wyx087

Just want to report after 6.5 years of ownership, car at 9.5 years old. Nissan Leaf EV battery health still at 79%. Running cost still at 2.5p/mile, charged using 7.5p/kWh off-peak. Running cost hasn't changed over the years of ownership, it actually gotten cheaper as I started with standard E7 at 8p/kWh. I can't find where you say V2G/V2H doesn't work. But I'm using V2H right now, almost 0 consumption from the grid throughout the day. Charge up via solar or overnight, about 2 hours at 5 kW will do. At most, I'd pull 7 + 5 kW overnight. Right now there's 33% EV charging install in my close, no infrastructure upgrade in the area seen. Also, at South Mimms, there's now 64 EV charging points, 24 of which are 250 kW chargers, others are 120-175 kW chargers. Grid connection probably have been upgraded.

Of course right now EV cannot compare to a many-years-old car on price. Do we have any good EV before 2010? This is the fault of car manufacturers waiting for innovators, not wanting to unbalance the established status quo. Actually, there was a very good EV before 2010, but were taken back and destroyed in fear of disturbing the status quo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1#Cancellation But to say they are expensive novelty, when there's more £40k+ brand new ICE vehicles being bought is very "ill informed". Fact is when comparing new vehicles, EV prices are comparable and some instances very competitive. When comparing second hand, an ICE replacement only really came about from 2019 onwards and choices are few. There is lot of choices. Change car, use public transport or reduce travelling into ULEZ just to name a few. Just like leaded petrol, based on more scientific understanding, a change need to happen. When something needs to change, there always has to be incentives and punishment, carrots and sticks. Enough carrots have been given out. Speaking of carrots, I got my 7 kW podpoint back in 2017 installed for £99, thanks to government grant of £500 and Nissan contribution. I recently sold charge point unit on ebay for £135. Thanks very much everyone for your tax contribution. 😛 Before you say it's expensive novelty, the Nissan Leaf costed similar to similar age Skoda Octavia. Diesel saving for my 60 miles commute covered most of PCP payments. The only problem I can see for wide adoption is the ownership of driveways.

Economy centric tyres sometimes come with lower thread depth. You are free to fit 8mm tyres if you wish. But remember it's not the thread depth that determines life of the tyre. The compound wear rate plays a bigger role. This video starting at this point explains why some tyre may have lower starting depth, it's for rolling resistance. But they may have slower wear rate.

Good point, I shall change to say ill informed in the future. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." It is ill informed if information isn't widely available. It would be ignorant if actively choose not to do such research in earnest and believe the headlines. If you have driveway and have 2 cars, replacing 1 to be electric commuter car is very straight forward. At £11k, best option would be a Ioniq 38. A £11k good Ioniq 38 example brought through auction bidding service, everything is well within manufacturer's warranty: https://youtu.be/TqCplga9FTU?si=pBexkl3bkJrd2LOZ No I don't get up at night. I do have habit of drink a lot of water when sitting and working, so I go to toilet about once every hour. Usually when my watch buzzes to remind me to stand up. It's more about needing to stretch legs and do something else other than sitting. It's much healthier this way.

I think some people here claiming able to drive 4+ hours might need one of those. 😛 It's no denying choices are non existence for under £10k because of lagging manufacturers, too slow to put EV into mass production. Under £10k get you a great local EV. (Leaf, Zoe 22/40) Can be your main vehicle most of the time. Still need to keep the old ICE for longer trips. But still saves a lot of fuel and reduce local air pollution. £10k to £20k gives a lot of options for an acceptable EV to replace a single ICE car. (Zoe 50, Ioniq 38, Kona, eNiro, ID3) £20k or more buys a full featured ICE replacement without any compromise. (Model 3) Key, as always, is home charging. Cheaper EV is coming. This 100 miles range city car only costs £15k brand new: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/dacia-spring-uks-cheapest-electric-car Although it isn't impossible without home charging in a city, as demonstrated by this video: (S London, 5 miles commute, 1 trip to Manchester and a few hiking trips, all in a 100 miles EV)

Dual-string inverter. By my calculation I've already made back my investment, about 2 years earlier than projection. Due to sharp rise in energy prices and crypto mining using the free excess electricity. Of course, having ability to store also vastly improve saving. One is a civil engineer, the other is a consultant also in engineering. The finances works for most installs, they've had me look over the numbers. Especially when they are paying 15p/kWh for exports and possible to not import 25p/kWh. Installation is also very cheap nowadays, in comparison to my install. Only need to seek out advice and evaluate the market. Not many people actually do this because the old view that solar panels are expensive stuck. You have stated a logical paradox: - "it comes across that fashion" that I'm asking everyone to buy EV today. - "everybody should....... if they are in a position". So am I really asking everybody to buy EV, or everyone who is in certain position to buy? In what way was I insulting people? As you said, everyone has their reasons, and I agreed, I said "unless there's good reasons". Just like solar panels, thinking they are expensive to install because they were 15 years ago is ignorant. Thinking EV are not suitable without doing research is ignorant. That is a fact, not insult. Playing games and sole reason is being "government said" is a 5 year old adult. It is not a valid reason and it is not an insult, it is a description.

