"Nobody in their right mind would buy a used EV..."

HolgateCorner said:
This is an interesting point.

As somebody new to my EV I have a bit of a thing at the moment to top it up to 80% (manufacturer recommends keeping in the 20% to 80% charge range) whenever I can.

I went to Silverstone recently staying at a hotel for three nights 30 miles north of the circuit, so a bit of daily driving, and when I did my journey planning I noticed the car app was telling me to charge back up to 80% when down to 14% and then a small top up on the way home with something like 20% left as I got back to Middlesbrough.

I didn’t follow it, I did my own thing and never got below 35% charge because of a bit of worry that chargers would not be working etc when I most needed one. In the event I charged 3 times and drove up to empty charge stations and each one was working perfectly.

Mind you I had no worries driving home down to finish on about 25% simply because I knew I could just plug in overnight when I got back.

I think my anxiety will diminish over time, it already has to a large extent, but you are right that there is no point hogging busy charge stations topping up unnecessarily and definitely not into the ‘slower charge zone’ above 80%.
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That anxiety should diminish. When I had the Tesla and knew I could rely on the superchargers I would regularly go down to 2-3% before charging. Now I have the polestar I'm not as confident but still will be chill if I'm going to arrive with under 10%. The cars tend to be pretty accurate with their arrival percentage calculations.

I agree that charger reliability needs to improve but the infrastructure is so much better than it was when I first started using an EV. I was amazed at how many gridserve charge stations there are now
 
SmallTown said:
That anxiety should diminish. When I had the Tesla and knew I could rely on the superchargers I would regularly go down to 2-3% before charging. Now I have the polestar I'm not as confident but still will be chill if I'm going to arrive with under 10%. The cars tend to be pretty accurate with their arrival percentage calculations.

I agree that charger reliability needs to improve but the infrastructure is so much better than it was when I first started using an EV. I was amazed at how many gridserve charge stations there are now
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One thing which really reassured me on the Saturday morning queue into Silverstone was that we were sat crawling for 6 miles in 2 hours and I was just waiting for the battery to start draining. But it didn’t, it used 2%, virtually spot on for a 300 mile range car. I know it says that it only uses the power needed to travel the distance and all that but sometimes you have to experience it yourself to believe it.
 
HolgateCorner said:
One thing which really reassured me on the Saturday morning queue into Silverstone was that we were sat crawling for 6 miles in 2 hours and I was just waiting for the battery to start draining. But it didn’t, it used 2%, virtually spot on for a 300 mile range car. I know it says that it only uses the power needed to travel the distance and all that but sometimes you have to experience it yourself to believe it.
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This is true.. I was stuck in heavy traffic on sat and expected a big drain which didn't come. I think people over estimate the power draw of aircon and the radio
 
The bottom line answer to this has got to be affordable, fit for purpose, public transport. Labour recognise this and have it in their sights as their election manifesto, but due to lack of investment by all parties and previous governments, it isn't going to be cheap. I used to love driving but now my wife, and self, make a dash for the car to see who can get into the passenger seat first. Congested roads, motoring costs, pollution, and ridiculous parking charges have killed the once enjoyed driving experience for us. The whole of Europe is set up so differently regarding public transport and provides a model which the UK should adopt.

#UTB
 
HolgateCorner said:
As somebody new to my EV I have a bit of a thing at the moment to top it up to 80% (manufacturer recommends keeping in the 20% to 80% charge range) whenever I can.

I went to Silverstone recently staying at a hotel for three nights 30 miles north of the circuit, so a bit of daily driving, and when I did my journey planning I noticed the car app was telling me to charge back up to 80% when down to 14% and then a small top up on the way home with something like 20% left as I got back to Middlesbrough.

I didn’t follow it, I did my own thing and never got below 35% charge because of a bit of worry that chargers would not be working etc when I most needed one. In the event I charged 3 times and drove up to empty charge stations and each one was working perfectly.

Mind you I had no worries driving home down to finish on about 25% simply because I knew I could just plug in overnight when I got back.

I think my anxiety will diminish over time, it already has to a large extent, but you are right that there is no point hogging busy charge stations topping up unnecessarily and definitely not into the ‘slower charge zone’ above 80%.
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Yeah, that's how I started, was like that for a month or so, but then I just started doing my own thing and it worked better. Also the milage is extremely accurate and there are ways to stretch it out, usually by going slower.

I don't bother with the 20-80% thing on long trips, not rigidly anyway. I just charge to what makes the most sense for overall speed. I would rarely go above 90-95% on a public charger though, especially if it was a fast charger and if it was fairly busy. It it's quiet and I'm having some lunch or whatever I would just leave it charging until I've finished, sometimes that's been 100% etc.

If you do ~12 long trips per year or one a month, then charge to what you need, until it slows right down at 90-95% or whatever. You're not doing much if any harm to the battery going over 80% on rapids for 12 times per year (the cars slows it down to what is safe enough). It may make a difference if you were using a rapid 2x a week, and needed to go to full, but I don't know anyone who does that.

