EV general discussion

Oh yeah i didn't realise old diesel cars got to keep their £20 a year tax?!?!

I thought when we got shafted from 0 up to 195 everyone else did too to equalise the system for everyone?
i think its £35 now but yeah afaik my wifes old pug 308 "eco" diesel would still have been essentially nothing - had some plonker not written it off in a bone headed overtake.
 
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Oh yeah i didn't realise old diesel cars got to keep their £20 a year tax?!?!

I thought when we got shafted from 0 up to 195 everyone else did too to equalise the system for everyone?
Again the optics mean that they can't.

"Maude, a volunteer worker for the local food bank, says that she'll have to give up her charity work due to a 457% increase in the road tax on her fourteen year old car."

The press would have a field day.

Awkward truth is that EV owners being hit with £195 a year wouldn't really get any reaction from the general public what so ever.

It has taken 13 years for the VED to go up by £135 on my MX-5 so expect those £35 bracket cars to be low VED for some time to come!
 
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Again the optics mean that they can't.

"Maude, a volunteer worker for the local food bank, says that she'll have to give up her charity work due to a 457% increase in the road tax on her fourteen year old car."

The press would have a field day.

Awkward truth is that EV owners being hit with £195 a year wouldn't really get any reaction from the general public what so ever.

It has taken 13 years for the VED to go up by £135 on my MX-5 so expect those £35 bracket cars to be low VED for some time to come!

It's not going to do them any favours with trying to increase EV uptake however, especially if they stick 4p/mile or whatever on top as well! Much as I prefer driving an EV to ICE, quadrupling my cost/mile when coupled with the higher initial purchase price is definitely making me reconsider (not to mention the admin of having to faff around estimating my mileage and headache of whichever barely functional system they cobble together for it).
 
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It's not going to do them any favours with trying to increase EV uptake however, especially if they stick 4p/mile or whatever on top as well!
Possibly not. Current objective is to start re-milking the motorist cash cows that have moved on to EVs. EV will remain the cheaper option for the foreseeable future though even with trying to reclaim the lost VED and fuel duty.
 
EV will remain the cheaper option for the foreseeable future though even with trying to reclaim the lost VED and fuel duty.

It's not quite that simple though, at the bottom end of the market at least.

Doing 8k miles costs me ~£160/year in electric (let's round that up to £200 if you factor in the odd occasion I use public charging)
£6-7k for a useable EV (there are cheaper, but on silly high mileage or things like battery lease Zoe, £6-7k will get you a battery owned one or an MG5)

Total over 3 years = £6,600

Adding in VED = £7,185
Add in rumoured 4p/mile = £8,145

A similar age/mileage Clio as the Zoe and you're looking at £4-5k + ~£1k/year in fuel, total over 3 years = ~£8k, slightly lower than the EV overall, but more importantly, the upfront cost is significantly lower.

Obviously the driving experience is going to be completely different, and the EV is likely to be a generally "nicer" car, but when you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, cost is almost certainly going to be the main deciding factor. You could always get an older/higher mileage ICE and the cost difference is even more stark, whereas with an EV, going any lower is likely to result in a significantly compromised vehicle for some uses (at least in the current market, obviously this is going to improve as more capable EVs hit the lower end of the market).
 
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It's not quite that simple though, at the bottom end of the market at least.

Doing 8k miles costs me ~£160/year in electric (let's round that up to £200 if you factor in the odd occasion I use public charging)
£6-7k for a useable EV (there are cheaper, but on silly high mileage or things like battery lease Zoe, £6-7k will get you a battery owned one or an MG5)

Total over 3 years = £6,600

Adding in VED = £7,185
Add in rumoured 4p/mile = £8,145

A similar age/mileage Clio as the Zoe and you're looking at £4-5k + ~£1k/year in fuel, total over 3 years = ~£8k
dont forget £1300 to install a home charge point.
 
dont forget £1300 to install a home charge point.

Good point, that's over a year of fuel for your cheap ICE!

Obviously if you keep the car longer, the EV is going to end up cheaper, but when you're looking at cheap older/high mileage cars like these, repair costs are going to become more significant, you'll be out of warranty, and while of course they share a lot of common components, anything going wrong with the EV battery/drivetrain is likely to cost more than an equivalent ICE fault, even if purely down to the lack of garages able/willing to work on them at present.
 
Yeah that's an interesting point, my wife could do with changing her car soon as she needs something bigger than her Suzuki Swift and i just assumed we'd go EV but if they're going to ratchet up the price we may well just get another petrol as she doesn't do that much milage so the EV savings won't be as much for her as they were for me, 5 mile commute vs my 60 mile.

It's an interesting study in how to try kill off EV's on one hand and on the other dish out massive subsidies on the other?
 
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Anyone got a 3 pin plug charger for their EV, Amazon have a 10m Masterplug one on offer for £103.99 for Black Friday, are they any good or can someone recommend a better one for emergency charging?
 
indeed.... if anything i would rather they got rid of the subsidies on new cars and forced EVs to compete that way with ICE cars. generally the people buying brand new cars tend to be more well off... so piling costs onto those getting 2nd hand vehicles whilst offering £1000s of subsidies for those buying new cars seems to be punishing less well off people over well off ones.
 
Or it's the worst of both worlds.
No.

For somebody who want's an EV but does quite a few long drives so can't deal with the range/charging drawbacks it's a best of both worlds situation.

If their journey is under 50-80 miles round trip their car acts like an EV, if it's longer it acts like a 100+ MPG car, there's no downside for them.


the byd 6 seal saloon estate phev they are selling in eu to beat full bev tarifs, and will soon be sellimg in the UK, now seems a bit of a con 100bhp/120Nm only, if the battery is depleted
What the AI video fails to explain is that the 100bhp figure is the rated output of the generator (it's not really an engine), fully depleting the battery so it's only on power generation is realistically impossible under normal driving conditions as the generator can charge the battery faster than it will deplete. Of course if you're on a race track you may run into difficulties :P
 
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Anyone got a 3 pin plug charger for their EV, Amazon have a 10m Masterplug one on offer for £103.99 for Black Friday, are they any good or can someone recommend a better one for emergency charging?
Don't get the Masterplug. They claim to have thermal management and current throttling BUT they don't have a thermocouple in the most important part, the plug.

Ask me how I know as they say...



 
Mmm now where have I seen this before :rolleyes:

There is one going around social media where they got called out when people figured out they'd plugged an extension lead in in-between... though I think the posts are intentional rage/engagement bait.

We could have had similar - one place we were considering putting an EV charger in which was supposed to have a 32amp dedicated circuit had been cowboy jobbed by previous resident and would have not been pretty with anything more than about 5amp...
 

Okay...
  1. That's not an EV rated socket (as far as I'm aware they don't even come in doubles).
  2. It's a two gang 13A socket, not a "two gang plug 13A in one side plus more in the other side" socket (and we know things were plugged in both sides because the other side is still switched on). You're only supposed to use both sides if the total is under 13A (yes I know some manufacturers like MK self certify theirs for up to 15A total, but this brings me onto point 3).
  3. That's not even a good socket, hence why it's cracked over time from the heat, you can buy them online for under £3.
 
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