I'm just pondering this very thing, sort of fag packet maths in my head. With the latest electricity rises, the whole ev, phev thing isn't too clear. My thinking: take a 50kw EV, will now cost £15 to charge at 30 odd pence per kWh. And it will drive for say 150miles? So take a 50mpg ICE petrol car, plenty about, 150 miles will cost 3 galls equals about £22 quid. So my EV saves me £7 on 150 miles. Or about£466 over 10000 miles , it's not that much really in the big scheme of things. Not worked out payback yet on phevs or EVS, but it'll be many years!

At current prices, a 3 miles per kWh electric car costs 9.3 pence per mile for "fuel" at the Ogfem price cap rate of 28pence per kWh.

A 50mpg petrol car at fuel costing £1.65 per litre (£7.42 per gallon) costs 14.9 pence per mile for fuel. That's 5.6 pence per mile cheaper.

A new base model electric Corsa costs about £7000 more than the petrol equivalent, so would need to be driven 125000 miles before the fuel saving recovers the difference in purchase cost.

So, over the life of the car, assuming maintenance and repair costs are the same and relative amounts of tax paid on each don't change, it will cost about the same to run an electric car as it would a petrol equivalent.

It would be possible to make the electric car cheaper to run by using cheap rate electricity or your own solar panels to charge. The only way to make the petrol car cheaper would be to illegally use tax free red diesel (ooops that sentence doesn't make any sense, but if the car was diesel powered it would!!).

However despite this, I've just bought a new car and its petrol powered (albeit a self charging hybrid so hopefully will see a bit over 50mpg). The simple reason is that until it's possible to reliably do the 350 mile trip to my in-laws in northern Scotland with just one 30 minute meal break, an electric car won't do everything I need it to. I suspect it will be my last petrol powered car though as with fast charging, some EVs are now getting pretty close to being able to do that.

The only real purpose for an EV is to give people something to drive in urban areas where emissions are banned. Some of those people are switching to e-scooters, which they may find preferable when full-size EVs still have a restricted range, making them less than ideal for longer journeys. Who knows how far that trend may go ?

Already seen 2 up on an e-scooter. I wonder hoe long it will be before someone bolts a horizontal plank to one of these so they can take the wife and kids for a day out

The running cost difference between EV and ICE is principally due to the lack of tax and duty on electricity vs high tax and duty on fossil fuels.

The choice for buyers (aside environmental etc) is simple - pay more upfront, save on future running costs. It is a gamble and depends on future fuel and electricity prices.

This happy state of affairs is unlikely to last - the government is looking at road charging etc as they will lose a major revenue stream as ICE is phased out.

PHEV will largely perform as EVs over short distances - beyond battery range, economy is largely as for ICE. No surprises so far.

But there are some fundamental issues going forward:

• battery technology - capacity, range, charging time etc - has the potential to improve, ICE is a very mature product. any improvements will be marginal
• using energy to create other energy carriers (eg: hydrogen, synthetic fuel etc) is fundamentally inefficient. The only justification is for very specialist applications

""""The running cost difference between EV and ICE is principally due to the lack of tax and duty on electricity vs high tax and duty on fossil fuels.""""

As all domestic households are paying standard charges before they get their energy unit charges what sort of business is allowed to sell energy units to EV chargers without some sort of pain or is there one? Are we as domestic consumers subsidising industry and businesses with the rates offered to them which in turn they can pass on as part of their business to us?? Why are my standard charges doubling when the costs to maintain the Grid is the same as before How is the war affecting electric prices?.

Why are domestic energy users expected to bail out the suppliers that have gone bust I thought that if companies went bust then that was a loss to the Directors/shareholders and anyone else who was owed money. So why are we paying other peoples losses when they were raking it in in the good times??

Edited by sammy1 on 01/04/2022 at 18:23

Looks very impressive for the EV until you see how much it costs to buy, how the range deteriorates over time etc. We've done it to death on here but the range problem dosen't go away and a long EV journey could be very worrying when you can't find a charger.

