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OT- Practicality of owning an electric car

johnwhitfield

johnwhitfield

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Hi guys. Looking for a bit of advice about the practicality of owning an electric car.

In all honesty I don’t give a monkey’s about cars. They are a means to get occasionally from A to B. I’ve had a Prius for the last 12 or so years and before that a Crappy ford. Ithink it’s fair to say I’m not a car snob in any form 😂 I didn’t have a car at all until we had kids.

Anyway, our lease is about to expire and Anna’s itching to get something different. Everything seems to have shot up by the best part of £500 a month. 😱. So with this in mind it might be time to embrace an electric car

To be honest I’m not bothered about the cost of charging. We do an insanely small amount of mileage a year (under 2500 on a heavy year).
However despite 90% of most trips being under 5 miles we do also have to take the boy to uni and go to see my in laws. Both are about 230 mile trips.
I’ve tried floating the idea of hiring a car for the longer trips but Anna’s not up for that.

How have people found the practicality of charging the bloody things? We live in a terrace with no off road parking so would need to use commercial charging points.

How viable is that?

Is it worth spending the extra to get a Tesla or equivalent with a quicker charging time? (There’s a Tesla charging park near Stonehenge which is a regular stop off point for us if we are going down to the West Country)
How practical is it to find charging points outside of cities?
Any regrets from people who have bought one?
Anything else I should really factor in? (I know they are exempt from the London congestion charge etc)
Does the air con etc really reduce the range you can go on one charge? Similarly if I get stuck in traffic does time then become more important than distance in terms of battery drain or is it really only about the engine.
Do you need to change the way you think about long trips to factor in recharges? Do most people top up the battery half way through a longer trip and force themselves to take a meal break?
If we stay over at friends is it socially acceptable to ask them if we can charge up in their drive if I sling them some cash?
Do you end up needing loads of different apps for the different charging providers (similar to parking apps?)

Any advice would be very welcome before I saddle myself self with a three year millstone
 
I'm full electric for 3 years, prior to that plug in hybrid 3 years and prior to that 6 years with hybrids. 12,000 miles a year post lockdown (was 22,000). With regular trips of 350 miles from Northumberland to Somerset/London.

For you, I would recommend either stick with petrol or go for a plug in hybrid. If you go for full electric, overall cost would be loads more and be more inconvenient on the long trips as you are not a petrolectric head you would likley want to spend your money another way.

If you go for plug in hybrid, you can do all your local miles on electric and use the petrol motor for the long journies. I have a friend who lives in North London with a Mitsubishi Outlabder PHEV and he does exactly this - he first filled his car 3 months after he bought it.. But given no at home charging you will need a local public charger and you can go on Zapmap to find where that is and how much it costs to charger per unit (range now is typically 35p - 70p with faster chargers more expensive. You will only need a slow (7kw) charger near your home. Electric range on my Outlander was 20 miles at motorway speeds and 30 miles if driving below 50. If you don't have a local public charger that you can walk to don't bother.

If you go full electric you will likley want something that has 150 to 200 miles range. If you are driving at motorway speeds you will get 20% to 30% fewer miles than manufacturers stated WTLP ranges,, so you need something that has 200-250 miles stated range. On a 250 mile trip you fully charge before you leave, stop to charge just over half way half way when you get to 20% charge left. Charge back up to 80%, (as squeezing last 20% in the battery takes loads of time but many idiiots who have not learnt how to run an electric car sit there blocking the fast public chargers doing just that). You will also need a car that charges quickly, ideally at 80-100kw or more per hour or more. If you can charge at 100kw, your charging stop will be 30- 40 minutes. But to do this you willalso need to find a charger that will charge at 100kw and you can filter for these on Zap map. You will then arrive at your destination with an empty charge and need somewhere local to your destination to charge (again check Zap Map. And the 100kw chargers can get busy, particularly during daytimes, so you may have to join a queue and even when you get on them they may not deliver full 100kw when several are charging because the chargers all share a single power source that can only deliver so much , so it dials down the charge at each charging point). And did I mention the idiots squeezing the last 20% in at 5kw per hour? You have to plan your long journeys well. The charging infrastructure isn't good enough and isn't keeping up with new electric cars on the road. Porsche Taycan can charge at 270kw but you would need to find a public charging station that is capable (Porsche dealerships have them) and starting price is £75K.

