Is it stupid to buy a petrol/diesel car in 2019?

Silent Running

CorkMan_ wrote: »

I never thought about it until demanufactured mentioned it. What would an electric car be like for towing? Surely it'd reduced the range available by quite a bit?

Only thing I'd get an electric car for is if I had a short commute to work. I go to England a lot and can only see hassle doing that with an electric car.

Funny you should say that. I just got off the ferry this morning from a return trip to Hertfordshire, in my 28kWh Ioniq. Charging while we had lunch and coffee. It didn't seem like much hassle. Much nicer to do the trip in an electric car, much more relaxing. And I've done the same trip in a 2L diesel auto.

If I had to choose, I'd do the trip in the electric.

Silent Running

Stallingrad wrote: »

This is Ireland, if that happens I will eat my catalytic converter. You think Big Oil are going to sit by and watch fuel sales dry up? Politicians will be lobbied to oblivion. There is also the thorny issue of keeping this new EV fleet powered up, we will need a few extra power stations (wonder what will power those?), and we are not so great on major infrastructure.

Interesting times ahead.

Big oil are in the process of buying up charging companies. Shell and BP have done it in the UK. They are in the process of rolling out rapid chargers to their stations.

DEFTLEFTHAND

No it's not. Stop worrying about such nonsense.

We won't be banning your car anytime soon.

redcup342

Stallingrad wrote: »

This is Ireland, if that happens I will eat my catalytic converter. You think Big Oil are going to sit by and watch fuel sales dry up? Politicians will be lobbied to oblivion. There is also the thorny issue of keeping this new EV fleet powered up, we will need a few extra power stations (wonder what will power those?), and we are not so great on major infrastructure.

Interesting times ahead.

They said the very same thing about banning smoking in Public places.

Big Oil are not going to sit by and rely on Fuel sales anymore than Cigarette Companies rely on Cigarette Sales anymore to keep them going, they are investing into E-Cigarettes.



Writing is on the wall for Diesel in the Developed Cities of Europe anyways, even in die hard Diesel Germany, look at how much money VW is investing into Electric.

samih

There are not enough cars avaialbe to buy at the moment. The reasons for that are manyfold but the biggest issue is that the car makers are not ready to fully commit to write down their investment in legacy tech. This then means that the battery makers won't invest before they have enough orders now there are not enough battery cells on the market.

The current battery technology is good enough, even to build HGV that could do 800 km between the statutory rest breaks. The price for such a HGV is currently just a little bit too high but companies like Nikola and Tesla are in full swing planning for them. The Merc, MAN/Scania, Iveco are also working on BEV HGVs but less committed to do so than the other two. Once they become available it will be a no brainer to get those instead of diesels.

For cars, again due to low production volumes they are snapped up at almost at any price which leads to the like of 48k Kona EV (38 including subsidies in Ireland). Another problem is that there are not enough variety in the volume market for anything but a small or mid size hatch.

All of the above will change in the near future I think. At the moment, if you can actually get one without waiting for year and it suits your needs and you have private charging for 99 percent of your driving it would be foolish not to at least consider getting one, especially if you own another car for those few times a year long trips. Once you can charge where you normally park driving an EV suddently becomes much more enjoyable than driving a fossil car. Just think public chargers as a backup plan and your own charger as the petrol station equivalent. You can easily do up to 40-50 k year with just that one overnight charge a day.

PS. We won't need any more power stations in the medium term. But once the EV revolution gets on full swing more infrastructure is needed. But also the redundant filling stations and associated stuff like refineries can be shut down to compensate.
PS2. The hydrogen sounded like a good idea 20 years ago but that ship has sailed.

_Kaiser_

I do an average of 1100km per week, on motorways for at least an hour at a time. I also rent and don't have a garden. My current car (in fact all I've had) was bought second hand for under 20k.

I can't see myself buying a new electric anytime soon.

samih

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

I do an average of 1100km per week, on motorways for at least an hour at a time. I also rent and don't have a garden. My current car (in fact all I've had) was bought second hand for under 20k.

