Would you buy a plug in electric car?

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Re: Would you buy a plug in electric car?

Post by Dickchins »

Not even if they were cheaper than a proper car. But im sure my great great great great grand children will consider it when the infrastructure is vaguely acceptable.
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Re: Would you buy a plug in electric car?

Post by TigerChris »

Barryboy wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 12:14 pm Until a few years ago I ran a Lexus CT200H - a 'mild hybrid' which even in its limited way wetted my taste for EV driving. However a job change meant that I needed a load-lugger so bought a VW Golf diesel estate that is a really excellent car that returns 50 mpg on a run, but it's a diesel. I am now retired and thinking along the lines of a PHEV. In truth I think an electric only range of 25 miles or so would suit me fine for the vast majority of the time with the odd longer journey such as my occasional run from Cardiff to the south of Bristol being on fossil fuel. My heart says that I would rather a full electric vehicle but predictably enough range is the worry.... cars with a real world range of 200 miles are at present outside my budget so my head says PHEV is the way to go (but definitely not the BMW REX :lol: ). There's also the consideration of the installation of a charger which alone can cost the thick end of £1000

Now as I understand it the only diesel PHEVs are the Volvo 60 range (at least in my price bracket - Audi and Mercedes are just too costly) but they are 2.4 litre engines and I have no need of anything of that capacity so a petrol PHEV it will have to be until such time as full EVs with sufficient range come into my budget.
I think there’s decent options for full electric with a real world range of 200 miles now in the more affordable category. Kia eNero, Ford Mach E to name a couple. Worth having a look around. Also, if you have decent negotiating skills, persuading the dealer to pay for the charger/install isn’t impossible - Audi paid for mine :thumbup:
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Re: Would you buy a plug in electric car?

Post by Barryboy »

Thanks, Chris, but budget is the issue. I am retired so will be looking to buy used and don't really want to go above 15K so that limits me to the likes of Nissan Leaf, Kia Soul etc. and their range is nowhere near the 200 miles that I would feel comfortable with and they are not rapid charge vehicles.
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Re: Would you buy a plug in electric car?

Post by Thegreyman »

I am still very sceptical the infrastructure will be in place to meet the government's target of banning sales of pure petrol/diesel cars by 2030. I stayed in a Crowne Plaza hotel last week with a large car park. I could see only 2 or 3 spaces with charging points (with the obligatory Tesla parked in them). The growth of charging points in car parks, service stations, petrol (if we will still call them that) stations has got to grow exponentially to make this all happen.

I also still fail to be convinced by the environmental impact of the battery powered car, both in mining of scarce metals and the safe disposal/recycling of millions of these massive batteries.
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Re: Would you buy a plug in electric car?

Post by magicman »

Apologies if this has been posted before.
I saw a comment on Instagram today, that simply put, said that a better system for electric car charging would be a Battery exchange system. You pull up, remove your depleted battery and swap it out with a fully charged unit.
Seems a great solution, but could it be a practical one ?

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Re: Would you buy a plug in electric car?

Post by Bahnstormer_vRS »

^^^^ Not with current battery technology.

The batteries in an all electric car are generally set in the floor pan of the passenger compartment; about 6' x 4' x 6", and weigh the best part of 500kg - 800kg (educated guess).

Try swapping those out on your driveway. :-k :-k

Even if you had a dedicated Charging Station / Garage with the spare batteries it would still take a while to swap then over.

A lot easier to plug-in and charge.

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Re: Would you buy a plug in electric car?

Post by Paul Drawmer »

Battery swapping here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTsrDpsYHrw

yes, it's possible. But to be a really practicable solution, there needs to be a LOT of vehicles all using compatible hardware. As the technology is not yet mature, few manufacturers will want to constrain this crucial part of the design. Therefore, the chances of pan manufacturer cooperation are remote at the moment.

There are additional benefits. If you set up a swapping service, you will have a lot of capacity sitting on the shelf. By using a small amount from each battery and taking advantage of usage patterns, then you could provide a very effective load balancing capacity which could be sold back to the DNO.
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Re: Would you buy a plug in electric car?