So what does an electric car with 200+ mile range with a 100kw cost. Probably upwards of £40K. Tesla model 3 is the obvious choice but there are loads of others now. cheaper electric cars don't have the range and don't have the charging speed. You don't want to be stopping every 80 miles for an hour of charging on a long trip.

Had my full electric, 80kw charging speed 280 mile stated range (200 motorway miles realistic) for 3 years - it goes back next month and new car is same again. A big driver for me is the very low income tax as it is provided by my company and there are huge tax breaks for electric company cars.

Other questions:

Tesla has better 100kw+ charging infrastructure than public (but even that struggles at busy times and raps down to 50kw at some stations when very busy).
Public chargers are there out of cities. I live in a village in the middle of nowhere and there is charger less than 1 minutes walk away (which i use for all my charging). Look on Zap map.
No regrets, but biggest issue is charging on long journies.
Air con / heater doesn't reduce range much. Cold winter driving is the killer - 10% less miles than I state above. batteries work less well in the cold.
Yes you do need to change the way you think on a long journey. See above.
Socially acceptable but if they don't have a charging point you will need a 3 pin plug "granny charger" which may be supplied with the car and that will charge at 2-3kw per hour so could take 30+ hours to top up from 20%. Best to rely on public charging infrastructure.
You will have loads of different apps but you will find you use one or two of them regularly. Many chargers are now contactless including Gridserve who have all the motorway chargers and Instavolt who are rolling out ultra fast chargers at McDonalds and Costa and MFG who are rolling out at their existing / new petrol stations. On long distance, I do 99% of my charging with these 3 providers, so you don't really need loads of apps.

Paul
 
anything beyond 400 miles isn't doable in an electric car, so if you need to do that then forget it.

otherwise BMW i4.
 
Thanks for the really detailed reply Paul. On the plus side our nearest public charger is only a 2 min walk away but can only service two cars at a time.
 
Similarly I couldn't give a toss about cars, but I went fully electric last year and I can't see any reason to go back, other than being a bit old/stubborn and if i did hundreds of motorway miles per day - the public charging infrastructure is still in it's early development, so if you don't have easy driveway home charging it's always going to be a bit of a pain, but it's improving fast and you're in London with the greatest density of charging points in the UK, so have a look on ZapMap: https://www.zap-map.com/live/

I'm not a fan PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle), which only charge at slower speeds anyway, becuase you have the best and worst of both worlds. A full engine and small battery system to maintain, fix, service & carry about, but I agree that the range anxiety thing goes away, but when the engine kicks in I guarantee you'll be saying - we need a bigger battery. Every PHEV driver i've spoken to will not be buying another, they go to full EV. Driving an EV is actually rather nice too, smooth uninterrupted instant power. Driving our VW Passat TDI is like stepping back in time, dragging bricks down the road.

I went with a Kia Niro - 7yr warranty, doesn't look much, not too big, does everything i need it to, fast enough Rapid charging @77kw peak, 64Kwh battery with range 200m winter to 300m summer, decent efficiency vs the others. We do loads of short journeys, 6k miles a year ish, and it's been flawless. Even for trips to Scotland and back.

russdx1 said:
If you only do 2500 miles and don’t care about cars I would not buy anything fancy just to have it sat outside dropping in value each year. Buy some cheap Nissan Leaf or something :)
Click to expand...

I'd agree, except for the need to do occasional long journeys, and Nissan use a stupid charging connection called CHADEMO which is decreasingly common vs the current CCS plugs. There are still plenty about though.
 
