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Electric Car Charger Home Install - Brands & Experience

Discussion in 'Lounge' started by damodici, Jan 6, 2021.

  1. Just spotted this.... And yes, it is.
     
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  2. I took an electric black cab from Kings X to Heathrow about 10 days back. The chirpy cocker-nee driver was telling me the cold weather halves his range!! After dropping me he was having to take yet another hour off to charge his cab.

    EV's are still a big fat no from me. Maybe 5 years or so I'll have another look....
     
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  3. I've got a Ford Custom Hybrid van on loan at the moment. It is supposed to do 35 miles on a full charge I think I'm getting between 10 and 20. Complete waste of time.
     
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  4. I think it depends what you are doing. Even with half the range, I got to the hospital and back on one charge. Obviously a van is going to be doing more than that a day.

    Tomorrow I will go to Middlesborough for another hospital visit and it will do about 18 miles on pure electric at 60mph or so and then another 20 miles or more on electricity the car has generated itself over the 400 mile round trip. Depends how you use the right foot too. When the weather warms up I will be back to getting 30 miles out of it.
     

  5. Did you know the black cab drivers are held in a huge car park off site and sent round as demand requires. Pre Covid times obviously. They can spend all day waiting on a fare, but at £100 it’s not bad for a few hours actual “work”.

    unless they got me m, who was a £20 ride into Twickenham. They were never happy because they are not allowed to refuse a fair. In the end I changed to the bus because it wasn’t really fair on them even though it was going on my expenses
     
  6. We’ve just got a Jaguar iPace, I’ll put up with only getting around 200 miles per charge just for the shove in the back acceleration. I’ve got a 7KW Dynavolt charger installed which seems to work well.
    Before the install I was using various charging points around town, a 50KW charger would put about 25-30% charge back into the battery whilst I went shopping so quite manageable. On the down side my consumption of coffee has increased but the again my Costa rewards have as well.
     
  7. Going back a while now Guy Martin built (well got involved in) a electric Beetle, the take away for me was using public charging it cost him just as much as diesel to complete his journey and obviously wasted about an hour or two charging.

    It's been covered in great depth already but the public charging network just doesn't exist, more chargers in London and the South east from memory than the rest of the UK. Good old Schmee did a video about charging his Taycan in London, same old story lives in an apartment, he has a parking bay but no charger so has to use the public chargers, the closest one doesn't work so had to use one 20 mins away, queuing at the charger etc etc. And what happens if you were towing, imagine the chaos potentially blocking the road/forecourt for an hour or two with a large trailer/caravan.

    I've moaned about the lack of infrastructure for years for the normal person, people who live with no off-street parking, terrace housing, flats etc how will they charge? And because they will be forced to use public chargers there is already a cost divide between those who have and those that don't, charging at home costs X but public chargers cost Y, how does that work?

    For most though an electric car would suit most journeys, let's be honest but that once a week, once a month journey becomes difficult so puts people off.

    I think the tech is pretty impressive but until the infrastructure is in place it's not for me.

    Years ago Tesla demonstrated a battery swapping facility that they were developing, something like 90 seconds to replace a battery, but it never got off the ground -

    However, little known Chinese car manufacturer Nio already have this rolled out across parts of China, and it's pretty impressive... the only limit is you need to have a Nio -

    So as impressive as the above is, it will only work for X brand of car/vehicle a a bit like charging X charging Y.

    Obviously if you are a company car driver/company director it makes perfect financial sense to move to EV at the moment, heck I'd do the same, but as the masses move to EV it's obvious that suddenly electric charging will be taxed or a method of taxation for miles covered will be introduced to fill the shortfall in petrol/diesel demand.

    Other stuff to consider, the weight of the things, I know speaking to my cousin who is a tyre fitter Teslas get through tyres every 8000 miles due to torque and weight, that doesn't feature in any information, again not a worry if it's a company car I guess. I suppose another knock on that will come over the next decade or so, as the uptake continues the increase in vehicle weight on the roads will undoubtedly increase the wear of the current roads, so potholes etc will increase and no doubt they'll be another hike in taxation to cover these repairs.

    Finally, what about the 2nd hand values of say 6-8 year old EV's? I am assuming that such vehicles will have reduced range and we know that battery swaps are $$$, so I would imagine the values will fall off a cliff? And what about the older generation - retirees etc, my mother-in-law drove a battered Kia Picanto until she passed away, she had no income but had a car valued at £1500, drove a few hundred miles a year, probably a tanks of fuel a year... it feels like this is another issue yet to be realised, obviously in the near term they'll be lots of petrol/diesel cars still available.

    Phew.... rant over!
     
    #47 Freak, Nov 29, 2021
    Last edited: Nov 29, 2021
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  8. Good post Freak.

    Totally agree, everyone is talking green but no one is talking about what happens to the first generation of electric vehicles, when they are dead, either battery wise OR economically to repair? Everyone is talking about just lowering CO figures. What about the energy used to recycle these batteries?

    There should be a LEGAL responsibility on the manufacturers (enforced by Governments) to recycle their electric vehicles so it’s a complete cycle. Not just pump it out for sales and take the money.

    We are moving in the right direction but we are 2% there in terms in total infrastructure, recycling, battery replacement etc.
     
