Petrol/Diesel cars

The same reason I own a car now rather than getting a taxi now via an app with a driver to do my bidding. It’ll be expensive to hire one for each journey and inconvenient having to wait for it to arrive. You also couldn’t store anything in the boot if it doesn’t belong to you and you get a different one each time.

 

Now we all need to know what you store in your boot!!

 

Interesting to read the differing viewpoints.

I was lucky enough to get a Model 3 as a company car just before the first lockdown in March. So far I've done about 8.5k miles in it across the country.

The Tesla charging network is second to none and the reason why I felt comfortable opting for the M3. It is the standard range so has a published range of 230 miles, but in the real world driving at 70mph more like 200 miles. Usually plenty of availability at service stations and chargers at 100+kW/hr. We went on holiday in Norfolk where Tesla chargers are few and far between and had to rely on the non Tesla charging network which wasn't as reliable and only 50kW/hr chargers available. However, it was doable as a holiday and we didn't need to spend all week searching for places to charge. We went to a Tesla Supercharger on the way down and charged up enough so that we would get to the chalet with 60% battery giving us enough to get around for a few days, charged for 30 mins day 3 and 45 mins day 4 in preparation for the return journey. Having inbuilt Netflix is a good Tesla plus point.

I've done a return trip to Cardiff in a day with no problems, having to charge once on the way down and twice on the way back. All three times the charge was done adequately enough for me to complete my next leg of the journey by the time I'd been to the loo and got a coffee so no real delay to the journey time. Had the place I was visiting in Cardiff had a standard charger I probably would have only needed to charge once on the way back but unfortunately it didn't. The Supercharging cost me approx £15.

I regularly travel to Long Sutton and back in a day with no charging required. I re-charge at home, I'm lucky enough to have a driveway so I can plug in, but I haven't had a charger installed, I use a normal 13 amp 3 pin plug. This charges at 2 kW/hr or approx 10 miles per hour. At the office (when/ if I get back) there is a 7kW (25 miles per hour) public charger so I will be able to drive there, charge up and drive home without any issues.

Many supermarkets are installing 7kW chargers and some are giving free electricity. Our local Aldi & Tesco both give free power and while I don't spend all day there to get a full battery I can get a few miles in the tank. I'm not aware of any supermarkets giving free petrol or diesel while you shop. That is when I can park in the charging bays, why people feel the need to block the charging points when there are plenty of spaces available in the car park I don't know. If I parked at the petrol pump and blocked the fuel source while I did my shop I'm sure I'd come back to abuse. Asda has installed charging points too and our local has 8 points, these are not free but cost £1 if you are a Chargemaster member.

There are several issues with the charging network across the UK and it needs a lot of work for the non-Tesla EV's. Tesla's can just plug in and the Supercharger knows your details and it automatically charges your account, no logging in to an app to start or stop the charge and to pay, it's all automatic. The next best are Instavolt and they are installing chargers at Starbucks and is the way forward, plug in and use a contactless card to pay for what you use. The other manufacturers all require you to download their app, create an account, log in, start the charge, stop the charge. It's a all bit more of hassle than is really needed. I've got a glovebox full of cards for all the different companies, it all needs to be rationalised and they need to create a cross-network charging infrastructure so that if you don't have a particular 'brand' you can still charge.

As far as running costs go it costs about 3 to 4p per mile as opposed to 10 to 12 p per mile for petrol cars. Efficiency increases driving around town as good old regenerative braking puts energy back into the battery and there is more of that around town than on a motorway trip. Obviously no road tax or congestion charge although I know that will not last for ever. There is no servicing for an electric car as there is nothing to service. Tesla recommends a brake service every two years but apart from that and rotating the tyres every 10k miles there is nothing to do with it.

The battery life Elon Musk will tell you is good for 3-500k miles. They are guaranteed for 8 years or 100k miles. I know a few of the early Nissan leaf batteries had some issues but they are now sorted and again Nissan offer an 8 year/ 100k mile guarantee. The Kia EV's are similar although only a 7 year guarantee I think, so all the comments about batteries failing and costing a fortune to replace are based on old news.

