Electric Vehicles

[Luckypants]

This comes up regularly on EV forums (Google 'Do brake lights come on when regen braking') The European regs are that brake lights must come on above a certain deceleration rate, this applies to all cars. I cannot remember the exact figure, but brake lights do come on with regen. There is a second much higher limit where the brake lights flash 4 times to indicate emergency braking.

[daktulos]

Originally Posted by Luckypants

There are solutions to not having a drive, my personal favourite is the cable channel in the pavement to allow the resident to safely run a cable across the pavement. Someone in our village has this solution as he has no drive. His charger is on the wall of his shed in the front yard and he passes his cable through the fence and lays it in the cable channel - hey presto, charge-o!

The width of our houses are less than a length of a car, and I rarely get a parking space outside, sometimes having to park a fair way away. It'd work for some places, but not all.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against electric, but I just worry about the practical side of it.

[Luckypants]

I understand, those without a guaranteed parking spot such as a drive or private car park need somewhere convenient to charge. It needs intervention or guidance by governments (its a devolved matter hence Scotland shot ahead on charging infrastructure and NI is waaaaay behind) to mandate chargers in workplace car parks / banks of chargers in every retail park / rapid charging hubs in every supermarket etc. But for some areas, modifications to local infrastructure will also work such as lamp post chargers. Most folks will only need an overnight charge once a week, so shared infrastructure should work - but you do have the *******s who think they 'own' a charger and plug in all the time whether needed or not. (Scotland had this problem a lot when everything was free).

[Sir Trev]

I found out today that my office/works car park has two free chargers us plebs can use, as well as the two chargers I already knew were in the exec parking area. One of my colleagues has an EV and says most of the regular office attendees are in a WhatsApp group and let each other know when they've topped up enough and they're going down to move to a regular space so others can use it, which is nice. But, as it's close to the warehouse some of the ICE drivers that work on that side of the site block it for their entire shift as it is so close to the security entrance they have to use and people are inevitably lazy/unobservant/belligerent... Don't know how long the freebie will last and perhaps the Facilities guys should move the charge points to the another part of the car park. Having more than two would be nice too as more people might be encouraged to transition.

[Luckypants]

That kind of thing is the way forward, but needs access to be formalised and ICEing prevented. I expect the free use will be curtailed as that is now a taxable benefit I believe. My client gets around this by charging 50p/hour, which is about 7p per kWh so bally cheap. If I visit the office I go with an empty battery! I didn't know coin-op charging was a thing but it is, buy tokens in the security lodge then 'load' the charger.

Imagine if half or more of work car parks were EV charger spots too, takes away the problem of no charger at home. Not token machines but charged via RFID card / security pass.

[Sir Trev]

We can already use our ID badges to pay for food/drink in the canteen so it's not much of a leap forward if the company thinks ahead.

[rowdy]

Originally Posted by Luckypants

There are solutions to not having a drive, my personal favourite is the cable channel in the pavement to allow the resident to safely run a cable across the pavement. Someone in our village has this solution as he has no drive. His charger is on the wall of his shed in the front yard and he passes his cable through the fence and lays it in the cable channel - hey presto, charge-o!

Problem with that is, you aren’t actually allowed to have a shed in your front garden, unless you go through planning.

[Luckypants]

The shed is incidental to the fact that he can have a charger and safely run the cable across the pavement in the channel. He had his mounted on the shed, but could have it on a wall or a post by the gate or in fact any suitable location.

[rowdy]

Yeh I know, just flagging it up incase anyone thinks they can put anything up in front garden. Bloke three doors away put a big shed up in his front garden, someone complained, had to get retrospective planning permission!

[Luckypants]

I know I'm coming over as a lone voice espousing the virtues of EVs, so this might read like a 'look at me' post, but I'm trying to give a real world example of running costs here. The reason I'm making this post now is because I've just had solar panels and house battery fitted, so costs are about to change. (thats the look at me bit)

I've done 28K in my VW ID.4 now and I've tracked every cost, mainly fuel. Over that time I have averaged 5.94p / mile. That is cheap running costs. My electric tariff was initially Octopus Tracker, then a 2-year fix @21p/kWh to ride out the high prices of past two winters and now I've moved back to Tracker which is averaging 17p/kWh so far (since 1st July). None of these are a special off peak EV tariff since my smart meter does not connect. The low pence per mile figure has been helped by free supermarket charging in the first 9 months, but that free charging honeymoon period is over now. The average for the second year of ownership (March 22-March23) was still only 6.03p over 13259 miles, without free charging. My point is, even running on standard price tariffs, EV running costs are low compared with a comparable diesel.

Servicing has been £200 at main dealer to maintain the warranty, so quite pricey but probably the same as dealer servicing for a diesel. Certainly expensive for what actually gets done. When the next service is due in 21 months, my local mechanic will do it for about half the price (he is EV qualified).

Insurance is £230 a year, exactly what I paid for my previous car. (Skoda Karoq)

All in all, the EV is cheap to run for me. This has improved recently due to a software update from VW that improved the efficiency of the motor and climate control, moving my average from 3.8 m/kWh to 4.2 m/kWh. 10% improvement without me paying anything. This is unique to EVs, Tesla and Kia have done this for a number of years.

I hope in the future to be able to get a cheap overnight tariff when they solve meter connections in areas without O2 coverage and lower my costs still further. Trying to get this issue resolved has been hard work and quite frustrating. I know far more than the average joe should need to know about how the electricity system works. This is a 'benefit' of EV ownership, it makes you focus on the price of leccy in the same way as we focus on petrol/diesel prices, so always looking for the cheapest rate and best deal. It makes running the house cheaper as a consequence

Hope this is informative and gives real world information on how this works out.