Harry’s Garage

[Rich B]

Blimey - research required to fill your car up. More expense to fill it up quickly. And an hour to fill it up 60% is considered quick!

I'm with Harry - wait for the next gen.

[Barry]

That comment just highlights the issue with converting petrolheads - why would you want to fully charge the car? A toilet/coffee break will chuck enough in for most daily needs. Eventually there'll be plugs everywhere and you just graze/top up whenever you stop, instead of having to specifically stop for fuel. Current EV ownership vs network means you can almost do that now, and I see no reason why the network won't increase to match EV take up, simple supply and demand.

[Mito Man]

230 mile range seems pretty realistic if he's driving it as you would drive a performance car rather than sitting behind a lorry at 56 mph on the motorway as most EV drivers do.

[Ascender]

I do like the Taycan, even thought its a properly massive car.

With EVs, what’s the expected life of batteries before you’d have to replace them and what’s the likely costs? Just wondering about the used values of these things a few years down the line if you (and dealers) are going to need to budget-in replacements... not necessarily the Taycan, but all EVs.

[Rich B]

That comment just highlights the issue with converting petrolheads - why would you want to fully charge the car? A toilet/coffee break will chuck enough in for most daily needs. Eventually there'll be plugs everywhere and you just graze/top up whenever you stop, instead of having to specifically stop for fuel. Current EV ownership vs network means you can almost do that now, and I see no reason why the network won't increase to match EV take up, simple supply and demand.

Budget as much for coffee as electricity and we're down to 20mpg equivalent!

[Mito Man]

That comment just highlights the issue with converting petrolheads - why would you want to fully charge the car? A toilet/coffee break will chuck enough in for most daily needs. Eventually there'll be plugs everywhere and you just graze/top up whenever you stop, instead of having to specifically stop for fuel. Current EV ownership vs network means you can almost do that now, and I see no reason why the network won't increase to match EV take up, simple supply and demand.

Budget as much for coffee as electricity and we're down to 20mpg equivalent!

My EV caravan towing idea is perfectly reasonable now. You would eventually break even just drinking coffee and eating out the back of your own caravan whilst charging the car every few hours

[Rich B]

That comment just highlights the issue with converting petrolheads - why would you want to fully charge the car? A toilet/coffee break will chuck enough in for most daily needs. Eventually there'll be plugs everywhere and you just graze/top up whenever you stop, instead of having to specifically stop for fuel. Current EV ownership vs network means you can almost do that now, and I see no reason why the network won't increase to match EV take up, simple supply and demand.

Budget as much for coffee as electricity and we're down to 20mpg equivalent!

My EV caravan towing idea is perfectly reasonable now. You would eventually break even just drinking coffee and eating out the back of your own caravan whilst charging the car every few hours

maybe serve it to the other EV drivers waiting too? Nothing better to do with your time!

[Jobbo]

That comment just highlights the issue with converting petrolheads - why would you want to fully charge the car?

You’d need to charge it fully to get a 230 mile range. That’s not particularly far; dropping someone off at the airport, for instance, or going to Devon to surf.

How often do you put petrol in your car and *not* fill it right up?

[Rich B]

That Porsche only has a 138 mile range if you're only using between 20% & 80%. Why even quote the full range and size of the battery if you can't use it?

[Rich B]

And that's after you've ticked a £4,000 box for a bigger battery!

[integrale_evo]

People have got so lazy they can’t be bothered to press a button to lock / unlock their car or use a handle to open a boot, yet they’re now going to be expected to faff about with chargers and making payments and trailing cables about every time they stop for more than 10 minutes?

I would be a lot more enthusiastic if I could see any reasonable way in which the infrastructure was likely to roll out. I just can’t even imagine retail parks, supermarkets, motorway services etc ever getting to say 10% of their parking spaces being charge points. The costs and power supply demands would just be insane.

Plus I guess there’s a lot of chicken and egg going on. Who is going to mass install charge points while demand is low, yet how do you convert the masses to the benefits of electric vehicles when they don’t see many charge points and are likely to have range anxiety given the time it takes to refill if you’re caught short?

[V8Granite]

Not knowing how long a charge is going to take, the cost, the extra charges etc would really put me off even when it’s financially viable.

It’s a fantastic solution for a certain type of drive cycle but currently nothing more than that. Tesla really did a great job with their charging infrastructure compared to everyone else.

Dave!

[Marv]

£2.82 for 26 miles of range.

So about the same price to fill as a petrol car doing 45mpg.

Ok, but not great. Especially for the extra outlay to have all those batteries. And the fact it took 8 minutes to do it.

Charging your car at the public charge point, is like filling your ICE car up at the most expensive motorway service station, with the most expensive fuel then dropping a few quid on the floor on your way to pay, and not noticing.

[V8Granite]

£2.82 for 26 miles of range.

So about the same price to fill as a petrol car doing 45mpg.

Ok, but not great. Especially for the extra outlay to have all those batteries. And the fact it took 8 minutes to do it.

Charging your car at the public charge point, is like filling your ICE car up at the most expensive motorway service station, with the most expensive fuel then dropping a few quid on the floor on your way to pay, and not noticing.

No, it’s filling your car up when needed. 5p a kWh on economy 7 simply won’t last and the price to fuel an electric car is only going up. Not everyone is going to be able to fit a 7kw home charger and if 2 people in the house have an electric car that will half.

Not needing to charge a full tank each night is absolutely fine until the day you do and then you are adding complexity and hassle to what used to be a very simple exercise.

