Which is cheapest - hybrid, plug-in hybrid or fully electric?

Goudy

Petriix said:

 but do your own sums based on your unique circumstances.

That's the crux of the matter.

The article has used the current price of electricity most will pay to work out the figures, which I understand.
Of course there are other tariffs more suited to EV charging but I would think if they based their figures on some of those, others would complain it was just as biased as those tariffs might not be available to them.

Oddly, no one has jumped on the petrol costs of the Hybrid/Plug in calculations.
I haven't worked it out for myself but I think I could probably do better at a local supermarket and a lot better here
I run Britain's cheapest petrol station and I'm charging far less than the UK average | This is Money
But a lot worse at a motorway service station.

To me the articles calculations point out the obvious, if you can charge at average electricity price or below and you make the sort of trips that only require you to charge at those rates, an EV could be a viable option.

If you can't, then the article is truly bias as there aren't all the other options being compared.
I am certain there are ICE car that could top the Hybrids 56.5 mpg on a 270 mile motorway run as mine does.

JKenH

Goudy said:

Petriix said:

 but do your own sums based on your unique circumstances.

That's the crux of the matter.

The article has used the current price of electricity most will pay to work out the figures, which I understand.
Of course there are other tariffs more suited to EV charging but I would think if they based their figures on some of those, others would complain it was just as biased as those tariffs might not be available to them.

Oddly, no one has jumped on the petrol costs of the Hybrid/Plug in calculations.
I haven't worked it out for myself but I think I could probably do better at a local supermarket and a lot better here
I run Britain's cheapest petrol station and I'm charging far less than the UK average | This is Money
But a lot worse at a motorway service station.

To me the articles calculations point out the obvious, if you can charge at average electricity price or below and you make the sort of trips that only require you to charge at those rates, an EV could be a viable option.

If you can't, then the article is truly bias as there aren't all the other options being compared.
I am certain there are ICE car that could top the Hybrids 56.5 mpg on a 270 mile motorway run as mine does.

Fair comment. The article could have done a comparison of costs based on charging of both the PHEV and EV at public charging points - it didn’t. Had that been the case I think it would have been biased even though that will be the reality for many new EV buyers who don’t have a home charging option. 

Basing it on the standard tariff which most people are on seems a fairly reasonable approach. However let’s add some nuance to the subject. There is no way a magazine article is going to go into this much detail but if you are going to cater for the EV tariff you need to include other options/potential issues as well. Let’s then have a look at what one might need to include to cover all bases. 

Once you start introducing options you need to cover them all from all the special EV tariffs or E7 or Octopus Flux,  so where do you stop? Do you do a separate calculation for those with home solar who can charge for “free”? Do you use Instavolt prices for rapids or the cheapest 7kW charger? Do you go on to explain that only certain cars or chargers can access some of the tariffs or that you have to be an existing customer.?Anyone moving now from an ICE car to an EV (unless they already have something like an E7 tariff) will almost inevitably start off on the standard tariff or will be using public chargers. Maybe a rate somewhere between the two - say 45p/kWh - would have been fairer for an EV/Hybrid comparison?

What is quite likely is, when you first get an EV, you won’t have a home charger. Hopefully you will have a dedicated charging spot. You might have a smart meter or you might not. You might apply for a smart meter and find there is a delay or your home doesn’t have a smart meter signal. It isn’t guaranteed you will be able to install a home charger. My son was on a looped supply and while the DNO  unlooped the supply at no cost it meant digging a trench up the tarmac drive shared with his neighbour. The neighbour wasn’t over the moon about that but eventually agreed with my son to share the cost of retarmacking the drive. That ran into several thousand pounds. 

Some people might decide to just stick with a granny charger - no EV charger and no EV tariff. Probably if you only have a PHEV you won’t need a dedicated EV charger so do you take that into account in the figures? Anyway once we know we can have a charger that works with a smart meter we buy one. I don’t know how much a charger is now but mine was around £800 after the £500 grant was deducted. It will vary with type and installation but let’s take an arbitrary figure of £1250. If that will save you 25p/kWh then payback is 6000 hours or around 3 years for the average user, charging solely from home. There is a cost there, but it is difficult to know how to include it in the calculations. You may decide Evs are not for you at the moment and go back to an ICE car. With the significant amount of public charging I did, I wonder if the savings from solar or my cheap EV tariff covered the cost of the charger.

