Eletric cars are they worth it - do you have one

Herzlos

shinytop said:

The real elephant in the room is the cost of an EV that is capable of doing long journeys.  Many people (myself included) drive sub-£10k cars, either by choice or necessity.  A sub-£10k EV isn't realistically going to be doing any long journeys. This may change in the future won't any time soon.  Or maybe used EVs will never get that cheap before they're turned into storage batteries.          

Not entirely. You could make a 400 mile journey in a £5k Nissan Leaf, though admittedly with a range of about 80 miles it'll involve about 6 recharging stops and make for a pretty dull day. Would I do it? Nope, but I wouldn't try and drive 400 miles in a single day in any car.

Newer and more expensive EV's mean longer range and faster charging, thus more convenience. I certainly wouldn't recommend a £5k Leaf for anything other than a local 2nd car,

However, how often do most people make such a trip? Twice a year in each direction?

Also, not everyone drives sub £10k cars, many people buy/lease/whatever newer cars where the cost trade-off between electric and petrol isn't as drastic, and for higher mileage/company car/LEZ it's often cheaper to go electric.

IIRC my current car in diesel was about £26k, whilst the EV version was £30k. If I was buying new then going for the EV would have been the smarter choice as you'd save that £4k difference pretty quickly.

Herzlos

To avoid going round in more circles, there are a few things EV's don't make sense for:

Huge distance non-stop or high speed trips, because a lot of EV's are limited to 81mph, and the efficiency drops massively at higher speeds.
Tiny annual mileage use, where the EV may be more convenient and better for the car, the cost saving won't be enough to offset the purchase difference.

Bangernomics, since used EV prices will hit a price floor far above ICE - maybe £3-4k vs £1k, because even a battery with 20 miles range is useful for various static purposes.
Towing heavy loads, because few EV's are rated for towing, the range will suffer and the total weight is likely to be too high for a lot of license holders.

But for most other use cases an EV could be more convenience and cheaper over the whole ownership period. All of the people I know with EV's love them, though most are 2 car households where they have an ICE vehicle for the stuff an EV isn't good for. The ICE vehicle's seem to get a lot less use than expected though as the owners become more comfortable with the EV.

MattMattMattUK

shinytop said:

Herzlos said:

TooManyPoints said:

What’s the rush? An extra half hour break would be much welcome I would have thought. 

It's interesting that as soon as somebody explains their driving habits, and they don't seem compatible with an EV, the immediate recommendation is that the driver should change his habits. Why is this? 

Because these examples are trotted out regularly as a trump card to defeat EV's whilst being (a) borderline unbelieveable, (b) hugely rare and (c) pretty dangerous.

The motoring organizations AA/RAC recommend a quick break every 2 hours of driving, so the 400 mile claim with a single 2 minute stop is sort of doable at 100mph, which absolutely isn't possible in an EV (since most won't go that fast, or suffer terrible economy degradation). More realistically from UK motorways is that the journey is going to take at least 6 hours, probably 7, which is a long time to be sat in a car from a tiredness, muscle and bladder perspective. It's also going to suck for the dogs and human passengers.

Any time I've done a cross country road trip of that length I've averaged well under 70mph as it seems impossible to miss all city traffic. I generally try and split it into 200-300 mile days with an overnight if I can, because it just makes it a lot more bearable and means I can actually function at the other end.

The reality, if you're trying to make EV's work and not trying to find ever more obscure reasons they won't, is that you could hire a petrol car for those trips with the money you saved on fuel from having an EV the rest of the time, or you just let the journey take a bit longer. Given it's a trip only made a few times a year having to have an extra 20-30 minute stop is unlikely to be a major issue and will make the trip a lot more bearable.

The real elephant in the room is the cost of an EV that is capable of doing long journeys.  Many people (myself included) drive sub-£10k cars, either by choice or necessity.  A sub-£10k EV isn't realistically going to be doing any long journeys. This may change in the future won't any time soon.  Or maybe used EVs will never get that cheap before they're turned into storage batteries.          

