Electric Vehicles - Your thoughts - MotorMouth, Newstalk

An EV would suit me fine. I am a reasonably high mileage driver, however most of my trips are less than 80 miles per day. About 3 times per year I would need a conventional car, or else stop for a sociable break, which I quite like the idea of! I am sure I am typical of many drivers.
Battery technology will advance rapidly over the next few years, as will home charging.

My family and I have a Nissan Leaf. My wife and I have two young daughters and we got rid of both our old ICE cars in order to get a Nissan Leaf. We've had it over 3 months now and have done more than 7500km in it. It is our only car and it meets my families needs very well.

My eldest daughter is 4 years old and the youngest is 8 months. So my opinion on the car itself is coming from the perspective of a young family man. The car we used to have as our primary family car was a 2000 model Audi A6 Avant Quattro Sport 2.5TDI. This was a nice large estate car for a family. In comparison the boot the in Leaf is smaller, but large enough to accommodate baby buggy, shopping and anything else we like to throw in the boot usually.

Interior space in the car for passengers is on par with what we had in the Audi, for both front seat and back seat passengers. The car is very roomy on the interior. Overall everything is quite well put together and looks like it will stand up to abuse from kids.

The car has a lot of modern multimedia features like USB port, bluetooth, audio jack etc. Great for entertaining kids as you can easily put their favourite songs on USB memory sticks to play in the car. Safety wise it scored 5 stars on the Euro NCAP.

http://www.euroncap.com/results/nissan/leaf/2011/432.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbwQva75bbQ&feature=player_embedded#at=126

Handling wise the centre of gravity is very low on the car. This car was purpose built as an EV, not a redesigned petrol/diesel car. As such the batteries are below the passenger compartment running along the floor. This gives the car a perfect 50/50 weight distribution and low centre of gravity. While the steering is a little light, the car is a joy to drive. With 108bhp and 280 newton metres of torque, I'm very happy with the power available from the car. Of course as a modern car it also comes equipped with ABS and ESP as standard.

The car has a lot of intelligent features, I won't go into all of them. But features people will end up using a lot are the charging timer and climate control timer. In relation to the charging timer I have the car set as follows:

Monday to Thursday:
Start charging at 00:10
Charge to 80%

Friday to Sunday
Start charging at 00:10
Charge to 100%

This means I get home and I plug the car in, but it doesn't start charging until just after midnight. This way I take advantage of ESB night rates without having to go out to the car at midnight to plug it in then. The car also has a subscription free connection to the internet built-in. If you want it to, it can keep track of all journeys you make and it automatically keeps track of all energy used to charge it. This is then stored online and available for you to access using your username and password. This means I can log on to the Nissan Leaf portal online and see exactly how much the car is costing me. See screenshot below from my own portal (price below excludes VAT at 13.5%).



The climate control timer I haven't used much yet as it's summer time. But basically you can schedule when you want the climate control to activate on whatever days and times you want. So in winter you could have the car start heating itself at 7:30am every Monday to Friday. Advantages of this are that when you get to your car it is nice and warm and fully defrosted. It also means it was all done using power from the charging unit on your house. When plugged in the car uses power from the plug to run the climate control. Before you leave for work your car is warm, defrosted and no power has been used from your battery leaving you with a full charge before you leave for work.

As far as range goes we actually drive more since we got our EV. Sunday afternoon drive? why not! It's only going to cost 1 to 2 euro for a leisurely spin. Beforehand we would drive less because a full tank of fuel would cost us 85 euro. If we want to go further we don't have to wait 7 hours (time it takes to charge from 0% to 100% on home charger or on street charger). We can just pull into a fuel station like this one in Newlands Cross Topaz



This Fast Charger can take the Leaf from 0% to 84% in 30 minutes. Presumably you won't enter the station with 0% left, so most times getting back up to 84% charge will take less than 30 minutes. Too long for some, but a compromise my wife and I are happy to live with considering the other advantages of our EV.

