Trying to work out where TallPaul lives. I’m guessing Newbury.

Have you looked at a variable tariff like octopus go? That’s currently 7p /kWh off peak which makes a big difference in fuel costs. Balanced out with the higher day rate that is averaging 11p / kWh for us.
However, we seem to manage nearly 20k miles a year, mostly running around local very rural roads, so the difference is more significant.

Yeah I’ll have a look and confirm exactly what tariff we’re on – that does make a big difference. Currently we’re with Shell Energy.

Trying to work out where TallPaul lives. I’m guessing Newbury.

Ha, almost similar latitude but way further east – Kent. Which means anywhere in the UK with proper riding is a good few hours away.

Have you looked at a variable tariff like octopus go? That’s currently 7p /kWh off peak which makes a big difference in fuel costs. Balanced out with the higher day rate that is averaging 11p / kWh for us.

We went off Octopus Go and ended up on their standard. You have to be doing enough miles to offset the higher normal leccy cost with lower car fuel cost, and I don’t think we are, at least not currently.

We went off Octopus Go and ended up on their standard. You have to be doing enough miles to offset the higher normal leccy cost with lower car fuel cost, and I don’t think we are, at least not currently.

Interesting, I see it’s a fair bit more during the daytime.

On my mileage, obviously if I did more miles from and within 150 miles of home the cost savings would be greater, 7000 miles from home charging means closer to £60 a month saved.

Currently I go into the office once or twice a month, which is a 20 mile round trip. I barely do any shopping trips or local running about, my car might get driven 10 miles every couple of weeks. I’ve been riding more locally (and using the car less) recently due to the fuel prices, my ‘local’ riding spots are anything from a 70 mile to 100 mile round trip. If I had an EV I’d undoubtedly do this more often than I am currently because it’ll be costing half as much. I’d also do more 1-2 day trips away, with a good chunk of the miles being on home charge or campsite hook up.

There’s also earning interest in having the £12k or so sat in a 1yr fixed savings account (2.7% is easily accessible) which works out at another £27 a month/£324 a year. I’m in the process of putting away as much as I can for a house deposit so having another £12k to put towards that is a great help, and having just cleared the £300 a month loan for my current car, a lease at £3-400 a month doesn’t phase me.

I’ll have a proper look into the leccy tariff I’m on, and also the public charging subscription deals, things like ionity which is 69p/kWh with no sub (how much!!?) and 35p with a 12 month, £17 a month sub. But that still works out more expensive than gridserve at their flat 48p/kWh. I’d need to look at what chargers are at the locations I’d be stopping at when going either north or west.

Obviously there’s also servicing costs to include, I’ve had a bad few months with my car with the cambelt at £650, on a diesel it’s going to be a few hundred a year…

It all ads up, £25pm saved on servicing, £25 saved on fuel, £25 earned in interest, do a more ‘normal’ mileage (ie actually riding places not from my door) and that’s £100 a month saved over my current car or a diesel Berlingo…

We went off Octopus Go and ended up on their standard. You have to be doing enough miles to offset the higher normal leccy cost with lower car fuel cost, and I don’t think we are, at least not currently.

Agreed.

We calculated before we moved tariff and it didn’t take much to tip the balance. We do 30miles a day just in school runs, and have switched to trying to use the EV for everything else too, hence the 20k miles in a year and this definitely works out better than standard rate. It’s also substantially cheaper than the fuel costs on the petrol car.

Most of our journeys are within range of home charging so works out ok. If not then it’s most likely I’m going to an office and can take advantage of the current 13p /kWh charging there. Have a long drive to Scotland this week, so that will dent the costs, but that’s a rarity and what tipped us to an EV to begin with.

We don’t really use a lot of electricity, it’s heavily weighted to the EV charging.

The last bill we had averaged out at 11p / kWh with both rates combined.

Whilst I’m in no way suggesting that a car is an investment remember that interest is acculating slower than current inflation!

Anyone keen on the Sono Sion?

