Buying another BEV(maybe)

Shefwedfan

So it looks like I might need to invest in another car. Trying to work around it at the moment but I suspect we will need to invest.

Requirements are tiny. Local schools runs(20km round trip), work(60km/20km depending on office), etc etc....max I would say is 80km per day.

Car will be required for maybe 1-2 years. Looking at electric as I think a small petrol will just cost more over the period. Also the reduced tolls will help the TCO

I guess to try and pick up battery owned Zoe is going to raise budget requirements?

I don't mind about a Gen 1 Leaf. High mileage is not an issue either as I might just run it into the ground and then use the battery for Solar PV.

So just wondering is Leaf 1 best option? where is best place to get a cheap one?

I would hate to go buying a petrol car when we are trying our best to go full electric across the range.

Other options? I want to keep the budget to a minimum if possible

Orebro

Would be very difficult to beat something like a Yaris for a couple of grand and work away with it. Can’t see you getting a gen 1 Leaf for anything less than 5k at the very cheapest? On the flip side the Leaf is likely to be worth something after a couple of years.

Shefwedfan

I should have added, it has to be automatic as well

...Ghost...

Generation 1 Leaf will be the cheapest option of course for an electric. Over a 2 year period a small petrol will be cheaper, but if keeping the car longer well an ev will be best. I own a Gen1 Leaf SV (2012) I am considering selling because I have been given a company car I must use for a few months. The Leaf also has 11 bars still. I own another Leaf but will be keeping for the family car. When I give the company car back I would buy another Leaf. Great cars. If you are seriously interested you can contact me and talk.

Shefwedfan

Whats the crack with the Renault Fluence? I know they are battery rental but I seen some up as battery bought....can you buy it out?

...Ghost...

The big problem with the fluence is the very slow charging. I considered one but decided against. I have not seen any here for sale with a battery owned. Maybe there are some in Europe.

Shefwedfan

...Ghost... wrote: »

The big problem with the fluence is the very slow charging. I considered one but decided against. I have not seen any here for sale with a battery owned. Maybe there are some in Europe.

How slow is slow? it would be charged at home?

I don't use the public system

Gumbo

My job bought our fluences for about €2k each.
They are 2012 models. No fast charging. 60-80km range on full battery.

They are nice ‘normal’ looking cars so I’m surprised Renault didn’t develop them further.

We’ve had 2 as fleet cars since 2012.

Shefwedfan

kceire wrote: »

My job bought our fluences for about €2k each.
They are 2012 models. No fast charging. 60-80km range on full battery.

They are nice ‘normal’ looking cars so I’m surprised Renault didn’t develop them further.

We’ve had 2 as fleet cars since 2012.

The monthly cost would be something I wouldn't like

I think Renault developed them in some other countries outside of Europe.

If I could pick up one for 2k it would be perfect

It will never be using the public network anyway so I dont mind about no fast charging

slave1

I think he meant that his workplace bought out the battery pack at €2k, not the car itself...

Shefwedfan

slave1 wrote: »

I think he meant that his workplace bought out the battery pack at €2k, not the car itself...

Ahh that makes sense...what size battery is in them anyway?

Round Cable

Shefwedfan wrote: »

Ahh that makes sense...what size battery is in them anyway?

It is a 22kWh battery pack, with the same AESC modules as the gen 1 Leaf.

unkel

If you could buy one for about €2k and then paid €2k to buy the battery, it would be a decent local EV for €4k

Can't be much more than that as you can still pick up the odd very low range Leaf for about €5k-€6k, with the difference that the Leaf can fast charge, Fluence can not. Leaf also has better reliability.

zilog_jones

Don't some of the early bogger spec Leafs also not have fast charging? Maybe something to watch out for.

unkel

Surely all early Leafs for sale in Europe / Japan were made in Japan and all had the same spec and all had CHAdeMO DC fast charging?

Gumbo

slave1 wrote: »

I think he meant that his workplace bought out the battery pack at €2k, not the car itself...

