Motorway Charging and Misinformation
Motorway Charging and Misinformation
Author
Discussion

C.A.R.

Original Poster:

3,986 posts

209 months

Thursday 21st April 2022
quotequote all
I took a jolly the other day to 'top up' at one of those super-fast 350kW chargers, just because I wanted to see what they were like. I knew it wouldn't be the most cost-effective top-up before I even turned up...

However; 69p/kW! I topped-up about 33kW in under 10 minutes (would have been faster if I had pre-heated the battery...) to the grand sum of £22.87.

This is about as expensive as running a petrol car getting just 35mpg (based on £1.50 / litre)!

I get it; you pay extra for the convenience / speed, but that's a big jump.

Misinformation-
I watched the Auto Express YouTube video of the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Steve Sutcliffe claimed that "At worst, you'll get 10 miles for every £ of electricity, if you use the fastest, most expensive chargers"

At 69p/kW your £1 would yield 1.45 kW and would assume the Ioniq 5 can do 7 miles per kW, or approximately double what the manufacturer claims.

Realistically; you'll get around 5 miles from your £1 at that rate.

I'm all for electric cars and for most users the majority of charging happens at home or at work, but this level of misinformation is terrible consumer advice.

Naturally there was a queue for the 40p/kW, 50kW charger at the opposite end of the service station car park from the 350kW chargers.


sjg

7,637 posts

286 months

Thursday 21st April 2022
quotequote all
Kind of true, Ioniq 5 buyers get a couple of years of Hyundai's premium membership which gets much cheaper rates, so it would be more like 10 miles.

Ionity is funded by the consortium of car manufacturers, who can offer their customers discounted rates or membership schemes. The 69p figure is like the rack rate for a hotel.

dapprman

2,678 posts

288 months

Thursday 21st April 2022
quotequote all
Where did you charge ? The Gridserve 350 kW chargers at Rugby at 49p per kWh (and 39p at the service stations where they have the 120 kW chargers (yeah I know most are limited to just 60 kW).

TheDeuce

30,632 posts

87 months

Thursday 21st April 2022
quotequote all
sjg said:
Kind of true, Ioniq 5 buyers get a couple of years of Hyundai's premium membership which gets much cheaper rates, so it would be more like 10 miles.

Ionity is funded by the consortium of car manufacturers, who can offer their customers discounted rates or membership schemes. The 69p figure is like the rack rate for a hotel.
This. Anyone using the motorway high speed chargers often enough to worry about the cost per kw/h will get a monthly sub sorted and either get unlimited or highly discounted rates.

The rest of us who use them once in a blue moon... It doesn't seem unreasonable to pay a premium for the convenience.

This thread boils down to a factual error in a YouTube video. But it's a pretty irrelevant error because anyone using them frequently is going to well within the 'worst' case pricing that Steve mentions.

dmsims

7,321 posts

288 months

Thursday 21st April 2022
quotequote all
OP you should work for the Daily Mail!

rscott

16,788 posts

212 months

Thursday 21st April 2022
quotequote all
TheDeuce said:
sjg said:
Kind of true, Ioniq 5 buyers get a couple of years of Hyundai's premium membership which gets much cheaper rates, so it would be more like 10 miles.

Ionity is funded by the consortium of car manufacturers, who can offer their customers discounted rates or membership schemes. The 69p figure is like the rack rate for a hotel.
This. Anyone using the motorway high speed chargers often enough to worry about the cost per kw/h will get a monthly sub sorted and either get unlimited or highly discounted rates.

The rest of us who use them once in a blue moon... It doesn't seem unreasonable to pay a premium for the convenience.

This thread boils down to a factual error in a YouTube video. But it's a pretty irrelevant error because anyone using them frequently is going to well within the 'worst' case pricing that Steve mentions.
I notice they also use a figure of £1.50 a litre for fuel - where you can get petrol (let alone diesel) for that nowadays?

anonymous-user

75 months

Thursday 21st April 2022
quotequote all
because you can't have your own petrol pump at home, you always have to pay the going market rate for petrol

With an EV, most people charge at home at a far lower rate, so occasional expensive "fill ups" are really no different to not bothering to leave the motorway to fill up when you are going on holiday, ie you pay over the odds, but it doesn't make a lot of difference overall

JonnyVTEC

3,223 posts

196 months

Thursday 21st April 2022
quotequote all
ChargePoint app gives it you at 58p, typically it’s a 100mile
Boost to finish a 300mile trip. Please don’t start doing the maths based on starting a journey at 0% at a hyper speed charger.



HelldogBE

285 posts

64 months

Friday 22nd April 2022
quotequote all
Our I3 REX costs the same to fast-charge as to run the range extender on petrol. So I always charge at home and run on petrol if the electric range isn't enough.

Why would I bother sitting at the motorway services for half an hour (max. 50 kW charging in the I3) and spend even more money on coffees I don't need when I can just keep on driving forever and fill up the tiny petrol tank every 70 miles.

Granted a model 3 LR or EV6 with a significant base range and 200kW+ DC charging are more compatible with stopping for 20mins after a 2-hour motorway run.

Heres Johnny

8,002 posts

145 months

Friday 22nd April 2022
quotequote all
C.A.R. said:
However; 69p/kW! I topped-up about 33kW in under 10 minutes (would have been faster if I had pre-heated the battery...) to the grand sum of £22.87.
It’s kWh not kw

Post complaining about inaccuracy is inaccurate.

