The big fat Electric Vehicle bashing thread.

DB1904

Deleted_User said:

Ibrahim5 said:

All this googling electric cars means I have just been sent an advert to buy a Volvo C40 electric. Only £799 a month. I would save £50 a month on diesel though. Difficult decision.

You can also spend £799 a month on an ice car. Your posts bring nothing to this discussion. 

On a V or C40 Volvo? Prove they bring nothing to the discussion and post a link to one. 

[Deleted User]

I'm one of the 40% of people that can't charge an EV at home. I could destroy my front garden and remove some trees to make it into a driveway but not only is that costly it isn't good for the environment.

Home charging isn't an option for everyone and lifestyles don't always allow finite planning and managing of distances and mileage. One night last week my 25 mile commute home turned into 80 miles to assist my daughter because there was a fire at the train station.

Earlier in this thread I posted that all my nearest public chargers all being out of use or occupied when I checked on Zap map. After watching some Youtube videos from some pro-EV long term owners that give honest real life experiences of the public charging network I decided to look a bit more into my local chargers and found people having similar experiences:

                  

  

The above are the most recent reviews at my nearest public chargers, even the 4 successful ones sounds like it was a faff to even get charging.

Just watched an EV man channel video on Youtube, describing some tales of woe:

1. He met a man doing his first out a range run with his son - spent 30 mins on the phone to the EV charger operator but still couldn't get it working, eventually had to slow charge on the next charger taking hours at 10pm.
   
   
2. EV Man came to a charger with touch screen not working - phoned operator, 20 mins later charger rebooted then couldn't start charge because the touch screen still wasn't working.
   
   
3. All chargers for a particular network down nationally due to a server error.
   
   
4. A free charger wouldn't authenticate the RFID due to a server problem but still wouldn't allow charging even though it was free anyway.
   
   
5. A number of chargers located in unsafe areas - dark and lonely areas of car parks and streets with no CCTV or people nearby - a real safety concern for lone drivers having to faff about distracted with a dodgy charger and their mobile phone / payment card / car keys all ready to get stolen.

yessuz

I do not really understand your agenda there 

If you think it doesn't suit you now, then that's it. Go back to options of chosing NEW car in like 2030. Because it's only then when market for NEW cars will be EV only. 

You will still have millions of second hand ICE cars to choose from.

Situation with the public chargers near you NOW does not mean it will be same in a year or two. You might have lamp lost chargers. Or actually you can install stand alone charger at the place (near the street) where you live or whatever. Zap map comments are not made by all users who use the charging point, nor it is most up to date.

But you argument about planning os just wrong. Instead of 25 miles commute it became 80... And this has to be problem exactly why? Cars do 300 miles on a single charge easily these days, even in winter. So how some odd 80 mile journey suddenly becomes an issue?!

Answering you points:
1) !!!!!! happens. But it does not mean that this happens absolutely every time amd with everyone. But there are many other options. You can have ICE, run on fumes and when arrive at the pumps - it's not operating. 
2) 3) and 4) same one. You might come to pump and it not working. You should not take some anecdotal events as a constant 

5) eh!? 

If you want a really good channel for EVs, then watch Bjorn Nyland from Norway. He does various EVs and cruicially - a 1000 km (600+ miles) challenge. This one is particularly good if you want to understand HOW this works and how ot is different mindset to ICE

yessuz

For the record, I switched to EV few months ago. Was extremely anxious about how it will work... And now I see that there's no problems at all and I didn't have to overthink or over worry

[Deleted User]

yessuz said:

Situation with the public chargers near you NOW does not mean it will be same in a year or two. You might have lamp lost chargers. Or actually you can install stand alone charger at the place (near the street) where you live or whatever. Zap map comments are not made by all users who use the charging point, nor it is most up to date.

Will it though? Public chargers have been around for 10 years and they still don't work as reliably as fuel pumps. No moving parts yet they fail more than fuel pumps! EV owners claim the EV is more reliable because there are fewer moving parts - well the chargers don't seem to follow suit.