No, We bought the cars for €2k as a whole.

zilog_jones

unkel wrote: »

Surely all early Leafs for sale in Europe / Japan were made in Japan and all had the same spec and all had CHAdeMO DC fast charging?

Well there were multiple trim levels. I can't find confirmation it was standard on UK or Irish models (certainly no idea about JDM), but I know it wasn't in all markets (e.g. US). Maybe I'm confusing it with the i3...

unkel

kceire wrote: »

No, We bought the cars for €2k as a whole.

Surely you were stuck with paying battery lease then?

Shefwedfan

Sorry to pull this old thread back up, we are still looking at options. Miss Shef has said to just go out and buy a petrol but I’m sick of paying for fuel

I looked and seen a few iMiev in Uk? They any good?

unkel

Leaf is better. Why not just bite the bullet and buy an elderly '11 or '12 Leaf for about €6k-€7k (personally I would consider it wiser to up your budget to around the €9k level and get an improved 141)

You know it will be reliable and it will keep its value well. No brainer for a runabout car really. Is your home charger untethered?

Soarer

We've an iMiEV here in work, and my 11 L24 is a different class of beast altogether.

mordeith

Soarer wrote: »

We've an iMiEV here in work, and my 11 L24 is a different class of beast altogether.

What year is the iMiev? We had one back in 2014 for a while. As Soarer says it's nowhere near as refined as the Leaf we got shortly after.

Shefwedfan

unkel wrote: »

Leaf is better. Why not just bite the bullet and buy an elderly '11 or '12 Leaf for about €6k-€7k (personally I would consider it wiser to up your budget to around the €9k level and get an improved 141)

You know it will be reliable and it will keep its value well. No brainer for a runabout car really. Is your home charger untethered?

Home charger untethered so plan would be to invest in new Zappi and install alongside the existing one.



The Zappi should work with the existing? I think I seen that someone......


If not going for something cheap like iMiev I was thinking Zoe. But not sue what battery owned Zoe would go for? 22kWh

slave1

If a L24 would you not just thing about an external socket and night time charging at that rate should not impact other EV charging??

Shefwedfan

slave1 wrote: »

If a L24 would you not just thing about an external socket and night time charging at that rate should not impact other EV charging??

This of course is option.

Shefwedfan

mordeith wrote: »

What year is the iMiev? We had one back in 2014 for a while. As Soarer says it's nowhere near as refined as the Leaf we got shortly after.

I don't care about refined I won't be driving it



What sort of range you get out of it? it will be used for school runs etc so max speed would be 80km/h

mordeith

Shefwedfan wrote: »

I don't care about refined I won't be driving it



What sort of range you get out of it? it will be used for school runs etc so max speed would be 80km/h

As far as I can recall it was only in the region of 70kms

unkel

I'd buy an iMiev as a local runabout for about €2-€3k. But with the negative depreciation of all second hand EVs over the last year or two, they seem to command GBP5k+ which is crazy for what they are imho.

Maybe you could still find a Fluence ZE somewhere? They went for about GBP2k last year but they do come with battery lease. And have no fast charging. The bold person in me wonders what would happen if you bought one (or a Zoe) from the UK, signed the lease over there, brought it home and "forgot" to keep paying the monthly lease? :pac: (not that I'd ever do that, but interesting to see what happened if somebody did)

Shefwedfan

unkel wrote: »

I'd buy an iMiev as a local runabout for about €2-€3k. But with the negative depreciation of all second hand EVs over the last year or two, they seem to command GBP5k+ which is crazy for what they are imho.

Maybe you could still find a Fluence ZE somewhere? They went for about GBP2k last year but they do come with battery lease. And have no fast charging. The bold person in me wonders what would happen if you bought one (or a Zoe) from the UK, signed the lease over there, brought it home and "forgot" to keep paying the monthly lease? :pac: (not that I'd ever do that, but interesting to see what happened if somebody did)

The Fluence would be the job, the same Fluence is for sale in Ireland for nearly 3 years now and is still up at 5k :P:P:P:P

unkel

My thread about the Fluence from 4 years ago

Remember back then a Leaf was the guts of €30k on the road!

