Electric car charging – is it supposed to be this difficult?

My car has a 77kwh battery at 7.5p per kwh means a full charge would cost £5.78. That will give me a range if 300-ish miles on that full charge so just under 2p per mile.

My previous diesel Mitsubishi Outlander, an equivalent sized vehicle with substantially less power returned about 35 Mpg. A gallon of diesel currently costs £6.81 on average in Scotland according to Allstar.

Just over 19p per mile. So about 10 times as much.

I suggest that an Outlanlander isn’t a fair comparison with your current car, perchy, and an Audi E-Tron SUV would be more realisictic – that would rougly double your leccy consumption.

It’s a perfectly fair comparison.
It’s the car I had versus the car I now have, a Genesis GV60.   Same size, more or less driven on all the same journeys to service the same lifestyle over long enough periods to make accurate costings.

What’s not fair about it?

Well try driving both off road and get back to me. One is an off-road vehicle with off road capacity and the other isn’t.

A fairer comparison would be a diesel returning 50mpg.

my numbers are pretty close to you also PP, with an i4 on Octopus home charging I am also just under 2p a mile, my previous Audi Q5 diesel would typically do about 480 miles of my regular mixed driving on an £85 fill up from empty, so about 18p per mile.

Molgrips original statement that you queried:

And I’d just like to underline the fact that my EV costs us a tenth as much per mile as a diesel would do in everyday driving

my Ev: Check

a tenth: check

a diesel :  my diesel, so check

everyday driving :  not offroad, not in 4wd . Check

You could produce a million different combinations to prove or disprove the claim but this is the only I can comment on with authority and I find it proven

Again a Q5 is a gross fuel greedy thing and an i4 is a sleek performance thing. Apples and pears.

Let’s compare vaguely comparable things like my original Zoe and Clio comparison.

I’m into EVs, owned and used for seven years but I’m not into making misleading claims, comparing apples with pears or ignoring how crap the charge network is (Superchargers excepted). If you want future EV owners reading this to be satisfied when they buy they need honest advice based on real world experiences.

Yes EVs are great, just don’t expect free leccy, super cheap leccy, chargers to be easy to use or even work at all in many cases. Go in eyes open, don’t run the battery down to under 10% at the last charger for 50kms becuase sod’s law says it won’t work, and expect to have a phone full of apps if you venture far enough to need a public charger.

Enthusiastic as I am about EVs I like to see your sums on that.

Well, my wife’s commute has some start/stop driving, some motorway and some dual carriageway with roundabouts. From experience I’m guessing it would be around 45mpg in a typical diesel. We average 5.0 miles per kWh in the Ioniq. At home we pay 7p per kWh.

That makes it 1.54p per mile with 10% losses. A diesel would return 14.7p per mile given current prices. Some diesels would be more efficient, all EVs would be less, but that’s my maths. You can adjust as.you wish.

expect to have a phone full of apps if you venture far enough to need a public charger

No, don’t, unless you’re in France. UK drivers can rely on debit cards and a CPS card.

Just a thought regarding the pollution aspect of liquid fuel powered cars. If we, as a country or world stopped using so much electricity for pointless luxuries, would it match the CO2 etc savings for electric cars? Even typing this I have wasted resources as does charging a phone, playing electronic games, running a telly or an ebike. How about the environmental costs attached to new cars when we could keep old ones going? Maybe ban the sales of new cars sort of thing.  This sort of thing is never mentioned as it needs a few hard truths looking at. Hmmmm

We’re at about 2.9p per mile in our very inefficient ( for an ev) merc eqc as an average over the last 5000 miles.

It’s rediculously  cheap per mile compared to the diesel vw tiguan that we had before it, but probably not a tenth of the cost. Think the vw worked out around 16p per mile assuming diesel was 1.45 per litre.

If we, as a country or world stopped using so much electricity for pointless luxuries

This is a great idea but the problem is that billions of people’s livelihoods are based on making and selling those pointless luxuries, because our entire global society is based on it. If we all stopped over-consuming overnight there would be the mother of all global economic catastrophies. We just don’t know what to do about that. Large scale change towards much lower material standard of living is currently impossible without coercion.

