Rolling road at a constant speed, probably. While in the real world cars are always slowing down and speeding up, and that’s what wrecks MPG. Every time you break you’re effectively throwing away all the money you’ve spent on getting your car up to speed (through burning fuel), my driving instructor told me.
Means I end up getting mad when there’s congestion on the motorway - most people will speed up into a gap and brake to a halt when traffic stops again; me, I’ll try and strike a constant speed so that regardless of the size of the gap in front of me, I’m moving at all times - then idiots will go “Ooh, a gap!” move in and make me have to break. &%*!
I barely stop on a long-trip. Fuel, grab a sandwich to eat while I’m driving and have a wee and I’m gone again. 10 mins absolute max. The frustration at having to wait 30 mins to charge puts me off. I guess it’s a bit different if you have kids and you stop for longer to give them a break.
The availability of charging stations is also an issue. I know that if I pull into a fuel station, it’s unlikely all pumps are full, but if they are, within a minute or two people are leaving because it doesn’t take long to fill up.
If all charging stations are taken up, by their nature people use them for longer so you could be waiting 40 mins because someone is having a cheeky Nandos while they wait. I know this is improving but it’s still a pain.
I’m sure it’s changed but it was typically calculated with the car at approx 56 mph in top gear on a flat road. So enough power to propel the car forward with minimal engine load. I’ll bet the driver was a naked supermodel and a strong wind was blowing in the same direction as the car too.
For me that would involve waking them up to get them out of the car, so I too would prefer to just get there asap and allow the kids to have a nice rest without going crazy with boredom.
phildawson
(Sorry, I will have to escalate this.)
729
In that video where they do 571 miles they spend an hour charging in total.
And they mention if it was petrol/diesel they would have still stopped for 45mins. Which seems fair, unless you are a coffee fiend with a large bladder.
Avg speed of ~60 thats 10 hours. 15mins added on that journey meh.
I think there are a couple of different standards for measures electric car range (NEDC and WLTP), both of which tend to slightly over estimate. The evdatabase website seems to take this into account and provides what they call a ‘real world range’ figure for summer and winter, and for city, highway and combined driving.
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phildawson
(Sorry, I will have to escalate this.)
731
We just need more rapid charging (and outside the South, well outside England)
Range obviously changes at different temperatures and therefore the best metric is the rolling average.
As I mentioned my Kona’s is presently 4.8 miles/ KWh.
In the Summer I can rely on the indicated range displayed and as this picture shows the available range in my car at the time of charging was :
So plainly in the Summer I was benefiting from a range of around 5.3 miles / Kwh.
5.3 miles /kWh which on the day of the above picture was provided free of charge by BP/ Chargemaster because at the time the charger was available on "free vend”.
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phildawson
(Sorry, I will have to escalate this.)
734
If you were to swap the Kona what would you go to? Or does it tick all the boxes? Cost/Style/Usefulness
I test drove the e-Niro in 2020 (2019? ) and it was ace from a cost/practical pov. The only internal thing I didn’t like was the shinny black around the selector and doors which was a fingerprint haven.
My main issue now is I hardly ever drive other than family trips. No commuting, shopping delivered, everything bought online and delivered.
After the government grant of, at that time, £4500 I paid £28000 for my car and today to replace it with a similar specification is not possible without spending around at least £45000.
I am eighty years old and so I am now reconciled to keeping the Kona and enjoy the fact, that like you, I no longer have to undertake long journeys on a regular basis.
A great benefit to me is that I don’t have to pay for my mileage any longer because as the image below shows I claim a PodPoint charge on a weekly basis at my local Tesco free of charge
If you could bring yourself to shopping in store instead of online your motoring would be free of charge as far as electricity is concerned.
FWIW (maybe nothing) after reading a lot of the posts in this thread from folk who seem to quite like the idea of an EV - or like the idea enough to have thought about why it wouldn’t work for them, I thought it might be worth chucking in my experience.
I replaced my ICE 9 months ago with an EV. I did a fair amount of research but, due to having almost no interest in cars, quickly found myself getting bored and confused and creating reasons why it wouldn’t really work for me. However, I work in the energy industry and can see first hand the need to reduce direct CO2 emissions to give us a chance of combating climate change.
In the end I decided that, if I could find something that would allow me to do my 60 mile round trip commute twice on one charge (I live in a remote area) then I’d give it a shot.
Since making the switch I’ve found that my driving habits have changed in fairly subtle, but significant, ways that quickly meant that I now have a similar feeling about going back to an ICE as many folk seem to feel about switching to an EV.
