The Electric Car Thread

You want your car to be able to deal with the exceptional journeys as well.

Not really. Or you’ll end up with a 7 seater pick up for those times you want to take 4 disabled grannies to the hospital and pick up a tonne of gravel and drop off a fridge freezer on the way home… The vast majority of people *never ever* do exceptional journeys. And if they do, they *should* plan ahead. Like we used to 30 years ago when some areas still didn’t have 24 hour petrol stations.

Christ, my last few cars have all been large family estates and i’ve *still* needed to rent or borrow to cover exceptional journeys.

Or you’ll end up with a 7 seater pick up for those times you want to take 4 disabled grannies to the hospital and pick up a tonne of gravel and drop off a fridge freezer on the way home

I should clarify – when I say exceptional, I mean things out of the ordinary that you still do. For example, occasionally I might drive to Scotland; several times a year I’ll drive to North Wales. Those are regular, but they are much further than my wife’s weekly commute. I want my car to enable me to do those things even though they are not my regular average trip.  I do occasionally drive my parents places so I do choose a car that has decent space in the back.

If/when I come to move my kid to university or something then I’ll hire something.

I’m willing to bet you regularly do journeys that are many times your average daily drive.  I don’t think it’s a normal distribution.

On the subject of kids moving universities I thought I might need to drive mine plus some stuff to Tromso (and get myself back) in a hurry a couple years ago, and by far the cheapest way was to rent a Model X with free super charging.  It summed up as circa half the cost of an ICE car. Luckily he got a flight as it’s still the best part of 5000kms driving

i3 is a great option for a small EV second car. Would want one with car play though.

I’m willing to bet you regularly do journeys that are many times your average daily drive. I don’t think it’s a normal distribution.

I’m so far off the end of the normal distribution it’s almost funny. So no i don’t. The number of times a year i drive further than my average daily drive is very limited. e.g. the seaside, the nearest airport, the nearest (3) bike parks, the nearest massive IKEA, two wildlife parks, almost the entire family etc are all similar distance to or closer than my daily commute. Only thing i drive further for is if i take the caravan somewhere. And even that is usually only around double my daily drive (to our favourite location, which is also a bike park, and has a lakeside beach).

Long live WFH. 😀

(I also knew exactly what you meant, but with these things you’ve got to be specific or you get a car brained drivist all over the semantics.)

And FWIW, the majority of people never do exceptional journeys, or for some, even slightly long ones. There are many many cars in circulation that won’t do much more than 100 km a day for the entire time they are owned by someone. Or once a year they’ll drive to Auntie Janet and Uncle Fred. Looking at the data, i sometimes wonder why something like 15% of the population even own a car. (OK, yeah i know. It’s because  they’re nice to have, convenient, public transport in a huge number of places is dire, car rental in some markets is (almost) robbery and so on.)

Just had an eBerlingo Multispace XL overnight as a courtesy car. Very interesting and practical, but for the price feels a bit basic and range wasn’t great – 166 miles showing at 100% charge which quickly disappeared, and a 2 degree commute with gentle driving, minimal heating and a short hop of 60mph motorway managed to use 44 miles range to cover 20 miles. I didn’t have a charge cable, and I’d have struggled to make it home / back if I’d needed to keep it a second night. Brake blending was a bit snatchy, but hope things might be improved on the facelift model with 3 regen settings and reports of more usable battery capacity.

I was hoping I’d be totally sold on it, but for the time being we’ll wait to try some of the interesting things on the horizon in the next year or two:

Kia PV5 (specs suggest it will be a spacious van on a Berlingo footprint)

Ford eCourier Tourneo

Renault 4 Fourgonette (if it gets the rumoured boxy back end then it might not be good for aero….)

Maybe the next Berlingo (as they appear roughly every 10 years) and the new “made in France” Stellantis batteries about to come in the Peugeot 5008.

Any of the resident Hyundai / Kia fans tried an EV3 yet?

