EV general discussion

[Penfold101]

How much per month does it cost to charge your ev? I’m wondering if I’d save enough in fuel to afford an ev lease

My 50mpg E Class would cost between £100 and £150 per 66 litre tankful depending on the cost of diesel and would do 750 miles ish. The same mileage in my Polestar (3 full charges in summer) is about £15 on the overnight 7p per kWh tariff.

 

[m4rmite]

My 50mpg E Class would cost between £100 and £150 per 66 litre tankful depending on the cost of diesel and would do 750 miles ish. The same mileage in my Polestar (3 full charges in summer) is about £15 on the overnight 7p per kWh tariff.

Jesus where do you fill up at£150 a tank.
That's£2.27 a litre.

 

[Penfold101]

Jesus where do you fill up at£150 a tank.
That's£2.27 a litre.

It was when prices went mental in mid 2022 and the station I pulled up at only had Shell’s premium diesel - nowadays it would be down close to the £100 quid!

 

[lordrobs]

How much per month does it cost to charge your ev? I’m wondering if I’d save enough in fuel to afford an ev lease

If you are looking at it purely from a fuel cost point of view just multiply your annual mileage by £0.10 and you won't be far off.

Whether you feel the need to factor in the charger cost as part of the equation is up to you and that will depend on your setup at home.

 

[Hedge]

Done my first month of commuting in my ev. In current temps (rarely above 3c) I'm using about 35% to do 40 miles at about 60mph. Recharging that 35% each night is costing about £1.20 a time.

It's definitely a noticeable fuel cost reduction for me. I think I've gone from maybe £40 a week to about a £5-6. I imagine it gets better in the summer too.

A few years down the line I might consider replacing my diesel estate with a larger long range ev.

 

[Capt Doufos]

Purchased an 2019 OG 55 etron yesterday. After looking for a family car for some time one came up at a relatively close Audi dealer with most of the options. Also comes with Audi warranty / servicing for 2 more years. They have to be one of the best value cars out there, the ICE alternatives at the same price point are nowhere near as nice. We were concerned about size but after driving it, it didn't seem so bad.

Super nice place to be and drive, looking forward to seeing how the EV ownership pans out.

 

[bigmike20vt]

How much per month does it cost to charge your ev? I’m wondering if I’d save enough in fuel to afford an ev lease

taking into account losses my 84kwh usable ipace costs around £7 to charge from empty to full and on average will get me around 240 miles

the ipace is a big heavy SUV so compare that to say the F Pace .

if you want you can get a far more efficient EV capable of closer to 5 miles per kWh as opposed to the 3 I get on average.

 

[stuman]

Done my first month of commuting in my ev. In current temps (rarely above 3c) I'm using about 35% to do 40 miles at about 60mph. Recharging that 35% each night is costing about £1.20 a time.

It's definitely a noticeable fuel cost reduction for me. I think I've gone from maybe £40 a week to about a £5-6. I imagine it gets better in the summer too.

A few years down the line I might consider replacing my diesel estate with a larger long range ev.

We got a mini ev with only around 90-100 mile real world range expecting to rent a car a couple of times a year to do longer trips - in reality though we just suck it up for the 12 or so added hours waiting for extra charges. If the trips were there and back in a day - then would be worth doing - but that’s not the case and 4 days rental quickly takes the shine off th

 

[rodders]

Octopus intelligent go is also ‘anytime’ in that they will give you as much charging you need to get the car charged by the next morning assuming there is enough time between when you plug in and the time you need the car by the next day.

Edit: if you are a private buyer, look in the used market.

What happens if intelligent go can't get you car to what you ask for in the cheap period, do you then pay the higher rate, or can you tell it to not do that?

 

[b0rn2sk8]

What happens if intelligent go can't get you car to what you ask for in the cheap period, do you then pay the higher rate, or can you tell it to not do that?

That only happens if there physically isn’t enough time to charge your car, they’ll just charge it for as long as they can. That’s more of a you problem than an octopus one as no tariff can fix that.

E.g. if you plug in at 10pm with 10% and you want it at 100% by 6am and you have a 100kwh battery in your car. In that period they would add 74kwh to the car but you asked for 90kwh so you’ll be 16kwh short.

All your electricity where they instigate the car charging is at 7p, even if it is outside the core 2330-0530 period. If they charge your car at 7pm for an hour, all your electricity is 7p from 7pm to 8pm.

