In praise of......electric cars

discostu1

I bought my Nissan Leaf 30 nearly two years ago in Feb 17, we have 33k up on it and the "fuel costs" have been probably less that €40 . Prior to buying we had checked how much milage we were doing in a Nissan Micra, it was between 60 and 70 kms a day back and forth across Cork City mainly in rush hour traffic. It was costing of the order of €30.
We have a home charger my wife drives the Leaf and uses the slow charges around the city at times and the very occasionally a fast charger. I sometime take it if it needs charging as we have charging at work.
It is also the nicest car I have driven.
I have used it to travel to Portlaoise/Naas and been lucky and never had an issue with a FCP.
This is not the say the Leaf is better than any other car out there, nor is it to say the charging network is perfect far from it, two slow chargers near us are out of commission. But I bought the car to to save money not to save the world and thus far its been a major money saver.
On top of this in the last 6 to 8 months a lot of my work colleagues are now asking me questions about the car. Like mobile phones my car is already "Old technology" but I am more than happy with the car and the fact that I have had 2 years of largely "free fuel". These are just my personal experiences and I am not an expert on cars unlike a lot of folk here. I moved to EV having done the maths and been convinced by some of the experiences here, so thank you and happy new year

Creamy Goodness

Colour me ignorant here (I’m totally in favour of lectric cars) but if the majority of your charging is on the home charger how is your fuel bill only €40? (I understand even if it’s quadrupled it beats petrol by a long way)

Now I know not every charge at home would being going from 0-100 but if we say you avail of a night rate of 8c a kWh that means a 0-100 charge costs ~2.5€. 40/2.5 is only 16 charges in 2 years of use seems a little low for me. Your daily mileage would be in my ball park hence why im curious (also my math may be hugely off).

discostu1

Sorry most of my home charging is not on the home charger we use the Public network and work charging I have charged at home but where we can use work and public we have

Creamy Goodness

discostu1 wrote: »

Sorry most of my home charging is not on the home charger we use the Public network and work charging I have charged at home but where we can use work and public we have

Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.

randombar

This is the year I'll make the move all right, just a no brainer for a two car family that one should be electric.

What are peoples predictions for this year?

unkel

GaryCocs wrote: »

What are peoples predictions for this year?

Feck all unfortunately. No new mainstream EVs coming at all this year, except eNiro

Hopefully we have a much improved fast charging network by the end of this year.

Next year is the big year for EVs...

ELM327

I expect 2019 to be the year of charging infrastructure massive sea change for the better,
Followed by 2020 the year of the EV.
Model 3 and the neo will be big sellers.

randombar

As mentioned on the other thread. All depends on new vs second hand. Albeit with a surge in new models to market there should be a drop in price for second hand as well.

Brexit I guess is the big one for second hand.

slave1

GaryCocs wrote: »

This is the year I'll make the move all right, just a no brainer for a two car family that one should be electric.

What are peoples predictions for this year?

You have it right there, EV perfect for two car family with one car doing the school/around town trips.

Predictions.....EV imports before Brexit will ramp now the L40 has matured past 6months, already at the £22k mark

unkel

EV is also perfect for a one family car, even one with a modest battery, provided the fast charging infrastructure is there (and it is not at the moment)

unkel

slave1 wrote: »

EV imports before Brexit will ramp now the L40 has matured past 6months, already at the £22k mark

Cheapest one on Autotrader is £23k at the moment, and that's the base model (Visia). The guts of €26k landed. Not a great proposition in my book as some on this forum have brought 191 Ioniqs with a higher spec for the same money brand new in Ireland.

slave1

Was a white demo one for £22k NYE, must have been sold fairly lively, FX hitting 0.90 so would have been under €25k landed.
Horses for courses, I'd prefer Leaf for the remote app, herself would not live without it, if the Ioniq goes I64 battery with proper GSM app then things would change

slave1

unkel wrote: »

EV is also perfect for a one family car, even one with a modest battery, provided the fast charging infrastructure is there (and it is not at the moment)

Absolutely, Athlone rapid now 118days out of action

unkel

Hopefully it's one of the ones being replaced soon with a triple head. Although single fast chargers really are not good enough at this stage...

The triple head in Lucan (busiest in the country) was out for the guts of 2 months, back working now. Haven't charged there since the summer of last year, even though it is local to me and I am there regularly. 182D Leaf Taxi charging there a lot. Taximan is delighted with himself and says his taxi company has got 3 of them!

Gile_na_gile

slave1 wrote: »

Was a white demo one for £22k NYE, must have been sold fairly lively, FX hitting 0.90 so would have been under €25k landed.

I had my eye on that one, but disappeared fast... Had no intelligent cruise control, though. Not a big deal but a useful feature.

Aargh. Used a rapid first time in months yesterday and even thoght the eCars app showed Kilbeggan free, a Mitsu PHEV had just initiated a charge and even before he was finished another Mitsu PHEV arrived and after filling with petrol the driver asked if I planned to stay for a long as he would like to charge too after paying for his petrol.

Hopefully the charge for charging is introduced soon and at per minute at 20-30 c/min for the 50 kW/120A chargers in order to avoid unnecessary hogging. Any word from eCars about the expected date and pricing? At 20 c/min it would have cost yesterday's PHEV driver about a fiver for the 25 minute charge worth maybe 80 cent so he wouldn't have been there at all and I could have then paid 2 yoyos for 10 minutes which would have been plenty of charge for us to get home. As the charge was free and there was nobody else waiting,. I of course stayed for 30 minutes and I could then complete the journey at 130 km/h instead of staying at the LEAFspeed so I'm guilty as well. But not as guilty as PHEV drivers :-)

randombar

What's the story with scrappage for the likes of a new leaf or ioniq. You hear the whole time about up to 5k but is that for a decent car or what's the story? Not a fan of a new car myself with the depreciation in the first year but if you get decent scrappage rather than trying to sell a very old car privately then it would be worth taking into consideration.

Soarer

GaryCocs wrote: »

What's the story with scrappage for the likes of a new leaf or ioniq. You hear the whole time about up to 5k but is that for a decent car or what's the story? Not a fan of a new car myself with the depreciation in the first year but if you get decent scrappage rather than trying to sell a very old car privately then it would be worth taking into consideration.

It's usually for any ol' bag of bolts, as long as it's NCT'd and you own it for at least 6 months.

randombar

Soarer wrote: »

It's usually for any ol' bag of bolts, as long as it's NCT'd and you own it for at least 6 months.

Email back from Nissan Ireland.

"Unfortunately, scrappage is not an offer that is available on the new Leaf. However our finance offer of 3.9% APR is available on this car."

SteM

unkel wrote: »

EV is also perfect for a one family car, even one with a modest battery, provided the fast charging infrastructure is there (and it is not at the moment)

We'll finally be picking up a second hand leaf within the next 2 weeks if all goes well. As a one car family I was delighted to read the first part of your post, unhappy to read the second part

Shouldn't be a huge issue for us to I guess, we never really drive outside County Dublin/North County Wicklow.

unkel

Soarer wrote: »

It's usually for any ol' bag of bolts, as long as it's NCT'd and you own it for at least 6 months.

There are usually T&C like that - in the case of Ioniq set by Hyundai Ireland. I found that some dealers didn't really care about these T&C

My own scrapped car was end of life, NCT only a few weeks valid and not economical to repair. I only owned it for a couple of months. So worth maybe €80 if I drove it to a scrapyard myself (hassle) or a scrap dealer would come to take the car off my hands for free. So it was completely worthless really. The Hyundai dealer didn't even look at the car, parked around the corner, until the sale was complete and I had the keys of my new car.