Have we ever been in a worse car buying era I don't know where to turn next.

Iceweasel

born_again said:

Ectophile said:

I'd be embarrassed to be seen driving a Tesla these days, on account of the company's main owner.  There are plenty of other manufacturers.

Figurehead does not make the cars. 

 Not so sure about that - they may not be employed on the assembly lines, but the figureheads are certainly very involved in policymaking - not to mention a share in the profits.
Similar to many of us not being able to vote for certain political parties.

born_again

Iceweasel said:

born_again said:

Ectophile said:

I'd be embarrassed to be seen driving a Tesla these days, on account of the company's main owner.  There are plenty of other manufacturers.

Figurehead does not make the cars. 

 Not so sure about that - they may not be employed on the assembly lines, but the figureheads are certainly very involved in policymaking - not to mention a share in the profits.
Similar to many of us not being able to vote for certain political parties.

Personally not fond of the guy, but would not stop me from buying a Tesla.

I buy products based on my needs, not my feelings on some loud mouth CEO.

HHarry

Herzlos said:

HHarry said:

Herzlos said:

HHarry said:

Herzlos said:

It may only take me 5 minutes to refill the car with diesel, but the equivelant charging would take me maybe 30 seconds in total of person time (and maybe 10 hours of car-sat-on-driveway time).

 That is a ridiculous statement.

What's ridiculous about it? 

How long do you reckon you actively spend charging your phone over a week? Do you stare at it for 2 hours every day?

Realistically with a home charger (my example), I'd park, plug it in whilst walking past and forget about it until I use the car next. Assuming that takes as long as 10 seconds to plug in, 3 times, then that's all the time I spent on it. How long the car takes to charge given it'll sit on my driveway without moving for 18 hours is pretty much irrelevant.

Even if it somehow took me a full minute, assuming I need to stow the cable in the boot, configure an app or whaever, that's still going to compare favourably to the time taken going to get diesel even if there's no traffic or queue. It took me 10 minutes earlier and it was raining.

If I was talking about refuelling at a motorway stop it'd be a different matter altogether, where ICE clearly wins, but that's not the case here.

 How long does it take to boil an egg?  Oh, just the 10 seconds it takes to get an egg from the fridge and put it in my pan.

 

I think it's important to clarify that there are more than 1 type of time in play here. There's "user time" and "elasped time", and the big issue that the EV haters seem to struggle with is that they are the same thing with combustion and the perception that EV is different is bad and therefore wrong.

In simple terms, user time is how much time the user needs to be involved, and elapsed time is the time needed for the process to complete.

With a petrol pump, since you can't walk away from any step of the process, if it takes 10 minutes you need to spend all 10 minutes doing it.

With anything that involves a battery charge, it may take several hours (elapsed time) but since you don't need to actively do anything for it, the user time is minimal (say 1 minute).

Using the above example, my car has been sat on my driveway for about 18 hours at this point, so if it was electric and I'd plugged it in it'd be fully charged. But since it's diesel, if I want it to be fully fuelled I'll need to go out and actively fill it up. That'll take me far longer than I'd have spent connecting and disconnecting the plug, thus an electric car would have been more convenient.

So a 8-hour charge time sounds terrible, BUT if that 8 hours is happening at some point where you don't need the car, it's essentially free from a user perspective. You plug it in, go do something, and it's ready.

There's a risk that if you return home with an empty battery, that you'll need to wait some time before you can use it again. But unless you're going to use the full battery again, you probably don't need to wait for it to fully charge. So it's entirely possible that it'll have enough charge by the time you need it next assuming it's not immediately. 

In the worst case you may need to home charge it with enough to get it to a fast charger to get it to 80% range in ~15-30 mins.

With bigger batteries and faster charging it's less likely that'll actually occur. Most people won't come close to depleting the battery on a daily basis, so never really need to worry about the car being unusable at short notice. I don't believe it's something that EV owners actually worry about.

  Thanks Herzlos.  I completely understand the difference between the user time and elapsed time.  I just felt the original post disregarded the fact that there will be times when the elapsed time is of major importance (but acknowledged in this post).  Get home with a flat battery to find a message from your Mum who needs you urgently, or out on a long road trip, and you are going to have wait 30+ minutes before you can get going.
 Both probably rare occurences, but if we’re going to call out the EV haters for being overly pessimistic, it’s only right to do the same for EV fans if they’re being overly positive.

I agree that EV’s probably suit more people than they realise with the quoted average daily and annual mileages.