I can't see myself buying a new electric anytime soon.

Any chance getting a charging point fitted at work instead? At the moment the 38 k Kona would be only car in the market that suits but I reckon that by end of 2021 there will be an electric car in market that does what Kona does for 28 k instead. And once you factor in the fuel cost and maintenance cost difference (you probably burn around 4000 or 5000 yoyo worth of diesel per year at the moment) you would save the price difference in quite a short time.

bazz26

_Kaiser_ drives a 3.0 litre Quattro A6. What if he doesn't want to replace it with a small Kona type car, what if he doesn't want to or hasn't got 28k to spend on a car?

samih

bazz26, as mentioned above the availabilty of anything but small hatches is the currently an issue and even paying Tesla money doesn't necessarily buy you the Audi interior quality and it will take even longer for decent second hand premium brand models becoming available.

But for the volume market currently a LEAF at 28k can easily match a Qashqai at 28k both for spec and space if the range suits you (i.e. you travel up to 150 km a day on motorway and have private charging). And if you can get one without waiting for a year.

redcup342

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

I do an average of 1100km per week, on motorways for at least an hour at a time. I also rent and don't have a garden. My current car (in fact all I've had) was bought second hand for under 20k.

I can't see myself buying a new electric anytime soon.

I was doing that commute for 5 years (1280 km /week), that sounds like a perfect use case, you must be spending around 500 quid a month on Diesel alone.

You'd only need to do 2/3 charges / week depending on if that's your commuting mileage or your total mileage and with a 64kWh battery, taking around 2 - 2 1/2 hours of your time on a 50kWh fast charger.

It's currently free ... so essentially it's like getting paid 60 euros an hour for time spent having something to eat/read(not taking into account the servicing on your current car with oil/gearbox,clutch etc the depreciation putting 60k / year on a Diesel Car)

Would be an added bonus if there was a charger close to your workplace.

If the cars that are available now were available them + the fast charging option it would have been a no brainer, instead I just moved closer to work.

Cilar

mengele wrote: »

Well I will be very slow to make the switch to electric. The simple task of just filling it with petrol or diesel every two weeks suits me far better than having to charging it every day.

Plugging in the car in the driveway every (few) days is actually faster and more convenient than traveling to the petrol station every few weeks. It's not more complicated or time-consuming than plugging in a mobile phone to charge overnight.

I think people are starting making this shift in term of thinking really fast. Fewer and fewer people see charging similar to refilling a gas of tank in a petrol station when it's actually like having a petrol pump in your driveway.

I already see this awakening happening in a broader way as demand in 3+-year-old second hand electric is increasing (their value is actually increasing compared to last year, for the same cars), and suspect this will expand like wildfire from 2020/21 onward as more and more people start shifting their thinking and learn more about electric, hence my initial post about the collapse in value in regular diesel/petrol car on the second-hand market from 2021 onwards.

Cilar

On the same topic, I also see a reduction in value for houses with communal parking (no home charging), without a driveway as electric car adoption broaden.

slave1

It totally depends on your needs, but I must point out that some of those early posts in relation to EV are very ignorant of where EV's are at.
I've had a Leaf30 for over two years and it's perfect for around town, with constant AC in Summer and constant pre-heating/AC/heating we get 190kms/130kms.
The car does not have to be charged every day, we charge about twice a week and maybe three times a week every second week, it takes all of 20seconds to plug it in, not exactly hardship and no need to seek out a fuel station.
We are in the EV a lot, well more than "10 minutes every single morning and evening".
For our first year I kept a record of our cost for 12,500kms and it was €376 including fuel, tax and servicing (got some free on-street charging while waiting for our home charger install).

Since the Leaf30 there are longer range cars, the Ioniq and then greater in price the eGolf and BMW i3, more recently the Kona64 with 350kms range and shortly the larger NiroEV with similar range, this is ignoring the expensive Audi/Jag/Tesla EV's with greater bells/whistles and some with savage range.

