Cheery's path to fulfilment - finishing the DIY, looking after myself, appreciating the garden 🌻

badmemory

I wonder if it is possible that the more people see the need for heat pumps, EVs, solar etc the better they will get & the more they will do/cope with.

greenbee

You might want to try a different supplier for the heatpump Cheery :) One of my surveys suggested a 14kW, the installer I'm going with is putting in a 12kW which should work. And you can get 15/16kW plus cascading systems. For rural LPG/oil users the grant has gone up from £7.5k to £9k from July so I just miss out on it.

It's definitely worth looking at prices every 6 months or so - solar is a lot cheaper now than it was when I had my original installation done (the panels were already cheaper when I had the second lot put on - the scaffolding was the expensive bit!). All the suppliers/installers are busy right now due to the middle east issues, and there are some supply constraints, but overall, costs are coming down as demand increases.

beanielou

Maybe a hybrid? Mine is a Yaris.

dawnybabes

I’ve a plug in hybrid currently, in summer a ‘charge’ gets me 40 miles in winter about 35 so there is a difference but not huge huge. My son is a mechanic and does service electric cars in a backstreet garage ! Though he reckons they only need stuff every couple of years tbh. I’m collecting my new car this week and I’ve gone for a full electric (but I’ve got solar, batteries and a heat pump) think my range is about 250 miles but tbh if I’m going that far I’d need a pee break so could quickly top up then.

cheesymouse

We are a 2 electric car family. If you wanted to go the second hand route, there are a lot of bargains around. Mileage is not an issue as it is when buying used petrol or diesel.

Don’t fret about range, there are far more chargers around than you think. We bought both ours used. Mine has range of about 160 and that is low by modern standards. Husband’s car has range of about 220 in winter and now it’s warming up he’s getting closer to 250. We do regular long trips in both cars. We live rurally and our local garage looks after them for us, but mostly tell us there isn’t much to go wrong. I would never go back to combustion engine.

Any questions, ask away.

Cheery_Daff

Ooh,thank you all! Lots to think about. @greenbee will investigate heatpumps although priority right now is the car 😬 good to know about the additional grant though.

@dawnybabes I'd not thought about a hybrid, will investigate that too.

@cheesymouse thank you - I confess I'd just assumed we wouldn't be able to afford to buy one and we'd therefore have to lease. Hadn't actually looked at prices 😂 some do seem quite reasonable - although probably more than we'd usually pay for a car, and we'd then need to pay to install a charger which bumps the cost up.

I think with a lease car I'd spend the whole time worrying about damaging it 🙈 not that I generally go round driving into things 😂 but ours are old and never even cleaned, and I never worry if I scrape a tree branch or someone bumps us in a car park. I don't like the idea of constantly fretting about it, although I realise that might go with familiarity.

I'm going to our usual garage on Wednesday, I'll ask if they can service electric cars - obviously doesn't mean they'd be approved by a lease organisation but would do if we bought one

EssexHebridean

The lower range would just equal inconvenience for me I think - when we head off somewhere like MrEH's folks down in Devon, or up to Scotland, we tend to only stop for a 5 minute wee-break and change of drivers as needed, so not enough time to do a charge as well, and we wouldn't really want the longer stops imposed on us either. I have come to the conclusion that my next car will not be able to be a diesel, but until infrastructure improves to the extent that we would be able to charge at home, and range improves without the cars with better ranges costing a fortune, I can't see electric suiting us any time soon. A self charging hybrid could work - although I'm not sure how much of an advantage that would really be.

I'll be following your thought process with interest Cheery - it's a fascinating subject not least as rather like with the solar, heat pumps etc, there is so much to learn!

cheesymouse

You don’t necessarily need a dedicated charge point. Lots of people make do with a properly rated outdoor socket, although you would be charging with 3 pin plug and that would mean it charged slowly.
Having said that, if you get a smart charger, you can get access to special tariffs, which gives access to cheap rate electricity not just for the car but the whole house too (usually overnight). I now run my dishwasher and washing machine every night, saving quite a lot of money on electricity. Add that to the saving in fuel as well and the charger probably paid for itself in less than a year.

themadvix

Cheery, I can't remember exactly what Mr MV said now, but it was along the lines of it might not be a bad deal at that price, depending on the car - although if we keep ours for 6 years, it will have cost £290/month (plus tyres and MOT) rather than £350.

Pure EVs don't really need servicing (a service is not required to comply with the T3sla warranty, for instance). Occasionally things go wrong, and you will need new tyres of course, but because of the regen, brakes are very rarely used and therefore need less attention and there's a lot less to go wrong (bushes will need changing, but that's not a frequent service item). I think most garages have EV-trained technicians these days, but there's not a lot of call for extensive work. Obviously if it was leased, this would be by a main dealer, but also covered.

Re charging and range. We have 250 miles… and we have to stop for at most 20 minutes (and in fact, I'm not sure we've ever stopped that long to charge on the road, even on our way to the south of France). On average the car is done before we've got back from having a wee at the services - usually less than 10 minutes. It's really not an issue - and we definitely need a wee more often than the car needs charging! Cars with smaller ranges are generally designed as town/city cars - most people don't do as many miles in a day as they think (appreciate that is not your situation Cheery!). Re cold weather, it affects the range a bit, but not, these days, as much as it did - it's as much due to having heating on and wipers/lights, etc. as it is battery efficiency - which gives an indication of the minor-ness (there's definitely a better word) of the impact, given the huge size of the battery compared to the small draw from these items. (And depending on the car, it may have a heat pump, which will reduce this further.) We get 250/255 in the summer, 225/230 in winter - not a huge difference overall.

Hybrids… hmm… there's a lot more to go wrong with one of these as you have the full combustion engine and associated parts/costs/servicing as well as the EV side. Modern plug-ins do have much better range than they did. If you're doing it for environmental reasons, I wouldn't bother with a 'self-charging' hybrid… (sorry folks) - they are charging by running the engine…. which doesn't really solve anything (IMO it's greenwashing by legacy car makers) (*dons flak helmet and ducks*).

There are definitely a lot of good-priced secondhand options available these days. I would recommend a charger for the same reasons mentioned by cheesymouse - the tariffs are much better and you can maximise your overnight usage (or get a battery that you can charge overnight, depending on your tariff (some measure uptake by car specifically). Greenbee's point about vehicle to home loading is probably very relevant in your situation too!

If you're charging on the road, the Octopods have a (free) scheme for customers that gets you a percentage off of the posted charging rates. Or, if you were charging away from home frequently and it was at a T3sla supercharger, you can buy a monthly subscription that means as a non-T owner, you pay the same rates as a T owner - which makes them the cheapest option out there for rapid charging (potentially useful for going away too).

cheesymouse

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81994408#Comment_81994408

Agree with these points ref the hybrids.