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I dunno why these threads always have someone coming on saying ‘yeah but I can’t use one for my big hell for leather drive across Europe’.
And why is at always assumed that everyone can afford the latest and greatest?
The new Zoe can do up to 186 miles on a charge apparently. How many 15 minute charges is that to get to Scotland? If I'm paying the best part of 20 large on a car I expect it to be suitable for all my driving.
https://www.nextgreencar.com/cost-calculators/renault/zoe/
If I’m paying the best part of 20 large on a car I expect it to be suitable for all my driving.
Why? at 4p/mile for 80-90% of your driving what is the saving each year that funds something extra for the weekend?
The Zoe is the equivalent of 128 MPG
So on 10k miles locally that is getting close to £1k saved to use on things like a hire car for a long trip a few times a year if you are getting really good MPG from your ICE car on all journeys. Add in tax savings etc. and it's a bit more.
You need to have a proper look at full cost of ownership on these things
If I drive Zoé "hell for leather" on the autoroute from St Jean de Luz to Pau (most of the route is 130kmh limit) the battery is as flat as is comfortable by the time I'm home - 128km. If I stick to speed limits along the main roads Zoé gets there and back and there's still a quarter of the battery left (about 330km total range).
Even the fast charge 50kW charger Zoé (which I don't have) takes an hour to add 100km flat out. You soon learn that driving faster is counter productive as time saved driving doesn't make up for the extra charging time. If we're doing any distance on autoroutes we just trundle along with the trucks at 94kmh indicated/90kmh real as that seems to be about the optimum total drive + charge time. The vast majority of existing charge infrastructure is 22kW or less for practical reasons, a 1 x 22kW/2 X 11kW charger can be added to the street lighting circuits at the same time as the street lamps are changed for energy saving versions. The new 50kW chargers draw about the same as 10 houses early evening in Winter.
Edit: I did my sums before buying, Mike, the Zoé offers no saving compared with the equivalent petrol Clio even with cheaper insurance and servicing, and that's with low French electricity prices. What really convinced us wasn't the economic argument, it was low CO2, zero local pollution and the drive - it's the most fun little car I've owned at legal speeds. Madame loves it, no hesitation pulling out of junctions, fluid, smooth, zippy... .
and of course remembering to was your hands after 😉
It's what hand sanitising gel was invented for.
a leisurely walk across the car park,
No way, unless there's a pedestrian crossing of course. 😉
I mentioned earlier that my mate runs a Tesla, he had the 1st gen one, now has the 2nd gen one. The only difference is the 2nd gen one does “80ks” more to the same charge time he reckons.
He drives his to Lake Garda with his dinghy on the roof (lightweight foiling Moth) and says he has to stop 4 times to charge it on the way down, each time he stops he says he waits for 1hr39mins.. each stop..
He too (like Edu above) says it has an optimal speed/charge ratio, it isn’t 80mph, nor 70mph, it’s 65mph.. Now then, in a real world that would be fine for me because I drive like a grandad. He doesn’t though, he drives like a ludicrous looney everywhere and has to stop more frequently.
And this is my whole point.
Drive sensibly, within or below the speed limits and I think EV has some advantages. Drive locally and under say 8k a year and they’re going to benefit plenty of people.
Pragmatically though, at present and until fast charging and charging points are installed, EV’s are a limitation to the vast majority of Car Owners.
I drive a hybrid, it’s the best vehicle in its class by a massive proportion... 62mph ave since I bought it.
I’d be very sceptical of Dracs claims that VW are claiming for such range, VW have history of lying to the public so whatever they say has to be countered with empirical evidence before I go near any VW or subsidiary thereof.
Drive sensibly, within or below the speed limits and I think EV has some advantages. Drive locally and under say 8k a year and they’re going to benefit plenty of people.
Pragmatically though, at present and until fast charging and charging points are installed, EV’s are a limitation to the vast majority of Car Owners.
Your first paragraph just described the vast majority of car owners/users
Yes, we’ve all seen that graph. Trouble with that is the sample set used to collate the data.
Its been debunked ‘000’s of times.
I like the idea of EV motorcycles...
Instead of the A32 becoming a noisy racetrack on a Sunday, it would be really quiet for a change.
the Zoé offers no saving compared with the equivalent petrol Clio even with cheaper insurance and servicing, and that’s with low French electricity prices. What really convinced us wasn’t the economic argument, it was low CO2, zero local pollution and the drive – it’s the most fun little car I’ve owned at legal speeds. Madame loves it, no hesitation pulling out of junctions, fluid, smooth, zippy… .
This.
And also the fact they're not convenient, or necessarily appropriate, for everyone. I don't think anyone besides doomaniac has suggested they should be.
