PHEV's are definitely the future probably eventually switching to hydrogen or natural gas in place of ICE's though. I think part of the problem in this argument is the large disconnect in the way the US vs rest of the world uses cars. I drove 152 miles to a client site the other day and I view that as a short drive. It's not unusual to drive 500-600 miles in a single day on vacation. One of my best vacations as a kid we drove from Ohio to LA and San Diego and back. Stopping at sites along the way. Those kind of trips won't be feasible in an EV anytime soon.
Chevy Volt drivers average 800 miles between fill-ups.
- Thread starter nintenho
- Start date
In the UK at least, you are missing:
a) A higher service charge
and
b) An increase in cost in the rest of the electricity used (for TVs, PCs, lighting, etc. etc.) unless you can hit somewhere in the region of 50% daily energy usage during off-peak times.
Some calculations using a purely electric vehicle:
The Nissan Leaf is £10,000 more expensive than a Golf Bluemotion 2.0L (£5,000 after a government rebate).
The bluemotion does 4.3L/100km. Diesel costs £1.35/L here at the moment, which works out as £5.81 per 100km. The Nissan Leaf travels 100km on 21KWh of power, which at 5p per KWh costs £1.05, so the Leaf ends up as £4.76/100km cheaper, or £0.0476/Km.
To break even on the initial £5,000 expense of choosing a Leaf over the Golf, you would need to travel (5,000 / 0.0476) Km. This works out as 105042 Km. At 40km/day, that is 2626 days. If you drive 40km *every* day for 7 years, you still won't have broken even on the initial outlay. If the government wasn't paying £5,000 for you to take the car, it would be almost 14.5 years before you were back where you started.
If you only commute to work and don't do any travelling at the weekend, it gets even worse, needing 10 years to break even with the government subsidized value, and 20 years without.
The Leaf's battery is guaranteed for 8 years or 100,000Km - Nissan won't even guarantee the battery long enough for you to break even on the initial overspend.
So overall you are left with a vehicle that costs more unless you own the car for at least 7 years, driving 40Km each and every day will cost you more money over the lifetime of the car. After 10 years, the car will only have 70-80% of its initial range due to battery degredation, and if you ever do make a long journey you have to stop for 30 minutes to recharge after an hour of highway driving, lengthening any journey over 100km or so by about 50%.
Now, how does that compare to the Volt?
The Chevy Volt is slightly worse in terms of KWh/100km (22.3 vs 21 for the Leaf) so it will take longer to recoup the cost. It is also more expensive, costing about £35,000 (before any rebates) in Europe, meaning that you'll need to recoup £10,000 - £15,000 (vs. £5,000 - £10,000 for the _more_ efficient Leaf). The fuel economy on the Chevy Volt is 4.7L/100km, which is worse than the Bluemotion Golf, and any time spent using this method of power is prolonging the time it takes to catch up with the ICE car. The Chevy Volt has the same warranty on the battery as the Leaf - given the decreased efficiency and increased cost of the volt over the leaf, you almost certainly won't make your money back before the battery is out of warrenty.
For me, it doesn't seem economical to run a pure-electric, or PEHV given current premiums paid for this sort of car over fuel-efficient ICE cars.
Ha. See if you can get the UK to complete the job here first.Right I'm starting a campaign for the metrification of the USA
@Mintmaster:
I realise you have a dislike for diesels, but they do have an advantage over petrol in that a petrol engine loses a lot of efficiency if you don't have the throttle fully open. Unless you are driving either like a maniac or using some bizarre form of PWM, you aren't getting the best out of the engine. A diesel doesn't have that problem.
I realise you have a dislike for diesels, but they do have an advantage over petrol in that a petrol engine loses a lot of efficiency if you don't have the throttle fully open. Unless you are driving either like a maniac or using some bizarre form of PWM, you aren't getting the best out of the engine. A diesel doesn't have that problem.
That used to be the case.
However, modern FSI petrol engines work similar to how diesel works, - injecting fuel directly into the cylinder. This allows the engine control computer to precisely control how much fuel is injected.
Diesel engines seem more economical, but that is just because diesel is more energy dense. If you look at mileage in terms of km/kg instead of km/litre, modern petrol and diesel engines are fairly similar.
