The running costs have been noticeably lower, driven by lower (almost non-existent) maintenance costs. I'm about to buy two tires for it, but other than that, my #1 maintenance expense has been wiper blades and #2 expense washer fluid.
Based on the car presented by OP, Skoda Enyaq, I'm guessing they're in Europe where electricity is expensive.
If the charging infrastructure isn't there, both at home/work and fast chargers, BEVs most likely suck.
Can you elaborate?
Car almost left me stranded in middle of France north of Troyes, when it lead me to charge to Freshmile, which was not compatible at all (car navigation was thinking otherwise). I needed to charge at local Citroen dealership to get 30km so I can get to Ionity in Troyes.
Applications - Frustrating chapter for itself. New charger, new app to be installed, account created in etc.... And new problems to be solved, like their pay gate does not like your Visa card. Huh? Or they will happily take your money as a credit for charging and then you will figure out that your car is not compatible with the charger. Money back? F You!
This could have been resolved by installing normal debit card terminals, like are in stores. Just let me use my NFC card / phone to pay what I have charged. Like on an automated gas pump or when I am buying groceries. IT COULD BE THAT SIMPLE.
Driving - 2 hours going 130km/h on highway, then you need to charge for cca 1 hour. So your average traveling speed can't exceed 90km/h. That's an epic waste of time.
Charging at home - I moved to another country, where I can't charge at a driveway, because now I am living in the apartment. So I am forced to charge 2km away on a 20kW charger. Completely uncomfortable.
And then seeing ban on ICE cars 12 years away and there is 50% of people in EU living in apartments... yeah after my experience, I am confident that this will get postponed.
Try A Better Routeplanner and configure it to plan routes which prioritize your preferred charging providers:
https://abetterrouteplanner.com/
You'll probably have an easier time of it with ABRP.
The issues described are not insolvable, but dismissing that they aren't currently solved is a little bit like sticking your head in the sand. Suggesting a better route planner just seems a little naive in that context.
Until there are many more EV chargers in more locations such that you don't have to think about it, you use a route planner to easily find the charger locations that exist now.
> Until there are many more EV chargers in more locations such that you don't have to think about it, you use a route planner to easily find the charger locations that exist now.
Or I use an ICE car and not have to deal with this, like at all.
The whole point of suggesting a route planner is to reduce the effort on their part.
Any change of vehicle is a tradeoff - maybe it's faster but has worse fuel economy. Maybe it's got more passenger space but the navigation is worse. Ways to mitigate the downsides are a good thing.
> Or I use an ICE car and not have to deal with this, like at all.
Sure, but there are significant downsides to ICE. The tradeoffs may be worth it or they may not. Would you call it naive to talk about e.g. catalytic converters on ICEs to reduce their emissions (which then end up getting stolen - whereas I can use an electric car and not have to deal with that, like at all)
How would having to use a route planner be less effort than not having to use one at all? With my ICE car, I very rarely have to concern myself with being able to find a gas station in range. I also very rarely would need to use any sort of route planning software to find a gas station in range.
> Ways to mitigate the downsides are a good thing.
Yes, but the problem arises when you're mitigating downsides you added yourself. For a _lot_ of people, EVs have many downsides that they currently do not need to suffer from with ICE or hybrid cars. Yes, route planning software might mitigate the issue; I can imagine having a mode in Google or Apple maps that lets you route plan around charging stations could work quite well. But you're still stacking having to do that on top of the other downsides EVs currently have. Gas stations on the other hand are widely available, and on longer routes (in the US at least) often marked on roadside signage that makes them very accessible. If you're planning around charging stations you may also not have opportunities to take more interesting or faster routes, which could be a downside depending on the purpose of your trip.
> Sure, but there are significant downsides to ICE.
No disagreement from me there. But these downsides are largely well known, and either very diffuse or tend to have well-known mitigations at this point. When you change that set of downsides, there will be an adjustment period.
> Would you call it naive [...]
No, absolutely not. Those are real problems too. What I was referring to was the way you seemed to offer a dismissive solution to the problem that the GP described. A lot of EV proponents I've found are very dismissive of the real-world issues of EVs that currently exist, and the additional challenges many people would face if they were to switch to an EV right now. Dismissing these things makes it harder to address and improve them.