Unfortunately, they’ve already stated quite some time ago that they will not be making a right hand drive for many years, if ever.
One idea I liked in the original concept was the Vehicle2Home capability, so in theory you could charge at work or on Octopus Go/Agile and run your home from the car at peak times. I think it was 11kw so You could have lights on, watch telly and make a cup of tea, but maybe not kettle, electric shower and electric oven/hobs.

Had a chat with the Citroen sales guy around range on the E-berlingo (E-Brickingo more like!), he’d done a few trips in one – he reckons 90-100 miles on 80% charge at 65mph or so. Bearing in mind you’ll probably not want to be going much above 80% charge on a rapid charger as they slow down a lot, but you can start with 100% when going from home so the first stint can be about 115 miles. It’s doable for long trips – going to Scotland I’d forget doing it in a day like I currently do – this year to get from Maidstone to Aberfeldy I left at 9:20am, stopped for 50 minutes total over 2 stops, got there at 7:30pm. With the Berlingo I’d be looking at 4 or 5 stops, 2.5hrs roughly – which would have meant an arrival time of 9pm, which is a long day in the car. So for that distance I’d split it and leave at 7pm the night before, drive until midnight/1am, camp overnight then do the remaining 3-4hrs at a leisurely pace. I’d want to be able to do the Lake District in one day though, that’s 3 stops for charging, 1.5hrs so that would be OK + the 6hrs driving time.

Going to need a day long demo to test the charging speed, if that 80-100% is usable when rapid charging that makes a decent difference, it’s another 20-25 miles on the range which could mean the difference between needing an extra stop or not.

Bearing in mind you’ll probably not want to be going much above 80% charge on a rapid charger as they slow down a lot

I got to 80% first time I did a charge away then realised it was only another 5-7 mins or so to get to 90 so I waited. It was easy enough to do.

Re your Scotland calculations – yes it takes longer but how much of an inconvenience is it really, and is that inconvenience worth losing the benefits the rest of the year? For me, it is, but it’s only an 8hr drive that becomes a 9-9.5hr drive.

Re your Scotland calculations – yes it takes longer but how much of an inconvenience is it really, and is that inconvenience worth losing the benefits the rest of the year? For me, it is, but it’s only an 8hr drive that becomes a 9-9.5hr drive.

No, it’s not a huge impact tbh, for once or twice a year – 10hrs to 12hrs but with the added convenience of being able to stop and sleep.

Remembering also that probably half my mileage will be on trips away from home, if I’m buggering off to South Wales for a couple of days on a Friday night I’d rather only have to stop once for 30 mins rather than stop for a full hour when I’m already leaving at 6pm, and it’s a 3hr drive with no stops. That’s when being able to charge to 90 or 100% instead of 80% makes a difference – when the range is so limited every little bit extra is worth it! 😁

Does it have to be a van though? I mean, that’s crappy range.

Does it have to be a van though? I mean, that’s crappy range.

Yeah, the whole idea of looking at the Berlingo (either the new EV model or an older diesel one) is to be able to have a camping pod conversion it and get away for a weekend with little or no notice. Plus with the EV, riding more in my local trails, ie 50-100 mile round trips, thanks to half the fuel cost. And of course be able to have the bikes inside.

If I was just looking at a regular car then I wouldn’t be considering – the E-Berlingo is cheap enough that it’s not silly money for an EV.

How much weight is the conversion? That’s going to hit the mileage unless it evens out with the removed seats. If they’re anything like the seats in my C8 that’s probably not going to be hard TBF. I’m kinda thinking out loud here.

How much weight is the conversion? That’s going to hit the mileage unless it evens out with the removed seats. If they’re anything like the seats in my C8 that’s probably not going to be hard TBF. I’m kinda thinking out loud here.

The ready built ones are 100kg, so no worse that taking an extra (fairly hefty) person, or one extra normal sized person and a child. On a 2 tonne car it’s not a huge amount extra. You’d gain a bit back by removing the 6th & 7th seats mind you, on the XL version.