Linky

Shefwedfan

Autotrader best option in UK?

unkel

Or eBay

Zenith74

On charging of the two EVs, I put in two chargers and tbh would not bother if doing it again. We tend to leave a long 10m lead plugged into one of the chargers, first car home at 5pm plugs into it and the days driving is replenished by 9-10pm when you're going for a walk or locking up, so just swap the cable over to the other car and leave it going over night.

Obviously depends on the car and driving habits, but two 3.3kW charging cars should be grand like this, if one is 6.6kW then you're 100% covered.

There's no grant for a second charger, so a good few quid to be saved by not putting one in.

KCross

Zenith74 wrote: »

On charging of the two EVs, I put in two chargers and tbh would not bother if doing it again. We tend to leave a long 10m lead plugged into one of the chargers, first car home at 5pm plugs into it and the days driving is replenished by 9-10pm when you're going for a walk or locking up, so just swap the cable over to the other car and leave it going over night.

Obviously depends on the car and driving habits, but two 3.3kW charging cars should be grand like this, if one is 6.6kW then you're 100% covered.

There's no grant for a second charger, so a good few quid to be saved by not putting one in.

Main reason for having two would be convenience and night rate electricity.

unkel

Zenith74 wrote: »

first car home at 5pm plugs into it and the days driving is replenished by 9-10pm

You are paying 100% too much for the electricity charging the first car. With average annual mileage, that adds up to a few hundred euro per year to your bill!

Shefwedfan

Zenith74 wrote: »

On charging of the two EVs, I put in two chargers and tbh would not bother if doing it again. We tend to leave a long 10m lead plugged into one of the chargers, first car home at 5pm plugs into it and the days driving is replenished by 9-10pm when you're going for a walk or locking up, so just swap the cable over to the other car and leave it going over night.

Obviously depends on the car and driving habits, but two 3.3kW charging cars should be grand like this, if one is 6.6kW then you're 100% covered.

There's no grant for a second charger, so a good few quid to be saved by not putting one in.

The point of two electric cars would be use night rate as much as possible. I don't want to be using full rate electricity all the time. In that case it might be better to get rid of the night meter

Zenith74

KCross wrote: »

Main reason for having two would be convenience and night rate electricity.

I guess my point is just that I put in two, thinking it would be more convenient, but in reality it's been more convenient to just leave the single long cable out, rather than having two knocking around the place and having to be put away when not in-use (they're both untethered).

If you're doing night-rate then that certainly changes things.

Shefwedfan

Perfect scenario would be a single charger but solar PV, one car would always be at the house on/off during the day so let it charge off the PV and then at night just top up the other...long term plan, if I just won the lotto :-)

unkel

I got an extra 15m cable and leave it permanently connected for maximum convenience. The plug hangs in the bushes on the side of my driveway right beside where the charge port of my car is

If your two cars have fixed parking spots (more or less), you can do that * 2

KCross

Zenith74 wrote: »

I guess my point is just that I put in two, thinking it would be more convenient, but in reality it's been more convenient to just leave the single long cable out, rather than having two knocking around the place and having to be put away when not in-use (they're both untethered).

If you're doing night-rate then that certainly changes things.

Pretty much everyone with an EV should have night rate unless you have really low mileage or unusual charging patterns.
Charge an EV once or twice a week and it pays to go to night rate.

If you have two EV's you are screwing yourself if you dont have night rate.

unkel

Shefwedfan wrote: »

Perfect scenario would be a single charger but solar PV, one car would always be at the house on/off during the day so let it charge off the PV and then at night just top up the other...long term plan, if I just won the lotto :-)

Investment to do all that is not that much. 6 grand for a large 4kwp PV setup, including battery and Zappi charger. And the payback on it is far higher than on any savings account.

ELM327

Shefwedfan wrote: »

The point of two electric cars would be use night rate as much as possible. I don't want to be using full rate electricity all the time. In that case it might be better to get rid of the night meter

Getting rid of the night meter means that instead of some @ full rate and some @ night rate, you have all @ full rate,.


