Coutinho is too close to Sunak to win the members vote, Braverman and Patel lack support from Tory MPs as the header makes clear. Jenrick and Badenoch have more but probably not enough to make the last 2.
At the moment Cleverly v Tugendhat is my prediction of the 2 the remaining Tory MPs will put to the members if Cleverly stands, if not then Barclay would take his place. Cleverly or Barclay then winning the members vote
I'm green if it is any of Barclay, Cleverly, Coutinho, Tugendgat, or Jenrick, as it stands.
Cyber attacks brought the websites of Liechtenstein's national administration and government to a standstill. Once the attacks were noticed, they were resolved. They were DDoS attacks on the providers. Measures were taken immediately. The exact background is not yet known.
Coutinho is too close to Sunak to win the members vote, Braverman and Patel lack support from Tory MPs as the header makes clear. Jenrick and Badenoch have more but probably not enough to make the last 2.
At the moment Cleverly v Tugendhat is my prediction of the 2 the remaining Tory MPs will put to the members if Cleverly stands, if not then Barclay would take his place. Cleverly or Barclay then winning the members vote
Did you not tell us before the election that CCHQ had sent support to Cleverly in Braintree, rather than Patel in Witham. Would that provide a hint?
I'm on Claire Coutinho too. Though there may be an element of hopecasting in there. (I know relatively little about her, but she's always seemed quite assured in front of the camera, and fits my view of where the Tories should position themselves.)
Is this a joke? And is the Sunak endorsement actually seen as some sort of positive?? Her rampers yesterday didn't even know the spelling of her name. Even CHB and Gardenwalker were warning she's a complete nobody.
We've just had an inexperienced over-promoted-via-patronage useless article as leader, what on earth makes having another one remotely attractive?
Coutinho is too close to Sunak to win the members vote, Braverman and Patel lack support from Tory MPs as the header makes clear. Jenrick and Badenoch have more but probably not enough to make the last 2.
At the moment Cleverly v Tugendhat is my prediction of the 2 the remaining Tory MPs will put to the members if Cleverly stands, if not then Barclay would take his place. Cleverly or Barclay then winning the members vote
What was Alistair Meek's word for this: anti????. That you tend to replace in contrast to the predecessor and end up with paler and paler imitations of alternating types.
I can't define it succinctly enough to pull the word from Google unfortunately.
Surely the only reason that the Tories would plump for Jenrick or Braverman is if they intended to either merge with, or form an alliance with, Reform?
There's no electoral benefit for the Tories to either of those two unless Farage/Reform is part of the package.
I think it'd make sense for the Conservatives and Reform to take a leaf out of Macron's book and mutually stand candidates down next election. The split would broadly be along second places. Reform will get plenty more seconds (They might take Llanelli) and the Conservatives will win back a decent haul of seats. The pivot to the centre to my mind is for the election after 2029 - but I think a coupon/stand down makes sense next time up to get numbers back up.
Given just how many Reform second places there were, wouldn't that be consigning the Conservatives to effective 3rd-party status? They'd never be able to govern on their own again.
There should be a Conservative leadership candidate who fights on the manifesto of merging with Reform, and see what the membership thinks.
Hamilton at 9/1 on Betfair Exchange to win the Hungarian GP looks reasonable value this far out (no Ladbrokes market yet). One of his favourite circuits, and Merc are bringing more upgrades.
Coutinho is too close to Sunak to win the members vote, Braverman and Patel lack support from Tory MPs as the header makes clear. Jenrick and Badenoch have more but probably not enough to make the last 2.
At the moment Cleverly v Tugendhat is my prediction of the 2 the remaining Tory MPs will put to the members if Cleverly stands, if not then Barclay would take his place. Cleverly or Barclay then winning the members vote
What was Alistair Meek's word for this: anti????. That you tend to replace in contrast to the predecessor and end up with paler and paler imitations of alternating types.
I can't define it succinctly enough to pull the word from Google unfortunately.
I'm on Claire Coutinho too. Though there may be an element of hopecasting in there. (I know relatively little about her, but she's always seemed quite assured in front of the camera, and fits my view of where the Tories should position themselves.)
Is this a joke? And is the Sunak endorsement actually seen as some sort of positive?? Her rampers yesterday didn't even know the spelling of her name. Even CHB and Gardenwalker were warning she's a complete nobody.
We've just had an inexperienced over-promoted-via-patronage useless article as leader, what on earth makes having another one remotely attractive?
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
Ummm:
Not true, even in the UK.
Maintenance costs are dramatically lower for electric cars because they are mechanically much simpler.
Now, on fuel alone you are probably correct (at least in the UK)... but I wouldn't like to bet on that continuing. Electricity prices are going to fall quite a long way from here.
Err - what maintainance costs? My dirty old diesel Passat needs an oil change every 10k miles that takes under ten minutes, requires under £20 in oil and two £5 filters (oil and air). It needs a bonus £5 fuel filter every 20k miles and a £300 (all in costs from a reputable garage, did it earlier this year) timing belt change about every 80k miles. I think all in that lot sets me back a whopping 0.8p/mile.
By far most expensive aspect of it's running costs after fuel is tyres, and being heavier EVs wear them out faster.
Yes, if you buy a new merc and get the dealership to service it they'll cheerfully stiff you for £300 a basic service, but that's just them charging a mug tax on £25 of stuff and 15 mins labour to people foolish enough to pay it.
You know how engines work, right?
Little explosions that drive pistons. Those explosions, and the thermal expansion and contraction, causes wear and tear.
All vehicles have parts that wear out, and cars with petrol and diesel engines have lots of them. You might have got lucky this year, but the data is not really up for debate here: cars with explosion powered engines need to have parts replaced more often.
Even brakes and brake pads wear out faster on explosion powered cars, because they don't have the benefit of regenerative braking.
As much as I was amazed by Andy JS predictions on election night, I have never given you credit (not even a smidgeon) TSE in all these many years for your wit, great one liners, borderline smut, zingers and double entendres that helps make this site a daily goto....
On many, many occasions TSE you have brought a smile to my face and a lift to my day without knowing it...( and I am sure to countless others)
So describing Suella as "a person who would turn off your life support machine to charge her mobile phone.."....as Jimmy Carson would say "that's a Cracker..."
Aww thanks, it is a pleasure.
The line I am most proud of from the election campaign
After July 5th I suspect the only way Rishi Sunak and all other Tories will be able to talk about the election defeat will be in a therapist’s office with dolls.
Surely the only reason that the Tories would plump for Jenrick or Braverman is if they intended to either merge with, or form an alliance with, Reform?
There's no electoral benefit for the Tories to either of those two unless Farage/Reform is part of the package.
I think it'd make sense for the Conservatives and Reform to take a leaf out of Macron's book and mutually stand candidates down next election. The split would broadly be along second places. Reform will get plenty more seconds (They might take Llanelli) and the Conservatives will win back a decent haul of seats. The pivot to the centre to my mind is for the election after 2029 - but I think a coupon/stand down makes sense next time up to get numbers back up.
Given just how many Reform second places there were, wouldn't that be consigning the Conservatives to effective 3rd-party status? They'd never be able to govern on their own again.
There should be a Conservative leadership candidate who fights on the manifesto of merging with Reform, and see what the membership thinks.
What makes them think that Reform would entertain the prospect.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
Ummm:
Not true, even in the UK.
Maintenance costs are dramatically lower for electric cars because they are mechanically much simpler.
Now, on fuel alone you are probably correct (at least in the UK)... but I wouldn't like to bet on that continuing. Electricity prices are going to fall quite a long way from here.
Err - what maintainance costs? My dirty old diesel Passat needs an oil change every 10k miles that takes under ten minutes, requires under £20 in oil and two £5 filters (oil and air). It needs a bonus £5 fuel filter every 20k miles and a £300 (all in costs from a reputable garage, did it earlier this year) timing belt change about every 80k miles. I think all in that lot sets me back a whopping 0.8p/mile.
By far most expensive aspect of it's running costs after fuel is tyres, and being heavier EVs wear them out faster.
Yes, if you buy a new merc and get the dealership to service it they'll cheerfully stiff you for £300 a basic service, but that's just them charging a mug tax on £25 of stuff and 15 mins labour to people foolish enough to pay it.
Depends how old your Passat is, and how far you drive it. I think it's the flywheel on the clutch that fails and needs replacing about every 100k miles for all VW group diesels. One of the fuel lines sprang a leak on our Passat recently, though that was exactly an expensive repair. Or previous car, a Skoda Octavia, needed a fix to the turbo.
There are loads of things to go wrong on an ICE car.
But. They can be fixed. Mechanical things can be fixed. If anything goes wrong with the electronics in a car it can be horrendously expensive.
I see the Telegraph is getting excited about Labour Tax Rises. Expect that to be a nothingburger.
More of a problem for Labour is how to get anything concrete done before the elections. All very well to simplify planning rules but get rid of things like nutrient neutrality you face years of climate act underpinned in appeals in the court. Don't get rid of nutrient neutrality don't get anything built.
As much as I was amazed by Andy JS predictions on election night, I have never given you credit (not even a smidgeon) TSE in all these many years for your wit, great one liners, borderline smut, zingers and double entendres that helps make this site a daily goto....
On many, many occasions TSE you have brought a smile to my face and a lift to my day without knowing it...( and I am sure to countless others)
So describing Suella as "a person who would turn off your life support machine to charge her mobile phone.."....as Jimmy Carson would say "that's a Cracker..."
Aww thanks, it is a pleasure.
The line I am most proud of from the election campaign
After July 5th I suspect the only way Rishi Sunak and all other Tories will be able to talk about the election defeat will be in a therapist’s office with dolls.
Dates to pre-Roman times (the word Oppède is Celtic-Roman for fort) yet for centuries it was basically abandoned. Then in the Second World War the author Saint Exupery (yes, him) and a bunch of artists all rescued it
As much as I was amazed by Andy JS predictions on election night, I have never given you credit (not even a smidgeon) TSE in all these many years for your wit, great one liners, borderline smut, zingers and double entendres that helps make this site a daily goto....
On many, many occasions TSE you have brought a smile to my face and a lift to my day without knowing it...( and I am sure to countless others)
So describing Suella as "a person who would turn off your life support machine to charge her mobile phone.."....as Jimmy Carson would say "that's a Cracker..."
Aww thanks, it is a pleasure.
The line I am most proud of from the election campaign
After July 5th I suspect the only way Rishi Sunak and all other Tories will be able to talk about the election defeat will be in a therapist’s office with dolls.
Now Carol Vorderman goes to war with Laura Kuenssberg: Ex-Countdown host says the BBC politics presenter should be dropped for Victoria Derbyshire
i'm a fan of Carol Vorderman but I didn't see much wrong with LK's Ed Davey interview. Carol V did a great job during the election on her 'bring the Tories down plan' so probably better to rest on her laurels.
As much as I was amazed by Andy JS predictions on election night, I have never given you credit (not even a smidgeon) TSE in all these many years for your wit, great one liners, borderline smut, zingers and double entendres that helps make this site a daily goto....