Tbh I think the main thing affecting the range is the brick-like aerodynamics, it’s not exactly a slippery shape… 🤣

You would probably need to take those seats out anyway, if not the middle row as well. That would easily get you your 100kg and then some.

Middle row seats don’t come out on the new model, they just fold (almost) completely flat.

Middle row seats don’t come out on the new model,

We’ll see about that….

I once removed the third seats of a hire car once to get more room. Was only a few bolts.

Because I am a bit lazy and there are a lot of posts. If my wife was to use one of the short term rent/lease options for a leccy car, which mid size option would the experts recommend? Ta!

We’ll see about that….

That’s the spirit!

I had my first experience recently on a longer journey in an electric car and it wasn’t exactly easy or quick. The car was a polestar 2 with a range of 250 miles and i was going from Falkirk to the NEC in Birmingham. The car suggests where to charge on the journey to minimise stops and i thought this was ideal, a 40 minute stop at a 120 kw charger at Killington Lakes services and i would get to the NEC fine. The stop would include my meal break and a coffee. Arrived at the services and the charger was available, only two chargers onsite though. Plugged the car in and went for a sandwich. Came back 40 minutes later to find the charger was only working at 40 kWh and had only added about 40 miles to my range. Choice was then to stay at this charger longer or carry on and stop again for a better charger. We decided to carry on and looked for a bigger capacity charger further down the road. Stopped again at a charger off junction 27 where there were 8 brand new 150kwh chargers. Plugged in and went for a coffee, came back 20 minutes later to find this charger was only working at 80kwh and we had to stay for another 40 minutes to get enough range to get to the NEC, also the cost of this was 69p/kWh, not far off the price per mile of diesel. There doesn’t seem to be any regulation on publishing the cost of charging like there is with petrol and diesel. Anyway we carried on to the NEC and arrived at our hotel near the airport with 20 miles of range left. We asked about electric car charging and the hotel said there was a charger in the drop off car park. Went to find that it was free to park for the first two hours if you used the charger but after that was £5 for every 15 minutes. Not exactly convenient to use but worked it around our stay and left two days later with a full charge. The journey back to Scotland was not any better, i got all the way to Gretna and stopped to charge. The two gridserve chargers were busy and a woman on one of them said they were working slow and she had only just plugged in after waiting 45 minutes to do so. The other car wasn’t occupied so i didnt know how long they would be. There were plenty of Tesla chargers free but these ones are only available for Teslas. There were 6 Ionity chargers available but i could get an account set up as it kept telling me my email address wasn’t valid. I eventually had to leave and went to the next services where there was a queue of 4 cars waiting on two chargers. Checked an app and found there was a charger in Moffat which was free but this was 9 miles away and i was now down to 20 miles range. I took the gamble and went to Moffat, it was a 22kwh charger and it took over an hour to put in enough range to get home. In conclusion, the Polestar was lovely to drive and very comfortable but the infrastructure just isn’t there yet for me to change to an electric car unless its a Tesla.

I think getting in an EV and just letting it work out where to stop, unless it’s a Tesla, is just not a realistic proposition currently – if I was doing a long trip I’d make sure I knew exactly where the chargers were for each leg of the trip in advance. Of course with the increase in chargers, especially at motorway services, we’ll need to rely less on planning as every services on the motorway will have 20/30/40 chargers… When we’ll get to this stage I’m not sure, hopefully sooner rather than later. It’s not exactly like there’s a limit of parking, most of these places have a few hundred spaces overall, but currently with about maybe 10 chargers, if you’re lucky.

The slow charging speeds you saw, this wasn’t on one of the stupid hot days we had recently, was it? Chargers were overheating on those days and giving reduced outputs.

Ionity is a good shout if they are on route, expensive but reliable.
Using Bonnet brings the cost down to 50p/kWh (at the PAYG rate), I’m totally happy paying that as it only on long trips I need to do it.

https://www.joinbonnet.com/

My referral code will give us both £15 of your next charge.

RMRJGZ

Came back 40 minutes later to find the charger was only working at 40 kWh and had only added about 40 miles to my range.

