Yeah despite all the scare mongering, even in the last 6 months they're are masses more of them, certainly up here in hi tech Aberdeen

Just looking out the work car parks, about 1 in 5 is a full EV (going by the green plates), amazing. They've also just finished 2 large charging stations in the industrial estate and almost all of the office car parks have type 2 charging points. Give it a couple of years and I think half will be EV's.

Apart from me with my 86 year old car looking rather out of place , actually looking out for a 1940's pickup as my daily driver



[Edited on 19/3/24 by Mr Whippy]

The place I'm working at the moment has about a dozen charging bays, and they've had to introduce an online rota so everyone who needs it can get a share. Even with splitting the day there's still more requests than bays. Apparently they're top notch chargers as well, so charge really quickly.

They are also free, which made me wonder whether the government might start asking for their share as some sort of employee taxable benefit. Then again, it can only be pennies.

I always knew the naysayers would be proved wrong! I was inevitable, that's how progress works.

"Then again, it can only be pennies" Hmmm, depends what you base it on, sure, a full charge of my 64kWh battery only costs me less than a fiver on overnight leccy, but this is obviously daytime & charged at business tariff & presumably with full Vat unlike what you pay at home, I hardly ever charge on the move unless I absolutely have to because the rates are so extortionate

If you imagine most folk plugged in at work chargers would be grabbing a top up, so less than an hour on charge, but if it's going in at 40- 75kW, fairly typical at 150kW stations, that's going to be at least 40kWh (if there's capacity for it, & if there isn't the car should no longer be blocking a charge point), so, even being conservative let's say 30kWh per vehicle, at a commercial rate including Vat I'd imagine that to be around 40p per kW including VAT, maybe more, so a 30kWh charge is worth at least £12, if you take it at commercial rates like a public charge point then more like 80/90p/unit, so, based on that worth around £25. TBH, I'm surprised any employer would offer this for free, if they offered it at cost people would still make use of it

If you were doing a fairly high mileage that could be 3 top ups a week, depending how you value it, somewhere between £36 & £75 - I wouldn't call that pennies & certainly wouldn't mind having it in my pay packet! Even valued at the notional cost of overnight home leccy that's a bonus of around £8 a week, OK, not a fortune, but certainly more than pennies

Would the Government like to take tax on that? You betcha!
Are they going to latch on to this & start charging tax on an employee benefit? I'd be very surprised if they didn't - they've not been slow to remove the free road tax & haven't introduced it at a low level either, plus, most decent EV's are going to fall into the extra road tax bracket in a couple of years time unless there's a very substantial price drop, which I don't see happening at all & certainly not anytime soon, unless they syddenly workout how to make solid state batteries work on an industrial scale!

I'm an EV fan but, as normal with me, I don't hold a common view. I'll try and break it down.

I believe science and global warming
Humans will not and can not stop using vehicles
Apart from global warming ICE cars smell and pollute locally
ANY advancement away from this current trajectory is a good one
Industry and innovation is optimised in bulk, scalling up to optimise the small improvements in science.
EV as we know it is very unlikely to be around for long and unlikely to change the carbon deficit we currently have on our planet
Capitalism + humans genuine want to make the world a better place = Innovation and progress.
Anything to globalise energy providers and use green resources to power the world is a good thing.
We will close the loop soon on precious material life cycles, it's what humans are good at.

My wife has a ID3 top of the range spec and it is lush. My preferred drive, over my mid spec 2020 A5. It's quite, fast, and comfortable. It's also cheap even when comparing it to my 50+mpg (75+mpg) A5.

quote:

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Originally posted by russbost
Would the Government like to take tax on that? You betcha!

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yeah our Leaf costs around £11 to charge at home, it can go to Dundee and back on that and using my Volvo for the same trip uses about £40 of Petrol, so it's about a quarter of the cost of that or half the cost of using the Fiesta. Fast charges fully in 30mins. Add the free roadtax and tiny amount of maintenance (now doing all that myself, it's easy). It's completely paid for itself. So far it has lost 17% of it's battery capacity over 7 years which is not really noticeable, about the same as the winter range drop. Does go though tyres quickly but I suspect that's down to my wife's driving

Issues so far are zero, although I did have to change a wiper blade. The brakes look barely worn still!


That said although the Leaf is great with its fast acceleration and quietness (in moderation). I personally still prefer the engine cars and especially love the difficulty and challenge of driving the old car. Hence I want the old pickup rather than another EV.



