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UK switching to electric vehicles discussion

bspahh

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£14911 would be a steal, and for someone doing low mileage the fact it's done 80k is immaterial. It will likely take ten years to add another 50k!

The best bit about buying a second hand EV is there aren't going to be all the usual fears about something big about to go wrong that has been unseen or covered up by the seller.
If you were going to drive it 5000 miles a year, it would be better to buy a 2 year old MG with 45,000 miles or less. Then it will still be covered by the MG warranty until its 7 years old.

The MG warranty has a mileage limit of 80,000 miles with various lower limits for wear and tear items.
 
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Bletchleyite

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If you were going to drive it 5000 miles a year, it would be better to buy a 2 year old MG with 45,000 miles or less. Then it will still be covered by the MG warranty until its 7 years old.

The MG warranty has a mileage limit of 80,000 miles with various lower limits for wear and tear items.

Bonus there: I think the old MG5 EV looks much better than the new one. The new one has followed many EVs in getting rid of the "fake grille" and so looks very 1980s when cars typically hid it. Reminds me of a Mk3 Ford Fiesta.
 

MotCO

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I know you don’t get it, but there’s plenty of people out there who don’t fit that ‘demographic’ and/or don’t have off street parking who have EVs. As I’ve said previously I know about 15 people with EVs now, and some of them don’t have off street parking. It just means managing things in a different way.
I'm trying to get it, and I have not ruled out the possibility that my next car could be an EV, but the maths has got to stack up.

However, I still believe that there will be a 'saturation point' where those that can afford them, and have the ability to recharge them at an appropriate cost (home will invaribaly be cheaper than on-street) will be reached, and it is not 100% of all sales. For this to improve:
  • Purchase prices (or PCP contract prices) have to fall to an affordable level
  • The number of on-street, motorway etc charging points must increase so that waiting times and non-availability reduce (I know others have said that they always find a charging point, but if the number of EVs increases, then the number of charging points and availability has to continue to increase)
  • The cost of on-street charging must be reasonable so that those who live in flats, have no off street parking etc are not unfairly penalised.
The less fortunate people in society will in time have to switch to an EV (their 15 year old vehicles will not last for ever), but I don't see prices falling to something they can afford unless the car's battery is knackered.
 

reddragon

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I'm trying to get it, and I have not ruled out the possibility that my next car could be an EV, but the maths has got to stack up.

However, I still believe that there will be a 'saturation point' where those that can afford them, and have the ability to recharge them at an appropriate cost (home will invaribaly be cheaper than on-street) will be reached, and it is not 100% of all sales. For this to improve:
  • Purchase prices (or PCP contract prices) have to fall to an affordable level
  • The number of on-street, motorway etc charging points must increase so that waiting times and non-availability reduce (I know others have said that they always find a charging point, but if the number of EVs increases, then the number of charging points and availability has to continue to increase)
  • The cost of on-street charging must be reasonable so that those who live in flats, have no off street parking etc are not unfairly penalised.
The less fortunate people in society will in time have to switch to an EV (their 15 year old vehicles will not last for ever), but I don't see prices falling to something they can afford unless the car's battery is knackered.
In London, there was a point where anti-ULEZ campaigners stated that the 'poor' would suffer if they had to have clean cars.

The facts were that those 'poor' who owned cars in central London were not poor at all and the actual poor could neither afford a car let alone somewhere to park it and used public transport or a bike / walked.

What EVs enable are car clubs where you rent a car when you need one, per hour. This is already very common in cities, London in particular so the opposite outcome will be that the actual poor can afford a car when they need one.

Ideally, the cars owned will reduce from 31m to 10m with car rental schemes replacing many second and first cars. Evs make this easy in a way it can't happen with ICE cars due to maintenance issues.
 

trebor79

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Bonus there: I think the old MG5 EV looks much better than the new one. The new one has followed many EVs in getting rid of the "fake grille" and so looks very 1980s when cars typically hid it. Reminds me of a Mk3 Ford Fiesta.
I think the new one looks more modern, but I guess it's down to taste.
I preferred the analogue dials in the old version though - call me old-fashioned!
The achilles heel of the old one though is the infotainment system which was is like something from the 1990's and the sat nav function essentially unusable. Does support Android Auto/Apple Car Play though so it's not an insurmountable issue. My Niro doesn't even have a built in sat nav and AA works just fine.
  • Purchase prices (or PCP contract prices) have to fall to an affordable level
  • The number of on-street, motorway etc charging points must increase so that waiting times and non-availability reduce (I know others have said that they always find a charging point, but if the number of EVs increases, then the number of charging points and availability has to continue to increase)
  • The cost of on-street charging must be reasonable so that those who live in flats, have no off street parking etc are not unfairly penalised.
I see PCP already starting to come down (or at least people are reporting they are securing big discounts off list price again, which then brings the payments down. This time last year you could get an e208 for not much more than £200/month on a lease and those days will return.
Public charger availability is a non-issue 95% of the time IME. Shell alone are putting tens of thousands of rapid chargers in over the next few years. And "destination chargers" are becoming increasingly common. At the hotel I stayed at last week I arrived to find 4 AC chargers in the car park, completely unadvertised which was a nice surprise (it was an Ibis Budget so everything else was horrid lol!). So the car charged whilst I slept and that was enough for a couple of days going to the office and back and got me most of the way home to Norfolk.
 

