1.They are really very expensive. 2. Their range is not good. 3. Charging infrastructure is patchy and unreliable
Until these 3 change I will not be buying one. For very local journeys we walk or bike. There are no buses. The trains have become unreliable since the strikes. Cars are essential. But EV's are as yet wholly impractical.
I think this is unreasonably reductive & “wholly impractical” a massive overstatement.
Plenty of people commute less than fifty miles to work. Which means that the round trip is easily within every EV currently on sale (and most second hand ones, except early Leafs I imagine). If you can charge overnight, then this model of usage can work out perfectly well.
EVs do not have to be a perfect replacement for ICE cars to replace them - they just have to be good enough that a buyer is happy to put up with the downsides in order to get the upside. That’s a calculation which differs between people.
A relative bought a second hand Leaf as a second car. It’s range is terrible! But it can happily drive to town / school / any kind of local trip and the running costs are extremely low. What’s not to like?
As I hope was obvious from my comment they are wholly impractical in the area where I live.
Elsewhere they may be suitable. But public policy should be designed to make such a change practical and cost effective for everyone not the lucky few. I see no signs of that happening.
My Renault Zoe cost me £12k (2 years old). Range 185 miles in summer, 160 in winter. It depreciates pretty slowly so the current value is £11k after 2 years of ownership. £500 a year.
It's been great. The main reason I use it (in our local urban drives, which after all are by far the most common trips) is because of tailpipe emissions. I want to limit my contribution to the poor urban air quality that kills thousands every year. I drive our big diesel car on longer rural journeys and holidays.
The trouble at the moment is that the cost of charging the Zoe at home is actually higher per mile than the cost to fill the diesel, such is the odd state of the markets for diesel and petrol (rapid recent price drops) and domestic electricity (continued historically high costs). That's market failure and is no doubt slowing down EV adoption.
The price fall in diesel is quite remarkable. 132.9p compared to 133.9 for petrol (Costco, your local supermarket will still be a bit more). Unremarked in the news as good news always is though...
Diesel may well stick around longer than unleaded though being the favoured fuel of commercial vehicles where EV is less advanced than for residential use.
And of course the government slashed fuel duty recently when the prices soared, but won't be raising it back up any time soon because they're scared to. The fuel duty escalator lingers on in treasury forecasts every year but always gets cancelled as a matter of course, and then one-off drops always become permanent.
The government could look at a duty regime that ensured less volatility in prices. The higher the price above a certain threshold, the lower the duty. And vice versa for lower prices. Currently the tax regime is very pro-cyclical, the treasury earns loads more when prices are high because duty is fixed but VAT on fuel is a percentage of value. A ratchet type regime of the sort I'm suggesting would keep prices more stable while also reducing volatility of government receipts.
The solution? Apparently to get lots of other AI bots involved to correct each other relentlessly. Sounds like PB. Are you all sure we are not AI ourselves?
The solution? Apparently to get lots of other AI bots involved to correct each other relentlessly. Sounds like PB. Are you all sure we are not AI ourselves?
1.They are really very expensive. 2. Their range is not good. 3. Charging infrastructure is patchy and unreliable
Until these 3 change I will not be buying one. For very local journeys we walk or bike. There are no buses. The trains have become unreliable since the strikes. Cars are essential. But EV's are as yet wholly impractical.
I think this is unreasonably reductive & “wholly impractical” a massive overstatement.
Plenty of people commute less than fifty miles to work. Which means that the round trip is easily within every EV currently on sale (and most second hand ones, except early Leafs I imagine). If you can charge overnight, then this model of usage can work out perfectly well.
EVs do not have to be a perfect replacement for ICE cars to replace them - they just have to be good enough that a buyer is happy to put up with the downsides in order to get the upside. That’s a calculation which differs between people.
A relative bought a second hand Leaf as a second car. It’s range is terrible! But it can happily drive to town / school / any kind of local trip and the running costs are extremely low. What’s not to like?
As I hope was obvious from my comment they are wholly impractical in the area where I live.
Elsewhere they may be suitable. But public policy should be designed to make such a change practical and cost effective for everyone not the lucky few. I see no signs of that happening.
Why not have both, like we do? A big comfy long distance diesel or petrol for those long country drives, and a small runabout EV for trips to the shops and other local excursions. Even the small ones like Leafs and Zoes have ranges these days around 200 miles which gets you a lot of local trips, and living in the countryside means I assume it's easy to charge at home. And they really aren't expensive.
This is why the Tories won’t squeeze a single vote out of reform ahead of the election. Leave voters are angry that Tory sleaze and corruption has pulled the rug from under Brexit.
This is also another reason Sunak goes to the country on May 2nd. Months of phoney election war throughout 2024 will be dominated by how the highest tax take ever and huge amounts of borrowing from Sunak Johnson era was spent, partially, wastefully.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
I literally make money on YouTube doing videos about this exact thing. Your 8 hour trip - how many stops? Most people would have 2 stops, maybe 3. Toilet, a snack, in the shop - so perhaps 20 minutes per stop? Before you claim to do it non-stop, or make 1 5-minute stop half way and that's all, again I say "most people". There is a reason why motorway service areas are so busy - most people make stops.
So in your 20 minute stop, plug your car in, add another 150+ miles of range, and then carry on. If you only charge when you were stopping anyway, the time added to your journey for charging is zero. That is my experience of half a dozen now trips from north of Aberdeen down to Sheffield / Liverpool / Essex etc. The number of times I have queued to charge is zero.
I've even done a direct comparison of the same Aberdeenshire to Dartford trip in my current Tesla Model Y vs the previous Outlander PHEV. Tesla was 20 minutes faster, and £50 cheaper. A real world example.
The size of your tank or the range it offers is irrelevant in real world usage. Most people's range is how far their bladder lasts, or their stomach needs a snack, or they need a break because want to get out and stretch their legs. They aren't driving 600 miles of range without a stop.
Before I got stuck at home, I regularly (say 6+ times a year, most often in winter) did the trip north from the Flatlands. We'd have a driver swap somewhere in England, a short stop at Stirling and then a refuel either in Aviemore or Ullapool if heading for the far north. Basically, just point and go.
We usually had piles of outdoor junk, sometimes including bikes, which often went in the car to save on air resistance (about £20 in extra drag if you have them on the roof or a towbar).
My car was (and still is) a zero tax (ha!) diesel estate which gets about 60mpg and can usually do more than 500 miles on a tank.
All current EV cars would be functionally worse and would probably cost at least 4 times as much. A Tesla does not really have the boot space.
Now you could argue that because of climate change, we are all going to have to make sacrifices. But on the other hand I haven't flown anywhere since 2005, as this was what we did instead.
One solution would be to have two cars, one for long journeys and a small electric one for buzzing about. But we really don't do the short miles to make that worthwhile. I'm happy to cycle or walk locally most of the time and I'm not currently commuting (which is the ideal use case for an electric car).
For mass adoption, electric has to be functionally better, not just "morally". This time is maybe not far off, but they don't work for everyone, particularly those who can't afford shiny shiny. At least not yet.
For almost everyone, the best car option is the one they already own. You have an old diesel estate which is still going and by the sounds of it you're still happy with. Great! Keep it! Would be crazy to trade it for £little to spend £lots on any new car unless you really want to. That is the same consideration most of us face with cars - cheaper to keep it.
I did see a Tesla Model Y which had a bike rack on the roof. Asked the guy what that was doing to energy use, and as you said with your own example, it wasn't good.
My policy with choice of cars though isn't to have a universal vehicle that can cover every eventuality. Because I'd have to have a van. The Outlander I had before the Tesla was often used like a van, but even that wasn't big enough all the time. So I just did more trips. The gargantuan boot of my Tesla isn't as square as the Outlander, so more trips again. But its better at almost everything else than the Outlander.
The transition to electric vehicles can't come soon enough for one key reason: noise. Not all traffic noise is engine noise but it's the most significant part. The gradual end of revving, roaring, popping noise pollution will make every part of this country better in ways that I don't think many people really give credit for.
It'll take a long time for it to filter down through the second hand market, and I expect there will be "classics" knocking around for decades, but anyone who lives within a couple of kilometres of a main road, which is basically everyone, will gradually start to live better, more relaxing lives.
Until you can't get anywhere because your EV car has run out of power and there is no charging point nearby. Not that relaxing.
Look at what Mike said. 30 minutes or more at a charging station. We have been told for ages that the technology is getting "better" but the simple fact is that petrol cars are still most effective.
I spend far less time at charging stations than you do, because I charge my car at home once a week. Those five or ten minutes add up over the year, and I'm saving time and money.
Now, is that true of everyone? No.
But for a substantial minority of people, EVs are the better option today. And every day the size of that minority increases.
Perhaps in the US. I would question that in the UK.
At the end of the day, there is an implicit class / socio-economic issue here. If you are fairly well-off you will be fine (you will have a drive, a decent car, can afford the electricity etc). If you are poor and rely on your car for essentials, you are screwed.
Oh, I agree, for now they're not for everyone.
But the number of people who will benefit from going EV is growing all the time. You can't buck the market.
Again, I would question that.
The car manufacturers are not showing much inclination to develop mass market EV models. Instead, what they have done - and some such as BMW and Mercedes have been explicit about this - is to raise prices structurally. Wealthier people can afford this, poorer people can't.
I go back to the point that there is an implicit class / socio-economic point thing here. The unstated aim of many who are pushing the EV agenda is to force people - mainly the poorer types - onto public transport by pricing them out of the market when it comes to buying and maintaining a car. There is a reason why so many wealthy middle-class individuals are perfectly happy with pushing an EV agenda because they can afford the price as well as knowing others cannot. You see the same dynamic with such types calling for a reduction in air flights - they are not thinking about their trips to Tuscany or Provence, they are thinking those awful plebs who go on package holidays to cheap destinations.
...Why attack EVs? Seen as trendy and modern, driven by do-gooders, promoting the environment. So of course you want to attack people driving EVs - we're not one of you.
There's a fairly clear motive in the US, where car dealers make big money from the existing system, and are generous funders of Republican politicians. They absolutely loathe Tesla, since it has bypassed them completely.
Tesla. Bought online. Delivered at a showroom where the staff don't sell cars (genuinely - if you say "I want to order one" they will go online for you and assist you buying one online). With no servicing requirements. With brakes that will last a looooong time, tyres which on mine at least are still very healthy after 16k miles, and no consumables needing replacement.
It is a massive threat to existing manufacturers, to dealerships, to part manufacturers, to their entire way of doing business.
But it shouldn't be. Go back to the 70s and cars would dissolve or fall apart in a few years. That doesn't happen any more, yet manufacturers and dealers still exist. Legacy manufacturers still build cars the traditional way (lots of components bolted together), still add complexity which they then need to service. So it isn't EV that threatens, its the new manufacturers.
Tesla make so much money because they build cars in a completely different way. Other new entrants are doing the same, and it is that which threatens the likes of Mercedes. My Tesla Model Y was the best selling car globally in Q1. It is the new Model T Ford - revolutionising the industry. A threat if you don't want change.
One thing that worries me about EVs is what happens if you are in a bump? Is the battery at risk and, if so, is replacing it going to be 5 figure expensive? What does that do for the insurance premiums? Genuinely curious.
Batteries can and do catch fire after serious accidents, but so do petrol tanks. They are generally well located, and crash tested as part of the certification process. That’s not to say that a freak accident couldn’t damage the battery though, and write off an otherwise repairable car.
Of more concern to insurance companies, is the driving technology in many modern cars, and especially prevalent in EVs - sensors, cameras etc. It only takes a small car park knock, to run up thousands in repair costs.
I bought the original Tesla Roadster, and then a Model S.
More recently, I bought a Rivian.
EVs are great if:
(a) you have somewhere to charge it at home (b) you don't regularly do 300+ mile trips
If either of those things are not true, then either a straight ICE or a plug-in hybrid is perfect for you.
There's another requirement: (c) If you can afford one. EVs are still hellishly expensive compared to ICE cars - unless you go for ones with limitations, such as even more reduced range.
The cost differential is closing every day.
The crossover will come by the end of the decade, quite probably.
People will continue to grouse about the charging problem. It will be solved quickly for the wealthy, which might slow the process of solving it for everyone else.
The charging problem is rather a chicken and egg one. It isn't economic to build them until there is a market.
Range anxiety is pretty short lived when owning an EV. How often do you drive more than 250 miles without a half hour break? EV cars are also a pleasure to drive, smooth, powerful and very quick acceleration.
Lots of people do once a year, over Christmas and New Year. Just one three hour wait then (and there were plenty) is enough to spoil your whole year, especially with small children with you. Giles Coren did a piece saying he is retransitioning for this reason.
One three hour wait is enough to ruin your entire year?
I own an electric car (well truck). Over Christmas, the family got into the truck and headed up the mountains to Big Bear. Over the Christmas week, we went round the ski resorts in the area, returning to our AirBnB every night.
Aside from one 20 minute wait for a fast charger, we had no problems whatsoever with a 500 mile round trip.
If you have a driveway, don't regularly travel 300m+ a day, and can afford it, an electric car is best.
Of course, they could all be brainwashed. But the real world evidence is that people who buy Teslas buy Teslas again. And on this very board, everyone who has bought an EV (myself, Foxy, Dura, FrequentLurker) would do so again.
And me. Skoda Enyaq for the win.
Owned a Kia e-niro before that and was very happy. Yes, I have my own driveway (as do a majority of people, but certainly not all). It's staggering the amount of time I wasted refuelling my ICE cars over the years. Once every week-and-a-half having to go and fill up, and when you add up all the time, it usually added 15-20 minutes to my trip home. That adds up over a year. And over thirty years.
Now, plug in when I get home and go indoors. When I come out the following morning, car has charged overnight with cheap electricity. You can't do that with ICE cars.
I've had to recharge away from home a handful of times and I can swear by the Gridserve at Braintree. Even though we now have just about enough range to get from home to my Mum's and back when we go there a couple of times per year, the family insist on taking a break there because it's so plush. Twenty minutes to grab a drink and a loo break and we've got loads of charge for the way home.
And now the 150kW chargers are getting more plentiful and the 350kW chargers are coming in, charging times are coming way down. Twenty minutes at 3.5 miles/kWh gives you 50kW and 175 miles (at 150kW). To get an extra 100 miles at 350kW would take five minutes.
Charging infrastructure has improved a lot over the past three years as well, and one welcome change is that virtually everywhere takes contactless rather than requiring an app.
The solution? Apparently to get lots of other AI bots involved to correct each other relentlessly. Sounds like PB. Are you all sure we are not AI ourselves?
How would we know?
Turns out we are all just playthings in Elon Musk's AI workshop.
The solution? Apparently to get lots of other AI bots involved to correct each other relentlessly. Sounds like PB. Are you all sure we are not AI ourselves?
As a large language model I am not able to express an opinion on controversial political topics like the AV voting system or the right age to start sex education.
Stepping back from the detailed debates for a minute, can I ask a basic question - if we had just invented personal cars as a mass market technology, would we be promoting electricity or fossil fuels?
Most of the arguments against EVs stack a load of weights on that side of the equation and pretend there are none on the fossil side. On this thread we have had various weights stacked onto the EV side - a few examples: My diesel is ULEZ compliant so it doesn't pollute My car does 600 miles so how much longer would you take stopping in an EV Your EV battery will fail and need to be replaced
These are posted as zero-sum - all the weight on the EV side, nothing on the fossil side. That isn't reality.
Lets take range. We know that most people's car usage suits EVs. Hard data proves that. We also know that most people do not drive 600 miles non-stop, and the few who try get shouted at by the authorities trying to reduce the number accidents caused by tired drivers.
So if most people's normal use is inside EV battery range and you can charge at home, then why promote fossil as the answer? If most people have a human charging stop every couple of hours of driving, then why promote fossil as the answer?
The current EV market and infrastructure in the UK could not fulfil both of the points I have just looked at. Too many people can't charge at home, mass installation of simple chargers in car parks would be required. But that *could* be done. Nor does the current price of EVs and the increasingly bonkers price charged by many networks for electricity make it viable for people on a budget. But it *could* be.
Most of the tropes given against EVs - many on this thread - just aren't true for most people. But because the technology is old* people don't know any better. And the crapola way we have implemented re-electrification* has rightly put some people off.
*EVs came first. Go back to the start of the 20th century and the new fangled motor car was more likely to be EV than not. Ford's Model T and the might of Big Oil put a stop to that.
The convenience of a two minute fill-up put a stop to that.
Labour’s tax raid on private school fees could raise ‘very little’
At best the party’s calculations could be off by £600m, a report finds
Labour’s plan to add VAT to private school fees is badly flawed and could raise very little revenue, according to a think tank.
The party has said ending the tax breaks enjoyed by independent schools would raise £1.6 billion, which it would invest in the state sector.
However, a new analysis suggests that the figure is likely to be much lower and that in a “best case” scenario for Labour, the changes would bring in £1 billion. In a “worst case” scenario, there would be “very little” new revenue.
EDSK, an education think tank, said the wealthiest parents and the most expensive schools would be the least affected.
Most independent schools have charitable status, giving them at least 80 per cent relief on business rates. In September 2021, Labour said that in government it would end the charitable status of England’s private schools, raising an estimated £1.6 billion from VAT and £100 million from business rates.
The think tank’s report claims that the calculations behind the £1.6 billion figure do not take into account a drop-off in demand for private schools if VAT is added to fees or the extra taxpayer money needed to teach pupils who would be moved to state schools.
