Do you think that the UK switching to electric vehicles is realistic?

[The Ham]

It's basically OK for one of the use-cases for small cars - the second runaround that doesn't do long journeys - but not for the other one - the (typically young) person who does plenty of long journeys but can't afford a car more suitable for them.

Of course there's nothing that says the same car needs to be usable for both use-cases. It might mean lower residual values if there's a smaller pool of buyers, but people will always want runaround type small cars.

I would still question how many 80+ mile trips most people (young or old) actually make.

As I've said before I'm a slightly extreme example (due to regular trips to see family at about 240 miles) and whilst we would need a primary car which could do a decent range, we are usual in the number of trips we make of that distance. However, given that we are in the average, to make the average work, there's got to be people who don't make nearly as many 50+ mile trips as the average.

As I've said before, there's a good chance that for a once a year return journey people could change what they do. For example, rather than rushing to get to the holiday home, they leave early, stop off somewhere for breakfast (charge the car), then go for a day trip (charge the car), they then drive to somewhere for an evening meal (charge the car), arrive at where they are staying.

In doing so they could probably travel 200 miles, do something during the day and still get to where they are going on holiday. However rather than spending 4 hours in the car with a short lunch break, they break up the journey so it's much more pleasant. Not least as (assuming it's during the summer) that they aren't traveling in the middle of the day when it could be very hot, it's also likely that they'll miss the middle of the day congestion and/or will be aware of where there's likely to be issues and be able to divert past at least some of them.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It'll be stupidly expensive to lease (vs other vehicles at similar price points) because the residual value will be horrific.

It would have done alright 10 years ago as a competitor to the original Leaf and Zoe. But it's just not competitive with the current market. stick a decent sixed battery and more powerful motor on it and it would do well, and add perhaps £5,000 to the cost. Would probably make it cheaper to lease as the residuals would be better.

It'll be interesting to see where it pops up as a PCP because that seems to be how most cars are bought now, leasing is generally for more premium markets though I have noticed Stellantis dabbling in it at the bottom end. PCP of course is basically a lease with an option to buy at a predetermined price at the end.

It might well suit those who (like I, not that I'm in the market for that sort of car) prefer to use an unsecured personal loan or hire purchase, though.

I would still question how many 80+ mile trips most people (young or old) actually make.

The thing is that even if you don't do it often you want your car to be able to do it. The other thing about this sort of budget end car (once it's filtered through to the used market) is that a lot of people in the budget car market will live in terraced housing/flats without charging facilities, so just plugging it in daily overnight (which will work for those buying it new as a second car in addition to their big SUV and parking it on the drive with a charger) won't work for them.

Having said that, given how the costs of driving for young people have generally shot through the roof, I wonder if we'll see driving moving alongside housebuying as something you simply don't do in your 20s before long, which would effectively eliminate that "small old banger that you do drive to the mountains every other week*" market.

* Or wherever. I only use the mountains as an example because I do, albeit not in an old banger and by train when feasible.

 

[GLC]

As for the 0-60, I'd be more interested in the 0-30mph speed TBH. It does sound like trying to build up speed on a motorway slip-road would be scary!

0-30 (well 0-50km/h), is 5.8 seconds for the lower power one. A 1.0L Toyota Aygo will do the same in about 4.6 seconds, but given that would involve a perfect launch (i.e. right gear, right RPM etc) vs just booting it in a single gear EV, in and around town I'm sure the performance of this will be perfectly acceptable

 

[Andrew*Debbie]

It's a shame about this, as if it was nearer 100kWh you could have had a rapid charge (given the small capacity battery). 40 odd minutes is quite a wait,

Spring has a ~27kWh battery. Charging at 100kW would be nearly 4C. It would overheat the pack. They are likely using passive cooling. That has to be why DC charging is limited to 30kW.

For long distances take the train.

The Spring sold in Europe has no heat pump, and no regenerative braking.

The UK Spring is new car. It has almost nothing in common with the previous version sold in Europe. It has regenerative braking. Not sure about the heatpump. It does have aircon as standard.

 

[birchesgreen]

Spring looks an interesting car, the range would be fine for me for a week. I'm sticking to my 18 month old Sandero for now but keeping a watching brief.

 

[skyhigh]

Spring has a ~27kWh battery. Charging at 100kW would be nearly 4C. It would overheat the pack. They are likely using passive cooling. That has to be why DC charging is limited to 30kW.

Slightly disappointing though as the original Zoe only had a 22kWh pack but had an option to charge at up to 43kW on AC.

I imagine 30kW is peak speed so in reality it'll be slower.

The car does support V2L though which is a good feature. If we ever needed a second car I would consider one.

 

[Bletchleyite]

So I just had a thought. With Stellantis at least pushing towards leasing (not even PCP) could we work around the limited range of budget new EVs by including in the lease the option to hire, for a heavily discounted rate, an EV with a larger range for say 2 weeks per year for your family holiday or holidays? That would make the smaller car with a smaller range suit more families. It'd also have the benefit of reducing the number of big cars driving round cities that have been purchased simply because a big car is needed once or twice a year.

 

[bib]

Wonder if this concept will ever make it into production, a battery tender seems kind of logical if you don't need a big battery most of the time and don't want to hire a car.

Battery Tender — EP Tender

eptender.com

 

[gabrielhj07]

Wonder if this concept will ever make it into production, a battery tender seems kind of logical if you don't need a big battery most of the time and don't want to hire a car.

Battery Tender — EP Tender

eptender.com

View attachment 154119

This is getting silly. Once you start having to plan your journeys around your mode of transport, rather than the other way around, you’ve more or less invented the train.

 

[Bletchleyite]

This is getting silly. Once you start having to plan your journeys around your mode of transport, rather than the other way around, you’ve more or less invented the train.

While I'm not sure it's a wonderfull idea, you really are getting into very tiny niches (or even nonexistent ones) if you're considering a use-case that involves going to the shops and having to make an unexpected 200 mile journey without the ability to pop home first.

 

[trebor79]

Wonder if this concept will ever make it into production, a battery tender seems kind of logical if you don't need a big battery most of the time and don't want to hire a car.

Battery Tender — EP Tender

eptender.com

View attachment 154119

Nope. Stupid idea.

While I'm not sure it's a wonderfull idea, you really are getting into very tiny niches (or even nonexistent ones) if you're considering a use-case that involves going to the shops and having to make an unexpected 200 mile journey without the ability to pop home first.

Or plug into a rapid charger for 20 minutes en route.

Look guys, the reality of long-distance EV driving in a suitable vehicle is that I need to stop for a wee wee and a cup of tea long before the car needs charging. I have just about enough time to empty my bladder and drink my tea before it's time to go. My average charging time has been 18 minutes, but that's only because I game it sometimes by setting the charge limit to 100% (the last 20% takes way longer than the first 80% to fill) so I have time to each a sandwich. If I remove those outliers it's 12 minutes.

So people who blab on about their diesel taking "5 minutes to fill and then it has a 600 mile range" I just say "Can you fill your diesel, pay for it, then move the car to the car park and have your toilet break and buy refreshments inside of 12 minutes?"

 

[gabrielhj07]

While I'm not sure it's a wonderfull idea, you really are getting into very tiny niches (or even nonexistent ones) if you're considering a use-case that involves going to the shops and having to make an unexpected 200 mile journey without the ability to pop home first.

Not even that, I just think that if you reckon you’ll need a spare battery at home, because of the sort of driving you do, then just get a diesel and save loads of hassle.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Not even that, I just think that if you reckon you’ll need a spare battery at home, because of the sort of driving you do, then just get a diesel and save loads of hassle.

And be unable to drive it into most urban areas. ULEZs will be pretty universal soon, and we'll soon be heading into ZEZs. Because peoples' lungs are more important than drivers' convenience.

It's not like we didn't already have this with smokeless zones in the 80s - people switched to Coalite (and later gas) and it was fine, and as a result we don't have smogs any more.

