The battery / range thing takes some getting used to. You normally charge to 75%, the car also shuts down at 5% so again your "range" is not what it says.Originally Posted by wileeeeeey
The reality is for day to day use I have more than enough range and for long journeys I charge to 100% and will likely have to supercharge anyway.
Key to enjoying/using the car is to a) have a charge point at home (so you are not stressed about charging time) and b) setting the display to percentage and not worrying about the actual range as except in a few circumstances it is irrelevant.
The convenience of having a "full" car outside all the time is very nice.
I also had the same debate and was buying outright (although have made it my company car) and instead of a new M3 went for a used S although in hindsight I would probably choose a used X as having driven one the SUV driving experience is easier than a saloon for parking etc.
Seems a lot of stuff where there would normally be an engine.This is under the bonnet of the Enyaq. But then it has a big boot so I guess the designers didn’t really need to move all this stuff to make just a little bit of extra space.
Would think you'd be better off putting solar panel on your house and charging the car with that.
Great choice. I’ve had one since July and really rate it. It’s a great half way house to EV ownership until the national infrastructure gets up to speed.
The vast majority of my trips are in EV mode via my solar panels.
Thats my take, the latest smart chargers can direct any used energy not being used by the house directly to your car.
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Cheers....can you tell me what home charger you have?
If it can only get 70 miles per week it's unlikely to be able to charge anything let alone power your house.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Model Y now available to order in the UK
We talked about it before on here and I can’t see how it’ll be viable, in that I mean cost V benefit. Not forgetting we live in the pigging UK where’s it’s not that well known for its unbroken sunshine. Winter months my array produces about 30 watts an hour which barely runs the fridge.
I have been thinking about getting some solar panels so interesting to hear what the real performance is like in winter. We are looking at getting the roof replaced anyway so seems like a logical time to consider PV panels but the payback period is at least 10 years even with the ambitious electric yield from the panels assumed in the quote
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I never paid for mine as such as they were part of the house deal but I have mixed thoughts about them. Mine were installed in July 18 so I missed out on the tariffs available for selling unused energy back to the grid, mine essentially goes back for naff all.
During the winter months we clearly have a lot less daylight hours and on a dull day I produce 20-30 watts an hour which is barely nothing. I have a smart meter which measures usage and I’m running around 400 watts an hour which includes fridges, fish tanks, anything in standby etc. Essentially not worth it during these months. Spring/ Summer however is a different matter and our daily bill including cooking, kettles and hot water can be as little as a £1 a day. Of course these days aren’t as prolific as the winter poorer months and so really my experience is a mixed bag.
Of course there are other ways of harvesting the excess juice, one way is to obviously have it sent to your EV, the other way is via a smart link which will power up your electric boiler or you could buy a battery wall. I’ve done the maths for these and for the life of me I can’t see how these stack up.
The reality is especially with new installs is that unless you harness the excess energy the only way you’ll benefit is by actually being at home and using stuff during the day.
Last edited by Franky Four Fingers; 15th October 2021 at 22:29.
It charges other cars or powers your house from it's own battery at up to 11kw, so like a power wall on wheels. It makes sense if you also have solar on your house you can use the car to store energy for when it's dark.
Yeah it was the fact that I am now at home all day and therefore able to use the power as generated that got me thinking about getting panels again. We have been looking at getting 14 panels which in theory is supposed to generate up to 4kwh in ideal conditions. Our normal background usage is about 700wh, and a bit higher during the day so we use on average about 25kw/day when not charging the car so still likely to be excess energy to send back to the grid.
The quotes for a Tesla power wall were coming in at about £8k I think and was expected to save us about £80 a year! How do they manage to sell any of those?
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25kw per day equates to (tariff depending) roughly £4.50 per day which includes your standing charge? During the spring / summer months you’d without doubt benefit but come winter it would barely make a dent in it. I’m a firm believer that the good times of solar panels have passed, all the guys lucky enough to jump on the bus pre 18 and took advantage of the buy back tariffs are laughing. If you buy a house with them already installed it’s a win from the start but if you’re forking out 10k plus nowadays I’d question the benefits.
