EVs... no one wants them!

[Fastlane]

EddieSteadyGo said:

Unfortunately not. You need a "compatible charging system", which basically means either certain cars or a certain chargers that Octupus can integrate with.

If you click this link and then the button "I am eligible" it will tell you if your setup is compatible.

https://octopus.energy/smart/intelligent-octopus-g...

Not quite. That's only for Octopus Intelligent. You just need a smart meter for Octopus Go.

[p1stonhead]

I’ll happily pay the normal electric rate with my dumb charger if it means they can’t specifically turn off my charger when the grid is under pressure in the future.

[barryrs]

p1stonhead said:

I’ll happily pay the normal electric rate with my dumb charger if it means they can’t specifically turn off my charger when the grid is under pressure in the future.

Stick it to the “man”!

[740EVTORQUES]

So pay more now in order to prevent some unspecified concern in the future that may not ever materialise?

[p1stonhead]

barryrs said:

p1stonhead said:

I’ll happily pay the normal electric rate with my dumb charger if it means they can’t specifically turn off my charger when the grid is under pressure in the future.

Stick it to the “man”!

For my mileage it makes little difference and the charger was £400 installed not £1000.

[EddieSteadyGo]

Fastlane said:

EddieSteadyGo said:

Unfortunately not. You need a "compatible charging system", which basically means either certain cars or a certain chargers that Octupus can integrate with.

If you click this link and then the button "I am eligible" it will tell you if your setup is compatible.

https://octopus.energy/smart/intelligent-octopus-g...

Not quite. That's only for Octopus Intelligent. You just need a smart meter for Octopus Go.

Actually, I think you will find the question related to the "Octopus 7.5p" tariff, which is Octopus Intelligent. Octopus Go is a bit more expensive.

[Fastlane]

EddieSteadyGo said:

Actually, I think you will find the question related to the "Octopus 7.5p" tariff, which is Octopus Intelligent. Octopus Go is a bit more expensive.

I stand corrected. The Octopus Go rate is 9p at night now. I used to be on Go at the 7.5p rate before moving to Intelligent and hadn't realised they had upped it.

[sixor8]

p1stonhead said:

For my mileage it makes little difference and the charger was £400 installed not £1000.

Was that a while ago, or subsidised? I'm on Octopus Go and am charging for 4 hours a night at 9p / kWh using a granny charger. I considered a home charger to charge at 7kW/h but they start at £800 I found, and I doubt I'll spend more than £250 per year, charging at home and the occasional public charger on a long journey. I've this car for 3 yrs and don't do many miles these days.

[p1stonhead]

sixor8 said:

p1stonhead said:

For my mileage it makes little difference and the charger was £400 installed not £1000.

Was that a while ago, or subsidised? I'm on Octopus Go and am charging for 4 hours a night at 9p / kWh using a granny charger. I considered a home charger to charge at 7kW/h but they start at £800 I found, and I doubt I'll spend more than £250 per year, charging at home and the occasional public charger on a long journey. I've this car for 3 yrs and don't do many miles these days.

Bought a charger online. Local electrician charged me £100 to install it. Took him 30 mins.

Mines one of these;
https://ecolectrix.co.uk/product/rolec-wallpod-ev-...

[braddo]

740EVTORQUES said:

... it’s like a petrol car that a lot of the time you can fill up at home at a 90% discount ...

This is a good way of looking at it.

I'm considering a plug-in hybrid for the next family car. We don't commute and don't have off-street parking. Lots of short journeys in a city means that fuel economy for any ICE is terrible. 10-12mpg in my old V8 Cayenne, 25mpg in a Mini Clubman (1.5 triple). If I plug a hybrid into the local lamppost I think the economy will be somewhere around 35mpg for the electric range. That might sound low but it's about twice as efficient as the ICE equivalent for those local journeys.

I thought I would be several years away from having a plug-in car but a PHEV is looking like the best option for me now. We do long holiday drives and I like engines so I won't be buying a BEV for a fair while yet. (People need to remember that the number of cars that do long continental drives is a very small portion of the UK national fleet)

[DonkeyApple]

p1stonhead said:

For my mileage it makes little difference and the charger was £400 installed not £1000.

The charger is an interesting aspect. Now the ZEV Mandate is starting if I were at the point where I wished to switch to an EV and I was going to lease a new one, the first thing I'd be doing is asking the salesman when he was going to pay for my charger install to allow his deal to go ahead.

The Mandate is a golden ticket for consumers to hold vendors to ransom but sadly consumers very rarely exercise their opportunities.

