EV general discussion

McPhee said:
A lot of the earlier electric cars had very generous trim levels. I had a Zoe first, and that came with a bunch of toys which were extras even on the top-spec Clio. I then replaced it with a 24kWh Leaf, which was even more generously kitted out. And I'm now driving a fully kitted out 40kWh Leaf (I've even got the Intelligent Rear View Mirror).

I know the Leaf gets some stick for its archaic design, but the 40kWh car is a huge bargain at the moment IMO. They sell for about the same price as a used Astra of similar age/milage :eek:
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I like the facelifted leaf. it's a shame the later ones still had chademo as it will put a lot off but then I suppose for those who do not care that is part of why they are so cheap now. imo a smart looking car too unlike the 1st gen, had the Mrs of liked em I would have had no issue having one as a 2nd car.
 
bigmike20vt said:
I like the facelifted leaf. it's a shame the later ones still had chademo as it will put a lot off but then I suppose for those who do not care that is part of why they are so cheap now. imo a smart looking car too unlike the 1st gen, had the Mrs of liked em I would have had no issue having one as a 2nd car.
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It's not just the Chademo connector. The 40kWh Leaf only charges at ~40kW on a rapid charger. And that's only if the battery isn't too hot :p On longer journeys where you need multiple charges, you won't even get that speed.

And while the new shape looks nicer than the old one, the facelift car just isn't as efficient as the original. I wouldn't trust mine to do more than 120 miles on a charge. Stick a 40kWh pack in the original Leaf and it would probably do 150+.

It's a great car for local commutes. And it's alright for longer journeys up to 200-ish miles. But even the older Leafs are probably faster than the 40 on long (300+ mile) journeys (they don't have the charge speed throttling issue).
 
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McPhee said:
It's not just the Chademo connector. The 40kWh Leaf only charges at ~40kW on a rapid charger. And that's only if the battery isn't too hot :p On longer journeys where you need multiple charges, you won't even get that speed.

And while the new shape looks nicer than the old one, the facelift car just isn't as efficient as the original. I wouldn't trust mine to do more than 120 miles on a charge. Stick a 40kWh pack in the original Leaf and it would probably do 150+.

It's a great car for local commutes. And it's alright for longer journeys up to 200-ish miles. But even the older Leafs are probably faster than the 40 on long (300+ mile) journeys (they don't have the charge speed throttling issue).
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that is fair enough.... correct tool for the correct job and all that, which is why i said i would have taken one as the 2nd car for the mrs..... (not the family wagon).
 
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bigmike20vt said:
if the government are set on reverse ferreting then they could easily discount the "crap" ones which can't even manage 50miles real world winter range.
also for company cars PHEVs need to drop any tax breaks all together. if you want that sweet tax dodging then it should be full EV or nowt.

our PHEV does over 90miles winter, 130miles summer range and in 12 months used under 9l of fuel (and covered around 10,000 miles)

so despite being disappointed in the recent news personally, PHEVs *could* be part of the solution but only if handled sensibly and the poor ones weeded out.
personally I would like to see all new PHEVs have a wltp 100 mile battery range (so real world winter dual carriageway range of around 60 miles) otherwise they are considered like an ICE
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So, lets take a 'hypothetical' person who is office based and has a 32 mile commute but has a PHEV because their work takes them on 500+ mile door to door trips. What disadvantage is there to that person with a "crap" 35 mile range vs your requirement of 100 miles?

As for cutting the tax breaks, why? Company car tax has been emissions based for as long as I've had a company car and a PHEV can have much lower emissions than an equivalent petrol depending on the usage cycle. My PHEV is in the 12% bracket but has a P11D of £40080. I don't save a fortune over my old car which was in the 29% bracket because of the higher list price. I do average 15 - 20 mpg more in it though, which equals less emissions justifying the lower BIK.

"That sweet tax dodging" with an EV actually comes at quite an expense if you use your company car for sizable business miles. Tinders has a very sweet deal with his employer but the vast majority will stick to HMRC's flat 7ppm reimbursement rate. That simply isn't fit for purpose. When looking into EVs as a company car (I wanted my figures before I went to the boss who ultimately said to go PHEV) I worked out the cost to me personally over my last 10 work trips after expensing at the 7ppm rate. I used ABRP and based it on a big battery Enyaq, a car that was in budget and had a big enough boot for work. Here were the results based on leaving with a 100% battery charged using an EV discounted tariff...

Trip 1 - 514 miles - £24.98 cost to me
Trip 2 - 518 miles - £31.26 cost to me
Trip 3 - 477 miles - £29.44 cost to me
Trip 4 - 328 miles - £3.14 profit
Trip 5 - 359 miles - £10.78 cost to me
Trip 6 - 431 miles - £11.72 cost to me
Trip 7 - 414 miles - £7.38 cost to me
Trip 8 - 235 miles - £9.80 profit
Trip 9 - 305 miles - £1.30 profit
Trip 10 - 1129 miles - £119.38 cost to me

That last one is a once a year trip to a couple of customers in Scotland but as I say, I just picked the last 10 at the time.

