Fuel price discussion thread (was ‘chaos’)

lovelyhead said:
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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is it your only car ? - 90 miles wouldn't meet most peoples weekend needs - not sure if there is data on average weekend leisure car miles

edit: https://www.licencebureau.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/road-use-statistics.pdf
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lovelyhead said:
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.
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Whereas taking my last work trip, which I did non stop, would require five stops to recharge in your 24KWh Leaf if ABRP is to be believed.

Don't get me wrong, the fact it works for you is awesome but that doesn't detract from the fact that for many people public charging is, and always will be, a necessity.

EDIT - Fox managed to put across my point much more eloquently.
 
[TW]Fox said:
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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This. There seems to be a lot anti towards PHEV but for me they are ideal until the charging network gets better.

I do 20,000 miles per year. 15,000 of these are commuting to and from work and can be done on 100% electric (unless I need to pull out of a junction sharpish or overtake)

Another 1,000 will be 5 - 20 mile round trips to local shops and places - again these journeys can be done on 100% electric.

The other 4,000 miles are longer journeys, some of which would be fine if I had a full EV, I could have gone there and back without needed to charge. Eg last weekend I went out taking photos and did a 150 mile round trip.

Then there are the 200+ and 400+ journeys to see family a few times of year.

It will only be on these longer jouneys that I will need to use any fuel as so long as my PHEV is fully charged at home, it has a 52 mile range plus any regen I get.

So my annual fuel consumption is about to slashed to a fraction of what it was before but I still have a car which can go 500+miles without needing to be charged or filled up with petrol if I need it to be.
 
PHEV would be ideal for me - but the options aren't amazing right now for my needs :s (and/or would cost a lot more to buy than I can justify for my uses).
 
Greebo said:
Then there are the 200+ and 400+ journeys to see family a few times of year.
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That is how some people think totally differently though, out of the limited yearly travel that is out of the range of an EV I don't have an issue with stopping, but it is down to how much people prefer convivence in one manner vs another. You are a good example of an ideal PHEV candidate, and as long as you are happy to plug in your car every day, maybe twice a day, then you'll be really making the most of what a PHEV has to offer. You then have to ask yourself, what is the cost of the massive V6 engine, transmission, exhaust system, fuel tank, and all the other parts that the ICE needs to work and its value, when (if you kept it 5 years) that huge amount of steel and moving parts that require maintained may have only covered 10-12k miles.
 
jpaul said:
is it your only car ? - 90 miles wouldn't meet most peoples weekend needs - not sure if there is data on average weekend leisure car miles

edit: https://www.licencebureau.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/road-use-statistics.pdf
51931622816_4881985282_c_d.jpg
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Yes the Leaf is my only car and I am quite happy with the range as it is just now. Would I like more, sure. But I don't really need it.

I am not saying a 24Kwh Leaf is for everyone. I am saying that an EV with a range around the 150 mile mark would satisfy most peoples needs. Your table seems to back that up.
 
I think the difficulty here is that it's totally true that a 150 mile range would satisfy most of the needs of the average driver. But people generally want to buy cars that will suit all of their needs not just the needs they have for 90% of the time.

Which is why so many people buy an enormous SUV to drive to and from work because a few times a year it comes in handy on a family holiday.
 
[TW]Fox said:
I think the difficulty here is that it's totally true that a 150 mile range would satisfy most of the needs of the average driver. But people generally want to buy cars that will suit all of their needs not just the needs they have for 90% of the time.

Which is why so many people buy an enormous SUV to drive to and from work because a few times a year it comes in handy on a family holiday.
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Yep, in an ideal world I would have 2 or 3 cars. (I currently have 4 but thats another story since they are classic cars)

A sporty 2 door coupe EV for travelling to work and a bit of fun. Dont need rear doors or rear seats.

big 4x4 SUV for towing the horse trailer and for winter when the weather gets bad so I can actually leave my house.

A 4 door GT type car, could be an EV so long as it has great range, for trips to visit family or weekends away etc.

All three in a triple garage and just pick the right tool for the job on the day.

Then another double or triple garage for the classic cars.

But not all of us have the money or space unlikely Gibbo :p

So you end up compromising. I need to be able to tow a horse trailer and get out in winter so that means a big 4x4 and EVs have very low towing weights so it really comes down to a hybrid.
 
Is it time to panic yet? lol
Tried to get petrol on Wednesday and then today and two different stations were out. I've got 50 miles left but nowhere to be really over the weekend.
 
CaptainRAVE said:
Petrol nearly expensive enough to stop panic buying thank goodness.
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Its not though because it keeps going up every day or several times a day.

People see it at one price driving to work and then see it at a higher price at the same garage driving home and then repeat next day, I dont blame them for then pulling in and filling up even if it was days before they would need to as they worry what price it will be then if they dont fill up now.

Thats why I filled up all my cars and tins with super unleaded at £1.59 last weekend. I dont plan to use any of them for a couple of weeks.
 
wholesale price drop - r4today suggested we'd have to wait 2 weeks for the drop to filter through to the pumps, hopefully chancellor doesn't u-turn on any vat/duty reduction too.

150 miles of honest ev range in cold weather - for regular round trips, yes that would do me , looking at corsa-e say, it offers 120, so could see range anxiety / emergency contingency, being an issue, but would be fine for commute.
 
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. 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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It's pretty much as others have said - it depends on the individual. Battery degradation might not be an issue for everybody, but it certainly isn't a non-issue. As I said, it depends very much on the cost. If a relatively expensive battery is offset by considerably lower repair costs compared to an ICE vehicle, I don't think it's a big deal as you simply plan for that expense in the same way people used to plan for a timing belt change, and pay for a new battery once the range becomes low enough to be impractical. It would be interesting to see a repair cost comparison of say a Leaf and a Micra over a 10 year period.
 
I filled up at costco with 95, and it was 149.9. last sunday it was 10p cheaper:( That was at the Brum branch. I was going to fill up at the manchester branch yesterday, as that was 147.9, bu the queues were hideous :(.
 
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