I get that they are not for everyone yet but the speed of change seen over the last few years is accelerating and by 2030 I have no doubt that it will be the norm. There are currently not enough chargers if everyone had an electric car but they are coming. Shell have started to install superchargers on their forecourts and BP have invested in the Polar charging network and it is now rebranded as BP Chargemaster.

Sorry for the long post but there are a few 'fake news' comments in the thread and I wanted to put a first hand opinion of owning and using an EV. When we first got the M3 I said that I didn't think we could go fully electric but after having the car for 6 months my wife is itching to swap her petrol car for an EV when the lease is up for renewal (I've warned her it won't be another M3!). It does take a change in mindset for long journeys and Farnham, you will be surprised how much better the charging network is in Europe (although maybe not in the Alps).

 

**** that, i love eating beef.

 

Do you love it that much that you'd put it before protecting our fragile environment? I like a bit of beef myself but I'd be happy to cut down on it for the common good. Nobody needs to give it up completely, but we all need to cut down.

 

I think you may be right, Soylent Green anyone?

 

Absolutely. Oil (and coal for that matter) are fantastic sources of many useful chemicals, burning them for energy is sheer lunacy.

 

For lithium ion batteries, letting them go right down to flat destroys them (it causes lithium metal to be deposited on the electrodes which eventually shorts them out). they should be frequently recharged with plenty of power left in them.

 

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I switched to an electric car this autumn. Had it about 2 months now - I can only speak for my own experience but so far I love it. Its the future.

I decided to switch because of several reasons but heavily related to the effects highlighted by Covid. I was approaching the natural point anyway where I think about changing my car this year (i.e. as soon as the previous one is paid for ) and was initially thinking of going hybrid. But lockdown changed my views. I have never been much of a green freak and have previously never given it much thought if I am honest. But the initial lockdown created such a noticeable improvement in air quality and environment benefits that it make me stop and think about it all, and I suddenly realised that it was frankly unjustifiable for me that I drove a car (2L diesel) that emits such crap out the back end that it needs technology in it (that I could disable with the flick of a switch) that makes it turn off when stood at the lights to stop it poisoning people and the environment. Plus, the lack of mileage I was doing meant that I was desperate to get rid of the diesel - there is nothing like a few months of 2 mile journeys to my mothers to screw up a diesel engine.

So I bit the green bullet, so to speak. I got solar installed, step 1. Good move.
Then I changed direction on the car swap and started to research going full EV. Honestly there is so much to learn, I never realised how much I didn't know. Battery sizes, ranges, charger choices, electricity tariffs, battery care, on and on it went. If anyone is interested in learning, I can recommend an EV forum called SpeakEV. https://www.speakev.com It is a veritable mine of knowledgeable people who have been in the EV world for a long time since the days when they were for real hardcore enthusiasts when cars did about 40 miles before they needed recharging. I feel like I know a lot now, comparably speaking, even though the change in work patterns because of Covid means I haven't actually put that many miles on it yet.

Making the transition took a number of steps.

(1) Getting a smart meter installed, so I can sign up to a time of use tariff to take advantage of off peak cheap rates.
(2) Switching my electricity supplier to Octopus, who offer what seem to be the best tariffs for EV charging, based on moving your consumption out of peak hours.
(3) Getting a charger installed - lots of choice, depending how smart you want it to be.

I now have a Kia Soul EV, 2020 model. 64Kwh battery, good for 280 WLTP range, real world probably 240 - 250 miles if my experience so far is a measure. As the weather gets colder, that is likely to drop to 220. If I was on a motorway banging it, heater on etc, perhaps 200 is the realistic absolute minimum. Even that is a lot further than the range of my bladder.