Fast Charging technology also mean longer journeys are possible. As soon as the Topaz in Athlone has its Fast Charger operational we will be able to drive from Dublin to Galway with one 30 minute stop in between. Considering we have two young kids, this is not really an inconvenience, we would be stopping anyway. Not suitable for everybody, but for us we consider it a small sacrifice to gain the other immense advantages of owning an EV.

You'll probably get a lot of comments about EV's transferring the pollution back to power stations, they're not emission free etc. The common theme with these comments are usually that modern diesel engines will have similar or outperform EV's on emissions. I'd ask you to do your homework on this before just accepting those comments at face value. The emissions from a diesel or petrol car as rated by the manufacturer are only those at the point of emission i.e. the carbon the car itself emits while burning fossil fuels. This is the figure most people use when comparing their modern diesel car to an EV's emissions from the power plant. This completely ignores the fact that it takes a lot of energy (carbon emitted) to get oil out of the ground/seabed, transport it, refine it and transport it again (possibly several more times) before it ever goes into a cars fuel tank. Please check out these links:

http://www.seai.ie/Grants/Electric_Vehicle_Grant_Scheme/I_am_a_consumer/Power_Station_to_Wheels/

http://web.mit.edu/evt/summary_wtw.pdf

I have to admit though I'm not a tree hugging hippy. I care about our planet, but I didn't want to save the planet by buying a Leaf. At the moment 14% of electricity in Ireland is generated by renewable sources. This can be and should be increased. This is energy we can generate ourselves without sending our money overseas to unstable oil producing regimes. People can go on and on about half the cost of petrol/diesel being taxes. But that other half leaves our country, leaves Europe even! and goes to places like Libya (where 20% of our oil used to come from before the war). If we use EV's and charge them using domestically produced energy, that's money and jobs staying in Ireland.

The other big reason we chose to get rid of our ICE cars and go with one EV as our family car is that, in the long run it will be a lot cheaper than owning a petrol or diesel car. How many moving part does a petrol or diesel car have in their engine? Hundreds! An EV motor has about 5 moving parts and electric motors are not new untested technology. We've been using them for years in trains and boats etc. The car has normal wear and tear items like tyres, brake pads and shocks etc. But with regenerative braking being easy on brake pads and the silky smooth electric motor easy on the tyres, that only leaves shocks and there is no reason for them to need regular maintenance if the car is driven with respect.

That only leaves the battery pack, which Nissan says will still have 80% capacity after 10 years. In Ireland it has a 5 year warranty and in the US the battery pack has an 8 year warranty. So I'm happy it will last a very long time. But long before the battery pack is useless, I expect I'll be able to put in a newer battery pack as technology improves. It's just a big battery after all.

Overall we're really happy with our EV and would not consider going back to owning a diesel or petrol car. It cost a lot up front, but as a long term investment it will work out cheaper. Considering the long term cost of something is not something we Irish are famed for! But I'm hoping EV's will be different.

*edit*
Last point:

Eddie Hobbs made a comment that the type of people buying these cars are the type who own Range Rover Sports and have the Nissan Leaf as a second car for appearances. That was just his bigoted opinion based on no evidence whatsoever. My family and I are regular middle class. I've met up with several other Nissan Leaf owners and most of them like me have their Nissan Leaf as their only car. They are all also firmly middle class. I haven't met any rich Nissan Leaf owners, but I'm sure they do exist. Maybe Eddie Hobbs as a member of the rich class in Ireland might be considering purchasing one?

RoverJames wrote: »

Great post, thank you
How much are the Nissan Leaf do you mind me asking?

After EV grant it will set you back 30K. But please don't put it in the same class as a Micra with a battery or say the Mitsubishi i MiEV. It's a surprisingly large car and very well spec'd.

unkel wrote: »

Those electricity costs are spectacular, Sesshoumaru.

