My mate gave the same story a couple of years ago (knee pain, driving a 4 series a lot for his sales job) and I thought he was talking crap. Maybe I was wrong!
EV general discussion
- Thread starter Ricochet J
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My mate gave the same story a couple of years ago (knee pain, driving a 4 series a lot for his sales job) and I thought he was talking crap. Maybe I was wrong!
My partner has always being very susceptible to this. She once had an Audi and although it was a lovely car, the offset pedals gave her nothing but back and leg pain issues. She swears she will never have another Audi again.
So we are just about (I think) to join the fold..
It started after being given a BMW i3 (33kwh REX and a good set of options) a week to use whilst on holiday and despite all my reservations and low expectations of EV's I came away very very impressed at the concept of an EV. As we know the owner, they'd already prepared us quite well.. We took advantage of Tesco's free charging when appropriate (we had a weeks shopping to grab for the holiday cottage, and on taking our time, we took just over 2 hours which gave around 60 miles of additional range), that and a bit of granny charging from the cottage was all that was needed.
This is for the Mrs, so I've had to park my preferences a bit, so after test driving everything from a Model 3 /Q4 Etron, IONIQ 5, down to a e208 and Mini Countryman PHEV, we seem to have settled on the one car I had terribly low expectations about but actually aside from one aspect I struggle with, the Mrs thinks it fits the bill perfectly.
A VW ID.3 Max..
A terrible interior (IMO), but a good car.. and the finance options are good with VW having already discounted the entire range and heavy discounts available with good dealer contributions, it's literally half the cost of an IONIQ 5 over the term (we also got £1.5k above Webuyanycar as a P/X), and no additional RFL contributions, etc..
I admit I enjoyed the test drive, the Mrs really liked it from the outset, and with all the toys on the Max version, I am sure it'll be enough to distract me on the rare occasion I have to drive it!
It started after being given a BMW i3 (33kwh REX and a good set of options) a week to use whilst on holiday and despite all my reservations and low expectations of EV's I came away very very impressed at the concept of an EV. As we know the owner, they'd already prepared us quite well.. We took advantage of Tesco's free charging when appropriate (we had a weeks shopping to grab for the holiday cottage, and on taking our time, we took just over 2 hours which gave around 60 miles of additional range), that and a bit of granny charging from the cottage was all that was needed.
This is for the Mrs, so I've had to park my preferences a bit, so after test driving everything from a Model 3 /Q4 Etron, IONIQ 5, down to a e208 and Mini Countryman PHEV, we seem to have settled on the one car I had terribly low expectations about but actually aside from one aspect I struggle with, the Mrs thinks it fits the bill perfectly.
A VW ID.3 Max..
A terrible interior (IMO), but a good car.. and the finance options are good with VW having already discounted the entire range and heavy discounts available with good dealer contributions, it's literally half the cost of an IONIQ 5 over the term (we also got £1.5k above Webuyanycar as a P/X), and no additional RFL contributions, etc..
I admit I enjoyed the test drive, the Mrs really liked it from the outset, and with all the toys on the Max version, I am sure it'll be enough to distract me on the rare occasion I have to drive it!
Questions Far all EV owners
1, how long does it take you to charge?
2. Do you charge at home ?
3. Do you have a lot of charging stations near you ?
The issues I see at the moment with EV
1. The charge time ev takes hours to fill, traditional takes mins.
2. Not many charging stations locally
3. Unlike petrol its hard to do a quick topup
4. not very easy to have a charging station at home for most when a huge number of people live in terraces or semi houses without garages.
5. all the electronics so repairs will be a pain.
would a hydrogen x electric hybrid not be a better option?
1, how long does it take you to charge?
2. Do you charge at home ?
3. Do you have a lot of charging stations near you ?
The issues I see at the moment with EV
1. The charge time ev takes hours to fill, traditional takes mins.
2. Not many charging stations locally
3. Unlike petrol its hard to do a quick topup
4. not very easy to have a charging station at home for most when a huge number of people live in terraces or semi houses without garages.
5. all the electronics so repairs will be a pain.
would a hydrogen x electric hybrid not be a better option?
