Are EVs the way forward?

[Neil Nicholls]

You're comparing filling up a petrol / diesel car with recharging an EV?
I don't think it's the same at all, one takes five minutes and is a leg stretch on a long journey, the other isn't.

I agree, but that is changing.
I've seen recently that some ev`s are getting around an 80% charge in 20-30 minutes. I don`t think thats too terrible.
Ok, I have also looked at the pricing for this rapid charging, and its not cheap. Comparable to petrol/diesel. But, if for the most part at least, you can charge at home, it still makes sense.

 

[Sasquatch]

You're comparing filling up a petrol / diesel car with recharging an EV?
I don't think it's the same at all, one takes five minutes and is a leg stretch on a long journey, the other isn't.

Ours recharges itself while we sleep at 3.8p/kWh, or mile for mile around a twelfth-fourteenth the cost of petrol, depending on how hard OPEC is bending drivers over on any given day.

Why the average motorist would want to waste their time and needlessly pith their money up the wall visiting petrol stations is beyond me. They must have money to burn - Mrs Sasquatch saves around £350 a month on fuel compared to driving an economical diesel car. That's money that can be spend on nice things, an annual foreign holiday, call girls, crack cocaine. Indeed, that £350 could make the payments on a car all on its own.

 

[Stay Frosty]

Can we see pictures to give an idea what sort of girls appear in the £350 menu?

 

[DaveD]

Ours recharges itself while we sleep at 3.8p/kWh, or mile for mile around a twelfth-fourteenth the cost of petrol, depending on how hard OPEC is bending drivers over on any given day.

Why the average motorist would want to waste their time and needlessly pith their money up the wall visiting petrol stations is beyond me. They must have money to burn - Mrs Sasquatch saves around £350 a month on fuel compared to driving an economical diesel car. That's money that can be spend on nice things, an annual foreign holiday, call girls, crack cocaine. Indeed, that £350 could make the payments on a car all on its own.

I'm talking longer journeys, where you need to do say, 300 or more miles in a day, as I do regularly.
Yes, overnight charging is of course not an issue, unless you are one of the millions of people who can't park off street, and they don't count because nobody cares about them.

 

[Sasquatch]

Can we see pictures to give an idea what sort of girls appear in the £350 menu?

We're talking classy lasses at that price!

Yes, overnight charging is of course not an issue, unless you are one of the millions of people who can't park off street, and they don't count because nobody cares about them.

You might have noticed I used the words average motorist. The average motorist drives 23 miles a day, somjn most cases that argument is simply hokum. Indeed, in some parts of the country (Greater Manchester was in the news for this redently) the average car journey is less than 1 kilometer. Yes, less than 1700 paces for a man of average height.

You are less than 2 in every 100 if you do over 300 miles a day in a car. That's a tiny percentage, and neither society nor progress should be held back because of some a numerically insignificant minority.

Personally I don't care about those that use the road as a car park. Every property I've owned or rented in half a century the first question I've asked myself is, "where will I park the car?" Why should anyone else be any different?

Car driving and ownership is a privilege, not a God given right. Considering the congestion, pollution, environmental damage and danger we all cause we actually get off pretty lightly. If people don't have somewhere to store a car then I would question whether it's even acceptable for the rest of society - who have all paid towards those road whether they drive or not- to endure these people using the highway a car park at all. After all, if I parked a bed or shed at the roadside those very same car drivers would be quick to complain.

 

[ginkster]

Why should anyone else be any different?

Err, money, location, availability of properties that have parking….

 

[The Flying Scotsman]

We're talking classy lasses at that price!



You might have noticed I used the words average motorist. The average motorist drives 23 miles a day, somjn most cases that argument is simply hokum. Indeed, in some parts of the country (Greater Manchester was in the news for this redently) the average car journey is less than 1 kilometer. Yes, less than 1700 paces for a man of average height.

You are less than 2 in every 100 if you do over 300 miles a day in a car. That's a tiny percentage, and neither society nor progress should be held back because of some a numerically insignificant minority.

Personally I don't care about those that use the road as a car park. Every property I've owned or rented in half a century the first question I've asked myself is, "where will I park the car?" Why should anyone else be any different?

Car driving and ownership is a privilege, not a God given right. Considering the congestion, pollution, environmental damage and danger we all cause we actually get off pretty lightly. If people don't have somewhere to store a car then I would question whether it's even acceptable for the rest of society - who have all paid towards those road whether they drive or not- to endure these people using the highway a car park at all. After all, if I parked a bed or shed at the roadside those very same car drivers would be quick to complain.

So what your saying is if you don’t have a drive to park your car in you shouldn’t be driving and messing the roads up with your car anyway? and when there’s only EV’s on the road it’s tough titties for you mate your on the bus?

