Electric cars at work

But meanwhile pavements are going to be crisscrossed with extension leads which I’m sure will eventually start to get weighed in for scrap
It’s a great idea and many will manage it but until you can drive for 6 hrs on one charge and charge it outside your house safely then it’s going to be a battle lost

the thing about finite fuels like oil……they won’t go on forever the clue is in the name. Like it or not they’re running out and things HAVE to change.
As for electric car technology, it could be comparable to early cars. Since major industry has only seriously started investing in the last 20 years they will eventually out perform oil powered cars in every department……it’s already started!

 


Equally with increasing WFH reduces the need for the 2nd car. And 2nd cars tend to be a cheap 2nd runaround

It's all very saying you should be taking a break (normally we'd have a 15 min bog stop every 1.5 - 2 hours anyway) but Currently there's hardly any chargers free at service stations so it's handy to get a long range from a home charge.

I mentioned this before, but wetherby services out of 700 car parking spaces, they have a grand total of 3 chargers (and don't tell me to take a detour to aldi either)

I don't think I've even seen a charger in a hotel car park which is even more crackers.


I never said it was, but you have previously told me you need adapters for different chargers.

Looking on the tesla supercharger map, it appears there's only 1 station in the NE.
There’s a supercharger site at Washington with 8 charger stations, it’s never been full while I’ve been there. Next one is scotch corner. Northwards is Berwick. They are positioned up major motorway routes at distances to get you between them.

I regularly go to Swindon and Oxford without a problem, it adds no extra time to my normal journey at all, in fact I’d say it’s saved time as there is no separate visit to a petrol station.

connector wise, the superchargers are tethered chargers so you just plug whatever connection type you need (there are only two types but CCS is more common).

the only cable you need to carry about with you is a type 2 connector which fits to any AC non tethered charger.
 
the thing about finite fuels like oil……they won’t go on forever the clue is in the name. Like it or not they’re running out and things HAVE to change.
As for electric car technology, it could be comparable to early cars. Since major industry has only seriously started investing in the last 20 years they will eventually out perform oil powered cars in every department……it’s already started!

I not daft but while DPD can’t deliver all day without stopping, if I can’t drive to Sunderland without being forced to stop for 1/2 hr and should I go to London and not be able to charge it when I get there then I will carry on using diesel until I can no longer find any.
I also need 4wd and off road which again isn’t possible currently and not likely soon.
I need multi purpose and that doesn’t exist from what I can see.
I currently use a Mitsubishi L200 which as long as I look after it will be used daily for the next 10 or so years. After that, I’ll wait and see.
 
I thought the big selling point of EV's was that they're loads cheaper to fuel.
But it turns out that they cost a similar amount
It depends where you charge, without any special tariff I would get 250 miles for 12 quid from home charger, with my tariff if I charge off peak (plug it in overnight) I get the equivalent of appx 8000 miles free.
There are others where its a vastly reduced off peak tariff so you could be getting 250 miles off a fiver so equal to over 250 miles a gallon
Prohibitely expensive for your average person. The cheapest is about £50k


The kia is still a £30k car, and won't have access to the tesla supercharge network.

Until price, charge speeds, and access to chargers are addressed, then you won't get a mass take up of EV's
Yeah but if you look at the whole package, mine is 70 quid a month more than my last car but I was spending 200 a month on diesel, 50 on insurance plus tyres and services, this is all in.
 
Last edited:
It depends where you charge, without any special tariff I would get 250 miles for 12 quid from home charger, with my tariff if I charge off peak (plug it in overnight) I get the equivalent of appx 8000 miles free.
There are others where its a vastly reduced off peak tariff so you could be getting 250 miles off a fiver so equal to over 250 miles a gallon

Yeah but if you look at the whole package, mine is 70 quid a month more than my last car but I was spending 200 a month on diesel, 50 on insurance plus tyres and services, this is all in.

Which is great if you're doing lots of miles regularly. I don't & for me financially it makes zero sense to get an EV as the current payback is longer than the usable time length of the car.

It'll work for many in certain circumstances, for example If I was earning £150k year, I could get a cracking salary sacrifice deal with a 60% tax rebate, but I'm not.
 
Equally with increasing WFH reduces the need for the 2nd car. And 2nd cars tend to be a cheap 2nd runaround

It's all very saying you should be taking a break (normally we'd have a 15 min bog stop every 1.5 - 2 hours anyway) but Currently there's hardly any chargers free at service stations so it's handy to get a long range from a home charge.

I mentioned this before, but wetherby services out of 700 car parking spaces, they have a grand total of 3 chargers (and don't tell me to take a detour to aldi either)

I don't think I've even seen a charger in a hotel car park which is even more crackers.