A very sensible comment. The enthusiasm for EV's is very much misplaced IMHO, they should be confined to the role of reducing emissions within controlled city zones.

What car could the ordinary Joe buy who can't afford a tesla or an equally expensive semi - electric SUV, and doesn't want to get involved with the charging nonsense and still get good economy and range?

This post appeared on a Dacia forum recently.

"Just got 762 miles from my Logan Bi-fuel using both tanks. Was a little nervous at 750 miles, but the gamble paid off!

Cornwall and back from Northamptonshire for a family holiday, with roof box, without refuelling. Happy days!"

"LPG for just under 300 miles. Unleaded E5 for the remainder.

Was showing empty at 710, so must have been close to empty when refilling.

Pointless challenge, I suppose, but great range for family holidays"

And one of these is about £12K on the road.

Not everybody's choice I'm sure, but for the ordinary working man who doesn't want to run an older used car it seems to knock the electric car right out of the ball park.

This time last week I would have agreed that the PHEV was pointless but after having had a visit from a cousin over the weekend its got me thinking.

Posted that a few weeks ago and on Saturday we had a better experience of PHEV motoring. On Saturday went to Cadwell Park with the cousin and wives for the annual Vintage racing festival, a terrific day out for any petrol head. The round trip was about 120 miles and he had given the battery a full charge before setting off. The car is absolutely stunning, end of story, more than enough power for trouble free overtakes and whilst its eerily quiet when running on the battery it barely any noisier when the ICE chimes in. The battery went to zero just before we got home and the dash said it had managed 79.5 mpg for the 120 miles (which took about 3 hours on country roads - most with 50 mph limits or less - with some bank holiday traffic). That over double what our Pulsar would have done on that same trip.

If it was about £10,000 cheaper I would be looking at one, perhaps a nearly new one will come up just like the Fabia did.

Personally I think its a done deal now, its got to be one of these to replace the Pulsar. Its so much better than anything else we have looked at. But still not prepared to pay £35,000 for a new one so it looks like the Pulsar stays a bit longer whilst sone nearly new ones hit the forecourts.

If it gets 79.5mpg over 120 miles with a full charge, assuming the leccy provided 30 of those miles, the car actually did about 60mpg over the remaining 90

Cannot fault your logic there

That's still good for a fairly big car, and would mean you'd still get 60mpg even if you drove it 500 miles

60mpg is better than we have managed with any diesel we have owned in the past and none of those were Octavia size.

Have driven a Corolla with the 2 litre engine a couple of years ago and whilst it was OK in many respects we found the CVT annoying in the Peak District. As a replacement for the Pulsar it was simply not there. Seem to remember the dash was displaying just over 50 mpg after our 2 hour drive which seemed OK compared to the 35 the Pulsar does but its not in the same league as the Octavia.

But the Swace is very expensive and not available with the 2 litre. We want a car with similar performance to the 190 PS Pulsar and thought the 180PS Corolla would tick that box, it didn't. Plus it was much smaller inside and in the boot.

No way a normal 1.0 Octavia would find its way onto our drive. We have the 110PS 1.0 in our Fabia and whilst its a great engine I cannot think it could compete against the 190 PS of the Pulsar. The 1.5 would come close no doubt at a lower price than the PHEV but after Saturday I am more enthusiastic about that car than any other I can remember being in.

Excellent news. Sounds like you struck it lucky and walked away with a good deal. It will be interesting to hear how you get on with it and the economy you get.

Last evening I spent some time trying to work out what the mpg for the day actually was and probably still have no idea.

I'm sure you could convince yourself of a 'correct' rationale for arriving at a figure, but for a car which can choose when (or if) to switch between two modes of propulsion, I have no idea what the result actually means. In ICE mode it obviously uses fuel you have put in the tank, in EV mode energy you have put in from a charger (fuel somewhere else) or which it has generated for itself. Presumably if you complete a journey in EV mode you get infinite MPG, or not ??

