[Jim Jones]

In my borough, population 200,000, there are 19 charge points.

[Leodisflyer]

@stevelup No worries. For some reason I was under the impression you travel more than that.

[Leodisflyer]

In my borough, population 200,000, there are 19 charge points.

19 houses for 200,000 people?

More seriously, the charge points are needed if you can’t charge at home and when you go further afield.

There are quite a lot around West and South Yorkshire in places that people visit and park and then the motorways and trunk roads are well served.

[Flying_john]

Yeah - far too few charge points please don't buy an EV.





Look if we encourage everyone to buy one , we will all have to pay more for our EV's than now, as the Guv'mint will find a way to tax us more.

So everyone please carry on buying gas guzzlers while we "early adopters" drive by petrol/diesel pumps with a grin on our faces

[cockney steve]

^^^^^^ S-mug now, just wait until it's lease/drip ends and see how much it's really cost you.

The true cost per mile in depreciation of chassis and batteries is a lot greater than the headline "5 p a mile"
for electricity.

The BMW 2.8 Estate has just been re-insured (£188) thirsty, but I have less than £1K including parts "invested" in it....I travel in relative comfort, and have the smug-factor of knowing i'm amortising all that carbon it took to make all that tin,plastic, glass ,fabric etc. over yet another year, (21 coming up )

[eltonioni]

In my borough, population 200,000, there are 19 charge points.

19 houses for 200,000 people?

They don't call it mucky Leeds f'nowt.

(gets coat)

[Jim Jones]

Persuading more than 19 people to come to Halifax for business in the future may be problematic.

What could I charge them to park at my house?. I’ve got 2 13amp sockets outside and it’s a short bus ride to the town centre.

[Leodisflyer]

Halifax is fairly well served, but not in Halifax itself - although there’s a plan to roll out a lot of, initially, free to use 50kWh chargers across West Yorkshire. It’s a good place to own an EV as long as you have off street parking - you can get a 7kWh charge point free or for very little. You can pick up free charges at the park and ride down the road in Leeds and there are 50kWh chargers at the motorway services either side (although one of them does mandate going into Lancashire).

The challenge for people wanting to regularly drive more than a couple of hundred miles a day is access to >50kWh chargers. Tesla have a near monopoly, although that is changing.

I did 15k miles in as many months in my 40kWh Leaf. Largely tootling around the West Yorkshire area, charging at home then driving past Halifax and back. The charger was free. I also did a lot of 200 mile return trips mainly across the M62 into North Wales, but also to Newcastle and bariosj other places. The Leaf is perfect for that usage, but for regular use of over 200 miles a day you start to want 120kWh+ chargers and a car that can use that and faster charge speeds and also with a bigger battery.

[Leodisflyer]

In my borough, population 200,000, there are 19 charge points.

19 houses for 200,000 people?

They don't call it mucky Leeds f'nowt.

(gets coat)

<cough> Sheffield</cough>

(Makes note to call in at the Royal Armouries to borrow armour)

[Leodisflyer]

^^^^^^ S-mug now, just wait until it's lease/drip ends and see how much it's really cost you.

The true cost per mile in depreciation of chassis and batteries is a lot greater than the headline "5 p a mile"
for electricity.

The BMW 2.8 Estate has just been re-insured (£188) thirsty, but I have less than £1K including parts "invested" in it....I travel in relative comfort, and have the smug-factor of knowing i'm amortising all that carbon it took to make all that tin,plastic, glass ,fabric etc. over yet another year, (21 coming up )

This is an important point, and one that has steered my decisions. I had an Audi that we sold after 14 years of use. It was a good car, if rather smoky at times. It passed its MOTs and I'd already "replaced" it a couple of times ready for it to expire.

When I was ready for a couple of other cars I was, in part, looking at running costs, but also looking ahead at future value. Technology is changing fast. It's very difficult to predict future value, but we can be fairly sure that EVs will become more common and desirable. We know that diesel is struggling.

To keep it simple, when buying, I decided to write off both the Leaf and the Model 3 over the life of their battery warranty and assume no future value. As they are cheap to to run and maintain this makes the calculation a lot easier. In the case of the Model 3, based on current usage, I'll use up the battery warranty in around 4 years (120,000 miles). That costs in nicely for me. The reality is that the current generation of batteries and cars are lasting far longer so it's reasonable to expect that the car will be good for many more miles.

Tesla have also increased the price of the cars (I assume this is based on exchange rate changes). That's been a benefit to me in the early months, but as I assume zero future value then anything the car is worth in 4 years is a bonus.

In reality, what's likely to happen is that we'll get another longish range EV to go alongside the Model 3 and will split the mileage across the two. I still fancy the Kona, but the Model Y will be out by then and VW have some nice cars on the way too. We'll need two longish range cars as the "kids" are entering the university years.

The Model 3 can go anywhere in the UK, and need shorter breaks than I do, on the superchargers so that will be our true long range car for a while yet.

[eltonioni]

(Makes note to call in at the Royal Armouries to borrow armour)

Sheffield steel innit.

[Paul_Sengupta]

Am I reading correctly that you've written off the cost of a £35k over 5 years? £7k a year? That's almost as much as I spend on flying! If I had to do both, I'd have no money left to eat!

I've mentally written off the cost of my £6000 Jaguar over 10 years, though I hope it lasts at least 15.... (it's currently 12 years old, think it was 6 when I bought it). On the down side, I do pay something like £2500 a year in fuel for 18-20k miles. How much do you pay for electricity in a year?

[Leodisflyer]

It cost more than that. Electricity costs 5p per unit for 4 hours a day. Enough to save around £10 a normal weekday on fuel as a starting point (varies according to weather and fuel prices). Outside the cheap window I save, typically, 7p+ mile, but destination chargers are also often free, so it’s also difficult to calculate. I had 1,000 free referral miles and have another 1,000 on the way.

Yes, I could have run an older car into the ground, but then I like having cars with warranties. For what I needed I’d have been looking at a new car anyway and so the comparison becomes between two new cars. At current run rate I’ll save somewhere between £9k and £13k on fuel over 4 years then there’s reduced servicing and an improved driving experience.

There’s also the Yorkshire factor - I’ll rather spend my money on something nice to use and keep than watch it going into a tank to be burnt.

It’s not all about cost. That was just budgeting/rationalising what I wanted. Having done a reasonable amount of motorway mileage in the Leaf I would have found I very hard to switch back. Most days I drive for around 3 hours, but I’m often spending 6 hours or more a day in the car and I find the Model 3 to be a very relaxing drive.

[Bill McCarthy]

One of my mates on the Dreadnought in the ‘70s - “Buster”, never ever spent more than £50 when buying a car. As long as it took him home and back on weekend leave, that was all right by him. When it played up, he took it to a scrapyard and invariably picked up another when there. One plastic pig was a Bond Equipe - fancy body on a Triumph Herald chassis. He always reckoned that our choice of car was purely an “image thing” , suggesting that a BMW and many others were no better than a Ford for getting around in. I think he was right !

[PeteSpencer]

Am I reading correctly that you've written off the cost of a £35k over 5 years? £7k a year? That's almost as much as I spend on flying! If I had to do both, I'd have no money left to eat!

I've mentally written off the cost of my £6000 Jaguar over 10 years, though I hope it lasts at least 15.... (it's currently 12 years old, think it was 6 when I bought it). On the down side, I do pay something like £2500 a year in fuel for 18-20k miles. How much do you pay for electricity in a year?

Having just spent nearly £2k on my Krauto for new springs, tyres, and service to get it through the MOT I'm rather hoping I can coax it along for a good few more years too....

Peter