I never said they should be, I was saying they aren't.
And why is at always assumed that everyone can afford the latest and greatest?
Who's said that?
I think I've realised what the problem is. Some folk, such as doomaniac, think that people discussing EVs objectively are in fact trying to persuade him to buy one or criticise him for not having bought one.
They are what they are. They are expensive, if you can't afford one then you can't afford one. I can't. No need to get defensive about it.
Yes, we’ve all seen that graph. Trouble with that is the sample set used to collate the data.
Its been debunked ‘000’s of times.
I look forward to seeing your better data....
and quite how many people are doing more than 150 miles a day which is basically the easy to handle range of these things.
I’d be very sceptical of Dracs claims that VW are claiming for such range, VW have history of lying to the public so whatever they say has to be countered with empirical evidence before I go near any VW or subsidiary thereof.
Me too too but I do that for every manufacturer since owning a car with their claims of range compared to real world.
I bet your 62mph you get is was below what the manufacturer claims.
the next practical generation will have small capacity petrol engines to generate,top up battery capacity not to drive wheels
Mazda are doing this, with a small, single-rotor ****el rotary engine mounted horizontally in the bottom of the car to provide a constant supply to the electric motor/s and battery. Seems like the best of both worlds to me.
As far as range is concerned, it’s certainly the case that for the majority of driving, an EV would be fine - I drive around 35 miles/day as my commute to work, which I could do on one charge per week, around 155 miles. I have no access to chargers at work, but a charger at home would be fine. However, in rural areas like the West Country, filling stations are becoming rarer, and 24-hour almost non-existent. If you forget to fill up and drive home from Bristol late at night on the A420, there are no filling stations open at all as far as Chippenham, where I live, and none in the town. The one closest to me stopped 24 hour service several years ago, the only service is on the M4! That also means no vehicle charging either.
There are companies who are converting old classic cars to EV, like Morris Minors.
However, there is a cost implication - the conversion can cost somewhere around £20k...
I thought this was an interesting read that highlights where we aren't quite there with the UK infrastructure.
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/features/kona-edinburgh-700-miles-hyundais-new-ev-masses
Slightly OT (public transport rather than cars) I'm always surprised there isn't more noise being made about trolley buses as a solution to city pollution.
There's a 50kW Pod Point in Lidl on the A420 in Bristol which is open till 22:00 every night except Sunday and it's free. There are others in the science park and at motorway sevices near Chippenham.
I'm sure you'd find a charge point somewhere in the last 200km of your journey home, Countzero. Check:
Edit: interesting Mick, on our trip in the UK we found one out-of-order charger, it worked but cut out after a couple of minutes. We drove slowly to the next one. The mobile app usually tells you when chargers are broken or in use so I don't know why that journo turned up at so many broken ones.
re: the i3 range extender being dropped here but not in the USA, there were some interesting stats from Tom Callow of Chargemaster:
USA
- 1,000,000 EVs (1 per 327 people, 1 per 3 sq mi)
- 2,368 rapid chargers (1 per 420 EVs, 138,000 people and 1,250 sq mi)
UK
- 185,000 EVs (1 per 360 people, 1 per 0.5 sq mi)
- 1,798 rapid chargers (1 per 103 EVs, 37,000 people and 52 sq mi)
link - that's per charger (not site) and includes Tesla superchargers.
Take away Tesla's huge presence in the US (which you can't use with non-Teslas) and it's a pretty dismal state of affairs if you have a Leaf, i3, Volt, etc. Even on busy California routes like LA-SF where you'd expect plenty of EV drivers, the infrastructure is dismal if you're outside the Tesla network - the main interstate has virtually nothing, you have to go another way in most cars.
Compare with the UK's map of CCS rapid chargers (the type the BMW i3 and most European cars use, but less common than the Chademo standard that the Leaf uses):
[img] 
[/img]
We're actually pretty well served for rapid charging, as is much of Europe. The Ionity venture (of which BMW is part) is about putting more and faster non-Tesla rapid charging points along major European routes.
BMW needs the range extender in the US. With 180+ miles in the latest i3 and easily available rapid charging, it doesn't make so much sense over here to add the weight and complexity of an engine, fuel tank, etc just to give you another 80 miles of cruising range.
Madame has just checked the charge points for picking up junior from Toulouse airport. It's about 400km round trip so we'll need a charge somewhere. Charging too soon will be slow because a nearly full battery is slow to charge and charging too late is risky so we'll charge at about half way, with another half a dozen charge points to go at if the first doesn't work. The charge will be about 1hr and 2e unless we charge on the autoroute in which case it's 18e/hr.
the Zoé offers no saving compared with the equivalent petrol Clio even with cheaper insurance and servicing, and that’s with low French electricity prices.