Is the e Berlingo the same drivetrain as the Corsa e? The Corsa e has grabby brakes compared to the Ioniq that I drive. It takes me a few miles to adjust to the Corsa e after driving my Ioniq.

I really wanted the eBerlingo to replace the diesel version we have…but almost 700 mile range to almost 180 miles wasn’t acceptable. If the next version has a much improved range (would need to be close to 300 miles) then I’d be keen on it.

It would be ok if the range was really 180, but in mixed driving / autumn conditions it appears to be half that. Admittedly this was a 73 plate so older slightly smaller battery and I believe the new one is much more realistic about usable capacity. And unfortunately a heavier battery would mean very little payload on current weight limits.

Payload isn’t an issue…2 or 3 bodies and 2 or 3 bikes plus kit inside…would be the longer wheelbase version I’d be looking at…but not for another 2 years as current ev goes back then.

Any of the resident Hyundai / Kia fans tried an EV3 yet?

Demo cars not due until early December according to my local dealer

Drove past what looked like an EV3 at the dealer yesterday – just checked their Facebook and it arrived on 11th Nov so looks like they are just starting to appear.

The eBerlingo payload thing was what I’d looked at for the short Multispace – kerb to gvw is 626kg. If they were to fit the 75kWh battery it would add 225kg so the remaining 401kg looks tight once you factor driver, passengers, bikes and luggage etc. Guess the XL is already rated to a higher gvw so they can probably change springs etc and re-homologate.

Thanks to those who listed their top five requirements for an EV. Very interesting. There were a few in there I hadn’t considered and some things I’ve been obsessing over didn’t figure at all.

It is interesting (to me at least) how hard I’m finding it to commit to purchasing an EV. I worked out the other day that over the last 30 years I have bought 9 cars (4 second hand and 5 new). We are a two-car household and (barring those that were written off in crashes) tend to keep a car for around 7 years and 150,000 miles or so, which might be part of the issue with an EV. It needs to be a car that I’d still be happy with in six years time and the technology is evolving quickly. But there is probably more to it than that.

Those 9 cars were all very simple purchases. It never took more than a week or two (and sometimes only a couple of days) to go from “think it’s time to replace the car” to making the purchase. Draw up a shortlist of cars that suit our needs, see which ones can be had for the best price, job done. I don’t really care about cars so I’m happy going for an unfashionable one that does the job if it can be had cheap. I’ve been seriously looking at EVs for a couple of months now though, but am no closer to pulling the trigger.

Cars are obviously not cheap but in the past there was always something on the car that made the driving experience significantly better than it had been in the old car. That may have been something as simple as the first car with a reversing camera, the first one with adaptive cruise control, the first that allowed for CarPlay etc but it was always clear that the new car would be better than the old one. But this time I can’t help thinking that I’d be spending a lot of money for a worse experience.

I don’t mean the obvious things about EV vs ICE. I understand the trade-offs and think I can make them work, but there are lots of other things putting me off:

Price of EV vs the ICE equivalent is hard to justify and wipes out most of the savings if you buy new with cash. The idea is obviously for the government to stimulate the shift through tax breaks that make EVs attractive to company car buyers and allow the car makers to charge a premium to pay for their investment. Far enough but that means a new car is not a sensible purchase for me and that already feels like a worse deal i.e. for the same money I can buy a shiny new ICE car or a second hand EV.

Range wouldn’t be an issue most of the time but buying a car that would make certain journeys harder (even if they are rare) seems like a backwards step. For me the edge case is the Christmas trip from north-east Scotland to east anglia. So that’s around 500 miles that we do in the winter (lower range) mostly on motorways (lower range) at the same time as the rest of the country (very busy stops). It’s about 9 hours of driving and we usually do it in 11 hours total (has been as short as 10 on a few occasions). It might be a rare case, but if the car pushed that journey beyond 12 hours I’d be regretting my purchase. More importantly, if in three to four years time, cars with 350-400 mile ranges were common I’d be wanting to change cars again (and my 250 mile range car would probably not be worth much). So maybe I should wait for those cars to sink into my price bracket.

