The big fat Electric Vehicle bashing thread.

Petriix

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. 

The vast majority of people will never drive from Cumbria to Cornwall. I think you need to get away from assuming that the worst case is normal usage. Those that do such long journeys will need to do something different rather than assuming the current paradigm will remain viable.

Options include:

• Travel outside peak times
• Plan an activity or overnight stay halfway (with charging)
• Hire a hybrid (until EV range and/or infrastructure improves).

I've rapid charged my MG5 exactly 6 times. One of those was just an opportunistic free charge, two were arguably unnecessary but bought us some extra flexibility while we were stopping anyway; only three times was a rapid charge required to complete a journey, all on the same day when we drove 425 miles.

Grumpy_chap

grumiofoundation 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?

Speaking of figures that don't add up (well I suppose technically as you haven't provided any numbers there is no way they could) it might help if you provided figures rather than unsubstantiated statements with no such as "Depreciation greater for electric car" 

How did you calculate that depreciation for electric cars is greater than petrol cars? Is this all cars, new cars, second hand cars?


Regarding which is more polluting - running an electric car for the vast majority of your journeys and taking a small number of flights versus a petrol car for all journeys will depend on how many flights you take/miles you drive.

The spreadsheet referenced is one originally by Petriix and included a few posts higher up thread.

The pro-EV group always say that depreciation is lower, whereas it seems obvious to me that depreciation must be higher.  The thing is, this does depend on how the depreciation is assessed. 

In the short-term, EVs are holding value very well.  This is in part distorted by supply-constrained market also meaning that ICE cars are holding value better than would normally expected.  I think we can discount that distortion from long-term and general assessment of depreciation.

Regardless, in the short term, EVs are still holding more retained value compared to ICE.  This is because of short supply of used EV compared to ICE.  That supply imbalance will expire at some time.

The PCP deals are also producing comparable monthly payments in many cases for EV compared to ICE.

However, someone at some point has to pay the higher depreciation over the life of the vehicle.  I will use an example comparing "same" car as ICE vs EV:

• Vauxhall Corsa ICE, from £17,330
• Life = 15 years
• Scrap value £330
• Depreciation = £17k.  £1,133 per year.

• Vauxhall Corsa EV, from £27,055
• Life = 15 years
• Scrap value £3,055 - assuming that the battery will have a value for re-purposing
• Depreciation = £24k.  £1,600 per year.

Based on that type of assessment, it is clear that the depreciation for an EV is greater than the depreciation for an ICE and cannot be anything else.
Depreciation may be similar (or lower) for first-owner of EV, but the higher depreciation has to be borne by someone at some point.

I am quite happy to accept that total cost of ownership will very likely be favourable for the EV compared to the ICE.  The big challenge here is, someone with £15k to get a car will probably find a way to afford the ICE Corsa whereas the EV Corsa is totally out of reach so the lower TOTEX is never available for them.

RichardD1970

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.

Quite easy. You already take your car (3 years or older) and have the mileage recorded every year. You just introduce the requirement to take a newer car to an MOT station or some such, on it's registration anniversary, to have the mileage officially recorded and be charged accordingly.

Or as stated a black box which would give more flexibility, in that it could charge different amounts depending on time of day, type of road etc (although that would require an IT system and we all know how successful the government are at implementing them!).

iwb100

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?


(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.

I suspect because the introduction of automobiles was very gradual and had time for the infrastructure to catch up. You now have 30 odd million cars on the road and growing….

I think the problem is bigger than you think. Currently on a long journey like that I’d probably fill up at the services after we’d stopped for a half hour lunch and toilet break. So get to services. Bob in for a sandwich, change and toilet the kids. Back into car, top up at station, which I think on a normal day is under 10 minutes, and then off.

That’s 40 minutes break.

I think you could achieve that in an EV only if there is a charger there and ready waiting for you. Which is obviously the challenge. 

Then you have the problem of what happens when you get where you are going. I’m not convinced that if we are staying with the in laws in rural Devon who don’t have ev charging will be happy for us to plug into their wall sockets…

This is the challenge for infrastructure…it’s fine now for early buyers. It becomes less fine unless the infrastructure improves in line with adoption. And we know already it isn’t. 

Herzlos

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?

Absolutely. Unless you're delivering something time critical you can almost certainly find something to do for 30 minutes whilst charging. I know when I do business travel I've still got a ton of emails and calls to do, so I can either do them at the end of the journey or in the middle. 