The most optimistic scenario is that 5 per cent of pupils would leave private schools and the addition of VAT to fees would only raise about £1 billion a year, it said.
The more pessimistic projection that 25 per cent of pupils would leave private schools means that adding VAT to fees would raise very little new revenue, especially when additional administration costs for HM Revenue & Customs are taken into account.
A local, private, all girls school announced this week it is closing in June for good. The decisive factor was the removal of the charity exemption for rates. So rather than raising more money the policy in this case has cost well over 100 jobs and will throw quite a number of kids onto the local authorities. It will not be the only one.
The inability of politicians, in this case the Scottish government, to recognise that actions have consequences and people and businesses react to being taxed, is truly remarkable.
They don't care, as it's not about money or helping people. It's about ideology.
Yes, but they also like to claim they can fund other things they want to do by the policy in exactly the same way as Labour are claiming with VAT on school fees.
They’ll be funding a lot more school places for a start. Although where they get the money from, is a different question!
Under any reasonable assumption on switching, the policy will pay for more state school places with money left over to raise per pupil funding. A policy that raises school funding while removing an unfair tax distortion that funnels money to the well off, what's not to like about that?
I really don't think it will 'under any reasonable assumption'. BOAFP: Labour need to ensure no more than one in four children move from private to state sector just to break even. It isn't obvious that this will be the case.
People who have studied this in detail have found that spending on private education is fairly price-inelastic, as is evident in the fact that fees have gone up significantly in recent years while the proportion of children in the private sector hasn't changed much.
So you can increase the cost of a thing - to which there is a free alternative - by 20% without the demand for that thing going down? That seems a bold assumption. You would have thought if that were the case then the producers of that thing would have already increased the cost of the thing to take advantage of that.
Wouldn't surprise me if schools were in the category of goods where "expensive = reassuring". (See also the way that the University of Neasden (formerly World of Phones) hasn't opted to cut its fees below the maximum allowed.)
Fees have trebled in real terms since 1980, with their cost as a proportion of household budgets rising "inexorably" over the period. This means that even a family whose income is higher than that of 95 per cent of those in England has to pay a fifth of its income to educate just one child privately...
However, it remains a minority option even at higher levels of family income: even in the top five per cent richest families, only a minority attends private school and, even in the richest two per cent of homes, 40 per cent of families do not choose the private sector.
Of course from 2030 sale of petrol and diesel cars will be banned in the UK and by 2035 sale of hybrid cars, so we won't have much choice but to go electric then
I expect that date to change not least at the demand of German car makers and it will be many years before petrol and diesel cars become extinct, it at all
Die Großen Drei German OEMs (BMW, Mercedes, VAG) absolutely love EVs and are building their product roadmaps around them. Why? Because the cost of designing and engineering ICE powertrains is now phenomenally expensive (see JLR just giving up and using BMW engines) and the Chinese market has a high demand for EVs.
Assuming your name rflects your interests, and pushing the off-topic envelope, Shimano 105: R7000 2x11 mechanical or di2 2x12?
I'd always recommend Di2 if the budget allows. Never goes out of adjustment, quicker shifts, gear display on the bike computer and optional one handed operation. Always update the firmware though as most bike shops never bother doing this. The 'one way' bleeding isn't great on 105 calipers if you prefer a 'hard and high' lever feel though.
Interesting - I've been sceptical of electric/wireless groupsets (and they're out of my price range anyway) but never going out of adjustment sounds very good, especially as an veteran bike-breaker. I worry that I thrash my machine around and fall off a lot so would knacker it (and atm am actually very much enjoying riding fixed gear).
The transition to electric vehicles can't come soon enough for one key reason: noise. Not all traffic noise is engine noise but it's the most significant part. The gradual end of revving, roaring, popping noise pollution will make every part of this country better in ways that I don't think many people really give credit for.
It'll take a long time for it to filter down through the second hand market, and I expect there will be "classics" knocking around for decades, but anyone who lives within a couple of kilometres of a main road, which is basically everyone, will gradually start to live better, more relaxing lives.
Until you can't get anywhere because your EV car has run out of power and there is no charging point nearby. Not that relaxing.
Look at what Mike said. 30 minutes or more at a charging station. We have been told for ages that the technology is getting "better" but the simple fact is that petrol cars are still most effective.
I spend far less time at charging stations than you do, because I charge my car at home once a week. Those five or ten minutes add up over the year, and I'm saving time and money.
Now, is that true of everyone? No.
But for a substantial minority of people, EVs are the better option today. And every day the size of that minority increases.
Perhaps in the US. I would question that in the UK.
At the end of the day, there is an implicit class / socio-economic issue here. If you are fairly well-off you will be fine (you will have a drive, a decent car, can afford the electricity etc). If you are poor and rely on your car for essentials, you are screwed.
Oh, I agree, for now they're not for everyone.
But the number of people who will benefit from going EV is growing all the time. You can't buck the market.
Again, I would question that.
The car manufacturers are not showing much inclination to develop mass market EV models. Instead, what they have done - and some such as BMW and Mercedes have been explicit about this - is to raise prices structurally. Wealthier people can afford this, poorer people can't.
I go back to the point that there is an implicit class / socio-economic point thing here. The unstated aim of many who are pushing the EV agenda is to force people - mainly the poorer types - onto public transport by pricing them out of the market when it comes to buying and maintaining a car. There is a reason why so many wealthy middle-class individuals are perfectly happy with pushing an EV agenda because they can afford the price as well as knowing others cannot. You see the same dynamic with such types calling for a reduction in air flights - they are not thinking about their trips to Tuscany or Provence, they are thinking those awful plebs who go on package holidays to cheap destinations.
...Why attack EVs? Seen as trendy and modern, driven by do-gooders, promoting the environment. So of course you want to attack people driving EVs - we're not one of you.
There's a fairly clear motive in the US, where car dealers make big money from the existing system, and are generous funders of Republican politicians. They absolutely loathe Tesla, since it has bypassed them completely.
Tesla. Bought online. Delivered at a showroom where the staff don't sell cars (genuinely - if you say "I want to order one" they will go online for you and assist you buying one online). With no servicing requirements. With brakes that will last a looooong time, tyres which on mine at least are still very healthy after 16k miles, and no consumables needing replacement.
It is a massive threat to existing manufacturers, to dealerships, to part manufacturers, to their entire way of doing business.
But it shouldn't be. Go back to the 70s and cars would dissolve or fall apart in a few years. That doesn't happen any more, yet manufacturers and dealers still exist. Legacy manufacturers still build cars the traditional way (lots of components bolted together), still add complexity which they then need to service. So it isn't EV that threatens, its the new manufacturers.
Tesla make so much money because they build cars in a completely different way. Other new entrants are doing the same, and it is that which threatens the likes of Mercedes. My Tesla Model Y was the best selling car globally in Q1. It is the new Model T Ford - revolutionising the industry. A threat if you don't want change.
One thing that worries me about EVs is what happens if you are in a bump? Is the battery at risk and, if so, is replacing it going to be 5 figure expensive? What does that do for the insurance premiums? Genuinely curious.
Batteries can and do catch fire after serious accidents, but so do petrol tanks. They are generally well located, and crash tested as part of the certification process. That’s not to say that a freak accident couldn’t damage the battery though, and write off an otherwise repairable car.
Of more concern to insurance companies, is the driving technology in many modern cars, and especially prevalent in EVs - sensors, cameras etc. It only takes a small car park knock, to run up thousands in repair costs.
The safety concerns on EV strike me as a bit like those over e-cigarettes. I remember an old colleague telling me he was sticking to the traditional ciggies because "it's too early to know what the long term health effects of vaping might be". (Whereas it was very much not too early to know exactly what the long term health effects of smoking are).
On the off topic of VAT on private school fees, another benefit that private schools obtain is reduced business rate which arise as they are a charity.
There is a 80% relief for business rates if the ratepayer is a charity or trustees for a charity and if the premises is used wholly or mainly for charitable purposes.
The Supreme Court today confirmed that Nuffield Health (a registered charity) was able to obtain this relief for a gym which charges a standard membership fee of £80 pre month.
The solution? Apparently to get lots of other AI bots involved to correct each other relentlessly. Sounds like PB. Are you all sure we are not AI ourselves?
As a large language model I am not able to express an opinion on controversial political topics like the AV voting system or the right age to start sex education.
Perhaps we should teach kids about sex education and why you should always pay escorts in cash.
You don’t want escort services ltd to appear on your bank statement.
My Renault Zoe cost me £12k (2 years old). Range 185 miles in summer, 160 in winter. It depreciates pretty slowly so the current value is £11k after 2 years of ownership. £500 a year.
It's been great. The main reason I use it (in our local urban drives, which after all are by far the most common trips) is because of tailpipe emissions. I want to limit my contribution to the poor urban air quality that kills thousands every year. I drive our big diesel car on longer rural journeys and holidays.
The trouble at the moment is that the cost of charging the Zoe at home is actually higher per mile than the cost to fill the diesel, such is the odd state of the markets for diesel and petrol (rapid recent price drops) and domestic electricity (continued historically high costs). That's market failure and is no doubt slowing down EV adoption.
On that last point, remember that petrol and diesel have a lot of duty on them already.
The freezing of fuel duty for 13 years has been deeply regressive (at least for private car use) and a huge burden on the Treasury.
£80 billion cost so far. HS2 is around £40 billion.
And the budget for walking and cycling has just been cut by 50% in England.
This is why the Tories won’t squeeze a single vote out of reform ahead of the election. Leave voters are angry that Tory sleaze and corruption has pulled the rug from under Brexit.
This is also another reason Sunak goes to the country on May 2nd. Months of phoney election war throughout 2024 will be dominated by how the highest tax take ever and huge amounts of borrowing from Sunak Johnson era was spent, partially, wastefully.
Probably. Of course, the irony is that they may well let Labour, the true masters of punitive taxation and wasteful spending, in as a result.
The transition to electric vehicles can't come soon enough for one key reason: noise. Not all traffic noise is engine noise but it's the most significant part. The gradual end of revving, roaring, popping noise pollution will make every part of this country better in ways that I don't think many people really give credit for.
It'll take a long time for it to filter down through the second hand market, and I expect there will be "classics" knocking around for decades, but anyone who lives within a couple of kilometres of a main road, which is basically everyone, will gradually start to live better, more relaxing lives.
Until you can't get anywhere because your EV car has run out of power and there is no charging point nearby. Not that relaxing.
Look at what Mike said. 30 minutes or more at a charging station. We have been told for ages that the technology is getting "better" but the simple fact is that petrol cars are still most effective.
I spend far less time at charging stations than you do, because I charge my car at home once a week. Those five or ten minutes add up over the year, and I'm saving time and money.
Now, is that true of everyone? No.
But for a substantial minority of people, EVs are the better option today. And every day the size of that minority increases.
Perhaps in the US. I would question that in the UK.
At the end of the day, there is an implicit class / socio-economic issue here. If you are fairly well-off you will be fine (you will have a drive, a decent car, can afford the electricity etc). If you are poor and rely on your car for essentials, you are screwed.
Oh, I agree, for now they're not for everyone.
But the number of people who will benefit from going EV is growing all the time. You can't buck the market.
Again, I would question that.
The car manufacturers are not showing much inclination to develop mass market EV models. Instead, what they have done - and some such as BMW and Mercedes have been explicit about this - is to raise prices structurally. Wealthier people can afford this, poorer people can't.
I go back to the point that there is an implicit class / socio-economic point thing here. The unstated aim of many who are pushing the EV agenda is to force people - mainly the poorer types - onto public transport by pricing them out of the market when it comes to buying and maintaining a car. There is a reason why so many wealthy middle-class individuals are perfectly happy with pushing an EV agenda because they can afford the price as well as knowing others cannot. You see the same dynamic with such types calling for a reduction in air flights - they are not thinking about their trips to Tuscany or Provence, they are thinking those awful plebs who go on package holidays to cheap destinations.
...Why attack EVs? Seen as trendy and modern, driven by do-gooders, promoting the environment. So of course you want to attack people driving EVs - we're not one of you.
There's a fairly clear motive in the US, where car dealers make big money from the existing system, and are generous funders of Republican politicians. They absolutely loathe Tesla, since it has bypassed them completely.
A good and short (6’) piece by Saagar Enjeti on car dealers in the US, and why they hate EVs with a passion:
TL:DR They make less money from them, especially in servicing, and need to spend money on infrastructure and training. 45% of car dealers in the US don’t sell EVs. They’re also very politically active, and are sponsoring politicians and laws in many States.
1.They are really very expensive. 2. Their range is not good. 3. Charging infrastructure is patchy and unreliable
Until these 3 change I will not be buying one. For very local journeys we walk or bike. There are no buses. The trains have become unreliable since the strikes. Cars are essential. But EV's are as yet wholly impractical.
I think this is unreasonably reductive & “wholly impractical” a massive overstatement.
Plenty of people commute less than fifty miles to work. Which means that the round trip is easily within every EV currently on sale (and most second hand ones, except early Leafs I imagine). If you can charge overnight, then this model of usage can work out perfectly well.
EVs do not have to be a perfect replacement for ICE cars to replace them - they just have to be good enough that a buyer is happy to put up with the downsides in order to get the upside. That’s a calculation which differs between people.
A relative bought a second hand Leaf as a second car. It’s range is terrible! But it can happily drive to town / school / any kind of local trip and the running costs are extremely low. What’s not to like?
As I hope was obvious from my comment they are wholly impractical in the area where I live.
Elsewhere they may be suitable. But public policy should be designed to make such a change practical and cost effective for everyone not the lucky few. I see no signs of that happening.
Why not have both, like we do? A big comfy long distance diesel or petrol for those long country drives, and a small runabout EV for trips to the shops and other local excursions. Even the small ones like Leafs and Zoes have ranges these days around 200 miles which gets you a lot of local trips, and living in the countryside means I assume it's easy to charge at home. And they really aren't expensive.
I can't afford to own or run two cars, that's why. If the trains to London (or even the local ones) were reliable I could rely on something small. But they aren't.
In time I hope charging infrastructure and trains become better and the price comes down and then I will make the change. But for now - and I have looked into this - they don't work for me.
This is a much bigger electoral problem for Starmer than Sunak - oppositions need to generate hope to trump incumbents at elections, but it’s already clear Labours plan to squeeze money like blood out a stone (private schooling, non Dom status) is going to yield nothing. It’s clear the economy is not going to come right to help the Tory governments election prospects, the issue now is how exactly will Labour make a difference in the four years after the next election? Where will they find growth from? How will Labour find the money to cut taxes, reduce debt and the debt repayments, fund improvements in public services?
In those four miserable years after the next election, voters will already make their mind up not to vote Labour again.
My Renault Zoe cost me £12k (2 years old). Range 185 miles in summer, 160 in winter. It depreciates pretty slowly so the current value is £11k after 2 years of ownership. £500 a year.
It's been great. The main reason I use it (in our local urban drives, which after all are by far the most common trips) is because of tailpipe emissions. I want to limit my contribution to the poor urban air quality that kills thousands every year. I drive our big diesel car on longer rural journeys and holidays.
The trouble at the moment is that the cost of charging the Zoe at home is actually higher per mile than the cost to fill the diesel, such is the odd state of the markets for diesel and petrol (rapid recent price drops) and domestic electricity (continued historically high costs). That's market failure and is no doubt slowing down EV adoption.
On that last point, remember that petrol and diesel have a lot of duty on them already.
The freezing of fuel duty for 13 years has been deeply regressive (at least for private car use) and a huge burden on the Treasury.
£80 billion cost so far. HS2 is around £40 billion.
And the budget for walking and cycling has just been cut by 50% in England.
Conversely, the pain of having no fuel duty won't be so great when (it is a when... isn't it?) it's gone.
The solution? Apparently to get lots of other AI bots involved to correct each other relentlessly. Sounds like PB. Are you all sure we are not AI ourselves?
As a large language model I am not able to express an opinion on controversial political topics like the AV voting system or the right age to start sex education.
Perhaps we should teach kids about sex education and why you should always pay escorts in cash.
You don’t want escort services ltd to appear on your bank statement.
What about if you don't want to replace your shlonky old Ford with an electric car?
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
My Renault Zoe cost me £12k (2 years old). Range 185 miles in summer, 160 in winter. It depreciates pretty slowly so the current value is £11k after 2 years of ownership. £500 a year.
It's been great. The main reason I use it (in our local urban drives, which after all are by far the most common trips) is because of tailpipe emissions. I want to limit my contribution to the poor urban air quality that kills thousands every year. I drive our big diesel car on longer rural journeys and holidays.
The trouble at the moment is that the cost of charging the Zoe at home is actually higher per mile than the cost to fill the diesel, such is the odd state of the markets for diesel and petrol (rapid recent price drops) and domestic electricity (continued historically high costs). That's market failure and is no doubt slowing down EV adoption.
On that last point, remember that petrol and diesel have a lot of duty on them already.
The freezing of fuel duty for 13 years has been deeply regressive (at least for private car use) and a huge burden on the Treasury.
£80 billion cost so far. HS2 is around £40 billion.
And the budget for walking and cycling has just been cut by 50% in England.
If we're all moving to EVs then fuel duty is going to go down to zero anyway - no matter what it's set at.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
It is unreasonable to expect to be able to transition to a net zero economy while retaining every single aspect of our current unsustainable way of living. Some things may be lost, such as the ability to be anywhere in the country within a short amount of time. Businesses and individuals will adapt to cope with this.
So the great master plan is to reduce freedom and choice for millions of people.
