EV Discussion thread

Petriix

It's obviously worth remembering that the vast majority of people will never drive close to 380 miles in a day, and journeys over 100 miles make up a tiny proportion of all miles driven by private motorists.

I don't think I'd be attempting such a journey in an EV in these conditions so, should such a trip be absolutely necessary, I'd probably be hiring an ICE. However, the likelihood is that I would adapt my plans to stay somewhere (with charging) halfway. Two trips of 190 miles would be comfortable 'one stoppers' with a great deal of flexibility as to the location of that stop.

JKenH

I can’t really disagree with any of that. 

If I had been doing the trip in the Leaf I would have been very tempted to travel down the previous night but as  (bad) luck would have it I drove the Motorhome to Donington Park on Thursday as a support vehicle so by the time I had got back home, eaten and turned round it would have been midnight before I got to Surrey. 

Why not go in the Motorhome you might ask? Well it’s been winterised (all wet services drained) and if I did fill the tanks it would soon freeze up again. Anyway I might have struggled to park it at the funeral. 😀

1961Nick

A good example of the "significant power imbalances" between being able to do the majority of your journey with home charged energy rather than the expensive public stuff. It's good to hear that you're not "feeling disempowered" having sold the Leaf, but hopefully the Golf will be a "strategic bridge-builder" towards a longer range EV in the future.

Grumpy_chap

Petriix said:

It's obviously worth remembering that the vast majority of people will never drive close to 380 miles in a day, and journeys over 100 miles make up a tiny proportion of all miles driven by private motorists.

Is that correct?
Journeys over 100 miles make up a tiny proportion of all miles driven by private motorists?

Or, is the correct metric journeys over 100 miles make up a tiny proportion of all journeys?

What is the significance of the qualification "driven by private motorists"?  Does that exclude the business driver?

I ask just to understand the true fact.

As an example, a drive may do the school run daily and do the shops twice a week.  That's seven round trip journeys but might only total 50 miles in the week.  (4 miles each single leg.)  28 journeys in a month = 200 miles
Them the same person does a 200 mile round trip to visit the in-laws once a month.  1 journey in a month = 200 miles
In total 29 journeys, but 400 miles in a month.  That makes the 100 mile trips a minority of journeys but half of the miles.
In this scenario, the correct area to be seeking environmental and cost gains would be to eliminate the school run and supermarket trips to a non-car mode of transports.

silvercar

Grumpy_chap said:

Petriix said:

It's obviously worth remembering that the vast majority of people will never drive close to 380 miles in a day, and journeys over 100 miles make up a tiny proportion of all miles driven by private motorists.

Is that correct?
Journeys over 100 miles make up a tiny proportion of all miles driven by private motorists?

Or, is the correct metric journeys over 100 miles make up a tiny proportion of all journeys?

What is the significance of the qualification "driven by private motorists"?  Does that exclude the business driver?

I ask just to understand the true fact.

As an example, a drive may do the school run daily and do the shops twice a week.  That's seven round trip journeys but might only total 50 miles in the week.  (4 miles each single leg.)  28 journeys in a month = 200 miles
Them the same person does a 200 mile round trip to visit the in-laws once a month.  1 journey in a month = 200 miles
In total 29 journeys, but 400 miles in a month.  That makes the 100 mile trips a minority of journeys but half of the miles.
In this scenario, the correct area to be seeking environmental and cost gains would be to eliminate the school run and supermarket trips to a non-car mode of transports.

Would it then be worth owning a car? For one journey a month? May as well take the train for that journey. Surely the advantage of owning a car is the ability to make all those little journeys as and when you need.

JKenH

Grumpy_chap said:

Petriix said:

It's obviously worth remembering that the vast majority of people will never drive close to 380 miles in a day, and journeys over 100 miles make up a tiny proportion of all miles driven by private motorists.

Is that correct?
Journeys over 100 miles make up a tiny proportion of all miles driven by private motorists?

Or, is the correct metric journeys over 100 miles make up a tiny proportion of all journeys?

What is the significance of the qualification "driven by private motorists"?  Does that exclude the business driver?

I ask just to understand the true fact.

As an example, a drive may do the school run daily and do the shops twice a week.  That's seven round trip journeys but might only total 50 miles in the week.  (4 miles each single leg.)  28 journeys in a month = 200 miles
Them the same person does a 200 mile round trip to visit the in-laws once a month.  1 journey in a month = 200 miles
In total 29 journeys, but 400 miles in a month.  That makes the 100 mile trips a minority of journeys but half of the miles.
In this scenario, the correct area to be seeking environmental and cost gains would be to eliminate the school run and supermarket trips to a non-car mode of transports.

