Fuel price discussion thread (was ‘chaos’)

I expect any tax changes will just get loaded on to the VED, especially now the DVLA have direct debit systems already set up.

Something like a super mini will be £300, Premium saloon £500, big SUV £900 a year paid by direct debit each month.

Any amounts will be based on the list price and perhaps a premium added for those that consume a lot of electric.
 
[TW]Fox said:
That is exactly what this would do though, unless you want to argue that New Zealand doesn't tax diesel as a road fuel. It does, but using mileage, not on a per litre basis.
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I didn't comment on the per mile, did I? If you actually bothered to read the PART I quoted, I said how are they going to tax my electricity going into my EV from my own solar array that doesn't touch the meter or the grid, taxing per mile isn't taxing the electricity now is it? But oh wait it's Fox, who can't ever be wrong.
 
lovelyhead said:
Ecotricity is one of, if not the most expensive public chargers. There are plenty of cheaper, even free options available. If you are bothered about saving money and using ecotricity then you are d

.
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how out of date is this post, they were taken over last year, it’s Gridserve, and at 30p they were dirt cheap and at 39p now still remain one of the cheapest rapid charge providers.
 
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Haggisman said:
like i said even best case scenarion with cheap home charging, the difference is about 10p/mile, meaning you need 50-100k miles to break even over the £5-10k cheaper ICE. That's between 10-20 years if you only do 5k/year
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You also need to take into account cheaper servicing, tax and less depreciation.
 
Jonnycoupe said:
how out of date is this post, they were taken over last year, it’s Gridserve, and at 30p they were dirt cheap and at 39p now still remain one of the cheapest rapid charge providers.
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Sorry I got mixed up with Instavolt.

Just shows how little you really need to use public chargers even in a 24Kwh Leaf when you have your own charger. I only ever use my own charger or the free Podpoint at Tesco.
 
lovelyhead said:
You also need to take into account cheaper servicing, tax and less depreciation.
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Yes of course, so £140ish for tax, £50 or so servicing per year saved. In the grand scheme of things that doesnt make much difference. Dont forget increased tyre wear and the need for more expensive XL tyres

Depreciation... Who knows? Yes it will probably worth more than the equivalent ICE of the same age, but enough to offset the higher purchase price?
 
Asda near me was 1.54 today, it was also sold out of diesel at every pump.

Morrisons had tons of queuing, also out of diesel on some pumps, but petrol was bit less at 1.50
 
Cyber-Mav said:
Looks like they gonna do a temporary vat freeze on petrol. Should help out
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he's really got to do more on household energy first ? ... and if he does something on petrol, public transport should be in line for some relief.
23rd March then - so I won't fill up too much in the interim - sitting in a queue is soul destroying.

free ev charge points - equally, with an ev, not sure I'd spend extended time patronizing the gym or supermarket for free energy - you get in and out of Cambridge fast, when the traffic congestion permits
 
lovelyhead said:
My Leaf with zero thermal management of the battery is still above 85% battery health and it is coming up for 7 years old. Battery degradation is just not an issue EV owners need to worry themselves about.
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I personally would be quite worried about that. If it has a range of say 800 miles from new then I accept it might not be such a big issue as it'll still easily get you pretty much wherever you could want to go, but considering their range isn't that great to start with, a 15% loss over 7 years is pretty significant if you're buying a used car or intending to keep it a long time. I suppose the thing to look at is whether the cost of replacing the battery after say 10 years is less than the cost of 10 years of engine / transmission maintenance on an ICE car, in which case it would be easier to justify.
 
geekman said:
I personally would be quite worried about that. If it has a range of say 800 miles from new then I accept it might not be such a big issue as it'll still easily get you pretty much wherever you could want to go, but considering their range isn't that great to start with, a 15% loss over 7 years is pretty significant if you're buying a used car or intending to keep it a long time. I suppose the thing to look at is whether the cost of replacing the battery after say 10 years is less than the cost of 10 years of engine / transmission maintenance on an ICE car, in which case it would be easier to justify.
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People overestimate the amount of range you actually need. I think the average person drives approximately 30 miles a day. Even the most degraded Nissan Leaf can cover that distance.

I am the third owner of my Leaf 24kwh. When I bought it, it had only been rapid charged 7 times in its 27,000 mile life. That suggests the previous owners never had an issue with a car with 90 miles range. The car now has had 10 rapid charges. The first was me driving it home after buying it because it hadn't been charged up and the second was because I incorrectly set the charging timer at home and the car failed to charge so I had to rapid charge it at Tesco. The tenth rapid charge was for a round trip that was longer than the range of the car which took 20 minutes whilst doing some shopping in Lidl.

