Electric cars - so worried

[Northernlurker]

I keep worrying about being forced to buy an electric car when I change my car in a few years.
Reason being the long journeys and (mostly) self catering we love. In Scotland.
We need a range around 50% higher than the current max. It's no good saying charge it on the way if there are no fast chargers. Been looking at details today, even the fastest chargers need just over 30 minutes. Thousands of people drive UJ the Highlands and Islands annually. There won't be anything like enough chargers to cover that. We can charge overnight using an ordinary plug but it's not going to hit the max. Feel like we will spend the whole time worrying about finding a free charger in the middle of nowhere.
How is this ever going to work? It takes two Minutes to fill up a tank with petrol, electric is going to take hours!

@LimitIsUp

Oops posted too soon - meant to say that if you are not prepared to stop for more than 10 minutes in a 500 mile journey this makes you a danger to yourself and other road users

That depends if you're the only driver. If there's 2 of you, you can changeover and just spend 10 mins in the loo and a quick drink/snack.

That was a worst case estimate though.

That depends if you're the only driver. If there's 2 of you, you can changeover and just spend 10 mins in the loo and a quick drink/snack.

That is us. A driver change takes barely five minutes.

@BarbaraofSeville

stopping once on a 500 mile journey is hardly an inconvenience

It is if you've got to be there 40 minutes instead of the 10 that you have available.

That's if there's a charger available and you don't have to queue.

There's also the cost of charging at service stations, which isn't much far off that for petrol. Plus people seem to think you'll be buying food and drink while you're there.

So as well as having this hugely expensive car, you'll be forever spending time and money at service stations wiping out any savings you need to make to justify the higher purchase price.

Yet again Mumsnet completely misses the needs of lower income people.

You can, today, if you wish and are able, buy a Tesla Model 3 Rear Wheel Drive. It will cost you somewhere between £45,000 and £55,000, depending on the options you tick. In UK conditions it will have a range of around 250 miles from full,

Clearly poor (and quite a lot of not so poor) people can't afford that.

But, that car uses a different kind of battery. It's known as an LFP battery, for various reasons they are only currently made in China, which is where Tesla get them from, and they are a bit heavier than the LNCM type generally used in North America and Europe. They also don't use cobalt - that's the C in LNCM.

The yardstick for battery degradation is a fall to 80% of original capacity/range. Because electric cars are, overall, still quite new, the data is a bit limited, but the estimate for current LNC batteries is around 100,000 miles. The estimate for LFP ones is 200,000 to 500,000.

So in 10 years time, that car bought now will probably be good for 220 or more miles on each charge, but will be a 10-year-old secondhand car.

Soon, a lot of Chinese manufacturers you've never heard of will be selling cars in the UK. MG (which, despite the name, is now a Chinese company) already do. You can buy an MG ZS EV new from £29,000, but it's not clear which chemistry it uses. The Ora Good Cat is coming later this year in the same price range, and it uses LFP.

And in 10 years time the rich people will be buying cars with batteries that give a range of 800 miles and have a million mile life, and they'll be the 10 year old cars in 2042. Soon, people won't need to get a new battery for their car, they'll need a new car for their battery.

But as I said before, continuing to burn petrol and diesel is simply not an option, whether you're poor or rich, young or old etc etc. It has to stop.

@etulosba

But please explain how lower income people will be driving a 'hugely expensive car' as you describe? Andy why would they 'forever' be spending time/money at service stations? Doesn't stack up TBH.

They may need to charge more often if they have bought an older EV.

Nissan estimated that battery capacity will be approximately 80% of original capacity after five years.

Sure, but an old Leaf isn't going to be 'hugely' expensive and if your range is limited to 50 miles, I doubt you'll be up and down the motorway pouring money into service stations. Is that what poor people usually do, spend all their time on motorways?

Electric cars are significantly more expensive than petrol/diesel equivalents. Which means that they are not affordable or to low to medium income people.

If you have some spare money, you might be able to justify the cost based on savings on petrol/diesel. But if you are paying for electricity from service station prices, it works out nearly as expensive as petrol, so little in the way of cost savings. So it's an expense that may not be justified on your budget.

And if you are driving more than the range of the car, which isn't very far, you will have to buy this £££s electricity, because you don't have the luxury of filling up at the supermarket and your car being good for 4/600 miles.

And that's before you get to the time it takes to charge, and finding the right charger/account and it being working, which doesn't seem like a given.

Clearly the people who don't see any of these don't regularly have working days that are already 12-14 hours long and include driving 4/500 miles, so they don't have the time to hang around service stations drinking coffee that they wouldn't otherwise have bought while they wait for the car to charge up.

Clearly the people who don't see any of these don't regularly have working days that are already 12-14 hours long and include driving 4/500 miles, so they don't have the time to hang around service stations drinking coffee that they wouldn't otherwise have bought while they wait for the car to charge up.

In The Future, that lifestyle may no longer be possible. Probably a good thing too.

