EV Discussion thread

noitsnotme

I hope they’ve improved the quality.  My brother had a Dacia, a Duster I think.  Was a horrible thing.  Awful build quality and various things seemed to fall off regularly.

Grumpy_chap

Reed_Richards said:

The Dacia Spring EV UK model has a 26.8 kWh battery so unlikely to achieve a "1 k mile range".      

Well then, this car must be even better.  1k mile range and absolutely amazing energy efficiency.  About 38 miles per kWh.  Massively better than my TM3.

noitsnotme said:

I hope they’ve improved the quality.  

With that efficiency, I'm almost not that worried that it might have lower than perfect build quality.

Exiled_Tyke

According to this:

https://www.dacia.co.uk/hybrid-and-electric-range/spring-city-car.html

The range is 140 miles.  I'd stick to anything else but a Dacia Spring (or any other Dacia for that matter))

Martyn1981

I thought this was quite an interesting video, not sure if it's news though.

Review of the batts in two Leafs, a 2012 24kWh 100k mile model, and a 2016 30kWh with about 76k miles. Both have been plugged in to charge ~6,000 times. But actual average charge each time is around 14 miles.

The 2012 is at ~60.5% SOH, and the 2015 is at ~67% SOH. For both the cells were still well balanced.

I thought that seemed pretty reasonable, especially as a guide for BEV's in general, since these are early days small batts so getting more use (proportionately) and not the best managed battery packs.

These EVs Have Each Been Charged 6000 Times. How Is the Battery? Should We Avoid Doing This?

Reed_Richards

Grumpy_chap said:

Well then, this car must be even better.  1k mile range and absolutely amazing energy efficiency.  About 38 miles per kWh.  Massively better than my TM3.

Your TM3 must be a lot noisier than my Mokka-e; I can hear the radio clearly.  Stop the car next time that advert comes on and I'll bet you find Dacia don't claim that 1k mile range you thought you heard.

Magnitio

There are lots of brand new MG5's currently for sale with the 61.1kWh battery for under £20k! This model is due to be replaced by an MG4 estate soon, but it does seem to be good value and so much better than the Dacia.

Exodi

Magnitio said:

There are lots of brand new MG5's currently for sale with the 61.1kWh battery for under £20k! This model is due to be replaced by an MG4 estate soon, but it does seem to be good value and so much better than the Dacia.

I have a 73 plate MG5 Trophy, as you say 61.1kWh battery - getting somewhere between 200-300 miles depending on the weather.

I have it on business contract hire and it was notably cheaper than most other EV's. The salesperson in the showroom suggested this was because they didn't offer customisation options, they were able to keep the manufacturing process leaner.

It doesn't feel like a cheap car, nor does it particularly look like it. My only real gripes are that it didn't' come with car mats (not a big deal), there is a boot button on the key which I was disappointed doesn't open the boot (it unlocks the boot, because obviously it is a lot of effort otherwise pressing the general unlock button one centimeter below it), and perhaps my biggest frustration is the temperature can't be changed without going into a bespoke menu (which means closing the sat nav, changing the temperature and re-opening the sat nav - very annoying considering changing temperature has been done by a knob or button in cars for decades). The self driving mode is pretty good and gets a lot of use on motorways. The UI could be improved overall (but still does what it needs to do).

Despite my minor gripes, I'm very happy with my decision 9 months on, especially as other EV's were 25-50% more.

Exodi

To the knowledgeable people in this thread (thanks in advance):

We're planning on replacing my wife's current Nissan Micra (the motivation for the change is we need a slightly bigger car as we're having a baby in January).

We're not considering a full EV (I have one) as motorway charging is extremely expensive and we want the backup for very long journeys, but would still like to take advantage of the home charger and cheap energy tariff so currently looking at PHEV's instead.

We're currently looking at the Vauxhall Grandland X, something like this: https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202408313502668

There's also sell a petrol version which is about £2k-£3k cheaper.

Assuming we get 1.5 m/kWh from the PHEV (19.8 miles from the 13.2kWh battery) which I think is reasonable conservative, my napkin maths suggests that the breakeven from fuel cost saving would be around 3.6 years (we'd expect to own it longer than that). 

My questions are:

1) Any feedback on the Vauxhall Grandland X?
2) Do you anticipate any pitfalls selling a PHEV in the future that may be potentially 10 years old? My napkin maths could be all irrelevant if the PHEV depreciates significantly more than the ICE version.
3) Hypothetically, if the battery got down to very low SOH's, can the car still be used (albeit mostly consuming fuel)? Appreciate it would be hard to sell.
4) Any idea what the replacement cost of the battery might be?

Netexporter

I've got a PFL 61kWh MG5. Great range, comfortable, loads of space (I essentially use it as a van with the rear seat squab removed to get a properly flat floor) and totally reliable. The only real annoyance is the lane-keep-assist which activates a lot on rural roads where the width varies, but that seems to be common to many cars with all the safety features.

Magnitio

Exodi said:

To the knowledgeable people in this thread (thanks in advance):

We're planning on replacing my wife's current Nissan Micra (the motivation for the change is we need a slightly bigger car as we're having a baby in January).

We're not considering a full EV (I have one) as motorway charging is extremely expensive and we want the backup for very long journeys, but would still like to take advantage of the home charger and cheap energy tariff so currently looking at PHEV's instead.

We're currently looking at the Vauxhall Grandland X, something like this: https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202408313502668

There's also sell a petrol version which is about £2k-£3k cheaper.

Assuming we get 1.5 m/kWh from the PHEV (19.8 miles from the 13.2kWh battery) which I think is reasonable conservative, my napkin maths suggests that the breakeven from fuel cost saving would be around 3.6 years (we'd expect to own it longer than that). 

My questions are:

1) Any feedback on the Vauxhall Grandland X?
2) Do you anticipate any pitfalls selling a PHEV in the future that may be potentially 10 years old? My napkin maths could be all irrelevant if the PHEV depreciates significantly more than the ICE version.
3) Hypothetically, if the battery got down to very low SOH's, can the car still be used (albeit mostly consuming fuel)? Appreciate it would be hard to sell.
4) Any idea what the replacement cost of the battery might be?

The Grandland X shares a lot with the Peugeot 3008, which is more common but also a bit more expensive. They appear to be reasonably reliable so far. A PHEV is more complex than an ICE or EV, so there is more to go wrong and can be more challenging to diagnose/fix. It's difficult to know what battery replacement costs will be in a few years; the number of specialists willing to undertake such work is increasing rapidly and the availability of secondhand batteries will improve. Battery from accident damaged Grandland currently on ebay at £1500.