Electric cars: is it cheaper to fill a petrol or diesel car now? | Plug Life Television episode 39

[@robsmith1a]

One thing that nobody takes into account it that the extra purchase price of an EV (say £8k at 4% interest) is over £25 per month. I only spend £50 per month on fuel so for a very low mileage driver of an older car that has done most of it's depreciation an EV is still an expensive option. It depends on the individual of course. I know some careful drivers who get well over 60mpg from their diesels (Mercedes E class and Skoda Octavia so not tiny cars). I have a friend with a Tesla and solar panels plus a cheap overnight rate. His costs are a lot lower and he does quite a few miles I believe. In most cases fuel and other costs are still low compared with depreciation. If you are a company car driver the government tax incentive is the main reason to go electric and dwarfs the fuel savings- this doesn't help a private motorist such as myself until these cars hit the used market in a few years time.

[@robsmith1a]

@hamstavideos I've never owned or wanted a diesel on grounds of lack of refinement. I have a petrol SLK - really fun but a bit thirsty and impractical if you don't have access to another car when needed. I had a Zoe ZE40 for three years, couldn't fault it as transport other than I found it very dull.

[@samuelprice538]

I regularly run the numbers on my own spreadsheet. I come up with even greater savings than you found easily paying off the higher purchase price very quickly.

[@oceanfroggie]

Good analysis. Here in Ireland even since electricity prices jumped after Putin it is still 1/5th the cost to fuel a BEV from night rate electricity at home than diesel (eg: €20/wk electricity v €100/wk diesel). Not to mention servicing and annual road tax, toll discounts, etc. A year ago it was only €8/wk.

[@commuterbranchline8132]

God bless ECar NI and Charge place Scotland who have provided me with free charging since I got my first EV (Nissan Leaf) in 2013. I have had a fantastic run and I am very grateful to have availed of the opportunity. Charge place has slowly introduced fees and so to Will ECar NI, I have fitted solar panels to my home and a home battery is inbound and awaiting fitting. My wife finally bought an EV in 2018 so she has enjoyed the savings also. It would be very very difficult to return to driving a combustion engined car now, hopefully if EV prices coming down in future times more folk can reap the benefits of EV life. Thank you for all you do for the EV community👍

[@dougowt]

I forgot to say its great to see a few more videos from you recently 👍

[@MarkXHolland]

Welcome back. Missed your clear, intelligent, non-hysterical videos.

[@dougowt]

I think that if the most expensive ie motorway rapid charger costs are going to be used, then a fair comparison is the average motorway filling station cost of petrol and diesel. I've hardly ever had to use motorway rapid chargers in the last 4 years of EV ownership and I cannot charge at home. My running costs have been tiny compared to the ICE cars i owned before. And I'm in the trade/qualified MV technician. I bought electric because the advantages are obvious, even before you consider you are not poisoning yourself. (Getting ill can be quite costly too). I now have an early Model S with free supercharging. Good luck finding a BMW, Audi etc with free fuel for life.

[@fergalmcgrath935]

Would be good if you added in the initial purchase price of a similar size/class car too (establish the break-even point).

[@philipmelling]

Unfortunately I'm one of those few who does 100% charging on public chargers. Can't charge at home. My housing association are not even considering my request to install home charging :( Still better driving an EV than diesel. Cost is not the only reason for driving EV.

[@nettlesoup]

Same situation for me, except I'm lucky to have had a couple of car park chargers in my town which were usually available overnight (and free until two years ago!) Since then they've expanded to more than ten chargers around town but the prices have gone up to between 35 p/kWh (overnight 7 kW council car park charging) to between 44 - 52 p/kWh 22 kW AC (street charging posts, cost depending on how central the parking is). This is definitely the way to go: expand the street charging spaces. Ours are mostly dual use (2-2½ hr charging and/or resident permits) but some are for 2 hour charging only during the day. I really encourage people to ask their councils to investigate what's available in terms of government funding and maybe get a few of you together to email/talk to the local councillors and present your case with examples of other councils that have achieved good results.