Be interesting to see a government have the courage of their convictions and actually be honest about that.
Don't be silly. Of course nobody wants to reduce anyone's freedom and choice. But is frankly ridiculously entitled to assume that everything can carry on exactly as now, and I do indeed wish that governments would be honest about that. If we are to achieve our goal of a sustainable civilisation, then things need to change, some for the better and, yes, some for the worse. The technology is about mitigating the adverse effects as far as possible.
The visions of the 'sustainable' civilisation we have been presented with so far are the rich do what they want and the rest of us do as we are told.
Isn't that the entire case against industrialisation, expressed in a single sentence?
Industrialisation meant that the lifestyle that was once only available to the very rich, became availalbe to the ordinary person.
My Renault Zoe cost me £12k (2 years old). Range 185 miles in summer, 160 in winter. It depreciates pretty slowly so the current value is £11k after 2 years of ownership. £500 a year.
It's been great. The main reason I use it (in our local urban drives, which after all are by far the most common trips) is because of tailpipe emissions. I want to limit my contribution to the poor urban air quality that kills thousands every year. I drive our big diesel car on longer rural journeys and holidays.
The trouble at the moment is that the cost of charging the Zoe at home is actually higher per mile than the cost to fill the diesel, such is the odd state of the markets for diesel and petrol (rapid recent price drops) and domestic electricity (continued historically high costs). That's market failure and is no doubt slowing down EV adoption.
On that last point, remember that petrol and diesel have a lot of duty on them already.
The freezing of fuel duty for 13 years has been deeply regressive (at least for private car use) and a huge burden on the Treasury.
£80 billion cost so far. HS2 is around £40 billion.
And the budget for walking and cycling has just been cut by 50% in England.
Conversely, the pain of having no fuel duty won't be so great when (it is a when... isn't it?) it's gone.
True, and there is some excellent OBR analysis of this. The fundamental issue with Pigou taxes!
I drop VED for axle weight/size and replace fuel duty with congestion charging in all urban areas. Much fairer to rural people.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
I literally make money on YouTube doing videos about this exact thing. Your 8 hour trip - how many stops? Most people would have 2 stops, maybe 3. Toilet, a snack, in the shop - so perhaps 20 minutes per stop? Before you claim to do it non-stop, or make 1 5-minute stop half way and that's all, again I say "most people". There is a reason why motorway service areas are so busy - most people make stops.
So in your 20 minute stop, plug your car in, add another 150+ miles of range, and then carry on. If you only charge when you were stopping anyway, the time added to your journey for charging is zero. That is my experience of half a dozen now trips from north of Aberdeen down to Sheffield / Liverpool / Essex etc. The number of times I have queued to charge is zero.
I've even done a direct comparison of the same Aberdeenshire to Dartford trip in my current Tesla Model Y vs the previous Outlander PHEV. Tesla was 20 minutes faster, and £50 cheaper. A real world example.
The size of your tank or the range it offers is irrelevant in real world usage. Most people's range is how far their bladder lasts, or their stomach needs a snack, or they need a break because want to get out and stretch their legs. They aren't driving 600 miles of range without a stop.
Before I got stuck at home, I regularly (say 6+ times a year, most often in winter) did the trip north from the Flatlands. We'd have a driver swap somewhere in England, a short stop at Stirling and then a refuel either in Aviemore or Ullapool if heading for the far north. Basically, just point and go.
We usually had piles of outdoor junk, sometimes including bikes, which often went in the car to save on air resistance (about £20 in extra drag if you have them on the roof or a towbar).
My car was (and still is) a zero tax (ha!) diesel estate which gets about 60mpg and can usually do more than 500 miles on a tank.
All current EV cars would be functionally worse and would probably cost at least 4 times as much. A Tesla does not really have the boot space.
Now you could argue that because of climate change, we are all going to have to make sacrifices. But on the other hand I haven't flown anywhere since 2005, as this was what we did instead.
One solution would be to have two cars, one for long journeys and a small electric one for buzzing about. But we really don't do the short miles to make that worthwhile. I'm happy to cycle or walk locally most of the time and I'm not currently commuting (which is the ideal use case for an electric car).
For mass adoption, electric has to be functionally better, not just "morally". This time is maybe not far off, but they don't work for everyone, particularly those who can't afford shiny shiny. At least not yet.
For almost everyone, the best car option is the one they already own. You have an old diesel estate which is still going and by the sounds of it you're still happy with. Great! Keep it! Would be crazy to trade it for £little to spend £lots on any new car unless you really want to. That is the same consideration most of us face with cars - cheaper to keep it.
I did see a Tesla Model Y which had a bike rack on the roof. Asked the guy what that was doing to energy use, and as you said with your own example, it wasn't good.
My policy with choice of cars though isn't to have a universal vehicle that can cover every eventuality. Because I'd have to have a van. The Outlander I had before the Tesla was often used like a van, but even that wasn't big enough all the time. So I just did more trips. The gargantuan boot of my Tesla isn't as square as the Outlander, so more trips again. But its better at almost everything else than the Outlander.
That I do agree with. I'm not a fan of a new car every 3 years. We'll see where we are in 2030...
I bought the original Tesla Roadster, and then a Model S.
More recently, I bought a Rivian.
EVs are great if:
(a) you have somewhere to charge it at home (b) you don't regularly do 300+ mile trips
If either of those things are not true, then either a straight ICE or a plug-in hybrid is perfect for you.
There's another requirement: (c) If you can afford one. EVs are still hellishly expensive compared to ICE cars - unless you go for ones with limitations, such as even more reduced range.
The cost differential is closing every day.
The crossover will come by the end of the decade, quite probably.
People will continue to grouse about the charging problem. It will be solved quickly for the wealthy, which might slow the process of solving it for everyone else.
The charging problem is rather a chicken and egg one. It isn't economic to build them until there is a market.
Range anxiety is pretty short lived when owning an EV. How often do you drive more than 250 miles without a half hour break? EV cars are also a pleasure to drive, smooth, powerful and very quick acceleration.
Lots of people do once a year, over Christmas and New Year. Just one three hour wait then (and there were plenty) is enough to spoil your whole year, especially with small children with you. Giles Coren did a piece saying he is retransitioning for this reason.
One three hour wait is enough to ruin your entire year?
I own an electric car (well truck). Over Christmas, the family got into the truck and headed up the mountains to Big Bear. Over the Christmas week, we went round the ski resorts in the area, returning to our AirBnB every night.
Aside from one 20 minute wait for a fast charger, we had no problems whatsoever with a 500 mile round trip.
If you have a driveway, don't regularly travel 300m+ a day, and can afford it, an electric car is best.
Of course, they could all be brainwashed. But the real world evidence is that people who buy Teslas buy Teslas again. And on this very board, everyone who has bought an EV (myself, Foxy, Dura, FrequentLurker) would do so again.
And me. Skoda Enyaq for the win.
Owned a Kia e-niro before that and was very happy. Yes, I have my own driveway (as do a majority of people, but certainly not all). It's staggering the amount of time I wasted refuelling my ICE cars over the years. Once every week-and-a-half having to go and fill up, and when you add up all the time, it usually added 15-20 minutes to my trip home. That adds up over a year. And over thirty years.
Now, plug in when I get home and go indoors. When I come out the following morning, car has charged overnight with cheap electricity. You can't do that with ICE cars.
I've had to recharge away from home a handful of times and I can swear by the Gridserve at Braintree. Even though we now have just about enough range to get from home to my Mum's and back when we go there a couple of times per year, the family insist on taking a break there because it's so plush. Twenty minutes to grab a drink and a loo break and we've got loads of charge for the way home.
And now the 150kW chargers are getting more plentiful and the 350kW chargers are coming in, charging times are coming way down. Twenty minutes at 3.5 miles/kWh gives you 50kW and 175 miles (at 150kW). To get an extra 100 miles at 350kW would take five minutes.
Charging infrastructure has improved a lot over the past three years as well, and one welcome change is that virtually everywhere takes contactless rather than requiring an app.
Great to see that Gridserve are rolling out more of these ultra-rapid hubs! I was charging next to a new one going in at Grantham services last week - a great new addition.
I would query the Enyaq though with regards to your charging example. Until 2022 the standard onboard charger was 50kW, with a chargeable option to go as fast as 125kW. I think (please correct me if I'm wrong!) 125kW is still the fastest it will charge. Which rather makes your Braintree site over-specced as you're getting just under a third of its potential speed.
There are an awful lot of manufacturers follow VAG and hobbling EVs with slow charging. And its been the same for a decade. I don't get it.
1.They are really very expensive. 2. Their range is not good. 3. Charging infrastructure is patchy and unreliable
Until these 3 change I will not be buying one. For very local journeys we walk or bike. There are no buses. The trains have become unreliable since the strikes. Cars are essential. But EV's are as yet wholly impractical.
I think this is unreasonably reductive & “wholly impractical” a massive overstatement.
Plenty of people commute less than fifty miles to work. Which means that the round trip is easily within every EV currently on sale (and most second hand ones, except early Leafs I imagine). If you can charge overnight, then this model of usage can work out perfectly well.
EVs do not have to be a perfect replacement for ICE cars to replace them - they just have to be good enough that a buyer is happy to put up with the downsides in order to get the upside. That’s a calculation which differs between people.
A relative bought a second hand Leaf as a second car. It’s range is terrible! But it can happily drive to town / school / any kind of local trip and the running costs are extremely low. What’s not to like?
As I hope was obvious from my comment they are wholly impractical in the area where I live.
Elsewhere they may be suitable. But public policy should be designed to make such a change practical and cost effective for everyone not the lucky few. I see no signs of that happening.
Why not have both, like we do? A big comfy long distance diesel or petrol for those long country drives, and a small runabout EV for trips to the shops and other local excursions. Even the small ones like Leafs and Zoes have ranges these days around 200 miles which gets you a lot of local trips, and living in the countryside means I assume it's easy to charge at home. And they really aren't expensive.
I can't afford to own or run two cars, that's why. If the trains to London (or even the local ones) were reliable I could rely on something small. But they aren't.
In time I hope charging infrastructure and trains become better and the price comes down and then I will make the change. But for now - and I have looked into this - they don't work for me.
It’s fine to say they don’t work for you & therefore you won’t buy one. If you’re talking about yourself rather than in general then maybe make that a tad clearer in future? It really wasn’t obvious to me reading your original comment that you were speaking personally & not in generalities.
My Renault Zoe cost me £12k (2 years old). Range 185 miles in summer, 160 in winter. It depreciates pretty slowly so the current value is £11k after 2 years of ownership. £500 a year.
It's been great. The main reason I use it (in our local urban drives, which after all are by far the most common trips) is because of tailpipe emissions. I want to limit my contribution to the poor urban air quality that kills thousands every year. I drive our big diesel car on longer rural journeys and holidays.
The trouble at the moment is that the cost of charging the Zoe at home is actually higher per mile than the cost to fill the diesel, such is the odd state of the markets for diesel and petrol (rapid recent price drops) and domestic electricity (continued historically high costs). That's market failure and is no doubt slowing down EV adoption.
On that last point, remember that petrol and diesel have a lot of duty on them already.
The freezing of fuel duty for 13 years has been deeply regressive (at least for private car use) and a huge burden on the Treasury.
£80 billion cost so far. HS2 is around £40 billion.
And the budget for walking and cycling has just been cut by 50% in England.
If we're all moving to EVs then fuel duty is going to go down to zero anyway - no matter what it's set at.
Fuel duty and road tax currently raise around £35bn, c.5% of all government revenues. It’s not discussed enough how the government is going to be able to replace that revenue, as more electric and hybrid cars are sold.
My Renault Zoe cost me £12k (2 years old). Range 185 miles in summer, 160 in winter. It depreciates pretty slowly so the current value is £11k after 2 years of ownership. £500 a year.
It's been great. The main reason I use it (in our local urban drives, which after all are by far the most common trips) is because of tailpipe emissions. I want to limit my contribution to the poor urban air quality that kills thousands every year. I drive our big diesel car on longer rural journeys and holidays.
The trouble at the moment is that the cost of charging the Zoe at home is actually higher per mile than the cost to fill the diesel, such is the odd state of the markets for diesel and petrol (rapid recent price drops) and domestic electricity (continued historically high costs). That's market failure and is no doubt slowing down EV adoption.
On that last point, remember that petrol and diesel have a lot of duty on them already.
The freezing of fuel duty for 13 years has been deeply regressive (at least for private car use) and a huge burden on the Treasury.
£80 billion cost so far. HS2 is around £40 billion.
And the budget for walking and cycling has just been cut by 50% in England.
If we're all moving to EVs then fuel duty is going to go down to zero anyway - no matter what it's set at.
It will be incorporated within electricity company taxation.
On the off topic of VAT on private school fees, another benefit that private schools obtain is reduced business rate which arise as they are a charity.
There is a 80% relief for business rates if the ratepayer is a charity or trustees for a charity and if the premises is used wholly or mainly for charitable purposes.
The Supreme Court today confirmed that Nuffield Health (a registered charity) was able to obtain this relief for a gym which charges a standard membership fee of £80 pre month.
This, I think, has a direct read accross to other charities, such as private schools, who charge a significant fee for services.
The main purpose of most private schools is to give the children of parents who can afford it a head start over state-educated children. That is precisely why those parents are willing to pay a lot of money. It's very hard to see any justification for this being classed as a valid charitable aim - if anything quite the opposite!
Stepping back from the detailed debates for a minute, can I ask a basic question - if we had just invented personal cars as a mass market technology, would we be promoting electricity or fossil fuels?
Most of the arguments against EVs stack a load of weights on that side of the equation and pretend there are none on the fossil side. On this thread we have had various weights stacked onto the EV side - a few examples: My diesel is ULEZ compliant so it doesn't pollute My car does 600 miles so how much longer would you take stopping in an EV Your EV battery will fail and need to be replaced
These are posted as zero-sum - all the weight on the EV side, nothing on the fossil side. That isn't reality.
Lets take range. We know that most people's car usage suits EVs. Hard data proves that. We also know that most people do not drive 600 miles non-stop, and the few who try get shouted at by the authorities trying to reduce the number accidents caused by tired drivers.
So if most people's normal use is inside EV battery range and you can charge at home, then why promote fossil as the answer? If most people have a human charging stop every couple of hours of driving, then why promote fossil as the answer?
The current EV market and infrastructure in the UK could not fulfil both of the points I have just looked at. Too many people can't charge at home, mass installation of simple chargers in car parks would be required. But that *could* be done. Nor does the current price of EVs and the increasingly bonkers price charged by many networks for electricity make it viable for people on a budget. But it *could* be.
Most of the tropes given against EVs - many on this thread - just aren't true for most people. But because the technology is old* people don't know any better. And the crapola way we have implemented re-electrification* has rightly put some people off.
*EVs came first. Go back to the start of the 20th century and the new fangled motor car was more likely to be EV than not. Ford's Model T and the might of Big Oil put a stop to that.
The convenience of a two minute fill-up put a stop to that.
Sure. But most cars spend most of their time parked up. So the overnight charge takes zero time as you're not using the car. And on a long trip where people are stopping for 20 minutes at the services. I can fuel my car during those 20 minutes. Having to then add your 2 minute fuel stop makes for a longer stop...
The solution? Apparently to get lots of other AI bots involved to correct each other relentlessly. Sounds like PB. Are you all sure we are not AI ourselves?
As a large language model I am not able to express an opinion on controversial political topics like the AV voting system or the right age to start sex education.
Perhaps we should teach kids about sex education and why you should always pay escorts in cash.
You don’t want escort services ltd to appear on your bank statement.
Its already happening! Gentlemen's establishments which are card only
The solution? Apparently to get lots of other AI bots involved to correct each other relentlessly. Sounds like PB. Are you all sure we are not AI ourselves?
As a large language model I am not able to express an opinion on controversial political topics like the AV voting system or the right age to start sex education.
Perhaps we should teach kids about sex education and why you should always pay escorts in cash.
You don’t want escort services ltd to appear on your bank statement.
What about if you don't want to replace your shlonky old Ford with an electric car?
Cities will have exclusively electric cars driving through them, not just priced out but prohibited by heavy fines.
The countryside will be full of shlonky old ICE vehicles in ever greater states of pollution-generation. Because no politicians will dare stop them.
I'd rather walk from Aberdeen to Dartford carrying an unwashed and naked Therese Coffey on my back than give Musk 1p. Dura_Ace
So you are quite happy to bid the price of oil that benefits theocratic dictatorships which jail women for 45 years who post on social media? Alternatively you could support someone who lost 10% of their net worth ending corporate censorship of social media.
My Renault Zoe cost me £12k (2 years old). Range 185 miles in summer, 160 in winter. It depreciates pretty slowly so the current value is £11k after 2 years of ownership. £500 a year.
It's been great. The main reason I use it (in our local urban drives, which after all are by far the most common trips) is because of tailpipe emissions. I want to limit my contribution to the poor urban air quality that kills thousands every year. I drive our big diesel car on longer rural journeys and holidays.
The trouble at the moment is that the cost of charging the Zoe at home is actually higher per mile than the cost to fill the diesel, such is the odd state of the markets for diesel and petrol (rapid recent price drops) and domestic electricity (continued historically high costs). That's market failure and is no doubt slowing down EV adoption.
On that last point, remember that petrol and diesel have a lot of duty on them already.
The freezing of fuel duty for 13 years has been deeply regressive (at least for private car use) and a huge burden on the Treasury.
£80 billion cost so far. HS2 is around £40 billion.