The TLDR summary is that any one can pick arbitrary figures of 'what the government should do' but its difficult to look beyond your own bubble of what people need.
 
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lordrobs said:
The TLDR summary is that any one can pick arbitrary figures of 'what the government should do' but its difficult to look beyond your own bubble of what people need.
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FWIW to call you on the only looking at my own bubble... i dont get any tax breaks regardless of car, i have to pay for my own out of my own pocket and any work miles get paid per mile after putting in receipts etc...

but the issue is.... perhaps you use your PHEV as intended using as few miles on petrol as possible which is great... but you accuse me of not looking out of my own bubble whilst ignoring the stats which have been published which show a great many of them are not ran as intended at all and ultimately end up as bad - or worse - than just buying an efficient ICE vehicle.

if you had a, lets say tesla with 300 mile range and needed to go beyond that range and so ended up charging at a super charger at 45p per kwh for work then of course you should be reimbursed for that, at the correct price, not just 7p.... and that should be implemented as well. (like i said our work covers us what ever it costs plus a little more for tyre wear and tear)
but better that imo than a PHEV that only does a few miles on battery then needs petrol. IF you really want the convenience of petrol for going on a long road trip that is up to you but imo there should not be tax breaks for that.

imo too many people seem to think a company car as some sort of right.... and it isnt it is a massive perk that many of us cannot get (and soon wont even get the small tax carrot of saving under a few hundred notes a year on tax for them) and as such a mild inconvenience of having to charge them now and then on long journeys is a small price to pay if you want the tax breaks imo.....

NOTE am not blaming you for getting what ever you can get within the current rules..... but i AM saying the rules should be changed (including getting paid the correct amount for fast charging on long work journeys beyond the range of your vehicle).
 
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bigmike20vt said:
FWIW to call you on the only looking at my own bubble... i dont get any tax breaks regardless of car, i have to pay for my own out of my own pocket and any work miles get paid per mile after putting in receipts etc...

but the issue is.... perhaps you use your PHEV as intended using as few miles on petrol as possible which is great... but you accuse me of not looking out of my own bubble whilst ignoring the stats which have been published which show a great many of them are not ran as intended at all and ultimately end up as bad - or worse - than just buying an efficient ICE vehicle.

if you had a, lets say tesla with 300 mile range and needed to go beyond that range and so ended up charging at a super charger at 45p per kwh for work then of course you should be reimbursed for that, at the correct price, not just 7p.... and that should be implemented as well. (like i said our work covers us what ever it costs plus a little more for tyre wear and tear)
but better that imo than a PHEV that only does a few miles on battery then needs petrol. IF you really want the convenience of petrol for going on a long road trip that is up to you but imo there should not be tax breaks for that.

imo too many people seem to think a company car as some sort of right.... and it isnt it is a massive perk that many of us cannot get (and soon wont even get the small tax carrot of saving under a few hundred notes a year on tax for them) and as such a mild inconvenience of having to charge them now and then on long journeys is a small price to pay if you want the tax breaks imo.....

NOTE am not blaming you for getting what ever you can get within the current rules..... but i AM saying the rules should be changed (including getting paid the correct amount for fast charging on long work journeys beyond the range of your vehicle).
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If you see an Astra estate as a massive perk then I really feel sorry for you :p My job requires me to travel the UK, therefore my employer needs to facilitate that. They choose to provide a car, there is no opt out option not that I'd want to stick tens of thousands of miles on my own car. Its like my company phone, credit card, laptop, test equipment... tools that I need to facilitate doing my job.

The taxation comes from the fact that there is a perceived benefit in kind because MD's and senior management used to use cars as a tax dodge and taking a car in lieu of salary. The reality is that it is unworkable for me not to have the car for personal use. There would be nowhere to store my car when out in the company one and vice versa to give just one logistical nightmare.

As for PHEVs I do question the published stats because of how the data is sourced. Companies can only calculate the economy of their fleet if they are paying for the fuel. If your employer is paying for the fuel, you don't charge the thing up because you are paying twice (HMRC flat mileage rate PLUS the cost of the electricity). That isn't every company car driver though, I have no idea what the ratios are but LOTS pay for their own fuel then claim back at the HMRC rate. In this scenario you most certainly do charge the thing up! That's a HMRC advisory fuel rate issue though, you can't blame individual drivers because not everyone gets to choose the system they are on.

