Road Tax on EV's

DrEskimo

MouldyOldDough said:

Deleted_User said:

MouldyOldDough said:

Does an EV Lithium battery deteriorate with age - as well as mileage ?

ie) Would a low mileage user (say 5,000 miles per year) get twice as long out  of the battery, before it started to lose its ability to hold a decent charge - than someone who drove 10k pa ?

No. Electric cars need to be used regularly just like ice cars. Taxi companies are reporting that their fleets of Leafs with circa 150k miles have minimal battery degradation and that’s with constant use of rapid charging. 

So it would seem the benefit from heavy use. 

Right - so EVs do not suit light users ?

Not only cost per mile but also replacement battery-wise ?

Think I'll stick with my low emission IC car

Only done 10k miles in 5 years

Averages 55mpg and costs £30 pa road tax, and, since it already exists - wont use any build resources

I'm not sure how MouldyOldDough reached that conclusion, but I completely disagree.

As evidence by my 5-yr old EV with 17k miles with a battery capacity of 97% still.

It's the number and type of charge cycles that dictate degradation. Age is only a factor if it sits for years on end at very high or very low state of charge.

MouldyOldDough

For anyone who watches Mythbusters Motoring last night on Discovery - there was an interesting comparison between an EV and an IC vehicle - both producing 210bhp - obviously the EV produced a lot more Torque

They ran a 0-60 test and a standing 1/4 mile, both of which the EV trounched the IC

But they then did repeated the test with the EV at 25% charge - and this showed that the EV power was down considerably on its state at 100% charge - something like 15 % down - giving a 0-60 time some 1.5 seconds slower than at 100% charge

They came to the conclusion that the battery needs to be at 100% charge to get max power

ComicGeek

MouldyOldDough said:

For anyone who watches Mythbusters Motoring last night on Discovery - there was an interesting comparison between an EV and an IC vehicle - both producing 210bhp - obviously the EV produced a lot more Torque

They ran a 0-60 test and a standing 1/4 mile, both of which the EV trounched the IC

But they then did repeated the test with the EV at 25% charge - and this showed that the EV power was down considerably on its state at 100% charge - something like 15 % down - giving a 0-60 time some 1.5 seconds slower than at 100% charge

They came to the conclusion that the battery needs to be at 100% charge to get max power

Great story, but I have never needed to do a drag race in my EV so that is completely irrelevant. I'm much more interested in how it deals with real life driving, and it absolutely excels in that for me.

MouldyOldDough

ComicGeek said:

MouldyOldDough said:

For anyone who watches Mythbusters Motoring last night on Discovery - there was an interesting comparison between an EV and an IC vehicle - both producing 210bhp - obviously the EV produced a lot more Torque

They ran a 0-60 test and a standing 1/4 mile, both of which the EV trounched the IC

But they then did repeated the test with the EV at 25% charge - and this showed that the EV power was down considerably on its state at 100% charge - something like 15 % down - giving a 0-60 time some 1.5 seconds slower than at 100% charge

They came to the conclusion that the battery needs to be at 100% charge to get max power

Great story, but I have never needed to do a drag race in my EV so that is completely irrelevant. I'm much more interested in how it deals with real life driving, and it absolutely excels in that for me.

Yes but this means that in order to get the highest efficiency from your EV - It needs to be charged constantly and never left to go below say, 50%

Jenni_D

In order to get highest efficiency from your ICEV then it needs to run at a constant speed at suitable revs ... and an EV under the same conditions would still be more efficient.

I don't think this is an argument you'll win.

Petriix

MouldyOldDough said:

ComicGeek said:

MouldyOldDough said:

For anyone who watches Mythbusters Motoring last night on Discovery - there was an interesting comparison between an EV and an IC vehicle - both producing 210bhp - obviously the EV produced a lot more Torque

They ran a 0-60 test and a standing 1/4 mile, both of which the EV trounched the IC

But they then did repeated the test with the EV at 25% charge - and this showed that the EV power was down considerably on its state at 100% charge - something like 15 % down - giving a 0-60 time some 1.5 seconds slower than at 100% charge

They came to the conclusion that the battery needs to be at 100% charge to get max power

Great story, but I have never needed to do a drag race in my EV so that is completely irrelevant. I'm much more interested in how it deals with real life driving, and it absolutely excels in that for me.

Yes but this means that in order to get the highest efficiency from your EV - It needs to be charged constantly and never left to go below say, 50%

That's a non sequitur. Having less power available doesn't make it less efficient; quite the opposite in fact. The more power you use, the more energy you'll waste. While it's not ideal to have limited power, this only occurs at lower states of charge - under 33% typically.   

ComicGeek

MouldyOldDough said:

ComicGeek said:

MouldyOldDough said:

For anyone who watches Mythbusters Motoring last night on Discovery - there was an interesting comparison between an EV and an IC vehicle - both producing 210bhp - obviously the EV produced a lot more Torque

They ran a 0-60 test and a standing 1/4 mile, both of which the EV trounched the IC

But they then did repeated the test with the EV at 25% charge - and this showed that the EV power was down considerably on its state at 100% charge - something like 15 % down - giving a 0-60 time some 1.5 seconds slower than at 100% charge

They came to the conclusion that the battery needs to be at 100% charge to get max power

Great story, but I have never needed to do a drag race in my EV so that is completely irrelevant. I'm much more interested in how it deals with real life driving, and it absolutely excels in that for me.

Yes but this means that in order to get the highest efficiency from your EV - It needs to be charged constantly and never left to go below say, 50%

No, it means that to get the highest amount of power from the battery at a single time it needs to be kept at a higher charge - however, I don't need to access that amount of power in every day driving, so the battery charge level makes no difference to the efficiency I achieve. The acceleration at the full range of UK legal speeds for the EV is crazy compared to my previous 2.5L petrol - there is no issue with matching traffic speed with using sliproads on motorways etc, and overtaking is easy.  

I tend to keep my battery between 30%-80%, and just put it on charge every other day. Takes 10 seconds to plug it into the wall charger, and then the automated settings make sure it's all charged up at the lowest electric rates for me for the next morning. But then my EV can do 330 miles on a single charge, so really don't need to charge every day - I could probably only charge it 1-2 times a week, but with my cheap overnight elec tariff it's much cheaper to split into smaller charges.

MouldyOldDough

Is it still cheap to charge an EV - or have electricity rates increased recently ?

ComicGeek

MouldyOldDough said:

Is it still cheap to charge an EV - or have electricity rates increased recently ?

I charge mine at 5p/kWh, soon to increase to 7.5 p/kWh - but can also put in free elec from our solar pv panels. Same with any increase in energy use, you have to look at how to reduce costs. Still equates to about 2p/mile at the higher price.

MouldyOldDough

And are there still some places where you can charge for free - ie) Shopping centres or similar ?