And the budget for walking and cycling has just been cut by 50% in England.
If we're all moving to EVs then fuel duty is going to go down to zero anyway - no matter what it's set at.
It will be incorporated within electricity company taxation.
And so, back to you as the consumer.
Will that apply to all electricity? I can't see how they could differentiate it based on what you're using it for.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
I literally make money on YouTube doing videos about this exact thing. Your 8 hour trip - how many stops? Most people would have 2 stops, maybe 3. Toilet, a snack, in the shop - so perhaps 20 minutes per stop? Before you claim to do it non-stop, or make 1 5-minute stop half way and that's all, again I say "most people". There is a reason why motorway service areas are so busy - most people make stops.
So in your 20 minute stop, plug your car in, add another 150+ miles of range, and then carry on. If you only charge when you were stopping anyway, the time added to your journey for charging is zero. That is my experience of half a dozen now trips from north of Aberdeen down to Sheffield / Liverpool / Essex etc. The number of times I have queued to charge is zero.
I've even done a direct comparison of the same Aberdeenshire to Dartford trip in my current Tesla Model Y vs the previous Outlander PHEV. Tesla was 20 minutes faster, and £50 cheaper. A real world example.
The size of your tank or the range it offers is irrelevant in real world usage. Most people's range is how far their bladder lasts, or their stomach needs a snack, or they need a break because want to get out and stretch their legs. They aren't driving 600 miles of range without a stop.
Before I got stuck at home, I regularly (say 6+ times a year, most often in winter) did the trip north from the Flatlands. We'd have a driver swap somewhere in England, a short stop at Stirling and then a refuel either in Aviemore or Ullapool if heading for the far north. Basically, just point and go.
We usually had piles of outdoor junk, sometimes including bikes, which often went in the car to save on air resistance (about £20 in extra drag if you have them on the roof or a towbar).
My car was (and still is) a zero tax (ha!) diesel estate which gets about 60mpg and can usually do more than 500 miles on a tank.
All current EV cars would be functionally worse and would probably cost at least 4 times as much. A Tesla does not really have the boot space.
Now you could argue that because of climate change, we are all going to have to make sacrifices. But on the other hand I haven't flown anywhere since 2005, as this was what we did instead.
One solution would be to have two cars, one for long journeys and a small electric one for buzzing about. But we really don't do the short miles to make that worthwhile. I'm happy to cycle or walk locally most of the time and I'm not currently commuting (which is the ideal use case for an electric car).
For mass adoption, electric has to be functionally better, not just "morally". This time is maybe not far off, but they don't work for everyone, particularly those who can't afford shiny shiny. At least not yet.
EVs will quite possibly be adopted by most car users before they become functionally better for you, though, since you are something of an edge case.
The solution? Apparently to get lots of other AI bots involved to correct each other relentlessly. Sounds like PB. Are you all sure we are not AI ourselves?
As a large language model I am not able to express an opinion on controversial political topics like the AV voting system or the right age to start sex education.
Perhaps we should teach kids about sex education and why you should always pay escorts in cash.
You don’t want escort services ltd to appear on your bank statement.
Its already happening! Gentlemen's establishments which are card only
The transition to electric vehicles can't come soon enough for one key reason: noise. Not all traffic noise is engine noise but it's the most significant part. The gradual end of revving, roaring, popping noise pollution will make every part of this country better in ways that I don't think many people really give credit for.
It'll take a long time for it to filter down through the second hand market, and I expect there will be "classics" knocking around for decades, but anyone who lives within a couple of kilometres of a main road, which is basically everyone, will gradually start to live better, more relaxing lives.
Until you can't get anywhere because your EV car has run out of power and there is no charging point nearby. Not that relaxing.
Look at what Mike said. 30 minutes or more at a charging station. We have been told for ages that the technology is getting "better" but the simple fact is that petrol cars are still most effective.
I spend far less time at charging stations than you do, because I charge my car at home once a week. Those five or ten minutes add up over the year, and I'm saving time and money.
Now, is that true of everyone? No.
But for a substantial minority of people, EVs are the better option today. And every day the size of that minority increases.
Perhaps in the US. I would question that in the UK.
At the end of the day, there is an implicit class / socio-economic issue here. If you are fairly well-off you will be fine (you will have a drive, a decent car, can afford the electricity etc). If you are poor and rely on your car for essentials, you are screwed.
Oh, I agree, for now they're not for everyone.
But the number of people who will benefit from going EV is growing all the time. You can't buck the market.
Again, I would question that.
The car manufacturers are not showing much inclination to develop mass market EV models. Instead, what they have done - and some such as BMW and Mercedes have been explicit about this - is to raise prices structurally. Wealthier people can afford this, poorer people can't.
I go back to the point that there is an implicit class / socio-economic point thing here. The unstated aim of many who are pushing the EV agenda is to force people - mainly the poorer types - onto public transport by pricing them out of the market when it comes to buying and maintaining a car. There is a reason why so many wealthy middle-class individuals are perfectly happy with pushing an EV agenda because they can afford the price as well as knowing others cannot. You see the same dynamic with such types calling for a reduction in air flights - they are not thinking about their trips to Tuscany or Provence, they are thinking those awful plebs who go on package holidays to cheap destinations.
Wowsers. 1. Mass adoption of EVs will collapse the price and make them available to all. This is already happening with Stellantis offering small EVs which simply weren't an option even 5 years ago. Prices dropping all the time, so getting cheaper . 2. Premium brand charging more to make them more exclusive. How is that a conspiracy against the poor? Rolex throttle supply of Submariners to keep the price up - yet the masses somehow still own a watch. Same with cars. 3. Reduction of flights to stop the plebs travelling. So that what, they have to stay here and have less holidays? I do know of one political group advocating that working people are feckless scumbags who should do a decent day's work for a change, but it isn't the left.
There is very clearly an anti-EV agenda being pushed relentlessly by the right. Their client media have new stories every day - Teslas queueing for charging, my EV broke down, my nightmare journey took 8 hours etc etc. Despite the fact that their government is the one pushing EVs by putting the 2030 deadline in.
Why attack EVs? Seen as trendy and modern, driven by do-gooders, promoting the environment. So of course you want to attack people driving EVs - we're not one of you.
The poor are generally looking to spend less than 3000 on buying a car....what ev gets that low? You won't get many min wage workers paying much more than that I suspect where as now they can spend a couple of grand and get a car that lasts a couple of years and get them to work. They will be mostly buying of facebook market, craigslist, ebay, local ads
Second hand - as EVs expand their adoption, then the second hand market will expand.
Labour’s tax raid on private school fees could raise ‘very little’
At best the party’s calculations could be off by £600m, a report finds
Labour’s plan to add VAT to private school fees is badly flawed and could raise very little revenue, according to a think tank.
The party has said ending the tax breaks enjoyed by independent schools would raise £1.6 billion, which it would invest in the state sector.
However, a new analysis suggests that the figure is likely to be much lower and that in a “best case” scenario for Labour, the changes would bring in £1 billion. In a “worst case” scenario, there would be “very little” new revenue.
EDSK, an education think tank, said the wealthiest parents and the most expensive schools would be the least affected.
Most independent schools have charitable status, giving them at least 80 per cent relief on business rates. In September 2021, Labour said that in government it would end the charitable status of England’s private schools, raising an estimated £1.6 billion from VAT and £100 million from business rates.
The think tank’s report claims that the calculations behind the £1.6 billion figure do not take into account a drop-off in demand for private schools if VAT is added to fees or the extra taxpayer money needed to teach pupils who would be moved to state schools.
The most optimistic scenario is that 5 per cent of pupils would leave private schools and the addition of VAT to fees would only raise about £1 billion a year, it said.
The more pessimistic projection that 25 per cent of pupils would leave private schools means that adding VAT to fees would raise very little new revenue, especially when additional administration costs for HM Revenue & Customs are taken into account.
A local, private, all girls school announced this week it is closing in June for good. The decisive factor was the removal of the charity exemption for rates. So rather than raising more money the policy in this case has cost well over 100 jobs and will throw quite a number of kids onto the local authorities. It will not be the only one.
The inability of politicians, in this case the Scottish government, to recognise that actions have consequences and people and businesses react to being taxed, is truly remarkable.
They don't care, as it's not about money or helping people. It's about ideology.
Yes, but they also like to claim they can fund other things they want to do by the policy in exactly the same way as Labour are claiming with VAT on school fees.
They’ll be funding a lot more school places for a start. Although where they get the money from, is a different question!
Under any reasonable assumption on switching, the policy will pay for more state school places with money left over to raise per pupil funding. A policy that raises school funding while removing an unfair tax distortion that funnels money to the well off, what's not to like about that?
I really don't think it will 'under any reasonable assumption'. BOAFP: Labour need to ensure no more than one in four children move from private to state sector just to break even. It isn't obvious that this will be the case.
People who have studied this in detail have found that spending on private education is fairly price-inelastic, as is evident in the fact that fees have gone up significantly in recent years while the proportion of children in the private sector hasn't changed much.
But isn't that partly due to increased numbers of people from overseas? THis is very much the impression I get from a friend who has children in the Headmaster's Conference school which he attended himself. The children of local factory owners and accountants have ben priced out of the market and replaced by nouveaux riches from all over the world.
"analysis shows that, whilst parental demand for private schooling does respond to school fees, this response is relatively inelastic. Indeed, substantial increases in school fees in the United Kingdom during the last 10 years have not dented demand for private schooling."
My Renault Zoe cost me £12k (2 years old). Range 185 miles in summer, 160 in winter. It depreciates pretty slowly so the current value is £11k after 2 years of ownership. £500 a year.
It's been great. The main reason I use it (in our local urban drives, which after all are by far the most common trips) is because of tailpipe emissions. I want to limit my contribution to the poor urban air quality that kills thousands every year. I drive our big diesel car on longer rural journeys and holidays.
The trouble at the moment is that the cost of charging the Zoe at home is actually higher per mile than the cost to fill the diesel, such is the odd state of the markets for diesel and petrol (rapid recent price drops) and domestic electricity (continued historically high costs). That's market failure and is no doubt slowing down EV adoption.
On that last point, remember that petrol and diesel have a lot of duty on them already.
The freezing of fuel duty for 13 years has been deeply regressive (at least for private car use) and a huge burden on the Treasury.
£80 billion cost so far. HS2 is around £40 billion.
And the budget for walking and cycling has just been cut by 50% in England.
If we're all moving to EVs then fuel duty is going to go down to zero anyway - no matter what it's set at.
It will be incorporated within electricity company taxation.
And so, back to you as the consumer.
Will that apply to all electricity? I can't see how they could differentiate it based on what you're using it for.
Easy. Useage through charging points will be straightforward. DVLA will notify the Government if you have an electric car. I won't be at all surprised if you have to register your mileage monthly/quarterly, so they can "reflect" that in your electricity bill.
The solution? Apparently to get lots of other AI bots involved to correct each other relentlessly. Sounds like PB. Are you all sure we are not AI ourselves?
As a large language model I am not able to express an opinion on controversial political topics like the AV voting system or the right age to start sex education.
Perhaps we should teach kids about sex education and why you should always pay escorts in cash.
You don’t want escort services ltd to appear on your bank statement.
Its already happening! Gentlemen's establishments which are card only
Where does one swipe it, exactly?
(Presumably the name on the receipt doesn’t match the name on the door?)
My Renault Zoe cost me £12k (2 years old). Range 185 miles in summer, 160 in winter. It depreciates pretty slowly so the current value is £11k after 2 years of ownership. £500 a year.
It's been great. The main reason I use it (in our local urban drives, which after all are by far the most common trips) is because of tailpipe emissions. I want to limit my contribution to the poor urban air quality that kills thousands every year. I drive our big diesel car on longer rural journeys and holidays.
The trouble at the moment is that the cost of charging the Zoe at home is actually higher per mile than the cost to fill the diesel, such is the odd state of the markets for diesel and petrol (rapid recent price drops) and domestic electricity (continued historically high costs). That's market failure and is no doubt slowing down EV adoption.
On that last point, remember that petrol and diesel have a lot of duty on them already.
The freezing of fuel duty for 13 years has been deeply regressive (at least for private car use) and a huge burden on the Treasury.
£80 billion cost so far. HS2 is around £40 billion.
And the budget for walking and cycling has just been cut by 50% in England.
If we're all moving to EVs then fuel duty is going to go down to zero anyway - no matter what it's set at.
It will be incorporated within electricity company taxation.
And so, back to you as the consumer.
Not sure it will be as simple as that. One of the major savings of an EV at the moment is the cost of fuel. But nearly all of that differential is made up of the duty and VAT on the duty the government gets. According to the RAC the government take is approximately 55%.
As more and more people switch to EV I do not think that entirely artificial advantage can be sustained. I suspect that more taxes will be charged on charging points to cover some of this and road tax for EVs will increase sharply.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
It is unreasonable to expect to be able to transition to a net zero economy while retaining every single aspect of our current unsustainable way of living. Some things may be lost, such as the ability to be anywhere in the country within a short amount of time. Businesses and individuals will adapt to cope with this.
So the great master plan is to reduce freedom and choice for millions of people.
Be interesting to see a government have the courage of their convictions and actually be honest about that.
Don't be silly. Of course nobody wants to reduce anyone's freedom and choice. But is frankly ridiculously entitled to assume that everything can carry on exactly as now, and I do indeed wish that governments would be honest about that. If we are to achieve our goal of a sustainable civilisation, then things need to change, some for the better and, yes, some for the worse. The technology is about mitigating the adverse effects as far as possible.
The visions of the 'sustainable' civilisation we have been presented with so far are the rich do what they want and the rest of us do as we are told.
Isn't that the entire case against industrialisation, expressed in a single sentence?
Industrialisation meant that the lifestyle that was once only available to the very rich, became availalbe to the ordinary person.
Stepping back from the detailed debates for a minute, can I ask a basic question - if we had just invented personal cars as a mass market technology, would we be promoting electricity or fossil fuels?
Most of the arguments against EVs stack a load of weights on that side of the equation and pretend there are none on the fossil side. On this thread we have had various weights stacked onto the EV side - a few examples: My diesel is ULEZ compliant so it doesn't pollute My car does 600 miles so how much longer would you take stopping in an EV Your EV battery will fail and need to be replaced
These are posted as zero-sum - all the weight on the EV side, nothing on the fossil side. That isn't reality.
Lets take range. We know that most people's car usage suits EVs. Hard data proves that. We also know that most people do not drive 600 miles non-stop, and the few who try get shouted at by the authorities trying to reduce the number accidents caused by tired drivers.
So if most people's normal use is inside EV battery range and you can charge at home, then why promote fossil as the answer? If most people have a human charging stop every couple of hours of driving, then why promote fossil as the answer?
The current EV market and infrastructure in the UK could not fulfil both of the points I have just looked at. Too many people can't charge at home, mass installation of simple chargers in car parks would be required. But that *could* be done. Nor does the current price of EVs and the increasingly bonkers price charged by many networks for electricity make it viable for people on a budget. But it *could* be.
Most of the tropes given against EVs - many on this thread - just aren't true for most people. But because the technology is old* people don't know any better. And the crapola way we have implemented re-electrification* has rightly put some people off.
*EVs came first. Go back to the start of the 20th century and the new fangled motor car was more likely to be EV than not. Ford's Model T and the might of Big Oil put a stop to that.
If you invented petrol today, you wouldn’t be allowed to sell it to the public. It’s inflammable, toxic, explosive - and those are just the highlights.
My Renault Zoe cost me £12k (2 years old). Range 185 miles in summer, 160 in winter. It depreciates pretty slowly so the current value is £11k after 2 years of ownership. £500 a year.
It's been great. The main reason I use it (in our local urban drives, which after all are by far the most common trips) is because of tailpipe emissions. I want to limit my contribution to the poor urban air quality that kills thousands every year. I drive our big diesel car on longer rural journeys and holidays.
The trouble at the moment is that the cost of charging the Zoe at home is actually higher per mile than the cost to fill the diesel, such is the odd state of the markets for diesel and petrol (rapid recent price drops) and domestic electricity (continued historically high costs). That's market failure and is no doubt slowing down EV adoption.
On that last point, remember that petrol and diesel have a lot of duty on them already.
The freezing of fuel duty for 13 years has been deeply regressive (at least for private car use) and a huge burden on the Treasury.
£80 billion cost so far. HS2 is around £40 billion.
And the budget for walking and cycling has just been cut by 50% in England.
If we're all moving to EVs then fuel duty is going to go down to zero anyway - no matter what it's set at.
It will be incorporated within electricity company taxation.
And so, back to you as the consumer.
Not sure it will be as simple as that. One of the major savings of an EV at the moment is the cost of fuel. But nearly all of that differential is made up of the duty and VAT on the duty the government gets. According to the RAC the government take is approximately 55%.
As more and more people switch to EV I do not think that entirely artificial advantage can be sustained. I suspect that more taxes will be charged on charging points to cover some of this and road tax for EVs will increase sharply.
Road tax for EVs is increasing by ∞ % in 2025. That is indeed a pretty sharp increase.
My Renault Zoe cost me £12k (2 years old). Range 185 miles in summer, 160 in winter. It depreciates pretty slowly so the current value is £11k after 2 years of ownership. £500 a year.
It's been great. The main reason I use it (in our local urban drives, which after all are by far the most common trips) is because of tailpipe emissions. I want to limit my contribution to the poor urban air quality that kills thousands every year. I drive our big diesel car on longer rural journeys and holidays.