[Edited on 19/3/24 by Mr Whippy]

quote:

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Originally posted by Mr Whippy
yeah our Leaf costs around £11 to charge at home, it can go to Dundee and back on that and using my Volvo for the same trip uses about £40 of Petrol, so it's about a quarter of the cost of that or half the cost of using the Fiesta. Fast charges fully in 30mins. Add the free roadtax and tiny amount of maintenance (now doing all that myself, it's easy). It's completely paid for itself. So far it has lost 17% of it's battery capacity over 7 years which is not really noticeable, about the same as the winter range drop. Does go though tyres quickly but I suspect that's down to my wife's driving

Issues so far are zero, although I did have to change a wiper blade.

[Edited on 19/3/24 by Mr Whippy]

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Can't see the link Russ.

Ah you added it!

[Edited on 19/3/24 by JoelP]

Cheers Russ, tbh I haven't even noticed the leaf being charged on the bills, not that I was looking but will have a look at the link. I don't have an overnight tariff sorted out although the leaf charges on the timer, so sounds like it will make a difference.

Alternatives are to get the wife a pedal car or one powered by wind, which she can move by nagging alone

I had a deposit on a new budget Model 3 Tesla.

They never made it so I got my money back.

Now I wouldn't dream of ev.

At some point, every house in the land will have an ev charging point, it will be separate from non ev supplies and it will have excise duty and vat.

I'm also not convinced about resale values and any ev out of warranty will be pretty much worthless.

McMaster does some quite good videos even though he is very annoying.

He bought a Taycan two years ago. Cost £120,000, now being offered £28-45k with £65,000 still on finance.

Then there's the mining of raw materials etc etc.

There's a chap in the states that runs his V8 Cameron(?) from hydrogen stored in tanks in the back of his car. The hydrogen comes from water in a stream and the electricity from solar/wind.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytg23mDd1a4

There is also an outfit in the states that does h2o powered hotrods.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RAEhhYqMEBE




[Edited on 19/3/24 by Simon]

quote:

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Originally posted by Simon


At some point, every house in the land will have an ev charging point, it will be separate from non ev supplies and it will have excise duty and vat.

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You know the girl (supposedly intelligent) who sits next to me came out with cracker, she said she was against EV's, "Their dangerous since guide dogs can't hear them...!"

You could tell she'd given zero thought to this revelation which she no doubt had heard somewhere.

If there's one animal that is going to hear an EV's (i.e. the obvious motor whine and tyre noise) it's a dog! Indeed I can attest that they can hear them very well as my dog goes nuts when he hears the wife coming up the drive as it's no doubt sounds very distinctive.

EVs (and/or chargers) have a way to go before they are good enough to fully replace ICE vehicles. If you have home charging and generally don't require charging away from home, then the low fuel cost is great (currently about 2p per mile for me) and charging overnight is very convenient. Not so good for those that cannot charge at home, having to waste time and money at public chargers; for those that do long distances on a frequent basis; or for holidays towing and staying in places without charging facilities.

In our case the negatives would be "not instantly available if charge is low and there is a family emergency", "poor for long journeys, forcing breaks at a time that may be inconvenient", "long waits for chargers to become available for use on busy days". However, as we are a multi-car household, there is always an ICE car available for those odd occasions and an EV suits us almost all journeys. Our ICE car has gone from doing 9 to 10,000 miles a year to less than 250, but a) it is available if we suddenly need to go to Ireland for a next-day funeral (it's happened more than once) and b) the cost of keeping it on the road for 3 years is less than the cost of having a new towbar on a new EV every 3 years, just to take rubbish to the tip!

I can't argue with any of that, perfectly correct.

This simply won't work for a sizeable chunk of the population
Fine where houses are semi detached or detached, with garages and/or driveways.
Far more troublesome where you have terraced houses, and far harder where those houses are now 4 flats. As is much of Brighton and countless other towns/cities in the UK.
Add to that all those people struggle to find a parking space anywhere near their house.
So they will all need public charging points.

But in general takeup around my area is quite small. Not a poor area either, I regularly see the local footballers driving up my road in their supercars and huge Rangies. Along a road of approx 50 houses, I only know of 3 full electric cars. I would say the average age of the cars is 8 years (that excludes any classics, of which there are many, from Alvis, Jag E type series 1 and XJS, VW campers, TVRs, Porkers and my collection of Triumphs and a prewar Singer)
And driving around B+H i see some full electrics, but not many. Quite a few hybrid cars, including many of the taxis/PHVs

Interestingly, I have just renewed my traders parking permit. 3 prices depending on vehicle emissions. Low (sub 110g but NOT diesels) has just gone up from £400 to £600 a year. Medium (most cars/small vans) stayed at £800, and high emission (think transits and range rovers etc) are £1200, with no increase. How counter intuitive is it to penalise the low emission vehicles?

