To think a 100 mile range is not a lot?

[jennymanara]

Where I live we are being encouraged to buy electric cars through billboard adverts. These say things like electric cars can travel 100 miles before needing to be charged and that the average charging time is half an hour.

That sounds fine if all you want is a run around for a city or town to go to the supermarket and work, but pretty impractical for a lot if people. Especially given how few charging places there are. It would in reality mean that I could never drive more than 100 miles before going nack home to charge up the car.

Wait till it's cold and you need the rear screen heater plus hot air into the cabin. Plus wipers and lights.

I wonder how much that will take off the 100 miles ?

My younger son has an all electric Jaguar. The car is supposed to be able to go 290 miles between charges but that is without using lights, windscreen wiper, heating, radio or sat nav. He travelled to us last Christmas (180 miles) having not used any of the above and arrived with 18 miles left. He charged the car at a charging point near our house so it was almost fully charged.

He drove home the same evening taking his older brother with him and had to stop twice to top up the car and got home with 1 mile left.

He loves the car for local journeys in London but won’t be using it again to travel any distance from home.

The more modern cars could do that journey though, even the e-corsa they’re releasing in spring (so smaller than what I consider family cars) can do over 200 so 83 each way would be fine. Maybe the adverts need changing...
I can’t see public transport ever winning over cars sadly for convenience (even when taking into account charging time) especially when considering the cost. £50+ each to go to London and back on train (which would also involve buses that run very infrequently and last bus from station is 4.30pm and none at weekends), whereas we could do it on one charge (with 15-20% left), but never do as where we park there is a charging point.

Can I ask a question @jennymanara - what is your objection to the adverts?

The adverts you're seeing, weren't designed specifically to speak to you. They are appealing to people who perhaps could benefit from owning an electric car.

My wife only does short trips of a maximum of 10-15 miles, and then three or four times a year she'll do a 200 mile trip north with DCs that need a break from the car seat. For her an electric car would be ideal.

Yet because of previous Government's Co2 based tax regimes (£30 a year to tax a 1.6 diesel etc) plus everyone's focus on range and MPG, there are lots of our contemporaries who own diesel cars despite only making short trips to work, nursery etc.

These are the same folk who then get clobbered with a hefty bill for DPF issues and engine failures, who then discover in astonishment that driving 100+ miles once a month isn't enough to clear the filter...

My laboured point is that people have been driving diesels for years and it didn't actually suit them . My mate does 120 miles a day on motorways - it suits him. Cars are horses for courses, there isn't one thing that works.

I love the look of the VW e-Golf. BMW i3 is a great car. Tesla make a very desirable product with great range. Renault Zoe is a steal for what it is, and Nissan Leaf is a fine car. They may not work for you, but they're selling enough to work for someone, and allow the tech to be tested and developed for future longer range vehicles.

YABU

Look at the price to replace batteries and then consider if it's economically friendly. Look at the cost to produce, store and dispose of battery's combined with producing enough electricity (we are already close to full load) then consider if it's environmentally friendly.
Don't forget Diesel cars were pushed by the government as The. Answer and I remember reading posts about changing to diesel and environmentalist berating those that wouldn't swap.

and to be honest a 30minute break every few hours is necessary anyway.

It’s really not. Five minute loo break.

Public transport fares (especially trains) need subsidising as a 'public good'. But then there's often a problem when you get to the other end of how to do the last few miles. Maybe in a decade or two, stations will have ranks of electric cars available for easy hire (like a Boris Bike) - self driving so they can trundle back to a charging/parking lot when you're done with them. And obviously you could call one up like an Uber to get back to the station.

For people with short commutes and short journeys it'll be sufficient. But for work I regularly do more than 200 mile round trips, so the current ranges just aren't good enough for me.

Ds's school is 70 mile round trip ( if a road isn't shut) so it wouldn't work for those kind of journeys. The electric cars that are suitable for our needs ( space for 2 wheelchairs in boot) are also currently very expensive. If you only need a small car and rarely do long trips then fair enough.

@GinDaddy If this is about the environment, I would prefer the money was spent on public transport. Lots of very short journeys are made by car. Some can not be replaced by public transport, many can. But we have an incredibly expensive and poor transport system in the UK outside of London.
Visit many other European countries and public transport is cheap and easy. So I would have preferred to take us all by train on our common 160 mile round trip. But it would have been way more expensive than driving.
So basically my objection is if this is about the environment, it is a waste of money. The only people buying electric cars will be those already highly motivated to do so. So leave it to the market to sell them to those consumers.

If electric cars were made compulsory, then:
Hardly anyone could afford one.
If people could afford them, there wouldn't be enough charging points.
How long would it take me to drive to Italy from Calais?

The truth is that electric cars are too impractical and expensive for the vast majority of people.

@SamBeckettslastleap

You're focusing on one thing (battery disposal) to disprove the reason we need electric cars.

Fine, but could I ask - if that means you think electric cars aren't environmentally friendly...do you think we can honestly continue with the current approach, and wait around for hydrogen fuel cells which could take decades?

People are still buying diesels today - still - because of the perceived MPG thing, plus a lot of the stylish SUVs that people crave tend to be diesels in the used market (this is changing but search used for Qashqai, Sportage, Discovery Sport etc ...)

I know folk who are in 2-litre diesel SUVs and they pop to the shops, school and back. Children's lungs are being filled with particulates, our breathing environment is getting worse and worse, but that's irrelevant because...economic choice.

I'm not telling people what to buy, but I respect the Government and local councils for trying to encourage a different way.

I would rather we spend money to safely dispose batteries, because my DCs will breathe better air.

