When are you going fully electric?

When:
- there's more choice
- local garages have learnt how to maintain the cars
- the cars are price competitive with petrol cars
- it's clearer what the model for future electricity pricing will be
- it's a natural time for me to replace my car (not going to replace a perfectly good car)
- I know more about my future job situation, will need a new job soon, might have to move, might not have a driveway, might not need a car, etc.
 
I'm hoping in 4 years time the infrastructure will have developed sufficiently so I can make the jump. The big gap for me is facilities for people who can't charge at home. With 200-300 mile range I could charge once a week or so and have a coffee somewhere, but not that many with that sort of range for sensible money now.
 
Wife and I both drive diesels and the vast majority of our journeys are under 10 miles each way so the engines barely have time to warm up. We both do an artificial 'decent' run every so often to give the DPFs a clean. EV will be something to look at next time a car change happens but I don't see both being changed for a while as, already stated many times, when you want range, you really want it. My other objections are gradually being eaten away:

- EV's are slow milk floats. Not any more.
- EV's are ugly things only driven by old people and virtue signalling hippies. Not so much these days: I'm really liking the looks of the i-Pace and the other mainstream manufacturers are getting there too. Nothing stands out to me on Tesla styling, but I don't actively hate it either.
- Nowhere to charge except at home. I'm seeing these everywhere now including my local Costco.

My main concerns are really around longevity. We don't really know what re-sale values are like and how maintainable an old one (e.g. over 10 years) really is. There's not enough data out there yet. Well maintained diesel and petrol are good for hundreds of thousands of miles, I doubt that for batteries without complete replacement.
 
Nasher said:
The problems are the same as they always were. Batteries just aren't nearly as good at storing energy as liquid fuels. Another problem will be the massively increased need for rare Earth metals.
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indeed, this is why i feel that realistically our future should be along the lines of the range extender, where you have basically a pure ev for your 40 mile commute (and therefore you're not burning any fuel) but when it comes to that long trip it'll do it without sweating. there's a lot of good things you can do with an engine if it only needs to run as a generator, with no need to change rpm, which will save a lot of weight whilst maintaining efficiency.

Skillmister said:
And this is a big part of the problem. Why are new build houses allowed to be built without solar panels? If solar panels were put on at the time of construction huge amounts of households would be ready to switch to EV/hybrid cars.

But instead there is massive shortsightedness and the fact that the feed in tariff is getting scrapped next year is another example of this
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indeed, not just that but charging points, sure where i live atm charging an ev is extremely viable considering i can almost reach the filler cap without actually stepping outside, but not everyone is so lucky, how is the guy who lives on the 5th floor of a 60's apartment block going to charge his car? or indeed pretty much any housing area with on-street parking.

not only do we need the infrastructure to generate the power, but also to distribute it. my dad is wanting to add more solar panels to his house, maybe even install a wind turbing, but there's no point in him doing so because the grid in his area can't handle the exrtra feed in, and if it can't take the power from a few solar panels i dread to think what's going to happen when everyone in the area starts trying to charge their cars at the same time when they come home from work.

it could be done, but not quickly, and as is the way with politics they either make promises they won't be in office to have to keep, or invest in short-term policies they think will help in the next election. say what you like about dictatorships the one thing they can do is get this kind of project off the ground and all the way to completion (eg: can you imagine the weimar government commiting to building the autobahns in the same way that hitler did? or a democratic ancient egypt building the pyramids?)
 
was quite surprised the other week. when i was out for my sunday morning bike ride i went through the next estate where where's a small, slightly worse-for-wear two-pump filling station, the type that only offers unleaded or diesel and a tiny shop w/ about 8 overpriced products ~ they've added two EV charging points! Some set-up called InstaVolt, dunno what they're like for cost/recharge times etc but the fact some pokey little place has managed to get two charging points ahead of virtually every other big supermarket/multi-pump station in the area is quite interesting.
i think supermarkets like tesco really need to get on the ball and get rid of some of their parent/child spaces and put in EV spaces where you can charge whilst shopping.
 
What you wanna do is buy an EV and make your own mini reactor. Then you won't have range issues :p

Just don't tell anyone or you'll be in epic trouble :D
 
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I'd have a Tesla Model X right now if I could afford one. I'd also have no issue with a hybrid of some sort such as a BMW 530e, but they only made it in the saloon and I want the estate so that's out for now too. I'll stick with my F11 535i for a few more years and then see what the market is like.
 