Obviously a car with only 50 miles range is basically useless for any long journeys but again, for most people long journeys are way less common than the everyday school run or trip to the shops. A Leaf is ideal for a local runabout.

But the leaf is the worse case scenario really for electric cars. I think that for the majority of people a car with a 200 mile range is more than enough. You could travel from one end of the UK to the other with no more than 3 stops. Not many people could drive that distance with out stopping that many times anyway. Even an EV with a battery that has lost 25% of its capacity that originally had a 200 mile range will still be quite desirable to many people on the second hand market. 150 mile range is getting close to double my range. 25% degradation is extremely rare and worse case scenario (outside of Nissan Leaf's).

So I repeat, battery degradation is really a non issue that rags like the Daily Mail like to peddle as click bait.
 
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lovelyhead said:
People overestimate the amount of range you actually need. I think the average person drives approximately 30 miles a day. Even the most degraded Nissan Leaf can cover that distance.

I am the third owner of my Leaf 24kwh. When I bought it, it had only been rapid charged 7 times in its 27,000 mile life. That suggests the previous owners never had an issue with a car with 90 miles range.
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It is of course no surprise that a Nissan Leaf with a small range is no problem. Why would it be? It's a small city car. It's range is absolutely ideally suited for a car designed to do short journeys and return to its home every evening.

The range debate is frustrating - from both sides.

You get basically two points of view:

a) Electric cars are totally rubbish because what if I need to wake up and with zero notice drive 1000 miles whilst towing a trailer?!?!
b) Electric cars are totally amazing because nobody ever drives very far anyway and even if you do you need to stop anyway so can just charge mid journey

For most people, what the 'average driver' needs is not relevant. What is relevant is what they need themselves. None of us really have much of an understanding of what other peoples needs may be and to be frank its also irrelevant - we buy a car to suit our own needs and not the needs of the average driver.

We have two cars. One is used almost entirely for long journeys. One is used almost entirely around town. I can't remember the last time I personally drove the Mini* more than 100 miles a day. I just don't. An electric one would be absolutely ideal, I'd be able to plug it in at home and never ever require use of a public charger. It is almost the perfect car to be fully electric and there are absolutely no range concerns.

But the reason there are absolutely no range concerns is because all of my long distance usage is done in my other car. Last journey in my other car was 250 miles in a single day - starting from a location which was both away from home and some distance from home. It is here that electric becomes a challenge. How would I do that without significantly increasing the hassle? I currently see no way.

Now, I did stop - twice in-fact - over the course of this 250 mile journey. The first stop was for several hours, but there were no electric car charging facilities. The second stop was a Motorway service area, where we stopped to get coffee etc - the typical sort of stop that I always tend to make after 2 or 3 hours of driving. There were electric car chargers here - but all were in use. So I'd have had to wait. Which turned a 10 minute stop into what? This is the range issue I have. This would be solved be one of two things:

a) guaranteed availability of fast chargers anywhere I'd need to be
b) better range.

Or a combination of the two. This will come, in time. But we're not there yet and no amount of EV early adaptors telling everyone else they've no idea how they use their own car is going to change this.

My current car has a range of up 700 miles between refuelling stops and each stop takes 2-3 minutes. This is incredibly useful and you can see why to many people suddenly having nothing like this is really quite a different prospect. There are few places I cannot travel to, away from home, and return, without needing to think about filling up the car. Despite my regular long trips virtually all my refuelling takes place within a few miles of home. This is incredibly convenient.

It is clear that more needs to happen and no amount of EV owners telling people they are wrong and they only drive 30 miles a day anyway because average will change that.

Standard disclaimer - I am not anti EV. I want one and will get one as soon as it makes sense for me. I've been posting here long enough for it to be fairly obvious what i like in a car - large, smooth, refined and comfortable cars. An EV is significantly more refined than a diesel engine!

* Annoyingly, my partner does use the Mini for a monthly 350 mile round trip and I can't convince her to take my car instead. It's probably this is which has stopped the Mini moving to an electric one, we took one out and really liked it.

Given the fact that day to day it's entirely true that most people don't drive that far it does make me wonder why more isn't being made of PHEV for environmental reasons. All day to day local driving is emissions free and long distance driving is range anxiety free. They do seem quite ideal - but they tend to be paired with thirsty petrol engines which somewhat reduces the appeal.
 
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