Would you buy a non-EV ever again?

[sixor8]

TheDeuce said:

Two plus years later and I've driven all over this frankly very small country we live in. I've needed to charge en route four times..

Collectively my entire time spent using public chargers is less than the total time I'd have spent at petrol stations - and unlike at petrol stations, as my car charges for 20-30 minutes I'm busy scoffing a big Mac or KFC, or doing some shopping etc.

Playing Devil's Advocate, would you have stopped for the takeaway unless you needed to wait for a bit of charging? If I travel any distance (planned that is), I take prepared food (sarnies etc) with me. I'm always surprised by the queues at convenience food outlets at service stations. The prices are always £5 for Beans on Toast anybody? Peterborough Services (A605 / A1)

At those same services back in April, the electric cars were having to queue up for a charging spot. It was a Friday afternoon though and start of school breaks.

[TheDeuce]

sixor8 said:

TheDeuce said:

Two plus years later and I've driven all over this frankly very small country we live in. I've needed to charge en route four times..

Collectively my entire time spent using public chargers is less than the total time I'd have spent at petrol stations - and unlike at petrol stations, as my car charges for 20-30 minutes I'm busy scoffing a big Mac or KFC, or doing some shopping etc.

Playing Devil's Advocate, would you have stopped for the takeaway unless you needed to wait for a bit of charging? If I travel any distance (planned that is), I take prepared food (sarnies etc) with me. I'm always surprised by the queues at convenience food outlets at service stations. The prices are always £5 for Beans on Toast anybody? Peterborough Services (A605 / A1)

At those same services back in April, the electric cars were having to queue up for a charging spot. It was a Friday afternoon though and start of school breaks.

I generally never stop unless I have too!

Although I would rather stop for food as opposed to having to be 'organised' and take food with me

I know the A1 Services at Boro' well, I live in Stamford. Stop complaining, they have a good selection

Regards charging on longer trips, the few times I have done it I have mostly stopped somewhere interesting where I might actually not mind spending some time. On a trip up to Northumberland earlier this year we knew we would need to stop to charge and York was halfway up so we stopped there and had lunch and a glass of wine by the river and then did some shopping for stuff for our weekend break. The charger bays were free if you were charging and were right next to the restaurant we ate at. That's got to be better than a splash and dash at a petrol station which costs about £100 in a powerful SUV these days.

[TheRainMaker]

Gary C said:

JonnyVTEC said:

The convenience thing is a myth IMO. It genuinely annoys me if driving ICE to work only to realise you need fuel
In the morning or on the way back.

Surely its worse if you realise your EV is flat and you need to go somewhere.

I had that this week, an unexpected trip to kent and suddenly the EV is a massive pain in the butt.

I left kent and then had two meetings in London, no problem the car park I'm heading to has four chargers.

Once I get there all are blocked by other EV's

One tesla parked across two bays not charging at all, the other two chargers have got cars sat on them fully charged.





To answer the original question, I wouldn't buy a brand new car which wasn't an EV, however there are loads of cars I still would like to own, all are ICE.

[JonChalk]

TheRainMaker said:

One tesla parked across two bays not charging at all, the other two chargers have got cars sat on them fully charged.

People are the things not up to scratch, not the infrastructure....

[Register1]

DJP31 said:

I'm 5+ years into EV's and on my second Tesla Model S. I can't think of another car that ticks all the boxes - space,performance,tech,running costs etc. I don't do track days and don't know of an ICE that could improve on the package I have.

The Tesla S is still the car to beat.

The 3, is great, the Y is a fat 3
Wife is super happy with her 3 SR+

When our diesel Touareg becomes too old, I will look for a Tesla S

[Olibol]

We’re about to get rid of our last ICE car. We’ve had a Model 3 LR for about 18 months, which is perfect for everything but fun backroads driving. Driven two thousand mile trips in it without issue or delay.

