Dieselgate

Agreed. I'm fortunate enough to have two cars, one of which will hopefully be an EV from next month but with the technology at it's current state I would never consider one as my only vehicle. The only reason for having one is to lump my 15k annual commuting miles on to it (and as many other miles as possible) which will save me a fair bit of cash on fuel and depreciation. The EV will be quite unlikely to ever go further than 100 miles from home with the Superb taking on any longer journeys. I really hope the ZEV mandate is dropped at some stage. People should take on new technology at the speed that works for them, not be forced into it.

Warranties vary of course. Toyota offer a 10 year/100k mileage warranty if you service with them. Others such as Genesis and Hyunda offer a 5 year warranty but unlimited miles. A key difference here is it's very rare for an ICE car to suddenly drink lots more fuel than previously. Warranty issues on ICE cars tend to relate to a total failure of a component rather than a gradual decline as is the case with EV batteries. My point was that battery degradation is effectively an accepted part of EV ownership - people expect it but for it to drop to 70% in 8 years/100k miles in my view is going to be too much for most people to accept.

TBH I think manufacturers will have to shape up a lot better on battery warranties than they are generally currently offering. 70% at 100k/8 years is a pretty big decrease. Most people are used to ICE cars having a similar efficiency to new at that sort of age. I get that in most cases the degradation is a lot lower than that but I think 90% at that age is probably about the limit of what I would consider to be acceptable.

It's the Ohme ePod. There was an option to pay £100 and go for a tethered charger but I was feeling stingy so decided against it in the end. As I'm hoping to do the majority of charging at work then I shouldn't hopefully be using it every day, perhaps just a couple of times at the weekend. Any idea if it's any good? I didn't particularly research it but it looks fine to me. Nice and compact which I like.

I finally took the plunge last week and ordered a Cupra Born via salary sacrifice at work. Hoping it will arrive around the end of May (it was a pre configured one that they had a good deal on). It's to replace my wife's Polo GTI but will mostly be driven by me. Plan is to do all my short journeys (15k commuting miles per year) and as many other short journeys as possible on the Cupra and keep the Skoda for our longer trips. I tried to be very pessimistic about the numbers and in a worse case scenario it might not save me that much money but I'm hopeful that if all goes well and I can get most of the charging done for free at work then it could save quite a chunk as well as leaving me with less to worry about (insurance, maintenance etc). And of course I get a brand new and what looks like a nice car (and a free home charger thrown in for good measure).

FWIW I use all seasons during winter and summers in summer. I generally switch back to summer at the end of April and back to all seasons at the end of October. Probably keeping the all seasons on later than normally necessary but the in laws in Germany have been known to have snow in April so switching them at the end of the month effectively covers all bases and being all seasons it's not as if they're particularly compromised in warmer weather.

You could probably improve on your analogy tbh! No, people don't generally buy a car to cater for a 1 off occasion every few years (that may or may not happen) but grid peaks are more or less a daily occurrence and 'super peaks' in winter happen at the very least several times per year. Yes time of use pricing can help to alleviate demand but ultimately you are never going to be able to flatten it completely. Everyone wants to cook at around the same time every evening and we will always need the capability to be able to supply this.

Yes I was aware of that, we have plenty of fields of them near us. Obviously they can't be used for growing crops as well though. The visual impact and the fact that they are much less productive in winter is my main hangup with them though.

This is obviously something we won't agree on but I don't particularly take any delight in having large areas of the country given over to solar farms. I don't suppose I'm alone in that either.

Salary sacrifice scheme seems to be up and running at work now. Looking at the various options I think the ID7 is probably going to be slightly beyond my budget unfortunately though it's actually a lot closer than I expected. Cupra Born looks fairly attractive but the Ford Explorer looks much better value at only slightly more expensive. Does anyone have any experience or comments to make on it?

You can also cancel mid way through if you want to, if paying monthly. Useful if you think you might move the car on. Mine is out of warranty at the end of June and will almost definitely go for it. It does get a few more miles though!

If you are using it for long trips remember that the fuel tank is smaller on the IV. Obviously can be easily overcome with a bit of planning but don't get too far off the beaten track with an empty tank! I use a roofbox with my diesel Superb for long trips and it works well (I always take heaps of stuff with me) but the fuel consumption does take a hit when I give it the autobahn treatment!

Yes of course. I think its mainly public chargers that are being raided though, not domestic chargers as the high powered DC chargers have a lot more copper in them. Stealing home chargers would be possible of course but less likely as most are likely to be in use during the night hours and obviously powered at that time!

It is happening, particularly in the Midlands I gather. A friend of mine who works in the industry showed me a video from a CCTV camera of it actually happening, Obviously the perpetrator was well hooded up so no prospect of identification. Whether it is just for the metal or if they have a wider agenda is impossible to know until such a time as any of them are caught though FWIW my money is on it just being for the metal.