That’s why I believe technology (along with as much moderation as we can get people to accept) is our only hope and it’s touch and go wether or not it will be quick enough.

Could people quoting the home charging cost factor in the extra they are paying for day time electricity and the extra standing charge please because if you do that it really isn’t 7.5p. Work out how much extra you paid for daytime on the last bill, add that to the night time EV bill, add the extra standing change then divide the total by the EV kWhs on the bill. That’ll give you the real cost per kWh for your EV charging.

No-one has taken on board the charging losses using the on-board charger which will be high. I added 10% for my calculation but in most cases home charging is AC and it is much worse than that. The Zoé loses about 10% for DC charging and AC much worse according to my back of envelope calculations especially if I charge when it’s 35°C and the heat pump runs a lot, I venture 20%. Anyhow:

https://go-e.com/en/magazine/ev-charging-losses

No extra cost to my standing charge. I moved of a standard tariff to an EV tariff so get cheap power overnight so also reduce my dishwasher/washing machine etc cost too so save even more than just the EV cost so technically my saving are even bigger! Not less. However I do have a home charger which will pay for itself in the first year of ownership.

How much are your daytime and night rates, andy? And the standard non-variable rate from the same company?

For my postcode

Octoous Flexible (standard variable rate)

Standing charge 61.27p

Electricity 22.49p/kwh

IOG

Standing charge 61.27p

Cheap rate 7p/kwh

Standard rate 23.71p/kwh

So zero penalty in the standing charge, and a 1.22p/kwh levy on daytime usage – though your charge window may also cover peak evening usage..

That’s excellent, thepurist.

To clarify you talk about a peak evening rate. If that’s higher what is it?

EDF standard rate here is 25cents. With a dual tarif night is 16cents and day 30cents. Standing charge is higher and I’d pay a penalty as I’m also a PV producer. Not worth it when I’ve charged more away from home than at home this year. My car use would have to be over a third of my leccy bill for it to pay and it isn’t.

My total household power cost is £18 a week for a family of 4. That includes car charging and the home use. My fuel cost was on average £60 a week. This is 70 mile round trip commute and day to day running family around. When I do my long trip once a month the saving is even more.

My EV is an Audi SUV (Quattro but it’s never been taken offroad). My ICE was a Cupra hatchback, 2 wheel drive and never taken off road.

I don’t break the cost down to an individual level, I just know that my ICE fuel bill has dropped from a minimum of £300 a month to a maximum of £100 for all my electricity usage.

To clarify you talk about a peak evening rate. If that’s higher what is it?

No I was referring to peak evening usage when most cooking etc happens, there are only two rates.

To clarify you talk about a peak evening rate. If that’s higher what is it?

There isn’t a peak evening rate.  It’s a smart tariff which means you need a car or charger that is “smart” i.e. it has an API that Octopus can use to start and stop charging at random points. They advise you to keep your car plugged in whenever you are home, so that they can use surplus energy for.your car at any time, even during the day. If this happens and the car is charging then your whole house gets the cheap rate even at peak times. I think this is what thepurist means.

If you can schedule your washing machine or dishwasher for the off peak period then you also get those at the cheap rate. I use the cheap rate to heat hot water too. This saving may equal the cost of your car’s fuel so your mileage could be effectively free.

So genuinely cheap charging with minimal impact on the day rate. Say 8.5p including compensation for the day rate if your car charging is half your electricity use and you don’t use the cheap rate to save on anything else. Taking into account AC charging losses you can expect on a 7kW AC charge that’s about 10p/kWh for kWhs in the car. On that basis those claiming one tenth of the cost are actually getting a seventh of the cost – which is still very good and  more realistic, I still reckon a fifth with a genuinely comparable car. :)

For me (Ireland) the standard variable is about 35c and this is what I used to pay all day/everyday and now I just pay this 8am-11pm, 11pm-8am is 17c with 2am-4am just 10c. I don’t have the standing charge to hand.

my basic maths, if I did it right, gave me 2c per km as 99% of my charging is done @ 10c. My diesel worked out at about 11c per km with about 45mpg+ and €1.75 a litre.

Our monthly electric bill (inc standing charge)on intelligent octopus is about a fiver a month cheaper including Charging the car, than our previous monthly electric bill was on shell energy with no car charging.

