EVs in a jam.

Author
Discussion

RobDickinson

31,343 posts

255 months

Monday 17th February 2020
quotequote all
Yep this is what 500km range gets me currently. OK wont always get 500 in winter and roads are not this straight but still.


tamore

6,986 posts

285 months

Monday 17th February 2020
quotequote all
biggie is recharging speed. i've had a car which i used as my primary vehicle which got 250 miles out of a tank max. was fine, but obviously only took 5 mins to fill with petrol.

SWoll

18,428 posts

259 months

Monday 17th February 2020
quotequote all
tamore said:
biggie is recharging speed. i've had a car which i used as my primary vehicle which got 250 miles out of a tank max. was fine, but obviously only took 5 mins to fill with petrol.
Again, depends on if you can charge at home and if you regularly do 250 miles in one hit. We do about 1250 miles a month (or double the national average mileage in the UK) and just top up overnight using a 3 pin charger between midnight and 7am every few days. Far more convenient than petrol ever was and at <5p per mile a lot cheaper as well, especially for the performance on offer.

I appreciate it would be a different story relying on public charging but as two thirds of UK car owners do have off road parking still a valid solution for a lot of people.

ZesPak

24,433 posts

197 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
SWoll said:
Again, depends on if you can charge at home and if you regularly do 250 miles in one hit. We do about 1250 miles a month (or double the national average mileage in the UK) and just top up overnight using a 3 pin charger between midnight and 7am every few days. Far more convenient than petrol ever was and at <5p per mile a lot cheaper as well, especially for the performance on offer.

I appreciate it would be a different story relying on public charging but as two thirds of UK car owners do have off road parking still a valid solution for a lot of people.
yes I do about double that. Never have to waste time filling up again.
Well, until I go on a ski holiday in a couple of months that is biggrin.

A900ss

3,253 posts

153 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
I drive 25/30k a year and we bought a 30KWh Leaf in December as a second car for my wife.

I thought that it would be fine for her (10k a year commuting) but no way could i really use it with my mileage demands.

How wrong I was?

8 weeks later we sold it and replaced it with a Hyundai Ioniq BEV (only about 125 mile range). It’s amazing and does everything I need for my mileage and costs about 1/6 of my diesel car for fuel/energy.

Before I had an EV, I would have said ‘no way’. Now I have one, it’s more like ‘Why didn’t I do this sooner?’

The Mad Monk

10,474 posts

118 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
A900ss said:
I drive 25/30k a year and we bought a 30KWh Leaf in December as a second car for my wife.

I thought that it would be fine for her (10k a year commuting) but no way could i really use it with my mileage demands.

How wrong I was?

8 weeks later we sold it and replaced it with a Hyundai Ioniq BEV (only about 125 mile range). It’s amazing and does everything I need for my mileage and costs about 1/6 of my diesel car for fuel/energy.

Before I had an EV, I would have said ‘no way’. Now I have one, it’s more like ‘Why didn’t I do this sooner?’
Have you analysed the total costs of ownership for all the vehicles - electric and ICE, including purchase cost etc?

How does that work out?

A900ss

3,253 posts

153 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
The Mad Monk said:
A900ss said:
I drive 25/30k a year and we bought a 30KWh Leaf in December as a second car for my wife.

I thought that it would be fine for her (10k a year commuting) but no way could i really use it with my mileage demands.

How wrong I was?

8 weeks later we sold it and replaced it with a Hyundai Ioniq BEV (only about 125 mile range). It’s amazing and does everything I need for my mileage and costs about 1/6 of my diesel car for fuel/energy.

Before I had an EV, I would have said ‘no way’. Now I have one, it’s more like ‘Why didn’t I do this sooner?’
Have you analysed the total costs of ownership for all the vehicles - electric and ICE, including purchase cost etc?

How does that work out?
Too early to work out but my initial thoughts are that our ‘primary’ diesel car cost more to buy, costs more to ‘fuel’, costs more to maintain/tax/insure and will depreciate more than the EV.

If your question is ‘did you pay more for an EV than an ICE’ the answer is probably not. We’d have spent the same cash but would have had a slighter newer ICE.

EV is secondhand, my diesel car was bought new. (No PCP’s involved so I can’t do a monthly analysis).

But I don’t actually think I can truly compare them by cost as I have three cars that fulfil different duties:

A mid-size EV hatchback
A large diesel estate
A V8 convertible


Edited by A900ss on Tuesday 18th February 09:04

Mikebentley

6,121 posts

141 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
A900ss said:
I drive 25/30k a year and we bought a 30KWh Leaf in December as a second car for my wife.