The issue remains that there’s a shortage of electric fun cars. We’ve bought an electric Mini as the closest thing we can get at the moment, and I think that’ll do fine until the MGC EV comes along (which I’m pinning high hopes on as an MX5 alternative).

I kept my ICE sports car for almost a year alongside the Tesla, but the fun went out of driving it knowing that I was burning petrol when I didn’t have to. I stopped taking it on longer journeys for the fun of it, and needed up only using it on sunny Sunday mornings. Even then I felt increasingly self conscious and stupid. The world is moving on, and I’m happy to make small sacrifices to try and help save it!

[tamore]

JonChalk said:

TheRainMaker said:

One tesla parked across two bays not charging at all, the other two chargers have got cars sat on them fully charged.

People are the things not up to scratch, not the infrastructure....

now that's just not that case. 5 mins on zap map will reveal some serious issues with the charging network. too many 'charger deserts' (take the peak district as an example), and maintenance of chargers is very hit and miss. it'll get there, but the charging network as a whole is being left behind by EV take-up. we're through early adopters who put up with the issues.

[CheesecakeRunner]

TheRainMaker said:

Once I get there all are blocked by other EV's

One tesla parked across two bays not charging at all, the other two chargers have got cars sat on them fully charged.

Whilst there’s no excuse for the parking of the Model X, the other two are fine IMO.

You can’t tell if the white Model 3 is fully charged or not, as neither the display, nor the charge port give any indication of the charge state. Maybe the Merc shows it’s state, I don’t know.

And those are destination chargers, once on, you’re expected to be able to sit there even fully charged, and move when convenient to you. You should never rely on a destination charger.

[TheRainMaker]

CheesecakeRunner said:

You can’t tell if the white Model 3 is fully charged or not, as neither the display, nor the charge port give any indication of the charge state. Maybe the Merc shows it’s state, I don’t know.

Zap map was stating all four were available as of 1 min ago, could well have been wrong through.

I'm not sure I'd agree with dumping your car and just leaving it for hours fully charged though, seems very selfish when there are a very limited number of chargers to start with.

[CheesecakeRunner]

On a rapid charger, you’d be right. On a destination.. that’s what they’re for.

Ultimately the situation will only get resolved when every parking space in a car park like that has a slow 3.6 or 7kw charger on it. It’ll happen one day.

[l354uge]

Looked at an mg4 yesterday to replace her mii electric next year, lovely car and she loves an EV, but had a few close range calls recently which is ruining her enjoyment of EVs, these were caused by ancient electric highway, but I was always confident there was an instavolt nearby to bail us out, not anymore!

Went to the spa today, 65 miles if range, 30 miles each way, but there's two instavolts at the spa, great!

Not great, both not working in different ways.

Okay, let's try the Warwick McDonald's ones, one free, not working either! Then a queue of 4 built up asking if we were finished... Gave up on a charge and a mcflurry and rolled the dice with a nearby BP pulse/polar unit, it was ancient but it worked! I take back what I have always said about pulse now

The cars are great, but the charger network still requires you to plan your life around it, annoying.

[TheDeuce]

l354uge said:

Looked at an mg4 yesterday to replace her mii electric next year, lovely car and she loves an EV, but had a few close range calls recently which is ruining her enjoyment of EVs, these were caused by ancient electric highway, but I was always confident there was an instavolt nearby to bail us out, not anymore!

Went to the spa today, 65 miles if range, 30 miles each way, but there's two instavolts at the spa, great!

Not great, both not working in different ways.

Okay, let's try the Warwick McDonald's ones, one free, not working either! Then a queue of 4 built up asking if we were finished... Gave up on a charge and a mcflurry and rolled the dice with a nearby BP pulse/polar unit, it was ancient but it worked! I take back what I have always said about pulse now

The cars are great, but the charger network still requires you to plan your life around it, annoying.

The Mii has a tiny battery though - if you had an EV with double the size battery it would be far less likely you'd ever need to worry, even if you did happen upon the odd duff charger.