The trouble at the moment is that the cost of charging the Zoe at home is actually higher per mile than the cost to fill the diesel, such is the odd state of the markets for diesel and petrol (rapid recent price drops) and domestic electricity (continued historically high costs). That's market failure and is no doubt slowing down EV adoption.
On that last point, remember that petrol and diesel have a lot of duty on them already.
The freezing of fuel duty for 13 years has been deeply regressive (at least for private car use) and a huge burden on the Treasury.
£80 billion cost so far. HS2 is around £40 billion.
And the budget for walking and cycling has just been cut by 50% in England.
If we're all moving to EVs then fuel duty is going to go down to zero anyway - no matter what it's set at.
Fuel duty and road tax currently raise around £35bn, c.5% of all government revenues. It’s not discussed enough how the government is going to be able to replace that revenue, as more electric and hybrid cars are sold.
It's actually being discussed in loads of detail by the OBR etc.
It's really important work as it translates across to all Pigou taxes, the main way we are tackling climate change externalities.
I'm a big fan of transferring more of the tax burden onto "bad behaviour", but it does mean we need to be fiscally agile. Whac-a-mole.
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
Universities currently have their own unique status in UK law.
The solution? Apparently to get lots of other AI bots involved to correct each other relentlessly. Sounds like PB. Are you all sure we are not AI ourselves?
We are constantly correcting our mental representation of reality via our senses. And plenty of us have at times deeply inaccurate conceptions of the world around us. For now, AIs have only large text files - a good part of which are utter nonsense, produced by us - to operate on. It's still surprising that they appear as coherent as they do.
Of course from 2030 sale of petrol and diesel cars will be banned in the UK and by 2035 sale of hybrid cars, so we won't have much choice but to go electric then
I expect that date to change not least at the demand of German car makers and it will be many years before petrol and diesel cars become extinct, it at all
Die Großen Drei German OEMs (BMW, Mercedes, VAG) absolutely love EVs and are building their product roadmaps around them. Why? Because the cost of designing and engineering ICE powertrains is now phenomenally expensive (see JLR just giving up and using BMW engines) and the Chinese market has a high demand for EVs.
Assuming your name rflects your interests, and pushing the off-topic envelope, Shimano 105: R7000 2x11 mechanical or di2 2x12?
I'd always recommend Di2 if the budget allows. Never goes out of adjustment, quicker shifts, gear display on the bike computer and optional one handed operation. Always update the firmware though as most bike shops never bother doing this. The 'one way' bleeding isn't great on 105 calipers if you prefer a 'hard and high' lever feel though.
Interesting - I've been sceptical of electric/wireless groupsets (and they're out of my price range anyway) but never going out of adjustment sounds very good, especially as an veteran bike-breaker. I worry that I thrash my machine around and fall off a lot so would knacker it (and atm am actually very much enjoying riding fixed gear).
Capitalism is not taking away perfectly functional systems and replacing them for social/cultural reasons with an approach that prices out the majority from activities they could previously afford. That's a political choice. And it's a wretched one.
My Renault Zoe cost me £12k (2 years old). Range 185 miles in summer, 160 in winter. It depreciates pretty slowly so the current value is £11k after 2 years of ownership. £500 a year.
It's been great. The main reason I use it (in our local urban drives, which after all are by far the most common trips) is because of tailpipe emissions. I want to limit my contribution to the poor urban air quality that kills thousands every year. I drive our big diesel car on longer rural journeys and holidays.
The trouble at the moment is that the cost of charging the Zoe at home is actually higher per mile than the cost to fill the diesel, such is the odd state of the markets for diesel and petrol (rapid recent price drops) and domestic electricity (continued historically high costs). That's market failure and is no doubt slowing down EV adoption.
On that last point, remember that petrol and diesel have a lot of duty on them already.
The freezing of fuel duty for 13 years has been deeply regressive (at least for private car use) and a huge burden on the Treasury.
£80 billion cost so far. HS2 is around £40 billion.
And the budget for walking and cycling has just been cut by 50% in England.
If we're all moving to EVs then fuel duty is going to go down to zero anyway - no matter what it's set at.
Fuel duty and road tax currently raise around £35bn, c.5% of all government revenues. It’s not discussed enough how the government is going to be able to replace that revenue, as more electric and hybrid cars are sold.
It's actually being discussed in loads of detail by the OBR etc.
It's really important work as it translates across to all Pigou taxes, the main way we are tackling climate change externalities.
I'm a big fan of transferring more of the tax burden onto "bad behaviour", but it does mean we need to be fiscally agile. Whac-a-mole.
Here is the paper. It's so good. Sexy Sankey diagram too
The solution? Apparently to get lots of other AI bots involved to correct each other relentlessly. Sounds like PB. Are you all sure we are not AI ourselves?
As a large language model I am not able to express an opinion on controversial political topics like the AV voting system or the right age to start sex education.
Perhaps we should teach kids about sex education and why you should always pay escorts in cash.
You don’t want escort services ltd to appear on your bank statement.
Its already happening! Gentlemen's establishments which are card only
Where does one swipe it, exactly?
(Presumably the name on the receipt doesn’t match the name on the door?)
I spent a night in a brothel in Budapest last month (last minute booking, BA Bucharest flight got diverted there) but it shows up as the Somewhere Garden Hotel.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
I literally make money on YouTube doing videos about this exact thing. Your 8 hour trip - how many stops? Most people would have 2 stops, maybe 3. Toilet, a snack, in the shop - so perhaps 20 minutes per stop? Before you claim to do it non-stop, or make 1 5-minute stop half way and that's all, again I say "most people". There is a reason why motorway service areas are so busy - most people make stops.
So in your 20 minute stop, plug your car in, add another 150+ miles of range, and then carry on. If you only charge when you were stopping anyway, the time added to your journey for charging is zero. That is my experience of half a dozen now trips from north of Aberdeen down to Sheffield / Liverpool / Essex etc. The number of times I have queued to charge is zero.
I've even done a direct comparison of the same Aberdeenshire to Dartford trip in my current Tesla Model Y vs the previous Outlander PHEV. Tesla was 20 minutes faster, and £50 cheaper. A real world example.
The size of your tank or the range it offers is irrelevant in real world usage. Most people's range is how far their bladder lasts, or their stomach needs a snack, or they need a break because want to get out and stretch their legs. They aren't driving 600 miles of range without a stop.
Before I got stuck at home, I regularly (say 6+ times a year, most often in winter) did the trip north from the Flatlands. We'd have a driver swap somewhere in England, a short stop at Stirling and then a refuel either in Aviemore or Ullapool if heading for the far north. Basically, just point and go.
We usually had piles of outdoor junk, sometimes including bikes, which often went in the car to save on air resistance (about £20 in extra drag if you have them on the roof or a towbar).
My car was (and still is) a zero tax (ha!) diesel estate which gets about 60mpg and can usually do more than 500 miles on a tank.
All current EV cars would be functionally worse and would probably cost at least 4 times as much. A Tesla does not really have the boot space.
Now you could argue that because of climate change, we are all going to have to make sacrifices. But on the other hand I haven't flown anywhere since 2005, as this was what we did instead.
One solution would be to have two cars, one for long journeys and a small electric one for buzzing about. But we really don't do the short miles to make that worthwhile. I'm happy to cycle or walk locally most of the time and I'm not currently commuting (which is the ideal use case for an electric car).
For mass adoption, electric has to be functionally better, not just "morally". This time is maybe not far off, but they don't work for everyone, particularly those who can't afford shiny shiny. At least not yet.
For almost everyone, the best car option is the one they already own. You have an old diesel estate which is still going and by the sounds of it you're still happy with. Great! Keep it! Would be crazy to trade it for £little to spend £lots on any new car unless you really want to. That is the same consideration most of us face with cars - cheaper to keep it.
I did see a Tesla Model Y which had a bike rack on the roof. Asked the guy what that was doing to energy use, and as you said with your own example, it wasn't good.
My policy with choice of cars though isn't to have a universal vehicle that can cover every eventuality. Because I'd have to have a van. The Outlander I had before the Tesla was often used like a van, but even that wasn't big enough all the time. So I just did more trips. The gargantuan boot of my Tesla isn't as square as the Outlander, so more trips again. But its better at almost everything else than the Outlander.
My frustration - and it is frustration not opposition - is that I don't want to keep my old diesel. I want an electric car. Not for any pointless climate change reasons but for the ones I have outlined that really will make life better for people - cutting noise pollution (although I will caveat that with the fact that people don't seem to realise how much traffic noise on faster routes is actually tyre noise not engine) and dealing with what I believe is a far greater environmental catastrophe which is the effect of petrol additives on our insect population.
But it is frustrating that at this moment it is simply not practical. Saying we all have to make changes is great for those who have the ability and the money to do that. I don't. I can neither afford an EV nor would it be practical for the one main thing I use a vehicle for.
I want things to change but just waving away the objections, particularly when they come from people who genuinely want this promised future, is short sighted.
The transition to electric vehicles can't come soon enough for one key reason: noise. Not all traffic noise is engine noise but it's the most significant part. The gradual end of revving, roaring, popping noise pollution will make every part of this country better in ways that I don't think many people really give credit for.
It'll take a long time for it to filter down through the second hand market, and I expect there will be "classics" knocking around for decades, but anyone who lives within a couple of kilometres of a main road, which is basically everyone, will gradually start to live better, more relaxing lives.
Until you can't get anywhere because your EV car has run out of power and there is no charging point nearby. Not that relaxing.
Look at what Mike said. 30 minutes or more at a charging station. We have been told for ages that the technology is getting "better" but the simple fact is that petrol cars are still most effective.
A lot of ink gets spilled about the experience of the driver. I was offering an alternative perspective, that of the experience of everyone else. Can't we allow a comment on that without bringing it back yet again to the driver?
The idea that modes of transport should be designed only around the user is obviously wrong.
1.They are really very expensive. 2. Their range is not good. 3. Charging infrastructure is patchy and unreliable
Until these 3 change I will not be buying one. For very local journeys we walk or bike. There are no buses. The trains have become unreliable since the strikes. Cars are essential. But EV's are as yet wholly impractical.
I think this is unreasonably reductive & “wholly impractical” a massive overstatement.
Plenty of people commute less than fifty miles to work. Which means that the round trip is easily within every EV currently on sale (and most second hand ones, except early Leafs I imagine). If you can charge overnight, then this model of usage can work out perfectly well.
EVs do not have to be a perfect replacement for ICE cars to replace them - they just have to be good enough that a buyer is happy to put up with the downsides in order to get the upside. That’s a calculation which differs between people.
A relative bought a second hand Leaf as a second car. It’s range is terrible! But it can happily drive to town / school / any kind of local trip and the running costs are extremely low. What’s not to like?
As I hope was obvious from my comment they are wholly impractical in the area where I live.
Elsewhere they may be suitable. But public policy should be designed to make such a change practical and cost effective for everyone not the lucky few. I see no signs of that happening.
Why not have both, like we do? A big comfy long distance diesel or petrol for those long country drives, and a small runabout EV for trips to the shops and other local excursions. Even the small ones like Leafs and Zoes have ranges these days around 200 miles which gets you a lot of local trips, and living in the countryside means I assume it's easy to charge at home. And they really aren't expensive.
I can't afford to own or run two cars, that's why. If the trains to London (or even the local ones) were reliable I could rely on something small. But they aren't.
In time I hope charging infrastructure and trains become better and the price comes down and then I will make the change. But for now - and I have looked into this - they don't work for me.
It’s fine to say they don’t work for you & therefore you won’t buy one. If you’re talking about yourself rather than in general then maybe make that a tad clearer in future? It really wasn’t obvious to me reading your original comment that you were speaking personally & not in generalities.
Was the phrase "until these 3 change, I will not be buying one" not a big clue. Nor the reference to the state of local trains / non-existence of local buses and what "we" do for local journeys?
Capitalism is not taking away perfectly functional systems and replacing them for social/cultural reasons with an approach that prices out the majority from activities they could previously afford. That's a political choice. And it's a wretched one.
Private vices are public virtues. Excise on spirits and tobacco has been baked in to capitalism from day one.
Of course from 2030 sale of petrol and diesel cars will be banned in the UK and by 2035 sale of hybrid cars, so we won't have much choice but to go electric then
I expect that date to change not least at the demand of German car makers and it will be many years before petrol and diesel cars become extinct, it at all
Die Großen Drei German OEMs (BMW, Mercedes, VAG) absolutely love EVs and are building their product roadmaps around them. Why? Because the cost of designing and engineering ICE powertrains is now phenomenally expensive (see JLR just giving up and using BMW engines) and the Chinese market has a high demand for EVs.
Assuming your name rflects your interests, and pushing the off-topic envelope, Shimano 105: R7000 2x11 mechanical or di2 2x12?
I'd always recommend Di2 if the budget allows. Never goes out of adjustment, quicker shifts, gear display on the bike computer and optional one handed operation. Always update the firmware though as most bike shops never bother doing this. The 'one way' bleeding isn't great on 105 calipers if you prefer a 'hard and high' lever feel though.
Interesting - I've been sceptical of electric/wireless groupsets (and they're out of my price range anyway) but never going out of adjustment sounds very good, especially as an veteran bike-breaker. I worry that I thrash my machine around and fall off a lot so would knacker it (and atm am actually very much enjoying riding fixed gear).
Di2 goes into 'crash mode' if you stack it which disconnects the stepper motor in the RD from the cage. I put 8,000km on the R9200 gruppo on my training bike with zero gear adjustments (did three chains and two sets of brake pads though).
Capitalism is not taking away perfectly functional systems and replacing them for social/cultural reasons with an approach that prices out the majority from activities they could previously afford. That's a political choice. And it's a wretched one.
There is little point discussing the issue with you given that you apparently don't understand the problem that EVs are intended to mitigate.
The solution? Apparently to get lots of other AI bots involved to correct each other relentlessly. Sounds like PB. Are you all sure we are not AI ourselves?
As a large language model I am not able to express an opinion on controversial political topics like the AV voting system or the right age to start sex education.
Perhaps we should teach kids about sex education and why you should always pay escorts in cash.
You don’t want escort services ltd to appear on your bank statement.
Its already happening! Gentlemen's establishments which are card only
I would not know.
#Pious
I haven't been in them either. But so I have been told...
Of course from 2030 sale of petrol and diesel cars will be banned in the UK and by 2035 sale of hybrid cars, so we won't have much choice but to go electric then
I expect that date to change not least at the demand of German car makers and it will be many years before petrol and diesel cars become extinct, it at all
Die Großen Drei German OEMs (BMW, Mercedes, VAG) absolutely love EVs and are building their product roadmaps around them. Why? Because the cost of designing and engineering ICE powertrains is now phenomenally expensive (see JLR just giving up and using BMW engines) and the Chinese market has a high demand for EVs.
Assuming your name rflects your interests, and pushing the off-topic envelope, Shimano 105: R7000 2x11 mechanical or di2 2x12?
I'd always recommend Di2 if the budget allows. Never goes out of adjustment, quicker shifts, gear display on the bike computer and optional one handed operation. Always update the firmware though as most bike shops never bother doing this. The 'one way' bleeding isn't great on 105 calipers if you prefer a 'hard and high' lever feel though.
Interesting - I've been sceptical of electric/wireless groupsets (and they're out of my price range anyway) but never going out of adjustment sounds very good, especially as an veteran bike-breaker. I worry that I thrash my machine around and fall off a lot so would knacker it (and atm am actually very much enjoying riding fixed gear).
Di2 goes into 'crash mode' if you stack it which disconnects the stepper motor in the RD from the cage. I put 8,000km on the R9200 gruppo on my training bike with zero gear adjustments (did three chains and two sets of brake pads though).
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
It is unreasonable to expect to be able to transition to a net zero economy while retaining every single aspect of our current unsustainable way of living. Some things may be lost, such as the ability to be anywhere in the country within a short amount of time. Businesses and individuals will adapt to cope with this.
So the great master plan is to reduce freedom and choice for millions of people.
Be interesting to see a government have the courage of their convictions and actually be honest about that.
Don't be silly. Of course nobody wants to reduce anyone's freedom and choice. But is frankly ridiculously entitled to assume that everything can carry on exactly as now, and I do indeed wish that governments would be honest about that. If we are to achieve our goal of a sustainable civilisation, then things need to change, some for the better and, yes, some for the worse. The technology is about mitigating the adverse effects as far as possible.
The vusions of the 'sustainable' civilisation we have been presented with so far are the rich do what they want and the rest of us do as we are told.
So how would you go about achieving net zero?
Start by taxing all chinese imports at 200%. No one would do it of course and it is only a half serious suggestion but it would do more good than anything we are doing in the UK at the moment.
O/T and FWIW, we are hearing in Tallinn that the ZSU has made multiple breakthroughs of Russian lines. The destruction of the Nova Khakovka dam has also destroyed the primary water supply to Crimea and we are hearing reports of large scale movements of Russians out of the peninsula.
The situation will become clearer in the coming days, but victorious armies do not commit scorched earth war crimes on territory they expect to hold.
This is why the Tories won’t squeeze a single vote out of reform ahead of the election. Leave voters are angry that Tory sleaze and corruption has pulled the rug from under Brexit.
This is also another reason Sunak goes to the country on May 2nd. Months of phoney election war throughout 2024 will be dominated by how the highest tax take ever and huge amounts of borrowing from Sunak Johnson era was spent, partially, wastefully.
Probably. Of course, the irony is that they may well let Labour, the true masters of punitive taxation and wasteful spending, in as a result.
