lol-lol

20% discount if one uses ones Octopus Juice card and it get rolled in with home cost and DD.

Thought I would mention again Fast Charging, whilst convenient, harms EV's batteries.......... Not fast charged my Zoe yet in its first 7k miles and will try and use AC chargers during travelling rather than DC. Even Kia state, tucked away on their website, one can lose 10% of one's battery capacity being a fast charging user rather than a slow, presumably 7/11 kw. I see German chargers are some of the new super banks are set to supply at 35 kw which is a fair rate which will not damage the EV's car battery but one can tweak it up to over 150 kw but one pays 59 Eurocents rather than 39 Eurocent per kw. Really fast charging, not something I think is wisely pursued unless it is filling other electrical charge holders other the Lithium batteries. I would be happy with the 22 spec though I do not understand the limitation for OTA on the 22 Kia. Zoe is uploading maps, software everything OTA I understand. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://www.kia.com/dm/discover-kia/ask/how-to-extend-ev-battery-life.html#:~:text=Avoid using fast charging&text=However%2C it presses so much,years of using fast charging. 3. Avoid using fast charging If your batteries are soon-to-be die out, using a fast-charging is a great convenience. However, it presses so much current into the batteries in a short period which strains your EV battery and wanes them faster. While it is hard to notice its degradation, eight years of standard charging will give you 10% more battery life compared to 8 years of using fast charging. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If one lives in the Worcester, Tewkesbury, Gloucester or Cheltenham surrounding areas then one can cut many miles off the journey to London using the A roads rather than the M4 or M40 plus the cruising speed is going to be more in the super eco zone rather than the guzzling motorway speeds. Therefore I am happy that there is more charging points on these A roads. A part from Banbury there seems to be a bit of shortage healthy sized charger banks on the M4 and M40 route.

The design of the Red bridge Oxford hub, and its link to the National Grid but also the local very large battery storage devices which means that the AC and DC charger at these Oxford sites can be power 24/7 and with the higher rates of power and at potentially lower cost, or higher profit to the operators. The A34 is a very busy Truck Road. almost the key one for South-North travel in the centre of England, though I do find the bit to the South of Oxford not so great for connectivity to good A roads and the link down to the M4 a little slow sometimes and not built for higher cruising speeds compared to the North side of Oxford and its links to the M40 and East-West A roads like the A40 and A44. The Red Bridge Oxford hub has been designed to end up with at least 400 EV charger so fairly future proof.

Europe's most powerful electric vehicle charging hub (allegedly) 10 x 350kw, 12 Tesla v3, 22 x 22 kw AC, nice for Zoes and easy upscaling due to its ultra high connection to grid and massive battery storage.....

Good news. Been waiting to use my Octopus GO RFID card and that is quite a discount. Remembering all these rates and timing will be a bit challenging. Just goes on to my electricity/gas bill so the £400 credit can partly goes to this maybe as I will have a big surplus amount on my Octopus account when the £400 hits.

Short answer, 'no'. Long answer is one or several books long. Couple of facts, max mpg occurs at an incredibly low speed ie 20, 30 or at most 40 mph. Small engines, being pushed to 100 mph or more may well richen up to protect itself rather than overheat key parts. Aero is the most important factor over about 50 mph. I miss my old Audi A4 which seem to be doing over 60 mpg at legal and more and with the biggish tank could do almost a thousand miles with its 130 hp 1.9 pd engine. As to efficiency and cheap to run my Zoe is on another level costing about 1.4p a mile where as my 1. 4 TDI must be around 14p a mile with diesel at £2 a litre. Hypermilng on road and track is a real skill and different drivers in the same car can make several percentage points difference.

I agree. There will be even more wind being generated at night which will be very cheap to use and eventually more nuclear. 10p or less for a few hours at night is all that is needed for millions of UK users to get most of the electricity they need for the day for the EV and their house, sadly those who cannot take advantage will be paying the high daily rate, 40p plus per kWh and I can even see and introduction of a super rate of 50p per kWh plus for time around 0600 to 0830 in the morning and 1630 to 2000 hours in the evening.

