Wow, we’ve been out there for a year now and our shared car project cannot be stopped anymore!
What did we accomplish and what does that mean? Here’s a brief summary:
- we drove 17,300 km, 15,850 km with the shared car and 1,450 km with the backup car; we budgeted 20,000 km
- we saved €2,000.- in total
Conclusions: car sharing makes you more economical in car use than you can estimate and the cost per km were better than expected, despite the fact that we have driven less than 20,000 km we saved more than the expected €1,500.-
Then the key question: What kind of electric car makes sense given our car use? Here you can look at the length of the car rides made and the total mileage travelled per day per car. You can then compare this with battery capacities that are for sale. Hereby the data of the past year for the shared car (the backup car is excluded here):
- on 284 car rides there are 257 shorter than 150 km, a total of 9,
122 km;
90% of the rides, or 58% of the annual mileage can be done with a more limited battery - the remaining 27 rides longer than 150 km are a total of 6,718
km;
10% of the rides are still 42% of the annual mileage, this requires the ability of fast charging (exit old Renault Zoe) - 10 rides were longer than 225 km, a total of 3,274 kilometers;
for a small part, 3.5% of the rides or 21% of the annual mileage you need fast charging combined with an at least 30 kWh battery (Nissan Leaf 2016 for example) - On 5 days, the total of rides were above 200 km, for an annual total of 1,449 km;
on 3.9% of the rides or 9% of the annual mileage, several participants on 1 day are “bothering each other”. On 2 of these 5 days the last ride, given its length, already needed fast charging. So 3 problematic days remain.
Conclusions:
- our car use of the last year fits perfectly with a second-hand electric car. The discussion will be on batteries with a capacity of around 30 kWh
- fast charging should be possible: 10 to 20% of the mileage would have been made after fast charging so the car’s battery and its electrical system should be able to handle that
- as long as the backupcar is not yet electric, it can also be reserved for the longer rides. This settles range anxiety, no room for that. And our future electric cars will be more modern and have a wider range.
A year ago we hoped that after 1 year we would have a good basis for an electric car, to have money saved for placing a charging station and to have a nice, cosy car sharing group.
Well, that all worked fine. So, champagne!