I thought that it would be fine for her (10k a year commuting) but no way could i really use it with my mileage demands.

How wrong I was?

8 weeks later we sold it and replaced it with a Hyundai Ioniq BEV (only about 125 mile range). It’s amazing and does everything I need for my mileage and costs about 1/6 of my diesel car for fuel/energy.

Before I had an EV, I would have said ‘no way’. Now I have one, it’s more like ‘Why didn’t I do this sooner?’
This is exactly where I am now. I understand when adoption rates increase the Taxman will come knocking but I generally watch the pennies and therefore the running cost savings appeal. With the new cheaper cars on the way it is becoming very tempting now. The idea of not being restricted as to where I can go in future also appeals.

xjay1337

15,966 posts

119 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
RobDickinson said:
Yep this is what 500km range gets me currently. OK wont always get 500 in winter and roads are not this straight but still.

Glad that it works out for you personally.

SWoll

18,428 posts

259 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
xjay1337 said:
RobDickinson said:
Yep this is what 500km range gets me currently. OK wont always get 500 in winter and roads are not this straight but still.

Glad that it works out for you personally.
No-one expects it to work for everyone but you just need to read a few of the comments above to realise it's an option for many scenarios that people with no experience would likely quickly dismiss.

Everyone on here with an EV has also run ICE cars over the years so we are at least speaking from a position of experience rather than assumption.

donkmeister

8,195 posts

101 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
grumpy52 said:
Think about this
Surprised no-one else has pointed this out but... When this has happened in the past, some people run out of fuel in the night. Refuelling one car from a Jerry can is easy (provided you have a Jerry can of petrol) but a lot of ICE cars that are immobile on the carriageway is hardly convenient, and I've never seen a fuel bowser being provided so they presumably end up towing them anyway.
On top of that, don't a lot of modern cars, once run dry, require a fuel system priming procedure that requires additional equipment (as opposed to just pouring in a gallon and turning the key)?

donkmeister

8,195 posts

101 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
As an aside, whenever I see something with that many underlined words, exclamation marks and rhetorical questions it always makes me think of the Viz strip "The Male Online" (see below).


"Gaaaaagh! Beryl! That Greta Thurnberg is at it AGAIN! Why oh why oh why" etc.

jjwilde

1,904 posts

97 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
donkmeister said:
Surprised no-one else has pointed this out but... When this has happened in the past, some people run out of fuel in the night. Refuelling one car from a Jerry can is easy (provided you have a Jerry can of petrol) but a lot of ICE cars that are immobile on the carriageway is hardly convenient, and I've never seen a fuel bowser being provided so they presumably end up towing them anyway.
On top of that, don't a lot of modern cars, once run dry, require a fuel system priming procedure that requires additional equipment (as opposed to just pouring in a gallon and turning the key)?
There are so many things you could say about that silly post. OP was trolling and there is no point. There is a possibility he was trolled himself as that post reads like it's a joke making fun of anti-EV types.

xjay1337

15,966 posts

119 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
If you read the debate over the last few pages I have never once said that EV's do not work, or conceded that for your "average user" there are some who fit the usage pattern.

But there are also many whom don't, either through journey distances / requirements / charging infrastructure / cost.
It works for Rob. Great. I'm genuinely happy for him. Happy that he has found some meaning in his life to try and lead an EV revolution and that he loves his EV motoring experience.

But Rob is clearly a die-hard EV fan - you can tell this by looking at his Twitter, which is full of EV talk (and little else), mostly gushing about how brilliant Tesla is, and has further made me think he is a bit of an edge case when it comes to ICE v EV cars.

Trying to discuss things with Rob would literally be like arguing with a Vegan (EV car) as a meat eater (Petrol / diesel car)



Yesterday as I mentioned I had a very long drive. 417 miles in 7:30 exactly to be precise.
My car has a cruising range of around 400 miles. I drove there, did my work, and filled up on the way back. Which took 5 minutes.
I left at 7:30am, Arrived at site around 11:15 am.
Left site around 2:30pm and arrived home around 6PM.
My total driving time was 7:30 according to my trip computer.

I put the same route in, using a Kia Niro 64Kwh. At £37k, I could probably afford it if I got rid of both of my cars. I also quite like the Niro.

