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Like you my interest was piqued so i checked the MOT history and its got tin worm pretty much all over between the serious defects (seat belt mounts) and the advisories – sub frames , inner sills and suspension mounts.
Bugger. If one's that bad then clearly it has some issues and many more will follow.
What with 1st gen Leaves cooking batteries and Zoes having zero star crash rating, few of the early cars seem attractive. Cheapest 2nd gen cars seem to be an Ioniq 28kWh for ten grand or a higher mileage 2nd gen Leaf. That said the 2013 Zoe had 4 stars apparently, before the tests were made stricter.
What with 1st gen Leaves cooking batteries
Being Leaf owner (2nd Gen) i'm on the FB groups etc...it SEEMS the 1st Gen 24kWh Leafs are the better bet...oddly the 30kWh ones have the battery issues....
I LOVE my second Gen 40kWh leaf - it's the acenta with adaptive CC/android auto etc... They seem to be dropping in price quite a lot..prob about teh £12k mark for a decent mileage one... high miles could be got for less...
You’re also ignoring that you can charge from any 3 pin plug of which there are many. Our car you can add ~100miles range on a 12 hour overnight charge on a 3 pin plug.
This is a valid point... we went to an Air BnB a few weeks ago... left home with about 80% charge..arrived there with about 7%.. plugged it in through a window, and had 100% again (150 miles) come the morning for the trip home.
Yeah..the wingy Air BnB owner left a negative review (not just about me plugging in the car!) but in reality it would have cost, at max, £7 to charge..given it was a £500/night Air BnB, and they had an AGA running full chat the whole time, I didn't feel bothered!
But itraises another 'moral issue'...what's the etiquette about arriving at a hotel and aksing to plug into a wall socket (or patio socket, as i've done at a hotel recently!)....
DrP
On average in the UK in 2022 it was 193g/kWh of electricity, in my car that’s 41g/km of CO2. Around a third of a really good ICE car and about a quarter of my
Attribution of the electricity used by EVs should be against the most polluting generation source as they are putting an incremental load on the grid as you had the choice of buying an ICE compared to other devices that consume electricity and have no alternative fuel source.
The government will miss their 2035 target of decarbonisation of the grid which will also impact on the net zero target of 2050.
I’m not anti EV and will probably get one as my next car as there are clearly benefits such as zero emissions in populated areas.
Attribution of the electricity used by EVs should be against the most polluting generation source
Why? Most charge overnight when electricity is in surplus. There's a reason Octopus Energy agile pricing goes negative overnight at times. Yet more charge of solar during the day.
Attribution of the electricity used by EVs should be against the most polluting generation source as they are putting an incremental load on the grid as you had the choice of buying an ICE compared to other devices that consume electricity and have no alternative fuel source.
That's utter bollox. EV's especially with home charging are helping to reduce the peaks and troughs of demand. Most people with a large battery EV and doing decent mileage will be using Off Peak rates and times to do so. What it needs are better incentives to do so. At the moment Octopus is doing this well but others aren't.
EDIT - Jinx with @Flaperon
Attribution of the electricity used by EVs should be against the most polluting generation source as they are putting an incremental load on the grid
This is where there are real opportunities to look at the grid, power generation, storage and usage in a much smarter, more holistic way. As per Flaperons comments - overnight charging is a lot less polluting than at peak times for example.
Cheaper charging later on in the evening at this location on the outskirts York.
Octopus are down to 7.5p per kWh for 6 hours per night now, provided you have a compatible car or charger for Intelligent Octopus. Not only do you have 6 hours of cheap electricity but they also talk to the car (or charger if you have an Ohme) to choose other hours of charging if there is low demand on the grid. As per earlier this is a great way to make EV running costs really cheap. 120 miles = £2.25 on this tariff.