Something’s up there. 40 mins at 40kW is 26kWh which even at 3 miles/kWh should have given you 80 miles.

You’re right, it’s not perfect yet, but it’s not always like that. Doesn’t put me off though. Personally the only issue is cost.

Ionity is a good shout if they are on route, expensive but reliable.
Using Bonnet brings the cost down to 50p/kWh (at the PAYG rate), I’m totally happy paying that as it only on long trips I need to do it.

https://www.joinbonnet.com/

My referral code will give us both £15 of your next charge.

RMRJGZ

That’s a decent saving, I saw the electric juice from octopus but that only brings Ionity doesn’t too 66p/kWh so still quite expensive.

Tesla (especially M3 owners) – what’s the build quality actually like? Currently looking at M3, Polestar 2, maybe EV6 mid-next year. The network of the M3 appeals as first time EV owners, but I’d assume that the charging networks for non-Teslas will only get better over the next few years – unless I’m being hopelessly naive.

Any other suggestions c. £50k, 2 adult, 2 child family?

Electric car here, had it for 9 months and generally a big fan. It’s used as a local/second car so normally charged at home, we made a first attempt at a trip requiring a single charge away from home yesterday, bit of a nightmare. 2 hours spent either waiting for a charger, trying to get the charger to work (3 phone calls) and then not getting the speeds advertised as per comments above.

I think this is where Tesla have it nailed tbh, bit like Apple with the UI for iPhone, Tesla and the way their cars integrate charging to the route just looks fantastic.

It’ll get there, but it’s not there now. I don’t really understand why there’s no competing integrated solution to mimic teslas.

I’m still considering taking the EV to Scotland, it’ll cost about half as much, assuming I can charge at Gridserve, saving about £80, and take about 90 mins longer. If it weren’t for the fact that my diesel is a nicer car I wouldn’t think twice. The charging aspect wouldn’t come into it.

I don’t really understand why there’s no competing integrated solution to mimic teslas.

Bloody incompetent apathetic government. They should be rolling this out even if it were via some kind of dodgy PPI ripoff scheme. We need it.

We really need it. I’m slightly surprised there’s no collusion in the private sector to deliver it. If you did you’d probably corner the market.

It was one of the very hot days in July so that might explain the slow charging speed. The 40kwh charging speed was what the charging said it was charging at but it may have been even less for some of the 40 minute charge period. It’s the principal of planning ahead and thinking that a charger is available at a certain speed and allowing a fixed amount of time for the stop. I agree that the government need to get their finger out if they expect people to change to electric cars.

At the moment each charging provider seems to be trying to get people into their own network. But I see the future being much more open and you just use whichever one works for you at the time, like petrol stations now.

Re the integrating all of the available chargers availability with car route planning (copying a message I wrote in a different ev ralated thread) My theory…. Google are really good at doing things like this and I suspect that they will eventually to do (either developing their own solution or buying out a smaller company who’s developed a solution) and from then on all the charging providers will desperately want to be part of this system to drive traffic to their chargers (a bit like how Google focussed SEO is a big deal for websites now). That will then drive prices down as it will be a hyper competitive market.

Agree re google. Just slightly amazed it hasn’t happened already!

Where they are from, everyone drives Tesla’s and they already do it…

But yes it will be coming. It’s already pretty frustrating it isn’t tied into android auto already, and I still haven’t even got the fuel saver update they have been rolling out.

They have a bit of work to do – we asked it ‘directions to Glenrothes Instavolt’ and it mapped to somewhere down south, 6hrs away. We were about 20 mins away and just wanted to check traffic on the route.

Any other suggestions c. £50k, 2 adult, 2 child family?

Ioniq 5, iD4/5

I wonder if some cars handle heat better than others? I’ve read that they have battery cooling and heating, perhaps some.dont have enough.

I have a Kia eNiro. Cracking car. Currently returning a genuine range of approx. 340 miles to a full charge, reduced to about 280 in the depths of winter.

On the Octopus GoFurther tariff, so charging is done in a 5 hour window at 8.5p kw/h.

