The rising cost of living

[Davkaus]

11 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Well having run an EV for a week around 200 mile a day for 5 days, I have worked it out being more expensive than the diesel car I had. Should do 280 mile on a full charge, I'd take it to 180 mile and poo my pants to about 200 then charge it fully.

 

Blimey, never heard that, where were you charging it?!

If anything they should be more attractive at higher mileage - at lower mileage they're just not worth it as there's not much money to save on fuel if you don't buy much, and they're more expensive vehicles,

[sidcow]

58 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Well having run an EV for a week around 200 mile a day for 5 days, I have worked it out being more expensive than the diesel car I had. Should do 280 mile on a full charge, I'd take it to 180 mile and poo my pants to about 200 then charge it fully.

So the verdict, unless you do 3000 miles a year or wanna save the planet, stick to your oil guzzler. You'll probably add to destroying the planet anyway when the battery has expired, cause its a world of pain to recycle them.

Where are you charging it? That's contrary to everything I've seen. 

Have you got an EV electricity tariff where you can charge for peanuts overnight?   You would ideally get a home battery too and charge this for peanuts on the same tarrif to use up during the day to run the house. 

Edited April 20, 2023 by sidcow

[Xela]

He must be using premium super electricity  

 

[sidcow]

1 minute ago, Xela said:

He must be using premium super electricity  

 

Gives the engine that little bit of extra oommpphh. 

[foreveryoung]

22 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Where are you charging it? That's contrary to everything I've seen. 

Have you got an EV electricity tariff where you can charge for peanuts overnight?   You would ideally get a home battery too and charge this for peanuts on the same tarrif to use up during the day to run the house. 

Iv'e just been working it out for real. I have got a charge card as I have to do a report on it for work, not got a home charger yet. It's working out around £35.00 for a full charge, at about 50 per kw on the fast chargers, which wouldn't be bad if the car did stated miles on a full charge, but only does around 200 mile max. So my diesel cost £85 to fill and would do 450 mile-ish. The EV does 400 mile on £70, so I guess not far off, but hardly a bargain. Though I totally understand if charging from home slow charge would be a fair bit cheaper. But if you are high mileage driver you probably would have to charge while your out and about, which is why I say wouldn't be so bad for low miles users.

[sidcow]

1 minute ago, foreveryoung said:

Iv'e just been working it out for real. I have got a charge card as I have to do a report on it for work, not got a home charger yet. It's working out around £35.00 for a full charge, at about 50 per kw on the fast chargers, which wouldn't be bad if the car did stated miles on a full charge, but only does around 200 mile max. So my diesel cost £85 to fill and would do 450 mile-ish. The EV does 400 mile on £70, so I guess not far off, but hardly a bargain. Though I totally understand if charging from home slow charge would be a fair bit cheaper. But if you are high mileage driver you probably would have to charge while your out and about, which is why I say wouldn't be so bad for low miles users.

Well the idea is you leave home fully charged which costs nothing. If you HAVE to charge on the go then just put enough in to get comfortably home. 

You've made a big sweeping statement there based on a specific set of circumstances 90% of people won't be utilising. 

What are you driving anyway, pretty much any new EV beyond a small car should easily go more than 200 miles. I'd get it checked out if I were you. 

[Sid4ever]

3 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Well the idea is you leave home fully charged which costs nothing. If you HAVE to charge on the go then just put enough in to get comfortably home. 

You've made a big sweeping statement there based on a specific set of circumstances 90% of people won't be utilising. 

What are you driving anyway, pretty much any new EV beyond a small car should easily go more than 200 miles. I'd get it checked out if I were you. 

Fully charged to 100% giving me about 230 miles at home costs £6 on Octopus, round trip to Villa Park costs an additional £10 at either Hilton Park or Stafford just to make sure.  This compares to about £36 on diesel

[sidcow]

1 hour ago, foreveryoung said:

Well having run an EV for a week around 200 mile a day for 5 days, I have worked it out being more expensive than the diesel car I had. Should do 280 mile on a full charge, I'd take it to 180 mile and poo my pants to about 200 then charge it fully.

So the verdict, unless you do 3000 miles a year or wanna save the planet, stick to your oil guzzler. You'll probably add to destroying the planet anyway when the battery has expired, cause its a world of pain to recycle them.

Oh, and batteries are now easily recyclable, even though most of them are actually reused in stationary storage facilities anyway. Although it's now estimated to be so much easier to recycle them that it's probably better to scrap them and build a new battery from the materials than to reuse them because the materials are pretty valuable and the new battery made from them will likely be 4 times more efficient than the old battery. 

So the lithium and other rare metals in that 1 battery is likely to be enough to make 2 or 3 new much better batteries. 

One of those common misconceptions. 

Whilst we're on misconceptions. How about cobolt? It's bad innit. Thing is the cobolt goes into a battery and is then used over and over and over again. 

Do you know how much cobalt is used in the refinement of crude oil which is then burned once? A **** ton is the answer. 

Edited April 20, 2023 by sidcow

[foreveryoung]

11 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Well the idea is you leave home fully charged which costs nothing. If you HAVE to charge on the go then just put enough in to get comfortably home. 

You've made a big sweeping statement there based on a specific set of circumstances 90% of people won't be utilising. 

What are you driving anyway, pretty much any new EV beyond a small car should easily go more than 200 miles. I'd get it checked out if I were you. 

I work for Mercedes, it's a EQB 4x4, quotes 260 does 180-ish, by the time you hit 200 ya bum hole will be twitching.  You can put in Eco+ mode to add another 20 miles, but it's a proper slouch on the motorway.

