Converting to EV, what do I need to know?

[SSG1000]

Afternoon all,

I’ve been thinking about switching to a Tesla from my current petrol car. At the moment I put in around £250 a month in fuel so have done a cost benefit and it looks like paying more for the Tesla will be better for me, as the fuel costs will be considerably lower. However, being new to the EV market I have some questions:

Installing an at home EV charge point, do I need to switch all of my electricity supply to a different provider? I’m currently with Eon Next.

What are the average costs to charge up a model 3 (standard range)?

How busy can Tesla charge points be? I tend to go to London once a week (from Birmingham) for work, and the obvious choice is to charge up at Oxford services.

[Maracus]

It's just pot luck at the SuC sites. They will always be busier at half term from my experience, I've never queued, but have taken the last stall once at Scotch Corner.

As for cost of charging from home, it depends on your tariff.

I'm on Octopus Go until December @ 5p/KW for 4 hours, so 4 x 7.5KW equals 30KW. So £1.50 for approximately 110 miles.

[somouk]

The Tesla conundrum is hitting a lot of people, myself included.

As above, super chargers will be hit and miss depending on your route and until you know what time of day and how busy they are it will be hard to say. In theory in a Model 3 you may not need much charge anyway if you're just doing Birmingham to London and back. Maybe see if there is something in London you can plug in to at the overnight or while at work?

You'll want a home charger generally speaking, the grant finishes soon to help install those so be careful on pricing expect circa £800 to fit one if it's a pretty standard install.

As for charging it, the Octopus go tariff is popular as it gives cheap electricity overnight and you get it for 4 hours so you can put a big chunk in during those 4 hours then it's quite cheap.

Charging it out of the cheap times at the soon to be 24p per Kw with a 75 KW battery is going to cost about £18 to fill it. Will be rare to completely empty it though based on my usage of the EV.

[Heres Johnny]

You don’t need to change your electricity supplier

After charging and other losses you’ll get about 3 miles to a kwh so whatever your kwh rate is divide by 3 and multiple by the number of miles you drive a month. Trying to calculate what a ‘tank’ costs isn’t that useful. Unless you’re on a great rate you could easily be at 30p/kwh and 10p a mile, 1000 miles a month costing £100 so still a good saving. If you’re likely to do public rapid charging, many are now costing around 40p per kwh or more, so 12-13p a mile. The difference is much better if you’ve been able to get a cheap off peak rate with a smart meter etc etc but those deals are harder to come by. Some on here will quote what they pay and ignore the fact you can’t get the same deal.

How busy they are varies, around London they can be particularly bad. Oxford isn’t too bad, but Tesla have 2 versions of superchargers known as V2 and V3 (don’t ask), and Oxford are type 2 which means as soon as it’s over half full people are sharing a pair so they only get about 60kw charge rates. Same in Warwick. This happens much more often. I think there are some V3 a few miles off the motorway in Banbury which are faster and share the load better across the site but you’re adding driving time to get to them.

[WestyCarl]

Heres Johnny said:

You don’t need to change your electricity supplier
I think there are some V3 a few miles off the motorway in Banbury which are faster and share the load better across the site but you’re adding driving time to get to them.

The Banbury ones are a couple miles from J11. Rarely any cars there and a plenty of fast food outlets next door

[Maracus]

Heres Johnny said:

I think there are some V3 a few miles off the motorway in Banbury which are faster and share the load better across the site but you’re adding driving time to get to them.

As someone who lives close by, if you're looking to charge near J11 of the M40 then look at the Instavolt chargers just off the junction - OX16 4AE. There are currently 8 iirc, and soon to be 16 but 50p/KW. The Tesla SuCs are located in a retail park that can be notoriously busy and difficult to get out of!

There's a Costa right next to the Instavolt chargers.

[sjg]

Model 3 standard range has about 52kWh usable, so multiply 52 by your unit rate for a worst case empty to full.

No need to change supplier but if you do lots of miles you may find one with a cheaper overnight rate works out better.

Telsa are good about enforcing overstay when busy so even if loads of people wanted to charge at once then it would move pretty quickly. Or as said, at Banbury as well as superchargers there's Osprey rapids right next door or Instavolt closer to the motorway.

[SSG1000]

Thank you all for the responses - just trying to get my head around the kw/h calculations.

