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.

Works for me. School run, supermarket trips, drive to the station. Drive to the gym/doctor/dentist/vet. Normal driving that millions do. Not everyone drives 80 miles a day.

Oh the extra fun this could be on smart motorways..

If they are that "smart" they'd work with the car to ensure it doesn't conk out mid journey.

What's that you say ? They can't do that.

Not that smart then ...

But presumably roadside assistance have considered this?"

well considering electric cars already have roadside assistance... Yes...

I was assuming that. The question mark was because I dont state something as fact if i dont know.

Well, firstly we couldn’t afford one 🤦‍♀️Secondly though, DH has to do a 250 mile round trip once a week for work. That would mean charging twice during the journey I presume. Not going to work for us sadly ☹️

The latest Nissan Leaf has a range of ~150miles. We live about 15 miles from our nearest city and I would guess 99% of our driving is "local" in and out to that city. We charge our car about 3 times a week. Since changing from 2 diesel cars to 1 diesel and 1 electric we are saving roughly 300 a month on fuel.

"Lots of people like me can't charge at work. "

but in time, you will be able to... more and more charging points are being installed everywhere

"And no, I would not have a 30 minute break every 100 miles of driving on long journeys."

Well, if I was driving 200 miles, I would have a break about half way...

The point is, YES you have to slightly alter your driving patterns.... but so what? Electric vehicles aren't going away...

Ranges will increase, charging will improve, infrastructure will adapt and improve... it will be completey normal in say 10-20 years to have electric vehicles...

I'm sure people had the same whinges about when they 'phased out' leaded petrol but now nobody gives a crap

We have an electric car and a petrol. The electric one was brilliant while my husband had a 70mile round trip commute. Saved a fortune in petrol. Lovely car to drive too! We use it for all short journeys now, my petrol car is literally only for commuting.

However for anything over 100miles and we chicken out and use my petrol car. We love the electric car, it's brilliant, but the range on an affordable car is nowhere near enough. We live in East Anglia and the charging points are few and far between. Once you factor in the risk that they may be broken when you arrive at them, it means travelling long distances is nigh on impossible. I'm sure other parts of the UK have more reliable charge points but round here we don't!

When my petrol car is run into the ground, we will have to carefully consider what we do with regards to a replacement. Unless my area seriously gets a kick up the arse, I will have to continue to have a petrol for commuting and holidays/long drives. I would absolutely love to have my own electric car but the structure is not there yet.

Oh just to add, I think our car advertises 150miles? No way does it do that. 130 in the summer and under 100 in the winter. Without the heating on. If the car is full it's worse.

The batteries do not rapidly degrade at all. Some Teslas have done several hundred thousand miles with very little loss of range. Once they do degrade and lose range, they can be repurposed for home battery storage. There are a number of companies out there that are then looking at processes for recycling and end of life materials recovery.

@001 no i was driving when leaded petrol was phased out. It really is not comparable. Electric cars need a lot of investment in infrastructure and development before it can be more than a city run around.

@ All those getting their knickers in a twist about having 100 miles of range, note that the latest generation of electric cars have 200-300 miles of range. This is plenty! I've taken my car up to the Scottish Highlands and down into France. 20,000 miles in 2 years, with no extra time needed on a long journey versus doing the same journey with a petrol or diesel car. You just charge up during the stop for lunch or coffee and loo break that you would have had anyway.

"Lots of people like me can't charge at work. "

but in time, you will be able to... more and more charging points are being installed everywhere

Well Birmingham (amongst others) is looking to whack £500/year on employer provided car parking, so I can't see it happening there ....

@SameStory, the infrastructure is ok as long as you have an electric car with >200 miles range. Mine has 230 and this has been fine for travelling all over the UK and going to France.

I've been looking into why they don't have swapping batteries thing - turns out its a right faff to do and too expensive to build swapping stations big enough to store enough batteries to keep up with demand. Plus manufacturers don't want to fit in with a standardisation n all that. So I can see why they aren't going down that route.

