EV general discussion

Rimsy said:
Am i missing something here entirely or are EVs a massive pain in the ass which cause untold inconvenience having to stop and charge the damn things and then pay more money per mile than a diesel? My particular example is at a shell "recharge" which was charging 87p per kw/h which cost me just under £30 for about 100 miles of range.
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This is incredibly frustrating and something I think government should intervene in. If I was being very cynical I would suggest that "big oil" was placing barriers to EV adoption but charging so much for electricity. Is it in their interest to reduce the delta between the cost per mile of ice vs electric? Well at this point yes as they are enjoying super profits. Price to charge away from home should not be such a big premium. There is a VAT difference which accounts for some of the gap but not to the extent Shell are employing. The whole charging infrastructure is a bit of mess and partly because government left it to market forces to sort out and that means profiteering and poor service as a price for the investment.

We are lagging behind Germany in terms of chargers per 100k population and also are well off the pace of the governments own 2030 target of 300,000 public charge points. There are less than 40,000 at present.
 
Rimsy said:
My particular example is at a shell "recharge" which was charging 87p per kw/h which cost me just under £30 for about 100 miles of range.
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So what was your total average cost per kWh for your entire trip, including any you had from home, or even better if you get them free from work like some users do? :)
 
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Calpol said:
This is incredibly frustrating and something I think government should intervene in. If I was being very cynical I would suggest that "big oil" was placing barriers to EV adoption but charging so much for electricity. Is it in their interest to reduce the delta between the cost per mile of ice vs electric? Well at this point yes as they are enjoying super profits. Price to charge away from home should not be such a big premium. There is a VAT difference which accounts for some of the gap but not to the extent Shell are employing. The whole charging infrastructure is a bit of mess and partly because government left it to market forces to sort out and that means profiteering and poor service as a price for the investment.

We are lagging behind Germany in terms of chargers per 100k population and also are well off the pace of the governments own 2030 target of 300,000 public charge points. There are less than 40,000 at present.
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Grab some tin foil, it’s got nothing to do with big oil. In fact most of the charge networks have nothing to do with big oil.

It’s all down to the way the energy grid is structured in the U.K. and very few of the costs for new connections being socialised. Just the grid connection alone is hundreds of thousands of pounds to secure and frankly they don’t have the man power for all these high power connections.

There is so little competition within local areas, those that are installed have an effective monopoly, they can basically charge what ever they like at this point.
 
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b0rn2sk8 said:
Grab some tin foil, it’s got nothing to do with big oil. In fact most of the charge networks have nothing to do with big oil.

It’s all down to the way the energy grid is structured in the U.K. and very few of the costs for new connections being socialised. Just the grid connection alone is hundreds of thousands of pounds to secure and frankly they don’t have the man power for all these high power connections.

There is so little competition within local areas, those that are installed have an effective monopoly, they can basically charge what ever they like at this point.
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This is a good explanation of how things operate in the UK. (Probably been posted before)
 
Business rates arnt protected to the same extent as domestic users aswell as higher VAT.

Did you need to actually get a company car before you went conspiratorial when a holiday cost £40 more than you hoped it would?
 
Rimsy said:
Just joined the EV club thanks to work forcing them down our throats as company cars.
I have a Q4 e-tron and have to say its quite a nice drive no doubt but am absolutely mortified after my little weekend down to cornwall (only going from devon so hardly long distances!) to test it out.... unless my maths is way out public fast chargers are more expensive than petrol/diesel!!! How the hell is that meant to incentivise people to want to switch to these so called eco saviour machines?
Am i missing something here entirely or are EVs a massive pain in the ass which cause untold inconvenience having to stop and charge the damn things and then pay more money per mile than a diesel? My particular example is at a shell "recharge" which was charging 87p per kw/h which cost me just under £30 for about 100 miles of range.
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Did you set off on your journey with 100% charge? You should only really have to pay for the return journey on expensive public charging which brings the price right down, plus doing the rest of your normal journeys from home charging.

Also, you've got a huge EV which isn't well known for its efficiency either :p
 
squerble said:
Did you set off on your journey with 100% charge? You should only really have to pay for the return journey on expensive public charging which brings the price right down, plus doing the rest of your normal journeys from home charging.

Also, you've got a huge EV which isn't well known for its efficiency either :p
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I agree with all that - it's more the unpleasant surprise that "filling up" on the road is vastly more expensive than with an ICE.
If the government is meant to be trying to push everyone onto EVs then that in itself is hardly going to win people over!
 