Attribution of the electricity used by EVs should be against the most polluting generation source as they are putting an incremental load on the grid
It really doesn't work like that. With a smart charger and an intelligent tariff, it favours renweables i.e. schedules charging according to when renewable energy generation is highest. So if the wind is set to drop, it charges earlier in the night. It can also charge outside the nominal off-peak times when there's a surplus of renewable power.
And yes, more EVs are being sold but more wind turbines and solar being installed as well. If your assertion was correct you'd see fossil fuel generation increasing, but it's going down.
Beware what they mean by 1st gen, 2 gen Leafs, says the Gen 1 Leaf owner. I'm going to assume you mean body shape 1, body shape 2 (new), in which case there are some more important details.
Gen 1 is a 24 kWh Leaf from 2011.... they don't have too many issues except age.
Gen 2 is a 2012 car I think, and they did have problems.
So there is a tweak for 2013 and on , old body style, 24 kWh cars. Mine is a 2015 and did a 100km near as dammit exactly on 80% 0f charge on Sunday. That's good, as it's over 13C here, which helps the battery, plus it means the heating is off or low. I think the battery still has about 16 , maybe 17 kWh available.
And on 100% renewable power as well ;.)
Mine is a 2015 .... I think the battery still has about 16 , maybe 17 kWh available
See, that sounds pretty terrible.
Octopus are down to 7.5p per kWh for 6 hours per night now, provided you have a compatible car or charger for Intelligent Octopus
We switched to Octopus when we bought our MG4. Currently still on the Economy 7 tariff (14.5p midnight-730) but applied for a smart meter. Sadly there is close to zero mobile signal where the meter is, and neither of our neighbours have been able to get their smart meters working. Apparently they can't use your house WiFi.
Bit annoying and niche case I'm sure, but somewhat ironic we can't use all the tech to get a cheaper charging tariff because our very old tech mobile signal doesn't work 😉
Home charger is making life a lot more simple. Reckon we'll be charging once every two weeks at the mo.
It really doesn’t work like that.
But it does. During the night gas is still being burned to generate electricity and of course solar is out of the picture.
Then you have people on 100% renewable tariffs which are not renewable because they include burning trees that are shipped a few thousand miles by ship and train.
The amount of renewable goes up and down all the time, even at night, due to wind. When the wind picks up, everyone's EVs start charging. Without grid storage, there'd be nowhere for that spare power to go because they cannot turn the gas power stations down very quickly - at least that's my understanding. Hence negative tariffs at certain times.
EVs are still niche, they are expensive so most people who can afford them can home charge at decent rates (and have enough intelligence to understand the variable charging structure). Many are also installing home solar with battery storage which is great as not only is that emissions free generation it also reduces further stress on the grid which is by far the weakest link at the moment.
The crunch will come in 3 years time when the current mass uptick in EV sales in the last 12 months (many of 3 to 4 year leases) hit the market making it more realistic (although probably still expensive) for lower income drivers to own one. This will in turn drive a huge demand for reasonable cost public charging walkable from home. That's what we need to be installing now, 7.5kW and 22kW A chargers, relatively cheap to install in volume so it keeps the costs down, a 22kW charger may cost a round £3k per charger to install, a 50kW DC charger is around £25k to install, that's a lot more pay back and relies on rapid turn over of vehicles which doesn't happen overnight when most people want to do routine charging. I reckon the supermarkets are missing a trick, particularly Aldi and Lidl, who have loads of unused car parking space at night and are often close to residential areas.
The one thing EVs might kill is bangernomics, people can keep a £500 ratty ICE vehicle on the road with duct tape and spares from breakers. If the battery in you end of life EV is shagged the only option is a replacement which is uneconomical.
I was talking about this with my better half. It's not going to be as simple as converting existing petrol stations either (we did wonder if range anxiety would eventually be an ICE thing as EVs - inevitably - numbers overtake them).
If you're going to have to wait longer than a traditional fill up, it makes sense to create some kind of hub/cafe rather than a windswept facility free edge of an industrial estate. And if you're going to do that, then maybe develop it in a more sustainable manner - solar panels on the roof etc.