And if it generates its own charge, presumably there is some energy loss (compared with direct ICE use) when that charge is used in EV mode ? Maybe the answer is to forget about gallons and convert to miles per kW ?

Edited by Andrew-T on 02/05/2022 at 10:19

Maybe the answer is to forget about gallons and convert to miles per kW ?

Thought about that but my issue would be who knows what a kW looks like, I don’t. We all know what a mile is, we all know what a gallon is but since we cannot actually see a kW its probably meaningless to many. So why not convert it to something we all have, say a Microwave. Ours is 800w so a kW is 1.25 microwaves, but miles per microwave does not work for me.

But we all know what a £ is so why not miles per £? It works for petrol, diesel and electric. But unfortunately when the price of your chosen fuel changes so do the figures.

So here goes. Using the price of £1.61 a litre for E10 at present

@ 35 mpg our Pulsar would have done 4.8 miles/£

@ 48 mpg our Fabia would do 6.6 miles/£

Using 12 kW electric @ 20p/kW (current overnight rate) + 1.06 gallons of E10 yesterdays trip would have been 8.3 miles/£

Using 12 kW electric @ 7.5p/kW (Go overnight rate) + 1.06 gallons of E10 yesterdays trip would have been 9.7 miles/£

Still not convinced this really works, just as easy to convert electric to gallons to get mpg.

Obviously one trip is not far enough to prove costs, I will know better in a few thousand miles. But it looks promising.

What about the upfront cost of a new car to achieve such a figure, by the time you factor this in where are you in terms of cost per mile?

Did not even try to work that out since it was clear it depends how often you use cheap electric to do your trips and how long those trips are. Will try and remember to think about it when I have a better idea of the miles/£ but we in truth we bought it because we liked it, more than anything else we drove in truth and that matters probably more to us than running costs.

"""

What about the upfront cost of a new car to achieve such a figure, by the time you factor this in where are you in terms of cost per mile?

Did not even try to work that out since it was clear it depends how often you use cheap electric to do your trips and how long those trips are. Will try and remember to think about it when I have a better idea of the miles/£ but we in truth we bought it because we liked it, more than anything else we drove in truth and that matters probably more to us than running costs."""

We bought it because we liked it. Fully concur with this statement.. What is the point of life if you don't enjoy!

Conceptually interesting to create a level playing field between different types of fuel as it standardises the measurement base.

This is the only (simple) way to compare apples, pears and grapefruit. The problem is that it eliminates the whole purpose of an EV, which is to use less resource, aim to be more sustainable and cause less pollution. Before the start of ULEZ and the like, I became converted to diesel because I got more miles to the gallon (litre), which usually cost less into the bargain - simples. But now that new cars are so expensive, the only way to choose a way forward is to go back to basic £££.pp - which we are all finding is rather complicated.

And if, after deciding how to calculate a pseudo-mpg figure for a PHEV, what conclusion or comparison can you sensibly draw ? It will just be a number with a questionable basis, IMHO.

Edited by Andrew-T on 02/05/2022 at 15:28

MPG is what we understand, why change. If some equally sad soul asks what mpg its doing and I tell them 10 miles per £ they will only say "what's that in mpg"

The snag for me is that your numbers will give you little useful info. The more you rely on charging your car, the better your MPG will look, because you are putting in less fuel - and of course spending less cash. But the MPG has little to do with the total miles the car covers.

Doesn't seem much point to me, but I may have it all wrong ?

Just to help with the original question. You can convert miles per kw/h to the equivalent of mpg.

So my EV recently did 4.6m per kwh on a recent 140mile trip. Which converts to 155 miles per gallon. Tesla I believe do better.

The link is here.

www.inchcalculator.com/convert/mile-per-kilowatt-h.../

This could be the US equivalent. Another site specifically for UK says take the miles per kwh and just multiply by 40. 4.6 times 40 is 184 mpg either way its a lot. Kind of immaterial really its just many.

