Reply With QuoteDefinitely garlic bread.Originally Posted by bobocat
I think so too, but the future might not be now
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Definitely garlic bread.
Looking at the house above, ground floor plan marked up.
Green is where I believe the fuse box is, blue is the meter box and red would be the ideal 7kw charger location. To the right of the lounge is the driveway and to the left of the floor plan is another property. There is gate access to the garden from both sides of the property.
Would it be possible to get a charger fixed in the red location? and will there be lots of wire all round the house/garden as a result?
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Should be able to have a new dedicated consumer unit off the meter via henley block then along the side of house to charger (though someone will usually be along to say that is in the car...).
Presumably the outside wall by the consumer unit (green) belongs to you and you have access to it from your garden/maintenance strip? You mention there’s a gate both sides?
Looking at the house above, ground floor plan marked up.
Green is where I believe the fuse box is, blue is the meter box and red would be the ideal 7kw charger location. To the right of the lounge is the driveway and to the left of the floor plan is another property. There is gate access to the garden from both sides of the property.
Would it be possible to get a charger fixed in the red location? and will there be lots of wire all round the house/garden as a result?
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Basically you need a 32A feed from there to the location marked green, so the easiest way would appear to go through the wall, then armoured cable just above floor level around the back of the house and to the driveway.
If the EVSE you choose has built in PEN protection then you shouldn’t need an earth rod, so should be a simple install as long as the consumer unit is of the required modern standard, and you’ve got something like a 100A fuse at the supply entry by the meter box.
Thanks both. House was built 2019 and yes we have access to that strip between the properties.
Will see how simple Podpoint say it is…ffs
Or locate it by the meter box (with the new DB in the box) and then use a longer cable to reach the EV? Longer cable can be useful if change cars eg Tesla is rear left, MG front bumper etc.
If the meter box is a viable option that would certainly be the way I’d go. I’d have it anywhere along that wall if it made things easier.
Maths isnt my strong point but here goes, Ive only had my ID.5 for a month and was interested to see the running costs V my equivalent diesel car I had beforehand (not that would have swayed the deal) Months costs running the new car, it came with 50 miles on the clock and half a charge, when i worked out these figures it had 420 miles on it and had half a charge left. In that time we charged (not fully) 3 times. Total costs of 3 charges was just under £38. So i did 370 miles for £38.00. So for that £38 i would have got about 5 gallons of diesel. Its been around £1.70 a ltr for months now so its about right. My car on a run would do 45 mpg so lets use that as a figures for arguments sake. 5 gallons x 45mpg = 225 miles. So theres 145 miles difference between my electric car and my old diesel car for the same amount of spend. I dont have a cheap overnight tarif and these figures are based on 31.5p per kWh, clearly you guys charging at circa 10p per kWh will see the difference as being even greater.
To obtain the same mileage as the electric car i would have had to have filled up with an extra £25 of diesel.
For the ID.5 to be more expensive than the diesel my tarif would have to increase to over 20p per kWh.
Last edited by Franky Four Fingers; 4th March 2023 at 12:50.
^^^ Presumably you mean BY 20p per kWh?
Yes
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Sadly the days of 10p per kWh for most people at home have long gone, for now anyway.
I’ve done a year and about 22k miles in my ID.4 GTX now, so driven through last summer and this winter, and getting a long term average of 3.3 miles per kWh.
My E7 tariff is around 15p per kWh, and 90% of my charging is done at home.
Pence per mile is around 5.5p, so still pretty good, especially compared to a similar performance and size ICE car which I estimate would be around 25p plus per mile.
I’d say if you haven’t got home charging or are paying the capped electricity rate, then an EV is roughly cost comparable to an equivalent ICE.
Octopus overnight tariff is still 10p per kw Tooks, I’ve just been swapped over to them from Bulb and it all comes with the info from them. Don’t think I’ll do it though as most of my charging is done at work and it sticks the daytime rate up to 42p
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This.
We did exactly the same. I had assumed and in fact already run a cable underground from consumer unit. In the end the installer did as above and it worked well.
We don’t have a smart meter yet, but good to hear that 10p is still doable. Presumably that Octopus deal is for 4 hours a night ?
As you say, it’s a balance between saving a few quid charging the car overnight vs paying a higher rate for everything else the rest of the time.
7 hours at circa 15p works best for us with one charge point, I can get around 50kWh into either car overnight then, in case we’re both needing to travel for work etc. 4 hours might be a bit more limiting.
Last edited by Tooks; 4th March 2023 at 18:58.
The guff on the email says 6 hours a night so tbh its pretty good if you don't have access to other chargers like i do.
Cheers Franky, I’ll look into it then I think. 👍
Recently switched to octopus but haven’t switched to their Charing tariff yet.
