The big fat Electric Vehicle bashing thread.

iwb100

Herzlos said:

DB1904 said:

Herzlos said:

I don't mean travelling over 100 miles without stopping is extreme, just that for most people it's not really an issue as they can have a coffee/lunch/explore or whatever. 

I do get that EVs may not be suited to a once a year trek across the country and back (although many EV owners don't find it a problem), but I'm not sure it's that big a deal to that many people given the inconvenience is twice a year. It's also worth noting that many households have multiple cars, so many people have the option of using the other ICE car for the holiday road trip.


As for freedom, people can already live and visit where they want; they just tend to want to live close to work and shop close to home and so on.

I'm not convinced anyone can get 12p/mile out of an ICE car now.  50mpg at £1.50/l is 14p/mile

Explore a motorway services. Are you serious?

Be a bit more imaginative. You can charge places that aren't motorway services, so break road trips up by stopping at nice places whilst you charge. 

After 2 hours sat in a car then a short walk around a lake or beach or whatever will do everyone good. We usually do that when traveling with the kids anyway.

 But most people can’t be imaginative. If your journey is on a bank holiday down the M6 and M5 for example with your family and all and sundry are also on the road you aren’t going to get people taking detours. They need to get from Cumbria to Cornwall or wherever and they aren’t driving miles out of their way with their young kids in tow. So you need an infrastructure to support the weight of motorway traffic when the majority of it is EVs that allows people either far greater range than exists or simply has charging points in sufficient numbers to support the on road traffic in these sorts of peak scenarios. Service stations each need hundreds and hundreds of working charging points. I don’t think that’s contentious or even necessarily the full extent.

Once that happens I think majority EV ownership might become viable. But it’s an infrastructure issue. And as much as you now talk about ‘oh change your route and lifestyle to accommodate it’ that doesn’t work for most people and also doesn’t work as the number of EVs on the road increases. You aren’t going to want hundreds and hundreds of cars pottering off into Warwick cos they need a charge and it’s better to explore. It’s just backing up problems. People need ready charging on route. I think people can sacrifice charging taking half an hour. Over say 10 minutes to fill up. But they can’t be expected to queue for an hour for a charger then hang around another half hour. Doomed to failure without the infrastructure. 

victor2

Deleted_User said:

How the heck will pay per mile work for tax? they going to stick a black box in every car then send a bill every month for the miles you've travelled? Sick of hearing folk bleet on about it but never say how it will work.

Yes, a black box in every car - the same black box that will prevent you from exceeding speed limits and going places the powers that be don't approve of. 

ComicGeek

iwb100 said:

Herzlos said:

DB1904 said:

Herzlos said:

I don't mean travelling over 100 miles without stopping is extreme, just that for most people it's not really an issue as they can have a coffee/lunch/explore or whatever. 

I do get that EVs may not be suited to a once a year trek across the country and back (although many EV owners don't find it a problem), but I'm not sure it's that big a deal to that many people given the inconvenience is twice a year. It's also worth noting that many households have multiple cars, so many people have the option of using the other ICE car for the holiday road trip.


As for freedom, people can already live and visit where they want; they just tend to want to live close to work and shop close to home and so on.

I'm not convinced anyone can get 12p/mile out of an ICE car now.  50mpg at £1.50/l is 14p/mile

Explore a motorway services. Are you serious?

Be a bit more imaginative. You can charge places that aren't motorway services, so break road trips up by stopping at nice places whilst you charge. 

After 2 hours sat in a car then a short walk around a lake or beach or whatever will do everyone good. We usually do that when traveling with the kids anyway.

 But most people can’t be imaginative. If your journey is on a bank holiday down the M6 and M5 for example with your family and all and sundry are also on the road you aren’t going to get people taking detours. They need to get from Cumbria to Cornwall or wherever and they aren’t driving miles out of their way with their young kids in tow. So you need an infrastructure to support the weight of motorway traffic when the majority of it is EVs that allows people either far greater range than exists or simply has charging points in sufficient numbers to support the on road traffic in these sorts of peak scenarios. Service stations each need hundreds and hundreds of working charging points. I don’t think that’s contentious or even necessarily the full extent.