To be clear, a century ago we might have been having the same discussion about ICE cars, and how the infrastructure is not ready yet; In a way, this reminds me of refactoring core components of a large intertwined codebase. Often you can't just flip a switch and just change everything, it has to be gradual, building up it's own support over time and effort -- but many an inexperienced (and dare I say naive) engineer would still try to change it all at once.
If you're too scared to own an EV, if the EV chargers frighten you, if you find the leading edge too edgy, if the adoption is too early for you, then the solution in your case is simple: don't buy an EV.
In the meantime, EV owners can use A Better Routeplanner and configure it to prioritise their preferred charging networks (via Settings -> Charging Networks -> Network Preferences) to find charging sites from charging providers they like to use.
So, in TheLoafOfBread's case, if he prefers to use let's say Ionity, Tesla, BP, and FastNed with his Skoda Enyaq he can add them to the network preferences in ABRP.
Then when TheLoafOfBread plans his next road trip, A Better Routeplanner will plan a route which uses those charging sites in preference to other charging sites. TheLoafOfBread will find that most of the time he'll be charging at one of his preferred charging providers and he'll be much happier.
Which is exactly what I have done. Driving an EV is great, owning one in my situation would introduce more problems than it solves. Many of the factors that affect this decision for me are very common and likely apply to a large fraction of the population.
> So, in TheLoafOfBread's case, if he prefers to use let's say Ionity, Tesla, BP, and FastNed with his Skoda Enyaq he can add them to the network preferences in ABRP.
I understood the complaint to be partially that they would prefer to not have to deal with any of that at all, or at least that it could and should be far far simpler.
It is far, far simpler. A Better Routeplanner will make it simpler for TheLoafOfBread.
Instead of talking in circles, just try A Better Routeplanner.
Here's my idea of simple: No apps needed, I pull up to the charger, any charger, I get out of the car, tap my credit card on the payment terminal, plug the charging cable into my car, stand around for 2-3 minutes while my car recharges to 100%, unplug, grab my receipt and drive off. If I'm on a long trip and starting to get low on charge, I look for the next charge station sign I see. Basically, exactly like a gas station is right now. My understand of TheLoafOfBread's comment was that they were thinking along the same lines as me.
ABRP does very little to move the needle towards this version of simple. It can't make charging times shorter than what is physically possible, it can't offer you charging stations that are as ubiquitous as gas stations, it can't enforce having the same easy to use connector at every charge station. It has a role to play, a small one, and frankly not terribly interesting one.
We are talking in circles, so perhaps it's time to finish the conversation.
Hey, super. Show the trip and the car. Let's see it.
> So yes, I will agree, ABRP does simplify things. I couldn't imagine having to deal with finding the charging stations and planning out my route without a tool like that.
Good. So there was nothing for you to argue about from the beginning.
It's not, it's less effort than whatever they were doing to find charging stations before.
> What I was referring to was the way you seemed to offer a dismissive solution to the problem that the GP described.
I didn't offer it, but I don't see anything dismissive about it. It looked like a genuine effort to help someone mitigate one of the downsides of an EV (which was clearly something that had some upsides for them, otherwise why would they have bought one in the first place).
I understood the GP's comment to also be a commentary on the difference between what they had to deal with when driving an EV and how that was different than their previous experiences with ICE/Hybrids.
Yeah.. no. Especially not in old big towns around Europe where hundreds of thousands (even millions) of people live without underground garage and there's literally no place to install street side chargers on every corner.
My personal hope is that advances in technology and grid upgrades will eventually lead to every single lamp post being a charge socket - a lot of the cars here belong to residents and stay parked for days, so they can get away with 3.6 kW charging just fine.
In the end, however, the solution likely will be a massive expansion of public transport, to a point where almost no one but people with disabilities and tradespeople will have their own cars.
All in all it's a useful tool if used in moderation.
You need a minimum 3 phase 480v electrical source to charge even a small battery in under an hour. We are talking 150-200Kw, or the equivalent energy to run around 170 American sized households to fast charge a single car. You think that’s happening in Europe, pretty much ever?
