Bargain Basement Electric

[mickthemaverick]

Without referring back to the tab Neil does the £355 balance cover the other costs as you forcast? Have you achieved a net profit?

[NewcastleFalcon]

Without referring back to the tab Neil does the £355 balance cover the other costs as you forcast? Have you achieved a net profit?

Mick the only variable in the debate really is the price differential between electric and petrol.

It is probably unfair to compare a £10,000 second-hand electric car with a £100 petrol car but over 48 months and 15,000 miles per year the electric car, will save £5,625 (ICE consumption 10 miles/litre, petrol @£1.25/l. and electric 0.25 x Petrol cost)

Financing a £10,000 car over 48 months will cost £11,021 on an old fashioned repayment loan at 5% on outstanding/balance (£230ish/month). At the end of that period the residual value of the car may be £5,000.

So even compared to a zero finance/zero depreciation 14 year old Nissan Micra bought for £100 you are left with this surprising calculation

£10,000 car
Financing cost £11,021 less Residual Value £5000 = £6,021 + fuel £1,875 = £7,896 total cost
£100 car
Financing Cost £100 less Residual Value £100 = £0 + fuel £7,500=£7,500 total cost

So not a kick in the pants off being just as cheap as running my £100 Micra....zero tax for 4 years when factored in really makes it even out. Effectively the fuel saving/tax saving pays the full financing costs of a £10,000 car.

Of course when you make the fairer comparison between purchasing a £10,000 second hand electric car, and a £10,000 ICE car, financing costs the same, but the added selling point with the electric car is the fuel is currently much much cheaper, and for now free at many locations.

I regard this zero cost phase a bit of a bonus, but I reckon this is the best time to buy a second hand electric car. Pretty much a shot to nothing and currently as cheap as running a £100 Nissan Micra


REgards Neil

[mickthemaverick]

Well it certainly seems the way to go. Plus of course you are driving a much better equipped car so whats not to like? My research into conversion is not going well from a financial point of view but both from a challenge and a reliability angle I am severely tempted to go ahead with the conversion plan once the weather warms up a bit

[NewcastleFalcon]

FCF Bargain Basement Electric thread provides the double tab packet worksheet to assist careful decision making.....

screenshot

Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Well it certainly seems the way to go. Plus of course you are driving a much better equipped car so whats not to like? My research into conversion is not going well from a financial point of view but both from a challenge and a reliability angle I am severely tempted to go ahead with the conversion plan once the weather warms up a bit

In the early days of the FCF's flirtation with electric vehicles I started a thread off on Conversions. Kicked off with a highschool in the US bolting loads of lead acid batteries into a triumph spitfire. Securing supply of suitable batteries for the battery pack remains the biggest cost item.

Start a new thread, or use the conversions thread here to map out your thoughts/ research which you have come across. I for one would be more than interested in things you turn up. I have watched several video of varying validity of people assembling battery packs from ex-laptop batteries. This chap here has a youtube channel well known in EV conversion circles

https://www.youtube.com/user/jehugarcia/videos

Regards Neil

[mickthemaverick]

Thanks Neil, I will sort that out next week, I have decided to have a weekend's mulling before I decide anything so I'll get a thread underway next week.

[Mandrake]

Good classic conversions are difficult today because batteries are still large and heavy to get a useful range, so trying to install them in a car that was never designed around having them in the floor pan like a modern EV means stuffing them in anywhere you can - typically some under the bonnet and some in the boot. Unfortunately this means a compromised load space, high centre of gravity, and not very good safety. (Imagine the fire risk in a severe head on collision with a conversion stuffed full of batteries under the bonnet where it should be a crumple zone...)

However as batteries get more smaller and more energy dense classic conversions will get a lot easier. The motor and controller technology is there already to make it relatively easy - you can get motors and controllers off the shelf nowadays, so it's really just battery tech we're waiting on to catch up.

As always with EV's it's the batteries that are the archiles heel!

[NewcastleFalcon]

Well, I prefer it to either one the charging buddies today and one of them was a Porsche!

Nf Own Work

Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Thanks Mick, Hopefully I will be able to ease my way in with charging via the plug in cable at home, and public chargers for the time being. There is a grant for charging point installations if installed by an approved installer, but before they come along and I need to do a bit of upgrading of our electrical installation. Its fine but old, and could do with "the electricity Board" updating the main fuse, and for us to get the old 6-way rewirable fuse consumer unit replaced with a new one compliant with the 18th Edition of the wiring regs. Has needed doing for years so its about time it was changed in any case.

Many people make Leaf's work up here, should cope with our regular trips up and down to Tyneside, and just because we may have to plan on a recharge on our nice days out to North Yorks/ lake District or the Borders isnt going to stop us.

