EV range

Herzlos

MouldyOldDough said:

Herzlos said:

You'll rarely need to sit around waiting for an EV to charge though, that's the beauty of it.

Even on a road trip, you can usually charge whilst doing something else (like a comfort break or grabbing a coffee). Even if you do want to stand and watch it rapid charge, you pay a lot for that but only need to put in enough to get you to the destination. Just like at a motorway services, if you've only got 100 miles to go you only put in 100 miles of super expensive fuel.

The disability angle is one that does present problems, in that most of the charger spaces are end-on, narrow and can be hard to access. I'm assuming the disability problem is that you struggle to access the charger from the parking space, rather than using the charger itself? Because from my position of ignorance, plugging a power socket in isn't going to be any different to using a petrol pump?

Yes but petrol stations are normally manned with helpful staff who come out and filll my car for me !!

Ah, most of the petrol stations here are either unmanned or understaffed, so I hadn't considered that it'd be possible for someone to come and do it for you.

No reason a charger station attached to a business couldn't have someone help. Whether that's a petrol station, services, supermarket or whatever. I've even read about automated docking for EV's, but that's still a while off I think.

RichardD1970

MouldyOldDough said:

Yes - if you have a home charger (over 1/4 of UK homes have no parking facilities so cannot home charge) you can do this for considerably less.

So that means around 3/4 do. That's a large majority. 

We know you don't want an EV, we get it.

No one is forcing you to get one. ICE will  probably be around a lot longer than you (no being rude but I get the impression you're "of advanced years") so what IS the problem?

You're sounding like a stuck record now. 

Petriix

Of course EVs can work out vastly more expensive than ICE. They can also work out vastly cheaper.

Imagine if you drive around 125 miles every day and charge overnight on Octopus Intelligent for 6 hours at 10p per kWh. Say you do that 5 days per week, 40 weeks per year. That's 25k miles per year for just £725 at ~ 3p per mile.

Compared to an equivalent petrol car at 40mpg, £1.50 per litre at 17p per mile or £4250 per year... That's a saving of £3525.

Obviously most people would fall somewhere between my extremely positive example and the extremely negative example posted by @MouldyOldDough but they're both equally as valid as opposite ends of the scale. 

michaels

Petriix said:

Of course EVs can work out vastly more expensive than ICE. They can also work out vastly cheaper.

Imagine if you drive around 125 miles every day and charge overnight on Octopus Intelligent for 6 hours at 10p per kWh. Say you do that 5 days per week, 40 weeks per year. That's 25k miles per year for just £725 at ~ 3p per mile.

Compared to an equivalent petrol car at 40mpg, £1.50 per litre at 17p per mile or £4250 per year... That's a saving of £3525.

Obviously most people would fall somewhere between my extremely positive example and the extremely negative example posted by @MouldyOldDough but they're both equally as valid as opposite ends of the scale. 

We don't fall in-between

Our EV does about 3.5 miles per kwh and our night tariff is 4.5p per kwh

Our ICE does 22mpg

Petriix

michaels said:

Petriix said:

Of course EVs can work out vastly more expensive than ICE. They can also work out vastly cheaper.

Imagine if you drive around 125 miles every day and charge overnight on Octopus Intelligent for 6 hours at 10p per kWh. Say you do that 5 days per week, 40 weeks per year. That's 25k miles per year for just £725 at ~ 3p per mile.

Compared to an equivalent petrol car at 40mpg, £1.50 per litre at 17p per mile or £4250 per year... That's a saving of £3525.

Obviously most people would fall somewhere between my extremely positive example and the extremely negative example posted by @MouldyOldDough but they're both equally as valid as opposite ends of the scale. 

We don't fall in-between

Our EV does about 3.5 miles per kwh and our night tariff is 4.5p per kwh

Our ICE does 22mpg

Presumably, though, you don't drive 25k miles per year to reach the £3k+ saving? 

JKenH

One of the difficulties in deciding from a cost point of view whether to go ICE or EV is the goalposts keep changing. A year ago the maths were very much in favour of EVs. Fuel was shooting up in price to an all time high while electricity was still cheap as chips particularly for those of us lucky enough to be on legacy TOU tariffs. Depreciation was virtually non existent for EVs. 

A year on and a lot has changed. Fuel prices are creeping back down and electricity prices have more than doubled. There are still a few of us still lucky enough to be able to buy our electricity at around 5p (although such tariffs come with increased daytime rates which are rarely mentioned) but the reality for many is that domestic electricity prices are twice what they were and the same with public charging. Many retailers (like Tesco) have ended the perk of free charging. 