Clearly the people who don't see any of these don't regularly have working days that are already 12-14 hours long and include driving 4/500 miles, so they don't have the time to hang around service stations drinking coffee that they wouldn't otherwise have bought while they wait for the car to charge up

But these people are hardly your average daily user are they?

The U.K. average is 20 miles a day/140 miles a week. A battery with a 300 mile range is perfectly adequate for the vast majority of users.

@DrWhoNowww

Clearly the people who don't see any of these don't regularly have working days that are already 12-14 hours long and include driving 4/500 miles, so they don't have the time to hang around service stations drinking coffee that they wouldn't otherwise have bought while they wait for the car to charge up

But these people are hardly your average daily user are they?

The U.K. average is 20 miles a day/140 miles a week. A battery with a 300 mile range is perfectly adequate for the vast majority of users.

But the “average” person can’t afford an electric car

Once upon a time the "average" person couldn't afford a mobile phone and now everyone has them.

This is how it works and you only need to pay attention to the cars on the road that the number of EVs driving about is increasing rapidly.

Unbelievable, the amount of stuff that gets peddled on here. The average person can easily afford an EV. The new DACIA Spring EV is going to be around £10-12k. A smart EV will set you back £18k and there are others from £20k upwards. Given the average salary is about £32k, PCP or leasing is easily possible.

And so what if EVs are expensive now. No one has to buy one for 20-30 years. All new tech is expensive to start with and EVs are no different. In time, prices will come down and more used examples will be available.

It's completely pointless moaning about prices when they're an option right now, not an obligation.

@Lunar27

Unbelievable, the amount of stuff that gets peddled on here. The average person can easily afford an EV. The new DACIA Spring EV is going to be around £10-12k. A smart EV will set you back £18k and there are others from £20k upwards. Given the average salary is about £32k, PCP or leasing is easily possible.

And so what if EVs are expensive now. No one has to buy one for 20-30 years. All new tech is expensive to start with and EVs are no different. In time, prices will come down and more used examples will be available.

It's completely pointless moaning about prices when they're an option right now, not an obligation.

Come now.

It's a fact that for an equivalent model EV's are significantly higher.

A Pug 208 with a petrol engine starts at £16k. For the same model the e208 - which is literally the same car apart from the drivetrain- the starting price is £25k.

For some people ev's make sense, but it's still a good few years away from being for most people.

@lameasahorse average according to the National Travel Survey - so mean, excellent use of semantics to divert from having an actual argument though.

As to being able to afford it there’s more to the EV market than a shiny Tesla - you can get an 8 year old Renault Zoe on autotrader with “ average” mileage for its age for £6k and that’s with an extraordinarily strong second hand market given the materials shortages at the moment.

Given the advances in technology over the next decade and the inevitable government grants that will encourage people to trade in petrol and diesel cars and EVs will be even more affordable.

@CapMarvel

You're right to some extent but this is pretty irrelevant as we're currently not being forced to choose one over the other. The complaint is that EV's are too expensive to consider, the premise being that they'll always be this way. However, tech history would suggest that this isn't really true.

So in many ways you're not really comparing apples with apples, despite the seemingly similar name/shape/class of car. An electric Corsa isn't comparable with an ICE Corsa that's based on 100 year old technology. People will naturally try to make the comparison but it's not the right way of looking at it, given the research and manufacturing issues involved. You casually say it's 'JUST' the drivetrain but this is massive. Not insignificant. It's also disingenuous to compare the cheapest petrol 208 (actually £19k) with an electrified version as the performance will be totally different. To get the same level of performance you're likely to spend £25+k.

I appreciate that sounds oxymoronic but changing the drivetrain technology completely changes the car. If you put hydrogen drive in, the same would apply.

However, if you do make a financial comparison then it's been shown that an electric Corsa will still cost you less in the long run. It's just that the up front costs are different.

[quote lameasahorse]@Lunar27 what?? I assume you have plenty of money?
That average of 32k is nationally. In many cities and regions it is much lower. But we also all have to pay rent or mortgage, bills, food and other expenses. The just under £2k I get a month isn't just sitting around doing nothing.[/quote]
Are you suggesting that someone earning £32k can't afford the finance on a £12k DACIA Spring when it comes out. Just because you might not be able to, it doesn't mean others couldn't.

Sure I'm relatively comfortable now but for a long time I didn't even earn the national average so can speak from experience. We financed our first new car in 2003 when my salary was just £16k and my wife was earning £6k working part-time. It was a Honda Civic costing £14.5k. It was a stretch but lasted aeons so good value overall.

To get one capable of towing our caravan would cost about £60k-£70k so quite a bit of difference to an equivalent ICE car. Didn't many families buy caravans in lockdown, I doubt they are going to ditch them anytime soon.

I can't imagine the palaver it would be trying to charge a car up with a caravan on the back and also the fact that the mileage would be a lot less because of the weight, I did look into this and it was completely unfeasible.