The Electric Car Thread

Anecdotal , but we drove to cornwall (fowey) from manchester  on a weekend last august , admittedly it wasnt a bank holiday, but there was no problem with charger availability on the way down or back.

Actually , thats not quite true , at exeter (my planned 2nd stop) all chargers were full, so we drove past those and charged a bit further along the route at a different bank of chargers that had plenty spare.

Once we got to fowey with 20% battery left we plugged into one of the slow chargers in the public car park (again no issue with availability) and charged it back up to 100% for the next morning.

Let me guess, the open to the public superchargers at Exerter were full but the Tesla exclusive ones had plenty spare. Superchargers are one of the Musk/US services I'm not prepared to boycott, it would be too painful.

Posted by: Edukator

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Let me guess, the open to the public superchargers at Exerter were full but the Tesla exclusive ones had plenty spare. Superchargers are one of the Musk/US services I'm not prepared to boycott, it would be too painful.

No they were all full including the tesla chargers. 

We carried on to an open to all tesla charging station about 30 miles further up the road that were pretty much empty. 

I guess this is as good a place to ask, currently have a Golf PHEV on order. basically for my use case I can run it as an electric most of the time, but for longer trips I have options.

Just considering the EV side of it, ideal world I guess it makes sense to get a charging point for the house, if only because I'll end up with a full ev one day.. But how realistic is running it off a 3pin plug as an interim solution?

Looks like that's about 20kwh battery so the 3 pin charger would top that up from flat overnight, but it'd be sensible to make sure the socket and wiring are up to that sort of sustained load. A dedicated charger probably wouldn't save you time so it's a big spend for dubious benefit. In fact you might be able to configure IOG for the car and get 7p/kw for the whole time the car is on the granny charger.

I think Intelligent Octopus Go supports VW cars directly, which means you don't need a smart charger and you should be able to get it on the granny charger.  Octopus have a calculator on their website that tells you what tariff you can have with what sort of car and charger you are using.

You should probably replace your socket with an 'EV compatible' one - these are a drop-in replacement and pretty cheap, but they are rated for continuous high load.

You should probably replace your socket

And check wiring...

Check what the maximum charge rate for the car is too. Depending on what model year/version i'm seeing either 3.6kW, 11kW or 40kW DC...

If it's 3.6 a slightly upgraded granny socket will be all you need/can use. If it's 40kW DC, there's not a domestic charger that will even do that! My PHEV is rated at 6.7kW AC, so it was worth buying some extra charging kit!

After a good few months with an electric car I have decided to go back to diesel! (partly).

I like an electric motor, it's great in a car. However working in remote areas of Scotland it just isn't viable for now. The public charging network has a long way to go, and it's disappointing to see how poor it is considering how long it has been touted as the next big thing in cars. Over the past year we found public chargers to be unreliable, often occupied by regular cars who just don't give a crap where they park, and sited in areas not on the common routes.
I'm sure in the cities it will be much better, and as a city car electric will be really good I am sure.

For the moment, living and working in remote areas it's just a massive pain in the arse. For those who say 'just stop and charge on your way home, no thanks. After a long shift the last thing I want to be doing is adding more time to my day, which over the course of a year really adds up.
And for those who say just get a long range battery, I looked at these and the price for that is mental.

When manufacturers have developed it to the point where you can buy a sensible priced car with a real world range of 400+ miles this is when I'll seriously look at it again.

So back to Volvo diesel for the next few years. This is the workhorse, fill it up and go and know it'll do hundreds of miles easily. And it's comfy haha!

And I say going back partly because now I'm looking at the smaller electric cars which we can use for the short trips and not have to worry about the range and charging. Renault 5 looks tempting as a small fun thing...

Posted by: mrmo

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But how realistic is running it off a 3pin plug as an interim solution?

I charge my ioniq on a 3 pin. 10amp/2.2kw into the car. I usually only charge for a few hours at a time (whilst the agile prices are cheap) and rarely nightly as I don't do many miles daily.

Timed via a tapo smart plug. 

This is my interim solution until I have a house rewire at which point the cost of installing a permanent charger will pale into insignificance! 