Once you get your charger and smart meter installed and get on an EV tariff you will most probably find you can only fill half the battery on the cheap rate. 7kW leaving the wall (standard for a single phase charger) puts roughly 6kW in the battery so on Octopus Go that’s 28kW from the plug giving you 24kWh in the car at the cheap rate 9.5p/kWh period and if you have to, say, put 50kWh in (doing 2 long runs on successive days) you pay 40-43p/kWh for the other 26kwh (around 30kWh from the plug). Total cost for 50 kWh in the car £15.11 or 30.22p/kWh. That’s just one example. With intelligent Octopus you might do better but only with certain compatible cars or chargers.

What if you can do most of your charging at work during the week  for free but the rest is at public chargers. 

I am sure there are many other things I could have included but have forgotten. The point is how much detail do you go about charging alternatives in a motoring article  that sets out to compare 3 motoring technologies in 2 quite different but typical scenarios. Someone will always be able to say Aah but you forgot my special case.

ComicGeek

JKenH said:

Goudy said:

Petriix said:

 but do your own sums based on your unique circumstances.

That's the crux of the matter.

The article has used the current price of electricity most will pay to work out the figures, which I understand.
Of course there are other tariffs more suited to EV charging but I would think if they based their figures on some of those, others would complain it was just as biased as those tariffs might not be available to them.

Oddly, no one has jumped on the petrol costs of the Hybrid/Plug in calculations.
I haven't worked it out for myself but I think I could probably do better at a local supermarket and a lot better here
I run Britain's cheapest petrol station and I'm charging far less than the UK average | This is Money
But a lot worse at a motorway service station.

To me the articles calculations point out the obvious, if you can charge at average electricity price or below and you make the sort of trips that only require you to charge at those rates, an EV could be a viable option.

If you can't, then the article is truly bias as there aren't all the other options being compared.
I am certain there are ICE car that could top the Hybrids 56.5 mpg on a 270 mile motorway run as mine does.

Fair comment. The article could have done a comparison of costs based on charging of both the PHEV and EV at public charging points - it didn’t. Had that been the case I think it would have been biased even though that will be the reality for many new EV buyers who don’t have a home charging option. 

Basing it on the standard tariff which most people are on seems a fairly reasonable approach. However let’s add some nuance to the subject. There is no way a magazine article is going to go into this much detail but if you are going to cater for the EV tariff you need to include other options/potential issues as well. Let’s then have a look at what one might need to include to cover all bases. 

Once you start introducing options you need to cover them all from all the special EV tariffs or E7 or Octopus Flux,  so where do you stop? Do you do a separate calculation for those with home solar who can charge for “free”? Do you use Instavolt prices for rapids or the cheapest 7kW charger? Do you go on to explain that only certain cars or chargers can access some of the tariffs or that you have to be an existing customer. Anyone moving now from an ICE car to an EV (unless they already have something like an E7 tariff) will almost inevitably start off on the standard tariff or will be using public chargers. Maybe a rate somewhere between the two - say 45p/kWh - would have been fairer for an EV/Hybrid comparison?

What is quite likely is, when you first get an EV, you won’t have a home charger. Hopefully you will have a dedicated charging spot. You might have a smart meter or you might not. You might apply for a smart meter and find there is a delay or your home doesn’t have a smart meter signal. It isn’t guaranteed you will be able to install a home charger. My son was on a looped supply and while the DNO  unlooped the supply at no cost it meant digging a trench up the tarmac drive shared with his neighbour. The neighbour wasn’t over the moon about that but eventually agreed with my son to share the cost of retarmacking the drive. That ran into several thousand pounds. 

Some people might decide to just stick with a granny charger - no EV charger and no EV tariff. Probably if you only have a PHEV you won’t need a dedicated EV charger so do you take that into account in the figures? Anyway once we know we can have a charger that works with a smart meter we buy one. I don’t know how much a charger is now but mine was around £800 after the £500 grant was deducted. It will vary with type and installation but let’s take an arbitrary figure of £1250. If that will save you 25p/kWh then payback is 6000 hours or around 3 years for the average user, charging solely from home. There is a cost there, but it is difficult to know how to include it in the calculations. You may decide Evs are not for you at the moment and go back to an ICE car. I doubt, with the significant amount if public charging I wonder if the savings from solar or my cheap EV tariff covered the cost of the charger.

