When are you going fully electric?

[Nasher]

How many years experience do you have with owning and driving an Elise? Just don't base your idea of what level of comfort can be achieved in a lightweight sports car by what Audi or BMW do with a their sports suspension set ups.

Yep, Audi and BMW "sports" suspension is basically like having no suspension :/

 

[jpaul]

Taycan on Top Gear ... exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis , for both top gear and electric cars ?

 

[McPhee]

Just picked up a Peugeot e208 this week. I was surprised after installing zap map just how many free 7kw chargers there are. I think this might be the best time to go electric with zero tax then grants for the vehicle and home chargers.

Really liked the look of the 208. Numbers didn't work for me though, so I've got an Ioniq on the way.

The best time to own an EV was ~5 years ago. My home charger was free. The OLEV grant was £1,000 more. And Ecotricity hadn't started charging people to use their 50kW chargers yet. You could literally drive the length of the country for nowt.

But now is still pretty good. And the cars are a lot more practical than they were.

 

[.:MBK:.]

208 looks to be pretty much there as what I would consider a usable ev (leafs etc would still require access to an ice car). Price is still prohibitive for my current circumstances but a couple of years and a few more choices on the market should fix that.

 

[mjt]

Really liked the look of the 208. Numbers didn't work for me though, so I've got an Ioniq on the way.

The best time to own an EV was ~5 years ago. My home charger was free. The OLEV grant was £1,000 more. And Ecotricity hadn't started charging people to use their 50kW chargers yet. You could literally drive the length of the country for nowt.

But now is still pretty good. And the cars are a lot more practical than they were.

Except now BEVs have proper range.

 

[Journey]

Except now BEVs have proper range.

That's a bit of a generalisation though, since 'proper' to one person is different to another. A car with a 60 mile range would happily suit my mother-in-law as she never goes more than 10 miles away from her house in her car, the same for my elderly neighbour who does 4 miles to and from work and that is it.

Just use the example of the average car mileage for the UK at ~8,000 miles per year, and the average UK work commute is/was 8.8 miles per day.

I'm not saying that it is good enough just it is best to not use such concrete terms, when it maybe applies to how you think, rather than being perfectly fine for many, many other people.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

To be fair the e208/corsa e/DS3 have about the same range as a Tesla from 2012. Much more affordable now though!

 

[jpaul]

(like the newbie property subsidy) not sure the government subsidies were necessarily benefitting the consumer - the car manufacturer/meter installer, can just inflate prices, and consumer ownership cost, is, what it would have been anyway ... that will be a fine balance for future initiatives too.

Are manufacturers already making a bigger gpm for bev's ?
The earlier point about the relatively high cost of bev battery pack and motor - I though M3 battery pack was about 2K$ (don't know about motor) and they made 6K$ per car, 20% gpm is that ?, the 64K$ Q is how does that compare with ICE ?, so, are they currently charging a premium ?
maybe non-recurring engineering costs are real high ... but Tesla's / i3's / leafs have been around a while now.

the average car mileage for the UK at ~8,000 miles per year, and the average UK work commute is/was 8.8 miles per day

that did leave 90miles per weekend

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Most manufacturers are losing money per BEV when total program costs are considered. The gross margin is not a good metric, particularly this early in the BEVs development. I can’t see cars like the EQC ever making a ‘profit’, that as an obscene development costs associated with it.

Once manufactures get to scale then I can see the gross margin falling and the segment getting more competitive because the development costs are spread across far more cars.

The exceptions are Tesla, Nissan and Renault, funnily enough, they are the only ones that are really producing them at scale currently. The latter I think are only just profitable. The car market is very competitive, margins are pretty low on your run of the mil cars.

 

[jpaul]

(from my echo chamber) ... bev's versus hybrid price

Toyota Prius Chief Designer Admits Some EVs Already Cheaper To Manufacture Than Hybrids
“The cost of pure electric depends very much on range. Up to 250 km (155 mile) range, battery-electric vehicles already can be built for less money than hybrids. However, the market generally wants more range. With a range above 300 km (186 mile) a battery-electric vehicle will remain more expensive at least through 2025.”
“What Ogiso now admits, well informed electric car supporters already knew. This is why the Hyundai IONIQ’s prices are a scam. In Germany the electric version costs €9,400 more than the hybrid. While Ogiso tried to push hybrid cars with what he said, to me only it proves that the current technology is more than capable to make BEVs mainstream. If automakers prefer to sell polluting cars, governments have the duty to make these polluting cars harder and harder to sell, to a point that automakers decide they don’t worth it and switch to BEVs.”

 

[skookum]

Guess... speculate... and 70%? Really?

