The big fat Electric Vehicle bashing thread.

yessuz

However, of course, infrastructure could be improved if there was one or two fast chargers at each petrol station like it is in Netherlands.

Nevertheless there is really no issues to own EV

[Deleted User]

yessuz said:

However, of course, infrastructure could be improved if there was one or two fast chargers at each petrol station like it is in Netherlands.

Absolutely and I'm in full agreement with you, no ifs or buts, I 100% agree with what you just said.

It is about time that petrol / diesel stations start swapping pumps for chargers, a typical station with 8 pumps could sacrifice 4 for EV's.

Yes petrol / diesel owners may need to queue when it is busy but it will still be quicker than charging an EV.

Just outside the 5 mile range I quoted earlier this place has opened up, it used to be a petrol station, became a car wash for a while and is now a Londis / Greggs come EV charging station - perfect!

https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/manchesters-first-ultra-rapid-ev-charging-forecourt-opened



^^^^^
This is my agenda.

grumiofoundation

Deleted_User said:

yessuz said:

It does not matter what provider is there

 It's like to look at status of all shell petrol stations around and do not take the esso, tesco, Morrison's, Saintsbury's and others into account.

In the 5 mile radius search I've included all providers so I have taken others into account. My comments were two separate observations, the GeniePoint which was my nearest has been out of action of at least 8 days and the next 2 nearest GeniePoint are out of action - more than 5 miles away.

In a 5 mile radius I included all providers, Instavolt had 1 of 2 working at a location, other than that just the Tesla only site.....

yessuz said:

Ps.s those tesla ones - I can guarantee that All of them are operational.  Tesla shows how many are free and not occupied. I yet to see tesla charger to be out of order 

That comment looks a bit silly now when an actual Tesla owner reported this recently at the station I was referring to:



You aren't doing EV ownership any favours when you are in complete denial that a Tesla supercharger could be out of service it just diminishes the value of everything you are saying. There are lots of comments on the location saying it was slow and they were getting only 57kWh despite being advertised as 250kWh.

I care because I want to own an EV and most likely my next car change in 3-5 years will be EV if the current situation improves.

And my agenda is as per my earlier post, make sure the public challenge the current situation and demand better support and infrastructure for EV's instead of the dream world that some current EV owners seem to live in where they think 100% of chargers are working 24/7 and everything will be ok.

As I said, current EV owners represent only 1.2% of all car owners, your experiences can't count for the 98.8% of other car owners that have different needs, facilities and abilities.

You still haven't commented on the difficulties for disabled drivers I mentioned earlier?

I can't comment on specific issues people face but fast charger cables can be hard sometimes to pull lift, pull and plug in and the positioning of some chargers is not helpful. From my experience though by far the biggest issue I have had with usability of working electric chargers is petrol car drivers who believe they are parking spots blocking anyone from charging (most common at supermarkets) requiring the heavy cables to be stretched and interesting parking angles to be required!

I cannot comment from experience but are all petrol stations completely free of difficulties for all disabled drivers? 

Although I would say every time I have seen newer chargers that have been installed more recently they are generally more accessible, and easier to park in, so this something that hopefully is improving.

Re the negative reviews: 
There is definitely an issue with chargers not always working although simply looking at reviews will paint a worse situation that reality because as said a) people are more likely to review after a bad experience and b) need to consider how many of the 'not working' reviews are actually 'I don't know how to use it'.

Having been told on multiple occasions "the charger is broken" and found it was fine this is certainly an issue. Some of my favourite examples are "the charger doesn't fit "(trying to put CCS in Chademo), "the contactless is broken" (app only), the person who forgot to press start charge.


Although charging could often be simpler and more consistent before you claim these examples are just another issue with EVs consider how you would view someone claiming a widespread problem with petrol cars is that sometimes people put the wrong fuel in. 

Martyn1981

Just to say that EV chargers at petrol stations have been rolling out for some years. Admittedly still early days, but I'd expect the transition to accelerate. As I mentioned a while back, the Norwegian car fleet is now about 25% plug-in (with new sales at around 75%+ BEV plus another 10% PHEV). So simply extracted, not scientific I admit, that means around 25% less petrol/diesel sales for cars there already.

In the UK, public EV chargers (not necessarily at petrol stations) outnumbered petrol pumps about 3yrs ago, but of course this will include a lot of lower speed / longer charge time units, such as 7KW.

Big EV charging stations are already arriving, such as the quite famous (earliest) at Braintree over a year ago:

UK’s first electric car charging forecourt opens

Instead of the rows of petrol and diesel pumps you find in conventional service stations, the electric forecourt, which is just off the A131, has 36 EV chargers, including six Tesla Superchargers. Twelve of the other chargers are capable of operating at up to 350kW, so they can add 200 miles of range to a car in as little as 20 minutes. 