On many, many occasions TSE you have brought a smile to my face and a lift to my day without knowing it...( and I am sure to countless others)
So describing Suella as "a person who would turn off your life support machine to charge her mobile phone.."....as Jimmy Carson would say "that's a Cracker..."
Aww thanks, it is a pleasure.
The line I am most proud of from the election campaign
After July 5th I suspect the only way Rishi Sunak and all other Tories will be able to talk about the election defeat will be in a therapist’s office with dolls.
Isn't there a life support machine/floor buffing machine from a hospital story somewhere?
Yes it’s in a movie. Like airplane but not airplane
It must have been quite funny because I remember from the same movie the hospital tannoy saying “can we have doctor pepper to the diabetes clinic? Doctor pepper, diabetes clinic”
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
Ummm:
Not true, even in the UK.
Maintenance costs are dramatically lower for electric cars because they are mechanically much simpler.
Now, on fuel alone you are probably correct (at least in the UK)... but I wouldn't like to bet on that continuing. Electricity prices are going to fall quite a long way from here.
Err - what maintainance costs? My dirty old diesel Passat needs an oil change every 10k miles that takes under ten minutes, requires under £20 in oil and two £5 filters (oil and air). It needs a bonus £5 fuel filter every 20k miles and a £300 (all in costs from a reputable garage, did it earlier this year) timing belt change about every 80k miles. I think all in that lot sets me back a whopping 0.8p/mile.
By far most expensive aspect of it's running costs after fuel is tyres, and being heavier EVs wear them out faster.
Yes, if you buy a new merc and get the dealership to service it they'll cheerfully stiff you for £300 a basic service, but that's just them charging a mug tax on £25 of stuff and 15 mins labour to people foolish enough to pay it.
Depends how old your Passat is, and how far you drive it. I think it's the flywheel on the clutch that fails and needs replacing about every 100k miles for all VW group diesels. One of the fuel lines sprang a leak on our Passat recently, though that was exactly an expensive repair. Or previous car, a Skoda Octavia, needed a fix to the turbo.
There are loads of things to go wrong on an ICE car.
But. They can be fixed. Mechanical things can be fixed. If anything goes wrong with the electronics in a car it can be horrendously expensive.
The battery issue is the biggie, minor prang involving the chassis and the car gets written off because no one can be sure that one of the thousands of 1.5V AA cells that make up the battries isn't damaged and will sooner or later self combust.
That more than makes up for mechanical wear in an engine. Especially as the batteries degrade even if you don't drive it (especially in extreme hot and cold temperatures)
Sorry but the technology is immature and crude and I'm not testing someones beta model at my own expense.
Come back when you have a battery that is stable, will run 400 miles, will recharge in 5 minutes at any Petrol Station and is not able to self combust. Then I might be interested.
In the interim I might go for a hybrid, which gives the efficiency of the electric drive train with a £1000 battery in the boot that can be changed without difficulty and can be charged from its onboard Petrol generator.
But so long as the 18 year old low mileage car Ive had from new keeps going without major issue I will stick with it.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
Ummm:
Not true, even in the UK.
Maintenance costs are dramatically lower for electric cars because they are mechanically much simpler.
Now, on fuel alone you are probably correct (at least in the UK)... but I wouldn't like to bet on that continuing. Electricity prices are going to fall quite a long way from here.
Err - what maintainance costs? My dirty old diesel Passat needs an oil change every 10k miles that takes under ten minutes, requires under £20 in oil and two £5 filters (oil and air). It needs a bonus £5 fuel filter every 20k miles and a £300 (all in costs from a reputable garage, did it earlier this year) timing belt change about every 80k miles. I think all in that lot sets me back a whopping 0.8p/mile.
By far most expensive aspect of it's running costs after fuel is tyres, and being heavier EVs wear them out faster.
Yes, if you buy a new merc and get the dealership to service it they'll cheerfully stiff you for £300 a basic service, but that's just them charging a mug tax on £25 of stuff and 15 mins labour to people foolish enough to pay it.
Depends how old your Passat is, and how far you drive it. I think it's the flywheel on the clutch that fails and needs replacing about every 100k miles for all VW group diesels. One of the fuel lines sprang a leak on our Passat recently, though that was exactly an expensive repair. Or previous car, a Skoda Octavia, needed a fix to the turbo.
There are loads of things to go wrong on an ICE car.
But. They can be fixed. Mechanical things can be fixed. If anything goes wrong with the electronics in a car it can be horrendously expensive.
The battery issue is the biggie, minor prang involving the chassis and the car gets written off because no one can be sure that one of the thousands of 1.5V AA cells that make up the battries isn't damaged and will sooner or later self combust.
That more than makes up for mechanical wear in an engine. Especially as the batteries degrade even if you don't drive it (especially in extreme hot and cold temperatures)
Sorry but the technology is immature and crude and I'm not testing someones beta model at my own expense.
Come back when you have a battery that is stable, will run 400 miles, will recharge in 5 minutes at any Petrol Station and is not able to self combust. Then I might be interested.
In the interim I might go for a hybrid, which gives the efficiency of the electric drive train with a £1000 battery in the boot that can be changed without difficulty and can be charged from its onboard Petrol generator.
But so long as the 18 year old low mileage car Ive had from new keeps going without major issue I will stick with it.
I don't understand why hybrids aren't pushed more. They have 75% of the positives with only 10% of the negatives.
I see the Telegraph is getting excited about Labour Tax Rises. Expect that to be a nothingburger.
More of a problem for Labour is how to get anything concrete done before the elections. All very well to simplify planning rules but get rid of things like nutrient neutrality you face years of climate act underpinned in appeals in the court. Don't get rid of nutrient neutrality don't get anything built.
etc etc.
It is somewhat ironic that Labour's ability to get houses built will be constrained by all the nimby legislation they have so eagerly supported.
As much as I was amazed by Andy JS predictions on election night, I have never given you credit (not even a smidgeon) TSE in all these many years for your wit, great one liners, borderline smut, zingers and double entendres that helps make this site a daily goto....
On many, many occasions TSE you have brought a smile to my face and a lift to my day without knowing it...( and I am sure to countless others)
So describing Suella as "a person who would turn off your life support machine to charge her mobile phone.."....as Jimmy Carson would say "that's a Cracker..."
Aww thanks, it is a pleasure.
The line I am most proud of from the election campaign
After July 5th I suspect the only way Rishi Sunak and all other Tories will be able to talk about the election defeat will be in a therapist’s office with dolls.
Isn't there a life support machine/floor buffing machine from a hospital story somewhere?
Yes it’s in a movie. Like airplane but not airplane
It must have been quite funny because I remember from the same movie the hospital tannoy saying “can we have doctor pepper to the diabetes clinic? Doctor pepper, diabetes clinic”
There was a story some years ago about whichever patient was in Bed 1 in a particular hospital died every Monday at about 11am. Eventually it was realised that the cleaner came in every Monday and plugged her vacuum cleaner into Bed 1's life support system.
I see the Telegraph is getting excited about Labour Tax Rises. Expect that to be a nothingburger.
More of a problem for Labour is how to get anything concrete done before the elections. All very well to simplify planning rules but get rid of things like nutrient neutrality you face years of climate act underpinned in appeals in the court. Don't get rid of nutrient neutrality don't get anything built.
etc etc.
It is somewhat ironic that Labour's ability to get houses built will be constrained by all the nimby legislation they have so eagerly supported.
It really is a time consuming and expensive rule with real world impacts.
Dates to pre-Roman times (the word Oppède is Celtic-Roman for fort) yet for centuries it was basically abandoned. Then in the Second World War the author Saint Exupery (yes, him) and a bunch of artists all rescued it
It has a brilliantly grumpy cafe owner
Im fairly grumpy myself. 6 hours waiting for effing Lufthansa to organise a flight where the plane had a minor bird strike and then they cancel it. My compensation is the 5,55 am flight tomorrow - be there 2 hours early. Great.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
(whips out calculator)
Diesel has a duty of £0.53 / litre, with VAT on top. So a £1.50 litre of diesel costs ~£0.72. 1 litre of diesel represents about 38MJ, which comes out at a third of that in kinetic energy at the wheel thanks to ICE thermal losses.
So 13MJ KE costs you 72p with diesel.
13MJ is ~ 3.6 kWh. An EV will have some (small) resistive losses & should probably scale by weight as well - an EV has to lug around all that battery compared to an ICE car. So equivalent for an EV is probably 5kWh ish?
If you can charge at home the EV will cost you half the untaxed diesel rate (Octopus EV rate: 7p / kWh). Charging elsewhere is going to be much more expensive, zapmap ways a mean charge on their network of 56p / kWh for “fast” chargers & 80p/kWh for the ultra-rapid chargers.
So for home charging the EV beats even untaxed diesel. If you have to charge elsewhere you’re going to find it’s much, much more expensive!
Indeed, which is why all modern homes should ideally come with a driveway for 2 off-road parking spots as standard.
Switching to clean vehicles without at-home charging is going to be very problematic.
Near me a new petrol station has just opened which is the first I've seen that has the price per kwh for EVs on its display board, not just the price for unleaded/diesel.
A litre of unleaded costs £1.389 My self-charging hybrid gets an average (real, based on my own driving) of 9 miles per litre. So it costs 15.4p per mile.
A kwh of electricity costs 59p From what I've read 3-4 miles per kwh is fairly typical. So it costs 15-20p per mile, making EV more expensive than even unleaded just on running costs without the tax being taken into account.
I don't see a good solution for this.
I am with Octopus and pay 15.22p daytime 7.86 p per kwh at night. I use a public charger less than once per year. So a fuel cost of 2.5 to 5p a mile.
Refueling at home is not an option with ICE vehicles.
Well that's precisely the point being made, if you are able to recharge at home then that is fantastic! Great cost saving.
However if you can't recharge at home and need to charge at a public station where its 59p or more per kWh then you are suddenly paying potentially more for an EV per mile than a self-charging hybrid unleaded vehicle is paying per mile.
And that's before certain people have suggested that the loss of fuel duty needs to be 'covered' by drivers which doesn't work at all, especially for drivers of EVs charging publicly who are out of pocket already just for fuel let alone tax too.
I see the Telegraph is getting excited about Labour Tax Rises. Expect that to be a nothingburger.
More of a problem for Labour is how to get anything concrete done before the elections. All very well to simplify planning rules but get rid of things like nutrient neutrality you face years of climate act underpinned in appeals in the court. Don't get rid of nutrient neutrality don't get anything built.
etc etc.
It is somewhat ironic that Labour's ability to get houses built will be constrained by all the nimby legislation they have so eagerly supported.
It really is a time consuming and expensive rule with real world impacts.
The most ludicrous thing I have seen is May's net zero. We give all and sundry a right to stop everything and the government chips in to sue itself.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
(whips out calculator)
Diesel has a duty of £0.53 / litre, with VAT on top. So a £1.50 litre of diesel costs ~£0.72. 1 litre of diesel represents about 38MJ, which comes out at a third of that in kinetic energy at the wheel thanks to ICE thermal losses.
So 13MJ KE costs you 72p with diesel.
13MJ is ~ 3.6 kWh. An EV will have some (small) resistive losses & should probably scale by weight as well - an EV has to lug around all that battery compared to an ICE car. So equivalent for an EV is probably 5kWh ish?
