Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

EVandPV

Grumpy_chap said:

I take the view that the value of any second hand EV is NIL because I cannot know the battery condition.  

Actually, you can. There's an app for the Zoe which links to an ODB11 reader that can tell you the battery state of health. Mine is at 98% after 10k miles.
There's a similar app available for the Leaf and I would imagine for most other EV's also. 

Solarchaser

Grumpy_chap said:

Martyn1981 said:

So, we have ICE Corsa:

• List £16k
• Discounted £14k
• Deposit £2,342
• Monthly £185.35 x 48 = £8,896
• Total outlay £11,238
• Residual at the end of 4 years £2,762

Versus EV Corsa:

• List £27k
• Discounted £23k
• Deposit £3,354
• Monthly £217.22 x 48 = £10,426
• Total outlay £13,780
• Residual at the end of 4 years £9,220

For the first-owner, the EV is starting to look like a no-brainer, so long as the vehicle fits life-style (range, ability to charge at home).

By considering new-car discounts into the deal, the delta at 4 years has narrowed to £6.5k rather than £8k.  I am still unsure what happens to that 4yo EV at >£9k is expensive.  Given clever finance has been used to mitigate the purchase cost for the new car, the cost difference is passed to the second owner and seems a challenge then.

Yep, for the first owner a no-brainer, and second hand (if not bought at the end of the contract) a difference of £6.5k (for a much better car, we need to stress) looks good to me, after all the BEV will probably have £500-£1000pa less running costs/maintenance (as I mentioned earlier) and a longer life expectancy. If the owner is entering an ULEZ zone, then the savings pa could be ~£2k more?

For the first owner, the sums work, though the delta in list price could put many off even looking at the EV - it likely requires the sales person to actually guide the choice to at least consider the EV option.  How many sales people are sufficiently driven for that, when they can close the cheaper ICE deal for so much less effort?

For the 4 yo car, someone looking at a budget of £3k - £5k retail is not going to consider a car at £9k - £12k retail.  I do understand the comment on fuel and maintenance cost, but is the potential buyer of a 4 yo car even getting to the point of doing the calculation?

You then say longer life expectancy of the EV.  I am not sure that this is proven.  Even if you are correct, there are many people that are concerned about life-span of the battery and potential massive bill if the battery needs renewal.  This is a common perception and includes myself - I take the view that the value of any second hand EV is NIL because I cannot know the battery condition.  An old ICE gets rough and noisy, but will still get you from A-B.  An old EV with a failing battery will fail to get you from A-B.

I am not sure the ULEZ charges make a difference?  As I understand it, any car, petrol, diesel, hybrid, or electric since 2016 is exempt from ULEZ fees - why, even my 2007 Focus is ULEZ-compliant.  I am considering the London ULEZ, there may be other zones with different criteria.

I think the point on sales is a good one, salesmen generally don't have a clue about EVs,  unless it's a dealership where they have been trained.

However regarding your point about being the second owner, I can only speak to my experience. 
2.5 years ago, I decided the wife's car was needing retired and had about 2.5k to buy another, had a look around and to meet my requirements (good spec, good make, reliable, so low mileage but not too low) there weren't many ice cars that were fitting the bill.
In fact having been around cars for a while (I'm the mate that gets dragged along when folk are buying cars, so I can look over them and advise to buy or run) I know there is an awful lot of things you can do to a car to hide faults for a few days or weeks, and really I got a bit fed up with the whole thing.

I like the idea that an old ice will get rough and noisy, but still get you there... thats not my experience. 
And old ICE will happily fall over and die (jump timing) because of a worn idler, or chain tensioner and leave you with a nasty bill and a weekend in an engine bay, that was one of the big pushes for me to electric.
No more weekends under the car.

I figured with electric there arnt many folk in the know enough to fudge up an electric to look decent when it's actually a lemon.
And with a leaf it has 12 battery bars displayed on the dash, if the battery is degrading, the bars go out to indicate this degradation.
You can also plug in to the obd port and use leafspy which is a free download to tell you the battery health.

Interest rates are low, so I got a 10k loan and bought a (at that time) 3.5 year old leaf tekna.
Mrs absolutely loves it, as it has all the toys and best of all, costs her nothing, she plugs it in at home.

So what about depreciation,  we'll a year ago I checked and the leaf was still worth 10k, now somewhere between 9 and 9.5k, so in 2.5 years I've potentially lost a grand in depreciation. 
But, I've "made" about £1500 in charging it mostly for free (solar / cheap rate 80% and free chargers 10%) for the 10k miles it's done vs what I was paying in petrol for the previous car (£50 for 300 miles).

So as a second owner it's still fairly Rosie for me.
I may have said already,  but I tried to convince the wife a couple of months ago to upgrade to the newer leaf, like Ken has for the larger range, but she wasn't for having it. She said the new one looked ugly in comparison to her car, and that was that. 
I have a feeling ill be getting a larger battery fitted to it in time, rather than replacing it since the wife loves it so much.

So far 2.5 years and not even a lightbulb to replace.