If the model 3 has a 300 mile range, I can do my journey to London and back charging from home. However will likely need to do a quick stop at a supercharger… at Oxford or nearby as you have all suggested. Fortunately when I return from London I don’t leave until approx 6pm so can’t imagine the services being too busy on a Thursday night.

Just calculating the costs generally. I see OctopusGo do overnight charging at 7.5p per kw/h between 12:30 -4:30 which would be enough for me to run the vehicle with the odd extra charge here or there.

What I’m trying to calculate how many miles (or % of battery) would I get from those 4 hours overnight? (Could be a simple question apologies!!)

[off_again]

Mentioned this before on other threads, but dont expect to charge to 100% all of the time. Get used to just charging for what you need with a little contingency. Range anxiety (or probably better should be termed charger anxiety) is a concern, but just get your head in a place where you just charge for what you need - and suddenly things get easier.

Also, take a little extra time planning for more complicated trips - either use an app (A better route planner - ABRP is a good option) and remember that the range will be variable based on temperature, driving conditions, weather and other factors. Though I am not talking about having a tightly planned journey or anything, just a minute or two and use the technology provided. It will save a lot of problems and stress.

[plfrench]

SSG1000 said:

Thank you all for the responses - just trying to get my head around the kw/h calculations.

If the model 3 has a 300 mile range, I can do my journey to London and back charging from home. However will likely need to do a quick stop at a supercharger… at Oxford or nearby as you have all suggested. Fortunately when I return from London I don’t leave until approx 6pm so can’t imagine the services being too busy on a Thursday night.

Just calculating the costs generally. I see OctopusGo do overnight charging at 7.5p per kw/h between 12:30 -4:30 which would be enough for me to run the vehicle with the odd extra charge here or there.

What I’m trying to calculate how many miles (or % of battery) would I get from those 4 hours overnight? (Could be a simple question apologies!!)

If you've got a normal wall charger at home which charges at 7kW, then four hours is 28kWh. If you're assuming 3mi/kWh average consumption for the Model 3, then that equals 84 miles for £2.10 at the price you mention above.

[Heres Johnny]

SSG1000 said:

Thank you all for the responses - just trying to get my head around the kw/h calculations.

If the model 3 has a 300 mile range, I can do my journey to London and back charging from home. However will likely need to do a quick stop at a supercharger… at Oxford or nearby as you have all suggested. Fortunately when I return from London I don’t leave until approx 6pm so can’t imagine the services being too busy on a Thursday night.

Just calculating the costs generally. I see OctopusGo do overnight charging at 7.5p per kw/h between 12:30 -4:30 which would be enough for me to run the vehicle with the odd extra charge here or there.

What I’m trying to calculate how many miles (or % of battery) would I get from those 4 hours overnight? (Could be a simple question apologies!!)

You’ve a great rate so you want to maximise that even if that means taking more than one night to fill the battery.

If you’re looking at the Standard model 3 (used to be called the SR+), it has a battery that can charge happily to 100%, in fact current Tesla comms is telling owners to do just that. In your situation people typically schedule it to start charging when you cheap rate starts and then set the limit based on some crude man maths to make it stop around the time your cheap rate ends. Most days that might give you a full charge, other days that might just get you to 60% and the following night you get to 100%. Same logic with the other models except you target 90%. You can get other 3rd party options to better control start and stop times.

4 hours at 7kw is common at home, so 28kwh or about 90-100 miles, but as above don’t see it as needing to always fully charge over night, just max your charging to the cheap rate and when you’re full you’re full, if you know you’ll need more the following day then you just have to take it on the chin and pay the balance at the more expensive rate.

[Car Obsessed]

SSG1000 said:

Thank you all for the responses - just trying to get my head around the kw/h calculations.

If the model 3 has a 300 mile range, I can do my journey to London and back charging from home. However will likely need to do a quick stop at a supercharger… at Oxford or nearby as you have all suggested. Fortunately when I return from London I don’t leave until approx 6pm so can’t imagine the services being too busy on a Thursday night.

Just calculating the costs generally. I see OctopusGo do overnight charging at 7.5p per kw/h between 12:30 -4:30 which would be enough for me to run the vehicle with the odd extra charge here or there.

