EV Life In Ireland: Six Surprises after Fifty Thousand Kilometres

By Blake Boland

I can trace the genesis of my decision to go electric to early 2015. A family member had finished up a lease on a 3-Series BMW, and was off to the dealership to collect their next car. The gates opened, and a Lexus IS300h F Sport rolled into our driveway in near silence. I was lucky enough to take the Lexus for a few weeks over the following years, clocking up three of four thousand kilometres in the process. The car amazed me at first. Going downhill, the engine shut off and the battery recuperated some energy. Stuck in bumper to bumper traffic, the electric motor ticked the car along in silence. Over time, however, frustrations arose. At the sight of any hill, the electric motor needed to call on its petrol-fuelled bigger brother to lug it up. Going down a hill? Hardly any energy recuperated. Going a bit faster than city speeds? No, big brother again please. More than a kilometre or so in electric mode? Nope, battery ran out.

It got me thinking though, why not increase the size of the battery? Why not make the electric motor stronger? Could you not get the car to charge more effectively when going downhill? Even better, could you get the car to charge its own battery instead of friction braking? It was at that point I thought I might have invented a new type of car. No, it wasn’t an electric car though. I knew about those. I had seen Top Gear, and the silly electric cars that run out of battery halfway to the supermarket.

At the time, my fiancée and I shared her Toyota IQ. It was a dream to park and was nippy enough, despite its engine being smaller than 1-litre. It was fractionally bigger that a Smart car; you ran it as a four-seater, or you had a boot. But life changes, it evolves, and eternally proves the old adage that nothing ever stays the same. We needed a bigger car.

I was at friend’s house catching up. We got chatting about cars when I mentioned that we were going to be changing ours. He pointed at his own; a 2015 Nissan Leaf SVE. ‘Would you think about going electric?’ he asked me. I thought of the Top Gear episode and imagined myself running out of battery on the hard shoulder of the M1. I politely responded that I hadn’t considered electric. We left it at that, but a few days later I was back. The topic of cars came up again. The idea of me going electric came up again. He asked me had I ever driven one. I said not really, but I’d driven the Lexus hybrid. He gave a dismissive chuckle, closed his front door shut, put the keys to his LEAF in my hand and told me that we were driving around the block.

In the year leading up to that, I had driven a Superb, an Insignia, a 3 Series, a CLK Mercedes, a Lexus IS300h F-Sport and a few others. Nothing compared to the driving sensation of full electric. We drove around the block whilst he explained the nuances. I was blown away. A week later, I had a deposit down on a 2016 Nissan LEAF 30kWh. It’s worth bearing in mind, as you read this piece, that I own what is now one of the oldest, slowest, most basic and low-range EV models on the road.

I have been driving electric for just over two years; 28 months to be exact. In that time, I’ve covered 53,000km. The car has run me and my family around, and it has been across the country.  Up until Covid-19 descended upon us, I was averaging about 2,000km each month.

I had done a good bit of research prior to buying the car. I was expecting certain limitations, and I was expecting certain comforts. These are not necessarily the best things about EV ownership, the most interesting or even the most surprising. Another thing to note is that these are my personal experiences. It is unlikely that every other EV driver has an identical experience. Some will not find driving electric as positive, although surveys indicate that most would never go back. Those that are lucky enough to drive the likes of a Tesla or an Audi e-tron may well be even more positive, and wonder how I can slum it in a Nissan LEAF with a 30kWh battery.

Savings

The car I used previously was a Toyota IQ. It was incredibly efficient due to its small engine and weight. I once got 83mpg out of a tank of petrol. 53,000km of driving in that car would have cost me in the region of €4,500 in fuel alone. My lifestyle over the last couple of years has been conducive to picking up a lot of free public charging; free DC Fast Charger at my local Lidl, a 3-pin socket in the multi-storey car park of where I work. At one stage, I went through nearly a month without charging at home. As a result, I’ve spent about €400 on home electricity. If I had a night-time rate, that would have been €250 or less.

When we switched our insurance after buying the LEAF, our policy reduced by nearly €50, and the following year on renewal it went down again. We now pay just under €450 for fully comprehensive. Tax also went down. EVs pay only €120 year.