We're looking at a 220mile round trip on Tuesday which we can almost certainly make without a charge - but just in case I checked and there are about fifty 50-150kw charger en-route, so if we were to find one that is broken we'd just move on the next. We would never pull into one that wasn't available - we check the on google maps and if there aren't at least two places free when we're fairly close we just push on to the next. That's something I appreciate you can't always do if you have a smaller range to begin with.

On a sort of related note I used a 50kw charger the other day and a bloke pulled in at the bay next to me and started going on about there not being enough chargers 'these days' (I'm not sure what other days he was thinking of). He then went to plug the type two plug into his EQC, I asked why he didn't use the CCS (50kw as opposed to 7kw) and he looked at me dumbfounded for a moment, pointed to the type two he was holding and said 'this is the one for my car'. He had no idea that if he removed the rubber cover from his charger port he could use the CCS and charge seven times faster. So there we have it, a bloke roaming the country taking the time to whinge about 'not enough' chargers - and all the time he was charging at a seventh the speed he should be and taking up the charger for three times longer and making others wait!

Edited by TheDeuce on Sunday 2nd October 18:03

[RobbyJ]

TheRainMaker said:

I had that this week, an unexpected trip to kent and suddenly the EV is a massive pain in the butt.

I left kent and then had two meetings in London, no problem the car park I'm heading to has four chargers.

Once I get there all are blocked by other EV's

One tesla parked across two bays not charging at all, the other two chargers have got cars sat on them fully charged.





To answer the original question, I wouldn't buy a brand new car which wasn't an EV, however there are loads of cars I still would like to own, all are ICE.

Is that the car park near the Shard? I tried to use one of those chargers a few months back and it didn't work, the others were all full of EV's.

[Bert Plerg]

NDA said:

tamore said:

he'd have needed to sit on that charger for 40mins to get enough charge just to get him to a mcdonald's near bangor to get a fast charge. this at 5pm on a friday evening, so i'd wager there was someone on that charger when he arrived.

That is miserable and would put you off EV's for good!

It absolutely would. My parents have an i3 and charge almost exclusively at home, so don't really get any experience of public charging. When they venture further they come home with tales like this. Everything is difficult, everything is broken, everything is somebody else's fault.

When probing deeper, they did zero planning, picked the cheapest charger, not the most reliable networks, waited in a queue instead of seeing what else is free nearby, ignoring basically all my advice and just picking random things from Zap Map. At least they now understand to only look for CCS 50kW+chargers. We're making progress.

I am almost convinced that 80% of horror stories are from people like this who don't plan ahead, or don't do public charging often enough to build up any troubleshooting experience. That's not to say there aren't issues (my goodness, there sure are!) but I think there's a large, silent population of EV owners who can deal with those issues without too much fuss, so you never hear from them.

The other day my dad managed to plug in to a podpoint at Tesco, but forgot (yes, I'd explained this some time ago) about activating the charge so it stopped after 15 mins. He grumbled about that. I mean, is that really an "issue" with public chargers, or certain EV owners? Should it be easier to use? Definitely. Are you dumb for not spending 20 mins reading up on a charger network you know you're going to use in future? Definitely.

EDIT: To fully acknowledge what l354uge said above, even experienced users could get caught out, for sure. But often enough to cause real issues? Not yet, for me.

Edited by Bert Plerg on Monday 3rd October 09:23

[soupdragon1]

I gave a little bit of thought to this over the weekend

At some point, we know that EV's will need to be taxed in some shape or form, so I decided to try and equalise EV v fuel costs in a more standardised way, removing all Govt taxes

Roughly, we're looking at £1 per litre for diesel excluding taxes. A litre of fuel is 10kw of energy, so excluding tax, diesel costs about 10p per KW. Thats cheaper than electric by quite some distance

However, on the other side of the calculation is efficiency. A diesel car can expect to get about 1 mile per KW (at ~45MPG) whereas an EV can do much better, with 3 miles being easily achievable in most cars, and 4 being possible too.