(People get it wrong by thinking carbon is that important in this context - it's not - it's about NOx and particulates that are harmful to people - personally I'm fed up of being able to taste diesel fumes, and that's not just when boarding a filthy Voyager at New St)

 

[trebor79]

Not even that, I just think that if you reckon you’ll need a spare battery at home, because of the sort of driving you do, then just get a diesel and save loads of hassle.

Nobody needs a battery tender for their car. It's a ridiculous idea that will go nowhere. I did have a look at their site, and about the only sensible use case they have is for lighting towers etc instead of a generator, but they're a bit late to market for that.
"just get a diesel" is not the answer. That's NEVER the answer.

EV's do not have the practicality issues that sceptics like to imagine they do (I was such a sceptic until I tried one).

 

[greyman42]

Many of the comments on this lengthy post have been around the need for small, affordable battery electric cars. Rather surprisingly, the Spring was the third best selling BEV in Europe for the whole of 2022 and 2023 . That's quite an achievement, so I would suggest it is a proper car - not all of us want a 3 tonne SUV with 350 miles of range and charging rates of 270kW (looking at you Porsche Taycan).

A Porsche Taycan is not a SUV, nor does it weigh 3 tonne.

 

[Mawkie]

A Porsche Taycan is not a SUV, nor does it weigh 3 tonne.

Well done. It doesn't do 350 miles on a single charge either.

 

[trebor79]

Actually the Taycan 270kW charging rate is very useful. I'd say being able to charge really fast is a better utility than having range in excess of 250-300 miles.
I don't drive a Taycan (I wish!). My Tesla can charge at 250kW, but it starts to ramp down from about 30% SOC whereas the Taycan will charge at that speed to about 50%, and still pull over 100kW to 80%.
My Niro can in theory charge at 75kW, but I've only ever seen that briefly a couple of times. Usually it managed about 45kW. Long journeys in the Niro do indeed involve a 45 minute stop for charging (and it needs to charge more often as it's not as efficient) that the anti-EV brigade harp on about. Long journeys in the Tesla/Taycan take no longer than ICE.

 

[thejuggler]

Well done. It doesn't do 350 miles on a single charge either.

A friend has just picked up a used Taycan for business tax purposes. No idea which model or battery, but it shows than 200 miles on a full charge. Its an expensive car for his daily commute as for longer trips he needs to use the family Range Rover.

 

[trebor79]

for longer trips he needs to use the family Range Rover.

He really doesn't!

 

[renegademaster]

I like the battery tender idea tbh. If I had something like a Nissan leaf with a low range and slow charging it would tempt me to rent one of those rather than faffing around finding chargers somewhere far and unfamiliar.

 

[trebor79]

I like the battery tender idea tbh. If I had something like a Nissan leaf with a low range and slow charging it would tempt me to rent one of those rather than faffing around finding chargers somewhere far and unfamiliar.

Tell me you've never driven and EV without telling me you've never driven an EV!

The battery tender is a total nonsense. There isn't a car that supports it. Most cars won't even let you put it into drive with the charge port occupied. The battery is under the floor, not towed in a trailer behind.

Finding chargers is easy. There are several apps available that work like google maps - tell it where to go, it'll give you a route and also tell you where to stop and charge (and for how long).

 

[GusB]

The battery tender is a total nonsense. There isn't a car that supports it. Most cars won't even let you put it into drive with the charge port occupied. The battery is under the floor, not towed in a trailer behind.

That's even before you consider the point that it is a trailer and many people won't have the entitlement to tow one on their licences. It's asking for trouble!

 

[Bletchleyite]

That's even before you consider the point that it is a trailer and many people won't have the entitlement to tow one on their licences. It's asking for trouble!

Absolutely everyone with a full UK licence does now. A year or two back the law was amended to basically give everyone B+E entitlement. You'll see it on your licence when you next renew it, but it's legally there either way. This entitles you to, subject to the legal capabilities of the vehicle, tow up to 3500kg.

However even without that you never needed B+E for a light unbraked trailer (up to 750kg) within vehicle limits and provided the total GVW* of car and trailer didn't exceed 3500kg.

It's a bit of a silly idea, but this isn't a reason it couldn't work.

* Gross vehicle weight, otherwise known as MAM (Maximum Authorised Mass), the plated maximum laden weight of the vehicle.

 

[The Ham]

The thing is that even if you don't do it often you want your car to be able to do it. The other thing about this sort of budget end car (once it's filtered through to the used market) is that a lot of people in the budget car market will live in terraced housing/flats without charging facilities, so just plugging it in daily overnight (which will work for those buying it new as a second car in addition to their big SUV and parking it on the drive with a charger) won't work for them.

Having said that, given how the costs of driving for young people have generally shot through the roof, I wonder if we'll see driving moving alongside housebuying as something you simply don't do in your 20s before long, which would effectively eliminate that "small old banger that you do drive to the mountains every other week*" market.

* Or wherever. I only use the mountains as an example because I do, albeit not in an old banger and by train when feasible.

The number of young people with a driving licence has generally been on a downwards track since 2000.

In the 90's it was about 45% of 17-21 year old, in 2019 it had fallen to 37% (and that was a bit of an outlier with 2017 and 2016 being more typical with 31% and 30%).

Whilst the 21-30 year olds have been more stable of late than the younger group, in the 90's it averaged around 75% mark whilst since 2000 it's been more typically around the 66% mark.

There's a small shift in the 31-40 age range with maybe a small shift downwards.

It's only when you get to the 41-50 age range that you see a rise, but then most 17 year olds in the 90's would be 44-55 now, so that'd no surprise.

 

[plugwash]

Absolutely everyone with a full UK licence does now. A year or two back the law was amended to basically give everyone B+E entitlement. You'll see it on your licence when you next renew it, but it's legally there either way. This entitles you to, subject to the legal capabilities of the vehicle, tow up to 3500kg.

Yeah, looks like the government reduced discrimination against young people for once.

 

[E27007]

It'll be stupidly expensive to lease (vs other vehicles at similar price points) because the residual value will be horrific.

It would have done alright 10 years ago as a competitor to the original Leaf and Zoe. But it's just not competitive with the current market. stick a decent sixed battery and more powerful motor on it and it would do well, and add perhaps £5,000 to the cost. Would probably make it cheaper to lease as the residuals would be better.

If someone is averse to buying used (but there's far less risk with EV than ICE, so that's going to change), then there are great lease deals on far better cars than this - eg Smart Hashtag 1 was recently available for £199 a month.
And if it's a "I wouldn't be seen dead in a used car" snobbery, they 'aint gonna buy a Dacia!

The issue with the Dacia Spring may be the NCAP rating, I like the style of the car, but I read it is 1-star NCAP, if that is correct, a fail for Renault, the owners of the brand. Renault were pioneers in making volume cars to high driver/passenger safety standards

 

[birchesgreen]

There is nothing unsafe about the car, it just doesn't have the same gizmos as others which game the NCAP rating.

 

[Mawkie]

The issue with the Dacia Spring may be the NCAP rating, I like the style of the car, but I read it is 1-star NCAP, if that is correct, a fail for Renault, the owners of the brand. Renault were pioneers in making volume cars to high driver/passenger safety standards

The previous Dacia Spring had a dreadful NCAP rating - largely based on cost-cutting when it came to installing the more sophisticated safety technology that modern cars usually have now. I think it was based on a Renault Kwid, a £3000 car sold in India without even an airbag! I couldn't find a rating for the 2024 Spring, but it does now have lane keep assist and a few other things.

Of course with the average speeds in cities being so low and the limited motorway ability of this car, perhaps that's a compromise owners are willing to make.

Dacia know the average daily mileage for their car is 24 miles. So the car is perfectly designed for what it is - a small city car, probably a second vehicle, that does a low daily mileage, at an affordable price.