[@PlugLifeTelevision]

Norway has a Right to Charge, whereby if you want a charge point in the basement of your apartment block, or in your case on the driveway/street outside your housing association-owned house, then the property's owners have to fit one or give a very good technical reason why not. The UK needs that same Right to Charge too. Get your housing association to give a very clear reason why they won't install a charge point for you. N.b. if you're in Scotland, there's additional funding available for installing charge points in communal car parks for apartment blocks etc.

[@philipmelling]

@@PlugLifeTelevision Thanks Euan. It's frustrating. I've tried asking them a couple of times. The only response I get is that it's not something they are thinking about at the moment. It's a communal car park and technically I'm a leaseholder in the mixed housing association flats. It's a bit complicated but really shouldn't be impossible. I don't have any destination chargers near me at all - but do have 4 Osprey units (2*75kw and 2*50kw) and a Lidl PodPoint within about 3 miles. Great videos and your Skye trip from a few years ago convinced me to take my EV (eNiro) to the Outer Hebrides!

[@desertdan100]

One thing people don't think about is when you cross that bracket on Total electric consumption for you home per month you pay more on your Electric bill. I went through this in the past. I installed a heat pump in my home and for 5 years I got a discount on my electricity. I was using gas to heat my home in the winter. I installed my HP and my Electric usage jumped and damn near doubled for 8 months of the year. I was getting the discount so my heating bill didn't go too much higher for 5 years. I was not saving anything over my gas in the winter but in the summer my bills dropped because the new unit was more efficient than the 20 year old AC that it replaced. I was on a level payment program , so the changes were manageable and the savings for 3 months running the AC were almost a wash. Then after 5 years they dropped the discount and charged me a higher rate per KW than before because I had moved into a higher KW usage bracket. I saw an almost 100.00 a month increase on my level payment per month for the year. That hurt. I am sure that the same thing would happen if I started charging 1 or 2 EVs every night on top of my usually home daily usage. The Utilities could incentivize EV adoption with large usage discounts but we all know what happens once they get their hooks into you. It will be just like my heat pump at home. I have been using my emergency Natural Gas backup furnace instead of my Heat pump to heat my home with for the last 7 years because it has proven to be way cheaper after I lost the discount. I want to be more efficient about my energy use , but facts are facts. When everyone get's forced into an Electric economy we all are going to get the screws. Once there is no competing technology they will set the price to whatever they want and tax you 10 times higher. After all it's for the children don't you know.

[@mikeselectricstuff]

An issue to consider with off-peak tariffs is that the on-peak price and/or standing charges may be higher than a normal tarriff, so may only be worthwhile if you do a lot of mileage, and even then you need to account for the increased peak costs, though obviously that's harder to quantify

[@lawrencetaylor4101]

Merci beaucoup for this. Our charging network in western Switzerland is criminally inadequate. Geneva installed their first rapid charger only 5 years ago and placed it in a parking garage at the airport. They installed a charging post in my town and didn't connect it for one year. It's almost as if they have an agenda.

[@ΘάνατοςΧορτοφάγος]

I drove from 🇳🇱 to 🇨🇭 and indeed the chargers there are a bit scarce. And then on a motorway they indicate there are 4 chargers, you get there and its only 1 charger with 4 different plugs of which only 2 can be used at one tine 🤦

[@Pavelow1806]

Really eye opening, great job!

[@LindaMChristie]

I have had my 2019 Nissan Leaf 40 Tekna for three years. Last month, November, I drove 2,361 miles as a volunteer driver, and that cost me less than £50 charging at home. At nearly 74 and only on a state pension, I couldn't afford to do my job if I had to put petrol in a car!

[@lindagrave6815]

Really good clear explanation of the facts, thank you Plug Life

[@JasonWarwick-ns1ro]

Excellent Analysis we need more sensible balanced reports like this.

[@poff9345]

I really appreciate the work you're doing. The quantity of poor information, both for and against EV cars seems to be growing at a exponential rate. As an engineer, your data driven, clear and open approach is a breath of fresh air

[@DavidPlayfair]

A very enlightening video. Many thanks.

[@clivelockwood3236]

Cost of ev and setup for charging at home are factors plus range issues, time it takes to charge while out, these are off-putting time is money and time wasted while charging not helping, we need a break through in battery design before these can become usefull

[@bertlevis]

Yet again packed with well researched technical information, presented in a way that the message is clear ! Thank you.