Once that happens I think majority EV ownership might become viable. But it’s an infrastructure issue. And as much as you now talk about ‘oh change your route and lifestyle to accommodate it’ that doesn’t work for most people and also doesn’t work as the number of EVs on the road increases. You aren’t going to want hundreds and hundreds of cars pottering off into Warwick cos they need a charge and it’s better to explore. It’s just backing up problems. People need ready charging on route. I think people can sacrifice charging taking half an hour. Over say 10 minutes to fill up. But they can’t be expected to queue for an hour for a charger then hang around another half hour. Doomed to failure without the infrastructure. 

Cumbria to Cornwall takes about 7-8 hrs driving - seems only sensible to build in a few stops on that kind of journey, particularly with a car full of kids.

Even before the days of EVs I would have stayed at a travelodge to break up the journey - charge before leaving home, charge up at the hotel, and then charge at the final destination. I wouldn't need to charge on route with my EV, although would still plug it in if stopping for any other reasons. 

I have done many thousands of miles in my EV, have only used a public charger once - the required reliance on a massive charger infrastructure is massively overstated for the vast majority of people. If you always left home with a full tank of petrol, how often would you actually need to fill up when out?

grumiofoundation

iwb100 said:

Herzlos said:

DB1904 said:

Herzlos said:

I don't mean travelling over 100 miles without stopping is extreme, just that for most people it's not really an issue as they can have a coffee/lunch/explore or whatever. 

I do get that EVs may not be suited to a once a year trek across the country and back (although many EV owners don't find it a problem), but I'm not sure it's that big a deal to that many people given the inconvenience is twice a year. It's also worth noting that many households have multiple cars, so many people have the option of using the other ICE car for the holiday road trip.


As for freedom, people can already live and visit where they want; they just tend to want to live close to work and shop close to home and so on.

I'm not convinced anyone can get 12p/mile out of an ICE car now.  50mpg at £1.50/l is 14p/mile

Explore a motorway services. Are you serious?

Be a bit more imaginative. You can charge places that aren't motorway services, so break road trips up by stopping at nice places whilst you charge. 

After 2 hours sat in a car then a short walk around a lake or beach or whatever will do everyone good. We usually do that when traveling with the kids anyway.

 But most people can’t be imaginative. If your journey is on a bank holiday down the M6 and M5 for example with your family and all and sundry are also on the road you aren’t going to get people taking detours. They need to get from Cumbria to Cornwall or wherever and they aren’t driving miles out of their way with their young kids in tow. So you need an infrastructure to support the weight of motorway traffic when the majority of it is EVs that allows people either far greater range than exists or simply has charging points in sufficient numbers to support the on road traffic in these sorts of peak scenarios. Service stations each need hundreds and hundreds of working charging points. I don’t think that’s contentious or even necessarily the full extent.

Once that happens I think majority EV ownership might become viable. But it’s an infrastructure issue. And as much as you now talk about ‘oh change your route and lifestyle to accommodate it’ that doesn’t work for most people and also doesn’t work as the number of EVs on the road increases. You aren’t going to want hundreds and hundreds of cars pottering off into Warwick cos they need a charge and it’s better to explore. It’s just backing up problems. People need ready charging on route. I think people can sacrifice charging taking half an hour. Over say 10 minutes to fill up. But they can’t be expected to queue for an hour for a charger then hang around another half hour. Doomed to failure without the infrastructure. 

Obviously that is true but the infrastructure wasn't there for petrol to replace horses. Why didn't that fail?


(I'm not arguing that infrastructure doesn't need improving - it does, and improvement is hit and miss).

Will hundreds of chargers actually be needed at each service station in the long term?
New electric cars have not dissimilar ranges to ICE vehicles. So surely electric cars will only need to charge as regularly* as cars fill up. But as you say takes longer if we use 30 minutes versus 10 minutes would mean 3x the number of rapid chargers needed as petrol pumps?  (Having not been through how many petrol pumps does a service station have 10? 20?) 

