Adventure Bike Rider Forum

...electricity is more expensive than diesel!

How can this be?

As they say at the end, what that shows is that at the moment ‘electric cars and long journeys don’t always mix’. On the other hand in you live in a city and are on the right tariff they can make a lot of sense. On my current tariff, it would be incredibly cheap to charge an electric vehicle overnight and for me as I have got solar panels, free during sunny periods. A lot of electricity providers are offering tariffs where you can sell surplus energy back to the grid, you can either buy batteries and charge them overnight and sell it back during peak periods or use your car battery in the same way e.g if you work 9-5 ish and come home with charge in your battery you could sell it back to the grid and then recharge at low cost time overnight. There is also the factor of low emission zones to take into account. More cities are bringing these in and more will do so. Cities are responsible for lowering the pollution in their area and low emission zones are relatively cheap and bring in income. Cycle lanes, park and ride, subsidised public transport etc all cost money.
I think there are two separate issues, global warming and pollution, particularly in cities. I am not convinced that electric vehicles help with the former and they may cause other environmental impacts, but they do reduce local pollution. Just follow an electric car through town as opposed to a diesel one. If I were still commuting every day I would seriously consider an electric bike or scooter. To be honest for the sort of journeys most UK motorcyclists make these days, electric motorcycles already have the range, although with most bikes this would be seriously reduced by having the stereo cranked up full playing an annoyingly loud exhaust sound.

This is worth reading as well.

https://insideevs.com/features/407545/t ... exclusive/

Norwegian reg on that car

This is a youtuber who lives about 10 miles from us and is also a biker. His stuff is worth watching about everything to do with EV ownership, servicing, range, real life use and even replacing individual cells in older car batteries.
He also has a recent vid on an electric bike

to be fair the video was quite appealing ..apart from maby his enthusing on the styling which wasnt that hot to me ..al went well until the end .....28.500 quid was somwhat of a shock i thought hed say maby 20k .......me current bike does near 300 miles on one tank and cost 24.500 less that leaves me 24.500 quid for fuel or six spare bikes ...just doesnt add up at the moment
dont know what others think but id punt on somthing with a600cc performance with 200 miles range for around 12k ...maby in 5 years

I’ve recently taken delivery of a Tesla Model 3 Long Range company car.

A 385 mile round trip to Stevenage requires either two short charges of 20 minutes or one longer charge of 35 minutes. The charging cost is 9p/mile at a Tesla Supercharger (36p/kWh) and half that at my standard electricity rate at home (18.63p/kWh). Once I’ve finally got a new smart meter installed, charging overnight will reduce the cost to 5p/kWh or 1.25p/mile.

My 320d did averaged 46mpg, so cost around 13p/mile to run, plus a lot more in tax than the £10/month BIK I pay on the Tesla. Most charging is done at home, so it’s much cheaper for my 9000 miles/year private mileage, especially once I’m paying 5p/kWh.

Can't disagree on the fuel economy BUT it IS a company car so disposal in a few years doesn't concern you--we all know that the battery packs degrade with use and disposal is still a big issue. The power you use to charge is probably fossil fuel based anyway--we are struggling with power generation and when blackouts start your car will be dead in the water. I think that electric drive has its place in inner cities based on noise and pollution--but to be honest these days emissions are getting much lower anyway with ULEZ type restrictions. Also the CO2 impact of the whole process in mining and refining the basic materials and precious metals used in the power train construction simply dumps the CO2 problem elsewhere because the mining equipment is probably diesel powered and the construction power grid is likely to be fossil fuel powered--and do we really need to keep producing NEW cars and not getting the best use out of whats already been manufactured at HIGH CO2 cost.

Until we can make vehicle mounted solar panels that are good enough to run the vehicle (as it is used) there will always be a large amount of fossil fuels involved in the powering of electric vehicles, the manufacture of batteries and the required charging infrastructure, as such it is a compromise. However I do see the need to get people on board with the reduction in fossil fuel use in order to make the first steps that create the market for innovation and investment. If you look at Formula 1 you can see how the original KERS cars provided the platform for Formula E and in turn that will develop further. I'm not sure there will be a place for road vehicles to be able to achieve 100mph+ though especially when it compromises battery range.

Tonibe63 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 11:09 am I'm not sure there will be a place for road vehicles to be able to achieve 100mph+ though especially when it compromises battery range.

Why would anyone need 100mph+ when the speed limit is 70mph? By the time EV's are mandatory, they will all have speed limiters built in, which if we're lucky will allow very brief spurts of over-limit speed to 'get out of trouble'.
The same can, I suppose, be said regarding speed capability for ICE vehicles.