To answer your question(s) on costs, my experience so far is

a. Home charging
In the same way that ICE cars efficiency is measured in miles per gallon, you measure an EVs efficiency in miles per Kwh. I am averaging 3.8 miles per Kwh at the moment. That equates to 243 miles on a full charge with a 64Kwh battery.
My tariff with Octopus, called 'Octopus Go' allows for 4 hours charging at 5p per Kwh between 00.30 and 04:30 in the middle of the night. A standard EV home charger runs at a max rate of 32a which is equivalent to a power output of 7.4Kw, meaning I can get 29.6Kwh in the car in those 4 hours. In practise, call it 28Kwh with a bit of efficiency loss during the charge. That means I can top up around 28 x 3.8 = 106 miles for a cost of 28 x 0.05 = £1.40 during those 4 hours. That's around 1.3p per mile. Most of the time, especially at the moment, 100 miles top up is more than enough so at least whilst we are in this new world, I can do all my charging at a max of 5p per Kwh.

If I did the same 106 mile top up outside of those cheaper hours, when my Octopus rate is 13p per Kwh, then it would cost 28 x 0.13 = £3.64

The link that was quoted, of £8.40 - for 200 miles - well, to get a cost of £8.40 at my standard tariff rate of 13p would mean 64Kwh of energy (8.40 / 0.13) , which is a full battery, and that would take me a bare minimum of 200 miles worst case scenario, probably more like 220-240. But that quote is not far out, based on standard tariff rates. But as described above, with a bit of planning, you can do it for not much more than a third of that price.

b. Charging using public chargers
This varies an awful lot - the public charging infrastructure is extremely fragmented with lots of small and frankly crap companies out there providing crappy service with crappy apps, and charging different prices. I would hope that in time, the whole infrastructure evens out with the bigger players swallowing the little crappy ones and providing some uniform level of service. The signs are emerging of the better players becoming more dominant but there is a long way to go and this is the biggest hurdle right now to EV adoption on a mass scale. I am confident that it will get there over the next 10 years, but I do think it needs government intervention and not just left to the market to sort itself out. The biggest issue is with the motorway infrastructure - a company called Ecotricity has a near monopoly of the motorway service stations and their service is just woeful with single chargers in the car park that don't work most of the time. They need to be forced to shape up or ship out, for the sake of the country's infrastructure. But there are numerous examples now of alternative EV hubs appearing next to motorways which act as an alternative services for EVs if the current service stations won't get themselves sorted. There are barriers I can see which needs govt investment - for example, in many services, the costs of getting the high voltage electricity supply needed into the site to support the creation of big hubs is prohibitive.

Anyway, the cost of rapid chargers varies a lot.
Instavolt - 35p per Kwh - widely regarded as the best charging company for reliability and ease of use.
Ionity - 69p per Kwh - avoid like the plague
Ecotricity - 35p per Kwh if you can find one that works.
Polar (now owned by BP) - 30p or 25p if using the app, or 15p per Kwh if you sign up to a monthly subscription of £7.85 a month.
Shell Recharge - 39p per Kwh
etc etc

So, a typical mid point is probably Instavolt at 35p - on that basis, a 50% charge, giving me around 120 miles, would be 32Kwh = £11.20, meaning around 9p per mile.

Clearly then, the savings are to be made from home charging where I can run my car for just over 1p per mile. That's what most people will do for most of their mileage, if they have the capability of charging from home. And switching to a time of use tariff only makes it cheaper still. You use the rapid charger network only when you are travelling beyond the range of your car, and when you do, the costs work out roughly equivalent to an ICE per mile, probably a fraction less. It is still possible to get by without home charging options though, although I appreciate it is harder, it just needs planning. For example, many supermarkets offer destination charger points which are usually free. These will only multiple in number over the next few years to cover all car parks where you spend any significant time. And you don't need to be charging all the time - my range is good for a whole week's worth of driving for a fairly average mileage driver.

Overall, really happy with my decision so far. But early days yet.

