casey

The old battery rental raises it's head again, there is precisely one model, count 'em, just one, on sale in the UK with battery rental. And that is optional, you can buy the car outright, but the majority who buy the Renault Zoe (for this is the one) choose not to. I'm well aware that many can't run to a new car and many more decide to do something different with their money even if they can afford it. There is a pool of second hand EVs, albeit a small one, and if someone was just after a sort range commuter car there are some out there in the £5000-£6000 area. The Mitsubishi iMiev/Citroen C Zero/Peugeot Ion (known as the triplet, its the same car) are a case in point. If you can live with the 'quirky' :)design and low range.

Nothing was incorrect with anything in the comment you replied to with the above. Most EVs are very fast off the lights, not necessarily going to beat every other car on the road but I've seen enough surprised faces when my little Zoe leaves the line at the lights to know that's true. Nottingham (where @mavhc seems to hail from) allows EVs to use bus lanes, possibly the only place in the country but other UK citys are considering it. The Nissan Leaf has indeed appreciated in value over the last couple of years, plenty of people have traded in an old Leaf for the same amount they paid originally, after putting thousands of miles on them. The fuel costs are much less than an ICE vehicle, even if electricity was the same cost as petrol the efficiency of electric motors vastly outweighs the efficiency of any ICE engine. Even in the most efficient ICE engine more than two thirds of the fuel is wasted in the form of heat and friction. I get that you are (or appear to be) anti EV and whilst I agree they are not yet the solution for everyone, tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of drivers could change over but they don't. Very often the reason for this is because of the ridiculous myths that are still perpetuated about them, some of which are no longer true and some which were never correct in the first place. The reason for the 'pretentious waffle' is to try and counter the complete nonsense that is spouted by a vocal minority who seem to have a problem with EVs.

Oh yes that's much worse, I'll stick to my plain white Zoe.

Sob. Mine for a mere week.

I haven't stopped wanting a Tesla since I hired a Model S for a week about 2 years ago, sigh indeed. Lotto here I come.

If it's not practical to own or someone can't afford an EV, and many can't, fair enough. And you're right about the salary in this job. But the first line of your quote..... It's time for me to bow out of this discussion.

Ah, I didn't realise this journey was after work on Friday. That makes all the difference. Anyway an EV suits me and my lifestyle very well but not you and yours. It's early in the transition to alternative fuels and things will change over time. It will be interesting to see how a similar discussion would go in 5 years. (All hail President Musk, world leader or mmm... Tesla, didn't they used to make cars)

Alternatively, spent 45 minutes hoping you won't catch anything nasty in those services spend £10 on expensive coffee, spend £10 charging (at home before the journey and at the services) arrive a mere 45 minutes later and £40 better off. Hmmm... etc.

Yes @Sephiroth, what you said. It is more complex than the comments that I and others in this thread have made. But it’s been very interesting to have a discussion on a forum which has been civilised and constructive rather than descending into abuse/name calling that so many EV vs ICE threads in other places on the internet.

Zoe with battery rental is about £15,000. Battery owned about £21,000 and if you factor in energy costs of about a tenth of your petrol you'd be quids in. Then the first service is less than £100, brakes and discs should last about 75,000 to 100,000 miles due to regen braking. Not winding you up, but you are a prime candidate for an EV as long as you have off road parking or a garage atached to your house, charger and fitting included with most EVs too.

Maybe all of the people on here (and many other discussions all around t'intewebs) want to get to their destination really quickly because they hate driving rattly, smelly, vibrating ICE vehicles. Could it be that's why I'm in less of a hurry, not age but the relaxing driving experience you get with an EV.

Only £110 per month battery rental for unlimited mileage on the Zoe. It just needs you to do less than 120-150 miles a day commute. Or there's the Kia E-Niro 280 miles on a charge (12 to 14 months waiting list) or maybe the Hyundai Kona EV similar mileage but even longer waiting list..

The battery rental is a controversial thing but it's not mandatory if you buy the 'i' version, then you own the battery just like on any other EV. It was started to allay peoples fears about the longevity of batteries (unfounded, so far), and to make the car appear to be cheaper. There's no point me arguing about the price of EVs, they are more expensive than ICE cars at the moment. But to people who own them well worth it for the driving experience. So you pays your money and you takes your choice, I chose battery rental but my dad couldn't get his head around it so bought his outright, battery and all. No problem, no sales person trying to push the rental. I'll be within a couple of years of retirement when my PCP runs out on the current Zoe and the next EV I buy will probably be battery owned whatever make and model it is.

Renault do the same, free flatbed to the nearest charger, but I think only if you are on the battery rental scheme. I've never run out in my 3 years of driving a Zoe and I'll never go back to ICE either. I'm looking forward to Zoe 2 coming out at the end of 2019 beginning of 2020, 200+ miles of range with (probably) a 50kWh battery, 22kW AC charging and 50kW, maybe even 100kW, DC charging.

It's not recommended but there are videos of a Model S being towed and charging in that way. I expect someone is working on it somewhere. There are various videos of Tesla owners waiting for their girlfriend/wife/dog being walked to get back to the car after it has finished being charged. One in particular with a new Model 3 Performance says it's now always the car waiting for them, not them waiting for the car.