1. depends on the charger, but 45mins on fast one
2. yes, on a 3pin at the moment pending podpoint install
3. not many, not had a need for them
Issues
1. change of mindset - it's like waking up to a full tank of petrol every day.
2. doesn't matter, as can charge at home or at work
3. agreed, but with a bit of planning, not much of an issue
4. agreed, this is a failing, pushing EVs to people with drives/garages for now
5. my limited understanding put the servicing requirements at less than a traditional ICE car?
Bear in mind, I've only had mine a week and a half - but it's been great so far.
Soldato
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Hydrogen has the same issues as petrol today but harder to fill… I play football with a guy who had a Murai.
Electric cars charge when you sleep so that’s fine by me as I have a home charger (garage not essential) and ideally all the new rapid chargers are atleast 100miles from my house. Local ones are of no use.
Electric cars charge when you sleep so that’s fine by me as I have a home charger (garage not essential) and ideally all the new rapid chargers are atleast 100miles from my house. Local ones are of no use.
Chucked my answers in bold below.
I have a Hyundai Kona 64KW which with my driving style is returning a long term average of 5.4kW/mile with an estimated range of 340 miles @ 96% battery (4 weeks on the trot now this estimation has been bang on vs miles driven). Currently do around 140-160 miles a week so easily within range limits of the car (two fold..).
I have a Hyundai Kona 64KW which with my driving style is returning a long term average of 5.4kW/mile with an estimated range of 340 miles @ 96% battery (4 weeks on the trot now this estimation has been bang on vs miles driven). Currently do around 140-160 miles a week so easily within range limits of the car (two fold..).
Ill be honest I know even less, I dont know anyone who owns one.
I assume you would need a drive at least ?
Its likely the same for most people ( 100miles from my house.)
I was you one year ago before pulling the trigger on an E-Tron 50 through a work lease scheme. I am now an EV convert and my next car will likely be another lease but with better range. Even though the 170ish summer and 130ish winter on the E-Tron 50 has been fine for 99% of my driving needs. The other 1% I used rapid chargers, or just charged overnight at the place I was staying (granny lead). Let me try and answer your questions.
1, how long does it take you to charge?
About 50 seconds. I plug it in to our wall charger, go to bed and the next day unplug and go with 100% charge. Please bear in mind you do not need to charge every day and the vast majority of charging will be done at home, or work if you have it. So if you have a drive then get a home charger installed for a few hundred quid. There are four types of chargers.
- Granny lead. Basicaly a three pin plug and this will take literally days to charge most mid-large size batteries. This is last resort type charging that is better than nothing but will be utterly unsuitable for regular use.
- Home charger. Usually a 3kW unit that will take a few hours overnight to charge (depending on battery level when you plugged in). This is the most common type of charger.
- Public fast charger. Usually a 22kW unit that will charge from 7kW to 22kW depending on the car. So make sure you check the charing speeds of the car you are buying. This type of charger would still take a fair few hours to charge from zero to 100%. Good for a quick top up at supermarkets etc if you can find a free one.
- Public rapid charger. Anything from 50kw to 350kW but most cars charge far less than the 350kW rate. The will take about 1 hour at 50kW to 20-45 minutes at the higher rates. Assuming a 10% to 80% charge. They are also more expensive and in many cases still quite rare to find.
- Telsa Superchargers are also worth considering a Tesla for. In the UK mainland (not N. Ireland) Tesla owners have access to a very well covered network. Though normal public chargers have improved quite a bit for us mere mortals.
Yes, see above about 3kW home chargers. This is essential if you want care free EV driving.
3. Do you have a lot of charging stations near you?
This is going to depend where you live. Again if you don't have a drive to get a charger installed, or access to regular cheap charging (at work for example) then EV ownership will be a pain.
The issues I see at the moment with EV
1. The charge time ev takes hours to fill, traditional takes mins.
See my 50 seconds comment above, it is a joke based on reality. If you have home charging it really is a lot less hassle than using fuel pumps in a garage forecourt. I plug in at night, go to bed and get up in the morning with the car charged to whatever level I have set. I unplug and drive off.
