Electric cars

GunJack

Martyn1981 wrote: »

It's strange that you started out trying to avoid the whole cost, but are now, trumplike, trying to spin the issue the other way around and accuse me of your failings, when all I have done is push the whole cost issue, despite your claims to the contrary.

Errmmm.... I was ALWAYS on about the total cost, it was you who was trying to ignore purchase price!!

You don't do the ev cause any favours with your attitude :T

DrEskimo

GunJack wrote: »

Errmmm.... I was ALWAYS on about the total cost, it was you who was trying to ignore purchase price!!

You don't do the ev cause any favours with your attitude :T

With the greatest respect you continue to ignore why you can buy a £500 ICE, but not £500 EV's....because EV's haven't been around long enough to depreciate that much!

A Renault Zoe is not more expensive than your £500 ICE because it's an EV, it's because the oldest Zoe is 2013 and has <20k miles on it! When you adjust for age and mileage, EV's can be cheaper to buy than the equivalent ICE.

You are free to speculate why that might not be the case when they get to 15yrs old, or indeed that it's still not as an attractive proposition for the 'bangernomics' inclined, but it's just that, speculation. You could quite easily argue the opposite. Only time will tell.

But if you ignore the way the car moves the wheels, essentially your argument is that older cars with more miles are cheaper than newer cars with less miles. Hard to disagree, but not exactly earth-shattering findings....

Martyn1981

GunJack wrote: »

Errmmm.... I was ALWAYS on about the total cost, it was you who was trying to ignore purchase price!!

You don't do the ev cause any favours with your attitude :T

Sorry but that's a complete lie. You started out trying to compare an old banger to a new EV.

Then you ignored fuel costs:

GunJack wrote: »

The ongoing costs may work out cheaper eventually,but unless fuel duty rises horrendously the other costs will be similar. not much difference in VED between £0 and £30 a year, MoT tests will still cost £30-£35, insurance could even be more as they price in expensive batteries needing replacement after crashes... so it's not so clear-cut as you think.....

When challenged on this you tried to justify ignoring the per mile costs, which is where the argument for EV's is made:

GunJack wrote: »

I think you may still be missing the point.....

fuel & repair costs are reasonably well spread out through the life of the car, but with an EV to be doable for anyone on a small motoring budget (irrespective of how essential a car is, to the likes of me it IS essential for getting to work as no practical public transport) it's the cost of buying the flippin' thing in the first place - it's the same reason why horses to cars took decades to happen, the cost of BUYING it is way more significant than the running costs.

I have consistently pointed out that all costs have to be considered, and today you have decided to start to tell me that, which is rather strange.

I'm sorry you are getting upset and making claims about my attitude, but I'm simply trying to correct the many flaws in your arguments.

Regarding the 'EV cause' I really don't think that my defending their costs by suggesting you look at the whole picture can do any harm to it. In fact, nothing I say that is positive, or you say that is negative, will change the fact that EV's are now economically pulling ahead of ICE's (if you consider all costs), meaning that the genie is out of the bottle and can not be put back.

AnotherJoe

It's very unlikely that s/h EVs will ever get down to bangernomics type prices of £500-£1000 because the battery is valuable and provides a floor price, likely around £4K-£5k.

It's quite possible (and long term, certain) that it will be cheaper to run a £5k EV than a £500 ICE however not everyone will have (or wish to spend) £5k up front for a longer term gain. Those people will continue to run bangers for a while, until the bans on cars in city centres, and the rising cost of petrol & diesel drive (ha ha) them to it.

AdrianC

DrEskimo wrote: »

A Renault Zoe is not more expensive than your £500 ICE because it's an EV, it's because the oldest Zoe is 2013 and has <20k miles on it! When you adjust for age and mileage, EV's can be cheaper to buy than the equivalent ICE.

But that used Zoe is artificially cheap because of the requirement for continued battery lease costs.

AnotherJoe wrote: »

It's very unlikely that s/h EVs will ever get down to bangernomics type prices of £500-£1000 because the battery is valuable and provides a floor price, likely around £4K-£5k.

...at which point, a consumer durable with many more years of viable use ahead of it is scrapped. Not environmentally great, is it?

It's quite possible (and long term, certain) that it will be cheaper to run a £5k EV than a £500 ICE however not everyone will have (or wish to spend) £5k up front for a longer term gain. Those people will continue to run bangers for a while

<nods>

until the bans on cars in city centres, and the rising cost of petrol & diesel drive (ha ha) them to it.

Not everybody drives in city centres, of course. And we come back to the private car - no matter the fuel - being simply absolutely the wrong thing for city centres. Park and ride...

zeupater

GunJack wrote: »

No, you still don't see what I'm on about....