I think much of the price issue will adjust as the pool of available second hand cars drops. A Tesla Model 3 LR (320-340 miles real world range) is around £50k new, at three years old they are around £30k, the Standard Plus (250 miles real world range) is around £20k at three years old. As the oldest of those cars are only between three and four years old they will not be illustrative overall, but I would expect as the available pool ages the prices will drop close to ICE cars. Especially as based on the older Model S they look to retain at least 90% of initial battery capacity after ten years. 

Martyn1981

Elliott.T123 said:

born_again said:

I feel sorry for the dogs 😶‍🌫️

At 50 mph: 8 hours

At 55 mph: 7 hours and 16 minutes

At 65 mph: 6 hours and 9 minutes

At 70 mph: 5 hours and 43 minutes

For anyone worrying about the dogs they get a 2 hour walk either end of the journey and a long weekend of being extremely spoiled and are more than content asleep in the excessively large Skoda Superb boot with plenty of toys and treats!

I wont pretend it isn't pushing it on the driving front, there are certain times one of the drivers does struggle and we swap 2/3 times rather than just the once. 

Usual route is Surrey to Lancaster in 1 go with me driving, I have been doing this for 10+ years since my uni days and unless the M6 is hell am very comfortable doing it in 1 hit. Then the other half takes over and drives up to Edinburgh (ish) 


But genuinely thank you to some of the posters, I wasn't aware EV's had reached the point that this was achievable so it is something I am going to explore! I'm really not being awkward for awkwards sake, honest! 

Hi again, I had the feeling you were being genuine, so it's another 'fun' question to research. Funnily enough, if you were doing the drive more often, then a BEV, with decent range would be an even better bet, due to the fuel savings. Plus, and it's hard to explain this, but driving a BEV, is incredibly relaxing, far less tiring than an ICE, especially over long distances.

Small correction to my earlier reply, thinking about it, you wouldn't need a LR (long range) Tesla (or other BEV), if you could do two 10 min stops instead. But 2 x 20mins would be better, and make things borderline easy (famous last words). Dawned on me that the energy for the trip is the same, so 10mins at a Tesla supercharger (they are starting to unlock more locations for non-Tesla's) could add ~150miles of range.

But sadly, the Tesla Y isn't cheap, so will set you back around £45k (£43k new from inventory). But other BEV's that have been out longer, will have lower SH prices. Bit of a silly idea, but there's also SH Tesla Model S's, which are getting cheaper, but not cheap. Some of these have ranges closer to 400 miles, so perhaps 300(?) with a roofbox. They have utterly massive storage space, but they are also large, and 'American wide', which may only be about 150mm wider, but is worth considering.

But obviously, my concern is the amount you are carrying, hence why I'm suggesting something at the larger end. If the dogs are small, then more options are available. I'm also not sure just how inefficient a roof box is, but suspect it's pretty bad. [Silly digression - but I notice most boxes are mounted with the pointy end forward, and the larger rounder end to the rear. That seems to be the opposite of the 'aerodynamic teardrop' shape, such as the racing helmets that cyclists wear. Just a thought, am I being silly?]

Keep an eye out, perhaps, as prices new and SH steadily fall over the coming years.

Edit - Elliot, I was thinking, and something like the MG MG5 might suit you for size and shape. Sadly, it's battery size and range are a liitle too low, for your single stop criteria, but may be a compromise you are willing to consider. And other options like this will keep arriving. [Note - the 145 mile cold highway figure is based on -10C, so quite extreme, but worth bearing in mind, perhaps for standing water and headwinds, which really do impact efficiency.]

born_again

TooManyPoints said:

What’s the rush? An extra half hour break would be much welcome I would have thought. 

It's interesting that as soon as somebody explains their driving habits, and they don't seem compatible with an EV, the immediate recommendation is that the driver should change his habits. Why is this? 

Not a case of being a EV (only 3 weeks) driver. I have thought this for a long time.
Driving while tired is dangerous to not only the people in the car, but also everyone else on the road.