One final point - whilst my home charging is very cheap, (yet another) company called Engie is currently installing 88 rapid chargers dotted around West Yorkshire in a deal with local councils around the county part funded by the government. They are all free until October next year. My nearest one is in Ackworth, but there will be one going in the Asda car park in South Elmsall soon. I can't resist a cheeky half hour on those, so in practise, most of my usage has actually been free so far, although it won't last. The last 2000 miles have cost me the grant total of £7. Happy days

 

What about vegan foods that "pound for pound" are worse for the environment than beef? Tofu for example has been flagged up more than once as being worse for the environment than the animal equivalent.

Additionally, given how the protein from Tofu isnt as digestible as meat protein Id have to eat twice as much.

 

Tesla recommends keeping the battery between 20 & 80%. They say to charge up to 100% only before a long road trip and if you can avoid letting the battery go below 10% is the best for the longevity, but if you do so on the odd occasion it isn't going to kill the battery but they do warn against letting the battery get to 0%.

 

Good post, lots of good first hand information there.

One thing that's often bandied about is off-road parking at people's houses. It's not beyond the wit of man to wire up a secure charging point on the street outside (under a locked steel plate or in a lamp post or something) and reserve the parking places for residents only. There's always a way.

 

Yes, the electrode problem arises as a result of repeatedly flattening the battery - also applies to phone batteries as I found out to my cost...

 

Battery management is a bit of an art, but they are not as fragile as they are made out to be.

If rapid charging, the ideal is to aim to charge between 20% and 80%, but that is not to do with the battery management as such, it is more to do with the efficiency of charging - EVs have sophisticated battery management systems that throttle the charge speed once the battery reaches a certain percentage, to take care of the battery. So the last 20% would take longer to fill than the first 80%.

It is not good practise to leave the car on the drive for extended periods of time with the battery sat at 100% charge.
But it is good practise to charge it to 100% around once a month to allow the battery management system to condition the battery - i.e. to ensure that the individual cells are all evened out to hold the same charge. Otherwise they are discharged at different rates

Slower charging is better than rapid charging, although rapid charging will not kill the battery in a couple of years as widely suggested. Most modern EVs have liquid cooled battery systems which regulates the heat produced when rapid charging. The key exception to this is Nissan (although they are moving to liquid cooled in their new Ariya). The main effect of not being liquid cooled is that the heat generated during rapid charging slows down the charge rate, and leads to lengthy waits if having to charge multiple times in the same day.

Good practise is to keep to the 20 - 80% state of charge range.

There's lots of examples of EV taxis out there, even the Nissan Leaf ones with the air cooled batteries, with 250k miles on them. They will last, probably longer than the car.

 

Never had tofu as far as I know. I'm not a vegan or even a vegetarian. If a food is bad for the environment it doesn't matter two hoots to me whether it's meat or veg, it's still bad.

 

Yes, but not to any worrying extent. See above.

 

We said that about cd’s though....

 

This is a great thread with loads of useful information. It's a subject that needs to be discussed.

 

Tesla Superchargers are 25p per kWh so are good value. I looked at Octopus but we have 3 young adult kids (23 to 17) and all high energy consumers at all times of the day so we went with Simplicity and our electricity is 10p per kWh at all times. I have heard of Octopus paying you to take their energy at some times in the night.

 

Tyres - maybe

Brakes - definitely not. EVs have regenerative braking capabilities - mine can be switched between 3 different levels of Regen - on the top level, its almost one pedal driving like a dodgem. Even pressing on the brake pedal, the car still brakes using regen until you press hard enough for it to realise that you need the friction brakes and then it will use them. With a little care and gentle driving, you can go for miles without the friction brakes being used. I expect the brake pads to last me forever.

Servicing. Difficult call. It should be cheaper and generally is. First service for me is £80 and that is probably a rip off - there's nothing to service. For that I'll get a good look around, the tyres kicked and the car washed. But every third service, Kia are chucking in a requirement to replace the liquid in the battery cooling system, which costs so much per litre, I think it is liberally sprinkled with gold dust. Liquid gold would be cheaper. So third service is around £400.

Insurance - around the same. Just renewed, £30 cheaper than last year.