Reliability and basic functionality seems to be pretty awful with a lot of EVs. I thought it was just because there is more information these days, but then I realised that I was checking driver’s forums to get information on cars at least 15 years ago. They used to be mainly full of enthusiasts who loved their cars but now they are just a litany of faults that make me think “no way”: cars that lock you out, fail to charge, fail to start (because the 12V battery is dead), set off the alarm in the middle of the night for no reason, brake for no reason, try to steer you into a cyclist, beep at you relentlessly because it thinks you are going 1mph over a speed limit it has got wrong, thinks you might cross a white line that doesn’t exist, can’t see your eyes for a few seconds etc.

Basic design issues: does FWD really make any sense in an EV or is it just a hang over from ICE cars (and a compromise for companies that still want to produce both)? Can we not all agree on something as basic as where to put the charge port?

At the end of the day, my 7 year old ICE car still does everything I want. I hasn’t missed a beat in over 140,000 miles of driving and it is only really the fear of the bills that must be just around the corner (and a bit of guilt about those tailpipe emissions) that make me want to change.  Looking at newer cars there are only really two things that look like an upgrade to me. I quite like the idea of a 360 degree camera, although my current reversing camera gets covered in crap half the year so maybe that wouldn’t actually be that useful. I quite like the idea of lane centring on a motorway as it should make those longer journeys a bit more relaxing. But I can’t seem to have either of those without a lot of tech that I don’t want and a car that is much less reliable and much more frustrating to drive than my current one.

TLDR: EVs are modern cars and modern cars are over priced and overly complicated for my needs.

Any opinions on the Ioniq 5 with the 84kHw battery? I know they’re pretty new. Its 354 miles WTLP, could I expect that to be around 250 of 50-70mph motorway driving?

According to ev-database it will do 190 miles on the motorway in cold weather and 240 in warm weather

https://ev-database.org/imp/car/2236/Hyundai-IONIQ-5-84-kWh-RWD

The cold weather is colder than we usually get in the UK but it still sounds as though 250 would be a stretch. Of course you only charge to 80% on longer journeys and wont want to risk dropping below 10% so the distance between charging stops is only 70% of those ranges on a long trip.

It can, in theory, charge 10-80% in as little as 17 minutes if you can find a fast enough charger though.

 for some, even slightly long ones

What percentage of people (not cars) never go on a long trip?  I’m sure lots of cars don’t, because they are the ‘second car’ in a family, but they might all be driving to the Alps three times a year in their main car.  Sure, this means there’s a market for small short range cars, but there will still be a significant market for longer range ones.  All this complexity behind the data just underlines the point that the mean journey length is a meaningless statistic particularly in this context.

Price of EV vs the ICE equivalent is hard to justify and wipes out most of the savings if you buy new with cash

What’s your worked example for that? I think it depends on what you consider ‘equivalent’.

we usually do it in 11 hours total (has been as short as 10 on a few occasions). It might be a rare case, but if the car pushed that journey beyond 12 hours I’d be regretting my purchase

Would you though?  Really? You’re still doing the same amount of actual driving, and 11 hours is still all day just the same as 12 hours.  What you have to remember is that when you buy a new car, we all need it to be an EV.  It’s going to significantly reduce your carbon footprint and that is really quite important.  Are you really saying that saving one hour a year is worth thousands of extra kgs of CO2 being emitted?

Reliability and basic functionality seems to be pretty awful with a lot of EVs

I honestly don’t think this is true.  There is a lot of misinformation about this, and a few key cock-ups like VW’s rubbish infotainment. But you can avoid those.  12V batteries – I suspect a few cars have under-specified batteries, but you must remember that there are probably thousands of people every cold morning who can’t start their ICEs because the battery has failed, and they don’t make FB posts about it and FB doesn’t put them on your feed.  When a battery fails in an ICE it’s just a normal part of car ownership, but when an EV 12V battery fails it’s somehow a big deal.