Back when we drove a lot more and used off-peak electricity our Zoe was 1/10th of the price per mile in fuel as our Skoda Fabia. It was a more expensive car, but the servicing is much cheaper, the insurance is about the same and the tax is zero. If we had kept doing that mileage it would have been cheaper overall in just a few years.
HOWEVER the Fabia doesn't have remote preheat and defrost, which for this bit of the year is so incredibly awesome I don't think I could face having a car without it now. I haven't scraped a windscreen or waited for it to clear in a year and a half, and the car is always nice and warm when I get in. And all EVs do this, even the cheap ones.
That map looks great but how many different apps, subscriptions and cards do you need for it, Simon? In Germany there are about 50. Until all chargers can be used with a credit card charging will remain problematic for the long-distance traveller. Imagine petrol station infrastructure if you could only fill your BMW at a BMW petrol station and your Renault at a Renault station with a working mobile phone. We charged our Renault at Nissan in a UK dealers for free. 🙂
Our most comical expereinces was in Spain in the middle of nowhere where there was a shiney new Recargas charger in the car park. I checked the phone, no mobile network, went to a bar for wi-fi, wi-fi too unreliable to connect. But the nice man told us to wander around because there was a phone network in some places. So Madame went for a walk while I waited with charger. She set the charger off when she found a phone signal and I plugged the car in.
Edit: you've forgotten to factor in the battery lease cost per mile in addition to the leccy, Phil. When you do that it's about the same price as petrol.
There is an argument that 500-1000W V2G enabled chargers everywhere (so not even 3kW, and at that level they could be dirt cheap AC connections) supplemented by a few fast chargers may be the best charging solution. A few metering issues to sort but nothing insurmountable (mind you, SMETS2 😳). Better matches the profile of low carbon generation and I hate the idea of running fixed storage to charge an EV battery
Fast charging is not good. Ask the techies at car companies, ask those who understand power flow on grids.
Long journeys? Supplementary towable power packs are already available, and maybe motorail will start to rise again. Reality is average mileage is about 10kWh a day (or a quarter of a 2018 Nissan LEAF’s battery). Long journeys are the exception and we need to think differently about them.
And ICE? Well it’s going, the only question is when.
You can buy a battery trailer for the Zoé.
Pretty sure it's not type approved for a tow bar. Friend wanted to fit a bike rack to his leaf and tow bar was out, roofrack would kill the range too much.
I'm with Molgrips on the "performance for free" thing. Used to race RC cars as a kid (from about 1990) and I always thought you should be able to build a real car with that kind of acceleration and Tesla proved if and in terms of all out power it doesnt have much, it just makes the torque very usable. A gen 1 leaf only has something like 100hp but it uses it very well. The power band of a petrol and diesel engine is a curve and that quoted figure is only available at the correct RPM so you have to be at that RPM to get the full power. The rest of the time you don't have that power.
An electric motor just makes the power so much more accessible and at a low rpm. Where the EVs fall flat is top speed, that can be fixed with a gearbox of course but there is no point. Enjoy the torque at nice safe speeds!
As for the pickup, had my eye on this since they announced it. IT was said to be around £60k, a lot of money but if it is rated for 3 to 3.5T then I will get one (and break my rule about financing cars). I know it's aimed at the leisure market but it would be great for towing the sheep trailer.
So reading through bits of this thread, how many different types of chargers are there? Are they all compatible with each other?
just to add, I suspect it will be a lot more than £60k though 🙁
I bet your 62mph you get is was below what the manufacturer claims.
It is exactly what the manufacturer claims.
Dont forget, and this is a huge point... I drive very very conservatively and slowly... y’all should know that as I’ve posted that 00’s of time on here. Other owners get 45-56mpg.. just says more about driving styles doesn’t it.
As far as data, Mike you are great at chucking stats out, but I for one would like to know what car you own/drive. And more to the point, would you own/drive an EV now, today?
Europe has screwed up with chargers by not adopting the japanese ones IMO.
tbh it would have been nice if Tesla or whoever was first to the post had just created an open standard with an AC connector and a very different DC connector.
It is also a shame with all these skateboard chassis concepts that there can't be a couple of standard battery shapes. Maybe it will come eventually as designs mature but I doubt it as by then battery technology will be at the point cost has really come down, degredation reduced and charge rates so fast that hot swap is not needed as an option.
As far as data, Mike you are great at chucking stats out, but I for one would like to know what car you own/drive. And more to the point, would you own/drive an EV now, today?
I don't own a car, I hire what I need when I need it, since coming back from Oz I've got no day to day need for one, in fact having one sitting around would be a pain and just cost me money for nothing, I've got access to a share car scheme for short easy trips. Proper hire for everything else, had everything from golf/astra/beatles to Transits for the days I need.