The shift is already happening and we will all end up in EVs, which I think is a great thing by the way, but to start taking pot shots at alternatives because your PHEV (or range extender EV as I would refer to it) can do 90 miles in the winter, therefore all PHEVs that do less than this should be banned is ridiculous. It is great that it works for you. For me its got a fraction of the boot space that I need and doing 85% of a trip powered by a motorbike engine fuelled from a cup sized fuel tank sounds horrendous. Therefore I think the government should ban "crap" PHEVs that don't have 500L+ of boot space and can't maintain 70mph up hill once the battery runs out. See, sounds ridiculous doesn't it because my requirements don't equal your requirements.
 
lordrobs said:
(or range extender EV as I would refer to it)
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i wish the government would have referred to it like that as well.... in other countries that is how it was treated and was taxed accordingly.. in the uk however it had the same luxury car tax and yearly car tax as any standard hybrid.

our i3 however is from 2018 and technology has improved a lot since then....... we are talking about new car and there is no excuse for any hybrid not to do a decent amount of miles under battery power at this point. and again to be clear, i am NOT blaming drivers..... i am blaming the rules (and ultimately the government i guess) for not having more robust rules around which cars qualify.

if people are choosing a hybrid because its cheaper than having a full EV and charging at a public charging point due to how they can claim back expenses... that is a flawed system.

btw after a Google audi A3 and a a plug in golf hybrid can do a claimed 90 miles. probably not that in reality but it's an improvement at least
 
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bigmike20vt said:
there is no excuse for any hybrid not to do a decent amount of miles under battery power at this point
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Of course there is because the same problems that effect EV range still exist, the efficiency of motors haven't really improved as they were already pretty good, so gains are marginal and battery density hasn't got high enough at a reasonable cost so you need very big battery to achieve 100 miles all season in you sales rep wagon, PHEVs that companies might use would have to be the size of of an X5 or GLE to fit the appropriate battery, fuel tank and motors etc.

Due to the size, weight and cost addition of respectable size hardware, it kind of tips the scales to either say either stay small battery, go full EV or just buy a diesel. :o
 
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There's quite a few PHEV's that aren't huge and claim a 80+ mile battery, one of them is the Golf eHybrid with 89 miles and a 19.7kWh pack, the other stand out one being the Skoda Superb at 84 miles range, with the same pack size which is impressive.
 
The EV recovery rates are a complete joke quite frankly - when I travel it tends to be significant distance that is more practical or only possible to fly but on the odd occasion I travel a drivable 200 miles plus to a single destination I now book a train wherever possible and do not use my company car. Imo there is no reason an employee should ever be out of pocket (nor "significantly winning") when travelling for business
 
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Journey said:
There's quite a few PHEV's that aren't huge and claim a 80+ mile battery, one of them is the Golf eHybrid with 89 miles and a 19.7kWh pack, the other stand out one being the Skoda Superb at 84 miles range, with the same pack size which is impressive.
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Yes but the requirement mentioned all season range, those cars do sound great though, be interesting to know if they achieve that claim as its nudging 4.7 miles/kwh, would be a bit strange if a PHEV out does many real EV on a run.

Golf looses ~100 litres in the boot giving almost the same size boot as my little Up.....not the practical sales rep mobile, car needs to be bigger for that 'little' battery, bigger again if you want more range, Superb could probably take a lot more.

Probably be a better pool car for me than the little EVs mind you if there's a decent opening for a big lad like me, big boot not needed.
 
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ford now offering charger with ev's - a rrp reduction, if car is on the precipice of luxury tax would be preferable though https://www.ford.co.uk/hybrid-electric/power-promise

passat with same phev drivetrain as golf a bit more spacey , but battery still taking additional boot space like 330e touring - maybe new 3 neue klasse phev will not do that,
can't but see that by 2030 with more&economic public chargers and 800V/higher energy density(like new blade) cars, that phev's should be redundant, -if- chinese will sell us batteries.
 
CaptainRAVE said:
A lot less mechanically to go wrong, hardly anything that needs servicing, I’ve gone from £140 a month on petrol to £8 of electricity. I’ve honestly not looked back.
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Which car did you go for? :)

I was looking at a Hyundai Ioniq 5 (i know it looks a bit marmite) due to good used manufacturer approved pricing. You can pick them up for like 18K.

But then I read their reliability is not very good in a couple of places, at least vs say a Kia EV6 which then put me off.

What also liked about the Hyundai is i have a official service center very close to me which is a big bonus as I hate having to drive my car now 45 minutes and then making my way back if the car needs to stay there for a couple of days fir example.

What's people's in here thoughts about the car Ioniq 5 excluding how it looks?
 
TNA said:
How does ev car reliability compare to ice cars? Cheaper to run? Less time in garage?
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Obviously highly dependent on manufacturer, but EV is an inherently more reliable technology than ICE. Far few moving parts and much less maintenance required. Running costs are far lower - providing you have home charging.
 
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