Electric cars

Car_54

almillar wrote: »

I know someone who bought one. She found it very difficult to persuade dealers to actually take her money off her.

Unlike the Tesla dealers, who are eager to take your money but don't deliver the car;).

NigeWick

Stageshoot wrote: »

Good Option if you want to take your EV on a European road trip

Newmotion Roaming cards. Works across loads of European Networks (Only Shell Chargers in the UK at the moment and as they take credit card anyway not much point)

I'm going to France in September and have a card from http://www.chargeyourcar.org.uk/ and
http://www.kiwhipass.fr/
Which seems to cover quite a few in France.

NigeWick

I bought a Nissan Leaf 2.ZERO 40kWh battery car. The vehicle itself is an improvement on the old 24 or 30kWh version, except, the efficiency.

On the old 30 kWh car I could get 5 miles per kWh around town but with the new one I'm getting nowhere near that at present. I have therefore whinged to Nissan and am taking it in for tests Friday next week.

The best I have managed was 4 miles per kWh slipstreaming HGVs on the A1 when I was expecting what others had got. This was 4.2 miles per kWh without slipstreaming at 55-60mph. 4.2 miles per kWh would give the WLTP estimate of 168 miles per full charge which is acceptable to me.

The NEDC estimate for the 30 kWh car was 155 and at 5 miles per kWh I was close to that. The NEDC for the 40kWH vehicle is 235 miles and I am nowhere near that at about 170 miles indicated on the Guessometer with a full charge

I will let you know how I get on.

AdrianC

maxmycardagain wrote: »

HMG have already hammered new leccy cars with the tax on new ones over £40K (how many are under £40K?)

TBF, there are two elements to the VED for a new car. There's a CO2-related element, and there's a premium for £40k+ list cars, whatever the fuel type.
From the second tax payment, the premium remains for five years, but petrol and diesel vehicles pay £140, electrics pay £0.

When the revenue from petrol/diesel sales falls the tax on leccy cars will rocket

Well, of course. Something has to fill that £40b hole in the gov't income.

Batteries are useless, we need fuel cell cars

Which is what PSA were working on a decade or so ago.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/12/fisypac-20091208.html

Martyn1981

AdrianC wrote: »

Which is what PSA were working on a decade or so ago.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/12/fisypac-20091208.html

But in fairness to PSA, lots of the old school made the mistake of wasting money and time on hydrogen rather than supporting EV's - until Tesla proved them all wrong.

They'll all catch up eventually, or die.

And there may still be a use for H2 in some areas, like heavy freight, so long as we can afford the 3 to 4 fold increase in leccy needed v's BEV's.

markudman

Too early for them to be mainstream, I done a electric car course, and there is only about 1200 mechanics trained to work on them, it is basically a big battery and a motor, but touching it it the wrong place will kill you, so not yet safe for your average home mechanic just yet, I'm talking from a technical point of view.

Martyn1981

markudman wrote: »

Too early for them to be mainstream, I done a electric car course, and there is only about 1200 mechanics trained to work on them, it is basically a big battery and a motor, but touching it it the wrong place will kill you, so not yet safe for your average home mechanic just yet, I'm talking from a technical point of view.

I suppose it'll all scale up proportionately, but the reduced maintenance with EV's may mean that there will never be as many mechanics/service centers as we see with ICE's.

The biggest losers will be the main dealership network, which might not be needed anymore, especially given the better profits that a manufacturer can make selling cars to the public at retail, rather than to dealers at wholesale.

Certainly a lot of change to come, whatever happens.

almillar

On the old 30 kWh car I could get 5 miles per kWh around town

What was the outside temperature at the time? You need to test like-for-like. As an EV driver you must be acutely aware of the effect that battery pack temperature will have on range - I would say as a general guide you can only go 2/3 or 3/4 as far in the winter as in summer.

Also for all that people complained about the looks of Leaf1, it was, at least, aerodynamic.

it is basically a big battery and a motor, but touching it it the wrong place will kill you

A 12v battery in an ICE can happily kill you. Shorting a traction battery in an EV will just make the corpse crispier. But I'll accept there are more places this can happen on an EV. You need to accept however that there are so many risks removed though - flammable liquids, exposed fans, fuel injectors, hot surfaces, horrible used oil etc.

Martyn1981

EV sales keep going up in the UK, hitting 2% of sales.

2% is small, but suggests the genie is out of the bottle now, so no going back. Roll on the quiet revolution.

UK drives into e-vehicle fast lane with 11% sales rise

Sales of electric cars in the UK have risen 11% on last year, putting the country in the premier league of those ditching petrol and diesel engines, though it is still miles behind Norway and China.

In the UK, e-vehicle sales reached 14,084 units in the first quarter of 2018. Plug-in hybrid vehicles accounted for 71% of the sales. The market share of electric vehicles increased from 1.5% a year ago to 2%.

AdrianC

Woah, hold on one sec... What was it Disraeli allegedly said about statistics?

Those figures not only include hybrids, but hybrids are 71% of them... So EV-only sales are just 0.6%, or just over 4,000 cars - yes, it's an increase, but it's a bit of a stretch to say "ditching petrol and diesel".

Oh, and the increase in market share? That's definitely not hurt by the total market contracting by 12.4%, from a very high point last year.
https://www.best-selling-cars.com/britain-uk/2018-q1-britain-best-selling-car-brands-and-models/