As you say the tech is here, I've seen video of a Model 3 on a Supercharger V3 (not a test system, a public charger) charging at a rate of 1000 miles in an hour. So 250 miles in 15 minutes, even a comfort stop and a takeaway coffee will take that long. Unfortunately I'm never likely to be able to afford a Tesla but the rest of the automotive industry are s l o w l y catching up.

As far as I can tell it's a flatbed recovery truck to the nearest charger. I have seen pictures of a 'mobile' charger but don't know if they exist as a product yet. I did get down to less than 10 miles of range in my early days of EV driving and the car recommended I use Eco mode, I did get a but twitchy then, but I was local to home and not on a motorway miles away. If you're that nervous about range maybe an EV is not for you at the moment. But just in case you're a secret millionaire the latest Tesla Model S Long Range will do 370 miles at normal motorway speeds. An American car magazine recently drove one from Los Angeles to San Francisco without charging and still had range to spare.

I considered an Outlander when I started looking at EVs because it was a good compromise of electric and petrol. It was just too big (and expensive) to justify for a 3 person family. What sort of mileage do you get in pure EV mode? I read somewhere that the battery capacity has increased since it was introduced a few years ago.

Well, you've got me on both counts. Wales is known as a bit of a charging black hole in the EV community, hopefully that will improve as time goes on. And the 'not wanting to stop' thing is probably related to age. My in-laws used to take almost a whole day to travel to Plymouth from Southampton, which would have driven me crazy. I've become less bothered about the time as I've become older, but I still wouldn't spend 6 hours on that particular journey!

I must lead a really boring life, I've never had the misfortune to need to drive to the other end of the country in my 40+ years of driving. I realise that families live in a much wider spread of the country than they used too and you might need to visit a sick relative/friend, but this argument has been beaten to death. Last week I drove from Plymouth to Southampton and back in a day. I stopped to charge in Dorchester, my wife and I went to a coffee shop then a very quick visit to a supermarket, by which time almost an hour had passed. On to Southampton, my wife visited her parents, my daughter and I went into Southampton city centre, where I charged at one of the more than 30 charge points there (and for free, but that wasn't the important bit.) Later I picked up my wife and we headed back to Plymouth, we stopped at Exeter services, not specifically to charge but for a comfort break, I did charge but didn't need to, I had the range to get home. I guess I'm just too laid back I could't see the hassle in that journey.

Maybe I'm an edge case, but in 3 years of driving an EV I've never had to 'emergency charge'. I do top up when parked at home also while in the supermarket, in the coffee shop, at a local garden centre and whilst shopping in the town, but only if I need the charge. Another problem is that people seem to equate laptop and phone batteries to EV batteries just because they are lithium ion. Although Tesla used to use laptop cells in the original Roadster, the chemistry and the battery management systems have come a long way since then. My car has a 41kWh battery in it, but thats just what's visible to me, the battery management system reserves some capacity at the 'top' and 'bottom' to protect the battery and stop it going too low or too high a state of charge. Which could cause the life of the battery to shorten. It's obvious you don't think EV's are ready for 'prime time' and you are right, they are not yet the answer for everyone, but for hundreds thousands of people they are an ideal solution and I see more EVs every day in my local area. The EVs are coming, and they are coming quietly, look out.

Why would you drive 30 miles and then charge up again overnight? I charged my car last Saturday afternoon, I've done about 80 miles and the range this morning was approx. 90 miles. If I did drive 30 miles in a day it would take less than an hour the get it back to 100% on my home charger, which is only a 7kW charger. The Model S in the case I quoted is driven hard in very hot conditions and always Supercharged, both things which apparently are particularly bad for batteries.

There is a Tesla taxi which runs between Las Vegas and Los Angeles which has done over 400,000 miles on the original battery, more than enough for most use cases. Musk has recently Tweeted that in the next 2 years they will be producing battery packs that will be good for 1,000,000 miles. In the event that there are problems with the battery it's highly unlikely a new one would cost anything like you are saying in 10 years. The 'tipping point' $100 per kWh battery is very close now so the long range Model 3 battery pack would currently only cost about $8000 to $9000 (Approx 75kWh) and if individual cells/modules fail they can be replaced without buying a whole new battery. Edit: apologies, it would appear that had its high voltage battery replaced twice under warranty at 194,000 and 324,000 miles. It's currently done about 450,000 miles. Still not bad for a car that's been hammered for nearly 5 years

We have Viewsonic boards here and the rep. that came to give some training said that very often dust on the bottom infra-red ledge can cause strange problems. Although if you've checked for stuff around the edges you may have already looked at that.

This story came out about a month after the PiCG grant was effectively scrapped for PHEVs and hybrids so it does seem that the government made the right call on that occasion. (Bit of a surprise there!) Not sure how this will affect the condition of the battery, leaving LiOn batteries on zero charge is definitely bad for them but maybe the regen braking would mean there was always some charge in it and the battery management systems on these vehicles should stop the battery from being fully discharged. So some of these cars will never have been charged/discharged which could be good for the next owner. I guess any prospective buyers should ask for some sort of printout of the battery health before buying. Part of the problem is lack of education for drivers. I'm guessing that many of the people who were given these as company cars had no instruction/information given when they had their cars delivered to them. When I hear some of the objections about electric cars in general it seems like it's going to be a huge task to get people to 'unlearn' all of the 'facts' they read in the papers or from the esteemed Mr Clarkson.