323 replies to this topic

[PoolGuy]

 

People themselves are probably the most polluting thing on the planet,that is before all the pollution they directly or indirectly cause.Food for thought?Steve..

If you think i' m going to top myself to save the planet your very much mistaken !!!

 

Allan

 

‘Probably’ but maybe not.

[Shooter63]

Be honest now people, who has a little smirk to themselves when you pull into a petrol station and see a line of EV's on the chargers with the passengers looking aimlessly out the windscreen.

Shooter

[IronmanG]

Just about to get an EV in the next month. We went test driving at the weekend. It works for us as I do 20 miles a day for work and can charge from home at 8p a kWh. Works out about 60p a day.

I stand by what I said months ago at the start of this thread. It works for some but not the millions who live in flats and can only charge publically

[E23TFD]

Be honest now people, who has a little smirk to themselves when you pull into a petrol station and see a line of EV's on the chargers with the passengers looking aimlessly out the windscreen.

Shooter

Probably looking at those at the petrol station thinking, how often do they have to do that. 99% of the time mine fills while I’m asleep.

Think of it as going to the Natural History museum and looking at early man using dinosaurs as well.

For context done 13k miles in mine in 11 months, used for work. Have charged twice while enroute, plugged in at destinations including customers which was free. Never used to get free petrol when visiting. I also have a small battery at 58kWh.

Have done Shropshire to Sheffield and back a number of times without topping up. Shropshire to Hemel Hemp and needed to add between 10 to 20% for round trip in the day.

Leicester, Liverpool, Preston, Leeds, Bristol all there and back using overnight charge. Oh and no planning and wetting my pants thinking I will end up dieing on the side of the road.

Over this year have avoided paying £900+ in petrol for my private use.

Edited by E23TFD, 31 December 2024 - 08:31 PM.

[stuart bowes]

Just to clarify though man and dinosaur was about 60 million years apart they didn't ride them lol that was just in the flintstones

If you get the car free from work then it's a no brainer obviously but if you had to buy it or rent it... well in that case I've saved like 30 grand by having an older car, it would take decades of use to make up that huge gap

In principle I'm all for 'the masses' having non fossil fuel cars for daily use providing we can still enjoy ICE as a hobby if we want, it's just that they're currently way too expensive

For me doing short journeys 99% of the time it would be fine so if anyone is giving one away I'll have one

But I won't be buying one

Edited by stuart bowes, 31 December 2024 - 08:40 PM.

[E23TFD]

Absolutely. For me it was a no brainer, have always had performance oriented cars whether petrol or diesel derived so this was a jump.

EV on the used market are firming and some instances increasing as m more people sample and talk to others who have them.

However if you’ve never had a new or even a car less than 10years old then it’s going to be sometime before jumping in.

Our Octy VRS has done less than 1k miles in 13months as generally the EV gets taken and preferred. Same 0-60, quieter, cheaper and with no gearbox to pick no waiting for it to work out what’s going on.

For none car people who are not interested the more we get switched the better so we have more for the fun and hobby cars. That said if I could convert my Mini to EV then I would as it would make an easier and more reliable car to take out.

[PoolGuy]

How many people are driving/buying EV's because they (wrongly in most cases) think it's better for the environment compared to those who are driving/buying them because it's more tax efficient?

[MatthewsDad]

Fuel consumption on my diesel car drops by about 40% when I tow a trailer (trailer's not especially big or heavy). How is EV range affected by towing trailers, caravans etc? Are the charging points that are being installed now designed to allow drive through rather than drive in/ reverse out? Is it be feasible with existing infrastructure to recharge a tow car and exit the charging area without reversing into oncoming / queuing traffic? Just curious.

[Cooperman]

I often tow a 10 metre long glider trailer. The thought of trying to charge an electric car with that trailer behind it is frightening. The range would be very short as well between charges. I'll stick with my 1997 Land-Rover Discovery for towing. The range would be even worse with my Mini on my big flat-bed trailer.

[MatthewsDad]

Good points. I'm just thinking ahead only a decade or so to when entire industries such as leisure and motorsport - that are entirely dependent on towing stuff around the country and abroad - will need to start retiring their ICEs and will have no option but to buy an EV tow vehicle. (One upside might be the demise of the caravan on the A55 and the A30.)

Edited by MatthewsDad, 01 January 2025 - 11:30 AM.

[mab01uk]

Some interesting comments below from an article in the Telegraph by an EV driver who is very happy with switching to an EV...but on what may be a problem for many potential EV owners....