[@RussellFineArt]

I’ve charged my EV exclusively at my house off my own solar panels and small wind turbine, the past 7-years and have paid $0 to charge it and $0 for my home power bill, in that time. No way I could produce my own oil and gasoline, electric will always win.

[@keithdenton8386]

Petrol and diesel cars never do 45 mpg unless on a duel carriage way. Driving short journeys I found that 17 mpg was what I got. Long journey's I got 50 mpg if I was careful. Driving an EV on short journeys is more efficient than long journeys

[@argowal]

I've never had 50mpg not in my diesels or gas on a road trip. When I hypermile my Honda pilot I get 28mpg, hipermiling my Honda crv gets me 32mpg.

[@thplumbing8883]

My old 57plate touran will do 50mpg easy, with 3 passengers, I can do 250miles on 30quid of diesel, don't have to stop somewhere and wait 40.ins or more to charge, no range anxiety, and I know 💯 if I stop at a garage I will be able to get fuel and not worry about if the chargers are going to work

[@davidpartington4617]

As ever - an excellent analysis from pluglifetelevision ! Well done Euan !

[@Brian-om2hh]

I have no idea what petrol or diesel costs now, as I haven't bought any for over 2 years. All I know is I pay £8 to £9 to charge my Kia eNiro every week and a half at home, and that lasts me for around 250 miles. Using public charging costs way more, particularly if you don't subscribe to a charging network. I haven't used a public charger for almost a year now.

[@eamonstack4139]

Euan, excellent analysis and very helpful data. Many thanks, Eamon

[@iancollis966]

Octopus go is only 4 hours per night which isn’t enough to charge most cars. Id also say purchase price should taken into account as our electric kona was over 10k more than similar petrol model and service costs were not as cheap as expected

[@PlugLifeTelevision]

4 hours overnight will give you 28 kWh, or about 100 miles of range for a typical EV. If used 5 days a week, 46 weeks a year, that's 23,000 miles of off-peak motoring. Even if you need to fully charge your car from empty overnight, and therefore stray into expensive peak-time electricity, you'll still save considerable money vs filling a petrol or diesel car.

[@iancollis966]

@@PlugLifeTelevision but my kona cost 10k more than the petrol version. That’s a lot of fuel when I generally keep a car 3 to 4 years.

[@Brian-om2hh]

No, but there are 5 off-peak nights in a week......and a daytime top-up can be free if you shop at Sainsburys.

[@del4668]

Let's not forgot that to get that off peak cheaper price. You have to pay a higher on peak tarrif. This is always conveniently left out of any equations.

[@billleddy602]

A bit off topic but I don’t know who else to ask. I have a 2019 Nissan Leaf Plus in the U.S. I (mostly) like the car but the Cademo DC connector is an issue for longer trips. Has anyone heard of a system to convert a Leaf to CCS charging socket?

[@charlesmarsh9608]

The transition will take a little longer it's the way forward.

[@SWR112]

Or if you live next to one of Europes biggest wind farms a few miles and walk your dogs say for an hour from the visitor centre that has free charge points 22kw. You can do 70k miles between two EV’s charging almost for free 😉👍 I call it early adopters taking the piss…..But we need to get electricity prices down when most of my country can generate its needs from wind.

[@johntisbury]

Great analysis, certainly dispels the clickbait headlines in social and MSM media.

[@LeahWright-Tiramakea]

Great Analysis - helping the many sort EV Fact from Fiction

[@bdeithrick]

Best youtube channel consistently

[@MarkGaudie]

Keep telling people this but a lot of the anti EV folk out there who do t like change only want to listen to the negative points. Everything has a negative if you look for it hard enough. Still loving EV life and I’d happily pay more to fuel my EV if it means I don’t have to visit a petrol station again or pollute my children’s lungs. I charge my EV from solar when I can and luckily I’m still on a cheap 5.5p per kWh night time tariff. Thanks for this video Euan. Great work! 👏

[@xperyskop2475]

Without option of home/workplace charging I wouldn't go for electric car. Public charging networks are unreliable and expensive

[@jimf4748]

I moved to electric three years ago, live in a flat so can't charge at home, but I've never had a problem charging and saved a fortune on fuel.