Due to shifting washing machine and dish washer into the off peak hours plus the whole house getting electric at 7p whenever the car is charging outside the off peak hours.

Now that the per kwh costs have come down across the board, I think my currently monthly costs with the car  are about the same as the monthly costs I would be paying without the car on a standard tarrif.

Changing to an EV would save me about £1100pa in fuel but cost me about £8k to upgrade my car & install a charger, so changing from a fully paid for economical diesel car doesn’t add up at the moment. Might work for those on leases, PCP deals or if you are changing car anyway but my car is easily good for another 75k / 6yrs.

With solar and batteries it’s even better, from pretty much everything but 3 months over winter the house runs off 7.5p/kwh rate (charge the batteries overnight) and any generation is sold to the grid at 15p/kWh. Shift dishwasher and washing machine use to overnight too. Electricity including running the car (and standing charge) is a net income.

Car is averaging just under 4miles/kWh so just under 2p/mile except the few occasions when it was on motorway fast chargers but comparable diesel is also vastly more expensive there too. ID4 so comparable sized ICE is doing ~ 45mpg and diesel here is ~ 155p/L so ev is getting on 1/8th of the cost/mile for fuel. Outside of work use I’ve charged away from home maybe 10-15 times in 2.5 years so almost irrelevant.

This saving may equal the cost of your car’s fuel so your mileage could be effectively free.

Agreed…

I feel like I’m being paid to drive sometimes! I have been reading up, and the polestar SHOULD be able to do v2h..in fact a company has got it working (google for the article… I can’t switch around screens on the phone!)..

That would be amazing… Fill up overnight at cheap rate… Discharge the car in the day.

Would mean a new wall charger though..

DrP

With solar and batteries it’s even better, from pretty much everything but 3 months over winter the house runs off 7.5p/kwh rate (charge the batteries overnight) and any generation is sold to the grid at 15p/kWh.

Id be interested to see your calculations, since when I’ve looked into getting a battery the cost per kWh storage never made sense. The irony is that I have a huge battery sitting on my driveway…

Japanese EVs and the new Renault 5 allow selling back to the grid but the the tarif system here in France don’t make it worthwhile. Especially when you take into account the cost of the battery deterioration it wil cause.

It will allow going off-grid and using the car to store PV production in addition to the house battery. If you start getting low on leccy top up at a public charger. I only know one person who is off-grid and interested though.

I can honestly say that in over >45k miles of an EV there’s been 3-4 instances of range anxiety or charger problems. Really small issue (for me) compared to the thoughts of most non EV drivers. I think it is very journey/location specific and it matches my 90-95% charge at home and 10-5% rapid chargers that a readily available on my usual longer routes. As I said v person-specific though as a mate has had a problematic time and is going back to ICE.

I’m about to experience Dragon Charging in W Wales on a camping trip and given their rather contradictory app/website information about using rfid cards I’ve not got high hopes.

I’m about to experience Dragon Charging in W Wales on a camping trip and given their rather contradictory app/website information about using rfid cards I’ve not got high hopes.

My folks live in Pembrokeshire, most of my away from home charging has been there and they are all Dragon. Using the app is easy, chargers in lots of places and (Usually) fairly quiet. Pembrokeshire is an easy place to EV, dunno about wider west Wales.

Quick question for the experts.

As I mainly charge at home I am new to all this charging at public chargers whilst visiting my mum in Scotland. So far I have had no issues, however, yesterday I tried to charge at a 22kw AC charger while we went shopping (mainly to avoid paying for parking). There were 4 charging units each with a plug on either side. Does this mean 8 cars or 4 cars can charge at once, can only one car use a charging point at a time or can 2 (one left hand side and one right)? There was one car at each point charging and my car wouldn’t connect to the charger point on the other side at the 2 stations I tried. The CPS app said there was 4/4 chargers available and 1/2 sockets in use at each charger so I thought this meant 2 cars could charge per station (but then why did it not say 4/8 available)? Is this wrong, if only 1 car can charge at a time then the app is misleading saying 4/4 available (as none were so should show 0/4 available) but if 2 can charge at a time then I don’t know why mine wouldn’t connect? I gave up and used a different location that was empty.