There are 6 or 8 charging points within 500m of where I live so an EV would be a simple and easy option but I don't need to pay depreciation on an asset.
What that has done (i've not owned a car for 3 years now I think) is you lose the addiction to the car, the idea of owning something that simply cost you money makes very little sense.
But anyway lets have your stats on the UK's mileage, there is a reason I like data and stats, it means you can actually make informed rather than impassioned decisions.
There a three common modern plugs and a few historic one that you can get adaptors for.
1, the humble domestic plug - 18hrs (greenup) or 24hrs to charge Zoé.
2, "Type 2" which is AC and rated at 3,7,18,22 or 43kW. 1.5-14hrs
3, CHAdeMO which is 50kW DC. under an hour to 80% with a Leaf.
Type 2 are the most common because they don't require a big thick cables and a big trnasformer nearby to run them. There are about thousand towns/villages in France with a type 2. CHAdeMO needs a three phase supply and a solid electricity supply to they can't be installed anywhere and everywhere.
Edit: Type 2 which Tesla use is the common standard.
As far as milage goes we get through about 15k per year. I have no idea how but we do, probably a lot to do with location and having to take the long way to get anywhere. Public transport is one bus or train to Glasgow per hour or a bus that will get me to Ayr in the same time I could drive to Edinburgh (not that I would but, you know). I work 7.5miles away, the missus gets free train travel to her work so we're in as good a position as we can be work wise but to visit friends or family is a 50 plus mile round trip.
Still reckon an EV could cope with that.
What car do you own Bikebouy I have a Golf GTE it doesn’t do what the manufacturer claims as I don’t drive on treadmill but it seems so Ok.
Still reckon an EV could cope with that.
Yeah easily, before I left the UK apart from the fact I had a converted van as my main drive I reckon 98% of my journeys would have been fine with a 300 mile EV, 95% with a 180 mile one so long as the main work car park or big chain hotel had charging points, I think I was up at 30k a year. 125 mile trips twice a week, 40 mile round trip commute on the other days. Do those miles at 5p/mile and it would pay for itself.
We are moving in 6 weeks and my cross-country commute will increase to 30 miles but the motorway alternative will stay the same at 35 miles.
I am desperate to switch to EV but sadly a 24kwh leaf just won't work and something like an outlander phev would maybe get 80% of the way there before turning into an expensive to run petrol SUV.
40kwh leafs are holding their value well and the high capacity battery Zoes are all on lease which will cost more than my current diesel bill. Current car is a mercedes E250 CDI estate which I love, having suffered for 5 years from getting T-boned in a small hatchback by an MPV the merc feels indestructible but I am racking up the miles on it and the cross country route is not exactly getting great mpg through the winter.
"Preorder the R1T™ Truck to experience the thrill of navigating the world in an Electric Adventure Vehicle™. Starting price of $61,500 after Federal Tax rebate. Range of 250+ to 400+ miles."
I wasnt imagining things. I suspect that is not the one with the battery getting 300 miles range though.
US specs state 5000kg tow weight which is fantastic but it will be capped at 3500kg in the UK (as with all US pickups) but good to know that our measly 3500kg trailers wont stress it.
The payload is only 800kg, presumably due to the batteries, which means it wont qualify for the commercial BIK savings so that will rule out a lot of potential business purchases in the UK.
The big mistake about EV, I think so any way, is the non standardisation of batteries and charging between the Car companies.
Petrol and diesel are the same from every garage. Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of stopping to slowly pump electrons back into a battery, you could just pop in a new freshly filled battery cell?
Yes, the complete battery change would need many cells swapping out, but most commutes and regular drives do not empty the battery entirely. Maybe you could just install the number of cells you need for your journey?
Some people may need assistance with the battery cell swapping, but that just means having a person employed to do so. As in days of old when attendents would pump the fuel for you!
That’s why we need governments stepping in to control the situation. Batteries should be recycled into more batteries at EOL.
The problem is the length of that life. Both in resources and cost. Having the major part of the car suffer such massive degregation over 8 years is no good. Love electric cars but the batteries life is a major issue. I posted a interesting link on page one for interested parties.
The largest mineable reserves are in Argentina, Australia, China and Chile, carried on big ships bunkering the worst heavy oils to pollute the atmosphere. In 2017, 50% of lithium used was in batteries; some estimates are 80% by 2027 (roskill.com). This will mean a massive increase in mining, production and transportation, and the associated pollution, to stay ahead of consumption
Lithium in batteries is recyclable, but very little effort is put into this, which considering the 5-year warranty for EV batteries from some manufacturers is odd. A lot more thought needs to be put into battery production, recycling and standardisation before EVs become the pancea that the motor industry is promising
people are generally too selfish to make the necessary sacrifices to shift to non-ICE cars.
people are generally too selfish to make the necessary sacrifices to shift away from private car ownership.