[@xperyskop2475]

@@jimf4748 Good for you. I have "subsidised" charging at work so my nissan leaf paid for itself . But I can't see owning electric car with only public charging being cheaper than efficient fosil powered car

[@PlugLifeTelevision]

@@xperyskop2475 As stated in the video, there are public chargers across the UK that have tariffs that work out much cheaper than filling a petrol or diesel car. That goes for both Type 2 "destination" and DC rapid chargers.

[@saffazone]

The data is sound - the segmentation should be how the vehicle is used - most of my driving is 400 mile round trips so mostly using super charger network which means it's more expensive using my electric car. also don't forget insurance for electric cars is very high. Do segmentation on average trip distances that might give a better reflection of where each car type performs best. even petrol vs diesel doing very long motorway mileage there are clear winners

[@saffazone]

@tiepup I have some at 69p/kWh at the Rugby services & lots at 56 / 57 - calculate a 400 mile trip as much as I would love cheap home charging I am paying the 34p/kWh - should one have to go to a specialist EV insurance company? why what makes EV's so special? Tesla insurance group is close to 50 if not 50 - a BMW X3 is around 30

[@PlugLifeTelevision]

Superchargers are often competitively priced vs other high power chargers, and if your Tesla leaves the house fully charged, chances are it'll do at least half of the 400 mile round trip on cheaper home electrcity. The supercharger prices you mention, combined with home charging at 34p/kWh to fully charge the car for the next 400 mile trip, mean that you'll still be saving money vs equivalent petrol or diesel cars. As for insurance, Teslas are comparatively pricey, but typically speaking, all other makes and models of EV appear to be fractionally cheaper on average to insure than their petrol or diesel equivalents.

[@KiltedJock1]

Simply brilliant video

[@davethevicar88]

Plug in hybrid here and its the most amazingly cheap vehicle I've ever owned and I've owned diesels for 20yrs saved me thousands this last year I've owned it £30 pm to charge and I've put in around £400 of petrol so ha I'm laughing so much love the ampera

[@fly_neil]

Good analysis. On my e-Niro I did 12,000 miles in 2022, for a total outlay of around £185 on charging. Most of which was at home (5p on Octopus Go off-peak). I probably got 5-10% free. Go will be 12p this year but the saving is still clearly substantial.

[@commuterbranchline8132]

I’d be intrigued to learn more about the evidence indicating average mpg is below 40 mph for an internal combustion engined (ICE) car!?

[@PlugLifeTelevision]

@tiepup Thanks, that's the exact source in question. It was eye-opening for me too! Then again, real-world MPG is notoriously less than what petrol and diesel car manufacturers (and NEDC and WLTP) claim.

[@SDK2006b]

I'm 100% charging at home, on Octopus Go (at 7.5p until end of March) or my home solar. My cost per mile is about 1.5p ⚡☀👍

[@Brian-om2hh]

You'll find your tariff increases to 12p per kwh once your tariff term expires though Peter. It still won't break the bank at around 3p per mile though....

[@10783247jp]

But does the reduced running cost for an EV, out weigh the purchase premium over a much cheaper petrol or diesel over typical car ownership. I support EVs but it’s hard to sell me on £1500 of savings a year if I’m paying £15k more at the start.

[@FFVoyager]

Which EV is £15k more than an equivalent fossil?

[@PlugLifeTelevision]

@@garysmith5025 I'd add that there are affordable used EVs available to buy as well, which will definitely save money vs petrol or diesel cars of the same age as they'll be much less likely to break down on you.

[@Machine_NZ]

@10783247jp well said. These types of videos never talk about the initial outlay of buying an EV as opposed to a fossil.............funny that

[@Brian-om2hh]

You don't have to pay £15k more at the start. The new MG4 fully electric is the same price as a new petrol Astra, Focus or Golf.......plus it's a similar sized car too. There is also the used EV market. You don't *have* to buy a new one......

[@ΘάνατοςΧορτοφάγος]

For now it at least is a lot cheaper, but i'm not driving electric to be cheap, so 🤷 I dont have acces to a charger at home, so always have to use public chargers, still acceptable

[@th3er]

And that justifies paying double the car price to save fuel!

