Electric cars

supersaver2

Me and the wife are quite new to the electric car market. She currently has a Zoe, on a full charge we are getting a range of 217 miles. We are also lucky to have a Renault dealership with a fast charger on our door step. Charger is free to their customers. Never paid yet to charge it! She doesn't do many long journeys, a short commute to work and shopping, we probably charge around once a fortnight currently.

I was amazed how nippy it is, leaves most cars behind at traffic lights. Got all the usual toys, sat nav, reversing cam etc.

Driving up to the Lakes and back last weekend with zero fuel costs was quite satisfying!

I travel quite a lot for work otherwise I'd be getting one myself.

The infrastructure definitely needs to be improved in this country, but for folk who don't travel a lot i'd highly recommend.

Herzlos

BeenThroughItAll wrote: »

I do quite a lot of >100mi trips. Today, I've driven 350mi to Birmingham and Wednesday, I'll be doing a 250mi drive to London, with a 400mi trip from London to Glasgow on Thursday, then Glasgow back to Durham on Friday morning.

So you're one of the few people I covered above that EV's don't make sense for. But I bet you're in something like less than 5% of the population.

Even with that, EVs are almost at the stage where you can do your 250 mile drive to London on a single charge, though you'd likely need to make a single stop mid way on the 350/400 mile drives to fast-charge somewhere. Easily after about 4 hours of driving, when the general advice has always been to stop every 2 or so anyway.

Give it another generation and I'd be willing to bet you'll be able to get an EV that'll do 400 miles on a single charge.

I don't know anyone doing the kind of miles that make an EV impractical beyond a few of our sales guys and even then they could probably get away with it most of the time.

Gloomendoom

Herzlos wrote: »

So you're one of the few people I covered above that EV's don't make sense for. But I bet you're in something like less than 5% of the population.

Unfortunately, I'm another one in that group. Have a holiday place in Wales that is totally off-grid. The investment necessary to provide for EV charging would be considerable, even if I had the space to do it. I also need to tow, which restricts EV choice even further.

Otherwise, I would seriously be considering an electric car. The only one that comes close is the Tesla Model X and that, at over £72k for the base model, is way out of my price range.

Martyn1981

BeenThroughItAll wrote: »

I do quite a lot of >100mi trips. Today, I've driven 350mi to Birmingham and Wednesday, I'll be doing a 250mi drive to London, with a 400mi trip from London to Glasgow on Thursday, then Glasgow back to Durham on Friday morning.

The more miles you do, the greater the savings with an EV.

So what you are actually arguing is that for a small percentage of drivers who do long trips and don't take breaks, there is a market for a car model with a larger battery, perhaps 140kWh rather than Tesla's 100kWh.

Or you want faster charging, such as Tesla's plans to use cooling to speed up charge rates.

You don't seem to be arguing against EV's, you are simply arguing for an extreme EV for a small percentage of the population.

Obviously, most people would rather have a smaller battery, and less financial investment in the car, as such a large batt would not make sense for the vast majority of journeys.

There will always be outliers in transportation, but the fact that some people buy motorbikes, Lamborghini's, pick up trucks, etc doesn't mean that 'normal' cars don't meet the needs of the vast majority.

Herzlos

Gloomendoom wrote: »

Unfortunately, I'm another one in that group. Have a holiday place in Wales that is totally off-grid. The investment necessary to provide for EV charging would be considerable, even if I had the space to do it. I also need to tow, which restricts EV choice even further.

Otherwise, I would seriously be considering an electric car. The only one that comes close is the Tesla Model X and that, at over £72k for the base model, is way out of my price range.

I have to admit I'm not sure what the deal is regarding towing and EV's. In theory they should be a lot better due to the torque, but I don't know how badly it'd impact range.

Your holiday place has no electricity at all? That's unusual.
Presumably in Wales it's not likely to be viable to run a solar panel either.

In other news, the UK government look to be banning the sales of combustion engines by 2040 like the French are:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/25/new-diesel-petrol-cars-banned-uk-roads-2040-government-unveils/

mksysb

What happens if you run out of charge before reaching a charging point? In an ICE car you just walk to the petrol station, fill up a can and walk back to your car. What do you do with an electric car?

dipsy

I would be interested in a electric car but like lots of others, yes what do you do if you are not need a charger?

Seen in the press that councils will put chargers on streets, (maybe), running from lamp posts, should be fun, can't even park on my street some days then what

I know very little about electric cars, but if I could be sure I could charge and never get caught short I would have one just for the cost savings

Herzlos

mksysb wrote: »

What happens if you run out of charge before reaching a charging point? In an ICE car you just walk to the petrol station, fill up a can and walk back to your car. What do you do with an electric car?

Call the AA (or equivalent) who'll come along and charge it up a bit for you (I believe Nissan already offer this, but if it's likely to be a common thing then someone will fill the gap, all they'd need is a battery/generator on the back of a van), or see if the building you've broke down outside will let you use a 13A socket for 10 minutes.

Remember they've still got a fuel gauge and warning lights, so it's not as if you'll suddenly just stop. You should have plenty of time to find a petrol station with an EV point, or a supermarket or something. Just like you do with an ICE car.

Martyn1981

mksysb wrote: »

What happens if you run out of charge before reaching a charging point? In an ICE car you just walk to the petrol station, fill up a can and walk back to your car. What do you do with an electric car?

Keep an eye on the distance remaining (like a fuel gauge) and slow down if necessary.

The Tesla S 100D will do 319miles at 70mph, or 514miles at 45mph.

I assume at 30mph the range will improve further as you stop fighting with air resistance, but their site only shows 45-70mph.

Whilst I don't have an EV, everything I've read or watched seems to suggest that these worries disappear fast once you have an EV .... you just adapt to it.

vman

Herzlos wrote: »

Call the AA (or equivalent) who'll come along and charge it up a bit for you (I believe Nissan already offer this, but if it's likely to be a common thing then someone will fill the gap, all they'd need is a battery/generator on the back of a van), or see if the building you've broke down outside will let you use a 13A socket for 10 minutes.

Remember they've still got a fuel gauge and warning lights, so it's not as if you'll suddenly just stop. You should have plenty of time to find a petrol station with an EV point, or a supermarket or something. Just like you do with an ICE car.

...and Nissan breakdown cover is free providing you have your annual service with them (which you kinda need to do anyway, your local exhaust fitting company isn't a great choice for EV). Annual service is very cheap (about £100 compared to about £360 for my diesel). Turtle mode kicks in before a complete stop, so you can crawl along for about 5 miles (I think). It's worth noting that there are also a few after-market range extenders that I seem to remember claim to increase range by about 15%.