When are you going fully electric?

Joking aside, me and the mrs were discussing this as now i've got a big car she could get a smaller one. I'm just not sure the 'cheaper' ones are quite there yet, the leafs and other electrics cars just seem too expensive to me. If i could get a tesla model s cheap then i would (although where my mrs works is not the best of areas so this might not work).
 
theone8181 said:
Joking aside, me and the mrs were discussing this as now i've got a big car she could get a smaller one. I'm just not sure the 'cheaper' ones are quite there yet, the leafs and other electrics cars just seem too expensive to me. If i could get a tesla model s cheap then i would (although where my mrs works is not the best of areas so this might not work).
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Do you mean list price new or 2nd hand as for example the list for a Leaf may around £26k but you would be stupid to pay more than £18K for one in reality.

Leafs are typically £10-12k for the later 30kWh or larger and Zoe's are in the £5-7K range for 2-3 year old models so not overly expensive.
 
vanpeebles said:
Lead Acid, but some people use LiPos etc these days :)
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Emmm. The Tesla's use 18650s. They are changing to a new format which is slightly larger. This will mean that 18650s will come down in price until the oversupply is used up.

18650s are Lithium Ion. I expect most electric cars use similar multi-cell LIon batteries.

The main difference between you home or even professional LIon system and a EV car battery is that the later is tightly monitored and has very intelligent management systems to keep it within it's best tolerances all the time.
 
PaulCa said:
Emmm. The Tesla's use 18650s. They are changing to a new format which is slightly larger. This will mean that 18650s will come down in price until the oversupply is used up.

18650s are Lithium Ion. I expect most electric cars use similar multi-cell LIon batteries.

The main difference between you home or even professional LIon system and a EV car battery is that the later is tightly monitored and has very intelligent management systems to keep it within it's best tolerances all the time.
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Read the posts before :p:D
 
I'll update sometime this week after pa and I do the drive up from Villelongue to Abbeville tomorrow. Because I don't reckon that any EV, Teslas included, can sensibly do that in one day right now - but I'll throw the route we end up using into that planner that @Matthew.M linked to and we'll see how the timings compare.
 
;)
JRS said:
I'll update sometime this week after pa and I do the drive up from Villelongue to Abbeville tomorrow. Because I don't reckon that any EV, Teslas included, can sensibly do that in one day right now - but I'll throw the route we end up using into that planner that @Matthew.M linked to and we'll see how the timings compare.
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I’m sure it’ll be suitably disastrous for normal EVs :D but the fact that it’s even possible now is a huge improvement on where we were a short time ago. The Tesla time should be reasonable though.

A lot depends on the country at the moment. Germany/Belgium/Netherlands/Norway have really good infrastructure but France is a bit patchy. Spain is a disaster. Tesla are the exception with coverage most places. So my trip to Munich is far easier than say your journey in France.

It’ll get there soon, they’re quick to build and the charging network which VW/BMW etc are contributing to, Ionity, is gathering momentum. Although still way behind the targets they publicised last year.

Obviously if you regularly drive to the south of France only a Tesla is viable and even then it’s not going to win the “I travel 300miles in a stint, want to stop for 5mins to switch drivers and do another 300 miles” argument so it isn’t the best tool for the job. At least not for a long while yet. But if for most of the year you drive within range and maybe once per annum for a summer holiday drive it 1000 miles away and on that journey it adds a few extra hours stationary or a night in a hotel. Is the inconvenience on that one journey a year worth it for the savings and benefits the rest of the time? For me the answer is yes, or if the EV looks like a terrible option I have no issues renting or borrowing a car more suitable, but everyone has different requirements. Just like some people can put with a 2 seater as their daily driver and others can’t. Choice is good.
 
If I could afford a Model X now I would get one tomorrow :)

As I can't and I am ordering a new car in the next few months its going to be a Toyota C-HR Hybrid.

I would prefer the larger size of the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV but its just out of reach financially right now. The 30 mile EV range is perfect for my daily needs and a friend has one and the best he gets is 99mpg on a run from Cornwall to London.

I think he said though that its down to 20mpg on petrol only but he has only ever done that once and just as a test to see what happens.
 
mattcrane said:
If I could afford a Model X now I would get one tomorrow :)

As I can't and I am ordering a new car in the next few months its going to be a Toyota C-HR Hybrid.

I would prefer the larger size of the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV but its just out of reach financially right now. The 30 mile EV range is perfect for my daily needs and a friend has one and the best he gets is 99mpg on a run from Cornwall to London.

I think he said though that its down to 20mpg on petrol only but he has only ever done that once and just as a test to see what happens.
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Have you looked at the e-golf?
 
"When are you going fully electric?"
For my runaround / station car (Ford Ka type) maybe the next 5 ish years, as long as there is a suitably small and cheap option. Only do short journeys so an electric car would fit the bill nicely.

For my main car (currently an Octavia estate) its much further off. Once the charging infrastructure can get me around in a similar way to my petrol car (i.e. I never really think about how much is left in the tank as there is always a petrol station nearby and its 5 mins to fill up) I'll switch.
 
VincentHanna said:
Seen so many Tesla's in California on my honeymoon I've lost count.