[@G-Cam1]

Tesla have just cut their prices.. BMW are about to do the same.. and Ford are reducing production rapidly as they transition to EV production. The differential is narrowing all the time. But its not all about cost. Some buy to stop tail pipe emissions, some love the performance, many love the reduced running costs and many just prefer the ease if driving an EV on a daily basis.

[@stephenlee5929]

Thanks. Something that occurred to me though, EVs do 90% based on home charging, but is that true for the higher mileage? I use home charging if I remain/return to home within the EV range, conversely I would expect to go outside that range more often for a higher mileage vehicle. Have I misunderstood? I would expect the 90% home charge figure to reduce for EVs doing 15k or 20k miles.

[@PlugLifeTelevision]

A modern EV will easily do 200 - 300 miles per charge. Assuming that it's in use 5 days a week, 46 weeks a year, 20,000 miles equates to less than 90 miles per day, easily within the range of the car and possible to recharge overnight. If there's a mixture of long motorway trips and short journeys, then there may be some public charging involved, but this could be at cheaper destination charge points or cheaper rapid chargers (just like petrol drivers often shop around to find cheaper petrol). I've accounted for 10% of all charging being on expensive public rapid chargers in my calculations, to factor in longer journeys throughout the year; this is representative for most drivers.

[@rogerfinch7651]

Can’t argue with that 😉

[@stephenlee5929]

Fair comments, I'm new to EVs, but it doesn't match my old ICE model. I used to do high mileage which could not be Home Charged (>150 from home), when I was doing shorter journeys I had lower yearly average. I'm guessing that was either just me, or I'm mistaken. But thanks for clarification. I think I'm on a lower annual mileage time, at the moment.

[@kenzohkw]

Interesting. Everything makes sense but the solar panel argument doesn't stand up. You cannot charge a car at night when there is no sun. Also most solar equipped houses only feed back to the grid. If you want a battery storage system you're looking at £20k plus for the hardware and install. Where are you gonna get a £5k solar setup that can charge your car nowadays? Also you don't mention that the Octopus Go tariff only gives 4hours of cheap charging per night between 00:30 and 04:30. This means with the average home charge of 7KW/h you will only get 28KW/h of charge into your car at the reduced rate BUT then your normal rate is 39.95p/kWH! So everything you use during peak hours will be compensating for the reduced rate. The most realistic scenario for most folk buying electric vehicles will be the 90% home charge and 10% public charger. So a low mileage driver at 8k miles a year can realistically save £400 a year. But then it would take you 20 years to make up the difference in cost when buying the car in the first place! Another caveat is if you're a 20k+ driver like me, you will save a fair bit of money per year but you will spend lots of time looking for chargers and waiting for charge to complete, not to mention the fact that you need to buy a more expensive model of car with a bigger battery so that you can actually complete most journeys without an additional charge. I'm not against EVs but like anything in the techs space it is just starting to go mainstream and will get better over time but we're not at that cross over point yet where is suits the majority of scenarios. A good diesel is still very viable at the moment. I have one with the Renault 1.5DCi engine and its currently doing 62MPG in winter. Will be close to 70MPG when the weather gets better.

[@del4668]

Finally someone else who gets it. I get sick and tired of this 'it costs nothing to charge your car with solar'

[@stuartwilson2112]

Thanks good video Everyone seems to ignore or forget the economics of this IE EVs may be cheaper to run But are £10 k more to buy If we want to be serious about EVs they need to be less expensive than there fossil alternatives Charging infrastructure needs to be vastly improved We only want to get from A-B and the cheapest easiest way to do this will always win

[@Brian-om2hh]

But the difference is shrinking fast. The new MG4 is the same price as a new petrol Astra, Focus or Golf..... My Kia eNiro was almost £8k more than the standard hybrid version when I got mine over 2 years ago. But, with charging at home almost exclusively, I've saved £5k in those 2 years by not buying petrol. In Summer at least, I can cover 1000 miles of commuting, town or city driving, for £40. A full charge costs me £8 to £9. I pay 12p per kwh on my off-peak EV tariff. Servicing is way cheaper too. My last service was £70. A neighbour has a Nissan Leaf, and he keeps a record of his per mile costs religiously. I last spoke to him a couple of weeks back, and he mentioned his last 10k miles had cost him £180 in electricity.