It's also fair to assume business travellers will be in newer EVs with longer ranges so it's less of an issue. 

When you factor in the fuel and BIK savings as well as green credentials it's not surprising business fleets are going electric. We're certainly pushing for it. 

Martyn1981

grumiofoundation said:

Herzlos said:

grumiofoundation said:

If buying a second car electric car (lets say range <100 miles) then driving longer journeys is more time consuming due to frequent stops and the fact you have to stop regularly means you can be forced to wait for chargers. Even then unless you are driving through very rural areas for a long distance I would say the charging infrastructure (i.e. motorway service stations) is still up to the job - and getting better all the time.

For perspective though, the vast bulk of journeys are under 10 miles. Beyond some extreme cases needing to stop every 100 miles isn't really an issue (assuming easy access to charging). 

Even travelling sales guys probably have enough paperwork and calls to do to fill up a charging stop.

The only people I can see who'd struggle to charge every 100 miles are long distance couriers and haulage, but they'd save so much money.

The people with more particular car needs will struggle though; there aren't many 7/8/9 seat EVs on the market yet (some launched last year but will need a while to trickle down to an affordable point), and I think only the Tesla X can tow.  But those are still a fairly small niche of car ownerships.

Indeed I have got a lot of work done at motorway service stations while we are charging! 

Some years ago on another EV thread a female poster really opened my eyes to the potential. She does about 40k to 50k miles per year, and I think she gets a new car every two years. Going back a few cars, she had a BMW i3 Rx (range extender model, which has a compact ICE on board to work as a charger (doesn't power wheels directly)), but when it came time to replace she went for just the BMW i3 (so cheaper and lighter), as she'd used the Rx so little. She does her paperwork at chargers.

Really helpful posts from her, and impressive annual mileage given the i3 has a stated range of about 150 miles, so will of course be less in practice.

Herzlos

Grumpy_chap said:

grumiofoundation 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?

Speaking of figures that don't add up (well I suppose technically as you haven't provided any numbers there is no way they could) it might help if you provided figures rather than unsubstantiated statements with no such as "Depreciation greater for electric car" 

How did you calculate that depreciation for electric cars is greater than petrol cars? Is this all cars, new cars, second hand cars?


Regarding which is more polluting - running an electric car for the vast majority of your journeys and taking a small number of flights versus a petrol car for all journeys will depend on how many flights you take/miles you drive.

The spreadsheet referenced is one originally by Petriix and included a few posts higher up thread.

The pro-EV group always say that depreciation is lower, whereas it seems obvious to me that depreciation must be higher.  The thing is, this does depend on how the depreciation is assessed. 

In the short-term, EVs are holding value very well.  This is in part distorted by supply-constrained market also meaning that ICE cars are holding value better than would normally expected.  I think we can discount that distortion from long-term and general assessment of depreciation.

Regardless, in the short term, EVs are still holding more retained value compared to ICE.  This is because of short supply of used EV compared to ICE.  That supply imbalance will expire at some time.

The PCP deals are also producing comparable monthly payments in many cases for EV compared to ICE.

However, someone at some point has to pay the higher depreciation over the life of the vehicle.  I will use an example comparing "same" car as ICE vs EV:

• Vauxhall Corsa ICE, from £17,330
• Life = 15 years
• Scrap value £330
• Depreciation = £17k.  £1,133 per year.

• Vauxhall Corsa EV, from £27,055
• Life = 15 years
• Scrap value £3,055 - assuming that the battery will have a value for re-purposing
• Depreciation = £24k.  £1,600 per year.

Based on that type of assessment, it is clear that the depreciation for an EV is greater than the depreciation for an ICE and cannot be anything else.
Depreciation may be similar (or lower) for first-owner of EV, but the higher depreciation has to be borne by someone at some point.

I am quite happy to accept that total cost of ownership will very likely be favourable for the EV compared to the ICE.  The big challenge here is, someone with £15k to get a car will probably find a way to afford the ICE Corsa whereas the EV Corsa is totally out of reach so the lower TOTEX is never available for them.

Ok, sure, a more expensive car will have a higher depreciation in absolute terms, but I don't think it'll actually work out that way as the ev price will be kept higher due to higher demand due to the lower running costs. 

At least you've conceded the EV is going to be cheaper to actually run. 