Post by JAFO »

No. I won't buy one. I think my current car will probably last until I no longer drive, so I can save the undoubted expense and frustration of finding charging stations.
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Re: Would you buy a plug in electric car?

Post by JAFO »

The best system will be to have cars with smaller batteries, charging automatically as they drive over powered roads. That's the only way to do it, but it's all or nothing. The infrastructure has to be there first.
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Re: Would you buy a plug in electric car?

Post by exHowfener »

^^^

It's a good idea, but would need standardisation so that all battery packs were the same size/capacity etc. Will it come? maybe down the road and could be offered at filling stations etc. Bear in mind that some people can't (or don't) change their own wheels after a puncture, check/change their own oil etc. so the "doing it yourself at home" option will appeal to a limited number of people. And very many people have nowhere to keep a car much less a large battery pack.

I think that EV's are where video recorders once were - initially very expensive, several formats, one will become predominant and then technology will shift and something better will come along. Until then, I think petrol and diesel vehicles will be around for longer than I am.
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Re: Would you buy a plug in electric car?

Post by 5oclockhero »

We recently bought a new car (last month). Its petrol.
I looked carefully at EVs both new and used for our £20k budget. Some things that influenced my decision in no particular order...

Range...my partner's family live 200 miles away and we frequently drive the distance with only one 20 min stop. I don't really want to be begging electricity off my in-laws or hunting around for a place to recharge for the return trip a day or two later.

Cost ... there seems to be an £8000+ premium on EVs over equivalent petrol. That buys a lot of petrol.

Cost ... petrol is cheap. Its the tax on petrol that's expensive. Will the government tax electricity for EVs or introduce some other tax soon?
Electricity costs are rising exponentially at the moment and cheap overnight charging plans arent an option if you need to run a heat pump in the daytime (there's an irony there...)

Environment.... extra tyre and brake wear associated with overweight EVs. There is a Volvo study that claims their own petrol models are more environmentally friendly over the first 70,000 miles. Well worth googling.

Environment.... another study I have read states that along with various precious metals EV batteries contain significant Graphite..currently obtained from crude oil.

Finally. Watch the you tube video, Guy Martin's EV disaster.

If you're on a company BIK 0% tax scheme there maybe a good reason to buy (everyone else is subsidising it....). For the rest of us if there is a good reason I couldn't find it.....
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Re: Would you buy a plug in electric car?

Post by Stif »

I've been driving an EV for 4 years now and it's been excellent - there are lots of misconceptions and misinformation about them. Haven't read back through this whole thread (literally just this page, since it's popped up) but there are a few points in your post @5oclockhero that I think are worth addressing.
5oclockhero wrote: Sun Feb 27, 2022 6:51 pm
Cost ... there seems to be an £8000+ premium on EVs over equivalent petrol. That buys a lot of petrol.

Cost ... petrol is cheap. Its the tax on petrol that's expensive. Will the government tax electricity for EVs or introduce some other tax soon?
Electricity costs are rising exponentially at the moment and cheap overnight charging plans arent an option if you need to run a heat pump in the daytime (there's an irony there...)

Environment.... extra tyre and brake wear associated with overweight EVs. There is a Volvo study that claims their own petrol models are more environmentally friendly over the first 70,000 miles. Well worth googling.
You're absolutely right that a lot of EVs are more expensive than their petrol counterparts - but it's madness to compare list prices, as there are always discounts on cars. It's well worth doing the maths on an individual level though as petrol is significantly more expensive - as an example, my old petrol car (at prices 4+ years ago) cost me around 12p per mile to fuel. My EV currently costs me around 1.5p per mile in fuel (in real terms saving me almost £1500 a year) - they're also significantly cheaper to run, as they have far less moving parts to maintain.

Your point on environment is a good one - there is indeed a Volvo study that shows their large cars (V60 vs Polestar 2 I believe) use more CO2 through building than they save, which evens out after 70,000 miles roughtly... but the average lifetime of a car is 100+ thousand miles, therefore, over their lifetime they are cleaner. Far more importantly though, they don't dump poison out of their exhausts - it's something we're all normalised to, but when you have to deal with children suffering from asthma due to poor air quality, you care a little more about local air quality (this was what drove me to switch in the first place!)