Bletchleyite

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The achilles heel of the old one though is the infotainment system which was is like something from the 1990's and the sat nav function essentially unusable. Does support Android Auto/Apple Car Play though so it's not an insurmountable issue. My Niro doesn't even have a built in sat nav and AA works just fine.

I'd not use a built in satnav either unless the car ran Android or iOS and offered Google or Apple Maps, or Waze. All the others are pretty much junk with poor UIs and out of date maps. So what's important to me is being able to plug in my phone. I don't even want a touchscreen at all, I'd rather physical buttons so I can e.g. adjust the temperature without taking my eyes off the road - I think the touchscreens are dangerous and should be banned.

Interestingly Dacia are using "why waste your money on a fancy screen when your phone already has one" as a selling point!
 

jon0844

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Interestingly Dacia are using "why waste your money on a fancy screen when your phone already has one" as a selling point!

And so they should. Android Auto works brilliantly and there's almost zero reason to use any of the onboard systems. Even the radio can be received via an app, with BBC Sounds letting you forward and rewind live streams.

I think Renault has Google behind its onboard system, but even that runs the risk of updates stopping (as well as Google continually changing things over time). Android Auto may change a bit too, but it's still pretty consistent - even with the new beta that brings a windowed layout.

Like smart TVs; EVs are going to become obsolete more from software issues than hardware.
 

trebor79

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I'd not use a built in satnav either unless the car ran Android or iOS and offered Google or Apple Maps, or Waze. All the others are pretty much junk with poor UIs and out of date maps. So what's important to me is being able to plug in my phone. I don't even want a touchscreen at all, I'd rather physical buttons so I can e.g. adjust the temperature without taking my eyes off the road - I think the touchscreens are dangerous and should be banned.

Interestingly Dacia are using "why waste your money on a fancy screen when your phone already has one" as a selling point!
Yep, one of the selling points for the Niro was twiddly dials for the climate and radio controls, and lots of functions controlled from buttons on the steering wheel. In fact on my base model you don't need to touch the screen at all whilst driving.
Anything which requires me to use a touchscreen for things like temperature adjustment will not be on the shortlist for my next car. I agree that manufacturers are putting way too much onto the screens, and when you start having to go through several menus to do simple stuff like adjust the climate it's very distracting, also just harder to stab a spot on a screen in a moving car than push a physical button.
I suppose it's cheaper to not provide dials and buttons, but it's a rubbish UI.
 

Bletchleyite

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Yep, one of the selling points for the Niro was twiddly dials for the climate and radio controls, and lots of functions controlled from buttons on the steering wheel. In fact on my base model you don't need to touch the screen at all whilst driving.
Anything which requires me to use a touchscreen for things like temperature adjustment will not be on the shortlist for my next car. I agree that manufacturers are putting way too much onto the screens, and when you start having to go through several menus to do simple stuff like adjust the climate it's very distracting, also just harder to stab a spot on a screen in a moving car than push a physical button.
I suppose it's cheaper to not provide dials and buttons, but it's a rubbish UI.

I guess incorporating a good voice assistant will do this in due course - "Alexa, increase the temperature" is what I do at home. But they still aren't quite there. Not even Siri is that good!

In the meantime I want physical buttons.
 

jon0844

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Physical buttons are absolutely essential IMO. Just as other little things like a rear wiper, or decent cabin lighting, are my personal musts (the latter two that the MG4, even in Trophy form, lacks).

MG does have two smart buttons you can set to do whatever you want, which I think is great. I am sure other car makers do similar, although I don't recall that being mentioned in the many car reviews I've watched for EVs in general.
 

Bletchleyite

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Physical buttons are absolutely essential IMO. Just as other little things like a rear wiper, or decent cabin lighting, are my personal musts (the latter two that the MG4, even in Trophy form, lacks).

No rear wiper is weird. It was only old style saloon cars that traditionally didn't have one. Even a LWB Land Rover Defender has one and you can barely see anything useful out of the back.
 