For many (not all) EV drivers the cost of fuelling their car is now on a similar level to fuelling an ICE car. The biggest financial bolt out of the blue though is the sudden and unexpected fall in used EV values. This may not immediately impact owners who finance their cars but it will as they come to the end of their leases/PCP agreements. The days of being able to end your EV PCP deal with a healthy deposit for the next car are gone. The fall in residual values will impact heavily on future PCP and lease deals. Interest rates are higher which will also add to costs. Now you may say this will also affect ICEv purchases but for most working people the amounts involved in purchasing ICE vehicles were never as high as for EVs so a 20% drop in residuals has less impact. 

This may be a temporary phenomenon - we just don’t know how residuals will hold up in the future - but at the moment the fuel/maintenance savings from running an EV are swallowed up by increased depreciation. This is not at all what we were expecting - it was always argued that TCO for an EV was much cheaper - and many people will have to do their sums again when their existing leases/PCP deals come to an end. 

The comments above purely relate to ownership costs, nothing else. 

Edit: corrected “days faculties” to “difficulties” in first line of my post. 

DrEskimo

JKenH said:

One of the days faculties in deciding from a cost point of view whether to go ICE or EV is the goalposts keep changing. A year ago the maths were very much in favour of EVs. Fuel was shooting up in price to an all time high while electricity was still cheap as chips particularly for those of us lucky enough to be on legacy TOU tariffs. Depreciation was virtually non existent for EVs. 

A year on and a lot has changed. Fuel prices are creeping back down and electricity prices have more than doubled. There are still a few of us still lucky enough to be able to buy our electricity at around 5p (although such tariffs come with increased daytime rates which are rarely mentioned) but the reality for many is that domestic electricity prices are twice what they were and the same with public charging. Many retailers (like Tesco) have ended the perk of free charging. 

For many (not all) EV drivers the cost of fuelling their car is now on a similar level to fuelling an ICE car. The biggest financial bolt out of the blue though is the sudden and unexpected fall in used EV values. This may not immediately impact owners who finance their cars but it will as they come to the end of their leases/PCP agreements. The days of being able to end your EV PCP deal with a healthy deposit for the next car are gone. The fall in residual values will impact heavily on future PCP and lease deals. Interest rates are higher which will also add to costs. Now you may say this will also affect ICEv purchases but for most working people the amounts involved in purchasing ICE vehicles were never as high as for EVs so a 20% drop in residuals has less impact. 

This may be a temporary phenomenon - we just don’t know how residuals will hold up in the future - but at the moment the fuel/maintenance savings from running an EV are swallowed up by increased depreciation. This is not at all what we were expecting - it was always argued that TCO for an EV was much cheaper - and many people will have to do their sums again when their existing leases/PCP deals come to an end. 

The comments above purely relate to ownership costs, nothing else. 

Not everyone buys new on finance or through lease (I’ve long argued this is rarely a money saving endeavour…). 

As with ICE, it’s why I always recommend used EVV without finance, as you can benefit from lower depreciation and lower running costs.

Also, whilst TOU tariffs can have slightly higher peak rates, the mere fact you have an EV will mean you raise your electricity consumption, which in my case means I use about as much electricity charging as I do for the house day to day. Combined the average cost with a TOU and slightly higher peak rate makes my average costs much lower than if I went with a standard tariff. Typically you only need around 30-40% of your consumption at the off peak rate to achieve this, which is not difficult when you move to an EV and shift all your petrol costs to electricity costs. 

JKenH

DrEskimo said:

JKenH said:

One of the days faculties in deciding from a cost point of view whether to go ICE or EV is the goalposts keep changing. A year ago the maths were very much in favour of EVs. Fuel was shooting up in price to an all time high while electricity was still cheap as chips particularly for those of us lucky enough to be on legacy TOU tariffs. Depreciation was virtually non existent for EVs. 

A year on and a lot has changed. Fuel prices are creeping back down and electricity prices have more than doubled. There are still a few of us still lucky enough to be able to buy our electricity at around 5p (although such tariffs come with increased daytime rates which are rarely mentioned) but the reality for many is that domestic electricity prices are twice what they were and the same with public charging. Many retailers (like Tesco) have ended the perk of free charging. 

For many (not all) EV drivers the cost of fuelling their car is now on a similar level to fuelling an ICE car. The biggest financial bolt out of the blue though is the sudden and unexpected fall in used EV values. This may not immediately impact owners who finance their cars but it will as they come to the end of their leases/PCP agreements. The days of being able to end your EV PCP deal with a healthy deposit for the next car are gone. The fall in residual values will impact heavily on future PCP and lease deals. Interest rates are higher which will also add to costs. Now you may say this will also affect ICEv purchases but for most working people the amounts involved in purchasing ICE vehicles were never as high as for EVs so a 20% drop in residuals has less impact. 