According to ev-database

Take that with a pinch of salt. It says the ‘mild weather’ range of my car is 140 miles on the ‘highway’ but that would mean an average of 3.7 miles/kWh and I can get 5 doing nothing other than leaving the cruise control on 70mph. My long term average in combined driving is 5.1

I think these databases include US cars, where cold weather is clearly much colder, most people are driving at a true 80mph on their highways (which would be an indicted 85mph or more here) and in some markets heat pumps were optional extras.

I watched a video review of the Ioniq 5 when it came out with two people on a road trip, and one was able to achieve 4 miles per kWh and the other much less.  I think that most UK drivers are getting 3.7 or so from their 5s, which would give you a 300 mile ish real range. Of course you are not going to be recharging to 100% on road trips as we know.

Pop onto one of the FB owners groups and ask about range.

I have diesel Vauxhall Combo – essentially a re-badged Berlingo. I would love an electric one, but we drive out to the Alps twice per year, and one of those trips is towing a trailer. It would be extremely tedious with a 180 mile range. In Winter we’d be recharging probably every 1.5 hours, and I have no idea how towing would effect the range. Some say it would halve, but my diesel mpg barely notices towing an “in-slipstream” trailer.

If it had a 300 mile range, I’d buy one tomorrow.

Range when towing is mostly about air resistance.  Towing a caravan on a normal car is probably nearly double the frontal area, so you get half the fuel economy.  But if you tow a low trailer that sits below the roof line, it’s not going to make a lot of difference. Similarly, if you tow a caravan with a big van, they are nearly the same frontal area so not that much difference.

That was my thought. I would still need the longer range though. Maybe in a few years…

Yeah I drive a short range car but it’s made possible by the fact it’s consistent year round and it’s range is genuine. I don’t fancy those vans.

The new XL eBerlingo car can’t tow anything. The normal length tows 750kg max. Presume the Combo is the same. Looks like all panel van versions including XL and crew van can tow 750kg.

Yeah, my trailer is sub 750kg, unbraked. My wife has a Peugeot E-2008 which is fantastic for the daily commute, but she has range anxiety with longer trips. From home to work to her Mum’s house is about 125 miles, and the range (summer) should be about 200, but most of the 125 miles is at motorway speeds so gobbles the power. I keep trying to get her to slow down…

Yes when we go electric it will also be one car to do everything so needs a more realistic range.

We’ve just been on a regular trip to SW Scotland and cool weather, mway, fast A road and hills feels like a Berlingo might have needed two charging stops.  Or one stop and a very nervous finish which is a bit silly for a 2.5 hour journey. Then 7kW charging in the village overnight and pedalling 1.5 miles back up the hill to where we stay.

But if you tow a low trailer that sits below the roof line, it’s not going to make a lot of difference.

Really?

I’m sure air resistance is a definite factor but if you take the equivalent weight of the trailer/contents and put it inside the car you’re still going to use a chunk more power to move that weight from A to B.  Physics.

Reliability and basic functionality seems to be pretty awful with a lot of EVs

That I do not believe.  On my street there are very few ICE cars left.  Most people I work with drive electric cars, and I hear of very few problems.  They don’t catch fire all the time.

I’ve got 190,000 kms on an old Leaf.  I’ve just bought and EV6 and expect to put 200,000 on that as well, and don’t expect much bother. And judging from last weekend I’d expect 400kms between charges, no problem in a winter that’s colder than yours

if you take the equivalent weight of the trailer/contents and put it inside the car you’re still going to use a chunk more power to move that weight from A to B.  Physics.

Well, that only apples when you’re accelerating or going up a hill.  On the flat at constant speed, the only effect weight has is increasing the rolling resistance. Of course the extra weight has an effect, but it’s nowhere near as much as the air resistance.