I (like many people) buy my cars outright for circa £500 or less (the current one very substantially less) so NO monthly payments to take into consideration. Yes, it's cheap motoring but a car is essential not a nice-to-have. My current annual spend on fuel, tax, insurance is around £900. To make the EV work, it would have to be cheap enough to buy outright without borrowing anything before considering the ongoing running costs and how long the batteries last

It's the total cost of ownership (buying, fuel, tax, insurance and resale/scrap) that's important, so now can you see that having to pay £2000 to buy an old EV massively skews that equation, and that's before the inconvenience of range & charging points is even mentioned - I can do 450 miles after one 10-min stop for fuel in 2-3 weeks, no chance in even a very new & costly EV.

As I said earlier, I'm not against EVs but to become practical there needs to be massive improvements...

Hi

Does that all really make sense ? ...

Firstly your "current annual spend on fuel, tax, insurance is around £900" ... does that really stack up with doing "450 miles after one 10-min stop for fuel in 2-3 weeks" in a car which has previously been stated to achieve "61mpg averaged over all mileage in 11 months", so lets have a look ....

- 450 miles in 3 weeks = (450/3)*52 = 7800miles/year (somewhere around average)
- 7800miles/61mpg = 127gallons, which at an average £1.32/litre equates to around £762/year at £6/gallon, leaving £138 to cover all other costs ...

... Doesn't really look good, so let's take another look, so excluding any consumables & repairs ... Insurance (£500)+VED (£30)+MOT(£40)+Service(£100 average) = £670, leaving ~£230 for fuel, so enough for somewhere around 2340miles, ((230/6)*61), which if achieving 450miles/tank would equate to visiting the forecourt once every 10 weeks, not between 2&3 ... doesn't really look good from that perspective either! ...

... Mind though, if 2340 miles/year is in the correct ball park, then even an EV with a mere 100 mile range would only need charging once a fortnight (100/(2340/52)), so even what would likely be unpopular early generation EVs in a few years time (therefore likely the cheapest on the used market!) would probably suit ...

As has been raised by many on many occasions, it's not something that will be down to personal choice for ever as the supply of decent ICE vehicles will eventually dry-up, additionally it's almost certain that governments will collectively use levers and various incentives to 'encourage' the public to stop using ICEs in order to attempt to meet their own emissions targets, effectively accelerating the rate at which the supply of older ICEs (those with the worst emissions!) are taken off the road ...

HTH
Z

AnotherJoe

AdrianC wrote: »

...at which point, a consumer durable with many more years of viable use ahead of it is scrapped. Not environmentally great, isit.

You seem either spectacularly ill informed or just mischievous. I'm sure you are aware that when their time is done in cars they are being repurposed into stationary applications from small to large scale. After all yiu acceited the point a floor price if £4K-£5k because it's valuable. You don't scrap something that's valuable..

And then after that reuse, which is a 15 or so year total life span, recycled.

No scrapping involved

GunJack

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Does that all really make sense ? ...

Firstly your "current annual spend on fuel, tax, insurance is around £900" ... does that really stack up with doing "450 miles after one 10-min stop for fuel in 2-3 weeks" in a car which has previously been stated to achieve "61mpg averaged over all mileage in 11 months", so lets have a look ....

- 450 miles in 3 weeks = (450/3)*52 = 7800miles/year (somewhere around average)
- 7800miles/61mpg = 127gallons, which at an average £1.32/litre equates to around £762/year at £6/gallon, leaving £138 to cover all other costs ...

... Doesn't really look good, so let's take another look, so excluding any consumables & repairs ... Insurance (£500)+VED (£30)+MOT(£40)+Service(£100 average) = £670, leaving ~£230 for fuel, so enough for somewhere around 2340miles, ((230/6)*61), which if achieving 450miles/tank would equate to visiting the forecourt once every 10 weeks, not between 2&3 ... doesn't really look good from that perspective either! ...

... Mind though, if 2340 miles/year is in the correct ball park, then even an EV with a mere 100 mile range would only need charging once a fortnight (100/(2340/52)), so even what would likely be unpopular early generation EVs in a few years time (therefore likely the cheapest on the used market!) would probably suit ...

As has been raised by many on many occasions, it's not something that will be down to personal choice for ever as the supply of decent ICE vehicles will eventually dry-up, additionally it's almost certain that governments will collectively use levers and various incentives to 'encourage' the public to stop using ICEs in order to attempt to meet their own emissions targets, effectively accelerating the rate at which the supply of older ICEs (those with the worst emissions!) are taken off the road ...

HTH
Z

I don't know where you buy your fuel, but my total average cost per litre of diesel has been £1.20 to date. At it's cheapest it was £1.14, currently at the peak at £1.27. I know as I've spreadsheeted(?) the whole lot.

Insurance this year was £185 fully comp and protected NCD, where you get £500 from I don't know.

