Can you not purchase things that will lock the cable into the car while it’s locked to prevent it from being stolen.
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Yes, a car 
Cables are locked in when plugged in to the car. My car provides a thirty second window to remove it after unlocking the car, leave it longer than thirty seconds and the procedure has to be repeated.
This is always going to be the case because an EV is cheaper to drive. So the more miles you can drive the more money you save and because they say EV’s will last longer than a typical ICE car (lower maintenance costs, fewer moving parts, etc) you’re able to continue making those savings for longer too. I guess if you can keep hold of an EV for long enough, the savings will eventually outweigh the cost of buying new versus buying a used ICE (especially if you’re high annual mileage).
For example, if you typically spend £100 a month on fuel for an ICE. You could save over £10k on fuel alone over a 10 year ownership of an EV. Plus savings on servicing and repairs.
edit: going back to my previous post, this £10k savings over 10 years is also a big reason why I think sub £20k EVs will be the true tipping point. When the car can half pay for itself just by being an EV.
The problem with trying to crystal ball gaze that far into the future is that you can’t assume what’s true now is going to stay true.
If you can home charge, then yeah - you’d save a lot more, but if you are reliant on public (not necessarily rapid) chargers, then it’s difficult to predict how much that’s going to cost - especially as some networks are still on a model of either ‘free vend’ or ‘monthly sub’. As I’ve mentioned before, BP and Shell both have their own charge networks now, and I expect that at some point even ESSO will join in as well - and I would also expect that they’d end up charging a similar amount to charge up your EV as they currently charge to fill up your petrol car.
And at some point there’s going to be something changed to make up for the tax loss from the drop in petrol duties - just hope it’s not as ridiculous as what they’ve just introduced in Victoria in Australia where all EV owners now have to submit their annual mileage to the tax office to get their tax bill…
It’s also big annoyance of mine when you see a lot of publicity about how much an EV can save you over a petrol car and a big chunk of it is because they include not having to pay the London Congestion Charge. Gee - thanks, but as I think there’s some people in the UK who don’t go to London, that’s probably not relevant to a lot of us…
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Obviously an EV won’t need an oil change. But it will still need brakes/tyres?
Sure, but definitely no where near as often for the brakes because of regenerative braking (which is basically like engine braking). Tyres maybe just as much because the added torque makes little wheel spins more frequent when you pull away from the lights (in my experience anyway).
Generally I was thinking more about the cost to repair engine faults like faulty fuel pumps, worn out spark plugs, oil leaks, coolant leaks, that kind of thing. (Found this old blog post with some examples)
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Oh yeah, you’re absolutely right. I was definitely thinking about it in terms of being able to charge at home. The savings are not going to be quite as significant if you’re charging elsewhere and like you said we can’t really predict what the rates will be in the future. But while we’re crystal balling, there could just as easily be added carbon taxes on ICE as we move towards EVs over the next 10 years. So I guess that could compensate for mileage taxes or other schemes that might get introduced. Its going to continue to be in the governments best interest to incentivise going EV in some way if it wants to hit its targets.
I think long term reliability is a bit of an X factor really. Theoretically there’s less parts to go wrong but the technology is also new and I tested over long term use. Tesla’s have had no end of reliability issues (they generally rank as one of the least reliable car makes out there).
As most people will be getting them on lease or with warranties, it won’t be an issue now though.
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According to What Car the Tesla M3 is the most reliable Executive car.
Most reliable executive cars
1. Tesla Model 3 (2019-present)
Reliability rating 99.4%
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Yes but as I am sure you know the Xs and Ss have been breaking all over the place, which is why Tesla almost ranks at the bottom of their overall manufacturer survey 2020 What Car? Reliability Survey: brands | What Car? .
Point is, it’s at best too early to say whether the current crop of electric cars are more reliable over a 10 year period and the indicators aren’t great that they will be.
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That can’t be a good thing if their cars are so unreliable 
A tesla was my dream EV too 
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Don’t try to reason, all that’ll happen is elements of articles will be cherry picked to suit whatever gets peddled next.
