EV general discussion

Kenai said:
Another reason not to bother buying an electric plane then :rolleyes:
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in pure Baldrick logic....... I have a cunning plan!.

for short range flights planes need a removable battery.... if take off uses a large percentage of the battery then the plane takes off with a comparatively large battery, once it gets up to height using the large battery the battery is released and dropped out..... it has a parachute and some small propellers to guide it to a landing site.

the plane then continues on with its much smaller battery which can then regen when the plane comes into land and reduces height and speed.

genius! :D

(or perhaps not)

(or blimps! i would love to see blimps / zepalins make a comeback)
 
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Im toying with moving to an EV but might need a sanity check, and definitely need to do more research.

I currently have a petrol car with a value of around £4000, that does 48ish mpg. With my current commute (65mi per day, 60 of which is dual carriageway or motorway), I'm spending around £240 on petrol a month, including social mileage. I pay £180 in tax and service it 3x per annum for a total of around £350 (DIY job).

I've been looking at leasing a used Leaf e+ (the bigger battery variant), and can get a 3 year old one for around £210 if I chop my current car in as a deposit. I have free charging at work, which would probably cover most of the day to day stuff and a large portion of the social driving too. There's are no available EV tariffs in my area though, so charging at home would be around 36p/kW 2 years servicing would be covered in the lease. Does this actually make sense to others?
 
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free charging at work..... saving £240 a month on fuel, sounds like you would be a perfect EV use case.

no EV tariffs in your area tho.. that sucks, but then if your job is secure and they are not planning on changing the free charging at work (I would check on that 1st) then i dont see why not.

if you cant get a dedicated EV tariff what about a tracker? note there is a referral link in the link below. this is nothing to do with me and i am not trying to shill to get you to sign through me.


stupid question as i know nothing about leases...

i assume you pay the £210 and you get nothing at the end of it. how much would it cost to buy the leaf e+ at 3 years old? ie if you could get a loan with say £300 a month it may make sense that way you get to keep hold of the vehicle afterwards?

also (and am not knocking it as a car) but any reason why the leaf?

if you can get 4k for your ICE then that would make this pretty affordable imo and would have the range you need (not necessarily specifially that one but its worth getting the one with the larger battery)

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bigmike20vt said:
if you can get 4k for your ICE then that would make this pretty affordable imo and would have the range you need (not necessarily specifially that one)

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Those original Ioniq's in big battery spec seem like cracking value.

As a side note this made me sad...

You can no longer use the AT Price Tracker plug-in on Auto Trader

Sorry, we know that you find it handy, however we no longer allow this tool on the site.
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Cookeh said:
Im toying with moving to an EV but might need a sanity check, and definitely need to do more research.

I currently have a petrol car with a value of around £4000, that does 48ish mpg. With my current commute (65mi per day, 60 of which is dual carriageway or motorway), I'm spending around £240 on petrol a month, including social mileage. I pay £180 in tax and service it 3x per annum for a total of around £350 (DIY job).

I've been looking at leasing a used Leaf e+ (the bigger battery variant), and can get a 3 year old one for around £210 if I chop my current car in as a deposit. I have free charging at work, which would probably cover most of the day to day stuff and a large portion of the social driving too. There's are no available EV tariffs in my area though, so charging at home would be around 36p/kW 2 years servicing would be covered in the lease. Does this actually make sense to others?
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Probably doesn't make sense if you have no residual value at the end of the lease. Your car will depreciate but still be worth something in 2 years and a Leaf will be fine for the commute but a nightmare for anything longer
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
hard to go wrong with the Kona, particularly the new one which is a bit bigger.

Most people use Octopus Intelligent go here as it generally works out cheaper.

With Ovo and others the cheap electric if for your car only where as with Octopus it’s for your whole house.

That said ‘6000 miles’ (that does this translate to in KWh?) is a hard offer to beat at the moment. Take it for a year and then switch elsewhere.

Correct me if I’m wrong but I think Ohm and Wallbox are compatible with Ovo and Octopus smart tariffs. Check their website and pick a charger compatible with both.