FTFY
Classic case in point - electric cars are great for cities, suburban areas etc. You mean the exact same areas that are likely to have better public transport or cycling infrastucture to begin with never mind what could be achieved with less cars clogging up streets?
If you want to make serious environmental change it's modal shift you need, not the method of propulsion.
Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of stopping to slowly pump electrons back into a battery, you could just pop in a new freshly filled battery cell?
Because the fast charge is the exception, on the go charging is for the rare journeys that go outside of the normal range.
Having the major part of the car suffer such massive degregation over 8 years is no good.
The average life of a UK car has only recently risen from 8 to 10 years - how many of the cars that go to the breakers have already had major engine/gearbox work to keep them on the road?. Lots. 8 years for the lithium batteries is a guess, we still don't know if they will suffer massive degradation over eight years. What we do know is that Tesla taxis go to 400 000 km and still have good batteries.And even if they do "massively degrade" the battery can be changed in 15 minutes on a Zoé. One of the reasons I chose the Zoé was that I think leasing the battery is a good deal, if capacity drops significantly they change it. If you sell the second hand buyer benefits from the same system so there's no need to worry about the state of the battery when you buy.
What you say about Lithium mining and transport is true, Timba. The oil industry pollutes far more to bring you oil from around the world which you then simply burn with 0% recycling. As for recycling lithium, there are some plants running that recycle very high percentages of lithium and use the residue in building blocks. What they lack at present to go large scale and profitable is large quantities of end-of-life batteries.
"make sacrifices" are the wrong words, Brakes. If you go through this thread then I think you'll find "poor", "impossible to charge at home", "stingy", "justifiably sceptical about finding working fast chargers", "mislead and ignorant", "confirmed petrol head" as reasons or justifications for not buying an EV. If I'm being "selfish" it's because I'm using an EV that still has a high carbon footprint and clogs up the road network however green it's marketed to be.
Love how bikebouy always manages to find a way to have a dig about bikes on the a32 in just about every thread.
The real issue around EV’s is just that as above - they aren’t green.
By the time a Prius or Zoe is on the showroom floor it’s as polluting as a small 16v ice car being built and run for around 8yrs.
Using batteries isn’t the way to go ultimately but it’s easy to tell people it is as it isn’t that hard to develop from existing tech.
people are generally too selfish to make the necessary sacrifices to shift to non-ICE cars.
That's never going to change so you need to make policy that reflects that. One important thing will be government policy that makes EVs attractive for users. In order to achieve that, you need to ditch the annoying smugness because that offends voters and politicians have to respond to voters or they will be voted out of power. See D.J. Trump vs H.R. Clinton, for example. Polls showed that many people who voted for Trump believed he lacked the temperament and ability to do the job, but they loathed Clinton so much that they voted for him anyway. Calling people "selfish" because they don't do what you want is counterproductive to achieving the changes you want.
Having the major part of the car suffer such massive degregation over 8 years is no good.
There is an ad at the moment for the Corsa, playing on the perceptions of nothing being included on the base model of a car. Flip that around to ICE vs EV. Yep the battery could need replacing at 8 years.
They don't explain to you in the sales pitch that the ICE contains a magic fluid that needs replacing 1-2 times a year and is more expensive than anything you heard of, or that it will require consumables like filters to be swapped out on a regular basis etc.
Anyone got the 8-10 year cost of oil, filters etc. for their car? Couple that with the cost improved pence per mile you get every day makes the life costs look a lot different.
That you have to travel to a special place to increase your millage range, and you have to do the chemical transfer yourself, it won't just do it over night when you are at home.
Interesting thread and the one stand out point for me has been the realisation that extracting the raw material for the batteries, manufacturing the cells, shipping them to market and the relatively new and not yet fully implemented large scale recycling of them kinda makes the whole EV initiative a bit smoke and mirror-ish.
I guess, for the end consumers’ conscience, it removes them from their direct involvement with pollution creation by not directly burning fossil fuel to get from A to B and possibly C and thereby gives them a warm fuzzy feeling of doing their bit. However, the pollutants and environmental impact created from the aforementioned mining, production and lack of recycling skews the whole argument. I guess, that once these issues and their effects are minimised, then EV will becomes the lesser of all evils.
Overall, it’s a lovely concept, let’s not forget the overall impact and cost before the holier than thou attitude 😉
By the time a Prius or Zoe is on the showroom floor it’s as polluting as a small 16v ice car being built and run for around 8yrs.
