Electric cars and the grid..... it has begun.

[R Kraft]

to digress just slightly...
My old Puch 49cc moped used to do about 125mpg which I believe is approx 7p/mile.
Funnily enough the tank only held 3/4 gallon (3.2 litres), so had 90-ish miles range....
My commute was 24 miles a day so by day-four I was looking for a refill.
Minimum petrol sale was half a gallon, so I had to run it perilously low to ensure getting it in the tank.
The manufacturers were clearly having a range-anxiety laugh at our expense then (early 1970's) - and now.
I could only take it for 12 months then upgraded to a more normal 300 miles range motor.

Pensioner here, & unless/until 2nd hand prices come down to around £2k, I doubt I will ever be able to afford an electric/battery/hybrid vehicle.
That's at todays prices - with inflation on 10% and electric prices imminently due to double, it could get even harder/less affordable.
And if the range is only 60 to 100 miles, I would not want one either...

The powers that be want people to buy an electric car.
At this time the average new car payment is about $725 per month, on a 72 month loan.
The car insurance and maintenance and fuel will probably add $300 to that.
Inflation this year has already eaten up $600 per month, of an average families income, and it is just getting started.
So a new car, or any car will be out of reach.

 

[Bullet2012]

What about airships?

Great, but they are covered in tin foil

 

[daleyd]

Genuine question and I touched on this before without getting an answer. If the car does 6 miles per KW and you pay 4.5p per kw hour surely there has to be more leccy going in than a battery gives back out or are they now 100% efficient.

Bob

You’ll have to explain your maths - how does that mean there’s more going out than in

I can’t see anything those figures that suggests that ….ours is a little less efficient and we pay more for our electric but using my figures we pay 7.5p per kWh and get roughly 3.7 miles per kWh , so it’s simply 7.5/3.7 to give you pence per mile - just over 2p

Using the other figures it’s 4.5p per kWh and 6 miles per kWh so 4.5/6 so 0.75 p per mile

You’ll lose a little due to charging losses but it’s something like 90% efficient - so in my case it would work out at 2.2 p per mile (It does actually work out roughly at that when you take the charging costs/miles added - I don’t have those figures with me to give at the moment because I am away but will put them up when I get back)

Edit - ah sorry, I see he wrote 0.0075p, I think that was meant to be £0.0075

 

[daleyd]

Yes no fuel duty - just wait until they start taxing you per mile

You questioned the running costs so you got a couple of real world examples of exactly how much it costs now, at this moment - unfortunately it’s not possible to give you running costs from some unspecified time in the future after some future unknown taxes have been applied

 

[Onoff]

Great, but they are covered in tin foil

??? So are Costco chicken bakes.

 

[Mr Fro]

There was a thread on this forum before with some guy keen to rubbish EV efficiency quoting an ancient paper he found saying fast DC charging was more efficient which I suggested was wrong and tested the efficiency of my onboard Leaf 3.6kW AC charger. It was pretty much bang on 90% efficient.

Exceptions are early Renault Zoes charging on single phase and anything charging at level 1 (120v) which we don't do in the UK.

Do you mean the peer reviewed research I conducted which showed that charging an EV with a device other than the optimum charger used by the manufacturer during testing could induce significant charging losses?

You know, the one where you focused intensely on only your own singular experience and rejected all other data because it didn't fit with that experience?

The nub of the research (if you were to engage with it in it's whole) was that EV are more efficient in terms of energy from primary source than ICEV with the exception of a theoretical hybrid diesel which was slightly favourable.

If you're going to summarise my work, please be sure you get it right, eh.

 

[mtt.tr]

On my travels I see far more new vehicles stranded by the side of the road than old ones. New vehicles give people a feeling of immunity to maintenance.





You don't have to buy a banger to buy a cheap vehicle.

3k can find you a well maintained bargain that isn't likely to leave you stranded by the side of the road. Especially when looked after.

Equally you could be I'm a brand new land rover discovery that suffers a catastrophic failure.

Not the M25 keep seeing old ****ters with the bonnet

 

[premmington]

The powers that be want people to buy an electric car.
At this time the average new car payment is about $725 per month, on a 72 month loan.
The car insurance and maintenance and fuel will probably add $300 to that.
Inflation this year has already eaten up $600 per month, of an average families income, and it is just getting started.
So a new car, or any car will be out of reach.

They have been predicting this - they even had a name for it - "transport poverty".

I repair cars for a living - how some of my customers pay there garage bills I don't know?

We see people paying with credit cards - two debit cards (as they don't have enough money in one account). They wait till payday to collect repaired cars. Aging parents make payment over the phone for middle aged kids.

Cars get more complicated - labour times increase - parts get dearer - cars get more neglected and thus repair bills get bigger.

But it is the second hand car market - that really shocks me. There are no cheap cars about - and the low cost ones that are - are really only motive scrap.