Also isn't this just another transitional technology - once automated driving becomes a thing, car ownership is pretty much dead anyway.
(it was a long trip, hence the random discussion 😉 )
I reckon the supermarkets are missing a trick, particularly Aldi and Lidl, who have loads of unused car parking space at night and are often close to residential areas.
The Lidl near me is 14p per kWh!! Bargain!
I charge at work mostly, but if I need to top up at home i'll pop to Lidl and leave the car there (3 hour max..and i've a brompton in the boot).
It's annoying they DON'T allow you to leave the car there overnight though...
Oddly...Hove train station has a few 7kW chargers that are FREE to use, but you have to pay for parking...
At £2.50 for a sunday all day, that's cheap too!
DrP
Iirc with MK1 Leafs the ones to look for are the ones without the optional DC fast charger as fast charging caused battery temperature increases/degradation.
I was going to get one preCovid as they came down to my bangernomics level, they've gone back up a bit since.
The Lidl near me is 14p per kWh!! Bargain!
Indeed. It does seem a bit short sighted with the supermarkets. There's planning in for LIDL in Hereford. Big site, two chargers (well probably 1 and two cables). With the 22kw ones, you'd have thought it'd be worth putting in a few more while you're building the place.
We have exactly ZERO chargers at Ledbury or Hereford station. No idea about Gloucester as there be dragons 🙂
Also isn’t this just another transitional technology – once automated driving becomes a thing, car ownership is pretty much dead anyway.
But of course we are only notionally closer both in technology and law to that than we were on tomorrow's world in 1989
Agreed. Regardless of the technology (which isn't anywhere near well enough developed), you have the entire car owning / (understandable) fear of automated / autonomous vehicles culture to shift AND the extremely difficult to manage transition between current and future states.
Not sure if there will be a tipping point/trigger event for it, but it does feel inevitable. Maybe not in my lifetime (he says hopefully)
If you’re going to have to wait longer than a traditional fill up, it makes sense to create some kind of hub/cafe rather than a windswept facility free edge of an industrial estate. And if you’re going to do that, then maybe develop it in a more sustainable manner – solar panels on the roof etc.
Comrie Croft have this at their trail centre. Massive canopy of solar panels hooked up to four FREE charging points. Went a few weeks ago and plugged in for four hours while riding. By the time I got home I still had more charge than I left with in the morning. Mid week outside holiday time and still two spare spaces all day otherwise I’d have moved at snack time after my first few laps.
They seem to be dropping in price quite a lot
I think the future values of leccy cars is potentially fairly small unless the BIK rates go up. most people in the market for an electric car have access to a bik scheme, which artificially surpresses the price-per-month for a new car - for example an ID3 is around £330/month pre tax (just under £200/month post tax) for a £35k car.
if you're buying one second hand, you're going to want a reasonably lower cost than getting a new one - say £150/month might be the most your willing to spend. Over 36 months, £150 a month will only buy you a £15k car (assuming a £10k deposit, which you want to roll into your next car in 3 years time), which is frankly massive depreciation. You can already see a bit of this in some of the smaller cars - the corsa e has a £33k list price and there's one with 5,000 miles on autotrader for £15k!
EVs are still niche, they are expensive
Not sure about niche, they are proliferating like mad. They aren't expensive to buy, as such (not a huge premium in some cases comparing like for like) but the problem is that there aren't any cheap ones. But even the expensive ones are actually relatively cheap if you get one through work because of the BiK tax rate. I reckon most of those you see on the road are leased that way and consequently not costing their owners any more than an ICE.
The one thing EVs might kill is bangernomics, people can keep a £500 ratty ICE vehicle on the road with duct tape and spares from breakers. If the battery in you end of life EV is shagged the only option is a replacement which is uneconomical.