Mawkie

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No rear wiper is weird. It was only old style saloon cars that traditionally didn't have one. Even a LWB Land Rover Defender has one and you can barely see anything useful out of the back.
I read online that the rear spoiler used some clever aerodynamics to 'clean' the rear screen with an air curtain of sorts.

Maybe with the introduction of reversing cameras, the need for a wiper becomes redundant?
 

Bletchleyite

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Maybe with the introduction of reversing cameras, the need for a wiper becomes redundant?

I've never seen a reversing camera that replaced the rear view mirror entirely, though. You need to see behind at times when not reversing.

(They will come, e.g. lorries and buses with video wing "mirrors").
 

Bald Rick

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Purchase prices (or PCP contract prices) have to fall to an affordable level

They are affordable (or about to be) for almost anyone in the market for a new car.

What has yet to happen is full development of the second hand market, but that is only a year or two away as the first half million EVs start being moved on.


The number of on-street, motorway etc charging points must increase so that waiting times and non-availability reduce (I know others have said that they always find a charging point, but if the number of EVs increases, then the number of charging points and availability has to continue to increase)

Agreed, and this is happening. I’m seeing new charge point popping up all over the place.


The cost of on-street charging must be reasonable so that those who live in flats, have no off street parking etc are not unfairly penalised.

whether on street or destination, the market will sort that out.
 

paul1609

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I know you don’t get it, but there’s plenty of people out there who don’t fit that ‘demographic’ and/or don’t have off street parking who have EVs. As I’ve said previously I know about 15 people with EVs now, and some of them don’t have off street parking. It just means managing things in a different way.
Having had a company Nissan Leaf and no off street parking in a rural area it really does depend on how flexible your work patterns can be. I think on days when I had medium distance journeys it generally took me longer in an EV that it would have an ICE. There was also a couple of times in the 2 years when I had to dump the Leaf in the Heathrow car park and rent a hire car on the company credit card because an incoming VIP charter was diverted to Luton at the last minute.
Now retired Id quite happily get an MG4 long range and just take my time.
 

Deepgreen

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At present the greatest constraint on EV adoption is the ability of the car industry to supply demand. I’m hearing several anecdotal tales of deliveries stretching well into 2023.
Exactly so; we ordered a new PHEV a while back and received it 13 months later, this summer. I think one thing that people mistakenly state as a barrier to adoption is street parking where charging cannot be provided - remember that street parking spaces do not have their own petrol pumps at the moment - the principle of going to a charging station is the same as going to a petrol station.
 

paul1609

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Exactly so; we ordered a new PHEV a while back and received it 13 months later, this summer. I think one thing that people mistakenly state as a barrier to adoption is street parking where charging cannot be provided - remember that street parking spaces do not have their own petrol pumps at the moment - the principle of going to a charging station is the same as going to a petrol station.
It does depend on where you live. I live within 60 miles of Charing Cross but the only public charging within 10 miles is a pod point at a local tescos which is 7kw and limited to 90 mins and some Tesla Destination Chargers at pubs and hotels. I believe BP are in the process of installing some sort of Rapid Chargers at their Hawkhurst Petrol station that's 13 miles away. There were some local authority chargers at tenterden 5 miles away but they appear have been taken out of use having not worked for some time.
 

jon0844

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I read online that the rear spoiler used some clever aerodynamics to 'clean' the rear screen with an air curtain of sorts.
I heard that too, but apparently it creates a vortex that makes the middle even worse to see through.

Only the Trophy has the spoiler though.
 

Bald Rick

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1 in 6 is pure EV or plug in hybrid:

That was 2021. In 2022 more than 1:5 is pure EV or PHEV. And the only thing stopping it being 1:3 is supply side issues, although I gather they are easing. Two of my friends have taken delivery of Skoda Enyaqs in the last week or so, both having been on order for the best part of a year. But I am seeing a lot of them on the road all of a sudden.
 

Domh245

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The achilles heel of the old one though is the infotainment system which was is like something from the 1990's and the sat nav function essentially unusable. Does support Android Auto/Apple Car Play though so it's not an insurmountable issue.

Unfortunately, at least in my parents' MG5 the patchy infotainment isn't that fixed by use of android auto - we've had the display lock up completely on us a few times, necessitating a reboot of the infotainment. Thankfully there's nothing important on there, and the climate controls still have physical dials - though I've not tested to see if it does actually change settings whilst the infotainment is locked up
 

trebor79

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Unfortunately, at least in my parents' MG5 the patchy infotainment isn't that fixed by use of android auto - we've had the display lock up completely on us a few times, necessitating a reboot of the infotainment. Thankfully there's nothing important on there, and the climate controls still have physical dials - though I've not tested to see if it does actually change settings whilst the infotainment is locked up
Interesting. Some work colleagues and I hired an ICE MG ZS last year which has the exact same infotainment. Colleague attempted to use the sat nav, which took more than 5 minutes to put the destination postcode in, it then crashed within 30 seconds of setting off, and stayed in it's "crashed" state for the remainder of the 3 day trip, but Apple Car Play still worked pert.
 