Worth doing the sums for anyone thinking of doing it as they do increase the day rate quite significantly. For us I don’t think the maths will add up but happy with octopus nonetheless.
Nice to see the figures above for home charging which sadly isn’t an option for me. Try doing 1.5k mikes a month using public network and fast chargers and the maths paints a very different picture.
Biggest mistake I’ve ever made plus the Ionic 5 I have had so many intermittent and serious issues that I’ve evidenced to the lease company although they still won’t accept that so I will have to go legal.
Had to buy a second car as the Hyundai just can’t be relied upon and is just so unpredictable and unsafe … suffice to say for me a 15 year old Merc CLK 320 CDI is more economical, more reliable, more fun to drive and gives me hours of my life back each month…. 3.8k to get out of my lease and I’m seriously contemplating it as with 2.5 yrs left to run its probably cost effective and certainly will relieve a lot of my stress!
What led you you choose an EV with that sort of mileage and no access to home or work charging?
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
Just seen you can log in to the octopus EV charging app called Electroverse, uses the same credentials as octopus and covers what seems like a large amount of public chargers. The good thing is that they add your charge costs to your electricity bill which seems like a great idea.
That’s correct. I’m on Octopus Intelligent. I get 6 hours a night at 10p per kWh and the rest of the time it’s 42p per kWh.
The kids are in school and the wife and I are in work during the day so our usage is minimal until about 3:30 in the afternoon.
This is a screenshot of my typical overnight charging prices.
At the moment I’m delivering pizza for Dominos while waiting until the end of May to start my HGV driver training. On top of my hourly rate I get £1.20 per delivery, tax free. The amount I get for my deliveries effectively covers the monthly payments on the car and the cost of electricity to run it.
Going back to electric was the best move I could have done.
Last edited by jaytip; 5th March 2023 at 01:01.
The fact on paper it was a cheaper monthly outlay than the older diesel I was running at the time when factoring the cost of fuel, the PCP I had., tax, insurance, maintenance costs etc etc. Basically 15 months ago when I ordered the Ionic my neighbour was happy for me to lay a short cable run under his land to get my charger where I wanted it, sadly he sold and the new neighbours won’t entertain it, add in the huge increase in electric costs and the massive inconvenience coupled with so many issues with the car……
Interesting insight via Harry Metcalfe & JCB.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
I think for bigger vehicles, then hydrogen is potentially viable, especially if you stick a tank of hydrogen on site like you do a concrete silo for larger projects.
I’ve got a mate who works at Caterpillar, although he doesn’t go into all the details for obvious reasons, they’re looking at electric dozers as well, with swappable battery packs and also battery leasing similar to aero engines. They’ve also looking at Hydrogen, it’s good that a diversity of more sustainable options are being worked up.
I average around 25p k/wh from the combined cheap overnight rate (10p) and extortionate day rate (40p). Still cheaper than the price cap so I’m fairly happy.
Bmw are doing a short production run of the IX5 Hydrogen to trial it in general usage as they aren’t yet convinced on the long term prospects of EV.
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They started trials in the 7 series back in 2005-07 nothing new.
Motor manufacturers keep flirting with Hydrogen, and why not, always worth a revisit now and again to properly understand the pros and cons.
But if people think that EV public charging is thin on the ground, then they should see the Hydrogen one…
If HGVs go Hydrogen they will be everywhere rapidly, I go through £2000 + of fuel every week and there’s around 490,000 licensed wagons in the UK. The scope for profit will drive the expansion.
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The same argument could be made for the circa 30m passenger cars here in the UK, the infrastructure built up for ‘just’ 1.2m plug in electric vehicles is only just getting going. The potential market is huge for the supply of public
en-route charging for longer trips for business users (incl vans), even for those with home charging, but also for those people without access to home charging.
I hope they do get HGVs going down the alternative fuel route, and hydrogen certainly seems viable. As you’ll know there are huge truck stops around the country, adding some hydrogen infrastructure would certainly be possible.
Looking at all the lorries parked up overnight by the sides of roads and on industrial estates though, seems like more dedicated truck stops would be welcome.
Last edited by Tooks; 6th March 2023 at 18:53.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CpJBs...d=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
Hilarious
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Solar panels helping the equation...
Last edited by gunner; 24th March 2023 at 14:44.
I’ve got a VW ID3 (family pro performance) arriving next week as a second/run about car. First EV so I’m looking forward to it. I’m with Onto via salary sacrifice so can always chop it if it’s not working out for me. Figured it was worth a shot. Any views on the ID3 or Onto would be welcome. Cheers.
Took delivery of a Mercedes EQA 250+ on Tuesday. So far so good (touch wood).
Due to move house soon and thanks to the power of Facebook a neighbour has offered me use of their charger whenever I want (first EV, no charger of my own), obviously I want to restrict this to once a week ideally.