Not to diminish democracy, but voters do tend get a “It can’t be any worse than this, I’ve nothing to lose by trying the grass on the other side” about them, that isn’t always rational or the good call.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
I literally make money on YouTube doing videos about this exact thing. Your 8 hour trip - how many stops? Most people would have 2 stops, maybe 3. Toilet, a snack, in the shop - so perhaps 20 minutes per stop? Before you claim to do it non-stop, or make 1 5-minute stop half way and that's all, again I say "most people". There is a reason why motorway service areas are so busy - most people make stops.
So in your 20 minute stop, plug your car in, add another 150+ miles of range, and then carry on. If you only charge when you were stopping anyway, the time added to your journey for charging is zero. That is my experience of half a dozen now trips from north of Aberdeen down to Sheffield / Liverpool / Essex etc. The number of times I have queued to charge is zero.
I've even done a direct comparison of the same Aberdeenshire to Dartford trip in my current Tesla Model Y vs the previous Outlander PHEV. Tesla was 20 minutes faster, and £50 cheaper. A real world example.
The size of your tank or the range it offers is irrelevant in real world usage. Most people's range is how far their bladder lasts, or their stomach needs a snack, or they need a break because want to get out and stretch their legs. They aren't driving 600 miles of range without a stop.
Before I got stuck at home, I regularly (say 6+ times a year, most often in winter) did the trip north from the Flatlands. We'd have a driver swap somewhere in England, a short stop at Stirling and then a refuel either in Aviemore or Ullapool if heading for the far north. Basically, just point and go.
We usually had piles of outdoor junk, sometimes including bikes, which often went in the car to save on air resistance (about £20 in extra drag if you have them on the roof or a towbar).
My car was (and still is) a zero tax (ha!) diesel estate which gets about 60mpg and can usually do more than 500 miles on a tank.
All current EV cars would be functionally worse and would probably cost at least 4 times as much. A Tesla does not really have the boot space.
Now you could argue that because of climate change, we are all going to have to make sacrifices. But on the other hand I haven't flown anywhere since 2005, as this was what we did instead.
One solution would be to have two cars, one for long journeys and a small electric one for buzzing about. But we really don't do the short miles to make that worthwhile. I'm happy to cycle or walk locally most of the time and I'm not currently commuting (which is the ideal use case for an electric car).
For mass adoption, electric has to be functionally better, not just "morally". This time is maybe not far off, but they don't work for everyone, particularly those who can't afford shiny shiny. At least not yet.
For almost everyone, the best car option is the one they already own. You have an old diesel estate which is still going and by the sounds of it you're still happy with. Great! Keep it! Would be crazy to trade it for £little to spend £lots on any new car unless you really want to. That is the same consideration most of us face with cars - cheaper to keep it.
I did see a Tesla Model Y which had a bike rack on the roof. Asked the guy what that was doing to energy use, and as you said with your own example, it wasn't good.
My policy with choice of cars though isn't to have a universal vehicle that can cover every eventuality. Because I'd have to have a van. The Outlander I had before the Tesla was often used like a van, but even that wasn't big enough all the time. So I just did more trips. The gargantuan boot of my Tesla isn't as square as the Outlander, so more trips again. But its better at almost everything else than the Outlander.
My frustration - and it is frustration not opposition - is that I don't want to keep my old diesel. I want an electric car. Not for any pointless climate change reasons but for the ones I have outlined that really will make life better for people - cutting noise pollution (although I will caveat that with the fact that people don't seem to realise how much traffic noise on faster routes is actually tyre noise not engine) and dealing with what I believe is a far greater environmental catastrophe which is the effect of petrol additives on our insect population.
But it is frustrating that at this moment it is simply not practical. Saying we all have to make changes is great for those who have the ability and the money to do that. I don't. I can neither afford an EV nor would it be practical for the one main thing I use a vehicle for.
I want things to change but just waving away the objections, particularly when they come from people who genuinely want this promised future, is short sighted.
One reason they don't work for you because you have a robo bladder and don't get tired For almost anyone doing your example trip they would stop a couple of times because they aren't robo and whilst stopped the car charges up.
In our case with the family in the car we did Fraserburgh-ish to Basildon with a couple of stops. We would have to stop even if the car had a battery or fuel tank capable of going non-stop.
I take your points on cost and practicalities - costs are dropping and body types expanding, so the tipping point will come.
Where of course ev's really fail is a scenario I think most have done once
Driving along you realise you have overestimated your fuel/charge due to conditions. You start muttering prayers as you head to the nearest filling station but run out short.
Now in an ice car its a total inconvenience and you swear as you trudge/hitchhike to the nearest bp then do the reverse journey with a flagon of petrol.
In an ev you do? Difficult to go fetch a bucket of electricity
You get someone to tow you.
It's a pain.
But I'm 48 years old and have never run out of fuel. It's not that common a scenario.
Towing costs a fair amount of money as I know from when I had to get towed off a motorway when my last car broke down.
Running out of fuel is more common than you think especially in cold weather where you are stuck in a jam and need the engine running for heat. Something I suspect just as common in ev's as ice. Most I know have run out of fuel at least once in their life due to this
I’ve never come close to running out of fuel and I’m in my mid 40s. You have to be pretty absent minded to allow that to happen.
The light comes on with about 70 miles left in the tank these days.
I’ve been driving for nearly 28 years.
I think the light has come on about 3 times in those 28 years.
I always fill up when I have just less than a quarter in.
Am I a weirdo overcautious?
Three times in three decades? That's a bit OCPD TBF.
I have been driving for 62 years and have not had a light come on or run out of fuel
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
It is unreasonable to expect to be able to transition to a net zero economy while retaining every single aspect of our current unsustainable way of living. Some things may be lost, such as the ability to be anywhere in the country within a short amount of time. Businesses and individuals will adapt to cope with this.
So the great master plan is to reduce freedom and choice for millions of people.
Be interesting to see a government have the courage of their convictions and actually be honest about that.
Don't be silly. Of course nobody wants to reduce anyone's freedom and choice. But is frankly ridiculously entitled to assume that everything can carry on exactly as now, and I do indeed wish that governments would be honest about that. If we are to achieve our goal of a sustainable civilisation, then things need to change, some for the better and, yes, some for the worse. The technology is about mitigating the adverse effects as far as possible.
The vusions of the 'sustainable' civilisation we have been presented with so far are the rich do what they want and the rest of us do as we are told.
So how would you go about achieving net zero?
Start by taxing all chinese imports at 200%. No one would do it of course and it is only a half serious suggestion but it would do more good than anything we are doing in the UK at the moment.
On a serious note - I was told be someone in Dept. Of International Trade that the Chinese had said a carbon tax on imports would be a declaration of a trade war, as far as they were concerned.
My Renault Zoe cost me £12k (2 years old). Range 185 miles in summer, 160 in winter. It depreciates pretty slowly so the current value is £11k after 2 years of ownership. £500 a year.
It's been great. The main reason I use it (in our local urban drives, which after all are by far the most common trips) is because of tailpipe emissions. I want to limit my contribution to the poor urban air quality that kills thousands every year. I drive our big diesel car on longer rural journeys and holidays.
The trouble at the moment is that the cost of charging the Zoe at home is actually higher per mile than the cost to fill the diesel, such is the odd state of the markets for diesel and petrol (rapid recent price drops) and domestic electricity (continued historically high costs). That's market failure and is no doubt slowing down EV adoption.
On that last point, remember that petrol and diesel have a lot of duty on them already.
The freezing of fuel duty for 13 years has been deeply regressive (at least for private car use) and a huge burden on the Treasury.
£80 billion cost so far. HS2 is around £40 billion.
And the budget for walking and cycling has just been cut by 50% in England.
If we're all moving to EVs then fuel duty is going to go down to zero anyway - no matter what it's set at.
Fuel duty and road tax currently raise around £35bn, c.5% of all government revenues. It’s not discussed enough how the government is going to be able to replace that revenue, as more electric and hybrid cars are sold.
Hopefully by taxing everyone fairly and consistently, rather than treating drivers as the golden goose to be fleeced while subsidising other people's chosen modes of transportation.
1.They are really very expensive. 2. Their range is not good. 3. Charging infrastructure is patchy and unreliable
Until these 3 change I will not be buying one. For very local journeys we walk or bike. There are no buses. The trains have become unreliable since the strikes. Cars are essential. But EV's are as yet wholly impractical.
I think this is unreasonably reductive & “wholly impractical” a massive overstatement.
Plenty of people commute less than fifty miles to work. Which means that the round trip is easily within every EV currently on sale (and most second hand ones, except early Leafs I imagine). If you can charge overnight, then this model of usage can work out perfectly well.
EVs do not have to be a perfect replacement for ICE cars to replace them - they just have to be good enough that a buyer is happy to put up with the downsides in order to get the upside. That’s a calculation which differs between people.
A relative bought a second hand Leaf as a second car. It’s range is terrible! But it can happily drive to town / school / any kind of local trip and the running costs are extremely low. What’s not to like?
As I hope was obvious from my comment they are wholly impractical in the area where I live.
Elsewhere they may be suitable. But public policy should be designed to make such a change practical and cost effective for everyone not the lucky few. I see no signs of that happening.
Why not have both, like we do? A big comfy long distance diesel or petrol for those long country drives, and a small runabout EV for trips to the shops and other local excursions. Even the small ones like Leafs and Zoes have ranges these days around 200 miles which gets you a lot of local trips, and living in the countryside means I assume it's easy to charge at home. And they really aren't expensive.
I can't afford to own or run two cars, that's why. If the trains to London (or even the local ones) were reliable I could rely on something small. But they aren't.
In time I hope charging infrastructure and trains become better and the price comes down and then I will make the change. But for now - and I have looked into this - they don't work for me.
It’s fine to say they don’t work for you & therefore you won’t buy one. If you’re talking about yourself rather than in general then maybe make that a tad clearer in future? It really wasn’t obvious to me reading your original comment that you were speaking personally & not in generalities.
Was the phrase "until these 3 change, I will not be buying one" not a big clue. Nor the reference to the state of local trains / non-existence of local buses and what "we" do for local journeys?
I am curious as to why they are "wholly impractical in the area where I live". I assume you live in the sticks as I do. I have only ever used public chargers up here for shooting a YouTube video - the car's range means there's no need for local charging within a 140 mile radius of here.
Capitalism is not taking away perfectly functional systems and replacing them for social/cultural reasons with an approach that prices out the majority from activities they could previously afford. That's a political choice. And it's a wretched one.
There is little point discussing the issue with you given that you apparently don't understand the problem that EVs are intended to mitigate.
Like the "young people's curiosity about sex" thing on the last thread, much pleasanter to just pretend that a problem doesn't exist.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
I literally make money on YouTube doing videos about this exact thing. Your 8 hour trip - how many stops? Most people would have 2 stops, maybe 3. Toilet, a snack, in the shop - so perhaps 20 minutes per stop? Before you claim to do it non-stop, or make 1 5-minute stop half way and that's all, again I say "most people". There is a reason why motorway service areas are so busy - most people make stops.
So in your 20 minute stop, plug your car in, add another 150+ miles of range, and then carry on. If you only charge when you were stopping anyway, the time added to your journey for charging is zero. That is my experience of half a dozen now trips from north of Aberdeen down to Sheffield / Liverpool / Essex etc. The number of times I have queued to charge is zero.
I've even done a direct comparison of the same Aberdeenshire to Dartford trip in my current Tesla Model Y vs the previous Outlander PHEV. Tesla was 20 minutes faster, and £50 cheaper. A real world example.
The size of your tank or the range it offers is irrelevant in real world usage. Most people's range is how far their bladder lasts, or their stomach needs a snack, or they need a break because want to get out and stretch their legs. They aren't driving 600 miles of range without a stop.
Before I got stuck at home, I regularly (say 6+ times a year, most often in winter) did the trip north from the Flatlands. We'd have a driver swap somewhere in England, a short stop at Stirling and then a refuel either in Aviemore or Ullapool if heading for the far north. Basically, just point and go.
We usually had piles of outdoor junk, sometimes including bikes, which often went in the car to save on air resistance (about £20 in extra drag if you have them on the roof or a towbar).
My car was (and still is) a zero tax (ha!) diesel estate which gets about 60mpg and can usually do more than 500 miles on a tank.
All current EV cars would be functionally worse and would probably cost at least 4 times as much. A Tesla does not really have the boot space.
Now you could argue that because of climate change, we are all going to have to make sacrifices. But on the other hand I haven't flown anywhere since 2005, as this was what we did instead.
One solution would be to have two cars, one for long journeys and a small electric one for buzzing about. But we really don't do the short miles to make that worthwhile. I'm happy to cycle or walk locally most of the time and I'm not currently commuting (which is the ideal use case for an electric car).
For mass adoption, electric has to be functionally better, not just "morally". This time is maybe not far off, but they don't work for everyone, particularly those who can't afford shiny shiny. At least not yet.
For almost everyone, the best car option is the one they already own. You have an old diesel estate which is still going and by the sounds of it you're still happy with. Great! Keep it! Would be crazy to trade it for £little to spend £lots on any new car unless you really want to. That is the same consideration most of us face with cars - cheaper to keep it.
I did see a Tesla Model Y which had a bike rack on the roof. Asked the guy what that was doing to energy use, and as you said with your own example, it wasn't good.
My policy with choice of cars though isn't to have a universal vehicle that can cover every eventuality. Because I'd have to have a van. The Outlander I had before the Tesla was often used like a van, but even that wasn't big enough all the time. So I just did more trips. The gargantuan boot of my Tesla isn't as square as the Outlander, so more trips again. But its better at almost everything else than the Outlander.
My frustration - and it is frustration not opposition - is that I don't want to keep my old diesel. I want an electric car. Not for any pointless climate change reasons but for the ones I have outlined that really will make life better for people - cutting noise pollution (although I will caveat that with the fact that people don't seem to realise how much traffic noise on faster routes is actually tyre noise not engine) and dealing with what I believe is a far greater environmental catastrophe which is the effect of petrol additives on our insect population.
But it is frustrating that at this moment it is simply not practical. Saying we all have to make changes is great for those who have the ability and the money to do that. I don't. I can neither afford an EV nor would it be practical for the one main thing I use a vehicle for.
I want things to change but just waving away the objections, particularly when they come from people who genuinely want this promised future, is short sighted.
Yes, tyre noise is significant and EVs don't solve that. But anybody who lives near a junction or a hill or where the speed limit goes up from 30 to 60 knows how piercing the roar of an engine can be when it's being made to push hard. On top of that there are those who deliberately drive noisily. All of those things are greatly improved by removing the combustion part of the car.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
It is unreasonable to expect to be able to transition to a net zero economy while retaining every single aspect of our current unsustainable way of living. Some things may be lost, such as the ability to be anywhere in the country within a short amount of time. Businesses and individuals will adapt to cope with this.
So the great master plan is to reduce freedom and choice for millions of people.
Be interesting to see a government have the courage of their convictions and actually be honest about that.
Don't be silly. Of course nobody wants to reduce anyone's freedom and choice. But is frankly ridiculously entitled to assume that everything can carry on exactly as now, and I do indeed wish that governments would be honest about that. If we are to achieve our goal of a sustainable civilisation, then things need to change, some for the better and, yes, some for the worse. The technology is about mitigating the adverse effects as far as possible.
The visions of the 'sustainable' civilisation we have been presented with so far are the rich do what they want and the rest of us do as we are told.
Isn't that the entire case against industrialisation, expressed in a single sentence?
Industrialisation meant that the lifestyle that was once only available to the very rich, became availalbe to the ordinary person.
Indeed, however we now have universal suffrage unlike pre industrialisation, so if the average person is seeing their lifestyle fall too far behind that of the rich they will express their anger by voting for populist parties of left and right
Ground staff at The Oval have prepared two pitches for the World Test Championship final, fearing that protestors could target the match and damage the pitch.
1.They are really very expensive. 2. Their range is not good. 3. Charging infrastructure is patchy and unreliable
Until these 3 change I will not be buying one. For very local journeys we walk or bike. There are no buses. The trains have become unreliable since the strikes. Cars are essential. But EV's are as yet wholly impractical.
I think this is unreasonably reductive & “wholly impractical” a massive overstatement.
Plenty of people commute less than fifty miles to work. Which means that the round trip is easily within every EV currently on sale (and most second hand ones, except early Leafs I imagine). If you can charge overnight, then this model of usage can work out perfectly well.
EVs do not have to be a perfect replacement for ICE cars to replace them - they just have to be good enough that a buyer is happy to put up with the downsides in order to get the upside. That’s a calculation which differs between people.
A relative bought a second hand Leaf as a second car. It’s range is terrible! But it can happily drive to town / school / any kind of local trip and the running costs are extremely low. What’s not to like?
As I hope was obvious from my comment they are wholly impractical in the area where I live.
Elsewhere they may be suitable. But public policy should be designed to make such a change practical and cost effective for everyone not the lucky few. I see no signs of that happening.
Why not have both, like we do? A big comfy long distance diesel or petrol for those long country drives, and a small runabout EV for trips to the shops and other local excursions. Even the small ones like Leafs and Zoes have ranges these days around 200 miles which gets you a lot of local trips, and living in the countryside means I assume it's easy to charge at home. And they really aren't expensive.
I can't afford to own or run two cars, that's why. If the trains to London (or even the local ones) were reliable I could rely on something small. But they aren't.
In time I hope charging infrastructure and trains become better and the price comes down and then I will make the change. But for now - and I have looked into this - they don't work for me.