I gather Oxford has fitted several types of kerb side chargers and are planning a lot more with their residence. They already have more than I have seen in any other town in their shopping centre. There are quite a few different models ie dedicated posts, lamp post used as posts as well as being a lamp post, also saw ones that rise from the floor on the local telly. https://www.goultralowoxford.org/info/5/chargers Here in Worcester we have considerable numbers of chargers at the local car park and another 26 out at our new train station Parkway as well as the ones in Aldi, Asda, Tesco and Waitrose. Quite a lot of pre-car housing so a big challenge for some, I would like to see banks of them at the Park and Ride as well for such residence. Train stations should be quite, they should reduce the parking charge or roll the EV charge and parking in to one reasonable amount through the charging amount. Whole new station is much under used as it opened during Covid and has not recovered yet or maybe never will. There will be pickets at Shrub Hill and Foregate but I am not sure anyone will be going out to the new £50M Parkway station where all the EV chargers are. It is not far off the M5 so perhaps there is a different business model there.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, or kerbside chargers in London.... Some dedicated post, some built in to lamp posts, this has been happening for at least 2 years but I use to hear more about it when my company owned Source London but now it is sold to Total I hear less about it.

It should always be the best car you own should be the current one and I certainly fell very good about driving the Renault Zoe Riviera ZE50 as it wafts around power by renewable energy and whilst I still like the sound of a 6,8 or 12 cylinder car or a flat four Scoobie I just think if what a huge economic and climate mess we are in the moment at how the Zoe makes me feel that I am rising above that both costing me next to nothing to drive and not harming the environment. For that it is best of the fifty or so car and bikes I have owned. Zoe topping out at 158 kph at the ring, handling quite well if not really that fast but being Eco and having lots of fun. https://evcompare.io/video/the-renault-zoe-absolutely-dominates-the-n-rburgring_150929/

EV Nick broadcast it so it must be true, maybe.....

Granny cable to become illegal. What, what. EV charging system that does not default to charging outside peak time no longer to be allowed hell's teeth ! I wanted to get hold of one I could control to throttle charge throughput to 6,8,10 or 12 amps, better find one soon !

Hope not and have not seen evidence but perhaps not seeing those big council building where they would be. On the positive side the EV delivery vans are popping up everywhere.

My drive the 24 kWh LEAF like my son drive my Zoe ZE50. Leaves 15 minutes to drive 10 miles through a mixture of roads, does not know or want to use the ECO button, has the stereo etc way up high, perhaps does not one pedal drive but touches the dreaded brake pedal and then back on the gas/lecky. LEAF might have a few cells down but would still expect 50 miles even so from what I have heard, even in cold winter time, 60 or 65 miles average, 70-75 on a warm summer day when the living is easy.

Mate of mine had and Alfa GTV, late 70s model, which we had around 1985/6/7, so much prettier than the popular standard fare ie Ford Crapies and the engine and suspension much better the the most popular Ford output, not leaf suspension and even this 1.6 had two twin choke Webbers. Good brakes too I recall. History was rewrote that the VW Golf started the Hot Hatch genre where as those in the know know it was the Alfa Sud. The hot/warm hatch daddy........

As Robert Llewelyn showed there are ways of either fixing duff cells or upgrade old 22 kWh packs for newer 30, or 40 was it, to double or triple the range using the pack from a totalled LEAF. Presumably similar actions can be done for Zoe. Not cheap but after done one had a much better very cheap running car.

I love charging for free off my employer or client whilst in an audit with HMRC and claiming tax relief on the 45p per mile whilst fossil burners are taxed to high heaven to bring on the demise of that method of propulsion. What is not great is where District Nurses cannot afford to run their cars on the 45p a mile never mind 25 ppm they would claim later in the year. This UK government's lack of empathy and understanding of matters that they have considerable direct control is a badge of shame for them.

Round here I think the vast majority of shopper have home chargers and Worcester local Tescos mostly do not have EV chargers ie only one does one the other two large Tescos do not sadly, hope they rectify soon. The roll out seems very slow here compare to what has happened at other supermarkets. Not sure if many others are like me ie luck enough to have very cheap home charging, me at 5p a kWh until September, which makes it just not worth the hassle. World might change in September when there is the next massive hike in electricity prices for many more drivers and driver will be hunting for electricity for their cars. Also loading up their power packs when they visit hotels to take power home. Some people already have rigs to power their CPAP machines and they oft carry small power stations. Looks like electricity, storage of power in our EVs and power/solar power stations could be even more valuable and petrol station which are suffering petrol theft at ever higher levels. Interesting times ahead.

Opell Manta 2.0 GTE. Pretty car. I love all cars., the ugly ones too, Dacia, Skodas, everything except the Fiat Multipla. Example picture similar to mine. Slippery shape, vague-ish instrumentation could show over 130 mph, not bad for a mere 110 hp but it was slipper and light. True top speed more like 120 and acceleration about 8 seconds to 60 mph. Looked good, related to the early ie mk1 Cavalier, so front engine and rear wheel drive, fun in slip conditions like the MK 1 and 2 Escorts.

