Adventures in an all electric vehicle.

[GRW]

Yeah you fag packet maths is fairly tight mate.

Then you gonna work out how much the premium of an EV car is to purchase - whack the fuel savings in and declare on average mileage - the petrol looks a better bet.

Yeah, I'd arrived there too (but stopped short of saying so, cos I seem to agitate the odd person here & there for the crime of using basic maths & logic ).
I live in the country where thankfully even our Grasping Govt haven't yet found an excuse to introduce ULEZ or similar nonsense, & I drive a (very) cheap used petrol car.
With my mpg I'm looking at maybe £2k to do 10,000 miles. But, when you spent £1200 on the car.......

 

[bricol]

I think if I total the average mpg of the three of my cars I'm using at the moment I get a little bit more than 50mpg . . . does that count?

 

[daleyd]

We were looking at a new car. It was a new diesel car that would cost us ~£1300 a year in fuel (plus a few hundred road tax)

OR an ev that cost ~£200 a year in “fuel” and no road tax. (Appreciate that will change in the near future)

We paid no premium for an ev, we simply spent the same money we were going to on a petrol/diesel car on an ev.

For us it was no brainer decision, based on pure maths.

If you’re buying a £1500 secondhand car then no one would argue that it’s not cheaper, or you should stump up for a new ev to save money - that’s ridiculous. But that wasn’t our situation.

 

[Pigeon_Droppings2]

We paid no premium for an ev, we simply spent the same money we were going to on a petrol/diesel car on an ev.

Thats basically what I did...the Tucson warranty is about to run out so wanted to replace it....so the choice is a new petrol/diesel/PHEV or EV.

If I'm honest I'd pay a bit more for an EV just to get away from the whole petrol/diesel pricing nonsense.

 

[voipio]

Just googled.
A typical EV does 3 - 3.5 miles on a kwh.
1 litre of petrol is somewhere between the equivalent of 8.9 to 9.7 kwh.
(If Google stuff is close to correct).

No idea what that means without some thinking & maths.

OK...
If 1 litre is somewhere around 9 kwh,

If you get 3.5 miles per kwh, then to do 100 miles you need about 11 kwh?
11kwh @ £0.56 per unit is £ 6.16, which is still only just over 6-pence a mile fuel cost. Is that about right?

A newish petrol/diesel car doing 50mpg, & with fuel at £1.55/litre would need about 9.1 Litres & £14.11, so just over 14-pence a mile fuel cost.

Over say 10,000 miles a year - it's £616 fuelling for the EV, versus £1410 for the ICE - a difference of £ 794 cheaper for the leccy car.

If home charging at say 32p per kwh, Then 11kwh is £3.52 for 100 miles, & £352 for 10,000 miles - so £1058 cheaper.

Am I therein thereabouts?

Something wrong with the maths, there - if you are able to get ~3.5miles/kWh, then 100 miles requires around 28.5kWh which, at £0.56/unit is £15.96, so 10,000 miles a year would cost £1596.

This assumes that the 3.5miles/kWh is the mains power input equivalent i.e. it includes the energy conversion (charge/discharge) efficiency of the battery and the 90-95% cefficiency of the charging circuit. If the 3.5miles/kWh is based on voltage and current measurements at the battery terminals during discharge only, then the true "EV fuel" costs would be higher, because of those inefficiencies.

 

[daleyd]

Thats basically what I did...the Tucson warranty is about to run out so wanted to replace it....so the choice is a new petrol/diesel/PHEV or EV.

If I'm honest I'd pay a bit more for an EV just to get away from the whole petrol/diesel pricing nonsense.

If you can charge at home you should pay ~ 9.5p per kWh on a nighttime tariff. Depends on area and supplier but that seems about average currently, we had 7.5p last year and before that it was about 2.5p!

 

[Pigeon_Droppings2]

If you can charge at home you should pay ~ 9.5p per kWh on a nighttime tariff.

Cheers thats good to know...is that easy to setup with any provider?...it's a 64kwh battery so I make that £6.80 per 270 miles?

Petrol prices really annoy me because they just seem to charge what they can get away with...I can't wait to be free of that nonsense!

 

[GRW]

Something wrong with the maths, there - if you are able to get ~3.5miles/kWh, then 100 miles requires around 28.5kWh which, at £0.56/unit is £15.96, so 10,000 miles a year would cost £1596.