I never said it was, but you have previously told me you need adapters for different chargers.

Looking on the tesla supercharger map, it appears there's only 1 station in the NE.
I live in Nottingham, if I drive to London, Newcastle, Cornwall or Manchester I pass 5 or 6 Tesla Supercharger stations on each route.
In the last three months I've had two long weeks away staying at hotels, one was in the South Downs and had 6 Tesla chargers in the car-park, the other was a pub/hotel in Newmarket and it had three EV chargers in the car-park. I've still got a diesel at the moment so wasn't booking hotels with charging facility, they were just there.
Which is great if you're doing lots of miles regularly. I don't & for me financially it makes zero sense to get an EV as the current payback is longer than the usable time length of the car.

It'll work for many in certain circumstances, for example If I was earning £150k year, I could get a cracking salary sacrifice deal with a 60% tax rebate, but I'm not.
You seem determined to find reasons not to get one so just stick with what you've got but you will need to make the change after 2030 anyway so at least start getting your head around the fact it's coming.
 
Last edited:
I live in Nottingham, if I drive to London, Newcastle, Cornwall or Manchester I pass 5 or 6 Tesla Supercharger stations on each route.
In the last three months I've had two long weeks away staying at hotels, one was in the South Downs and had 6 Tesla chargers in the car-park, the other was a pub/hotel in Newmarket and it had three EV chargers in the car-park. I've still got a diesel at the moment so wasn't booking hotels with charging facility, they were just there.

You seem determined to find reasons not to get one so just stick with what you've got but you will need to make the change after 2030 anyway so at least start getting your head around the fact it's coming.

I'm not against them, just a bit sceptical that the infrastructure needed will be in place, but for me to get one it has to have at least a 400 mile range & cost less than £18k. Currently that isn't an option.

And I don't 'need' to make the change in 2030. Its just new car sales that are stopping, not completely banning petrol
 
The way battery tech is progressing I’d expect that to do over 200mile range on release.
There’s a large number of households now have two cars and this would fill the 2nd car slot perfectly as it would only be used for short commutes and shopping trips with the main family car being used for long hauls.
How often is anyone actually doing more than 200 miles a day? For the odd time you are you should really be taking breaks at least once every three hours and there’s not many places you can drive more than 200 miles in three hours. On long haul motorway trip’s you’ll always be passing Tesla Superchargers and a smaller battery like that will recharge in about 15-20 minutes so you’d have that short a break every three hours.
People don’t stop every 3 hrs. Why do motorway friendly cars like mondeos and the likes have £80-90 fuel tanks ? You don’t want to be stopping time after time and your boss definitely doesn’t want it either
 
I not daft but while DPD can’t deliver all day without stopping, if I can’t drive to Sunderland without being forced to stop for 1/2 hr and should I go to London and not be able to charge it when I get there then I will carry on using diesel until I can no longer find any.
I also need 4wd and off road which again isn’t possible currently and not likely soon.
I need multi purpose and that doesn’t exist from what I can see.
I currently use a Mitsubishi L200 which as long as I look after it will be used daily for the next 10 or so years. After that, I’ll wait and see.

battery technology is improving all the time, things like solid state ceramic batteries could revolutionise the range and the speed they’re recharged……also

4x4 electric vehicles are out now

 
I'm not against them, just a bit sceptical that the infrastructure needed will be in place, but for me to get one it has to have at least a 400 mile range & cost less than £18k. Currently that isn't an option.

And I don't 'need' to make the change in 2030. Its just new car sales that are stopping, not completely banning petrol
Why do you need a range of 400 mile?
I do 100-160 mile a day commutes, our holidays consist of road trips all over Europe as we don't fly and I wouldn't have any qualms about heading to Italy or Croatia, when I do them I'll do twelve hours or more in one hit. Although the car I've got coming has a stated range of 360 mile I think the real world range will be 300 mile and I'll be able to make it work.

If you're doing such long trips on a continuous basis you'll make the money back on the savings of EV fuel.

After 2030 see how difficult it will become to get petrol. Most petrol stations are now linked to supermarket chains. Supermarkets are based on mass demand, when the majority of cars on the road are EV they'll be shutting them down faster than you could put 300 mile charge into an EV. They'll not keep them all operational at high cost to themselves for the odd petrol head to roll up in his polluter (bear in mind that they also won't want to be seen to still be assisting in the destruction of the planet). Servicing your car will become harder as parts availability will shrink as the manufacturers are already putting all their focus on EV and again won't want to be seen to be helping to keep ICE's on the road.
 