If you have solar, consider if you also need a charger that can divert excess solar to the grid. That said, if you are not on a feed in tariff, you are normally better off exporting excess to the grid as you can get paid 15p for it vs paying 7-7,5p to charge over night.
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Thanks mate, unfortunately the Kona is pre-registered my23 plate not the 'new' my24, which I think is the bigger of the 2. Anyway, it's still going to be a foot into the electric cars. :) it's start.

With regards to the Ovo deal they quote "The 6,000 free miles are based on driving 3 miles per kWh. We’ll show this on your bill as £140 credit added to your energy account." But funnily I've already mentioned Octopus going forward to my wife, on the same basis you've mentioned :D I'll win her round as our deal with Ovo expires end of May.

Yes I have been looking at the Ohme pro charger that's top of the list so far, as far as chargers go that is.
 
chanjy said:
Probably doesn't make sense if you have no residual value at the end of the lease. Your car will depreciate but still be worth something in 2 years and a Leaf will be fine for the commute but a nightmare for anything longer
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i agree on the lease where you end up with nothing at the end, its definitely worth considering..... but "nightmare" for longer than 65mile commute is nonsense imo.

the long range leaf claims 240 mile range and by most accounts its a fairly honest range. It isnt the car i would choose for the cost but....................................

also funnily enough the chademo charge socket may be a bonus for now. right now apparently there is still good support for them, but a lot less pressure on that network. i wont lie tho, over all i would rather have a car with CCS
 
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bigmike20vt said:
i agree on the lease where you end up with nothing at the end, its definitely worth considering..... but "nightmare" for longer than 65mile commute is nonsense imo.

the long range leaf claims 240 mile range and by most accounts its a fairly honest range. It isnt the car i would choose for the cost but....................................

also funnily enough the chademo charge socket may be a bonus for now. right now apparently there is still good support for them, but a lot less pressure on that network. i wont lie tho, over all i would rather have a car with CCS
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The other potential bonus of the Leaf is Octopus' new "Octopus Power Pack" V2G tariff (or any similar tariffs on the horizon which allow you to use the car as a home battery), but yeah, I'd still rather have a car with CCS as the main household vehicle
 
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OldKitMan said:
My compulsory excess with Admiral for the Zoe is £175 (over 25 with full UK licence for at least 1 year)
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Do they give different people different rates?

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bigmike20vt said:
i agree on the lease where you end up with nothing at the end, its definitely worth considering..... but "nightmare" for longer than 65mile commute is nonsense imo.

the long range leaf claims 240 mile range and by most accounts its a fairly honest range. It isnt the car i would choose for the cost but....................................

also funnily enough the chademo charge socket may be a bonus for now. right now apparently there is still good support for them, but a lot less pressure on that network. i wont lie tho, over all i would rather have a car with CCS
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Hmmmm maybe I underestimated the range of the leaf... Still though Chademo...
 
chanjy said:
Probably doesn't make sense if you have no residual value at the end of the lease. Your car will depreciate but still be worth something in 2 years and a Leaf will be fine for the commute but a nightmare for anything longer
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Its a fair point, certainly. Reassessing the figures I'd be able to get that £210ish PCP value with roughly £2500 deposit, which is £1500 less than what I'd get for the current car.

At current annual mileage my petrol vehicle will be on approx 200k miles in 3 years, and will be 13 years old by then. It will certainly be worth something, but arguably not very much - 200k miles on a Suzuki Swift Sport will probably send people running

The only other potential benefit is that we could do with a larger vehicle than the Swift, as if plans allow they'll be a new family addition within the lease duration. We also have a second petrol vehicle (a midsize SUV) that could be used for journeys lacking in charger locations.

Silly questions inc but whats CCS? Brief research shows chademo as being a somewhat less common charger - what issues would this present?
 
