the truth about electric cars

[Graham Butcher]

12 minutes ago, Winston_Woof said:

Until I joined this forum I never even gave thought to using summer and winter tyres in the UK and I’ve been driving since 82. 
 

in fact it’s never really come up with other car forums I’ve been on over the years. 
 

are Skida drivers really that different or are the members here no representative of the wider population most of whom probably just use all season tyres in the UK

I've been driving since 66 and all I've ever used are what they call all season tyres. I've always thought of winter tyres as being the ones with studs in them for driving on impacted snow. 

 

I understand that in some countries it is compulsory to have a set of summer and winter tyres.

Edited 19 May by Graham Butcher

[J.R.]

Without any comment with the posted link I assume that you consider that to be a reasonable price for a charger?

 

I would have agreed with you until I learned it is not a charger at all

 

I should have realised given the size of the things, look at that unit, its barely any bigger than the caravan plug!

[Winston_Woof]

2 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

I've been driving since 66 and all I've ever used are what they call all season tyres. I've always thought of winter tyres as being the ones with studs in them for driving on impacted snow. 

 

I understand that in some countries it is compulsory to have a set of summer and winter tyres.

Yup that’s what I have always thought of as “winter” tyres but it does seem many people here (even Brits) have summer/winter tyre/wheel combos. 
 

seems a waste of time to me. 

[Stonekeeper]

16 minutes ago, Winston_Woof said:

Until I joined this forum I never even gave thought to using summer and winter tyres in the UK and I’ve been driving since 82. 
 

in fact it’s never really come up with other car forums I’ve been on over the years. 
 

are Skoda drivers really that different or are the members here no representative of the wider population most of whom probably just use all season tyres in the UK

 

 

I too don't see the need for Snow/winter tyres in Greater Manchester/Lancashire. I can probably count the number of times i have been stuck in Snow in over forty years on half of one Hand. But if  i lived in Scotland or elsewhere in Europe i may see the need.

Edited 19 May by Stonekeeper

[wyx087]

19 minutes ago, J.R. said:

Without any comment with the posted link I assume that you consider that to be a reasonable price for a charger?

 

I would have agreed with you until I learned it is not a charger at all

 

I should have realised given the size of the things, look at that unit, its barely any bigger than the caravan plug!

That is about the price for mobile charge connector. The Tesla OEM one is here:

https://shop.tesla.com/en_gb/product/mobile-connector

But Tesla one is more versatile, you can buy an adaptor for Commando socket. Single one works with everything with the right £40 adaptor.

 

Remembering a regular Type 2 cable is £80-150 depend on length. £150 for a no brand portable EVSE is about right. It handles safety checks at the plug (not over heating) and the electrical signalling for the car.

 

https://shop.tesla.com/en_gb/category/charging

 

Edited 19 May by wyx087

[Stonekeeper]

10 minutes ago, J.R. said:

Without any comment with the posted link I assume that you consider that to be a reasonable price for a charger?

 

I would have agreed with you until I learned it is not a charger at all

 

I should have realised given the size of the things, look at that unit, its barely any bigger than the caravan plug!

 

I will assume this is a response to the caravan plug type adapter ev connector,

 

I was wondering where i could find a Socket to plug the car into or a cable that could allow charging at 7kw from standard house wiring without a wallbox if i decided to make one myself. that was the nearest thing i could locate other than the podpoint type arrangement in the previous pdf posted.

 

I cannot find a wallbox that doesn't describe itself as a charger so i am confused about what does what.

 

I don't know how it works in France but in the UK 7kw charging at home has to be "smart" capable going off all the info i have read so far. So the  wallboxes are a bit more involved than just supplying the Amps.

[Graham Butcher]

15 minutes ago, J.R. said:

Without any comment with the posted link I assume that you consider that to be a reasonable price for a charger?

 

I would have agreed with you until I learned it is not a charger at all

 

I should have realised given the size of the things, look at that unit, its barely any bigger than the caravan plug!

Until now, I had never really given any thought to the home charger other than understanding that to get the best out of an EV, you needed to be able to charge while at home for economic reasons. Then it hit me that electric cars actually have their own dedicated built in chargers, which just require a suitable connection to the house AC electric system. So yes, I do agree with you that they are very expensive for what they are, a glorified weatherproof interface between the car and the house wiring.

 

On the other hand when plugging in a lawn mower, they are generally going to be double insulated and normally not left plugged in overnight. Whereas a car would be and they are generally metallic so I'm guessing that these charge pods etc not only have another 30ma RCD but also other detections and disconnections systems just to be ultra safe as other third parties could come into contact with the car while on your property and hence why they are demanding photos of the internal connections as part of the registration process??

[J.R.]

