I’ve had a tesla model S as a company vehicle for 18 months now with no issues. I charge 50% on the free network and 50% at home. Compared to the 12 monthly costs of my last vehicle (2.0ltr diesel XF sport brake) the tesla is 3k a year cheaper to run including servicing, tax, fuel, tyres, etc on 33k Miles a year, not including depreciation which is currently fixed at 3 years should I wish to part ex for a new one. Range anxiety was a worry but has not been an issue if you plan your journey in advance and the network is improving all the time. As a car it is as good as any equivalently costing vehicle I have driven and takes the bike wheels off in the boot or front wheel off with the seats down in the back. The company tax incentives were the the reason for the original purchase but I would not go back to an ICE now I have experienced this vehicle on a day to day basis

Kia Soul EV has arrived. Mixed feelings about it to be honest. Glad it’s not our only car.

Maybe I will get used to the idea. GF loves it so far.

even at £3000 as you are entering into an unlimited rental contract on a second hand vehicle.

None of the contracts is unlimited. You sign up for as long as you want. I signed up for two years in the hope of there being something better than a Zoé 40 along by the time it runs out. The new owner will sign up for as many years as they want.

One advantage of leasing the battery is that the new owner doesn’t have to worry about battery life as if capacity drops below 75% it will be replaced however old the car is. I reckon manufacturers are dropping the leasing idea because they have worked out that long term it’s less profitable than selling the car with the battery, especially on low-milage vehicles. Would you buy an 8-year-old electric car with the prospect of the battery falling/failing and costing you more than the value of the car to replace?

Our Zoe was always intended to be our second car when it arrived last September. Since then, though, the “main” car has hardly moved, even though we’ve done quite a bit of running around the country to see family and friends.

It makes day to day journeys much easier and more pleasant. Longer journeys take a bit of getting used to, gradually growing confidence in how far it goes, use of chargers etcetera but we’ve had no problems; admittedly our situation is slightly different as with a toddler stops en route of longer than just a quick pee stop is what we would do in any car.

I suspect like renewables they’ll just reach the tipping point where they work out cheaper then everyone will get one

i’m interested in what happens when they do, i had a look at a on-street charging point in the street the other day, it was a massive box like a cable tv one. what happens when we all need a charge point?

i live in a flat (block of 14) parking is not in high demand outside and is not residents parking but how can you charge your car? the meter cupboard faces the street is about 12 ft from the kerb but are we really going to see rubber mats across pavements etc? what if your meter is at the back of a property or 10 floors up?

there needs to be some kind of app and a column you pull up out of the pavement and plug-in but thats a huge infrastructure commitment.

electric cars are needed more in cities and make the most sense for places where short journeys are the norm but i haven’t seen much about how we are supposed to charge them?

So actually enjoying the Soul now. Drove down the M1 – better than I thought on the motorway. The range actually increased which surprised me. Looking at 122 miles now. Regenerative braking mode on. The heating drops the estimation down quite a lot, clearly unlike a normal car there is no free heat coming from the engine.

Drove to sheffield to check out the city centre car park with free charging. Made sure we’d got enough charge to get there and back anyway.

Parked up at Carver street, there is one charge point with two cables. There was one free when we got there. Car park was only a quid an hour too.

Meadowhell has some free charging too but we didn’t bother staying as they were all taken up and some of them broke. New Ikea has charge points. Not free. I’m not interested at shopping in either place but it’s useful to know.

there needs to be some kind of app and a column you pull up out of the pavement and plug-in but thats a huge infrastructure commitment.

Not much compared with a drill ship, kms of tubing and platform infrastructure on the seabed which will be abondonned. A production platform, a fleet of tankers, 1000s of kms of transport, an oil refinery, a petrol/diesel road tanker on the roads, a petrol station occupying a large site… and you moan about a 70cmx50cm box on the pavement connected to existing infrastructure that can be supplied with electricity from renewable sources.

 Not much compared with a drill ship, kms of tubing and platform infrastructure on the seabed which will be abondonned. A production platform, a fleet of tankers, 1000s of kms of transport, an oil refinery, a petrol/diesel road tanker on the roads, a petrol station occupying a large site… and you moan about a 70cmx50cm box on the pavement connected to existing infrastructure that can be supplied with electricity from renewable sources.

Chances are the majority of people are going to want to charge their vehicles overnight, so you’ll need what, 1 charger for every 2-3 cars? Currently there are over 30 million cars in the UK. Are those 10 million charge points going to cost less than the additional oil infrastructure for passenger vehicles?

I’m not saying that EV’s shouldn’t happen because it requires investment in infrastructure, but I’m curious as to whether there are any actual figures for comparison.

Of those 30 million cars the first check to make is how many can be charged at people’s homes or in their works’ car parks.

A Zoé takes an hour to add 50% (which is using only a 22kw charger) so will occupy a charge point for an hour every 160km, a few days commuting for most people. I generally recharge when the battery is down to 35% which means that an hour on the public charger takes it up to 85%, the point at which charging starts to slow down, cost 2e. People won’t leave them on charge longer than necessary because they’ll still be paying while connnected. The police ticketed an ICE car on my local charge point – 135e and more importantly 3 points.

You are looking at a public charge point for every 50 cars at worst IMO.

My commute is 55 miles each way. No charging at work but I’ve got a drive so could charge at home. An electric car with a real range of 200 miles would suit me down to the ground. With 250 miles range it would even do my old weekly commute to Knutsford (175 miles). My current diesel has range for more than a week’s driving so works well. My previous petrol Fiat Panda could do 4 days of commuting at a pinch, leading me to carry a can of petrol at all times having tried to stretch the range.

Next car will be electric (but the current car’s only done 75,000 miles so that won’t be for a while).

New Ikea has charge points. Not free.

They’re run by Ecotricity and you pay them – but then IKEA refund you the £6 off your purchase, you just show the ecotricity email receipt.

As for on-street charging, there’s a company call Ubitricity who have a system where they can cheaply add charging sockets to lampposts – they use a box as part of the charging cable to authorise and meter what you’ve used for billing so the stuff in the lamppost can be fairly cheap and simple. A few of the London boroughs have been putting them in, would expect to see more over time.

https://insideevs.com/ubitricity-lamp-post-charging/

Is that one of the £1k charging cables dangling from the lampost? Quickest buck anyone can make…