If you can charge at home the EV will cost you half the untaxed diesel rate (Octopus EV rate: 7p / kWh). Charging elsewhere is going to be much more expensive, zapmap ways a mean charge on their network of 56p / kWh for “fast” chargers & 80p/kWh for the ultra-rapid chargers.
So for home charging the EV beats even untaxed diesel. If you have to charge elsewhere you’re going to find it’s much, much more expensive!
Indeed, which is why all modern homes should ideally come with a driveway for 2 off-road parking spots as standard.
Switching to clean vehicles without at-home charging is going to be very problematic.
Near me a new petrol station has just opened which is the first I've seen that has the price per kwh for EVs on its display board, not just the price for unleaded/diesel.
A litre of unleaded costs £1.389 My self-charging hybrid gets an average (real, based on my own driving) of 9 miles per litre. So it costs 15.4p per mile.
A kwh of electricity costs 59p From what I've read 3-4 miles per kwh is fairly typical. So it costs 15-20p per mile, making EV more expensive than even unleaded just on running costs without the tax being taken into account.
I don't see a good solution for this.
I am with Octopus and pay 15.22p daytime 7.86 p per kwh at night. I use a public charger less than once per year. So a fuel cost of 2.5 to 5p a mile.
Refueling at home is not an option with ICE vehicles.
Well that's precisely the point being made, if you are able to recharge at home then that is fantastic! Great cost saving.
However if you can't recharge at home and need to charge at a public station where its 59p or more per kWh then you are suddenly paying potentially more for an EV per mile than a self-charging hybrid unleaded vehicle is paying per mile.
And that's before certain people have suggested that the loss of fuel duty needs to be 'covered' by drivers which doesn't work at all, especially for drivers of EVs charging publicly who are out of pocket already just for fuel let alone tax too.
Octopus can't find my house on their system, so I've got to stay with E On. Bother!!!!!
On the positive side I have had at last heard from the DVLA. Been waiting since February. Now they want me to have a driving assessment, but if it all goes well, I should get my driving licence back.
I see the Telegraph is getting excited about Labour Tax Rises. Expect that to be a nothingburger.
More of a problem for Labour is how to get anything concrete done before the elections. All very well to simplify planning rules but get rid of things like nutrient neutrality you face years of climate act underpinned in appeals in the court. Don't get rid of nutrient neutrality don't get anything built.
etc etc.
It is somewhat ironic that Labour's ability to get houses built will be constrained by all the nimby legislation they have so eagerly supported.
It really is a time consuming and expensive rule with real world impacts.
The most ludicrous thing I have seen is May's net zero. We give all and sundry a right to stop everything and the government chips in to sue itself.
It was given practically no scrutiny. I was just looking through some 'agricultural transition' plans that the government (past government) had, which i can only assume will be taken even further. It's like some people really really want to tie down the productive areas of economic activity and smother them with unicorns and rainbows.
I see the Telegraph is getting excited about Labour Tax Rises. Expect that to be a nothingburger.
More of a problem for Labour is how to get anything concrete done before the elections. All very well to simplify planning rules but get rid of things like nutrient neutrality you face years of climate act underpinned in appeals in the court. Don't get rid of nutrient neutrality don't get anything built.
etc etc.
It is somewhat ironic that Labour's ability to get houses built will be constrained by all the nimby legislation they have so eagerly supported.
Quite. It dosen't seem to have occured to them that their most sacred Acts (Equality, ECHR and Climate Change) are going to be the things that impale them and prevent them getting much done in one term.
By which time the problems will have got far worse and a lot of Labour voters will be listening to Farage saying "I told you so".
Edit. May upgrading Climate Change to Net Zero was under the Tories but this is also uber sacred to them.
Meanwhile Fargle will be sitting opposite with popcorn.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
Ummm:
Not true, even in the UK.
Maintenance costs are dramatically lower for electric cars because they are mechanically much simpler.
Now, on fuel alone you are probably correct (at least in the UK)... but I wouldn't like to bet on that continuing. Electricity prices are going to fall quite a long way from here.
Err - what maintainance costs? My dirty old diesel Passat needs an oil change every 10k miles that takes under ten minutes, requires under £20 in oil and two £5 filters (oil and air). It needs a bonus £5 fuel filter every 20k miles and a £300 (all in costs from a reputable garage, did it earlier this year) timing belt change about every 80k miles. I think all in that lot sets me back a whopping 0.8p/mile.
By far most expensive aspect of it's running costs after fuel is tyres, and being heavier EVs wear them out faster.
Yes, if you buy a new merc and get the dealership to service it they'll cheerfully stiff you for £300 a basic service, but that's just them charging a mug tax on £25 of stuff and 15 mins labour to people foolish enough to pay it.
You know how engines work, right?
Little explosions that drive pistons. Those explosions, and the thermal expansion and contraction, causes wear and tear.
All vehicles have parts that wear out, and cars with petrol and diesel engines have lots of them. You might have got lucky this year, but the data is not really up for debate here: cars with explosion powered engines need to have parts replaced more often.
Even brakes and brake pads wear out faster on explosion powered cars, because they don't have the benefit of regenerative braking.
My self-charging hybrid has regenerative braking. That's increasingly standard on all types of cars.
In the US, it is already possible to buy used EVs for modest ptices: "For less than $10,000, I could pick between several electric Mercedes-Benz hatchbacks, Volkswagen e-Golfs or Fiats on used-car sites. For under $3,000 I found a fleet of used Nissan Leafs with around 70-mile range to cruise around town. With an upfront used-EV discount at registered dealerships, I could have driven home a $2,100 car." (Links omitted.) source:$ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/30/cheap-electric-cars/
As Warren Buffett has long pointed out, used cars are the sensible choice, financially. I expect that to be even more true with EVs, because of their -- relative -- simplicity, compared to modern ICE vehicles.
Who are people thinking will be Trump's running mate? I saw a lot of chatter last week about General Flynn - which in my mind would be extremely suggestive of how off the rails Trump plans to be.
I think Trump is enjoying prompting internet chatter - there's been at least ten unlikely names so far. I've got a small bet on Tom Cotton on no better grounds than I want to win a 100-1 bet.
Perhaps Trump will pick Boris Johnson as his running mate?
BoJo may have renounced his birth-right American citizenship HOWEVER states are pretty much obliged to put on ballots whomever the Republican National Convention nominates for POTUS and VP.
Lack of CURRENT US citizenship and also residency would still be impediments to actually taking office HOWEVER a new Republican-controlled Congress and/or same old SCOTUS could very conceivably make that problem go away before Inauguration Day.
By performing his standard Benny Hill Tribute Act, Johnson would provided much-needed comic relief for USers, like he used to do for (many anyway) UKers.
Better than Spiro PLUS Boris has already been "vetted" in a manner of speaking for skeletons in his closets, unlike Agnew who's own chicanery was buried like a ticking time bomb until AFTER he was re-elected as Nixon's Veep (old school nickname). Then Spiro exploded, resigning as VP and replaced by Gerry Ford and thus removing possibility of Agnew assuming the White House upon removal of Tricky Dick. Which was NOT helpful to the CREEPer.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
Ummm:
Not true, even in the UK.
Maintenance costs are dramatically lower for electric cars because they are mechanically much simpler.
Now, on fuel alone you are probably correct (at least in the UK)... but I wouldn't like to bet on that continuing. Electricity prices are going to fall quite a long way from here.
Err - what maintainance costs? My dirty old diesel Passat needs an oil change every 10k miles that takes under ten minutes, requires under £20 in oil and two £5 filters (oil and air). It needs a bonus £5 fuel filter every 20k miles and a £300 (all in costs from a reputable garage, did it earlier this year) timing belt change about every 80k miles. I think all in that lot sets me back a whopping 0.8p/mile.
By far most expensive aspect of it's running costs after fuel is tyres, and being heavier EVs wear them out faster.
Yes, if you buy a new merc and get the dealership to service it they'll cheerfully stiff you for £300 a basic service, but that's just them charging a mug tax on £25 of stuff and 15 mins labour to people foolish enough to pay it.
You know how engines work, right?
Little explosions that drive pistons. Those explosions, and the thermal expansion and contraction, causes wear and tear.
All vehicles have parts that wear out, and cars with petrol and diesel engines have lots of them. You might have got lucky this year, but the data is not really up for debate here: cars with explosion powered engines need to have parts replaced more often.
Even brakes and brake pads wear out faster on explosion powered cars, because they don't have the benefit of regenerative braking.
My self-charging hybrid has regenerative braking. That's increasingly standard on all types of cars.
That will have less wear and tear than an all explosion powered car, but less than a BEV.
I see the Telegraph is getting excited about Labour Tax Rises. Expect that to be a nothingburger.
More of a problem for Labour is how to get anything concrete done before the elections. All very well to simplify planning rules but get rid of things like nutrient neutrality you face years of climate act underpinned in appeals in the court. Don't get rid of nutrient neutrality don't get anything built.
etc etc.
It is somewhat ironic that Labour's ability to get houses built will be constrained by all the nimby legislation they have so eagerly supported.
Quite. It dosen't seem to have occured to them that their most sacred Acts (Equality, ECHR and Climate Change) are going to be the things that impale them and prevent them getting much done in one term.
By which time the problems will have got far worse and a lot of Labour voters will be listening to Farage saying "I told you so".
Edit. May upgrading Climate Change to Net Zero was under the Tories but this is also uber sacred to them.
Perhaps you're underestimating Starmer's ruthlessness. He could just do away with any legislation that gets in the way.
Only a Labour government can deliver Liz Truss's supply-side agenda.
In the US, it is already possible to buy used EVs for modest ptices: "For less than $10,000, I could pick between several electric Mercedes-Benz hatchbacks, Volkswagen e-Golfs or Fiats on used-car sites. For under $3,000 I found a fleet of used Nissan Leafs with around 70-mile range to cruise around town. With an upfront used-EV discount at registered dealerships, I could have driven home a $2,100 car." (Links omitted.) source:$ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/30/cheap-electric-cars/
As Warren Buffett has long pointed out, used cars are the sensible choice, financially. I expect that to be even more true with EVs, because of their -- relative -- simplicity, compared to modern ICE vehicles.
Having to replace the batteries if they are knackered is the risk here.
I see the Telegraph is getting excited about Labour Tax Rises. Expect that to be a nothingburger.
More of a problem for Labour is how to get anything concrete done before the elections. All very well to simplify planning rules but get rid of things like nutrient neutrality you face years of climate act underpinned in appeals in the court. Don't get rid of nutrient neutrality don't get anything built.
etc etc.
It is somewhat ironic that Labour's ability to get houses built will be constrained by all the nimby legislation they have so eagerly supported.
Quite. It dosen't seem to have occured to them that their most sacred Acts (Equality, ECHR and Climate Change) are going to be the things that impale them and prevent them getting much done in one term.
By which time the problems will have got far worse and a lot of Labour voters will be listening to Farage saying "I told you so".
Edit. May upgrading Climate Change to Net Zero was under the Tories but this is also uber sacred to them.
Perhaps you're underestimating Starmer's ruthlessness. He could just do away with any legislation that gets in the way.
