I don’t know what VW diesel you drive, but it must be very old or have a big engine to be that thirsty… Here is a like-for-like comparison, current Volkswagen models
The 9k price gap shrinks a bit if you take into account that the entry ID.3 has some stuff as standard that are optional extras for the Golf, but it still costs 6k less to buy the Golf once you add it. The ID.3 It is a bit more powerful, though.
So energy cost for the EV if twice as much as for the Diesel if you charge at that outrageus price.
Breakeven: £0.41 per kWh
Breakeven if you want the 6k extra cost back within three years and drive 10,000km per year: around £0.20 per kWh
Current household tariffs are around 0.30 per kWh, and 0.10 per kWh for night tariffs.
So as Peter (and others) keep saying – this looks massively different depending on whether you can charge mostly at home, or have to use expensive charge points.
I pay 0.095 at night and 0.315 during daytime, and almost all my charging is at the night tariff, so I pay less than 2.5p per km; so I can drive a large, powerful car (Tesla Model S) for less than half the energy cost of a low-end Golf Diesel.
Side note – most people I know who drive electric or are considering it don’t do it to save money.
£0.70 – £0.90 per Kw/h is far to expensive IMO to get the masses to switch to EVs.
Is that the French airfield charging rate?
I would think France is super cheap, being mostly State run and nuclear.
Here in the UK it has varied a lot lately but right now is about 30p/kWh, both retail and trade. So those people on the IOW are making a LOT of money on it.
And it cannot be cheaper than avgas; it is probably roughly 2x the cost per hour / per mile.
According to this electric car public charging points are in the same ballpark at 70p+ per kWh.
I don’t know what VW diesel you drive, but it must be very old or have a big engine to be that thirsty
2012 diesel Scirocco – basically a Golf. The one with the bigger turbo 
But this is not the electric car thread which is here and I spend a lot of time moving posts to it I am using this as a comparison, to show that there is a lot of urine extraction. being done on GA customers (even more than car drivers).
Speaking to people flying them they are very good for circuits and training flights to airfields close by and back.
Indeed; that was always obvious. Until battery tech improves another factor of 5x or so, with corresponding upstream improvements (like being able to stuff 5x the energy into these currently nonexistent batteries in the same time it takes to stuff it into the existing batteries) this is just a gimmick. Even for the QXC (the PPL cross country flight) you need to fly a Cessna or some such, so if you started your PPL in an electric one, you now need to chuck a load of money into conversion training. The gain is basically zero, both you to and the school.
Visit your local airport which, if reasonably busy, will obviously not tolerate 1hr+ charging times.
Gallois wrote:£0.70 – £0.90 per Kw/h is far to expensive IMO to get the masses to switch to EVs.
Peter wrote:- Is that the French airfield charging rate?
I would think France is super cheap, being mostly State run and nuclear.
Actually I was commenting on your post with the photo on the IOW
French airport charging in terms of te Velis is not a commercial thing AFAIK. I believe the club at Royan Medis which operates an electric Velis has had a charger installed in its hangar and I presume they are paying the standard rate of just less than €0,20 per KWh. Although there may also be some government subventions to be had.
@Cobalt I agree that at present most people are not buying EVs just based on cost per kilometer, however, as with anything else there is a price above which customers will turn away.
That figure, however much people want to do their bit to save the planet will be different for different people. But for EVs to keep gaining market share will need the masses to buy them.
And if they can’t afford to run them, they will not buy them. And in the end Governments will have to abandon their green credentials.
French airport charging in terms of te Velis is not a commercial thing AFAIK. I believe the club at Royan Medis which operates an electric Velis has had a charger installed in its hangar and I presume they are paying the standard rate of just less than €0,20 per KWh.
That’s interesting; it suggests nobody will “go anywhere” in France. Even – what I’ve been told by French pilots is the typical aeroclub mission profile: a 30 min flight to the club next door – is completely impossible with any current electric plane.
I don’t understand that comment. AiUI the Pipistrel Velis being tried out in French clubs is an experiment facilitated by the FFA, it has nothing to do ith what French pilots do or do not do normally.
I would imagine that just like in many other countries there are pilots who travel distances and there are those who stay more locally.
Averaging it out across the 40,000 plus members of the FFA and dividing that into the just over 500,000 hours a year flown in club aircraft one could probably surmise that the average flight is local.
But then that would also be the case for the many members who enjoy aerobatics, they tend to fly locally.
However we also have a large, experimental, collection, kit built and plans built community. They too tend to stay within France, more to do with the language than bureaucracy.
But there are many who enjoy travelling to other countries.
The builders tend to fly more hours a year than your average club pilot and that goes double for the ULM scene where most of them are knocking up over 100hours a year. And I was surprised when speaking to these pilots to learn of the range of different countries they are flying to, despite the bureaucracy involved.
So I think you would be wrong to draw any conclusions from the use of electric aircraft here. Treat it for the moment as a fact finding experiment.
My point was that unless public charging points are provided, EVs will go nowhere in aviation.
I am cofused. Are we talking electric cars or electric aircraft.
For electric cars there are public charging points popping up all over France. And having chargers fitted to homes is also going at a pace.
For aircraft, I think it is too early to be installing public recharging points. There are not enough electric aircraft to make it viable or even necessary. If clubs were to decide to go the electric route, in the short term they would probably make their own provisions as the clubs operating the Velis are no doubt doing already.
I added “in aviation”.
Everything before was aviation (thread edited/moved yesterday).
“Own provisions” would mean arranging with the aeroclub next door (you won’t be able to fly much further, after all) to use their charger, but you will hardly have time to polish off the lunch in time to takes to recharge the one plane. Maybe two planes, if you have plenty of wine also 
No, this isn’t gonna work. It’s not a “90% solution” and it isn’t even a “10% solution”. It is almost completely useless.
Well isn’t that the point of experiments. ie test theories and to record facts and not opinions.
