Luckypants

Gridserve have been having issues with their chargers at Rugby for the past week or so. It seems they are not keeping on top of maintenance leading to breakdowns at quite a few sites, not just Rugby. The Tesla chargers seem unaffected. We did a 200 mile trip yesterday on a whim. Car was at 73% when we left and we got two destination charges while we did the sight seeing / walking planned and got home with 33% charge. This EV thing is not so hard.

I did meet a couple of guys who treated getting free charging like a game, planning their use and comparing notes (while plugged in to the free Tesco 22kW). One proudly told me he had done 6000 miles for £90. Fair play if you can get it but it will come to an end soon. Dundee have the right idea to benefit locals but 20p is still cheaper than home charging for me. Still a bargain in Scotland using CPS chargers.

That seems very reasonable costs to me. I think free open to all council chargers are unfair to local council tax payers as people who do not contribute to local taxes reap the benefits also. It did feel odd rocking up to a charger, getting 50kW and not paying - I felt like a 'cheeky git' knowing the local council would be footing my bill. I'm not surprised that Local Authorities are moving to a pay to use model. Local Authorities around here are just starting to put chargers in to their car parks and prices are more commercial at 40-55p a kWh. I think most if not all will be happy paying the 30p/kWh price, even those who cannot charge at home.

The price is crazy and makes me concerned about charging on the go. Luckily I do very little of that. The shocking part is the scale of the rise, 66p to £1, a 50% increase suggests Osprey have messed up buying electricity at a good price or have lost a backer. Either way this looks like panic and I won't be surprised if they go bust. I'm sure they will lose a lot of custom at that price.

Lack of demand for propane is probably what keeps the price down. It is 'cheap' compared to natural gas but I have to say your €30 price is a lot less than the UK which is £38 for 11kG bottle refill. Having said that, it has not gone up since I last bought in January. I use bottled gas for the hob. (oil for heating, no mains gas out here).

That's a shame but I don't blame you.

We're getting used to it! Perhaps we need a new thread? "George's Charging Rants"......

The ID. cars from VW get enhanced battery temperature management in cold weather with V3.0 software. I expect Enyaq will get similar with version 3 too. In the meantime schedule any overnight charging to complete just before you leave as charging warms the battery.

*cough* hydro *cough cough* pumped storage hydro We need more of both.

I've just topped up the heating oil as I'm expecting the price to rise over the coming weeks, not just because of the approaching winter. Lots of German and French commercial users will be forced onto oil when the EU finally bans imports of Russian gas. There is only something like a 2 million barrel reserve of diesel/heating oil this year where normally there is 20 million in reserve in the EU at this time of year. Driving any kind of car will be very expensive this winter.

We did about a thousand miles in Scotland in June. We charged almost exclusively on ChargePlace Scotland (CPS) chargers and they all worked seamlessly. We had registered an account with them last year, but never made it up to Scotland. We got a CPS RFID card (costs £10) and used that without exception to start/stop charges and never had a problem. The free charging units are normally CPS units and we did get free charges at Pitlochry, Fort Augustus and Callander. The other charges were very reasonable at 18-36p / kWh. The only non-CPS charging we did in Scotland was a Podpoint rapid at Tain Tesco which was a very reasonable 28p/kWh. (this could have been free too, but two old boys who obviously knew each other well were hogging the free 22kW chargers )

Can't say I have, but always worth an ask?😁

Salary Sacrifice is nearly always better than PCH if the lease prices are similar. You do get BIK taxation, but that is low currently compared to the tax and NI savings made by paying the lease from salary before income tax and NI is calculated. Furthermore, the SS scheme will be reclaiming the VAT, further reducing the cost to you. So the lease price you pay is ex. VAT. If you can, see if the SS lease company can take over your current offer - you may get the benefit of the lower price and SS. Note most company SS will include RFL and insurance. With PCH you must insure it yourself and (for safety) also take gap insurance.

MfG are putting their prices up from tomorrow. Matching Instavolt. https://twitter.com/MotorFuelGroup/status/1559163101622280192?s=20&t=vNTLNnKVWuvDVZktMmlv8w

Instavolt have announced another price increase

I have often cited my own example as I do monitor the cost of my cars. My previous diesel Karoq averaged 45.4 mpg over 36K miles. (https://www.fuelly.com/car/skoda/karoq/2018/luckypants/793739) - a good comparison to my ID.4 I have now. It was serviced once in that time for £256, insurance was £320 pa and VED was included in the lease - which was £480. Before covid we were doing about 15K a year. At current fuel prices here (£1.85 p/litre) the fuel cost is 18.5p/mile. The ID.4 is on PCP and costs £580 pcm. Insurance is £300 pa and VED is £0. No servicing yet, but I expect to be in the region of £150. Over 17K miles my average charge cost per mile 5.48p/mile (sorry in a spreadsheet so cannot share). This includes free charges at Tesco etc but I get nothing not available to any EV driver and I don't take the **** (e.g could have granny charged at the cottage when on holiday but chose to pay at the rapid 2 miles away). The £100 difference in monthly cost is more or less offset by the cheaper cost per mile, making the cars broadly similar in cost to run / own. If we take an average 1000 mile month, I save £120 but spend £100 more on monthly (This is how I justified the high purchase price of an EV to myself, cos £580 a month is crazy!) These figures meant I was able to get an EV for all the reasons of low emissions without really paying through the nose. I'd like to replace the Citigo with electric, but the figures no where near stack up for a low use vehicle.