Another thing that surprised me was the amount of maintenance. I was expecting to spend a few hundred euro; some brake pads, maybe some filter changes. Absolutely none of this transpired. Two new front tyres comprise the grand total of what I have spent on my car that now has a total of 73,00km on the odometer.

An interesting part that is not often discussed in the cost of a car is its depreciation. Having spent €19,200 on the car as a used import, I would be confident of getting upwards of €16,000 if sold now.

In summary, I have spent €1,700 to cover 53,000km over 28 months. This includes tax, fuel and insurance. I knew it would be cheap to run, but not nearly as cheap as that.

Comfort

A term that has proliferated over the previous decade is Range Anxiety, and its use is employed almost exclusively in terms of electric cars. As an experienced EV driver, I now have little time for the term. But it wasn’t always like that. I remember the second day I had the car, and realised the battery was down to less than 20%. I remembered seeing a charge point at the local train station so headed there on my way home from shopping. I spent fifteen minutes faffing about with cables, plugging in and unplugging without realising that the charger was offline. In the end, I rang my friend that had given me the test drive, and it was all sorted within a few seconds.

I laugh now at my ignorance at the time, and compare it to how comfortably an EV has slotted into my life. After a couple of weeks getting used to the car, I began to experience less ‘Range Anxiety’ than when I had a petrol car. I don’t have to queue at a petrol station at 8am on Monday morning because I forgot to fuel over the weekend. I no longer look at a fuel gauge, roughly the size of a €2 coin, and wonder how much petrol is left in the tank.

Another thing that struck me is how the car delivers its power, and how that differs from a typical combustion engine. I have one of the slowest EVs on the road, but it still delivers the power as effectively as many 2-litre cars. In an EV, you get all the power available all of the time. You just press the pedal and feel a silent, consistent surge of acceleration.

Regeneratiave Braking

I had no idea what this was before I drove an electric car, and even after a quick test drive only understood a little bit. Going down a hill or coming up to a traffic light, you just ease off the accelerator. In effect, the electric motor turns into reverse and slows the car whilst charging the battery. It becomes very intuitive, and you can set the strength of the regenerative braking to suit your style. The amount returned in everyday driving is mostly unnoticeable, but its cumulative effect over time is substantial.

One example that stands out is when we went for a road trip from just outside Drogheda to Glendalough in Wicklow. My car has a relatively small battery, and it became obvious as we left Glendalough and drove home through the Sally Gap that I’d have to charge at some stage. But then something happened. Regenerative Braking happened. From just outside Glencree down into Rathfarnham, the elevation drop is about 500m of altitude. Not once did I press the brake pedal between those points. The car slowed itself and charged the battery at the same time. As a result, by the time we arrived into Rathfarnham, I had 7% more battery in the car. I was nearly at Dublin Airport by the time the battery went back down to the level that it was in the Wicklow Mountains.

Charging the Car

Being able to charge was probably my biggest worry in advance of purchasing the car. I had spoken to a few EV drivers and done a bit of research. But there is no substitute for personal experience. The anxiety attached to many forthcoming events in life is very often worse than the experience itself.

After a few weeks, the experience of charging my car became more pleasant and time-efficient than it ever was with a petrol car. The notion of ‘Range Anxiety’ now seems more and more an exaggerated term deployed by an establishment that fears the proliferation of e-mobility.

It now takes me less than ten seconds to fully charge my car. I pull up in my driveway and spend four of five seconds plugging it in. It takes me another four or five seconds to unplug it the next morning. I have gone through a paradigmatic shift. How long my car takes to charge is inconsequential when I’m sleeping in bed at night. The crucial point is that I only spend a few seconds, as opposed to the ten minutes I used to spend detouring, refilling and paying in a petrol car.

Another facet that has arisen is how little I need to use public charging. Since ESB introduced fees for their DC Rapid Chargers late last year, I have used them only three times. The first was to test the new system out. The other two times were on long trips, and we were stopping for lunch or a toilet break anyway. The fact that I was driving electric actually saved me time over a combustion car because I didn’t have to stand there holding a petrol pump for a few minutes.

