Electric, Hybrid and Alternative fuelled vehicles - News and Discussion

[Reorte]

27 minutes ago, 30801 said:

 

Meh. You've got 20 plus hours a day to charge while you're not using the thing. You don't have to stand there like a lemon watching it like you do a petrol car.

 

I'm sure future people will find car ownership a hilarious idea.

Conversely there's a lot people do now that they never used to that I find hilarious (or would if I didn't find it so depressing) . So such statements just reinforce my prejudice that the future's people are likely to be a bad joke 🙂

 

In any case despite what some people keep saying I really don't see any sign of car ownership vanishing. Lessening slightly, perhaps, but certainly not vanishing.

[Pete the Elaner]

52 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Conversely there's a lot people do now that they never used to that I find hilarious (or would if I didn't find it so depressing) . So such statements just reinforce my prejudice that the future's people are likely to be a bad joke 🙂

 

 

It works the other way too. There are a lot of things we are better off without:

Spending an hour in a pub without stinking like an ashtray.

Walking down a street without getting a black face scarf from filtering out all the soot in the air you had been breathing in.

Fiddling with a manual choke when starting your car from cold.

Staying at home to watch a particular TV programme because there is no way to save it.

Having a weekly bath because showers are for the rich.

Moaning about the UK weather when you go on holiday because nobody goes abroad.

Eating your chips from last Sunday's newspaper.

Using the outside toilet because nobody has one inside the house.

 

 

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, Pete the Elaner said:

Using the outside toilet because nobody has one inside the house.

 

Past people would probably look at our en-suite and ask why there's a toilet in the wardrobe.

 

I wouldn't have a convincing answer for them.

[admiles]

19 hours ago, Fenman said:

Then why not have a look at how Norway is getting on? Completely different geography, culture and economy of course but, as Churchill said, “dim illumination is better than none at all”.

 

Maybe there are some pointers for us from a country where >80% of new car sales are pure EVs?

 

Incidentally, I was surprised to learn that the majority of people in England (sic) have off-road parking. That’s actually a bigger proportion than I was expecting. Elsewhere, some of the more progressive councils are experimenting with lamp-post chargers, up-and-down bollards on the pavement edge, etc. 

 

Or maybe my glass is half-full?

 

Paul

 

Off road parking though doesn't necessarily mean you could site a charger at that point. My house for example has a garage and a drive (just long enough for one car). The problem is because of the layout of the roads my garage/drive is round the corner in the next road with a house in between it and my house. The garage does have an electricity supply but this isn't man enough for an EV charger.  The cost to upgrade that supply? £12-£15000 making charging at home a total non-starter.  The other car in my household is parked on the road. There aren't any lamp posts nearby either. The whole road of 60 houses has three! 

 

This is why better range and the ability to charge in say 5 mins max is vital for those who can't charge at home overnight.

[Reorte]

3 hours ago, Pete the Elaner said:

 

It works the other way too. There are a lot of things we are better off without:

Spending an hour in a pub without stinking like an ashtray.

Walking down a street without getting a black face scarf from filtering out all the soot in the air you had been breathing in.

Fiddling with a manual choke when starting your car from cold.

Staying at home to watch a particular TV programme because there is no way to save it.

Having a weekly bath because showers are for the rich.

Moaning about the UK weather when you go on holiday because nobody goes abroad.

Eating your chips from last Sunday's newspaper.

Using the outside toilet because nobody has one inside the house.

Certainly some things we're better off without. Not that everything on that list would bother me, and sometimes (quite often in fact) I find coming up with "solutions" to such things rather absurd. Not that I'm implying that to all or any on your list, it's a generalisation; some I very much agree we're better off without. For example I'm quite glad to not be limited to a weekly bath, but the "hassle" of a manual choke (and I have driven cars with them) a triviality. A crank handle to start on the other hand, that sounds like a pain (and a chance of a broken wrist).

 

But in general I find that change has done a good job of getting rid of bad stuff but a great deal of what it's added I loathe, to the point where I'm just getting ever more depressed.

Edited May 24, 2022 by Reorte

[Fenman]

2 hours ago, admiles said:

...

This is why better range and the ability to charge in say 5 mins max is vital for those who can't charge at home overnight.

 

But those are -- for most of us, most of the time -- simply red herrings. The average UK annual mileage is under 8,000 miles. So half of us are driving less than that. That's just 150 miles a week or less.

 

Other than a few city cars (which are specifically designed for low range), pretty much every EV on sale today has a longer range than that. 

 

So for most of us, most of the time, we need to find a charger once or at most twice a week. 