What's your source for this claim?
Overall, it’s a lovely concept, let’s not forget the overall impact and cost before the holier than thou attitude
And put a full side by side with the ICE for comparison, as said above the used batteries are going into bulk storage in many cases which allows home users to get more out of locally installed renewable.
Also you can't discount the direct impact of air pollution in cities and built up areas - see the Variable speed limit thread about the need to slow the M1 down to reduce pollution levels to the LEGAL MAXIMUM at schools.
It's a complex equation
Interesting thread and the one stand out point for me has been the realisation that extracting the raw material for the batteries, manufacturing the cells, shipping them to market and the relatively new and not yet fully implemented large scale recycling of them kinda makes the whole EV initiative a bit smoke and mirror-ish.
Where as petrol and diesel just magically appears.
the ICE contains a magic fluid that needs replacing 1-2 times a year and is more expensive than anything you heard of
I've heard of a substance called "cocaine" which is apparently quite expensive. If I sell the magic fluid in my car, how much "cocaine" do you figure I'll get?
I’ve heard of a substance called “cocaine” which is apparently quite expensive. If I sell the magic fluid in my car, how much “cocaine” do you figure I’ll get?
I'd imagine you would get more "cocaine" than you would saffron.
Where as petrol and diesel just magically appears.
Missing the point again. Which, oddly enough is made in the paragraph you didn't quote.
I guess, for the end consumers’ conscience, it removes them from their direct involvement with pollution creation by not directly burning fossil fuel to get from A to B and possibly C and thereby gives them a warm fuzzy feeling of doing their bit. However, the pollutants and environmental impact created from the aforementioned mining, production and lack of recycling skews the whole argument. I guess, that once these issues and their effects are minimised, then EV will becomes the lesser of all evils.
Where as petrol and diesel just magically appears.
Tedious. Where did I suggest that petrol and oil extraction wasn’t as environmentally damaging as extracting lithium?
As Mike correctly states, it’s a complex equation. My point was supporting the earlier comment that EV is not the panacea that some would like it to be.
Edit: @squrrelking said it for me, cheers
Missing the point again. Which, oddly enough is made in the paragraph you didn’t quote.
No, we get that but you seemed to forget drilling, shipping and refining oil then the fuels also has impact.
Tedious. Where did I suggest that petrol and oil extraction wasn’t as environmentally damaging as extracting lithium?
Right next to the page where people claim there is no impact from mining for lithium.
Another aspect of the standardisation/recycling discussion is the rare earth elements used in the motor, electronic and magnet components. Standard components would help here too
Where as petrol and diesel just magically appears.
I agree with the sentiment, the point is that you exchange one form of pollution for another. China has massive reserves of lithium, and a less than sparkling record in industrial pollution
The real issue around EV’s is just that as above – they aren’t green.
By the time a Prius or Zoe is on the showroom floor it’s as polluting as a small 16v ice car being built and run for around 8yrs.
That smells like bollocks to me.
Well done hols digging in deep again!!
What's the 10 year cost of running your car? Anybody got a figure for that? Somebody must have all the receipts and be able to split out ICE vs running gear/brakes stuff that you need on an EV
That’s never going to change so you need to make policy that reflects that. One important thing will be government policy that makes EVs attractive for users. In order to achieve that, you need to ditch the annoying smugness because that offends voters
The current petrol golf has a blue track thing that tracks how you are driving, get an output from that into an app, most new cars do something similar. If you could harvest that data and then show people how their life would need to change in an EV - ie How many of their journeys would not have been possible in different vehicles.
Right next to the page where people claim there is no impact from mining for lithium
Dude, you’ve lost me with that comment. You’ll need to try harder than that to wind me up, have a great day 😉
What’s the 10 year cost of running your car?
I can tell you for 8 years and 80,000 miles.
2011 Toyota Aygo - £10,000
Servicing - 5 services at average of £150 (first 3 services free) - £750
Maintenance - Front discs, pad, rear silencer £250
Petrol - 60mpg for 80,000 miles at cost of £7,000
Total cost for 8 years motoring include purchase of car £18,000
Now show me where I can get an EV that is cheaper. Yes, you won't be able to which is the sole reason I don't have one. Just bought a new Aygo a few months back and if there was an EV option for same price I would have bought one. However even if they made one if would be £10,000 more which I would never get back.
What’s the 10 year cost of running your car?
I have a 2006 Honda Jazz with about 40k on the clock. I needed it for a previous job when I did about 10k per year, and just keep it because I already have it and it's convenient to have a car available. If I didn't already have it, I wouldn't bother owning a car at all. I currently do about 250 miles per year (literally). With such a low mileage, a hybrid or EV would have cost more over the life of the vehicle. An EV would be perfect for the tiny amount of city driving I do, but much cheaper to just use a taxi occasionally than to buy a new EV.