Last edited:
Why do you need a range of 400 mile?
I do 100-160 mile a day commutes, our holidays consist of road trips all over Europe as we don't fly and I wouldn't have any qualms about heading to Italy or Croatia, when I do them I'll do twelve hours or more in one hit. Although the car I've got coming has a stated range of 360 mile I think the real world range will be 300 mile and I'll be able to make it work.

If you're doing such long trips on a continuous basis you'll make the money back on the savings of EV fuel.

After 2030 see how difficult it will become to get petrol. Most petrol stations are now linked to supermarket chains. Supermarkets are based on mass demand, when the majority of cars on the road are EV they'll be shutting them down faster than you could put 300 mile charge into an EV. They'll not keep them all operational at high cost to themselves for the odd petrol head to roll up in his polluter (bear in mind that they also won't want to be seen to still assisting in the destruction of the planet). Servicing your car will become harder as parts availability will shrink as the manufacturers are already putting all their focus on EV and again won't want to be seen to be helping to keep ICE's on the road.

I don't want to stop off every 2 hours for 45 mins to charge when I'm on a long trip, it's just not practical.
As herbal mentioned above, he did 1 stop on a trip to Cornwall. With an EV, it would add 2 or 3 hours onto the journey using the affordable 150 mile range cars

I've explained several times, the price gap between a EV & ICE cars won't come close to being offset by fuel savings unless you do a serious amount of milage. For myself & millions of others the whole set up is very cost prohibited.

After 2030 it'll entirely depend on uptake of vehicles. The government are hoping the private sector fill the gap, but the private sector won't do it until the demand is there, and the public won't buy into until the infrastructure is there. Its catch 22. It wouldn't surprise me if 50% of road cars were stil petrol come 2030
 
Reading this thread, I shall not be getting an EV anytime soon. Sounds like an absolute ballache!
To be fair it's just as well there are naysayers as if everyone suddenly wanted to switch to ELV overnight it would leave millions of virtually new vehicles obsolete so it needs someone to keep driving these for the next 7 or 8 years to get the use out of them. As it gets closer to 2030 there'll be fewer and fewer new ICE's out there to buy as manufacturers are already looking to massively scale down their production and the prices will escalate a lot more than the EV's at that stage.
As said up thread, people need to get their heads around it and if that takes another 5 or 6 years so be it.
I don't want to stop off every 2 hours for 45 mins to charge when I'm on a long trip, it's just not practical.
As herbal mentioned above, he did 1 stop on a trip to Cornwall. With an EV, it would add 2 or 3 hours onto the journey using the affordable 150 mile range cars

I've explained several times, the price gap between a EV & ICE cars won't come close to being offset by fuel savings unless you do a serious amount of milage. For myself & millions of others the whole set up is very cost prohibited.

After 2030 it'll entirely depend on uptake of vehicles. The government are hoping the private sector fill the gap, but the private sector won't do it until the demand is there, and the public won't buy into until the infrastructure is there. Its catch 22. It wouldn't surprise me if 50% of road cars were stil petrol come 2030
How many times in a year will Herbal or yourself drive from Sunderland to Cornwall?
Sunderland to Newquay is 445 miles, that's 2 stops, the fast charger will do the charge in less than 1/2 an hour or so at worst. As we all know Herbals a mans man who can drive for 8 hours with just a 5 min break in total but most normal people will welcome a break probably at the 3 hour and six hour marker. For the once or twice a year you're doing it, probably on holiday I'm sure it's worth that extra hour of your journey to help the planet out for the other 364 days of the year.
 
Last edited:
To be fair it's just as well there are naysayers as if everyone suddenly wanted to switch to ELV overnight it would leave millions of virtually new vehicles obsolete so it needs someone to keep driving these for the next 7 or 8 years to get the use out of them. As it gets closer to 2030 there'll be fewer and fewer new ICE's out there to buy as manufacturers are already looking to massively scale down their production and the prices will escalate a lot more than the EV's at that stage.
As said up thread, people need to get their heads around it and if that takes another 5 or 6 years so be it.

How many times in a year will Herbal or yourself drive from Sunderland to Cornwall?
Sunderland to Newquay is 445 miles, that's 2 stops, the fast charger will do the charge in less than 1/2 an hour or so at worst. As we all know Herbals a mans man who can drive for 8 hours with just a 5 min break in total but most normal people will welcome a break probably at the 3 hour and six hour marker. For the once or twice a year you're doing it, probably on holiday I'm sure it's worth that extra hour of your journey to help the planet out for the other 364 days of the year.

It doesn't matter how many time I want to go, the fact it becomes more difficult for when I do means I'm not going to buy. The simple fact is that most people ain't going to pay double for something that is less practical.