Edited by Ethan Edwards on 02/05/2022 at 19:38

All human activity is bad, I suppose it's a matter of which is the least worst for the environment. Plenty of problems associated with oil - Gulf of Mexico etc.

The undersea cables from these farms are creating electro magnetic fields which is causing deformities in lobsters.

All electric cables even low voltage cables have an electro magnetic field around them, its caused by the flow of electricity and can have an effect on anything that is sensitive to it, some test equipment uses this field to test the wires to make sure of electricity flow.

so whatever you have in your house gives off an EMF whether connected to a battery or the mains, you cannot get away from it, even the earth gives off an EMF

The turbines cost an arm and a leg and have a short lifespan before they need serious maintenance.

I gather they are working on internal turbines which work inside the tube and may be able to support several turbines in one tube and because they work in a tube the airflow is constant so the turbines could work even in low wind areas

""""Many/most of the comments (including mine!) relate to money and cost. But what price is placed on the environment - is this evidenced by the amounts folk will willingly pay/forgo to reduce environmental damage. """

The environmental damage is everywhere you care to look. On wind farms the turbine blades are killing untold number of birds. The undersea cables from these farms are creating electro magnetic fields which is causing deformities in lobsters. The turbines cost an arm and a leg and have a short lifespan before they need serious maintenance.

So we ignore the environmental damage done by ICE vehicles just because we do damage in other ways?

Anything humans do will cause changes to nature - we just need to minimise the bad and do more that uses renewables and does not pollute as much. It will cost more than it does now but it needs to be done and can be done, quite easily really if people wanted to do it rather than just living in the past and what has gone before.

it's not going to change, all we can do is try to mitigate the damage we and nature are doing even if it seems like a losing battle sometimes

our dependency on electric will only get worse, though I have doubts we will be able to meet demand without nuclear, as having millions of wind turbines is not going to be a very nice sight ...

I'm interested to know how the damage from nuclear failures might be mitigated. A book was reviewed recently discussing 6 'accidents' of this sort, including Windscale, 3-mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Of course every effort would be made to make new ones accident-proof, but we all know that 100% will not be achieved, especially if they are installed worldwide. There are quite a number in France, come to think of it ....

So am I actually, there is no one size fits all for anything, But gather the new Fusion reactors are far safer than the old ones, but then only time will tell -when we get around to having them built that is... or if?

Fusion reactors would have all the positives without the negatives...it will be a way off before there are commercial ones though

For anyone interested, Kurzgesagt did a video (amongst many others) on this very topic.

Worst Nuclear Accidents in History - YouTube

On wind farms the turbine blades are killing untold number of birds. .

I think if the number of birds killed was large, there might be visible heaps of them below the turbines. The risk is well-known, and when 18 turbines were erected on Fr0dsham and Helsby marshes near here a few years ago, a wide gap was left in the centre of the 'farm' for the geese which were known to travel there regularly. And still do.

Edited by Andrew-T on 02/05/2022 at 23:24

The very obvious root of the problem, which politicians and humanity generally want to avoid, is the excessive number of homo sapiens all wanting to be fed, watered, clothed, housed etc.

There are some strategies which may delay "meltdown" for humanity by a few decades, or possibly even a few generations. Energy supply is an important element.

Nuclear, wind, solar, tidal, wave, +++ are all possibilities. It is much more constructive to identify the best (or even least worst) solution, rather than parrot reasons why nothing can or should be done - eg: birds/wind turbines, deformed lobsters, ruined view with windmills etc

Very interesting thread. Back to the PHEV, the simplest way in my mind to compare economic advantage is to know the cost difference between PHEV and conventional models and , knowing the seemingly accurate mpg calculations by thunderbird, working out the payback versus the mpg of conventional. I would estimate the payback to be a few years but with some other advantages eg emotional gain, performance advantage of the hybrid etc