Are you ready for an electric car?

I have had the above Hyundai Kona Electric car since February of this year and I am delighted with it.
With a Summer range of in excess of 300 miles (cold winter expect a drop of around 20%) I have never experienced "range anxiety”
Often I am able to charge it for free at many locations otherwise it costs me 12p kW.
Full "tank” would be around £7.00 assuming the battery was completely discharged, which of course it never would be.
Personally if I had a Monzo pot for electricity I use I think £10 per month would be ample.

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I like the idea of moving to electric, and have done for some time.

The key barriers for me are initial cost, and charging at home:

• I cover approximately 25k miles a year for work, with no company car scheme or cash allowance (a whole other topic!). So it’s self funded and mileage claimed back through expenses. So I tend to only spend around £3k on a vehicle every 3 years to reap maximum value out of it.

• I live in a flat with (typical?) on street parking. I haven’t delved into this too deeply but I’m not sure on how the charging set up would work. I would hope that as EV adoption becomes more widespread more charging points would be placed into residential zones. It would be quite cumbersome at the minute having to run cables across the road.

As time progresses I’m sure those barriers will naturally alleviate. It is an area as a whole that Interests me greatly, the progress made in the past decade is astounding!

On the Pot front, wouldn’t it be great if it could auto generate based on usage? With some manual input of course.

Along the lines of…

Average monthly miles = x
My energy supplier is x and cost per KWh is £x
Expected monthly cost = £x

“Based on monthly usage, we suggest putting aside £x”

Excuse the formatting; first response and on mobile :slightly_smiling_face:

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It’s typical if you live in my town/city!

That would be the biggest thing stopping most people, including me, here

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Literally just this weekend in the Guardian:

Longevity of battery life at this age though?

Covered in the article:

“Until recently buyers of used EVs feared being left holding a worthless car because the expensive battery had died,” she says. “Those fears have proved largely unfounded"

and, from someone who bought a three-year old Leaf which has a battery running at more than 95% of capacity:

“I have the benefit of the remainder of the eight-year (or 100,000 miles) warranty that will replace the battery if it falls below 75% capacity, but I’m not expecting it to”

And finally, if you’re that concerned about the battery, you have the option of a Zoe, where you own the car but lease the battery.

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I’d be happy to move over to an electric car but a few things need to happen first.

  1. Cost needs to go down, need a decent sub 5k car which is affordable to everyone in the market.
  2. I live in a terraced house and therefore have communal parking, so I’d have no way to charge it other than at a charging station in a petrol station or other place. (Lampost charging would be a nice idea but isn’t enough of them in my estate to allow it to be useful! Not does my work Carpark have any, so can’t charge it there either!)
  3. Faster charging, I want to be able to plug in and go within at least 10/15 minutes. Don’t want to have to wait 2 hours to get decent range charged up.
  4. A nice design! Nearly all of them look awful!
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So long as they don’t take the piss on cost, that really seems like a good route to go down. Those old batteries I believe can still be (re)used in other settings like power storage

Tesla owners ran a test on the MS and showed that concern about battery longevity is overdone.

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I too live in a terrace house and have used the supplied "granny cable” from a wall box. This has meant running a cable across the pavement, with a cable guard, as seen in the Guardian piece. I am fortunate inasmuch that I can do it in the day time when there are few pedestrians around.
Mostly I charge away from home and a in fact an half hour charge provides over 100 miles of range.
Most people (95%) don’t travel more than thirty miles on a journey and therefore the need for a charge could be as low as once a week.

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I would be curious to see what the lease would be with my 25,000 yearly mileage.

Looks like the base is £35k and plus £37.5k for a better SE trim.

Guessing £900 monthly with a three year PCP. :neutral_face:

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Our communal parking is at the end of the estate so unfortunately I can’t even do this :frowning:

I wish I could do this but unfortunately neither my town nor work has public electric charging points. I do 60 miles a day round trip, so would be charging fairly often and honestly wouldn’t be prepared to wait half an hour for 100 miles. I’m sure by the time electric cars become mainstream, fast charging will be much quicker

To be fair 6k as a minimum price is still expensive. I certainly wouldn’t spend that much on an electric car (or just a car in general really)

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My currently reliably £2000 car does 450 miles on one tank.

Electric cars imo at least for me need to do a. Comfortable 200 miles per charge to not add on 4 hours of extra travel time charging.

On top of that the problem I and I imagine many other have is charging it at home and work. I can’t. I’d have to dig up the road to put charging in, which I can’t because I rent. And potentially my next place won’t have any drive way at all.

We can’t have a future of 100 eléctrica cables laying across foot paths to charge cars parked on the steer. That issues needs solved.

Then there’s the problem of being to expensive. £30k minimum for a car that does 180 miles in the summer… i don’t have 30k

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I have a Zoe for zipping around town and going to work, I love my car but when friends ask me about her I say get the biggest battery you can afford. On a full charge my zoe(2015) can do 92miles. For me I can get everywhere I need to go, but I would be weary of long distances. Charge wise it cost £2 for 30 mile or free at work. But I have been refused permission for home charge point by social housing because heaven forbid I increase the value of the property.

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That’s a bit like iPhone owners saying their phones are better than Samsung :smiley:

If you can afford a ‘newish’ car then you can afford an electric car.
If your mileage is workable then it’s a good option.

But many of us live in flats, or have parking that isn’t next to the building. Until THAT problem is solved, electric cars will remain the remit of those who can afford a house/happen to have a charging point near them.

It’s just not workable for me, despite my very low mileage (I bus to work, car is mostly supermarket trips, the occasional weekend usage to visit people/do stuff).

Shame, because I’d love to make the switch.

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I should make it plain that generally I charge away from my home because I am fortunate in having a number of charge points within a few miles.
Many people may be surprised just how close the nearest charge point is to their location.
To discover just how close I recommend searching Zap-Map site.

Which is great.

But for the masses, who have a car sitting in a driveway, or sitting outside their house, this is inconvenient and will remain the biggest blocker to increased adoption of electric cars.

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Just had a look, and there is 1 in my town (pop 25000) so unfortunately it’s highly unlikely to ever be available consistently to make an electric car a realistic option for me :frowning: and this is the problem, slow and inconsistent roll out of charging networks if you don’t live in a city.

Oh and also, the fact that there isn’t a standard type of charger, so you might not even be able to use a publicly located charging point if you don’t have the “right” kind of vehicle