Would you have an electric car if you had the money for a new car and were in the market for one?

[ZRX61]

It's a slippery slope... & yes, he does have the HRD logo on his pisspot.

IMG_20260301_112546561.jpg (4.81 MiB) Viewed 727 times

[Pirahna]

I took the new Tesla Model Y for a test drive this morning, I'm very impressed. It was my first drive in an electric car, smooth, quiet, plenty of power and one pedal driving is brilliant. I'm definitely sold on the idea.

[Taipan]

I took the new Tesla Model Y for a test drive this morning, I'm very impressed. It was my first drive in an electric car, smooth, quiet, plenty of power and one pedal driving is brilliant. I'm definitely sold on the idea.

They definitely grow on you. Took me a while, but I really love driving my Tesla now. As you say, silky smooth and powerful.

[Taipan]

[Nordboy]

For the few i4 owners on here, I'm considering another EV, probably can't stretch to a 50 so 40 is the one I'm looking at.

Any issues? Real range? They're quoting 360+ miles but I know it won't do that, just wondering how close or the real range.

Anything else I need to think of?

Current list of possibilities are
Tesla M3 LR
BMW I4 40
Polestar 2 LR
Renault Scenic etech
Kia ev6

Apart from the Polestar and Kia, they're all quoting over 350 mile ranges.

[KungFooBob]

I've got the M50, I'm on all the Friendface groups and problems are few and far between. Even then it's minor stuff like the media rebooting.

In the States it often wins reliability surveys.

The official WLTP range for mine is 315, but I ain't ever got close. Mainly because I hardly ever charge to 100%.

The cold makes a massive difference to range too.

I did my house to Scarbados and back when it was just above freezing and got 200 miles with about 15% left.

If range is important, then the Teslas are more efficient, but they are not as well built by a long chalk.

[Nordboy]

I've got the M50, I'm on all the Friendface groups and problems are few and far between. Even then it's minor stuff like the media rebooting.

In the States it often wins reliability surveys.

The official WLTP range for mine is 315, but I ain't ever got close. Mainly because I hardly ever charge to 100%.

The cold makes a massive difference to range too.

I did my house to Scarbados and back when it was just above freezing and got 200 miles with about 15% left.

If range is important, then the Teslas are more efficient, but they are not as well built by a long chalk.

Thanks, In the winter I've run the Explorer on the premise that it's range is 100 miles less than claimed. Hopefully it'll get closer in the summer.

If I have to buy a M3, then I will, but I'm looking at a few options. I'm a bit of a BMW fan boy so wouldn't mind an i4, even if it is the 40. The BM is generally a fair bit more £ used though.

[Taff]

I've got the 40 with a massive 1250 miles on the clock.

today I got 3.4m/Kwh which is up from 3.1 that I was getting in Jan, realistically 270-280 is probably about where it's at, how often you drive more than 250 miles a day? if it's once in a blue moon then public charging is no problem.

The bigger consideration for me is that in the 6 hours a day that I get electric at 7p/kwh, I can charge about 50%, any more will be at 28p/kw or leave it until the next night.

It's a truly amazing car though, the heads up display and the voice control is superb.

[KungFooBob]

Over winter I was averaging 3 miles/kwh.

This month so far it's 3.3.

A couple of times this month I've got over 4 on my commute home (24 miles), it needs to be 10c plus to get that tho'.

[Nordboy]

I've got the 40 with a massive 1250 miles on the clock.

today I got 3.4m/Kwh which is up from 3.1 that I was getting in Jan, realistically 270-280 is probably about where it's at, how often you drive more than 250 miles a day? if it's once in a blue moon then public charging is no problem.

The bigger consideration for me is that in the 6 hours a day that I get electric at 7p/kwh, I can charge about 50%, any more will be at 28p/kw or leave it until the next night.

It's a truly amazing car though, the heads up display and the voice control is superb.

My (maybe) future commute could be 100-130 mile round trip, four days a week, which would mean that I'd need a pretty good range. I'm the same regarding 6 odd hours charging at cheap rate. If I only charged to 80-90 %, then realistically I'd need to charge and then keep topped up almost every day. We'd be running two EV's in the household so need to be organised as to when to charge each one.
So, I'm not 100% sure it's doable at the moment. If I had a longer range then I could potentially go 2 days between charges, making the whole thing a bit easier.

[Taff]

Your 130 miles would need 43kw at 3 m/kw, charging for 6 hours at 7kw is 42kw, so it entirely depends on how much charge your other car needs if you only want to charge @7p.
But charging at full rate is still much cheaper than petrol, the last time I worked it out electric needed to be less than 47p to be cheaper than petrol but now that the price of petrol is going north....

[Couchy]

Had the leaf for around 9k miles now. When we bought I didn’t imagine we’d use it anywhere near as much but at 1.5p a mile it’s saved us a fortune over the diesel it replaced. it’s the smaller battery one and does 140-160 miles a charge which works for us. What doesn’t though is the older style chademo charge port. Twice it’s needed charging in public and these charge leads are becoming rare. So knowing we use it so much started to look for something and may as well go bigger with the battery. Almost bought a 2 year old Kia but an advert popped up for the Honda e:ny1, an unbelievable £20k off list price and 0% plus 5 years warranty servicing and AA cover. A visit to the Honda dealer to confirm the deal and ordered one. Apparently Honda will be fined a huge amount if they don’t sell their quota of EV’s, dunno how true it is but the car and deal worked for us

[KungFooBob]

Had the leaf for around 9k miles now. When we bought I didn’t imagine we’d use it anywhere near as much but at 1.5p a mile it’s saved us a fortune over the diesel it replaced. it’s the smaller battery one and does 140-160 miles a charge which works for us. What doesn’t though is the older style chademo charge port. Twice it’s needed charging in public and these charge leads are becoming rare. So knowing we use it so much started to look for something and may as well go bigger with the battery. Almost bought a 2 year old Kia but an advert popped up for the Honda e:ny1, an unbelievable £20k off list price and 0% plus 5 years warranty servicing and AA cover. A visit to the Honda dealer to confirm the deal and ordered one. Apparently Honda will be fined a huge amount if they don’t sell their quota of EV’s, dunno how true it is but the car and deal worked for us

It's not listed on the Honda website any longer, I assume they've been discontinued, hence the big discount.