Thanks for sharing your experiences @Zedsdead. Very interesting. 

I’ve had similar discussions with a friend from rural Aberdeenshire who has been driving an EV with a claimed range around 340 miles (so around 250 in reality) for the past 4 years. He has just about made it work but his advice to me was that I might consider waiting a few years until solid state batteries make cars with a range of 600 miles a reality. 

I’m skeptical. Leaving aside the question of how long it will really take for that technology to become affordable. I find it hard to believe that I really need that sort of range. A car with a 600 mile range will always be more expensive, bigger, heavier and less efficient than one with a range of, say, 250 miles. I never drive more than 200 miles without a break (usually a fair bit less). So surely what I need is better charging infrastructure not a super long range car. But unlike him (and you) I’ve not actually tried it in practice. 

To be fair, he (like me) enjoys driving to remote places to run up and down mountains. I doubt we’ll ever see charge ports in every trailhead in Scotland I can see that it is a pain having to stop for a charge after a long day in the hills. 

But how realistic is running it off a 3pin plug as an interim solution

I have a MG ZS EV (70kwh or something - the bigger battery) - initially I was going to get a charger, but then I did the maths and realised it would take a long time to pay for itself. I had my garage rewired when I moved in and specced with big cables (wood working tools), but even so the granny charger is never actually 3.6kw - they are normally limited to 3kw. Most of the time we do relatively few miles and the granny charger is more than sufficient to top it up - since we have had the car (a year) it has been charged once on a non granny charger (and that was my wife who wanted to try it out rather than because we had to). We just plug it in every night (on whatever the octopus tarrif is for EVs that doesn't need a dedicated charger) - if we do a long journey it'll drop to 20% or whatever, but then over the next couple of days it gets back up to 80%. It's fine (I guess the caveat is that I do have a diesel tourneo for zooming across france in!).

That's a long way of saying - assuming your wiring isn't terrible, I would use a granny charger and save myself a grand. 

Whilst chargers are being discussed (they’re not really chargers are they, just sockets in an expensive box…) what’s the most cost effective way of getting one at the moment?

It’s for my mum, she’s doesn’t have a smart meter yet so are there any good offers on from the elec companies at the moment?

She may be another case where a granny charger would do the job, but depends what the options are currently.

Mine cost me £105 but that was 5 years ago now…

Thanks for the comments, might just save the money and stick to 3pin.

I can see that it is a pain having to stop for a charge after a long day in the hills. 

That is the easiest thing to change. Just sit back and relax for half an hour - if this is a problem then it's probably an attitude thing 🙂 And yes I have had to do this.

It's all an attitude thing though really. For you (and maybe for me) sitting in the car for half an hour after a long day in the hills might be just fine, but if somebody else finds that a pain and just wants to get home then I can't argue with that. I've had various conversations with EV drivers now. Most are happy with their choice but for the ones who aren't it tends to come down to one or two specific situations that they personally find annoying. 

I don't think my friend is going back to ICE anytime soon though. He's just looking forward to the day when solid state batteries result in a car that he can drive all day without charging. Personally, I'm not sure that is really a good thing as I suspect the possibility of ultra long range EVs will make it harder for people to commit to installing public chargers, which are what I think we really need. 

After a day in the hills there's a flask waiting for us in the car, we stop for a coffee with or without need for a charge.

Your last point about public chargers is the crux of it IMO. It's now 8 years I've been using EVs and whislt infrastructure has improved massively it's still more hassle than turning up at a petrol station and pouring petrol in. In nearly 50 years of using ICE vehicles I can count the times I've falied to fill up with petrol or diesel on the fingers of one hand. In 8 years with an EV I've run out of fingers on two hands. My record is three chargers on different networks in one town, Cernay, and ending up going back to a Tesla supercharger in the wrong direction - keep 40km in reserve folks.

But unlike him (and you) I’ve not actually tried it in practice.

We've modelled it, based on actual driver usage in ICE, hybrids and EVs.

600miles per charge may happen (but unlikely), but the number of people who *actually* need it is so close to zero that they could carry on with the most polluting ICE cars in existence and the additional total population emissions would trend to almost zero. Include breathing and farting, it'd be too small to measure.