Only a Labour government can deliver Liz Truss's supply-side agenda.
Seeing him repeal any of those acts would be very entertaining and probably see most of his MPs defect to Libdems (Galloway for the Left wing ones).
It's important to note the context here: Miss Black Teen Pennsylvania asked him "Don't you think a candidate without dementia would be best placed to beat Donald Trump", and replied "Why you..." and made to punch her.
Coutinho is too close to Sunak to win the members vote, Braverman and Patel lack support from Tory MPs as the header makes clear. Jenrick and Badenoch have more but probably not enough to make the last 2.
At the moment Cleverly v Tugendhat is my prediction of the 2 the remaining Tory MPs will put to the members if Cleverly stands, if not then Barclay would take his place. Cleverly or Barclay then winning the members vote
What was Alistair Meek's word for this: anti????. That you tend to replace in contrast to the predecessor and end up with paler and paler imitations of alternating types.
I can't define it succinctly enough to pull the word from Google unfortunately.
I was going to go with "Oppositionalism", and plan on writing a header on it.
Dates to pre-Roman times (the word Oppède is Celtic-Roman for fort) yet for centuries it was basically abandoned. Then in the Second World War the author Saint Exupery (yes, him) and a bunch of artists all rescued it
It has a brilliantly grumpy cafe owner
You can go and irritate Hugh Grant just down the road in Eygalieres
I see the Telegraph is getting excited about Labour Tax Rises. Expect that to be a nothingburger.
More of a problem for Labour is how to get anything concrete done before the elections. All very well to simplify planning rules but get rid of things like nutrient neutrality you face years of climate act underpinned in appeals in the court. Don't get rid of nutrient neutrality don't get anything built.
etc etc.
It is somewhat ironic that Labour's ability to get houses built will be constrained by all the nimby legislation they have so eagerly supported.
Quite. It dosen't seem to have occured to them that their most sacred Acts (Equality, ECHR and Climate Change) are going to be the things that impale them and prevent them getting much done in one term.
By which time the problems will have got far worse and a lot of Labour voters will be listening to Farage saying "I told you so".
Edit. May upgrading Climate Change to Net Zero was under the Tories but this is also uber sacred to them.
Perhaps you're underestimating Starmer's ruthlessness. He could just do away with any legislation that gets in the way.
Only a Labour government can deliver Liz Truss's supply-side agenda.
He could get away with and the only thing it would piss off is the activists. If primary legislation was needed though, even his staggering majority would struggle. They are all fully signed up the net zero by yesterday agenda.
What is interesting is just how the 'circular economy' and both no growth and active degrowth ideas have entered into the Labour Party bloodstream, they are main stays of the Greens. These people mean it. They really want to shrink the economy, i wonder how many new MPs agree.
I see the Telegraph is getting excited about Labour Tax Rises. Expect that to be a nothingburger.
More of a problem for Labour is how to get anything concrete done before the elections. All very well to simplify planning rules but get rid of things like nutrient neutrality you face years of climate act underpinned in appeals in the court. Don't get rid of nutrient neutrality don't get anything built.
etc etc.
It is somewhat ironic that Labour's ability to get houses built will be constrained by all the nimby legislation they have so eagerly supported.
Quite. It dosen't seem to have occured to them that their most sacred Acts (Equality, ECHR and Climate Change) are going to be the things that impale them and prevent them getting much done in one term.
By which time the problems will have got far worse and a lot of Labour voters will be listening to Farage saying "I told you so".
Edit. May upgrading Climate Change to Net Zero was under the Tories but this is also uber sacred to them.
Perhaps you're underestimating Starmer's ruthlessness. He could just do away with any legislation that gets in the way.
Only a Labour government can deliver Liz Truss's supply-side agenda.
I certainly wouldn't bet against Starmer's ruthless drive to get things done.
Four days in, and: - waiting lists haven't come down - small boats are still crossing the Channel - not one new house has been built - not one new wind farm has emerged - interest rates still haven't been cut.
According to the Post article I just linked to, battery life in most current EVs is now acceptable: "Because of sophisticated cooling hardware and management software, most batteries are expected to outlive their car. Recurrent studied the loss of lithium-ion battery capacity in 15,000 EVs going back as far as 2011. Degradation, they found, tends to follow an S-curve. A modern EV with a 250- or 300-mile range might lose roughly 20 to 40 miles of maximum range over the first 20,000 miles, and then level off to about 1 percent of the battery capacity annually. For a Tesla Model 3 with 341 miles of range, that translates to a maximum range of about 300 miles after a decade." (Links omitted.)
Surely the only reason that the Tories would plump for Jenrick or Braverman is if they intended to either merge with, or form an alliance with, Reform?
There's no electoral benefit for the Tories to either of those two unless Farage/Reform is part of the package.
I think it'd make sense for the Conservatives and Reform to take a leaf out of Macron's book and mutually stand candidates down next election. The split would broadly be along second places. Reform will get plenty more seconds (They might take Llanelli) and the Conservatives will win back a decent haul of seats. The pivot to the centre to my mind is for the election after 2029 - but I think a coupon/stand down makes sense next time up to get numbers back up.
Given just how many Reform second places there were, wouldn't that be consigning the Conservatives to effective 3rd-party status? They'd never be able to govern on their own again.
There should be a Conservative leadership candidate who fights on the manifesto of merging with Reform, and see what the membership thinks.
What makes them think that Reform would entertain the prospect.
Not sure they want to be shackled to a corpse.
Study on how the Reform Party of Canada took over the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada back in the waning years of the 2nd millennium:
As much as I was amazed by Andy JS predictions on election night, I have never given you credit (not even a smidgeon) TSE in all these many years for your wit, great one liners, borderline smut, zingers and double entendres that helps make this site a daily goto....
On many, many occasions TSE you have brought a smile to my face and a lift to my day without knowing it...( and I am sure to countless others)
So describing Suella as "a person who would turn off your life support machine to charge her mobile phone.."....as Jimmy Carson would say "that's a Cracker..."
Aww thanks, it is a pleasure.
The line I am most proud of from the election campaign
After July 5th I suspect the only way Rishi Sunak and all other Tories will be able to talk about the election defeat will be in a therapist’s office with dolls.
Isn't there a life support machine/floor buffing machine from a hospital story somewhere?
Yes it’s in a movie. Like airplane but not airplane
It must have been quite funny because I remember from the same movie the hospital tannoy saying “can we have doctor pepper to the diabetes clinic? Doctor pepper, diabetes clinic”
There was a story some years ago about whichever patient was in Bed 1 in a particular hospital died every Monday at about 11am. Eventually it was realised that the cleaner came in every Monday and plugged her vacuum cleaner into Bed 1's life support system.
I see the Telegraph is getting excited about Labour Tax Rises. Expect that to be a nothingburger.
More of a problem for Labour is how to get anything concrete done before the elections. All very well to simplify planning rules but get rid of things like nutrient neutrality you face years of climate act underpinned in appeals in the court. Don't get rid of nutrient neutrality don't get anything built.
etc etc.
It is somewhat ironic that Labour's ability to get houses built will be constrained by all the nimby legislation they have so eagerly supported.
It really is a time consuming and expensive rule with real world impacts.
UK governments have for years been tying their own hands, and of course everyone else's by legislating and regulating to an infinitely complex degree, so that every decision is tied, and every new piece of legislation has to be read in the light of every other piece, and precedent, back to 1190. To say nothing of residual EU legislation still hanging around.
The coming struggle to get around the NIMBYs, the pressure groups, the commercial interests and political opponents will be interesting.
Even with a Labour government progressive lawyers still have starving children to feed and of course VAT on school fees on top. They won't be going away.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
Ummm:
Not true, even in the UK.
Maintenance costs are dramatically lower for electric cars because they are mechanically much simpler.
Now, on fuel alone you are probably correct (at least in the UK)... but I wouldn't like to bet on that continuing. Electricity prices are going to fall quite a long way from here.
Err - what maintainance costs? My dirty old diesel Passat needs an oil change every 10k miles that takes under ten minutes, requires under £20 in oil and two £5 filters (oil and air). It needs a bonus £5 fuel filter every 20k miles and a £300 (all in costs from a reputable garage, did it earlier this year) timing belt change about every 80k miles. I think all in that lot sets me back a whopping 0.8p/mile.
By far most expensive aspect of it's running costs after fuel is tyres, and being heavier EVs wear them out faster.
Yes, if you buy a new merc and get the dealership to service it they'll cheerfully stiff you for £300 a basic service, but that's just them charging a mug tax on £25 of stuff and 15 mins labour to people foolish enough to pay it.
Depends how old your Passat is, and how far you drive it. I think it's the flywheel on the clutch that fails and needs replacing about every 100k miles for all VW group diesels. One of the fuel lines sprang a leak on our Passat recently, though that was exactly an expensive repair. Or previous car, a Skoda Octavia, needed a fix to the turbo.
There are loads of things to go wrong on an ICE car.
But. They can be fixed. Mechanical things can be fixed. If anything goes wrong with the electronics in a car it can be horrendously expensive.
The battery issue is the biggie, minor prang involving the chassis and the car gets written off because no one can be sure that one of the thousands of 1.5V AA cells that make up the battries isn't damaged and will sooner or later self combust.
That more than makes up for mechanical wear in an engine. Especially as the batteries degrade even if you don't drive it (especially in extreme hot and cold temperatures)
Sorry but the technology is immature and crude and I'm not testing someones beta model at my own expense.
Come back when you have a battery that is stable, will run 400 miles, will recharge in 5 minutes at any Petrol Station and is not able to self combust. Then I might be interested.
In the interim I might go for a hybrid, which gives the efficiency of the electric drive train with a £1000 battery in the boot that can be changed without difficulty and can be charged from its onboard Petrol generator.
But so long as the 18 year old low mileage car Ive had from new keeps going without major issue I will stick with it.
While that's true, I can tell you that those damaged battery packs are sold off and recycled.
So, the hit to the insurance company is often pretty small.
(Source: I am CEO of an insurance company, and we get pretty amazing salvage rates on damaged electric cars.)
That Biden letter to congressional democrats. Oh my days, he comes across almost as much a demagogue as Trump does.
As for Tory leadership, the runners and riders might not realise but it’s a caretaker role. I’d be pretty surprised if the winner is leading the party at the next election.
I think Coutinho is a reasonable outside bet for the leadership, backed her this morning, still available at 50/1 at Ladbrokes/Coral (60 with boost). I think Badenoch is too short right now, 2/1 in places. If the Tories go for a longer contest, some of the outsiders will come into play, particularly those who are more unknown.
Incidentally it's her birthday today, 39 - the same age as David Cameron was when he first became leader
Dates to pre-Roman times (the word Oppède is Celtic-Roman for fort) yet for centuries it was basically abandoned. Then in the Second World War the author Saint Exupery (yes, him) and a bunch of artists all rescued it
It has a brilliantly grumpy cafe owner
You can go and irritate Hugh Grant just down the road in Eygalieres
According to the Post article I just linked to, battery life in most current EVs is now acceptable: "Because of sophisticated cooling hardware and management software, most batteries are expected to outlive their car. Recurrent studied the loss of lithium-ion battery capacity in 15,000 EVs going back as far as 2011. Degradation, they found, tends to follow an S-curve. A modern EV with a 250- or 300-mile range might lose roughly 20 to 40 miles of maximum range over the first 20,000 miles, and then level off to about 1 percent of the battery capacity annually. For a Tesla Model 3 with 341 miles of range, that translates to a maximum range of about 300 miles after a decade." (Links omitted.)