This is true BUT the day rate or peak rate paid is very high as are the standing charges. You need to be able to move almost all your use to the low cost period for it to make sense to use one of these tariffs now. Just saying you can charge your car for 7.5p / kWh ignores the bigger picture of overall electricity cost for the household. I work from home, so use quite a lot in the day and for me the SVP would be best if I didn't have a fixed rate at the moment. I get what you say about home charging being cheaper than diesel and for me most definitely is at approx 5ppm versus 18ppm if I still had a diesel. I pasted the rates in my area below and you can see the day rate on Go is double my current (V. Good) rate. Everyone's circumstances are different. My rate YOUR TARIFF Octopus 24M Fixed Octopus 24M Fixed September 2021 v3 Fixed term ends 13/09/2023 21.99p/kWh 23.50p/day Octopus Go rates for my area:- Unit rate (04:30 - 00:30): 42.29p/ kWh Unit rate (00:30 - 04:30): 7.50p/ kWh Standing Charge: 47.31p/ day Prices include VAT. Octopus Go is an electricity only smart tariff. For gas, simply choose any Octopus gas tariff.

I can understand you not getting the granny charger but they must supply you with means to charge your car via type 2 cable, so this should be supplied. Have you checked with the dealer that they have their facts straight?

Watched this yesterday and now on tenterhooks for part 2. 🙂

Blimey, that was a while back. IIRC it was a trip to Bodnant Gardens with the grown up step-kids. It would have been driving normally with auto (or intelligent?) regen set, driving to speed limits and with climate set to 19C. Since then I've done many more miles in the ID.4 and I'm able to get better efficiency as I've learnt to drive to its strengths. I'd be disappointed with less than 3.3 miles/kWh now. FWIW our recent touring holiday of the Highlands, covering 1866 miles averaged 3.4 miles/kWh. Probably around 700 miles of motorway in that, another 700 odd on two lane A roads and the rest on single track. Two adults, two dogs, luggage for all including buggy for the old dog.

Something that just occurred to me as my nearest ultra rapid charger is Flint Mountain Supercharger..... Osprey's 66p / kWh makes Tesla's price for non-Tesla cars seem reasonable at 60p/kWh. Who'd have thought that? 🤷‍♂️

As has been said, most people will look at the monthly cost. My ID.4 costs more per month than our previous Karoq, but less to run. When we went for the ID.4 I thought the running cost savings would offset the increased monthly cost and this has been proved by experience. Broadly speaking going EV has been cost neutral for me.

Only get the discount if charging between 7pm and 11pm. It is not a discount across the board and the discounted price puts it at around the same price as everyone else, 52.8p. Bonnet PAYG rate is 50p at the moment, so the cheapest way to charge at Osprey chargers. (unless you have bought a Bonnet refill, which is cheaper still) And I agree that the price of used EVs is crazy, mainly due to the daft waiting time for a new car. I've been offered more than I paid for mine and its 16 months old and 16k miles. I recently thought I'd be able to change out our Citigo for a second hand electric Mii/Up/Citigo until I saw the prices being asked - even 3 year old ones are asking more than new price (two year wait for a new one)

Chapeau! 🙏

If you rapid charge, I'd agree using a CPO company is getting expensive. I note the CPS chargers are still cheap though, mostly below 40p so that is still economical. We have a few (and I mean few) Transport for Wales chargers here at around 40-45p so not too bad. Home charging is still cheap compared to fossil fuels for most, so in my experience EV is cheaper than ICE equivalent. As an example, my previous Karoq averaged 45mpg in our ownership (37k miles) which means 10 miles / litre. This makes working out cost per mile pretty straight forward. Around here diesel is £1.93, giving 19.3 p/mile if we were still running our previous car. The ID.4 has an average of 5.47 p/mile over 16k miles and so far this month is 4.83 p/mile. Last month we did 2K miles at 4.49/mile mostly on CPS rapids, but that is skewed by some free charges. But I think it demonstrates how cheap EV is compared with comparable ICE. I don't do much rapid charging though, mainly home charging and Tesco / Aldi free top ups.