[sidcow]

3 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

I work for Mercedes, it's a EQB 4x4, quotes 260 does 180-ish, by the time you hit 200 ya bum hole will be twitching.  You can put in Eco+ mode to add another 20 miles, but it's a proper slouch on the motorway.

I bet the next one you get does 300 easily. Battery tech is improving daily. 

Mind you I'm not sure about Mercedes. Are they one of the companies dabbling in in EVs hoping they can eek out the diesels whilst pretending Tesla, China and Asia aren't destroying their market share? I know only Ford and Volkswagen seem to have seen the writing on the wall so far. 

I saw a Fully Charged show with Robert Lewellyn the other day and he'd just got back from a visit to Hollywood. He was saying the last time he'd been there the car parks were wall to wall with German premium manufacturers.  This time he was amazed to see acres and acres of car parks with Tesla and literally nothing else. 

Although now I think about it I think I saw Mercedes might be making a bet on Solid state batteries. That could be a saviour because they really could be game changing with 600 miles plus range and near instant charging.   If they get that right they could make a massive comeback...... But they still need to make the cars, having batteries alone doesn't sell cars. 

[foreveryoung]

3 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Oh, and batteries are now easily recyclable, even though most of them are actually reused in stationary storage facilities anyway. Although it's now estimated to be so much easier to recycle them that it's probably better to scrap them and build a new battery from the materials than to reuse them because the materials are pretty valuable and the new batter made from them will likely be 4 times more efficient than the old battery. 

So the lithium and other rare metals in that 1 battery is likely to be enough to make 2 or 3 new much better batteries. 

One of those common misconceptions. 

Whilst we're on misconceptions. How about cobolt? It's bad innit. Thing is the cobolt goes into a battery and is then used over and over and over again. 

Do you know how much cobalt is used in the refinement of crude oil which is then burned once? A **** ton is the answer. 

To my knowledge the materials that make up the battery are easily recycled, but battery cells are very difficult to recycle. Your right the cobalt can be recycled, but the magnesium, nickle and lithium require additional  processing which can be unsafe and not very cost effective, unless as you say the cells are being reused.

[sidcow]

1 minute ago, foreveryoung said:

To my knowledge the materials that make up the battery are easily recycled, but battery cells are very difficult to recycle. Your right the cobalt can be recycled, but the magnesium, nickle and lithium require additional  processing which can be unsafe and not very cost effective, unless as you say the cells are being reused.

They've found new cheat ways to deal with this. 

I'll try to dig out a link to the podcast. 

[sidcow]

7 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

To my knowledge the materials that make up the battery are easily recycled, but battery cells are very difficult to recycle. Your right the cobalt can be recycled, but the magnesium, nickle and lithium require additional  processing which can be unsafe and not very cost effective, unless as you say the cells are being reused.

 

There is another company doing a similar thing but a different way. They're focusing on disrupting the mining industry though making it cheaper to extract lithium and rare earth metals from the mined ore, but could equally apply the tech to battery recycling. 

Personally I'm desperate to go electric and save myself from the rip off of the oil man and save the planet to boot. 

I've only not done in because I'm very low mileage so the cost of the car itself is too high.  When I'm due to change my Polo in 2.5 years VW should have a price proximate Polo size EV by then and I'll definitely do it then. 

 

[Rds1983]

My local Co-Op with a helpful deal:

 

[Genie]

 

Quote

The Bank of England's top economist has said people in the UK need to accept that they are poorer otherwise prices will continue to rise.

Huw Pill told a podcast in the US that there was a "reluctance to accept that, yes, we're all worse off".

He said in response to higher bills and other costs rising, workers had responded by asking for wage increases and businesses were charging more.

bbc

I bet his £180,000 salary is helping though.

Edited April 25, 2023 by Genie

[Xann]

11 hours ago, Genie said:

The Bank of England's top economist has said people in the UK need to accept that they are poorer otherwise prices will continue to rise.

It's almost as if the poor critical thinkers, the racists and the forelock tuggers were stitched up by the tax swerving rich, that bank abroad and wanted to continue dicking the tax system with the stroke of a pen. Ably assisted by Putin of course.

Oh dear.

[StefanAVFC]

I did the maths based on the price of stuff over here, and I reckon running an electric car would cost about a third of petrol based on electric (charging at home) vs filling up.

Edited April 26, 2023 by StefanAVFC

[bickster]

11 hours ago, Genie said:

 

bbc

I bet his £180,000 salary is helping though.

Yep, that's a full on Daily Mail opinion (its almost exactly what their front page says). Don't shoot the messenger

If you wanted to piss off the government whilst working in his job, that statement is pretty much bang on exactly what you'd say. The government can't criticise it because it's true. It'll also annoy the hell out of vast swathes of the population.

Aim you're towards the Government. He's telling you like it is

[bickster]

Fuel watch, the 24 hour unmanned self services by me are now £1:38.9 for diesel and petrol. (Approx £6.25 per gallon) BP 300 yards away is steadfastly sticking to £1:59.9 for diesel and that's cheapish for the big brand petrol stations. 21p a litre difference or just shy of a £1 a gallon.

[Rugeley Villa]

2 minutes ago, bickster said:

Fuel watch, the 24 hour unmanned self services by me are now £1:38.9 for diesel and petrol. (Approx £6.25 per gallon) BP 300 yards away is steadfastly sticking to £1:59.9 for diesel and that's cheapish for the big brand petrol stations. 21p a litre difference or just shy of a £1 a gallon.

Esso in Clifton Nottingham 1.53 for Diesel