We looked at PV and a Powerwall 12 months ago but the payback was crazy. But that was based on current fuel costs which are only going one way. Will an install start to make sense??
Being involved with residential development there is no question that punters are now considering running costs of their new homes, again building regs are only going one way with insulation, air permeability and heating fuel, look where gas CH is going. 20 years ago was mpg at the top of the list as a must have when buying a car. ???
Any investment in your main residence to ‘better’ it surely has a return??
Pitch
They reckon if the fuel battery unit needs replacing that'll cost 40% of the initial car price absolutely CRAZY.
That may have been the case once upon a time when it was over $1000 per kWh to produce the batteries, but it’s now down to about $130 per kWh to produce them with projections of $100 per kWh by 2023.
Who is THEY?
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
Tesla are quoted as saying it'll be about £5k to replace those in a model 3. But they should be good for around 300k miles before that. The rest of the car will be dead before the batteries.
Yes of course but for me if you’re talking about such a small return over XXXX number of years then I don’t see the point. My house already had them on and so no complaints for me but I don’t think I’d be investing that money if I had to pull it out my savings.
Savings, huh, nice, i ain’t got a pot to piss in 🤣
Pitch
I was lucky enough to have my PV panels installed before the Feed In Tarifs were cut so after 10 years now all installation costs paid back and every penny now is all profit until my inverter needs replacing
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4 day getaway for us down in not so sunny Cornwall and I’m certain if the infrastructure down here is anything to go by I've currently made the right decision to go hybrid. We’re staying around St Columb Major which is roughly 190 miles door to door, its questionable whether I’d have made it on a single charge and likely would have needed to stop at Taunton Dean services. For such a huge stop there are only 2 chargers for which one was being used and the other was faulty. Looking back at the chat history it seems blighted with connection problems and far from reliable so I may have had issues there.
I’ve scanned the area on the zap map and there’s not an awful amount of chargers in the local area, there’s one close to Newquay airport which again has issue after issue, quite a few in Newquay which again when clicked on most have issues.
The place we’re staying isn't ready for EV, there’s no outside power points and so I’d have had to find a way of safely getting the 3kw charger through the window to the car. As we’re quite central our planned journeys are some distance away and I’d have to make use of public charge points and rely on getting what I could from the house we’re at which I don’t think would be enough.
I started this thread with eyes wide open, for some of you guys they’re perfect and you’re clearly making them work and I think if I stayed at home 100% of the time and never venture further afield they’d also work for me. Perhaps Cornwall isn’t currently a great example but I’m sure I’d struggle down here and be thinking about every journey which is something you don’t really want on holiday. I filled up Monday afternoon and drove 200 miles and did 40 yesterday, my car still has 1/2 a tank and showing 230 mile range........I know there aren’t any current EVs that can do that.
it’s not the actual car mileage that’s the issue, it’s the ability to be able to quickly charge it up again with little hassle that’s the problem.
There is no doubt it doesn’t work for everybody and also potentially not every journey
I have an I-Pace and travelling from Coventry to my parents home in Northern Ireland would not be easy
It’s doable especially as I would be stopping anyway as I have a young daughter but it’s no doubt more difficult than ICE or hybrid
However I do that journey maximum once or twice a year and I’m happy with that trade off versus the everyday benefit
Zap Map is not a reliable indicator of charger status unfortunately, it doesn’t filter for idiots who for whatever reason have failed to get a charge, even where it wasn’t the fault of the charger.
You’re right though, some areas are pretty poorly served by charging infrastructure, and the plans to upgrade the services like Taunton Deane now Ecotricity have left the pitch are still to happen. Gridserve are now taking over all those sites, they’ve upgraded the existing ones to make them more reliable and will be installing ‘hubs’ over the coming months/years.
We travel down to family 255 miles away in South Devon regularly, not done it in the Tesla yet owing to Covid etc. but in the ID.3 with its realistic 200 mile range, it’s easy enough to pick a place to stop just over half way whilst we stretch our legs etc.