This bit is true, your thinking is also true. It all depends on how panels are wired up. Simplest and most common is wire up in series. Using what's called string inverter. A string of panels in series. Single panel get shaded, whole string generation drops. Middle is solar panel optimisers, panels are wired up in series through those. Any shading would not increase whole resistance in the whole string. Most expensive install use micro-inverters on the panels. They output AC and are wired up in parallel directly to the grid. Some explanation: https://www.freshelectricalsolar.co.uk/solar-panel-optimisers/

My solar is E-W facing, return on investment 11 years with feed-in tariff and energy saving calculation in 2015. Of course we all know there's hugely increased saving in recent years. 2 other house in my close recently got solar, no more feed in tariff, they are also E-W facing. The finance must make sense for them to have done the install. Again, how many times do I have to reiterate, I'm not asking everyone to buy EV today. I'm saying there's people who is in a position to home charge and buy new-ish vehicles, but are buying/leasing fossil fuel by default or out of spite for ZEV mandate. That is plain ignorance or a 5 year old adult. For those people, ZEV should be the default now. Unless there's good reasons, BEV will drive better, save money and pollute less. Check out all the reasons why people choose BEV: https://www.speakev.com/threads/what-convinced-you-that-ev-are-the-future.183692/

For planning, check out this website. Try it with different cars and weather/road/passenger configurations, see what kind of charging stop you would need to do: https://abetterrouteplanner.com/ It's brilliant. My wife was saying a stop every 2 hours, so I just looked at the route and clicked on an earlier supercharger -> add stop. It added that as a stop and understood it can be a charging stop. Re-calculated everything to fit around this new stop.

I can only hope ignorance or being a 5 year old adult by resisting whatever government says are not the reasons.

Unable to charge overnight is a barrier right now, I get it. But EV's as a vehicle purchase and the running costs if able to home charge are actually extremely cheap. It's even cheaper now with every level of second hand vehicles to choose from. But many with driveways are still buying brand new £60k+ giant SUV's. Many with capability are not installing roof top solar. Wealth is a limitation. But it's not the reason many are actively resisting.

Currently planning trip to Isle of Skye. I honestly can't see how driving ICE I could make it there much quicker. After 2+ hours I will need a comfort break anyway. Also, this is based on today's weather. May able to get there with 1 charge stop end of May. Oh yes, on mobile all kind of strange stuff happens. I restrain myself from visiting forum on mobile. I get more enjoyment out of my life than browsing forums 😛

Thanks very much. I read through the SpeakEV thread, which included your rundown of charging https://www.speakev.com/threads/skye-the-highlands-in-an-ev-was-easy.170994/#post-3280553 Indeed Fort William to Portree is only 110 miles. But we plan to stay in Isle of Skye for around 3 days, going all around the edge. 2-3 nights at same accommodation, star topology routes. So will need top up. Looking at Zapmap and discussing with my wife, The rapid chargers in Portree would be the fallback point. Ideally able to granny charge overnight would solve all problems. I calculated if leaving Fort William supercharger with 100%, only need top up around 50% to comfortably make it back to Fort William. I'm not worried about anywhere else, there's plenty of charging choices with just Tesla, add Electroverse as fallback typically at same service area. Only need a single 2 charging stop between London and Glasgow according to ABRP.

You need to go out to your own text entry area imminently under the quote box and press backspace twice from there. This forum uses a strange software, different to all others. It's got a lot of quirks, good and bad.

For the longest time, including all through last page, I had pushed green hydrogen as a very important method of excess renewable energy storage. I don't think anyone is overlooking or ignoring other possible solutions. But the solution must be suitable for the problem. BEV makes is the perfect solution for transport for vast majority of people. There will always be edge cases, similarly cars are not the definitive answer to all "getting around" problems. The mineral extraction exploitation problem for batteries are a speckle in the imperialistic exploitation of global resources all throughout history. Oil industry is still at it, but somehow battery material is a problem now. All forgetting many EV's today don't even use rare earth materials such as cobalt. Also conveniently forgetting that battery recycling will eventually happen when there is enough financial incentive: https://www.drivingelectric.com/your-questions-answered/840/electric-car-battery-recycling-all-you-need-to-know Battery and renewables create circular economy, burning of stuff for energy does not. Funny you should mention "big oil", I'm sure you are fully aware the amount of efforts big oil puts in to stir up FUD against climate change and EV. This book is a must read. Currently they are following the same playbook for climate change and EV, as tobacco industry to the letter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt This video explains the "new deniers" and how similar it is to the tobacco tactics used. The one thing we don't have is time to wait. The latter part of that video talks about impacts of giving in to denials.

What point would that be? If your example is about affordable, then I’m sorry to say green hydrogen will never be as cheap as powering directly with battery. Battery powered cars will always be cheaper to run by the simple fact it’s more efficient.

