UKC

to be persuaded to buy an electric car?

( some people I talk to don't want them)

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Money (to buy it, not to be persuaded)

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Price, including used, similar to a petrol/diesel car.

Suitably large "box shifting" 7-seat vehicle available (I shift lots of stuff when I use my car, presently in a Land Rover Defender but the 4x4 isn't strictly needed, something like a larger version of a Berlingo would also work well). When travelling on my own with little "stuff" I often cycle/use public transport where viable anyway.

Capable of 70mph with the same acceleration as a typical petrol/diesel car.

Range would allow any typical long-distance journey I do in the UK to be done without changes to the journey plan, which would usually involve only a few short stops.

Will run reliably for me from about 6-7 years from new, and not require expensive battery replacement that would kill any residual value.

Basically, overall, it has to be a direct equivalent in all aspects.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:


Enough money and second hand availability.
jk

In reply to jkarran:


.. and some means to exchange the battery stacks once they slowly give up.

Buy the (used) car, lease the batteries, or some such scheme.

CB

In reply to The Ice Doctor: moneyto buy a new car. Several people i know use, particularly as second cars, and they are very happy.

Neil - price - tick
7 seats - i dont use 7 seats so not a problem
Performance - tick
Range - only problem, but i know people using them for weekend Reiss and they seem to get by.

In reply to cb294:




I have several "old" laptops (>3 y.o.) generally their batteries are screwed compared to the performance of a new one. This (plus the range and charging time issues) stop me from thinking about getting a battery powered car.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

I don't need persuading, I just need it to be practical. Currently the issues are

The ability to charge it - I currently have no off-street parking so can't guarantee I can park outside my house and even if I could, I'd have to have a lead form my house, across the pavement, to the car.

Cost - I've never bought a new car. The cost of a new electric seems prohibitive and the second hand market is limited, which the concerns over battery life hanging over the purchase.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:
In addition to all of the above, I'd need to move house. Like all my neighbours (and a big chunk of the rest of the city) I park on the street near my house, sometimes right outside more often not. I've no practical way to charge an electric car at home.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Increased range, really need 400-500 miles to cover a full days travelling without getting range anxiety.
Readily available charge points - work, at home and at a customers or service station.
Faster charges - doesnt matter too much at home or work but if I am low when out on the road I dont want to be held up at a charging point for an hour.
Price to a degree though it would currently be a company car -

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Be provided with personal off-road parking, with a secure power supply.
Vehicle batteries that last for 400+ miles, even in winter when heaters, lights, wipers and radio are in constant use.
The availability of charging up away from home quickly, and not have to wait overnight for a "refill".
Have all electricity in the country provided by Hydro-Electric.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

1) Price
2) Range

I could charge one up on a drive - we even have a charger - but I don't use the car all that often - I commute by bike most days. Where the car is essential is for longer journeys to parents, and in both case these are over 100 miles, so either on or above the range.

An electric car is going to be twice what I would pay for a petrol one - £30k as opposed to £15k, and given the fact that I only drive around 5000 miles a year I don't think savings in running costs would make it worthwhile.

However, given the way batteries are improving, then maybe it's not so far off.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

I think I'd prefer hydrogen over electric - it seems to have the advantage in terms of filling like traditional petrol. Not sure how its performance compares to electric

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

As with most of the above, price and practicality. As in, I need, (a) a car that's still in usable condition at around ten years old and several previous owners (some of whom may even have attempted to look after it) and (b) a recharge cable that can go down a flight of steps and halfway across a busy loading yard, without tripping people up and without being stolen when left out in said loading yard in a busy town centre. Except during the day, when I'm not allowed to park in said loading yard, so we need either lots more publicly-available recharge points, or a cable a mile and a half long.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:


I would want it to have the range, refuelling time and functionality of a conventional car. But what really matters to me is a good driving experience, I am a petrol head and do a lot of motorsport so I like to feel like I am driving the car well rather than the car making me quicker go than my ability allows

In reply to The Ice Doctor: who here has actually driven an electric car?

I can't fix your parking problems but you can charge a leaf or a tesla to 70, 80% in half an hour. Friends with those cars seem to survive very well. The car that underwhelmed was the golf as the range was rubbish

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

i'm not in the market for a new car and probably won't ever be.

but that being said, i'm not yet convinced that the over total life environmental foot print of a pure electric car is quite as good as a small cheap petrol car.

also if we are in danger of running of of electricity for homes / businesses because as a nation we've failed to keep production up with demand, is plugging more electric cars into the system really a great idea?

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

simply the price.

