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!

[quote lameasahorse]@Lunar27 No flagstaff has a high earning partner who contributes as well. Average (mean) household income for the UK is £37,100, so flagstaff has way above the average household income plus no children.
Trust me you sound very much like let them eat cake.[/quote]
You're conveniently neglecting the other examples of single parents aren't you. Or that I've already been there and done it on a lower joint income.

It's clear you don't want to accept that people have different lives so is pointless going round in circles.

Anyways as an aside, I don't think anyone has mentioned salary sacrifice schemes for employees (although apologies if I missed it). If considering an EV, you can save the PAYE and NI on leasing one through your payroll department. You'd attract BIK but it's only 2% so barely noticeable.

Over a 4 year lease, it's possible to save a significant amount, making them more accessible.

Suppose the EV moaners will have to find something else to moan about if an EV is no longer that much more expensive

www.zap-map.com/electric-vehicles/ev-salary-sacrifice/

[quote Lunar27]Anyways as an aside, I don't think anyone has mentioned salary sacrifice schemes for employees (although apologies if I missed it). If considering an EV, you can save the PAYE and NI on leasing one through your payroll department. You'd attract BIK but it's only 2% so barely noticeable.

Over a 4 year lease, it's possible to save a significant amount, making them more accessible.

Suppose the EV moaners will have to find something else to moan about if an EV is no longer that much more expensive

www.zap-map.com/electric-vehicles/ev-salary-sacrifice/[/quote]
Oh get off your smug high horse. Thousands of people have nowhere to charge the bloody things even if they could afford them. Also your idea of "accessible" prices is indescribably privileged.

@Cheeserton

Damn, half an hour eh? Good job our children's planet isn't on fire already... Oh wait.

Some of that is caused by the production of electric cars, but who cares about inconvenient facts, eh?

@lameasahorse

If you read up on it, it's a government backed scheme that will cost employers nothing and anyone can do. All people need to do is approach their payroll.

I'm running a very small business and could do it, much like a ride to work scheme.

@entropynow

Oh give over. I was obviously being facetious, given the last few pages of bickering. However, if someone is considering an EV and doesn't know about this scheme, it could save a small fortune. How is that smug?

Your snipe about thousands of people is completely irrelevant but thanks for illustrating my point about EV moaners nicely.

@Lunar27

You'd attract BIK but it's only 2% so barely noticeable.

It won't stay at 2%. It started at 0%!

[quote Lunar27]@lameasahorse

If you read up on it, it's a government backed scheme that will cost employers nothing and anyone can do. All people need to do is approach their payroll.

I'm running a very small business and could do it, much like a ride to work scheme.[/quote]
Plus the employer needs to agree and many won't.

What do people think BIK and RFL will be when the tax take drops due to more people driving electric and heavily taxed petrol sales fall too?

P
Not everyone wants to or can commit a paying hundreds of pounds a month to lease a new car, even if it is cost effective if you drive far enough.

It won't stay at 2%. It started at 0%!

True, but to be fair to @Lunar27, they are talking about now, not what happen in the future.

I've been doing some research & one thing that jumps out is how the range on an EV drops if you are driving at motorway speeds. Even the much vaunted Tesla's 300 miles drops by 33% if you cruise at 80mph - not unusual on UK motorways. Don't even think about driving on a motorway once the temperature drops below 5 degrees!

I think a lot of people are scared by what is unfamiliar. Some embrace change for the better as early adopters but many just cling to what they understand, even if it is actually responsible for quite a lot of harm in the world. It will shift over time as more people have EVs and people realise they are fine and not scary. We just drove long distance E-SW in our EV, charged once whilst we ate out dinner - driving at 70mph on the motorway - got there and everyone survived! Car has recharged overnight and is ready for action.

BIK is set to remain at 2% until 2025. Unfortunately we don't have a crystal ball to see how it'll change after that but I doubt it'll ramp up to the levels that impact ICE vehicles. Not while EV take up is slow.

Regarding employers taking up the scheme, they'd be silly not to as both benefit from it. This is because employers pay NI at 13.8%. Therefore, if your employee pays less NI then they will too. Much like any other salary sacrifice scheme and hence why companies are keen to offer these perks and why they've become popular for all sorts of things.

@Ifailed. You're absolutely right about EV's being worse on the motorway but people just need to get used to the way they work. A BMW 320d for example will do 65mpg urban and 78mpg on the motorway. That's just under 30% but we all accept this. Petrol will be worse still. The opposite is true for an EV as they're more efficient round town but less so at 80mph. The key with an EV is to just drive a bit slower as wind resistance increases by the square of speed.

