EV's and business driving - when?

traco

As a long time reader of this section and given the amount of knowledge and insight here I figured this would be a good place to ask.



When do you think the EV segment will be viable for professional road warriors?



I've also been watching the EV build trends and with a keen interest on China and their activities. The Germans are now also in the mix and should be contenders in a few years.


I can't see the range being comparable to a diesel fill (6-800lms) for quite a while yest but I would think around 400km +/- 50 (worst case cold weather high speed, loaded motor way range) and fast charging (sub 30 mins - ideally 15 ins) as being a transition point where EV would work for us.


So - my question is in terms of fleet buying, when would you think that the switch will be possible for professionals on the road? Are we 3 years out or 6. We change company vehicles for the guys every 3 years 150k+ kms approx.

Will options potentially be there in the 30-40k price bracket to meet those needs in 2022/23?


Thoughts were prompted by an article projecting volumes in the future - hence the hope that the battery tech may have advanced enough in the time frame.

KCross

traco wrote: »

I can't see the range being comparable to a diesel fill (6-800lms) for quite a while yest but I would think around 400km +/- 50 (worst case cold weather high speed, loaded motor way range) and fast charging (sub 30 mins - ideally 15 ins) as being a transition point where EV would work for us.


So - my question is in terms of fleet buying, when would you think that the switch will be possible for professionals on the road? Are we 3 years out or 6. We change company vehicles for the guys every 3 years 150k+ kms approx.

Will options potentially be there in the 30-40k price bracket to meet those needs in 2022/23?

Much depends on what type of vehicle you want.

You mentioned a "loaded vehicle". What are you carrying.... people or just some goods in the boot or are you talking about vans or what? Is this travelling salesmen? Maybe tell us what your current fleet vehicle is to give us a comparison?

You've mentioned 150k km after 3yrs so 50k km per year.... but what is the max daily mileage?... thats more important really as you dont want to be stopping to charge during the day as I presume you wouldnt be happy to have an employee sitting at a charger for 30mins while he's being paid!!

And finally, how many vehicles are you talking becuase you need to ensure you can charge them all overnight. Do you have the power for that at your premises or would each employee charge up at home or is it only 2 or 3 cars?

traco

Sorry - sales and service techs. 80% of the of the time single driver, tools , laptop, overnight bag. Sometimes it could be 4 adults and all their kit. Current cars are Skoda Superbs so a large car.

Daily - how long is a piece of string? Not uncommon to cover 600kms in a day, I've done over 900kms in a single day but its hard to say.
That was why I said 400km +/- 50 if the charge time was fast as breaks would be fine and workable as that would equate to 3/4 hours driving time at which point the driver should be getting out and having a break.
The diesel tanks skew the range argument completely - most cars in the US will only do around 3/400 miles on a tank so it just becomes a matter of adjusting slightly.

All vehicles go home at night or are wherever the guys are. If in the office we have a decent supply 3 phase 63A per phase but staff coming from home to office wouldn't really need to charge at the office. We'd need to figure out how the home charging would work to cover costs but can't see that being too complicated. I can't see more than 2 or 3 ever being charged here together.

ELM327

traco wrote: »

Sorry - sales and service techs. 80% of the of the time single driver, tools , laptop, overnight bag. Sometimes it could be 4 adults and all their kit. Current cars are Skoda Superbs so a large car.

Daily - how long is a piece of string? Not uncommon to cover 600kms in a day, I've done over 900kms in a single day but its hard to say.
That was why I said 400km +/- 50 if the charge time was fast as breaks would be fine and workable as that would equate to 3/4 hours driving time at which point the driver should be getting out and having a break.
The diesel tanks skew the range argument completely - most cars in the US will only do around 3/400 miles on a tank so it just becomes a matter of adjusting slightly.

All vehicles go home at night or are wherever the guys are. If in the office we have a decent supply 3 phase 63A per phase but staff coming from home to office wouldn't really need to charge at the office. We'd need to figure out how the home charging would work to cover costs but can't see that being too complicated. I can't see more than 2 or 3 ever being charged here together.