Edited by Heres Johnny on Friday 22 April 07:14

DMZ

1,973 posts

181 months

Friday 22nd April 2022
quotequote all
This is why I rarely bother taking the EV on longer trips. It’s just a bunch of hassle and time wasting and it costs about the same as ICE anyhow. I look at EVs as a 100 mile radius from the house kind of solution and they’re very good at that.

I wonder if the price of public charging will come down. Once everyone gets used to paying a certain amount that tends to be it.

andyA700

3,452 posts

58 months

Friday 22nd April 2022
quotequote all
You EV people are totally nuts IMHO.
The cheapest EV on Autotrader is a Nissan Leaf @ £4,700 - 11 years old with 112K on the clock - has a 25-30 miles range!!!!!!!!
You people are madder than a box of frogs.

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202203253...

TheDeuce

30,632 posts

87 months

Friday 22nd April 2022
quotequote all
andyA700 said:
You EV people are totally nuts IMHO.
The cheapest EV on Autotrader is a Nissan Leaf @ £4,700 - 11 years old with 112K on the clock - has a 25-30 miles range!!!!!!!!
You people are madder than a box of frogs.

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202203253...
Or we just have budgets greater than £4,700...?

I imagine the absolute cheapest of any type of car on Autotrader is going to be ste one way or another.

rscott

16,788 posts

212 months

Friday 22nd April 2022
quotequote all
andyA700 said:
You EV people are totally nuts IMHO.
The cheapest EV on Autotrader is a Nissan Leaf @ £4,700 - 11 years old with 112K on the clock - has a 25-30 miles range!!!!!!!!
You people are madder than a box of frogs.

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202203253...
Those Leafs don't have a decent battery cooling system, so the cells don't last as long as many other EVs. Even so, this one seems especially low range.

Not sure what 1 single car advert says about EVs in general though.

SWoll

21,606 posts

279 months

Friday 22nd April 2022
quotequote all
andyA700 said:
You EV people are totally nuts IMHO.
The cheapest EV on Autotrader is a Nissan Leaf @ £4,700 - 11 years old with 112K on the clock - has a 25-30 miles range!!!!!!!!
You people are madder than a box of frogs.

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202203253...
As a counter argument, if you had bought a Tesla Model 3 P for £52k back in 2019 and covered 20,000 miles you'd still have a car worth £46k and have spent < £500 in 'fuel' with the right electricity tariff and home charging, nothing on servicing and zero VED.

anonymous-user

75 months

Friday 22nd April 2022
quotequote all
SWoll said:
andyA700 said:
You EV people are totally nuts IMHO.
The cheapest EV on Autotrader is a Nissan Leaf @ £4,700 - 11 years old with 112K on the clock - has a 25-30 miles range!!!!!!!!
You people are madder than a box of frogs.

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202203253...
As a counter argument, if you had bought a Tesla Model 3 P for £52k back in 2019 and covered 20,000 miles you'd still have a car worth £46k and have spent < £500 in 'fuel' with the right electricity tariff and home charging, nothing on servicing and zero VED.
I drove my last i3 for 5 years and just over 30,000 miles at a total average cost of £50.40 per month! For a new, 5* ncap , 7 sec to 60, carbon fiber, rwd, fun to drive car with a terrific interior and electronic feature content.

For the same money i could have (maybe) just about driven around in a death traps of a £500 banger at no more than 10% throttle so as to try to eak out max mpg, and had a cold, noisy car car that would have more breakdowns than Sienna Miller and chuck out enough polution out the back to kill a couple of kids.

Not sure id' call that descision a difficult or "mad" one tbh :-)



anonymous-user

75 months

Friday 22nd April 2022
quotequote all
I don’t see how this is any different to filling up with petrol or diesel at a motorway services, i.e. a last resort for reasons of absolute necessity. You know you’re going to get ripped off.

PBCD

872 posts

159 months

Saturday 23rd April 2022
quotequote all
TheDeuce said:
andyA700 said:
You EV people are totally nuts IMHO.
The cheapest EV on Autotrader is a Nissan Leaf @ £4,700 - 11 years old with 112K on the clock - has a 25-30 miles range!!!!!!!!
You people are madder than a box of frogs.

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202203253...
Or we just have budgets greater than £4,700...?
The only people "madder than a box of frogs" are those who think that the most/only important aspect
of any car (electric or otherwise) is the initial purchase price...

lost in espace

6,444 posts

228 months

Saturday 23rd April 2022
quotequote all
andyA700 said:
You EV people are totally nuts IMHO.
The cheapest EV on Autotrader is a Nissan Leaf @ £4,700 - 11 years old with 112K on the clock - has a 25-30 miles range!!!!!!!!
You people are madder than a box of frogs.

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202203253...
My Leaf cost me about £18,500 5 years ago, still does 90 miles at a decent speed and after 65k is still worth about £10k. It is a good car that I just service myself, and costs pennies to run. For what it is I think it is great value for money, but the changes to motorway Chademo chargers are going to make life much harder. MG ZS LR on order.

LukeBrown66

4,479 posts

67 months

Saturday 23rd April 2022
quotequote all
Why is anyone shocked at this.

Services are literally one of the most hideous places in our country, they massively overcharge for everything, food, fuel, and they offer vey little in return other than free use of toilets, which if you have any sense is ALL you ever use them for.

I once knew of a person who managed one of these awful places and he was asked about their pricing structure for food in every shop, and his simple answer was "because we can do what we want"

Not with my money you can't, I haven't spent a pound in services for 20 odd years and hopefully never will, they are the pinnacle of rip off convenience.