Electric vehicles
- Thread starter Woodchips2
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This popped up a couple of days ago. It’s not news to me as this has been suggested before, along with heart and lung disease. They should have brought the ICE ban forward for Diesel cars, not put it off for another five years. Plenty of perfectly good petrol cars out there, which whilst not perfect are less polluting than Diesel.
Interesting qualification from BMW about their latest electric 5 series:
These range figures are for the *BMW i5 Touring eDrive40 M Sport and **the BMW iX2 eDrive30 M Sport. Battery electric vehicles requiring mains electricity for charging. Whilst we recommend the battery for these vehicles are charged to 80% to help optimise the life of your battery, the electric range figures shown are the WLTP figure after the battery had been fully charged to 100%. WLTP figures are shown for comparability purposes. Only compare fuel consumption, CO2 and electric range figures with other cars tested to the same technical procedures. These figures may not reflect real life driving results, which will depend upon several factors including the starting charge of the battery, accessories fitted (post registration), variations in weather, driving styles and vehicle load.
These range figures are for the *BMW i5 Touring eDrive40 M Sport and **the BMW iX2 eDrive30 M Sport. Battery electric vehicles requiring mains electricity for charging. Whilst we recommend the battery for these vehicles are charged to 80% to help optimise the life of your battery, the electric range figures shown are the WLTP figure after the battery had been fully charged to 100%. WLTP figures are shown for comparability purposes. Only compare fuel consumption, CO2 and electric range figures with other cars tested to the same technical procedures. These figures may not reflect real life driving results, which will depend upon several factors including the starting charge of the battery, accessories fitted (post registration), variations in weather, driving styles and vehicle load.
Blackswanwood
Still Learning
We have a BMW EV. If you drive it like Mr Toad you do not achieve WLTP figures but if you drive sensibly you exceed it! I think that’s all they are trying to say.
AJB Temple
Finely figured
I agree. Range (as in a petrol car) depends on loading and how economically you choose to drive. If I hammer the acceleration then range is reduced a lot. As one would expect.
What an EV needs is a freewheel like the old Rover 90's / 110's so you drive uphill and roll down which would increase the range.
AJB Temple
Finely figured
Spectric What EV's already have is energy regeneration that re-charges the battery when you are going downhill.....
Not how I read it, what they are saying is if you top up your battery to 100% you will reduce the life of the battery so only charge to 80% and never achieve the range they advertise.
Blackswanwood
Still Learning
They are - so what most EV owners do is their regular charge to 80% and only charge to 100% when they will be doing a long journey. The car/app/charger let you specify so it’s easy to do.
The anti-EVers will say “ooh another proof point that petrol is better” but the reality is that the daily mileage of most car users gets nowhere near 80% of the maximum range and the vehicle is being topped up on an EV tariff overnight which is far cheaper than petrol.
To be balanced ICE vehicles do continue to be better for those motorists who don’t have access to home charging. IMHO range is a not an issue for the vast majority of road users.
Some old Saabs had a similar system. We have a BMW 420 with the modern equivalent of that. If you lift off the throttle the transmission is basically disconnected from the engine. Revs drop to idle speed, regardless of the car's road speed. There are some restrictions though. It only does this when using the economy setting and it only works over 50 KPH.
The most economical way of exploiting this is not to drive uphill and coast downhill. The opposite approach is better. Accelerate downhill, when gravity is acting in your favour. Coast uphill as much as possible so you are not using the engine to directly fight against gravity. I have tested this extensively and it is definitely the best approach.
Incidentally I competed on an economy driving event a week ago. The results used energy conversion calculations to compare electric vehicles use of energy with ICE vehicles and the results were clear. Fully electric vehicles were the most economical, followed by hybrids. Bringing up the rear were ICE vehicles. So despite being the most economical ICE vehicle we were soundly beaten by the electric crowd.
I said that EV vehicles can not achieve the range advertised, your reply is "They are" ????