[@paulleonard1296]

The only reason petrol is expensive is because of VED and VAT. As more people move to EVs this tax will need to be recouped in a different way. This money saving isn't going to last forever, even if electricity is free us EV drivers will soon be paying the savings in taxes.

[@paulleonard1296]

@tiepup sorry. I meant Fuel Duty which is currently 53p a litre.

[@stuartalexander3]

But an EV costs in the region of £11000 more than an equivalent petrol car, then the cost of £200 per annum more for insurance compared to a petrol car. A home charger is £1000 to purchase+installation. These extra costs are not in your equation. Surely a Hybrid is far better than an EV.

[@01trsmar]

Wit until mileage tax comes into play....Gas cars pay taxes when they fuel up,electric cars dont..They will have price per mile driven on electric cars in the future,making any savings null in void!

[@G-Cam1]

Lets hope they charge per mile. Its the fairest way. Those that use the roads most pay the most. Link it to pollution and add a large multiplier for cars with emissions and I cant see anyone having an argument against that (unless they are self centred and dont care about the environment)

[@argowal]

40mpg??where? How? I get 20 in my truck and 28 tops in my little Honda

[@PlugLifeTelevision]

US or imperial gallons? 😉

[@argowal]

@@PlugLifeTelevision US

[@argowal]

@tiepup thank you! It's still very high, equivalent to 17km/l, real averages are 12 to 14

[@chillout1109]

In other words, electric cars are best suited for people with homes, people that have access to home chargers. This is a message that I hear over and over whenever someone is arguing about the merits of electric cars over ICE cars. "You simply charge overnight at home"!. You forget that not everyone in the UK is fortunate enough like you to be living in a home with access to a home charger. Well, until there are cheaper, long range electric cars that are designed for people like me who live in high rise apartments, some of us (me) will unfortunately just watch this electric revolution from the petrol stations while filling up our fuel tanks with fossil fuel. Electricity prices will not get cheaper despite you dreaming about. It's all about profits these days. So, unless the shareholders suddenly wake up one day having found Jesus, they are not going to accept price slashing, and thereby slashing their profits too, ever. Think about it, a couple of years ago, we were told that battery manufacturing costs were rapidly dropping, and that this would lead to cheaper electric cars soon! Yeah right. I'm keeping my Golf 8 Life 2.0 TDI which cost me £30,500 and routinely returns a real world 66mpg. Don't get me wrong, I'll gladly take a similarly sized EV for the similar price that I can conveniently charge while living on the 8 floor of my current residence.

[@finky555]

Let's see this comparison when the subsidies for electric go away and road tax is applied to EV's. The artificial high price of petrol is the only reason EV's seem to have an edge. You missed q few distinct disadvantages of EV's as well. If you run out of battery power you most likely need to be towed where as a petrol car can be back on the road with a quick fuel assist from a road service like CAA in my case. Bringing a generator to the scene would be prohibitive and take much more time if possible. EV's do not work well in cold climates with excessive battery drain due to cold and slow or no charging when the battery is cold. Just a couple of large issues not addressed in this evaluation. Mechanically and EV is better lasting but the technology and infrastructure is not ready to eliminate petrol at this time. It is the future but not yet.

[@finky555]

@tiepup Yes I understand you do not see an issue. The UK is not really a challenge for an EV. Decidedly different in Ontario Canada in January.

[@Brian-om2hh]

There are no subsidies for electric anymore. The "artificially" high price of petrol???? The oil companies receive billions in subsidies from the taxpayer each year. Petrol is only HALF the cost it would be without the subsidies....... And EV's don't work in cold climates? Have you told the 56% of Norway's poulation, who now drive an EV? Clearly, you have no idea that many modern EV's have heat pumps and battery heating. You could also try watching Bjorn Nyland's KZbin channel. He's driven several EV's to the Arctic Circle and back......

[@iainmackie5079]

With so many variables, this is always a difficult calculation. My last fuel car was a Merc 320D. I paid to get a larger 80 litre fuel tank. I used to get about 580 miles out of a full tank. At today's prices, that would have cost £120 to fill the tank. I recently drove 989 miles in my EV. The fuel cost me £100. So I got 400 more miles for about £20 less. Real life costs still show that my EV is considerably cheaper to run, even on long distance trips.