When home charging I only usually charge up to 80 or 90%, it depends what I have planned for the week. If driving to a long meeting, where I might be pushing the range for a long trip I'll charge to 100%. Most of the time my car is sat on the drive with 50-125 mile range, I don't worry about it being less than 50% now as I've come to learn the reality of my schedule. Long trips at < 1 days notice don't really happen, not for me anyway.

If charging on the way back to Teesside I would aim to target Skelton lakes or Wetherby, as they both have 350kW chargers, this makes a big difference to me as my car can charge up to 270kW. My old EV could only do 100kW, so I was less fussy.
 
HolgateCorner said:
One thing which really reassured me on the Saturday morning queue into Silverstone was that we were sat crawling for 6 miles in 2 hours and I was just waiting for the battery to start draining. But it didn’t, it used 2%, virtually spot on for a 300 mile range car. I know it says that it only uses the power needed to travel the distance and all that but sometimes you have to experience it yourself to believe it.
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You will have still been using energy, but all you're doing is altering the time spent in each speed band, for the range calculation. The car might have been expecting you to do 60mph, but instead you were doing 20 mph or 0 mph etc.

EV's are extremely efficient at slow speeds, as it's far lest drag. The biggest enemy of the EV is drag, and the enemy of drag is the speed, it's like cycling which I've physically felt, rough numbers:

Average speed = power used per hour
10 kM/h = 50 watts
20 kM/h = 100 watts
30 kM/h = 200 watts
40 kM/h = 400 watts

So riding for 40km at 10 kM/h might use 200 watts, but do 40km at 40 kM/h and you're going to use double the energy.

I think a car at 80 mph uses something like 50% more energy than a car at 60 mph does, or something like that.

WLTP tests on cars are done at a ~55 kM/h average for the low speed test I think, so they're way up on the drag curve by that point. Milage will probably far exceed WLTP milage when going very slow, even better if you can avoid stopping or breaking and even regen.

I suppose if you were really struggling on battery, getting off the motorway and driving like a Sunday grandma on slower roads with less stopping and traffic would make a massive difference.

People have done tests on all sorts of cars at slow speeds and someone got 600 miles out of an older version model 3 a while back, averaging ~25mph I think. This was ~50% more than the max WLTP range.

It's not really practical to use WLTP range mind, as the main time you want range is on long trips, when ideally you want to be tooting down the motorway at max 70mph or whatever (usually @ 60mph average).

If you've got a car which can charge fast, and you can hit fast chargers then it makes no sense to drive slower, even if it's more efficient though. The charging speed far outweighs the extra inefficiency of higher speeds, plus higher speeds are obviously saving you time.
 
Alan_Breck said:
The bottom line answer to this has got to be affordable, fit for purpose, public transport. Labour recognise this and have it in their sights as their election manifesto, but due to lack of investment by all parties and previous governments, it isn't going to be cheap. I used to love driving but now my wife, and self, make a dash for the car to see who can get into the passenger seat first. Congested roads, motoring costs, pollution, and ridiculous parking charges have killed the once enjoyed driving experience for us. The whole of Europe is set up so differently regarding public transport and provides a model which the UK should adopt.

#UTB
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Public transport should become very cheap when the buses and taxi's no longer need a driver, when they're being fuelled by the cheapest way of moving a bus or car (wind/ solar power), and when the maintenance costs come down (which they should be for EV's). That's the hope anyway!

If it's cheap, and there ends up a lot more of it, and it was integrated, then it would be more reliable and usable for a lot more people, so could snowball into something massive and completely replace most personal car ownership. This in turn could put less cars on the road, making journeys faster or the same by public transport then they would otherwise have been with personal transport.

The thing is, driverless cars and buses are going to have to come in and work, when there's the most cars on the road, i.e at the most difficult time. When there are less cars over time, things should get much easier...in theory.

There's already driverless taxi's in LA, and I've driven there and it's nuts.

I can't imagine we're going to be more than 5 years behind this, surely?
 
If they get the driver-less cars right you should never need to own a car again.
You could just subscribe to a specific car sharing system were the car is waiting for you at your doorstep when you request it and it takes you were you want to go you then pay on a price per mile charge.

You could have bespoke services for bigger vehicles when you go out with the family and smaller ones if your traveling alone you could make some vehicles thinner as you wouldn't need a passenger seat and they would drive safely closer together so traffic jams should become a thing of the past as would traffic lights.

Vehicle Insurance would become obsolete and no more car crime.

No one would ever speed again but as there are no jams journeys would be quicker.

It would also require a complete overhaul in town and home planning. Houses would no longer need drives or potentially garages . Roads could be thinner as you could inc-operate more one way systems especially in residential areas. Town centers or shopping malls would no longer need car parks as you would be dropped of at the door.
Even the Redcar Arena might work ;)
 
Redpete said:
If they get the driver-less cars right you should never need to own a car again.
You could just subscribe to a specific car sharing system were the car is waiting for you at your doorstep when you request it and it takes you were you want to go you then pay on a price per mile charge.

