Electric cars

[madasafish]

My wife relies on me to fill her Yaris with diesel.....(She NEVER checks the fuel level)
which makes me think..
how many people are going to forget to recharge their battery overnight ?

[Jocko]

Also a factoid in the program that you cannot tow an electric car as it damages the motors / electronic - so being as rescue services cannot charge the car you will need a proper truck to get the whole car on

Most recovery services just lift the driven wheels and that is all that a BEV requires. Unless it is 4x4.
Same likely to apply to any hybrid.

[Jocko]

Seemingly the majority of PHEV owners swap to a BEV for their next car.

[culzean]

Seemingly the majority of PHEV owners swap to a BEV for their next car.

A lot of business users have been using PHEV in the past just for the tax breaks and being able to go into emission zones,  most never charged the battery. Now they will have to go full electric for tax and low emission zones, they are doing it for their bank account, not the planet 

[peteo48]

I've heard that as well. I think it was my brother who told me - he had been into his local BMW dealer and was looking at a PHEV and he was told many business owners never charge the battery just taking the tax break. It was almost as if they were saying don't worry about the hassle of charging - you will never have to do it.

[VicW]

For those interested in electric cars, I suppose we all need to be, there is an interesting report in this months copy of 'Top Gear' Magazine. It is a comparison between the Honda E, the Mini Cooper EV and the Peugeot E208.
The Honda E comes out on top.

Vic.

[peteo48]

The Honda E has had a very good reception from EV fans. It's range is quite limited but Honda are unapologetic saying that the E is a city car. It won't be long before they bring out a longer range car. By 2022 they won't sell anything that isn't either a hybrid or an EV.

[richardfrost]

Program on ITV tonight at 7-30pm 'are we ready for electric cars'...

Got round to watching this yesterday. Partly because the presenter used to do the corporate TV channel for my employer back in the 1990s and I worked with her a couple of times.

On topic though, I wasn't sure about their choice of the couple to do test drives. Driving to London is not really a typical journey for me. If I was going that far, there would have to be a reason for me to have a car at my destination for me to drive it. Would use the train.

For me, the profile of an electric car needs to cover mostly local and cross county journeys (although Yorkshire is rather large) of around 100 miles total. But occasionally, and often with little planning, a day trip could involve a 200 mile round trip with some driving around at the destination. Range anxiety is going to creep in for me on that sort of trip.

Very rarely, say once a year, we might do a road trip. If that was to the Highlands then I would not really want to do that until charging infrastructure is much improved. Bit in this scenario, hiring a car could be an option. The days of having one car which can do every possible type of journey are probably over now, and I would never want more than one car for my personal use.

I think either reliable, trustable ranges of 300 miles or so, and/or a charging infrastructure which is widespread, functional, simple and rapid, are things which will define the tipping point for me.

I think we are close. Within 5 years maybe. But my next car will be a hybrid and probably leased on a fairly short term.

[culzean]

The problem with BEV up to now has been the double whammy of high initial cost and massive depreciation ( good news for brave second hand buyers ) - according to this link hybrids are cheaper to buy new and retain a really good part of their value.

https://www.drivingelectric.com/your-questions-answered/624/electric-car-depreciation-will-electric-vehicles-lose-their-value

[TnTkr]

Within the foreseeable development BEV will not work for me, at least not for the primary car. I regularly make 400 mile, sometimes even 600 mile one day trips without possibility to charge the batteries either due to the stops being too short or in off-grid areas.

[Jocko]

There are huge parts of the world where that will remain the case for decades. if not longer.

[peteo48]

Indeed. Especially sparsely populated areas where the charging infrastructure will not be cost effective. Russia, Australian outback, parts of Canada and the USA etc etc.

[Jocko]

And Finland.

[TnTkr]

And Finland.

..and Sweden and Norway too.

[John Ratsey]

Hydrogen + fuel cell is the solution for longer range. The hydrogen can be produced when there's surplus electricity from wind, solar, ... and stored. It seems to work best with an on-vehicle battery as the fuel cell can then be sized to suit the average power requirement and the battery handles the fluctuations. And refuelling is quick.