People who tow caravans with normal cars report that their fuel economy towing is about half what it is solo.  People who tow with big Range Rovers or vans report that it doesn’t go down that much, because it’s already low, because of air resistance.  People who tow super light caravans like the Swift Basecamp or the other small (but full height) ones from Bailey or Elddis etc also report that their fuel economy is not that different to those towing big vans weighing twice as much.  I just went from a 1200kg van to a 1500kg van of the same size, and my fuel economy is about 5-10% better.

What’s your worked example for that? I think it depends on what you consider ‘equivalent’.

Just had a look on the Hyundai site as the Kona was the first example that came to mind of a car that could be had with the same trim levels in either petrol or EV. Price for a petrol Ultimate (top level) trim is currently listed as £30k. The same trim level in the EV is £43k

Similar story at the bottom of the range: Advance trim is £26k in petrol or £35k for the EV.

Depreciation is pretty steep on EVs of course, so you can pick up a one year old Ultimate trim with less than 10k on the clock for around £30k, but it’s still basically second hand EV or new petrol for the same money.

Would you though?  Really? You’re still doing the same amount of actual driving, and 11 hours is still all day just the same as 12 hours.  What you have to remember is that when you buy a new car, we all need it to be an EV.  It’s going to significantly reduce your carbon footprint and that is really quite important.  Are you really saying that saving one hour a year is worth thousands of extra kgs of CO2 being emitted?

To be honest, if it was just me then I probably could just take a few more breaks and wouldn’t really mind. But after 11 hours in the car the rest of the family (and dogs) are getting a bit antsy 🙂 You are right though, it’s not a deal breaker, just a small example of where you could spend a lot of money and end up with a worse experience. I agree with your main point though and it’s very unlikely that I will buy another ICE car. If/when I buy another car it should be an EV, but the more I look into them the more tempted I am to just keep my ICE car for a bit longer and the environmental impact of that seems a bit more complicated.

Re: reliability and basic functionality being awful.

I honestly don’t think this is true

You could be right and I see @wbo makes a similar point. Maybe I’m just reading too much into complaints on driver forums.

I do remember, many years ago, I bought a Smart ForFour and before doing so I registered for the Smart forum to see what drivers thought. It was basically full of people showing pictures of their cars, arranging meets and discussing options for remapping them for more fun. Recently I checked out the Smart # 1 forum and while a few people do like them it’s mainly a long list of faults and complaints about poor service and flaky software. I had a look on the Volvo Ex30 forum too and that was even worse! Maybe I just picked two bad examples, but the only EVs I can think of that owners seem to rave about are Teslas and my family are firmly in the “can’t buy one of them, people might think we support Musk” camp 🙂

Any of the resident Hyundai / Kia fans tried an EV3 yet? Demo cars not due until early December according to my local dealer

Not driven one, but my beef with the EV3 is that you can only get the heat pump as an optional extra on the top trim level. It’s being marketed as a low cost, long range small EV but if you want a heat pump (to stop range dropping significantly in winter) then it’s just another £44k EV.

It’s not even that small, which is another thing I find annoying with the current crop pf EVs. I don’t need or want a large car, they are a pain to park and generally less fun to drive than smaller cars. Something the size of a Suzuki Swift with a  300 mile range would be perfect. But if I want any sort of decent range I have to buy something much larger than I need or want.

the only EVs I can think of that owners seem to rave about are Teslas

I think most people here are pretty pleased with their EVs, most of which are not Teslas.

Re the long trip – you say it’s 9hrs of driving and 500 miles.  In most cars that’s going to comfortably be three stops.  If each stop is half an hour, that’s still less time than you spend stopped even in your ICE.  Head onto ABRP and you can plan out some scenarios. Also bear in mind they are very conservative with their range estimates.

 Something the size of a Suzuki Swift with a  300 mile range would be perfect

That much battery takes up a certain amount of space, that’s hard to get around.  A Kona is as small as you’re going to get with a decent range but that’s not even 300 miles IIRC.

but the only EVs I can think of that owners seem to rave about are Teslas and my family are firmly in the “can’t buy one of them, people might think we support Musk” camp

I think his only crime is being an arsehole.