Once you get your charger and smart meter installed and get on an EV tariff you will most probably find you can only fill half the battery on the cheap rate. 7kW leaving the wall (standard for a single phase charger) puts roughly 6kW in the battery so on Octopus Go that’s 28kW from the plug giving you 24kWh in the car at the cheap rate 9.5p/kWh period and if you have to, say, put 50kWh in (doing 2 long runs on successive days) you pay 40-43p/kWh for the other 26kwh (around 30kWh from the plug). Total cost for 50 kWh in the car £15.11 or 30.22p/kWh. That’s just one example. With intelligent Octopus you might do better but only with certain compatible cars or chargers.

I am sure there are many other things I could have included but have forgotten. The point is how much detail do you go about charging alternatives in a motoring article  that sets out to compare 3 motoring technologies in 2 quite different but typical scenarios. Someone will always be able to say Aah but you forgot my special case.

I think that's an excellent summary.

It's a minefield, and does show how many other things need to be considered to see if it's worth a switch - add in things like PCP, lease, salary sacrifice, BIK etc, and it gets even more complicated. There is no way of separating EV charging from home energy use (unlike ICEs and mild hybrids), so it needs to be looked at as an whole.

A small part of my job involves sizing heating systems for houses. There are lots of online calculators that claim to be able to do this for you, but never fully ask for all the inputs needed, trying to simplify something that isn't simple (but equally could be made more accurate by just a couple more questions!) - as a result every calculation is incorrect. Might not be the end of the world for a radiator, but if you're looking to move to an EV purely to save money then every part of the analysis needs to be accurate.

Petriix

It's nowhere near as complicated as you make out: either a) simply add a caveat to your post/thread title or b) include a second and third row on the table to show the low, medium and high costs. It really isn't rocket surgery.

While it might be true that most people are on the SVR, I strongly doubt that most EV owners are (a lot has changed since the Cornwall Insights article) and, as previously stated, no one should be recommending an EV as a cost saving measure to anyone who can't access affordable charging. 

Martyn1981

Petriix said:

It's nowhere near as complicated as you make out: either a) simply add a caveat to your post/thread title or b) include a second and third row on the table to show the low, medium and high costs. It really isn't rocket surgery.

While it might be true that most people are on the SVR, I strongly doubt that most EV owners are (a lot has changed since the Cornwall Insights article) and, as previously stated, no one should be recommending an EV as a cost saving measure to anyone who can't access affordable charging. 

Yep, we switched once we got a BEV. Due to Covid, and cancelled appointments, we ran two BEV's off the granny charger and cheap rate. Now have a 7kW charger, but do most charging off the granny charger for 6 months of the year, making the most of PV.

As I mentioned before, most of these negatives are just points in time, as the technology develops and knowledge and infrastructure expands. Current high leccy pricing is an anomaly, and easing a bit (and slowly). 

Herzlos

Goudy said:

Oddly, no one has jumped on the petrol costs of the Hybrid/Plug in calculations.
I haven't worked it out for myself but I think I could probably do better at a local supermarket and a lot better here
I run Britain's cheapest petrol station and I'm charging far less than the UK average | This is Money
But a lot worse at a motorway service station.

I looked at the petrol price and I think it worked out to be within about 2p/litre from the current average petrol price (something like £1.44/l rather than £1.46/l) but that didn't skew things much at all so I didn't think it justified a comment.

It didn't use motorway fuel which is fair because I'd expect any modern petrol car to handle the 270 mile return trip without needing to stop and fuel at the half way point unlike the EV.

Herzlos

JKenH said:

Once you start introducing options you need to cover them all from all the special EV tariffs or E7 or Octopus Flux,  so where do you stop? Do you do a separate calculation for those with home solar who can charge for “free”? Do you use Instavolt prices for rapids or the cheapest 7kW charger? Do you go on to explain that only certain cars or chargers can access some of the tariffs or that you have to be an existing customer.?Anyone moving now from an ICE car to an EV (unless they already have something like an E7 tariff) will almost inevitably start off on the standard tariff or will be using public chargers. Maybe a rate somewhere between the two - say 45p/kWh - would have been fairer for an EV/Hybrid comparison?

Nah, a brief paragraph about how EV users may be able to take advantage of electricity as low as 10p/kwh off-peak or take advantage of solar panels, and how the cost of the fast chargers varies by supplier and speed. So the reader then knows there are options.

There's also been a big push towards smart meters for a few years now - it's easier for the energy suppliers, so more and more people are getting them fitted at no cost.