It's also worth noting that the base EV will be higher spec and higher performance than the base ICE, I'd need to do a bit of research to figure out the closest parity point spec wise. 

Herzlos

I don't think they'll go for a black box or MOT reported tax. I think we'll probably all just get slapped with a £500/year VED. 

grumiofoundation

Herzlos said:

Grumpy_chap said:

grumiofoundation 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?

Speaking of figures that don't add up (well I suppose technically as you haven't provided any numbers there is no way they could) it might help if you provided figures rather than unsubstantiated statements with no such as "Depreciation greater for electric car" 

How did you calculate that depreciation for electric cars is greater than petrol cars? Is this all cars, new cars, second hand cars?


Regarding which is more polluting - running an electric car for the vast majority of your journeys and taking a small number of flights versus a petrol car for all journeys will depend on how many flights you take/miles you drive.

The spreadsheet referenced is one originally by Petriix and included a few posts higher up thread.

The pro-EV group always say that depreciation is lower, whereas it seems obvious to me that depreciation must be higher.  The thing is, this does depend on how the depreciation is assessed. 

In the short-term, EVs are holding value very well.  This is in part distorted by supply-constrained market also meaning that ICE cars are holding value better than would normally expected.  I think we can discount that distortion from long-term and general assessment of depreciation.

Regardless, in the short term, EVs are still holding more retained value compared to ICE.  This is because of short supply of used EV compared to ICE.  That supply imbalance will expire at some time.

The PCP deals are also producing comparable monthly payments in many cases for EV compared to ICE.

However, someone at some point has to pay the higher depreciation over the life of the vehicle.  I will use an example comparing "same" car as ICE vs EV:

• Vauxhall Corsa ICE, from £17,330
• Life = 15 years
• Scrap value £330
• Depreciation = £17k.  £1,133 per year.

• Vauxhall Corsa EV, from £27,055
• Life = 15 years
• Scrap value £3,055 - assuming that the battery will have a value for re-purposing
• Depreciation = £24k.  £1,600 per year.

Based on that type of assessment, it is clear that the depreciation for an EV is greater than the depreciation for an ICE and cannot be anything else.
Depreciation may be similar (or lower) for first-owner of EV, but the higher depreciation has to be borne by someone at some point.

I am quite happy to accept that total cost of ownership will very likely be favourable for the EV compared to the ICE.  The big challenge here is, someone with £15k to get a car will probably find a way to afford the ICE Corsa whereas the EV Corsa is totally out of reach so the lower TOTEX is never available for them.

Ok, sure, a more expensive car will have a higher depreciation in absolute terms, but I don't think it'll actually work out that way as the ev price will be kept higher due to higher demand due to the lower running costs. 

At least you've conceded the EV is going to be cheaper to actually run. 

It's also worth noting that the base EV will be higher spec and higher performance than the base ICE, I'd need to do a bit of research to figure out the closest parity point spec wise. 

I do see the posters point but it does assume average lifespan of EV/ICE car will be the same. 

With increases in battery technology will this be the case? Is it the case now for older electric vehicles?

grumiofoundation

iwb100 said:

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?


(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.

I suspect because the introduction of automobiles was very gradual and had time for the infrastructure to catch up. You now have 30 odd million cars on the road and growing….

I think the problem is bigger than you think. Currently on a long journey like that I’d probably fill up at the services after we’d stopped for a half hour lunch and toilet break. So get to services. Bob in for a sandwich, change and toilet the kids. Back into car, top up at station, which I think on a normal day is under 10 minutes, and then off.

That’s 40 minutes break.

I think you could achieve that in an EV only if there is a charger there and ready waiting for you. Which is obviously the challenge. 

Then you have the problem of what happens when you get where you are going. I’m not convinced that if we are staying with the in laws in rural Devon who don’t have ev charging will be happy for us to plug into their wall sockets…

This is the challenge for infrastructure…it’s fine now for early buyers. It becomes less fine unless the infrastructure improves in line with adoption. And we know already it isn’t. 

As I said I'm not arguing with the need for improved infrastructure (it is improving by the way), but I think you are exaggerating the problems with your claim that 'hundreds and hundreds' of chargers are needed at every service station, maybe I am missing something but I don't see why this many will actually be needed. 

Obviously there is not much anyone can do if the ability to charge a car exists cheaply but people don't take advantage (e.g outside 3-pin plug on a separate circuit costs a few hundred pounds - also useful for any other electric items one might use outside).