Electric Vehicles

[Luckypants]

Originally Posted by Bibio

LP.. whats the avg range of your EV? please dont quote what the book says tell us the true daily use figures. if your coming up to Scotland what mileage do you expect to get out a charge before having to stop for one.

i'm truly interested in real world figures.

Right now with the current weather and our normal daily driving its showing 102 miles range at 40% charge. Extrapolate that to 100% would be 250 miles or thereabouts. We are averaging 3.0 miles / kWh in current conditions. Summer range is higher when we were averaging 3.8 miles / kWh as batteries like to be warm. The longest trips we have done in this weird year are to Macclesfield, 65 miles each way - mixture of M'way, A-road and lanes. This uses 50% of the battery (EDIT: for the full 130 miles, in current conditions!), so easily done on a normal 80% charge. In summer it was more like 45% of the battery. It was diverting to a particular cheese shop unplanned on the way home from Mac that meant I needed a charge once to get home, 10 mins on a rapid and I was fine. There was a choice of about 10 charging spots on my way home that would have done the job.

Coming up to Scotland I'm confident of a 250 mile range on the motorway but quite possibly more like 280. I'll stop at Moffat (210 miles) to walk the dogs and get breakfast, so will get an 80% charge then. Then stop at Pitlochry (130 miles) for lunch and let the dogs have a splash in the river (charge to around 70% while doing that). Then arrive at our destination north of Inverness with 20% charge remaining (125 miles further). There is a rapid charger 3 miles from where we stay so charging no problem. That is the exact same route we did in the diesel last time we could go and took about 10 hours door to door. I expect it to be the same time in the EV.

We can go visit my wife's family near Hawick on a single charge and do it in one go. However, we are both late 50s and like to stop for a pee at Tebay, so would look to get a charge there for 20-30 minutes (longer if we fancy coffee) and that will give more running about miles while at the brother-in-law's. To charge for the return trip we can charge in Hawick while out for dinner with the rele's, charge at the station if we take the train into Edinburgh or charge en-route home (probably Tebay again )

Does that help?

[Bibio]

yup. that helps. so realistically your 320 rated mileage is more like 160-200 real world driving before you would need a 30-40min rapid charge for a full top up. or 180 miles round trip for home charge overnight.

lets say i do a lot of overtaking (lots of ultra slow plonker drivers up here) the mileage would drop to 100 before i would need a top up in your ID.4 quoted 320mile range.

realistically an hour charge on "normal" public chargers will get you 60-70 miles?

to get anywhere near the quoted 320 miles you would need to be on a flat motorway in summer with no wind driving at 50mph.

[Luckypants]

Originally Posted by Bibio

yup. that helps. so realistically your 320 rated mileage is more like 160-200 real world driving before you would need a 30-40min rapid charge for a full top up. or 180 miles round trip for home charge overnight.

Where do you get that figure from, based on my real world figures I just gave you? My 320 rated range is about 250-280 real world summer time. This has dropped to 230-250 in current mild winter temps (5-10C) and I expect another 10% drop when it gets down to freezing, 200-225 miles. I've never had less than 220 for a full charge, even in last April's cold snap. Some people do better than me, some worse. Just like ICE vehicles, consumption depends very much on the driver. I'm not gonna lie just to big up EVs, those are my real world numbers based on 8.5k miles of experience.

Originally Posted by Bibio

lets say i do a lot of overtaking (lots of ultra slow plonker drivers up here) the mileage would drop to 100 before i would need a top up in your ID.4 quoted 320mile range.

again, how do you arrive at that? (EDIT: OK - I might have spotted your confusion was with the trip to Macclesfield? its 50% battery to the full round trip of 130 miles giving a total range of 260 on a full charge.)

Originally Posted by Bibio

realistically an hour charge on "normal" public chargers will get you 60-70 miles?

Define normal? for me on a 'road trip' it would be a 50kW or faster charger. An hour charge on that will add around 150 miles to my car with my current consumption of 3 miles / kwH. Get to a faster charger and it will add 320 or more miles in an hour. As I'd likely top up before 0% the battery would be full in much less than an hour.

Originally Posted by Bibio

to get anywhere near the quoted 320 miles you would need to be on a flat motorway in summer with no wind driving at 50mph.

Probably true. My last diesel had a quoted consumption of 55mpg, I averaged 45mpg in its lifetime (https://www.fuelly.com/car/skoda/kar...kypants/793739) with a best tank of 54.2mpg on the run to Scotland used as an example. My point here is claimed range by manufacturers is not real world.

