Using a PHEV without chargers

[jaapv]

The question is how an adequate public charging infrastructure could be funded? To meet the needs of city dwellers with no off-street parking, you would need to install pole mounted chargers in significant numbers along the kerb side - each one costing thousands of pounds to install, and a non-trivial amount to maintain. These will not be free - because whoever installs them will need to recover the costs - and, if it succeeds in bringing up the level of EV ownership, the cost of the electricity supplied will become high.

It's a very large investment and involves a lot of disruption to the roads and pavements - and the number of electric vehicles in use is still pretty small. Of course it's a chicken and egg situation - while the number of EVs is small, it's impossible to justify the investment, but the number of EVs will remain small until the infrastructure has been built. Look all over London (and other major cities) - there are miles upon miles of residential roads full of houses with no off-street parking! We here, tend to focus on how we will get a charge while we are away from home shopping or going to work - it is a far greater problem for all those people who have to park their cars overnight wherever they can find a space, possible a long way from home.

Well, it was not much of a problem over here. There are tens of thousands (Amsterdam alone over 6000) chargers all over the country right now, increasing rapidly, and they were fitted in a couple of years without any noticeable disruption. If you need one near your house you just call the council and they will help out to get one installed within 250 meters.The cost of a charger is about 1000 Euro paid for by the provider and subsidized by the city in many cases.

 

[Kim]

There are tens of thousands (Amsterdam alone over 6000) chargers all over the country right now...

Sigh.... So true... Netherlands (and, of course, Norway) is the Mekka of EV drivers..!!
Superjealous!!

 

[maby]

...

Well, it was not much of a problem over here. There are tens of thousands (Amsterdam alone over 6000) chargers all over the country right now, increasing rapidly, and they were fitted in a couple of years without any noticeable disruption.....

Oh, come on! That's a drop in the ocean! There is something like 2.5m cars in Greater London and I would guess that less than a quarter of them have off-road parking - probably a lot less than a quarter. All the moves towards EV usage thus far have been tokens to allow governments to claim green credentials without actually spending very much. Digging up roads is expensive and disruptive - and laying in an infrastructure piecemeal is particularly bad. When the government here decided to encourage the roll-out of cable TV 30-odd years ago, they let the contract to a small number of large companies that agreed to cable up most of the country in a short period of time in anticipation of subsequently attracting the customer base. The difference is that the fixed investment to install the cable TV network was relatively small - they laid in the cables, but didn't install the termination equipment until they actually had a customer.

Also, the termination goes directly into the customer's house and there is no need to protect it from other users, so it is easy to get a customer to pay for it. We don't get allocated on-road parking here - it is a first come, first served policy. We have got another thread running here with people expressing anger that non-EVs park in IKEA charging bays - policing charging bays scattered along public roads is going to be a nightmare. What happens if I get my local council to install a kerb-side charger for me, designate it as "EV only", then I move house? Do they do it all over again for me? How about that now redundant bay? Does it sit there, unused but policed by traffic wardens until someone else with an EV moves into the road?

 

[jaapv]

Have it your way. Can’t do mentality won’t get you anywhere.Nobody is talking about private. If a public point is in regular use the EV owner can apply for another point near his home. The amount of digging is minimal, the public points just pick up on the cables that are already there. It is not like building another underground line,
If you expand the Amsterdam situation Greater London would need about 90.000 charging points. That cannot be too difficult to achieve. After all, how many street lighting points are there?

 

[maby]

Have it your way. Can’t do mentality won’t get you anywhere.

I'm reluctant to see a great deal of public (in other words, my) money wasted on technology that is wrong - and the idea of hanging millions of cars off cables plugged into kerb-side poles for several hours each night does not feel "right".

Street lighting is quite widely spaced and I don't know how much spare capacity there is in the cables. Looking out of my front window right now, it looks like there are around six or seven houses between each light - there would be a need to dig up a lot of pavements and roads to get cables to the newly installed poles and the additional loading on the cabling infrastructure could be enormous! I believe that each lamp is a couple of hundred watts, isn't it? Now imagine putting several cars between each pole, each drawing four kW overnight. You could be increasing the drain on the infrastructure by an order of magnitude or more.

I repeat - what's been done thus far is irrelevant - these are token gestures from governments that want to claim greenness. They simply don't scale to support a significant move to EV usage - which is what I thought we were discussing.

 

[jaapv]

Shrug. The investment is minuscule - they have just replaced the cable network for communication and television throughout the country by glass fibre. And built a useless railway line for many billions of Euros, and suffered a high-speed rail setback that would easily finance a charge point for every single household...those relatively cheap public charge points are being financed by the electricity companies and will also serve fully electrical vehicles. I fully agree it is transitional technology but that is the price of living in an age of transition. The next step might well be to get rid of the idea of private ownership of a vehicle and make cars a part of public transport.