I think it's fair to see that's quite an extreme hols2.
At the current rate of wear on Zoé the rear drum brakes will last the life of the car and the front discs will rust away before the pads need changing. The regeneration provides all the braking I need above walking pace.
By the time a Prius or Zoe is on the showroom floor it’s as polluting as a small 16v ice car being built and run for around 8yrs.
Even with Germany's brown-coal-filthy energy mix the Fraunhofer institute found EVs have a lower CO2 and environment impact than ICEs and produced break-even comparisons with petrol/diesel/hybrid equivlants - all reported on German TV with journalists who were not sympathetic to EVs. The EVs always won in the end, and quite quickly in comparison with petrol on CO2. Compared with diesels, powerful EVs such as the Tesla S took over 100 000km to break even on CO2, but you don't buy a Tesla because you're worried about the planet you're leaving to your kids.
Don't forget that when you burn diesel/petrol the CO2 figure announced by the manufacturer does not include the CO2 released in extracting, transporting, refining, transporting and storing that fuel. Many comparisons conveniently forget invoncovenient truths about the oil industry.
I think it’s fair to see that’s quite an extreme hols2.
Different people have different circumstances so they will make different choices. EVs will be better for some circumstances, not better for others. As the technology improves, they will become more widely adopted, but assuming that they are better for everybody is silly.
assuming that they are better for everybody is silly
No one does assume that.
The average life of a UK car has only recently risen from 8 to 10 years
Exactly average. If you make 8 the effective max age the average becomes a lot less. 8 years comes from the the requirement life span of batteries of electric vehicles. The desegregation comment comes from practical experiments and observations. See my link in first page. Making cars (or a major component) more disposable is not a good thing. I agree with a move away from ICE but there are some very serious problems with battery technology currently. The industry of course need more people in electric vehicles to invest more in the research.
This is the most objective analysis I can find in English from surprisingly humble source.
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/not-so-green-truth-about-current-car-co2-legislation
This is very important to keep in mind when you are looking a the graphics:
Battery-electric cars still produce less CO2 during their lifetime than petrol and diesel cars, based on 500g/kWh of CO2 emitted during electricity generation. In fact, the UK National Grid is much cleaner today at around 300g/kWh, making battery EVs even cleaner too.
Anyone got the 8-10 year cost of oil, filters etc. for their car?
~ £1000.
Like Edukator says BEVs do reduce CO2 emissions regardless of what's generating the electricity. Its an expensive way to do it but it works and will lead to greater CO2 reductions in the future as power grids are decarbonised like what is happening in the UK. BEVs are the future its just a question of when. Personally I think it will come sooner rather than later. Electric drive trains will be cost equivalent to ICE around 2022. After that they will keep getting cheaper so why would you pay extra for an ICE vehicle? Also most new cars these days are bought on finance. There will come a point where it will be difficult to get finance on an ICE vehicle as there will be too much uncertainty regarding the residual value. Also there will be social pressure when your neighbours who are running BEVs ask you why you are poisoning their children and killing baby robins with your nasty ICE.
However even if they made one if would be £10,000 more which I would never get back.
😂 nice random figure.
Different people have different circumstances so they will make different choices.
Well I'm glad we have represented the 2 sectors of driving 700 miles non stop through rural alaska or Australia avoiding all petrol stations towing boats/caravan/children* and people retaining a car paying tax/insurance/servicing for 250 miles/year.
So apart from you 10 people......
Good comparison Kerley nice to see some people actually have the numbers!! the purchase price of something like the Zoe pushes it over the comparison there, it doesn't have to go down that much to get it closer, the very small petrol car is going to be the end of the market that is going to stay ahead on the comparison for the longest at this point.
*Delete as appropriate
edit - not wanting new?
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201811232688063
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201812223434393
Some used ones coming around, given the battery is lease and replaced as part of it not a bad deal for some people
We have a car, standard STW issue diesel Octavia. Generally do about 15k miles a year. This is a mixture of a 15 mile commute, when I'm not able to cycle; work travel which can be anywhere in the country and personal travel, up to Scotland, seeing relatives in the West country, trips to Wales that type of thing. I live pretty much slap bang in the middle of the country.
Would love to get an EV as the next car, instant heat on cold mornings, pre-heat all that kind of stuff. However there are a few hurdles for me.