Using ABR (Zap Map is a poor website which takes forever to load, and you need to register to use it! Joke)
I would need to stop on the way for 42 minutes to charge.
Then, because there was no way to charge at my destination (like most destinations........) I would have to drive 5 minutes to a charger, spent another 15 minutes charging there.
Then, after a 45 mile drive, stop to charge again, spending a further 23 minutes.
And then once more, spend a further 29 minutes.
I'm not sure why it made me stop a couple of times, but hey.

My forward leg would be 2:37 + 1:18.
And my return leg would be 0:17 + 0:50 + 1:10 + 1:50.

The time charging would be in total approx 1hr 50.
And the total journey time apparently would be 9hr 55.
So over 2 and a half hours longer than my ICE journey was.


I put in also that I was using a Tesla Model 3 Long Range Performance to see if it would be any better.
For this, I would need to charge for 1 hour. But the journey length would still be 1hr 30 longer than ICE, I presume due to the strong winds and you have to drive more slowly, plus the small detours to get to the Tesla chargers.
And apparently that it would cost me a total of £30 to charge at Tesla (I thought Tesla charging was free?)

The cost in fuel was around £65 of Tesco's finest. (one full tank plus say a gallon, in my M135i).
So I save around 50% in cost. But of course EV's cost quite a lot more than a regular ICE car.

So a long range electric car is still not there yet.
But as I have said, plenty of times, it's great for you if you do say less than 150 miles at a time. Or just do your 30 minute commute to and from work, and happen to have somewhere to charge it at home (driveway, garage, etc).

Would I accept the lower cost of travelling, and perhaps having to go a bit more slowly to conserve battery, if the journey was say, half an hour longer?
Yes! I would. Would allow me to stretch my legs, do some emails, or have a more gourmet meal than a Jamie Oliver chicken wrap from the Shell.
But would I accept basically 2 hours of charging?
No. That's completely unacceptable to me, that's basically 1 day per month of my life I lose sitting around waiting looking at electrons move down a wire.

When most motorway service stations have enough chargers that you don't have to queue, and are not broken, and those chargers can charge any car, at a reasonable cost from say 15% to 9x % in 30 minutes , and you can TRULY get 300 miles (not the fake 300 miles which is actually around 230 miles) from your battery, then I would consider moving to an EV car for a daily drive and enjoy my ICE cars at weekends, European trips and trackdays.

I don't want to have to input my route onto a charging route planner. I just want to be able to get on and drive and stop as and when I need to refuel / recharge.

But, the technology and infrastructure is not there yet to support it and until the EV lifestyle is as easy as the ICE lifestyle it will not catch on in the way some people (Rob + the Government) want it to.

SWoll

18,428 posts

259 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
xjay1337 said:
If you read the debate over the last few pages I have never once said that EV's do not work, or conceded that for your "average user" there are many who fit the usage pattern.

But there are also some whom don't, either through journey distances / requirements / charging infrastructure / cost.
Your issue is as above. I think you have it the wrong way around and the number of people who have requirements that EV's currently don't meet are a significantly smaller number than those that they do. (removing purchase cost from the equation as very difficult to quantify)

Average annual UK mileage approx 7500
Average daily driven commute approx 20-30 mile round trip.
Two thirds of car owners have access to off-road parking.
Numerous posters on here that cover 15k+ miles per year in an EV without issue.

We've got 2 Ev's now, cover approx 25k miles a year across them both and do all of our regular charging on a 3-pin plug.

I was tempted to pull apart the rest of the assumptions in your post but TBH lost the will to live. The EV experience is massively different to how you perceive it IME, though certainly not perfect or for everyone.


Edited by SWoll on Tuesday 18th February 13:04

anonymous-user

55 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
I agree. I'll upgrade in 5 years or so, but don't anticipate paying for extra range. 300 is fine. I'd rather the advances occur elsewhere eg weight.

Laptops have lasted 10 hours for how long? I'm sure there are people who need 20 hours of battery life, but they probably smell.

I too charge on 3 pin despite scottish grants for nearly free chargers. It's not a problem.

Edited by anonymous-user on Tuesday 18th February 13:11

rscott

14,762 posts

192 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
xjay1337 said:
If you read the debate over the last few pages I have never once said that EV's do not work, or conceded that for your "average user" there are some who fit the usage pattern.

But there are also many whom don't, either through journey distances / requirements / charging infrastructure / cost.
It works for Rob. Great. I'm genuinely happy for him. Happy that he has found some meaning in his life to try and lead an EV revolution and that he loves his EV motoring experience.

But Rob is clearly a die-hard EV fan - you can tell this by looking at his Twitter, which is full of EV talk (and little else), mostly gushing about how brilliant Tesla is, and has further made me think he is a bit of an edge case when it comes to ICE v EV cars.