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I went EV, I’d never go back, only drive about 25K miles/year, longest journey in a day so far is 550 miles, I have a Tesla with a ‘book range’ of 395 miles, but as already said winter driving will slice a good chunk of that. I don’t see an issue of stopping to charge after driving 2/3/400 miles, personally I think this is a sensible approach to any form of driving.

The Tesla supercharger infrastructure is superb, the only issue I’ve had personally is arriving once and all chargers were in use, I had to wait for about 5 minutes to get on the next one available. The Tesla sat nav tells you where to stop and charge and for how long to complete your journey, it’s been faultless for me. The 3rd party charging options are improving all the time also, but with all fast chargers cost IS a lot more expensive than home charging, so if you were to purchase an EV on the grounds of saving money then charge at some of these fast chargers running costs will likely be comparable with ICE.

IMO the ICE car is outdated and dying quickly, and that’s from the mouth of someone with 2 ICE cars that I love and had for many years, both being Supercar’s from their day, both now slower and harder to drive than my EV, the world has moved on!

Chris.
 
Without the ability to charge at home I woukldn't. Have a PHEV now for 2 years which works fine for me, leccy usually and petrol when on a trip. Was looking at full electric next but it really depends on your circumstance. The stupid cost of the car plus price of commercial charging I think it'd drive me nuts.
 
johnwhitfield said:
Thanks for the really detailed reply Paul. On the plus side our nearest public charger is only a 2 min walk away but can only service two cars at a time.
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For 2500 miles you will need about 800 units of electric a year so it will be on a 7kw charger for 10 hours a month. So no big deal provided nobody hogging charger bay whilst not charging.
 
I mentioned a Nissan Leaf to Anna and it didn’t exactly go down well. 🤣

Turns out that while I genuinely don’t give a **** about cars one of us in the house does……. (Apparently, it can’t be a Renault or Vauxhall for utterly unspecified reasons but the Audi is clearly worth paying far more. I’m not going to win this one am I?). [in all fairness she is far and away the breadwinner in the house and My role is as a financial and emotional burden].
 
Brought. Hyundai Tucson PHEV in May. What a revelation. It does 38 miles on battery

Only need to do 20 miles or so a day then the occasional trips to relatives or the coast which are generally 200+ miles do the PHEV was a good choice. I really don’t like the idea of having to charge half way on journeys. I know a few people that wen full EV with teslas and ipaces and have a nightmare on long journeys waiting for charging points.

Takes about 8 hours to charge that battery on the mains powered charger but this is ideal as we have solar panels and we just about manage to charge the car without drawing from the grid.
If it wasn’t for going to Surrey to see the sister in law the car would still have the quarter of a tank we brought it with.

We can also charge it for free (upto 80%) at the local Tesco takes about 2 hours on the 7kw charger. Not much but free is free !

But if a bugger for charging at home though when you live in a terrace. Surely the rules will Change to allow this ?
 
A couple of streets away there’s another charging point built into a street light. I’ve got a feeling this might become the norm for areas with no off street parking.

Anna’s now rejected the electric Merc she was looking at as “I don’t like the look of the speedometer in the dashboard”. I think all logic and facts have left the building….
 
Public charging is also much more expensive than home charging.

2500 miles a year is nothing, you may as well buy something that will keep you going for 5 years as @russdx1 has already said.

You are doing 7 miles a day on average....

A friend of mine has just gone electric and he has told me his insurance has gone thru the roof..... Is this common across the board?
 
Pick Holder said:
A friend of mine has just gone electric and he has told me his insurance has gone thru the roof..... Is this common across the board?
Click to expand...
Not for me, £350 ish I think, and I had zero no claims bonus due to having no car for 5yrs. Parked on driveway.