2. Not many charging stations locally
There doesn't need to be if you have a home charger. The implication being that locally is well within the range of even the most short ranged BEVs. If you are driving longer distances then you are no longer local.
3. Unlike petrol its hard to do a quick topup
True but some minor planning can mitigate this somewhat but this is one of those areas that as an EV owner you just need to accept. I know some very rapid charging cars can add 60 miles of range in 10 minutes but going from empty to full in a petrol/diesel car is always going to trump EV charging.
4. not very easy to have a charging station at home for most when a huge number of people live in terraces or semi houses without garages.
Agreed for the terraced houses bit but not on the semi detached if it has a drive (most do) and a garage is not required. I have a garage but my PodPoint charger is on the wall on the side of the house at the driveway.
If you fall into the terraced house category I just wasted a lot of typing, because an EV should be avoided for these people. The only exception to this is having regular access to charging at work. As I said above unless you do thousands of miles every month you don't need to charge every day and most EVs will give close to 200 miles and this is 3-5 days of driving for the majority.
5. all the electronics so repairs will be a pain.
EVs require less maintenance than combustion engined cars. Most will also offer an 8 year or 100,000 miles warranty on the battery.
https://www.theaa.com/driving-advice/electric-vehicles/electric-car-maintenance
EV Battery warranties by manufactuter
https://www.buyacar.co.uk/cars/economical-cars/electric-cars/1615/electric-car-battery-life
Contrary to what you hear, hydrogen cars are not viable yet and may not be for a very long time.
Other EV buying tips.
- Don't just look at range when buying an EV. Look at charging speeds and overall efficency as well.
- Be sure to check the rapid charging curve if possible. A car may hit the advertised charging rate on a rapid charger for only around the first 20%-30% of the battery, then charging speed drops off quite a bit.
- As a follow-on from the above point. If on a very long journey and you need to charge, don't fall into the trap of thinking always charge to 100%. Get a bit more than you need and unplug because you could end up trickle charging for ages when you don't need to. It's quicker to charge twice for 15 minutes each than once for 45 minutes or an hour. (Charging curve remember).
- It may be a good idea to avoid EVs with the Chademo socket type. It looks like they are being phased out for the AC and DC (CCS) type cars. Most new cars are coming with these newer chargers.
EVs do require some planning for longer trips and it can be a pain of you find your plan A charger is broken or occupied and you head of to find a plan B. But for the rest of the time they are easier to live with than a petrol/diesel. If that wasn't true I would have got shot of mine long ago.
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Having just borrowed an i3 when holidaying (Cottage in cornwall) twice now, I've had that stark contrast to driving down in a diesel, then touring around in an EV with quite low expectations (as you seem to have)..
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if you are lease/pcp'ing are VW being bullish on the residuals, with corresponding low monthlies ?
they still seem a stand-out in the market where, despite interior, they would be something to buy yourself, with residual confidence.
what would you have bought.
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For work/company purchasers the BIK contribution, remains, a no brainer.
It's just a factor of cars being overpriced at launch and now they've lowered the RRP and we have an overdose of new EV's at the moment in the £30-£50k bracket so deals can be had which means with some good haggling (So I like to think!) the normal residual value comes out around 48% which is fairly OK, this is inline with the Nissan Leaf so is not a deliberate inflation as far as I can tell.
Possibly talking cross purposes, I just mean if you buy at RRP vs a significant discount the residual value at 3 years will be the same but as a percentage of purchase price the heavily discounted car will have depreciated less.. Right now the ID.3 is being heavily discounted and there has been a drop in RRP..past performance isn't an indication of future performance - but, reposting
If I take all the offers on an ID.3 max Ive had since early 2021, initially the RRP with options was 42.4K with a Predicted residual of 15.8k so 37.3% retained, this deal now is effectively a net car price of 33k with the same GFV, which is 48% retained value, this is inline with its rivals (slightly worse) so I don’t think VW are being bullish with their GFV’s, but I agree, it’s a prediction which cannot always be relied upon..
Or are we talking about different things?
Our battery lease Zoe cost us £12k when we got it in 2019 and getting quotes for £10.7k to sell it back to a dealer now. Residuals have been great so far but probably a function of a very small market now getting more interest as there aren’t many old electric cars to go around. Plus grants used to be a lot better.