Nobody is demanding photgraphs of my internal connections 😛

 

I can do what I like here thank the Lord!

[J.R.]

23 minutes ago, Stonekeeper said:

I was wondering where i could find a Socket to plug the car into or a cable that could allow charging at 7kw from standard house wiring without a wallbox if i decided to make one myself.

 

I have been thinking along the same lines but I think the plug and socket would need more terminals as I am surmising that there are some comms going backwards and forwards presumably to cut the power when battery is charged or in a fault condition, or when a desired level of charge is attained.

 

But then again they cannot exist on a Granny cable, perhaps someone could explain?

[wyx087]

15 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

So yes, I do agree with you that they are very expensive for what they are, a glorified weatherproof interface between the car and the house wiring.

Wait until you find out a home wall box charge point start at around £400, cheapest branded one is actually the Tesla one: https://shop.tesla.com/en_gb/product/wall-connector. None of them even have the RCBO built in!

 

Generally, a charge point install cost around £1000

https://octopus.energy/order/ev-charger/products/

 

It's all a giant rip-off. I had done a quote at my parents just before gov grant went away, that was Jul/Aug 2022. I'd qualify with my MY order paperwork. But installers were busy and had given quotes of over £1200, saying without government grant it would be closer to £1500. Surprised no one, grant went away and install price didn't change.

 

Similarly, when government grant for new EV back in 2010's went away and manufacturers magically found margins to lower their prices.

 

Hence I think we don't need more grants for individuals. Only need to cut red tape for charging hubs, build it and they will come.

[Stonekeeper]

11 minutes ago, J.R. said:

 

I have been thinking along the same lines but I think the plug and socket would need more terminals as I am surmising that there are some comms going backwards and forwards presumably to cut the power when battery is charged or in a fault condition, or when a desired level of charge is attained.

 

But then again they cannot exist on a Granny cable, perhaps someone could explain?

 

I think fully  charging a Tesla on a 13amp plug would take longer than a day. So maybe the low current makes comms redundant the car can probably ignore it when the battery is full

 

 

[Ootohere]

@J.R. I have 3 x 3 pin charge cables.  Good quality and 2 were under £100. 

1 came with the MINI.

AC single phase Type 2 but 10 amp (2.2 kW)  

 

Not the same as a 7 kW  32 amp set up. 

Edited 19 May by Ootohere

[Graham Butcher]

1 hour ago, J.R. said:

Nobody is demanding photgraphs of my internal connections 😛

 

I can do what I like here thank the Lord!

The photo submission was mention in the PDF file about the Podpoint that @Stonekeeper posted and I think it was only for them to accept that it had been installed correctly so that they could activate the warranty on the product more than anything else.

[domhnall]

On 19/05/2024 at 18:40, Graham Butcher said:

I think the real issue with charging regulations or the lack thereof is that there needs to be some form of regulation, especially over the price per kWh when it comes to public chargers, however the argument that I would expect to be presented by the providers is that it costs money for the chargers, the large charging hubs have to be located wherever there is suitable grid connection point. This point could be away from the main arterial routes like the Electric Forecourt in Braintree. They do take up a pretty large chunk of real estate when compared to a fossil fuel filling station, which has the capacity to yield a far bigger return on capital employed per hour than electric chargers could return.

 

Yes there are mitigating circumstances which could help redress the balance slightly, for instance a filling station will need to hire some staff members whereas charge points all are self-service via either a credit/debit card or an account or a phone app., but the filling station will always win out on that front.

 

However, all that being said, something does need to be done to give buyers of BEVs some sort of confidence about their running costs, even when home is impossible if the big switch over to electric power isn't to stall on the way.

 

Most of the charger operators are still loss making. They are having to invest in network rollout and that is capex intensive. The other reason is that the government has artificially depressed our energy prices, so the difference has been made up from business tariffs. Businesses typically hedge and lock in for longer periods, many are still paying significantly more than we do with our artificially constrained prices. Then there's the cost of connecting to the grid. The grid charges are up roughly 500% since 12 months ago. Per rapid charger it is now roughly £1,000 per year just to have your unit hooked up to the mains. Then there's maintenance, site rental, wayleave costs etc etc etc

[domhnall]

On 19/05/2024 at 20:55, Graham Butcher said:

Until now, I had never really given any thought to the home charger other than understanding that to get the best out of an EV, you needed to be able to charge while at home for economic reasons. Then it hit me that electric cars actually have their own dedicated built in chargers, which just require a suitable connection to the house AC electric system. So yes, I do agree with you that they are very expensive for what they are, a glorified weatherproof interface between the car and the house wiring.