Cookeh said:
Silly questions inc but whats CCS? Brief research shows chademo as being a somewhat less common charger - what issues would this present?
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not silly at all...

chademo was the 1st fast charging tech in the uk. it was replaced by CCS, the only new car you can buy now with chademo is the leaf (i think) a few older cars have it.

there are more CCS fast charge points in the uk than chademo, also CCS is a faster charging technology. however the flip side is CCS chargepoints are under a lot more load than chademo as the vast majority of EVs are CCS.
if its only as a 2nd vehicle anyway its unlikely you will need it often so maybe not even worth worrying about.

it wont affect what wallbox you install at home. unless you go with a really old leaf (which has such low range you wont be able to get to work and back on it) then the home charging socket is type 2 which is the same as any modern EV.

chademo isnt a bad technology, and it has some features lacking in CCS. its a bit like betamax/VHS or blu-ray/HDDVD (or highlander) in the end there can be only 1, and CCS (in the UK/EU) has all but won, but that isnt to say its cut and dry better than chademo and chademo public charging will be around for a while yet.

random trivia chademo came into its own around the Fukushima disaster. Nissan leafs were sent to the area because chademo natively supports bi directional charging which meant the cars were mobile batteries and were able to run vital infrastructure. This is technically meant to be possible with type 2 charging socket as well but (and i do not know the details) for what ever reason it doesnt seem to be happening very quickly and currently all the Vehicle to home and vehicle to grid trials going on at the moment are all based around leafs AFAIK.
 
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Thanks very much. Sounds like it may well get left behind going forward. Most of my social driving would be covered by the range of the Leaf, but I do do around 5-6 journeys a year that are 165mi each way. The destination has a charger at the property so that's no big deal, assuming that's within the Leaf's range.

To answer your earlier post that I missed (sorry!), no real reason for the Leaf. Just that its quite readily available at my budget, appears to have a solid range, and reviews well. I'd have to test drive to see if I could live with the weight/handling. Are there other options to keep an eye open for? Jag i-Paces pop up for around £220 but then they're much older still, have reported reliability issues, and I imagine the insurance would be bonkers. Other than that everything seems to be super-mini segment size.
 
Cookeh said:
Thanks very much. Sounds like it may well get left behind going forward. Most of my social driving would be covered by the range of the Leaf, but I do do around 5-6 journeys a year that are 165mi each way. The destination has a charger at the property so that's no big deal, assuming that's within the Leaf's range.

To answer your earlier post that I missed (sorry!), no real reason for the Leaf. Just that its quite readily available at my budget, appears to have a solid range, and reviews well. I'd have to test drive to see if I could live with the weight/handling. Are there other options to keep an eye open for? Jag i-Paces pop up for around £220 but then they're much older still, have reported reliability issues, and I imagine the insurance would be bonkers. Other than that everything seems to be super-mini segment size.
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if you are looking at newish you have heaps of options.

the MG4 i would expect you to get for a good price, the facelifted original ionic has slightly less range than the long range leaf but is a solid car (my next door neighbour used to have one). the bmw i3 is quirky and fun, but has a small boot and is pricey for what it is (we have one along with our ipace)..... MG also have the MG5 estate as well as the SUV which i cant remember the model number but again these should also be cheap.... dont forget the Kona, E-niro and maybe even the older ID3s or even a tesla model 3 will be in budget now (certainly if you are considering an ipace - which is a brilliant car but going for the absolute cheapest one you can may be risky).......

but there are so many options.

totally out there, and means going for an older vehicle but ........ there is also the tesla model S, i think the facelifted one came in in 2016.
 
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Battery size x 3.5 is the realistic range for a EV when range actually matters ( sat on a motorway). No idea how a leaf is claiming 240 miles range ?
 
bigmike20vt said:
the long range leaf claims 240 mile range and by most accounts its a fairly honest range.
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yes assumed he meant 65m*2 per day - commute round trip
40kw leaf seems more like 160 miles in summer https://www.reddit.com/r/leaf/comments/104pk7k/how_many_miles_do_you_get_avg_40kwh/
and might require an assured re-charge at his workplace in winter time; pre-conditioning maybe usefult too, possibly lost a bit of range, buying it at 3years old too,
... Guess he needs a test drive to try it out.
 
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