Doesn't really look good, so let's take another look, so excluding any consumables & repairs ... Insurance (£500) wrong, see above+VED (£30)+MOT(£40) same on ICE and EV, £30-£35 so cancels out+Service(£100 average) wrong, circa £25 for parts = £670, leaving ~£230 for fuel, so enough for somewhere around 2340miles, ((230/6)*61), which if achieving 450miles/tank would equate to visiting the forecourt once every 10 weeks, not between 2&3 ... doesn't really look good from that perspective either! ...

The only part of your paragraph you have correct is the bit highlighted in red... the whole point of me going back to a diesel after my last car was petrol was to hammer down running costs, which I have significantly...Your numbers & analysis above just show how far from the real world some are....okay, I get there will be some regional differences, but we don't all live in the expensive, overcrowded south-east

GunJack

AnotherJoe wrote: »

You seem either spectacularly ill informed or just mischievous. I'm sure you are aware that when their time is done in cars they are being repurposed into stationary applications from small to large scale. After all yiu acceited the point a floor price if £4K-£5k because it's valuable. You don't scrap something that's valuable..

And then after that reuse, which is a 15 or so year total life span, recycled.

No scrapping involved

I think AdrianC is referring to the residual value of the batteries far outweighing the rest of the car, which I can see being the case....so yes, younger cars will end up being "taken out of service" if you don't like the term "scrapped"

zeupater

GunJack wrote: »

I don't know where you buy your fuel, but my total average cost per litre of diesel has been £1.20 to date. At it's cheapest it was £1.14, currently at the peak at £1.27. I know as I've spreadsheeted(?) the whole lot.

Insurance this year was £185 fully comp and protected NCD, where you get £500 from I don't know.

Doesn't really look good, so let's take another look, so excluding any consumables & repairs ... Insurance (£500) wrong, see above+VED (£30)+MOT(£40) same on ICE and EV, £30-£35 so cancels out+Service(£100 average) wrong, circa £25 for parts = £670, leaving ~£230 for fuel, so enough for somewhere around 2340miles, ((230/6)*61), which if achieving 450miles/tank would equate to visiting the forecourt once every 10 weeks, not between 2&3 ... doesn't really look good from that perspective either! ...

The only part of your paragraph you have correct is the bit highlighted in red... the whole point of me going back to a diesel after my last car was petrol was to hammer down running costs, which I have significantly...Your numbers & analysis above just show how far from the real world some are....okay, I get there will be some regional differences, but we don't all live in the expensive, overcrowded south-east

Hi

Great, so how many miles does your spreadsheet tell you you've done? ... you must have it because you've mentioned your average mpg & it should really stack up with being able to travel "450 miles after one 10-min stop for fuel in 2-3 weeks" and achieve "61mpg averaged over all mileage in 11 months" ...

Anyway, £500/year would represent a fair average for insurance for the majority of motorists & £100/year would represent quite a low average for servicing over time, including oil changes, brake fluid etc ...

As for your comments on MOT & VED, well you raised them as being part of the running cost in your own post ... "My current annual spend on fuel, tax, insurance is around £900" ...

Regarding the smoke & mirror waffle on the fuel cost, what you've historically paid & what you will pay in the future are completely different, what's more, in order to 'encourage' people to move away from ICEs the government is very likely to pull the fuel taxation lever hard, that's very hard when it suits them to do so ... however according to the AA (06/07/2018) ... http://www.theaa.com/driving-advice/driving-costs/fuel-prices ...

Diesel prices have increased by 3.4p from 128.3 p/litre to 131.7 p/litre ...

Highest !!!8211; The South East has recorded the highest diesel price at 132.4 p/litre
Lowest !!!8211; Northern Ireland has the cheapest diesel at 130.8 p/litre

... good enough for me, but let's take your average at £1.20 ... the £762/year simply becomes £692 ((762/132)x120), leaving just over £200/year to cover all other running costs, so not much difference ...

Anyway, we could go a little further down that track & look at the original position of travelling 450miles resulting in only needing to refuel every "2-3 weeks" ... note, the benefit of the mileage calculations based on 3 weeks ... if it was 2.5 weeks then the annual mileage would be 9360 so cost over £900, and if 2 weeks it goes up to 11700 with an annual cost of over £1100!

However, none of this really matters ... all you'll likely be facing as the EV market expands is that oil prices will reduce and production contract so that only the low cost production on-shore fields remain viable, petrol stations will become unprofitable & most will close down, fuel tax & emission based VED will be incrementally increased to 'encourage' the further uptake of EVs & the reduction of ICEs amongst other measures previously mentioned, effectively strangling the both supply of ICE vehicles on the second hand market & making their ownership vastly more costly ... what we pay today is not what we can expect to pay in the future, it would be naive to expect otherwise ....

There are many who would at this point mention that there's always the option of TaaS (effectively a cheap to operate driverless taxi service), which for those unable or unwilling to pay extra for a used EV that would likely last longer & have a lower overall cost-of-ownership than a used ICE of a similar age may not only be the most suitable solution, but the only solution available ... but that's a different discussion!

HTH
Z