I remember it.
This will explain it better if you have time??
https://www.elexon.co.uk/reference/technical-opera...
The answer re renewable generation is that every plausibly sane step is already being taken in this direction. A huge proportion of consumer bills is attributable to clean energy generation and transmission, and it will increase massively over the next 10 years. It is arguable that we already have more than the economically optimal amount of green generation, but we will be paying through the nose for a little bit more of it. It is astonishingly expensive stuff.
If we were to accept that consumer energy bills should go through the roof (i.e. thousands of pounds per household), we could increase renewable energy generation a lot more.
ORD said:
Devil2575 said:
Ok, so show me the evidence to support the "huge proportion" statement.
Do your own Googling, you lazy git! Ofgem is a good place to start.Don’t read blog posts made by people arguing about whether using fossil fuels is a good idea. There are PR companies that are paid to contribute misleading evidence to the debate on how quickly we should move away from fossil fuels. With billions of pounds a year at stake they can afford to pay millions to a PR agency that employs dozens of full time bloggers to write BS in any site where “the public” may be reading and can be conditioned into thinking what the companies want. The messages get picked up and repeated ad-infinitum. The best example to mind is the article the Daily Mail ran on deforestation caused by nickel smelting by the supplier for the Prius batteries. Daily Mail had to pull the article from their website when it turned out the Sudbury plant had cleaned up its act with smoke stack scrubbers 30 years earlier and has since won awards for environmental regeneration. you may not realise it but there's been a long running PR battle run by companies such as this: www.edelman.co.uk/about/ or more open bloggers like this... www.desmogblog.com/alex-epstein . Be careful you aren't passing on messages that big corporates want you to believe. I've seen example sin marketing literature where they have several thousand accounts on different web platforms that are maintained as regular users, but allow you to slip in messages here and thre for a fee. For all you know I could be one of them working for the electric car industry ;-)
You have to do your own back ground reading.
That’s said here’s how you know a Green Energy supplier gets you green electricity . The idea that green electricity comes from coal or nukes or gas is just misplaced.
I’ve got about 15 years experience of working in Electric, gas and water billing systems so have a rough idea of what I’m talking about – this is off the top of my head so some bits may be a bit fuzzy.
To be a market participant or Retail energy supplier you need several things…
A contract with a generator to buy electricity.
A contract with a shipper to ship your electricity using national grid and the DNO (distribution network operator).
As a meter operator to measure the consumption of your customers.
There’s a process where the units that have clocked up on everyone’s meter needs to be accounted for and the costs apportioned to the relevant supplier. At the moment the only fudge factor is that the domestic reads aren’t half hourly but annualy – so say if you drive an electric car and have high usage but go on holiday for 2 months every December – they might think you use 1000 units a month in December and January but in fact you use zero. That’s because currently they use a standard profile for residential customers. So for example if you are a green electric supplier and have 100,000 electric customers, then at 5pm-5:30pm on a December night if the profile is for a demand of 5kW you need to make sure you have somewhere you can buy 500MW of green electric from. That’s why I’ve noted Good Energy have started using a lot more biogas than they used to when they had less customers. It's its dark and not windy they are down to hydro and biogas.
Energy companies have an energy trading team that prepurchases energy from their chosen suppliers under contract, and if you get caught short at settlement time you then end up paying a horrendous spot price. AS more and more people get Smart meters they'll be able to properly account for where the energy is going and reduce the costs of operating the networks by building energy storage in the right places instead of having to upgrade the wiring.
Or at least that's how I remember it.
This will explain it better if you have time??
https://www.elexon.co.uk/reference/technical-opera...
AW111 said:
A large number of Melbourne houses have off-street parking, which makes an EV city runabout very practical.
I could charge at home and at work (work has 3 phase @ high current too).
Yep. Most Australian houses have off street parking at the very least. I could charge at home and at work (work has 3 phase @ high current too).
Considering one (Tesla S) for a work car if the finances stack up. My driving is 110km on mainly 70km/h+ roads, 40 minutes on a motorway. Then parked at work for 8 hours (3 phase power as well) and I do that twice a week. Otherwise it is either sat in my garage or doing similar distances around the region.
I'd want a fun second car for weekends, but I'd want that if I had any sedan for mainly commuting purposes.
Phunk said:
60-80 miles.
Renault Zoe is approx the same, perhaps 5 miles more.
However Nissan have just released a Leaf with a bigger battery which should give a real world 90-110 mile range
I've had my Leaf over 6 months. The 100-0% range is actually very close to 90 miles. But you never will go to 0% - Your be stuck overwise. I recharge it once the battery drops to below 20%, so I plug mine in every 70 miles or so. Which for me is about twice a week.Renault Zoe is approx the same, perhaps 5 miles more.