According to the Post article I just linked to, battery life in most current EVs is now acceptable: "Because of sophisticated cooling hardware and management software, most batteries are expected to outlive their car. Recurrent studied the loss of lithium-ion battery capacity in 15,000 EVs going back as far as 2011. Degradation, they found, tends to follow an S-curve. A modern EV with a 250- or 300-mile range might lose roughly 20 to 40 miles of maximum range over the first 20,000 miles, and then level off to about 1 percent of the battery capacity annually. For a Tesla Model 3 with 341 miles of range, that translates to a maximum range of about 300 miles after a decade." (Links omitted.)
Assuming that this article is correct, the weasel word here is "average". Most will do a little more or a little less but some will do *much* less and you don't know which.
Same risk that you take when you buy a second hand car that the engine is knackered, but not such a probable link to mileage and **much** more expensive if you get the dog batteries.
That Biden letter to congressional democrats. Oh my days, he comes across almost as much a demagogue as Trump does.
As for Tory leadership, the runners and riders might not realise but it’s a caretaker role. I’d be pretty surprised if the winner is leading the party at the next election.
You don't get to become the president without a certain amount of stubbornness
Dates to pre-Roman times (the word Oppède is Celtic-Roman for fort) yet for centuries it was basically abandoned. Then in the Second World War the author Saint Exupery (yes, him) and a bunch of artists all rescued it
It has a brilliantly grumpy cafe owner
I stayed bloody near there a few years ago. Does your friend’s house have its own ruined chapel at all?
That Biden letter to congressional democrats. Oh my days, he comes across almost as much a demagogue as Trump does.
As for Tory leadership, the runners and riders might not realise but it’s a caretaker role. I’d be pretty surprised if the winner is leading the party at the next election.
This is the person who said, when he was allegedly more compos mentis, "If you don't vote for me, you ain't black."
In the US, it is already possible to buy used EVs for modest ptices: "For less than $10,000, I could pick between several electric Mercedes-Benz hatchbacks, Volkswagen e-Golfs or Fiats on used-car sites. For under $3,000 I found a fleet of used Nissan Leafs with around 70-mile range to cruise around town. With an upfront used-EV discount at registered dealerships, I could have driven home a $2,100 car." (Links omitted.) source:$ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/30/cheap-electric-cars/
As Warren Buffett has long pointed out, used cars are the sensible choice, financially. I expect that to be even more true with EVs, because of their -- relative -- simplicity, compared to modern ICE vehicles.
70 mile range?
That would barely get me to Milton Keynes on a cold day with the heating and headlights on.
I'm on Claire Coutinho too. Though there may be an element of hopecasting in there. (I know relatively little about her, but she's always seemed quite assured in front of the camera, and fits my view of where the Tories should position themselves.)
Is this a joke? And is the Sunak endorsement actually seen as some sort of positive?? Her rampers yesterday didn't even know the spelling of her name. Even CHB and Gardenwalker were warning she's a complete nobody.
We've just had an inexperienced over-promoted-via-patronage useless article as leader, what on earth makes having another one remotely attractive?
You supported an over-promoted useless article as leader.
Four days in, and: - waiting lists haven't come down - small boats are still crossing the Channel - not one new house has been built - not one new wind farm has emerged - interest rates still haven't been cut.
Labour: all promises and no delivery.
You left out _ failure to appoint Second Church Estates Commissioner
In the US, it is already possible to buy used EVs for modest ptices: "For less than $10,000, I could pick between several electric Mercedes-Benz hatchbacks, Volkswagen e-Golfs or Fiats on used-car sites. For under $3,000 I found a fleet of used Nissan Leafs with around 70-mile range to cruise around town. With an upfront used-EV discount at registered dealerships, I could have driven home a $2,100 car." (Links omitted.) source:$ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/30/cheap-electric-cars/
As Warren Buffett has long pointed out, used cars are the sensible choice, financially. I expect that to be even more true with EVs, because of their -- relative -- simplicity, compared to modern ICE vehicles.
70 mile range?
That would barely get me to Milton Keynes on a cold day with the heating and headlights on.
The Nissan Leaf was launched originally as a 120 mile range vehicle - it was not an enormous success. It also used a very old battery technology (Magnesium Oxide) which was very prone to degredation and had poor energy density. Modern cars all use one of the various Lithium Ion variants.
Still more on EV battery life from the Post article: "Nissan, which released its Leaf EV in 2010, says “almost all” of its original batteries are still powering its cars despite early recalls. And failure rates are dropping. About 1.5 percent of vehicles have had to replace batteries, outside of recalls, since 2011, reports Recurrent. That rate has fallen below 0.5 percent since model year 2016." (Links omitted.)
Battery life was a serious problem with EVs sold in the US, but is no longer.
I'm on Claire Coutinho too. Though there may be an element of hopecasting in there. (I know relatively little about her, but she's always seemed quite assured in front of the camera, and fits my view of where the Tories should position themselves.)
Is this a joke? And is the Sunak endorsement actually seen as some sort of positive?? Her rampers yesterday didn't even know the spelling of her name. Even CHB and Gardenwalker were warning she's a complete nobody.
We've just had an inexperienced over-promoted-via-patronage useless article as leader, what on earth makes having another one remotely attractive?
You supported an over-promoted useless article as leader.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
Ummm:
Not true, even in the UK.
Maintenance costs are dramatically lower for electric cars because they are mechanically much simpler.
Now, on fuel alone you are probably correct (at least in the UK)... but I wouldn't like to bet on that continuing. Electricity prices are going to fall quite a long way from here.
Err - what maintainance costs? My dirty old diesel Passat needs an oil change every 10k miles that takes under ten minutes, requires under £20 in oil and two £5 filters (oil and air). It needs a bonus £5 fuel filter every 20k miles and a £300 (all in costs from a reputable garage, did it earlier this year) timing belt change about every 80k miles. I think all in that lot sets me back a whopping 0.8p/mile.
By far most expensive aspect of it's running costs after fuel is tyres, and being heavier EVs wear them out faster.
Yes, if you buy a new merc and get the dealership to service it they'll cheerfully stiff you for £300 a basic service, but that's just them charging a mug tax on £25 of stuff and 15 mins labour to people foolish enough to pay it.
Depends how old your Passat is, and how far you drive it. I think it's the flywheel on the clutch that fails and needs replacing about every 100k miles for all VW group diesels. One of the fuel lines sprang a leak on our Passat recently, though that was exactly an expensive repair. Or previous car, a Skoda Octavia, needed a fix to the turbo.
There are loads of things to go wrong on an ICE car.
But. They can be fixed. Mechanical things can be fixed. If anything goes wrong with the electronics in a car it can be horrendously expensive.
The battery issue is the biggie, minor prang involving the chassis and the car gets written off because no one can be sure that one of the thousands of 1.5V AA cells that make up the battries isn't damaged and will sooner or later self combust.
That more than makes up for mechanical wear in an engine. Especially as the batteries degrade even if you don't drive it (especially in extreme hot and cold temperatures)
Sorry but the technology is immature and crude and I'm not testing someones beta model at my own expense.
Come back when you have a battery that is stable, will run 400 miles, will recharge in 5 minutes at any Petrol Station and is not able to self combust. Then I might be interested.
In the interim I might go for a hybrid, which gives the efficiency of the electric drive train with a £1000 battery in the boot that can be changed without difficulty and can be charged from its onboard Petrol generator.
But so long as the 18 year old low mileage car Ive had from new keeps going without major issue I will stick with it.
While that's true, I can tell you that those damaged battery packs are sold off and recycled.
So, the hit to the insurance company is often pretty small.
(Source: I am CEO of an insurance company, and we get pretty amazing salvage rates on damaged electric cars.)
US I assume? Dosent seem to be the case in the UK yet.
Agree though that the problem will eventually go away one way or another. I'm just not going to buy the equivalent of Stephensons Rocket when if I wait two or three decades a Black 5 will be available with maintenance facilities as ubiquitous as Blacksmiths in the Packhorse era.
According to the Post article I just linked to, battery life in most current EVs is now acceptable: "Because of sophisticated cooling hardware and management software, most batteries are expected to outlive their car. Recurrent studied the loss of lithium-ion battery capacity in 15,000 EVs going back as far as 2011. Degradation, they found, tends to follow an S-curve. A modern EV with a 250- or 300-mile range might lose roughly 20 to 40 miles of maximum range over the first 20,000 miles, and then level off to about 1 percent of the battery capacity annually. For a Tesla Model 3 with 341 miles of range, that translates to a maximum range of about 300 miles after a decade." (Links omitted.)
Assuming that this article is correct, the weasel word here is "average". Most will do a little more or a little less but some will do *much* less and you don't know which.
Same risk that you take when you buy a second hand car that the engine is knackered, but not such a probable link to mileage and **much** more expensive if you get the dog batteries.
But you do know which. When you buy an EV, you can check the battery status indicator to see how much the battery has degraded, and then offer accordingly.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
(whips out calculator)
Diesel has a duty of £0.53 / litre, with VAT on top. So a £1.50 litre of diesel costs ~£0.72. 1 litre of diesel represents about 38MJ, which comes out at a third of that in kinetic energy at the wheel thanks to ICE thermal losses.
So 13MJ KE costs you 72p with diesel.
13MJ is ~ 3.6 kWh. An EV will have some (small) resistive losses & should probably scale by weight as well - an EV has to lug around all that battery compared to an ICE car. So equivalent for an EV is probably 5kWh ish?
If you can charge at home the EV will cost you half the untaxed diesel rate (Octopus EV rate: 7p / kWh). Charging elsewhere is going to be much more expensive, zapmap ways a mean charge on their network of 56p / kWh for “fast” chargers & 80p/kWh for the ultra-rapid chargers.
So for home charging the EV beats even untaxed diesel. If you have to charge elsewhere you’re going to find it’s much, much more expensive!
Indeed, which is why all modern homes should ideally come with a driveway for 2 off-road parking spots as standard.
Switching to clean vehicles without at-home charging is going to be very problematic.
Near me a new petrol station has just opened which is the first I've seen that has the price per kwh for EVs on its display board, not just the price for unleaded/diesel.
A litre of unleaded costs £1.389 My self-charging hybrid gets an average (real, based on my own driving) of 9 miles per litre. So it costs 15.4p per mile.
A kwh of electricity costs 59p From what I've read 3-4 miles per kwh is fairly typical. So it costs 15-20p per mile, making EV more expensive than even unleaded just on running costs without the tax being taken into account.
I don't see a good solution for this.
I am with Octopus and pay 15.22p daytime 7.86 p per kwh at night. I use a public charger less than once per year. So a fuel cost of 2.5 to 5p a mile.
Refueling at home is not an option with ICE vehicles.
Well that's precisely the point being made, if you are able to recharge at home then that is fantastic! Great cost saving.
