EV are they worth it?

[robinbanks]

You clearly not learnt EV is bull ox. Even though sensationalist, there are truths to these stories:

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Don't quite know how you get to "Honda say EV are boIIocks and are stopping making them" from an article that says "Honda and GM are not working together to produce EVs that price rival Teslas thanks to GM struggling to predict future operational costs, partly because of worker strikes"

But it tells us something about what you want to understand out of what you read. Perhaps simply don't buy an EV yourself, and don't pour significant effort into spreading lies and misinformation in an effort to get others not to buy EVs; leave people to make their own experiments and draw their own conclusions

 

[norseman]

But it tells us something about what you want to understand out of what you read. Perhaps simply don't buy an EV yourself, and don't pour significant effort into spreading lies and misinformation on an effort to get others not to buy EVs; leave people to make their own experiments and draw their own conclusions

Probably about the most succinct comment so far on this thread.
I have a friend that bought a new BMW hybrid a couple of years ago. He can charge at home, but his place of work is well within the cars' battery range & his employer allows him to re-charge there for free. If he travels further afield the economical petrol ICE comes into it's own, so it's a win-win situation for him.

Personally I don't want an EV & am sticking to my classic petrol driven ICE cars, but that is my choice & I don't seek to influence others in theirs'.

 

[Avocet]

I don't mind anyone seeking to influence anyone else in this (or any) discussion. That is, after all, the nature of debate. What I object to, are people trying to do it with lies and half-truths.

 

[ReganAndCarter]

& his employer allows him to re-charge there for free.

Imagining the list price of that BMW was very steep. Hope the free leccy helps him claw some of this back and the massive depreciation.

 

[DiyNutJob]

Don't quite know how you get to "Honda say EV are boIIocks and are stopping making them"

Don't put words in my mouth. Nowhere did I say so and so said EVs are bull ox. It's always been that I said EVs are bullox. I came to the conclusion from the data available to me. I have presented some of the data, which you see in the thread, but not all. Nowhere have I told people to not buy EVs. It's not my money and I don't care. There is a thing called an objective/fundamental truth. This is what I am getting at. I am interested in this type truth for everything, and not just EVs. Hence I am highly enthusiastic when discussing it. If you don't have the stamina to keep up with me, then go find something else to do.

 

[ReganAndCarter]

All rapid chargers (which are all DC) have tethered cables. There is no other option. You do not need your own cable at any of them.

A cable is only required for AC charging which doesn't have a cable attached, as would be found at most public locations where you would be parked for an hour or four while doing something else.



I have an electric van. When purchased 2 years ago it cost £6000 more than the diesel version.
So far it has saved £3000 per year, most of which is due to using electricity instead of diesel. Next year it will save another £3000, and then another £3000 and so on. Obviously those savings can and will vary as the price of electricity, diesel and other factors such as road fund licence change, however there are no circumstances where it could ever cost more than the diesel.

99% of the time it charges overnight at home for a few hours. I use rapid charging a few times per year on the rare occasions where it's necessary to drive longer distances than the typical workday of between 10 and 80 miles, and for those it's a stop of 20-30 minutes.
As it has no clutch pedal, there is no more aggravating an old leg injury every time I drive somewhere.
I never have to go to stinking fuel stations to buy expensive fuel.
Servicing costs are virtually nothing as there is no oil to replace, no oil filter, no air filter, no fuel filter, no injectors to clog, no DPF to be ruined by urban driving, and countless other failure parts which electric vehicles just don't have.

The only additional expense was the extra paid when purchasing the vehicle.
Everything else is much easier, cheaper and far less hassle than any other vehicle I have owned.

Other people's situations and experiences will vary.

Thanks for your reply. I felt sure there must be some people out there who make EV ownership work.

 

[Avocet]

Don't put words in my mouth. Nowhere did I say so and so said EVs are bull ox. It's always been that I said EVs are bullox. I came to the conclusion from the data available to me. I have presented some of the data, which you see in the thread, but not all. Nowhere have I told people to not buy EVs. It's not my money and I don't care. There is a thing called an objective/fundamental truth. This is what I am getting at. I am interested in this type truth for everything, and not just EVs. Hence I am highly enthusiastic when discussing it. If you don't have the stamina to keep up with me, then go find something else to do.

My irony meter just exploded! If there's one person on here who wouldn't know "objective" if it walked up to him and kicked him in the nuts, it's you!

 

[DiyNutJob]

What I object to, are people trying to do it with lies and half-truths.

The full truth is that ICE owners don't need to resort to "don't drive from Land's End to John O' Groats that often". An ICE driver can go any place, any time, and for as often as he wants.

 

[ReganAndCarter]

The full truth is that ICE owners don't need to resort to "don't drive from Land's End to John O' Groats that often". An ICE driver can go any place, any time, and for as often as he wants.

This is true. My van normally potters around town, rarely leaving the city limits. However Nov 2021 I drove it from Bristol to the far side of the Czech Republic near Ostrava (1100 miles) with only 2 or 3 quick diesel stops. One was early hours in a frosty Poland. Couldn't imagine the stress of such a journey, desperately searching for working/compatible charge points, while the greatly manufacturer over-estimated range rapidly drops off and I desperately turn off heater/accessories to squeeze a few more miles. All this poss late at night in a foreign land. Then having to sit in the cold for ages while the thing slowly charges.

On a long run, my van has a range of over 650 miles on a full tank. Beat that, EVs!

That's the flexibility of ICE vehicles. Friend had a nightmare journey in a hired EV recently just travelling from Bristol to Leeds. After that aggro, he swears he will hang on to his old petrol 7 series Beemer as long as possible.

