lol-lol

There are multiple ways to help those without drive ways. I like the roll of street charging and lampposts are one good way as well as standalone street chargers. When my employer owned Source London I was involved in the import of the equipment and it is surprising hyst how expensive these units are. Those of use who have chargers fitted to our houses it is paid for one way or another. Partial grant under the lady Con government softened the financial cost but it still was hundres of pounds to fork out. Wallbox fitment is standard rated for VAT so UK government got a dose of tax from that at the time. My first two properties i lived in did not have drives but third onward did and having EVs is just logical. Yes I do publuc charge and whilst Sunak entirely dodged the full VAT rate on public charging i would like to see public charging VAT rate come down to get more ICE vehicles off the road as part of the carrot rather than just ever higher oil prices due to Middke East wars and gready oil and gas companies. Like previous governments gave remote areas excise cuts of about 10% i would like to see similar for EV charging as I want to do the 500 mile Highland loop as good chargers everywhere in the uk should be a thing.

Public charging is a business of course. Tesla can sell electricity for charging at 23p per kwh here in the West Midland and also cheap in the South West of England. Are you asking for more subsidies for Northern Scotland from Edinburgh and or Westminster ?

Or accessing the hyper cheap public charging like Tesla do, or BE.EV with a cheapish contract or getting that pavement channel done using the now £500 grant. Where there is a will there is a way. Or buddy up with someone with a drive and split the gains which people do and I expect the price differential to increase when vat goes to zero for home electricity and ut seems the oil and fas wars are going on for many months yet. Oil companies profits double to almost $50B last quarter.

Running cost EV truth (Skoda Enyaq v ICE ) ..........

Negative electricity prices from 1000 tomorrow 5th of August, Octopus Agile, thru to the 1600 hours tea time peak to charge the EVs and get super cheap running costs, heat the hot water, top up batteries etc !

An ice car running out of fuel can do damage to the fuel system with pump cavitation etc. Expect they did the ice car from fuel light coming on, put in the £5 of fuel and then recorded when fuel light came on. 40 miles was quite good but that was but that was sweltering with no aircon as I struggle to think of any ICE car with a heat pump. Even my £20k Renault 5 has a heat pump and running with aircon hardly affects the range it seems to me. Still to test my 40 / 43 kwh R5 past 0% SoC to compare to Bjorn Nyland getting 46 kms in the 52 / 55 kwh R5.

I charge on a Gridserve charger on Thursday. Think it was about 87p per kwh. Had done 200 miles from Worcester to Dartmoor and was just getting a part charge to get me back to Worcester. Yes expensive compared to other chargers but very good site, good cgarging speed of about 100 KW, went from 25% to 90% in half an hour, M&S on site, still waiting to see the bill, Gridserve took a tenner deposit and still waiting 4 days later for the actual amount to appear which should be a £35. I have been ripping up petrol receipts over 5 years old and rarely are they for less than £50 and that is for Fabias and Octavias and they have quite small tanks. Running EVs is saving me and the family hundreds of pounds a montn I reckon.

Is it a tariff when they pay you? So many ways both with home and public charges to get the headline costs to half, third, quarter or less, something one cannot do with fossil fuels. Not rocket science, just a little planning with great financial rewards. More money to spend on other things.

See my answer above. Could have been done much cheaper the Inogen Bhogal (BSc Hons) quoted ie free or even got paid £5 for what she used if on an even better Octopus tariff !

You mention one side of the coin but there are plenty of other factors on the other side of the coin. More homes, those without drives, are getting approval to have cable channels through the pavement and the install grant has now been upped to £500 from £350 I gather.... https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/motoring/motoring-news/uk-households-without-driveways-handed-34073227 You may be a bit more limited in low population density areas like Northern Scotland but there are plenty of Public charging places where you can charge for less 65p a KWh. MFG are currently doing 59p per Kwh for the next 2 months, BE.EV is oft at 49p a KWh, sadly Southern Scotland is a close as they get to Northern Scotland, TESLA BRUM are charging 23p a KWh for much of the time at Frankley, M5 J3 Brum. The 3p a mile, when it comes in in 20 months time, looks like it will not be onerous. if one under estimates the mileage one does and only catches up when the annual reporting is done, has the money in a savings count to cover when due, pays on a credit card as some government sites allow and get some kick back. definitely get me to check my tyres more to check inflation and replace at 3mm tread to maximise rolling radius. Also, as I mentioned before, I and I suspect other EVs will choose the shorter routes through villages and towns to bring down the mileage rather than go the slightly quicker long way way round on the A roads and motorways. I think the mileage policy could backfire badly. Imogen Bhogal, BSC Hons, charged on a Octopus GO or IOG tariff it looks like so the 52 KWh R5 battery could be charged for a £5. I charge our R5, Scenic and Mini on the cheapest going rate on Octopus Agile which is sometimes, oft this summer, less than the Octopus GO or IOG, rate, sometimes about 5p a KWH, sometime about zero P per KWh and sometimes as low as minus 10 p per KWh so the Lincoln to Exeter I would have been paid £5 for the electricity used in that journey. Balcony / Plug in solar, especially when linked to upcoming home batteries, from Octopus-CATL, can mean most doing some charging from solar via home batteries. looking forward to the zero rating of home electricity in 58 days but frightened just much diesel, gas and petrol will cost and effect cost of living. Need to look more in to Heat Pump.

