Electric cars

GunJack

Martyn1981 wrote: »

So 7,540 miles at 4 miles per kWh and 7p/kWh = £132 pa, or a saving of ~£540pa. [Before considering the externality costs of CO2, NOx, pm2.5, etc emissions.]

BTW why would you want to buy or lease batts, we are talking about an older EV with its own batts, shirley.

But as always the arguments for bangernomics collapse if you take the argument to the extreme since you need someone to buy a new car to make an secondhand one available, and someone to buy the secondhand car to make an older car available. So the issue is irrelevant to new EV's, and is simply a matter for consideration when older and cheaper EV's are available ...... so long as all ownership costs are taken into account.

If, in 10yrs, I can get an electric car for £500, then of course I would seriously consider it...there will still be plenty of ICE around then (they won't even have banned sale of new ones by then) and for 2-3 decades following (speculation, yes, but with a reasonable confidence factor).... we'll have to wait and see what happens in the real world

almillar

But "more conveniently"? As conveniently, sure. But more?

As others have covered, leaving your house, the supermarket, the cinema etc with a charged car, is more convenient than ever having to pay at a petrol station. Don't forget to subtract the time you spend regularly checking the oil!

it's the cost of buying the flippin' thing in the first place

You have, of course, heard of PCP (the way most ICE and EV are 'bought'), but you think that's a waste of money, prefering to spend that money as a trickle maintaining an old, high mileage car, which you perceive as better value.

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

GunJack, You've banged on enough about cheap cars being cheap, and EVs not being cheap. We heard you. I've told you that you can't compare 20 YO ICE to 20 YO EV because 20 YO EV doesn't exist, and I've asked you to do fair comparisons (you haven't) and I've given you an example of MY costs. £4,000 spread over 2 years = £166.67 per month on average, for 15,000 miles in a brand new car. Go on, give us some numbers. Ah, you did.

Real-life numbers for you (and the nett purchase cost was less than a week's fuel )

You missed out maintenance costs. Which is a long term one (so don't say £0 in 4 months = £0 over 4 years).

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.

Not long ago (probably earlier in this thread, and before diesel unravelled), plenty of people were worried about second hand EV prices and not holding their value well. But some people don't like to hear about change...

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

This is true. Add ~£5,000 for a rare 'i' model to the purchase price. The battery rental does have benefits like breakdown recovery (including running out of charge) included.

The battery lease is nothing but a money maker for RCI... Buy the thing its cheaper

And again, it's funny how things change. People wanted to rent, not buy, batteries, because they thought they would lose charge and need replaced, and didn't want to own them.

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

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

I think he was talking about the rest of the car...

You don't think when the market matures (a decade plus) there could be a market for fitting new/refurbed/remanufactured batteries into old but still usable cars? It won't happen short term, and we may lose some otherwise perfectly good cars in the short term, but the problem is that demand for batteries (cars, storage and other uses) outstrips supply. Check the price to install a 4kWh battery in your home, vs the 22kWh battery being dragged around in cheap Zoes. It will depend a lot, I think, on how indies are able to pick it up. If everything is locked up in a manufacturer/dealer system, they could keep prices as high as they like, whereas the free market could make it cheaper.

If you want to talk about cars being scrapped before their time, my personal bugbear is that top VED band for 2006 onwards cars. Sure, they're polluting models (in CO2) but they're perfectly good cars, worth way less than £5,000, and nobody wants them because they're ~£500 per year to tax. Rant over.

I think Tesla, Nissan and Renault are well placed to ramp up production

I know Tesla are building factories, so long term that's correct, but I'd say there are a few people with deposits on Model 3 that would disagree, short term!

Can't find a price to just buy the battery separate from the car..

No, just buy the car!

The ins is £100 dearer than my current ICE...another part of the point....

You've already used this rubbish, and I've already debunked it, EVs are NOT more expensive than equivalent ICE. Nobody is forcing YOU to buy an EV, or saying they're for everyone. Maybe an EV would cost YOU more, but that doesn't mean they would cost everyone more. Someone out there DOES buy new cars. THAT person could step into a Zoe for around the same total cost of ownership as a Clio.

zeupater

GunJack wrote: »

With respect, that is speculation. I'm talking here and now.

Hi

But you're not even doing that, you continue to write about the past - as evidenced by referring to historical fuel prices as opposed to those that apply here & now ...

Anyway, back to your position in the earliest post on this set of exchanges ...