Oh, and those who live in flats & terrace houses that will rely on public charging will save nowt on fuel costs (frijj said it costs 10p a mile, which is pretty much what my car is costing me) making it even less attractive

Of course, I forget that everyone one on here has a 6 figure household income & lives in a 5 bed detached. So such issues of affordability & somewhere to charge aren't a problem
 
It doesn't matter how many time I want to go, the fact it becomes more difficult for when I do means I'm not going to buy. The simple fact is that most people ain't going to pay double for something that is less practical.

Oh, and those who live in flats & terrace houses that will rely on public charging will save nowt on fuel costs (frijj said it costs 10p a mile, which is pretty much what my car is costing me) making it even less attractive

Of course, I forget that everyone one on here has a 6 figure household income & lives in a 5 bed detached. So such issues of affordability & somewhere to charge aren't a problem
A high majority of new cars on the road are fleet cars and they're nearly all starting to switch over to EV or plug in hybrid (although they're mainly transitional) as that works it's way through the infrastructure and technology improvements are moving on apace. Most fleet drivers would not be able to buy the £50,000 cars themselves but are getting huge incentives through BIK to take the plunge.
Although it's not necessarily right it needs those toffs at the top of the hill to buy all these things first and whinge if the infrastructure isn't good enough to get the market momentum underway so that the R&D and the confidence to go mass market builds and the manufacturers can get suitable vehicles out at affordable prices and proven technology.
See it this way, those feckers in the big houses are the ones having to deal with all these issues you keep coming up with so by the time you can afford to swap over life will be easy for you.
It doesn't matter how many time I want to go, the fact it becomes more difficult for when I do means I'm not going to buy. The simple fact is that most people ain't going to pay double for something that is less practical.

Oh, and those who live in flats & terrace houses that will rely on public charging will save nowt on fuel costs (frijj said it costs 10p a mile, which is pretty much what my car is costing me) making it even less attractive

Of course, I forget that everyone one on here has a 6 figure household income & lives in a 5 bed detached. So such issues of affordability & somewhere to charge aren't a problem
If you want to use the calculator here

You can see the comparisons for savings on fuel. I used Herbals Kia e Niro against a ford focus 1.5L based on current diesel cost of £1.50/l and a daily commute of 60 miles/ day

The annual cost for electric is £978 the cost for diesel is £2,643
 
Last edited:
A high majority of new cars on the road are fleet cars and they're nearly all starting to switch over to EV or plug in hybrid (although they're mainly transitional) as that works it's way through the infrastructure and technology improvements are moving on apace. Most fleet drivers would not be able to buy the £50,000 cars themselves but are getting huge incentives through BIK to take the plunge.
Although it's not necessarily right it needs those toffs at the top of the hill to buy all these things first and whinge if the infrastructure isn't good enough to get the market momentum underway so that the R&D and the confidence to go mass market builds and the manufacturers can get suitable vehicles out at affordable prices and proven technology.
See it this way, those feckers in the big houses are the ones having to deal with all these issues you keep coming up with so by the time you can afford to swap over life will be easy for you.

If you want to use the calculator here

You can see the comparisons for savings on fuel. I used Herbals Kia e Niro against a ford focus 1.5L based on current diesel cost of £1.50/l and a daily commute of 60 miles/ day

The annual cost for electric is £978 the cost for diesel is £2,643

Annual cost EV £200 v £750 for petrol

£550 annual saving having laid out an extra £20k

As I keep telling you, the numbers just don't stack up.
 
It doesn't matter how many time I want to go, the fact it becomes more difficult for when I do means I'm not going to buy. The simple fact is that most people ain't going to pay double for something that is less practical.

Oh, and those who live in flats & terrace houses that will rely on public charging will save nowt on fuel costs (frijj said it costs 10p a mile, which is pretty much what my car is costing me) making it even less attractive

Of course, I forget that everyone one on here has a 6 figure household income & lives in a 5 bed detached. So such issues of affordability & somewhere to charge aren't a problem
I’ve already said I’m just going to run a cable out the house window and across the kerb if I have no other choice.
I normally wouldn’t have gone near an EV, but the scheme we’ve got is so cheap you’d be mad not too, so I’m just going to have to find a way to charge it.
Annual cost EV £200 v £750 for petrol

£550 annual saving having laid out an extra £20k

As I keep telling you, the numbers just don't stack up.
I think there will be a sea change in ownership, and the majority will be leasing by then anyway.
Current car is paid off, but let’s say £150 HP. I spend £200 on fuel and say £100 on all the bills combined. Total £450 per month.
EV Lease - 350 per month, with all bills included. That means I’ve got up to £100 to spend on charging before I even reach the diesel car cost.

Compare them that way and all of a sudden they become enticing. However, most people won’t have access to such a scheme. Yet.
 
Last edited:

Back
Top