Author Topic: Electric cars  (Read 700294 times)

sparky Paul

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #1935 on: January 21, 2021, 09:11:47 AM »
If I was paying £800 I’d want an R8 not a TT! 🤣

It was a fairly high spec, as far as I can remember.

A quick flick over the finance examples on the Audi website, a TT RS Vorsprung is £6,665 down, 4 years at £910.02 a month, and £28,306 final payment. Cheapest TT RS is £734 a month and £26K final payment.

10,000 miles p.a., 11p per mile excess charge

Gulp! :o

Westy36

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #1936 on: January 21, 2021, 01:06:46 PM »
A quick flick over the finance examples on the Audi website, a TT RS Vorsprung is £6,665 down, 4 years at £910.02 a month, and £28,306 final payment. Cheapest TT RS is £734 a month and £26K final payment.

10,000 miles p.a., 11p per mile excess charge

Gulp! :o
Gulp indeed. :D Ok, so it's a fast as you like cool car, but that works out at £50,345 to borrow a car for four years! FOUR years £50K? I can get four decades+ motoring out of that budget. 

JimSh

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TiJazz

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #1938 on: January 22, 2021, 03:53:22 PM »
Cost / range / charging issues are still a barrier. These will reduce over time. To accelerate that round require heavy incentives in terms of cost and infrastructure, like Norway.

sparky Paul

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #1939 on: January 22, 2021, 04:17:51 PM »
Vauxhall are running an interesting scheme, a twist on the charging problem.

Buy a new Corsa-e on PCP, and they are including a free fitted home charger, and including 30,000 miles worth of electricity, equivalent to around £3K worth of petrol. They are also throwing in a 6 month subscription to the Polar charging network.

https://uk.motor1.com/news/459833/vauxhall-corsa-free-charger-electricity/

TiJazz

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #1940 on: January 22, 2021, 05:23:54 PM »
It’s a start, but doesn’t change the fact that:
- it’s a £30,000 Corsa(!!)
- lots of folk live in flats / terraces
- Public chargers are often out of service, and rapids are still few and far between

Westy36

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #1941 on: January 22, 2021, 06:15:09 PM »
It’s a start, but doesn’t change the fact that:
- it’s a £30,000 Corsa(!!)
- lots of folk live in flats / terraces
- Public chargers are often out of service, and rapids are still few and far between
Your points regarding at least, what, 60% (guess) don't have their own driveway are very valid. It only works for those of us that have a drive or communal parking with dedicated charging. Charging facilities at work can increase options, mind you, working from home is the covid way these days.

£30k for a Corsa is a fair point, but if you are one of the many 'pay monthly never own' car users, then £330 a month is not that bad. £330 a month, you get a new car, green reg number to tell the whole world your eco EV man/woman and lower running costs.

https://www.vauxhall.co.uk/cars/new-corsa/offers-finance/electric/personal-contract-hire.html

I have never bought my cars on finance, or anything else for that matter, but then again I'm old school. Monthly is how people do things. Monthly rent, monthly i Phone, monthly TV package etc etc. So, £330 a month is about average for a car I suppose.

Lets hope Vauxhall sell loads of Corsa e and Combo e, and the PSA/FCA/Stellantis group keep the brand and jobs in the uk.  :)

sparky Paul

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #1942 on: January 22, 2021, 08:40:46 PM »
It’s a start, but doesn’t change the fact that:
- it’s a £30,000 Corsa(!!)
- lots of folk live in flats / terraces
- Public chargers are often out of service, and rapids are still few and far between

List price is pretty much irrelevant, I think this deal is only open to those using the PCP scheme - glorified rental. Not for me either, but the majority use these schemes to buy their new cars in the UK.

Obviously, a home charger is not going to suit everybody, but around 60% of UK homes have some sort of off road parking. I presume that the manufacturers would consider that the demographic they are aiming at would be less likely to live in a terraced house.

Not sure about public chargers being "often out of service", my nearest Shell charging forecourt always seems to be fully operational, and the cheaper chargers in the local town car park also seem to be working when I walk past, and usually available.


As I said, it's just an interesting twist, not something that would suck me in.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2021, 09:26:34 PM by sparky Paul »

Jocko

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #1943 on: January 22, 2021, 08:58:44 PM »
I talked to some EV owners living around Edinburgh, and they reckon the public charging network around here is excellent. Two of them were only able to charge at public chargers, and neither found it an issue. The Scottish government is very much in favour of green policies, perhaps because they have Green support in Holyrood.

sparky Paul

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #1944 on: January 22, 2021, 09:21:43 PM »
I've been quite surprised by the appearance of charging sites around here, in what is a pretty rural area really.

The Shell site serves a main trunk road, but is really my nearest proper forecourt service station. A couple of years ago, they expanded the site, building several food and coffee outlets and parking on the new bit. When the three car charging bays were installed, it all made sense.

ColinB

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #1945 on: January 23, 2021, 09:53:06 AM »
Obviously, a home charger is not going to suit everybody, but around 60% of UK homes have some sort of off road parking. I presume that the manufacturers would consider that the demographic they are aiming at would be less likely to live in a terraced house.

