EV & Renewables Myths
We've all heard or read many things about the move towards electric vehicles and renewable energy. It does seem like its ramped up in the last few months:
* The national grid can't handle everyone getting an EV.
* Children are mining colbalt for use in EV batteries.
* EV drivers clog phones up with 30+ payment apps.
* An EV costs more to run than an equivalent petrol car.
* EV's are too heavy, creating more potholes and will collapse car parks.
There are so many false headlines doing the rounds at present. It just seems like they are there to create hysteria and stop the 2030 ban of NEW petrol and diesel cars (that's something that some people don't understand that's it not a ban on all petrol and diesel cars, just a ban on purchase of new petrol and diesel cars).
The sheer avalanche of articles makes me think there is an agenda behind this. Funding this volume of articles wouldn't come cheap. It probably isn't too hard to work out who could be when there is so much money at risk with the change away from fossil fuels.
I was all for writing an article on busting some of these myths, but it occurred to me that many people have already written myth busting articles so why would I waste time doing the same.
Here's just a few I could find:
MY EXPERIENCE - THE FIRST MONTHS of an EV
I thought perhaps rather talk about media articles, perhaps its better to talk about my actual experiences of the first few months of using an EV as a daily vehicle.
Range Anxiety
Before getting an EV I was worried about range anxiety. The first question anyone ever asks me able the Ioniq 5 is 'how many miles can it do?'. I don't think I was ever asked this when driving a petrol or diesel car!
Back in 2019 I had a chance to order the VW e Golf as a company car. At the time I thought about my daily mileage. I didn't have too much information on my actual daily mileage so it was difficult to know what I actually did. The real world range of the VW e Golf was around 120 miles. I decided it was probably a bit too low for what I'd need. This range anxiety meant I decided to get a Toyota Prius hybrid. That was actually a great car but just far too low. I'd often scrap the bottom of the car on speed bumps and uneven roads.
Later in 2023 when the Prius was returned I got a chance to replace it with the Hyundai Ioniq 5. Fast forward 4 years and EV's were now miles apart (pardon the pun) from the VW e Golf.. The 73kW battery of the Ioniq 5 meant real world range had increased to more than 200+ miles.
Calculating my likely daily mileage
Having years worth of business mileage returns I had the data to check what my business mileage was actually like throughout a year. I chose 2022 as it the latest full year of data available and is sufficiently past the 2020/2021 'COVID' years..
Knowing that my mileage was below 150 miles per day 98% of the time meant an EV with 200+ real world range would likely work quite well for me. That definitely put my mind at rest that an EV would cover my mileage from work use.
CHARGING - Home
For the first month I didn't have a home EV charger. It was either charge very slowly at 2kW using a 3 pin 'granny charger', or use the Connected Kerb 7kW charger in our nearby town. It's not that this didn't work, its just both options were a bit inconvenient and made things a little more difficult. The 'granny charger' was very slow to charge adding 2kW per hour. A full night's (12 hours) charge would add about 25kW or around 90 miles. Fully charging the battery would have taken around 36 hours on the 'granny charger'.
The Connected Kerb charge point in the nearby town was fantastic. They were easy to use and charged nicely at 7kW at only 35p per kWh. That cost was about the same as my daytime cost on Octopus Flux. I'd often drop the car off after work at 5pm and my wife would come to pick me up. We'd go back around 10pm to collect the car. If it only needed a short charge I'd take the dog for a walk along the river and stop for a coffee to give the EV more time to charge. I can't fault the Connected Kerb chargers as they were great, but they were inconvenience for me as they were 3 miles away from my home.
Once we had the Zappi charger installed at home that made charging much more convenient and easy to do. It would just a case of plugging in the EV most nights and let the Zappi charge up on a fixed schedule between 0200 and 0500 during the Octopus Flux low cost period.
Charging - Long Distance Journey's
You hear so many horror stories about there not being enough chargers, or that the chargers there are are often broken. It initially made me a bit apprehensive before our first long distance journey to the Fully Charged Show in Harrogate. I planned the journey meticulously on Octopus Electroverse and Zap Maps apps. As it was our first long journey we tweeted updates on our journey progress. We found our first planned on-route rapid charge wasn't actually needed because we arrived at the stop with much more battery charge than we expected. Instead we stopped for coffee and carried on to our overnight stop at the Premier Inn at Castleford there a 7kW BP Pulse destination charger was available. With a full battery again we went to the Fully Charged Show in Harrogate the next day and returned home on the same day.
The Ioniq 5 on charge at Castleford Premier Inn
After this first long trip we felt happy to try a day trip to the Peak District (275 miles round day trip) and a trip up to Kendal to collect a Campervan for 4 nights in the Lake District. The jLake District trip were 230 miles each way journey's. The return journey from the Lake District was a good test as it was the first time we had started a long journey with less than 100% (actually only 53%). A quick look on Zap Map's and Electroverse showed all that was needed was a couple partial charges at Instavolt at Booths in Ilkley and the Gridserve hub at Grantham services. After 4 days in a diesel Campervan (automatic DSG gearbox) made me appreciate the instant quick acceleration and the quietness of an EV.
