To rent or not to rent...

[aminorjourney]

Hi Jonathan.

Good to see you on the forums!

I think what I meant in option 1) was that you owned the car and the batteries outright, but that the technology of the car was such that buying replacement batteries on the open market proved difficult. A good illustration of this would be the Citroen Berlingo. It is possible to retro-fit different battery technologies into this beast but it is rather expensive and complex to do so due to the way the car's electronics are put together. Buying OEM replacements is even worse as the battery company are prohibited by contract from supplying them to you.

[wattson]

I have another thread asking if anyone has actually asked Saft if they can supply "pre loved" batteries. When I had my Clio serviced the specialist found 3 faulty batteries but had a supply of good used ones which were fitted. Total cost 480 euros. Where is HE getting them...? With such establishments there is no need to use main dealers, many of which have never seen an electric car anyway.
All we need to do is find a supplier of an alternative pack who will give us a price for quantities - 5, 10 or 50 packs - then canvass members for enough orders to get the price down. Now, who is going to provide the prototype?

[Deddly]

Hi I just wanted to poke my nose in and say that I, too, think that we should be offered a choice. The whole battery lease thing was what completely put me off the Think City.

I'm the kind of person who never takes out a loan, and leasing feels very much worse than a loan for me. Instead of leasing a battery I would prefer to pay that "lease" money into a seperate savings account and use that money as a "car repair fund." If all goes well, by the end of the life of the car I would have saved enough to buy a new one.

--
Ed

[wattson]

Hi Ed,
My thinking is that NiCad batteries are now reliable & the technology proven. PSA are not making electric cars at the moment so there is no need to protect their reputation.
If I ran a diesel 106 & covered 10000 miles a year my fuel costs here would be about 1550 euros pa. To rent the batteries, 1800 euros pa plus the cost of charging. According to the contract the insurance value of the packs is 7060 euros. My 2001 106 has covered 10000 miles in its life so in 7 years has cost 12600 euros, or 1.26 euros per mile. Diesel version would have cost .15 of a euro per mile.
I think the contract has earned the company a good return on investment so the batteries could be sold off just as cars on contract hire are. Money raised would be a bonus, help the hundreds of us with electric cars, help the environment, save disposal of perfectly good batteries & encourage further development.
I can't even find the boxes that the batteries go in, which means I have no way of mounting alternative batteries.
I want to know why this is a problem & as a private individual have got nowhere with PSA & Saft, & also no help from so called environmental groups, obviously too busy saving newts to actually ACT on global warming, or green politicians, too busy padding their expenses. I just want to motor cheaply. It can be done. I wonder if any green lobbyists are real in the European Parliament?
A ramble from
Wattson

[Deddly]

My thinking is that NiCad batteries are now reliable & the technology proven.

OK I'm certainly no battery expert but don't NiCads still have the "memory effect" problem? Surely in an automotive application where the car has regenerative braking and where the driver is very unlikely to run the batteries down every time before charging, the NiCad would need replacing in pretty short order wouldn't it?

As I said, I'm no battery expert, please enlighten me =o)

If I ran a diesel 106 & covered 10000 miles a year my fuel costs here would be about 1550 euros pa. To rent the batteries, 1800 euros pa plus the cost of charging. According to the contract the insurance value of the packs is 7060 euros. My 2001 106 has covered 10000 miles in its life so in 7 years has cost 12600 euros, or 1.26 euros per mile. Diesel version would have cost .15 of a euro per mile.

That's exactly why I would never lease batteries...great for the company of course, but I think there are very few road users who would be able to cut the cost of motoring that way. They should give us a choice!

--
Ed

[MB]

You've missed another option on your poll: instead of paying a monthly fee - i.e. so your paying a fixed amount for your batteries every month, irrespective on how many times you use them, what about a 'pay as you go' scheme where you pay based on the number of times you recharge the batteries?

In other words, a scheme where you fill up your car with fuel and pay for the fuel as you use it. Just like a petrol car.