  9. We have an electric Mini which has a limited range but it is ideal for my twice weekly hospital round trip of around 25 miles and to and from the shops and have my old VW turbo diesel for longer journeys - not sure we could manage without this!
    We had problems initially finding a home charge installer and ended up with PodPoint who did the job quickly and efficiently,
     
  10. Did anyone else pick up on a recent statement from Volvo regarding their electric vehicle offering ? Seems their electric vehicle isn’t actually more whole life cycle environmentally sound than their ICE powered vehicles until the electric vehicle has covered more than 70,000 miles. I wonder what the whole life cycle figures are like for other manufacturers. Andy
     
  11. Great post :):upyeah:

    Tyre decay struck a chord. I was talking to a guy that ditched his Tesla. He did mention being staggered by the way it chewed through tyres…
     
  12. In reality, the "real-world whole-life" cost needs to be clarified and properly explained to electric vehicle owners, not simply the 'environmentally positive CO2 savings/benefits', as seems to be the constant mantra played out.

    If people understood the end to end environmental, human and financial costs associated with the production/running of these vehicles, then the arguments about CO2 benefits alone, would simply disappear.

    Adding up the costs of precious metals, slavery associated with mining thereof, true running costs of vehicles, including cold weather mileages, tyre wear/degradation, additional costs of changing batteries when worn out, dealing with spent batteries, woeful UK charging infrastructure, etc, this then fully details the real-time cost of ownership or otherwise.

    I get really cheesed off when people try to enlighten me as to the rationale for having an electric car, without properly understanding and articulating all issues.

    Electric vehicle evangelism is another rapidly developing, incredibly annoying trait.:mad:

    Although I would ultimately like to have an electric vehicle, until all of the above make sense, count me out.:scream:
     
  13. I saw a programme on TV about EV's recently, can't remember exactly what programme, but in it they took a few cars, including a 9 year old Nissan Leaf, onto the motorway to test both the cars and the charging infrastructure.

    No disrespect to a Nissan Leaf, and no doubt battery technology has moved on in leaps and bounds in the last nine years, but fully charged it had a range of around 45 miles, which immediately dropped into the low 30 miles as soon as he accelerated down the motorway on ramp. The programme didn't cover cost or practicality of a battery replacement on a nine year old Leaf, but to me that vehicle has virtually no residual value.

    I also recollect in that programme that MG recommended that to prevent premature battery deterioration, you should not let them fall below 20% charge, and should not charge them above 80% capacity, so if you don't want a huge and expensive problem, only use 60% of the battery capacity.

    I don't know if you can set the max % charge on an EV, or if you have to get up in the middle of the night to unplug the car from the charger, but also can't see Mrs Bimble setting out in an EV with anything less than 100% battery charge.

    If most EV's are either company cars or on PCP's, and moved on after three or so years, I can't see many people sticking to that, so beware 2nd hand buyers.
     
  14. This November saw 12 months since I got my Plug in hybrid. Since getting the car I have fuelled it 3 times. Once in Nov 20, once in April 21 and just this last week. The car had it’s first service beginning of Nov 21 and still had over 100 miles petrol range left at that time. The car really suits our use requirements and is mainly used on full EV getting around 32 miles range. Petrol use is normally on longer trips up and down the A1 north of Newcastle. Now Winter is here the petrol use will slightly increase as the car uses the petrol engine to provide heat.
     
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  15. So what is it? And do you like it? Or do you harbour feelings about torching it?
     
  16. It was dispatches on Ch4, I watched it also, there wasn't much new info but the Nissan Leaf albeit old battery tech demonstrates perfectly that as batteries degrade and the range is drastically reduced they aren't worth anything to anyone as the replacement batteries are so expensive. So an 8-10 year old car which clearly passes its MOT every year is basically scrap, but there lies another problem how to scrap/dispose of the batteries.

    The e2e lifecycle from cradle to grave of an EV isn't publicised and that's the issue, at peak life 5-10 years it's clean (albeit there's a coal powerplant etc) but before/after it's worse for the environment.

    Likewise on that programme they demonstrated how hybrids are actually the worst pollutants out there when cold, again something that isn't publicised.
     
  17. A quick internet search shows the original Nissan Leaf had a claimed range of 124 miles, so a 64% drop in useable range to the reported 45 mile range over the nine year life of the vehicle. Realise history, mileage, etc, of the car is not known and it's a sample of one, but that's pretty shocking decrease in battery efficiency.
     
  18. The batteries in EVs contain a fair amount of cobalt. It's not very common in the Earth's crust.
    This caught my eye the other day - a case of "how the other half live" - Cobalt mining in the Congo.

     
  19. Have a look at the Panorama programme that was on TV last week. It highlights the situation even moreso, even taking account of the fact of BBC bias when reporting.
    It establishes that once again, the richer world is ready and willing to take advantage of others much less fortunate. And yes, no surprise really, the Tesla twat and his cohort are there at the forefront. Doh!
     
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  20. Until Nov 20 I had run a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV that was 5 yrs old (I had it for over 3 yrs). I really liked the Outlander and had been waiting for the new line up to be announced only to find that Mitsubishi were pulling out of Europe. I started looking for an alternative replacement and ended up buying a Kia Niro PHEV. And to be honest, the car is great. Loaded with lots of gizmos that actually make driving pleasant. My favourite is 1 pedal driving. Crank the regen braking up to 3 and go for it on the twisties. Just control everything with the throttle. If you want to have some fun with ICE drivers then set the regen to 2 and the brake lights do not come. Watch the rear view mirror as they come in too hot for a corner.
     
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