However if you can't recharge at home and need to charge at a public station where its 59p or more per kWh then you are suddenly paying potentially more for an EV per mile than a self-charging hybrid unleaded vehicle is paying per mile.
And that's before certain people have suggested that the loss of fuel duty needs to be 'covered' by drivers which doesn't work at all, especially for drivers of EVs charging publicly who are out of pocket already just for fuel let alone tax too.
It's a much bigger problem in the UK than the US, but it is definitely an issue. People who live in places without offstreet parking, or who live in flats where the landlord won't invest in charging facilities are a total pain.
In the Netherlands, they are equipping an increasing proportion of street lights with regular charging sockets: and it means they have 30% of all the electric car chargers in the whole EU. These aren't super fast - so aren't expensive and don't need new cables to be run - but the point is to enable people without off street parking to plug their cars in at night. They also get charged directly to your regular electricity bill and tariff.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
Ummm:
Not true, even in the UK.
Maintenance costs are dramatically lower for electric cars because they are mechanically much simpler.
Now, on fuel alone you are probably correct (at least in the UK)... but I wouldn't like to bet on that continuing. Electricity prices are going to fall quite a long way from here.
Err - what maintainance costs? My dirty old diesel Passat needs an oil change every 10k miles that takes under ten minutes, requires under £20 in oil and two £5 filters (oil and air). It needs a bonus £5 fuel filter every 20k miles and a £300 (all in costs from a reputable garage, did it earlier this year) timing belt change about every 80k miles. I think all in that lot sets me back a whopping 0.8p/mile.
By far most expensive aspect of it's running costs after fuel is tyres, and being heavier EVs wear them out faster.
Yes, if you buy a new merc and get the dealership to service it they'll cheerfully stiff you for £300 a basic service, but that's just them charging a mug tax on £25 of stuff and 15 mins labour to people foolish enough to pay it.
Depends how old your Passat is, and how far you drive it. I think it's the flywheel on the clutch that fails and needs replacing about every 100k miles for all VW group diesels. One of the fuel lines sprang a leak on our Passat recently, though that was exactly an expensive repair. Or previous car, a Skoda Octavia, needed a fix to the turbo.
There are loads of things to go wrong on an ICE car.
But. They can be fixed. Mechanical things can be fixed. If anything goes wrong with the electronics in a car it can be horrendously expensive.
The battery issue is the biggie, minor prang involving the chassis and the car gets written off because no one can be sure that one of the thousands of 1.5V AA cells that make up the battries isn't damaged and will sooner or later self combust.
That more than makes up for mechanical wear in an engine. Especially as the batteries degrade even if you don't drive it (especially in extreme hot and cold temperatures)
Sorry but the technology is immature and crude and I'm not testing someones beta model at my own expense.
Come back when you have a battery that is stable, will run 400 miles, will recharge in 5 minutes at any Petrol Station and is not able to self combust. Then I might be interested.
In the interim I might go for a hybrid, which gives the efficiency of the electric drive train with a £1000 battery in the boot that can be changed without difficulty and can be charged from its onboard Petrol generator.
But so long as the 18 year old low mileage car Ive had from new keeps going without major issue I will stick with it.
While that's true, I can tell you that those damaged battery packs are sold off and recycled.
So, the hit to the insurance company is often pretty small.
(Source: I am CEO of an insurance company, and we get pretty amazing salvage rates on damaged electric cars.)
US I assume? Dosent seem to be the case in the UK yet.
Agree though that the problem will eventually go away one way or another. I'm just not going to buy the equivalent of Stephensons Rocket when if I wait two or three decades a Black 5 will be available with maintenance facilities as ubiquitous as Blacksmiths in the Packhorse era.
Those cells are expensive. They can be easily tested and sold.
According to the Post article I just linked to, battery life in most current EVs is now acceptable: "Because of sophisticated cooling hardware and management software, most batteries are expected to outlive their car. Recurrent studied the loss of lithium-ion battery capacity in 15,000 EVs going back as far as 2011. Degradation, they found, tends to follow an S-curve. A modern EV with a 250- or 300-mile range might lose roughly 20 to 40 miles of maximum range over the first 20,000 miles, and then level off to about 1 percent of the battery capacity annually. For a Tesla Model 3 with 341 miles of range, that translates to a maximum range of about 300 miles after a decade." (Links omitted.)
Assuming that this article is correct, the weasel word here is "average". Most will do a little more or a little less but some will do *much* less and you don't know which.
Same risk that you take when you buy a second hand car that the engine is knackered, but not such a probable link to mileage and **much** more expensive if you get the dog batteries.
But you do know which. When you buy an EV, you can check the battery status indicator to see how much the battery has degraded, and then offer accordingly.
Indeed.
The bigger problem is how to handle people who can't charge at home.
To which too many people seem to have an attitude of "well I can and its great". Good for you. Many people can't.
And if it costs more to charge publicly per mile an EV than it does an unleaded hybrid, despite the fact the unleaded cost is all tax, then what reason do people have to make the switch?
Dates to pre-Roman times (the word Oppède is Celtic-Roman for fort) yet for centuries it was basically abandoned. Then in the Second World War the author Saint Exupery (yes, him) and a bunch of artists all rescued it
It has a brilliantly grumpy cafe owner
I stayed bloody near there a few years ago. Does your friend’s house have its own ruined chapel at all?
Non
But his house has appeared on the cover of multiple magazines like "Beautiful France"
It cost him £500k for a barely two bed house in a half ruined village. With no shops. Just a couple of caffs (in season).
I thought he was mad until I came here today. it's ravishing and serene and because it's quite inaccessible it lacks the tourist hordes that throng Peter Mayle's Menerbes and the rest, yet you're only ten minutes drive from civilisation
If i ever bought a holiday home (I gravely doubt I will) it would be something like this. Incredibly simple but incredibly beautiful
Bet it's bloody cold in winter - tho winter probably only lasts 8 weeks
I see the Telegraph is getting excited about Labour Tax Rises. Expect that to be a nothingburger.
More of a problem for Labour is how to get anything concrete done before the elections. All very well to simplify planning rules but get rid of things like nutrient neutrality you face years of climate act underpinned in appeals in the court. Don't get rid of nutrient neutrality don't get anything built.
etc etc.
It is somewhat ironic that Labour's ability to get houses built will be constrained by all the nimby legislation they have so eagerly supported.
It really is a time consuming and expensive rule with real world impacts.
UK governments have for years been tying their own hands, and of course everyone else's by legislating and regulating to an infinitely complex degree, so that every decision is tied, and every new piece of legislation has to be read in the light of every other piece, and precedent, back to 1190. To say nothing of residual EU legislation still hanging around.
The coming struggle to get around the NIMBYs, the pressure groups, the commercial interests and political opponents will be interesting.
Even with a Labour government progressive lawyers still have starving children to feed and of course VAT on school fees on top. They won't be going away.
There's a site near here where a large pub burned down (in, allegedly, 'questionable' circumstances). Your could put 4-6 houses on the site easily. Yet nothing's happened for about four years. Compulsorily purchasing the site and building a few houses would add to the general ambience, although the residents would have a journey to buy milk and bread.
Four days in, and: - waiting lists haven't come down - small boats are still crossing the Channel - not one new house has been built - not one new wind farm has emerged - interest rates still haven't been cut.
Labour: all promises and no delivery.
You left out _ failure to appoint Second Church Estates Commissioner
Four days in, and: - waiting lists haven't come down - small boats are still crossing the Channel - not one new house has been built - not one new wind farm has emerged - interest rates still haven't been cut.
Labour: all promises and no delivery.
You're joking, obvs, but at some point this won't be a joke
Six months? A year? How long is Skyr's honeymoon gonna last? I give him til the end of the coming winter, unless England win the euros then he'll be OK til 2027
Dates to pre-Roman times (the word Oppède is Celtic-Roman for fort) yet for centuries it was basically abandoned. Then in the Second World War the author Saint Exupery (yes, him) and a bunch of artists all rescued it
It has a brilliantly grumpy cafe owner
You can go and irritate Hugh Grant just down the road in Eygalieres
Pronounced "Eye Galleries" by most expats?
He found the place which is pretty unspectacular but thanks to inviting friends the place improved vastly and its now got the best boulangeries patisseries and wine shops in the area.
Coutinho is too close to Sunak to win the members vote, Braverman and Patel lack support from Tory MPs as the header makes clear. Jenrick and Badenoch have more but probably not enough to make the last 2.
At the moment Cleverly v Tugendhat is my prediction of the 2 the remaining Tory MPs will put to the members if Cleverly stands, if not then Barclay would take his place. Cleverly or Barclay then winning the members vote
Is it definitely going to members?
Yes unless CCHQ and the 1922 cttee want a riot on their hands
The Tories would be mad to let the decision anywhere near their members. Most of them won't be alive by the time the party gets its next credible shot at government.
I think they have to, this time round at least.
26 of their MPs are new to parliament, so don't really have any better basis on which to make a choice than the members. And the other 95 are too small a pool of voters to adequately represent all shades of opinion, especially since five or six (at least!) are likely to be candidates.
The best they can hope for is a change to the rules to remove the members vote in the case of a sitting PM, when there'll be a much bigger pool of voting MPs by definition.
The might also want to look at the wording of the question for the members ballot - ask members to choose the "best leader" rather than their "preferred leader". In an ideal world, they'd consider some sort of preference voting system which ought to be ideal for this use case, but I suspect that's beyond them!
I see the Telegraph is getting excited about Labour Tax Rises. Expect that to be a nothingburger.
More of a problem for Labour is how to get anything concrete done before the elections. All very well to simplify planning rules but get rid of things like nutrient neutrality you face years of climate act underpinned in appeals in the court. Don't get rid of nutrient neutrality don't get anything built.
etc etc.
It is somewhat ironic that Labour's ability to get houses built will be constrained by all the nimby legislation they have so eagerly supported.
It really is a time consuming and expensive rule with real world impacts.
UK governments have for years been tying their own hands, and of course everyone else's by legislating and regulating to an infinitely complex degree, so that every decision is tied, and every new piece of legislation has to be read in the light of every other piece, and precedent, back to 1190. To say nothing of residual EU legislation still hanging around.
The coming struggle to get around the NIMBYs, the pressure groups, the commercial interests and political opponents will be interesting.
Even with a Labour government progressive lawyers still have starving children to feed and of course VAT on school fees on top. They won't be going away.
There's a site near here where a large pub burned down (in, allegedly, 'questionable' circumstances). Your could put 4-6 houses on the site easily. Yet nothing's happened for about four years. Compulsorily purchasing the site and building a few houses would add to the general ambience, although the residents would have a journey to buy milk and bread.
If you could convert pubs into houses through the simple expedient of burning them down there wouldn't be many pubs left.
I see the Telegraph is getting excited about Labour Tax Rises. Expect that to be a nothingburger.
More of a problem for Labour is how to get anything concrete done before the elections. All very well to simplify planning rules but get rid of things like nutrient neutrality you face years of climate act underpinned in appeals in the court. Don't get rid of nutrient neutrality don't get anything built.
etc etc.
It is somewhat ironic that Labour's ability to get houses built will be constrained by all the nimby legislation they have so eagerly supported.