If any of your family have a petrol car then they have spent their lives financially supporting arseholes. In just very recent times have they forgotten they are throwing there petrol money into a murdering Saudi family regime that treat women like third class citizens and would happily throw “other” people off a bridge.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45812399.amp

There’s no illusion that the Saudi sovereign wealth fund is everywhere, but man child musk is the least of their problems, they’re already in the matrix..

It is true, Tesla’s are no good for virtue signalling..

Thanks. ABRP is good fun and I have planned that journey out in various EVs now. Interesting to hear that they tend to be conservative. Even so it does look as though it shouldn’t be too bad. Of course, ABRP can’t tell me how busy those chargers are going to be on the Sunday before Christmas, but I can check that out myself (in my ICE car) in a few weeks.

Yes, we’ve had all those discussions about Tesla. I’m very much of the view that all cars are just boxes on wheels. I don’t much care what they look like and the only thing that matters about the badge to me is what sort of support I might get when it goes wrong. But I can’t deny that many people think they are making some kind of statement by driving a certain car and I’m not going to buy a car that makes the rest of the family uncomfortable, no matter how irrational I might think they are being on this one.

I honestly don’t think this is true.

TBH, if you compare the number of people complaining about something on the internet, and then go and interrogate the car systems to find out how many times something has actually failed/happened, or even just look at *actual* warranty, rather than twitter/forums. The mismatch is gargantuan. The size of the issue is amplified at least 10 fold, more likely 100 or more.

I worked on one three/four years ago and found about 70-80 posts from different users across twitter and three or four of the bigger user communities. We had *three* actual times that it’d happened, in two years, over well over quarter of a million cars with the feature installed. It’s not the only time i’ve found this sort of mismatch, and now we have more connected cars, it’s easier to get an actual set of statistics/data, once you have an idea of whats wrong.

What percentage of people (not cars) never go on a long trip?  I’m sure lots of cars don’t, because they are the ‘second car’ in a family, but they might all be driving to the Alps three times a year in their main car

Not sure about people, but something like 15% of cars won’t, obviously varies by market and car size/class. (NB, i haven’t looked at this since last i changed jobs, when it was actually relevant!)

the only thing that matters about the badge to me is what sort of support I might get when it goes wrong

Tesla have a poor reputation for after sales service, perhaps because of their service model; but whilst Hyundai/Kia dealers do make an effort it’s apparently really difficult to get parts – a 6 week wait seems to be a good result.  Fortunately the warranty is long so they hire you a care whilst yours is off the road.

Tesla have a poor reputation for after sales service, perhaps because of their service model; but whilst Hyundai/Kia dealers do make an effort it’s apparently really difficult to get parts – a 6 week wait seems to be a good result.  Fortunately the warranty is long so they hire you a care whilst yours is off the road.

I’ve heard conflicting stories about Tesla service. Some people seem to like the fact that you do everything through the app and they come to you for servicing and some warranty stuff. Others not so keen.

The longer warranties on Hyundai/Kia are good but as someone who tends to keep cars for around 7 years (and would probably be buying something a year or two old already) I’m also interested in parts availability, which does seem to be an issue. It’s about the only thing I don’t like about my current Suzuki to be honest. I’ve currently got a very slow coolant leak (as in chuck a bit more coolant in every six months sort of slow) which my local independent garage says is coming from the radiator. Unfortunately it looks as though you can only buy a radiator directly from Suzuki and they want £700 (ouch). It’s basically things like that and the knowledge that after 140,000 (trouble free) miles I can probably expect things like clutch, exhaust, timing chain and turbo to go at any moment. All of which could be expensive, on top of the usual suspension and brake stuff.

Parts availability seems to be an issue on most EVs, regardless of brand. I am on a few BMW i4 FB groups and it seems pretty standard that when just about anything goes wrong its 2 weeks minimum and often more than a month.

I can probably expect things like clutch, exhaust, timing chain and turbo to go at any moment

Happily EVs have none of those things 🙂