What we do need is ubiquitous Level 2 (240V AC) charging present at the locations where most drivers store their cars. For drivers who store their cars on public city streets, that means installing new cable runs and charging poles. Obviously this infrastructure isn't going to be "free", but it's not some kind of intractable technical challenge. Moreover it will eventually pay for itself through a modest surcharge on the electricity consumers use for charging.
The Tesla 3 Long Range AWD has a 76 kWh battery with a range of 358 miles (576 km). The average European car drives 18,000 km/year, or 72 km/day or 10 kWh/day with Tesla's efficiency.
If everyone has giant EV pickups with 200kWh batteries driving 500 miles every day, yeah you have a problem. But that's the tiny minority.
>on-the-road charging with Elli membership
Why should I buy some stupid membership so I can pay monthly fee + charging fee? I am not buying memberships for taking gas either.
It's math.
There are 21 Tesla charging sites in Finland and 14 of them are now open to all EVs. So you could be making use of two thirds of Tesla's Finnish charging sites with your Skoda Enyaq right now.
It just seems like a lot of your problems are self-inflicted. You could be doing things easier.
Even public transportation trams and buses in Eastern Europe have NFC terminals on board to buy tickets. Why is it so hard for a damn charger in Western Europe to have one?
Instead of wishing for what isn't, you could be doing a lot better with what is.
I don't need a "practical" application of local supermarket chain to buy grocieries.
Why should I tolerate buggy applications to charge an electric car on incompatible chargers? Why there isn't an NFC terminal which I can find almost in any store in EU and today even on vending machines? The chargers already have internet connection, so where is the problem? I am not a masochist and I am refusing to live in this customer hell. This is one of the reasons why I am selling this joke of a car and going back to ICE.
I think you are. Why else would you buy something you didn't understand? You plainly didn't think through the practicalities before you bought it.
I bought the car using my own money to get the experience with BEV and I found out, that it sucks big time. I was expecting that it might be a little bit inconvenient, but I was not expecting to be such a massive bag of problems with BEV proponents like you trying to gaslight me that user is the problem.
They won't have the same issues like you do. You're doing a lot of this to yourself.
> BEV proponents like you trying to gaslight me that user is the problem.
No one's gaslighting you. You're refusing to use the tools that will make it easier for you.
Are you using A Better Routeplanner yet? Configure it to prioritise your preferred charging networks so you don't end up trying to charge on Freshmile again.
Imagine if every time you tried to use a gas station you needed to install a buggy, crashing phone App that required you to type in your credit card and other personal information. Imagine if 50% of gas stations simply didn’t work and you get stranded somewhere far from home having to sleep in your car. This is the reality of owning a non-Tesla EV. After a year of this and owning a rapidly depreciating car I said screw it and went back to gas.
> The European Union’s CO2 emissions are on course to decline this year despite an increase in coal emissions. The rise in European coal use is expected to be temporary, with a strong pipeline of new renewable projects forecast to add around 50 gigawatts of capacity in 2023. These additions would generate more electricity than the expected increase in coal-fired power generation in the EU in 2022.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/22/eus-emis...
> EU’s emissions continue to fall despite return to coal
My note: those coal plants are only increasing emissions a few percentage points temporarily. Trajectory deviation is ever so sleight.
It is true that certain cars (Trabi comes to mind) could be fixed roadside with a screwdriver and a hammer usually, but >100k kilometers life was still rare - people simply used their cars less and for shorter trips those days.
This is not a sentimental view of good old times, the cars were really bad, killed many people etc, but the fact is because people didn't have a choice they hanged on to them as long as they could. Once modern cars became available, everyone ditched the old ones as fast as they could afford it.
What is currently happenning with cars is not that they last shorter, but after the first life mostly in western/central Europe they are sold to the east and south where they continue to work for many more years, but out of our sight.
Toyota is getting ridiculed today, but they will be last one who will be laughing, when prices for BEV and for batteries are currently going up [0]
[0] https://about.bnef.com/blog/increase-in-battery-prices-could...