Reply to post: Re: A bit out of date?

Electric cars can't cut UK carbon emissions while only the wealthy can afford to own one

Duncan Macdonald
FAIL

Re: A bit out of date?

The Nissan Leaf has a RRP starting at £31,440 - a Hyuandai i10 has a RRP starting at £9,091 - a difference of over £20,000 !! This difference will pay for a lot of petrol or diesel fuel. (At current prices and the mpg of an i10 it would be sufficient for about 140,000 miles!!)

The capital cost of a Nissan Leaf at over £30k is beyond the means of most car drivers in the UK even with hire purchase. Add to that the difficulty in charging for anyone living in a flat and the time taken to do a full charge (with a standard 13 amp socket it takes about 10 hours for a full charge of a Leaf vs 5 minutes to fill up an i10 at a petrol station). (Even with a high power charger (30 Amp 7kW) it takes over 4 hours for a full charge (and this sort of charger normally requires house wiring changes.))

In calm winter nights there is very little power available from renewables - the increased demand from a large fleet of EVs would require the building of several more conventional power stations (nuclear, coal or gas) and would probably require reinforcement of the National Grid in several locations.

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