What I’m trying to calculate how many miles (or % of battery) would I get from those 4 hours overnight? (Could be a simple question apologies!!)

I’ve got a Model 3, but currently only use a standard 3-pin household plug to charge. To put it simply, using this method it charges at 10A which equates to 9 miles per hour (until it gets nearly full when it slows down a bit).

So if you had a 7kw home charger you should expect a charge rate of around 26 miles per hour. And don’t get too hung up on the 4 hours of cheap electricity - even at normal rate it’s a lot cheaper than Supercharging or Public Chargers.

[off_again]

Car Obsessed said:

So if you had a 7kw home charger you should expect a charge rate of around 26 miles per hour. And don’t get too hung up on the 4 hours of cheap electricity - even at normal rate it’s a lot cheaper than Supercharging or Public Chargers.

And just to add to that - read the pricing at public chargers too! Some put sneaky little things in there, so dont get stung. It could be an increased cost per unit after a time or total energy delivered. Or it could be 'waiting' costs when charging gets beyond 80% or something. Doesnt seem to be consistent, so check the pricing.

Oh, and you might want to look at membership of a charging network - not sure about the UK, but Electrify America has a good network but unless you sign up for a $4 a month fee, you dont get the cheap electricity. In fact, its about double my home rate! I use them so rarely that it really doesnt matter, but if you are doing a regular journey and there are a particular set of chargers, it might be worth spending 15 minutes working out if its worth it or not.

[Frimley111R]

Car Obsessed said:

So if you had a 7kw home charger you should expect a charge rate of around 26 miles per hour. And don’t get too hung up on the 4 hours of cheap electricity - even at normal rate it’s a lot cheaper than Supercharging or Public Chargers.

Yep, and you will charge up overnight at home so the time it takes doesn't really matter, it will always be fully charged in the morning (unless you came home at 3.30am!).

And it'll also be a lot cheaper than ICE!

[SSG1000]

With regards to the Model 3 Standard Range Plus, does Anyone have insight into the ‘real world’ mileage the car offers?

[coach]

Real world in Tesla SR+ seems to be (assuming not driving like a loon) 170 Winter, 190-200 Summer (You don run them entirely to empty and only charge to full right before a "big" Journey

[Heres Johnny]

SSG1000 said:

With regards to the Model 3 Standard Range Plus, does Anyone have insight into the ‘real world’ mileage the car offers?

Depends which one you mean, technically they don't make the SR+ anymore, they just call it the RWD version although we know generally which one you mean. But they've just changed the battery and motor and in total there have been something like 9 variants of the SR+ ranging from a rated 254 miles to 305 miles on the WLTP test cycle.

I work on only 90% is usable as a working range as you don't want to plan on dropping below 10%, and in winter and at speed you might be down to 80% of the rated, so assuming you're thinking of a new car, 305 * 0.9 * 0.8 = 220 miles. Keep it under 70 and at this time of year you could be more like 240 miles and a drive at nearer 60 in summer and a working range of 275 miles should be possible. If you're looking at older cars you can easily drop to 180 miles in winter.

TBH, PH isn't the best place for detailed Tesla advice.

[page3]

coach said:

Real world in Tesla SR+ seems to be (assuming not driving like a loon) 170 Winter, 190-200 Summer (You don run them entirely to empty and only charge to full right before a "big" Journey

Add 30 miles to that and always charge to 100%

Oxford supercharger is a good one. Plenty of bays and never had to wait.

[SSG1000]

Thanks all for the advice.

Thinking of a 69/20/70 reg Model 3.

I spend 3 days in London and 4 in Birmingham. (Work pay for my apartment in W.London)

I’d look to install a charger in my Birmingham home but unlikely to do so in London as it’s an apartment.

So will need to weigh up the costs/potential hassle of an EV.

Many thanks for your responses!!

[Heres Johnny]

You’d need to stop for the round trip but you’ve a choice of Hopewood, Warwick, Banbury and Oxford. Only Banbury will be quick when they’re busy. 20 min stop there when you’re at say 30% and you’d add 150 miles of range. The M40 is well served.

The older cars don’t have the LFP battery and as a result you shouldn’t really charge them to 100% so as well as a smaller battery, the advice is to use less of it too. But if you’re stopping anyway it’s only a couple of extra minutes