Martyn1981

I've said it before and I'll say it again, it always seems to be Scotland or Bristol with the big G&E news. Could be confirmation bias, could be their more comprehensive plans / policies, could be the mild mannered janitor, but here's yet another opportunity to praise Bristol:

Royal Mail’s Newest Delivery Office Will Have An All-Electric Fleet

Royal Mail has announced the launch of its first 100% electric Delivery Office. The Bristol East Central Delivery Office recently had its 23 diesel delivery and collection vans replaced by fully electric ones.

The office’s entire fleet — collection and delivery vehicles — is now made up of electric vehicles. To support this transition, six charging stations have been installed at the office. Furthermore, the electricity powering the office and charging the vehicles is 100% renewable.

shinytop

Martyn1981 said:

I've said it before and I'll say it again, it always seems to be Scotland or Bristol with the big G&E news. Could be confirmation bias, could be their more comprehensive plans / policies, could be the mild mannered janitor, but here's yet another opportunity to praise Bristol:

Royal Mail’s Newest Delivery Office Will Have An All-Electric Fleet

Royal Mail has announced the launch of its first 100% electric Delivery Office. The Bristol East Central Delivery Office recently had its 23 diesel delivery and collection vans replaced by fully electric ones.

The office’s entire fleet — collection and delivery vehicles — is now made up of electric vehicles. To support this transition, six charging stations have been installed at the office. Furthermore, the electricity powering the office and charging the vehicles is 100% renewable.

Supports the TCO argument; I doubt they'd be doing it otherwise.  Bristol's impending clean air zone means all their older diesels would need replacing anyway.

Grumpy_chap

Solarchaser said:

I think the point on sales is a good one, salesmen generally don't have a clue about EVs,  unless it's a dealership where they have been trained.

However regarding your point about being the second owner, I can only speak to my experience. 
2.5 years ago, I decided the wife's car was needing retired and had about 2.5k to buy another, had a look around and to meet my requirements (good spec, good make, reliable, so low mileage but not too low) there weren't many ice cars that were fitting the bill.

Interest rates are low, so I got a 10k loan and bought a (at that time) 3.5 year old leaf tekna.

So what about depreciation,  we'll a year ago I checked and the leaf was still worth 10k, now somewhere between 9 and 9.5k, so in 2.5 years I've potentially lost a grand in depreciation. 
But, I've "made" about £1500 in charging it mostly for free (solar / cheap rate 80% and free chargers 10%) for the 10k miles it's done vs what I was paying in petrol for the previous car (£50 for 300 miles).

So as a second owner it's still fairly Rosie for me.

Thanks for sharing the experience.  
Is your case, going from a £2.5k budget to £10k typical?  Many people at £2.5k simply cannot afford £10k - irrespective of the TCO, if they can't sensibly finance the £10k and we see enough tales of people with cars they cannot afford.

Regarding depreciation - yes it's very good at the moment for EV's.  For how long is that low depreciation sustainable?  As supply of used EV's increases, the depreciation will tend towards the same as ICE depreciation.  Ultimately, over the life of the vehicle, someone has to end up carrying the can for the additional £10k in starting price.

Solarchaser

Grumpy_chap said:

Solarchaser said:

I think the point on sales is a good one, salesmen generally don't have a clue about EVs,  unless it's a dealership where they have been trained.

However regarding your point about being the second owner, I can only speak to my experience. 
2.5 years ago, I decided the wife's car was needing retired and had about 2.5k to buy another, had a look around and to meet my requirements (good spec, good make, reliable, so low mileage but not too low) there weren't many ice cars that were fitting the bill.

Interest rates are low, so I got a 10k loan and bought a (at that time) 3.5 year old leaf tekna.

So what about depreciation,  we'll a year ago I checked and the leaf was still worth 10k, now somewhere between 9 and 9.5k, so in 2.5 years I've potentially lost a grand in depreciation. 
But, I've "made" about £1500 in charging it mostly for free (solar / cheap rate 80% and free chargers 10%) for the 10k miles it's done vs what I was paying in petrol for the previous car (£50 for 300 miles).

So as a second owner it's still fairly Rosie for me.

Thanks for sharing the experience.  
Is your case, going from a £2.5k budget to £10k typical?  Many people at £2.5k simply cannot afford £10k - irrespective of the TCO, if they can't sensibly finance the £10k and we see enough tales of people with cars they cannot afford.

Regarding depreciation - yes it's very good at the moment for EV's.  For how long is that low depreciation sustainable?  As supply of used EV's increases, the depreciation will tend towards the same as ICE depreciation.  Ultimately, over the life of the vehicle, someone has to end up carrying the can for the additional £10k in starting price.

I can't tell you what is typical, what I can say is that folk who have managed to save 2.5k for a car, can generally afford £180 a month on a loan, that's what I did, 10k loan over 5 years.
The 2.5k went on home batteries and inverters, but thats another story.

How long will decent depreciation last on ev's, id hazard a guess at at least 5-10 years as we haven't even reached 10% market penetration yet, and more and more people want to dip their toe into the ev market without spending £50k on a Tesla or even 25k on a "cheaper" ev.