Including at least 10 model 3's
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I saw one the other day in the UK, didn't think they were over here yet?

I do live near some US bases though so ist quite possible it was brought over by one of them. Did have UK plates, but that seems to be 50/50 thing to be honest, maybe somehow they first registered it here. We get US people driving UK plates, US plates, German plates etc
 
Some quick-and-dirty calculation using the 'Better Routeplanner' site.

Pa and I did Villelongue to Abbeville on Monday in three coffee stops. We made an additional stop right at the start to top off the fuel tank, topped off the tank at one of the coffee stops, and one at Nonancourt to fill up again. Setting off at 5:40 we arrived at a little before 19:30 - péage roads used were the bit to get around Narbonne and Beziers early on plus the Millau viaduct, no others.

Better Routeplanner. Assumptions made were similar weather conditions, same load we were carrying, starting from 100% charge and having the goal of 50% charge at each stop to try and make them vaguely short stops, but wanting to arrive at the hotel with 90% charge as there's no way there to charge up overnight. Also max speed of 135km/h (we did occasionally stray faster than the posted speed limit in the Kia, but definitely only by very little officer ;)). In a year-old Chevy Bolt with about 5% battery degradation, that's 6hrs 37mins stationary charging. Changing that charger arrival goal to 25% makes the stationary time half an hour shorter. And truth be told, if there was some way of charging up at the hotel we use in Abbeville then we could kill another hour (actually 1:09) off that by charging during the overnight stop. But whichever way you carve it, it's taking an already long day and making it longer.

One other thing to consider is that you're also using a lot more péage roads as well - a not insignificant expense, certainly more than 80 euros in tolls. Oh, and you're having to deal with the horror show of Paris - presumably Better Routeplanner is taking me this route because all the decent (i.e. fast) electric charging points are on the péage roads and on the routes that go to Paris.

So yeah. Day 1 of that trip was definitely possible in an electric car. It would cost a lot in toll road fees, you'd be sat going nowhere a lot longer, and you might (read: will) get driven into by some Parisian twonk. But definitely possible.

Day 2 is interesting. Same vehicle assumptions made regarding car model, load, no annihilation of speed limits. Weather adjusted to UK spec. Starting in the UK with 100% charge (i.e assuming that we got fully charged at the Eurotunnel, I'll come back to that caveat later). If you run the car figuring on charging back up when you get home, so down to 10%, you can do it with the one 24 minute stop. That's pretty good I reckon. Thing is - if your Eurotunnel experience was like ours then you weren't getting charged up there. We arrived, did the thing at the automated station where you pick a departure time - we were booked for 11:50, it offered 11:20 for free so we took that. That would give us some stationary time at the terminal so you could have charged up then. But we went clean through French border control (or lack-of control), flashed passports at the UK border people, and then got waved straight onto an even earlier train. So there was no time at all to charge an EV there. Now, we set off from the Abbeville hotel at a pretty leisurely hour. You could have foregone breakfast there, set off earlier, say charged up at a hypermarché in Boulogne (which is indeed where we topped off the Kia's tank as it was a few pennies-per-litre cheaper than UK prices, and we were shopping there for food for the evening at home), and perhaps still have contrived to hit the earlier train that we did.

All told, I'm not going to look at all that and say that current EVs are an utter write-off for that kind of trip. But to make it genuinely convenient they need more range/much, much, much, much quicker charging time, and to come down in price to merely expensive for what you're getting as opposed to eye-watering. They'll get there.
 
ahar said:
"When are you going fully electric?"
For my runaround / station car (Ford Ka type) maybe the next 5 ish years, as long as there is a suitably small and cheap option. Only do short journeys so an electric car would fit the bill nicely.

For my main car (currently an Octavia estate) its much further off. Once the charging infrastructure can get me around in a similar way to my petrol car (i.e. I never really think about how much is left in the tank as there is always a petrol station nearby and its 5 mins to fill up) I'll switch.
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Plug in hybrids already do all of what you want
 
Cleisthenes said:
You need to post up post pictures/information about this :D
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I did a while a go in the show us your cars thread. I used to just link to my build thread on a forum but that closed and went to Face book unfortunately.

I had my Rolec charge point installed yesterday. Very neat install and handy as it's literally right next to my front door so I can just about plug it in without leaving the house which could be good in winter.

I've also not driven an ICE car for about a month now and had to test my Celica after fixing the front suspension. It got hit by a lorry and was a reason for switching to a BMW i3 BEV with only the RX7 to rely on. Anyway I was fine driving it with gears as usual until I lifted off approaching a junction and immediately thought this ain't right why isn't it engine braking! Of course it was engine braking as normal but I'm already used to the regen braking which can stop the i3 with moderate force to a full stop.

So a 7.2KW (32A) charger will do my car in about 3hrs and costs ~£2.55 looking at my smart meter. My battery is fairly small by today's standards and will give ~80 miles on a full charge. The range extender could double that but for me would be dead weight for most of the time and they appear to suffer more failures than anything else in an i3 due to being hardly used. The Celica was costing me ~£13 per 80 miles though it would do 350 miles on a full tank.
 
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