It’s fine to say they don’t work for you & therefore you won’t buy one. If you’re talking about yourself rather than in general then maybe make that a tad clearer in future? It really wasn’t obvious to me reading your original comment that you were speaking personally & not in generalities.
Was the phrase "until these 3 change, I will not be buying one" not a big clue. Nor the reference to the state of local trains / non-existence of local buses and what "we" do for local journeys?
I am curious as to why they are "wholly impractical in the area where I live". I assume you live in the sticks as I do. I have only ever used public chargers up here for shooting a YouTube video - the car's range means there's no need for local charging within a 140 mile radius of here.
That doesn't make any sense to me.
If you lack at-home charging capabilities and lack charging within a 140 mile radius then what if your daily commute is 20 miles each way with no charging capabilities at either side?
Do you deliberately go out of your way 140 miles to charge when you need a charge? That's not feasible.
This is a much bigger electoral problem for Starmer than Sunak - oppositions need to generate hope to trump incumbents at elections, but it’s already clear Labours plan to squeeze money like blood out a stone (private schooling, non Dom status) is going to yield nothing. It’s clear the economy is not going to come right to help the Tory governments election prospects, the issue now is how exactly will Labour make a difference in the four years after the next election? Where will they find growth from? How will Labour find the money to cut taxes, reduce debt and the debt repayments, fund improvements in public services?
In those four miserable years after the next election, voters will already make their mind up not to vote Labour again.
The OECD's Clare Lombardelli's comments sound much more sensible than the IMF's Gita Gopinath's the other day.
If there is a problem with participation in the labour market, perhaps Rishi Sunak needs to unleash his inner nasty party and cut benefits.
This is a much bigger electoral problem for Starmer than Sunak - oppositions need to generate hope to trump incumbents at elections, but it’s already clear Labours plan to squeeze money like blood out a stone (private schooling, non Dom status) is going to yield nothing. It’s clear the economy is not going to come right to help the Tory governments election prospects, the issue now is how exactly will Labour make a difference in the four years after the next election? Where will they find growth from? How will Labour find the money to cut taxes, reduce debt and the debt repayments, fund improvements in public services?
In those four miserable years after the next election, voters will already make their mind up not to vote Labour again.
The OECD's Clare Lombardelli's comments sound much more sensible than the IMF's Gita Gopinath's the other day.
If there is a problem with participation in the labour market, perhaps Rishi Sunak needs to unleash his inner nasty party and cut benefits.
Universal Credit is a very generous benefit, especially if you are renting. It does not encourage working if you have kids.
Not entirely convinced though. Oxford West & Abingdon, projected winner Labour? Come off it.
Yes, agree that is rubbish. Oxford West and Abingdon is Remainer LD and posh Cameroon Tory central. It has not and never will elect a Labour MP unlike its poorer relation, Oxford East which contains most of the city itself and Cowley and does have a Labour MP.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
It is unreasonable to expect to be able to transition to a net zero economy while retaining every single aspect of our current unsustainable way of living. Some things may be lost, such as the ability to be anywhere in the country within a short amount of time. Businesses and individuals will adapt to cope with this.
So the great master plan is to reduce freedom and choice for millions of people.
Be interesting to see a government have the courage of their convictions and actually be honest about that.
Don't be silly. Of course nobody wants to reduce anyone's freedom and choice. But is frankly ridiculously entitled to assume that everything can carry on exactly as now, and I do indeed wish that governments would be honest about that. If we are to achieve our goal of a sustainable civilisation, then things need to change, some for the better and, yes, some for the worse. The technology is about mitigating the adverse effects as far as possible.
The vusions of the 'sustainable' civilisation we have been presented with so far are the rich do what they want and the rest of us do as we are told.
So how would you go about achieving net zero?
Start by taxing all chinese imports at 200%. No one would do it of course and it is only a half serious suggestion but it would do more good than anything we are doing in the UK at the moment.
On a serious note - I was told be someone in Dept. Of International Trade that the Chinese had said a carbon tax on imports would be a declaration of a trade war, as far as they were concerned.
I note the ol' climate reparations formula some uni prof came up with the other day had payments TO China in it...
This is a much bigger electoral problem for Starmer than Sunak - oppositions need to generate hope to trump incumbents at elections, but it’s already clear Labours plan to squeeze money like blood out a stone (private schooling, non Dom status) is going to yield nothing.
It seems odd to describe these fairly marginal tax changes (private schooling, non-dom status) as "to squeeze money like blood out [of] a stone". They don't affect the vast majority of the population at all. If anything, one could critique them as not doing enough to raise income, that is as not squeezing hard enough.
Indeed, you say they will "yield nothing", which surely demonstrates that they are not squeezing blood out of a stone!
1.They are really very expensive. 2. Their range is not good. 3. Charging infrastructure is patchy and unreliable
Until these 3 change I will not be buying one. For very local journeys we walk or bike. There are no buses. The trains have become unreliable since the strikes. Cars are essential. But EV's are as yet wholly impractical.
I think this is unreasonably reductive & “wholly impractical” a massive overstatement.
Plenty of people commute less than fifty miles to work. Which means that the round trip is easily within every EV currently on sale (and most second hand ones, except early Leafs I imagine). If you can charge overnight, then this model of usage can work out perfectly well.
EVs do not have to be a perfect replacement for ICE cars to replace them - they just have to be good enough that a buyer is happy to put up with the downsides in order to get the upside. That’s a calculation which differs between people.
A relative bought a second hand Leaf as a second car. It’s range is terrible! But it can happily drive to town / school / any kind of local trip and the running costs are extremely low. What’s not to like?
As I hope was obvious from my comment they are wholly impractical in the area where I live.
Elsewhere they may be suitable. But public policy should be designed to make such a change practical and cost effective for everyone not the lucky few. I see no signs of that happening.
Why not have both, like we do? A big comfy long distance diesel or petrol for those long country drives, and a small runabout EV for trips to the shops and other local excursions. Even the small ones like Leafs and Zoes have ranges these days around 200 miles which gets you a lot of local trips, and living in the countryside means I assume it's easy to charge at home. And they really aren't expensive.
I can't afford to own or run two cars, that's why. If the trains to London (or even the local ones) were reliable I could rely on something small. But they aren't.
In time I hope charging infrastructure and trains become better and the price comes down and then I will make the change. But for now - and I have looked into this - they don't work for me.
It’s fine to say they don’t work for you & therefore you won’t buy one. If you’re talking about yourself rather than in general then maybe make that a tad clearer in future? It really wasn’t obvious to me reading your original comment that you were speaking personally & not in generalities.
Was the phrase "until these 3 change, I will not be buying one" not a big clue. Nor the reference to the state of local trains / non-existence of local buses and what "we" do for local journeys?
I am curious as to why they are "wholly impractical in the area where I live". I assume you live in the sticks as I do. I have only ever used public chargers up here for shooting a YouTube video - the car's range means there's no need for local charging within a 140 mile radius of here.
That doesn't make any sense to me.
If you lack at-home charging capabilities and lack charging within a 140 mile radius then what if your daily commute is 20 miles each way with no charging capabilities at either side?
Do you deliberately go out of your way 140 miles to charge when you need a charge? That's not feasible.
If you can't charge at home then an EV is not for you. That isn't an "area" issue though, its your house whether its town, country, wherever.
But if you do have charging at home then you need to either be doing some serious local mileage or live in the artic to have EV use to be wholly impractical. My point about 140 miles was that with a comfortable range of about 300 miles I could go 140 miles each way and still not need charging.
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
The transition to electric vehicles can't come soon enough for one key reason: noise. Not all traffic noise is engine noise but it's the most significant part. The gradual end of revving, roaring, popping noise pollution will make every part of this country better in ways that I don't think many people really give credit for.
It'll take a long time for it to filter down through the second hand market, and I expect there will be "classics" knocking around for decades, but anyone who lives within a couple of kilometres of a main road, which is basically everyone, will gradually start to live better, more relaxing lives.
Until you can't get anywhere because your EV car has run out of power and there is no charging point nearby. Not that relaxing.
Look at what Mike said. 30 minutes or more at a charging station. We have been told for ages that the technology is getting "better" but the simple fact is that petrol cars are still most effective.
I spend far less time at charging stations than you do, because I charge my car at home once a week. Those five or ten minutes add up over the year, and I'm saving time and money.
Now, is that true of everyone? No.
But for a substantial minority of people, EVs are the better option today. And every day the size of that minority increases.
Perhaps in the US. I would question that in the UK.
At the end of the day, there is an implicit class / socio-economic issue here. If you are fairly well-off you will be fine (you will have a drive, a decent car, can afford the electricity etc). If you are poor and rely on your car for essentials, you are screwed.
Oh, I agree, for now they're not for everyone.
But the number of people who will benefit from going EV is growing all the time. You can't buck the market.
Again, I would question that.
The car manufacturers are not showing much inclination to develop mass market EV models. Instead, what they have done - and some such as BMW and Mercedes have been explicit about this - is to raise prices structurally. Wealthier people can afford this, poorer people can't.
I go back to the point that there is an implicit class / socio-economic point thing here. The unstated aim of many who are pushing the EV agenda is to force people - mainly the poorer types - onto public transport by pricing them out of the market when it comes to buying and maintaining a car. There is a reason why so many wealthy middle-class individuals are perfectly happy with pushing an EV agenda because they can afford the price as well as knowing others cannot. You see the same dynamic with such types calling for a reduction in air flights - they are not thinking about their trips to Tuscany or Provence, they are thinking those awful plebs who go on package holidays to cheap destinations.
...Why attack EVs? Seen as trendy and modern, driven by do-gooders, promoting the environment. So of course you want to attack people driving EVs - we're not one of you.
There's a fairly clear motive in the US, where car dealers make big money from the existing system, and are generous funders of Republican politicians. They absolutely loathe Tesla, since it has bypassed them completely.
Tesla also doesn't money on advertising, which doesn't endear them to the media.
I suspect they'll go on a similar journey to Amazon with advertising; Captain Jeff Penisrocket didn't 'believe' in it for a long time, but realised after a while that both brand and activation advertising are important for growth in the long term, especially in a market that becomes increasingly competitive.
As the unquestioned brand leader in their vertical Tesla didn't really need to do brand ads - they were selling everything they made and there was a lot of excitement and fanboyishness about them. As a brand it has undeniably made electric cars desirable and cool (remember that the market leader before was the two-steps-from-a-milk-float Nissan Leaf).
However, their brand is struggling as it becomes less cool - Musky is divisive (to be generous) and remains closely associated with Tesla's image. Rumours around reliability, NDAs and whatnot have not helped. The pricing strategy has been sclerotic and reduced the brand's prestige, as (maybe more arguably) have the bland aesthetics of the Model 3.
That is all happening to Tesla's brand regardless of the market - BUT, the market (especially German and Korean manufacturers) has itself now caught up with Tesla, giving consumers more choice and also offering more market niches than Tesla's limited range. Now, against a backdrop of extraordinary sector growth that won't hurt Tesla much in the short term, but in the long run they are in severe danger of being eclipsed, become both less cool and less competitive.
Brand advertising will be crucial to whether they survive or not. They are no longer a market disrupter. If they want sustained growth and sales, they need to remain appealing in a market that will quickly outgun them in terms of brand loyalty and market infrastructure.
They now don’t have a waiting list in most markets, have built a lot of extra production capacity in recent years, and have an increasing amount of competition from other manufacturers.
Selling to the 10% of evangelical early-adopters was the easy bit, selling to the other 90% of us is a lot more difficult.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
It is unreasonable to expect to be able to transition to a net zero economy while retaining every single aspect of our current unsustainable way of living. Some things may be lost, such as the ability to be anywhere in the country within a short amount of time. Businesses and individuals will adapt to cope with this.
So the great master plan is to reduce freedom and choice for millions of people.
Be interesting to see a government have the courage of their convictions and actually be honest about that.
Don't be silly. Of course nobody wants to reduce anyone's freedom and choice. But is frankly ridiculously entitled to assume that everything can carry on exactly as now, and I do indeed wish that governments would be honest about that. If we are to achieve our goal of a sustainable civilisation, then things need to change, some for the better and, yes, some for the worse. The technology is about mitigating the adverse effects as far as possible.
The vusions of the 'sustainable' civilisation we have been presented with so far are the rich do what they want and the rest of us do as we are told.
So how would you go about achieving net zero?
Start by taxing all chinese imports at 200%. No one would do it of course and it is only a half serious suggestion but it would do more good than anything we are doing in the UK at the moment.
Taxing imports of goods produced in environmentally damaging ways is certainly not a bad idea (though it would of course also hit the poorest people hardest). But that doesn't obviate our obligations to reduce domestic emissions.
1.They are really very expensive. 2. Their range is not good. 3. Charging infrastructure is patchy and unreliable
Until these 3 change I will not be buying one. For very local journeys we walk or bike. There are no buses. The trains have become unreliable since the strikes. Cars are essential. But EV's are as yet wholly impractical.
I think this is unreasonably reductive & “wholly impractical” a massive overstatement.
Plenty of people commute less than fifty miles to work. Which means that the round trip is easily within every EV currently on sale (and most second hand ones, except early Leafs I imagine). If you can charge overnight, then this model of usage can work out perfectly well.
EVs do not have to be a perfect replacement for ICE cars to replace them - they just have to be good enough that a buyer is happy to put up with the downsides in order to get the upside. That’s a calculation which differs between people.
A relative bought a second hand Leaf as a second car. It’s range is terrible! But it can happily drive to town / school / any kind of local trip and the running costs are extremely low. What’s not to like?
As I hope was obvious from my comment they are wholly impractical in the area where I live.
Elsewhere they may be suitable. But public policy should be designed to make such a change practical and cost effective for everyone not the lucky few. I see no signs of that happening.
Why not have both, like we do? A big comfy long distance diesel or petrol for those long country drives, and a small runabout EV for trips to the shops and other local excursions. Even the small ones like Leafs and Zoes have ranges these days around 200 miles which gets you a lot of local trips, and living in the countryside means I assume it's easy to charge at home. And they really aren't expensive.
I can't afford to own or run two cars, that's why. If the trains to London (or even the local ones) were reliable I could rely on something small. But they aren't.
In time I hope charging infrastructure and trains become better and the price comes down and then I will make the change. But for now - and I have looked into this - they don't work for me.
It’s fine to say they don’t work for you & therefore you won’t buy one. If you’re talking about yourself rather than in general then maybe make that a tad clearer in future? It really wasn’t obvious to me reading your original comment that you were speaking personally & not in generalities.
Was the phrase "until these 3 change, I will not be buying one" not a big clue. Nor the reference to the state of local trains / non-existence of local buses and what "we" do for local journeys?
I am curious as to why they are "wholly impractical in the area where I live". I assume you live in the sticks as I do. I have only ever used public chargers up here for shooting a YouTube video - the car's range means there's no need for local charging within a 140 mile radius of here.
That doesn't make any sense to me.
If you lack at-home charging capabilities and lack charging within a 140 mile radius then what if your daily commute is 20 miles each way with no charging capabilities at either side?
Do you deliberately go out of your way 140 miles to charge when you need a charge? That's not feasible.
If you can't charge at home then an EV is not for you. That isn't an "area" issue though, its your house whether its town, country, wherever.
But if you do have charging at home then you need to either be doing some serious local mileage or live in the artic to have EV use to be wholly impractical. My point about 140 miles was that with a comfortable range of about 300 miles I could go 140 miles each way and still not need charging.
Well precisely this is the problem that needs to be fixed. Many people won't have a charger at home.
Now in my town we have many charger ports available within a few miles of where I live, though the price and inconvenience of them means I wouldn't want to rely upon them, but in rural areas that's even more of a problem.
Even in rural areas, plenty of people live in terraced houses. Terraces are utter madness to me, especially nowadays how they're still getting built, its insane to drive through dozens of miles of no developments then have a row of houses all shoved together with nowhere to park and charge your car - but that's how many people live and many developments are still built like that today which is complete madness.
We only have 7 years until new ICE vehicles are supposed to be outlawed, in that 7 years there needs to be a viable solution implemented and rolled out to solve the charging problem for people who can't charge at home.
Simply saying "well I can charge at home, so suck to be you, you're left behind" is not a solution.
The solution? Apparently to get lots of other AI bots involved to correct each other relentlessly. Sounds like PB. Are you all sure we are not AI ourselves?
As a large language model I am not able to express an opinion on controversial political topics like the AV voting system or the right age to start sex education.
Perhaps we should teach kids about sex education and why you should always pay escorts in cash.
You don’t want escort services ltd to appear on your bank statement.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
It is unreasonable to expect to be able to transition to a net zero economy while retaining every single aspect of our current unsustainable way of living. Some things may be lost, such as the ability to be anywhere in the country within a short amount of time. Businesses and individuals will adapt to cope with this.
So the great master plan is to reduce freedom and choice for millions of people.
Be interesting to see a government have the courage of their convictions and actually be honest about that.
Don't be silly. Of course nobody wants to reduce anyone's freedom and choice. But is frankly ridiculously entitled to assume that everything can carry on exactly as now, and I do indeed wish that governments would be honest about that. If we are to achieve our goal of a sustainable civilisation, then things need to change, some for the better and, yes, some for the worse. The technology is about mitigating the adverse effects as far as possible.
The vusions of the 'sustainable' civilisation we have been presented with so far are the rich do what they want and the rest of us do as we are told.
So how would you go about achieving net zero?
Start by taxing all chinese imports at 200%. No one would do it of course and it is only a half serious suggestion but it would do more good than anything we are doing in the UK at the moment.