Become a Cadbury Caramel Bunny & relax (Frankie says so). Not rush around like a headless chicken 😍

born_again

Herzlos said:

To avoid going round in more circles, there are a few things EV's don't make sense for:

Huge distance non-stop or high speed trips, because a lot of EV's are limited to 81mph, and the efficiency drops massively at higher speeds.

No offence, but what a pointless point, as max speed limit is 70 MPH anyway. 🤦‍♀️

Are they limited to 81mph? Mine isn't. ICE efficiency is exactly the same gets killed by high speed.



These guys do around 50K a year in their EV's in one the cheapest EV's there is. 

https://youtu.be/PM3uQkhM6bs?si=E17XI3PqpHXRGIyy

Herzlos

I think it's silly to pretend that people don't drive above 70mph. It's the legal limit in the UK but if I'm sat on the motorway at 70 I'm being passed constantly.

I'm also not advocating it, and doubt many people here are using de-restricted autobahn on a regular basis, but it's also fair to declare that at higher speeds then EV's fair pretty badly in terms of top speed and economy.

MattMattMattUK

Herzlos said:

I think it's silly to pretend that people don't drive above 70mph. It's the legal limit in the UK but if I'm sat on the motorway at 70 I'm being passed constantly.

I'm also not advocating it, and doubt many people here are using de-restricted autobahn on a regular basis, but it's also fair to declare that at higher speeds then EV's fair pretty badly in terms of top speed and economy.

All cars are bad in terms of economy at high speeds, air resistance increases with the square of speed (as a rough guide). As a real world example at a steady 50mph (real speed, not speedo speed) on a motorway I can get 59.9 MPG from my Golf, at 70 mpg that drops to 48.6 MPG and at 85 mph that is further reduced to 34.2 MPG. Other cars will show a similar drop in MPG as speed increases although it will be less pronounced in larger aerodynamic cars with big engines and much much worse in SUVs. 

In terms of top speeds the Zoe has a top speed of 87mph, the Leaf 89-99 mph and Model 3 and Model Y 139-162 mph depending on variant, even accounting for speeding most EVs are more than capable of hitting the speed that all but the least intelligent drivers drive at. Indeed in the UK of the top ten best selling EVs, accounting for more than 95% of electric cars sold the Zoe and the Leaf are the slowest, all the others have a top speed of 98.5 mph or faster, 100mph is an automatic ban on British roads. 

ElefantEd

The reduction in efficiency as speed increases is particularly noticeable in EVs as you get constant feedback, which you tend not to in ICEs. What I've found is that so long as you drive at a constant speed, 50-60mph is actually quite efficient (4 miles per kWH), about the same as changing speed a lot but at a lower average (in different situations of course). Going at 70mph reduces this quite a bit, so unless I'm in a hurry I tend to go at 60 on dual carriageways to save money.

When driving an ICE this reduction in fuel economy is much less apparent!

Herzlos

ElefantEd said:
When driving an ICE this reduction in fuel economy is much less apparent!

I always thought that was because the engine was only 30% efficient anyway. So any increase in mechanical inefficiency was masked by the fuel wasted to heat/noise, but I could never figure out how to calculate it.

So if you doubled the wind resistance (by going from ~60 to ~80) you'd only see the fuel economy drop by 1/6th with ICE but half with an EV.

I'm struggling to find any figures on EV economy at higher speeds, best I can find is for a model S (top speed 163mph) is up to 80mph. That's showing a range of 200 miles @ 80 vs about 250 miles at 70, or a 20% reduction.

Crudely extrapolating the graph here https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/blog/model-s-efficiency-and-range up to 160mph gives it a range of about 50 miles.

Admittedly I can't find any figures on what the economy an ICE car like a BMW 530d is at 155mph either, but I'm sure it'll manage more than 50 miles per tank, which would be barely 4mpg.

Of course I'm taking it to a logical extreme; virtually no-one is spending any real time at 3 digit speeds.