1. Cost - I can't justify the cost of a brand new Tesla. Even a brand new car. Normally buy them at a year or two old.
2. Infrastructure - I live in a Victorian house. This means I don't have a drive. No lamp post near the house. Closest is over the road about 50 yards away. So to charge my EV I'd need to run a cable across the pavement to the car, or we'd have 8 houses sharing one lamp post charger. So ultimately I'd need good infrastructure to charge up whilst out visiting people, car parks, that kind of thing.
As far as range is concerned I'm not bothered. With things like the Tesla super charger I'd quite happily take a break, whilst charging.
Surely the future is self driving cars that you just hire on a per journey basis, rather than owning. This would suit us as some weeks the car will sit on the road for 3 or 4 days whilst it's not being used. Waste of money.
One of the biggest issues people have with getting their head around EV adoption is that they conflate battery capacity with petrol tank capacity. It’s not the same thing, unless you happen to have large fuel bunkers at home. We have had our Leaf for over a month now. It gets used every day, for school runs (16 miles each way twice a day) commutes (similar) and shopping and general S,D&P use. Not once has it been charged anywhere but at home. Unless you’re use involves driving further than 150ish miles before returning home (I’m sure some people do this, but I suspect it’s a vanishingly small percentage) then this car works well as a family motor. It’s lovely, quiet and relaxing to drive, too (I wish I got to drive it more; partners car). And the ability to preheat on a cold morning, that’s almost worth it on its own. Financially, it’s working out significantly cheaper than the car it replaces, a diesel Skoda Fabia estate. We have another car in the household that can do the longer journeys if need be, but I imagine this will be a couple of times a year or so only.
Petrol – 60mpg for 80,000 miles at cost of £7,000
you get 60mpg all the time? hmm, shame I would feel like I am about to get squashed in one.
No one does assume that.
So apart from you 10 people……
LOL you missed the joke there!! Seriously you are picking out the most extreme of examples there.
Seriously you are picking out the most extreme of examples there.
They aren't that extreme. Plenty of people keep a car for convenience but do a low mileage. In rural areas, plenty of people need a vehicle with a range of more than 200 miles and that can be filled with a can of fuel. Not everybody, but quite a few people. Besides those, there are all sorts of other circumstances that lead people to buy different kinds of cars, hence the enormous range of vehicles on the market. EVs make good sense in some circumstances, but just writing off the needs of anyone who disagrees with you is the kind of arrogant smugness that makes a lot of people loathe environmentalists.
Define plenty in ratio to the avarage and why people in rural areas need a 200 mile range and a can of fuel?
Battery-electric cars still produce less CO2 during their lifetime than petrol and diesel cars, based on 500g/kWh of CO2 emitted during electricity generation. In fact, the UK National Grid is much cleaner today at around 300g/kWh, making battery EVs even cleaner too.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environment-impact
EVs make good sense in some circumstances, but just writing off the needs of anyone who disagrees with you is the kind of arrogant smugness that makes a lot of people loathe environmentalists.
Hence I'd like to see people being able to log their journeys and see what EV would have worked for them, what the alternatives are and what compromises they might need to make. I have to say I think it would surprise a lot of people.
https://www.renault.co.uk/vehicles/new-vehicles/zoe/motor.html
a 50% charge on the Zoe is 1hr, 75% 1hr 30, given 200 miles of motorway cruising will take you about 3 hrs is it an inconvenience to have a break if you need to go another 150? That 200 mile range would get me from Manchester to Glasgow - it's a fairly big range for the UK certainly. the bigger cars with 300 mile ranges get you a hell of a way.
Not that many people drive for that long without stopping for some reason.
For city dwellers (like me), an EV is fine, but people who live way out in the sticks
Or on the 20th floor !! In many cities most people live in apartments or housing with no offroad parking.
On the ranch of radical right-wing, let-the-oil-industry-get-on-with-polluting, damn those pesky environmentalists Wired magazine, Essel. Get a grip man you'll be falling for the lies and voting for Brexit next. 😉
But seriously, lithium like any natural resource makes a bit of a mess when you mine it. Oil on the other hand makes a hell of a mess extracting it trasporting it and refining and screws up the climate when you burn it.
There is an ad at the moment for the Corsa, playing on the perceptions of nothing being included on the base model of a car. Flip that around to ICE vs EV. Yep the battery could need replacing at 8 years.
Trouble is, EV’s haven’t been around for long enough to get any real data on battery life, but I did read something a while back about a Tesla used by a car hire company in LA going back to Tesla because the battery wasn’t holding a charge like it should. They discovered that the problem was down to a software issue, and an update sorted it. However, they swapped out the battery for a new one anyway, as the car was only about three years old.
It had done 300,000 miles! Now, extrapolate that out, and how many people own a car long enough to rack up that sort of extreme mileage? It could be argued that as battery tech improves, the battery pack could theoretically last the life of the car itself.