Taxing imports of goods produced in environmentally damaging ways is certainly not a bad idea. But that doesn't obviate our obligations to reduce domestic emissions.
We have reduced domestic emissions and continue to do so. Why do you keep focusing on that while being relaxed about "cutting some slack" to the rest of the world? Did you try running the numbers as I suggested yesterday?
Some people liked to argue that there were lots of Russian-speaking Ukrainians who wanted to live as part of Russia. Perhaps the evidence of the way in which Russia has abandoned civilians to the flooding from the dam collapse will convince some of these people that it is not a good idea to leave any of Ukraine under Russian control.
Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 @bayraktar_1love Local residents from the roofs of their houses are signaling for help to the Ukrainian drone. Oleshki, Kherson region. The left bank of the Dnipro, occupied by Russia.
Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 @bayraktar_1love /2. The Ukrainian side has no way to reach the local residents so far on the left bank of Dnipro. But it is possible to deliver part of the supplies with the help of Drones. On the video the 406 brigade delivers drinking water to the flood victims in Oleshki.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
It is unreasonable to expect to be able to transition to a net zero economy while retaining every single aspect of our current unsustainable way of living. Some things may be lost, such as the ability to be anywhere in the country within a short amount of time. Businesses and individuals will adapt to cope with this.
So the great master plan is to reduce freedom and choice for millions of people.
Be interesting to see a government have the courage of their convictions and actually be honest about that.
Don't be silly. Of course nobody wants to reduce anyone's freedom and choice. But is frankly ridiculously entitled to assume that everything can carry on exactly as now, and I do indeed wish that governments would be honest about that. If we are to achieve our goal of a sustainable civilisation, then things need to change, some for the better and, yes, some for the worse. The technology is about mitigating the adverse effects as far as possible.
The vusions of the 'sustainable' civilisation we have been presented with so far are the rich do what they want and the rest of us do as we are told.
So how would you go about achieving net zero?
Start by taxing all chinese imports at 200%. No one would do it of course and it is only a half serious suggestion but it would do more good than anything we are doing in the UK at the moment.
Taxing imports of goods produced in environmentally damaging ways is certainly not a bad idea (though it would of course also hit the poorest people hardest). But that doesn't obviate our obligations to reduce domestic emissions.
Though we've already done that, which is why people who want to pretend we're the problem now look at "historic" or "cumulative" figures which are utterly irrelevant rather than ongoing figures.
As we discussed yesterday, the fact that people decades ago burnt coal to keep themselves warm, or to power their lights, is neither here nor there when it comes to emissions that are happening today.
1.They are really very expensive. 2. Their range is not good. 3. Charging infrastructure is patchy and unreliable
Until these 3 change I will not be buying one. For very local journeys we walk or bike. There are no buses. The trains have become unreliable since the strikes. Cars are essential. But EV's are as yet wholly impractical.
I think this is unreasonably reductive & “wholly impractical” a massive overstatement.
Plenty of people commute less than fifty miles to work. Which means that the round trip is easily within every EV currently on sale (and most second hand ones, except early Leafs I imagine). If you can charge overnight, then this model of usage can work out perfectly well.
EVs do not have to be a perfect replacement for ICE cars to replace them - they just have to be good enough that a buyer is happy to put up with the downsides in order to get the upside. That’s a calculation which differs between people.
A relative bought a second hand Leaf as a second car. It’s range is terrible! But it can happily drive to town / school / any kind of local trip and the running costs are extremely low. What’s not to like?
As I hope was obvious from my comment they are wholly impractical in the area where I live.
Elsewhere they may be suitable. But public policy should be designed to make such a change practical and cost effective for everyone not the lucky few. I see no signs of that happening.
Why not have both, like we do? A big comfy long distance diesel or petrol for those long country drives, and a small runabout EV for trips to the shops and other local excursions. Even the small ones like Leafs and Zoes have ranges these days around 200 miles which gets you a lot of local trips, and living in the countryside means I assume it's easy to charge at home. And they really aren't expensive.
I can't afford to own or run two cars, that's why. If the trains to London (or even the local ones) were reliable I could rely on something small. But they aren't.
In time I hope charging infrastructure and trains become better and the price comes down and then I will make the change. But for now - and I have looked into this - they don't work for me.
It’s fine to say they don’t work for you & therefore you won’t buy one. If you’re talking about yourself rather than in general then maybe make that a tad clearer in future? It really wasn’t obvious to me reading your original comment that you were speaking personally & not in generalities.
Was the phrase "until these 3 change, I will not be buying one" not a big clue. Nor the reference to the state of local trains / non-existence of local buses and what "we" do for local journeys?
I am curious as to why they are "wholly impractical in the area where I live". I assume you live in the sticks as I do. I have only ever used public chargers up here for shooting a YouTube video - the car's range means there's no need for local charging within a 140 mile radius of here.
That doesn't make any sense to me.
If you lack at-home charging capabilities and lack charging within a 140 mile radius then what if your daily commute is 20 miles each way with no charging capabilities at either side?
Do you deliberately go out of your way 140 miles to charge when you need a charge? That's not feasible.
If you can't charge at home then an EV is not for you. That isn't an "area" issue though, its your house whether its town, country, wherever.
But if you do have charging at home then you need to either be doing some serious local mileage or live in the artic to have EV use to be wholly impractical. My point about 140 miles was that with a comfortable range of about 300 miles I could go 140 miles each way and still not need charging.
Well precisely this is the problem that needs to be fixed. Many people won't have a charger at home.
Now in my town we have many charger ports available within a few miles of where I live, though the price and inconvenience of them means I wouldn't want to rely upon them, but in rural areas that's even more of a problem.
Even in rural areas, plenty of people live in terraced houses. Terraces are utter madness to me, especially nowadays how they're still getting built, its insane to drive through dozens of miles of no developments then have a row of houses all shoved together with nowhere to park and charge your car - but that's how many people live and many developments are still built like that today which is complete madness.
We only have 7 years until new ICE vehicles are supposed to be outlawed, in that 7 years there needs to be a viable solution implemented and rolled out to solve the charging problem for people who can't charge at home.
Simply saying "well I can charge at home, so suck to be you, you're left behind" is not a solution.
We don't "only have 7 years until new ICE vehicles are supposed to be outlawed". We have 7 years before sales of new ICE vehicles (with various exceptions) is to be outlawed. ICE vehicles will remain legal and in widespread use.
That said, yes, we need more infrastructure and I support government acting on that.
Comments
Elsewhere they may be suitable. But public policy should be designed to make such a change practical and cost effective for everyone not the lucky few. I see no signs of that happening.
The government could look at a duty regime that ensured less volatility in prices. The higher the price above a certain threshold, the lower the duty. And vice versa for lower prices. Currently the tax regime is very pro-cyclical, the treasury earns loads more when prices are high because duty is fixed but VAT on fuel is a percentage of value. A ratchet type regime of the sort I'm suggesting would keep prices more stable while also reducing volatility of government receipts.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/05/30/ai-chatbots-chatgpt-bard-trustworthy/?utm_source=tldrai
The solution? Apparently to get lots of other AI bots involved to correct each other relentlessly. Sounds like PB. Are you all sure we are not AI ourselves?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/07/150000-levelling-up-grant-went-to-tory-donor-lubov-chernukhi-amusement-centre-in-hastings
This is also another reason Sunak goes to the country on May 2nd. Months of phoney election war throughout 2024 will be dominated by how the highest tax take ever and huge amounts of borrowing from Sunak Johnson era was spent, partially, wastefully.
I did see a Tesla Model Y which had a bike rack on the roof. Asked the guy what that was doing to energy use, and as you said with your own example, it wasn't good.
My policy with choice of cars though isn't to have a universal vehicle that can cover every eventuality. Because I'd have to have a van. The Outlander I had before the Tesla was often used like a van, but even that wasn't big enough all the time. So I just did more trips. The gargantuan boot of my Tesla isn't as square as the Outlander, so more trips again. But its better at almost everything else than the Outlander.
Of more concern to insurance companies, is the driving technology in many modern cars, and especially prevalent in EVs - sensors, cameras etc. It only takes a small car park knock, to run up thousands in repair costs.
Skoda Enyaq for the win.
Owned a Kia e-niro before that and was very happy.
Yes, I have my own driveway (as do a majority of people, but certainly not all).
It's staggering the amount of time I wasted refuelling my ICE cars over the years. Once every week-and-a-half having to go and fill up, and when you add up all the time, it usually added 15-20 minutes to my trip home.
That adds up over a year. And over thirty years.
Now, plug in when I get home and go indoors. When I come out the following morning, car has charged overnight with cheap electricity. You can't do that with ICE cars.
I've had to recharge away from home a handful of times and I can swear by the Gridserve at Braintree. Even though we now have just about enough range to get from home to my Mum's and back when we go there a couple of times per year, the family insist on taking a break there because it's so plush. Twenty minutes to grab a drink and a loo break and we've got loads of charge for the way home.
And now the 150kW chargers are getting more plentiful and the 350kW chargers are coming in, charging times are coming way down.
Twenty minutes at 3.5 miles/kWh gives you 50kW and 175 miles (at 150kW).
To get an extra 100 miles at 350kW would take five minutes.
Charging infrastructure has improved a lot over the past three years as well, and one welcome change is that virtually everywhere takes contactless rather than requiring an app.
Sorry, Dura.
Fees have trebled in real terms since 1980, with their cost as a proportion of household budgets rising "inexorably" over the period. This means that even a family whose income is higher than that of 95 per cent of those in England has to pay a fifth of its income to educate just one child privately...
However, it remains a minority option even at higher levels of family income: even in the top five per cent richest families, only a minority attends private school and, even in the richest two per cent of homes, 40 per cent of families do not choose the private sector.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2018/jan/private-school-fee-hikes-have-not-put-parents-research-finds
Bluntly, if private schools have an extra cost whacked on them, why can't they just learn to be more efficient, like the rest of the education sector?
There is a 80% relief for business rates if the ratepayer is a charity or trustees for a charity and if the premises is used wholly or mainly for charitable purposes.
The Supreme Court today confirmed that Nuffield Health (a registered charity) was able to obtain this relief for a gym which charges a standard membership fee of £80 pre month.
https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2021-0138.html
This, I think, has a direct read accross to other charities, such as private schools, who charge a significant fee for services.
You don’t want escort services ltd to appear on your bank statement.
£80 billion cost so far. HS2 is around £40 billion.
And the budget for walking and cycling has just been cut by 50% in England.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=vvozRyADahk
TL:DR They make less money from them, especially in servicing, and need to spend money on infrastructure and training. 45% of car dealers in the US don’t sell EVs. They’re also very politically active, and are sponsoring politicians and laws in many States.
In time I hope charging infrastructure and trains become better and the price comes down and then I will make the change. But for now - and I have looked into this - they don't work for me.
https://news.sky.com/story/uk-to-have-highest-inflation-in-developed-world-this-year-oecd-warns-12897660
This is a much bigger electoral problem for Starmer than Sunak - oppositions need to generate hope to trump incumbents at elections, but it’s already clear Labours plan to squeeze money like blood out a stone (private schooling, non Dom status) is going to yield nothing. It’s clear the economy is not going to come right to help the Tory governments election prospects, the issue now is how exactly will Labour make a difference in the four years after the next election? Where will they find growth from? How will Labour find the money to cut taxes, reduce debt and the debt repayments, fund improvements in public services?
In those four miserable years after the next election, voters will already make their mind up not to vote Labour again.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Industrialisation meant that the lifestyle that was once only available to the very rich, became availalbe to the ordinary person.
I drop VED for axle weight/size and replace fuel duty with congestion charging in all urban areas. Much fairer to rural people.
I would query the Enyaq though with regards to your charging example. Until 2022 the standard onboard charger was 50kW, with a chargeable option to go as fast as 125kW. I think (please correct me if I'm wrong!) 125kW is still the fastest it will charge. Which rather makes your Braintree site over-specced as you're getting just under a third of its potential speed.
There are an awful lot of manufacturers follow VAG and hobbling EVs with slow charging. And its been the same for a decade. I don't get it.
And so, back to you as the consumer.
The countryside will be full of shlonky old ICE vehicles in ever greater states of pollution-generation. Because no politicians will dare stop them.
#Pious
See the second hand market for Prius etc…
"A Comparison of Private Schooling in the United Kingdom and Australia" by Chris Ryan & Luke Sibieta (2011), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8462.2011.00651.xCit
"analysis shows that, whilst parental demand for private schooling does respond to school fees, this response is relatively inelastic. Indeed, substantial increases in school fees in the United Kingdom during the last 10 years have not dented demand for private schooling."
(Presumably the name on the receipt doesn’t match the name on the door?)
As more and more people switch to EV I do not think that entirely artificial advantage can be sustained. I suspect that more taxes will be charged on charging points to cover some of this and road tax for EVs will increase sharply.
It's really important work as it translates across to all Pigou taxes, the main way we are tackling climate change externalities.
I'm a big fan of transferring more of the tax burden onto "bad behaviour", but it does mean we need to be fiscally agile. Whac-a-mole.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4426015#Comment_4426015
We are constantly correcting our mental representation of reality via our senses. And plenty of us have at times deeply inaccurate conceptions of the world around us.
For now, AIs have only large text files - a good part of which are utter nonsense, produced by us - to operate on. It's still surprising that they appear as coherent as they do.
https://www.stickybottle.com/latest-news/sepp-kuss-changes-batteries-of-sram-derailleur-while-descending-video/
Capitalism is not taking away perfectly functional systems and replacing them for social/cultural reasons with an approach that prices out the majority from activities they could previously afford. That's a political choice. And it's a wretched one.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/Emissions-working-paper.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj169DC9bD_AhUZE8AKHatJAYoQFnoECBIQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3RZP6DjB9vRy6iEQgt2SSP
But it is frustrating that at this moment it is simply not practical. Saying we all have to make changes is great for those who have the ability and the money to do that. I don't. I can neither afford an EV nor would it be practical for the one main thing I use a vehicle for.
I want things to change but just waving away the objections, particularly when they come from people who genuinely want this promised future, is short sighted.
I was offering an alternative perspective, that of the experience of everyone else. Can't we allow a comment on that without bringing it back yet again to the driver?
The idea that modes of transport should be designed only around the user is obviously wrong.
The situation will become clearer in the coming days, but victorious armies do not commit scorched earth war crimes on territory they expect to hold.
In our case with the family in the car we did Fraserburgh-ish to Basildon with a couple of stops. We would have to stop even if the car had a battery or fuel tank capable of going non-stop.
I take your points on cost and practicalities - costs are dropping and body types expanding, so the tipping point will come.
https://www.bestforbritain.org/mrp_polling_new_boundaries_june_2023
Not entirely convinced though. Oxford West & Abingdon, projected winner Labour? Come off it.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2023/06/06/reserve-pitch-world-test-championship-just-stop-oil-icc/
Just as well there won’t be two athletic men standing on the pitch for the whole game, armed with large wooden bats.
If you lack at-home charging capabilities and lack charging within a 140 mile radius then what if your daily commute is 20 miles each way with no charging capabilities at either side?
Do you deliberately go out of your way 140 miles to charge when you need a charge? That's not feasible.
If there is a problem with participation in the labour market, perhaps Rishi Sunak needs to unleash his inner nasty party and cut benefits.
Indeed on the new boundaries electoral calculus gives Oxford West and Abingdon projected figures of LD 42%, Conservative 26% and Labour 23%. So Labour are only 3rd, let alone near winning it
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/calcwork23.py?seat=Oxford West and Abingdon
The press kept quoting £55 million.
Indeed, you say they will "yield nothing", which surely demonstrates that they are not squeezing blood out of a stone!
But if you do have charging at home then you need to either be doing some serious local mileage or live in the artic to have EV use to be wholly impractical. My point about 140 miles was that with a comfortable range of about 300 miles I could go 140 miles each way and still not need charging.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
Selling to the 10% of evangelical early-adopters was the easy bit, selling to the other 90% of us is a lot more difficult.
https://twitter.com/fabrizioromano/status/1666387311326633985?s=46
Now in my town we have many charger ports available within a few miles of where I live, though the price and inconvenience of them means I wouldn't want to rely upon them, but in rural areas that's even more of a problem.
Even in rural areas, plenty of people live in terraced houses. Terraces are utter madness to me, especially nowadays how they're still getting built, its insane to drive through dozens of miles of no developments then have a row of houses all shoved together with nowhere to park and charge your car - but that's how many people live and many developments are still built like that today which is complete madness.
We only have 7 years until new ICE vehicles are supposed to be outlawed, in that 7 years there needs to be a viable solution implemented and rolled out to solve the charging problem for people who can't charge at home.
Simply saying "well I can charge at home, so suck to be you, you're left behind" is not a solution.
But the reports say he wanted to work with Klopp.
Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦
@bayraktar_1love
Local residents from the roofs of their houses are signaling for help to the Ukrainian drone. Oleshki, Kherson region. The left bank of the Dnipro, occupied by Russia.
Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦
@bayraktar_1love
/2. The Ukrainian side has no way to reach the local residents so far on the left bank of Dnipro. But it is possible to deliver part of the supplies with the help of Drones. On the video the 406 brigade delivers drinking water to the flood victims in Oleshki.
https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1666367641210978305
As we discussed yesterday, the fact that people decades ago burnt coal to keep themselves warm, or to power their lights, is neither here nor there when it comes to emissions that are happening today.
That said, yes, we need more infrastructure and I support government acting on that.