Mad how a Zoe used to be so cheap though and all electric cars are mega expensive now
Mad how a Zoe used to be so cheap though and all electric cars are mega expensive now
I could get a 7KW charger installed inside my ground floor flat, then 10 meter type 2 cable, through the window, over the communal grass, anti-trip-cable-thing over pavement to the car park area out front.. lawers on standby. It's not a main road, its one of those small flat car park areas so the pavement is only used by neighbours. Thoughts? (I'm only going to listen to the people that say yes) 
Fast forward 10 years where everyone has the same idea and its just rows of anti trip things.
Anti trip patent pending (it goes over an archway)
Fast forward 10 years where everyone has the same idea and its just rows of anti trip things.
Anti trip patent pending (it goes over an archway)
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I could get a 7KW charger installed inside my ground floor flat, then 10 meter type 2 cable, through the window, over the communal grass, anti-trip-cable-thing over pavement to the car park area out front.. lawers on standby. It's not a main road, its one of those small flat car park areas so the pavement is only used by neighbours. Thoughts? (I'm only going to listen to the people that say yes)
Fast forward 10 years where everyone has the same idea and its just rows of anti trip things.
Anti trip patent pending (it goes over an archway)
The solution is that you'll need to work with the freeholder and other tenants on getting proper charge posts installed in your car park. However that is easier said than done and its an expensive chicken or egg issue where people are not going to want to invest without without having an electric car and they are not going to get an electric car without the charger.
At the moment there isn't really any incentives (or sticks) for freeholders to do anything about it, you'll have to live in hope that the government passes some kind of regulation that forces the issue. Particularly where adding chargers to spaces one at a time is significantly more expensive per charger than doing all of them at once.
Yeah good point. I'd imagine there will be more and more people doing my anti-trip idea until it is banned/made illegal, but only then will gov/councils get more onboard.
I may have other options, my sister already has an electric car and they love it so I think they may get their own 7KW home charger at some point. Plus my parents could get one. Both have their own drive. I'd only about 4 hours a week @ 7KW with usual commute miles.
Thanks, guys the information has been very useful.
At the moment I won't be able to get a home charger, I don't have a driveway or a garage, not a lot of people do, here up north, and a walking path between the road and my house.
I had some other questions,
1. do you get any gov incentives to get an EV or is it like the solar panels? do it yourself if you want it dont ask us.
2. What is the insurance like?
3. Do the cars need road tax and MOT
At the moment I won't be able to get a home charger, I don't have a driveway or a garage, not a lot of people do, here up north, and a walking path between the road and my house.
I had some other questions,
1. do you get any gov incentives to get an EV or is it like the solar panels? do it yourself if you want it dont ask us.
2. What is the insurance like?
3. Do the cars need road tax and MOT
This is one thing I was noticing, which is another thing I was considering, prices for cars are not what you would call cheap, not much on the used market and the ones that are available are not far off from new price, I assume its mostly because the car models are not very old.Our battery lease Zoe cost us £12k when we got it in 2019 and getting quotes for £10.7k to sell it back to a dealer now. Residuals have been great so far but probably a function of a very small market now getting more interest as there aren’t many old electric cars to go around. Plus grants used to be a lot better.
Mad how a Zoe used to be so cheap though and all electric cars are mega expensive now
Honestly? As much as I post positive things about EVs, in your situation, without a home charging solution, I wouldn’t consider it in 2021. I’d leave it 5 years and re-evaluate.
To answer your specific questions:
1. There is a £2.5k incentive for new ‘affordable’ EVs but it’s knocked off the purchase price already. There is a £250 grant for a home charger but you are not eligible because you don’t have anywhere suitable to install it.
2. Too complex to answer, or depends on the car. A Zoe or leaf will not be any more than other similar hatchbacks but something like a Model 3 will be more expensive because it’s faster than most proper sports cars. Insurance is relatively cheap in this country and in therms of total cost of ownership, insurance is a small expense for most.
3. Yes they are still cars but the tax is currently zero unless it’s in the luxury car bracket (£40k+?). But it’s not really that relevant when you are spending that much money on a car.