Comments earlier in this thread are about how easy it is just to open up Zap map and charge up but the users don't seem to agree. Even when it worked it took one person 15 mins to even start a charge. All those users turned up because the charger was showing as operational on Zap map yet it wasn't.

And the charger I picked on from the comments is not some oddball out of the way charger, it is the nearest rapid charger to the biggest airport outside London on a Shell forecourt, only a few miles from a city centre in a densely populated area among the highest for EV owners in the UK. My area supposedly has the highest ratio of electric chargers to EV's outside London.

yessuz said:

But you argument about planning os just wrong. Instead of 25 miles commute it became 80... And this has to be problem exactly why? Cars do 300 miles on a single charge easily these days, even in winter. So how some odd 80 mile journey suddenly becomes an issue?!

Again based on comments earlier in this thread telling me that the average driver does 20 miles per day so can charge up once a week - no they can't, you simply can't allow an EV to go to near empty like an ICE when you need to have your car available for a short notice / emergency journey. That effectively reduces the range of the car - I had to do 55 extra miles without any time to charge - on a 200 mile range EV that means effectively it is only 145 miles range if I need to keep 55 miles in reserve for emergencies or short notice.

I once had to drive 240 miles to Portsmouth following a phone call from a family member in an emergency - I'd need to keep my EV topped up to max every day - I don't have home charging so I have to rely on those public chargers that don't seem to work.

yessuz said:

1) !!!!!! happens. But it does not mean that this happens absolutely every time amd with everyone. But there are many other options. You can have ICE, run on fumes and when arrive at the pumps - it's not operating. 
2) 3) and 4) same one. You might come to pump and it not working. You should not take some anecdotal events as a constant 

5) eh!? 

If you want a really good channel for EVs, then watch Bjorn Nyland from Norway. He does various EVs and cruicially - a 1000 km (600+ miles) challenge. This one is particularly good if you want to understand HOW this works and how ot is different mindset to ICE

1, 2, 3, 4 - yes I've drove past a fuel station and see a sign saying closed but didn't need to stop and get out of the car and spend 15+mins faffing about to realise I wasn't going to get fuel. One of the comments said 5th charger they had tried that night - that doesn't happen with fuel pumps, it is not a !!!! happens scenario it is a total lack of decent infrastructure.

5 - Not sure where you live but car jacking is a daily occurrence where I live with over 400 per year and 6,000 annual car thefts - it is something we are all aware of and take precautions - I wouldn't feel safe going to an unattended charger in a empty / dark street / car park with my shiny new EV. 

yessuz

Deleted_User said:

yessuz said:

Situation with the public chargers near you NOW does not mean it will be same in a year or two. You might have lamp lost chargers. Or actually you can install stand alone charger at the place (near the street) where you live or whatever. Zap map comments are not made by all users who use the charging point, nor it is most up to date.

Will it though? Public chargers have been around for 10 years and they still don't work as reliably as fuel pumps. No moving parts yet they fail more than fuel pumps! EV owners claim the EV is more reliable because there are fewer moving parts - well the chargers don't seem to follow suit.

Comments earlier in this thread are about how easy it is just to open up Zap map and charge up but the users don't seem to agree. Even when it worked it took one person 15 mins to even start a charge. All those users turned up because the charger was showing as operational on Zap map yet it wasn't.

And the charger I picked on from the comments is not some oddball out of the way charger, it is the nearest rapid charger to the biggest airport outside London on a Shell forecourt, only a few miles from a city centre in a densely populated area among the highest for EV owners in the UK. My area supposedly has the highest ratio of electric chargers to EV's outside London.

yessuz said:

But you argument about planning os just wrong. Instead of 25 miles commute it became 80... And this has to be problem exactly why? Cars do 300 miles on a single charge easily these days, even in winter. So how some odd 80 mile journey suddenly becomes an issue?!

Again based on comments earlier in this thread telling me that the average driver does 20 miles per day so can charge up once a week - no they can't, you simply can't allow an EV to go to near empty like an ICE when you need to have your car available for a short notice / emergency journey. That effectively reduces the range of the car - I had to do 55 extra miles without any time to charge - on a 200 mile range EV that means effectively it is only 145 miles range if I need to keep 55 miles in reserve for emergencies or short notice.