On a wider note, I think we have to accept that cars have use cases, and much as we like to think we should have a car that can go anywhere, do anything - that also comes with compromises. Don't buy a Smart car if you've got a big family. Don't buy a Range Rover for good fuel economy. Don't buy a Dacia Spring for extended motorway driving.

To answer the original question, then yes, cars like the Dacia Spring are making it more realistic for the UK to switch to electric cars.

 

[trebor79]

The issue with the Dacia Spring may be the NCAP rating, I like the style of the car, but I read it is 1-star NCAP, if that is correct, a fail for Renault, the owners of the brand. Renault were pioneers in making volume cars to high driver/passenger safety standards

There is nothing unsafe about the car, it just doesn't have the same gizmos as others which game the NCAP rating.

Yes, and I think NCAP is going too far with a lot of this stuff. For example although LKA and LDWS can be switched off in some cars, if they don't default to "on" every time the car is started that drops a star from the rating.
That's all well and good, but some of these systems are particularly poorly implements and overly aggressive to the point of being dangerous. For example our Kia Niro on the Norfolk country roads will start beeping and tugging the wheel either towards the ditch or the middle of the road because it doesn't work very well on twisty roads with variable widths. Pull out to overtake a cyclist and it'll try and steer you striaght into said cyclist! Kia answer is "The system is designed to work on highways". So why does the damn thing default to "on" all the time then? Oh, that'll be Euro NCAP...
On the Kia you can hold down a steering button for 3 seconds to turn it off, which I do the first time the stupid system reminds me of it's presence. Other people jam the button down with a piece of paper so it always turns itself off.
This would be a bigger issue in my Tesla (it's a faff turning anything on or off), but fortunately the system there seems less hyperactive and only seems to trigger in situations where it's actually helpful.

Really I'd like 2 ratings from Euro NCAP - an "overall" one which includes their assessment of all this electronic rubbish (note NCAP makes no assessment of how well these systems are actually implemented, just "oh, it has system x, tick"), and an actual crash test rating. That's what I'm interested in. Presently people assume a 1 star car won't perform as well in a crash as a 5 star car and that is not necessarily the case.

Edit: I'm more interested in the actual crash performance, as that's what actually saved my life and prevented me from being even minorly injured when I drove a Fiat 500 head on into another car at 55mph. None of the electronic stuff can save you from somebody pulling out of a country junction 6 feet away at that speed. Really was amazing to walk out of that uninjured. If that had happened in eg the Nissan Micra I used to drive 25 years ago I'd have been horrible mashed.

 

[jon0844]

The issue with the Dacia Spring may be the NCAP rating, I like the style of the car, but I read it is 1-star NCAP, if that is correct, a fail for Renault, the owners of the brand. Renault were pioneers in making volume cars to high driver/passenger safety standards

The NCAP rating system is a lot different to how it used to be, given how much is based on accident avoidance technology over things like crash protection. If the car doesn't have all the same sensors as more expensive cars, it will fall short.

Bear in mind that if the rules change, the Volvo EX30 and even perhaps Tesla cars, may fall to two stars by not having physical controls for specified functions. I bet if that happens, we'll find a lot of people suddenly changing their views on the rating system. Most people would consider a Volvo to be safe, so I wonder if they'll put pressure to make sure the changes don't happen OR they'll introduce physical buttons again (which TBH I'd prefer).

Personally, I think there might be a need to split the tests and rate the car for physical safety systems and for technology safety systems - especially as the latter often allows for the driver to disable said features. Most MG4 owners will turn off lane keep assist as it can be over zealous at times (or was on earlier software) so if you've disabled it, you've potentially put the driver at risk. If the car hadn't had LKA from the factory it may well have been rated only 1 or 2 stars, but what's the difference now it gets disabled every trip (you cannot turn it off permanently).

Edit: I see the post above says the same thing about two separate scores.

To answer the original question, then yes, cars like the Dacia Spring are making it more realistic for the UK to switch to electric cars.

I agree. Glad someone else 'gets it'.