 

The new standard from mainstream companies like Hyundai and Kia (so no, I'm not basing this assertion on high-end Porsches or £100,000 Teslas) which have ranges of ~300 miles is an 80% charge from a fast charger in less than 20 minutes. That's pretty extraordinary performance; and while, truth be told, you need optimal conditions for that, including the fastest chargers (then again, look at what was considered a "fast charger" ten years ago), my guess is within +/- five years pretty much every family EV will at least match that while the better ones will have improved on it.

 

I suspect that many people are simply mapping over their ICE car experience to EVs, looking at differences, and then demanding that battery technology should match the performance of dinosaur juice. They are utterly different technologies so it may be worth thinking about that a bit, rather than trying to dismiss an entire technological, social and political shift on the basis of lack of wiring to one person's garage, or problems that another might have today in accessing a charger from a block of flats. There will be real and signficant problems for the more marginal cases: that's to be expected. But it's not as if we don't have some time to sort them out. ICE cars will still be on sale for the next eight years (which I'd wager is actually longer than the likely lifespan of a not insignificant number of us -- incuding me -- here on RMweb), and hybrids for the next 13. 

 

Again, why not have a look at how Norway has already started tackling these problems? Is there nothing in their experience which gives you hope that we, too, could master them?

 

Paul

 

 

PS: I've just read an article that Polestar is aiming by 2026 to offer 100 miles charging in 5 minutes (the underlying technology to do that should be ready by 2024). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2022 by Fenman
Clarifying...

[Ron Ron Ron]

4 hours ago, 30801 said:

 

Past people would probably look at our en-suite and ask why there's a toilet in the wardrobe.

 

I wouldn't have a convincing answer for them.

It reminds me of when we moved into our house, 26 years ago and my old Dad wanted to know why we needed 4 toilets.

(family bathroom, 2 en-suites and a downstairs cloakroom).

When we extended the house a few years later, Mrs Ron wanted an extra bog put into the plans, located just inside the new back door.

I think they called them a “gardener’s toilet” or something similar and equally pretentious.

The idea being not to have to traipse through the house if coming in from the garden to “pay a visit”.

My Dad rolled his eyes at that one.

5 toilets ????

I scuppered that idea at birth.

Now we’re looking at the possibility of an additional loft conversion.

Back to the possibility of having 5 bogs (another en-suite). 

The makers of Domestos and Harpic, must love people like us.

 

Back in the day, my grandparents had to carry a torch to go to the outside privy, in freezing cold winters.

 

 

.

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, Fenman said:

Again, why not have a look at how Norway has already started tackling these problems? Is there nothing in their experience which gives you hope that we, too, could master them?

 

One of the things that happens in cold places like that is in winter you plug your fossil car into a 'charging post' to power the block heater so you can actually start it again later. So an EV isn't so different.

[Reorte]

6 minutes ago, 30801 said:

 

One of the things that happens in cold places like that is in winter you plug your fossil car into a 'charging post' to power the block heater so you can actually start it again later. So an EV isn't so different.

I think petrol should still start in the cold, but not diesel? Although in either case having a frozen radiator probably isn't much good either.

[Pacific231G]

On 20/05/2022 at 23:33, AndyID said:

 

England lost control of English at least 200 years ago. Of course there's always the option of defining "proper English" a bit like the way Académie Française tries to control French. BTW, due to its relative isolation from Europe for quite a long time, English in America is, in many respects, closer to older forms of English used in England.

 

Of course the best English speakers are found in Scotland. Just ask the BBC.

English has always been a language of common usage and not one defined by some arbitrary legal authority.  This is different from French which was imposed by the central government on a population that, in the great majority, didn't speak it until surprisingly recently.

 

There are of course self-appointed "authorities" who would love to be able to tell the rest of us how to use our own language but they are just that and we do have the liberty to disagree with them or even ignore them. In current parlance you could define English as an "Open Source" language with its usage and conventions defined by the communities who use it. That may be annoying for those who would like there to be fixed rules set in stone but it does make the language extrenely flexible. It also means that there are differences between the many dialects of English.

For example,  I may not like "train station" but it has become more widely used in British English than "railway station" so is not wrong.

Clearly, if you want to use the language well and fluently you need to know what the accepted usages are. You were probably taught them as the rules of grammar and spelling. Because those are pretty well accepted you'll just look clumsy or ignorant if you stray too far from them but nobody (not even an English teacher or someone who's wirtten a grammar primer!) has the final say on what is and is not "correct" usage.  