 

[greendwarf]

The next step might well be to get rid of the idea of private ownership of a vehicle and make cars a part of public transport.

As in Paris, at present

 

[jaapv]

Coming back to the original question, I think the OP would bec far better off buying a plug-in that is more oriented to the fuel-burning type of hybrid, like a Golf GTE, Prius plugin or Mercedes C class plugin.

 

[discorduk]

I'm in a similar position to OP, but a motability lease instead of company car.

Its time for me to choose a new vehicle and the outlander is in my top 3 choices of vehicle that fitted my needs of accessibility, seat height, boot size etc, it is my favourite for style and comfort, and seems to have the best quoted fuel economy.

I had originally been looking at the diesel, but being a computer and electronics geek having a PHEV appeals, but theres no way i would be able to plug it in at home (live in a city, Victorian terraces, no off street parking), work might let me plug it in if i pay the electric bill, and apart from motorway services and dealerships theres one single solitary public slow charger in the entire city. The public charger situation is unlikely to improve much, the on-street charging grants are england only, i asked the welsh assembly minister for transport and she says there are no plans to spend public money on EV infrastructure. My daily commute is 30 miles / 1 hour each way, roughly equal time on city driving, motorway, then country roads.

So i am left with the dilemma of phev vs diesel, i think that i will probably still get better economy from the phev than the diesel, and the occasional fast charge or sneaky plug in are a bonus right, should i go for it, or am i deluded ?

 

[maby]

I'm in a similar position to OP, but a motability lease instead of company car.

Its time for me to choose a new vehicle and the outlander is in my top 3 choices of vehicle that fitted my needs of accessibility, seat height, boot size etc, it is my favourite for style and comfort, and seems to have the best quoted fuel economy.

I had originally been looking at the diesel, but being a computer and electronics geek having a PHEV appeals, but theres no way i would be able to plug it in at home (live in a city, Victorian terraces, no off street parking), work might let me plug it in if i pay the electric bill, and apart from motorway services and dealerships theres one single solitary public slow charger in the entire city. The public charger situation is unlikely to improve much, the on-street charging grants are england only, i asked the welsh assembly minister for transport and she says there are no plans to spend public money on EV infrastructure. My daily commute is 30 miles / 1 hour each way, roughly equal time on city driving, motorway, then country roads.

So i am left with the dilemma of phev vs diesel, i think that i will probably still get better economy from the phev than the diesel, and the occasional fast charge or sneaky plug in are a bonus right, should i go for it, or am i deluded ?

I suspect that the fuel costs will be lower for diesel than for the PHEV at least in the near future, but not by very much. Against that you have to balance the tax savings (admittedly not high unless it is a company car) and the various restrictions and additional penalties that are likely to be imposed on diesels in the not-so-distant future. In the absence of charging, the PHEV is going to return somewhere between 35 and 40mpg - the diesel version is claimed to be able to average better than 40mpg. The occasional charge grabbed on the road is not going to make much difference to your running costs, but may improve the battery life expectancy relative to what it would be if you never charged.

 

[jaapv]

It drives a lot nicer than the Diesel....

 

[Ozukus]

Have you considered the new Lexus NX, I considered that as the best Hybrid SUV choice, however since I can charge from home went for the Outlander. Had I not been able to charge from home I would have purchased the Lexus.

 

[maby]

Have you considered the new Lexus NX, I considered that as the best Hybrid SUV choice, however since I can charge from home went for the Outlander. Had I not been able to charge from home I would have purchased the Lexus.

Not exactly a looker, is it? Official fuel economy of 56mpg - I guess that in reality it might come out a bit better than an Outlander that is not charged.

 

[discorduk]

It drives a lot nicer than the Diesel....

This is what I have heard, I can't drive it myself prior to purchase, I need adaptions so rely on other peoples experiences and riding shotgun on a test drive, also the smoothness of no gear changes and quietness in the cabin are appealing.

Official MPG for the PHEV with minimum charge is 48.7, and for the diesel auto its also 48.7 (i need auto), which are both better than my other choices ix35 (41.5) and tiguan (47.9), of course official figures are never realistic, but I am using them here as relative comparisons.

Lexus aren't available on motability at all, and taxes aren't relevant, as a disabled driver my vehicle is exempt from road tax.

So my assumptions are that given that the official mpg figures are the same, petrol is cheaper than diesel per litre, and the phev is presumably better economy on urban than the diesel, just a shame they don't publish that figure.

 

[maby]

It drives a lot nicer than the Diesel....

This is what I have heard, I can't drive it myself prior to purchase, I need adaptions so rely on other peoples experiences and riding shotgun on a test drive, also the smoothness of no gear changes and quietness in the cabin are appealing.