I once had to drive 240 miles to Portsmouth following a phone call from a family member in an emergency - I'd need to keep my EV topped up to max every day - I don't have home charging so I have to rely on those public chargers that don't seem to work.

yessuz said:

1) !!!!!! happens. But it does not mean that this happens absolutely every time amd with everyone. But there are many other options. You can have ICE, run on fumes and when arrive at the pumps - it's not operating. 
2) 3) and 4) same one. You might come to pump and it not working. You should not take some anecdotal events as a constant 

5) eh!? 

If you want a really good channel for EVs, then watch Bjorn Nyland from Norway. He does various EVs and cruicially - a 1000 km (600+ miles) challenge. This one is particularly good if you want to understand HOW this works and how ot is different mindset to ICE

1, 2, 3, 4 - yes I've drove past a fuel station and see a sign saying closed but didn't need to stop and get out of the car and spend 15+mins faffing about to realise I wasn't going to get fuel. One of the comments said 5th charger they had tried that night - that doesn't happen with fuel pumps, it is not a !!!! happens scenario it is a total lack of decent infrastructure.

5 - Not sure where you live but car jacking is a daily occurrence where I live with over 400 per year and 6,000 annual car thefts - it is something we are all aware of and take precautions - I wouldn't feel safe going to an unattended charger in a empty / dark street / car park with my shiny new EV. 

Firstly, for example All tesla superchargers work flawlessly. Moreover, you can wee each and every supercharge occupation (how many stalls remaining). Other manufacturers have similar info with other networks. main point being that you use fast chargers only when needed and for normal charges (99% of the time) you use slow one at home.

Wat is more sinister is that You nit-picked comments (only bad ones!) - tell us which charger you chose for the comments!?) And what is even wotse - these are from different chargers/networks and some of them are on the completely different systems/standards (cvs and chademo for example) and only one of them is compatible with the specific car. Once again, you just nit-pick bad comments, and some of them are irrelevant.  Show here, which ones you picked.
Moreover all EVs (new ones) have certain networks already coded into the sat nav (kia ev6, hiunday iconiq 5, others). So that again, in this case shows that it is not necessary to use zap-map. By the way, zap map does not show all the charging points

And if you really want to stick to zapmap, then I can tell you that nearest public charger has 37 comments, of which only 1 is stating that it was not working, followed by another few days later that it is working fine... And these are like 1 year old. And shedloads of good comments. Same is for the nearest fast chargers, which had issues in the past but now works fine. So again - nitpicking

Secondly, cars have let's say 300 miles range. Even odd longer commute is perfectly fine. You can charge you car when you need. If you live in Scottish highlands and nearest petrol station is 30 odd miles away you never keep you fuel tank below that range, do you?
I also once drove across Europe. So based on that I should never get an EV? You drive when you need and stop at nearest fast charger to top up in order to reach your destination. And on contrary what you are saying here, we known that public chargers do work, especially the fast ones.

And for the last bit: 1, 2, 3, 4 - you just nit-pick bad comments. Until proven different. Btw - when I come to charger, it works. Miracles happen I suppose.
And for 5 - well bad luck then.  Use chargers during daylight or when they are at well illuminated area? I am not mentioning that you can lock/unlock cars with phones these days (as well as block from driving) and in worst case there's insurance for that. Never had a single issue with parking/charging in various areas. But I do not use a steering wheel lock t-bar either.

In short - if you want to find negatives, and if you will look for them, yeah, you will find. But this does not reflect a reality.

[Deleted User]

[Deleted User] said:

I'm one of the 40% of people that can't charge an EV at home. I could destroy I think you get a bus pass then my front garden and remove some trees to make it into a driveway but not only is that costly it isn't good for the environment.

Home charging isn't an option for everyone and lifestyles don't always allow finite planning and managing of distances and mileage. One night last week my 25 mile commute home turned into 80 miles to assist my daughter because there was a fire at the train station.