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I think this plays into the recent buzzword that describes lack of critical thinking - possibly a good example or maybe I'm just being harsh....
Rimsy said:
I agree with all that - it's more the unpleasant surprise that "filling up" on the road is vastly more expensive than with an ICE.
If the government is meant to be trying to push everyone onto EVs then that in itself is hardly going to win people over!
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I'd rather they subsidise peoples home heating/cooking costs than someone in a heavily subsided company vehicle whilst they are driving on a personal holiday.

You've got one now, and just worked this out, so what exactly is the merit for making it cheaper to 'win people over' when you are already driving around in one.
 
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Rimsy said:
My personal circumstance is irrelevant to my point.
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Nothing to do with your personal circumstances - I'm talking about the company car tax system as a whole.

Choosing a Q4 electric over a Q5 petrol will result in significant differences in company car tax every single month through differences in the company car system designed to incentivise users to pick an electric car. Many people would argue that company car drivers currently get a very fair share of incentive to drive an electric car and don't therefore need any more.

Would you prefer to pay the same company car tax as an Audi Q5 petrol but have a subsidy on the rapid charging costs?
 
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Rimsy said:
My personal circumstance is irrelevant to my point.
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Wasn't "your point" that charging your EV on holiday is more expensive than it would be to do the same in a diesel? In which case it's very "convenient" to ignore the fact the car is costing you significantly less than the equivalent diesel would, almost as if you have an inherent bias against EVs (the fact you refer to it as "forcing them down our throats" also gives it away :rolleyes:)
 
Rimsy said:
I agree with all that - it's more the unpleasant surprise that "filling up" on the road is vastly more expensive than with an ICE.
If the government is meant to be trying to push everyone onto EVs then that in itself is hardly going to win people over!
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It depends on what you are comparing. 89p is still cheaper than it was to fuel my golf R and the Tesla has much more performance.

That said the superchargers are a lot cheaper and 99.9% of my fueling is at 7.5p per kW
 
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I've had quite a good experience with public charging in the Ioniq since getting it in January and found it pretty good even for longish trips despite the small battery (suspect its relative efficiency offsets this quite a bit).

150 miles one direction Saturday, left home with full charge (free as Glasgow still miraculously has free charging...for the very short term) and stopped to top up for 30 mins on the way at a cost of £5ish - 50kw charger as the ioniq can't actually handle any more at only 25p per Kwh, again chargeplace scotland.

Done the same again before leaving the next day, circa £4 top up to 80% then stopped at a fastned rapid as it was next to food on the way home and spent around £11 there.

£21 to cover around 320 miles by the time i used the car a little in between which i'm more than happy with. Even if i'd paid to charge before leaving it would only add £10 whereas our other car would need £60+ of fuel (completely ignoring the cost of the car, obviously). Biggest issue I really have is knowing which chargers are actually going to output anything like the speed intended, once i've got the MG and a slightly bigger battery i think i'd also happily pay the 70p+ per Kwh for a quicker charge if time is important. At the moment i tend to avoid the fastest and most expensive chargers as it's a bit of a waste given what the Hyundai can actually handle r.e charge speeds.

Also no cheap home rate as moving this year so paying for charger is a bit of a waste, not found it remotely difficult using a mix of slow home charging, public and workplace charge however I live within a few mins of some decent chargers and can boost for free at work so not a fair comparison to some.
 
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Having forgot to plug my car in all week this week for some reason I had to go to work with 18% battery and try the old hypermiling tricks...
215watt hrs pr mile :eek: :D :cool:
Considering normally I'll use 280..

Not bad

Now all I have to do this evening is get to the gym and then get home




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It's a really bad indicator of my nerd level that I look at that image and go ooooh :D

I'm such a saddo, my Fiat would collect such data on USB and rate my driving totally nerded out on that for a while, turned the whole driving thing into a meta game trying to be top of the tables and the best in the country :D
 
I take delivery of my standard model Y a week today, looking forward too it considering I had to give me old company car Polestar 2 back in October when switching company and wasn't able to order a new car until I passed probation last month. Tesla was really the only option as they are the only manufacturer that could get a car to me in a decent time frame - the Polestar and XC40 equivalents couldn't even give me a firm timeline. Disappointing it's just the standard (read slow) version compared to the full fat polestar 2 I had but it will be a welcome difference from the 1.4 2016 Astra I bought to see us through / become the family second car (I suspect my wife will mainly drive the Tesla with the car seats all loaded in there and I will be left with the astra!)
 
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