EV running costs?

Don’t want to get an EV with 200 mile range only to find out in the real world its 170 etc 

It’s really not a big deal if you need to stop for 10 mins on the way.  People seem to be very wary of this when it’s an absolute cinch. You don’t have to spend half an hour if you only need a bit of extra.

Anyway, in my experience it seems that Hyundai/Kia give more consistent range and have more accurate range meters on the dashboard than some others.

Bruce wins. Because none of the rest of us use trains, buses, bikes or our feet where we can.

Good job, Bruce.

The car scheduled 2 top ups on each main journey on fast chargers

This is obvious but I never thought / realised it – do i understand right that you can put your journey into the trip computer / satnav, and it’ll tell you where to stop to top up if needed, etc.? Is that pretty standard on all cars, or just better ones?

Can vary…

My polestar has ‘integrated’ google maps, so it knows the cars state of charge (SOC). So if i put in a destination, the car and maps know if i’ll need a charge en route, and then suggest EV chargers on the way. It’ll prep the battery for this too.

TBH, I just use an app called “ABRP” which means I can plan the route sat on the sofa, and put a bit more choice into where I stop, and how frequently. You can put into the app how you want to charge (short but frequent, or long and fewer)… I then export this from the ABRP app into google maps, and send it to the car!

THis is one of the biggest mindest changes with EV driving.
However, you don’t need to be stood next to your car for it to charge. So if you figure out you’ll stop ‘around lunchtime’ on your journey, you can top-up for 30 odd minutes whilst you pee and poop and eat!

DrP

do i understand right that you can put your journey into the trip computer / satnav, and it’ll tell you where to stop to top up if needed, etc.? Is that pretty standard on all cars, or just better ones?

My Leaf tried to do this but it didn’t have live information for rapid chargers, only slow ones which is pretty useless.

The Ioniq does it after an update a couple of years back (despite being an old cheap car that they stopped making shortly after) and it’s brilliant. When we went to Scotland I had planned a route with ABRP but I ended up ignoring it because it was so much easier to juat do what the car said. It adapted to what we did and the state of chargers. Only downside is that the car does not know about public Tesla chargers so it cost me a few more quid, as Tesla chargers are pretty cheap. The car had more accurate live information than Zap Map free did as well.

It does cost a monthly sub, but it’s free for 5 years so we still have a year left. I’ll pay when it expires because you also get live traffic routing.

I don’t know if all EVs do it, but I think enough do that it’s not worth buying one that doesn’t.

Bruce wins. Because none of the rest of us use trains, buses, bikes or our feet where we can.

Good job, Bruce.

To be fair he’s not wrong and you’re not either. Public transport and provision for cycles in this country is shite. I paid less than £20 for a month pass on the Prague public transport system, it runs 24/7 and so frequently that you can mess up and only be a few minutes late. Still plenty of cars but not anything like the density we see because they’re just inconvenient. They’re extending the metro with a new line as well, €4bn and opening in 2027.

Same in Netherlands, bike paths and prioritisation make and journey of 10km or less a no brainer on bikes (the bus was 3 mins slower for the same journey according to Google).

I’m sure the vast majority of us would support better multi-modal transport.

Stumpy, I’ve had my ID3 for just over 12 months and in winter it will still charge to 200 miles give or take a couple miles.

Similar to what molgrips has mentioned my old Kia Soul would be a lot more accurate than the ID3 for giving consistent range.

When I commuted I cycled and it took 10 to 15mins less for a 7 mile commute than the car, bus or tram.

I cycled to work for most of my adult life.  People are still stuck in cars and probably reduce productivity by complaining about journey times. The reward for cycling and reducing the number of cars on the road is close passes and driver agression.

In Norway they have good take up of EVs but have not got people out of there cars. Employers like Universities providing free charging just encourages the use of cars. Subsidies of EVs favours the better of at the expense of the less well of.

I am beginning to think that the accuracy of the dash readout is more important than actual range. If it tells you you’ve got 50 miles, then you need to be able to depend on that number.   Saying it’s got 50 miles when it only has 30 is much worse than  simply admitting it has 30 – or even 25.  This was one reason we got rid of the Leaf.

Not sure if the universities comment was aimed at me or not, but I’ll add a bit of context….and also a caveat that I totally agree that we need to drive less. It’s just very hard in this country to do so given the dire public transport infrastructure.