So if you pay 30p per KWh to charge your EV and get 3 miles per KWh, then its roughly the same cost as a moderately efficient 45 MPG diesel car.

So overall, when you look at the cost (ex tax) and efficiency, there really isn't a lot in it, as long as electric doesn't go too far above 30p per KWh. If you are charging in public (much more expensive) or at home on a night time tariff (much cheaper) then of course the numbers will change but for long term view, and assuming the govt will want revenue from EV drivers to match ICE car revenue, the costs sort of balance out.

Then there is the purchase price....EV's are clearly more expensive to buy.

[JonnyVTEC]

We need to consider the benefit to congestion from EVs for that debate. They tend to get moving quicker as people have less to faff with so you get 10 cars through a traffic light rather than 7-8. etc.

[phil4]

We've two EV cars, and 1 ICE motorbike.

I can't see myself going back unless ICe whips something out of the hat. Even if like for like on costs I'd still prefer the EV.

So it'd need to be an ICE that offers something above and beyond the EV, and costs less, for me to change back... I can't see that happening.

I've done the fun ICE cars for the weekend and doubt I'll ever do that again EV or ICE. The motorbike might well go EV when there's some reasonable priced choice.

[TheDeuce]

soupdragon1 said:

I gave a little bit of thought to this over the weekend

At some point, we know that EV's will need to be taxed in some shape or form, so I decided to try and equalise EV v fuel costs in a more standardised way, removing all Govt taxes

Roughly, we're looking at £1 per litre for diesel excluding taxes. A litre of fuel is 10kw of energy, so excluding tax, diesel costs about 10p per KW. Thats cheaper than electric by quite some distance

However, on the other side of the calculation is efficiency. A diesel car can expect to get about 1 mile per KW (at ~45MPG) whereas an EV can do much better, with 3 miles being easily achievable in most cars, and 4 being possible too.

So if you pay 30p per KWh to charge your EV and get 3 miles per KWh, then its roughly the same cost as a moderately efficient 45 MPG diesel car.

So overall, when you look at the cost (ex tax) and efficiency, there really isn't a lot in it, as long as electric doesn't go too far above 30p per KWh. If you are charging in public (much more expensive) or at home on a night time tariff (much cheaper) then of course the numbers will change but for long term view, and assuming the govt will want revenue from EV drivers to match ICE car revenue, the costs sort of balance out.

Then there is the purchase price....EV's are clearly more expensive to buy.

That seems quite a sensible way to compare costs, it is likely that the tax burden on EV's will increase over time, although we can't say to what extent and how closely it will mirror what has happened with ICE cars to date.

The cost per mile is skewed though as virtually all EV owners that can charge at home can charge at night for a fraction of you assumed 30p per kwh. Many probably don't right now, for whatever reason - but as an ownership/cost proposition, pretty much anyone can get a far lower rate - currently around 7.5p per kw is typical, although does come at the cost of a few pence more per kw/h during daytime hours. That's hardly an issue as most EV user use the bulk of their power to charge the EV of course.

It's also important to note that the cheap rate power isn't some kind of EV subsidy that will get taken away at some point, it's a key part of this countries power plan for the future and is here to stay.

[TheRainMaker]

JonnyVTEC said:

We need to consider the benefit to congestion from EVs for that debate. They tend to get moving quicker as people have less to faff with so you get 10 cars through a traffic light rather than 7-8. etc.

What a load of balls

[TheDeuce]

TheRainMaker said:

JonnyVTEC said:

We need to consider the benefit to congestion from EVs for that debate. They tend to get moving quicker as people have less to faff with so you get 10 cars through a traffic light rather than 7-8. etc.

What a load of balls

I get the guys point... but no matter how smart off the line EV's tend to be, if the one at the front is a Peugeot EV it will still contain a Peugeot driver, and they'll still fanny about hold everyone up

That's the problem with the theory - in any queue of cars there's always going to one muppet that is slow!