Is this in response to the Channel 5 programme tonight?
From my personal point of view the key factors against getting a pure electric car are the initial cost (at least 50% above the price of an equivalent ICE car), the range - especially as the battery ages (see below) and the sheer nonsensical use of gadgets and apps and subscriptions, so I'm holding out as long as I can while recognising it will have to come at some point.
The subscriptions thing was also brought up at the end of the C5 programme - why should you have to sign up to a "club" or give over your personal details just to activate a charger? The blasted things charge over-the-odds for electricity anyway, so why can't you just tap or swipe your card as you would at a petrol station? They showed an example of a charging station which allows exactly this but it's almost unique in the country.
If someone produced an electric car which
didn't need an app on your phone to start the heater fifteen minutes before you drive off (a button on the remote would work just fine) and
didn't have a 21" computer monitor blazing away in the centre of the dash, ruining my night vision (I have enough problems with the "infotainment" systems manufacturers have been fitting to normal cars for some years) and instead fitted a nice simple speedometer and "fuel gauge", not only would it save a couple of thousand quid of currently hard-to-source electronics, but it would probably make for a nicer driving experience.
As for range and battery life, my problem is that I regularly travel around 24,000 miles a year. I realise I'm unusual in this and my eldest - who probably manages about 6,000 a year - is more "normal" and a much better fit for an EV. My regular commute is around 50 miles each way, about 35 of which are on a motorway, and I cannot guarantee to be able to charge at the far end. I would also want to minimise charging away from home purely on cost grounds. Fortunately I do have a driveway and am able to park off-road in order to charge at home, but a
lot of housing around here is 150+ year-old terracing where this is simply impossible.
When I first looked at EVs, the best was probably the Leaf, with a quoted range of "up to 150 miles". This sounds ideal until you realise that this is with a new battery, at extra-urban speeds (i.e. 50mph-ish) in the spring with no heating or cooling. Nissan had a calculator (may still do) on their website which, once you'd entered "motorway, 0C ambient, hours of darkness" brought the as-new range down to something like 120 miles, again just about ok for my 100 mile commute, except for three things.
Firstly, 20 miles of leeway is not really enough. I get nervous when my Diesel car goes "bleep", even though it will have somewhere north of 60 miles left at that point.
Secondly, I sometimes have to divert via a much more taxing route involving twistier, hillier roads. The distance isn't very much greater, but the fuel use is (and no, it won't all be reclaimed regeneratively as I go back down the hills, when the Diesel car is coasting and uses zero fuel anyway!).
Thirdly, at the time, Nissan reckoned a battery was "spent" when it would only hold about 70% of the as-new charge. For my driving pattern this was predicted to be somewhere around 4 or 5 years and - I'm sure you can see where this is going - 70% of 120 miles is only 84 miles, which is not enough range for my whole commute. On top of that, current wisdom is that Lithium-based batteries don't like being charged to 100% and then discharged to (near) zero, so doing this every day would severely reduce the life of my battery.
The Renault battery lease scheme at the time didn't have a tier for 24,000 miles a year, so that wasn't an option either.
Taking all those things into account, I need a car which - as new - has a range of somewhere around 300 miles just for my 100 mile commute. I reckon this will work because:
- 300 miles will probably turn into 250 miles in the dark in the winter on the motorway (possibly less)
- 250 miles is actually only 150 miles if you stick to the "optimal charge window" of 20% - 80% (i.e. only use 60% of the battery capacity) (I know this is current wisdom, but I do have my doubts and would be happy using 10% to 90% based on experience with phones, laptops etc. which are similar (if not actually identical) battery technologies)
- 150 miles turns into 105 miles once the battery has aged and can only hold 70% of its initial charge
As a bonus, 300 miles range would get me to most relatives in one hop.
Such cars are now starting to appear, but even ignoring the Teslas, Mercs and suchlike they are expensive. The big-battery Nissan Leaf (290 mile range) starts at £34½k and the big-battery Hyundai Kona (300 mile range) starts at £35½k. I've never yet bought a car for more than £20k, and thinking about our other car, with a big family, why is the Nissan e-NV200 only available with the small battery?
And why the rush for electric? Whatever happened to Hydrogen ICE or
fuel cells?
A friend is in the market for a new car. He says he's found a lot of second-hand Leafs on the market, but almost without exception they come with batteries which can barely manage 50 miles on a full charge, and a cheap car doesn't look so cheap if the first thing you have to do is shell out £3k or so (it's difficult to find reliable prices online, I've seen up to £5k quoted for a first-gen battery pack) on a new battery pack.
M.