Technically the regeneration ratio is pretty impressive I thought. And economically, with the night rates for electricity your fuel costs of €18 would compare to about €85 with a very efficient modern diesel doing 70MPG (which is barely possible given you do so many short trips)

So that's a fuel saving of at least €800 per year based on 25k km. Out of interest, how much do you pay insurance?

It was around €360 for fully comprehensive. The policy covers both my wife and I. The insurance companies seem to be classing it as fairly low risk. Low risk like a milk float I suppose

Very eye opening I am running 2 cars at the moment and I think am seeing from this post an annual saving in running cost of trading in one of those a Qashqui+2 1.5d of 2,500 euro between tax and diesel. Problem for me is we use the 7 seats. But I do like the idea of re-couping my tax increases of the last 2 years through the grant and the discounted electric rates. I wonder how long these incentives would last if 1/2 million Irish motorists changed next year. They won't and the car companies know this too and they are continuing to plan to build just as many ICEs in 2020 as they are today but they will be more efficient

I hear that there will be a reservation feature, allowing you to reserve a charging point in advance from your sat nav. Should allow you to plan your stops along a long journey.

I suppose if loads of EVs are sold all of a sudden, there will be loads of charging stations installed all of a sudden.

robtri wrote: »

ev's have too many major flaws currently that i can see..

1. range .. no point saying too much, we all know the limitations... as part of a two car family, they would be more than likely a runner... lets be honest limited to 140km a trip is not good except for commuting..

2. even in these recessioanry years, style and status symbol still play a stupidly big part in Irish and global consumerism... while the new generation of EV's is getting better, it still no BMW... BMW , Merc, Audi are still big sellers in the car market cause they represent status, cause lets face it the mondeo is a better car than the standard bogo spec 3 series or A4... but yet the BMW outsells it ??? so a small EV just doesnt really cut the mustard yet...

3 price... just too damn expensive at the moment... i am sorry but €30k... for car that wont save u money over its lifetime, is not green ( current power supplies and battery manufacturing dont allow for it to be green, maybe in the future but right now NO).... A similiar sized petrol or diesel car is over half the price... 15K gets a lot of fuel a hell of alot...
and lets hope nothing happens the battery pack... or in 7 years the battery pack is knackered from charge cycles.. then what?? cost does not add up... False economy to think it will save money short term or long term.

You're wrong and it's not worth my time carefully refuting your non researched arguments

moonlighting wrote: »

i got my hands on an electric scooter and am very disappointed to be honest. its slightly slower than a bicycle and range wise i would be safer with a bicycle.
electric cars would only suit people with massive wind turbines in the back yard and living close to a city center.
if i could generate my own electricity and afford a gm volt i would, but for now its only a rich mans game, and rich people want to drive ferraris and lamborghinis not small depressing electric car,

I would guess a 50cc scooter would also be fairly disappointing.

http://www.mcc-energy.com/?products=vectrix-vx-1-li-electric-scooter

http://www.greenmachines.ie/vectrix_scooter/product.aspx

I test drove one of these, it is not slow. Maybe slow if I compared it to my Ducati Monster, but in comparison to my Piaggio MP3 250, they're about the same.

Deleted User wrote: »

While I am generally pro electric vehicle and think it is a technology that holds some promise for the future I have one major reservation.

Currently, they are cheap to run because they can be charged at night taking advantage of very cheap off peak electricity rates. However, if the popularity of EVs were to increase significantly, night time would no longer be off peak for electricity as the power consumed by many thousands of households charging their EV would be comparable to the demand placed on the grid during daytime and evening. Thus, cheap night time electricity would disappear and the cost of running an EV would increase significantly.

The amount of power consumed by a large amount of EVs charging is a lot less than you would think. See page 29 of this report from Eirgrid: http://www.eirgrid.com/media/Generation%20Adequacy%20Report%202010-2016.pdf
Figure 3-9 shows that in 2020 with 250,000 EVs charging the increase in the off-peak demand is still way off the peak daytime demand.
It is not clear what 'controllably charged' means but I suspect it has something to do with encouraging/forcing most charging to be done at night.