I don't have a car now. I have a motorbike. It cost me £1350. so it's probably going to be years before prices get to a level I could possibly consider. The rest of the issues people list I'd be ok with and largely aren't as big as people think (tech is moving faster than people's knowledge of the latest)

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Price: - needs to be less than half what it is now... A Tesla with reasonable range and performance is £70K
Range: - needs to be able to do 500 miles and then be able to do another 500 miles after 10 minutes "recharge".

If its an electric campervan (to replace my T5) then the system will also need to be able to provide heat and cooking to the occupants for long periods of time without significantly affecting the range.

Can't help thinking a hydrogen fuel-cell is the only thing capable of this.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Range, range, range.

I don't have off street parking so charging would be a practical issue, but currently range is the deal breaker for me

In reply to LG-Mark:

That's a major problem with EVs according to a friend of a friend who engineers them. Ic engines give off so much waste heat that it's not a problem, but EVs simply don't do that. He said they were experimenting with infra red heating directed at the parts of the occupants not covered by clothing.

In reply to rallymania:

These mirror my thoughts, electric cars seem like a nice idea until you dig a little deeper into the environmental impact. I know that the technology needs to develop further, but there does seem to be a little blindness by some to the carbon footprint of electric cars as long as the tailpipe emissions are zero.

https://www.wired.com/2016/03/teslas-electric-cars-might-not-green-think/

In reply to Toerag:


You've missed the point - I'm not referring to heat whilst driving rather the living arrangements. Campers, generally have diesel heaters, not engine driven and can have diesel hobs too... So no fuel tank limits this. Sure you can use gas, but thats just another fossil fuel.
If you want to go the full eco-hog, then you'll need electric heating and cooking...

In reply to tspoon1981:


Does there? By who? IMHO, some of the advantages of an electric car are:

- The source of energy can be green, i.e. we may be reliant on gas and nuclear as well as renewables at the moment but as the national energy mix changes to more wind/solar/hydro the cars get "greener"

- An electric car produces ~ a 1/4 of the CO2 per mile than an ICE car (generation to wheel compared to well to wheel)

- Urban pollution is massively reduced.


This highlights some of the issues of car production and electirc cars in particular but as more people buy them, technology gets better, cost goes down, investment into sorting out how better to recycle/re-use batteries goes up etc.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:


BIK on company cars to be put back to very low for electric cars. The P11d cost of an electric car is much higher than a non-electric. But the BIK isn't sufficiently lower to offset the higher P11d. So you end up paying too much tax.

Half of new car purchases are fleet/business - it would significantly increase the number of secondhand electric cars.

In reply to rallymania:


I tend to think that we've allowed demand to outstrip production, but I agree with your point about electric cars.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Price and range.
At the moment the price is far too high and the range is woeful.
It would be fine for during the week for the wife to go to work and back but a pain if she wanted to go anywhere decent at the weekend.
We would have to hire a car and that is a hassle.

I would love to replace my van with an electric one but a typical day is 200 miles and often up to 500 miles and often I will get home and then get called out 10 mins later so it wouldn't have time to charge.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Price, functionality and established reliability record and service costs. And colour.

In reply to Toerag:
Amusingly the electric buses used on my local route have a diesel-powered heater.

FWIW, the internal combustion engine is now quite efficient, so unless we have a mass renewables and nuclear programme it might be to the best benefit if we all just moved to hybrids which would switch to battery mode in towns and cities and recharge on the motorway. It's pollution at the point of use in cities that is the real killer. Electric cars, if we still burn coal and gas to get electricity, still produce CO2.

In reply to The Ice Doctor: I've counted - there are 24 houses in my street and 7 electric cars. Do we think the sky will fall down on these crazy fools?

In reply to wbo:


I've had a look at my street, 32 houses and no electric cars.

In reply to Sir Chasm:
None by me either. I think you'll see them more in more well-off places (round by me is what you might term working or lower middle class) because there isn't really much of a used market in them yet.

That will of course change as they filter down, just like Priuses and similar hybrids have.

In reply to tspoon1981:

Yes, I've noticed that. In the end, unless we can supply electricity primarily by zero-carbon means, the same amount of carbon will be kicked out as a reasonably efficient petrol car, simply because it requires roughly the same amount of energy to move the same size and weight of metal box around the place.

Zero emissions at the point of use have massive strength in cities where pollution is a much greater problem - I can see cities like London insisting on zero emissions in the city area before very long, maybe 10 years. But there's little to choose between issuing CO2 etc on a motorway in the middle of nowhere or issuing it from a coal, oil or gas-fired power station in the middle of nowhere.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Range of over 500 miles on a single charge without driving it like a granny, ability to recharge in the time I can fill with diesel.

Until then it's never going to happen

In reply to paul_the_northerner:


Nailed it.