A 100 mile a day round trip, commuting, puts you in something like the 99.9 percentile of daily usage in Europe (inc UK), US is about a quarter more.

I'm sure that's true, but it would appear that in order to get people to make the switch to an EV you can't just cover 99% of their use. It's those "edge case" journeys that people tend to focus on. Maybe super long range is what will be required to get people to move, but assuming the charging infrastructure improves I suspect it might just be a transitional thing though with those drivers moving back to cheaper, lighter cars once they realise that they don't actually need that range. But I could be wrong and maybe the shift to EVs will result in us all driving great big tanks with monster ranges, which would be a shame. I guess the market will decide. Glad it's not my job to try to predict that 😀 

TBH, my personal view is that people who still concentrate on their (mostly) made up corner cases to explain how terrible EVs are should just be left to drive their ICE cars and fill up with petrol at 5 quid a litre when all the refineries shut... but that's just me 😉 

The problems with that view is that not everyone can afford to buy an electric car and also have no means of charging without using “public” chargers. What could have been a movement for the equalisation of transportation has followed the capitalist model. Hugely more expensive charging, cars that are far more complicated than people actually need and the vehicles getting bigger and bigger and bigger! An opportunity for clean, greener transport has been missed. 

I think you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick here, it's those who want massively expensive and heavy cars with huge batteries/range that i want to leave behind.

Is there any realistic chance of public fast charging costs to come down in the future?

Paying the equivalent of £12 a gallon seems to be a big hurdle for the many who don't have home charging

I think there are two arguments when it comes to range and I'm glad it isn't my job to predict which will win.

One is that range is still the number one issue for people considering a move from ICE to EV (and for a few EV owners too) that the average range of new EVs has increased a lot since the early days and that this trend will continue and possibly accelerate with the introduction of new battery technology. So the future for EVs will be cars with 600+ mile range. At which point charging "on the road" stops being an issue and you just need somewhere close to either where you live or where you work to charge. 

The other argument is that we've already reached the optimal range for an EV and the future is all about improving the charging infrastructure to make those EVs more usable in a wider variety of situations. Under that scenario the future of EVs would be new technology bringing down the price and weight of cars along with improvements in the speed of charging rather than the range. Nobody really wants to pay for a car that is more expensive, bigger, heavier and less efficient than they need. 

I prefer the second argument and I guess one fact in its favour is that my friend bought a mainstream car (ID3) with a 77 kwh battery back in 2021. Four years later and there still aren't many middle range cars offering much more than that. I think the latest ID3 has increased that from 77 to 79 kwh so hardly significant. In the meantime lots of new models have been released with "long range" offerings in the 60-70 kwh range. So maybe that is the sweet spot. Blowed if I know though. 

There will always be those who will hate EV's for their own BS made up reasons. Leave them to it, there is no point in trying to show the merits as they do not want to listen.

For us, I acknowledge our case is somewhat more unusual to most, and it is purely down to the work we do. But I am hopeful that with the expected advances in technology etc this will be achievable in the future. Although the lack of movement on public charging here is a bit concerning.
For instance, we live in a town which is apparently 'affluent' (Seems just a normal town to me), with approximately 15,000 people. This town has 4 charging points. 3 of which are more often than not occupied by either regular cars or EV drivers who are using it as a parking space instead of actually charging. And they are slow.
The one which is a medium rate charger at best is often broken.
They are all off the beaten track.
There are 4 supermarkets, and at least 3 substantially sized public car parks, and none of them have any charging. I think this is a major missed opportunity.
Personally for a town of this size in 2025 I think this is pathetic. But hey ho, I'm just some daft laddie...

And for the time being we will in fact use a small cheap(er) EV for the day to day short trips. We do like how it drives, and find it makes for quite a relaxing journey.

And in 5 years we will look at it all again and see how it stands...

it tends to come down to one or two specific situations that they personally find annoying.

Indeed, but the point is the situation where you're spraying pollution everywhere you go SHOULD be annoying.  But we're so used to it that we think it's normal and we don't care.