600+km per day is a lot more than 50k per annum
I do approx 50-60k per annum and generally do around 120-200km per day. I do it in an Ioniq EV, with little to no charging beyond destination charging where the car is parked anyway. And before that (with some difficulty) in a Leaf 24kWh.


In 3 years time I would be sure that you will get a real world range of 400km for €40k. The new Kona coming out now will have that range at around €40k now. But you won't get one for ages.

traco

ELM327 wrote: »

600+km per day is a lot more than 50k per annum
I do approx 50-60k per annum and generally do around 120-200km per day. I do it in an Ioniq EV, with little to no charging beyond destination charging where the car is parked anyway. And before that (with some difficulty) in a Leaf 24kWh.


In 3 years time I would be sure that you will get a real world range of 400km for €40k. The new Kona coming out now will have that range at around €40k now. But you won't get one for ages.

We have no regular commute, customers are all over the country so you could go Dublin to Cork to Limerick. Stay overnight then Galway and on to Belfast. In between all the driving there are many hours onsite.

Other days it could be local stuff. Overall we average 50/60k Km’s per year but it’s totally unpredictable on any given day.

So far I have not noticed any charging points at the visitor car parks of our customers so charging would have to be via service stations. Haven’t been paying attention to hotels but can’t say I’ve been struck by chargers there either.

It’d be great to think that we may have purchased some of our last ICE even if it meant pushing them on for an extra year or two. The fuel savings would be substantial per year.

KCross

Based on what you have described I think your biggest stumbling block wont be car availability/choice it will be infrastructure (i.e. rapid chargers in the right places).

The unpredictable nature(distance and location) of your driving each day means there will be days where you have to stop and charge to get to a job or to get home. The infrastructure right now is wholly inadequate for you to base a service business on it.

By 2022 (your suggested timeframe) we should have the Ionity charging infrastructure which is just 9 locations. The thing is, will those rapid chargers be appropriately located for you to run your business. If you need a charge up and the nearest charger is 50km out of your way and then you have an employee sitting at a charger for 30mins are you going to be happy with that?

The current EV's can do the 400km range you specify (e.g. Kona and eNiro). I suspect the Kona is too small but the eNiro might be good enough and will be ~€40k but as I said even if there was a Superb that could do 400km in EV mode you would still have infrastructure issues, imo. Thats what you are going to have to keep your eye on, not the cars.


Maybe initially you have a mixture of EV's and ICE and plan which person takes the EV based on what you know for the day ahead. A little extra planning but as you said, that will be worth the fuel savings.

traco

KCross wrote: »

By 2022 (your suggested timeframe) we should have the Ionity charging infrastructure which is just 9 locations.

It was the Ionity network that I was hoping would be the game changer. Are they only putting in 9 - that seems entirely inadequate given the Germans are invested in it?

KCross

traco wrote: »

It was the Ionity network that I was hoping would be the game changer. Are they only putting in 9 - that seems entirely inadequate given the Germans are invested in it?

9 locations with upto 6 chargers per location. The key difference between them and what we have now is that it will be reliable and available.... not one charger per site.

But it is still just 9 proposed locations. Where they are placed will be key to whether it works for you or not. They will be most likely all in motorway locations so maybe it will work for you but if you are say in the arsehole of somewhere with low charge and doing an overnight at a hotel with no charge point what do you then have to do the next day when you expect your tech to be onsite at 8am somewhere.

Only you can tell whether that will be a runner or not.

Sabre Man

Realistically the only currently available car that *may* suit you would be a Tesla Model S100.

unkel

KCross wrote: »

By 2022 (your suggested timeframe) we should have the Ionity charging infrastructure which is just 9 locations.

The Ionity plan is to have 9 locations by the end of 2019. We don't know yet if they will further expand after that.

KCross

unkel wrote: »

The Ionity plan is to have 9 locations by the end of 2019. We don't know yet if they will further expand after that.

Thats true, we dont know, which is why he will need to see what has developed in the infrastructure side between now and 2022 (his 3yr timescale).

But lets be realistic here, we have about 5000 EV's in Ireland right now.

How many CCS enabled cars will exist in Ireland come 2020 when these 54 Ionity rapids are expected to be live?