[@mrnixie]

BUT! (If I may continue your train of thought...) even THAT is not the full picture! Step back a bit - why are we doing any of this? Or in other words, what is the cost of the continued existence of our species?

[@jhamilton7373]

Very flawed analysis with too many assumptions. There are no savings until you have taken account for the huge difference in initial car purchase costs and setting up home infrastructure as usual in these types analyses. You have not accounted for the fact that despite people being able to find solutions to not having a drive way it does not mean they can automatically park outside or near their home as this is public road way. Modern petrol and diesel cars now need less maintenance ever and as an EV owner you still need servicing and you will in most cases be tied to dealership pricing as there are very few independent garages who will be prepared to work on EVs. Because when an EV goes wrong it's often a very complex and expensive issue. You are also assuming electricity prices will fall. When was the last time this happened? Energy prices may reduce slightly in the short term but like everything the trend will always be up. You have also not taken into account cold weather driving and the massive hit this has on batteries and range.

[@jhamilton7373]

@tiepup as an ex EV owner I know all the shortcomings. Like poor charging networks, regularly out of order chargers, long waits for chargers and software issues. I also know that quoted driving range is at best a number that is as achievable as finding a unicorn too. I went through tyres almost twice as quickly and spent many wasted hours and miles finding or waiting at chargers, not to mention the money I blew on coffee waiting for said car to charge. Real life range was garbage and even using the heater hurt mileage, when in an ICE this was a useful by product in winter. My small capacity diesel beats the EV on virtually every metric other than acceleration, but that feature was barely used because of the effect on range. I can drive from London to Edinburgh and back without stopping if I wanted to and my car does around 60 mpg. I don't have to plan my journey around destination charging and be bound to networks en route being tied to chargers which were often out of service despite what the apps tell you. So many assumptions made by this video and yourself it seems.

[@jhamilton7373]

@tiepup yes I guess I have like many owners who were sold an ideal scenario but realised there are so many compromises, the poor charging network being one of them and add in an hour on to almost every longer trip. Time is money to me and I don't like wasting it. Plus the more I investigated the more unrealized that the whole eco argument was pretty much all garbage too. I mean you need to drive arpund 70k miles for an EV to break even with an average ICE vehicleE in terms of CO2. EVs have their place dont get me wrong, Im not anti EV. I just dont think we are saving the planet building these huge bulky expensive posing chariots. Personal transport like scootlers and a development of vehicles like the Citroen Ami are a great idea for city centre transport as a car club / share like the 'Boris Bikes'. However until battery technology becomes more efficient and less dependent on rare materials, we are kidding ourselves that EVs are going to be the answer to our future transport needs. The whole argument is akin to thinking you can make a blanket longer by cutting off the bottom and sewing it to the top.

[@vincecarlo]

NOT Everyone can Charge at Home The Assumptions are NOT Realistic

[@G-Cam1]

Did you not watch the video??

[@vincecarlo]

@@G-Cam1 Who do you know has Solar Panels Installed n Religiously ONLY Charges at Lowest Electrical Tarrif ? EXTREME NON Realistic Assumption. Bunch of 🐃💩

[@G-Cam1]

Everyone I know with an EV charges this way? Via auto switching or via time slot charging... Sorry but im confused by your reply.. can you not charge in this way or do you not understand how home EV charging is scheduled and controlled? If you can expand your comment it might help to narrow down a specific response?

[@vincecarlo]

@@G-Cam1 Why not just plaster Solar Cells on Bonnet, roof n boot ? You can get Free Electricity 🤣🤣🤣

[@G-Cam1]

@@vincecarlo while some cars, like Sonis, do this the power generated gives only a mild charge. A bit like me suggesting you swap your car engine for a Briggs & Stratton lawn mower engine... It might work.. just not as you want it to 😂👍

[@kborak]

It also takes how long to get a full charge from a wall outlet? ROFL, keep trying.

[@G-Cam1]

Plug in and walk away.. it does it when im not using it... Cant see any problem with that 🤔. Quicker and much than filling up a diesel tank.