This assumes that the 3.5miles/kWh is the mains power input equivalent i.e. it includes the energy conversion (charge/discharge) efficiency of the battery and the 90-95% cefficiency of the charging circuit. If the 3.5miles/kWh is based on voltage and current measurements at the battery terminals during discharge only, then the true "EV fuel" costs would be higher, because of those inefficiencies.

I thought I might mess up. I got bogged-down in the idea of comparing kwh to litres & gallons & confused myself most likely

OK... 3.5 into 10,000 is 2857 kwh required in kwh to cover 10,000 miles yes?
2857 x £0.56 is £1600 rounded up.
2857 x £0.32 is £ 914 rounded up.

If daleyd gets to do all his charging at 9.5p per kwh (my leccy is 30p per unit btw) then 10,000 miles would cost
2857 x £0.095 which is £ 271.45.

I worked out that my cheap runabout costs anywhere between 15p & 18p per mile recently, so 10,000 miles fuel cost is approx. £1650.... which is a lot, granted.
But a 40k EV will depreciate by I dunno, what, maybe 10%, maybe 15% a year? Is that a reasonable figure? That's £4k to £6k - which buys an awful lot of fuel.

Any new or pretty new car is going to lose significant money of course, not just EV's. The cost of motoring is really become expensive, and "cheap" motoring like I have always done - is being relentlessly squeezed till its eradicated.
If the situation progresses along the lines it is doing now - then by the time EV's are the only personal transport option.... then it'll be only the middle-income plus bracket that can afford to drive.

 

[rhubarb7]

That night tariff is very cheap. I think mine is 16p

 

[addjunkie]

That night tariff is very cheap. I think mine is 16p

I cant get it, as our smart meter is dumb as it doesn't communicate, being* a very rural area. We are disadvantaged

 

[premmington]

That night tariff is very cheap. I think mine is 16p

There are special deals for charging tariffs at home when you buy some EV cars they struggling to sell.

It is all priced into the monthly rental PHP payment. I don't know the details exactly - heard some "sales reptile" bragging about the "hard sell" the other week.

 

[Pigeon_Droppings2]

But a 40k EV will depreciate by I dunno, what, maybe 10%

Thats what was putting me off too...but the MG4 is £32k so quite a bit cheaper to begin with. Their warranty is 7 years so basically I'l be keeping this car quite some time. The alternative was a £34k PHEV but the mpg was terrible on the motorway unfortunately.

I looked up Octopus...they're offering 7.5p per kWh for the EV tariff...that seems pretty cheap to me.

 

[GRW]

Cheers thats good to know...is that easy to setup with any provider?...it's a 64kwh battery so I make that £6.80 per 270 miles?

Petrol prices really annoy me because they just seem to charge what they can get away with...I can't wait to be free of that nonsense!

64kwh etc.
I'm wondering if (& if yes, how they qualify & explain - which I'd be surprised if they do) the capacity of car batteries?

There's been talk of only charging to 80%, & discharging to 20% to look after batteries (sounds about right). So, if they just give the full-to-flat value (which is how batt mfrs have always used as the power rating historically) - then your 64kw USABLE is more like 38.5kw.

(64kw at e.5 miles per kw is 224 miles. So if your new car is capable if 270 miles, then it must do more like 4.21 miles per kwh if you have 64kw you can actually use. If your usable was closer to 40kw, then to hit 270 miles range, your car would need to do 6.75 miles per kwh).

Then.... do they qualify the built-in Safety's & settings of the charging system & software?
"Not done it yet" was rattling on about the driver limiting his charge to 80% & not discharging below 20% ...... the thing is - I'd expect the Mfr to have preprogrammed this into the system to protect the car from its owner - meaning the display visual of battery percentage - might well disregard the "hidden" top & bottom 20%.... so your displayed 100%, might only be a REAL state-of-charge - of 80%?

Perhaps because I've not owned or had chance to have any data from an EV - these answers are provided and are backed up by owner figures of Kwh put into the car, and the actual mileage extracted from those kwh.

I for one would be very interested to hear from you just what you find out, & just what you actually get from your kilowatt-hours IN, and resultant mileage OUT.

 

[Ubique]

I'd imagine that's it's very dependent upon driving style and time of day - the same with ICE powered vehicles. On a run I get ~36mpg (4.4SDV8) weekday commuting is 27mpg, that said, the heating/cooling overhead is negligible. Regen isn't going to do a whole lot in <15-20 mph traffic either.

 

[Pigeon_Droppings2]

I for one would be very interested to hear from you just what you find out, & just what you actually get from your kilowatt-hours

I'm also quite interested to see how its going to work out. I'm not really pro EV...just made sense. Think I'll do some monitoring to see what's what and report back.

Today I learned (on here) that I basically need to home charge on an EV tariff !

 

[addjunkie]

I'm also quite interested to see how its going to work out. I'm not really pro EV...just made sense. Think I'll do some monitoring to see what's what and report back.

Today I learned (on here) that I basically need to home charge on an EV tariff !

Youll need your connection checked by your dno too, when you install a charge point at home

 

[not done it yet]

You need to get over yourself, & stop actively seeking things to get stroppy about.
Read that again - you'll see (or should if you take the blinkers off & calm the F down) that I was saying that for trades, vans (that's ANY van ffs) is of very limited use, due to Parking.

I reckon you could pick a fight with your own shadow.

Ok, rambo. Why did you specifically write that it was a problem for EV vans. Get real, you were trying to demean the EV van just to demean all EVs like all your posts. Writing without thinking or writing to try to get people on your side. Disgraceful.

 

[GRW]

Just to add to the questions - it'd be good to know what criteria & test system the mfrs are using when arriving at their battery AH or kwh rating.

There's ways to get a more impressive rating, and another to get a more "real" rating with Lead-acid cells, so it's a fair guess the same applies to L-ion (but I don't know).

With Lead-Acid cells, there's 2 common Test paths to get a Rating. The first (& most common, used for starter batteries & leisure batteries (even pretty big ones) is to discharge a cell with a load that fully discharges the battery in 20hrs (the small print on a datasheet will have this buried somewhere).

The 2nd path us the one we'd see for Deep-Cycle Traction cells (fork lift & similar industrial stuff).
These cells apply a load that fully discharges a cell in 5-hours (25% of the time of the other batteries).

So, you can have 2 cells, both with the same AH rating - but tested very differently! And.... because the 5-hour discharge is deleting the cell faster, using a much bigger load, in reality the Traction cell is far stronger & superior to the Leisure cell, despite the rating looking the same.

If I were ever to want/need/have to buy an EV.... then the questions in my previous post, AND the method of rating the pack, and the true usable AH/Kwh - are things I'd want to know (& you can guarantee any bull$h1ttjng "Sales Reptile" wouldn't have a clue about).

Otherwise you cannot have a hope of knowing whether you're comparing apples with apples, or apples with foot powder (model to model) .... or just how real your storage KW are.... till you get it home & do the maths in use (& not rely on what the Dash tells you..... & I suspect 99% of customers don't do their own checks/calcs)

 

[GRW]

Ok, rambo. Why did you specifically write that it was a problem for EV vans. Get real, you were trying to demean the EV van just to demean all EVs like all your posts. Writing without thinking or writing to try to get people on your side. Disgraceful.

It was on an EV thread fella, & at the time (SURPRISE!) EV Vans was being discussed.

I really do wonder how you've lived so long, I truly do. With your appetite for aggravation (if you're as combative in real life), either you were the Rambo as a younger man, or you regularly woke up with a crowd around you after someone administered some "attitude adjustment therapy" (that you weren't smart enough to learn from).

I have two words for you:
SEEK HELP!

 

[willie.macleod]

Otherwise you cannot have a hope of knowing whether you're comparing apples with apples, or apples with foot powder (model to model) .... or just how real your storage KW are.... till you get it home & do the maths in use (& not rely on what the Dash tells you..... & I suspect 99% of customers don't do their own checks/calcs)

I think you'll find quite a few EV owners do their own calcs - they have accurate records of power supplied by their chargers, a large number of them are logging the data and every public chargepoint that they use is as well. EVs can not only record the miles but the power breakdown of the usage per trip which can be quite interesting.

If you go to https://ev-database.org you will the nominal capacity and the usable capacity of each EV, there isn't a massive difference between the two for most manufacturers, not sure who is the worst culprit. Modern EV batteries behave very differently from lead acid and manufacturers are backing their batteries with decent warranties thanks to their massive data sets collated over many years which give them the confidence to do so. C rates charging are more of a problem than C rates discharging on road cars thanks to the general publics desire to try and get energy into the cars in a similar timescale to refilling an ICE!