Are EV’s really the way to go?

Why does it matter if your doing a lot of charging if it’s all done when it’s parked? It’s not like you’d need to stop on the way home or anything.l and charging the car should be no less hassle than chasing a phone.

Why does it matter if a fuel car can go 2-3 days between refuelling and a BEV can’t?

The issue is that everyone is hung up on rapid chargers but it’s slower AC charging that is the obvious enabler and it’s soo much cheaper.

Because in the 5 hour cheap electric window you can't actually fill the car to do that journey and assumes that all you do in life is go to and from work such that it can charge the rest of the time on AC at home which is not the case?

7kw is not really good enough in these scenarios due to AC charging losses etc. for the missus she can charge at work, would work for her, for me it is marginal and the efficiency of the Ev is important.

One of my mates would do it and park in Morrisons then walk to the office :rolleyes: that's almost as bad as taking public transport, such is the lack of convenience. :D
 
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My 6 hours of 7.5p per kWh will give me at least 150miles in mid winter. Of I could charge to 100% Monday and do 170 miles a day for 5 days.

If you are doing more than that and don't have charging at your work place then you would have to stop for 15 mins from time to time to fast charge.

Also 170 miles is around 3 hours driving, minimum
 
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That was my commute so I know how long it could take on a good day and a bad one, a crash on the motorway and one diversion could add hours, adding a stop for a fill up everyday would be a additional chore to factor in hence I waited for greater range cars, unfortunately I like the bad EVs like Volvo and Polestar :rolleyes:
 
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That was my commute so I know how long it could take on a good day and a bad one, a crash on the motorway and one diversion could add hours, adding a stop for a fill up everyday would be a additional chore to factor in hence I waited for greater range cars, unfortunately I like the bad EVs like Volvo and Polestar :rolleyes:

But that's assuming 50mph average, if you travel slower or are stationary then you will have much more range. Ofc choosing less efficient cars has an impact
 
It matters if you've not got access to home charging.

Which is why I said ‘the key enabler is ubiquitous access to AC charging’.

Ubiquitous access doesn’t need to mean it’s on your drive, its where you park cars in general.

Because in the 5 hour cheap electric window you can't actually fill the car to do that journey and assumes that all you do in life is go to and from work such that it can charge the rest of the time on AC at home which is not the case?

7kw is not really good enough in these scenarios due to AC charging losses etc. for the missus she can charge at work, would work for her, for me it is marginal and the efficiency of the Ev is important.

One of my mates would do it and park in Morrisons then walk to the office :rolleyes: that's almost as bad as taking public transport, such is the lack of convenience. :D

Again, I don’t follow your point at all.

Why does the ‘cheap window’ matter? Sure it impacts the cost to charge but it doesn’t impact BEV being one answer to phasing out ICE which is fundamentally about changing behaviour rather than anything else.

I said it enables you to leave with a ‘full tank’ when you need it. That doesn’t mean you are forced to do all your charging outside of any cheaper periods, far from it. I’d also expect the cost to refill become far more dynamic over time.

Why are AC charging losses relevant?
Basic AC charging will refill 100 miles of range in about 4 hours in all but the most inefficient cars. There is plenty of time in the day, even if you have a long commute.

Again, to reiterate, ubiquitous access means charging points are available anywhere you park a car if you need or want them. Be that at home, in a residential street, work or a commercial car park.

That doesn’t mean you have to use them or be in every space but is massively increases convenience and drastically reduces the need for rapid chargers where you will end up sitting and waiting for it.
 
That was my commute so I know how long it could take on a good day and a bad one, a crash on the motorway and one diversion could add hours, adding a stop for a fill up everyday would be a additional chore to factor in hence I waited for greater range cars, unfortunately I like the bad EVs like Volvo and Polestar :rolleyes:


Errm... Its miles... not hours in the car.
Same as a ICE... stuck in traffic? You don't use the Power / fuel. lol
 
But that's assuming 50mph average, if you travel slower or are stationary then you will have much more range. Ofc choosing less efficient cars has an impact
This. EVs don't really use much power stood still, and use a lot less power (mi/kwh) when travelling slower.
 
Which is why I said ‘the key enabler is ubiquitous access to AC charging’.

Ubiquitous access doesn’t need to mean it’s on your drive, its where you park cars in general.

Ah I see you are saying, it is that it needs to be ubiquitous, then yes this is true, but it is not where we are at and then the problem still remains that if it is not as cheap as home or free, then I would still struggle with purchase justification as an ICE works so well in this scenario.

Being cheaper is the the driver to adoption, its why the company car buyers choose them, because they are cheap, rarely for environmental concerns.

For what it is worth I've chosen electrified for the missus for environmental reasons, spends a lot of time going to and from the school and kids events etc, often sat in the car waiting running engine for heat/ac etc. needlessly polluting, I'm not against this stuff just making the point that they are not massively cheap ( on purchase price alone I could save ~£20k sticking with petrol due to available discounts, seems they are not trendy :D ) so you need to know why you are buying and how it is going to work for you.

A number of people looking at fuel prices and saying I'm going electric will get a shock if they have not sat down with a spread sheet and looked at the numbers.