The town itself has no public charging, which is not good, but there’s an outdoor 3 pin socket at the house which is all we need.
Our immediate neighbours used to have a 1st Generation Leaf as their only car, covered their work and domestic trips, and they used to hire a car for the annual holiday. They now have a Leaf 62+ as well now, so even the hire car isn't required now.
Hybrids are part of the solution, obviously, plug in ones are good and the more you plug them in the better. Self charging ones, don’t see the point myself? They rarely use less fuel than the all petrol equivalent, are more complex and are just marketing IMHO.
If you're interested I can find you a thread on the UKGSER forum (motorbikes) where one of the guys has spent about £120k getting his house to an A grade EPC and has two powerwalls, solar on the roof etc.
He estimates 30 or 35 years I think to break even. Once the early adopter tax is out of the way it'll be interesting but for now that's nuts pricing.
Some ferries offer on-board charging stations. Stena Line doesn't yet do so.
______
Jim.
I don't want to sound all preachy, but the main driver(!) for EVs is to reduce emmissions, is it not? Cost savings are a secondary consideration.
I built my house only 18 years ago and I can remember my fellas laughing at how much I upped the insulation in the floors wall and roof. I think at the time 75mm of jabalite met building regs in the floor and I put 150mm celotex on the ground floor, the same in the sloping roof sections.
I currently have oil fired central heating (no gas on my lane in Suffolk) feeding UF on the ground floor (5 separate zones) and rads upstairs and I have been happy with the costs but the boiler will need replacing in the next year or so and I will definitely be swapping to a ASHP.
Pitch
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It is three fold for me, enviro, cost and how much nicer it is to drive.
Pitch
I have our heating on 3 circuits with 3 thermostats - one for each floor. No sense in heating 3 floors just to be warm in the living room watching TV.
I'm still not entirely convinced by electric I've got a hybrid so I can rely on the engine but I was talking to someone at work were we have a large fleet of Nissan electric vans and he said the ones that are 6 years old have already got marked battery degradation eg 130 miles when new now down to 80 miles
We shouldn’t be judging all electric vehicles batteries by those in ENV200 vans that are passively cooled and were pretty small to begin with.
That said, I’ve not got a downer on Nissan, some early Leafs that share your work vans battery tech being used as taxis have covered huge mileages without issue or much degradation.
My neighbour has an 8 year old Mk1 Leaf that has lost a bit of battery capacity but is still a useful vehicle that covers the majority of their journeys and is still a perfectly useable car.
E-nv200 vans with the 130 mile range are later 40kwhr vans whilst the earlier 24kwhr vans have an 80 mile range. As the larger battery wasn’t introduced until 2018, the six year old vans with an 80 mile range have a 24kwhr battery and have shown little to no degradation.
My 2015, 24kwhr van still has a similar range to the day I bought it at one year old.
The e-nv batteries are actively cooled and degrade far less than the same, passively cooled batteries in the Leaf.
Thanks Dave, I knew there were different versions, and it was the earlier ‘Mk1 Leaf Battery in a van’ versions I was thinking of.
Yours sounds like a good one! I’ve been watching YouTube videos for a while now about electric camper conversions, and I’m tempted…
Do Tesla offer a warranty of miles on their batteries?
It depends on the exact model, but it’s always 8 years and ranges from 100k to 150k miles, and will be replaced inside that timeframe or mileage if capacity drops below 70%.
In reality, they seem to last much longer than that, the early model S batteries are doing starship mileages in most cases.
A San Fran taxi company have a lot of Model X Tesla's and said they have some in the fleet with 300k miles and still going strong. Don't regret getting them in the fleet at all.
Premier cabs in Blackpool have some 200k+ Nissan Lesf (24kwhr) taxis in their fleet which are still going strong!
I’ve got a Zappi.