Hmm, not sure about that either. There are loads of things to go expensively wrong with ICEs, and loads of things will just deteriorate generally. So whilst your clutch might simply fail, at the same time the car is burning oil and needs a cam belt change so that could condemn it. In an EV, there's far fewer moving parts, the list of things that can go wrong is vastly shorter. Batteries are also modular so you won't need to replace a whole one, and I suspect that the supply of replacement modules from crashed cars will exceed the failure rate. And if the battery declines and the range drops to 50 or 100 miles people will take those for cheap and deal with it just like they deal with ICE bangers.
It's worth noting that if you are on a budget but you can score a cheap EV your fuel costs could* be far less so you might be in a position to pay more for the car or repair the battery.
* provided you have a suitable location and your landlord lets you install a charger. Which they will have to, eventually. It will probably end up being like having Sky or cable installed in a rental property which we used to do. We paid but the landlord always agreed because it was an asset to their property. This will raise an interesting socio-economic problem as even when poor you could buy a small economical car and spend the same or less on fuel or than rich people. However, if you can't rent a house with on-street parking or you live in a flat, you could be completely screwed over and end up spending 10x more on fuel than someone who lives in a house with a drive. That will have to be addressed.
if you’re buying one second hand, you’re going to want a reasonably lower cost than getting a new one – say £150/month might be the most your willing to spend. Over 36 months, £150 a month will only buy you a £15k car
Yeah and (if you can home charge) you can offset that loan cost against the fuel savings. Given a long-ish commute it could work out largely cost-neutral to upgrade from a fully functioning ICE.
If you’re going to have to wait longer than a traditional fill up, it makes sense to create some kind of hub/cafe rather than a windswept facility free edge of an industrial estate. And if you’re going to do that, then maybe develop it in a more sustainable manner – solar panels on the roof etc.
Gridserve have a couple of these running at the moment https://www.gridserve.com/electric-vehicle-charging/electric-forecourt/
A colleague of mine has used the Braintree facility and said it’s very nice, if not a little expensive for food and drink
@clubby @tenfoot - good stuff. I'm hoping for a Teabay like experience, but that might be pushing it a bit!
@molgrips - I won't go into the exact costs on our MG4 but after trading our mechanically perfect but cosmetically poor 7 year old Fabia (which the dealer REALLY wanted, DSG Skoda's seem to be hot stuff, dunno why but they gave us a price that meant I had no interest in selling it privately), taking a 10k year / 3 year tariff and getting about 1.2k off the car, our monthly payment is in two figures.
However, we'll have no deposit when this one goes back (unless the residuals are even stronger than forecasted) and the charger cost and complex install won't make it a simple break even calc. But we were ready for a change, definitely had a EV profile in terms of 95% of use and we really liked the MG. So a no brainer for us.
I expect it'll be a far more complex calculation second hand/battery life/can I charge at home etc as the market matures. The Sales-fella asked us if we'd consider a used one in the future, and we both reckoned we'd be fine with that as three years out we'll know a lot more about longevity etc.
It looks like asking price is ~£4.5k and up for an 11 plate or later 24kw leaf.
The one good thing about leags seems to be that they report their range a bit more honestly as the battery ages.
The charging hubs look good, but I'm not sure it's better than what we found in Crosshands last time which was an 8 way charger on a business park that also contained a Starbucks, and a McDonalds across the road (which also had its own Ionity 2-way)/
MacDs chargers are usually Instavolt, which are pretty good.
I’ve just ha£ my first full month on Intelligent Octopus and the average price I paid was 16p/kWh. Very happy indeed, but we do have 2 EVs (& 2 chargers provided FoC by Tusker)
The second car plugs in to the Indra which is scheduled 1130-530. My main Ioniq 5 uses the Ohme which controls my IO tariff. If I tell the Ohme to put in a bit extra, it starts my 7.5p electricity about 10PM.
I’m mapping out all the potential charging hubs for my Alps trip in Jul/Aug. I’m trying to avoid anywhere that has less than 4 UHS chargers. Ionity/Fastned/Total/Tesla should do me nicely.