BMW's own words: "These figures may not reflect real life driving results"
Blackswanwood
Still Learning
What they are saying is that constantly charging to100% is less than ideal for maintaining the efficiency of the battery so just charge to 80%. They also state the obvious that when you do this as you have not charged to 100% the car will not show the anticipated range that it does in the published comparative data on EV’s (which are based on 100% charge). They also point out that in real life you may not achieve or may exceed the results used for the comparative data as it very much depends on the conditions you are driving in and how you drive.
As I said earlier the vast majority of journeys don’t need anywhere near the maximum range and when they do you just tell the car to charge to 100% as an exception.
I apologise for my tardiness as the “They are” only applied to the first part of what you said.
Jacob
What goes around comes around.
I reckon EVs are about saving the motor industry and not the planet.
Private powered transport is likely to become a thing of the past.
It's a very recent phenomenon - there were no car owners on our street when I was little (b 1944) and hardly any cars passing by.
Makes sense as we move away from high carbon footprint high tech, that it should be last in first out.
Private powered transport is likely to become a thing of the past.
It's a very recent phenomenon - there were no car owners on our street when I was little (b 1944) and hardly any cars passing by.
Makes sense as we move away from high carbon footprint high tech, that it should be last in first out.
Hi @Blackswanwood - Just my tuppence worth, I had an EV for 6 months and nearly always charged it to 100% as did many others I know. The reason being was that they were leased company cars (we only had them for BIK tax purposes) and even on say a 4 year lease then long term battery life just isn't our problem. I read that in April 24 only 15% of sales were to retail customers. There will likely be a huge glut of ex fleet cars on the market in a few years time where the batteries may well have not been 'maintained' correctly and will perform below par, but I can't see how fleet companies would know or more importantly penalise hirers for that. It's not like the traditional ICE leasing where they currently charge a fortune for cosmetic scratches/damage etc.
My Mum was born around the same time and she used to tell how she played in the street outside her house and how cars only came by once or twice a week. She said they used to run after them they were so exciting to see. That road is now the A38. Almost impossible to find a gap in the traffic now.
The vehicle retains a complete record of when and how it was charged. They also record discharge rates for different driving conditions, weather etc.
sploo
Somewhat extinguished member
That's also been true of ICE cars since the year dot; any official MPG figures are based on stationary laboratory style testing (the one that was gamed by VW; leading to the dieselgate scandal). Point being: no official range or MPG figure for either EV or ICE cars is usually likely to be reflected in real world driving - it's basically just a tool to (try to) compare the probable efficiency/range of one vehicle against another.
Terrytpot
Established Member
I don’t have ,and am too lazy to try and google up, supporting evidence that Pandora’s box has been well and truly opened. The vast majority of “us” who own vehicles will do all we can to hang onto them for the freedom they give us and those who have lost the access to them no doubt morn said loss and would reverse the process if possible, I know my mother continually morns her loss of that freedom since my father shuffled off and even though she acknowledges her over 90 sister shouldn’t be allowed on the road, that doesn’t stop her hopping in her car with her every week for local trips even though I repeatedly berate her for doing so. As for becoming a thing of the past, have you seen how many youngsters are still taking driving lessons and how many people , of any age, have embraced small powered vehicles (whether they be electric bicycles or scooters, the latter of which really annoy me and I’m sure are still illegal for road use) all of which leads me to believe that for a large percentage of the population, freedom to travel from a to b at a speed and time to suit their desire is more than just an aspiration, it’s a necessity and one that isn’t going away.
Blackswanwood
Still Learning
As has already been mentioned the charging history is recoverable. I’d expect this to be reflected in the resale price so probably more of an issue for the finance companies (who will carry a loss if it’s less than their assumption at the outset) than the consumer.
Edit - according to Autotrader it’s pretty straightforward to get a diagnostic check done on a battery before buying an EV
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Blackswanwood
Still Learning
The game changer will imho be driverless cars. They are much closer than many people expect and have the potential to remove the need for many to have a costly lump of metal sat on their drive/outside of their house idle for most of the time.
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