Imogen Bhogal, first class Mech Eng science degree from Oxford, in the well selling R5, and her husband, Deep Bhogal, in a petrol Citroen. Both people are ex JLR engineering staff. Not quite even as he is much bigger / heavier than Imogen but the range achieved is so much it would have made little difference (spoiler, more than 4 times) swapping drivers around......... (I wanted pop green but my ordered car got damaged in transit so had to swap to yellow and very happy except for the extra £800 cost but should get back if I ever sell, but not planning to).

Indeed. Salary sacrifice does not always look great as those quoted deals don't seem to be anywhere near what the tax relief should provide. We, at Bollore and CMA/CEVA were told we were going to get SS EV deals but time passed and they never materialised. The EV grants have been nice from both the Con government and current government but both are icing on the cake and I was always buying cake rather than bread (ICE). ICE cars loads of bread to run and don't taste as nice to take the analogy a bit too far.

Like climate denial there are those that cannot see the clear mass of evidence in front of the them for what ever reason. BEVs are already great and improving rapidly. ICE cars are pretty much stuck in the doldrums. As my fellow converts we gave driven ICE for decades, in my cases done about 1M miles and owned about 50 of them. Sadly many Luddites still around or maybe it is an initial purchase, credit obtaining thing but clear to me that BEVs are the future, whether that is LFP, Na or whatever battery chemistry. I too am tired of this thread and will try and not contribute any more as it seems flogged to death. Am looking forward to even cheaper running from October 1st though when VAT on charging at home goes to zero. Just bought £33 public charge charge from Gridserve so about £5 VAT, not nice compared to home.

Personally am not in favour of banning ICE but emissions must be tightly controlled to bring down the number of shortening of life / death due to vehicle emmissons. I am quite convinced the ever increasing economic strength of argument EVs will increasingly have companies, drivers etc choose EVs over ICE. No need to outright ban.

Just saying that private buying is a significant chunk ie about 1 in 5. From what i read on the Renault Groups plenty others are buing Renaults privately. EV grants for all EV purchases I presume but the EV sacrifice schemes are very generous. For 40 and 45% tax payers getting £400 a month cut off the payments bring a whole host of what would have been unaffordable into affordability. There will be VAT payment on the leasing jf which not all is recoverable so as with EV private purchases there is VAT to pay which far exceeds the EV grant. Government does not loss out in all ways and, as it was eith thd last Con government, they do grants and tax breaks to achieve the net zero objectives and most company cars is another strand in hitting the intermediate stepping stone reduction in CO2 targets. Such schemes and Israel and Trump's war, and Russia- Ukraine all speeding up EV adoption for UK companies and UK private buyers. New seak by TESLA a boozy. Think it is £499 a month and you get a TESLA car and a TESLA Powerwall home battery system. One of my diesel head relatives had picked up on this.

I did. When i ordered my Renault 5 there was no financial bungs. The £1500 came between ordering and delivering and was handed to me at time of paying the PCP deposit. Car came with 0% finance for the remaining monies minus the deposit. Also got a discount of about £1k and for a car that was in huge demand then and seems to still be it meant basically getting the car for less than £20k, monthly payments of way less than £100 a month and running costs are tiny. Took out the monthly service plan, £9 a month, charge the car on negative priced electricity much of the time. Trying to convince other family members that they are paying are fortune in running costs, diesel, petrol, also costs after MOTs, servicing which add up to at least £2k and more like £3k to £4k when I am paying barely over £1k. Insurance cheapish too. Only, albeit significant, was the £8k upfront for the deposit but I needed to get rid of that sort of amount or pay interest on its interest or stuff away in an ISA. No brainer I though now and with electricity prices having fell big time since the start of the year and hydrocarbon costs gone the other way my choice was even further endorsed.

Apparently over 80% of company cars ordered in the UK are EVs !!!

Indeed. Personally, and as a marine engineer we are trained and responsible for a similar scenario of running all the electrical aspects of a small town or city, generation of power from super heated steam or diesel, distribution throughout massive ships, massive electrical appliances and motors. Balcony - plug in solar already demonstrated to have very small risk. Whether install done by the householder or an electrician who has done their City and Guilds the risks of plug in solar are probably not the ones highlighted above. Inverter over heating when badly placed ie in a warm or hot environment might be an underestimated risk. Personally I would not have solar panels on my roof unless i spec'ed and checked the spec ie air gaps and use of sufficiently large cross section and quality cable. As Graham pointed out increasing numbers of solar panels getting hot and fires happening. I have about two dozen panels but mounted away from the house on tracking arrays or on fence posts. I can see us using water cooling for panels more and more. Panels are more efficient closer to ambient.

