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.

Yes as a second car in a city/town and with a driveway I can see electric cars would work.
How far away are we from electric cars with a longer range being cost effective?

Has there been any solutions floated for people like me with no designated parking space?

Fleet of driverless taxis ?

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.

Where these billboards put up in 2011? Because 100 miles was state-of-the-art then.

100 miles may suit some people, but I think approaching 200 miles is a more realistic minimum. Many electric car models give a lot more than 100 miles these days.

No, that would defeat the purpose. If you need to travel more miles, that's a cost that needs to be factored into you decision to continue living where you do.

Not everyone can afford to live in a city. You pay a premium to live within walking distances of buses/trains/shops/work. Rural poverty is a real thing.

Most EV batteries are guaranteed for 100,000 miles anyway. I know very few people who keep their ICE cars that long.
I suspect you are in a very different demographic from me. Our cars always do way over 100k. But good to know how long batteries tend to last, thanks.

We drive about 150k miles a year in our one shared car. So I wouldn't consider a second hand car until batteries are much better then.

It would suit my parents though, although I have been trying to persuade them to get rid of their car altogether and take taxis. They drive about 20 miles a week.

@PettyContractor They have appeared in the last month. I had thought electric cars did more miles than 100, but this promotion says otherwise.

I drive for about 4 hours without stopping. Not a chance am I buying an electric car to have to stop every few hours to charge the damn thing. Keeping my diesel til they make them better and cheaper.

Agree that trains need to be cheaper.

Also agree that charging infrastructure needs to be better and that cars with more range need to become cheaper but that’s coming.

Meanwhile we have a leaf we used for school run and my 20 miles commute to work. We charge it at home, often with solar. I prefer doing that daily to filling up with petrol. I also get 90% of a parking season ticket in my city for work.

They aren’t for everyone, at the moment though, that’s true.

And, after a couple of holidays to Wales in the EV, I insisted on a petrol ‘holiday car’. My husband actually enjoyed planning our routes and with kids we do stop more than we usually would anyway. But I found it hard work by myself. Never had to book a charging point though. And Zapmap is helpful. Park and rides usually have charging points.

Agree they aren’t for everyone, yet, and about public transport though.

I don't think they will ever suit everyone but they would really suit someone like me - I drive about 20 miles a day in the week, doing the school runs. In between the car sits at home, and could be charging, but even 100 mile range means I'd only have to charge it once a week. A few times a year we do a really long drive of hundreds of miles but we could either rent a car for those trips or stop every couple of hours to get a coffee and use the loo while it charges.

I don't know where you're getting 100 mile range though unless you're buying an older model. Even the old Nissan leafs get 150 miles and the newest ones are 226 miles.

I just need to pull my finger out and get rid of our petrol car and buy an EV. It's pure laziness on my part, another task on the to-do list that doesn't get done month after month.

I have to change my car in the Spring and was looking at the electric Golf yesterday. It bills as having a range of 186 miles but the motoring reviews don't believe it. It's also horribly under powered.

What Car doesn't agree it's underpowered, they seem happy with it, except at speeds over 70mph. (But if you've test-driven it, then you have first-hand knowledge I don't.)

As with any EV, there’s a smooth rush of silent and powerful acceleration when you put your foot down. In fact, it shoots to 62mph from a standing start at least as quickly as most diesel hatchbacks can. That's for nipping between lights in the city and it'll cruise at 70mph without any issue, although doesn't have much oomph if you try to go much faster.

www.whatcar.com/volkswagen/golf/hatchback/review/n17165/on-the-road

OP why not get a hybrid instead and then you don't have to worry about charging points?

They're much cheaper, too
.

And as a separate point, you should stop every two hours when driving, for a proper break. That may only be 10 mins to get out and go to the loo but you shouldn't just swap over to the other driver, being a passenger is tiring, too and they also need a bit of fresh air and a walk round.

It would be fine for us but absolutely useless for my DSis or DF who travel far more than that almost daily.
I suppose it's situational as to whether the cars are worth it for you. I would love to be able to afford an electric car. On that note, if there's any insanely rich sugar daddies out there interested in an almost middle aged married mum of three with a fair bit of a tummy and not willing to put out (hey I am married!) then I'm your gal and I'll happily accept a 7 seater hybrid car.

@Xiaoxiong for the type of driving you say you do, you would definitely love a leaf

Not all car journeys can be preplanned though. I’ve had to make sudden emergency journeys to my elderly parents when they’ve been taken I’ll , I’d hate to have the stress of not knowing if my car would get me there under such circumstances.

@BlaueLagune If that was true, why can professional drivers drive longer than 2 hours without legally needing a break?

Jennymanara if you're driving over 400 miles a day perhaps you need to rethink your life a bit!! 150k miles a year is ridiculous.

It would make more sense if the service stations had a battery bank where you could just pull out your empty one from the car and swap it for a fully charged and you would be able to drive away in minutes like we can now.
I totally agree. I don't know why they don't adopt this model.

I'm not going to be any electric-guineapig/early-adopter. Iron out the problems and then I'll think again.

@jennymanara

Nissan give an 8 year / 100,000 mile warranty on the LEAF battery as an example, so there's a definite viability there. I think on some of the Renault Zoe models you could lease the battery separately, so I'm not sure whether that helps people in the sense that you get a new battery when your lease is up?

Probably becuase each car manufacturer wants to have its own special battery design , like phone charger cables , coupled with the problem of possible battery abuse and handling

I just wish that the public transport investment per person across the uk was the same as in London.

@poshme If it works out to that per day I may have miscalculated!
An average of 500 miles a week, and we share a car so it is what we drive altogether, not just me.

@jennymanara

400+ miles a day?! Goodness.

For those kind of journeys I completely agree with you that with current tech in mind, electric vehicles are not for you. But that's an extraordinary amount of mileage.

With that in mind, there's a reason the Toyota Prius is chosen so often by Uber drivers in London I guess - it's not uncommon to see crazy high mileages on them, and reliability is very high, plus you get 50+ mpg out of the thing. Maybe worth a look, it's not electric but it's at least cleaner than diesel.

Charging points in lamp posts are very much a thing - there’s a fair few near me and plans for many more along with alternative solutions. The reason why it’s worth the government investing in advertising and cash incentives is that the infrastructure needs are indeed pretty heavy, so you need a critical mass of early adopters in the small (but rapidly growing) demographic for whom it works to make it worthwhile as you roll it out.
The potential benefits for us all are huge: reduced air pollution in city centres, lower CO2 emissions as our electricity supply moves increasingly to renewable sources, a built-in reservoir for levelling out renewable production vs demand, and building UK manufacturing expertise in a technology which will become hugely important globally.

Increased public transport investment/subsidy is all very well, and I’m not against it (it worked miracles with London buses) but a large proportion of the UK population live in very lightly populated regions where the raw geography means that public transport will always be either: ruinously expensive to use/subsidise; hugely infrequent and inconvenient; less environmentally friendly than running cars or all three.

I understand in many rural areas public transport is never going to replace the car.
But outside London investment in public transport is poor in most large cities and towns. Even where there is a lot of it, it tends to be expensive.