We've so far found Ionity, Instavolt and Gridserve chargers worked fine with no issues. They were all pretty simple to use once you got the app's or RFID cards. The new Gridserve charger hub at Grantham Services was fantastic as they took contactless payment. How can you not like 12 350kW Rapid DC charger in a row nicely spaced with good access? This is how all public chargers should be.
The GridServe 350kW chargers at Grantham Services
June's actual charging
In June we did a mixture of short local journeys, work journeys and the longer trips to the Peak District and Lake District. There was probably more longer trips that required rapid charging than we would do in an average month. Charging at home accounted for 62% our overall charging. Due to the long trips public charging accounted for 38% of our overall charging. That's much higher than I'd expect on an average month.
The cost breakdown of this is quite interesting. Our average miles per kWh efficiency in June was 3.6 miles per kWh. That's miles driven divided by actual kWh charged, including the charging losses, rather than an efficiency figure derived by the EV (which I often think is over estimated by many manufacturers). That's about the WLPT efficiency figure stated by Hyundai. It should be noted that's its summer and quite warm, but I'd also been quite a lot of fast A roads/motorways with air conditioning on the majority of the time.
Home Charging
We are currently using the Octopus Flux tariff to charge the EV at home. The Octopus Flux tariff has three different charge periods throughout the day. We've tried to schedule most through the low cost period but some still occurred in the higher daytime period. We never charged the EV through the highest 'Flux' rate period as that's charged at 47.5p per kWh.
The average unit price of our monthly use during these two periods was 24.4p per kWh.
I've included a cost to charging by solar. This is because if the car doesn't use the solar generation it would otherwise be exported at an average cost of 23p per kWh.
Average cost per mile for home charging was 6.8p which isn't bad considering the lowest cost period of Octopus Flux tariff was 20.4p per kWh which is much higher than the 9.5p per kWh low unit rate of Octopus Go.
If we had used the Octopus Go EV tariff it would have been much cheaper the charge the EV at around £34. That's an average of 2.4p per mile.
Whilst Octopus Go tariff would be better for the EV from a cost per kWh unit rate, the trade off is the SEG export would be lower at 4.41p per kWh exported. This would make quite a difference to our solar exported SEG income.
SEG export on Octopus Go would have been about £17 for the 419kWh we exported in June compared to £103 SEG on Octopus Flux . Therefore Octopus Flux had an overall gain of about £26 over Octopus Go when considering SEG export too.
Under June's import and export figures the balancing point between Octopus Flux and Go would have been 292kWh exported. If we would have exported anything below 292kWh we would have been cheaper on the Octopus Go tariff.
Public Charging
Public charging, especially Rapid DC charging is much higher cost per kWh than home charging is. Our public charging consisted of AC 7kW charging via Connected Kerb prior to the Zappi home charger being installed, and Rapid DC charging on the longer journeys to the Peak District and Lake District.
Average cost per kWh for public charging was 53p per kWh due to the lower price of 35p per kWh of the AC Connected Kerb charging. Rapid DC charging cost per kWh was 69p to 75p per kWh. I soon learnt to only charge enough to get to my destination with just enough to get there (20% left was always my target).
OVERALL CHARGING COST
The overall cost per mile in June was 9.9p per mile. This would work out as a similar cost per mile as the Toyota Prius.
That's pretty good considering the amount of public rapid charging we did. We're happy the cost similar to the Toyota Prius as that was a very efficient petrol hybrid. The Ioniq 5 is a much larger SUV, a similar sized diesel hybrid SUV (Hyundai Tucson) would have been around 14.4p per mile.
The cost could have been lower if I was on the Octopus Go tariff as it would have cost just 7.2p per mile. That would have been due to the lower cost of home charging.
which Octopus Tariff going forward?
The Octopus Go tariff is something I'm definitely considering due to its lower cost of running the EV. The question is about SEG export as there is a huge difference between 24.7p (average) on Octopus Flux and 4.1p on Octopus Go. Last month we exported 75% of the solar generation. We probably won't export as much now we have the home battery to store some of the excess to use later in the home.
I'm currently thinking we may be best off on Octopus Flux in the summer months and Octopus Go from Autumn through to Spring. It's just a shame Octopus don't do a combined solar and EV tariff, or let you join Octopus Outgoing if you're on an EV tariff. That would be a great solution for solar and EV owners. It currently feels like you have to choose between solar and EV as there isn't a tariff available where you can benefit from having both like you would if you only had one technology.
keeping up with changing Solar/EV technology
As one last point I thought I'd share the ways I keep up with all things EV and renewable. I love listening to podcasts, its great listening to experts who know what they are talking about. Some of my favourite podcasts are: