A UK-centric Electric Vehicles community, where discussion/news of the wider European continent is welcome.
All discussion of EVs (and hybrids for the moment), charging networks, etc, welcome!
No USA/Americas news unless it is relevant to the UK/Europe - most of the existing EV communities on Lemmy are awash with US discussion, please use one of those. US news and discussion will be removed.
The main "global" EV community is !electricvehicles@slrpnk.net
Electric vehicle avatar/icon created by Freepik - Flaticon
Nice to see something other than the usual "I went to four different chargers and they were all broken"
Nice to hear that things aren't as bad as the RIGHT WING media makes out. Would be nice to hear the actual costs involved though in £s or €s. That's something missing from the article.
i can help with that, what costs do you need?
What's the overall cost of the holiday for a start. For example is this doable on a budget whilst visiting rural areas. Lots of Ireland is countryside and rural. Same I'd imagine with the UK. If you're splashing out to visit cities and staying in expensive hotels along the way that might be one thing. But if you're visiting family on a farm is this trip even considerable?
I dunno... Just interested to hear the trip cost I suppose.
id say from the last few years its more the time spent than the cost. Ive had a petrol car these past few weeks and did 450 miles for £60 as it was a very new engine Nissan courtesy car from enterprise. I got my EV back and just did yorkshire to london down the M1 for £15, which is better than petrol but only by a few pounds. The trick is the time, we did one stop, 25 minutes using a rapid and had enough time to have a coffee. The range on my older EV lasts about 1:30h-1:45h so if youre going further than Yorkshire to London you will add 25 at each stop. So thats a factor to consider. Getting a longer range new EV will still mean stopping for 25-30 but your range is basically double to 3 hours, maybe 3:30h. Which is more than a decent comparison to petrol.
Cost wise, ive done some calculations recently which show roughly what I describe above. If youre paying at a rapid, contactless units will be costing between 60p and 80p per KWh, and you get about 4 miles to a KW, with a 50KW bcapacity battery. So depending on where you charge at these rates it will be roughly similar to petrol. However anything under about 45p per KWh and it starts to really add up savings wise. Many operators of slow chargers are charging between 35p and 45p. These take many hours longer but cost alot less. Finally, if you can plug into a wall socket overnight at a hotel, many are offering this now, you wake up in the morning to a full battery free of charge. Its not free to the hotel but its the cost equivalent to them of running a few kettles worth of energy overnight, or an aircon unit.
Finally the law swill be changing in the coming year or so. All operators will have to be open to all, so Tesla will be open to all vehicles instead of just Tesla cars. Only 20 sites are currently open to all, but their new units on the north circular have contactless pads ready for this change. They are currently charging under 40p at some sites late at night, and generally are cheaper than most operators. The other law change is the use of subscription services will become widespread as all operators will have to offer deals to buy electricity in bulk. Currently Bonnet and Elli are the main providers and you buy a monthly package to buy in bulk. In practice this means you get discounts on various operators like Osprey and Ionity in return for £13 a month, which is great if you do loads of miles. Currently gridserve and instavolt do not offer any subscriptions, but when they and Tesla do get forced to open up there will be real bargains to be had as competition will bring the price down.
The other thing id mention is Electroverse which is a payment card and app which bills your house electric bill and offers some discounts here and there. Octopus Energy offer these but i think anyone can have one. Double check that. In operation you open the app, toggle electroverse and navigate. Really clever stuff and probably the future if they can work out how to make it cheaper than Bonnet or Elli which are the same idea but just a billing system not connected to your house billing.
im sure i forgot something
This is the best summary I could come up with:
We worked out a route and looked at booking hotels, a treehouse, a campervan and a lighthouse; we’d visit friends and family; and we’d explore the capital cities of four nations – it sounded amazing.
It was this careful planning that meant I soon stopped anxiously watching the number of miles left on the dashboard display and started to enjoy the drive.
I tend to get tired quite quickly when I’m driving, but on this trip, despite being the only driver, I found myself feeling rested when I arrived at each destination, rather than dazed and exhausted after staring at a motorway for hours without let-up.
When I go to the beach or into town, I can leave it as long as I want on a free-parking lamp-post charger, spending the money I would have paid for parking on a few extra miles of charge.
For a full tank, I leave it on a local lamp-post overnight, many of which now have allocated bays to prevent ICEing (being blocked by a car with an internal combustion engine).
Local provision has to be a gradual process, to be approached by councils delicately – my neighbours would be entitled to be upset if 10 of their parking spaces were suddenly taken over by EV-only bays that largely sat empty.
The original article contains 892 words, the summary contains 217 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is key:
For a full tank, I leave it on a local lamp-post overnight, many of which now have allocated bays to prevent ICEing (being blocked by a car with an internal combustion engine). Brighton is quite well served, but I like to think it’s at the forefront of widespread adoption rather than being an exception. Local provision has to be a gradual process, to be approached by councils delicately – my neighbours would be entitled to be upset if 10 of their parking spaces were suddenly taken over by EV-only bays that largely sat empty.
A very large proportion of housing in the UK only has on-street parking. It's getting easier to charge up while doing the weekly shop but being able to plug in at home, or anywhere else you're parked up for a while, is a major factor for many people. And the earliest generation of electric cars is only just getting to the point of old-banger affordability, so range anxiety will be an issue for many, many years to come.
It's got to be workable on a 100-150 mile range for people who can't buy new cars. And also for those who do buy new cars, because their ability to buy a new car depends a great deal on their ability to sell an old one.
Nice to see an article that emphasises how much easier it is getting.
Obviously, I'd much rather see the same article showing how easy and affordable the same trip is by public transport. But, infuriatingly, we're not there yet. One day, maybe. Come the revolution etc etc.