Your point about brake wear due to the batteries is untrue (I've heard this one a few times, and can see the logic behind the thinking!) however, a significant amount of braking in an EV is done by simply reversing the motor and allowing it to run backwards and charge the car - to the extent that at service time its often worth having the brakes cleaned to avoid them becoming pitted from lack of use.

The big concern most people have though is the convenience of charging - I'm lucky that I have off street parking and can therefore charge the car overnight (so if anything I save time with an electric car, as it takes me seconds to plug it in at night, as opposed to minutes detouring to a petrol station, filling up and going home.
The infrastructure sadly varies from place to place (luckily in Scotland we've got a fairly decent amount of coverage, but it still needs to improve) but there is a huge amount of investment going on and large, multi charger forecourts opening across the UK - the fact is though, if you can charge from home, the odd charging stop on a long trip isn't too much hassle - I've toured most of Scotland and the north of England with my wife and 2 young kids in the car without a hitch over the past 4 years.

Absolutely agree they're not for everyone yet, but I'd encourage anyone to give it serious thought if they're buying a new car - they'd be more convenient for a lot of people than many realise.

EDIT: Hope this doesn't come across as confrontational to your post @5oclockhere - that's not my intention at all! Just using some of your points to respond to.
As an aside, I'm a member of numerous EV owner groups on Facebook - and other forums in fact - and there's an almost overwhelming consensus that a) people wish they'd changed over sooner, and b) that they'd not consider going back to an internal combustion engine.
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Re: Would you buy a plug in electric car?

Post by Robotaz »

Stif wrote:I've been driving an EV for 4 years now and it's been excellent - there are lots of misconceptions and misinformation about them. Haven't read back through this whole thread (literally just this page, since it's popped up) but there are a few points in your post @5oclockhero that I think are worth addressing.
5oclockhero wrote: Sun Feb 27, 2022 6:51 pm
Cost ... there seems to be an £8000+ premium on EVs over equivalent petrol. That buys a lot of petrol.

Cost ... petrol is cheap. Its the tax on petrol that's expensive. Will the government tax electricity for EVs or introduce some other tax soon?
Electricity costs are rising exponentially at the moment and cheap overnight charging plans arent an option if you need to run a heat pump in the daytime (there's an irony there...)

Environment.... extra tyre and brake wear associated with overweight EVs. There is a Volvo study that claims their own petrol models are more environmentally friendly over the first 70,000 miles. Well worth googling.
You're absolutely right that a lot of EVs are more expensive than their petrol counterparts - but it's madness to compare list prices, as there are always discounts on cars. It's well worth doing the maths on an individual level though as petrol is significantly more expensive - as an example, my old petrol car (at prices 4+ years ago) cost me around 12p per mile to fuel. My EV currently costs me around 1.5p per mile in fuel (in real terms saving me almost £1500 a year) - they're also significantly cheaper to run, as they have far less moving parts to maintain.

Your point on environment is a good one - there is indeed a Volvo study that shows their large cars (V60 vs Polestar 2 I believe) use more CO2 through building than they save, which evens out after 70,000 miles roughtly... but the average lifetime of a car is 100+ thousand miles, therefore, over their lifetime they are cleaner. Far more importantly though, they don't dump poison out of their exhausts - it's something we're all normalised to, but when you have to deal with children suffering from asthma due to poor air quality, you care a little more about local air quality (this was what drove me to switch in the first place!)

Your point about brake wear due to the batteries is untrue (I've heard this one a few times, and can see the logic behind the thinking!) however, a significant amount of braking in an EV is done by simply reversing the motor and allowing it to run backwards and charge the car - to the extent that at service time its often worth having the brakes cleaned to avoid them becoming pitted from lack of use.