Britain’s driveway divide is killing the case for electric cars.
"Unlike almost half of the country who live in terraced housing or flats, my dwelling has a dedicated parking spot where I have been able to install a wall-mounted charger. In a petrol-powered world, the driveway divide did not matter. Whatever one’s domestic circumstances, we all had to queue up at the forecourt and pump fuel into our vehicle every few hundred miles. In the electric age, meanwhile, driveway ownership separates motorists into a nation of haves and have-nots.
There are obvious convenience benefits to being able to charge up domestically. Leaving the house with the equivalent of a full tank every day and never having to visit a petrol station easily outweighs the moderate inconvenience of charging on the occasional longer journeys.
But the main advantage of charging from one’s own house is financial. On today’s smart overnight tariff, charging a battery from empty to full costs less than a fiver. In comparison, filling up an average family petrol car costs £75, according to the RAC Foundation. A full tank will go further than a charged battery, but the difference is still huge on a per-mile basis: around £2 to drive 100 miles in the EV, compared to £14 for petrol.
Powering up at an ultra-rapid station costs the equivalent of £28 for 100 miles – almost double that of a petrol car – and this has risen significantly in the last two years. Slower chargers, such as those placed in lampposts by councils, are slightly cheaper, but not by enough to make EVs financially viable. Supermarkets and other shops that once offered free charging as a way to get people in the door have stopped doing so.
When electric cars are both more expensive to buy and more expensive to run, owning them makes little sense. No wonder, then, that the EV-owning class are disproportionately those with dedicated parking – 93% of people who have given up their petrol-powered vehicle have a home charger.
When those without a driveway – estimated at up to 40% of the population – have no financial incentive to own an electric car, it should not be a surprise that ownership is so far behind official targets. Carmakers are going to dramatically undershoot this year’s net zero targets of 22pc of all sales, and they rise to 28pc next year.
Electric cars account for less than a fifth of sales today, but the cost of not being able to charge up at home – dubbed the pavement tax – is going to become more stark as these mandates push more people into owning EVs, ahead of the eventual elimination of petrol vehicle sales. The price of electric cars themselves may be falling, but the cost of powering them is not.
If Labour sticks to its pledge to bring the petrol car ban forward to 2030, expect this issue to become yet more contentious. Because those in denser housing without driveways are typically poorer, electric car mandates risk being branded a regressive policy, benefiting the wealthy at the expense of the less well-off.
One way or another, the pavement tax will need addressing before the majority of the population is forced on to EVs. If not, electric car mandates will become even more unpopular than they are now."
https://www.telegrap...-electric-cars/

 

[Aly-g]

Just about to get an EV in the next month. We went test driving at the weekend. It works for us as I do 20 miles a day for work and can charge from home at 8p a kWh. Works out about 60p a day.

I stand by what I said months ago at the start of this thread. It works for some but not the millions who live in flats and can only charge publically

Or for people who have to drive more than 50 miles to their destination , sorry but EVs are just not the future in my opinion, they are to expensive and actually cause more pollution to the planet than ICE cars in the long term,.

[Cooperman]

What is interesting is that the legislation relating to 'electric vehicles only' after 2030 talks about it not being legal to sell a new non-electric car in the UK. It doesn't mention the importation of new or nearly new cars from countries which do not have that ban. Not every country will have that ban and some cars will conform to UK C & U regulations, or can be easily made to comply. The USA will probably never have that ban.

Just a thought.

[DomCr250]

What is interesting is that the legislation relating to 'electric vehicles only' after 2030 talks about it not being legal to sell a new non-electric car in the UK. It doesn't mention the importation of new or nearly new cars from countries which do not have that ban. Not every country will have that ban and some cars will conform to UK C & U regulations, or can be easily made to comply. The USA will probably never have that ban.

Just a thought.

Could not agree more, there is a chemical plant near Liverpool that was still producing Tetraethyllead (the 'lead' in petrol) for the African markets up until a couple of years ago. How long ago was lead banned in most markets?  There will always be opportunities for people who think outside the box.

[r.tec]

Concerning leaded petrol I was astonished that in our country while testing my race Mini on a light aircraft field that there was a filling station that only sold leaded fuel for the piston-engined aeroplanes. When I asked the operator about this I was told that for aircrafts there is an exception of the law to sell only non-leaded fuel. And he added that sometimes oldtimers come by to to fill up their tanks with leaded petrol. Wonder if in your country this exception is also in force.