Relative fuel costs of petrol and electric

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Just waiting on the work installing a petrol + diesel pump so i can commute FOC just like the EV guys. :rolleyes:

Used to have that for a number of years. Diesel tanks at the sites, fill up your car, drive away, simples.



(Only applicable to the company cars and the payment of relevant BIK to HMRC)
 
My father had LOTS of diesel on his farm......slightly the wrong colour though. But he drives a petrol car now though!
 
See Shell have had a change of heart about the Cambo Field in the light of current energy security developments! Less liable to stir up a political hornets nest than Fracking which has been declared a nonstarter.
 
If anyone's thinking about saving CO2 to save the planet remember that roughly 10 tonnes of CO2 are expended in making a new car.
The "EV is going to save the world" story, is a myth.

IIRC in the EU, all transport (airlines, trains etc included) only accounts for 35% of problem emissions. We have a world of of ~8 billion people most of them in developing countries. The world population has doubled in the last 50 years and that has also mostly happened in developing countries / 3rd world (are we allowed to say 3rd world?).

Emissions are here to stay.

Our little obsession with saving the world and going green energy is why Russia literally have us over a barrel today. They are nett exporters of fossil energy (while at the same time have invested hugely in Nuclear) the UK and the EU are nett importers of fossil fuels.
 
The "EV is going to save the world" story, is a myth.

IIRC in the EU, all transport (airlines, trains etc included) only accounts for 35% of problem emissions. We have a world of of ~8 billion people most of them in developing countries. The world population has doubled in the last 50 years and that has also mostly happened in developing countries / 3rd world (are we allowed to say 3rd world?).

Emissions are here to stay.

Our little obsession with saving the world and going green energy is why Russia literally have us over a barrel today. They are nett exporters of fossil energy (while at the same time have invested hugely in Nuclear) the UK and the EU are nett importers of fossil fuels.
I just thought it was an interesting graph! It was from the US so not directly comparable and only concentrated on the cost of the fuel to run. The interesting point was the average of 25mpg that new cars do in the States I thought.

I was only looking because I've just had some solar panels installed. I suspect there's a can of worms there as well, but having them is worth it just for the entertainment value of watching the rate it generates electricity. If it carries on at the current rate (and its a big "if") it will pay back in 4 years (including the big battery). When oil eventually becomes so expensive that I have to use an alternative to it for heating, I suspect it will have to be a heat pump. Currently no real savings on running costs there (all electric), but a huge capital investment.

Seems to me the world is going to eventually go all electric so we need to sort out our quantity and quality of supply PDQ.
 
I was only looking because I've just had some solar panels installed. I suspect there's a can of worms there as well, but having them is worth it just for the entertainment value of watching the rate it generates electricity. If it carries on at the current rate (and its a big "if") it will pay back in 4 years (including the big battery). When oil eventually becomes so expensive that I have to use an alternative to it for heating, I suspect it will have to be a heat pump. Currently no real savings on running costs there (all electric), but a huge capital investment.
Have a sniff around "Harry's garage." He had a wind turbine and solar panels installed a few years back, and uses that power to service the PHEV's that he uses as well as various farming kit.

Can't say that I'm convinced yet about the current effectiveness and reliability of solar panels & batteries, but for sure they're coming.
 
Have a sniff around "Harry's garage." He had a wind turbine and solar panels installed a few years back, and uses that power to service the PHEV's that he uses as well as various farming kit.

Can't say that I'm convinced yet about the current effectiveness and reliability of solar panels & batteries, but for sure they're coming.
I’d like solar but the payback is too long for me but with teh way electricity prices are going it might be worth a look.

Back in the 70s my parents had a solar water heater installed. Family of 6 bathing every day etc. The panels were good enough to lift the water (IIRC) to about 40C and the water heater did the rest. Again IIRC it saved my parents about 25% on their electricity bill.
 
Back in the 70s my parents had a solar water heater installed. Family of 6 bathing every day etc. The panels were good enough to lift the water (IIRC) to about 40C and the water heater did the rest. Again IIRC it saved my parents about 25% on their electricity bill.
Bathing every day?

Blimey O'Reilly, you lot were posh. Once a week, whether needed, or not.



.
 
Bathing every day?

Blimey O'Reilly, you lot were posh. Once a week, whether needed, or not.



.
Yep we could never understand why poms that came to SA smelled so bad......;):)
 
Yep we could never understand why poms that came to SA smelled so bad......;):)
Council housing, Guv.

We was lucky.

One grandmother hung her bath on the kitchen wall. The other grandmother had a plumbed in bath next to the kitchen stove.

And they was happy.
 
Bathing every day?
My Pal, when he left home shared a flat with two other guy's. Their immersion heater was quite small so could only fill one bath. They had to share the water, so they used to draw lots (was going to say toss for it, but may be misconstrued) to see who was first, second & third. The two other guy's worked on building sites so were pretty filthy. My pal was a window cleaner so relatively clean. When he was third he said it was like lying in sludge & he came out dirtier than he got in.
Also they had a blow up sofa which had to be replaced frequently as when they came home from the pub (all smokers) one of them would accidentally drop their fag on the sofa accompanied with the sofa deflating. Happy days.:banana::banana:
 
Our other car is the wife's Mini. We own it outright so doesn't owe us anything technically. It does 4k miles a year, that is all. An electric would be a no brainer but taking the above example why would I fork out an extra £550 per month for an EV?? I'm not going to save that over a year am I.