The big concern most people have though is the convenience of charging - I'm lucky that I have off street parking and can therefore charge the car overnight (so if anything I save time with an electric car, as it takes me seconds to plug it in at night, as opposed to minutes detouring to a petrol station, filling up and going home.
The infrastructure sadly varies from place to place (luckily in Scotland we've got a fairly decent amount of coverage, but it still needs to improve) but there is a huge amount of investment going on and large, multi charger forecourts opening across the UK - the fact is though, if you can charge from home, the odd charging stop on a long trip isn't too much hassle - I've toured most of Scotland and the north of England with my wife and 2 young kids in the car without a hitch over the past 4 years.

Absolutely agree they're not for everyone yet, but I'd encourage anyone to give it serious thought if they're buying a new car - they'd be more convenient for a lot of people than many realise.

EDIT: Hope this doesn't come across as confrontational to your post @5oclockhere - that's not my intention at all! Just using some of your points to respond to.
As an aside, I'm a member of numerous EV owner groups on Facebook - and other forums in fact - and there's an almost overwhelming consensus that a) people wish they'd changed over sooner, and b) that they'd not consider going back to an internal combustion engine.
Good points, but I would argue with you on the pollution aspect. I have the coal burning to power EV cars in my local air, so going EV pushes your pollution to my house instead of yours. There’s a debate aspect that’s valid about burning coal in the first place, and i get that. I don’t expect anyone to actually care, but when I hear that I can’t help but think it’s a little selfish.

That said, when the range problems get worked out in the US I’ll buy one. I couldn’t care less about the pollution. They have fewer parts, are quicker, and I can recharge them at my house. I like that.
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Re: Would you buy a plug in electric car?

Post by Dickchins »

Our company is seriously looking at this gov discount scheme to get people in to ev's so despite my utter dislike for them, I thought id give one a whirl to see if im missing anything and just being pig headed about it all.

The range (or total lack of it) is a problem for me. I also regularly see cars parked for ages waiting for a charge point at local garages. Ive done a big shop (yes im from Bolton!!!) several times and the same cars are still waiting as I drive home past them! I really dont need that in my life.

The environmental guff around it all can only be opinion at this point as nobody knows all the facts about battery disposal, manufacturing etc etc, as its still all new. Obviously ev companies and green people will bang the positive drum, and sceptics and oil companies will be sceptical.

Anyway, I took out a Kia Sportage electric thing, and a VW eGolf. Both had a bit more tech in them and the spec was great, but the drive in both of them was no better (or worse) than my petrol VRS. I was pleasently surprised.
I would say though, that as soon as you accelerate and drive "normally" the range quoted by companies is as big a lie as the quoted diesel mpg by VW and Audi etc!!!! Unless you do tiny miles or trips, they are really poor.

By the time you bolt on the much bigger price tag, the uncertainty with all the tech, the MASSIVE cost if a battery system malfunctions (which im told often results in a car being written off as uneconomical to fix), the ballache charging, plus any other problems with new tech, means 110% I still wouldnt touch one with a barge pole.

In maybe 20-30 years when you can charge them easily and the range is similar to a proper car, im pretty sure ill be keen to swap, as the actual drive is fine, but until then, im still firmly against every part of them.
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Re: Would you buy a plug in electric car?

Post by 5oclockhero »

I didn't find the replies confrontational at all! I was buying nearly new (mini) a 21 plate cooper that was a 5 month old demonstrator. The dealer had an almost identical spec and age mini EV available. It was £8000 more. I just can't get the maths to work for me I'm afraid, even if I am saving £1500 in petrol a year and shifting pollution elsewhere. I'm sorry but I'm sceptical about these things my old dad tells me of how he had to wear a scarf over his face to go to school in the 1950s due to the coal smog. He is 80 now it must've taken years off his life..although the woodbines can't have helped. If I sound flippant I'm sorry but I don't honestly think a 50mpg mini really is very much more harmful to the planet than the electric version; pollution in cities is a whole other area, agreed. Unfortunately those are the areas with the greatest recharging issues. Far be it from me to tell city folk they've got to ditch their petrol car and get an EV or take the bus. I worked in London all my life and I know how awful and unreliable public transport is having used it every day.
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