I've been looking into why they don't have swapping batteries thing

The battery forms part of the chassis - at least in some models. If it were to be made swappable, then the whole car would have to weigh a lot more and you could kiss goodbye to your mileage.

Plus manufacturers would rather lock you into their models.

I have no doubt battery tech will improve - for various reasons. But I suspect as a society we might achieve a hell of a lot more if we looked to non-technical solutions first. Starting with wtf are people commuting 100+ miles a day ?

The problem is there's no pork in making simple changes to lifestyle, whereas there is an entire fortune to be milked from the ever-generous taxpayer with subsidies and the like ...

Nearly 5pm already ?! Gracious me, time for my anti-cynic pills.

I’m not commuting 100 miles a day. My normal commute is 13 mile round trip which I cycle. But a few times a month work send me to other places which I have to visit in person. Believe me if I could Skype it I would, I don’t have time for travelling! So it’s business miles rather than a commute.

How does the 100 miles work if in crawling traffic?

Its not like petrol - if you don’t move you don’t use up the mileage. The heater will run a battery down quicker but not enough to run the battery down. I just do the heater in short bursts. Lights don’t really make any difference to range to speak of, nor the radio.

If you live in a terrace in London, an EV is possibly not the best of ideas, though.

How far away are we from electric cars with a longer range being cost effective?

We're on the wait list for a Hyundai Kona EV and it's going to cost us just under $45k CAD, so around £27k. It has a 415km (>250miles) range. I do believe that they're far more expensive in the UK for some reason though?

We drive ours around London and have taken it to the Lake District, the Cotswolds and Cornwall as well as regular visits to Swindon and when my husband drives to long distance away matches. You just get used to the way it works. My husband gets updates on new chargers and it works for us. When we eventually need a new car it will be electric.

I’m not commuting 100 miles a day. My normal commute is 13 mile round trip which I cycle.

I find it a source of endless fascination that no topic provokes the "it's all about me" response than electric (and by extension driverless cars).

It has a vague echo from the days when "nobody needs a mobile phone" .

If nothing else, it proves Alexander Pope right ...

I'm sure people had the same whinges about when they 'phased out' leaded petrol but now nobody gives a crap

Completely different scenario, because a) three-fifths of the cars on the road at the time the ban was announced (over a year before it actually came into force) were capable of being converted to run on unleaded; b) lead additive was (and still is) available for those which couldn't be converted and c) unless it's ultra-high performance, a hard-valved 'leaded' car can run safely on unleaded petrol for a while anyway.

I'm sure people had the same whinges about when they 'phased out' leaded petrol but now nobody gives a crap

A much better analogy (beyond living memory) might be when horses gave way to cars. And not a moment too soon, as cities were drowning in horse shit.

But a car is demonstrably not a horse(*), whereas hydrocarbon cars and electric cars look similar, which makes people think they are equivalent. And they are not.

*Henry Ford once said that what his customers told him they wanted were "faster horses". Such is the life of a visionary (not that Henry Ford is in any way a person to be revered).

I suspect in terms of the environment, most people who are using these cars would be better using public transport. Because they will be based in cities.

Actually I agree with you that for most of us electric cars aren't an option for us as the range isn't good enough. But there was a piece on telly recently saying that the place in the UK with one of the highest rates of electric vehicles is Orkney - about as far from big cities as you can get. Public transport pretty patchy too and certainly no trains.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-49319120

It's more that driving on Orkney is neither stop start around town, or fast motorway. It's even driving on relatively flat roads with not much traffic.

unleaded petrol was a technological wrong turn, should have been lean burn. Too late for that.

I'd be an ideal candidate for an electric car - almost all journeys are a few miles, long trips are done by being taken to a train station. Locality has very limited public transport. I've got a driveway to park it on and could fit a charging point.

trouble is that even the cheapest second hand one in the country is seven grand, which is about twice what I want to spend on a car that is only used 2-3 days a week. Also it seems that they only come in automatic (for reasons that do make sense with a bit of reading). Sod that with a steep hill start to a main road whenever I go anywhere.

add that to the lack of charging points (and the lack of infrastructure to power them) and it is a big no.