GunJack wrote: »

I'll consider going electric when I can get 450+ miles on a charge, it charges in 10 mins (equivalent of a garage fill-up of diesel), and I can buy a decent used one for £500 or less...

That's the reality of driving for much of the population, and until electric gets as good as that, I think it'll struggle to go totally mainstream...

... That's not 'here & now', it's really pure speculation on what you personally believe will happen in the future, and as has been mentioned by a number of people on a number of occasions, what you can do today may not always be the case & comparing a reasonably new EV with a much older ICE simply displays lack of understanding or mischievous bias, also, considering that almost your entire argument since has been based on looking at the issue from a TCO viewpoint, you've not even been open to doing so, which also suggests mischief ....

If EVs are more reliable, the cost of maintenance & repair is lower, the energy cost per mile travelled is substantially lower etc, then when in the market for a highly depreciated vehicle, why wouldn't someone consider an EV costing (say)£2500 with low running costs as being a better medium-term prospect than an ICE vehicle of a similar age costing £500 with significantly higher running costs ... isn't that really the basis & meaning of TCO?

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

almillar wrote: »

You don't think when the market matures (a decade plus) there could be a market for fitting new/refurbed/remanufactured batteries into old but still usable cars? It won't happen short term, and we may lose some otherwise perfectly good cars in the short term, but the problem is that demand for batteries (cars, storage and other uses) outstrips supply.

Apologies if this is misleading, but a year or so back when I was researching replacement batt prices (purely for my own learning) I'm sure that you could get refurbished batt packs.

I seem to recall something about companies that check each cell or pack, replace any dodgy ones, then sell the refurb batt at a lower price than the manufacturer sells a new batt.

Sorry for being so vague, it's just that your idea prompted a dim lightbulb in my brain to light up.

AdrianC

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Apologies if this is misleading, but a year or so back when I was researching replacement batt prices (purely for my own learning) I'm sure that you could get refurbished batt packs.

I seem to recall something about companies that check each cell or pack, replace any dodgy ones, then sell the refurb batt at a lower price than the manufacturer sells a new batt.

That's certainly long been the case for hybrids - and we come back to the standard cells used - but is very dependent upon the availability of used batteries to refurbish.

For something as relatively common as a Prius - where there's no lease-versus-purchase question - then it's straightforward. Buy write-offs from Copart, remove battery pack, refurbish, sell on with old pack returned against core deposit.


For pure EVs, especially where many have been sold on a battery lease so the battery being purchased may be to replace a leased battery, that's a lot harder - especially where substantial and complex-design battery packs are more at risk of damage in a collision simply through taking up much more of the vehicle footprint and getting much nearer the edges of the vehicle. And, of course, restricted supply versus demand means the prices only go one way... Which in turn feeds back to used values being low enough to be worth buying viable vehicles to break for the battery.

Martyn1981

News, or not news on variable tariffs.

TBH I'd have thought that a cheap off-peak rate will simply move the vast majority of charging away from peak times. And smart chargers will 'grab' any cheap RE excess for those cars plugged in for 'may or may not get some charging' charging.

UK electric car drivers face paying more to charge at peak times

NigeWick

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I'd have thought that a cheap off-peak rate will simply move the vast majority of charging away from peak times. And smart chargers will 'grab' any cheap RE excess for those cars plugged in for 'may or may not get some charging' charging.

At present I just plug into the Myernergi Zappi charger in the garage and it tops the car's battery up with solar after the house, hot water and Tesla Powerwall are sorted. Other times, I'll set the car's timer to charge on Economy 7.

Who in their right mind wants to pay peak prices for their electricity? And yes, I have 7kW charged in the daytime when I needed to for a particular journey.

almillar

more at risk of damage in a collision simply through taking up much more of the vehicle footprint and getting much nearer the edges of the vehicle.

Any mass produced EV (not PHEV) I know of has the battery only under the seats - no further rear than a fuel tank would be, and no further forwards than the frint passengers - ie, inside the crash structure. But further out to the sides, yes.

AdrianC

VW are doing some plugging of an electric version of the Bay window that they were playing about with in the early 70s.


https://www.volkswagen-vans.co.uk/content/vw_nfz/magazine/gb/en/e-campervan.html


850kg of lead-acid batteries for 70km range...!



No sign of any other hybrid or electric Transporter from them since, though.

Martyn1981

AdrianC wrote: »

No sign of any other hybrid or electric Transporter from them since, though.

Not even an I.D Buzz with the seats stripped out? They never stop going on about it, like all the EV concepts they've been promoting for years and years, and may even build eventually.