 I think there are some less tangible & emotional issues around swapping to EV’s.  Over my last few cars I’ve realised how much I love the sound of a performance ICE at full chat.  Childish?  Quite possibly, but those emotional factors can be a huge factor in decision making.

Nobbie1967

I wonder if anyone has developed a smartphone app that would track your car use to suggest how suitable an EV would be for you? It could record length of journeys, stopping times etc so you would know how often range was likely to be an issue. Some people may over estimate how often they need a big range. Would also be useful when looking at which battery size would suit you best.

It could also track likely costs using available info on rates for home and public charging, depreciation, insurance, tax etc.

Herzlos

HHarry said:

Get home with a flat battery to find a message from your Mum who needs you urgently, or out on a long road trip, and you are going to have wait 30+ minutes before you can get going.

That's certainly the use case that'll cause the most worry; the long distance family emergency. Especially since most EV's are capped at a pretty low top speed (~81mph) and fuel economy is notable worse at higher speeds. Not that you can exceed 70mph legally or practically in the UK.

So if it's an only car you may not be able to rush across the country at top speed with no notice.

It's not an issue at all if you've got a 2nd car; a lot of multi-car families tend to have a mix because that gives them the best of both worlds, or if you've got an EV with a long enough range.

The road trip part is less of an issue especially with larger batteries, because it's probably wise to stop for a break anyway. It does mean you may need to plan around charging stops though, so it's definitely a different approach to ICE where you can just stop for pee breaks and switch drivers.

Iceweasel

That's your next job then Nobbie1067.

A good starting point would be the myBMW app which does all that with info from a BMW ecu.

born_again

Herzlos said:

HHarry said:

Get home with a flat battery to find a message from your Mum who needs you urgently, or out on a long road trip, and you are going to have wait 30+ minutes before you can get going.

That's certainly the use case that'll cause the most worry; the long distance family emergency. Especially since most EV's are capped at a pretty low top speed (~81mph) and fuel economy is notable worse at higher speeds. Not that you can exceed 70mph legally or practically in the UK.

https://ev-database.org/imp/cheatsheet/top-speed-electric-car

Rethink 🤣

Effect on fuel economy is the same for all cars is the same at high speeds. 

Bonniepurple

Herzlos said:

HHarry said:

Get home with a flat battery to find a message from your Mum who needs you urgently, or out on a long road trip, and you are going to have wait 30+ minutes before you can get going.

That's certainly the use case that'll cause the most worry; the long distance family emergency. Especially since most EV's are capped at a pretty low top speed (~81mph) and fuel economy is notable worse at higher speeds. Not that you can exceed 70mph legally or practically in the UK.

So if it's an only car you may not be able to rush across the country at top speed with no notice.

It's not an issue at all if you've got a 2nd car; a lot of multi-car families tend to have a mix because that gives them the best of both worlds, or if you've got an EV with a long enough range.

The road trip part is less of an issue especially with larger batteries, because it's probably wise to stop for a break anyway. It does mean you may need to plan around charging stops though, so it's definitely a different approach to ICE where you can just stop for pee breaks and switch drivers.

And that would be my worry, especially with the rubbish range on the WAV.  Say I owned it (well, 
leased) and used it to drive to work.  12 miles each way=24 miles.  Say I get home and I need to go out again straight away-hospital (22 miles each way=44 miles)/discovering that the cats have eaten their expensive, hard to get food (min 12 miles each way)/husband too tired to drive home (50 miles round trip) - I would be out of charge and stranded.  The cold hurts my joints and I would end up too stiff to drive.

WellKnownSid

24 + 44 + 24 + 50 miles is easily doable in most other EVs - even our Zoe “city car”. Remember that you can leave the house every morning with a full tank if it’s a big worry.

Even a slow 7kW home EVSE will fill your tank at 28mph - get a flexible EV tariff that allows you to plug in during the day at the same low rate and the problem largely goes away. 

born_again

Bonniepurple said:

And that would be my worry, especially with the rubbish range on the WAV.  Say I owned it (well, 
leased) and used it to drive to work.  12 miles each way=24 miles.  Say I get home and I need to go out again straight away-hospital (22 miles each way=44 miles)/discovering that the cats have eaten their expensive, hard to get food (min 12 miles each way)/husband too tired to drive home (50 miles round trip) - I would be out of charge and stranded.  The cold hurts my joints and I would end up too stiff to drive.

How often does that happen?

Even with a petrol car, you could end up in the same situation. Running low garage closed.

There are so many what if's that are being dreamt up.

Ultimate one. What if there is a power cut. Well you ain't going to get any petrol either...