Should get up and down to the Drift Cafe as long as its not -12 and I have to put the heater on!

REgards Neil

Well the was day one of Leaf ownwership. So far I have never charged it overnight at home. There is a convenient and free public 7kW charger and 20-80% with the on board 6.6kW charger takes a couple of hours at the most.

"Many people make Leaf's work up here, should cope with our regular trips up and down to Tyneside, and just because we may have to plan on a recharge on our nice days out to North Yorks/ lake District or the Borders isnt going to stop us."

I have often used "make leafs work", but now its just normal, switched on to economic driving and know the charging locations, and the "range" is just not a problem. Done a few days out to our normal haunts of Yorkshire and the borders, but havent as yet done a Lake District trip. Small bit of planning ahead with alternatives in mind which is interesting in its own right, and once done a few times it becomes normal.

People are maybe over-anxious about having a large range.....it does come at a price. None of the second hand offerings under £10,000 are going to have 100 miles plus ranges currently......( all right you may squeeze in a high miles 30kWh Leaf at very close to £10,000).

Not for everyones circumstances though, impractical for the very long commute, or regular long distance private motoring, but big big bonus....no visits to the petrol station and after a short "making it work" period the transition is made, its enjoyable and no desire to return to an ICE.

REgards Neil

[Mandrake]

Are you planning to get home charging at some point though Neil and do you have the off street parking/drive way that would make it possible ?

I couldn't go back to not having home charging. With the short range of my Ion the car would be unusable for my daily commute without it, however even if I had a car with double or triple the range that made it possible to get by without home charging I still would not want to go without it.

There's something incredibly satisfying about spending only 10 seconds grabbing the plug off the wall and plugging it in (and 10 seconds in the morning unplugging it and hanging it back on the wall) knowing that (a) I'm leaving with a full charge every morning, and (b) I don't have to go out of my way to queue at a petrol station. I am acutely aware of this when I grab the seldom used Xantia for an unexpected journey and groan at the discovery that I'm going to have to visit a petrol station on the way because I've let the tank get down too low.

It literally takes me less time to plug the car in and unplug it than it does to open and close the gate, or load and unload the car. This is because I have a tethered charger mind you - an un-tethered one is less convenient as you have to open a bag, unroll a cable, plug it in at both ends, and then in the morning you would have to unplug the cable at both ends, roll it up (probably after its wet) and stuff it back into a bag. Not nearly as nice as tethered where you unplug just the plug on the car and hang the spare loops of cable over a hook on the wall.

I was lucky in Scotland because on top of the UK wide OLEV charger installation grant (which is good up to £500) there is a second grant from Transport Scotland good for up to another £500. So unless you go for something very expensive or there is a lot of extra work required to do the installation, home charger installs in Scotland are basically free at the moment, (subject to proving that you own an EV, and you are only eligible to one subsidised installation per EV purchase) and only part subsidised in the rest of the UK.

Another nice feature of home charging is you can just leave the car plugged in over night, when it is charged it stops charging automatically, however you can set a pre-heat timer to warm the car up at a certain time in the morning entirely from mains power - at least on cars like the Leaf which support pre-heating.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Are you planning to get home charging at some point though Neil and do you have the off street parking/drive way that would make it possible ?

This is as far as my home charging efforts have got, bit of chatty but functional carpentry and a couple of external sockets. When I say we have a private road outside the house, it may give the impression of a Bentley gently crunching the gravel as it approaches the house, in reality its an unsurfaced road and the house stands back a good 10 metres from the parking in front of the house too long for the granny charger which would need an extension cable to plug into the house sockets.

The charging point would have to go where my external sockets are now, and would give me the benefit of that shorter charge time if it was 7kW, and be really convenient like you say. I reckon it would probably cost me over the £500 grant level, so for the time being with the public charger being free, I'll not spend the add on £200 or more to get a "proper" charging point installed.

NF own work

Regards Neil

[andy5]

If the sockets are waterproof, did you need the box as well?

[NewcastleFalcon]

If the sockets are waterproof, did you need the box as well?

I thought so Andy.....bit of a belt and braces job and water tends to find its way into things, IP66 rated or not.

Regards Neil

[Gibbo2286]

I wonder how long before some of these come onto the second hand market.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/cars/news/dp ... spartandhp

[NewcastleFalcon]

Good news for Barcelona, but why on earth does the Sunderland plant not build the ENV200 Van, even just to churn them out for the UK market, I have no idea. The ridiculous thing is that the batteries for the env 200 are assembled in Sunderland and shipped over to Spain.

Regards Neil