Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) EV Journey

My Polo is 11 years old and at 57 k miles still a good car but with only 2 doors it is getting harder to get in & out due to my old knees and fatter newer cars filling car parking spots.

My wife is also having a thumb joint replacement on her left hand so needs an auto car for a while, probably 3 months.

I did a bit of research on EVs and found MG heavily discounting their ZS EV cars so have bought a new one for a third off list and comparible with buying a 3 year old id3. I collect it on Thursday from a dealer far far away in Leamington Spa. I would recommend Car Wow to get a great deal.

Now whilst the Morgan & our other ICE will be used for longer trips & the EV locally I did look at the economics of long distance EV travel. Which is fascinating if the UK Govt really wants us all in EVs after 2030.

My Polo does 40 mpg consistently so costs in fuel 15p or so per mile. Ditto the Morgan.
Charging at home on an Octopus EV tarriff (which is 7p per kW with Intelligent Octopus Go) and with the MG doing 3 miles per kWh, this cost per mile 2p

On the long trips though the public chargers cost around 80p per kW. Thus it costs 27p per mile or roughly double an ICE car.

There are plenty of charging stations and the excellent Octopus Electroverse app can route plan them in. The trick it seems is to only charge publically the minimum whenever possible. This so called splash & dash means typically a 10 -15 min stop after 3 hrs. So not so bad.

But you will say you pay no road tax. Wrong from April it will be £190 thanks to that nice man Mr Hunt. I'm happy to pay in the delusional view that the roads will improve. My Polo was and remains £20 pa , go figure.

The MG service plan including AA cover costs less for 3 years than an annual ICE service.

Despite horror stories on insurance and the MG being group 28A the increase is only c £70 pa

Mixed messages all round then.

I'll post more as I learn the joy of zero emmission (powered by Drax) motoring

Well done John, I know your feelings on this and I hope this suits the boss and yourself.
It will be interesting reading your experiences with the MG, some of those figures seem skew whiff if they are trying to get us all in ev’s.

For those that are unable to charge at home (street parking/flats etc) looks like a non starter.

Beware of some of the "safety" systems.
A fellow radio amateur, who is an EV fan, gave up on MG, one reason being his car at least twice (until he managed to turn the system off each time he was driving it) steered him away from nearside hedges, virtually into the path of oncoming traffic. This was on narrow country lanes, he lives outside Stroud.
Not sure what EV he is driving now.

Graham the lane assist etc you have to actively switch on in the car I am getting.
But it has tons of this stuff that I will turn off.

Makes a lot more sense!

On the MG EV forum are folks who can only publically charge. They seem to have company cars and the ev tax hit is only 2% so I suppose that balances out.

Al lot of the folk on the forum plan to retax their cars in March to ensure another year of 0 ved.

John .... and I bet they're the same people who'd rant on about rich people gaming the rules to avoid paying their taxes!! 🤣

Sorry, couldn't resist it.🙂

K

Ps ... I smile about such stuff as, living in the 'oil capital of Europe' (as it was), I know plenty who registered as non-dom and formed themselves as limited companies but still obliviously ranted on about 'tax avoiders' and Westminster spongers when they wouldn't get out of bed for what an MP was paid! 😁

Well Rachel from accounts moving my DC pension into inheritence tax also pushed me into buying a new car as 40% of what I spend they won't get (basic man maths says big spends are 40% off till we get back to the IHT threshold; a nice problem I guess). Sadly most of that spend goes to China but that is what successive governments have driven by globilisation & making it possible/attractive to destroy onshore production.

Jeez, that sounds lethal. All the Mini does is vibrate the steering wheel a little if you cross a white line without indicating.

We bloody love our Mini, it's been absolutely faultless since we bought it 3 years ago with no sign whatsoever of range degradation. It's just come second in the What Car reliability survey with an index of 98.4%, just behind the Tesla Model Y. Apparently there have been no reported faults with either battery or motor, all the recorded faults were with 12V battery or motor wiring, none of which immobilised the cars.

If we were ever going to replace it (which almost certainly won't happen) then it would be to make way for a Volvo EX40.

Update: the 3 worst EVs for reliability were the MG4 (63.8%) , the MG ZS (69.3%), and the Mokka-E (65.6%).