Complexity relates in to much higher buy price. Cars like the BMW 330e have been successful due to their low company car tax but it does not stir the soul I find and plugging in just to get 25-30 miles of range is a bit sad IMO. The 545e sounds like more of a nice to drive motor, again quite sad EV range which many would struggle to push themselves to plug the car in at night and then unplug in the morning to save less than a fiver. Pure EV cars with longer range are being launched at several per quarter, Merc seem to have the high ground at the moment and these cars seem to have charging at 200 kWh, at least for now until electricity possibly needs to be rationed both in terms of flow rate and even amount, as might diesel, due to the Ukraine conflict continuing and The West decision to do the right thing and phase out Russian hydro-carbon supply. Super pleased with the 260 mile range of the Zoe but then my clients are usually in large corporate buildings which increasingly have charge points and "substainability" agendas as part of their corporate profit. As daughter no1 tells me very different working in an outside broadcast scenario !! https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/best-cars-vans/108345/top-10-longest-range-electric-cars-2022 Which 2022 EV has the longest range? Mercedes EQS - 485 miles. The longest-range electric car currently on sale is also one of the newest: the Mercedes EQS. Mercedes EQE - 410 miles. ... Tesla Model S - 405 miles. ... BMW iX - 380 miles. ... Ford Mustang Mach-E - 379 miles. ... BMW i4 - 367 miles. ... Tesla Model 3 - 360 miles. ... Tesla Model X - 360 miles. ...

Alpine has been knobbled pre race with both a weight penalty and told to take 16 hp off their output so losing out on the Mulsanne straight. Quite possible to lose their lead in the WEC championship in part due to this.

As I understood it the money paid for the first 10k miles contains both running cost and an element for depreciation and the mileage rate over 10k was really for just running costs with little, to no, element for depreciation loss so basically £2k a year for making a car available to the employer and then the 25p for total running costs ie fuel, tyres, servicing and adding business insurance clause to ones insurance. Clearly the 45p a mile is now totally out of whack. In all my looking at HMRC mileage rules I have not seen anywhere it state that you should use the Google maps or a route-planner calculate mileage software tool to come up with the amount of mileage claim, or use your cars odometer which could be up to 10% incorrect of course. Always make sure one also adds in those on route diversions for natural breaks so that the mileage claimed can be a few more miles than the Google or Routeplanner shows. Get no mileage paid to me so I can claim the full difference between 45p per mile and nothing as tax relief which is a tidy some. Zoe was fantastic coming back from Gatwick Worcester, starting with 266 miles range indicated and arriving home with about 90 miles showing and 5 miles per kWh still indicated. Marvellous.

The rise in prices of electricity to commercial sites will weigh heavily on one side but so is this corporate badge of honour to be greener which includes helping staff and visitors use EVs but I think this clearly is only open to a certain strata of staff at a certain level within companies ie middle management and above so I do worry about a them and us dividing factor. From what I have seen I would recommend both second hand ZE40s and the MGs which are not silly money for total cost of ownership on a year by year basis. There is a petition running to increase the HM Treasury claim rate to 60p a mile, which is more like what an average car costs to run overall these days.... https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/600966

Well my first venture of over 120 miles (ie half my warm weather range, WLTP, of 240 miles that the Zoe Ze50 (52 kWh useable battery). So left home after brim charge, which is actually about 102 % charge, as it continue to charge past the 100% being shown for about another half hour or so on my little 3.6 kWh home charger and does not drop to 99% until about 10 miles are driven. Did the 120 miles from Worcester to Heathrow and still has 140 miles shown on the range which lined up with the 5 miles per kWh also shown on the instruments. Mostly with the ECO button depressed and therefore low 60s or high 50s shown on the speedo. Charged for 5.5 hours on the currently free chargers at my Heathrow office. Did get my ears burnt that lecky for businesses had gone up massively, might be as high as about 40p kWh I gather. Zoe was showing 92% full and 218 miles range and I set off to Gatwick where I am working tomorrow. Again ECO button down and with the 44 miles to Gatwick the SOC went down to 74% but the range is still showing 197 miles which works out as theoretical range of around 266 miles. I have the chance of a charge at the clients but not sure I need it. Direct journey back to Worcester is about 160 miles from here so should be able to do it in one hop without stopping to charge but it is suppose to be a bit cooler tomorrow and a strongish SW wind which is not a good combo. Wish the Gatwick Gridserve station was open but it is not due to open for a few more weeks yet. All going very well so far with over 6K miles on the clock and only about £100 spent on buying lecky power in that time. Not bad when hydro-carbon fuel is hitting £8 a gallon I gather. Very pleased with the little Zoe.