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That’s really interesting. Most of the stuff I’d read generally talks about EVs being more reliable but I guess it’s usually just citing the whole “fewer moving parts” arguement rather than any hard evidence. I wish there was more of a breakdown of those survey results.
The paragraphs about EVs feels a bit generalised. I’d love to know which EVs were virtually faultless and what faults the other EVs had, but can’t seem to find more information.
Included the paragraphs below:
It’s also worth highlighting the strong performance of all hybrid cars. The class gained a 96.7% rating overall, and none of the cars surveyed scored less than 95%. So if you want a dependable car, it might be worth picking a hybrid.
However, you’re less guaranteed to find satisfaction if you buy an electric car. Although some were virtually fault-free, others were plagued by problems, and the differences aren’t necessarily brand-specific. Tesla has had a lot of build quality and electrical problems with the Model S and Model X; that’s why it ranks fairly low down in the brand chart, despite the fact that the Model 3 heads the electric car class.
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So it was bothering me that I couldn’t find a nice tidy list of results from that What Car survey, so I made one.
6 of the 8 EVs are above the overall average for reliability and all of hybrids are above average. Feel free to play around with the data yourself, I’ve run out of time to make fancy graphs etc. Maybe later.
So the What Car comment that “you’re less guaranteed to find satisfaction if you buy an electric car.” seems a bit disingenuous to me, as its seems to only be referring to older model leafs, Tesla model S and MG ZS EV. Every other model of EV is higher than average reliability. If were to pick an ICE at random, you’re more likely to get a less reliable car than if you were to pick an EV at random.
edit: note that the model 3 is included twice as it belongs to two categories. There are probably a couple other anomalies.
edit2: In terms of category average, hybrids and EVs both beat every other category average.
edit3: I can’t find any information about sample sizes or criteria for inclusion in the survey. So I have no idea why certain cars are not included and I don’t know whether the lists they provide on their website are exhaustive.
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Why do all of your posts read like a press release, and why do you only respond to positive comments or when you have some cherry-picked statistic?
As recently as the end of last year there were reports of Tesla hardware catastrophically failing:
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I’ll take your word for it! I know the early Tesla’s were particularly bad, but then they are a new company.
Still, exactly what a slim advantage in reliability will equate to in terms of real world savings on repairs - not sure and if I was budgeting, I’d budget at least the same for repairs as an ICE for now, being cautious.
That’s horrific that the roof came off! The only thing I’d note is that Tesla failures make great headlines. How many ICE vehicles catastrophically failed and burst into flames in the past 12 months?
Every year in the UK, over 100,000 cars which equates to nearly 300 a day go up in flames and around 100 people die as a result. Around 65% of these fires are started deliberately to cover criminal activity, to make a fraudulent insurance claim or as an act of vandalism. One in 12 reported stolen vehicles will be burnt out. [SOURCE]
^ This puts the figure at around 35,000 per year in the UK.
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Historically, poor reliability hasn’t been a bar to a car company succeeding*. Look at Lotus, or TVR. People used to love those cars, despite their bad to terrible reputations for being reliable!
Fiat has (or used to have) a reputation for the electronics being faulty. Never stopped them from being popular and the 500 range is practically ubiqitious.
Budgeting the saem for repairs is probably sensible, but hopefully you will make savings. There are many more moving parts by a degree of magnitude in an ICE, so many more things that could go wrong cost money to fix - compared to the batteries in an electric car. So on that basis, costs should be much lower.
Supercars can catch fire quite a lot, as I recall. Google found this for me:
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Yeah, I think that’s fair. The real savings are in fuel and CO2. I think I’ll see if I can run some more realistic numbers for my “£10k savings over 10 years” theory, maybe with some different scenarios, for home owners, high mileage versus low mileage, used versus new. Someone has probably already done this, but it’s fun to run the numbers yourself sometimes to tease out any assumptions etc.
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I think that’s a good average! Assuming comparing reasonable mileage & newer car users.
Look forward to the results.