When are you going fully electric?

Psycho Sonny said:
There's the fuel saving to take into account.

If like me you are going to be saving £100 a month on fuel. That's an extra £100 per month that can go to fund the car.

Others will save significantly more as we only do a combined 9k a year across 2 cars.

So if I'm willing to spend say £200 a month on a car that can now become £300 a month for an electric car.

Bare in mind electric cars have less moving parts, nothing really needs replacing or repairing bar tyres.

Take those savings into accounts then people can probably put an extra £150 minimum on top of their normal car budget. Likely a lot more.
Click to expand...

Your point seems to rely on a lease deal of sorts.

I prefer to own my cars so monthly fee for an electric car would be huge until electric cars become cheaper. I suppose I could maybe look at a kia soul or similar for about £13k and loan payments would be say £250 a month.

This isn't the something that appeals to someone like me who keeps an old £2k car for 100k miles.

I imagine costs for an electric car that can do 20k miles some years is really quite high. They are definitely not a bad option for someone who just drives round town though and does short journeys.
 
Last edited:
The Nissan ARIYA looks promising...


63kwh and 87kwh options giving 200 and 300 miles rage (WLTP rating is slightly higher but we know how good that is).
RWD and 4WD options
Can tow up to 1500kg
Reasonably quick, performance version does 0-60 in 5 seconds
CCS Charging (!)
Liquid Cooled Batteries (Finally!!)

Estimated to start £40k.
 
[TW]Fox said:
Yea that dropping the car off for a service once every 2 years is such a nuisance.
Click to expand...
There isn't much difference from a service point of view but the weekly fueling nuisance of an ICE car can be a large inconvenience compared to an EV. For an average driver doing an average daily drive then most of the time EVs win out. ICE wins out for those rare long drives which few people do. But even that can be migrated with a planed rest break.
 
Hedge said:
Your point seems to rely on a lease deal of sorts.

I prefer to own my cars so monthly fee for an electric car would be huge until electric cars become cheaper. I suppose I could maybe look at a kia soul or similar for about £13k and loan payments would be say £250 a month.

This isn't the something that appeals to someone like me who keeps an old £2k car for 100k miles.

I imagine costs for an electric car that can do 20k miles some years is really quite high. They are definitely not a bad option for someone who just drives round town though and does short journeys.
Click to expand...

it depends how many miles you do in a day and how much fuel you use.


You have to just think that the fixed and variable costs of an older cars (Fuel, maintenance and depreciation)get turned into solely fixed costs of your new car (the variable costs are minor on an ev)
 
Hedge said:
Your point seems to rely on a lease deal of sorts.

I prefer to own my cars so monthly fee for an electric car would be huge until electric cars become cheaper. I suppose I could maybe look at a kia soul or similar for about £13k and loan payments would be say £250 a month.

This isn't the something that appeals to someone like me who keeps an old £2k car for 100k miles.

I imagine costs for an electric car that can do 20k miles some years is really quite high. They are definitely not a bad option for someone who just drives round town though and does short journeys.
Click to expand...

You can get a BMW i3 for £13k.

Plus anyone who buys a banger like yourself can get a Nissan leaf for half that price.

If you are keeping your car for 4 years the £100+ saving per month in fuel pays for the difference in purchase price by itself.

Plus a leaf will have a lot more creature comforts than a £2k car.

Can you link me to a car that you would normally buy for £2k on auto trader?
 
Psycho Sonny said:
You can get a BMW i3 for £13k.

Plus anyone who buys a banger like yourself can get a Nissan leaf for half that price.

If you are keeping your car for 4 years the £100+ saving per month in fuel pays for the difference in purchase price by itself.

Plus a leaf will have a lot more creature comforts than a £2k car.

Can you link me to a car that you would normally buy for £2k on auto trader?
Click to expand...

Are you talking about the 50mile range leaf? That car is a joke and I would only recommend it to someone who is doing a 20-30 mile commute with charging either end and using it solely as a commuting hack. You’d still need another car.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
You can get a BMW i3 for £13k.

