The all things EV chat thread

PJ87

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So today we did about 260miles round trip in the EV. I had charged it up to 100% overnight.... It did the first 130 burning thru 75% of the battery. So on the return trip, stopped at a fast charger with evyve using the Electroverse card. Charged 53Kwh in about 50 mins. It was at a farm, so stayed for lunch while the car charged. Overall good experience (barring the nonsense around one of the guns not working). Charging cost £40.

In contrast I have done a return trip to B'ham in about £40 and had some fuel left. So pound for pound, using public charger is not cheaper than using ICE car.
The other bit is that there is no way to know if the price was competitive i..e could i have gone down to a BP charger 5 miles away and charged for £25. Equally, does my BMW card give me a better deal than my Electroverse card (I have previously charged using the BMW card for about £20).

Yeah that is a massive downside, you can look on zap map and see prices per kWh on various chargers but as opposed to petrol where you can go right Tesco is cheaper than shell I'll go there in EV you just want to go for what works and Is in your zone regardless of actual cost
 

jim8flog

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I would have thought a huge number of people have done that, but that's nothing to do with how complicated it is, it's just a case of absent mindedness.
Fuelling an ICE car really is very straight forward ........................................ and quick. ;)

Charging an electric car is very straight forward but like a lot of things in this world there are a lot of people who make straight forward things seem complicated.

I can charge my car whilst I am sleeping in bed, same thing cannot be said about an ICE car.
 

jim8flog

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So today we did about 260miles round trip in the EV. I had charged it up to 100% overnight.... It did the first 130 burning thru 75% of the battery. So on the return trip, stopped at a fast charger with evyve using the Electroverse card. Charged 53Kwh in about 50 mins. It was at a farm, so stayed for lunch while the car charged. Overall good experience (barring the nonsense around one of the guns not working). Charging cost £40.

In contrast I have done a return trip to B'ham in about £40 and had some fuel left. So pound for pound, using public charger is not cheaper than using ICE car.
The other bit is that there is no way to know if the price was competitive i..e could i have gone down to a BP charger 5 miles away and charged for £25. Equally, does my BMW card give me a better deal than my Electroverse card (I have previously charged using the BMW card for about £20).

My experience, comparing like for like, my previous Peugeot 308 1.2 against my current 20008e is this that the cost of charging on fast chargers works out about the same as filling with petrol with electric being cheaper.

My main experience for use of fast chargers is on motorway/ dual carriageway driving so a bit limited, 3 gallons of fuel £18 against £14 electric . Around 100 miles but I did not check start and residual charges.

I used card payments on Gridserve and Applegreen topping up what I thought would get me to my next planned to stopped point. ( A stretch, pee and coffee breaks where I always stop any way).
 

Mudball

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My experience, comparing like for like, my previous Peugeot 308 1.2 against my current 20008e is this that the cost of charging on fast chargers works out about the same as filling with petrol with electric being cheaper.

My main experience for use of fast chargers is on motorway/ dual carriageway driving so a bit limited, 3 gallons of fuel £18 against £14 electric . Around 100 miles but I did not check start and residual charges.

I used card payments on Gridserve and Applegreen topping up what I thought would get me to my next planned to stopped point. ( A stretch, pee and coffee breaks where I always stop any way).

At 40 quid, i am pretty much similar... though my 40 was on a smaller car rather than a comparable SUV. The other aspect was not knowing how much things cost or having the ability to shop around till find a cheaper charger.

I was also impressed with the speed of the evyve 75KwH charger.. 20-85% in about 50 mins... (I am comparing against my home 7k charger speed).
 

PJ87

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At 40 quid, i am pretty much similar... though my 40 was on a smaller car rather than a comparable SUV. The other aspect was not knowing how much things cost or having the ability to shop around till find a cheaper charger.

I was also impressed with the speed of the evyve 75KwH charger.. 20-85% in about 50 mins... (I am comparing against my home 7k charger speed).

Personally I don't think speed of charge is a big as a issue as it's made out. If you make it roughly 30 mins for a top up

What is key is number of chargers

If they get the network properly balances to have chargers everywhere, that you had enough so that you could guarantee to get on one then stopping every 2-3 hours for a 30 mins top up at the same time as a wee wee and a coffee would a not be that big a deal and b actually improve road safety as we need to get out the habit of just driving through tiredness.


So whilst battery tech can be improved it's the charge network that needs the investment and overhaul. That's also something that's pretty easy to do compared to developing a new battery.

For example you shouldn't go to a car park and have 3 EV chargers it should be at least 30

At places like shopping centres should have destination chargers. 7kw speed in most bays just so you can get some charge when doing things.

EV works for me so well because the 2 places I spend the most time away from home are work and golf. Both have chargers
 

Lord Tyrion

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EV works for me so well because the 2 places I spend the most time away from home are work and golf. Both have chargers
I think this is a really crucial part. I have thought about all of the long journeys that I do and none have a charger at the other end. I can top up en route but when I get to my destination there is not a charger so I am having to top up elsewhere still. That's not me being smart, it's just how it is right now. I don't have an answer to that, some things you can't have a perfect solution for.

I totally agree with you about the number of chargers. 2 or 3 here and there is not going to a change a thing. We need to flood car parks, shopping centres, service stations etc with banks of chargers. Make people feel comfortable that there will always be one available for them.
 