 

On the other hand when plugging in a lawn mower, they are generally going to be double insulated and normally not left plugged in overnight. Whereas a car would be and they are generally metallic so I'm guessing that these charge pods etc not only have another 30ma RCD but also other detections and disconnections systems just to be ultra safe as other third parties could come into contact with the car while on your property and hence why they are demanding photos of the internal connections as part of the registration process??

 

actually some of them are smarter than that. Mine can and does integrate with smart tariffs so it knows only to charge when the price drops below a value I set, it works with my home battery storage and also my solar, I can tell it to send a specified amount of power to the car, or to only charge the car from solar or when a certain percentage of the available oower comes from the grid/ solar. So a bit more to it than just a connection.

[domhnall]

On 19/05/2024 at 19:29, Winston_Woof said:

Actually there’s a thought (thinking about market force pricing). 
 

why aren’t the energy companies installing publicly accessible chargers open to all but potentially giving preferential rates to their customers directly linked to their home energy bill?

My energy provider gives me an 8% discount on many chargers and the charge gets added to my home energy bill. Why should they have to start buying chargers that cost 6 figures plus the cost of maintenance, a grid connectiion charge of £1000 per charger per year plus site rental, cost of running a help desk. Nah, far better to do what they are doing right now. After all Tesla are providing charging below cost (using cross subsidy from car sales) to drive as may others out of the market as possible and become dominant. Why would an energy provider try to compete with that? It makes zero sense. 

[wyx087]

13 minutes ago, domhnall said:

 

actually some of them are smarter than that. Mine can and does integrate with smart tariffs so it knows only to charge when the price drops below a value I set, it works with my home battery storage and also my solar, I can tell it to send a specified amount of power to the car, or to only charge the car from solar or when a certain percentage of the available oower comes from the grid/ solar. So a bit more to it than just a connection.

Nice. I'm assuming you are talking about Octopus Agile, so is it Ohme? Zappi does most of it, except Agile integration?

 

I've had Podpoint, as dumb as they come.

Now got Indra smart pro, seems smart with the sleek app and lots of options. But I'm not entirely happy with it because charging amps is not user adjustable, solar control is a blackbox with only a single on/off toggle. Only saving grace is the manual "boost" mode is a button directly on the charge point.

[Winston_Woof]

8 hours ago, domhnall said:

 After all Tesla are providing charging below cost (using cross subsidy from car sales) to drive as may others out of the market as possible and become dominant.

The maybe someone should report them to the Monopolies and Mergers or other regulatory body.


Oh hang on, maybe they don't need too .

Tesla have recently laid off 15 -50% of their charging division (certainly in the U.S) and meanwhile Elon Musk (in another one of his incredibly sane moves)  has gone and fired pretty much the rest of them.


https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/inside-story-elon-musks-mass-firings-tesla-supercharger-staff-2024-05-15/

[wyx087]

In case anyone is interested, attached to OP of this thread shows what's inside the Nissan OEM 3-pin charging cable: 

https://www.speakev.com/threads/fault-with-nissan-e-nv200-granny-charger.184970/

 

[Graham Butcher]

This is supposed to be the new 100% electric London Bus coming soon.

 

BYD aims to replace Routemaster with 400-mile EV London bus | Autocar

[Graham Butcher]

Not strictly on topic but sort of loosely related, I went to Southend on Sea airport on Sunday evening as their resident Avro Vulcan was doing a fast taxi run in order to raise some revenue to keep this historic aircraft in reasonable condition. As I'm more interested in getting some decent photos of this beast in motion rather than just getting up close and in person with it, I went to the end of the runway where viewing was FOC.

 

It was very clear from listening to some peoples comments coming from the sizable crowd gathered there just how uninformed and silly some people really are and the most ridiculous comment I heard was when the plane was being pushed backwards out of the hangar (engines off) someone uttered "I thought this plane was supposed to howl and roar, they must have fitted electric engines to it" 🙄

 

I posted a couple of pictures of it on the Photographic thread if anyone is interested.

 

 

Edited 21 May by Graham Butcher

[Ootohere]

If only every VW was as reliable as some VW,s it would be dead easy to know what to get.

 

'Should of bought a Passat',  Or rented one!

 

Someone needs to tell Porsche that Leeds is in Europe.

 

 

 

Edited 21 May by Ootohere

[Winston_Woof]

24 minutes ago, Ootohere said:

 

 

Someone needs to tell Porsche that Leeds is in Europe.

 

 

 

But it's not though.

There was a little thing a few years back called "Brexit" ;o)

[Ootohere]

Doh.    Are people in the Country that voted for Brexit just thick?

 

The UK left the EU.  It was not removed / towed away from Europe.

 

 

 

[Graham Butcher]

A massive act of self harm.