What you say is very true. Long trips make up a minority of my journeys but account for a significant portion of my mileage. My wife on the other hand does loads of short trips but rarely drives more than 60 miles in a trip. The ideal combination of cars for us would be an EV as a runabout and an ICE car for long journeys. Sadly my wife disagrees so we found ourselves in the situation of having a petrol car for local trips and an EV for the longer trips where I drive.

I think it is significant that surveys find around 75% of EV owners also have an ICE car in the family.

I was reflecting on my driving experiences over the  last couple of days and one point that is significant to me is the spontaneity one enjoys with an ICE car compared to the planning needed with an EV. You don’t need an ICE car to always have a full petrol tank if you have a sudden change of plan. I don’t fret about how much fuel is in the car as I can literally fill up in 5 minutes on my route with absolute certainty. 

Owning an EV, I was always thinking about the state of charge to make sure I had enough for my next anticipated or unanticipated trip and balancing that with battery health. I never wanted to start a charge with the battery at over 80% so only put 100% in the car immediately ahead of setting off on a long trip. There were times though I might  be caught out with a change of plan often having come home with 60% in the battery and not bothering to plug in. I particularly could get caught out in summer if I was leaving enough room in the battery to mop up some solar PV which I tried to maximise. Yes I enjoyed charging for free but would sometimes put off a (spontaneous) discretionary trip because there wasn’t enough charge in the car. It just introduced a bit more hassle into life. 

I can honestly say that I have felt a lot more relaxed about my car since I went back to petrol.

1961Nick

JKenH said:

...... Yes I enjoyed charging for free but would sometimes put off a (spontaneous) discretionary trip because there wasn’t enough charge in the car. It just introduced a bit more hassle into life.... 

My experience has been the complete opposite. Because we can travel for virtually nothing, we've made many more spontaneous trips that we would have done in her diesel SUV. This week we went out for lunch, a trip that would have cost about £18 in the SUV but only cost 96p in the Tesla. 

Martyn1981

1961Nick said:

JKenH said:

...... Yes I enjoyed charging for free but would sometimes put off a (spontaneous) discretionary trip because there wasn’t enough charge in the car. It just introduced a bit more hassle into life.... 

My experience has been the complete opposite. Because we can travel for virtually nothing, we've made many more spontaneous trips that we would have done in her diesel SUV. This week we went out for lunch, a trip that would have cost about £18 in the SUV but only cost 96p in the Tesla. 

Same with me. Lost interest in driving a few decades back, but now find it fun and pleasant again. Can't exactly say I like traffic jams, but they and slow queues are far more pleasant.

Petriix

I can only really speak for [me] in terms of driving patterns but in 2022 we did (from Norwich) 1 trip to London, 2 trips to Brighton, once to Grimsby, once to Oxford and once to Cumbria. Those account for under 2000 miles out of 10,000.

As I understand it, most people practically never drive over 100 miles from home. The trips to the in-laws are more likely once per year etc.

I've put in around 150kWh at public rapid chargers which mostly just used up some [free] Instavolt credit I was given. I added £20 to my Podpoint account and that's all that's left my bank account for public charging. 

JKenH

1961Nick said:

JKenH said:

...... Yes I enjoyed charging for free but would sometimes put off a (spontaneous) discretionary trip because there wasn’t enough charge in the car. It just introduced a bit more hassle into life.... 

My experience has been the complete opposite. Because we can travel for virtually nothing, we've made many more spontaneous trips that we would have done in her diesel SUV. This week we went out for lunch, a trip that would have cost about £18 in the SUV but only cost 96p in the Tesla. 

Martyn1981 said:

1961Nick said:

JKenH said:

...... Yes I enjoyed charging for free but would sometimes put off a (spontaneous) discretionary trip because there wasn’t enough charge in the car. It just introduced a bit more hassle into life.... 

My experience has been the complete opposite. Because we can travel for virtually nothing, we've made many more spontaneous trips that we would have done in her diesel SUV. This week we went out for lunch, a trip that would have cost about £18 in the SUV but only cost 96p in the Tesla. 

Same with me. Lost interest in driving a few decades back, but now find it fun and pleasant again. Can't exactly say I like traffic jams, but they and slow queues are far more pleasant.

There’s the law of unintended consequences coming into play. EVs are causing us to drive further than we did before. I have to admit when I first got the Leaf I took every opportunity to go out for a drive. When I got the Golf it sat in the garage for 2-3 weeks and it’s first trip was a functional one to Wales. 

Given that electricity generated in most parts of the world comes in part from fossil fuels these extra spontaneous miles are undoing some of the good work that EVs are doing in reducing CO2.

I suppose with a 75 kWh battery even half full will get you a long way.