Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Time for Electric Power?

I think you're right to wait Peter.

I've had over a year of hybrid driving in my i8, and always try to park & charge. It's not usually possible - the network is chaotic and brittle. That's not going to change quickly - I read that to keep up with EV demand the UK would need to install 1,000 charge points a day. That's 1,000 *working* charge points. There's five in the regency Crescent/Square ghetto where I live. Two are currently ICEd. When I last tried to use one, the payment failed; life's too short to try to figure out why. Imagine if petrol stations worked like that... diesels parking across petrol pumps, card machines not working. It would be chaos.

Motorway journeys are fine, if you need a fast charge. My hunt for a charge has taken me to the charging areas of service stations where there's always 90% free space on Tesla & Ionity chargers. & I guess that even as they become busy, if there's 10 occupied chargers on 50 minute charges, you won't have to wait long for a plug.

Inner city and destination Tesla charge points usually have one or two chargers for any other brands - my experience is that even in lockdown they were always in use. For example, there's lamppost charging in Westminster. On 3 trips to London over the past 12 months I've not yet seen a free charge point either around Trafalgar Square or in Fitzrovia. Services like ParkingBee are excellent for reserving a garaged parking space, but doesn't allow you to reserve one with a charger.

If I needed to buy an all purpose useable hybrid I'd be looking for a late model i3 rex, or a Mazda MX30 rex - which fast charge and will come with a small rotary charger. Where the BMW uses a small bike engine, the Mazda's rotary would give plenty of power for the weight.

Will

We went and had a look at the Jaguar iPace.
I was taken aback by its size: more like a high riding E Class estate.
Otherwise, it ticks all the boxes, other than they are, as 12 to 18 month old cars, still expensive.
So that it is, I won't drive it.

Last is a drive in a Mini Electric booked for Thursday. If it ticks all the boxes I'll order one and worry about selling the C43 in the autumn.
The mini is small, drives like a Mini, but has a range of about 100 miles.

Will's comments about the public charging mess are well founded, but I'll have a 7kw home charger, so it is doubtful that I'll ever need a home charger. For longer runs the C43 or the Plus 8 will do duty.

Yes, quite a few manufacturers panicked and dropped list prices

Citroen dropped the e-C4 to £34,995, similar cuts by Peugeot on e-2008, Vauxhall dropped the price on Mokka-e, BMW dropped the i3 between £5800 and £7500 off list (WOW) and Nissan pruned the leaf by £1350 to £2700 depending on trim

Why are electric cars so expensive? I understand development costs have to be recovered but this could be spread over greater time given the seemingly inevitable switch to pure EV and not covered just by early adopters. Electric motors are very simple with few moving parts, complex transmissions shouldn't be needed given motors torque characteristics, so we are left with a pile of control circuitry which costs next to nothing in terms of raw materials plus the battery. Are the latter really that expensive to produce

Ruut, knows what he is talking about!

Alternatively, You could have asked the question, why did ICE powered cars become so cheap... todays ford fiesta is better equiped than a RR of say twenty years ago.
You are right, EVs are technically simple, and will have lower maintenance costs. Also they are already cheaper to run. With time and with more and more capable car manufacturers building and developing EVs, prices will come down. Batteries will improve and ranges will increase and charging times will get shorter. Look at the new Kia EV6, has Porsche Taycan performance at half its price.

Based on my week spent evaluating electric cars I've, as far as is possible, compared the electric car with its ICE equivalent. In some cases, such as the VW IC.3 this isn't easy, but others like the Vauxhall Mokka E and Mini E it is easier.
My conclusion is that there is a 15% to 20% premium for going electric.
Unless you have a significant driving force, such as city centre charging or the ability to write off the cost against tax (limited company) to change it makes, at the moment, no sense as the savings are not that significant.

I suspect the manufacturers are having a laugh, whilst they can. As we approach 2030 prices might fall, but they might not as this deadline presents a wonderful opportunity to push prices up and hold them in the post ICE era.

Another ad for Tesla.

When I bought my Model 3 it was roughly equivalent to a BMW 3 series in price and performance. The BMW is a traditional interior, the Tesla a minimalist one. The BMW would cost a fair bit to tax, service and run, the Tesla almost nothing.

The BMW is probably better value for money as there are over 2,500 moving parts in it, 200 in a Tesla.

On the other hand, there are 630 dedicated Tesla supercharger sites in the UK and I think most are multiples of 8 or 16 'pumps' per site.

Hard to make comparisons really.... I still love my V8's and previously my V12's. But the Tesla as a daily driver makes a lot of sense.

I am tending to agree with Neilda.
There are a good number of used Model 3s on Autotrader under £40k-
I have a test drive organised tomorrow.
We shall see what the result is.

If you were selling an EV, your customer will likely buy on credit of some sort. You'd build the case based on all the costs per month of running an internal combustion engine - fuel, maintenance, tax... none of which apply to the EV, and then present an 'all in' monthly cost that suddenly sounds reasonable. So ironically you could say that hefty EV sticker price includes an allowance for petrol, maintenance and tax, in the form of extra profit for the manufacturer & dealer.

Will