8x22kw would mean all of them work at once.  Its possible they would half to 11kw if using the same post, but as 99% of EVs only change at 7kw on AC it wouldn’t matter anyway.

Did you get the sequence right, andy4d? DC chargers are often plug in then launch the charge before the car times out. With AC Type 2 very often the last thing you do is plug in the car – it’s often select which side of the charger first on either the charger or the app, then use RFID card or app to pay then plug in – but not always. They drive me nuts.

TBH I am not too sure if I did the right sequence. I ‘think’ I did but probably didn’t. CPS say plug into unit, tap card, plug into car and away you go, this worked at the other station. And 8 cars should have been able to charge then, 2 per unit?

Could people quoting the home charging cost factor in the extra they are paying for day time electricity and the extra standing charge please because if you do that it really isn’t 7.5p.

I’m on Agile Octopus Dec 23 tariff and currently achieving roughly 8p/kWh charging the car and 14p/kWh running the house. Pretty certain The daily standing charge was the same as standard tariff or very similar and in Yorkshire the standard leccy rate July-sept is 21.35p/kwh (may -june was about 23p/kWh).  So I’m quids in all round.

CPS AC posts usually charge from both sockets. Like Edukator saya did you use the correct sequence? For CPS AC posts you activate the post with the RFID or app then plug the car in.

Just driven from Manchester to Cornwall. The first stop was at Gloucester Services where there was a set of tesla chargers available to anyone, plus a set of none tesla chargers. The tesla chargers were 4p per kwh cheaper than the none tesla chargers, but it seems that nobody with a none tesla knew that the tesla chargers were open to all. We used the tesla chargers (with a merc) and all was well, had breakfast, by the time we’d finished breakfast  the car was at 85% and we cariied on the journey.

The car was saying the next stop should be Exeter services where there should be 24 chargers. As we approached it said 2 of the 24 should be free. We got there and it was bedlam, not just at the ev chargers, but the entire services were horrendously busy.  We had. A drive down the row of chargers but couldn’t see any free, despite the app saying 2 should have been free, not sure if people were parking inconsiderate lying or whether the utilisation was being incorrectly reported. Anyway we gave up on Exeter services and moored on to the next public tesla superchargers at lifton. These were very quiet, but no cell signal on my phone, so couldn’t start the charge, managed to sort this by enabling a WiFi hot-spot on the wife’s phone which had signal, put 30% in the car and got to Fowey 6 hours after leaving Manchester.

Left the car in the main car park at Fowey charging on a swarco slow(7kw) charger, ready for tomorrow.

A couple of people were having difficulty with the slow chargers, they were trying to use a contact less payment card to start the charge, where they would only take an rfid card or use the app. The instructions on the chargers are none existent so no wonder people struggled. I’d done a bit of go ogling so knew they needed at rfid card or app to start the charge.

Pembrokeshire is an easy place to EV

If you want to slow charge, in my experience. Most seaside towns seem to have a slow one but there are few rapids. By the way, I think it was a Dragon charger in Amroth where there was no signal for the app but the charger itself had a public WiFi hotspot. Not sure if this is the case for all Dragon units.

Edit: just had a look on Zap Map and the situation seems to have improved significantly. Single and double rapids have cropped up in many places and slows have proliferated as well. Loads available now. Amroth has gained a few more slows and a rapid.

I managed to get the CPS charger to work when I went back this morning, think I just needed to be more patient as it went through its process of connecting.

One thing I am finding using the public chargers on this holiday is they are not as expensive as you think if you plan, and 22kw are just fine, no need for the expensive rapid chargers unless you are doing a long motorway stint. As I am just top up charging when out and about I am saving parking fees. Today I got a 20% (12kw) top up for about £2, it was £5 but I saved the £3 parking fee. Really is a mindset change.

Slow chargers are cheap, for sure, I seem to see about 40p or so but I’ve only ever used two.

Just visited Tintern Abbey, a bank of four 11kw chargers. You have to pay for parking but you can claim the full fee back in ice creams from the pub. A two hour walk along the Wye Valley was a very pleasant (if not fast) way to top up the car for tomorrow.