Feels much bigger inside than I remembered when I test drove.
The simple fact is that Hydrogen has a massively higher energy density (effectively range per unit volume or mas) than a battery ever can.
It is also a refillable fuel, making stops mid journey very short.
And it is the answer to the thorny problem of what we do when there is an excess of renewable energy (quite common now, the world over), you just make more hydrogen.
It also does not use large amounts of precious metals that the third world is being plundered for by the Chinese.
In engineering terms, it is a much more elegant solution than batteries.
This also applies to Ammonia by the way (to a lesser degree).
But, you could argue, the intervention of a certain eccentric billionaire has given the electric car such a massive boost, and the more e-cars get established, the less chance hydrogen has to compete.
Hydrogen is ineffecient to produce and difficult to store, by the time they figure out that out batteries will either have such a long range that stopping will not be an issue or charge so fast that it won't matter.
Whilst you are right about hydrogen, it will only ever be viable if we have a vast surplus of renewable energy such that the inefficiencies are irrelevant.
I’m not so sure about batteries though, as far as I can see, there’s nothing in the pipeline to suggest that batteries will become much more energy dense or faster charging.
I still think that induction charging loops embedded into the road surface (on motorways and major A roads) will allow EVs to travel long distances with smaller batteries, the batteries only really being used for the shorter, more local sections of long journeys.
Hydrogen has a higher energy density than petrol, (about 3 times) based on mass. However 1kg Hydrogen occupies 11 cubic meters at STP, so it needs to be pressurised to make it viable as a fuel - typically to 700bar.
At normal temperatures and 700bar 5kg of hydrogen occupies 125litres.
5kg of h2 is more or less energy equivalent to 15kg of petrol, which occupies 21l.
So petrol, in use, is a much more practical proposition.
Good info to be found on the Air Liquide website.
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I’v read this quite a few times in numerous places & I can’t get my head around it, to me it’s hard to balance the talk of hydrogen inefficiencies with the obvious inefficiencies with inductive power transmission & the costs & disruption of installation to the road network. That kind of expenditure would buy a significant amount of hydrogen infrastructure with much less disruption.
I was concerned to read this about the manufacture of h2 - seems to be counter to the “green” credentials. But then current battery tech relies on the limited Lithium supplies which will soon run out at this rate. The hunt continues ?
Creating pure hydrogen for vehicles requires using a great deal of energy to "crack" a compound like natural gas (CH4) into pure H2, with CO2 as a byproduct. (Most hydrogen today is derived from fossil fuels like natural gas.)
“ Ford... you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.” HHGTTG
There are various paths from which to choose, battery power is currently the preferred option. That’s not to say that it will ultimately be the final solution.
Both induction and hydrogen are inefficient and would be very costly to implement, but then isn’t everything? As to disruption, installing induction loops would ideally be done at the same time as road resurfacing so no additional disruption would be necessary.
Still not compelled iirc the average resurfacing cycle is 10-12 years on major roads / motorways that’s a long time to have to maintain a upgrade program, how many years into such a program will it be viable to reduce battery size & charge on the go, then consider the lag in the real world confidence & it just seems unlikely to succeed.
Not that I’m fixated on hydrogen but I suspect you could add hydrogen filling to many a fuel station & motorway services with significantly reduced times.
Whichever direction interesting times.
Plus, can't just be a UK thing - manufacturers aren't going to produce such vehicles solely for our market.
Just isn't going to happen.
Agreed, there needs to be worldwide agreement on whichever solution is eventually chosen. Personally, I don’t see hydrogen as the solution but I’m no expert.
WRT battery size, 20-30 kwhr as was the norm just a few years ago is plenty for 70-100 miles.
Induction loop approach would raise some challenges with charging (£ not kW)?
I don’t think that would be an issue; telemetry from the car could send that information straight to your provider.
Most people would be thinking of electrolysing water to make hydrogen, only the petrochem brigade are pushing the cracking of methane, which has no greenhouse advantage at all, I agree.
They are proposing quite large wind powered hydrogen from water electrolysis in the Orkneys, it is seen as a better bet for producing storable energy than anything else, and export from there via wire would be problematic.
The other advantage of hydrogen is that it can be used in fuel cells. I had a very interesting chat to one consultant trying to get a small hydrogen vessel and a fuel cell (to convert the hydrogen into electricity) as a very lightweight battlefield radio power solution, he reckoned half the weight carried would give up to 8 or 9 timed the radio life.
ps - totally agree about the energy density in terms of volume, but energy use by vehicles is not (for the most part) governed by volume, it is governed by weight, and hydrogen wins that by miles
Last edited by sweets; 15th April 2023 at 17:21. Reason: Add ps
Hydrogen cars use fuel cells, don't see anyone suggesting combustion engines.
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