 

[B.different]

Some people are not that privileged to have lots of money to own a house and with a drive with what houses cost today. Never mind forking out the extra for an EV and a charging port. The government should have forced manufacturers to make all vehicles hybrids which gives the best of both worlds and time for the country and manufacturer's to adapt to either fully electric or hydrogen in stead of rushing into something it can promise.
As for YouTube or he says our firm run a fleet of ev6, ev9 and ev corsas about 60 in total and they all say roughly the same. Great for short journeys and quick as hell, but rubbish in winter months for commuting. Not particularly bothered about what other people think if you have the money to buy an EV and love it great for you but for myself I'm on the shelf until it has progressed abit more.

 

[The Flying Scotsman]

Some people are not that privileged to have lots of money to own a house and with a drive with what houses cost today. Never mind forking out the extra for an EV and a charging port. The government should have forced manufacturers to make all vehicles hybrids which gives the best of both worlds and time for the country and manufacturer's to adapt to either fully electric or hydrogen in stead of rushing into something it can promise.
As for YouTube or he says our firm run a fleet of ev6, ev9 and ev corsas about 60 in total and they all say roughly the same. Great for short journeys and quick as hell, but rubbish in winter months for commuting. Not particularly bothered about what other people think if you have the money to buy an EV and love it great for you but for myself I'm on the shelf until it has progressed abit more.

Pretty much my thoughts.
I’m not against EV’s but at the moment they are a bit of a disaster.
There’s only 1 post on this thread that makes me consider an EV and that’s @Dundee_Kev post about his model 3 Tesla.
I’ve been in one. It’s a mental quick car.
Faster acceleration to 60mph than my 600bhp skyline GTR was.
No big turbos to spin up. Just instant nail you in your seat power.
My pals a taxi driver. Used to run an EV. Hated it. As soon as he seen the city’s lights disappearing in his rear mirror the panic would set in about running out of power.
I would hate that.

 

[DaveD]

"It works for me (as a second car) so it must work for everybody else."
Not a good argument.

 

[Wills]

Definitely not an option if living in certain parts of the Middle East! Shows what modern technology is capable of in the “wrong hands”

 

[roadtripper]

As a very specific point of reference I'm really enjoying the BMW i3 we've had for just under a month. While not cheap it was a quarter of what we spent on the van and it's surprising how quickly the fact it's powered by batteries is as unremarkable as the difference between petrol and diesel.

What it is showing is just how short the trips were do locally are. With a currently nominal 120 mile range we charge it about once a week. We've not bothered with a wall charger as for us the 6A trickle charge is fine. And that's with an hour drive to the coast at the weekends to try it out.

We've also used it for a couple of long trips. Certainly where we drive public charging is a non issue - there's been a huge surge in mid range chargers. The biggest issue we've had was a queue for a charger on the bank holiday where 4 people in big EVs insisted on not moving on until the battery was 100% rather than the end of fast charge (around 80%) which is an ICE vehicle behaviour.

Shortly we'll be on Octopus and hopefully charging it cheaply when the grid needs to dump excess generation.

Most vehicles are stationary most of the time, and they don't need high power chargers if they can be reliably hooked up at home and destination. And if they are sitting around then the grid can use them smartly.

No-one is worrying that a large chunk of the UK uses a 7kw electric shower in the same couple of hours in the morning, but the same number of people charging a car at 7kw for an hour or so in the middle of the night is an concern. The biggest issue for the grid right now is not the overall capacity but that generation is getting smaller and more spread out rather than concentrated at massive power stations, but that's changing.

 

[Neil Nicholls]

I certainly wouldn`t argue they are for everyone.
If you have no driveway to charge overnight, I think that would be a big problem.
My van is for work, and I often have to travel a fair distance, and often well loaded. Sometimes over 300 miles but not very often.
On those occasions I could live with stopping for 30 - 40 mins or so.
I have started to watch out for chargers in various areas I have been working. There are actually a lot more than I thought there were.

I think the government will eventually price diesel & petrol off the road anyway.
I`m still not 100% convinced, but I am getting closer.

 

[Lubrown]

There are a few things on this awesome discussion that caught my eye. I’ve rammed on my tin foil hat a bit squiffy and downed my tofu double fast just to join in!

Water abundance- yes, there is plenty of it but it’s salty. Freshwater is not as abundant as people think and will become a problem at some point. You can build desalination plants but they use huge amounts of energy.

Volcanoes being the root cause of ‘climate change’ based on the co2 they belch out. That’s a load of cheese balls. They account for a fraction of the gas production from human activities. And the focus on ‘the environment’ forgets one another thing… human health (and the costs of healthcare). I’m sure big oil love and provoke this single focus knowing folk will argue over it because one things for sure… we won’t argue that we want to be healthy and not die early. And yet pollution causes premature death after long suffering and decline. It causes cancers, dementia, strokes, heart disease, chronic inflammation… add in the fact that a warmer environment encourages viruses and their spread and it’s a double whammy.
Here in the UK we all chip in for healthcare via our taxes/national insurance and a healthy dose of this money is spent prolonging lives that are tailing off too fast due to pollution.

