AIBU to not want an electric car?

[Elevenfourteen]

I know IABU for asking such a dull question, but my Dh wants to buy an electric car and I’m not convinced.
I guess they’re better for the environment so that’s one thing. But are we set up for them properly yet? Do all garages have charging points? Do you have to hang around the garage for ages while they charge? I just can’t imagine how they can be a practical option.
Driving to work and back and charging at night is fine, but what about going on holiday?

Do any of you have electric cars and can you reassure me?

Meant for SwanBuster

And I think many do a lot less than 200 miles.

Plus I live in Scotland. Rural and long distances, few charging points

I’d love to know where @Beercrispsandnuts has got her info from.
Total utter tripe.

Im jealous

I love mine! Mainly because it is sooooooo cheap to run … we spent £10 on fuel in March and did around 700 miles!
We’ve only just got around to having a charger installed at home - before that we charged overnight just plugged into the 3-pin plug in the garage. The charger means it’ll charge much quicker and so only need charging during our cheap overnight hours on our EV tariff.
I would say though that the range on mine is 120 miles ish - perfect for us as we do have another car - diesel - for when we need to do long journeys. But we pretty much use the electric car all the time and occasionally charge on the go to save the astronomical diesel costs!!

This is probably a stupid question but say if you don't have a drive way and you park your car on the road overnight, how would you charge your car? I understand that some places have a charge point but how long do they take to charge? What if you don't have the time to sit around waiting near a shop etc for hours at a time charging your car up? This is what puts me off them 🤔

I think without charging at home an electric car would be too impractical at the moment. The stress of constantly finding a charge point, hoping it’s available/working, waiting to charge would be too much for me!

I wouldn't get an electric if I couldn't charge it at home, tbh, unless maybe if you were near a charging point. But charging like this ends up more expensive and it's inconvenient.

@Moonchild18

This is probably a stupid question but say if you don't have a drive way and you park your car on the road overnight, how would you charge your car? I understand that some places have a charge point but how long do they take to charge? What if you don't have the time to sit around waiting near a shop etc for hours at a time charging your car up? This is what puts me off them 🤔

It’s not a stupid question and it’s a genuine problem. You need some way of conveniently charging the thing.

That could be near work with a 7/11kw charger (which would take about 6-10 hours to fully fill most decent range EVs).

That could be parking up whilst shopping (which you say you don’t want to do) or that could be spending quite a bit of money (though still less than most petrol cars, ionity aside) fast charging.

If you haven’t got any of those options, it’s not easy.

Can I just ask whether all the EV owners bought them to replace a vehicle that had done over 250,000 miles? Because if not you can forget any green credentials you thought you were gaining.
Throwing away a perfectly good vehicle because you wanted something new and shiny doesn't make you eco friendly.
The actual eco friendly solution is to convert the existing ICE vehicles to electric. Strangely non of the car manufacturers are interested in doing that

My 2006 Subaru Forester will do 250000 miles before she dies
She’s on 105000 now
I’ve had her from new
I’m quite old so she’s definitely going to outlive me
I think that’s probably better for the environment,having a car for 30 years
How many hay bales can you fit in a Tesla as a matter of interest and what’s the towing capacity?

I have a Tesla, I love it. I wouldn’t get any other electric car though until they sort out the charging infrastructure- I do think Tesla are opening their network to other manufactures at some point

I've got an electric car and I LOVE IT.
It takes about 25 minutes to charge it up on a fast charger or about 4 hours overnight at home and does about 150 miles to a full charge.
It's saved me thousands of pounds in fuel and costs me £30/month more than my petrol car did to buy.

@toomuchfruit

Ha! Yes. Also agree about the free supercharging. I will never give mine up for a newer one, for this very reason.

The most incredible thing I find is that so many tesla owners don’t realise or acknowledge it’s (free charging) value!

On the forums you’ll see people saying it’s not worth anything and they wouldn’t especially look for a car with it and they’d happily trade in their S or X with it for a Y.

At 20000 miles per year, with half my charging being supercharging - it’s saving me thousands as don’t have proper driveway access all the time and don’t have a cheap electricity tariff.

It’s unbelievable! Many Tesla owners seem to find free distasteful - complete snobs 😂

@DameCelia

Not many people keep their cars for 250k miles so is a bit unfair to suddenly ask that.

I purchased mine when I changed cars naturally so it was either an EV or another ICE. Therefore the eco thing doesn't really apply. You're also making the mistake of assuming we're all eco warriors. Sure I like the idea of no tailpipe emissions but more that it was a great business case for saving money.

I agree about the conversion though and there are companies doing this but no manufacturers will as they're more interested in selling new cars.

I do find it odd that people are so hyperbolic about this. ALL new cars are crazy expensive, and run for years, usually decades. Most people never have new petrol cars. No one is suggesting scrapping them all and making everyone buy new electric ones. It’s just that new ones will be electric. It’ll be decades before most cars on the road are electric.

Also, running an electric car isn’t like running a petrol one. The ranges are lower, but if you can charge at home or work, not just petrol stations, it will generally be full, as you top up all the time. A long journey of over it’s range (which is, what, 200 miles?!) might be mildly inconvenient if you have to stop and charge it, but at 70mph, that’s almost three hours driving. Surely everyone is ready for a toilet break and a bite to eat by then? And by the time you’ve done that at a services, it’ll be mostly charged.