Trying to discuss things with Rob would literally be like arguing with a Vegan (EV car) as a meat eater (Petrol / diesel car)



Yesterday as I mentioned I had a very long drive. 417 miles in 7:30 exactly to be precise.
My car has a cruising range of around 400 miles. I drove there, did my work, and filled up on the way back. Which took 5 minutes.
I left at 7:30am, Arrived at site around 11:15 am.
Left site around 2:30pm and arrived home around 6PM.
My total driving time was 7:30 according to my trip computer.

I put the same route in, using a Kia Niro 64Kwh. At £37k, I could probably afford it if I got rid of both of my cars. I also quite like the Niro.

Using ABR (Zap Map is a poor website which takes forever to load, and you need to register to use it! Joke)
I would need to stop on the way for 42 minutes to charge.
Then, because there was no way to charge at my destination (like most destinations........) I would have to drive 5 minutes to a charger, spent another 15 minutes charging there.
Then, after a 45 mile drive, stop to charge again, spending a further 23 minutes.
And then once more, spend a further 29 minutes.
I'm not sure why it made me stop a couple of times, but hey.

My forward leg would be 2:37 + 1:18.
And my return leg would be 0:17 + 0:50 + 1:10 + 1:50.

The time charging would be in total approx 1hr 50.
And the total journey time apparently would be 9hr 55.
So over 2 and a half hours longer than my ICE journey was.


I put in also that I was using a Tesla Model 3 Long Range Performance to see if it would be any better.
For this, I would need to charge for 1 hour. But the journey length would still be 1hr 30 longer than ICE, I presume due to the strong winds and you have to drive more slowly, plus the small detours to get to the Tesla chargers.
And apparently that it would cost me a total of £30 to charge at Tesla (I thought Tesla charging was free?)

The cost in fuel was around £65 of Tesco's finest. (one full tank plus say a gallon, in my M135i).
So I save around 50% in cost. But of course EV's cost quite a lot more than a regular ICE car.

So a long range electric car is still not there yet.
But as I have said, plenty of times, it's great for you if you do say less than 150 miles at a time. Or just do your 30 minute commute to and from work, and happen to have somewhere to charge it at home (driveway, garage, etc).

Would I accept the lower cost of travelling, and perhaps having to go a bit more slowly to conserve battery, if the journey was say, half an hour longer?
Yes! I would. Would allow me to stretch my legs, do some emails, or have a more gourmet meal than a Jamie Oliver chicken wrap from the Shell.
But would I accept basically 2 hours of charging?
No. That's completely unacceptable to me, that's basically 1 day per month of my life I lose sitting around waiting looking at electrons move down a wire.

When most motorway service stations have enough chargers that you don't have to queue, and are not broken, and those chargers can charge any car, at a reasonable cost from say 15% to 9x % in 30 minutes , and you can TRULY get 300 miles (not the fake 300 miles which is actually around 230 miles) from your battery, then I would consider moving to an EV car for a daily drive and enjoy my ICE cars at weekends, European trips and trackdays.

I don't want to have to input my route onto a charging route planner. I just want to be able to get on and drive and stop as and when I need to refuel / recharge.

But, the technology and infrastructure is not there yet to support it and until the EV lifestyle is as easy as the ICE lifestyle it will not catch on in the way some people (Rob + the Government) want it to.
Question - did any of your real journey occur at speeds above the limit? If so, that's why the estimated journey time was more than you expected?

Try planning your actual journey on Google maps and see what that estimated for the time it would take.

SWoll

18,428 posts

259 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
Sambucket said:
Laptops have lasted 10 hours for how long? I'm sure there are people who need 20 hours of battery life, but they probably smell.

Edited by Sambucket on Tuesday 18th February 13:11
biglaugh

xjay1337

15,966 posts

119 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
I don't see how I have it wrong.

I said many fit the usage pattern and could use an EV.
But there are some who don't.

That seems pretty fair and true?

Again , great if you have a fixed commute and no regular long distance or over night away stays.
These are not "normal cases" sure but many people fit these usage profiles.


Great if you fit in the box init.

xjay1337

15,966 posts

119 months

Tuesday 18th February 2020
quotequote all
rscott said:
Question - did any of your real journey occur at speeds above the limit? If so, that's why the estimated journey time was more than you expected?

Try planning your actual journey on Google maps and see what that estimated for the time it would take.
My cruise control was set to 77 mph the whole way.

Luckily I just made good time with traffic etc.
Google Maps journey time estimated is 3hr 48