Regarding solid state batteries - I think manufacturers will offer two versions, 350 and 600 miles. The 600 will be as expensive as 350 mile cars are now, but the shorter range model will be cheaper even than an ICE car is now.  Some folks will buy the long range car at first, but they will eventually realise they never use it, they could have saved a shitload of money with the shorter one and/or they will upgrade to a more luxurious car with 350 miles of range; and sales of the longer range models will be small - probably only bought by caravanners.

“Indeed, but the point is the situation where you're spraying pollution everywhere you go“.
You have made this point before and it is valid but a large part of the population don’t have a choice. It also conveniently ignores the pollution at source in the mining of the large amounts of copper and lithium, often connected with dodgy regimes and poor human rights. 
I am in favour of sensibly sized and power electric vehicles but the “holier than thou” approach does nothing to persuade me!

Posted by: Zedsdead

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Although the lack of movement on public charging here is a bit concerning.

Nothing else really matters, people are lazy, if you want to go from A-B you have to be confident you can. And you need to be confident of when you will arrive.

Why have i gone for a PHEV, a pure electric would cover 80-90% of my usage, but the remainder? questionable access to chargers. If you can guarantee fast chargers that are fast and readily available everywhere then the issues fall away.

But and here is a more general problem, someone has to pay for the infrastructure, and with fuel receipts falling, who? Why should non drivers be paying, which leads to road pricing of some form.

It also conveniently ignores the pollution at source in the mining of the large amounts of copper and lithium, often connected with dodgy regimes and poor human rights. 

And the pollution to extract oil and the regimes in oil producing countries?

Im amazed we dont see more small cheap EVs here

https://www.wired.com/review/review-nissan-sakura-2025/#:~:text=The%20Sakura%20might%20be%20Japa n's,have%20been%20crying%20out%20for.

a large part of the population don’t have a choice

We know, and we've talked about this a lot here.

It also conveniently ignores the pollution at source in the mining of the large amounts of copper and lithium,

Again this hasn't been ignored, it's been endlessly discussed.  The mining doesn't have to cause pollution, it just does currently; but also once mined it says mined and doesn't go away. This isn't the case for oil.  And the pollution caused by mining is local and isn't going to bugger up the entire world.

As for holier than thou - this is your own interpretation. I'm just pointing out how things are - you're the one adding the resentment and moralising.  I've got a 6hr round trip coming up and I have an EV on the drive, but I'll probably take the diesel because it's comfier.  The EV I bought mostly because it was cheaper to run. So I'm not claiming to be better than anyone, at least not in terms of environmental footprint. In fact, every time this has been brought up in the last nearly 20 years I've been here I've said 'we' not 'you' and I've fully acknowledged my own failings. So let's put that one to bed.

Posted by: Andy Welch

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At which point charging "on the road" stops being an issue and you just need somewhere close to either where you live or where you work to charge

Hmmm - I wonder if that's part of the reason for a reluctance to invest in "on the road" charging infrastructure?

Posted by: Andy Welch

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Nobody really wants to pay for a car that is more expensive, bigger, heavier and less efficient than they need. 

That does seem logical, but many of the cars on the road today disprove it.

For instance, we live in a town which is apparently 'affluent' (Seems just a normal town to me), with approximately 15,000 people. This town has 4 charging points. 3 of which are more often than not occupied by either regular cars or EV drivers who are using it as a parking space instead of actually charging. And they are slow.

And whatever tweak they've done to legislation in Sweden means that the city i live (pop. 60000) in has over 400 public chargers listed, and i know some that exist aren't listed yet (as i've used them) and there are two companies that have their own employee chargers (about 100 in total). And from what i can see (a quick look), they top out at about 20% cheaper than public charging in the UK. (i never pay more than about half of that rate).

Posted by: ransos

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And the pollution to extract oil and the regimes in oil producing countries?

And refine and distribute it. 

and then burn it. 

Posted by: Greybeard

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Nobody really wants to pay for a car that is more expensive, bigger, heavier and less efficient than they need. 

That does seem logical, but many of the cars on the road today disprove it.