How often are people truly driving these long distances?! I do for holidays, and occasional days out. It would probably pay me to hire for them. It’s not like I drive 400 miles on a whim every few days! I almost did buy an electric car, but at the time I was doing a 200 mile round trip fortnightly. Bloody wish I had now!

@Japanesejazz

My 2006 Subaru Forester will do 250000 miles before she dies She’s on 105000 now I’ve had her from new I’m quite old so she’s definitely going to outlive me I think that’s probably better for the environment,having a car for 30 years How many hay bales can you fit in a Tesla as a matter of interest and what’s the towing capacity?

I don’t disagree at all - and Hello! - because I did indeed do exactly as you said.

I had a 17 year old petrol estate that I absolutely loved, but unfortunately it rusted away beyond repair and had numerous other issues. It had only done 160000 miles.

I was extremely tempted to try and fix it at least temporarily at a cost of 4x what the car was worth, but then I was also in a position to buy a Tesla and the idea of snapping up a free supercharging one with the knowledge that those aren’t going to be around for ever on the free market. So I bought a second hand one with the intention hopefully of keeping it until I myself am gone!

As far as hay bales - the model S is a very roomy car and I’m sure it can manage a couple but I haven’t had the need. Not have I needed to tow. But I have camped in it and had sex in it just fine.

@SwanBuster

I think it's generally true that most EVs are more efficient around town. Rationale being that you make best use of regenerative braking and wind resistance is minimal.

I see you have a Model S, which is pretty heavy so it's possible that the shifting all that weight is the problem but I'd imagine it's more efficient round town than doing 70-80mph on the motorway.

I have an i3s and can exceed the quoted range if I'm only round town. I've seen videos of the same for the Mini, Zoe, Leaf etc.

Aren't they really incredibly dull to drive? I love driving and hate automatics 😂

[quote Lunar27]@SwanBuster

I think it's generally true that most EVs are more efficient around town. Rationale being that you make best use of regenerative braking and wind resistance is minimal.

I see you have a Model S, which is pretty heavy so it's possible that the shifting all that weight is the problem but I'd imagine it's more efficient round town than doing 70-80mph on the motorway.

I have an i3s and can exceed the quoted range if I'm only round town. I've seen videos of the same for the Mini, Zoe, Leaf etc.[/quote]
I find it’s most efficient as I said when doing a constant speed - usually between 30-60 mph. Regen is all well and good but there’s an efficiency loss there. In town, you are inevitably accelerating and slowing down a lot. It doesn’t like it - my watt hours per mile figure in town driving is around 350 - which would equate to below rated range.

The most efficient journeys I’ve done have been doing about 55 constantly for 90 mins. There I’ve smashed the wh/mi figure down to 230. This would equate to a range of about 320 miles - and I well believe I could get that if I went on a long run fully charged.

As you can tell, I monitor all sorts of crap 😂

People will be able to drive their old cars.

But there will come a point where petrol stations become unviable and it becomes as hard to fill up with petrol as it was to charge electric vehicles 4 or 5 years ago.

@MobLife

Aren't they really incredibly dull to drive? I love driving and hate automatics 😂

Depends. I will freely admit - I miss having a manual car sometimes and the involvement it gave me.

What I like is how incredibly easy the car is to drive long distances and the ridiculous acceleration - I have a Model with ludicrous mode, so it’s 0-60 in 2.6s. But I rarely do that - I usually drive it sedately - listening to podcasts and classic FM, and then pluggiing in and watching a few random YouTube videos or Netflix shows (again - the internet connection is totally free on the older models).

It’s a totally different way of driving. I have a motorbike for the thrills, but yeah - if I had the parking space, I’d buy a GR Yaris as well.

@SwanBuster
I'm not sure I follow with the Netflix thing-are you joking?!

@Flatbrokefornow

Exactly. I have a BMW with 120 miles of range, which is paltry compared to most but it's fine and I've now covered over 50k miles.

There's lots of negativity but IME I love not having to visit a petrol station and putting in £60 to travel 300 miles. On an overnight tariff, I pay around £4 to travel the same distance. For me, this more than makes up for an occasional inconvenience of stopping on a long journey to recharge and so what if I have to stop at the services for 30 minutes instead of 10 for a comfort break.

I think people will need to adjust their habits as you can charge when shopping, eating out, gym, at the cinema or anywhere else where you'd normally spend time doing something. Sure in the winter the range drops but I've happy traded this for having to scrape and defrost a car in winter. Simple precondition and step inside a nice warm car. This can also be done when doing any of the above activities. Alternatively in the summer there's no need to get inside a scalding hot car as the Aircon sorts that out.

I'm a petrol head so am looking to buy a last hurrah car for fun but for everything else, the EV is quiet, relaxing, faster at junctions and superb for A to B driving.

[quote MobLife]@SwanBuster
I'm not sure I follow with the Netflix thing-are you joking?![/quote]
When I stop to charge - the infotainment system has a Netflix app and YouTube with the underlying internet connection being completely free. Very useful when camping in the car too. The only downside is on older cars you have a portrait rather than landscape screen, but it’s fine - and the sound system is awesome.

I don’t watch it whilst driving 😂