It's not just the affordability of electric cars for low mileage use. There is also the issue that very low annual mileage EV's will take many years or in some cases may never reach the break even point where the lifetime emissions are lower than an IC car. If EV's are going to be more expensive to run and have little or no lifetime emissions advantage you begin to wonder what the point is other than for use in big cities.
 
We bought a s/h Nissan Leaf - but we did keep the diesel and petrol cars that we have. It has clocked up more miles than our ICE cars over the last year. We mostly charge at home either overnight or from our solar panels. The Leaf has proven to be very cheap to run and there is almost nothing to do servicing wise. It is no Mercedes or BMW but it has surprised me with how competent it is - and the silence sitting in a queue of traffic is very pleasant. So they do work for some people in some scenarios - but I would not have one as an only car.
 
I’d like solar but the payback is too long for me but with teh way electricity prices are going it might be worth a look.

Back in the 70s my parents had a solar water heater installed. Family of 6 bathing every day etc. The panels were good enough to lift the water (IIRC) to about 40C and the water heater did the rest. Again IIRC it saved my parents about 25% on their electricity bill.

Yep the cost/benefit on solar power could change significantly now. We inherited a small solar installation when we moved house in August (14 panels on the garage roof, rated for 3.4 kW peak). No storage batteries so we do consume some power from the grid overnight, but we currently get paid for surplus exported back during the day which covers this several times over.

We have solar water heating too (a panel on each side of the roof). It's a reasonably old system (late '90s I think) but still works well - showing 51C in the heating loop right now, and would presumably be more in full summer. We didn't run the gas boiler at all for a couple of months after we moved in, although I appreciate now you are meant to take the cylinder up to 60C so I will be keeping an eye on that!
 
We bought a s/h Nissan Leaf - but we did keep the diesel and petrol cars that we have. It has clocked up more miles than our ICE cars over the last year. We mostly charge at home either overnight or from our solar panels. The Leaf has proven to be very cheap to run and there is almost nothing to do servicing wise. It is no Mercedes or BMW but it has surprised me with how competent it is - and the silence sitting in a queue of traffic is very pleasant. So they do work for some people in some scenarios - but I would not have one as an only car.
My friend has one of the first Leasfs.....it now has about a 60 to 80 mile range so needs a new battery.....cost?...about £5400 ....value of car?....about £5000!!.....so whilst trying to be green we have actually invented the disposable car!!
 
It's not just the affordability of electric cars for low mileage use. There is also the issue that very low annual mileage EV's will take many years or in some cases may never reach the break even point where the lifetime emissions are lower than an IC car. If EV's are going to be more expensive to run and have little or no lifetime emissions advantage you begin to wonder what the point is other than for use in big cities.
Stubbled across a discussion about this the other day....in the UK, where we still only make about 50% of our power from renewables, the average EV needs to have done about 60,000 miles to break even on carbon with an ICE car...that's taking running and production carbon cost into account. Not great really. Once it gets to break even point of course its way better than an ICE car.
The other thing that's not mentioned much is the "efficiency" of EVs. In much the same way some cars burn more petrol/derv than others, some EVs use more kwh to travel the same distance. Since you actually do have to pay for the power Id like to see EV makers having to quote a combined miles per kwh figure.....just so you know which cars make the most of your now very expensive electricity!!
 
My friend has one of the first Leasfs.....it now has about a 60 to 80 mile range so needs a new battery.....cost?...about £5400 ....value of car?....about £5000!!.....so whilst trying to be green we have actually invented the disposable car!!
What range did it have to start with? As I recall, Leafs didn't have much when they were new, and 60-80 miles is still fine for many use cases. If its no longer suitable for him, why not sell it and just buy a newer one with better range?
 
None if you work where i do as the EV`s get charged FOC whilst the guys are on shift...
I had read (although not checked out the law myself to verify this) that charging an EV at work is exactly the same as using a fuel card at work for tax purposes, and therefore the fill ups should be correctly logged and BIK paid appropriately. This is a tax that mist be paid and attributed to the individual, and not paid on a blanket basis by the company.
Failure to pay benefit in kind tax on vehicle fuel (a benefit) provided by an employer would therefore be tax evasion (not avoidance) and penalties for tax evasion can be quite steep.

I guess if huge numbers of employers are offering this, it might be too much to enforce effectively and fingers in ear and whistling might be an effective strategy to avoid enforcement action?

Where I used to work had EV charging and it was all registered to the appropriate company car and logged. Not available to lower tier scum not worthy of a company car (like me).
 
My friend has one of the first Leasfs.....it now has about a 60 to 80 mile range so needs a new battery.....cost?...about £5400 ....value of car?....about £5000!!.....so whilst trying to be green we have actually invented the disposable car!!
That is a write off big time and a long way from being green o_O:eek:
 

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