I will come back in on this thread with an apology as I posted out a very sceptical view earlier on; sorry. But I have to confess I am now a convert. My wife decided to trade her Mini Cooper S for a BMW i3S, I have to say it is so impressive in every respect and the running costs are amazing. So apologies again for being late to the party. I test drove a Tesla M3P the other day and was very impressed but actually think a Kia EV6 might be my next car when I sell my Boxster. I am thinking of getting the roof of the house covered with solar panels too as everything is going electric so why not embrace it and do my bit for decarbonisation and reducing CO2 emissions.
On a good day what’s it sending to the car, will it charge it fully in one day?
That will all depend on how many panels you have in terms of generation capability
I only have 2.4kW of labels so even if I was generating that for 6 hours solid it’s 14.4kWh and my ipace has a 90kWh battery
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That will all depend on how many panels you have in terms of generation capability
I only have 2.4kW of labels so even if I was generating that for 6 hours solid it’s 14.4kWh and my ipace has a 90kWh battery
I also have a Zappi but use more of my generated energy to run other things during the day like hot water immersion, washing machine, dishwasher etc and then charge the car at night on the cheap tariff
Can I confirm the bit on bold do you mean you/your house use about 25 kWh per day?
As if so there is little to no chance that 14 panels will supply that with anything left over.
I have a 12 panel system that is pretty well optimum south facing, not overlooked and on a VERY good day it might just produce 25 kWh. My average use is 8 kWh per day. I have a 7.2 kWh battery for anything excess. On dull days in winter the output is obviously far less.
My best month this year was June with 422 kWh - so 14/day on average. This month I’ll be surprised to see 200 kWh.
Yep daily usage when not charging one of the cars is roughly 25kwh per day, increasing slightly now it’s getting colder and darker. I guess the issue is that for the 8 hours or so that the panels are putting out energy it will probably exceed my usage even if not over the full day - that’s where having a battery would be handy but the sums just don’t add up.
I wouldn’t be seriously considering panels were it not for the fact we are planning on getting the roof redone anyway so the incremental cost of the panel install may not be that high if done at the same time.
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Ah, OK so you would be using the car as the “battery” to store the excess production during the charging day. That makes sense though as I say I doubt if a 14 panel system will actually produce all that much to make a dent in a big car battery. My 12 panels can easily take my 7.2kWh battery from 10% (“empty”) to 100% on a sunny day but a. on a dull day they struggle; and b. a BEV battery is obviously a lot bigger!
I don’t have an EV so don’t face this challenge though people I know with them and solar run their system on a 3 stage priority:
1. Supply the house demand
2. Charge the house battery
3. Charge the car
Regarding the actual install costs - this was an absolutely trivial amount of the overall costs - the whole system was installed and working in less than a day, so I suspect you won’t be saving a lot by combining with the roof work. Possibly different if your situation requires scaffolding (mine did not) as that will obviously increase the install costs.
Finally the other thing you will find you do with solar is shift power consumption into daylight hours - so anything controllable like the dishwasher or washing machine can be run in the day instead of overnight.
We have a 3 storey house so scaffolding definitely needed and not a trivial cost. By having it done at the same time as the roof and going with an integrated system also saves on about 25sqm or so of slates and associated fitting cost.
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Well, depends on the exact situation/layout I suppose but my house is three storeys as well and they were installed just using ladders ... each panel only weighs a few kilos and the fitter just strolled up the ladder carrying each one over his shoulder. Rather him than me mind!
Definitely rather him than me, they’re about 20kg each and pretty large!
All the fitters I have seen seem to insist on scaffolding which to be honest I think is fair enough!
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Anyone on the fence on Tesla note that there is a rumour of a 10% price hike across the range at midnight tonight. Already happened in the US yesterday.
Where does that leave people with £100 deposits?
Up a very brown river and with no means of propelling themselves. However people with confirmed orders and deposits paid were fine in the US so I assume the same applies here however of course UK price increases remain a rumour at this stage
I’d guess in the same position as people with deposits on sports Rolex.
Pay the new price or have your deposit back.
Tesla are so popular at the moment they would have no problems selling cancelled orders.
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