The above driving pattern may suit some and if not then fine but discounting an option without exploring it rationally is a bit silly.

I have every intention of keeping our car for another 10years + with absolute minimal maintenance costs (service is €78 at Nissan main dealer).
A friend of mine just passed the 200,000kms mark in his Leaf and it's his commute car, virtually zero fuel costs as he charges at work every day, work out his fuel savings!!!


Our other car is a diesel and we use that to suit longer driving patterns and my longer work commute, so as I said earlier it's all about driving patterns.

meeeeh

But it's not just about driving patterns. People see a vintage Alfa, Merc or even a Mini and sigh in admiration. There are cars which are sexy and desirable, Leaf is sort of vegan sausage. Good for the environment, maybe great to drive but looking at it you wonder do you really want to. Nobody will be looking at Leaf in 50 years thinking that's a design classic. (Sorry to single out Leaf but I think Nissan make some of least attractive cars on the market).

There just isn't enough choice or design flair at least among more sensibly priced electric cars. Most of us are not exactly sensible in our car purchases anyway. People buy SUVs to drive kids to school, some of us might buy an Italian car knowing it will lose value twice as fast as Passat and some buy cars that are happiest doing speeds which are not even legal in Ireland. At the moment electric cars are bought because they make sense but very few excite looking at them.

I think electric cars will become a lot more prominent soon and will replace diesel and petrol a lot sooner than in 30 years. But we need Apple IPhone type of a car to persuade us to ditch Nokias in large numbers.

Rdwrer

Cilar wrote: »

On the same topic, I also see a reduction in value for houses with communal parking (no home charging), without a driveway as electric car adoption broaden.

This is a really interesting point.

Sierra Oscar

Cilar wrote: »

On the same topic, I also see a reduction in value for houses with communal parking (no home charging), without a driveway as electric car adoption broaden.

It's one issue I haven't seen explored much at all. I'm looking into it a bit myself at the moment. There doesn't seem to be many companies offering a service for people living in apartment blocks / buildings with communal parking who need to have access to some sort of account based electric charging point system.

Currently the industry seems to assume that people can hook straight up to their charging point on their own private driveway which is connected to their own electricity supply that they can control access to. There will have to be fair bit of innovation in this area in the years ahead I reckon.

redcup342

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

It's one issue I haven't seen explored much at all. I'm looking into it a bit myself at the moment. There doesn't seem to be many companies offering a service for people living in apartment blocks / buildings with communal parking who need to have access to some sort of account based electric charging point system.

Currently the industry seems to assume that people can hook straight up to their charging point on their own private driveway which is connected to their own electricity supply that they can control access to. There will have to be fair bit of innovation in this area in the years ahead I reckon.

That's true, until they start enforcing parking rules on Electric Car bays and offering an option to reserve spaces then it's not that convenient for people.

Here in Dusseldorf they've started going heavy on the illegal parking, I saw near my place an Electric Car rolled up, X3 was parked in the charging bay.

Guy in electric car got on his phone, tow truck rolled up 10 minutes later and towed away the X3.

Until they start dealing with it in a serious way then its difficult for people to have confidence in it.

Hamburg has a similar policy
https://www.polizei.hamburg/service/6808000/e-kfz/

Google Translated:

The police and the State Traffic Authority endeavor to ensure that drivers of e-vehicles have the certainty that they will actually be able to park and charge their e-vehicles on these special parking spaces at charging stations, which are intended solely for them. Only in this way can the intended pre-emption for e-vehicles be effective and create a genuine incentive to participate in an electric vehicle on the road.

meeeeh

redcup342 wrote: »

That's true, until they start enforcing parking rules on Electric Car bays and offering an option to reserve spaces then it's not that convenient for people.

Here in Dusseldorf they've started going heavy on the illegal parking, I saw near my place an Electric Car rolled up, X3 was parked in the charging bay.

Guy in electric car got on his phone, tow truck rolled up 10 minutes later and towed away the X3.