Cheers
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Err, golf 1.6TDi blue motion is 75MPG combined, there are other vehicles that achieve 85MPG+, all are diesels, these are vehicales that exist now. It's quiet clear that diesals can and do work in the same way any other high effiency ICE can work.
Another 25% over the next couple of years is entirely plausable, I'd call that a bit more than "not much".
You really think the electricity companies aren't going to cotton onto this trick and make you pay for it? Longer term, do you really think the governments won't compensate for the loss in fuel tax revenues by taxing the electricity you use to feed your driving habbit at a higher rate?
Actually 25% came from a study I read a year or so ago, it isn't pulled out of the air, it was a paper article, but I'll see if I can dig it out.
You still apear to be maniplating the numbers to make them fit your arguement, $2.50 a litre is on the high side and 7L/100KM is ignoring new more efficient ICE based cars that you can purchase now, these should be more like $2.20/L and 5L/100KM. Using these numbers and your 10KWh battery cost of $7000 you get 3181L of fuel or ~64K KM or about 1600 days or ~6 years (assuming 40KM x 5 days/week) before you recoup the cost of goign PHEV. If we add the cost of electricity and the interrest you would have earned by keeping that 7K in the bank (can easily earn $500 in a long term bond over 6 years) we can add another $1000 of fuel, or another 9000KM, the time to recover your initial investment increases to 7 years i.e. this is pretty close to my original estimate of 10 years to break even.
Related statistic - Average age of cars on road in UK is 7.1 years.
Basically however you spin it in the EU PHEV's are at best a marginal choice for the vast majority of people.
Mintmaster
Veteran
Am I on mute? Why do you people keep bringing up golf diesels?
A) It is IMPOSSIBLE for a significant number of car owners to switch to diesel (both now and in the future, unless biodiesel has a miracle breakthrough), and even if they did, it would make world fuel consumption go UP
B) The European average fuel consumption is 7L/100km. Not 4.3L/100km. They may be more fuel conscious than the US, but not that much.
Ha, you really think that's ever going to happen? We're mixed mode over here and we're stuck with it.
People keep bringing it up because you are exagerating the effect of everyone switching to diesel.
Current average fuel consumption of cars is irrelevent when buying a new car, it's the fuel consumption of the new car that matters.
Mintmaster
Veteran
You are very annoying to have a conversation with...
No it isn't. There isn't even any research out there that suggests it's possible. The only way it can happen is with consumers accepting lower performance, which isn't necessary with PHEV.
WTF? So now you're a conspiracy theorist? It's called competition, genius. There's a reason that electric utilities get almost nothing for electricity produced at night.
Bullshit. Show me any study whatsoever showing me that the average 2009 or 2010 car buyer is getting 5L/100km from their cars. EU fuel economy tests are even more unrealistic than the EPA's.
You gotta be dreaming if you think $2.20/L is going to be the average in the next decade (even today you're wrong), but fine, take 10% off my numbers. A $7k battery with 2000 cycles on it isn't worth $0, either. Someone can still save $10k+ of gasoline with it.
It doesn't have to be a golf. The BMW 1-series has a similar level of fuel consumption (4.5L/100km), as does the Audi A3. I'm sure I could find more. Why do you say the diesels won't work?
Define "significant"? A large number of people *already* drive diesels - it isn't some tiny minority in Europe, they are common already. As JohnH already stated, if you suddenly start using your domestic energy supply to power a car, the electricity companies won't sit by and do nothing, they'll cash in on it. Would it be feasible for everyone in the country to switch to PHEVs today? Would the national grid be able to cope with the extra 31,035,791 * 8KWh per night ( 31,035,791 cars on the road at the start of 2010) if everyone switched this week?
The European average fuel consumption of what? Why are you taking averages which inflate the cost of owning an ICE rather than using a figure which actually relates to the cars in question?
It doesn't have to be a golf. The BMW 1-series has a similar level of fuel consumption (4.5L/100km), as does the Audi A3.
Of course, if you want to argue it that way and the average fuel consumption is 7L/100km, then the Nissan Leaf must use the equivalent of 7L/100km (rather than the equivalent of 2.2L/100km it actually does), meaning it actually costs more than 3x the amount you claim it does to run.
Mintmaster
Veteran
Explain. Do you understand how gasoline and diesel are produced?