That's a mad decision.

Shefwedfan

ELM327 wrote: »

Getting rid of the night meter means that instead of some @ full rate and some @ night rate, you have all @ full rate,.


That's a mad decision.

Oh I am not going to.


I think I seen it mentioned you need a high percentage at night rate to make the extra standing charge worthwhile.



So if you are constantly charging during the day then you are paying extra for standing charge and paying extra for day rate versus standard rate.


I am sure someone could work it out....:P

Shefwedfan

unkel wrote: »

Investment to do all that is not that much. 6 grand for a large 4kwp PV setup, including battery and Zappi charger. And the payback on it is far higher than on any savings account.

6k for the PV and 6k for the car. That's eating into the VW ID budget:P

unkel

Shefwedfan wrote: »

I think I seen it mentioned you need a high percentage at night rate to make the extra standing charge worthwhile.

Nope. Just 3 units on the nightrate per night for the average household and you'll break even. In most households you'd pretty much get that from the background usage (fridge/freezer, lights, TV / kettle used after 11PM, electric shower / kettle used before 9AM, etc.)

Everything on top of that is half price basically. Charge your EV just once a week and you are already well into the profit

Shefwedfan

Sorry going off track, I have night rate and currently I am running very close to 50/50 between night/day.

If I did go another BEV I would like to increase that by charging the second car at night....

Of course longer term investment is PV which would mean I could do some charging during the day

Zenith74

ELM327 wrote: »

Getting rid of the night meter means that instead of some @ full rate and some @ night rate, you have all @ full rate,.


That's a mad decision.

The daytime rate is slightly higher when you have the night meter, so it's not quite as simple as that. This discussion got me thinking about a night meter again, if I was to get a night rate meter and make no changes to my usage behaviour (pretty stupid, but just to illustrate the point ) my consumption bill for September18 would go from €94.50 to €97 and my standing charge would go up by €3.81 a month.

Hard to make the next calculation to see what would happen if I moved the car charging to the night rate as I do not track car charging separately to the oven etc. But taking an educated guess I'd say my consumption bill would go down to about €70. Factoring in the increased standing charge it would be a saving of about €250 per annum.

I see the tender for smart meters was awarded this week, would make this much simpler

OK I'll stop derailing your thread sorry Shefwedfan

unkel

Zenith74 wrote: »

if I was to get a night rate meter and make no changes to my usage behaviour (pretty stupid, but just to illustrate the point ) my consumption bill for September18 would go from €94.50 to €97

Nope. You don't know how much you are using at the night rate. Probably significantly enough for your consumption bill to go down a few euro, not up. Even if you made no changes to your behaviour. See my previous post for the explanation.

Your standing charge would go up alright, by about €50 per year.

Zenith74

unkel wrote: »

You don't know how much you are using at the night rate.

My energy monitor suggests otherwise. I wouldn't have posted such specific numbers if I was picking them out of the air

Shefwedfan

Zenith74 wrote: »

The daytime rate is slightly higher when you have the night meter, so it's not quite as simple as that. This discussion got me thinking about a night meter again, if I was to get a night rate meter and make no changes to my usage behaviour (pretty stupid, but just to illustrate the point ) my consumption bill for September18 would go from €94.50 to €97 and my standing charge would go up by €3.81 a month.

Hard to make the next calculation to see what would happen if I moved the car charging to the night rate as I do not track car charging separately to the oven etc. But taking an educated guess I'd say my consumption bill would go down to about €70. Factoring in the increased standing charge it would be a saving of about €250 per annum.

I see the tender for smart meters was awarded this week, would make this much simpler

OK I'll stop derailing your thread sorry Shefwedfan

No worries about derailing. When I put in night meter I swapped a lot of habits. Washing machine/dishwasher etc all had timers on them so they go on at nighttime maybe 98% of the time.



Anything I could move to night rate I have. Even the auto hoover kicks in at night time to charge and then hoovers everything and is ready in morning:D

Alkers

kceire wrote:

No, We bought the cars for €2k as a whole.

How did you manage that?