Electric cars - running costs.

It's charged from the traction battery. It's a tiny battery. (No starter motor) If it goes flat, the car can't be charged, run or anything.

What I don't understand about hybrids is the effective mpg on long trips? As well as the fuel serving the internal combustion engine you have the losses from the electricity generator and motors to pay for, and the weight of the electric system and battery to carry around. How can the hybrid possibly be as cheap to run as a modern diesel only car?

They come into their own about town. Little benefit on the motorway.

So you may as well have a straight electric car. Covers 99% of most people's needs.

You don't have a starter motor or alternator. I'm getting a long-term measured MPG of about 56. That seems to be rather better than most smallish petrol cars.

Yes the Zoe has a heater and full aircon based on a reversible heatpump. It is full auto so you just set the temp and forget.

With a Zoe you can lease the battery if you wish, bet we bought the car/battery outright. The battery has an 8 year guarantee.. The battery is oversized (I believe our 41kWh battery is actually 46kWh. The charger/battery monitor system allows you 41kWh at full capacity, feeding in the 'spare' capacity as the battery ages so to the end user it always seems like you have the full 100% capacity. All Zoes have full battery monitoring which Renault have access to via a permanent mobile link and the datasets on battery ageing for all(most?) Zoes are available for the last 4 or 5 years and are exceeding all expectations in terms of loss of battery capacity. It's new technology that has the spotlight on it. I am happy with that info and on that basis we bought an EV. Everyone has different expectations and can make their own choices based on the facts available.

Andy

But you can then recharge the 12V battery as normal with a normal car charger and recover the situation.

The one thing that I will say is the biggest weakpoint at the moment in EV's IS the 12V battery. In a Zoe (yawn) the 12V battery is normally replaced every 3 years as part of the service schedule to prevent being caught out with a failed battery. As I have said elsewhere if the battery is functioning normally it is normally continuously being recharged from the traction battery via a DC/DC converter.

Current (no pun) lead acid batterys used in EV's are standard legacy vehicle type batterys, and tend to fail early as the lead plates sulphate up over time - an EV does not have a high current starter motor being used several times a day to cause the plates to self clean. Hence the battery fails in lesser time than you would expect.

The 12V battery is there to brovide a keep alive voltage for the cars main contactor - the 400V traction battery is normally completely disconnected when the car is 'turned off'.

The 12V supply being used to power the main 400V traction contactor on startup, and power light/radio and othe low power stuff when the 'engine' is off

as many houses in towns don?t have off road parking ie driveway or garage how would they charge them?

That's what smart meters are for :-).

Shame the 'govt' isn't using its own money though ....

Assuming they actually use the car, then charge it at a public charge point/supermarket/car park/motorway service area/hotel/church/brothel/dealer etc

I get that from my medium sized diesel. For a long, mainly motorway, run I will get around 65mpg. This is as reported by the car so I can't say how accurate it is :) Perhaps one day I will get around to measuring it.

I'd rather have the E-type Zero

No better than a diesel. On ling trips all the benefit is in the energy recovery,.

As well as the fuel serving the internal combustion engine

What you lose are gearbox and transmission losses and waht you gain is regeneration and the ability to run the power plant at the most efficient part of its energy curve .

but inferior to most smallish diesel cars.

At the supermarket.

That's about what I would expect. Trouble is, it's a diesel.

No heater? What you do take a gas heater with you then? Brian

The trouble is that if the battery fails on an eight or nine year old car, it will be totally uneconomic to replace and there will be zero residual value in the vehicle. An IC engined car at that age can still have most things repaired or replaced economically and keep running for another 8 years. Indeed, when my wife wanted a smaller car, her previous car was reapired for £40 and sold for £350 - at 15 years old! If she had not wanted to change it, it would probably have gone on for a number of years.

SteveW