Random EV thoughts.....

In fairness is not everyday the traffic is bad. There are days when J13-J4 is 25 mins, days when is 1h+. Yesterday was relatively bad. I think there was a breakdown and rain. Repeating "Drive with care" every 200 m makes the messages redundant and people stop paying attention to them.

Today they announced left lane blocked at J10 NB (a first for M50 usually they wouldn't say which lane is blocked), and some people were avoiding the lane, while others finding the lane emptier, were rushing to overtake the whole pack only to find themselves facing the emergency vehicles and the blocked lane. This is only slowing down everyone. Maybe if they had that message in the car they wouldn't have rushed so much to the left, although it was an illegal maneuver (disputable by some) to start with.

Interesting to see that in the UK this week the car registration data shows the split in EV sales (and ICE too obviously) between private sales and company/fleet/lease/tax deductible cars - and only 35% of all EV sales are fully private sales.

”Demand for electric company cars grew by 42% in January 2024, compared with a 25% slump in private demand for EVs.”

https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/electric/ev-sales-figures-uk/

I wonder what % of Irish EV sales were fully private? Most people I know use it as a company car for lower BIK or whatever it is, or it’s tax deductible, or it’s a taxi. When I actually think about it, not that many friends with EVs are fully private buyers

That's what we're planning/hoping to do at some stage this year, should the other half's public sector employer ever get their finger out. It's been on the cards ever since she first raised it - which is about 18 months ago at this stage, but the timeline for introducing it kept being put back ("it'll be January/April/July/September/April"). The new timeline is always soon enough for us to hold back from committing to any other, less desirable used option, as the loan repayments for something like e.g. a 7 year old Ioniq (which would force us to retain a diesel car for the longer trips we take regularly) would be comparable to the monthly leasing cost on a brand new EV which could serve as the sole car in the household. It's probably because we're in NI and this was very likely one of those decisions that civil servants felt unable to take without a minister in charge, even though it's cost-neutral to the employer. Hopefully there might finally be some movement on that now, but if not then we're looking at a back-up plan - a leasing company which has started offering used EVs (3-y.o. ex-company cars etc) under the same salary-sacrifice scheme. Some of the options they have could meet our requirements for having just the one car. There were a couple of Model 3 LR on their site recently which were well under £400 per month for a three year old car with less than 15k miles on the clock. Those were snapped up in less than a day, as was an I-Pace for similar money (but triple the miles), but I think more like those will start to appear as the year progresses.

I'm guessing the average speed cameras don't adjust for the variable speed limit in the tunnel

People seem to generally obey the variable limits on the M50 in my experience.

They often don't get a huge amount of choice since the limit is usually there due to a traffic jam ahead, so cars are starting to slow down anyway

It’s a real case of beauty being in the eye of the beholder - or “if I had €575 per month to spend on a car I’d spend it on a ….”

€13.5k in rental payments for at most 30,000km on a car first released in 2018, from an ailing manufacturer

The I-Pace is a roomy, comfortable EV that drives well and gets the sort of range even in winter that would work for us. While this particular one, as essentially a new car with 250 miles on the clock, is too rich for my blood, I thought it might be worth bringing to other people's attention. It caught my eye as it's not that long since I was weighing up whether to buy outright a much older EV for shorter runs and continue running an ICE car for longer trips - the notion that we might consider the likes of an I-Pace or any other EV that could become the sole car in the household wouldn't have been realistic.

We've set our budget at around the equivalent of €350-€380 per month, which is less than what we've been spending over each of the past 12 months to run a 16 year old 2.0 diesel Mondeo. That figure includes fuel, tax, parts, maintenance and repairs, but excludes purchase and insurance (and of course there are no purchase or other upfront costs with the leasing option). Pretty much the same was true of the 2.0 diesel A6 we had before that. Fuel has been by far the biggest share of that outlay, at around 70% - that money is just as "dead" as anything we might pay towards a lease.