PJ87

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I think this is a really crucial part. I have thought about all of the long journeys that I do and none have a charger at the other end. I can top up en route but when I get to my destination there is not a charger so I am having to top up elsewhere still. That's not me being smart, it's just how it is right now. I don't have an answer to that, some things you can't have a perfect solution for.

I totally agree with you about the number of chargers. 2 or 3 here and there is not going to a change a thing. We need to flood car parks, shopping centres, service stations etc with banks of chargers. Make people feel comfortable that there will always be one available for them.

Exactly, Rory from top gear hit it on the head. It's not how far they can do it's how quick you can recharge them. And 350kw is available now. My car is max 80kw . The battery is 64kw so it's roughly one hour to fill fill of your not doing 20-80

However for me I'm comfortable with that. I could have gone EV 6 which takes faster speed but preferred the shape of the niro and suits us. So for that 1-2 long trips a year I sized it up.

Same with the Kona, that thing goes nowhere lol 😆 literally taking it to work tonight because I fancy a run in the go cart lol 😁

All that said if your doing under 100 miles per day and can charge at home their a no brainer. I wake up now to 150-200 charge on each car (depending which ones fullest) I know I do 50 miles mostly

So peace of mind for me is very much achieved

Considering my electric bill is £775 ATM a year for all the stuff I run including these cars in also very happy 😁

But in perspective, down to my mates in summer we will smash a monthly bill on one public charge.. again there is a plan for this year .. £200 a month I do to the energy bill , this year I've taken £700 out of it (new driver and 3 wood hello) so April 1st will be £0 again

So electroverse is connected to my account and that charge will come out of it ... So in theory I should keep to my budget and just see how much I walkaway with in April 25
 

PJ87

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That is fast... also cheaper than the 0.75 that we paid in B'ham yesterday. Can easily do away with the idling time if we wait in the car. I am going to create a Tesla account

Worth having one, I only have one because of the powerwall but it's useful to have

Not all chargers are open to the public mind
 

cliveb

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I totally agree with you about the number of chargers. 2 or 3 here and there is not going to a change a thing. We need to flood car parks, shopping centres, service stations etc with banks of chargers. Make people feel comfortable that there will always be one available for them.
Right now, what I see in places like Tesco car parks is that there are always charging points available, even though there aren't that many of them.
Also, pauljames just posted a screen grab of the Tesla station at Grays, showing that only 7 of the 16 chargers were in use.
So that would seem to suggest that perhaps the demand isn't actually there.

Of course, it could be that the chargers aren't being utilised because people aren't buying EVs.
And until EVs are bought in greater numbers, there's no business case to build more public chargers.
Or maybe the vast majority of people buying EVs charge them at home, so there's less need for public chargers?
Why would anyone invest in additional chargers if the ones they've already got aren't being fully utilised?

The Utopian scenario is that there's a huge network of public chargers so that you can just rock up and plug in. But such a network would sit idle a lot of the time. Nobody is going to build that. Petrol stations aren't like that. They don't have a huge surplus of pumps, and drivers expect to have to queue sometimes. But queueing is OK for drivers of ICE cars, because the queue moves quickly.
 

PJ87

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Right now, what I see in places like Tesco car parks is that there are always charging points available, even though there aren't that many of them.
Also, pauljames just posted a screen grab of the Tesla station at Grays, showing that only 7 of the 16 chargers were in use.
So that would seem to suggest that perhaps the demand isn't actually there.

Of course, it could be that the chargers aren't being utilised because people aren't buying EVs.
And until EVs are bought in greater numbers, there's no business case to build more public chargers.
Or maybe the vast majority of people buying EVs charge them at home, so there's less need for public chargers?
Why would anyone invest in additional chargers if the ones they've already got aren't being fully utilised?

The Utopian scenario is that there's a huge network of public chargers so that you can just rock up and plug in. But such a network would sit idle a lot of the time. Nobody is going to build that. Petrol stations aren't like that. They don't have a huge surplus of pumps, and drivers expect to have to queue sometimes. But queueing is OK for drivers of ICE cars, because the queue moves quickly.

Considering the low cost compared to a petrol garage to maintain the chargers it will be a pretty much one off cost. Once their in it doesnt overly matter if it's 10/100 pumps you still need to maintain them now and again

You won't be paying someone to staff the station

Now delivery of fuel to worry about

Grays may be low ATM but that's afternoon, it has it low and high demand like all the others

If you went say 50 chargers per station, like a grid serve station with all kinds of speeds available you would cater for most.

Gridserve are the best around imo (bar Tesla) and they have taken over a lot of the motorway services . Upgrading 2 points to 10 etc
 

bobmac

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I would guess the vast majority of people buying EVs will have somewhere cheap to charge (home or office).

But as the years tick along, the infrastructure will continue to grow (1436 more chargers last month).
But they need to be visible in every shopping centre/supermarket car park and reasonably priced to encourage the transition to cleaner energy transportation.
 

jim8flog

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One of the positives of electric cars I have found is doing short trips without worrying about what it is doing to the catalytic converter or emissions filter system.
 

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JLR have just signed a deal for a massive battery factory to be built in Somerset near Bridgwater. They reckon when it gets to full capacity they will be producing 1 million batteries a year and will be supplying a lot of car manufacturers
 
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