It's an obvious point but it's important to note that Euro NCAP continuously make the test tougher. Something that got 5 stars a few years ago might not get any today. Doesn't exactly mean the car isn't safe, just that cars are as a general rule getting ever safer.

I could be out of date but I think it's 62% when including NI.

Interesting, never heard of them before! Pricing on their dynamic tariff for yesterday is way lower than Octopus Agile.

Yes I think that's the tariff I'm interested in. Seems pretty good value - lower cost per kWh than any of the Octopus tariffs and for 7 hours instead of 5 or 6. Day rate is lower than Octopus too, just standing charge about 2p higher. Plus no exit fee so can change if something better crops up but with the advantage of it being fixed for 12 months.

Yes absolutely, main concern is to finish Friday with as close as possible to a full battery to maximise free usage at the weekend! The chargers hardly get used at the moment despite a few people owning EVs which I find quite surprising. If it becomes a problem then I'm hopeful we could get them upgraded, or more installed. Yes the ID7 is clearly an expensive option but I pay tax at 62% so this takes a fair amount of the hit. Will have to wait and see!

Yes - I don't have a home charger currently but apparently the scheme will be run through Octopus who offer a free home charger apparently. I already use Octopus Agile at home but will obviously switch to a more EV focused tariff if and when I have it. There's an Eon tariff that looks quite interesting at around 7p kW/h for 7 hours at night which would work well I reckon. Especially as I have air conditioning that I often run (for heating and cooling) during the night. Agile hasn't been a great tariff over the winter months so was thinking about moving on anyway. But as I mentioned, I'm hoping to get most, if not nearly all charging for free at the workplace EV chargers. Only slight concern is they are only 3.6kw so I can probably only get 30-35kW/h per day and my commute is around 33 miles each way. Plus if lots of people start getting them then there will probably be quite a scramble for the chargers😅 I guess final choice of vehicle will largely come down to the numbers of the various vehicles available on the scheme. The ID7 is interesting to me as it looks to be one of the most efficient and longest range available at the moment, especially as it's low drag coefficient should mean it's still fairly efficient at higher speeds as most of my driving is motorway.

I'm actually currently considering obtaining an EV. I'm sure that statement will be met with a degree of incredulity by many readers!😄 The situation is that work recently mentioned that they are going to be introducing a salary sacrifice scheme which got me thinking... It will obviously depend on the numbers once the scheme gets up and running (the scheme isn't running yet). However - and this is obviously only my situation... I currently own my wife's Polo outright which is worth around £14k - if I sold it and put the money in the bank I could reasonably expect to earn about £500 or more a year in interest (obviously this could drop). I could shift about 20k of my annual mileage onto the EV (15K of this would be commuting and the rest made up of other local short trips). I could keep the Skoda and use this for my longer journeys and have the added benefit of keeping the mileage low and therefore depreciation (I'm currently doing about 22k miles a year on the Skoda and about 10k on the Polo). 20k miles worth of fuel is probably at least £2k at current prices and I should be able to charge the EV at work as we have chargers (albeit very slow and only 4no.) and obviously I could charge cheaply at home for any additional requirements. So total potential savings per year as it stands would be: £500 interest £2,000 fuel £3,000 set aside for replacement car £300 servicing £200 VED £6,000 total Unknowns Actual cost of the scheme - i.e. how much will I lose in take home pay for whatever car I choose. Inclusions/exclusions - would insurance be covered for example? It's certainly got me thinking about which EV is best though. Looking for something efficient and long range to minimise need of public charging but still be able to maximise what I can use it for. Tesla's seem the obvious market leaders but I really don't like the look of them and neither do I like the touch screen does everything approach. The charging network is obviously a massive plus with them but as I don't really intend to do much, if any public charging then it's not really a game changer. Plus it looks like they will be increasingly opening the sites to all EVs in the long term anyway. I won't take any of the Chinese brands. The most obvious model that's got my attention at the moment is the VW ID7 estate. Seems to be very efficient, great range, highly practical and well equipped. Downsides seem to be the relatively high cost. Have I missed anything? Any other cars that I could look at? Any other potential costs/savings I've missed?

Aren't they based at Poole?

You also lose a portion of the manufacturers warranty period too.

Hardly surprising considering ICE technology has been around so much longer and most manufacturers are putting most of their investment into EV technology. The main question is how much further and how fast battery technology can improve. 5% improvement per annum in energy density is hardly that exciting when ICE is so far ahead. A typical Skoda Superb weighs at least 200kg less than a Tesla Model 3 (and is not insignificantly larger). With 200kg of extra fuel on board it would have a range of about 4000 miles. No contest.

Probably - I don't really know but it's more than likely I would have thought. Tax breaks are hardly unique to the fossil fuel industry, most businesses take advantage of them in some way. The industry would definitely exist if there was no such thing as tax.