Electric cars.

Having had a mooch about a few months back, I sat in a couple of cars in a dealership and instantly got why people were buying them. Both were Dacia - one was the new Duster the other was the Jogger. Daft names aside, if you are simply wanting a car as a reliable, economical mode of transport and have no special requirements such as towing etc, then they are damned hard to argue with for the money.

The curveball was the Renault 5 - probably the first EV I'd actually want to buy, were it not too small for us.

 

Go sit (or drive) a Renault 5 - fantastic wee car in my opinion and if you are in the market for something not too big, absolutely ideal. Surprisingly affordable too, especially when you see that a decent used car can now be easily £20k+

 

Indeed, it is a lot of money - but take a look at cars around the 3 year old mark and you'll see what I mean in terms of values. Reliability generally seems to have gone down, be it electric or not - my Volvo hasn't been bad, but it hasn't been great either to be honest and the cost of spare parts for hit are simply horrific.

I'm on a PCP contract (like many people nowadays as the whole price cost of cars is so high), so I will have to make a decision within the year whether I am refinancing to keep the Volvo, or going for something else. I'm staring at around £350 a month for a few years to buy it outright... it is a 6 year old car with 75k on the clock now, so likely 10 year old and 100k by the time I pay for it. So when you look at the likes of the Duster or Bigster that are around £400 a month, for a brand new hybrid car... it gets you wondering. The quality was significantly higher than I was expecting - OK, not a Mercedes, but it wasn't awful either.

 

I hope to keep my seven year old car for at least another 10 years (never had a car for less than ten years) but then shall think about an early version of a hybrid as it may have depreciated more.

 

The downside is for the likes of those who want to tow anything of any consequence - there are no hybrids that I am aware of that have a decent tow capacity - mostly for that, you are stuck with ICE, although there is also some EV's that can. It's almost as though different people have different needs from their vehicles and should be allowed to choose the best powertrain for their needs....

 

The battery size on a hybrid is much, much smaller than that of an EV and the cost of an EV lies in the battery more than anything, hence hybrids aren't as expensive as you might think.

Solar panel of that size would be lucky to put out 150w, given that most EV's have batteries around 70kWh, that wee solar panel would quite literally be farting against thunder... For example, parked up at your work for 8 hrs would get you 1200w if you assume maximum current all day (highly unlikely in itself), so roughly 1/70th of the battery capacity that would equate to 3 maybe 4 miles if you are very lucky. Plus, you'd add even more weight to be carried between the panel itself and the modifications to the charge control circuitry to allow it to accept such a low level charge.

I think understanding the sort of numbers involved is one of the very reasons why a significant number of folks struggle to get their head around it all, and others simply won't even bother trying. The industry itself is also using that to try and blind people and currently getting away with murder.