RailWonderer

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The achilles heel of the old one though is the infotainment system which was is like something from the 1990's and the sat nav function essentially unusable. Does support Android Auto/Apple Car Play though so it's not an insurmountable issue. My Niro doesn't even have a built in sat nav and AA works just fine.
I still use my 2008 Alfa Romeo sat nav where you have to enter the house number, name and town before the postcode. It is slow and the maps are out of date but it works fine. It is not intuitive, you need to learn how to operate it but same can be said for most car infotainment systems pre-apple car play/android auto.
 

trebor79

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I still use my 2008 Alfa Romeo sat nav where you have to enter the house number, name and town before the postcode. It is slow and the maps are out of date but it works fine. It is not intuitive, you need to learn how to operate it but same can be said for most car infotainment systems pre-apple car play/android auto.
The issue with the old MG system is that the screen is extremely laggy. So to type in a post code takes nearly a minute, and you get the finger press registering on the wrong thing due to screen lag etc, so you press what you think you should to "search" or whatever for the postcode you've finally entered, then the screen updates and you've actually pressed "cancel" or something daft.
And this is all after you've waited a long time with a "loading" screen when you first select navigation.
Christ knows where they found that system from, but someone flogging junk from about 15 years ago must have thanked their lucky stars the day that order arrived!
 

MotCO

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Christ knows where they found that system from, but someone flogging junk from about 15 years ago must have thanked their lucky stars the day that order arrived!
Thats how Del Boy became a millionaire!
 

Deepgreen

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It does depend on where you live. I live within 60 miles of Charing Cross but the only public charging within 10 miles is a pod point at a local tescos which is 7kw and limited to 90 mins and some Tesla Destination Chargers at pubs and hotels. I believe BP are in the process of installing some sort of Rapid Chargers at their Hawkhurst Petrol station that's 13 miles away. There were some local authority chargers at tenterden 5 miles away but they appear have been taken out of use having not worked for some time.
Absolutely agree that charging stations are thinly-spread at present but that will surely improve. My car (Land Rover Discovery Sport PHEV) has an associated app. that tells me where charging points are available, and they are very sparse still in some areas.
 

Bald Rick

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I still use my 2008 Alfa Romeo sat nav where you have to enter the house number, name and town before the postcode. It is slow and the maps are out of date but it works fine. It is not intuitive, you need to learn how to operate it but same can be said for most car infotainment systems pre-apple car play/android auto.

My Sat nav is 17 years old, and doesn’t do post codes! However it’s old maps certainly enable many ETAs to be beaten comfortably.
 

gg1

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I read online that the rear spoiler used some clever aerodynamics to 'clean' the rear screen with an air curtain of sorts.

Honda claimed something similar around 15 years ago when they eliminated the wiper from the Civic. The claim was of course nonsense and Honda bought the rear wiper back on the next model of Civic.
 

The Ham

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Whilst not directly linked to EV's and a global figure rather than UK only this makes for interesting reading in the date of future new renewable generation:


That verdict from the world-leading International Energy Agency (IEA) comes today in a new report, which also predicts the world will build as much wind, solar and other renewable power in the next five years as it did in the last 20.

It goes on to say:

The analysis from the IEA still finds an "extraordinary new phase" of growth will see solar overtake coal to become the largest source of power worldwide by 2027.

Both of these, if they come to pass, would be significant. Although there's still a long way to go to get to where we need to be.
 

Bald Rick

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Whilst not directly linked to EV's and a global figure rather than UK only this makes for interesting reading in the date of future new renewable generation:




It goes on to say:



Both of these, if they come to pass, would be significant. Although there's still a long way to go to get to where we need to be.

Yep.

In the UK, renewables were already the cheapest form of electricity generation before the energy crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now, much more so.

the issue is going to be the supply chain for solar PV panels and to a lesser extent installation resource for offshore wind. Nevertheless by the end of this decade (just 7 years away…) we (U.K.) will have installed another 10-15GW (peak) of wind and 5GWp of solar. Plus at least 10GW battery, probably double that.
 

Ediswan

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Nevertheless by the end of this decade (just 7 years away…) we (U.K.) will have installed another 10-15GW (peak) of wind and 5GWp of solar. Plus at least 10GW battery, probably double that.
For how many hours ?

This is a pet peeve of mine, not a moan at you personally. Electricity storage system specifications should always include both the Watts and Watt-hours (or Watts plus hours).
 

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