There are about 500 CCS enabled cars in Ireland today and the only CCS cars arriving in volume in 2019 are the Kona and eNiro (maybe another 500 cars between them)?

No eGolf's, tiny i3 numbers, a few iPaces... nothing really in numbers.
The only car arriving in numbers is the Leaf which wont be able to use Ionity.


So, come 2020 Ionity will have ~1000(maybe 1500) EV's with the ability to access its service and obviously a much smaller percentage actually using it as they are on motorways so only being used for long journeys and not freeloaders since its not free.

Now thats brilliant for CCS users because you are guaranteed access with those numbers but do you really think Ionity are going to look at those numbers and decide they will expand the network further by 2022?

They will in their ring!

They will wait until the demand increases when there are 10s of thousands of CCS enabled cars on the road and that requires VW to deliver on their promise and possibly the Model 3 having CCS.

Beyond 2022 they might add more sites but I cant see it before 2022 with those numbers.


The only other hope is that something comes of the government funding.

But overall I'd be thinking the Op will either need to plan and manage his EV fleet to ensure they arent wasting time travelling to rapids or else wait beyond 2022 in the hope the network has improved with other competitors or longer range EV's(600km+).

unkel

Aye, even if Ionity is going to grow after 2019, it will be unlikely they will start in Ireland first

I guess the only answer to the OP realistically is that he will need to stick to diesel for the next few years anyway and have a look in this forum every 6 months or so to see what is happening

traco

Cheers. Interesting times. So unfortunately it looks like it might be 4/5 years out before someone could be confident that the infrastructure could support EV commercial usage.

We have the option of company or own car and I run my own which I typically drive till it’s worthless and I’m getting there now with 170k miles on the clock.

Personally I’ve been hoping that it might be possible that this one would see me out to an EV but I may have to go through one more cycle before it’s possible. I was considering if I should change it next year with for another used diesel ex UK.

Maybe (Brexit dependent) a used Model S from the UK next year or later if the process drags on might bridge the gap. Keeping the current car would have 300k miles / 500k Kms on it by 2022 at which point it might not be easy / viable to get another diesel - or maybe that’s the time for a used Tesla.

It seems like the transition period is approaching and for business users like us it presents its own challenges. As mentioned above once commercial users start making the change the numbers of EVs will take a massive jump quickly as most will be on a similar 3 year cycle so much of the commercial fleet should change within a similar time frame.

ELM327

traco wrote: »

Cheers. Interesting times. So unfortunately it looks like it might be 4/5 years out before someone could be confident that the infrastructure could support EV commercial usage.

We have the option of company or own car and I run my own which I typically drive till it’s worthless and I’m getting there now with 170k miles on the clock.

Personally I’ve been hoping that it might be possible that this one would see me out to an EV but I may have to go through one more cycle before it’s possible. I was considering if I should change it next year with for another used diesel ex UK.

Maybe (Brexit dependant) a used Model S from the UK next year or later if the process drags on might bridge the gap. Keeping the current car would have 300k miles / 500k Kms on it by 2022 at which point it might not be easy / viable to get another diesel - or maybe that’s the time for a used Tesla.

It seems like the transition period is approaching and for business users like us it presents its own challenges. As mentioned above once commercial users start making the change the numbers of EVs will take a massive jump quickly as most will be on a similar 3 year cycle south of the commercial fleet should change within a similar timeframe.

If you genuinely need diesel due to miles now, then you will not have difficulty getting one in 2022 either. Might have another percentage point or 2 of VRT to pay but when you're doing 50-60k ayear a couple of hundred quid doesnt make a difference. Fuel is the expense along with depreciation

traco

ELM327 wrote: »

If you genuinely need diesel due to miles now, then you will not have difficulty getting one in 2022 either. Might have another percentage point or 2 of VRT to pay but when you're doing 50-60k ayear a couple of hundred quid doesnt make a difference. Fuel is the expense along with depreciation

I'd imagine there would be no problem getting one but its value in 2025/26 would be my concern as at that point I would hope that the EV market would be well established thus lowering its value considerably.


The long range Model 3 could be the ideal rep car if prices can come in on target. They announced a 3k reduction yesterday in costs i think.