@TalbotAMan your post did make me laugh! So because I live in a house with no drive and can’t park near enough to my house to charge I should just not own a car? So I should also just give up my job in rural community nursing? That’ll really help an already understaffed nhs 🙄

[quote AlaskaThunderfuckHiiiiiiiii]@TalbotAMan your post did make me laugh! So because I live in a house with no drive and can’t park near enough to my house to charge I should just not own a car? So I should also just give up my job in rural community nursing? That’ll really help an already understaffed nhs 🙄[/quote]
Like everyone else, you have got to stop using a petrol or diesel car on a regular basis. There can't be any special cases or other excuses. We know beyond doubt the amount of harm they are doing. I'm not saying there can't be carefully controlled use of historic vehicles, but no-one can keep using petrol or diesel for their 'daily driver'. We have to clean up a lot of things and road transport is one of the bigger ones. Laugh all you like, but that's the reality and it's not going away.

But, as I (and PP) keep saying, people have to think creatively and adapt. Even as a rural community nurse you presumably have some kind of base where you go quite regularly, so why can't you charge there? Presumably, like the vast majority of even the rural population, you visit supermarkets on a regular basis, so why can't you charge there? Why can't the NHS provide you with a vehicle for your work and take on the responsibility for keeping it charged?

The point I am making is that people who live in houses or flats where they can't charge can't use that as an excuse to continue with petrol or diesel. If they are essential car users like you, then solutions have to be found. If they simply have a car for convenience, then maybe in future they will have to do without.

@Ifailed

It won't stay at 2%. It started at 0%!

True, but to be fair to @Lunar27, they are talking about now, not what happen in the future.

I've been doing some research & one thing that jumps out is how the range on an EV drops if you are driving at motorway speeds. Even the much vaunted Tesla's 300 miles drops by 33% if you cruise at 80mph - not unusual on UK motorways. Don't even think about driving on a motorway once the temperature drops below 5 degrees!

I regularly drive an 8 year old Nissan Leaf on motorways in all weathers and temperatures. I rarely drive it at 80mph though. Also, having been driving on motorways for a long time, the ones I use regularly where people once cruised at 80 to 85 have slowed, probably because of the overall increase in traffic , to 60 to 65.

The paradox is that internal combustion vehicles are at their least inefficient at motorway speeds, while evs are pretty uniformly efficient and so are constrained by air resistance.

Well at least my car isn’t merely for convenience and I will consider an electric car when I can afford one of a similar size I need for all of my nursing equipment. The nhs will not provide cars for all members of staff, there is currently one pool car for 11 member of staff and the person doing the furthest run gets it, they also cannot be used for personal use. Interestingly I asked the surgery I am based from if there was any plans to put electric chargers in and their answer was no, with it being a private surgery and not nhs owned it’ll be up to them to find that, the small town the surgery is based in also has no electric chargers, I get all my shopping delivered as well so do not visit supermarkets all that often. There would need to be a massive rise in infrastructure and as others have pointed out some areas of Scotland haven’t even got decent internet never mind electric cars chargers

@Lunar27

BIK is set to remain at 2% until 2025. Unfortunately we don't have a crystal ball to see how it'll change after that but I doubt it'll ramp up to the levels that impact ICE vehicles. Not while EV take up is slow.

Regarding employers taking up the scheme, they'd be silly not to as both benefit from it. This is because employers pay NI at 13.8%. Therefore, if your employee pays less NI then they will too. Much like any other salary sacrifice scheme and hence why companies are keen to offer these perks and why they've become popular for all sorts of things.

@Ifailed. You're absolutely right about EV's being worse on the motorway but people just need to get used to the way they work. A BMW 320d for example will do 65mpg urban and 78mpg on the motorway. That's just under 30% but we all accept this. Petrol will be worse still. The opposite is true for an EV as they're more efficient round town but less so at 80mph. The key with an EV is to just drive a bit slower as wind resistance increases by the square of speed.

I think this bit is true. People will have to get used to driving differently and leaving more time for their journeys. A massive us in my opinion is that it will make many more people into less anti social and inadvertently more considerate drivers.

Hopefully these arseholes who rev round town and up and down the bypass at nights will slowly become a thing of the past.

Plus not us

@HesterShaw1

What will the boy/girl racers do with near silent EV's when their bean can exhaust tips won't fit