However Nissan have just released a Leaf with a bigger battery which should give a real world 90-110 mile range
Nissan has just released a new Leaf with a bigger battery which should mean a 100-0% range of 110+ miles. This is actually enough for me to go from Leicester to London without worry - My current Leaf can just about do it non-stop but the last 5-10 miles is very tight on charge - but it's good fun
300bhp/ton said:
I need to look further into this, but I just can't get the figures to work out. Been looking at the Leaf and Zoe and to do any sort of meaningful annual mileage, the battery rental just rapes you on monthly costs.
Just buy a pre-reg or ex-demo car. Nissan dealers are selling nearly new ex-demos for £12-14k, that price includes the battery to own. blearyeyedboy said:
I think Tesla Models S and X are too big for Europe. When I had a poke around a Model S it was lovely but it was bloody huge.
Their planned Model 3 could be a game changer in that respect.If When electric models begin to become more widespread and price points fall a little, I can see myself in one.
When you drive the S it's actually hides its size very well. My wife really likes the looks of the X, it's actually no bigger than a Range Rover or Porsche Caynne. Those things have no problems in cities, price wise the X is on par with the luxury 4x4 as well. I think it's highly likely we'll replace our Leaf with a X in the next 18 months when they hit UK shores.Their planned Model 3 could be a game changer in that respect.
Conspiracy theorist above made me laugh into my coffee. I am, for the record, not a paid infiltrator from those evil coal barons.
I didn't say that someone on a green tariff doesn't pay for green energy. He does. He just doesn't get it. He gets electricity from the distribution lines, which is a mix.
I didn't say that someone on a green tariff doesn't pay for green energy. He does. He just doesn't get it. He gets electricity from the distribution lines, which is a mix.
ORD said:
Conspiracy theorist above made me laugh into my coffee. I am, for the record, not a paid infiltrator from those evil coal barons.
I didn't say that someone on a green tariff doesn't pay for green energy. He does. He just doesn't get it. He gets electricity from the distribution lines, which is a mix.
Being in Australia I've had a look and with a few solar panels on the roof of a house you could easily get enough power to run one, especially when combined with some decent battery storage. I didn't say that someone on a green tariff doesn't pay for green energy. He does. He just doesn't get it. He gets electricity from the distribution lines, which is a mix.
ORD said:
Conspiracy theorist above made me laugh into my coffee. I am, for the record, not a paid infiltrator from those evil coal barons.
I didn't say that someone on a green tariff doesn't pay for green energy. He does. He just doesn't get it. He gets electricity from the distribution lines, which is a mix.
Most green people argument boils down to "it's us against the evil big corporations, if you don't believe us it's because you're too stupid". Like everyone they find their bogeyman.I didn't say that someone on a green tariff doesn't pay for green energy. He does. He just doesn't get it. He gets electricity from the distribution lines, which is a mix.
Thing is, with all "green" energy generation available to the grid running and adding as much as it's able, what is it your eco-electric tariff is buying or changing?
At the moment the only EV I'd consider owning would be the Tesla Model S, as its performance is similar to the Mustang, which means I can still perform quick overtakes on B road dawdlers on my way to work. Something with similar performance to a Fiesta would frustrate me.
Range day to day is not a problem as my round trip is only 25 miles, even on days where I go to the airport and back there would still be 120 miles left on the average Tesla model S. Which is all fine and dandy until I come to the biggest bug bear.
The big bug bear is the price, in order to get the same performance as my Mustang it costs a lot of money, granted I'd only be spending £10 a week in electric rather than £55 a week in petrol but given the Mustang is bought and paid for the cost of the monthly PCP would have to come down significantly if I were looking at PCP'ing a new Mustang for example, to make up the cost difference, only when that cost is less than or equal to would I start to consider it as a viable replacement.
Range day to day is not a problem as my round trip is only 25 miles, even on days where I go to the airport and back there would still be 120 miles left on the average Tesla model S. Which is all fine and dandy until I come to the biggest bug bear.
The big bug bear is the price, in order to get the same performance as my Mustang it costs a lot of money, granted I'd only be spending £10 a week in electric rather than £55 a week in petrol but given the Mustang is bought and paid for the cost of the monthly PCP would have to come down significantly if I were looking at PCP'ing a new Mustang for example, to make up the cost difference, only when that cost is less than or equal to would I start to consider it as a viable replacement.
The Tesla sports car i drove this year in California was awesome. The silence made you somehow less ready for that instant hit of acceleration. Even after a few miles of driving it you were never quite prepared for such huge twist from the first press of the pedal.
Impressive and yes i would own one.
Impressive and yes i would own one.
hairyben said:
Most green people argument boils down to "it's us against the evil big corporations, if you don't believe us it's because you're too stupid". Like everyone they find their bogeyman.
I don't think that's true at all. Sure, I see your point about the real eco-loonies, but I think the majority of people who are pro-sustainability (myself included) just think that we need to consider the long term impacts of our consumption, and how we can tweak things to make it less harmful (and thus cheaper long term).On the flip side, the "NO WAY I'M GOING ELECTRIC" argument seems to boil down to "I don't like change, and I'm not prepared to suffer any personal inconvenience or cost at all for the better of society"
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