But the market itself will evolve. Vendors will have to start throwing packages together to start fking each other over to ensure they get the EV sale that saves them from a tax reaming and allows them to sell 4 ICE units.

Every EV sale a competitor takes is 3 to 4 ICE sales lost.

Give me a fair lease price, pay for the charger and why not cover a chunk of my energy bill and I'll let you sell those 3 ICE cars you need to shift. As the EV consumer I'm absolutely essential to them being able to sell any ICE cars.

They're going to have to innovate to attract the non BIK buyers and they're going to have to fight each other for them.

Or, of course as we're stoopid Brits, they'll just increase the price 20% and offer a 5% cashback and we'll be in like Flynn for our savvy bargain.

[braddo]

I think a fair estimate is that 90% of the UK's cars don't leave the UK.

Eurotunnel Shuttle Services carried 1.6 million trucks and 2.6 million cars in 2017 (total number; both directions).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46891186

2.6m cars in both directions - so halve that number to account for return journeys. Take some more off to account for EU cars visiting the UK. Add some more back to account for the ferries. So let's say 2m UK cars visit mainland Europe per year.

It looks like there are about 35 million cars in the UK (total fleet around 40m)? So in a given year about 6% of cars go to mainland Europe.

I wonder how many cars are used during a year to travel more than 200 miles within the UK in a single day non-stop? 10%? 20%?

So probably, around 75% of the UK's car fleet wouldn't have a problem with the 200-250 mile range of a 2024 EV. As charging infrastructure continues to evolve over the next 20 years, the steady transition to EVs over 20-30 years doesn't look like a problem at all.

[DonkeyApple]

braddo said:

I think a fair estimate is that 90% of the UK's cars don't leave the UK.

Eurotunnel Shuttle Services carried 1.6 million trucks and 2.6 million cars in 2017 (total number; both directions).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46891186

2.6m cars in both directions - so halve that number to account for return journeys. Take some more off to account for EU cars visiting the UK. Add some more back to account for the ferries. So let's say 2m UK cars visit mainland Europe per year.

It looks like there are about 35 million cars in the UK (total fleet around 40m)? So in a given year about 6% of cars go to mainland Europe.

I wonder how many cars are used during a year to travel more than 200 miles within the UK in a single day non-stop? 10%? 20%?

So probably, around 75% of the UK's car fleet wouldn't have a problem with the 200-250 mile range of a 2024 EV. As charging infrastructure continues to evolve over the next 20 years, the steady transition to EVs over 20-30 years doesn't look like a problem at all.

I've missed what this is in response to but I'd hazard that it's even lower than that as a person may well be doing more than one crossing a year. Then there is the matter of just how far they're all subsequently travelling, for example, do people still just cross for the booze cruise sort of thing? Certainly a lot aren't going particularly far into France.

I cross at least a few times a year but mostly to somewhere pretty local like Le Touquet or Epernay so an EV would be easy enough. For the South of France or into Germany and beyond I wouldn't bother using an EV.

The whole EV thing is only going to get easier and easier and by the 2040s there really won't be any significant usage cases that aren't as easy or easier than ICE.

[FiF]

DonkeyApple said:

braddo said:

I think a fair estimate is that 90% of the UK's cars don't leave the UK.

Eurotunnel Shuttle Services carried 1.6 million trucks and 2.6 million cars in 2017 (total number; both directions).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46891186

2.6m cars in both directions - so halve that number to account for return journeys. Take some more off to account for EU cars visiting the UK. Add some more back to account for the ferries. So let's say 2m UK cars visit mainland Europe per year.

It looks like there are about 35 million cars in the UK (total fleet around 40m)? So in a given year about 6% of cars go to mainland Europe.

I wonder how many cars are used during a year to travel more than 200 miles within the UK in a single day non-stop? 10%? 20%?

So probably, around 75% of the UK's car fleet wouldn't have a problem with the 200-250 mile range of a 2024 EV. As charging infrastructure continues to evolve over the next 20 years, the steady transition to EVs over 20-30 years doesn't look like a problem at all.

I've missed what this is in response to but I'd hazard that it's even lower than that as a person may well be doing more than one crossing a year. Then there is the matter of just how far they're all subsequently travelling, for example, do people still just cross for the booze cruise sort of thing? Certainly a lot aren't going particularly far into France.

I cross at least a few times a year but mostly to somewhere pretty local like Le Touquet or Epernay so an EV would be easy enough. For the South of France or into Germany and beyond I wouldn't bother using an EV.

The whole EV thing is only going to get easier and easier and by the 2040s there really won't be any significant usage cases that aren't as easy or easier than ICE.