Earlier in this thread I posted that all my nearest public chargers all being out of use or occupied when I checked on Zap map. After watching some Youtube videos from some pro-EV long term owners that give honest real life experiences of the public charging network I decided to look a bit more into my local chargers and found people having similar experiences:

                  

  

The above are the most recent reviews at my nearest public chargers, even the 4 successful ones sounds like it was a faff to even get charging.

Just watched an EV man channel video on Youtube, describing some tales of woe:

1. He met a man doing his first out a range run with his son - spent 30 mins on the phone to the EV charger operator but still couldn't get it working, eventually had to slow charge on the next charger taking hours at 10pm.
   
   
2. EV Man came to a charger with touch screen not working - phoned operator, 20 mins later charger rebooted then couldn't start charge because the touch screen still wasn't working.
   
   
3. All chargers for a particular network down nationally due to a server error.
   
   
4. A free charger wouldn't authenticate the RFID due to a server problem but still wouldn't allow charging even though it was free anyway.
   
   
5. A number of chargers located in unsafe areas - dark and lonely areas of car parks and streets with no CCTV or people nearby - a real safety concern for lone drivers having to faff about distracted with a dodgy charger and their mobile phone / payment card / car keys all ready to get stolen.

Get a bus pass. 

The only regret EV drivers have is that they didn’t get one sooner. 

Flight3287462

Jeez this thread is like being at gathering of newly converted Jehovah Witnesses on an urgent quest to convert the nonbelievers.

[Deleted User]

yessuz said:

Wat is more sinister is that You nit-picked comments (only bad ones!) - tell us which charger you chose for the comments!?) And what is even wotse - these are from different chargers/networks and some of them are on the completely different systems/standards (cvs and chademo for example) and only one of them is compatible with the specific car. Once again, you just nit-pick bad comments, and some of them are irrelevant.  Show here, which ones you picked.

I didn't need to nit pick comments, even the successful ones had a negative slant.

You have just highlighted another problem, the compatibility - that just makes things worse when you say only one of them is compatible with a specific car but I'm not sure how that negates all the bad experiences people have had? How do these chargers being on different networks make the issues drivers were having any better?

The charging station I used in the example has the 3 main types of charger - I'm no expert in the types but I guess most EV's should be able to use one of these 3?




Still none of them working when I checked again this morning - how hard can it be to supply electricity to a box?

Martyn1981

yessuz said:

For the record, I switched to EV few months ago. Was extremely anxious about how it will work... And now I see that there's no problems at all and I didn't have to overthink or over worry

I think that's the key issue. It's entirely normal and reasonable to be concerned about big changes, but with PEV's, there are now 100's of thousands of drivers who can share comments and advice. But as is often the case with new things, folk at first want to throw out concerns and negatives (not unreasonable) but get a bit stroppy when positive answers and solutions are given, but that'll all blow over in time.

Wifey and I did find the Leaf (70 miles at best) somewhat scary, which I think is reasonable, but it was a great intro to BEV's, and taught us where the problems are. The IONIQ at 130miles+ is not an issue, but of course not suitable for folk driving long distances regularly. At 200-250 miles with ultra fast charging, then the issue of range (for the vehicle) evaporates .....

..... but at that point we need to address the charging infrastructure, which isn't great (yet), but with Tesla opening up their UK supercharger network, that's pretty much sorted.

On street charging, early days but dribbling out. Lamppost chargers are fitted, if I recall correctly in the 3 nearest lamppost to you when you join the scheme, and loads of in pavement systems now exist, but again need to be rolled out. Petrix seems to have found a good deployment recently.

NVH - go for a test drive, ask a friend or neighbour, accost a Tesla owner in a carpark (we love to show off) and have a drive. It's hard to explain, but I remember the first time I was a passenger in a BEV, and the first time for any friends who have been out with me, you sit in the passenger seat, and suddenly the car starts to roll as if the handbrake has come off .... quite surreal the first time, I assume it's because there's no gear change, clutch pedal movement, revs etc to let your brain know you are about to move, the car simply rolls away.