Talking of Braintree - I went on a little 2 day tour (600 miles) last summer to meet up with various forum friends, and this was my planned stop on day 1 for a top up (20kWh) ........ but 'ironically' it was closed! So I went to a Tesla supercharger instead. The Nav system showed me it was closed, so I didn't actually have to go there, and as yessuz pointed out, you are also told how many chargers there are, their charge rate, and the price per kWh, the car even starts to pre-condition the battery about 15 mins out from the station, so that it's at the optimal temp for charging speed when you arrive - this not only speeds up the stop for you, but also increases the throughput of the charging station.

On the return leg I stopped at the Heathrow site as I wanted to see the enlarged station, it now has 16 V3 superchargers (250kW) to add to the existing 16 V2 chargers (150kW).

Thrugelmir

Deleted_User said:

yessuz said:

However, of course, infrastructure could be improved if there was one or two fast chargers at each petrol station like it is in Netherlands.

Absolutely and I'm in full agreement with you, no ifs or buts, I 100% agree with what you just said.

It is about time that petrol / diesel stations start swapping pumps for chargers, a typical station with 8 pumps could sacrifice 4 for EV's.

Yes petrol / diesel owners may need to queue when it is busy but it will still be quicker than charging an EV.

Just outside the 5 mile range I quoted earlier this place has opened up, it used to be a petrol station, became a car wash for a while and is now a Londis / Greggs come EV charging station - perfect!

https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/manchesters-first-ultra-rapid-ev-charging-forecourt-opened



^^^^^
This is my agenda.

MFG's objective is to install 3,000 further chargers over the next 10 years. That's less than 6 a week.  Easy to see major conurbations being well served. Where they'll be a profitable return on the capital expenditure incurred. More rural/sparsely populated areas are going to require significant public sector investment. 

[Deleted User]

grumiofoundation said:

Although charging could often be simpler and more consistent before you claim these examples are just another issue with EVs consider how you would view someone claiming a widespread problem with petrol cars is that sometimes people put the wrong fuel in. 

Very good point. It could go one of two ways:

1. Better with EV because there is only one fuel type, plugs cannot be interchanged and the charging process is computerised. Much safer than volatile fuel, less messy etc.
   
   
2. Around 150,000 drivers per year make a fuelling error, some unbelievably manage to put diesel in a petrol car despite the nozzle being too big, so yes some drivers will find the EV charging thing confusing in the current format where some chargers are not compatible with some cars.

Hopefully charging points will become more universal and it won't make any difference but the payment methods seem to be a challenge - 40 odd different networks with different requirements from RFID to phone app or bank card - this needs to be sorted.

Some people still don't own smart phones, struggle to use them or don't want to carry out payment with them - hop over to the techie forum to find some. This will be challenging - and like I referred to earlier, the 1.2% of earlier adopter EV owners are probably tech savvy and not shy of using a smartphone or indeed any newer technology but there is a whole bunch of low-tech people in the remaining 98.8% of people yet to own an EV that will find it all confusing.

ComicGeek

The next generation of EVs will automatically talk to the charger when connected, and will process payment automatically - it will just be a case of plugging in, much simpler than present.

It's a valid criticism that there are too many payment/app systems currently - I also have the same problem when paying for parking over the last couple of years, it seems that every car park uses a different app for payment! If the car could automatically pay for both parking and charging at the same time, that would be brilliant.

Martyn1981

[Deleted User] said:

Some people still don't own smart phones, struggle to use them or don't want to carry out payment with them - hop over to the techie forum to find some. This will be challenging - and like I referred to earlier, the 1.2% of earlier adopter EV owners are probably tech savvy and not shy of using a smartphone or indeed any newer technology but there is a whole bunch of low-tech people in the remaining 98.8% of people yet to own an EV that will find it all confusing.

LOL, that would be me, I deliberately stayed away from a mobile till 2020. And the reason I finally got one .... yeah .... because we were getting a Tesla and the phone becomes your key, plus lots of other benefits from the app. Luckily Wifey is the Alpha Geek in the family so I lent on her.

Right ..... if I'm annoying anyone by going on (and on, and on) about Tesla, please forgive me, I'm honestly getting embarrassed myself with all these 'Tesla does it this way' posts, but they really do have clever kit and practices, so regarding all the payment types, issues, cards etc etc, this is how Tesla does it (so everyone else could eventually*):-

You arrive at the supercharger (unannounced), you reverse into the parking space, pick up the charger handle and press the small button on the top of it, and like magic the charge port on the car opens, and you plug in, and charging starts. You don't have to do anything.

This is possible because you have a Tesla account for payments, and the car and charger exchange an electronic handshake as you approach.

Hopefully, ideally, eventually, I see no reason why things can't be like this, or almost as simple for all PEV's.