Agree, Hybrid is already great, i fthey can extend the range a little more then even better.
I do refer to plug in though. Eg we have the BMW and the Merc at work (330e and C350e) and they are both around 20 miles on pure battery. As they average commute is under 20 miles they are already nigh on usable for most people.
If they could get that to circa 50 then starts to become really useful

I did sort of look at the i3 18 months or so ago. With the range extender, basically a small petrol engine that charges as you go when needed.

However I think the current models listed above are much better day to day. Currently they are a bit heavy, but to me drop some cc from the engine, improve the battery tech and your not far off a very very good implementation.

Where they fail right now is for high mileage drivers as they end up lugging around extra weight for not much benefit.

Technically as you can drive with elec/ICE or both you have more redundancy in the case of a failure than with either pure EV or ICE.
 
I've actually never heard of the engine failing in a hybrid before the hybrid system does.

In some of the old Priuses the hybrid part is shot but the engine still runs fine. Obviously it's not financially viable to fix it, so it's impossible to sell (unless you find a mug).
 
I just bought an I3 and was going to go for a range extender addition but decided I wanted to go full BEV and get the full benefit of the innovative production methods BMW are using. It has a carbon-fiber passenger cell on an aluminium chassis and is ~1270 kg without the two stroke engine which adds 120kg. Standing start to 60 is actually 6.5 secs (BMW say 7.1) so no slouch but does tend to fall off after that. Adds a bit of spice to the commute.

I don't disagree on the looks it's a mar-mite car and the suspension is setup for city driving but is very comfy at least. Range is an issue but I can do 2 days commute between charges and will be plugging it in overnight. This allows battery and car pre-conditioning which mitigates some of the range loss in winter as it keeps the battery warm and defrosts/demists the car just before your departure time.

Just to reiterate manufactures don't advertise this but cold temps do noticeably reduce the range so check for cars equipped with heat pumps (instead of traditional element heaters) and pre-conditioning options.

The current scepticism has allowed me to buy an i3 at 55% depreciation and yet still has 5 years and 70,000 miles on the battery warranty. At ~105 miles per week commuting I'm not going to get anywhere near that and I will be spending £4.5 per week compared to my previous Celica which was £18 for fuel on the same commute. It would be more but I also cycle 2-3 days per week as well.

It's not for everyone and I still have the Celica until I'm confident of making the switch. Check the ZapMap online near you for charging stations as you may be surprised though 50KW stations are more sparse. That gives 30 minute charging for my i3 with the smaller 60A battery.

/Green mode off

I also have an RX7 with an LS1 5.7 ltr V8 so I don't exactly have the best green credentials :)
 
Mark1989 said:
I learned in a hybrid and whilst obviously not full electric it was dull to drive and no soul, I want a car to be fun aswell as get me a to b
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I think you can start forgetting about that already, as so many cars are automatic now. But by the time EVs are affordable and as much fun to drive as our ICE cars of today (or yesterday, in my case), they'll all be autonymous anyway and human drivers will be a thing you tell your grandchildren about...
 
Also remember Robert Llewellyn i.e. Kryten well he has a very interesting channel on YT (Fully Charged) about all sorts of tech related to modern power generation, EVs and home integration.

He also organised one of the first dedicated EV car shows this year.
 
Nasher said:
I've actually never heard of the engine failing in a hybrid before the hybrid system does.

In some of the old Priuses the hybrid part is shot but the engine still runs fine. Obviously it's not financially viable to fix it, so it's impossible to sell (unless you find a mug).
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I am not talking total engine failure, something like a dead battery etc, which happens daily to every manufacturer. Its something like 20% of cars within 3 years from registration will have a breakdown which will require something to be "fixed" in order to work. Not necessarily (or probably likely) to be excessively expensive but just stops them working.
 
ttaskmaster said:
I think you can start forgetting about that already, as so many cars are automatic now. But by the time EVs are affordable and as much fun to drive as our ICE cars of today (or yesterday, in my case), they'll all be autonymous anyway and human drivers will be a thing you tell your grandchildren about...
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A car being automatic is fine, my leon is and I love it.

The hybrid yaris had no pull nothing, plastic and cheap inside, no sound nadda
 
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