Errm... Its miles... not hours in the car.
Same as a ICE... stuck in traffic? You don't use the Power / fuel. lol

Those extra hours in the car were generally more miles across country roads, I've rarely sat in traffic, it was actually a decent run typically, 70+ to reading, a touch of stop start and then 50mph average speed camera for most of the rest of it, wonder if they finished the roadworks, such a long section under camera, certainly quite an efficient run because of it though, I'd be nudging 50mpg in my Abarth.
 
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About a third of UK households do not have a driveway or garage or means to be able to safely charge an EV. I don't think these people should be left out. Doesn't seem right. There's not going to be an easy way to solve that without building a shedload of charge points all along streets. The only way to fix these charging problems is to make it so that a charge takes a very, very short time so people can treat them like they have been doing at Petrol stations forever and go and "fill up" quickly.

The most major point for me is the price of EVs. They are unobtainable for the vast majority since people only want to buy them new with warranty on the batteries. The second hand EV market is non existent compared to ICE. It's another "throw away society" model where we will consume and consume newer and newer cars probably via lease deals mainly.
 
About a third of UK households do not have a driveway or garage or means to be able to safely charge an EV. I don't think these people should be left out. Doesn't seem right. There's not going to be an easy way to solve that without building a shedload of charge points all along streets. The only way to fix these charging problems is to make it so that a charge takes a very, very short time so people can treat them like they have been doing at Petrol stations forever and go and "fill up" quickly.

Plenty of options springing up here, from lamp-posts with integrated Type-2 connectors to channels in pavements to allow for charging from the street into your home. Sure there will still be outlier use-cases, but there are solutions being dreamed up all the time.

The most major point for me is the price of EVs. They are unobtainable for the vast majority since people only want to buy them new with warranty on the batteries. The second hand EV market is non existent compared to ICE. It's another "throw away society" model where we will consume and consume newer and newer cars probably via lease deals mainly.

Most battery and motor warranties are longer than the usual 3 years you get on the rest of the vehicle. Heck, this is even true for most PHEVs. Our 2018 Passat is still under warranty for it's HV battery (8-years), my Model 3 is the same, 8-years or 120,000 miles for the battery.

Given new car buyers will tend to change car in the 3rd or 4th year, that still gives 4-5 years of battery warranty on a used purchase.

The used market doesn't really exist yet as the boom in BEV sales hasn't been ongoing for long enough for there to be a glut of 3-4 year old vehicles.
 
About a third of UK households do not have a driveway or garage or means to be able to safely charge an EV. I don't think these people should be left out. Doesn't seem right.
Ultimately the long term solution is there will be enough slow/fast chargers where ever people go - i.e. the cinema, hair dressers, gym, shops, restaurants, supermarkets, hotels, work etc.... so people without drives will 'graze' charge wherever they are parked up when not at home.
Will this be cheap charging?- no!, but everyone knows the cheap EV ride for charging and tax benefits isn't going to be around for ever.

On the plus side for cost, once EV's go more mainstream the cost of buying/leasing them will come down, so overall the ownership cost probably won't be much different than it is today.
 
Yup ‘grazing’ will be come the norm for people who can’t charge at work or home. It’s the notion of ‘ABC’ - always be charging.

I’ve been away from home for extended periods with my BEV with no charging at the hotel. I got lucky in being able to get on some AC chargers in some very busy public car parks at ideal points on the trip which kept me well away from rapids. But it could have been a lot easier if there was more locations to charge. It could have also been a lot harder if I didn’t get on those chargers.

But I totally get that right now it’s a pain in the proverbial because there isn’t ubiquitous access and that comes back to my point, there needs to be ubiquitous access to these things.

Other times I have been away and there was charging at the hotel, it was just a complete non-issue then.

Cal me crazy I don’t think free charging actually helps the cause either, it just encourages people to jump on chargers because they can, rather than because they need to. I’d rather chargers were available when people needed them.
 
Podpoints seem to flash when full aswell. Car park where I am now has 4 bays and the parking guys seem to have great control of it as it’s only got charging cars in it and they move on and park elsewhere when full.
 
Yup ‘grazing’ will be come the norm for people who can’t charge at work or home. It’s the notion of ‘ABC’ - always be charging.

Cal me crazy I don’t think free charging actually helps the cause either, it just encourages people to jump on chargers because they can, rather than because they need to. I’d rather chargers were available when people needed them.

I agree that free chargers don't really help, you just have people sitting on them when they don't really need to charge. Better to have reasonable charge ones with idle fees that move you on when you are done.
 
An obscure angle that hardly anyone can afford to buy a 50k BEV? Obscure meaning...reality?

No that the success some how is being measured by the number of second hand cars available. Nothing to do with even affordability, we hadn’t even got that far with the “logic”
 
Most people are leasing them through company car schemes as far as I can see.

There in lies the problem really. The kind of people that can afford BEV's and then ultimately "save money" on running said cheaper car as an overall package over time, are the kind of people already doing quite ok financially. The rich get richer.
BEVs do not help people who can only afford lower end second hand, older cars for a long time, until the market has matured and we get the trickle down 2nd hand market as well. Unless brand new and nearly new BEVs get hugely cheaper, which won't happen because capitalism. They'll probably go up if anything. Everything else is.
 
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