Plus anyone who buys a banger like yourself can get a Nissan leaf for half that price.

If you are keeping your car for 4 years the £100+ saving per month in fuel pays for the difference in purchase price by itself.

Plus a leaf will have a lot more creature comforts than a £2k car.

Can you link me to a car that you would normally buy for £2k on auto trader?
Click to expand...

Well I bought my current mk3 mondeo with 80k miles for just over 2k about 5yrs ago and I've put 100k miles on it doing a commute of 60 or so miles most days

I'd imagine it would be a car similar. Maybe something like an Octavia. Cars that do about 50mpg.

The numbers might add up and I could be a perfect candidate for an electric car. I just personally don't quite see how.
 
Pottsey said:
There isn't much difference from a service point of view but the weekly fueling nuisance of an ICE car can be a large inconvenience compared to an EV. For an average driver doing an average daily drive then most of the time EVs win out. ICE wins out for those rare long drives which few people do. But even that can be migrated with a planed rest break.
Click to expand...

I think medium term our garage will be an electric Mini for town use and a conventional ICE BMW for longer drives. I think that feels like the right mix. I just can't see there being sufficient progress to make EV work for longer journeys but for a car that rarely strays far from home it's far more realistic.
 
20k miles a year equates to at most a 76 mile commute per day (20k/262 working days), that's really not a lot and pretty much any new EV on the market today can do it without bother. Sure an gen 1 leaf, zoe or i3 isn't going to be capable but that isn't really reflective of the future of the market. The first owner of the car will take the biggest hit on depreciation which makes a used EV incredibly good value when used compared to an ICE car, particularly for longer than average commutes. In 5 years time you'll be able to pick up a used current EV at 40%-50% of its original price and should beat pretty much any ICE (regardless of cost) when it comes to total cost of ownership over 100k at that age.

Just take fuel, 100k @ 15p/mile for an ICE is £15,000, electric would cost £5000 @ 5p/mile. The fuel saving alone almost makes up most if not all of the purchase cost of the car and at this point assumes the ICE car was free.

Your average £2k car that is driven a further 100k is likely to need a significant amount of repairs doing to it over the course of ownership. Any 'modern' diesel is likely to need any or all of the following injectors, clutch, flywheel and turbo to get it up to 180k miles at the cost of several thousand £.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
20k miles a year equates to at most a 76 mile commute per day (20k/262 working days), that's really not a lot and pretty much any new EV on the market today can do it without bother. Sure an gen 1 leaf, zoe or i3 isn't going to be capable but that isn't really reflective of the future of the market. The first owner of the car will take the biggest hit on depreciation which makes a used EV incredibly good value when used compared to an ICE car, particularly for longer than average commutes. In 5 years time you'll be able to pick up a used current EV at 40%-50% of its original price and should beat pretty much any ICE (regardless of cost) when it comes to total cost of ownership over 100k at that age.

Just take fuel, 100k @ 15p/mile for an ICE is £15,000, electric would cost £5000 @ 5p/mile. The fuel saving alone almost makes up most if not all of the purchase cost of the car and at this point assumes the ICE car was free.

Your average £2k car that is driven a further 100k is likely to need a significant amount of repairs doing to it over the course of ownership. Any 'modern' diesel is likely to need any or all of the following injectors, clutch, flywheel and turbo to get it up to 180k miles at the cost of several thousand £.
Click to expand...

I'd say in the 100k miles I put on the mondeo I did change clutch / dmf for around 600 and then other items like idler pulleys and alternator plus exhaust repair probably did add up to a good few hundred more. At a stretch I'd say my 2k car has cost me 4k over 5 years. Plus tax which is probably another 1k and then fuel.

I suppose a £13k ev would be modern and cheap cos no fuel. Maybe the numbers can work.
 
[TW]Fox said:
I think medium term our garage will be an electric Mini for town use and a conventional ICE BMW for longer drives. I think that feels like the right mix. I just can't see there being sufficient progress to make EV work for longer journeys but for a car that rarely strays far from home it's far more realistic.
Click to expand...

