Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Electric Cars

In my area, most of the house rely on 'on street' parking - I got sick of the parking lottery, so paid for a dropped kerb - my drive is only 4.3 deep so can just squeeze my cars in (alhough technically not allowed to park on the front according to the deeds of my house. Cost me just under £2K for the kerb, and they want another £1K to change the deeds, so that's on hold for the long term)

With one lampost for every 10 houses, I wonder what the plan is for EV? Certainly can't have one or two cables crossing the pavement from each household, and I doubt you can have 10+ cars charging from each lampost.

“Factor in the greatly increased cost of a second hand Leaf (2014 at around £8K) and it would take me about 6 years before I started seeing any savings, and by that time I'd probably need to replace the batteries.”

Please stop thinking the batteries will need replacing, they won’t, they are outperforming all expectations and 10 year old batteries are still at 90% plus state of health.
If the car is kept for several years the overall costs of ownership are way cheaper than ice cars as there’s no engine, exhaust, cat, radiator or other components to need replacing.

There are chargers currently being developed that can charge EV’s in 15 mins, and Tesla supercharges that can charge at 1000 mph. The Porsche tau can can charge at 350kw/h ie empty to full in around 10/15 mins.
I know most of you are sceptical but it’s a coming, so stand by

Taycan not tau can

Try a model 3 at around £40k

Try zap map or plug charge apps there are more than you know

Now consider your home EV charger, taking a Nissan Leaf as an example. They offer/suggest 3 or 7kW home chargers. You will get away with a 3kW charger providing a full charge in 14 hours, but the 7kW one will likely cause issues at some point or other during the up to 6 hours its on. Lets be super fair and suggest the battery is usually only one third depleted when its put on charge. Sadly this will make no difference to the power draw from charger. It will draw power at its max limit for most of the time its on due to the efficiency of the batteries. Some sort of off peak circuitry may help but would require substantial changes to consumer unit and wiring. Oh and this is just considering one small EV BTW

I’ve had a 40kw Nissan Leaf for 20 months, initially charged on a 13amp socket until my 7kw charger was installed, 3.3 kw array of solar also installed, never had a problem with any of it,
If the systems installed correctly by approved installers why would you?

Don't get me wrong, if my numbers come up on the lottery, I'll be down the Tesla dealer by the end of the week.

However, I tend to keep cars for two or three years at most, pay little more that £750 - £1000 on a car, and if anything major breaks (£500+), then I scrap the vehicle and replace. Unless they massively increase the cost of petrol, and/or Road Tax for petrol vehicles, I can't really see myself in a position where I'm going to be happy spending £6K upwards on a normal car.

Genuine question: Apart from size, what's different about the Lithium-ion batteries used in EVs compared to those in laptops, 'phones and household devices.

In our household, we're lucky if we can get five years from a laptop battery, three years from an iPhone and two years from a vacuum cleaner (take a bow Dyson for being easily the worst of the whole miserable lot, with Bosch not far behind).

Why would a car be any different/better on battery life?

I have three customers with Nissan Leafs purchased two years or more old. None of them can get more than 70 miles in the best possible conditions, i.e. daylight, no heating or aircon etc. The batteries may not have to be replaced but they are nothing like 90% of the claim.
Nick