Good point. I maybe should have opened my eyes before posting that 😀 

That is the problem with leaving everything to the market I guess. The big profits will be in expensive, long range complicated cars, so that's what manufacturers will want to push. The fact that such cars may be around the corner will make people less likely to invest in public charging hubs. Conversely (see the Swedish example above) if there are incentives to install charging infrastructure now then that would reduce the demand for those bigger super long range cars.  

Im amazed we dont see more small cheap EVs here

 

 

Aren't most EVs company cars, salary sacrifice or just keeping up with the Jones's, like most other cars purchased?

I'm currently working on a project that uses 2.2MW of gas burners for the paint ovens at the mini plant in Oxford - this is just so mini roofs can be a different colour to the body, so absolutely unnecessary..

The mining doesn't have to cause pollution, it just does currently; but also once mined it says mined and doesn't go away. This isn't the case for oil.  And the pollution caused by mining is local and isn't going to bugger up the entire world.

How many EV batteries, or batteries of any sort for that matter get recycled? Alot of 'green' policy in the UK at the moment seems centred around moving our problems elsewhere, for example buying coal from Australia instead of mining it in the UK. 

 

Im amazed we dont see more small cheap EVs here

Would it be unreasonable to suggest that small cheap cars are symbiotic with smaller, cheaper housing. Flats & apartments, terrace houses and rentals. i.e. the kind of places less likely to be able to charge at home. And the economics of EV ownership (rather than other reasons to make the switch) start to make most sense when charging at home overnight. So the sector of the car market most influenced by economy (so mostly likely to live in a cheaper housing and buy a cheaper car) will for the moment see the least benefit from weekly running costs if they switched to EVs. 

Posted by: Ben

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How many EV batteries, or batteries of any sort for that matter get recycled?

I'd be surprised if many get scrapped (or even recycled) at the moment to be honest. There is still a lot of value in an EV battery and I suspect that most will be re-purposed as home storage (especially as more people put solar panels on their roof) when they can no longer be used in an EV. 

There is a lot of talk in the media at the moment about the high depreciation of new EVs (mostly from people who want to put you off buying an EV). That's mainly a consequence of inflated new prices that have been propped up by tax breaks on company cars. In the long term I expect that depreciation of older EVs is going to be a lot better than older ICE cars as that battery will still have value i.e. the floor for the value of an EV should be higher than for an ICE car.  

I'd be surprised if many get scrapped (or even recycled) at the moment to be honest. There is still a lot of value in an EV battery and I suspect that most will be re-purposed as home storage (especially as more people put solar panels on their roof) when they can no longer be used in an EV. 

This is spot on, I believe a lot going onto barges at the moment too. 

Fair amount of 'black mass' being recovered at the moment too. Just Google 'lithium battery recycling uk' though there are some rogues / criminals in the sector too. 

There are plenty of companies doing recycling but they haven't been able to scale up because there isn't enough supply of batteries to recycle. As above, they are being repurposed.  They won't be thrown in a hole, there are too many valuable raw materials for that.

Re small cheap cars - there is much less margin on these.  Capacity for making EVs is limited at the moment, so they may as well put the tech into the higher value cars that generate more profit so they can invest in production.  My guess is that the market for EVs currently is probably heavily driven by company cars which don't tend to be small.  The other issue is that quite a few small city cars are bought by young people who may well want to drive across the country in them, and truly short range cars might be a turnoff.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Those who drive 1000km in a single hit without any stops to visit their dying Aunt Dora once every 3 months have pretty much put paid to reduce. Materialism and the capitalist/"free market economy" don't help...

Reuse, there are at least half a dozen OEs and a dozen startups/3rd parties looking at how to reuse the batteries once they won't produce the current to move a car properly, conservative estimates reckon on discarded car cells being good for another 15 years in a house or for domestic type use (lighting, heating, light duties), if they can be structured and packaged properly (cooling/BMS/etc). Tesla claimed to be doing it, but the last i saw (two years ago maybe?) they were still using brand new cells. They may have moved to reuse by now.

Recycle, technically i don't think a single EV cell in existence has actually got to the point it needs recycling, but there are 3 or 4 facilities in europe at least who are doing what seems like a half arsed job of it. Another handful in China. No idea about the US.

There are EV battery packs that are too impact damaged / fire damaged that have to be recycled. Then there are all the illegal PLEVs that are being seized by the authorities. 

Eg. Black mass recycling https://www.iconichem.com/black-mass-recycling

There are a couple of others.

The impact damaged packs are being recycled in France, they were pretty much the only ones available when recycling started as battery packs are lasting rather well. There have been a couple of TV reports. They claim 70% of the lithium is recovered, almost all the metals and the residue left can be integrated in building material.

Posted by: mert

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Those who drive 1000km in a single hit without any stops to visit their dying Aunt Dora once every 3 months have pretty much put paid to reduce.

I think it's a little unfair to blame people for not buying an EV when the infrastructure isn't there to support the journeys they make (even if only rarely).

Our government decided that the best way to support the transition to EVs was to subsidise manufacturers to produce expensive company cars (through changes to the BIK rules). I can see why they did that. Without that support it was hard to see how existing car manufacturers would be able to compete with new (mainly Chinese) companies, so this looked like a way of supporting a move to EVs and also of protecting some UK manufacturing jobs. But the result is that it provides incentives for manufacturers to make (and consumers to buy) bigger more expensive EVs. I guess they hoped that the market would provide the charging infrastructure but by supporting the manufacture of expensive EVs they also make the business case for installing chargers harder. Basically, you need to be able to get your money back quickly (before longer range EVs become available) and that drives up charging costs and makes EVs less viable for anybody who can't charge at home. 

An alternative approach would have been for the government to use the company car BIK income to support installation of more chargers instead.  But it's too late for that now. 

I guess they hoped that the market would provide the charging infrastructure 

I think it is - chargers are flying up all over the place.

Posted by: molgrips

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I think it is - chargers are flying up all over the place.

True but the price/kwh is pretty high and I expect that puts a lot of people off buying an EV. Also the market only ever provides the profitable bits of the network so people can still point to charging deserts as a reason not to make the switch. I'm not saying all of these excuses are legitimate, just trying to understand what the barriers are to wider uptake of EVs. 

Think it depends on where you are...there are several spots that have chargers around me, but they aren't in ideal locations i.e. easily leave car to charge and return. I think 2 main streets in town have got street parking with chargers included - which is fantastic...but almost all the spaces are taken by ice cars (with several EV cars parked along other streets).

Things are improving but it isn't happening quickly in all places, I think demand is there, but it is low due to infrastructure not being in place, if that can improve then more EV cars will be getting used.

True but the price/kwh is pretty high

Yeah, I suspect this is set to provide enough profit to re-invest, because the main factor for choosing a network currently is availability - so to get market share the operators need availability not low price. Once the road network is saturated with charging locations, they'll have to start lowering prices - and that's ok because they won't need as much investment.

Posted by: molgrips

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I think it is - chargers are flying up all over the place.

That doesn't mean they're going to be cheaper though - there are many thousands of petrol stations.... doesn't make them cheap. And in the same way if you want convenience, i.e. on major routes, you're going to have to pay for it.

Posted by: molgrips

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Once the road network is saturated with charging locations, they'll have to start lowering prices

Why?  See above..... we have thousands of petrol stations and that has not necessarily meant cheap fuel.

Posted by: Andy Welch

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True but the price/kwh is pretty high and I expect that puts a lot of people off buying an EV.

My list in order of importance:

• Can't pull my 3500kg boat/trailer combo
• Cost of the cars (even used)*
• Still questions over longevity
• [Range
• Cost of public fuel**]

* My current car is 12 years old, is a lovely place to be and is still absolutely fine for my needs so why spend more?

** I could charge at home so it's of little interest to me

Posted by: molgrips

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I think it is - chargers are flying up all over the place.

Maybe where you are they are, certainly aren't in many parts of the UK. and that is a problem.

I don't have a problem with anybody who says an EV isn't for them. Personally, I don't see any point developing EVs or charging infrastructure for people who want to tow heavy loads. There aren't enough of those journeys for it to matter, so let them keep running an ICE car for the trips when they are towing. 

I suspect the switch from ICE to EVs is baked in now but it will be slower than it would have been if different decisions had been made a few years ago.