The 'fuel' in this instance is a combination of the electricity from the plug and the battery itself.

The maths does add up. Lets take, for instance, a vehicle using lead acid batteries. Lead acid batteries can take a charge/discharge cycle around 200-250 times before they start to degrade. That means that a £2000 pack of batteries costs £10 for a pay-as-you-go recharge and we'll assume it will give you a 40 mile range. Not cheap, but a fair reflection of the true cost of running an electric vehicle on lead acid batteries - in many cases, it's more expensive than a petrol car.
COST PER MILE: 40P

Take the same mathematical calculation for NiMH batteries. Lets assume they cost three times as much as lead acid but will last 800-1000 times before they require replacement. That means a £6000 pack of batteries costs £7.50 for a pay-as-you-go recharge: lets assume that will give you a 60 mile range. That makes an electric car using NiMH batteries as cheap to run as an economical diesel equivalent.
COST PER MILE: 18.75P

Now take the same mathematical calculation for some of these new lithium batteries. Lets assume that for our fictional vehicle the lithium cells are going to cost £10000, but that they can survive 3000 recharges before they start to fail (in testing, alot of these batteries are surviving 6000 plus recharges). That means a £10000 pack of batteries costs £3.33 for a pay-as-you-go recharge. Again, we'll assume that will give you a range of around 100 miles. That makes an electric car using lithium batteries a very cheap proposition indeed.
COST PER MILE: 3.33P

Now, ask the question again: who wants to pay £10000 up front for a set of lithium batteries compared to paying £3.33 every time you charge them?

[Peter Eggleston]

But these are just some numbers which you have made up which may or may not pan out.
Take my electric vehicle for example. I paid £11.00 each for 20 lead gel batteries. Total cost £220.
So far I have done 12000 miles with them so long term cost is 1.8 p/mile.
There is no sign of these batteries deteriorating in any way yet, so this figure will reduce further.
Add to this the daily electricity cost of 2.0 p/mile, and it is costing me 3.8 p/mile.
I believe this is even cheaper than cycling, because the cost of pies to power a bike would be greater.
These are real figures in the real world for batteries paid for in advance and are considerabley more economic than petrol, Nicads or Lithium.
Peter

[badnewswade]

I would never, ever, ever rent batteries. The whole point of electric vehicles, in the end, is that they are cheap. Their environmental benefits are a function of that cheapness; they consume fewer resources and that is why they cost less, even if only in the long run.

(People like Nikki might pay more but that is because you are paying a premium for new technologies, which are always more expensive, and because you are constantly inventing new systems to implement these technologies, which also isn't cheap.)

Now seeing as they cost less in a very real way, renting exposes you as a consumer to all kinds of exploitative scams, mainly Rachman-type extortion and EV1-type repossession.

It's bad enough having to rent a house, never mind about wheels. I want to be free to experiment with my transport and sell it on if I so desire. Renting batteries just flies in the face of the (slightly increased) independance you get from big corporations when you go electric. All of a sudden they can shut you down or just up the rent, whenever they feel like it, and if you decide to go with a different (competing) battery technology they can probably shut you down for that too.

No, no, no, no and no!

[aminorjourney]

Can I ask for a second how many people here rely on their vehicles for their job?

I think perhaps this may be part of the issue: I rely on my car for work and I have to do at least 200 miles a week now. It's not just a commuting matter either, since I work in many different places!

I can see ownership not being a problem if you have an alternative arrangement, but when you have student loans to pay off, mortages to account for and a varying salary dependent on the time of year and how many people are making lessons it's important to has as a predictable outlay as possible


Nikki.

[Peter Eggleston]

Yes I rely on my electric vehicle for work,and use it every day. It is reliable, easy and cheap to maintain and has not let me down.
With so many financial commitments why do you want to pay through the nose to rent batteries. It takes away the economy of using an ev and if it where not for helping the environment you would be better with internal combustion.
Peter