For example, I used to frequently stress myself out by letting the yellow light come on before putting diesel in my old car - and living where I do i can often find myself more than 60 miles from an open garage (or at least one I know of). I no longer have that as I’m much more aware of my range. I’ve also nearly forgotten what it is like to be rushing to work in the morning only to realise I need to fill up at the expense of being late again!
I know these examples are likely edge cases to do with the poor way I used to manage fuel in my old car and I don’t expect them to apply widely. However, my point is that there were a lot of things I thought would be a pain before I got the EV that have turned out to be completely non-issues because my habits shifted to accommodate the differences. Equally, there are a lot of advantages to the EV that I would never have thought of before owning one. I’m sure it is not for everyone but, if anyone finds themselves feeling like they want an EV, but they keep feeling like they talk themselves out of it (that’s how I felt), I’d recommend just going for it - I genuinely cannot see why I would ever return to an ICE, regardless of arguments about the relative environmental credentials of either technology (I’m uncomfortable with both for different reasons - and I’m no less comfortable with hydrogen until technology and costs make green hydrogen viable).
For me there is an extra hassle in charging a car at home.
We’ve got a garage, so could in theory (gotta have electric wiring updated etc) charge at home. However we have 3 cars, so whereas we can all go out, fill up with petrol and be done in 5 mins we’d have to configure who is charging when.
If I come home and need to plug in my electric car, what happens in my sister also needs to do so? Sure we can plug in for a few hours, move the car, plug in the next car for another few hours but that’s just hassle.
It’d be different when charging speeds increase a bit I suppose. Or if more workplaces were installing charges in all of their parking spaces.
Electric cars are just a too inconvenient and too expensive for me at the moment.
It’s only hassle if you replace all the cars at the same time. If you just replace one car now, there’s no to move cars around for charging. And then when charging speeds are faster you can replace a second car, and/or when workplace or public charging is more widespread you can replace a third.
That is a good point - a lot of the changes to my way of thinking about a car are related to the ease and benefits of charging at home - I’m lucky to have space to be able to install chargers for a couple of vehicles (if I needed to - we try hard to be a one car household, although it is getting less easy with the ‘new normal’ making work patterns less predictable).
I don’t think I would get more than one EV without having a dedicated charge point for each one - as you say, I wouldn’t be done with the hassle. It would also make it difficult to make use of electricity tariffs like Octopus Go, which make the cost of running the EV (18000 miles per year) basically negligible compared with my old diesel.
I worry about / am excited to see the solution to the problem of providing access to charge for folk with no off-street parking, which I think is a large number of car owners in cities in the UK.
Now you make me think about it, having a dedicated home charge point would definitely be a ‘red line’ for me if considering an EV!
My research suggests that those without off street parking will not be served very well.
It seems to me that Councillors responsible for providing chargers generally don’t understand the issues.
My own council recently bid for funding to provide for the needs of folk like me and handed the contract to a start up company that has been described by some in newspaper comment as "inept”
The nearest charger to me is around half a mile away and none of the chargers have been designated for EVs. I complained about this and eventually the Council agreed to consult about the imposition of an RTO which would allow the spaces to be designated. Only one of the five roads that have had chargers installed will benefit from designated spaces. I suspect that the cost of an RTO at around £5000 each will be a factor.
Then to add insult to injury the chargers are set to cost 24p/kWh on a 24 hour basis although the chargers were described as having the ability to vary the cost to reflect night rates.
My view is that the issues presently being experienced by EV owners will be resolved by companies such as BP and Shell. Both companies are repurposing many of their sites to provide ultra fast chargers at pace, albeit at 41p / kWh.
I think this is the inevitable path things will take. Existing forecourts will convert to electric, charge rates continue to increase and EV ranges will increase. Ultimately it will reach a point at which the difference between refueling and charging is relatively negligible.
Also, at the moment there seems to be concerns around ‘how long to fully recharge’, but many/most people ‘top up’ their fuel tank and I see the same being true for EVs, especially since recharging between 20% and 80% is typically the most rapid/efficient.
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phildawson
(Sorry, I will have to escalate this.)
743
I see it getting to a point where you simply don’t need charging at home before it gets to that adoption. Having millions of charging points seems ridiculous.
It seems we’ll get rapid charging where 10-80% turns into five minutes that you can do on at a charging station and go (converted petrol/diesel station).
At the moment we have 270kW vehicles charging 10-80% in 21 minutes, I’m sure we’ll see that reduce quickly and get added to cheaper vehicles.
In future when hydrogen takes over it’ll be the same time as petrol/diesel
) and it was ace from a cost/practical pov. The only internal thing I didn’t like was the shinny black around the selector and doors which was a fingerprint haven.