Times that I've travelled into mainland Europe by car was essentially into near Paris and surroundings, Ruhr or Eifel region, and Rotterdam and Schiedam area. That covers 50% of journeys.

Remaining 50% maybe 6 return trips per year up to northern Sweden, nowhere below 3 hours north of Stockholm. That's a two day trip minimum with one driver. Probably less than 0.01% of UK vehicles do something like that is my guess. Can't imagine it in an EV, but you never know.

Thankfully these days don't do that anymore so not relevant. EV will suit me fine when it's time to change.

Though in interest of full disclosure my ideal bucket list trip would still be a Bentley Continental T, disembark from ferry, point south towards the Riviera, open taps and enjoy the steam engine like shove.

[DonkeyApple]

FiF said:

Though in interest of full disclosure my ideal bucket list trip would still be a Bentley Continental T, disembark from ferry, point south towards the Riviera, open taps and enjoy the steam engine like shove.

Certainly idyllic. The reality however is that you can't restart the car once in the other side and end up nipping back to get the wife's Audi.

[braddo]

My post wasn't in response to a particular recent comment. As someone who does do one or two long trips to southern France each year, I thought it would be interesting to consider how many cars in the UK fleet might actually do the kind of distances where an EV would need a charge during a journey.

Or more importantly, how many tens of millions of UK cars wouldn't need a charge mid-journey for most or all of their entire lives.

[DonkeyApple]

braddo said:

My post wasn't in response to a particular recent comment. As someone who does do one or two long trips to southern France each year, I thought it would be interesting to consider how many cars in the UK fleet might actually do the kind of distances where an EV would need a charge during a journey.

Or more importantly, how many tens of millions of UK cars wouldn't need a charge mid-journey for most or all of their entire lives.

Indeed. Personally, I don't buy into the 'I need to travel 400 miles' but actually think the issue currently is the 100 mile out and back in a day journeys as these are what are common and destination charging hasn't yet developed sufficiently to make that a no brainer.

[Mikebentley]

DonkeyApple said:

braddo said:

My post wasn't in response to a particular recent comment. As someone who does do one or two long trips to southern France each year, I thought it would be interesting to consider how many cars in the UK fleet might actually do the kind of distances where an EV would need a charge during a journey.

Or more importantly, how many tens of millions of UK cars wouldn't need a charge mid-journey for most or all of their entire lives.

Indeed. Personally, I don't buy into the 'I need to travel 400 miles' but actually think the issue currently is the 100 mile out and back in a day journeys as these are what are common and destination charging hasn't yet developed sufficiently to make that a no brainer.

Most EVs will comfortably do that journey all year round. I’ve charged away from home twice in twelve months. Hideously expensive but the rest of the 22k miles a year are at 2ppm so I can deal with it.

[DonkeyApple]

Mikebentley said:

DonkeyApple said:

braddo said:

My post wasn't in response to a particular recent comment. As someone who does do one or two long trips to southern France each year, I thought it would be interesting to consider how many cars in the UK fleet might actually do the kind of distances where an EV would need a charge during a journey.

Or more importantly, how many tens of millions of UK cars wouldn't need a charge mid-journey for most or all of their entire lives.

Indeed. Personally, I don't buy into the 'I need to travel 400 miles' but actually think the issue currently is the 100 mile out and back in a day journeys as these are what are common and destination charging hasn't yet developed sufficiently to make that a no brainer.

Most EVs will comfortably do that journey all year round. I’ve charged away from home twice in twelve months. Hideously expensive but the rest of the 22k miles a year are at 2ppm so I can deal with it.

I keep borrowing EVs to test this but while it's been doable for a few years it's still not doable my way.

Definitely, for local pottering it's a done deal, when the current car for that finally goes in the bin it would be mad to not replace with an EV but not yet for the car that gets used for the 200 mile round trips. Needs a few more years, if only for more destination chargers to go in.

Personally, if someone can home charge then in the U.K. I think we're at the point that anyone can switch but it's just now about which type of vehicle is most convenient.

[CheesecakeRunner]

DonkeyApple said:

Indeed. Personally, I don't buy into the 'I need to travel 400 miles' but actually think the issue currently is the 100 mile out and back in a day journeys as these are what are common and destination charging hasn't yet developed sufficiently to make that a no brainer.

I’ve been commuting Birmingham to Manchester since February. 210 mile round trip, and I get home all the time with somewhere between 28% and 32% battery remaining. Needing to charge hasn’t even crossed my mind, as even when I get home the car still says it’ll do 100 miles. Just plug it in and forget about it till the morning.