Official MPG for the PHEV with minimum charge is 48.7, and for the diesel auto its also 48.7 (i need auto), which are both better than my other choices ix35 (41.5) and tiguan (47.9), of course official figures are never realistic, but I am using them here as relative comparisons.

Lexus aren't available on motability at all, and taxes aren't relevant, as a disabled driver my vehicle is exempt from road tax.

So my assumptions are that given that the official mpg figures are the same, petrol is cheaper than diesel per litre, and the phev is presumably better economy on urban than the diesel, just a shame they don't publish that figure.

The best I've ever seen out of our PHEV on pure petrol (i.e. battery flat) is about 43mpg and that is on the flat, warm weather, cruise control, little traffic, lightly loaded, 60mph. In normal use with infrequent charging, you should be seeing around 37mpg provided you stick to speed limits (UK speed limits, that is). The fuel economy drops off pretty rapidly as you go over 70mpg.

As I said above, your running costs would probably be slightly lower with the diesel than an uncharged PHEV under the current rules and fuel prices. The difference will be small and you will have a car that will protect you from the various penalties that seem likely to be heaped onto diesel cars in the not-so-distant future.

 

[jdsx]

Official MPG for the PHEV with minimum charge is 48.7, and for the diesel auto its also 48.7 (i need auto), which are both better than my other choices ix35 (41.5) and tiguan (47.9), of course official figures are never realistic, but I am using them here as relative comparisons.
So my assumptions are that given that the official mpg figures are the same, petrol is cheaper than diesel per litre, and the phev is presumably better economy on urban than the diesel, just a shame they don't publish that figure.

Personally I must say I doubt that a 2 litre petrol engine dragging round a 200kg battery can give better mpg figures than a diesel, albeit a 2.2 litre one. Can I ask where you got the figures from?

 

[maby]

Official MPG for the PHEV with minimum charge is 48.7, and for the diesel auto its also 48.7 (i need auto), which are both better than my other choices ix35 (41.5) and tiguan (47.9), of course official figures are never realistic, but I am using them here as relative comparisons.
So my assumptions are that given that the official mpg figures are the same, petrol is cheaper than diesel per litre, and the phev is presumably better economy on urban than the diesel, just a shame they don't publish that figure.

Personally I must say I doubt that a 2 litre petrol engine dragging round a 200kg battery can give better mpg figures than a diesel, albeit a 2.2 litre one. Can I ask where you got the figures from?

A PHEV with a flat battery still runs as a hybrid - bit like a heavy Prius - so you will get some benefits such as not running the engine while stationary and it will recoup some charge into the battery, running EV for short periods. That said, I am not convinced that it will outperform a diesel on raw fuel consumption

 

[spellinn]

Personally buying the PHEV made financial sense, even if I never charge it.

It's the only car that was viable to buy via my company (which I'm a director of) for private use, which means I get the 5% BIK (increasing to 13% over the next 5 years) and also can write off 100% of the cost of the car in year 1, thus saving around £6000 in corporation tax.

So, ignoring any fuel savings made by charging, I come in about £300@5%BIK per month better off than my current private lease arrangement, and even with the increase in BIK each year it still costs me less.

Obviously everyone's situation is different..but I would of bought this even if I couldn't of charged it.

Cheers

Neil
(PHEV arriving March 15)

 

[jdsx]

Personally buying the PHEV made financial sense, even if I never charge it.
It's the only car that was viable to buy via my company (which I'm a director of) for private use, which means I get the 5% BIK (increasing to 13% over the next 5 years) and also can write off 100% of the cost of the car in year 1, thus saving around £6000 in corporation tax.
So, ignoring any fuel savings made by charging, I come in about £300@5%BIK per month better off than my current private lease arrangement, and even with the increase in BIK each year it still costs me less.
Obviously everyone's situation is different..but I would of bought this even if I couldn't of charged it.
Cheers
Neil
(PHEV arriving March 15)

I bet you drink coffee at Costa (EDIT I meant Starbucks, obviously ), shop at Amazon and bank with HSBC too :mrgreen:

 

[maby]

Personally buying the PHEV made financial sense, even if I never charge it.
It's the only car that was viable to buy via my company (which I'm a director of) for private use, which means I get the 5% BIK (increasing to 13% over the next 5 years) and also can write off 100% of the cost of the car in year 1, thus saving around £6000 in corporation tax.
So, ignoring any fuel savings made by charging, I come in about £300@5%BIK per month better off than my current private lease arrangement, and even with the increase in BIK each year it still costs me less.
Obviously everyone's situation is different..but I would of bought this even if I couldn't of charged it.
Cheers
Neil
(PHEV arriving March 15)

I bet you drink coffee at Costa (EDIT I meant Starbucks, obviously ), shop at Amazon and bank with HSBC too :mrgreen:

Nothing wrong with tax avoidance - and the PHEV is a no-brainer!