You could have bespoke services for bigger vehicles when you go out with the family and smaller ones if your traveling alone you could make some vehicles thinner as you wouldn't need a passenger seat and they would drive safely closer together so traffic jams should become a thing of the past as would traffic lights.

Vehicle Insurance would become obsolete and no more car crime.

No one would ever speed again but as there are no jams journeys would be quicker.

It would also require a complete overhaul in town and home planning. Houses would no longer need drives or potentially garages . Roads could be thinner as you could inc-operate more one way systems especially in residential areas. Town centers or shopping malls would no longer need car parks as you would be dropped of at the door.
Even the Redcar Arena might work ;)
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Yeah, it seems like a complete no brainer to me, there has to be something viable like this in 10 years or so, surely.
 
I can't see how driverless cars will ever work in the UK. Our road system is too weird. Motorways are fine but have to go on a rural road and I can't see how a machine would be able to handle the nuances of passing points, partially driving into ditches etc. If all cars were linked and communicating with each other then it could work but if they are relying on what they can see then there's going to be things that seems too difficult to program a machine to think through. How do they deal with the endless amounts of potholes, roads with no markings, parked cars etc.

Other countries have newer road systems which are much more predictable. Some of ours are 100s of years old and not always fit for cars.
 
Redpete said:
If they get the driver-less cars right you should never need to own a car again.
You could just subscribe to a specific car sharing system were the car is waiting for you at your doorstep when you request it and it takes you were you want to go you then pay on a price per mile charge.

You could have bespoke services for bigger vehicles when you go out with the family and smaller ones if your traveling alone you could make some vehicles thinner as you wouldn't need a passenger seat and they would drive safely closer together so traffic jams should become a thing of the past as would traffic lights.

Vehicle Insurance would become obsolete and no more car crime.

No one would ever speed again but as there are no jams journeys would be quicker.

It would also require a complete overhaul in town and home planning. Houses would no longer need drives or potentially garages . Roads could be thinner as you could inc-operate more one way systems especially in residential areas. Town centers or shopping malls would no longer need car parks as you would be dropped of at the door.
Even the Redcar Arena might work ;)
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As long as they keep the inside of them clean 👍
 
Andy_W said:
Public transport should become very cheap when the buses and taxi's no longer need a driver, when they're being fuelled by the cheapest way of moving a bus or car (wind/ solar power), and when the maintenance costs come down (which they should be for EV's). That's the hope anyway!

If it's cheap, and there ends up a lot more of it, and it was integrated, then it would be more reliable and usable for a lot more people, so could snowball into something massive and completely replace most personal car ownership. This in turn could put less cars on the road, making journeys faster or the same by public transport then they would otherwise have been with personal transport.

The thing is, driverless cars and buses are going to have to come in and work, when there's the most cars on the road, i.e at the most difficult time. When there are less cars over time, things should get much easier...in theory.

There's already driverless taxi's in LA, and I've driven there and it's nuts.

I can't imagine we're going to be more than 5 years behind this, surely?
Click to expand...
It’s like that Invisible Man film.
 
Nano said:
I can't see how driverless cars will ever work in the UK. Our road system is too weird. Motorways are fine but have to go on a rural road and I can't see how a machine would be able to handle the nuances of passing points, partially driving into ditches etc. If all cars were linked and communicating with each other then it could work but if they are relying on what they can see then there's going to be things that seems too difficult to program a machine to think through. How do they deal with the endless amounts of potholes, roads with no markings, parked cars etc.

Other countries have newer road systems which are much more predictable. Some of ours are 100s of years old and not always fit for cars.
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Yeah I 100% get that, but they don't need to work on all roads to have a significant benefit. If they cover 80% of trips or 80% of milage then that's certainly "working" for me. Even covering 30% or 50% might be "working", depends how you look at it I suppose.

A lot of single lane roads could be made one way, or if that doesn't work maybe gradually widen some of the busiest single lane ones, add more passing points or remove the street parking etc. This doesn't need to be done straight away etc, this would be the last thing to get done, maybe 20 years away etc. In 20 years every car will probably have a GPS tracker on it, so you or a driverless car will know what is coming and where to pull over etc.

A lot of narrow single lane roads are probably used as short cuts, to save a couple of minutes, but I think if people were getting chauffeured around they won't mind going the slightly longer route, or doing more of the route on trunk routes etc.

Could maybe even be as simple as using normal wider vehicles for most roads and if you need to go down a single lane road you just swap over onto a narrower vehicle, or book a narrower vehicle form the outset. Most roads even the narrow ones are 3.5m wide, they need to be that wide to get a bin wagon down or whatever, we only need to be covering those. If people want to live down narrower roads than that, then that's their problem, but it won't be a problem for a long time.
 
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