I also assume that most new EV purchased will have the option to include some kind of discounted charging port installation, it'd be stupid not to. I know motability (largest single lease provider) will provide a charger for free with an EV lease.
Obviously that won't apply to 2nd hand EV's though, where the buyer would likely need to arrange something themselves, but is likely to be something that an EV buyer would consider as part of the process.

When I nearly bought an EV (I changed my mind because the dealer felt dodgy) I had a few quotes to get a charger fitted. It seems you can buy the hardware for about £500 so you can probably get one fitted for under £1000 in most cases. That's a lot if you're buying a used car but not a big deal if buying a new one, and it'll almost certainly add some value / saleability to your house so it's not a completely sunk cost.

JKenH

In case anyone is interested at the end of 2022 the statistics for domestic electricity meters were 15.3 million smart meters in smart mode, 1.5m smart meters in traditional mode and 12.4m non smart meters. That’s 52.9% of electricity meters are operating in smart mode. 

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1143407/Q4_2022_Smart_Meters_Statistics_Tables.xlsx

Martyn1981

Herzlos said:

JKenH said:

Once you start introducing options you need to cover them all from all the special EV tariffs or E7 or Octopus Flux,  so where do you stop? Do you do a separate calculation for those with home solar who can charge for “free”? Do you use Instavolt prices for rapids or the cheapest 7kW charger? Do you go on to explain that only certain cars or chargers can access some of the tariffs or that you have to be an existing customer.?Anyone moving now from an ICE car to an EV (unless they already have something like an E7 tariff) will almost inevitably start off on the standard tariff or will be using public chargers. Maybe a rate somewhere between the two - say 45p/kWh - would have been fairer for an EV/Hybrid comparison?

Nah, a brief paragraph about how EV users may be able to take advantage of electricity as low as 10p/kwh off-peak or take advantage of solar panels, and how the cost of the fast chargers varies by supplier and speed. So the reader then knows there are options.

There's also been a big push towards smart meters for a few years now - it's easier for the energy suppliers, so more and more people are getting them fitted at no cost.

I also assume that most new EV purchased will have the option to include some kind of discounted charging port installation, it'd be stupid not to. I know motability (largest single lease provider) will provide a charger for free with an EV lease.
Obviously that won't apply to 2nd hand EV's though, where the buyer would likely need to arrange something themselves, but is likely to be something that an EV buyer would consider as part of the process.

When I nearly bought an EV (I changed my mind because the dealer felt dodgy) I had a few quotes to get a charger fitted. It seems you can buy the hardware for about £500 so you can probably get one fitted for under £1000 in most cases. That's a lot if you're buying a used car but not a big deal if buying a new one, and it'll almost certainly add some value / saleability to your house so it's not a completely sunk cost.

Yes, and also deals with your leccy supplier, possiblyt. We got a 'free' charger installed back when there was a £350 subsidy, and the top up cost was typically ~£500. But nothing comes free, and our cheap rate was 10p (17p daytime), when other tariffs were closer to 5p (pre Ukraine invasion spike hike).

I believe all new homes have to have a smart charger installed, which is a great idea, though personally, I'd suggest having the wiring ready, would be better, rather than install some kit that may not be used for years, in some cases.


Not quite old enough to remember this, but early ICE vehicles didn't have petrol stations, in fact petrol was a 'great' choice for ICEV's as it was mainly a waste product (from producing kerosene). People had to buy 2gall cans from chemists and hardware stores etc ..... and garages .... which naturally lead to petrol stations.

silverwhistle

ComicGeek said:

But the article isn't talking about a public charging point on the street which costs more - it refers to home charging. There is a justifiable separate debate about how to make EVs accessible/economically reasonable for those without private driveways, but that's not what the OP's specific quoted article discusses.

There will be a great deal of inequity if we don't deal with the issue,  and all EV drivers will recognise that but I don't see the current government doing anything, they seem rather keener on announcement than action particularly when it comes to helping the disadvantaged. Petriix is right: we wouldn't recommend EVs to people in those circumstances at the moment. I believe their objections are far more valid than some of the higher mileage drivers who complain about en route charging, where improvement is necessary but where a little compromise and planning can deal with most situations.

If you can charge at home as an indication my average unit cost is between 17 - 19p, and that's at a low mileage and with some time shifting usage. My electricity purchasing has gone down and my average cost up as my solar production has increased, and I've even been able to use the granny charger for some free mileage.

As ever it's poor journalism not to make the context clear for those who aren't so interested or experienced as many here.