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

I suspect the ideal purchasor today is one who has invested in solar power so they can be more self-sufficient on energy, and want to apply that principle to their transportation too!
Meanwhile the breakeven point varies eg whether you are paying less tax for a company EV, or congestion charges, etc. And likely too how much you consider the polluting effects of conventional petro-industry discovery, extraction etc (and even if you add in the cost of controversial acts like Iraq War 2 !).

What assumptions were they making regarding the energy mix of the generated electricity? And what did they assume about end-of-life use? The better studies provide scenarios based on the prevailing generation patterns in various regions, and also take into account the likely reuse/recycling of batteries etc. On generation high in renewables like the UK, and with battery recycling/repurposing such as that which EDF is doing with Nissan, the figure drops quite markedly, AIUI to less than 20k miles.



I'd agree. It's not really about the money - or shouldn't be. Many of us just want to live as lightly as we can.

After 50,000 miles I will have spent £1,500 on volts. In my ICE car, I would have spent £17,500 on petrol. Apart from depriving the government of fuel duty - which will have the unpleasant effect of accelerating road pricing - I will have 'broken even' by a massive amount. I am assuming the break even calculation is the difference between costs of a similar ICE car to an EV? This ignores the zero servicing and zero road tax (£1,600 a year for my ICE car. or £6,400 over 50,000 miles).

My man maths says £1,500 for an EV, Vs £23,900 for my petrol one over 50,000 miles. I didn't really buy it for the economic or ecological benefits - simply a car and a tax break. But it is comically cheap to run and, in my case, the 'break even' point is rapidly approaching, far sooner than 50,000 miles.

It's a somewhat strange comparison. Most people buying a new BMW, Morgan, Aston or whatever, don't consider, even for a moment, 'world damage'. That's only ever dragged up to make some point against EV's.

When you say zero servicing would it be possible to share more on that?

It must be necessary to have an annual service and how do the BEVs come out following the MoT process and >3years?

I get the logic that brakes are more lightly used but things like suspension bushing and shockers must be doing more work as they push around the additional 300+kg of battery?

I think the break even point that Nick is talking about (and it certainly is what I'm talking about) is that of lifetime CO2 and other pollutant emissions. BEVs are more energy-intensive to manufacture than ICE cars, hence the CO2 debt that has to be repaid through the life of the cars usage when it's not pumping out nastiness into the environment.

The fossil fuel lobby and their allies try to maximise this by ignoring the environmental cost of fuel extraction and refinement, typically they start at the fuel pump, in skewing the energy mix of the generation pattern to a highly CO2 intensive pattern based on fossil fuels, and don't take into account the end of life re-use of BEV batteries or the use of home solar arrays to do the charging

The pro-EV lobbies of course tend to point to countries like the UK with a combination of generally short daily usage patterns, high levels of renewables power and BEV battery re-use in storage arrays, where BEVs make a great deal more sense.

£1500 of electricity cost to cover 50,000 miles is very impressive, but £17,500 on petrol to cover 50,000 miles makes me think a lighter right foot would quickly do the planet some good.

I am staying out of this one then........nothing to see here, move on....

I think the issue of breaking even is as Tim suggests. But it wasn't really referring to Tesla v big BMW. I think it was more about trying to get ordinary folk to buy one (ev).
At the lower end a VW up starts at 12T but the electric one is 28T although the gov give a few grand to the purchaser. It's a huge difference in initial cost...or alot of petrol etc. So I was saying that, for me to be interested I would need to do a much higher mileage than I actually do. But as these cheaper EVs don't have much of a range, that high mileage would have to be in shortish trips...like, for instance, going to and from a place of work , say, 35 miles away, daily.., which I don't do.

On the maintenance front...I now have quite a few clients with EVs. They aren't maintenance free and they aren't that reliable. Two of my clients, one a Tesla owner, for instance, have had them fail and sit in specialist garages for months, yes months, waiting to be attended to as there are so few experts. I looked it up and Tesla don't even make it into the reliability tables, let alone come high in them.
I'm not knoocking them, I love the look of those big Teslas, but the reality doesn't exactly live up to the hype (as always...)
Still, one of my Mogs went back for three months when it was 10 weeks old, so that matches Tesla no problem
Nick

Absolutely, it's easy to forget sometimes that nearly everybody of 'normal' means buys used cars rather than new. Even with the recent hike in used car prices, the average price paid for a used car in the UK is still only around £17k, and with around 9 million sales in the last year according to the SMMT (compared to around 1.6m new car registrations in 2020) it's going to be a long time before people of modest means could afford to buy a BEV.

I strongly suspect that very many urban and suburban owners will move out of private car ownership altogether over the next 5 to 10 years, due to a combination of soaring running costs, falling disposable incomes, increasing legislation, and social pressures, moving instead to personal electric solutions like bikes or scooters, public transport, or vehicle sharing schemes.

Agreed - my car (based on current local price of £1.31 a litre) would cost about £6500 to do 50,000 miles.

ICE Motoring can be cheap(ish) - I've owned her just under 3 years - in total I've spent £1000 on purchase, £600 on insurance, £600 on tax, £230 on MOT/servicing, £200 on new tyres, £50 on exhaust back box, £33 on brakes, £40 on handbrake cable, and £80 on CV joint. Petrol has been roughly £3000 (on current prices).

In total, a smidge under £6000 for three years motoring (£37 a week). 80% of my driving in this car is the daily commute. By comparison, the journey to work by bus costs around £12 a day, and takes 2h 44 mins, as compared to 40 mins by car.