*My theory is that Tesla may be ahead, but other companies will catch up, or at least be where Tesla is today, so referring to their charging, range, efficiency etc etc is OK when looking forward rather than the status quo. But of course that doesn't mean all BEV's are perfect today, and Tesla's certainly aren't cheap.

Grumpy_chap

My wife and I were out shopping this afternoon and Volvo had a stand in the shopping centre showing off their cars - they had two cars on display - an XC40 and a C40, both were all electric.

Volvo have managed to achieve a great big tick in the fabled "normal car just happens to be electric" box.  

The cars were certainly very nice, but did not have anything that I deemed an exceptional wow factor.

However, the price point was quite shocking.  The two cars were at £56k (£750 monthly) or £61k (£800 monthly).  Now, I accept that there is a reduced operating cost for an EV compared to an equivalent ICE, but these two cars were at substantial premium over the equivalent ICE in cost-to-acquire. 

This type of car is slap bang in the territory for the "aspirational family" and I am not convinced that there are that many "aspirational families" that can finance in the range of £60k or £750 per month for a car acquisition.  Even the "well off" "aspirational family" with a "good" income level also has mortgage / rent, school trips, and all the other commitments to be met as well.  The savings in energy cost for the car become irrelevant if it is simply not possible to get into the car in the first place.

Somehow, this cost-to-enter issue with EVs has to be resolved and there are various ways this could happen:

• Everyone just gets used to paying a massively increased capital outlay for cars - I don't see that as sustainable as there simply is not the finance there.
• Simply fewer cars are sold - will result in manufacturers failing and reduced investment in EV development, also means that whole-fleet swap to EV from ICE will be slower
• Prices have to fall to far nearer current financing point - this seems the most likely and it will result in the prices of used EVs also falling so those that would never be new car buyers can get an EV, the flip side is those that currently say to buy EV as depreciation is zero will be in for a shock.

Maybe I have got this all wrong and someone can explain how a nice EV can be affordable to all.  I do want to have an EV, so this will help me get the right outcome.

yessuz

Grumpy_chap said:

My wife and I were out shopping this afternoon and Volvo had a stand in the shopping centre showing off their cars - they had two cars on display - an XC40 and a C40, both were all electric.

Volvo have managed to achieve a great big tick in the fabled "normal car just happens to be electric" box.  

The cars were certainly very nice, but did not have anything that I deemed an exceptional wow factor.

However, the price point was quite shocking.  The two cars were at £56k (£750 monthly) or £61k (£800 monthly).  Now, I accept that there is a reduced operating cost for an EV compared to an equivalent ICE, but these two cars were at substantial premium over the equivalent ICE in cost-to-acquire. 

This type of car is slap bang in the territory for the "aspirational family" and I am not convinced that there are that many "aspirational families" that can finance in the range of £60k or £750 per month for a car acquisition.  Even the "well off" "aspirational family" with a "good" income level also has mortgage / rent, school trips, and all the other commitments to be met as well.  The savings in energy cost for the car become irrelevant if it is simply not possible to get into the car in the first place.

Somehow, this cost-to-enter issue with EVs has to be resolved and there are various ways this could happen:

• Everyone just gets used to paying a massively increased capital outlay for cars - I don't see that as sustainable as there simply is not the finance there.
• Simply fewer cars are sold - will result in manufacturers failing and reduced investment in EV development, also means that whole-fleet swap to EV from ICE will be slower
• Prices have to fall to far nearer current financing point - this seems the most likely and it will result in the prices of used EVs also falling so those that would never be new car buyers can get an EV, the flip side is those that currently say to buy EV as depreciation is zero will be in for a shock.

Maybe I have got this all wrong and someone can explain how a nice EV can be affordable to all.  I do want to have an EV, so this will help me get the right outcome.

Did you go to Volvo website to see how mum non-pure electric xc40 would cost!?
XC40 recharge Plug-in hybrid on the road FROM 41150.
XC40 recharge pure EV on the road FROM 45750
https://www.volvocars.com/uk?gclsrc=aw.ds&gclid=Cj0KCQjwyYKUBhDJARIsAMj9lkFkQVA7PuvMTSQVJeI-TBCo52Nz72sYd5SDQzAvs9JrkNyAuxrbE_MaAgxhEALw_wcB

Yes, Pure EV is slightly more expensive. But running costs will be much lower and it will even out in max couple of years.

Surely, the one you saw was full with bells and whistles. But overall new full EV comoared to non-ev is not that much of a difference.
Take some Skoda, Enyaq which is EV starts at 39k if I am not mistaken. Similar sized Skodia Kodiaqwill start at 35 or so. 

Is it the difference that huge?

In short, if your monthly payment is 150 more than similar ICE but running costs lower by 300...?