The changeover to electrics will take a long time to filter through to many. and at 8-10 years what will EV battery life be?
I reckon I could swap to an EV for work and most journeys, it would need a genuine 140mile range, but many would achieve that. And any longer journeys undertaken in a 50 year old car with real charm/character. In fact, most of our bigger journeys are already done in our old cars, this year we are off for a tour round Ireland, the Spa classic, and a 3k european jaunt in Sept, all that in a 52 year old spitfire (with st170 powerplant) None of those trips would be as good in an EV.

quote:

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Originally posted by Mr Whippy

quote:

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Originally posted by Simon


At some point, every house in the land will have an ev charging point, it will be separate from non ev supplies and it will have excise duty and vat.

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Considering all that it takes to charge an EV is to give it 240v and is easy to charge through solar, I don't think that is a possibility.

Soon I think roadtax and fuel duty (replacement) will be electronic and either charged through a GPS system or camera's based on usage. Or simply EV's at some point will have to pay once a year like everyone else when there are enough EV's around that incentives are not required.

As for depreciation on very expensive cars, just look at a Ranger Rovers, it comes with the territory and has nothing to do with cars being EV's. Model 3's are still holding their values really well even quite old ones which is why I still don't have one as I'd swap the Leaf for one in a heartbeat.

The anti EV's movement seems very like the tobacco industry fighting back with made up propaganda paying doctors to claim cigarettes are good for you. There is definitely deliberate scare mongering going on (You tube is full of it) designed to confuse and scare those yet to try an EV but indications are it isn't working and people are getting wise to their deception.



[Edited on 19/3/24 by Mr Whippy]

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quote:

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Originally posted by Simon
At some point, every house in the land will have an ev charging point, it will be separate from non ev supplies and it will have excise duty and vat.

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As more EVs are purchased, especially once new ICE cars are no longer available, more and more of those charge points will be used. It is right to fit at least the supply, but if doing that, it is very little extra work to add the charger at the same time.

Mandatory solar panels are considerably more expensive and time-consuming to fit and would drive up the cost of new houses, that many cannot afford now. If solar panel prices continue to fall, then it may become reasonable to mandate them on new builds.

A bit of a strange question how meany electric units to charge a ev car say a pulsar
Would it be about 12 units
Graham

quote:

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Originally posted by jacko
A bit of a strange question how meany electric units to charge a ev car say a pulsar
Would it be about 12 units
Graham

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Thankyou for the answer
Graham

But, if your supplier offers it, you don't pay the normal unit price. My electricity is currently about 26p per unit, but for charging the car, I pay only 6.67p per unit. So 60kWh (about 270 miles worth in good weather), costs me about £4, compared to £58 for my Zafira.

I think the problem with using solar for EV is simply they normally get charged at night. So unless you have a storage battery or settle for get paid for suppling your excess back to the grid that isn't going to be much use. Probably the most effective way is to charge the cars is where they often spend much their time, sitting in a work car park. If businesses could be given incentives to add charge points in the car parks and to power this from panels on their building roof, even deducting a small amount from your wages to pay for what you use, say using a company swipe card to start the charger. Yes I'm being very narrow here focusing on white collar office scum but there's a lot of us . We also tend to be the ones with the huge polluting cars.

There's obviously no one solution, but allowing people to charge their EV easily and quickly is more important for adoption than pretty much any other factor.

Excuse me if it's been mentioned above (I haven't read the whole thread).

I'm also seeing an increasing number of EV's in my area (Hampshire). Being a nosey git I often look at wrting on the number plates above/below the actual registration. Invariably it indicates they're leased not purchased, probably company cars.

Personally I've not had a company car since 2011 so a long time out of that game.

Do companies leasing the cars for employees get a perk for leasing them over leasing a petrol/diesel car?

Do employees get a tax benefit for an EV - i.e. paying less Benefit In Kind tax on them?


I understand and appreciate progress, but sometimes feel we're being herded along without a great deal of say in the matter!

Yes, employees pay less BIK - as it is partially based on emissions.

quote:

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Originally posted by Mr Whippy
I think the problem with using solar for EV is simply they normally get charged at night. So unless you have a storage battery or settle for get paid for suppling your excess back to the grid that isn't going to be much use.

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quote:

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Originally posted by SteveWalker

Indeed, with some tariffs, you can make a profit by charging a house battery at night and exporting the power in the day, without having solar panels at all!

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At least one energy company was advertising that option themselves a while ago - it gives them "cheap" power when demand is high, without them having to invest in their own storage capacity.