[Bibio]

hmm its sounding more and more feasible for me to switch to an EV.

[Ruffy]

Ah, the irony: People complaining about other types of vehicles that may not get over 200miles between top-ups when a fill requires the time to get a brew when those same people (as bikers) have vehicles that only do c. 150miles max. to a tank and brew-stop breaks are something to look forward to!

As LP states, the paradigm shift required is to do the charging when the vehicle is dormant and you're doing something else, not when you desperately need it straight away. And there's usually plenty of opportunity for that with only a modicum of forward planning. I can cope with that - who's never been out to fuel up the night before a ride just so they're 'ready to go' in the morning?

I'd have an EV if I could afford it (although I'd prefer a retro-fit because I find the 'modern' interior dash arrangements of pretty much all modern cars hideous - real gauges, switches and warning lights for me please, I don't want a flat screen device that looks like a cast-off concept of a sci-fi film!)

[Luckypants]

There is quite a cottage industry converting classics to electric drive. Not sure I agree with it but beetles, E-Types and Ferrari 308s are ones I've seen.

[embee]

There was a bit of a TV series on that a while ago. I'm always very uneasy about the safety of such mods, not the electrical side as such, but the crash safety. The progs I saw showed the conversions were basically tape measure and grinder affairs, I doubt very much there was any calculation involved regarding vehicle integrity.
Still, each to their own.

[Ruffy]

Originally Posted by Luckypants

There is quite a cottage industry converting classics to electric drive. Not sure I agree with it but beetles, E-Types and Ferrari 308s are ones I've seen.

Like you, I'm unsure I like the conversion of 'proper' classics. Preserving some i/c engined cars in original form matters for historical reasons. (Just like I wouldn't want to see the burning of coal in steam trains outlawed.)

But converting my aged Subaru could be good - 4WD powertrain plus a decent power/torque electric primary drive to replace the quite inefficient petrol boxer. And reasonable space to fit a good number of batteries too!

Originally Posted by embee

There was a bit of a TV series on that a while ago. I'm always very uneasy about the safety of such mods, not the electrical side as such, but the crash safety. The progs I saw showed the conversions were basically tape measure and grinder affairs, I doubt very much there was any calculation involved regarding vehicle integrity.
Still, each to their own.

Yes, "Vintage Voltage" I think was the title of the series I saw. I agree the approach was not something mass producers would get away with but the basic engineering consideration looked decent enough, even if mainly done by 'rule of thumb' rather than bespoke calculation.

However, viewed through a road safety lens, you're right, and I shudder to think what the consequences of a head-on might be for some of them, the way they stuffed rigid full battery boxes under the hood to get enough capacity in - no real crumple zone left between the bumper and the driver

But, hey, we're bikers, we're supposed to be comfortable with serious crash risk, right?!!!

[Luckypants]

Originally Posted by Bibio

LP.. whats the avg range of your EV? please dont quote what the book says tell us the true daily use figures. if your coming up to Scotland what mileage do you expect to get out a charge before having to stop for one.

i'm truly interested in real world figures.

Another real world example for you Bibio. I had a trip to Shrewsbury planned for today so decided to charge to 100% as its good for the battery to get a full charge about once a month and let's me make this post. It was cold overnight and there was frost on the car this morning, but the battery was warm due to the heating effects of charging. The charge was timed to finish just before I needed to leave and took 6.5 hours from 39%. I activated the cabin heater from the app 30 minutes before departure to warm the car and clear frost from the windows, while the car was plugged in to save using battery power for heating it up. I had 253 miles range according to the car when I set off.

I picked up my daughter and travelled at the pace of the traffic. Cabin heat at 20°C, both heated seats and heated steering wheel on lowest setting. Headlights were on due to patches of fog. So you can see, driving normally and not trying to save energy. The car was parked up for 5 hours so a cold battery on return journey. Temp was around 5°C out and 10°C return.

106 mile round trip used 45% battery. Back home the car states 143 miles range with 55% remaining charge. So a range of 249 in today's conditions, pretty close to the original estimate.

I have some screenshots showing the data but cannot see how to upload them.

HTH

[Bibio]

thanks for the info LP. thats pretty impressive. i looked at the price of the ID.4

wont be till next year i think about an EV and looks like it will be a Hyundai as the KONA looks just the ticket.