Petrol/Diesel cars

My wife nearly crashed her petrol car after she had been driving the M3 'cos she forgot to brake, so used to the regen braking she had become.

 

In the Netherlands they do this:

 

Yes, you are referring to the tariff called 'Octopus Agile', which is where the price changes every half an hour and tracks the wholesale price. On that tariff, the peak hours of 4pm - 7pm are very expensive (capped at 30p per Kwh), but most of the rest of the day the cost falls to < 10p, down to 2 or 3p at times.

At rare times, when there is too much supply in the grid, they pay you to burn electricity because the wholesale price goes negative. It's cheaper than compensating the wind farm owners to turn off the windmills. So there are occasions when you can get paid to fill up your car (and turn on the heating, and all the lights, and put the washer on etc etc).

My home charger is from a company called Ohme - its stand out feature is that you plug in details of your electricity supplier and tariff and it knows the rates. So when you are on the Agile tariff, it downloads tomorrow's rates at 4pm every day on an open API that the company publishes the rates on. Then you plug the car in, tell the app you want to be at a certain % charge and what time you want it by, and it refers to the downloaded rates to work out the cheapest half hour slots to turn on the charger to reach your target by the specified time. Honestly, its all getting very sophisticated, and it is quite easy to see why the power grid suggest they don't forsee massive problems meeting supply in the future when we all switch to EV - the excess power is there - we just need to be smarter at using it at the right times of day. This tariff is all about doing just that. Next stop - Battery to grid technology (i.e. using the car battery as a source of power to the grid - plug in the car, let the power companies draw out power when its needed and pay you to do so, and then put it back later at night when the excess is there. You wake up with the same battery level, and some money in your pocket for loaning them the power).

I stuck with the more simple Octopus Go tariff for now, where the costs are fixed like yours at different times of the day (5p for 4 hours, 13p otherwise). But I can see me switching to Agile when we get back to driving again and I need more than 4 hours top up time, as the averaged out cost will probably then be cheaper on Agile.

There is actually a web site (not sure of the URL, would have to look it up) where if you plug in your Octopus account number, it will look at your usage history and work out whether Go or Agile would have worked out cheaper.

 

Nothing exciting! Jump leads, warning triangle, fire extinguisher, a blanket, torch, tyre pump, snow shovel and odd bits and bobs.

 

I'm sure you ll be able to order your driver less car with all that kit in there. I was thinking more along the lines of chocolate that you dont want the kids to get hold of!

 

Can I just say what a good thread this is.
Thanks for some great contributions.

 

I reckon there's nuclear all sorts in the river Dearne

 

To be fair to the tories (and that's the only time I'll say that), scrapping petrol and diesel cars was part of every party's manifesto at the last election. Barring maybe the Brexit Party, but their manifesto was 3 lines on the back of a cigarette packet.

Edit: didn't realise the slang term for a cigarette comes under the swear filter. Rightly so mind.

 

No multimeter?

 

Well not just petrol (diesel in our case). It is the fixed costs that are the problem... Insurance, tax depreciation all to be paid for even if the car just sits there. We are saving on fuel though. Only filled the tank twice this year so far with a top up a few weeks back. Get around 800km per fill So net cost over the year is lower. Still comes down to an eye watering amount per mile though in the current situation though.

 

Very interesting post thanks for that . Nevertheless it doesn't address the fundamental points i.e. that the full lifecycle of EVs is considerably dirtier and damaging to the environment than ICE which itself has made vast improvements to clean up its act. Whilst you acknowledge "it is not for everyone" I would go further and say it is not for the majority rural dwellers, people who do not have driveways and particularly trying to maintain the battery with a 13 amp supply at home (10 miles per hour charging!!?) whilst the cars/batteries themselves will improve I am sceptical that the infrastructure (particularly the power generation capacity will be sufficient to charge tens if not hundreds of thousands of cars at peak times. I hope to be proved wrong but IMO EVs are on par with the Edsel when it comes to progress in the automotive industry. A knee jerk reaction to placate environmentalists (albeit we need to do something)but, again IMO EVS are not the long term solution. ALL the money needed for infrastructure (and any amount of money cannot cover every situation) could go a long way to researching and developing Hydrogen fuel cells which are a much more logical, practical, cleaner and less disruptive during the transition as a cost effective answer.

EDIT: Just read currently there are 40million cars in circulation on UK roads set to hit a peak in 2034. Now I know after 2030 there will be a lot of ICE cars circulating for many years but even if 50% are EVs that is still 20million EVS that require charging every 2 or three days (many daily). That is before we get to commercial HGVs and PSVs Hmmm!!!

 

I am not going to pretend that I am some great Oracle on the whole subject of EVs but I can appreciate that it is something that some people may want to know more about as they contemplate the switch to EV and I have learnt quite a lot over recent months as I have researched the switch myself. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask and I'll do my best to provide useful replies.

 

The disasters are obviously as they are described and relatively tangible at the time (though I still suspect the invisibility of radiation makes it feel less so). I imagine the biggest disaster will be the tonnes and tonnes of varying degrees of spent radioactive material and equipment that won't decay fully for hundreds of centuries. I'm sure we're better at storing this waste "now"... but the real issue is what happens to these mechanisms of storage in the future. I've read variations of materials being "safer" in 500 years, but still radioactive for 10,000 years. I'd be surprised if any method of storage is as robust in 2520 as it is in 2020, let alone in the year 12020.

 

The last diesel car I owned I had the cat removed it was actually cleaner than when the cat was fitted and I got better fuel consumption and more power these things that are supposedly put on a car to more the emissions cleaner don’t always do the job they are supposed to

 

If she doesn't drive it much, why does she need to change it? Because its largely depreciated in its early years, you're not losing as much residual value, and in comparison I'd expect electric car prices to reduce and more than offset any further depreciation. if you're using the basis of cost and value for making your decision, choosing to not trade in if you don't need to makes even more sense.

 

You wouldn't need any of them if you didn't own a car.

 

Old news I think TT, the manufacture of the EV car shell is about the same as an ICE car, the battery adds approx 1 tonne of CO2 which is soon offset by the emissions savings.

It is simple and easy to install a 7kW charger at domestic homes with no change to the supply, that is what I will do eventually and what most people who buy an EV do. These chargers are programmable and will charge at off-peak times and most EV's can schedule a trip and calculate when it needs to start charging based on departure time and required charge to get there. EV drivers do not come home at 5pm and plug and start charging at peak time. And even if you didn't install a 7kW charger at home, the average UK commute is about 15 miles, so a 3 hour charge once or twice a week if you're on a 13 amp socket with a car that has a reasonable range.

And for those people without drives see what they are doing in the Netherlands.

They hydrogen question is still to solve, they have been talking about these for longer than EV's and yet still no answer. I was of the same mindset as you at first, that hydrogen should be the solution, but I don't believe that the extraction and transportation is as easy as they perhaps first thought and the costs are higher than EV cars.

It is a big change in mindset needed but it is not unachievable but the government needs to act now as the infrastructure is needed quickly to give people the confidence to change. One thing is certain we cannot continue as we are.

 

If you don't mind going Chinese, then MG, now under Chinese ownership, are taking big strides in EVs and are getting a lot of traction because they are pricing them aggressively. They have the MG ZS-EV which is a medium sized SUV (Think Nissan Qashqui sized), which has been doing a roaring trade, and have just brought out the MG5 which is a medium sized estate. Both have very decent reviews - a few rough edges but very good cars for the money and significantly cheaper than most EVs. Top spec MG5 can be had new for 25k. I would expect them to be getting close to your 2nd car budget within 3 years.