There isn't a single full electric car on the Honda site at all.

[Couchy]

Had the leaf for around 9k miles now. When we bought I didn’t imagine we’d use it anywhere near as much but at 1.5p a mile it’s saved us a fortune over the diesel it replaced. it’s the smaller battery one and does 140-160 miles a charge which works for us. What doesn’t though is the older style chademo charge port. Twice it’s needed charging in public and these charge leads are becoming rare. So knowing we use it so much started to look for something and may as well go bigger with the battery. Almost bought a 2 year old Kia but an advert popped up for the Honda e:ny1, an unbelievable £20k off list price and 0% plus 5 years warranty servicing and AA cover. A visit to the Honda dealer to confirm the deal and ordered one. Apparently Honda will be fined a huge amount if they don’t sell their quota of EV’s, dunno how true it is but the car and deal worked for us

It's not listed on the Honda website any longer, I assume they've been discontinued, hence the big discount.

There isn't a single full electric car on the Honda site at all.

It’s here

https://www.honda.co.uk/cars/new/range/electric.html

[KungFooBob]

Had the leaf for around 9k miles now. When we bought I didn’t imagine we’d use it anywhere near as much but at 1.5p a mile it’s saved us a fortune over the diesel it replaced. it’s the smaller battery one and does 140-160 miles a charge which works for us. What doesn’t though is the older style chademo charge port. Twice it’s needed charging in public and these charge leads are becoming rare. So knowing we use it so much started to look for something and may as well go bigger with the battery. Almost bought a 2 year old Kia but an advert popped up for the Honda e:ny1, an unbelievable £20k off list price and 0% plus 5 years warranty servicing and AA cover. A visit to the Honda dealer to confirm the deal and ordered one. Apparently Honda will be fined a huge amount if they don’t sell their quota of EV’s, dunno how true it is but the car and deal worked for us

It's not listed on the Honda website any longer, I assume they've been discontinued, hence the big discount.

There isn't a single full electric car on the Honda site at all.

It’s here

https://www.honda.co.uk/cars/new/range/electric.html

But there's no link to it from the main new car page...

https://www.honda.co.uk/cars.html

EDIT:

Ah you have to go to the specific Electric page to see it.

But you still can't 'build' one to buy.

[v8-powered]

@Couchy - if you dont mind me asking, what did you get back on the Leaf? Are they hit as badly as the other EVs on resale?

[Nordboy]

Your 130 miles would need 43kw at 3 m/kw, charging for 6 hours at 7kw is 42kw, so it entirely depends on how much charge your other car needs if you only want to charge @7p.
But charging at full rate is still much cheaper than petrol, the last time I worked it out electric needed to be less than 47p to be cheaper than petrol but now that the price of petrol is going north....

I have thought about the possibility of needing to do a short public charge mid week, just so the wife could chuck hers on the home charger. Otherwise your calculations mean that I should have no problem with the 130 mile round trip?

In fact, i'm now wondering if I need something with a theoretical, rather than real 300+ mile range? If I'm going to have to top it up every night then I'd only really need 200+ miles?

[Nordboy]

Or, using Couchy's suggestion of a 3 pin plug. I'm not sure if my calculations are correct?

Octopus go so 7p/kw between 11.30pm and 6.00am, 34p other times.

If I used a 2.4kw/h 3 pin charger, from 6pm until 6am, 12 hours. The first 5.5 hours would cost me about £4.08, the cheaper session then about £1.09 so £5.17'ish in total.
I should be able to put in about 27.6kw in total, therefore if I was getting 3 miles/kw, that's a theoretical range added of about 80 miles?

If I had 100 miles range left at the end of the mid week drive, i'd therefore have more than enough charge to do my 130 mile return journey?

I have no idea if my above maths is correct though

[Taipan]

Or, using Couchy's suggestion of a 3 pin plug. I'm not sure if my calculations are correct?

Octopus go so 7p/kw between 11.30pm and 6.00am, 34p other times.

If I used a 2.4kw/h 3 pin charger, from 6pm until 6am, 12 hours. The first 5.5 hours would cost me about £4.08, the cheaper session then about £1.09 so £5.17'ish in total.
I should be able to put in about 27.6kw in total, therefore if I was getting 3 miles/kw, that's a theoretical range added of about 80 miles?

If I had 100 miles range left at the end of the mid week drive, i'd therefore have more than enough charge to do my 130 mile return journey?

I have no idea if my above maths is correct though

If you use Octopus Intelligent Go, you tell it what time you want your car ready for and it'll create a charging schedule. Often these packages of charging are outside of the cheap rate hours, but you'll still only get charged cheap rate.

[Couchy]

@Couchy - if you dont mind me asking, what did you get back on the Leaf? Are they hit as badly as the other EVs on resale?

Paid £11k at one year old sold 9 months later having done 9000 miles for £9500. Never imagined we’d have used it so much tbh would have gone bigger battery car at the start which is where we are now with the Honda and its huge discount