Electric cars

You forgot to quote the first line of the next paragraph:

Allowing that the Zoe and the Kia are the same price, the cost to lease the battery in the Renault would buy you 1000 miles worth of diesel for the Kia!

Also the 10 min quick charge is based around a 'high voltage' charger which I'm guessing means 420V from a 3 phase supply and most houses don't have that...

Thanks, I hadn't read it - would be definitely be worth doing all the math on this one :)

Be good if we knew more.. in a few years perhaps we will - servicing and maintenance costs etc..
 
Well, i did type out a reply, but lost it, when the power went off......how ironic :D

Lets hops my car doesn't need a charge otherwise, we won't be able to go anywhere for some hot food :)
 
Well, i did type out a reply, but lost it, when the power went off......how ironic :D

Lets hops my car doesn't need a charge otherwise, we won't be able to go anywhere for some hot food :)

Order in! :)

Maybe I'll run a website to solve the issues of stranded electric car owners...
 
I would certainly have an electric car in the future, but only as a second car and would look to buy used rather than new unless prices were to come down significantly.

We currently use my wife's Mini for all of the short journeys around town and she uses it once a week for an 80 mile round trip for work so an electric car would be fine to replace it. I would still want a petrol or diesel car for the longer journeys though.
 
If they do electric cars surely they could have some kind of solar panels fitted to the roof to give that bit extra oomph
 
I would certainly have an electric car in the future, but only as a second car and would look to buy used rather than new unless prices were to come down significantly.

We currently use my wife's Mini for all of the short journeys around town and she uses it once a week for an 80 mile round trip for work so an electric car would be fine to replace it. I would still want a petrol or diesel car for the longer journeys though.

Pretty solid strategy there, electric for local stuff and standard for long distance.
 
Order in! :)

Maybe I'll run a website to solve the issues of stranded electric car owners...

Yeah, will have to, otherwise its cat food!
 
If they do electric cars surely they could have some kind of solar panels fitted to the roof to give that bit extra oomph
I'm no expert but I think the power you'd get from a panel the size of an average car roof would be so negligible as to be completely offset by the impact of the additional weight?
 
If they do electric cars surely they could have some kind of solar panels fitted to the roof to give that bit extra oomph

(all tongue in cheek of course)

By 'oomph' I believe you are suggesting that instead of extending the charge of the battery, that it will give you added acceleration.

Which might not be so great as you start overtaking a long vehicle, to find a cloud has covered the sun ..and you now won't make it! :devil:
 
They fit them in the Solar Prius as part of the AC system to reduce the load on start up, so it might be useful for other low load peripherals, to squeeze an extra few miles of range out. Not sure if it's cost or weight effective or a gimmick.
 
Nissan launched the leaf when we were in Lisbon last year, there were scores of them in a car park beside the discoveries monument.
Very smart looking thing.
Unfortunately, £28k list price and 110 mile range makes it the usual electric car laughing stock.
You'd have to be seriously committed to electric driving to suffer that.
Even for pure commuting use, you could buy 4 x Citroen C1 for £28k!
Or 1 x Citroen C1 and a lifetime of fuel.
I believe only 106 electric cars have been registered in the uk this year, which says it all.
 
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I know I'd have a special external power point for it as well on my house.

Or this.

Or maybe they could invent rubberless wheels that can transfer power from the roads, like the train system.

Would obviously need all the roads to be replaced.
 
I believe only 106 electric cars have been registered in the uk this year, which says it all.

That's quite a lot in three days :D

Seriously though, a lot of those will have registered by fleets - Our Uni along with AVID have about 50! We have (I think) three charging points on campus. One has been blocked in by a building site for about eight months and the other two have ALWAYS had a car attached. God knows where everyone else is charging :)
 
Does anyone have an idea of what they would cost to charge though.

At the moment it costs me about £60 for 47ish litres which does me just shy of 400 miles. How much would my electricity bill go up by to get the same mileage, which would be about 3.5 charges based on FZR's 110 mile comment above.

If it's roughly the same or more then there's absolutely no point!
 
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I've yet to see a road test of an electric car that has actually returned the advertised mileage. The 100 mile per charge would surely be reduced by constant start/stop city motoring. How would it cope with the steep hills where I live. I would have serious doubts about doing my regular trip through the Brecon Beacons for medical treatment which has a round trip of 70 miles.

Hydrogen must be the way forward, although government would have to find a suitable way of fleecing, sorry, taxing the motorist, ie, a tax per mile. The old 'environmental tax' would almost certainly have to be replaced by something.
 
(all tongue in cheek of course)

By 'oomph' I believe you are suggesting that instead of extending the charge of the battery, that it will give you added acceleration.

Which might not be so great as you start overtaking a long vehicle, to find a cloud has covered the sun ..and you now won't make it! :devil:

No road vehicles are that long, unless your trying to pass a train lol
 
FZR400RRSP said:
Nissan launched the leaf when we were in Lisbon last year, there were scores of them in a car park beside the discoveries monument.
Very smart looking thing.
Unfortunately, £28k list price and 110 mile range makes it the usual electric car laughing stock.
You'd have to be seriously committed to electric driving to suffer that.
Even for pure commuting use, you could buy 4 x Citroen C1 for £28k!
Or 1 x Citroen C1 and a lifetime of fuel.
I believe only 106 electric cars have been registered in the uk this year, which says it all.

Agreed , but the batteries will improve quite quickly , also , its like any new technology , first adopters always pay heavily ....
 
the batteries will improve quite quickly

Will they though. Look at the technological advancements of mobile phones recently, yet no improvements have been made to what powers them so you end up having to charge them every night, which is rediculous.

I'd say they haven't improved this field not because they can't, but with the copius amounts of sockets and ease of charging they don't need to.

So the same would be true with any battery powered device. Why spend money improving something which will not result in additional income when it's so easy to charge something.
 
Does anyone have an idea of what they would cost to charge though.

At the moment it costs me about £60 for 47ish litres which does me just shy of 400 miles. How much would my electricity bill go up by to get the same mileage, which would be about 3.5 charges based on FZR's 110 mile comment above.

If it's roughly the same or more then there's absolutely no point!

It's only supposed to cost a few pence to fully charge one
 
Does anyone have an idea of what they would cost to charge though.

At the moment it costs me about £60 for 47ish litres which does me just shy of 400 miles. How much would my electricity bill go up by to get the same mileage, which would be about 3.5 charges based on FZR's 110 mile comment above.

If it's roughly the same or more then there's absolutely no point!

0.3p a mile is claimed, so if you ever got any mileage out of it it would pay for itself quickly :D

Your 400 miles would cost you £1.20 :smashin:

But not, I suspect at a public charging post.
 
But not, I suspect at a public charging post.

I would imagine the simplest way to claim back lost money on fuel taxes would be to increase the cost of road tax for electric cars.

It's distgusting that everything has to cost money. If the public can save money by doing something differently they shouldn't be shafted somewhere else, otherwise what's the point.

It would be like a builder giving a price for a job, say £10k to do everything but the buyer saying i'll do X, Y and Z myself so the builder's quote comes down to say £6k. The builder wouldn't then just increase the cost of jobs A, B and C to make it back up to £10k would they? :mad:
 
A disruptive technology is required to make electric cars economically and operationally viable for most people.

Not sure what sort of energy densities a new breed of Redox Flow batteries could achieve, but you could "fill" your car like you do with a petrol hose, and just replace the spent fluid which can be re-charged at the filling station. Redox flow batteries can last 20-25 years without degrading.
 

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