It really is a time consuming and expensive rule with real world impacts.
UK governments have for years been tying their own hands, and of course everyone else's by legislating and regulating to an infinitely complex degree, so that every decision is tied, and every new piece of legislation has to be read in the light of every other piece, and precedent, back to 1190. To say nothing of residual EU legislation still hanging around.
The coming struggle to get around the NIMBYs, the pressure groups, the commercial interests and political opponents will be interesting.
Even with a Labour government progressive lawyers still have starving children to feed and of course VAT on school fees on top. They won't be going away.
There's a site near here where a large pub burned down (in, allegedly, 'questionable' circumstances). Your could put 4-6 houses on the site easily. Yet nothing's happened for about four years. Compulsorily purchasing the site and building a few houses would add to the general ambience, although the residents would have a journey to buy milk and bread.
If you could convert pubs into houses through the simple expedient of burning them down there wouldn't be many pubs left.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
Ummm:
Not true, even in the UK.
Maintenance costs are dramatically lower for electric cars because they are mechanically much simpler.
Now, on fuel alone you are probably correct (at least in the UK)... but I wouldn't like to bet on that continuing. Electricity prices are going to fall quite a long way from here.
Err - what maintainance costs? My dirty old diesel Passat needs an oil change every 10k miles that takes under ten minutes, requires under £20 in oil and two £5 filters (oil and air). It needs a bonus £5 fuel filter every 20k miles and a £300 (all in costs from a reputable garage, did it earlier this year) timing belt change about every 80k miles. I think all in that lot sets me back a whopping 0.8p/mile.
By far most expensive aspect of it's running costs after fuel is tyres, and being heavier EVs wear them out faster.
Yes, if you buy a new merc and get the dealership to service it they'll cheerfully stiff you for £300 a basic service, but that's just them charging a mug tax on £25 of stuff and 15 mins labour to people foolish enough to pay it.
Depends how old your Passat is, and how far you drive it. I think it's the flywheel on the clutch that fails and needs replacing about every 100k miles for all VW group diesels. One of the fuel lines sprang a leak on our Passat recently, though that was exactly an expensive repair. Or previous car, a Skoda Octavia, needed a fix to the turbo.
There are loads of things to go wrong on an ICE car.
But. They can be fixed. Mechanical things can be fixed. If anything goes wrong with the electronics in a car it can be horrendously expensive.
The battery issue is the biggie, minor prang involving the chassis and the car gets written off because no one can be sure that one of the thousands of 1.5V AA cells that make up the battries isn't damaged and will sooner or later self combust.
That more than makes up for mechanical wear in an engine. Especially as the batteries degrade even if you don't drive it (especially in extreme hot and cold temperatures)
Sorry but the technology is immature and crude and I'm not testing someones beta model at my own expense.
Come back when you have a battery that is stable, will run 400 miles, will recharge in 5 minutes at any Petrol Station and is not able to self combust. Then I might be interested.
In the interim I might go for a hybrid, which gives the efficiency of the electric drive train with a £1000 battery in the boot that can be changed without difficulty and can be charged from its onboard Petrol generator.
But so long as the 18 year old low mileage car Ive had from new keeps going without major issue I will stick with it.
While that's true, I can tell you that those damaged battery packs are sold off and recycled.
So, the hit to the insurance company is often pretty small.
(Source: I am CEO of an insurance company, and we get pretty amazing salvage rates on damaged electric cars.)
US I assume? Dosent seem to be the case in the UK yet.
Agree though that the problem will eventually go away one way or another. I'm just not going to buy the equivalent of Stephensons Rocket when if I wait two or three decades a Black 5 will be available with maintenance facilities as ubiquitous as Blacksmiths in the Packhorse era.
Those cells are expensive. They can be easily tested and sold.
If it doesn't exist in the UK yet, it will.
It not existing in the UK appears to be an issue on two fronts:
"This sentiment was echoed by Chris Payne, head of engineering at motor insurer LV, who said that “only a few qualified technicians in the UK are able to remove a battery, let alone repair it”."
"It’s reported that scrap companies are being forced to remove the damaged parts from the written-off vehicles and store them in containers because there are no battery recycling facilities in the UK."
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
(whips out calculator)
Diesel has a duty of £0.53 / litre, with VAT on top. So a £1.50 litre of diesel costs ~£0.72. 1 litre of diesel represents about 38MJ, which comes out at a third of that in kinetic energy at the wheel thanks to ICE thermal losses.
So 13MJ KE costs you 72p with diesel.
13MJ is ~ 3.6 kWh. An EV will have some (small) resistive losses & should probably scale by weight as well - an EV has to lug around all that battery compared to an ICE car. So equivalent for an EV is probably 5kWh ish?
If you can charge at home the EV will cost you half the untaxed diesel rate (Octopus EV rate: 7p / kWh). Charging elsewhere is going to be much more expensive, zapmap ways a mean charge on their network of 56p / kWh for “fast” chargers & 80p/kWh for the ultra-rapid chargers.
So for home charging the EV beats even untaxed diesel. If you have to charge elsewhere you’re going to find it’s much, much more expensive!
Indeed, which is why all modern homes should ideally come with a driveway for 2 off-road parking spots as standard.
Switching to clean vehicles without at-home charging is going to be very problematic.
Near me a new petrol station has just opened which is the first I've seen that has the price per kwh for EVs on its display board, not just the price for unleaded/diesel.
A litre of unleaded costs £1.389 My self-charging hybrid gets an average (real, based on my own driving) of 9 miles per litre. So it costs 15.4p per mile.
A kwh of electricity costs 59p From what I've read 3-4 miles per kwh is fairly typical. So it costs 15-20p per mile, making EV more expensive than even unleaded just on running costs without the tax being taken into account.
I don't see a good solution for this.
I am with Octopus and pay 15.22p daytime 7.86 p per kwh at night. I use a public charger less than once per year. So a fuel cost of 2.5 to 5p a mile.
Refueling at home is not an option with ICE vehicles.
Well that's precisely the point being made, if you are able to recharge at home then that is fantastic! Great cost saving.
However if you can't recharge at home and need to charge at a public station where its 59p or more per kWh then you are suddenly paying potentially more for an EV per mile than a self-charging hybrid unleaded vehicle is paying per mile.
And that's before certain people have suggested that the loss of fuel duty needs to be 'covered' by drivers which doesn't work at all, especially for drivers of EVs charging publicly who are out of pocket already just for fuel let alone tax too.
It's a much bigger problem in the UK than the US, but it is definitely an issue. People who live in places without offstreet parking, or who live in flats where the landlord won't invest in charging facilities are a total pain.
In the Netherlands, they are equipping an increasing proportion of street lights with regular charging sockets: and it means they have 30% of all the electric car chargers in the whole EU. These aren't super fast - so aren't expensive and don't need new cables to be run - but the point is to enable people without off street parking to plug their cars in at night. They also get charged directly to your regular electricity bill and tariff.
Another problem in the UK is that places with least off street parking have the greatest prevalence of copper fairies and sundry vandals.
That Biden letter to congressional democrats. Oh my days, he comes across almost as much a demagogue as Trump does.
As for Tory leadership, the runners and riders might not realise but it’s a caretaker role. I’d be pretty surprised if the winner is leading the party at the next election.
Biden is making it morally permissible to vote for Trump. Because Trump is not so insane he might hallucimate an attack from North Korea and start WW3 due to dementia. Trump is just a monumental asshole who will put a few enemies in jail
This is the scale of the danger that is Demented Joe. THEY CANNOT LET HIM RUN
The interesting bit of the LOTO gig for the Tory winner will be having to oppose on substance when for so long the focus has been on performative dividing lines. Asking the PM what a woman is during PMQs is probably not going to cut the mustard.
Neither will be shouting "he didn't answer my question" once Starmer probably starts answering questions. If I were the Tory Party I'd have Sunak stay on for a while as caretaker, not make any waves, and only attack Labour for anything massively egregious to Tory principles. Because the answer can, and likely will be, "you guys lost, fucked up the country even worse than we thought, and we're doing the long hard work of putting it back together again. Rome wasn't built in a day, and fixing Britain after 14 years of Tory rule will take longer than a week / month / few months"
My advice to him would be to restrict his attacks to matters of delivery, not policy. Start banging the "why haven't you started work on this since you agree that it's so important?" drum as early as possible.
Yesterday's announcement that they're going to place an ad to recruit a leader of the new Border Security Command is an obvious example. Starmer has been talking about this since mid-May as part of his 'First Steps for Change' campaign, so why are they faffing around with job ads? Why haven't they already got someone ready to go?
The other thing he needs to do is to get all of the probable contenders into the top shad cab jobs - including those who've previously been sacked like Braverman and Jenrick. That's going to cause some controversy, but they won't actually be running anything or even tasked with developing policy, it's purely to give them a chance to showcase their parliamentary skills.
Dates to pre-Roman times (the word Oppède is Celtic-Roman for fort) yet for centuries it was basically abandoned. Then in the Second World War the author Saint Exupery (yes, him) and a bunch of artists all rescued it
It has a brilliantly grumpy cafe owner
I stayed bloody near there a few years ago. Does your friend’s house have its own ruined chapel at all?
Non
But his house has appeared on the cover of multiple magazines like "Beautiful France"
It cost him £500k for a barely two bed house in a half ruined village. With no shops. Just a couple of caffs (in season).
I thought he was mad until I came here today. it's ravishing and serene and because it's quite inaccessible it lacks the tourist hordes that throng Peter Mayle's Menerbes and the rest, yet you're only ten minutes drive from civilisation
If i ever bought a holiday home (I gravely doubt I will) it would be something like this. Incredibly simple but incredibly beautiful
Bet it's bloody cold in winter - tho winter probably only lasts 8 weeks
Ok so the place I went to - twice I think? - was up the road in Taillades.
But possibly one of the most amazing places I ever stayed.
You’re right, it’s a remarkable part of the world.
But beware of the Mistral. It actually gets bloody chilly for many months, not just 8 weeks.
Disappointing to learn that Sir Keir is manically driven to concrete over our green and pleasant land with ring roads and soulless new-build estates. As cultural vandalism goes he could well be up there with Henry VIII and the Reformation. No, he must be destroyed!
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Cyber attacks brought the websites of Liechtenstein's national administration and government to a standstill. Once the attacks were noticed, they were resolved. They were DDoS attacks on the providers. Measures were taken immediately. The exact background is not yet known.
https://landesspiegel.li/2024/07/cyberangriff-auf-liechtenstein/
Would that provide a hint?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/07/08/joe-biden-demands-democrats-end-stepping-down-talk-letter/
We've just had an inexperienced over-promoted-via-patronage useless article as leader, what on earth makes having another one remotely attractive?
I can't define it succinctly enough to pull the word from Google unfortunately.
One of his favourite circuits, and Merc are bringing more upgrades.
Had a small nibble.
Little explosions that drive pistons. Those explosions, and the thermal expansion and contraction, causes wear and tear.
All vehicles have parts that wear out, and cars with petrol and diesel engines have lots of them. You might have got lucky this year, but the data is not really up for debate here: cars with explosion powered engines need to have parts replaced more often.
