electric van and when to make the change?

[jonnyboy666]

ok so i bought my first ever new vehicle 2 1/2 years ago. a VW T6 multivan, i love it i think it's great. but obvs electric is coming, it's already pretty viable with cars but i don't think it's there yet with vans.

recently on facebook/instgram i have been getting adverts for electric vans, the 2 that came up were for Fiat and Peugeot, the Fiat van was a long wheelbase hightop panel van and quoted 90 to 160 miles if memory serves and the Peugeot van was more similar to my van in terms of size etc and was quoting around 200miles

now my issue with not going electric is range. currently i can drive from home (southampton) to north Wales and back on one tank at motorway speeds, if i went electric that journey time would be so much longer due to stopping and charging, not to mention my annual road trip to the alpes would also be a pain.

also to bear in mind is that from 2030 diesel won't be sold apparently, well not new anyway, so i realise this isn't an imminent problem.

what i'm concerned about really is the value of the vehicle dropping like a stone as it gets older. so today i went and spoke to my local VW van dealer where i got my van, he's saying that VW van prices are going up for used vehicles, simply because the new van prices have also gone up, so the new price going up increases the used prices, also apparently the electric vans when new will be £60,000 so as a result the diesel vans are holding their value.

for the record i have no issue going to electric, i just want to do it when the range is at least 400miles which seems to be way off.

basically what do you think the tipping point is? 2024? 2028?

my original plan was to keep the van 10 years so 2028, sell it and use that money for a deposit on another van but if the new van is gonna be £60,000 (plus) then that is a hell of a lot!

so do i change it sooner, for another diesel (or hybrid diesel electric if they are making one) or do i just run it longer and change it a lot later?

thoughts?

 

[rwm1962]

Subscribed to the thread - similar position with our diesel van & been wondering the same.

 

[legrandefromage]

I'd worry more about what to do when its time to replace the battery as the range drops

There is the possibility that these vehicles will become the new landfill if no solution is found as nobody wants to buy a vehicle that can only travel a few miles.

We are at a crossroads figuratively and literally and it is really tough to decide what mast to nail your flag to when there will be hydrogen fuel cells and other tech sneaking in. This will leave the existing battery vehicles and technology looking like screw-on cassettes or laserdisc video.

These vehicles are not 'old' either

https://insideevs.com/news/453771/recor ... -pack-fix/

https://cleantechnica.com/2020/12/05/my ... 66k-miles/

 

[greencat]

My guess is as with electric bikes, laptops and mobile phones already - a secondary market offering to refurbish/replace batteries for electric cars and vans will emerge. I'm already occasionally seeing tesla car batteries on eBay. I've also seen reports where it seems the battery life of some early electric nissans is much longer than expected ie holding a decent charge even after a couple of hundred thousand miles.

I'm not sure even the industry knows when the tipping point will be. 400 miles/charge is probably likely within five years given some vehicles are already at the 300+ miles/charge point. Also the supercharging network will improve allowing you to charge to 80% or so within 20 minutes (ie a pitstop at motorway services). A 20 min rest and cup of coffee every 3-5 hours of driving doesn't sound so bad does it? But we aren't there yet.

Prices will get cheaper as it scales too. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see pricing parity on the van front within five years.

 

[rwm1962]

Tesla are already talking about 1 million mile life batteries.

 

[legrandefromage]

A quick scoot around the internet for you tax dodgers saw this oddball crop up

https://www.levc.com/vn5-electric-lcv-van/

Mercedes Vito scrapes a poultry 93 mile range and that will drop drastically in cold weather,

Peugeot/ Citroen/ Vauxhall (they are the same vehicle) offers 143 to 205 depending on the battery package

The older Nissan eNV200 is around 100 miles

LDV offers something with over 100 miles

VW will be hilariously expensive (£42,000 ex VAT!) and despite their best efforts to hide dieselgate people have long memories and wont soon forget the oil leak sagas of the 2010's

None of the current offerings can really claim to be 'the one' in the current world of driving a van 8 hours a day.

And the trouble with being an early adopter is that you will pay through the nose for tech, no matter how much you initially spend. Tesla is 10 years old and everybody else is playing catch up.

Another And, in order to break even with these things you're gonna have to keep them at least 5 years or 50,000 miles at current estimates

Plus, servicing is actually more expensive at the moment, garages are charging more because its electric and needs 'specialists' despite having far fewer moving parts.

I do about 35,000 miles a year in a small van working in the vehicle industry and EV's have a long long way to go to match a diesel

But! If there is a sea change in how society acts and behaves, i.e, not having to commute 100 miles a day, by working from home and taking jobs nearer to home, better infrastructure etc etc, things will move very very quickly.

 

[legrandefromage]

When to make the change?

After Amazon et al start buying eVans in bulk - that will push the range up and prices down

 

[jonnyboy666]

Re:

having watched the links provided by LGF they do sort of confirm my worries, i don't like the idea of electric batteries being dumped, and being expensive to replace, it would seem that if you go electric you need to buy new and sell before the batteries lose efficiency which makes them and expensive product to buy and then keep buying.

i do agree though that a refurb market is likely to appear as greencat says, that just sort of makes sense.

i would however point our that the links from LGF were about Nissan cars and i would argue that the issues with those cars might be examples of lack of knowledge in relatively early models, for example if you take a normal car that exists as a diesel or petrol and use the guts of it to make an electric car my logic is that that chassis might not be suitable, excess weight (of batteries) for example in a different area which brings stresses to that area, hence the model in that example breaking axles, as time goes on i would imagine these things would be addressed, well you'd hope anyway.

i also wonder about some of the other options, Hydrogen for example, i remember James May on Topgear maybe 10 or 12 years ago testing a Hydrogen car, and his last line being "it's the car of tomorrow because it's no different from the car of today" meaning you stop to fill it with fuel, which takes minutes, and you drive it for if memory serves 400 or so miles, so essentially it was the same as a traditional car.

electric certainly isn't there in terms of range but also potentially in terms of recycle-ability of the batteries etc.

it's defo a tough subject to work out.

 

[mk one]

Its alright saying they are making batteries that last longer, but isnt that just passing the problems onto future generations?

 

[legrandefromage]

i would however point our that the links from LGF were about Nissan cars and i would argue that the issues with those cars might be examples of lack of knowledge in relatively early models,

The Nissan Leaf was purpose built and electric vehicles predate combustion engines!

As for issues:

Just look up Tesla for complaints

https://www.electrive.com/2020/12/07/te ... -the-cold/

and crashes are fun

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/317 ... earby-home

But!

Reviving old batteries

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-s ... k-revival/