Since we already have a solar array at home which produces more power than our house uses for about 8 months of the year, our cost to fuel any EV will be a small fraction of what we've been paying to burn diesel (and send all sorts of horrible crud into the atmosphere). That allows us to allocate a fair chunk towards leasing costs without going beyond what we're already paying out each month. The likelihood is that a used Model 3 LR would better suit our use case, and leasing a used one is more likely to fall within our budget. NB those leasing contracts include servicing, maintenance and breakdown cover, for a car which will still have a full warranty for the entire 24 months. There's no warranty to cover the replacement DPF on the Mondeo, or the replacement timing belt, or any of those other pesky things that have to be done to keep an older car on the road.

The same leasing company has other, cheaper alternatives to that I-Pace on their site right now, e.g. several Audi E-Trons for €380/month equivalent (but the 50 rather than the 55, so lacking the range we'd need). However if another slightly older I-Pace, or Model 3 LR, or 77kWh ID4, or an MG ZS LR, or any other longer-range EV I've seen on there recently, comes up within our budget (which I think will happen more often as the year goes on), then the choice becomes about whether we want to continue paying out a chunk of money every month to run a now-17 year old Mondeo, or pay less overall to have a much newer, warranty-covered EV that will do everything the Mondeo can in terms of basic practicalities, but will be far cleaner and far more pleasant to drive, with far lower risk of any problems arising and none of the burden of resolving such problems falling on us. It's not a difficult decision.

😄 Definitely not naming it now!

No, I mean they mentioned a car that wasn't for them but put in no link 😃

Has there been any mid life update to the iPace?

just looking through the ads, they seem to range from €30k for 19/20 all the way to €88k for a 241, the latter definitely feels a bit much

I'll be going even if I'm not in the market for a new car. I think it is the first such initiative which give people opportunity to educate themselves on the subject. I can only see positive outcomes from participating at the event.

A Model 3 LR appeared on that UK-based loveelectric leasing site I'd posted above earlier today - cost for us would have been £358 per month over 24 months for 10k miles p.a., for a car registered in June 2021 with just over 13k miles / 21k km on the clock. Gone already when I went to look at it again this evening.

Obviously almost all EV sales to date have been buyers of new cars - I think very few of us have any interest in still owning that car for 6-8years/160k or whatever the battery/drivetrain warranty is; but on the flip side, the buyer of that 6-8yo 2nd hand EV will want to have at least some of that risk priced in.

Good to know! Even with being off the road, a €3k bill is a lot more manageable than whatever a new pack would cost.

I think as there are more examples of older EV cars on the road, people will start to trust them more. The new tech will always have the spotlight on it.

I used to install phone systems that were based on SIP (calls being made over the internet rather than the phone line) about 15 years ago, and people would blame the internet calls for everything. I had one call from a customer where they were talking to a employee on the mobile phone and the call cut out and they wanted me to find out why. You wouldn't ring Eir to ask why one random call to a mobile dropped! Another one from the same customer, they rang me irate that their phone system wasn't working, and I couldn't see it online, so I asked her to check their internet connection on their computer "I can't, the power is gone"

Out of the people we mentioned we were getting an EV to:

Only 3 people were excited about the prospect - 2 of them have EVs, other one well researched on them and would probably get one as his next car.

1 thought it was a good idea but to be cautious of the advertised range and the actual real world range. He has an EV but its probably not really suitable for all the types of driving he has to do

Everyone else (maybe 10-15 people) were saying don't: "they don't have the range", "if the battery goes they are worthless" etc. None of these have any experience with EVs

Where'd you see that? I just did a quick check and Golf is €36k to the ID.3 €37k?

It's an apples to oranges comparison of course, base ID.3 has more power and I didn't check if they're the same spec

Also the €1k difference would be made up quickly enough on fuel savings I imagine, I think I saved around that in the first year with the Leaf and I didn't have a crazy commute (around 40km per day)