[Steve Thayne]

Saw this from a Facebook friend - someone who has considered buying an ev purely for the cost savings in the past


British government subisidies for electric
charging points have stopped and charging at
a motorway service station will cost more than
it would to get the same range out of a new
diesel. There goes the electric car industry.


I wonder if some of the media reports have a role in this misunderstanding.

Have commented to try to help him understand and also posted on my Facebook page

 

[Paul]

The BBC You and Yours and the comments, further BBC reports and general "noise" it's created (even in EV circles) have all been quite negative and will no doubt lead people to misunderstand the situation. A real shame.

Well done on trying to educate, it's all we can do!

 

[Olivier]

Let's hope it'll be a self destroying prophecy, and that the likes of Chargemaster, seeing their customer base growth projection nosedive will realise they have to be a little more clever with their pricing. It is their charge structure that's actually destroying any value in their offering.

 

[Steve Thayne]

Yes. Really think these kind of things can only delay not stop the momentum now. Word of mouth plus peoples direct experience of friends and relatives is going to lead to a proportion of those buying and the momentum continuing

Am tempted to conspiracy theorise though....no news is without spin but there are so many other choices of emphasis you and yours COULD have chosen for their stories. Almost as though there are interests not wanting electric cars to succeed....surely not.....

(takes tongue back out of cheek. Before it is cut off.)

 

[smartie]

To be fair, it is still diffucult to justify EVs on cost grounds alone other then perhaps as a company car or buying a cheap used one.

People should also not assume that the remaining free public chargers will continue to be free forever as a way of justifying cost benefits of an EV. However, hopefully any pricing structure applied to these will not follow the ludicrous Chargemaster example.

 

[Steve Thayne]

Think it is easier to justify ev's on the grounds of cost alone now since the battery replacement cost announced from Nissan in the USA of 5 grand

i.e. 100,000 miles driven = 5 p a mile battery replacement. Less than 2p a mile for charging at home (economomy 7).

Driviving 25,000 miles a yeae for me (I know not typical) and paying for my Leaf over 5 years meant an immediate saving for me from running my petrol car.

 

[Matt Beard]

Think it is easier to justify ev's on the grounds of cost alone now since the battery replacement cost announced from Nissan in the USA of 5 grand

i.e. 100,000 miles driven = 5 p a mile battery replacement. Less than 2p a mile for charging at home (economomy 7).

Driviving 25,000 miles a yeae for me (I know not typical) and paying for my Leaf over 5 years meant an immediate saving for me from running my petrol car.

25,000 miles a year is 70 miles per day on average. Do you never need to charge away from home?

 

[Steve Thayne]

Rarely. Very little available here in Shropshire. So I both need and choose to drive with care and ev friendly routes. Fortunately many of my work miles are around town so Leaf friendly. Am getting over 100 miles charge this time of year and in the 90's in the worst winter weather. Happy to arrive home with nil charge though if the maths add up - I know these choices are not for everyone

 

[andrew*debbie]

How many rapid chargers do Chargemaster operate?

 

[flipper]

I don't think the data on EVstatus.com is complete, as many of the chargers show a power rating of 0, but if you filter the data by Chargemaster and a power rating of 40000-50000 then you get 21 chargers.

 

[Lee Howard]

Forgive me for using US measures, but bear with me...

The Volt gets 40 miles per US gallon when running on petrol - which is probably only a bit more than we can expect a modern petrol-driven car to be. Since petrol is approximately $4.00 per-gallon that's $0.10 per mile.

Charging at home my electricity rates are $0.0625 per kWh. If I estimate 4 miles per kWh then when running on electric the Volt costs me $0.0156 per-mile, or roughly 6.5 times less than when on petrol.

However, if I'm not charging at home and I'm paying for public charging, then things change a bit because public charging rates are much more than charging at home. If the cost of the electricity increases by 6.5 times then it's a wash. So if I have to pay for a fee for public charging that exceeds $0.40 per kWh, then I'm actually paying more than if I were to use petrol.

The Volt charges slowly, and it really isn't intended to be used with en-route fee-based charging, but when I do use public charging Blink network will charge network members $1.00 for whatever time they can spend charging. After an hour and a half of charging I usually have a 10 or 15-mile charge... approximately 3 kWh. At that point I'm at about $0.30 per kWh. Blink charges non-members $2.00... and at that point it's clearly more-expensive than using petrol.

Then if you factor-in the reality that EVs cost more than traditional cars as @smartie said, you have a tough time justifying an EV purchase based on cost-savings.

So for those of us who do not need to pay for public charging there is a real long-term monetary savings to be had by purchasing and using electric vehicle transportation instead of petrol when a substantial amount of mileage is considered. However, if the EV driver has to pay for public charging, then the monetary savings approaches zero or is even more-expensive on the EV-side.

I think that there are far superior reasons to purchasing and using an EV other than monetary savings. Convenience of home charging is a big one for me. I will eventually purchase another EV (for my wife) for that sole reason.

 

[andrew*debbie]

Yes, but shouldn't we look at plug-in hybrids differently? They never need public charging. Sure, if it is there and it is free, why not but as you say there isn't much of a reason to pay to charge them.

Gas and diesel in the US have always cost about 1/2 of what they cost in the UK. Makes the economic argument that much weaker, even with subsidies.

Here, electricity costs us about 3p per mile to run the leaf. Our Z4 was over 20p per mile. Even our economical former daily driver was around 14p per mile. Since switching to the Leaf we are saving about $200 per month on fuel bills. Payments on the Leaf are about £10 per month less then the BMW so we are well ahead on expenses.

Public charging?? We mostly charge at home. There are a handful of 7kW posts I use now and again.

I think that is true for a large number of EV drivers. They use public posts but mostly don't need them. Just look at how much usage has dropped off now that CM has started asking for payment. Many people here won't even make the one time £20 fee to CM to use the £0.00 per charge posts. A lot of the CM posts are free once you sign up and put £20 in a charge now account. If people needed the posts they would pay the £20.