I’m sure something like 95% (correct me if I’ve over egged this figure) of journeys I the UK are under 5 miles and for these EVs would be perfect.
As others have said though the ownership model is not cool (too expensive, almost uninsurable, charging can be a problem as not everyone has a drive etc). Something more like enterprise car club would work better. As for charging we have charge bollards on no end of roads in Coventry- way too many for the amount of cars, but that’s good as it’s slowly encouraging folk by showing they can buy a car and charge it. However, these would work brilliantly with hire/pool cars as mentioned above.

As Bav and others have said… EVs are part of the solution. People also need to remember the problem isn’t just one issue (the environment) too.

 

[JDC]

Our boss has a Tesla and said its absolutely brilliant to drive and he won't go back to ICE cars. I've tried to convince the wife to go elec with a Cupra Born or Tesla but she's not having any of it. I told her I'd take it to work and charge it for free once a week but no. Not interested in them in the slightest. She does about 100 miles a week and ideal for an EV. Alas, we are now hunting for a new shape Touran, petrol, because she likes them and doesn't want to change and dont we want a modern diesel.. I think that is what the majority of people do I suppose. They have an older model and stay loyal. A bit like people on here going from a T5 all the way to a T6.1. It's what we're used to. Our comfort zone. We as humans see the negative press all the time and take it on board as being true. The cost of charging away from home is expensive and comparable with diesel with some people I've spoke to being a bit annoyed by that fact. I've had people annoyed that the chargers are down due to maintance because they never checked all the apps they need so they can charge up the cars. There's plus and minus to the argument but I would buy a nearly new one after the massive depreciation and defo not one worth £40k.

 

[Sasquatch]

Some people are not that privileged to have lots of money to own a house and with a drive with what houses cost today.

Owning a car is a privilege, and just being skint isn't a justification for using the street as a convenient storage space. Driving and cars isn't some universal God granted right, it's something that should be done with respect and consideration for our neighbours and other people that might like to use a road for its intended purpose, ie, driving.

Tokyo prefecture (in Japan, natch) banned on street parking, and you can't even get the permit required to buy a car in Tokyo (except a Kei car) without proof that you have off road parking. The sooner it comes here, the better...and you can be sure Mayor KHHAAANNNNN! Will be the first and other towns will follow.

Everyone survived without cars, most families managing fine without them as late as the sixties, and we'll manage without them when they're gone. Excuses about living in a flat or being poor are not good enough - people need to learn they can't always have their cake and eat it.

 

[DaveD]

Owning a car is a privilege, and just being skint isn't a justification for using the street as a convenient storage space. Driving and cars isn't some universal God granted right, it's something that should be done with respect and consideration for our neighbours and other people that might like to use a road for its intended purpose, ie, driving.

Tokyo prefecture (in Japan, natch) banned on street parking, and you can't even get the permit required to buy a car in Tokyo (except a Kei car) without proof that you have off road parking. The sooner it comes here, the better...and you can be sure Mayor KHHAAANNNNN! Will be the first and other towns will follow.

Everyone survived without cars, most families managing fine without them as late as the sixties, and we'll manage without them when they're gone. Excuses about living in a flat or being poor are not good enough - people need to learn they can't always have their cake and eat it.

Yeah, let's go back in time, when only the elite had their own cars, I'm sure it'd be great.
For the elite. Not so much for everybody else.
Anyway, how's your T6, Jack? (as in, "I'm alright.....")

 

[Lubrown]

If you have no driveway to charge overnight, I think that would be a big problem.

Depends where you live.
Pavements round here are littered with charging bollards.
Infuriating at nighttime because the council turn the street lights off at midnight (to save £700k a year apparently) and the bollards on the pavement plus the cables people loosely wrap around them when charging their cars are all black!
The company that operates the bollards makes money from EV users and so paid for the installation although there was also a government grant used in there somehow.

 

[Stay Frosty]

Wait one moment people... aside from those renting a car and making out that it belongs to them the increasingly cost efficient way to obtaining a new car and not worry about depreciation these days is to rent it.
Surely with an unknown like whether an EV will fit into your life then worrying about battery life and range anxiety is absolute nonsense, just rent the biggest one you can afford, Northampton is full of drivers doing exactly that with Chelsea tractors but as @Sasquatch pointed out earlier the fuel saving on an EV charged at home can offset the rental cost.

 

[Lubrown]

The scariest thing about EVs is the standard of driving from the majority of the population… with EVs being near silent and accelerating like a rocket it seems inevitable that when more people get them there will be more accidents at junctions and crossings