In reply to Big Ger: so it sounds like I am the only person here who's actually driven one.

In reply to wbo:

I drove one. Work had this amazingly stupid idea, passed down by the local green minister, that all community mental health staff should be "caring for the environment". So they ran a two team test, our team was unfortunate enough to be chosen.

They were utter shite and the idea was quietly dropped after 6 months.,

In reply to wbo:


So tell us what it's like. Can you hop in and drive 250 miles, get out, fuel up and have a piss and do another 100 miles? How much does your car cost? Is it the only car in your household?

In reply to Big Ger:



Why where they shite? What didn't they do that your job demanded?

In reply to Sir Chasm:
They were unreliable, they took days to charge, they were awkward to drive, they were insecure. They were also very expensive.


They were these BTW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_i-MiEV

In reply to Big Ger:

South Lanarkshire Council have a wee fleet of them that have been knocking around for a few years. Don't have any connection (excuse the pun) but something must work about the arrangement, for that to be continued.

In reply to Sir Chasm: no , you can hop in and drive from Bergen to Stavanger on one charge, or vice verse, and that's more driving than most people do. That is a friends leaf - it drives very nicely and is their only car. It's cheap to run, especially as right now you get free ferry travel and no congestion charges. That's on 100% hydroelectric power thank you.

The bloke next door but one has a Tesla which is pretty nice, it's their main car now, even for the 2 1/2hr. Trip each way to their hytte. He's selling his other petrol car when the new smaller Tesla appears.

They are both pretty fine to drive with instant torque for better or worse. The big difference is that when you take your foot off the accelerator they immediately start to decelerate.

I don't have one. If I was looking to buy a car I'd seriously consider it. My only problem is that I've done 10hr plus each way drives 14 weekends this year , so I'd need to charge against some point.

Big Ger - what cars are you talking about?

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Just a bit of money so long as it had that insane mode button that makes a car that looks like a cheap Korean family car out accelerate a V8 muscle car along with just about anything else.

A smile a day

Toby

In reply to wbo:

Thanks, that answered none of my questions.

In reply to colinakmc:

They're not cheap though.

South Lanarkshire Council were the second highest spender, splashing out £1,823,992 on their fleet of cars which were used over the same three year period. Neighbouring North Lanarkshire ran up a bill of £654,230.

Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scottish-councils-spend-11m-on-cars-f...

In reply to Big Ger:



Unreliable, how?
Days to charge? Really?
Awkward to drive? Are you quite old?
Insecure? Did you forget to lock it granddad?
Expensive? Good point.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

As long as it comes with a complimentary 2.5tdi landrover 110 I'd be happy to go down the electric route.

In reply to wbo:
I have driven a Tesla, but cannot afford one!

I just bought an 8 year old diesel car when downsizing from the big van after the girls moved out. I would have loved to go electric (no point really in a prius type hybrid, as my city traffic is >90% by bike), so had a look at various models. The Opel Ampera/Chevy Volt would have been fine, and there are already plenty of used ones in my price range. Anyway, cars with a purely electric drive unit and a fuel driven range extender generator are probably the ideal transition compromise while the charging infrastructure is being built up.
However, I have serious doubts as to how long the batteries of these used cars would last, and the exchange programs offered by Opel looked way too expensive.
Well, hopefully next time round...

CB

Just saw your other post, but 7 electric cars in your street immediately screamed Norway!

In reply to galpinos:

1. Does it? Surely that depends on the generation mix?

2. It isn't fair to compare generator-to-wheel with well-to-wheel. If most of your electricity is fossil-fuel-generated or indeed nuclear, you need to compare mine-to-wheel, or well-to-wheel, or whatever.

It's also worth noting that if you have a primarily battery-powered car but have an on-board petrol or diesel generator, that can be run at the speed of optimum efficiency to charge the battery up. That will further tip the balance a bit.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Having it retrofitted with a quad turbo, five litre V-12 petrol engine.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:



The ability to tow a 4 tonne trailer

In reply to timjones:


That raises a good point - is it even possible to buy an electric equivalent of a transit? Or an L/HGV? Seems like anyone who makes one might do well, in London anyway, once the ultra low emissions rules come along

In reply to The Ice Doctor:
There is a charging point at work ( used by the facilities / security)

I travel only 15 miles to work, 15 miles back, ( average speed, with delays passing the airport 30 mph) so I would not need a charge every day, so it would work for me, if I could get a re charge at work booked one of the days.
Weekends, my wife could use it, she has a six seater petrol Honda FRV, I could use that for longer trips I do.

Down to the cost I guess, I usually don't spend much on cars, I don't care much what it looks like , so anything from £ 300 to a couple of thousand, not sure I would get an electric car for that.