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

silverwhistle

Petriix said:

@JKenH you have a rather rose-tinted view of the press if you genuinely believe that the articles you post are somehow without "any in built bias". What people (quite reasonably) find difficult is that there is a strong leaning amongst these posts towards the unfavourable circumstances.

I tend to look on @JKenH as The Daily Telegraph of posters here: useful information at times but you do have to be cautious!

It seems to me, others may disagree, that you, JKH, ascribe opinions to others in a rather strawman sort of way. Talking to ComicGeek, for example you write:  " perhaps there is a danger that because EVs work for you you believe they should for everyone". The "perhaps" doesn't absolve you from the import of the rest of the phrase, which is dismissal of their opinion as biased. It may not be what you intend but it is certainly how it comes over, and not just to me, I suspect?

Surely the report you quoted should also have mentioned the cost of home charging at 34p/kWh could very often be bettered by the tariffs we know about? It's a fairly significant ommission, don't you think? It certainly seems obvious to me and others on here.

On a more general point, the shock horror on second-hand EV prices, why is it regarded as a universally bad thing? If it had happened earlier I'd have bought a second-hand EV instead of new and looked on it as a positive. It opens up the market to more people and more budgets. Prices go up and down: just don't put yourself in a situation where you have to worry about it, it'll all come out in the wash eventually.

JKenH

silverwhistle said:

Petriix said:

@JKenH you have a rather rose-tinted view of the press if you genuinely believe that the articles you post are somehow without "any in built bias". What people (quite reasonably) find difficult is that there is a strong leaning amongst these posts towards the unfavourable circumstances.

I tend to look on @JKenH as The Daily Telegraph of posters here: useful information at times but you do have to be cautious!

It seems to me, others may disagree, that you, JKH, ascribe opinions to others in a rather strawman sort of way. Talking to ComicGeek, for example you write:  " perhaps there is a danger that because EVs work for you you believe they should for everyone". The "perhaps" doesn't absolve you from the import of the rest of the phrase, which is dismissal of their opinion as biased. It may not be what you intend but it is certainly how it comes over, and not just to me, I suspect?

Surely the report you quoted should also have mentioned the cost of home charging at 34p/kWh could very often be bettered by the tariffs we know about? It's a fairly significant ommission, don't you think? It certainly seems obvious to me and others on here.

On a more general point, the shock horror on second-hand EV prices, why is it regarded as a universally bad thing? If it had happened earlier I'd have bought a second-hand EV instead of new and looked on it as a positive. It opens up the market to more people and more budgets. Prices go up and down: just don't put yourself in a situation where you have to worry about it, it'll all come out in the wash eventually.

Oh dear,  Silverwhistle - reduced to name calling and personal attacks. Surely you can do better than that.

As always we can rely on an EV optimist to make a good thing out of a bad situation. Dramatically falling residual values isn’t a good sign for the future of EVs in the UK but you are making the best of it; well done! Shame that at the same time ICE values are holding steady - not the narrative predicted at all. Weren’t ICE cars supposed to be stranded assets by now? What is that telling you? 

I thought I had dealt with the 34p/kWh home charging - here’s what I said earlier if you missed it

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. 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.

Herzlos

All the current pricing is indicating is how people feel about the huge spike in energy costs - we're (hopefully) in a worst case scenario for EV's and will (hopefully) see prices come back to normal soon.

I don't think anyone thought the crazy high EV residuals would last - many people did really well buying a car that was cheap to run and barely depreciated, but now it's fallen more in line with ICE trends. That's bad news for people relying on low depreciation on new cars, but pretty good news for everyone else since it means EV's will become more affordable.

The biggest barrier of entry to EV's is the purchase cost - if that goes down then they become viable for more people.


For example, I want an electric Berlingo but I can't afford £33k for a nearly/new one. The sooner I see one for under £15k the better; that's 45% of value which is the average price of a 3 year old car. I strongly suspect that I'll be waiting more than 3 years for it though.