Until they start dealing with it in a serious way then its difficult for people to have confidence in it.

Hamburg has a similar policy
https://www.polizei.hamburg/service/6808000/e-kfz/

Google Translated:

That should be done also for parking in cycling lanes and similar. I actually don't know why cities with problem parking don't employ tow truck to empty the space of those cars not paying, parking on disabled or electric car parking places. I remember it was done with some enthusiasm around my university campus and every so often someone was cursing because they had to take a bus to municipal car park and pay a fine to get the car.

Anyway would communal prepay meters work in estates with communal parking?

Renegade Mechanic

Lol, EV drivers should be thanking ICE drivers....
They should be BEGGING us to stay put!
Because if everyone goes electric, everyone will be paying road tax of probably two grand to make up for the loss in fuel taxes.
What you thought you'd get away with paying less to exist?

redcup342

meeeeh wrote: »

That should be done also for parking in cycling lanes and similar. I actually don't know why cities with problem parking don't employ tow to empty the space for those not paying, parking on disabled or electric car parking places. I remember it was done with some enthusiasm around my university campus and every so often someone was cursing because they had to take a bus to municipal car park and pay a fine to get the car.

Anyway would communal prepay meters work in estates with communal parking?

You wouldn't need a communal prepay meter, way it works here is like a Phone contract, you can charge on your home network of chargers and then roam on others.

So like with Maingau in Germany they have a Rate for people with just Car Charging and a different Rate for customers that have home leccy with them.

Then for different countries you have roaming rates.



That Maingau crowd were REALLY cheap (2 cent per minute for customers on a 100kWh fast Charger) , so much so that Dutch Residents were getting accounts with them in Germany and using them as a roaming provider in their own country.

meeeeh

redcup342 wrote: »

You wouldn't need a communal prepay meter, way it works here is like a Phone contract, you can charge on your home network of chargers and then roam on others.

So like with Maingau in Germany they have a Rate for people with just Car Charging and a different Rate for customers that have home leccy with them.

Then for different countries you have roaming rates.



That Maingau crowd were REALLY cheap (2 cent per minute for customers on a 100kWh fast Charger) , so much so that Dutch Residents were getting accounts with them in Germany and using them as a roaming provider in their own country.

Sorry that's what I meant. A prepay system where you can top up. So if apartment building has communal charging points you can enter in your password or whatever and charge. They will have to install quite a few though.

drunkmonkey

meeeeh wrote: »

There are cars which are sexy and desirable, Leaf is sort of vegan sausage. Good for the environment

Good for the environment??
Built in a coal powered plant, battery ingredients mined by big diesel machinery cutting holes in the ground, shipped over on a diesel ship and delivered to you on a diesel truck and if you break down your picked up in a diesel recovery truck, pretty much a write off after 10yrs unless you feel like lumping 10k for a new set of batteries on a car worth €200 and hard to insure.

Any self respecting Hippy wouldn't be caught near one ..much more environmentally friendly to nurse on their old VW Kombi.

samih

meeeeh wrote: »

Nobody will be looking at Leaf in 50 years thinking that's a design classic.

Having owned both the original and now the current I actually think that the original is much more interesting design and apart from those headlamps and the view in general from front. The lamps were shaped to direct airflow away from the wing mirrors to reduce wind noise. And it will probably have at least a curiosity value as one of the first mass produced BEV. It stands out from the crowd which was intentional at the time, you notice them even if you're not interested in them. The current model has really strange proportions at places and just blends in with the other ugly Nissans.

Anyway, that's my opinion and I'm allowed to have one.

samih

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Good for the environment??
Built in a coal powered plant, battery ingredients mined by big diesel machinery cutting holes in the ground, shipped over on a diesel ship and delivered to you on a diesel truc

This is a classic badly informed message. If you start to think about the volume and weight of a tankerful of fuel that goes through your conventional car (think about it) and compare that to the weight of material in the battery (a few tankfuls of fuel) that all need to be refined and hauled in the petrol station near you, you can start to see the fallacy of what you say.