*will actually be lower than the number of petrol cars needing to fill up since many cars will charge overnight** and some will never/rarely need to use rapid chargers. 

**this infrastructure needs improving/a solution for those w.o. off-street parking - could argue is actually the bigger issue.

DB1904

Herzlos said:

DB1904 said:

Herzlos said:

I don't mean travelling over 100 miles without stopping is extreme, just that for most people it's not really an issue as they can have a coffee/lunch/explore or whatever. 

I do get that EVs may not be suited to a once a year trek across the country and back (although many EV owners don't find it a problem), but I'm not sure it's that big a deal to that many people given the inconvenience is twice a year. It's also worth noting that many households have multiple cars, so many people have the option of using the other ICE car for the holiday road trip.


As for freedom, people can already live and visit where they want; they just tend to want to live close to work and shop close to home and so on.

I'm not convinced anyone can get 12p/mile out of an ICE car now.  50mpg at £1.50/l is 14p/mile

Explore a motorway services. Are you serious?

Be a bit more imaginative. You can charge places that aren't motorway services, so break road trips up by stopping at nice places whilst you charge. 

After 2 hours sat in a car then a short walk around a lake or beach or whatever will do everyone good. We usually do that when traveling with the kids anyway.

Your employer would accept that on business travel?

DB1904

Petriix said:

Ibrahim5 said:

The figures in the spreadsheet don't even add up. No such thing as equity only depreciation. Fuel costs and VED will be less with electric car though dependent on charging at home. Depreciation greater for electric car although appreciate market distorted at the moment. Probably not much difference in total. Main reason to change would be 'going green'. Secondary effects are interesting though. If I bought an electric car I couldn't do the European driving that I am used to. Rail fares are horrendous. I would probably just fly more. Would that be good?

The numbers do add up - only the depreciation is a cost; the repayment of £220 minus the increased equity equals the depreciation. The equity figure is real and important to account for, otherwise you're assuming that the car is worth nothing. Here's the same figures without the offending 'equity':



I've paid out about £6700 in total (including mortgage overpayments), but now owe £17k against a > £22k car. That £5k in equity would be in my pocket (or a deposit on whatever car I replace it with) if I sold it today. So the actual total cost of ownership has been ~ £1700 for 16 months and 14k miles.

The equivalent cost of running the old diesel would have been at least £3k - about £2k in fuel, £800 just to scrape through the MOT in 2020 then a couple of years of VED, a couple of oil changes, another MOT in 2021. So that's objectively at least £1300 saved. 

Now there's currently only 1 MG5 on Autotrader for under £23k so that £5k equity is pretty conservative. It's more like £6k or more, but it's reasonable to assume that prices will settle in the long term. However, with inflation so high, it's not unreasonable to believe that second hand prices might remain fairly constant while new prices continue to escalate.

The only real costs I've had are ~ £400 in interest, £160 for electricity and a £33 service. Everything else I've paid is retained in the value of the car.

But it gets better still. Because I have an EV I was able to switch to Octopus Go in January and fix at 5p off peak, 24p peak, 24p per day standing charge. I've shifted half my home usage to the off peak window so I'm averaging ~ 15p per kWh for my home usage, plus the lower standing charge. That's saving me over £250 vs being stuck on the price cap.

That's a total cost of £350, a saving of over £2500, for the pleasure of upgrading a 16 year old banger to a brand new EV.

Now I'm fully aware that depreciation might accelerate. But it's got a long way to go just to cover that £2500 before it's actually cost me anything. And the savings vs diesel will keep increasing too.

I look forward to some further irrational dispute with my figures. 

You have also failed to appreciate that ICE cars have also increased in value. 

grumiofoundation

DB1904 said:

Herzlos said:

DB1904 said:

Herzlos said:

I don't mean travelling over 100 miles without stopping is extreme, just that for most people it's not really an issue as they can have a coffee/lunch/explore or whatever. 

I do get that EVs may not be suited to a once a year trek across the country and back (although many EV owners don't find it a problem), but I'm not sure it's that big a deal to that many people given the inconvenience is twice a year. It's also worth noting that many households have multiple cars, so many people have the option of using the other ICE car for the holiday road trip.