It’s measured in half hour blocks per the smart meter readings. If they decide to charge your car for 30 second between 8pm and 8:30pm, that full half hour block is 7p and yes, I have seen that happen before.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

What happens if intelligent go can't get you car to what you ask for in the cheap period, do you then pay the higher rate, or can you tell it to not do that?

Without fail when we plug in around 5pm our schedule will always show cheap electric from 21:30 and sometimes 20:30.
I suppose you will have to calculate if your car will fill up between those times and if it can't you will have to set the end time in the Octopus App to charge longer.
Since we only need to put 20% back in every 2 days ours is probably done in less than 2 hours.

So below is an example of a schedule, I know I just said above we always get from 21:30 but on this day my wife wanted to know if she could put her washer on earlier.
At around 5pm we unplugged then plugged it in again to get a new schedule which started from 21:30.
You do get different schedules depending what time you plug it in.

Just found some more examples

 

[rodders]

Ok, all makes sense.

If 'I' want it longer, increase end time from 0530hrs to 0700hrs for example and I'll just pay extra.

Other scenario, I'll just take what it can until 0530hrs, which will do all our local stuff fine.

I can also charge at work for 4 hours for free, so that will be the main thing to focus on anyway!

Home charger is back up and for making sure its full before a long journey to her parents and until work start to charge lol

 

[Penfold101]

Ok, all makes sense.

If 'I' want it longer, increase end time from 0530hrs to 0700hrs for example and I'll just pay extra.

Other scenario, I'll just take what it can until 0530hrs, which will do all our local stuff fine.

I can also charge at work for 4 hours for free, so that will be the main thing to focus on anyway!

Home charger is back up and for making sure its full before a long journey to her parents and until work start to charge lol

You’ll get used to it as time goes on and what works for you and your lifestyle - the basic mantra is ‘charge when you can, not when you need to’

 

[rodders]

So charging say 60 or 70% to 80% each day, to keep it topped up is ok/good practice?

 

[Jonnycoupe]

Yep.

 

[Penfold101]

So charging say 60 or 70% to 80% each day, to keep it topped up is ok/good practice?

Yes. Good for battery health and means you’re never suddenly in need of a charge because of an unexpected change in circumstances during the day. Every night one of our two EV’s is on charge unless they’re both sat up at 80/90%, which would be highly unusual.

 

[Teknobry]

Ok, all makes sense.

If 'I' want it longer, increase end time from 0530hrs to 0700hrs for example and I'll just pay extra.

Other scenario, I'll just take what it can until 0530hrs, which will do all our local stuff fine.

I can also charge at work for 4 hours for free, so that will be the main thing to focus on anyway!

Home charger is back up and for making sure its full before a long journey to her parents and until work start to charge lol

If you set the end time to 11am it would create a schedule based on that to get your car to the desired level of charge and all at the lower 7p rate.

 

[Jonnycoupe]

I’ve got an evoque PHEV now so will be interesting how I balance this with the Ohme for the IPACE. I’ve put an external socket outside with the BG smart units. So one socket is timed for 11:30-5:30 only and that’s enough to fill the battery on a granny 10A unit.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

So charging say 60 or 70% to 80% each day, to keep it topped up is ok/good practice?

I've never charged higher than 80% because I don't need to.
However I'm interested to know whether I should do now and then?
On another forum somebody wrote 'Do you ever do a 10-100% balance charge?' and then saying it is recommended.
I can't imagine dropping below 50% let alone 10%.

 

[Penfold101]

I've never charged higher than 80% because I don't need to.
However I'm interested to know whether I should do now and then?
On another forum somebody wrote 'Do you ever do a 10-100% balance charge?' and then saying it is recommended.
I can't imagine dropping below 50% let alone 10%.

It’s a bit of a weird one as I don’t think there’s any factual answer and anything battery-wise is a bit wishy washy depending on who you talk to. 100% charge is fine I believe, it just isn’t good to leave it there for days at a time. If I know I’m doing a long journey or need the full range then I’ll try and time the charge to finish as close to my leaving time as I can, for example. With a household of two EV’s where you can only charge one per night I will sometimes do 100% charges as I have a 60 mile round trip commute every day, so I know I can do it 3 times in winter if I need to.

Given the battery warranty is 8 years and 100k miles, I don’t think manufacturers are that concerned about how we charge them in general - my Polestar would have to drop below 80% capacity before they changed it. I just wish we could see that figure ourselves…

I don’t know if the charge reading recalibrates itself a lot by doing the 10-100% thing, but I’d say as long as you have enough range to do what you want each day then 80% is a good figure to keep it at.

Jason does a good job of explaining some of these things: