Electric Vehicles (EV's)

runnach

runnach

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Took company Nissan Leaf up to Perth today. Left my campus EV @ 100%. Working the various controls such as, heat on when required, blower on to clear windows. Reached my destination with 52% in the battery bank, great says I, as I asked where campus charge post was located, on reaching charge point, only one of two plug in points working, and plugged in. Ok says I, on my way home I'll i'll pop in to Broxden Park and Ride. On reaching P&R, no plug in points available, one fast charge, which I wanted, not working, I counted four in total out of order. Fair amount of TESLA outlets available, no good to me.

Pondering what to do, headed south, no heat, blower when required, lights required at Bridge of Earn, due to thick fog. Fog left behind, lights off. I made it back to my campus with 10% in the bank, and readout stating miles available, 15 mile. Round trip totalled 125 mile.

Campus has eight charge points, four of them not working, a TESLA taxi making good use of our free electricity charge points, when he left, I parked up and put on charge EV I booked for the day.

Where am I going with this, Broxden P&R, EV's fully charged and no owner in sight, fair to say with this being a P&R, possibly at work? My destination campus, one out of two EV charge points worked, with the one working in use. My own campus, four charge points down. Today's experience of broken EV charge point does not instil confidence for me to move to EV's in the future.

I like EV's, great technology, and even when road tax is introduced in 2025, EV's will still be cheaper from a fuelling cost point of view, but the infrastructure is not there from my experience today, which is a snap shot, I wonder how the rest of the UK fairs with out of order charge points.
 
You’d have had no problems in a Tesla, Terry!!!
Banchory to Poole earlier this week, just under 600 miles, 3 charges all without waiting for them to become free and the third charge at Amesbury not really necessary but I wanted a good level of charge on arriving in Guernsey to save stealing my sons electricity!
 
Tesla have already opened up some of their superchargers in the UK to other vehicles and more will follow in due course. Not much help to you on that journey Terry but the Tesla superchargers at Dundee (Hilton Hotel) are available to non-Teslas.
 
Gordon people are hading vans back every day the sprinter states 180 miles in real life it actually gets 75 on a good day the VW transporters are the worst of the bunch lucky if they get 60 miles from a stated 180 miles. Ive no confidence in any electric car or van yet I was tempted to buy a Tesla until I seen a video of someone we know scurrying here and there to charge it just to make a medium journey.
 
tonybvi said:
You’d have had no problems in a Tesla, Terry!!!
Banchory to Poole earlier this week, just under 600 miles, 3 charges all without waiting for them to become free and the third charge at Amesbury not really necessary but I wanted a good level of charge on arriving in Guernsey to save stealing my sons electricity!
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That is good going Tony, TESLA has a niche with their own charging outlets.
 
tonybvi said:
Tesla have already opened up some of their superchargers in the UK to other vehicles and more will follow in due course. Not much help to you on that journey Terry but the Tesla superchargers at Dundee (Hilton Hotel) are available to non-Teslas.
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Tony, pre covid I was participating at an event at the EICC, Morrison St, Edinburgh. Three day event I booked out our then BMW i3. Nearest charge point to the EICC was the Hilton, Lothian Rd. Down side was I would have to leave i3 keys with attendant, which is fair enough as i3 would be moved when fully charged, then the body blow, a parking charge per hour up the time me retrieving i3. I ended up parking in Castle Terrace, no charge point there, cheaper to park as cost is discounted while participating in an event at the EICC.
 
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There’s no real insensitive for anyone putting in private chargers and the big oil companies aren’t going to clog up there money munching forecourt’s with cars sitting for an hour or two. Especially for a product we can supply at home for a fraction of what they’d like to charge to feed there shareholders . Like oil they are involved in the product from extraction to point of Sale so they can manipulate the price to suit them but not with electricity. So there not gonna give up the forecourt easily to electric. They should be hammered with a massive windfall tax and use that to install electric charging points. Tesla have been trying but there product is too expensive for joe blogs.
 
We have owned our Kia Soul just over 5 years now, charging has never been a problem but abuse, lack of convenience and failures of charge points always has been a problem and may never change so you always need enough range for a plan B or even C.

People do and will hog charge points either by obstructing the bay or by overstaying in the bay long after the charge has finished.

The hardware is vulnerable to accidental and malicious damage, faults especially intermittent ones seem to take a long time to resolve.

Our car does on average just over 4 miles per KW so when charging at home or at one of the increasingly rare free ones it’s still economically viable, but only just, fortunately we bought an ex demonstrator with 1600 miles on it for a relatively low price so we didn’t pay the premium many people do. If we had paid full price then with the current cost of electricity I am not sure there would be a break even point even now.

Right now if using commercial chargers the per KW cost makes using my diesel bmw no more expensive.

I feel sorry for people buying an inefficient EV some do around 3 miles per KW which translated in to comparable mpg terms could be pretty grim depending how much is paid per KW

Some EV vans are in the 2 miles per KW zone when fully loaded hence why the range is nowhere near what the sales bs might indicate.

Will the charging infrastructure proliferate, yes.
Will companies continue to profit massively from the markup on the price of electricity, yes.
Will hmg seta max price per KW, I doubt it, they could but have not done this with petrol or diesel
Will hmg have to find ways of taxing EV charging, maybe, although I think road pricing will be more likely
Will EVs become more efficient, not sure, current trend for excessive performance suggests the opposite.

Would I buy another one now, not sure, I am starting to think a hybrid ideally with v2l might be a more viable option


Can I ever contemplate an EV van, not for ages no, can you imagine the sheer scale of the infrastructure required to support hundreds of sub 3kw per mile vans doing trips around the NC500!
 
Cut & Paste from a site I follow.

Well folks, for those that followed my EV car journey, here’s why I’m NOT opting for an EV Company Car in my new position….⬇️🪫battery :low_battery:" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1faab.png" data-shortname=":low_battery:" />⚡️

1. They are a pain in the a***
2. They are a pain in the a***
3. They are a pain in the a***

But seriously, I loved the car (I had an AUDI E-tron 55 top spec) however it was the most unpractical vehicle I have ever owned. I was grateful for the opportunity to switch to EV but I wish I’d taken one on a short term one month lease prior to making the switch.

So here’s my 8 top tips for ANYONE sitting there thinking about making the switch to EV with their company car…..

1. Get the car you want on a short term hire, or any EV car. It’s a life change, and I wish I’d trialled before I switched.

2. They lie to you about the mileage, it’s all a load of complete rubbish. If they tell you 280 miles to a full charge it’s actually 50% less if you want to drive like a normal person does or drive how you did before in a normal petrol / diesel car.

3. You don’t charge them to 100%, they advise 80% so actually the mileage they state on a full charge doesn’t matter anyway.

4. Be prepared to load your credit card into about 15 different apps, every charging station is run by a different provider - you’ll be forever sat their setting up new accounts.

5. The charging stations break a lot, plus you’ve got to wait for the person in a hybrid to stop charging their car to give them 30miles - it’s annoying.

6. Charge / range anxiety is a real thing, I thought I was hard enough for it not to bother me - but trust me, it’s a nightmare.

7. I can confirm you don’t just ‘pop for a coffee’ when it’s charging, 150KW chargers are always 100KW and they are like hens teeth. 22KW chargers are about as much use as a chocolate fire guard.

8. You’ll really appreciate time and how much extra time you need to add to your daily life to handle owning an EV.

I’m typically a very positive person but unfortunately on this occasion I feel responsible due to my precious EV posts….I’m sorry if you made the decision to switch based on my previous posts (I’m not responsible 😜)

Yours sincerely,

A 6 week EV car owner.
 
They are ok if you are a just round the corner to the shops person etc. but at 40 grand a pop they can stick them where the sun dont shine.
And how long will it be before you can buy an old one for a few hundred pounds with still a few years of life left in it. :unsure:
 
nabsim said:
I have seen the EV I want, just waiting for the few million quid to buy it. Don’t care about range as it will kill me first time out 😂😂😂

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I had an [illegal, under my main employment T&Cs] part-time job in 1972 whilst saving to get married, working in a petrol station before Self Service became the norm. I was serving Farmer Bill [and checking that he had brought the 56lb bag of spuds for 95p that my Mother needed ...], when another customer who owned a Chevvy Camaro 5.3 litre V8 went roaring past on the road to Chaddesley Corbett ...

'What a car!', I exclaimed, 'How'd you fancy that, Bill?'
'Naw, I'll stick with I Old Transit, thanks, That car 'ud bluddy well kill me ...'
'Well, Bill, when your number's up', I replied
'Arrh, but he's gotta guess I bugger first ...' retorted Bill :D

Steve
 
There are a lot of myths, miss-information or maybe miss understanding about EV's. Our car is a Kia eNiro, which we have had for 3 years and some 27,000 miles. Here I list some FACTS from our experience of this car.

1-When bought the claimed range was 280miles. The range has improved over time and this summer we have had over 300 miles range on a number of occasions. In winter it reduces to about 260 miles. Believe me despite my great age I am not a slow driver. I do not hold traffic up and take great pleasure (childish really, but still enjoyable) in flooring it and overtaking the slowbies. It is not a slow car.

2-You CAN charge them to 100% and in 3 years we have had no reduction in battery performance. We mostly charge at home on a 3 pin plug (2.2kW). At this charge rate the battery is fine. On a 50kW DC charger it charges at 50kW until reaching 80% at which point the charge rate is automatically reduced to protect the batteries.

3- Certainly the number of different Apps you need is a pain and they nearly all work in a different way. This needs standardising. BP Pulse and Instavolt you just plug in and swipe your credit card. Easy..

4- We don't use the commercial chargers much so have not really noticed many out of order. We have had the situation a couple of times where the chargers were all occupied and we have had to wait a few minutes for someone to move off, but more are coming on line all the time.

5-Re charge rates. With AC chargers the rate is actually set by what size charger is built into your car. So for us this is 7kW even if the charger shows it can do 40kW. With DC chargers again the cars controls set the max rate of charge, on ours it is 50kW, so on a 150kW charger it will still only take 50kW. Check what your car is capable of handling. Some can be updated remotely.

6-If we do need to charge on a journey after say 2 to 3 hours driving, we take a break anyway and plug for about 30 mins to raise the charge to 80%. After 80% its not worth hanging about as the charge rate decreases and we find we have added about 100 miles to the range, so no problem there.

7-For many people a dedicated 7kW home charger is a waste of money. It maybe 3 times quicker, but how much time do most people actually spend driving?

As an ex petrolhead from my rallying days, I would not go back to an ICE. There is no comparison, smooth, quiet and extremely quick
 
tonybvi said:
Tesla have already opened up some of their superchargers in the UK to other vehicles and more will follow in due course. Not much help to you on that journey Terry but the Tesla superchargers at Dundee (Hilton Hotel) are available to non-Teslas.
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The superchargers charge at too high rate fro some EVs
 
I have in the past drove 600 miles with nothing but a quick refuel jimmy riddle and away again, 2 hr rest and same home, cannot do this with a scalextric car. 😂
 
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