Just because EV's "went out of fashion" before fossil fuel does not mean it will happen again. Back then having electricity at home was a luxury, so charging EV is much more troublesome. Now, electricity is being supplied to pretty much every building. I'm not sure why does energy consumption visualisation of US states need to have UK on the map. It's not a map of the world, UK might not line up with any of the states. Similarly, China doesn't appear on it, would you say the same thing about China? But this mentality that it's the other people's problem will never solved anything. But I thought you said humanity must stand united? Does that not mean solve problems together?

https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/the-deal-with-solar.html " Musk calls the sun “this handy fusion reactor in the sky, where you don’t have to do anything—it works, it shows up every day, and it produces ridiculous amounts of power.” "

If only there's a super easy way to harness the energy from that reactor and store 90% of it somewhere? 😜 Well, I have those magical devices, and I am storing it. Everything I have is in mass market production in one form or another. We have this, we can use them right now. We can stop burning stuff right now. Apart from dogmatism, I honestly can't see any reason why people are resisting these mass produced magical devices. Instead, want something that was promised many years ago but never been put into mass production. All whilst still producing carbon emissions and burning stuff like the well trained dog of fossil fuel companies. This very long piece was my turning point, convinced me that EV's make sense, back in around 2015/2016, I saved it offline for reading on a long flight. Then in 2017 I bought Nissan Leaf as my first EV, and shortly after said the Skoda Octavia was my last ever ICE car. https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html#part1 It goes from why electricity is best form of energy (part 1), to why it makes sense for cars (part 2), part 3 can be ignored because we've seen Tesla's rise over last 9 years since its publication.

Nuclear fusion, just like green hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, are just 10 years away..... for the last 40 years.

That's great. Let's build hundreds of those in the next few months so we can have enough energy to split hydrogen out of water. But before then, BEV are the best options with the limited amount of electricity we have.

I'm driving to Isle of Skye for a week of family holiday, fully loaded car and stuff. There doesn't seem to be much ultra rapid or rapid charging hubs in that area? I've ordered a Chargeplace Scotland RFID. I've looked at my route up there, many options for supercharger stops. No problem driving up there and no problems around Glasgow and Edinburgh. But options beyond Fort William seems like 2017 with Leaf down here. A few 50 kW rapid charger and destination charging few and far in between. Plan is Friday late afternoon drive motorway up to Glasgow, arrive just after midnight. Drive up to Isle of Skye the next day. Probably get a full charge at Fort William, but still need a little top up whilst going around Isle of Skye.

It's all very nice in theory for when we have infinite amount of energy to do the bit in bold. But in practice, efficiency is name of the game. Of course, hydrogen will always have a place for things that can't really work with batteries. For example, cross seasonal energy storage, passenger planes, extra long distance trucking, extreme edge cases for passenger vehicles. Hydrogen are leakier than Methane (very man-made "natural" gas), we will need infrastructure upgrade to pipe through homes for boilers. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/13/uk-poised-to-drop-plans-for-hydrogen-to-replace-natural-gas-in-homes The advantage with hydrogen is its ability to be stored long term in comparison to battery storage. Storage is one of very valuable use-case for green hydrogen: store excess renewables across seasons. Again, it's only useful when there's too much excess. Unless by "it" you mean water engine? Which is not a real thing, the claims are often tied to investment frauds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-fuelled_car Hydrogen combustion still produces a lot of harmful emissions, same as burning anything. Hydrogen fuel cell is viable, using green hydrogen. But we don't have enough renewables to go around to begin with. Perhaps HFCV makes sense in a windy corner of Scotland. But I think EV has already gotten there first: https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/the-orkney-islands-the-energy-revolution-starts-here Water engine, is there any mass produced vehicle? Nothing is stopping them to be adopted later if it's real, just like the more promising, already mass produced HFCV. The everlasting power source is the sun, which can be easily turned into renewable electricity. Hydrogen is only green and ever lasting if we never-ever touch other colour variations, must be green hydrogen. Also we must have huge excessive renewables to begin with. It has its use cases, but never forget it's a very wasteful fuel. Water is only useful if you can use it to power stuff. I certainly don't want a waterfall in my car. I guess your car also doesn't look like this?

Remember, only when you need to drive high mileage daily, you need to use the charge point overnight. For example, if all your teenagers drives 200 miles daily, then yes, you'd need to have a spare 7 kW charger for each. Otherwise, it's not difficult to recharge 3 or even 4 long range EV's with a single 7 kW charge point. I've managed perfectly fine with my neighbour's new GV60, my MY LR and 1 60 miles Leaf, charged on a single 5 years old charge point for a handful of months. On the contrary. Now that we know the problem associated with continued usage of fossil fuel, we must move swiftly to electrify. Just as the world moved swiftly to get rid of lead in fuel. The beauty with electrification is that all the biggest emission during the lifecycle can be controlled and improved centrally: manufacturing, power sources, re-purposing, recycling. As the grid get greener, through more money flowing towards green energy, so will all EV's charging on it.

Leaded petrol. Nasty stuff. But this is an amazing documentary explaining how leaded petrol was allowed to flourish with help from lobbying. Fossil fuel has always had so much lobbying power, it's unreal. The hybrid cars could have arrived 15 years earlier had it not been for the diesel lobbist groups. Full electric cars could have arrived 5 years earlier if all manufacturers got behind Tesla and Nissan Leaf back in 2011.