Germany leading the way in Balcony plug in solar and not heard of significant issues within the renewables energy community. UK systems look even safer in than the Gernany systems and the UK finally embrassing more so micro generation will be good for UK home energy bills. Only 4 weeks to go and hopefully suupliers will be ready to sell the UK kits at reasonable prices. Recall I saw whole 800w kits for about £399. Not sure on the VAT status but it should be Zero rated IMO. May wait for Black Friday and then go for it for significant extra generation for Spring time.

It's true. I will probably get a plug in. Solar just to chargethose low powered devices on the ring main. But I will put in a diverted switch to send the power to a battery when harvesting is high say over 300w and main power us cheap, zero or free like we have on several days a month witb Octopus Agile. Only just heard that excess power sent in to the house Ribg main and back in to Grid is normt credit to you put energy company may sell on and make a big profit margin on. Batteries are every bit as key as solar panels but even more so for late Autumn, Winter and early Spring ahead.

Right hand vehicles seem to usually come out about 6 months after LHD. KPMG, think it was, calculated that RHD vehicles cost 6% more to make than LHD, presumably due to the much lower volumes made. Epiq looking like a possible car for next year to have instead of my Scenic. Need good rear seat space occasionally which Renault 5 has not got but I can forgive it as it is so sweet.

Saw one system putting in a bit over 810w. One can fave up to 2000w of panels but the system should clip it down to the nominal 800w. Big panels to deal with Spring and Autumn weaker sun. Think it will be next Spring before we see thd big adoption. Batteries ars better for the when Sol hax popped South of the Equator. My small electrical devices load is only about 50w as big devices fed by batteries which have been charged up by solar to cheap lecky. Occasional power draw from the Ring main will be kettle, microwave, oven etc and the balcony plug in solar coukd cover all thd low power device consumption plus part of these heavy weight items but I suspect the overall saving over the ring main will be quite small. Working extending my DC circuit in the house. Less harmonised than AC, sone devices work on 5v, some 12v, some 48v. Bought my first DV step down device. For one of the blockd of solar panel in series so I can feed in one of the MPPT solar controllers. All good fun though i can see i am going to need biuld my only casings with fans to keep save from little one's fingers. Will run it past my qualified electrician son in law for isolation testing etc.

I will probably buy 1 or 2 systems, maybe wait for the Black Friday, Cyber Monday events. Trick will be to use all the power generated yourself ie the up to 800w, though have seen some systens exceeding this a bit, might be the 3.5a rather than 800w being the real limit. The alternative is to just export for free butvthen one is just giving sellable power to the electricity companies who will then sell it for profit. Shane was not available at start of summer rather than end of summer. Batteries are as much a money saver as solar and the two work well together and shame legislation does not include this combo. I have four solar feeds but they are not certified as matched plug in solar components so should not be used as plug in solar. Wonder how nany people will plug in non matched approved items but they could get found out if there is some power go back into the Grid on a non G98 approved house. Of course some could take the other route and not do plug in solar and just do batteries. Tomorrow, like many weekend days, the price of electricity is negative on TOU tariff like Octopus Agile. A part from charging the EVs I will charge up my shoebox, some more like boot boxes size, that will charge from the mains Grid. At 1600 energy heavy devices like the fridge freezer will go from using negative priced electricity for the previous 10 hours to using the battery stored electricity until the next cheap, zero or negative priced electricity spell. This option may get more users than plug in solar and some may do both.

I think there is a lot of protectionism by electricians going on here. Trying to get us to believe that electricity in any form, especially new tech, is a dangerous magic which only they can implement. While point of balcony / plug in solar is that it piggy backs on to existing electrical tech that solar components have and our excellent 3 pin plug safety. What is worse is that the current instructions and testing probably misses out the real dangers. People will setup the panel (s) and plug in the micro inverter and then plug into their 3 pin socket but place the micro inverter in a hot place ie just behind a balcony or patio window where it gets 40 or 50c in the summer. It will then fail as it gets too hot. Government and power companies like the sound of plug in solar as it feeds excess power back in to the Grid which the piwer companies can sell and this could help overall prices, if companies act fairly like Octopus do and reduce the chance of blackouts and brown outs.

Already been tested an the Uk plug, as expected by many of us, performed better than Euro plugs. Also the island isolation of the micro inverters seemed to cut off within the few microseconds stipulated. All that said the power from each spur of the solar system will be limited to 800 w, or just over 3a, and a limit via two spurs in to two seperate ring mains for the systems per household.