Edited May 24, 2022 by Pacific231G

[black and decker boy]

4 hours ago, admiles said:

 

Off road parking though doesn't necessarily mean you could site a charger at that point. My house for example has a garage and a drive (just long enough for one car). The problem is because of the layout of the roads my garage/drive is round the corner in the next road with a house in between it and my house. The garage does have an electricity supply but this isn't man enough for an EV charger.  The cost to upgrade that supply? £12-£15000 making charging at home a total non-starter.  The other car in my household is parked on the road. There aren't any lamp posts nearby either. The whole road of 60 houses has three! 

 

This is why better range and the ability to charge in say 5 mins max is vital for those who can't charge at home overnight.

If there is a supply in your garage then I assume it’s 13Amp? In which case you can charge your EV from it. It’s not fast but it will charge. If you can do 16A then even better.

 

my wall charger uses a 32A fused spur but the unit will happily connect to 16A. Some public chargers are set up this way offering 2kWh or 3kWh rather than 7kWh.

[Ron Ron Ron]

Still 3 or 4 years away from production, the PR for VW’s forthcoming Polo sized ID.1 is still pushing the “from £17k” line.

 

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/2025-volkswagen-id-1-spanish-built-£17000-entry-ev

 

 

 

.

[johnofwessex]

On 23/05/2022 at 10:36, Fenman said:

 

I've never been brave enough to do that: I think they'll assume I'm doing a runner.

 

Paul

 

There are about 1.7 million cases each year where drivers do not pay for fuel, this obviously takes up a lot of Police time and provides an income for offenders.

 

So why dont we do what they do in most of the rest of the world and make 'pay at pump' mandatory?

[SamThomas]

26 minutes ago, johnofwessex said:

So why dont we do what they do in most of the rest of the world and make 'pay at pump' mandatory?

& how will that stop "drive-offs" ?

 

FWIW I do not want to be opening my wallet on an exposed forecourt - I much prefer feeling more secure in the kiosk & horror of horrors, also nice to say "hi" to a real person behind the counter, especially on a long jouirney. We are becoming far tioo insular.

[57xx]

30 minutes ago, SamThomas said:

& how will that stop "drive-offs" ?

 

I'm trying to work out if that is a serious question?

[SamThomas]

12 minutes ago, 57xx said:

 

I'm trying to work out if that is a serious question?

TBH, I'm thinking about the older systems that you paid for after drawing your fuel. Shows how long I've managed to avoid using them !

 

My second comment still holds though.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, SamThomas said:

& how will that stop "drive-offs" ?

 

The pump won't dispense anything until you've given it your card and they've reserved £100 or so from it.

[Hobby]

16 hours ago, Fenman said:

I suspect that many people are simply mapping over their ICE car experience to EVs, looking at differences, and then demanding that battery technology should match the performance of dinosaur juice.

 

They are utterly different technologies so it may be worth thinking about that a bit,

 

Correct, we are and why shouldn't we! We are being forced into a major shift change in technology and asked to accept a technology with less "everyday convenience" than we are currently using and people do not want to lose that convenience.

 

That's not to say it's wrong or that we don't want to do it, but we all look at it from a different viewpoint and there's the issue. Most technological developments have progressed over the years, improving as they go along and EV's, from what I've seen, are doing just that. But I do feel that putting the pressure on the Manufacturers (and anyone else involved like Gov and Energy Companies) to make things as convenient as possible is a good thing.

 

16 hours ago, Fenman said:

But those are -- for most of us, most of the time -- simply red herrings. The average UK annual mileage is under 8,000 miles. So half of us are driving less than that. That's just 150 miles a week or less.

 

That's also a red herring, we've had this discussion several pages ago, quoting an annual mileage and then simply dividing it by 52 is, with respect, rubbish, you have to look at the use that car is getting, not just doing a simple calculation based on a guess. I really wish people wouldn't quote such stuff as it does the EV cause no favours. My annual mileage is currently around 12k, but that's made up of several long journeys (well over 150 miles) and a daily commute. It might be that I can manage it, but it certainly won't be anywhere near as easy or convenient as it is in an I/C car!

 

Luckily things seem to be getting better based on recent posts with decent ranges and faster charging, my only concern is that the numbers of charging stations keeps up with demand!

[Reorte]

11 hours ago, SamThomas said:

FWIW I do not want to be opening my wallet on an exposed forecourt - I much prefer feeling more secure in the kiosk & horror of horrors, also nice to say "hi" to a real person behind the counter, especially on a long jouirney. We are becoming far tioo insular.