 

[DiyNutJob]

That's the flexibility of ICE vehicles. Friend had a nightmare journey in a hired EV recently just travelling from Bristol to Leeds. After that aggro, he swears he will hang on to his old petrol 7 series Beemer as long as possible.

All the down-sides of EV's were know from experimenting with chinese guinea pigs. Nevertheless EVs were still force-fed to the people in the west. My conclusion was that it was done purely for profit because they knew people would be forced to abandon EVs for something else they will be selling. The chinese guinea pigs reported lack of infrastructure support outside of built up areas, range lower than claimed, range further reduced by cold temperature, un-economic to spend 1/3 price of new car to replace battery, major cost when they run out of power on the road, daily life revolving around charging of the car, constant checking of charge levels while driving (this is a major hazard in my assessment), turning into emotional wrecks when the charge level reaches 20% remaining, unable to sell car because no dealers would take them. I am quite sure the EV owners in this thread can/will relate to all of that.

My personal dislike for EVs is the fire risk, with everything else being secondary. If there wasn't a risk, I'd have no trouble getting a tiny EV (maybe 3 wheeler) for using as a grocery cart. It could easily handle a lot of my visits to tool station or screwfix, or B&Q. These places do have some bargains from time to time.

 

[Avocet]

The full truth is that ICE owners don't need to resort to "don't drive from Land's End to John O' Groats that often". An ICE driver can go any place, any time, and for as often as he wants.

Not only resorting to saying it, but not actually having to DO it either! I had a bit of a think before going for the company EV (nobody forced it on me - I know that's one of the lies you like to peddle, but it wasn't actually the case).

I thought about the number of times I'd had to drive from land's End to John O'Groats (or indeed, the Czech Republic) in the last 10 years, and found that it was... well, er... "zero". I think looked at the number of times I'd done it in the last 40 years and (funny enough) the answer was still "zero", so then I turned my attention to the real world and what I'd actually really like, that might be of some actual real-world use to me....

Well, it didn't take me long to work out that I didn't really like giving "Big Oil" about £100 a week for fuel. (I do more than average mileage as you know). I also worked out that roughly a couple of dozen times a year, I had to scrape the ice off the windscreen and freeze my butt off for the the first few miles, and thought: "wouldn't it be nice to have a car that you could just tell what time you wanted to leave, and get it to do all that for me"? I also thought it would be nice to have something with supercar-style overtaking ability, because a lot of my driving is on single carriageway roads, and overtaking opportunities are few.

Of course, I do have to do some fairly long journeys, so I worried about having to stop for hours every hundred miles to charge, but when I actually looked into it a bit more closely, I found that you could get EVs with a real-lief 300 mile range, and was quite prepared to live with that (and the 250 mile range in Winter), given that charging didn't actually take anything like as long as the doom-mongers said it would.

And I worried about fires too - after all, there are (would you believe it?!) people on the internet who kept saying that it was bound to happen. So I looked at come (credible) figures - compiled by fire & rescue services, insurance companies, governments - you know, people who actually know their backsides from their elbows), and quickly found out that it was all BS, and that I was at least 20 X more likely to have that happen in an ICE than an EV, so I stopped worrying about it.

And lastly, I wondered about international travel, but after a while, I remembered that's what aeroplanes and hire cars were for...

The fact that I'm saving a shed-load of CO2 at the same time... well, that was just icing on the cake...

Buy hey, I've got to give it to you. The very next time I have to drive from Land's End to John O'Groats, in a real hurry, I just know I'm going to regret getting that EV... I can almost hear the "I-told-you-so"s ringing in my ears now, in fact...

 

[Avocet]

This is true. My van normally potters around town, rarely leaving the city limits. However Nov 2021 I drove it from Bristol to the far side of the Czech Republic near Ostrava (1100 miles) with only 2 or 3 quick diesel stops. One was early hours in a frosty Poland. Couldn't imagine the stress of such a journey, desperately searching for working/compatible charge points, while the greatly manufacturer over-estimated range rapidly drops off and I desperately turn off heater/accessories to squeeze a few more miles. All this poss late at night in a foreign land. Then having to sit in the cold for ages while the thing slowly charges.

On a long run, my van has a range of over 650 miles on a full tank. Beat that, EVs!

That's the flexibility of ICE vehicles. Friend had a nightmare journey in a hired EV recently just travelling from Bristol to Leeds. After that aggro, he swears he will hang on to his old petrol 7 series Beemer as long as possible.

Just one thing, don't worry too much about sitting in the cold whilst charging. You can just turn the heater on, while you're sat there. It takes about 3kW on a very cold day, but as the slowest charger that I'd use on a journey is at least 50 kW (usually more than twice that), that still leaves at least 47 (and more usually 147) kW going into your battery. On a 50 kW charger though, I do have to admit that it will mean a 20 minute charge will take more like 21 minutes...

However, for sentimental reasons, I do keep an old ICE, just so I can stand there, outside, freezing my bits off, holding the trigger on the pump nozzle until my tank is full and I get the opportunity to drop my trousers and give Big Oil another £100. I do miss that...

 

[DiyNutJob]

The fact that I'm saving a shed-load of CO2 at the same time... well, that was just icing on the cake...

Generating electricity from hydrocarbons produces a lot more co2 than burning the hydrocarbons directly. I estimate 50% more co2 release. This makes you an industrial co2 machine on legs.

 

[DiyNutJob]

Double whammy for EV owners. No power for charging and risk of lithium ignition by water.

 

[Avocet]

Generating electricity from hydrocarbons produces a lot more co2 than burning the hydrocarbons directly. I estimate 50% more co2 release. This makes you an industrial co2 machine on legs.

Perhaps you'd like to show your working? (I'd be happy to show mine...)