My university is a pioneer in sustainability, we have 2 wind turbines and 10k solar panels in our clean energy park. The university is trialing a ‘smart energy network demonstrator’ model. It can turn car chargers on and off depending on how ‘clean’ the national grid mix. In times of surplus, it can turn car chargers on instead of curtailment etc. Across the year, just under 50% of the total energy is generated by our renewables park. Over the summer, it’s essentially 100%. Developing smart networks is key to the transition to renewables.

Free car charging is a perk of our university, but when you look at staff retention rates, and just how much money people could earn in the private sector, likely with all manners of perks such as health insurance, free EV charging etc, then it makes a lot of sense. (I’m a mere PhD student, so none of that really applies to me).

For me to commute to uni via bike/public transport: 3 mile bike ride to train station. There is 1 train per hour. Then another 7 miles to ride at the other end. It’d take about 90 minutes each way. 35-40minutes by car.

do i understand right that you can put your journey into the trip computer / satnav, and it’ll tell you where to stop to top up if needed, etc.?

the BMW satnav does just this, and it will pick out unoccupied chargers as it picks up real time info, Tesla ones too.  It can be done from the screen in the car or the phone app.  In the case of the journey I mentioned earlier, one of our stops was actually about 10 mins longer than scheduled as my boys were wanting food and the Burger King queue was a bit long….. The car then recalculated the remaining trip of it own accord and reduced the proposed charging at subsequent stops.

Similarly if you need to add in an unplanned toilet stop, then if you use the satnav to look for fast unoccupied chargers, say in the next 10 miles of the journey, and ask it to take you there, it will also precondition the battery, to maximise charging rate.

So basically if you let the car work out your stops in advance, it splits them into what it thinks are sensible chunks of journey for tiredness and comfort, directs you to unoccupied and working chargers, and preconditions the battery, every time.  Just so darned simple and clever.  This is on the BMW i4, different cars have different functionality.

I’ve yet to cover many miles in my 2nd hand ioniq. 250 miles so far with a third on the motorway and the rest on urban roads. Averaging around 5.2m/KW overall. Urban around 7m/KW.

I’m enjoying the car. Had a go with the active cruise control and lane keep steering on the motorway today. A step up in comfort and trickery from the roomster it replaced.

do i understand right that you can put your journey into the trip computer / satnav, and it’ll tell you where to stop to top up if needed, etc.?

The Ioniq5 does this pretty well flawlessly, across Europe too. It let’s you know live how many chargers available, out of order etc at a station. Took me a while to figure out how you can tell which of the stops it recommends are proper service station stops (coffee, toilets etc) vs a random charger tucked away in a park & ride, but once I did (and after a few charging stops in the middle of nowhere!) it was great.  Having just one system to do this in is brilliant, rather than having somebody on Zap map, somebody looking at google etc.  As above, Tesla not on there yet, but easy to figure out separately if you need, though a lot of Tesla chargers don’t have the max speed that the I5 can charge at. (I think the latest superchargers might be better though?)

Wow…pretty good economy there!
Top stuff!

DrP

There’s a feature on the Ioniq that alerts you to ‘special offers’ based on nearby business, which I obviously turned off.  However, in order to do this it knows where businesses are and that includes your favourite coffee chain etc.  What I want is to be able to tell it that I want to stop at a charger with a coffee shop and that I prefer Starbucks over Costa. I am not sure it does this, but there is another update due in a few weeks (not bad for a discontinued car!) so we’ll see if it’s there.  As it stands I am able to select ‘favourite’ chargers that I want to stop at where I know there are amenities I want – for example, the Starbucks at Carlisle with the 8 rapid chargers and the seagull has been favourited.

it took 10 to 15mins less for a 7 mile commute than the car

My commute takes ~15 minutes longer by bike than by car, so it’s not something you can say is always true.

That being said, I cycled in today as I usually do despite leaving 2 cars and my wife working from home. I’ve always preferred a bike ride to work though. In 23 years post university I have car commuted regularly for ~3 of those years and that was to a train station cos London, Cambridge to London and back daily wouldn’t be for me.

I can’t comment on the use of EVs and the cost, lots of those I see round my village still seem to be on short trips to drop kids at school or, ironically’ drive somewhere to walk the dog!

[andy4d]

andy4d

Full Member

‘^^^eh, how’s that. Stumpy was asking about ID3 so i gave the info from my car (an ID3 with a different skin basically). They mentioned 200 miles so I take it they are looking at the 58kw battery (my car) not the 77kw.