If you remove anything emotive the practical case for an ICE car over electric is tiny and electric wins 99% of the time. The one area it falls down from n is the flexibility and it’s just not there.

Everyone on this forum would manage with an electric car I have no doubt, we would adapt or it would suit our usage profile. But we have become accustomed to how simple and easy petrol/ diesel is and it will take time to get a decent compromise.

It will be fun to have an electric car to replace the TT when it’s needed, Pre-heating, no guilt about short journeys doing damage, no doubt packaging making it much more practical etc. Also in small towns it’s not always easy to get fuel without a drive, in ours I’d need to drive 6 miles for a petrol station at 5pm on a Sunday. I will always have electricity at my house *

When you are standing in the rain Plugging the car in though, not being able to do a slash and dash, having to entertain kids at a services and all the other things which happen a few times a year then all those benefits fade away. *

A 30 minute charge for 400 miles and the local grid managed to allow multiple 7kw chargers per household and I think we would be there.

Dave!

* it will be interesting to see how the grid will manage, they are currently trialing running some biodiesel generators at the plant I’m working on running at night due to demand. That’s 2 40 year old design diesels running at 80% load so roughly 2.5MW. Presuming 0 losses from production to plug, that’s 88000 miles of electric range for a 12 hour period.
That’s 66mpg when you take into account fuel consumption of 500 litres an hour for those generators, that’s being optimistic. Add in the efficiency losses and it’s about a 2.0 tdi at a guess.
The national grid have a huge amount of work to do and from what I see on the ground compared to what I’ve seen in the press they are a long long way from meeting our needs.

** why don’t they put shelters over electric car chargers, I’ve seen a lot of people staring at the screen getting soaked while the passengers run inside, the charger installers really don’t help themselves.

[Holley]

In 2 years of EV ownership and 30k miles, we've never charged outside of our house. Waking up to a fully charged car every morning has always been enough.

But that's more to do with the nature of what we need a car for - work, schools, shopping etc is all close to us. I imagine this to be the case with a large proportion of EV ownership where charging at home is all that's required - except for the odd day trip or holiday (we use the 240 for those, but I'd be okay with stopping to charge for an hour if I had a tesla/similar as wife and youngest like to stop pretty much every 2 hours anyway).

If my work was like Harry's and I had to travel a lot, I don't think I'd bother with an EV just yet. You just want to get home after work without any long stops and I totally get that!

[Rich B]

£2.82 for 26 miles of range.

So about the same price to fill as a petrol car doing 45mpg.

Ok, but not great. Especially for the extra outlay to have all those batteries. And the fact it took 8 minutes to do it.

Charging your car at the public charge point, is like filling your ICE car up at the most expensive motorway service station, with the most expensive fuel then dropping a few quid on the floor on your way to pay, and not noticing.

You'll have to plan any long journey extremely well to not have to use these though by the sounds of it.

Today I'm in Cardiff going round some properties with a client. It's not that common an occurrence, but could be once a month or so. It's 125miles there, then over to a couple more places in Bristol, then home. Probably 300 miles total. They'll be in their cars too, so I can't really ask them to pull into a handy Costa for an hour between stops to charge up and I can't rely on any of the properties having charging points either. So in reality, I'd have to use my ICE car or set out an hour or two earlier to charge somewhere nearby before the first meeting, then maybe stop on the way home for another 20 min too up.

[Broccers]

A friend of mine has the turbo and a 720s and he rates the porsches performance. A lot of money tho arent they.

[simon_g]

I do like the Taycan, even thought its a properly massive car.

With EVs, what’s the expected life of batteries before you’d have to replace them and what’s the likely costs? Just wondering about the used values of these things a few years down the line if you (and dealers) are going to need to budget-in replacements... not necessarily the Taycan, but all EVs.

Life of the car really. Even then the batteries aren't a single unit, they're hundreds or thousands of cells made up into dozens of modules so possible to replace dodgy ones if needed. Good example here on a really early Leaf - rare fault but easy to swap a module:

I don't see battery swaps being a common thing, cars will be old by the time it's an issue and it'll make more sense to sell it on as is than spend thousands to get a bit more range. Even an old Leaf today with heavy degredation is still useful to someone as a runabout, today's eNiro or similar could degrade heavily (but won't, battery cooling/management is better these days) and still have a really useful range left in 10 or 15 years time.

[V8Granite]

I made a reply but lost it

Early Leafs were shit but that was down to thermal
Management. No different than expecting a phone to last well in freezing temps, they just don’t.

Tesla had a problem with overuse of super chargers but they limited it somehow with the software. I believe quite a few were affected. Mostly though Tesla appear to be in the low single digits after hundreds of thousands of miles, they know what they are doing now it seems.

Dave!

[Jobbo]

* it will be interesting to see how the grid will manage, they are currently trialing running some biodiesel generators at the plant I’m working on running at night due to demand. That’s 2 40 year old design diesels running at 80% load so roughly 2.5MW. Presuming 0 losses from production to plug, that’s 88000 miles of electric range for a 12 hour period.
That’s 66mpg when you take into account fuel consumption of 500 litres an hour for those generators, that’s being optimistic. Add in the efficiency losses and it’s about a 2.0 tdi at a guess.
The national grid have a huge amount of work to do and from what I see on the ground compared to what I’ve seen in the press they are a long long way from meeting our needs.

The generators you're working on will be for short term high load demand - they're up to generating speed very quickly and deal with the demand on the grid on those winter evenings when everyone turns on the kettle in the middle of Coronation Street. You can't really extrapolate that to how dirty they are for charging an EV; efficiency isn't their main aim and they'd still be used even if nobody had an EV.