Car cost £40k (actually still worth about the same second hand due to high demand right now), which I accept isn’t cheap, but some of these electric BMW’s, Tesla’s and Mercs are silly money. We’ll hopefully see much cheaper cars appearing next year, the market needs them.
 
Cars are a personal choice so I will not attempt to steer you towards any particular model unless you want to carry a pinball in which case a Tesla is out under 55k.
My previous car was a Mitsubishi PHEV it would do 30 mi on full electric and had a 2.0 LOTR engine which returned over 40mph on a long run.
I traded it in with 95k on the clock 6yrs after buying from new and it would still do 15-18mi on pure electric upto 80mph when the petrol would kick in.
Oh and I’ve picked and dropped dozens of pins with it in that time.
90% of my milage was on pure electric as my commute to the ski slope is only 15mi return so it was the perfect car in every respect for me.
However you have no drive or charging facility so I suggest full Electric which I now have and I charge about once every 7-10 days due to its 330mi range.
In two weeks I will have a 6kw solar system with 11.2kw battery storage so this will negate charging altogether and help run Bertha during the day.
Used fast charge once and it cost me 28p per KW with my car having a 77kw battery it took 20 mins to 80% charge (about 250mi) but at the moment all Tesco superstores have free charging so start shop there 😂
I would never go back to petrol and so much as petrol heads will tell you otherwise with the scare tactics of range anxiety it’s bull**** unless you are a company rep on high milage tight schedules.
My car is always connected and constantly keeps you informed with the nearest stations so I think of it more as a chill and a coffee.
Is electric the future? Probs not but it’s the foreseeable one for now!
I was in my my sons little 2yr Citroen when he filled up it was £66 😱 mine is a third of that and soon be free with solar. Win win
 
My Mitsubishi PHEV only does about 25 miles on battery before the engine cuts in but that is 80% of my journeys Longer trips benefit from the regen braking and highly efficient drivetrain.
It's an SUV so not for everyone but it swallows a pin with room to spare of course... I love it. A public top-up was about £1 last year, now about £2.50.
 
As we are selling to @johnwhitfield wife can I suggest a VW iD.Buzz
www.volkswagen-vans.co.uk

ID. Buzz | New 2022 Electric Van | Volkswagen Vans UK

Explore the new 2022 Volkswagen ID. Buzz, equipped with advanced technology & a flexible interior for intelligent seating. Explore specs, dimensions & more.
www.volkswagen-vans.co.uk www.volkswagen-vans.co.uk
Quirky. Great drive train. Retro-modern. Great reviews. Will have a sleeper version coming soon.
 
I think today is going to cost me dearly. I’ve been seeing some of the quotes she’s getting in. 😱
Even worse as Anna came into the games room to show one I couldn’t moan as she would use the “well how much did all these cost then?” card.
Well and truly ****ed over by my hobby 😂
Looks like I might be selling a game and a half a year to cover it. (I also worked out in the last 6 weeks I’ve only driven the car once).
 
I've been all over the country in my Model S watching football. Newcastle was a 600 mile round trip with no hassle at all. I still think the only viable long distance option is Tesla as the Superchargers just work and most sites have a lot of chargers now 8/16/24 are pretty common and the newer ones hit 250kW charge rate so stops are about the time it takes to empty your bladder and grab a coffee.

For all EV cars, the range varies based on speed and weather - at 70mph this time of year I can get 250 miles on a full charge (P85D). At a motorway cruise of 80ish in the middle of winter against strong wind, 200 miles will be pushing it.
 
I decided to give ev a go and went for the Taycan turbo s
must say I'm mega impressed get about 260miles on a full charge
i can charge the battery in 22 minutes to 80 % at a supercharger station and just plug it in at work for free :)
now the performance omg ! a right weapon

I'm converted cant see me changing back
 
Things have got away from me and I’m no longer in the decision making loop. Apparently my 15 year old daughter gets a say but not me 🤷

Maybe there’s a make of car called “pussywhipped”
 
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