Then show me what people are getting with new cars. Don't cherry pick a couple cars and give me unrealistic fuel consumption figures from a test that has no bearing on reality.
An average person in the UK pays the same cost for electricity night or day- Economy 7 is a niche product designed for people with storage heaters. And you clearly love sticking to averages, so no, electricity companies don't get less for stuff produced at night. And it isn't a conspiracy theory - if a huge group of people suddenly say "hey, I want a load more electricity at night" of course the electricity companies will raise the price - its creating demand that wasn't there before.
Why on earth are you so obsessed with average values? If you only go by average values than a PHEV will cost the same as an average car, which means you have no financial benefit at all, for the cost of a reduced range.
Actually, as well as your obsessions with average values, why do you care about the whole of Europe? On the scale of a single person, it is currently cheaper to buy an efficient diesel than it is to buy a PEHV over the lifetime of the car.
As an individual making a choice, I don't really care about the choice that others make, be it PEHV, petrol or diesel - and there are enough people out there that are sufficiently clueless / don't care enough about it to make the dieseletrol ratio not be a problem
As an individual making a choice, I don't really care about the choice that others make, be it PEHV, petrol or diesel - and there are enough people out there that are sufficiently clueless / don't care enough about it to make the diesel
etrol ratio not be a problemMintmaster
Veteran
Here's an article I found that explains the situation well:
http://www.caranddriver.com/feature...when_the_world_is_running_short_of_it_-column
Move more people to diesel and you increase EU oil consumption, no matter how efficient TDi's and others are.
They'll just magically cash in on it? Then why aren't they charging $0.50/kWh right now? Why not $1/kWh? Why do they only get paid $0.01/kWh now for night time electricity?
The cars in question are the preferences of the entire car buying public, not just TDIs. EVs and Hybrids have negligible differences in energy costs per mile, whether you're talking about a Leaf or a Tesla roadster. In a few years, every EV will blow economical ICEs out of the water in performance (Leafs are already faster than TDIs), because a larger motor barely adds to running costs and even construction costs are low.
Let me show you some UK stats. Fuel consumption by cars and taxis has been 29 billion litres (source, conversion) for 250B miles travelled. That 7.5L/100km. If you want to say newer cars are 1L/100km less, then fine. By no means are they getting <5L/100km.
What kind of fuckwit logic is that? People actually use 7.5L/100km in the UK right now. You can look at Tesla Roadsters, Fisker Karmas, or whatever EV you want and you won't get much less than 3 miles per kWh. I've already overestimated the electricity cost to satisfy your whining.
You are saying that average fuel consumption is 7.5L/100Km, but that PHEV and EV are a special category and use far far far less than this which is ok to seperate from the average car figures. However, you seem to want every single other car has to be counted as using the average value. What I'm suggesting is that instead of lumping together *every* ICE, seperate out the TDIs in to their own category (y'know, just like you did for the PHEV and EVs) and the average consumption is about 4.2L/100Km. I can't see a good reason for being able to separate out the cars you want to do well from the average value and not the cars that are actually competitive.
*People* may use 7L/100Km on average now, but I'm not saying "instead of buying a PHEV go and buy an average car", I'm saying "Instead of buying a PHEV, it is more economical to buy a high efficiency diesel".
Sure, at the moment it is more economical to use a PHEV or EV than it is to buy an _average_ car, but it is more efficient still to buy a high efficiency diesel. I've already demonstrated that using current figures and prices. Once the £10,000-£15,000 premium for having a battery in the car is reduced by, say, 75% then yes, definately, go for a PHEV or EV, you'll make your money back sufficiently quickly that it is actually worth it. But at todays prices, switching to a PHEV or EV over an efficient diesel just _isn't worth it_.
Mintmaster
Veteran
Mintmaster
Veteran
At the moment there aren't any PHEVs for you to buy in the UK, so I don't know what you're talking about. This is about a general strategy going forward for all consumers and manufacturers, not about one man buying one car, or 0.1% of buyers looking at one model. This is how this whole discussion of costs started:
Also, EVs/hybrids aren't a special category of low performance cars. They span the entire spectrum from compact to luxury sports sedan to performance car.
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Mintmaster
Veteran
A Prius is not a PHEV, and a TDI doesn't give enough performance for most car buyers.