I was talking about an observation in my area at 2am when most people were at home. I will grab some pics if you like this weekend to see the mayhem

Didn't realise that a socket was so big, where are we going to put all the lamp posts, and bollards, and oh wait... In all seriousness though, you do realise that the type of 'overnight' chargers are not at all big, and they fit easily into a small post, lamppost, or other street furniture, or even as per some that are being tested directly into the ground.


Again, nonsense, people should really do some actual research before releasing their fingers on the keyboard. Even if there were no chargers at all near you, like there aren't now for a fuel pump, where you have to drive somewhere and put fuel in it, why would that change?

Do you think that you car will need to be charged every single day if you happen to not have a drive etc.? Tell me how many miles do you drive per year, and what is your average commute if you have a job away from home?

Guess... speculate... and 70%? Really?



Didn't realise that a socket was so big, where are we going to put all the lamp posts, and bollards, and oh wait... In all seriousness though, you do realise that the type of 'overnight' chargers are not at all big, and they fit easily into a small post, lamppost, or other street furniture, or even as per some that are being tested directly into the ground.


Again, nonsense, people should really do some actual research before releasing their fingers on the keyboard. Even if there were no chargers at all near you, like there aren't now for a fuel pump, where you have to drive somewhere and put fuel in it, why would that change?

Do you think that you car will need to be charged every single day if you happen to not have a drive etc.? Tell me how many miles do you drive per year, and what is your average commute if you have a job away from home?

It was an observation on the area I work and live and will grab you some pics this weekend so you can observe the parking mayhem. Since our local council has prohibited driveways for more than one car and a no garage policy on new developments it has complicated the issue.

Your right plugs don't take up much room but sadly the whole car needs to be parked next to it or am I missing something.

All well and good if we stick a charging point into everything that protrudes above the surface of the ground but I can only imagine the territorial parking wars that will happen when everyone returns from work.

Although I am hearing that Porsche are soon to introduce a 400kw charger that can charge a battery in a vastly reduced time. This I can see feasible as petrol stations could adapt into charging stations.

Lets hope the Government doesn't leave us all high and dry trying to meet this dealine. There is a huge amount of infrastructure change required to pull this off. That includes the power grid. We still have gas power stations that are well overdue replacement. We can't kid ourselves the current network can cope with this change.

Sadly Governments don't historically have a good history of pulling such projects off.

We can only wait and pray.

 

[Journey]

How come you opted out of saying what your daily commute was in miles?

 

[Jez]

One annoyance which i found today while i personally decide what to do, the insurance uplift between an E350 AMG-Sport Cabriolet and a Tesla Model S 70D is annoyingly high, i am used to very low premiums but the S is approx 300% uplift. I can only think due to potential repair costs due to extended hire car and hard to source panels, expensive sensors, etc?

 

[Journey]

One annoyance which i found today while i personally decide what to do, the insurance uplift between an E350 AMG-Sport Cabriolet and a Tesla Model S 70D is annoyingly high, i am used to very low premiums but the S is approx 300% uplift. I can only think due to potential repair costs due to extended hire car and hard to source panels, expensive sensors, etc?

Who are you with? Give LV a try they are pretty good for BEV's

 

[Jez]

Aviva, who have been really cheap for us for years (multi car). Of course will try other places but it seemed marked, significantly higher than even very powerful ICE stuff.

 

[Journey]

Aviva, who have been really cheap for us for years (multi car). Of course will try other places but it seemed marked, significantly higher than even very powerful ICE stuff.

Most insurance companies simply don't have the data to offer competitive pricing right now, so they end up charging more to off set that.

How much was the 70D you were looking at btw?

 

[Jez]

£28-35k ish is what i'd pay for one depending on grade and mileage Understood re the data, these are cars for which it must be difficult to model vs a Mercedes with decades of similar models in its history.

 

[Nasher]

Most insurance companies simply don't have the data to offer competitive pricing right now, so they end up charging more to off set that.

How much was the 70D you were looking at btw?

Usually it's the other way round. They start cheap until statistics start rolling in. That's why quite rare cars are cheap to insure.

 

[McPhee]

One annoyance which i found today while i personally decide what to do, the insurance uplift between an E350 AMG-Sport Cabriolet and a Tesla Model S 70D is annoyingly high, i am used to very low premiums but the S is approx 300% uplift. I can only think due to potential repair costs due to extended hire car and hard to source panels, expensive sensors, etc?

Takes a bit of shopping around with the better performing EVs. LV, NFU, Admiral and H&L Insurance seem to be commonly used among the Tesla crowd.

Given the performance of the faster EVs, I wouldn't be surprised if drivers are quite prone to having minor accidents.

 

[Journey]

Usually it's the other way round. They start cheap until statistics start rolling in. That's why quite rare cars are cheap to insure.

Or instead of making it up you could just read the actual facts.

https://www.whatcar.com/advice/owning/are-electric-cars-more-expensive-to-insure/n18043