Depreciation wise an ev is a far better investment than an ICE car, which is a big reason why my multinational company has given us EV's.

But you know I'm old enough to remember using the old glasses guide when buying cars, and recalling that a new mondao at £17k was worth £7k at a year old, people clearly weren't fretting about ice car depreciation back then.

My advice would be have a look for a 3 year old EV that suits you, and go drive it.
You tend to find that even old petrolheads like me U turn on electrics once they drive them for an hour or two.

Edited to add I've now paid back 5k of that 10k, and obviously 5k I'd alot of money.
I've put a set of tyres on it (front last year, rears this year) and thats another £300.

But in the year previous to this, I spent over £700 keeping the petrol car on the road, and thats just parts, so it forgets the multiple weekends working on rebuilding the engine, replacing various suspension parts, exhaust parts etc
And let me tell you, its been fantastic not to be spending those weekends cursing cars covered in crud and blood!

Martyn1981

Grumpy_chap said:

Solarchaser said:

I think the point on sales is a good one, salesmen generally don't have a clue about EVs,  unless it's a dealership where they have been trained.

However regarding your point about being the second owner, I can only speak to my experience. 
2.5 years ago, I decided the wife's car was needing retired and had about 2.5k to buy another, had a look around and to meet my requirements (good spec, good make, reliable, so low mileage but not too low) there weren't many ice cars that were fitting the bill.

Interest rates are low, so I got a 10k loan and bought a (at that time) 3.5 year old leaf tekna.

So what about depreciation,  we'll a year ago I checked and the leaf was still worth 10k, now somewhere between 9 and 9.5k, so in 2.5 years I've potentially lost a grand in depreciation. 
But, I've "made" about £1500 in charging it mostly for free (solar / cheap rate 80% and free chargers 10%) for the 10k miles it's done vs what I was paying in petrol for the previous car (£50 for 300 miles).

So as a second owner it's still fairly Rosie for me.

Regarding depreciation - yes it's very good at the moment for EV's.  For how long is that low depreciation sustainable?  As supply of used EV's increases, the depreciation will tend towards the same as ICE depreciation.  Ultimately, over the life of the vehicle, someone has to end up carrying the can for the additional £10k in starting price.

Sorry, but I don't think that's correct. The reason BEV's won't depreciate as quickly (in % terms) is that they have much lower running costs, and as I boringly keep repeating, the ICEV's maintenance costs go up as they get older, so folk have to balance paying more to run them, with paying less to buy them (sh). So that extra £10k* is reflected in the savings from owning a BEV, plus the longer life expectancy, especially now that we are seeing batteries doing really well in later production/generation vehicles.
*Hopefully most of that extra cost will disappear in the next 5yrs as battery and module costs fall, and production ramps up to more profitable/sustainable levels.

Martyn1981

I'm reading this as BEV's, due to the statement 'become electric only', but I suppose it could possibly 'just' mean electrified. If the former, then, blimey (apologies for the bad language) that's another big scalp falling to the Gods of electrons.

Fiat Plans To Go All In On Electric Cars By 2030

My, how things change. 7 short years ago, Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Fiat Chrysler, was begging people not to buy the battery electric Fiat 500e. He told an audience at the Brookings Institute, “I hope you don’t buy it because every time I sell one it costs me $14,000.”*

Today, Fiat is singing a very different tune. According to Autocar, Fiat boss Olivier François announced this week, “Between 2025 and 2030, our product lineup will gradually become electric only. This will be a radical change for Fiat. The decision to launch the new 500 — electric and electric alone — was actually taken before Covid-19. Even then, we were already aware that the world could not take any more compromises. We were reminded of the urgency of taking action, of doing something for the planet Earth.”

QrizB

There are about 35 million cars on the road in the UK (and on Bank Holiday weekends it seems most of them are on the A303 trying to pass Stonehenge). Current sales are around 2 million per year so, using a very simple (and thus wrong) model, over 17 years the entire UK car fleet is replaced*.

If essentially all sales are of BEVs from 2030, then by 2047 there will be very few FF cars left. New BEV purchases will lead to 3-year-old BEV sales and so on down the food chain. I would expect the oldest BEVs to be sub-£1000** bangers much as is the case now. For residuals to remain high you would need something else to artifically syphon off old BEVs; export***, or scrappage, or a strong market in pre-loved lithium batteries, or whatever.

* My Fiat Panda is 17 years old and I'm likely to be its final owner (it's possible it will live long enough to be passed on to Experiment #1). My previous car died at 14, the one before that made it to 19.

** Those are 2021 pounds, I'm sure inflation will have done something to the value of money by then.

*** I have a cousin who is a tree surgeon and he tells me the floor price for a serviceable pick-up truck is around £3k; below that price they get bought up for export to Africa. At one stage he was running his business out of a SUV because he couldn't find an affordable truck.

QrizB

Solarchaser said:

And let me tell you, its been fantastic not to be spending those weekends cursing cars covered in crud and blood!

I have occasionally joked with friends that one of the old smithing gods has taken on the portfolio of "mechanics" and demands a blood sacrifice before any major job will succeed.