This may be a temporary phenomenon - we just don’t know how residuals will hold up in the future - but at the moment the fuel/maintenance savings from running an EV are swallowed up by increased depreciation. This is not at all what we were expecting - it was always argued that TCO for an EV was much cheaper - and many people will have to do their sums again when their existing leases/PCP deals come to an end. 

The comments above purely relate to ownership costs, nothing else. 

Not everyone buys new on finance or through lease (I’ve long argued this is rarely a money saving endeavour…). 

As with ICE, it’s why I always recommend used EVV without finance, as you can benefit from lower depreciation and lower running costs.

Also, whilst TOU tariffs can have slightly higher peak rates, the mere fact you have an EV will mean you raise your electricity consumption, which in my case means I use about as much electricity charging as I do for the house day to day. Combined the average cost with a TOU and slightly higher peak rate makes my average costs much lower than if I went with a standard tariff. Typically you only need around 30-40% of your consumption at the off peak rate to achieve this, which is not difficult when you move to an EV and shift all your petrol costs to electricity costs. 

Yes, if your EV mileage is high enough and your household consumption low enough, you can lower your average unit rate to below the standard variable tariff. Quite a few EV owners also have solar and home storage batteries so a TOU tariff really does work well for them. It doesn’t, though, work for everyone - you have to do the suns. My point was that this last year the financial arguments for EVs are not as strong as they were. They still make financial sense for some but for others the cost argument may have swung back in favour of ICEvs. 

JKenH

michaels said:

Petriix said:

Of course EVs can work out vastly more expensive than ICE. They can also work out vastly cheaper.

Imagine if you drive around 125 miles every day and charge overnight on Octopus Intelligent for 6 hours at 10p per kWh. Say you do that 5 days per week, 40 weeks per year. That's 25k miles per year for just £725 at ~ 3p per mile.

Compared to an equivalent petrol car at 40mpg, £1.50 per litre at 17p per mile or £4250 per year... That's a saving of £3525.

Obviously most people would fall somewhere between my extremely positive example and the extremely negative example posted by @MouldyOldDough but they're both equally as valid as opposite ends of the scale. 

We don't fall in-between

Our EV does about 3.5 miles per kwh and our night tariff is 4.5p per kwh

Our ICE does 22mpg

22mpg? What do you drive? My 3.5 tonne Motorhome does better than that even when it’s -8 outside. 

Edit: I had a look at Auto Express and 22mpg is Aston Martin/Bentley/Lamborghini/Audi Q8 territory. Not even the Range Rover is that bad. Only one Ferrari model dips that low. I know Auto Express quote manufacturers (WLTP?) figures but the figure quoted for my Golf when new is almost exactly what I see on the dashboard over the time I have owned the car.

DrEskimo

JKenH said:

michaels said:

Petriix said:

Of course EVs can work out vastly more expensive than ICE. They can also work out vastly cheaper.

Imagine if you drive around 125 miles every day and charge overnight on Octopus Intelligent for 6 hours at 10p per kWh. Say you do that 5 days per week, 40 weeks per year. That's 25k miles per year for just £725 at ~ 3p per mile.

Compared to an equivalent petrol car at 40mpg, £1.50 per litre at 17p per mile or £4250 per year... That's a saving of £3525.

Obviously most people would fall somewhere between my extremely positive example and the extremely negative example posted by @MouldyOldDough but they're both equally as valid as opposite ends of the scale. 

We don't fall in-between

Our EV does about 3.5 miles per kwh and our night tariff is 4.5p per kwh

Our ICE does 22mpg

22mpg? What do you drive? My 3.5 tonne Motorhome does better than that even when it’s -8 outside. 

Edit: I had a look at Auto Express and 22mpg is Aston Martin/Bentley/Lamborghini/Audi Q8 territory. Not even the Range Rover is that bad. Only one Ferrari model dips that low. I know Auto Express quote manufacturers (WLTP?) figures but the figure quoted for my Golf when new is almost exactly what I see on the dashboard over the time I have owned the car.

The dash can be quite optimistic too. On my old Audi S5 I would consistently get 22mpg when measuring based on fuel actually used, whereas the dash would suggest around 28mpg.

So 22mpg isnt too difficult to 'achieve'....particularly as it might be possible @michaels and I have have a heavy right foot...:P