Kuco

Full Member

Stumpy, I’ve had my ID3 for just over 12 months and in winter it will still charge to 200 miles give or take a couple miles.

Similar to what molgrips has mentioned my old Kia Soul would be a lot more accurate than the ID3 for giving consistent range.

Thank you both for the info and sorry yes it is the 58kw version …. will keep an eye on the thread

‘^^^eh, how’s that. Stumpy was asking about ID3 so i gave the info from my car (an ID3 with a different skin basically). They mentioned 200 miles so I take it they are looking at the 58kw battery (my car) not the 77kw.

[Kuco]

Kuco

Full Member

Stumpy, I’ve had my ID3 for just over 12 months and in winter it will still charge to 200 miles give or take a couple miles.

Similar to what molgrips has mentioned my old Kia Soul would be a lot more accurate than the ID3 for giving consistent range.

Stumpy, I’ve had my ID3 for just over 12 months and in winter it will still charge to 200 miles give or take a couple miles.

Similar to what molgrips has mentioned my old Kia Soul would be a lot more accurate than the ID3 for giving consistent range.

Thank you both for the info and sorry yes it is the 58kw version …. will keep an eye on the thread

Thank you both for the info and sorry yes it is the 58kw version …. will keep an eye on the thread

@TomB

Uni reference wasn’t aimed at you, I used to work for Manchester Uni before I retired and it used to annoy me that the EV owners with large cars would get free charging. Very little was done to promote better ways of travelling other than suggesting it. Key annoyance for students was that they had to pay to park.

‘In Norway they have good take up of EVs but have not got people out of there cars. Employers like Universities providing free charging just encourages the use of cars. Subsidies of EVs favours the better of at the expense of the less well of.’ 

I am well placed to comment on this – I bought a Leaf 5 years ago as it was the cheapest car to run, and the cost was comparative to ICE car thanks to tax breaks on the high purchase taxes attached to cars. It has been a much better experience than I could ever have imagined.  Power to charge at night is very cheap 6 months of the year, reduced running costs such as servicing , ‘bompenger’ (road/commuter tax) and parking, insurance reasonable, servicing cheap.  It’s no surprise that EV’s make up 85% of new car sales (down from 93% though).

Generally cars do not depreciate much here, compared to the UK. That’s true of EV or ICE, and it’s because second hand cars are very often exported if they’re cheap, so there’s no banger market (banger here is <20K).  The reason 2nd hand stuff depreciates so much in the UK is , there are lots of new cars, and the wheels on the wrong side, so who’s going to buy a second hand car for more than buttons?

So the devil here is getting people onto public transport. In the summer cycling, especially ebikes is a lot more popular , but 6+ months of the year commuting on a bike here is miserable, far worse than the UK. It’s windy, rains a lot, and non stop for weeks , though not especially cold, and it’s a long way to work.  There’s also a big challenge with getting people onto public transport.  If you live in a centre it’s good, but I don’t,and here it’s non existant.  If I drive to work it’s 15 minutes.  If I get the bus, it’s 90, and I’m not spending 2 1/2 hours extra day on a bus.  It’s extremely spread out, with all the problems that makes for public transport ( and public transport here is a bit of a public scandal, much money, bad results, and will blow up again soon as it’s costing so much)

Sorry for the derailment

To be fair he’s not wrong and you’re not either.

Fair. I doubt EV owners are the worst offenders when it comes to the overuse of vehicles. Having an EV probably indicates a level of environmental conscientiousness. The comment about “holes in hedges” and “making progress” is tarring us with the wrong brush (although Tesla insurance premiums would indicate the opposite…).

FWIW, I commute by bike/train, and my partner/son go as many places by bike (with the macride) as possible.

My Audi Q4 is still hovering about 3.6kw/m, even though the weather has warmed up. Even in the cold spring it was averaging 3.6. I’m still driving sensibly. It’s quite a lot of motorway miles over 60mph so I suppose that doesn’t help.

In terms of cost though. I’ve gone from £60 a week in petrol to currently £19 a week for electricity (all household and car charging). I have to go to London once a month, it’s difficult to book in advance as diary clashes are difficult to manage, so tends to be less than a weeks notice to buy a train ticket, cost is on average £250 (standard class). Would cost me about £40 in the car and would be immeasurably more comfortable.