I am glad that this thread has morphed into a serious discussion from which we are learning stuff! I have no idea where he dropped the boat off, He's now dead, so I can't ask him. He was a master at sailing, he could just use wind to take a yacht from the harbour quayside right out to sea, no engine required. Quite often there wasn't an engine anyway.
According to Facebook all these problems have been solved with new battery technology that can give an EV a range of 600 miles on a single charge and it only takes 3 minutes to fully charge them :)
If true, :) :) why would anyone buy an EV now when the existing battery technology will be obsolete very soon making the second hand value of the EV close to zero.
If false why would anyone buy an EV now...either
Possibly because:
Most people buy new cars on a contract such as PCP where they are insulated from future falls in residual value, and
Many people who have driven an EV would prefer not to switch back to driving a car with an engine?
nib
They are quiet and comfortable. If you can charge at home, they are cheap to run.
For many people, range isn't critical. The furthest I have driven in one journey in the last 10 years is 130 miles.
If you can charge at home, there are no end of locations where you can't do that without running cables across the public footpath..
Agreed. It's quite a problem.
We are thinking of down sizing, and most of the smaller houses don't have off street parking.
I've got from Surrey to Aberdeen (and Back). I'm planning to going to Inverness in September.
So... if that's you, stick with engines for now. Everyone can't change at once.
nib
The furthest I drive in my own car is maybe 50 miles. Ideal candidate for an EV? Well my present car is worth more to me as a car than to sell it (it's
2008 reg and it's done just under 200,000 miles). It still goes very well and still gives me almost the same fuel economy as when it was new. I wouldn't want to have to buy a new car for the sake of it until my present car becomes uneconomic to repair. After that, maybe technology will have improved so recharge times are comparable to filling with 60 litres of diesel and getting another 700 miles range. Although I'd mainly use my car for short journeys, I wouldn't want to be saddled with a car that couldn't, at a moment' notice, be able to do a longer journey without advance preparation and/or lengthy stops on the way.My wife's car is our main car. She bought it partly because she would have a long commute to work, though Covid has changed the way her company work and she's been into the office about 5 times since then.
Several times a year we drive down south either to visit relatives or to go on holiday (cruises from Southampton). On those occasions, we do about 250 miles with only a pee and sandwich stop at a service station - we don't need longer because we changed drivers so the original driver doesn't need rest time before continuing. On a couple of occasions one or other of us has done the Southampton to East Yorkshire journey non stop. The thought of having to stop for longer than it takes to go for a pee, and buy and eat lunch, simply to recharge somewhere which is likely to be more expensive than anywhere else, is daunting.
Progress should be a one-way process: once cars can go faster and further, why would you want to endure shorter range and/or longer recharging time than in a previous car? As my grandpa used to say, "never progress backwards; better to stand still".
It's not so much "change at once"; it's "change at all, ever" for some people - unless they move house to one that has driveway parking where they can charge a car at household rates rather than at a rate which includes a profit for the operator of a public charger.
and, probably, the cost of geting he supply to the charging point.
WE have a motorway services close by. To get the extra power on site about
5 mles of highway was dug up. That must have cost sombody something."nib" snipped-for-privacy@ingram-bromley.co.uk> wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net...
If EVs didn't have the huge problem (at present) of taking dramatically longer to charge than it takes to fill up a tank of petrol or diesel and then get more range that with the EV, and if they weren't eye-wateringly expensive, I'd buy one tomorrow - or at least when my elderly but still perfectly good diesel car finally expires.
I'm sure EVs are a joy to drive, because you don't have to change gear manually or to endure an automatic which changes at a time other than when you would want it to if you were driving a manual. I have always found accelerating smoothly out of a roundabout difficult in an automatic - whether a 1980s Ford Sierra or a much more recent car because you either don't accelerate enough and the remains in the present gear but doesn't get a move on or else with a minute amount more accelerator transmission changes down to a silly gear which allows the engine to rev because it has less load on it and the car lurches forwards: there isn't a way of saying "I'm in third as I approach, stay in third as I negotiate and accelerate out, and then change up as I ease off the power having finished accelerating; don't go down into second and give me kick-in-the-back acceleration". It's something which is so much easier in a manual where you the driver can choose when or if you change gear and by how much, and can coordinate that with the timing of the acceleration that you've planned. Automatics are great at achieving a smooth gearchange but still, even in the 2020s, lousy about doing it at the same places in the acceleration as a manual driver would choose to do it. I always laugh when people say "automatics are so easy to drive" because I find them a lot more difficult because I'm "fighting" to remain in control. All that is a non-issue with an EV.
Once they solve the recharging-time problem (and ideally increase the range, although an extra stop for a couple of minutes (equivalent to filling up with diesel) is no great hardship; it's the fact that ever stop is for a lot longer than you would otherwise stop.
There is the little social problem. Suppose you have friends come to visit you. You need a social protocol for "can I charge my car on your drive and reimburse you for the cost of the electricity" because it seems mean to force your visitors to go out and find a public charger (on-street or car-park) for their return journey - and make them wait with the car until it's charged because they want to move it as soon as it's full so as not to hog the charger.
One of the issues at the moment, it seems to me, based on the people I know, that nearly every EV owner does almost all charging at home. I do, I've done 20000 miles in mine and it's only ever been charged at home or at work. That means that public chargers, especially the low power overnight residential area public ones around here, are not much used. They're more of a distress purchase. The operators need to charge a decent premium to make them pay. I have about 20 of this sort within a short walk from home and so far they are mostly occupied by non-EVs in the day time and deserted overnight when you would expect them to be most useful. Often just one car on a group of 8 chargers.
I suspect that if they were used more there would be competition and more income to cover fixed costs so prices would come down. Ergo, if everyone was using an EV, including those with no home charging, public charging would get easier and cheaper.
nib
I don't find that. Not only do I want to use the loo, I want a coffee about every 2 hours. That coves the charge time.
Much as I love my EV, I wouldn’t advise anyone without off street parking at home to buy one. The ability to refuel at home is one of the biggest plus points of EV ownership.
Tim
If you can charge at home, keeping the car topped up shouldn't be a problem for journeys within its range. So it won't take longer, and will be considerably cheaper. Charging off-site takes the cost of fueling well beyond petrol/diesel - I think 70p/unit isn't untypical. 45p is the average point at which EVs are more expensive (I've read - not done the sums).
But as you've set out, for your use - long journeys with short and infrequent breaks - an EV isn't likely to work. For many it will, though.
Cost of vehicle - agreed. I'll be looking second hand come the time. As I always have - never bought a car new. And EVs do seem to depreciate quite quickly.
On 2025-06-09 21:15, NY wrote: ...
...
Don't forget to factor in against the few times a year you might need an in-journey charge with the time saved in the whole of the rest of the year when you never have to go near a petrol station!
nib
Yesbut ... the time saved will generally go unnoticed, however the time lost will likely occur at the worst possible occasion ...
"By end of 2024, more than 27 percent of registered cars in Norway were battery electric (BEV). 88.9 percent of all new passenger cars sold were fully electric in 2024. The speed of the transition is closely related to policy instruments and a wide range of incentives."
*******In the forums where some of the participants are BEV owners, there is an admission there that "most people buy used cars, not new cars". And the reason is the price, the length of the loan and payback period, and so on.
The new car buyers, are selecting the "stock" the used car buyers will pick through.
*******How will it all end ?
We'll be taking lessons from Norwegians...
Paul
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