Lons
Established Member
Thanks for posting the videos NikNak. Ours friends car is in the video near the end.

Brilliant. Presumably the chargers will now be uprooted and sent to the Gulag for fifteen years, or have their leads tied behind their backs and shot !Just found this rather amousing story
My EV experience:
I’ve been driving 100% electric only cars since 2017 and we are now a 2 EV household.
I’ve had the lowest depreciation of any car I’ve ever owned with my Nissan Leaf which I got to help my saving towards my Tesla and on the “why wait” principle.
Bought 2017 for £8k Leafs do have a battery life issue see my other post for why so with 60k on the clock the battery and its price had dropped. My cost of ownership:
service /maintenance £275 (suspension bar in car Vs pothole challenge) no service needed. Insurance mot tyres etc = petrol car. Sold 2021 £5.5k. So 4.5 yrs total variable cost pa £600. With all depreciation and repairs added, I’ve never owned a car old or newish that’s been less than that and I’m the old git that has my data going back to 1990.
Over the time I used it (60k to 90k on the clock) it’s range dropped from 75m to 50). If i’d kept it, I’d have shelled out for the battery replacement equivalent to a new engine which was 8k and would have put it up to 185m range. Fuel savings would have gone towards that. I’ve not counted fuel savings as reduction in costs as they were towards my Tesla savings fund.
I sold the Nissan to a chap in London. He said it’s massively cheaper for him to hire a petrol car for odd out of London trip and 50m range is perfect for everything else (a classic case of the OP’s point). low range was a ball ache for me as I do quite a bit of long distance but I’m super motivated and for me it was worth it. But I 100% get that range like that is useless unless you are mostly city driving at which point the fuel savings more than pay for a few car hires for long trips.
2021, I bought a Tesla for 32k. (9 yrs of saving). 220m range, just over 100k on the clock and one of the old ones with free charging for the life of the car so my variable cost of ownership so far has been £75 for a minor repair and I’ve paid about £20 total for the odd top up at home. I’ve travelled 11k miles for under £100. The old Teslas are aluminium bodies, and I checked with 2 local body shops that they would do body repairs on Aly, so I’ve effectively got a car for life barring me wrapping it round a tree. I’ll save for a battery replacement which will be 22k but will put it up to 350m+range. There’s no sign of problems with the battery yet, it’s guaranteed for another 50k miles so free replacement if it fails soon and I’m saving about 2kpa in no fuel cost towards it. There’s a few 1million mile Tesla’s out there now and I’d like mine to be one of them in time. It’s not a cheap car, so for me the total cost of ownership will be higher than I’m used to, but its way cheaper than cars in its field. It’s a dream to drive with the “self driving” that’s no where near that yet obviously but gets better every month. I just “drove” to Hungary and back 3k miles travelled, of which I actually drove about 250 and just acted as driving instructor/babysitter for the car for the rest.
There are enough Tesla chargers everywhere this side of Turkey for almost all demand and they are building new ones at a massive rate. The same can’t be said for others!
My other half has just got a small ev and literally couldn’t find an empty fast charger on a recent trip. Other than that, there has been no problem with 2 EVs in the house; it’s cheap, relaxing to drive and 99.9% of the time takes 2 seconds to charge, get home, plug in, walk away. It’s preset on a timer and starts charging on cheap overnight electricity…
That’s the other worry I forgot to address in my essay of a post before, the “what happens when everyone gets home and plugs in” in reality, they use the electric that needs using at night, in fact the trial of EVs selling power back to the grid to support the 5.30-7.30pm demand, reducing the need for peaker plant generation went so well, it’s being rolled out now so the opposite will be the case.
Overall I’d not change back ever, my old car went to a friend who does very low milage and keeps it under a porch, the best case scenario of keeping on using an already built vehicle while minimising the pollution. I hope my Tesla will see me out and
I hope many more people look into a used EV as the risk with older cars of buying a lemon is far less of an issue as there’s so much less wear and tear of expensive bits!
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