 

[8ob]

Heat is a significant loss when fast charging
So efficiency is down

Slow charging is pretty good tickling it in there overnight on 3kw

View attachment 357315

I was trying to build a picture of the true efficiency of the whole leccy malarky. Gas, oil coal and nuclear generation produces power at under or around 50% efficiency, losses through the grid/transformers or power to our doors must be considerable and then we lose a load more with fast charging. Not sure of the true carbon footprint with wind , solar and nuclear but its doesnt look good. The direct power an ICE delivers doesn't look that inefficient in the grand scheme of things.

Bob

 

[pressbrake1]

They have been predicting this - they even had a name for it - "transport poverty".

I repair cars for a living - how some of my customers pay there garage bills I don't know?

We see people paying with credit cards - two debit cards (as they don't have enough money in one account). They wait till payday to collect repaired cars. Aging parents make payment over the phone for middle aged kids.

Cars get more complicated - labour times increase - parts get dearer - cars get more neglected and thus repair bills get bigger.

But it is the second hand car market - that really shocks me. There are no cheap cars about - and the low cost ones that are - are really only motive scrap.

Export for parts or complete cars
Scrappage schemes which murder good vehicles
Good cars being scraped because of failure of a unnecessary component adding stupid costs. Like fancy transponders , expensive fuel injection equipment . Poor German wiring etc
Covid causing manufacturing disruption so those new car buyers aren’t creating used examples as they’re not part ex or selling their old vehicles

 

[GRW]

The fuel costs of both of the above vehicles need to be brought into question plus the car tax of both.

You are talking with a guy who has spent the last three weeks driving just under a thousand miles a week in his 18 year old land rover which was purchased for £600 with an electrical fault and still owes him less than £1500 two years later. I practice bangereconomics as well and it makes sense for me to put as many miles as I can onto my little electric car as I still put over £5k diesel into that land rover in the last 12 months due to the need for 6 seats and 3.5t towing capacity. The Leaf pays for itself in the mileage savings on all the trips that don't need the full LR capacity.

As some of the others who have EVs in this thread have pointed out we generally all needed a newer vehicle (I've nothing apart from a motorbike and the Leaf under 100,000 miles/10 years) and just buying another cheap older vehicle can be problematic when our own transport is essential for both my wife and my own jobs, you have done well with your Yaris but any twenty year old vehicle is likely to give you more grief than a younger model. I've done plenty of miles with a 1997 Toyota Starlet and a 2002 Yaris Verso and both of those needed a lot more than anti-roll bar bushes and expired before 100k miles according to the MOT history checker. If you are buying a newer vehicle you might as well buy one that has cheaper fueling costs and one that is pleasant to drive and the Leaf ticked the box for both of those, it isn't fancy, it doesn't have much range, it looks ugly, it can't tow and I can't do 600 miles a day in it but it is cheaper than its electric competitors and works for us.

I think that that is changing relentlessly (& which will kill off "Bangernomics") is the built-in obsolescence and unreliability of vehicles (almost certainly by design), and the increasing difficulty or prevention of affordable repair/mtce of vehicles (most certainly by design).

Where you could in the not-too-distant past find a well-made, reliable car at 7-8 years-old, that could be largely self-maintained and trusted to give years of service at low cost - it seems none of the vehicles made in the last decade seem to offer that.

The EV is just taking the base cost of even a small car up into the stratosphere, and taking the potential for home mtce or even independent garage affordable mtce away, while anyone buying a 10-yr-old EV trying to get an affordable vehicle - has to play the lottery that the cars cells etc won't suddenly fail, with that expense immediately writing the car off and leaving the owner skint and car-less.

IMO there is no doubt that motoring will return to being the preserve of the wealthy, because the clear trend is to drive costs up beyond the means of the many, and to both outlaw and render useless/uneconomical the kind of vehicles that the "non-wealthy" need.

Let's face it, the simplest way to reduce traffic volumes and reduce emissions isn't to just produce so-called clean vehicles - it's to drastically reduce the number of vehicles altogether. The trend the Govt & the Car Industry is following appear to conspire to be pushing us towards this reality.

 

[mtt.tr]

I disagree with the maintenance aspect, I personally think the issue Is people not keeping with the times you can buy OEM cracked software for £100.

It's like expecting a steam engineer to maintain a 70s car unless taught or kept up-to-date not much chance.

 

[daleyd]

I think that that is changing relentlessly (& which will kill off "Bangernomics") is the built-in obsolescence and unreliability of vehicles (almost certainly by design), and the increasing difficulty or prevention of affordable repair/mtce of vehicles (most certainly by design).

Where you could in the not-too-distant past find a well-made, reliable car at 7-8 years-old, that could be largely self-maintained and trusted to give years of service at low cost - it seems none of the vehicles made in the last decade seem to offer that.

The EV is just taking the base cost of even a small car up into the stratosphere, and taking the potential for home mtce or even independent garage affordable mtce away, while anyone buying a 10-yr-old EV trying to get an affordable vehicle - has to play the lottery that the cars cells etc won't suddenly fail, with that expense immediately writing the car off and leaving the owner skint and car-less.

IMO there is no doubt that motoring will return to being the preserve of the wealthy, because the clear trend is to drive costs up beyond the means of the many, and to both outlaw and render useless/uneconomical the kind of vehicles that the "non-wealthy" need.

Let's face it, the simplest way to reduce traffic volumes and reduce emissions isn't to just produce so-called clean vehicles - it's to drastically reduce the number of vehicles altogether. The trend the Govt & the Car Industry is following appear to conspire to be pushing us towards this reality.

Why are you obsessed with the idea of electric cars suddenly “failing” when there’s no evidence that this happens any more than in an ICE vehicle? There are Tesla’s that have got well over 100,000 miles on that are still perfectly ok. (Those are the ones that have been around the longest, I’m sure there are others) as well as which battery tech has moved on from those early cars anyway.

There is little aftermarket support for these vehicles at the present time but do you think that won’t change as they come into the secondhand market and out of warranty? Of course not - garages will move with the time and the tech. What you see today is not what’s going to be there in 5,10 years time…

Audi TFSI piston ring problems, VW DSG gearboxes anyone? Both of those have been well documented and have basically written off plenty of otherwise perfectly good cars, or at least cost many thousands to put right.

 

[8ob]

Let's face it, the simplest way to reduce traffic volumes and reduce emissions isn't to just produce so-called clean vehicles - it's to drastically reduce the number of vehicles altogether. The trend the Govt & the Car Industry is following appear to conspire to be pushing us towards this reality.

Town planners have a lot to answer for, all well and good sterilising small towns and villages of industry in favour of housing but they never consider where these people will work. Nobody wants to waste three hours plus of their day on a commute but many do.There should be a big push with incentives to bring the workplace closer to home, offices can be anywhere and bigger manufacturers could quite easily be spread out a bit more evenly.

Bob

 

[Onoff]

I always find it amusing that if you want to electrify a classic, low maintenance, simple mechanics vehicle, then it basically remains the preserve of the rich.

I travel up from Sevenoaks station, unarguably a very well off area. The increasing amount of Tesla's in the car park, that sit there all day doing nothing, I can't quite get my head around. Those same cars are seemingly not there quite often, I guess owned by those able to work from home, the Tuesday, Wednesday And Thursday brigade and those who we'll see next Tuesday for 3 days only.

Don't get me wrong I'd have a model S tomorrow just for the fun of it and as I like the look. I'd put an electric drivetrain in one of the Capris too.

"If I were a rich man, dooby, dooby, dooby, doo..."

 

[Maker]

I'd put an electric drivetrain in one of the Capris too.

I like the idea of electrifying an old Mini, an electric Project Binky if you will.

 

[brewdexta]

There was a Tesla Model S dual motor driving like a looney on the M1 yesterday. Undertaking, jumping into very tight gaps between cars, hanging onto people bumpers in the outside lane and indicating right at 70+ even though all 3 lanes were full.

So BMW & Audi drivers obviously like them

 

[Bullet2012]

??? So are Costco chicken bakes.

What are these Costco cars, are they any good ?

 

[pressbrake1]

Town planners have a lot to answer for, all well and good sterilising small towns and villages of industry in favour of housing but they never consider where these people will work. Nobody wants to waste three hours plus of their day on a commute but many do.There should be a big push with incentives to bring the workplace closer to home, offices can be anywhere and bigger manufacturers could quite easily be spread out a bit more evenly.

Bob

Town planners are more concerned with traffic control than traffic flow
There was a greenpeace add for walking to work

I responded that most people can’t work local anymore and not every can be a bedroom activist

 

[Bobtail4x4]

You’ll have to explain your maths - how does that mean there’s more going out than in

I can’t see anything those figures that suggests that ….ours is a little less efficient and we pay more for our electric but using my figures we pay 7.5p per kWh and get roughly 3.7 miles per kWh , so it’s simply 7.5/3.7 to give you pence per mile - just over 2p

Using the other figures it’s 4.5p per kWh and 6 miles per kWh so 4.5/6 so 0.75 p per mile

You’ll lose a little due to charging losses but it’s something like 90% efficient - so in my case it would work out at 2.2 p per mile (It does actually work out roughly at that when you take the charging costs/miles added - I don’t have those figures with me to give at the moment because I am away but will put them up when I get back)

Edit - ah sorry, I see he wrote 0.0075p, I think that was meant to be £0.0075

yes I meant 0.75p per mile,

didnt mention I get paid 11p per mile from work