Over time, we learn to take advantage of the systems that we work within. The commuter knows that it is faster to alight from the last carriage of the DART because it’s by the exit. You know to avoid certain roads at certain times because of schools. You know to buy your coffee at a certain café because the staff are quicker. I have found the same experience with charging my car in public. I almost never need to use these points, but it’s convenient for me or it gives me free fuel. I know I can use the outdoor 3-pin socket at my parents’ house to charge. I know that I get a free Rapid Charge when I do my shopping at a certain Lidl. I found a 3-pin socket in the car park where I work that I can use. The idea, at this stage, of detouring to a garage weekly to stand pumping petrol then queue to hand over €60 seems very unpleasant to me.

Battery Degradation

Although set straight by reliable sources before buying the Nissan LEAF, I still harboured a fear that the battery would degrade rapidly, or even die. Even optimistically, I couldn’t have envisaged how well the car would hold up. It struck me, as the car’s odometer hit 70,000km, that it had never had a single bit of work done to it. Not a lightbulb or brake pad needed to be replaced. I wondered had the battery degraded. It must have, to some extent. But whatever the difference is, it is too small for me to even notice. I recently drove 241km on a single charge before plugging it in, which is the most I have ever done. I wonder am I lucky with the car I have, or are EVs just that resilient and efficient.

There is a basic app that can run a State of Health test called LEAF Spy. I just haven’t taken the time to download and run it. I know by the distance I get out of a charge that the battery still has at least 95% of its original capacity.

The Pervasive Level of Misinformation, Lies and FUD

It surprises me daily to see how the public is being fed what is known as Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) by the aggregate influence of interests that want to see e-mobility fail.

Danny Healy Rae was lamenting the promotion of EVs at a Joint Oireachtas Committee, stating that “one splash of water and they’re finished, and you’ll be walking then.” Interesting comment considering that the Nissan LEAF has a wading depth in water double that of a Nissan Qashqai.

An RTE Prime Time segment from last year featured a race between presenters Miriam O’Callaghan in an EV and David McCullagh in a combustion engine car from Dublin to Valentia island in South West Kerry. An interesting idea, but the execution was misleading at best. The producers staged the race as if Miriam forgot to charge the car before leaving. They chose an EV that has a tiny battery and charges at less than half the speed of pretty much every other EV on the road. Miriam, from Kerry herself and in the company of some production crew, gets lost on the way to Kerry and ends up crossing the Shannon. But I suppose the alternative wouldn’t make good TV; David gets into a high-spec petrol Nissan Qashqai and heads to Valentia for the weekend. Miriam steps into a Kia e-Niro with a full charge and drives straight to their destination without stopping. Miriam spends fifteen seconds plugging into a 3-pin socket at destination. Miriam drives straight home without stopping once. Miriam notes that David stopped on the way home to refuel and pats her pocket containing €50 fuel savings.

The list of unfounded concerns I still hear about EVs is astounding. Do the batteries die after three years and get thrown into landfill? No, they’ll last many years longer in the car, then they’ll get used for commercial energy storage for a few more years, then they will get reconditioned or recycled. Even a pessimistic outlook for my Nissan LEAF will be to drive it more than 150,000km with a SOH around 90%.

Summary

As I look to the future in these strange times, the destiny of e-mobility seems ever more certain, ever greener, ever more efficient and ultimately cheaper. Buying my Nissan LEAF has been one of the best decisions I have made. It has saved me a lot of money, is more comfortable to drive, and takes away many of the stresses of traditional motoring.

Author

Blake Boland is the founder of EV Life Ireland and a Senior Bookseller at Waterstones. He writes freelance on Electric Vehicles and the transition to e-mobility. Connect with Blake on Twitter & Instagram @EVLifeIreland, on LinkedIn, or by email: evlifeireland@gmail.com

More about Irish Tech News and Business Showcase here

FYI the ROI for you is => Irish Tech News now gets over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 50,000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview, or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles. Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you and hopefully we can share your story too and reach our global audience.

Irish Tech News

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie or on Twitter: @SimonCocking