I do find it really rather disturbing just how much effort society is putting in to stamping out any sort of interaction with our fellow human beings. We seem hell-bent on making sure that people don't do anything and we have nothing to do with people. Whilst being as lazy as possible (sorry, loving "convenience"). I'm starting to think Wall-E is an accurate depiction of the future, well, aside from the spaceship.

[SamThomas]

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

I do find it really rather disturbing just how much effort society is putting in to stamping out any sort of interaction with our fellow human beings. We seem hell-bent on making sure that people don't do anything and we have nothing to do with people. Whilst being as lazy as possible (sorry, loving "convenience"). I'm starting to think Wall-E is an accurate depiction of the future, well, aside from the spaceship.

Agreed, & to avoid futher thread drift on the subject I've started a new thread ;

 

 

 

 

[Hobby]

I can live with either, as i suspect can many others, what I object to more is being forced into one thing or the other... Supermarket checkouts are a prime example of that in practice, on the one hand we have people who shout loudly when the manned checkout is removed and there are others on the other side. Personally I like both, if I'm only in for a few items or there are big queues I'm quite happy using the self service ones but if I have a big shop it's sometimes quicker to wait for a manned checkout who can scan faster than I!

 

EDIT - oops, sorry, Sam!

Edited May 25, 2022 by Hobby

[Fenman]

2 hours ago, Hobby said:

...

That's also a red herring, we've had this discussion several pages ago, quoting an annual mileage and then simply dividing it by 52 is, with respect, rubbish, you have to look at the use that car is getting, not just doing a simple calculation based on a guess. I really wish people wouldn't quote such stuff as it does the EV cause no favours. ...

 

You seem to be getting cross that I've not recognised your specific circumstances, but I deliberately wrote "for most of us, most of the time".

 

You then slammed back with "several long journeys (well over 150 miles)": there are numerous EVs already on the market with ranges of double that, some with ranges of over 400 miles, and a couple (either here now or coming shortly) with even higher ultra-long ranges (and a high purchase price) of around four times that. Chances are you aren't going to need to charge away from home most of the time. 

 

As to whether or not ownership will be more or less tiresome, that's a matter for each of our use cases. In my case -- as someone who drives about 50% more than the annual average, and has had a BEV since last Autumn -- I've charged away from home on +/- three occasions. In each case I used an Instavolt fast charger (in one place they were "only" 50kW, compared to the more usual 150kW); no App, no special card. Just a wave of my credit card and off it went. No queues. No broken chargers. And with a nice cafe attached. I'm pretty sure the total amount of time that away-from-home charging has taken is less than the cumulative amount of time I would have spent in fuel stations for my previous ICE car over the same number of months; and the rest of the time the EV has been charged at home while I've been sleeping.

 

Will EVs make some people's lives more difficult, or need adjustment? Absolutely. No question. There was someone on here claiming he needs to drive 500 miles every single day on an incredibly tight schedule, and it's difficult to see how most of today's EVs would work for his fantastically extreme use case.

 

Will EVs make no difference or be easier for the majority of people? From what we've seen so far, it looks like they will. And, as you wrote, the improvements we've been seeing recently suggest that by the time the last "pure" ICE car is sold in 2030, converting to a BEV will be unlikely to create difficulties for most people (most of the time).

 

Paul

 

 

 

Edited May 25, 2022 by Fenman
Fat fingers

[admiles]

17 hours ago, black and decker boy said:

If there is a supply in your garage then I assume it’s 13Amp? In which case you can charge your EV from it. It’s not fast but it will charge. If you can do 16A then even better.

 

my wall charger uses a 32A fused spur but the unit will happily connect to 16A. Some public chargers are set up this way offering 2kWh or 3kWh rather than 7kWh.

 

13amp but three different charging unit installers have said this isn't suitable so no charging from home for us. Or work come to that so that will mean, for us, much faster charging times and longer range before an EV is viable. 

[Reorte]

29 minutes ago, admiles said:

 

13amp but three different charging unit installers have said this isn't suitable so no charging from home for us. Or work come to that so that will mean, for us, much faster charging times and longer range before an EV is viable. 

 

What makes an ordinary 13 amp supply unsuitable? I've no garage (or electric car), but looking towards the future there's an external supply near where I park the car.

[admiles]

2 minutes ago, Reorte said:

 

What makes an ordinary 13 amp supply unsuitable? I've no garage (or electric car), but looking towards the future there's an external supply near where I park the car.

 

Not enough amps and cabling not suitable apparently. Not uncommon according to the people that visited.