That’s a bit patronising. Not all terraced houses are impoverished slums ...
https://www.primelocation.com/for-sale/details/55586361?search_identifier=be177e9c91a28ad6e0f24714347ec686
In that particular example, there is no off-street parking, public chargers on the pavements are problematic because of the heritage issues and the vaults underneath are privately-owned, nor are there enough street lights to cater for any significant demand. That’s probably an extreme example, but it can’t be unique in the many areas of towns and cities with heritage architecture and perfectly respectable housing stock.

Whenever I read “real world” accounts of people trying to rely on public chargers, they seem to be laced with comments about them being unavailable or not working properly resulting in significant angst in trying to make even modest journeys. Unless serious money goes into both expanding the network and - critically - making the charge points more resilient, the only people who can realistically use EVs are those with off-street parking and home charging. Which condemns a very  large number of people to having to give up their personal transport in the next ten years or so. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but doesn’t make it less annoying.

sparky Paul

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #1946 on: January 23, 2021, 10:08:56 AM »
Obviously, a home charger is not going to suit everybody, but around 60% of UK homes have some sort of off road parking. I presume that the manufacturers would consider that the demographic they are aiming at would be less likely to live in a terraced house.

That’s a bit patronising. Not all terraced houses are impoverished slums ...

Why is it patronising? I think you've grabbed the wrong end of the stick there.

'Demographic' doesn't specifically relate to income, it can be any characteristic of society - and here, I'm talking about drivers and non-drivers. Is someone who buys a terraced house or flat with no parking more or less likely to be a car owner?

Quote
The majority (it’s roughly 60:40) of UK dwellings have off street parking. But it gets better. Those who don’t drive cars are over-represented in the dwellings with no car parking. PWC recently estimated that a stunning 84% of UK drivers have access to off-street parking at home.

https://pod-point.com/electric-car-news/electric-car-no-driveway
« Last Edit: January 23, 2021, 10:12:39 AM by sparky Paul »

peteo48

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #1947 on: January 23, 2021, 11:30:50 AM »
We will need to get to a situation where public charging is accessible to all. As Jocko says Scotland is moving along those lines ahead of the rest of the UK. On top of that something needs to be done about charge point deserts which make some journeys highly inconvenient if not actually impossible by EV.

We are not there yet so I don't see a "tipping point" occurring imminently but I reckon by 2025 things will look very different. People may not want to be stuck with ICE vehicles as the 2030 ban on new sales comes in, manufacturers may stop making ICE vehicles ahead of the deadline anyway. I think it highly unlikely that you will be able to buy a brand new ICE car in December 2029.

ColinB

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #1948 on: January 23, 2021, 11:36:58 AM »
Obviously, a home charger is not going to suit everybody, but around 60% of UK homes have some sort of off road parking. I presume that the manufacturers would consider that the demographic they are aiming at would be less likely to live in a terraced house.

That’s a bit patronising. Not all terraced houses are impoverished slums ...

Why is it patronising?

Because I read an implication in your comment that people who live in terraced houses (and flats, and other types of older high-density accommodation) were considered second-rate when it comes to EV ownership. If that wasn't intended, then I did indeed get the wrong end of the stick. Fact remains that just about all the terraced housing stock round here (and there's a lot of it in Bath, not just the kind of properties in my tongue-in-cheek link) is rammed nose to tail with parked cars (and they are all residents because of residents-only restrictions), so there are an awful lot of car-owners who live in terraced houses for whom EV ownership will be hugely problematic.

As for the podpoint article, that's interesting but has all kinds of holes in it. Just to take a few:
- The PWC article cited as the source of their stats is not available so can't be checked.
- Workplace charging: this is being actively reduced in a drive to reduce car use, such that new developments are being built with no, or very reduced, parking.
- On street charging: poses all kinds of issues in actually installing the charge points in older streets, some of which I hinted at previously. But there's a social issue with shared charging facilities: if your car finishes charging when you're doing something else (or at 3.00 am), would you go and move it? The current selfish "me first" attitude throughout society suggests many people wouldn't even if it causes hardship for someone else.
- The article misses the reliability issue. Too many 1st person accounts describe malfunctioning chargers when they arrive, so network owners like podpoint and their peers need to put very much more resource into maintaining the infrastructure so that users have a better chance of finding a charge point that's actually working when they need it.
- Security. I'm supposed to leave my expensive EV in a public car park that may be a long way from home whilst it charges? Obviously anyone proposing that has (a) never actually been in one of those car parks overnight (they're very unsafe-feeling places!) and (b) has never suffered the outrage of having a car stolen (you tend to want to keep an eye on it!).
That'll do. I still feel that there are no viable plans to encourage car-owners without off-street parking to make the switch to EVs, even f they might want to (as I do).

TiJazz

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #1949 on: January 23, 2021, 01:10:54 PM »
Absolutely - although one thing I will say is that nobody is stupid enough to steal a plugged-in EV. Nobody wants to saw through a live 400V cable!

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