To get an Electric car even though my petrol one has years of life?

[Grobagsforever]

Really, really want to go electric. DD is nagging me and she's right. For years I prided myself on being a non driver and using public transport but then I was suddenly a lone parent with two small children and it just wasn't practical so I learnt to drive.

Current car cost 6k in 2015, it was made in 2010. I've put 50k more miles on it but engine wise etc it's totally reliable and likely has years more use. I'd get very little resale value for it due to panel damage and scratches (fight with a wall).

I only spend 100/125 pounds a month on petrol so it would take AGES to recoup the cost of an electric car.

But I want one!!! I could afford the repayments on the various schemes, just seems a waste when I have a perfectly good car.

Anyone feel like this? Gone electric??

How does your electricity supplier generate their supply?

@Childrenofthestones I'd switch to the electric car tariff - 100 percent green energy plus cheaper charging between 12-5am.

Currently with Ecotricty, also fully renewable

Electric cars are never going to take off. The infrastructure is not there (Bluewater will need 10000 charging posts for example), the electricity cant be taxed the way fuel can, you need a dirty great power station to produce the electricity so it's not that green.

Toyota do a hydrogen hybrid and there are hydrogen filling stations in the south east that produce the hydrogen on site. This is the future - water out the exhaust instead of harmful gases, easily taxable, hydrogen is an infinite resource and fuel stations can be adapted. That is the future.

Oh, and I say this as someone who has sold electric cars.

Good question. I often wonder if I it’s better for the environment to keep my old car until it dies and then go electric or the opposite. What is the environmental price of manufacturing at brand new car and where does the balancing point.

Really interested to hear replies.

It depends what your priority is:
The resources involved in manufacturing a car are huge, so using an existing one for as long as possible represents the best way of using and minimising that initial carbon & material cost. It's especially true given that we don't yet have a carbon free electricity supply in the UK, so it would just shift your emissions, not halt them.
Most of us have many changes we can make to our lifestyle, but a major one surely has to be not replacing products before we need to?

@RockCrushesLizard - the research suggests it take 1.6 years of electric car ownership to 'recoup' the carbon footprint of manufacturing. Depending on use obviously.

I'm not sure this stacks up on an environmental level.

You are disposing of a working item and causing the manufacture of a brand new item to save a relatively small amount of emissions (the difference between what the petrol engine emits and the emissions due to the generation of the electricity used to power the car, which even using green energy, there are resources that have gone into building the wind turbines/solar panels etc etc - the materials and the big trucks used to move the components around).

There's probably an online calculator to work it out.

And then there's the cost. Say your car currently costs you little or nothing in depreciation, but £125 pm in petrol. Compare this against whatever the car payment is plus the electricity cost.

How much is the payment? Even if you can afford it, unless you have quite a lot of spare money, it's a decent dent in most people's disposable income for a perceived environmental benefit that's probably not that great when you properly cost out the environmental impact of scrapping your current car to swap to a brand new electric one.

@SmileyGiraffe why on earth would Bluewater need 10,000 posts? Very very few users would recharge on a trip to a shopping centre, given they are likely to have driven their from their homes which are unlikely to be 200 miles away (the range of newer models).

The infrastructure is expanding daily. Honestly, one could have said the same about petrol cars before we built all the petrol stations! Plus charge times will reduce with each new model. Selling electric cars does not equip you to understand technology/social change cycles.

Tbh the technology for electric cars isn't there yet.
Battery life isn't good, the environmental impact of producing the batteries is huge, there aren't enough charging points and the driving range is not good.
If you check out the whole life impact of scrapping a perfectly good car to replace with new, you won't be saving much if anything.

Wait until you need to replace it, then swap.

Environmentally it is better to keep your old car and keep it serviced properly. Buying a new car (albeit an electric one) uses lots of resources and energy.

Environmentally Bob the builder had it nailed. Reduce, reuse and recycle

There not their

There is no long term future in fossil fuels.

No-one can say if it's a reasonable use of your money to spend more money than you need to on a nicer car of any kind.

I think given their range issues and higher up front costs, electric cars only make sense for someone who is go to commute a reasonable distance in one five days a week. If you won't be doing a few hundred miles a week, in journeys that are each within the cars range, there's not enough benefit to electric.

I agree with SmileyGiraffe electric cars are a dead technology, hydrogen is the way forward.

Secondly if you are environmentally concerned then remember the Reduce, Reuse Recycle phrase, and run your existing car until it dies.

Should have added, I would prefer a used electric car, so the manufacture offset is less critical

Evidence please @Greatnorthwoods ?

If you won't be doing a few hundred miles a week, in journeys that are each within the cars range, there's not enough benefit to electric

I suppose the ideal candidate for an electric car driver would be someone with a decent length commute, who's employer allows them to charge their car at work for free. They'd probably get a parking space close to the door too.

I would keep your current car.

I'm another who think electric cars are impractical for the vast majority of people right now. I certainly wouldn't consider buying one at this stage.

Interesting question. We’ve just drastically changed the way we get around, switching to cycling anywhere within a couple of miles, and taking the bus, train or tram most other places. We’ve gone from using the car a couple of times a day to once a week at most.

We had a huge 7 seater diesel, and I felt so guilty the few times we were using it that we’ve just bought a second hand Leaf for those few times we do need a car (eg I can’t expect ds to cycle home in the freezing rain after playing a rugby match, and the bus service to and from his rugby club is crap, especially on a Sunday).

We live in a city, so public transport makes this doable, and dh and I have both cycled to work for years.

Having said all that, it doesn’t sound as if you use your car all that much anyway? I’m not sure I’d rush to change a small petrol car. There’s probably lots of other green things you could do with that cash, such as insulating your house thoroughly and getting solar panels.

If we are talking about the future SmileyGiraffe, surely that has to be a move away from private cars taking up so much of our public space, so that there’s more room for safe cycling and pleasant walking, and massively improved, convenient, cheap and clean public transport?

Have you ever see the devastation and environmental impact of a Lithium mine?

www.fuelcelltoday.com/about-fuel-cells/benefits

With an electric car, I'd be worried about the battery failing after a few years, like every other rechargeable battery seems to do, and requiring a very expensive replacement, so would make an already expensive choice even more expensive or would reduce the resale cost, as people wouldn't want to buy second hand, because they'd worry about needing to replace the battery.

There's also the environmental cost if a car needs multiple sets of batteries during it's lifespan.

What's the life span of the battery like, how much to replace it when it starts to lose it's charge etc...

II don't think the manufacturing process of the battery is particularly environmentally friendly is it?

I would be looking at keeping my current car until it's not economically viable any more, then replacing with something whether that is an electric car or whatever is best at that time.

Fucking love my electric car.

Unless you travel loads of miles, you're correct in saying that most people will charge at home. I do 95% of mine with my home charge point.

I'm in an area of Scotland with great charging facilities of I am out and about, obviously they will need to expand alongside uptake.

Also up here a large percentage of the energy is now generated from renewable sources (there's a handy app to see this :) )

I'm under no illusion that EVs are magical non polluting machines, but it's got to be better than exhaust emissions in busy cities full of pedestrians.

PS I've never met a car salesman that had any idea about electric vehicles yet 🙄 The ones near us appear to get rubbish/no training.

Can't believe I put car salesman. But I guess all the ones we talked to recently were