Even brakes and brake pads wear out faster on explosion powered cars, because they don't have the benefit of regenerative braking.
https://a.co/d/0gpJ987Z
I've seen several Kuenssberg interviews with Davey recently, and they have been fine.
Not sure they want to be shackled to a corpse.
There are loads of things to go wrong on an ICE car.
But. They can be fixed. Mechanical things can be fixed. If anything goes wrong with the electronics in a car it can be horrendously expensive.
More of a problem for Labour is how to get anything concrete done before the elections. All very well to simplify planning rules but get rid of things like nutrient neutrality you face years of climate act underpinned in appeals in the court. Don't get rid of nutrient neutrality don't get anything built.
etc etc.
His house is in one of the most staggeringly beautiful French villages I have ever seen
Oppède Le Vieux
https://www.theluberon.com/villages/oppede-le-vieux/
Dates to pre-Roman times (the word Oppède is Celtic-Roman for fort) yet for centuries it was basically abandoned. Then in the Second World War the author Saint Exupery (yes, him) and a bunch of artists all rescued it
It has a brilliantly grumpy cafe owner
It must have been quite funny because I remember from the same movie the hospital tannoy saying “can we have doctor pepper to the diabetes clinic? Doctor pepper, diabetes clinic”
That more than makes up for mechanical wear in an engine. Especially as the batteries degrade even if you don't drive it (especially in extreme hot and cold temperatures)
Sorry but the technology is immature and crude and I'm not testing someones beta model at my own expense.
Come back when you have a battery that is stable, will run 400 miles, will recharge in 5 minutes at any Petrol Station and is not able to self combust. Then I might be interested.
In the interim I might go for a hybrid, which gives the efficiency of the electric drive train with a £1000 battery in the boot that can be changed without difficulty and can be charged from its onboard Petrol generator.
But so long as the 18 year old low mileage car Ive had from new keeps going without major issue I will stick with it.
However if you can't recharge at home and need to charge at a public station where its 59p or more per kWh then you are suddenly paying potentially more for an EV per mile than a self-charging hybrid unleaded vehicle is paying per mile.
And that's before certain people have suggested that the loss of fuel duty needs to be 'covered' by drivers which doesn't work at all, especially for drivers of EVs charging publicly who are out of pocket already just for fuel let alone tax too.
Bother!!!!!
On the positive side I have had at last heard from the DVLA. Been waiting since February. Now they want me to have a driving assessment, but if it all goes well, I should get my driving licence back.
It's like some people really really want to tie down the productive areas of economic activity and smother them with unicorns and rainbows.
By which time the problems will have got far worse and a lot of Labour voters will be listening to Farage saying "I told you so".
Edit. May upgrading Climate Change to Net Zero was under the Tories but this is also uber sacred to them.
Meanwhile Fargle will be sitting opposite with popcorn.
"For less than $10,000, I could pick between several electric Mercedes-Benz hatchbacks, Volkswagen e-Golfs or Fiats on used-car sites. For under $3,000 I found a fleet of used Nissan Leafs with around 70-mile range to cruise around town. With an upfront used-EV discount at registered dealerships, I could have driven home a $2,100 car."
(Links omitted.)
source:$ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/30/cheap-electric-cars/
As Warren Buffett has long pointed out, used cars are the sensible choice, financially. I expect that to be even more true with EVs, because of their -- relative -- simplicity, compared to modern ICE vehicles.
It could actually be poo, but I'll give it a go
BoJo may have renounced his birth-right American citizenship HOWEVER states are pretty much obliged to put on ballots whomever the Republican National Convention nominates for POTUS and VP.
Lack of CURRENT US citizenship and also residency would still be impediments to actually taking office HOWEVER a new Republican-controlled Congress and/or same old SCOTUS could very conceivably make that problem go away before Inauguration Day.
By performing his standard Benny Hill Tribute Act, Johnson would provided much-needed comic relief for USers, like he used to do for (many anyway) UKers.
Better than Spiro PLUS Boris has already been "vetted" in a manner of speaking for skeletons in his closets, unlike Agnew who's own chicanery was buried like a ticking time bomb until AFTER he was re-elected as Nixon's Veep (old school nickname). Then Spiro exploded, resigning as VP and replaced by Gerry Ford and thus removing possibility of Agnew assuming the White House upon removal of Tricky Dick. Which was NOT helpful to the CREEPer.
Only a Labour government can deliver Liz Truss's supply-side agenda.
What is interesting is just how the 'circular economy' and both no growth and active degrowth ideas have entered into the Labour Party bloodstream, they are main stays of the Greens.
These people mean it. They really want to shrink the economy, i wonder how many new MPs agree.
- waiting lists haven't come down
- small boats are still crossing the Channel
- not one new house has been built
- not one new wind farm has emerged
- interest rates still haven't been cut.
Labour: all promises and no delivery.
"Because of sophisticated cooling hardware and management software, most batteries are expected to outlive their car. Recurrent studied the loss of lithium-ion battery capacity in 15,000 EVs going back as far as 2011. Degradation, they found, tends to follow an S-curve. A modern EV with a 250- or 300-mile range might lose roughly 20 to 40 miles of maximum range over the first 20,000 miles, and then level off to about 1 percent of the battery capacity annually. For a Tesla Model 3 with 341 miles of range, that translates to a maximum range of about 300 miles after a decade."
(Links omitted.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Party_of_Canada
Of course, Reform had more seats than PCs in House of Commons in Ottawa, the opposite of current situation at Westminster.
The coming struggle to get around the NIMBYs, the pressure groups, the commercial interests and political opponents will be interesting.
Even with a Labour government progressive lawyers still have starving children to feed and of course VAT on school fees on top. They won't be going away.
So, the hit to the insurance company is often pretty small.
(Source: I am CEO of an insurance company, and we get pretty amazing salvage rates on damaged electric cars.)
As for Tory leadership, the runners and riders might not realise but it’s a caretaker role. I’d be pretty surprised if the winner is leading the party at the next election.
Incidentally it's her birthday today, 39 - the same age as David Cameron was when he first became leader
Same risk that you take when you buy a second hand car that the engine is knackered, but not such a probable link to mileage and **much** more expensive if you get the dog batteries.
Does your friend’s house have its own ruined chapel at all?
That would barely get me to Milton Keynes on a cold day with the heating and headlights on.
_ failure to appoint Second Church Estates Commissioner
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Commissioners#Church_Estates_Commissioners
(Links omitted.)
Battery life was a serious problem with EVs sold in the US, but is no longer.
Agree though that the problem will eventually go away one way or another. I'm just not going to buy the equivalent of Stephensons Rocket when if I wait two or three decades a Black 5 will be available with maintenance facilities as ubiquitous as Blacksmiths in the Packhorse era.
Lib/Con
Lab/Con
Con/Ref
SNP/Lab
PC/Lab
Lab/Gaza
Lab/Green
Unionist/Republican
?
A map divided this way would show the clear divides between regions.
In the Netherlands, they are equipping an increasing proportion of street lights with regular charging sockets: and it means they have 30% of all the electric car chargers in the whole EU. These aren't super fast - so aren't expensive and don't need new cables to be run - but the point is to enable people without off street parking to plug their cars in at night. They also get charged directly to your regular electricity bill and tariff.
She's my MP, she once told me she'd like to be 'chancellor or better' and the local party are used to having ambitious, high profile MPs.
She probably won't win this time, but the chance of her standing is sufficient to make the price a decent one.
Oh, and I tried to log into all three of my old PB accounts today - two are locked out and one is 'user banned'!
If it doesn't exist in the UK yet, it will.
The bigger problem is how to handle people who can't charge at home.
To which too many people seem to have an attitude of "well I can and its great". Good for you. Many people can't.
And if it costs more to charge publicly per mile an EV than it does an unleaded hybrid, despite the fact the unleaded cost is all tax, then what reason do people have to make the switch?
But his house has appeared on the cover of multiple magazines like "Beautiful France"
It cost him £500k for a barely two bed house in a half ruined village. With no shops. Just a couple of caffs (in season).
I thought he was mad until I came here today. it's ravishing and serene and because it's quite inaccessible it lacks the tourist hordes that throng Peter Mayle's Menerbes and the rest, yet you're only ten minutes drive from civilisation
If i ever bought a holiday home (I gravely doubt I will) it would be something like this. Incredibly simple but incredibly beautiful
Bet it's bloody cold in winter - tho winter probably only lasts 8 weeks
Your could put 4-6 houses on the site easily. Yet nothing's happened for about four years. Compulsorily purchasing the site and building a few houses would add to the general ambience, although the residents would have a journey to buy milk and bread.
https://x.com/sam_bidwell/status/1810267592571097582
🌹 LAB: 38.8%
🇵🇸 IND/WPB: 19.7%
🌳 CON: 14.4%
➡️ REF: 12.4%
🌎 GRN: 8.1%
🔶 LD: 6.3%
Six months? A year? How long is Skyr's honeymoon gonna last? I give him til the end of the coming winter, unless England win the euros then he'll be OK til 2027
26 of their MPs are new to parliament, so don't really have any better basis on which to make a choice than the members. And the other 95 are too small a pool of voters to adequately represent all shades of opinion, especially since five or six (at least!) are likely to be candidates.
The best they can hope for is a change to the rules to remove the members vote in the case of a sitting PM, when there'll be a much bigger pool of voting MPs by definition.
The might also want to look at the wording of the question for the members ballot - ask members to choose the "best leader" rather than their "preferred leader". In an ideal world, they'd consider some sort of preference voting system which ought to be ideal for this use case, but I suspect that's beyond them!
"This sentiment was echoed by Chris Payne, head of engineering at motor insurer LV, who said that “only a few qualified technicians in the UK are able to remove a battery, let alone repair it”."
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/359993/electric-car-write-offs-could-be-more-likely-due-high-cost-battery-repairs
"It’s reported that scrap companies are being forced to remove the damaged parts from the written-off vehicles and store them in containers because there are no battery recycling facilities in the UK."
https://www.driving.org/electric-cars-more-likely-to-be-written-off-due-to-battery-costs/
https://x.com/politlcsuk/status/1810352947986907582?s=61
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/consumer/electric-car-chargers-out-action-thieves-cut-cables.
This is the scale of the danger that is Demented Joe. THEY CANNOT LET HIM RUN
Con 38.3% (-20.2%)
LD 21.5% (-1.5%)
Lab 20.7% (+7.1%)
Grn 10.5% (+5.6%)
Ind 4.9%
ED 4.0%
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/constituencies/E14001212
Yesterday's announcement that they're going to place an ad to recruit a leader of the new Border Security Command is an obvious example. Starmer has been talking about this since mid-May as part of his 'First Steps for Change' campaign, so why are they faffing around with job ads? Why haven't they already got someone ready to go?
The other thing he needs to do is to get all of the probable contenders into the top shad cab jobs - including those who've previously been sacked like Braverman and Jenrick. That's going to cause some controversy, but they won't actually be running anything or even tasked with developing policy, it's purely to give them a chance to showcase their parliamentary skills.
But possibly one of the most amazing places I ever stayed.
You’re right, it’s a remarkable part of the world.
But beware of the Mistral. It actually gets bloody chilly for many months, not just 8 weeks.