Rdwrer

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Good for the environment??
Built in a coal powered plant, battery ingredients mined by big diesel machinery cutting holes in the ground, shipped over on a diesel ship and delivered to you on a diesel truck and if you break down your picked up in a diesel recovery truck, pretty much a write off after 10yrs unless you feel like lumping 10k for a new set of batteries on a car worth €200 and hard to insure.

Any self respecting Hippy wouldn't be caught near one ..much more environmentally friendly to nurse on their old VW Kombi.

It's staggering how afraid some people are of change. You sound like one of those Southern Americans who thinks we're trying to take their guns

Idbatterim

mengele wrote: »

Well I will be very slow to make the switch to electric. The simple task of just filling it with petrol or diesel every two weeks suits me far better than having to charging it every day.

some of them have a what, 600km range now? so how would you be charging every day?

If you can afford to buy new and are doing huge mileage, electric will save you a fortune! Once you can reach there and back again on the same charge. (So for no extra head ache, if you can charge between commute there and back again, thats still good)

Idbatterim

EV's are at least 2 decades away from mass use/appeal in this country and given the glacial speed in which change in this country happens, its probably closer to 30 years before EV's become the norm (and hopefully in that time, hybrid technology and/or hydrogen powered vehicles will have improved sufficiently enough to ensure I never have the displeasure of owning or driving an EV)

LOL! look how quick the diesel band wagon happened! The leaps in technology every few years are ridiculous, now that it is a given than diesel / petrol are things of the past, you think VW and the rest wont now forge ahead with masses of spend on R&D in electric? Its the future, even if back waters like Ireland dont think it is, Germany one of the worlds biggest economies and producers of cars will lead the way and we here, will be forced to follow, thank god! I write this as someone who drives a petrol, but it will be some great day, when they start selling these noisy with pollution from the tail pipes, relatively high maintenance (over their life time) fossil fuel v electric...

https://www.independent.ie/life/motoring/car-talk/still-no-current-for-evs-37296923.html

(read the below article earlier) in other cities, charge points are being put into existing street lighting etc at minimal cost...

https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/volkswagen-reckons-itll-be-sucking-diesel-with-nextgeneration-chargers-37797428.html

w211

We do not have so much power to charge all of electric cars. It needs massive amount power. Every home must have industrial power or they will charge 3 days the battery. All these amps cost a big money. The grid is not ready for ev.

samih

w211 wrote: »

We do not have so much power to charge all of electric cars. It needs massive amount power. Every home must have industrial power or they will charge 3 days the battery. All these amps cost a big money. The grid is not ready for ev.

We don't have instrial power in our house but manage to drive an EV for 30000 km a year with home charging alone. As a matter of fact our EV takes almost exactly (a bit less actually) of power than our induction hob. And luckily of us we don't normally use the said hob at the same time the car is timed to charge from midnight on.

The car is plugged in on average every second or third night as we don't drive 200 kilometers a day (which would be 200 x 365 = 73000 kilometers a year).

redcup342

w211 wrote: »

We do not have so much power to charge all of electric cars. It needs massive amount power. Every home must have industrial power or they will charge 3 days the battery. All these amps cost a big money. The grid is not ready for ev.

You don't have a fast chargers at home, that would be stupid and they are quite large anyway.

The 'fast' home chargers like the Zappi EV Charger use about 6.6 kwh meaning it would take around 9 and a bit hours to completely charge a Kia E-Niro 64k kWh

A typical immersion tank uses 3-4 kWhs anyways.

Doesn't need to sit there all for one charge either, you can just unplug go out and come back then plug it in to top it up to 100%

Fully charged it would get you a range of 455 km.

People just need to get around the concept of having to completely empty the ' tank' and completely fill it again.

You can also time it to go on at night time for cheap nightsaver electricity (Companies want to dump power for cheap at this time as people aren't using kettle/tvs/immersions/radiators/Lights etc)