EV range

fred990

The cost of charging an electric car on the road has soared by nearly 60pc in eight months, making the vehicles more costly to run on long journeys than petrol motors.

Rapid charge points used by motorists topping up on long drives are now nearly £10 more expensive than filling up a car with petrol, analysis by motoring body the RAC revealed.

Alongside surging energy prices, a key reason behind the cost is that VAT is charged at 20pc on public networks, compared to 5pc for domestic energy use.

Above from the telegraph. Definitely staying with ICE for now. 

MouldyOldDough

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.

My Focus 1.6 automatic - bought new in 2005 used to average 27mpg - no matter how I drove it

(Some) Manufactuers figures are generally pure fantasy

I took it back to Ford to investigate and they could not come up with any reason

They tested it on a rolling road and confirmed the mpg

I part exchanged it for a new 50mpg automatic Suzuki Swift and have stuck with Suzukis ever since

JKenH

DrEskimo said:

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

I agree the dash display can be optimistic (and I was expecting someone would point that out) so I did a full tank measure in my petrol Golf, filling up and refilling at the same petrol pump (until it clicked off). Over 486 miles 50.7mpg on the dash board equated to 48.6 measured at the  pump.

One thing that often gets forgotten (or ignored) are the charging losses with EVs when plugging in at home, although to be fair to @Michaels, does acknowledge these. I did quite a bit of measuring with my EV using LeafSpy and typically found that the losses charging my Leaf at home were of the order of 15%,i.e. for every 10kWh that went into the charger 8.5 KWh went into the car. I did start a separate thread on this https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6267900/ev-charging-losses-and-vampire-drain

Given my experience with my Leaf if I was paying 30p/kWh then 10 kWh from the mains costs £3.00 which effectively means with only 8.5kwh reaching the car battery the real cost per kWh would be 35p. 

Jenni_D

Charging losses vary depending on charge source, as there are fixed losses (constant regardless of power source rating) and variable losses proportional to the power source. That's why low power sources (e.g. "granny" charge leads) are far less efficient at charging than 7kW and above wall boxes / charge points.

My 7kW Wallbox together with my MG4 (SE SR) is giving me an average charging efficiency of 90%+ (I am tracking my charges and am calculating two p per mile figures ... related to stored charge and related to delivered charge).

JKenH

I should also have mentioned that what the EV dash displays in terms of miles/kWh may not reflect the true consumption of the car as in addition to charging losses there can also be vampire drain and preconditioning consumption. 

This YouTuber who is really into renewables demonstrated that the 4.9 miles/kWh indicated by his electric Mini was actually 3.9miles/kWh in the real world. If you are only paying 5p/kWh then another 1p/kWh is neither here nor there but if you are paying 39p/kWh at the plug it converts to 49p/kWh at the car. 

https://youtu.be/wdLA7ydRod4

Edit: Teslas are well known for losing a significant amount of charge overnight if Sentry mode is deployed. This doesn’t appear in consumption figures (AFAIAA).

JKenH

Bjorn Nyland (well known to most EVers) compiled this table of differing efficiencies on different chargers for a Tesla Model 3 which highlights how inefficient the granny charger can be.



https://youtu.be/iLmIIe9N_aI

Edit: The 7kw charging losses do tie in with your experience in your MG. My Leaf was obviously not so efficient at charging.

Incidentally how did you measure your charging losses. Does the MG have an app that shows the battery capacity in kWh?

Herzlos

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.

22mpg is definitely not exclusive to supercars. I've had 2 family saloons that would barely hit 20mpg but those will be 20+ years old now so pretty rare. There's a poster on here complaining that new 1.0 turbo hatchback is barely leaving the teens.

I actually suspect that for a lot of drivers, they are probably getting closer to 22mpg than whatever the manufacturer is claiming. My 1.5 diesel will apparently do 70mpg but I don't get above 40.

JKenH

Herzlos said:

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.

22mpg is definitely not exclusive to supercars. I've had 2 family saloons that would barely hit 20mpg but those will be 20+ years old now so pretty rare. There's a poster on here complaining that new 1.0 turbo hatchback is barely leaving the teens.

I actually suspect that for a lot of drivers, they are probably getting closer to 22mpg than whatever the manufacturer is claiming. My 1.5 diesel will apparently do 70mpg but I don't get above 40.

We get around 12 mpg from a 1.6 Mazda MX5 on track with basically stock engine (just a head skim and recut valves and decat), that’s 1 litre of super unleaded every 2 minutes at an 80mph typical lap. It’s how you drive it. Perhaps people drive electric cars slower than petrol ones - I did.

Edit: corrected - every 2 minutes, not 1.

Jenni_D

JKenH said:

Bjorn Nyland (well known to most EVers) compiled this table of differing efficiencies on different chargers for a Tesla Model 3 which highlights how inefficient the granny charger can be.



https://youtu.be/iLmIIe9N_aI

Edit: The 7kw charging losses do tie in with your experience in your MG. My Leaf was obviously not so efficient at charging.

Incidentally how did you measure your charging losses. Does the MG have an app that shows the battery capacity in kWh?

Re. your vampire consumption point ... the MG4 uses very little when idle. Anecdotal evidence is that some people have fully-charged their cars, left it for a few days and still come back to 100% on the GOM (Guess-O-Meter). Obviously this changes if you preheat the cabin or HV battery using the HV battery as the source whilst not plugged in to the charge point. (Pedantry - preheating uses the 12V battery, but recharging that battery has to come from somewhere).  

Re. the above table ... that concurs quite closely with my own real-world figures. Stored charge has a tolerance of ±0.5% as it is calculated based on ( End % - Start % ) x 50.8kWh usable battery (% figures per the car's GOM). So if the end was 100% and the start was 30% then 70% was delivered = 35.56kWh. Delivered charge is as measured in my Wallbox app.

50.8kWh is the stated usable capacity for my model (Rated 51kWh LFP battery pack, 50.8kWh usable. The LR models have rated 64kWh NMC battery packs, 61.7kWh usable).

MouldyOldDough

What will happen to the UK EV industry now that the lithium battery site will not go ahead?