Try a Tesla with a supercharger, you can go pretty much anywhere.
 
Long and short of it for me - Savings were obvious when I was considering the switch.

Model 3 SR+
  • 100% First year allowance against my company corporation tax (i.e whole list price of car written off in accounts)
  • 6 year interest free loan via Scottish Government to the business
  • Fuel savings in 9 month are approx £190 per month - circa £1650 saved so far. Approx £200 a month before, now max £10 a month on home charger.
  • I have home charger but public charging is free in Scotland - plentiful as well. Charge my car for free once a week at golf course when I play on a Saturday - plug in, play golf, come back to full charged car. So in reality, £10 a month electric costs for approx 1200 miles a month.
Savings are massive for me personally and company wise. No brainier to buy.

Wife has a Mini Cooper S.
 
jpaul said:
semiconductor/chip wear electromigration, and, bugs in the software implementing the control
Click to expand...

They’re present in ICE cars, too. EVs obviously aren’t going be without fault. There’s more to wear than just tyres and wipers- there’s still the suspension, steering, electronics/electrics and software. But they should be substantially more reliable overall.
 
Just did a 600 mile (300 miles - overnight stay - 300 miles) round trip in my Model 3 SR+ .

Wonderfully easy due to the supercharger network. Charged once on the way down for 20 minutes, overnight on a 3pin, and once on the way back for 15 minutes. No worries about chargers not working, chargers being busy etc, just drive up and plug in.

On the return trip the car was charged enough to get home before I had finished my coffee. (Charging is really fast when charging from 10% to 60%)

We really need general use supercharger-type offerings at motorway services and the like (e.g. Ionity / Instavolt). I believe Ecotricity have some kind of exclusivity deal at motorway services which hopefully runs out soon. This will take away the long-distance charging pain for non-Tesla EV's. This also removes the need for enormous batteries just for the occasional long trip (just charge more often). Larger batteries could be offered for the minority who need them for huge daily miles.

Agree with the point that if you don't have charging at home. If I didn't have a driveway I would still have an EV (wouldn't want to switch back to ICE now), but it would mean missing one of the biggest benefits of "full tank each morning".
 
Got my Mini Electric finally arriving next week, been waiting since Dec. I only do 20-40 miles per day Mon to Friday at work so should definitely save some money over my current ice.
 
Are there any mini ev 'out in the wild' youtube tests yet ? couldn't see any for the ID, whose maternity must be imminent too.


Fusion said:
They’re present in ICE cars, too.
Click to expand...
theres a lot more power electronics (possible relaibility points) in an EV, the circuit boards on the motor tear-downs are impressive, and,
you must be monitoring/modelling the heat in the power electronics heat sinks (plus batteries too) to decide what power you allow to the motor, which sounds like a convolution compared to an ICE, more analogous to overclocking on a pc.


[
blun said:
home before I had finished my coffee.
Click to expand...
what denomination of coffee
]
 
Hedge said:
I'd say in the 100k miles I put on the mondeo I did change clutch / dmf for around 600 and then other items like idler pulleys and alternator plus exhaust repair probably did add up to a good few hundred more. At a stretch I'd say my 2k car has cost me 4k over 5 years. Plus tax which is probably another 1k and then fuel.

I suppose a £13k ev would be modern and cheap cos no fuel. Maybe the numbers can work.
Click to expand...

So £5k?

100k miles of fuel at £5.60/gallon would cost:
£18,667 at 30mpg
£14,000 at 40mpg
£11,200 at 50mpg

Domestic electricity can be bought as low as 5p per kWh guaranteed rate (lower on a time of use tariff). At a charging efficiency of 3.5 miles per kWh, 100k miles would cost £1,430.

So depending on the fuel efficiency you get out of the Mondeo, you could potentially break even if you bought an EV in the £15k-£20k range (though that disregards finance cost). Also worth considering that a £15k-£20k EV is probably a bit nicer to drive than a 15 year old Mondeo.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom