When are you going fully electric?

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?
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That doesn't always work, my last car was a £1400 "banger" that I kept for 7 years & it probably had most of the comforts a Leaf has aside from music related ones I wouldn't bother with anyway, i was doing about 350 miles a week in it and aside from fuel which came in at about £40 a week then most months it cost me nothing else aside from tyres & servicing with the service costing less than £50 a year.

I do all my own maintenance & i'm not sure that's really possible on an EV.

My current car is opposite end of the scale, again a £2k old car, a gas guzzler this time but i don't do a lot of miles now and aside from the road tax & fuel I don't think it's actually cost me anything other than a £50 rear caliper in the last year. A tank of fuel now also normally lasts me about 2-3 months.
 
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Why couldn't you do your own maintenance on an EV? It's just a car at the end of the day, there is just less to do. The main difference is you don't have an engine to maintain but everything else is effectively the same.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
Why couldn't you do your own maintenance on an EV? It's just a car at the end of the day, there is just less to do. The main difference is you don't have an engine to maintain but everything else is effectively the same.
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Well, in comparison to my old car will the EV powertrain need no maintenance at 300k miles. Is a wheel bearing assembly for example 45 mins on an EV to swap out? If a motor goes **** up can i replace it?

In comparison to the current, firstly i don't have 8+ grand spare to throw at an EV and if I finance one then my monthly outgoings increase, currently some months at which are less than £50
 
Bangernomics may not exist in the Ev world

There are 2 basic scenarios, the cells are still worth a relatively decent amount, in that case you wont get banger Evs, when they become unroadworthy, or basically just not worth keeping running then they will still hold decent value even as scrap, i ethe value is the cells. So you wont ever get cheap Evs, but the cost of ownership Ie buying price - selling price will still be cheap, its just the cost to get in one will be more.

Or as is probably more likely by then, the cells dont hold enough valueto really keep old Evs value up that high, so you still get cheap bangernomics, just compared to ICE its a bit more. The reason most ICE cars get to such a low value is they are one repair away from scrap basically.

Pretty much all aspects of ICE currently benefit from economies of scale, plenty of trained mechanics , plent of fuel stops, plenty of parts manufacturers. Once those die out then ICE will be dead for anyone other than collectors who can afford to get bespoke parts, or pay silly money for genuine parts, can afford their own fuel bunker etc
 
Iamzod said:
Well, in comparison to my old car will the EV powertrain need no maintenance at 300k miles. Is a wheel bearing assembly for example 45 mins on an EV to swap out? If a motor goes **** up can i replace it?

In comparison to the current, firstly i don't have 8+ grand spare to throw at an EV and if I finance one then my monthly outgoings increase, currently some months at which are less than £50
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A £1400 car you kept for 7 years never had anything go wrong and now same with a £2k car and your monthly outgoings are only £50?

Seems legit.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Bangernomics may not exist in the Ev world

There are 2 basic scenarios, the cells are still worth a relatively decent amount, in that case you wont get banger Evs, when they become unroadworthy, or basically just not worth keeping running then they will still hold decent value even as scrap, i ethe value is the cells. So you wont ever get cheap Evs, but the cost of ownership Ie buying price - selling price will still be cheap, its just the cost to get in one will be more.

Or as is probably more likely by then, the cells dont hold enough valueto really keep old Evs value up that high, so you still get cheap bangernomics, just compared to ICE its a bit more. The reason most ICE cars get to such a low value is they are one repair away from scrap basically.

Pretty much all aspects of ICE currently benefit from economies of scale, plenty of trained mechanics , plent of fuel stops, plenty of parts manufacturers. Once those die out then ICE will be dead for anyone other than collectors who can afford to get bespoke parts, or pay silly money for genuine parts, can afford their own fuel bunker etc
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Problem is li-ion battery tech already benefits from economies of scale (there are also some supply consideration) - even with a massive uptake in EV ownership that isn't going to change that equation hugely - vast numbers of 18650 batteries, etc. are already employed in a vast array of products and industries and so on.

Without/until some big advances in battery tech things aren't going to change much there. Something that might help eventually is things like Samsung's solid state battery advancements which reduce the battery requirements to get same performance as currently or give significantly better performance for the same size/weight but that is probably some way off being a reality yet.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
A £1400 car you kept for 7 years never had anything go wrong and now same with a £2k car and your monthly outgoings are only £50?

Seems legit.
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I never said the first had nothing go wrong, i said most months.

I used to do 350 miles a week as I had to commute, for this I had a TDCi Mondeo which I ran for 7 years & aside from fuel, road tax & insurance my monthly outgoings were normally £0, i actually stripped it for parts when I changed jobs & sold it all on Ebay in Bits & actually got a fair bit more back than the £1400 I paid for it so the car actually earned me money. Yes things went wrong, during the 7 years it had a pair of rear wheel bearings at £50 a piece, a split boost hose which I think cost me in the region of £25 and 20 minutes to change, the battery died when the car hit 10 years old which was about £80, drop links all 4 were replaced at £20 a go and about 30 mins work each, track rod ends £15 a go. It went through a set of springs too at £110 i think it was for a set of 4. Of course there were tyres galore in getting a car to 300k miles and i'll only use premium tyres but i don't include these as any car will want tyres.

Current car only costs £50 many months as I just pay the road tax & insurance via Direct Debit which is about £30 last time I checked for tax & £20 ish for insurance as I don't get through a full tank in a month due to either being able to work from home & when not I just walk to work as it's only 1.5 miles.
 
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Rroff said:
Problem is li-ion battery tech already benefits from economies of scale (there are also some supply consideration) - even with a massive uptake in EV ownership that isn't going to change that equation hugely - vast numbers of 18650 batteries, etc. are already employed in a vast array of products and industries and so on.

Without/until some big advances in battery tech things aren't going to change much there. Something that might help eventually is things like Samsung's solid state battery advancements which reduce the battery requirements to get same performance as currently or give significantly better performance for the same size/weight but that is probably some way off being a reality yet.
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I agree, the value of the cells right now is that when they become not really effective enough in a car then they hold good value for static energy storage, for home use or grid use.
Thats not likely to change much for some time.

Who knows if that will change and when, but right now a scrapped leaf for example has far more value than a scrapped equivalent ICE
 
Iamzod said:
That doesn't always work, my last car was a £1400 "banger" that I kept for 7 years & it probably had most of the comforts a Leaf has aside from music related ones I wouldn't bother with anyway, i was doing about 350 miles a week in it and aside from fuel which came in at about £40 a week then most months it cost me nothing else aside from tyres & servicing with the service costing less than £50 a year.

I do all my own maintenance & i'm not sure that's really possible on an EV.

My current car is opposite end of the scale, again a £2k old car, a gas guzzler this time but i don't do a lot of miles now and aside from the road tax & fuel I don't think it's actually cost me anything other than a £50 rear caliper in the last year. A tank of fuel now also normally lasts me about 2-3 months.
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Those cheap leafs haven’t really depreciated much in the past few years so you would be around £1500 a year better off had you gone with the leaf :)
 
Iamzod said:
How? My car hasn't even cost me £1500 a year, it'd need to be earning me money to be £1500 better off?
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Buying a gas guzzler because it's cheap is one side, but saving money isn't 100% of the point of EVs. In fact in the future I imagine it won't be a factor at all. It's because they're greener. I assume you're happy to drive around town spewing out god knows what.

Most things that are better are more expensive, at least at first, be it reusable rather than single use plastics, local produce, high quality meat, etc, but you pay the price for the elements that benefit others.

The whole reason I fast tracked getting an EV is because I live in an upcoming clean air zone where diesels will be charged and I work in an upcoming diesel ban zone.
 
Iamzod said:
How? My car hasn't even cost me £1500 a year, it'd need to be earning me money to be £1500 better off?
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This is effectively where I'm at with my current car.

Sure it uses diesel (less now I'm working from home more) and it has tax to pay but on months when it needs zero maintenance it costs nothing else.

I do think an ev will replace it when it's no longer cost effective keeping it though.

Entry level evs with a range comfortable for my commute cost 12-13k. I wouldn't want anything smaller than a leaf / kia soul too.

I am definitely coming round to the idea though.
 
Russinating said:
I assume you're happy to drive around town spewing out god knows what.
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Yes, i am, I only do about 1500 miles a year tops (this year i've done less than 100 due to Covid, I've filled up once since November) so my emissions from my 3.0 V6 per year i'd imagine probably will amount to less than the production of your EV spews out over the next decade.

And I didn't buy it because it was cheap, i bought it because I wanted one.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
Why wouldn't it be? Other than an ICE being swapped for a battery and motor the rest of the car is essentially the same.

Yes, It's highly unlikely to happen and it's a big job, but yes.
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To be fair, unlike the 400v system in an EV, there isn't really much on an ICE that could instantly kill you just by accidentally touching the wrong thing whilst working on it.
 
Don't forget too, if you are buying an ev privately w/o the bik/chancellor contribution the economics/ethical aspects are different.
(addressing the recurring question about taxation methods) congestion zone charges even for EV's per London 2025 may dwarf the daily electricy cost,
which, must often be the case now for ICE users in London.
Hopefully you can work from home and save the time, but, as I saw remarked, amusingly, today, if you can do your job from home, possibly someone from another country could do it too.
 
Iamzod said:
Yes, i am, I only do about 1500 miles a year tops (this year i've done less than 100 due to Covid, I've filled up once since November) so my emissions from my 3.0 V6 per year i'd imagine probably will amount to less than the production of your EV spews out over the next decade.

And I didn't buy it because it was cheap, i bought it because I wanted one.
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If you're driving bangers 1500 miles a year then as you've correctly surmised, you won't benefit from electric cars for a long time.
 
r22snapper said:
If you're driving bangers 1500 miles a year then as you've correctly surmised, you won't benefit from electric cars for a long time.
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To be fair, if you're driving 1500 miles a year then owning any car isn't going to be the best option, as the fixed costs (MOT/VED/insurance) are going to dwarf any running costs, and it would probably make more sense to rent a car the odd time you need one or walk/cycle :p
 
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