Re Intelligent Octopus do you mean the overall average or just the EV charging average? I can’t see why even with 2 cars you’d ever use anything other than the 7.5p rate.
Total electricity usage.
What's the best Octopus option without a smart meter? Only EE works in the village and that's pretty patchy.
At roughly 10k miles am thinking the split tariff is still worth it. Pretty sure Molgrips, you have said that it makes sense on that kind of usage? After 2 years of plugging into the shed, Polestar consumption might make me consider a 7Kw charger, but am not totally sold on the idea. Daily commute is about 36 miles return.
Finally, any takers for an i3s with 40k on it 😉
I’ve started subscribing to ionity via chargemyhyundai after the free yr ran out. With chargers 5 min from work and the long drive home it works out well at £11 per month for 25p per kw on top of home charging.
does anyone know if that rate will apply when using ionity abroad as I olan on doing ?
does
I’m mapping out all the potential charging hubs for my Alps trip in Jul/Aug. I’m trying to avoid anywhere that has less than 4 UHS chargers. Ionity/Fastned/Total/Tesla should do me nicely.
We drove down to Italy this winter, it's a piece of piss, especially if you have a co driver. The first section in northern France is a little sparce, but after that, just roughly plan a next stop, realise that French motorway speeds mean you need to stop earlier, then get your co driver to identify a suitable location. I recommend getting a chargemap account and RFID card. All chargers are supposed to take cc, but it seems like when they are really new that gets fitted later so, well worth having the RFID card.
I just worked out my overal average cost per unit on IO tariff and it comes to about 17p which is similar to previous poster and very satisfying!
realise that French motorway speeds mean you need to stop earlier,
You may actually get to your destination by driving slower if it means you need to stop for less.
then get your co driver to identify a suitable location
Or see if your car will do it.
For summer holidays in France I'd avoid a long drive at the weekend. 9am sat morning there was a queue for the Tesla supercharger where we joined the motorway, and the traffic only gets heavier through the day
Just been for a ride up in Dorking/surrey hills... And there's Tesla supercharger and 7kW t2 chargers at Denbies vineyard... Winner!
Bike on roof steals all the electrons.... But happy I could recharge whilst riding!
DrP
What economy do you Leaf owners get without bikes on the roof?
"for example an ID3 is around £330/month pre tax (just under £200/month post tax) for a £35k car."
Tusker are showing an Id3 at £606 gross, £376 net assuming a 40% tax rate. Not sure if it's because my employer can't claim VAT or some other shenanigans but buying second hand with a loan is looking a lot more attractive. I know Tusker include maintenance and insurance but that doesn't explain it being nearly double.
Tusker are setting up nice easy services for companies so they get selected as the sole lease providers for companies, then whacking up the monthly prices because they know that people will still use them.
wow I didn't realise tusker were being quite so opportunistic with pricing. I can see they're adding maybe £100 of value p/m (insurance/servicing etc), and that's being generous, but nearly doubling the cost vs what's available on the open market is crazy.
Maybe the prices won't be as skewed
What economy do you Leaf owners get without bikes on the roof?
4.1mi/kWh over the last couple of days, SE London to Telford and back, about 350 miles. Propilot set to speed limit everywhere. More like 3.5 when it's cold/wet. This is the 62kwh that is a bit less efficient than the 40.
Easiest long(ish) trip I've done with no rapid charging, office has 7kW chargers so put it on from 9-3, it was back up to 81% when I headed home and made it back with 5% left.
What’s the best Octopus option without a smart meter?
Probably Tracker tariff. In 2020 I went on Tracker V1 whilst waiting for them to try and get my smart meter working, so you didn't need a smart meter (their T&Cs might have changed). I've ended up sticking on it for the time being, my Tracker v1 price today is 17.82ppkwh, it's been as low as 14.71ppkwh