Maybe in a decade or two, stations will have ranks of electric cars available for easy hire (like a Boris Bike) - self driving so they can trundle back to a charging/parking lot when you're done with them.

If you can have a car at your feet in less than 5 minutes, why would you bother owning one ?

I can guarantee the very first self driving cars will be snapped up and immediately run as taxis 24/7 by investors (why are Uber spending so much money on self driving cars ?). After all it's idiotic to have a car capable of buzzing around earning money 24/7 just sitting on your drive for 12 hours a day.

And if you don't need a car on your drive, you don't need a drive. Or garage. So housing will change over time.

The truth is that electric cars are too impractical and expensive for the vast majority of people. Expensive at the moment, yes, but cheaper in running costs. But I'd dispute "vast majority". Most people don't live where there is good public transport, and have at least two cars in the household. Rather than having several personal cars, there's a good deal of sense in having a short-distance electric car and a long distance conventional car.

Well, first off, there aren't many new electric cars still sold in 2019 that only have a 100-mile range. The ones that are around that Smart EQ, Volkswagen e-Up, Citroen C-Zero are a) much older technology and b) designed for city use anyway, where 100 miles might last a week or more.

It's a compromise, isn't it. The technology is still developing, and therefore expensive. With smaller cars, which are more likely to be used as city/second cars, there's sense in keeping manufacturing (and therefore purchase) costs lower. Smaller batteries are also less environmentally impactful than big ones. Hence a smaller range.

I would also argue that these lower-cost cars are a good way of getting people who might be wavering to switch. In other words, getting people who are thinking of going electric to do so sooner.

My theory on the whole electric cars/public transport thing is that over the next few decades we'll see businesses like Uber introduce car sharing and self-driving road trains, which will gradually replace many of the railways. Those that can afford to will own cars, those that can't/don't need to will get a car-ticket for a specific journey like they would for a train. Motorways and roads are cheaper to build than railway lines and are less susceptible to unionised action; ideal for the right-wing/small-state governments we seem to be keen on electing.

I wouldn't get an electric car for several reasons:

• I live rurally in a town with no charging points. I could get one installed at home, but I'm not always guaranteed a parking spot outside my house.

• The town I work in only has two charging points. The likelihood of them being free when I need them is slim to none. There's no possibility of them being installed in my work parking spots.

• I drive rural roads with lots of hills, lots of stopping/starting, lots of driving along at 15mph behind a tractor, or sheep in the road, or pulling over to let a lorry past you. I wouldn't trust that the distance on the dash is the actual distance I have.

• There are two petrol stations on my journey in, but as of now, neither of them have charging points so I couldn't use them to top up. I also don't have a spare half an hour on my commute to sit on a forecourt charging my car!

They're a great idea but outside of the cities they're really impractical and are a rubbish option for people who live and work rurally.

If you can have a car at your feet in less than 5 minutes, why would you bother owning one ?

Quite so. You will be able to choose the car appropriate to your journey.

If the Government actually cared about the environment, I don't think for one minute they do, they would do all they can to improve public transport outside of London and make it cheaper.
I know where I live even short bus journeys are expensive. A 3 mile bus journey should be really cheap/ We shouldn't have to be thinking about electric cars for these type of journeys.

The batteries are environmentally evil anyway . I would like to be able to have decent local transport so about town / day to day car ( which is all electric really is) would not be needed

I would rather the advertising money was used to encourage people to not use their cars at all, everyone has an excuse for 'having' to drive but people are just lazy and want an easy life, that's the truth of it, people just don't care enough to change their lifestyles (and no I don't mean people with genuine need like those with disabilities). I would love to see some kind of carbon footprint tracker, every year you get either a bill for going over X amount of carbon or a rebate for being under.

@jennymanara

Whoa ok...you're talking about something else here entirely now.

I fully agree with investment in public transport. We had an extensive regional railway system that was decimated in the Beeching review. Local bus services around the country are mired in a vicious circle of "people don't use them, so let's cut back so badly that people can't use them for work or hospital visits" etc.

I agree with this and what you said.

However the reality is that people won't wait around for investment; and in rural areas, the kind of trips people make still won't be covered by various increases in public transport networks.

People like cars, and people want to make car journeys. So unless we tax them out of existence, restrict finance, or adopt the Japanese style of "only driveway owners can have cars", then you'll still have people wanting to buy cars. It's just factual.

Therefore I'm delighted if the Government are promoting electric, as my girls will breathe better air.

I would love to see some kind of carbon footprint tracker, every year you get either a bill for going over X amount of carbon or a rebate for being under.

Would people who live rurally be "allowed" a bigger footprint?

Not everyone is "lazy" - we don't all live in places with decent public transport - some of us genuinely have no choice but to drive.

@gindaddy I think it is a waste of money and we should leave it to the market to promote these cars to the small demographic who would actually be interested in buying them.

You will be able to choose the car appropriate to your journey.

As you can now with Uber anyway.

DS - city lad - is one of a group of (surprisingly) guys who don't drive. As in "never taken a test". Not sure if it's showing in car sales yet (it is in insurance ...) but you can't keep making modern life so damn expensive for kids and then act surprised when they decide not to drive (or indeed save for a deposit ...).

Anyway, DS is an uber-Uber user, so is halfway there. It would be a matter of supreme indifference to him whether the summoned vehicle came with a driver or not. (Or course a driverless car can seat an extra person "for free", compared to a regular taxi).

It's nowhere near enough. I need to be able to drive 400 miles in a day with couple of hours max between the 2 trips, my parents are 220 miles and I drive non stop. When the range is higher I would love one