Vectrix scooter revisited

Canary Wharf Motor Expo was on again this week, and I bumped into the people from Vectrix once again. This company makes an electric scooter called the Maxi Scooter which I rode a couple of years ago and was very impressed with (see my first blog on the subject).
A year on, the scooter hasn’t changed significantly, but the price tag certainly has. Last year they were retailing at over £7,000; now the price is £5,600 OTR. With petrol 15% higher in price and rising I needed to know if it would cope with my commute; so I asked to borrow it for the evening and ride home. They agreed; so on Thursday 2008-06-12 I was to pick up a fully charged scooter.
The economics, surprisingly, still don’t entirely add up, it has to be said. There is no doubt that now the Vectrix would save me money on my commute. If I was to sell my Pan European and go electric only then it would save a significant amount of money. However, that’s not practical – for example I’m riding the National Road Rally in a couple of weeks and that requires 870 km without stopping long enough for a recharge. Limiting the range to 110 km (at best) would not work. So the comparison has to compare the full cost of the Vectrix with the additional cost of riding the Honda to work.
First shock is the lifespan of the Vectrix battery. They are predicting it to go 10 years, or 80,000 km, or 1700 charging cycles. Given that I ride 25,000 km per year, that battery would last little more than 3 years. So the economics have to work on the bike being scrapped after 3 years (at least I don’t have to factor re-sale value into the equation). That means £146 per month in depreciation. Then the cost of borrow that extra money over three years works out at another £25 per month (that’s an optimistic number too). However, that depreciation might be overstated as the battery is supposed to be replaceable at a fraction of the cost of a new bike, so it might be possible to reduce that figure. Again, the cost of tyres is a deciding factor here – it’s by far the highest item on the running costs. I’m assuming maintenance can be mostly done by me, and allowed £50 per year, but these small wheels are going to go through around 3 rear tyres and probably one or more fronts per year. Apparently it’s quite heavy on rear brake pads too. That comes to another £40 per month, fitted. With another assumption on additional insurance costs, that brings the total monthly running to around £60. Adding up the running and financing costs, I reckon the scooter would cost £232 per month if it was used purely for commuting.
Comparing this to the cost of the Pan European, as I said, I have to remove costs that would be incurred if it sat in the garage all year. This includes tax, insurance most of the depreciation and one service per year. Pans keep their value quite well, but they also cover very high distances before they are fit for scrap. So I’ve allowed £40 per month for depreciation, and nothing for the cost of finance. The main costs are servicing, tyres and petrol, which come to around £200 per month. Two thirds of this is petrol, so it’s quite sensitive to rising petrol costs. If I assume a petrol cost of £2/litre then the number rises by £100 per month.

So the bottom line is:

• Vectrix cost per month £232
• Pan Euro cost per month £240
• Total saving per month - £8.

Hardly a convincing case, but I suppose if I could reduce that depreciation number it might make sense.

So I turned up at the Vectrix display on Thursday with my lid and leathers expecting to be given a key. A different salesman was on duty this time, and she was a little less optimistic than the chap I saw on Wednesday. She said they’d looked up my address and thought I’d struggle with the range. In fact they were pretty sure that I wouldn’t make the 55 km home if I went on the motorway. That range 110 km is only available if you use urban roads and keep the speed down to 50 km/h or below for most of your journey. Unfortunately that would leave me with at least a 90 minute commute – something I could have lived with for one evening, but not as a daily grind. They spoke about the new generation of battery that would be out in a year or two that might extend the range; and about the concept sportsbike they’ve got in pre-production already – that does 200 km/h with the same range as the scooter. But currently they have nothing to offer that would do my 55 km commute on the motorways and fast A-roads to Canary Wharf. Luckily the Pan European is still in fine fettle and should last at least another 100,000 km (4 years commuting) before I have to replace it. Perhaps the electric will have become practical by then. Who knows where the price of petrol, or indeed electricity will be by then.

Efergy Smart Meter

In a bid to do everything to reduce expenditure, I have focussed on Electricity consumption. When I last checked the cheapest supplier for my energy, I found that our household uses the “average” amount of gas for a UK household, but 1.5 times the “average” amount of electricity. I recently heard of a device called Electrisave, which is designed to get your electricity meter out of the cupboard and put it in front of your face. The objective is to allow you to monitor continually the total consumption of power by the house, and take action when it seems too high. In researching the Electrisave, I came across a superior product called the Efergy Smart Meter. This device does the same as the Electrisave, but also has a memory so that you can review historical consumption without needing to note down meter readings. The Efergy Smart Meter is also about GBP 25.00 cheaper than Electrisave. The only down-side is that the designers have not taken so much care over looks, and I would say that the Electrisave is a more elegant gadget compared with the Efergy’s functional feel – something that may be important if you want to keep it on a coffee table in a pristine living room; but something which matters not one jot to me.
The Smart Meter works by monitoring the current flowing through the wires leaving your electricity meter (which it does by induction, so there’s no wiring to do, just a clip that fits round the meter wire), and transmitting a radio signal from the meter cupboard to the hand-held metering unit. This means that the device is completely wireless and can be taken from room to room to keep an eye on what happens when electrical equipment is turned on. It runs on AAA batteries, 2 in the transmitter, and 2 in the receiver. The transmitter batteries last only about a month, so rechargables might be a good option.
So what have I learned about my energy consumption? If you’re going to make savings you need to learn what’s going on and put some changes into practice. The unit costs GBP 45.00, and as electricity costs GBP 0.07/kWh, you have to save about 650 kWh before the unit has paid for itself. That might not seem much – savings of 10% are quoted by salesmen – but it does require very disciplined application. It’s no good turning off stuff today and then ignoring it for the rest of the year. Smart Meter is a way of life. You have to watch it all the time. However, it does teach you some basics about electricity consumption. For example, I found that the house consumes a base load of about 200 W. That is, when I turn off everything, I still see (by torchlight) a reading of 200 W, which must be accounted for by standby, digital clocks, wireless access point etc. That might not seem a lot – a mere GBP0.336 per day – but this is a constant load which adds up to over GBP120 on my annual bill. (Or course the central heating pump and the fridge are intermittent loads, and it’s hard to know if they are included in this figure or not.) Another lesson is that lighting actually uses up a lot more energy than you’d expect. The humble 40 W light bulb seems fairly cheap to run (less than 1 kWh per day). But we have these in triple light fittings, so that’s 120 W for each fitting. Then consider that we have four of these on the ground floor and five on the first floor – that adds up to more than 1 kW just in lighting if you put on all of these on together.
To sum up: the Smart Meter is an educational tool which will open your eyes to the way you use energy. However, you need to be obsessive if you really want to make it into an investment and expect to save any money by purchasing it.