As for freedom, people can already live and visit where they want; they just tend to want to live close to work and shop close to home and so on.

I'm not convinced anyone can get 12p/mile out of an ICE car now.  50mpg at £1.50/l is 14p/mile

Explore a motorway services. Are you serious?

Be a bit more imaginative. You can charge places that aren't motorway services, so break road trips up by stopping at nice places whilst you charge. 

After 2 hours sat in a car then a short walk around a lake or beach or whatever will do everyone good. We usually do that when traveling with the kids anyway.

Your employer would accept that on business travel?

You take kids on business travel?

Thrugelmir

ComicGeek said:

iwb100 said:

Herzlos said:

DB1904 said:

Herzlos said:

I don't mean travelling over 100 miles without stopping is extreme, just that for most people it's not really an issue as they can have a coffee/lunch/explore or whatever. 

I do get that EVs may not be suited to a once a year trek across the country and back (although many EV owners don't find it a problem), but I'm not sure it's that big a deal to that many people given the inconvenience is twice a year. It's also worth noting that many households have multiple cars, so many people have the option of using the other ICE car for the holiday road trip.


As for freedom, people can already live and visit where they want; they just tend to want to live close to work and shop close to home and so on.

I'm not convinced anyone can get 12p/mile out of an ICE car now.  50mpg at £1.50/l is 14p/mile

Explore a motorway services. Are you serious?

Be a bit more imaginative. You can charge places that aren't motorway services, so break road trips up by stopping at nice places whilst you charge. 

After 2 hours sat in a car then a short walk around a lake or beach or whatever will do everyone good. We usually do that when traveling with the kids anyway.

 But most people can’t be imaginative. If your journey is on a bank holiday down the M6 and M5 for example with your family and all and sundry are also on the road you aren’t going to get people taking detours. They need to get from Cumbria to Cornwall or wherever and they aren’t driving miles out of their way with their young kids in tow. So you need an infrastructure to support the weight of motorway traffic when the majority of it is EVs that allows people either far greater range than exists or simply has charging points in sufficient numbers to support the on road traffic in these sorts of peak scenarios. Service stations each need hundreds and hundreds of working charging points. I don’t think that’s contentious or even necessarily the full extent.

Once that happens I think majority EV ownership might become viable. But it’s an infrastructure issue. And as much as you now talk about ‘oh change your route and lifestyle to accommodate it’ that doesn’t work for most people and also doesn’t work as the number of EVs on the road increases. You aren’t going to want hundreds and hundreds of cars pottering off into Warwick cos they need a charge and it’s better to explore. It’s just backing up problems. People need ready charging on route. I think people can sacrifice charging taking half an hour. Over say 10 minutes to fill up. But they can’t be expected to queue for an hour for a charger then hang around another half hour. Doomed to failure without the infrastructure. 

I have done many thousands of miles in my EV, have only used a public charger once - the required reliance on a massive charger infrastructure is massively overstated for the vast majority of people. If you always left home with a full tank of petrol, how often would you actually need to fill up when out?

What EV do you drive? 

Thrugelmir

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

Herzlos said:

DB1904 said:

Herzlos said:

I don't mean travelling over 100 miles without stopping is extreme, just that for most people it's not really an issue as they can have a coffee/lunch/explore or whatever. 

I do get that EVs may not be suited to a once a year trek across the country and back (although many EV owners don't find it a problem), but I'm not sure it's that big a deal to that many people given the inconvenience is twice a year. It's also worth noting that many households have multiple cars, so many people have the option of using the other ICE car for the holiday road trip.


As for freedom, people can already live and visit where they want; they just tend to want to live close to work and shop close to home and so on.

I'm not convinced anyone can get 12p/mile out of an ICE car now.  50mpg at £1.50/l is 14p/mile

Explore a motorway services. Are you serious?

Be a bit more imaginative. You can charge places that aren't motorway services, so break road trips up by stopping at nice places whilst you charge. 