Just browsing possible affordable EVs, in the £10-12k ish sort of range. It’s pretty much all old model Leafs and Zoes, some with lease some without. I definitely don’t want a Leaf because of the battery cooling thing, but what would I need to know about older Zoes? I think this is what @Edukator has?

It’d be for a local car only so a 26kWh battery would be alright.

For a bit more there are some Mercedes B-Class EVs. I didn’t even know they made one of those, no idea what it’s like. Also maybe an older but high mileage i3.

Anyone know the details of these older cars?

@RichBowman

I have a leased Tesla, if you’re near Worthing on the South Coast I’ll even let you take it for a drive and see if it works for you. I don’t own the car or have any particular tesla loyalty so happy for others to make their mind up.

I won’t comment on build quality or charging networks in here because the usual suspect(s) will just rip my post apart with their extensive experience of living with a Tesla and how awful it is.

I had a 41kWh Zoé and now have a 52kWh. I borrowed a 23kWh when they came out but didn’t buy one because it wouldn’t do the journeys I do a lot on a charge and there were insufficient chargers at the time – it was impossible to get to Toulouse, Bordeaux or the mountains. With current infrastructure a 23kWh would cover most of my driving but with more time on chargers -18kW is realistically the fastest charging you’ll see with the 23kWh battery unless you get one of the rare fast charge Continental motor versions.

My 41kWh Zoé (same as the 23kWh but with a bigger battery) was great. It had nice things like a mechanical handbrake and a gear lever that you could stick in reverse while still going forward rather than having to stop with your foot on the brake. Madame liked the light airy cabin too, the latest one is pretty much all gloomy black. It was reliable, absolutely nothing went wrong, and cost buttons to run.

The latest 52kWh Zoé obviously goes much futher, has Android Auto and a generally better spec but is more staid, I’m hoping a change to Michelin Cross Climates will give it the agility the original Zoé had. It had a processor replaced under waranty when it put up some alarming messages so hasn’t been 100% reliable even if hasn’t broken down.

We’ve had a 15 plate Zoé for a couple of years. It gets used for short trips in and around town where a bike wont work. We got it just before the prices for sh vehicles took off (£4k I think we paid) and its on the £40 per month battery lease. Last year it did 2k miles according to the MOT. I like how small it is compared the eTron and choose it everytime for short journeys.
Bad things – the 12v battery needed replacing long before it would don an ICE car apparently with a service interval for replacement of 3 years.
It occasionally throws some truly terrifying error messages and lights on the dash, which have generally disappeared next time I come to it – it’s quite picky about charging stations and the earthing of them apprently.
It’s a great wee car that gets us about 50 miles range, which is more than enough really.

Tesla (especially M3 owners) – what’s the build quality actually like?

Mine was a 2019 California build and the only issue I had with the build was one of the rear brake light clusters was always steamed up and had water in it (because led lights don’t generate the heat of trad bulbs the water never dries off). I possibly could have got it replaced under warranty but didn’t bother. The only other criticism I’d have of the model 3 is the auto full beam and auto wipers didn’t work that well to the point where I chose to do it all manually (now got an ID.3 and the auto full beam/auto wipers work perfectly). Apparently the new China built M3s are better build quality, but on speaking to a few customers who have the newer build, the auto full beam and auto wipers don’t appear to have improved, as they seemed to generaly agree with my criticism. Having said that the advantages far out weight any minor niggles, it’s a great car IMO

I think this is where Tesla have it nailed tbh, bit like Apple with the UI for iPhone, Tesla and the way their cars integrate charging to the route just looks fantastic.

It’ll get there, but it’s not there now. I don’t really understand why there’s no competing integrated solution to mimic teslas.

ages ago I read somewhere that Tesla were aiming to be a power company – their main aim was to run and profit from a global charging network open to all, as they are currently trialling in some countries. Producing their own cars and helping to shape and drive EV development was merely a stepping stone/side business to acheiving this. May have just stemmed from a random Elon Tweet though…