Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Electric Cars

Hello Chris,

How do you connect the EV to your home to utilize the stored battery power, if required? it sounds like expensive electrical work to achieve this.

You need a V2G or V2H charger, also often called a two way charger, V2G is Vehicle to Grid and V2H is Vehicle to Home. From what I can tell most chargers you can buy now are one way, you can use them to charger the car and that is it. The newer chargers can be two way and a bit more like a Solar panel invertor that takes DC power from the solar array and converts to 240V AC to use in the house and export to the grid.

Other new features I have seen on chargers is the ability to only charge the car with excess solar power

My solar system is quite old and small at 1.5KW but on a good 20 year contract from 2010. It goes straight to the grid at 45.7cents and we pay 22cents for power used from the grid. So really while we have that contract it only makes sense to charge the car from the grid. But once the Solar contract is finished assuming the contracts stay the same as now it would make sense to put on a much bigger system. Contract now seem to be about 6cents Feed in tariff for excess power in and being charged 22cents for any extra power used so you want to use as much solar as you can rather than getting paid only 6 cents for it.

Once I am out of contract it would make sense to throw way the old system and put on a new 13KW solar system (and take about the same roof space) with a 13KWH standard battery and a smart two way charger to only charge the car on solar unless overriden becaus ei want a full battery asap. Then allow the house to use power from the 13KW battery followed by the car if necessary. Cost a lot to setup but would mean minimal power bills from then on.

What I am thinking is the Mitsubishi comes with a 10 year warranty, plus a good service plan for 10 years. Assuming we get it in two years then the car will be 6 years old when our solar system contract finishes. I could sell the car for a decent price with 4 years warranty left and upgrade the car and house at that time with whatever is the most sensible option at that time. For now as it makes sense to only charge from the grid I would not buy any car charger at all, just use the standard 240V charger from a standard power point already in the garage. Hopefully by 2030 it will be more obvious what the future of cars is and solar systems will have improved even more than they have.

Thanks for the explanation,
While your initial contract remains, it makes good sense to sell all your solar power, a great pitty you don't have a larger system.
When your car arrives, buy your self an electric BBQ and 20mtr. lead.

Cheers

Hi,

I was thinking if we ever had a black out and needed power a 20metre cord wold be useful. For example we had an outage two years ago at 11;30am, I checked our utility providers website on my phone and it said power should be back by 2pm. I was working from home at the time so texted my boss to say I am having a long lunch, however I could have ran an extension lead from the car into the house and plugged the power board with computer, monitor and modem into it and kept working.

Yes it could also be good for an electric BBQ, and no reason to just have BBQ's at home

The recent budget coupled with market forces, are quickly bringing parity between EV charging and IC costs. Those who bought their EV's a few months ago expecting to enjoy a fuel cost advantage will soon lose that advantage if the trend follows on in this direction - driving charging costs above that of filling up with diesel or petrol.

It depends what car it was replacing... I now use my EV instead of my Range Rover as a daily. The cost per mile is about a tenth of that of the Range Rover. A lot cheaper than my +8 too. No servicing costs either.

Electricity would need to rise to £1.40 per kWh (currently 22p) to have parity with the V8's. And that assumes the cost of petrol would remain where it is now.

On todays prices, and based purely on fuel costs alone (not accounting tax/insurance/servicing/depreciation) our Hyundai is on 13p per mile and my Corsa on 17p per mile.

Depreciation is zero as they're very old and holding value but if you added in Tax, Insurance and Servicing, you can add an extra 3p per mile on to hers, and 4p per mile on mine.

I think I read earlier that an EV was on about 11p per mile (but I think that was just fuel costs alone). I've seen other websites quoting about 5-6p but again, insurance and depreciation are not factored in (I think EV's are currently tax free? - that'll probably change soon when the Gov't realise they are losing a massive amount of revenue).

My 2010 320d is currently costing around £0.14p/mile.

Circa 800 miles to a tank- and refilled at the pump in 5 or 6 minutes

Negligible depreciation, other than wear and tear on running gear (ball joints, tyres etc- which even EV's will need)

I would be interested how that compares against running an EV with the expected increase in Electricity costs

I thought about this as well.

If you are fortunate enough to have a solar array and local storage (charge house storage during the day and from that to car overnight) then it remains an increasing benefit. If you cannot then you will be in the same position as petrol is moving forwards, at the behest of the market. Petrol will no doubt become a bigger tax target as the mass volume of vehicles become BEV due to the UK goals. In theory the electric should translate to renewable and so become cheaper?

To add to Neilda's comment the running cost of the larger cars is becoming a LOT more expensive as garages continue to increase their per hour labour charge on ICE cars and they become more complex as they hit EU6 emissions capability? A big lump like my ML63 and a Range Rover eat brakes and tyres etc so I expect the re-gen and lack of moving parts should make a heck of a difference when you multiple the work by hourly charge for servicing. This will continue to increase as the car dealerchains come under pressure through the squeeze ahead.

I still think the more valuable thing is to reduce travel as far as possible (for work) in order to drop all costs. Petrol, servicing, road charges (soon), insurance, tyres, speeding tickets (oops) and ginsters at the petrol stop.

EVs make sense in specific situations, but they are not a universal replacement for an ICE and this will only be as long as electricity suppliers offer night time cheap electricity. I was paying Octopus 7.5p/kWh and this gave a fuel cost of 4p/mile.
Great if my daily commute was less than 250 miles round trip, but not if it is further and for the 300 to 500 mile a day drivers, quite useless.

BUT to drive further was marginally viable and now with higher fuel prices it isn't.

People will continue to buy ICEs and Hybrid ICEs as long as they can, and unless the re-sale of used ICEs is banned they will go on for many years.