After 2 hours sat in a car then a short walk around a lake or beach or whatever will do everyone good. We usually do that when traveling with the kids anyway.

 But most people can’t be imaginative. If your journey is on a bank holiday down the M6 and M5 for example with your family and all and sundry are also on the road you aren’t going to get people taking detours. They need to get from Cumbria to Cornwall or wherever and they aren’t driving miles out of their way with their young kids in tow. So you need an infrastructure to support the weight of motorway traffic when the majority of it is EVs that allows people either far greater range than exists or simply has charging points in sufficient numbers to support the on road traffic in these sorts of peak scenarios. Service stations each need hundreds and hundreds of working charging points. I don’t think that’s contentious or even necessarily the full extent.

Once that happens I think majority EV ownership might become viable. But it’s an infrastructure issue. And as much as you now talk about ‘oh change your route and lifestyle to accommodate it’ that doesn’t work for most people and also doesn’t work as the number of EVs on the road increases. You aren’t going to want hundreds and hundreds of cars pottering off into Warwick cos they need a charge and it’s better to explore. It’s just backing up problems. People need ready charging on route. I think people can sacrifice charging taking half an hour. Over say 10 minutes to fill up. But they can’t be expected to queue for an hour for a charger then hang around another half hour. Doomed to failure without the infrastructure. 

Obviously that is true but the infrastructure wasn't there for petrol to replace horses. Why didn't that fail?

Because people couldn't afford cars. Many people never owned one. My parents bought their first in the 60's. Likewise our neighbours. 

ComicGeek

Thrugelmir said:

ComicGeek said:

iwb100 said:

Herzlos said:

DB1904 said:

Herzlos said:

I don't mean travelling over 100 miles without stopping is extreme, just that for most people it's not really an issue as they can have a coffee/lunch/explore or whatever. 

I do get that EVs may not be suited to a once a year trek across the country and back (although many EV owners don't find it a problem), but I'm not sure it's that big a deal to that many people given the inconvenience is twice a year. It's also worth noting that many households have multiple cars, so many people have the option of using the other ICE car for the holiday road trip.


As for freedom, people can already live and visit where they want; they just tend to want to live close to work and shop close to home and so on.

I'm not convinced anyone can get 12p/mile out of an ICE car now.  50mpg at £1.50/l is 14p/mile

Explore a motorway services. Are you serious?

Be a bit more imaginative. You can charge places that aren't motorway services, so break road trips up by stopping at nice places whilst you charge. 

After 2 hours sat in a car then a short walk around a lake or beach or whatever will do everyone good. We usually do that when traveling with the kids anyway.

 But most people can’t be imaginative. If your journey is on a bank holiday down the M6 and M5 for example with your family and all and sundry are also on the road you aren’t going to get people taking detours. They need to get from Cumbria to Cornwall or wherever and they aren’t driving miles out of their way with their young kids in tow. So you need an infrastructure to support the weight of motorway traffic when the majority of it is EVs that allows people either far greater range than exists or simply has charging points in sufficient numbers to support the on road traffic in these sorts of peak scenarios. Service stations each need hundreds and hundreds of working charging points. I don’t think that’s contentious or even necessarily the full extent.

Once that happens I think majority EV ownership might become viable. But it’s an infrastructure issue. And as much as you now talk about ‘oh change your route and lifestyle to accommodate it’ that doesn’t work for most people and also doesn’t work as the number of EVs on the road increases. You aren’t going to want hundreds and hundreds of cars pottering off into Warwick cos they need a charge and it’s better to explore. It’s just backing up problems. People need ready charging on route. I think people can sacrifice charging taking half an hour. Over say 10 minutes to fill up. But they can’t be expected to queue for an hour for a charger then hang around another half hour. Doomed to failure without the infrastructure. 

I have done many thousands of miles in my EV, have only used a public charger once - the required reliance on a massive charger infrastructure is massively overstated for the vast majority of people. If you always left home with a full tank of petrol, how often would you actually need to fill up when out?

What EV do you drive? 

It's a Skoda Enyaq 80.