lol-lol

Just thought I would check where London Gateway Service is as to me and hundreds of thousands of people in Logistics London Gateway is near Basildon and not Edgeware ! Never know might go there for a charge one day but is that it ? Two charging posts with presumably a 50 kW DC or two on it or one 50 kW DC and a 22 KW AC as this seems to be oft the case. Nearly all the Ecotricity upgrades on the M5 from Bristol downwards are of this two machine updgrade with only Exeter actually getting the more than 2 machines. Hardly the 32 charger Braintree setup we are hoping for. Norwich on line soon and I am hoping for other similar ones to open up at Plymouth and Stevenage to be more like the Rugby setup with many chargers rather than just a couple as one can easily see waiting happening there and if one or both is broken than much heart ache.

Still nothing to almost nothing for those cars in the 2011 to 2017 and low emissions....... Fabia 1.4 TDI is 88 gm/km and still nothing and 0.9 TCE Clio is still £20 pa......... https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables/rates-for-cars-registered-on-or-after-1-march-2001 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cars registered between 1 March 2001 and 31 March 2017 The rate of vehicle tax is based on fuel type and CO2 emissions. CO2 emission details are shown on the car’s V5C registration certificate, or you can find emission details online. Petrol car (TC48) and diesel car (TC49) Band and CO2 emission Single 12 month payment Single 12 month payment by Direct Debit Total of 12 monthly instalments by Direct Debit Single 6 month payment Single 6 month payment by Direct Debit A: Up to 100g/km £0 £0 N/A N/A N/A B: 101 to 110g/km £20 £20 £21 N/A N/A 😄 111 to 120g/km £30 £30 £31.50 N/A N/A 😧 121 to 130g/km £130 £130 £136.50 £71.50 £68.25

Good report and very balanced and spot on. Range is just so impressive on the Zoe. Driving around now in the 8C it is here in the Midlands in the last couple of days, zooming around at 55/60 mph I have been from Worcester to Oxford, driving around there and doing over 110 miles and I arrive back in Worcester still with 50% of charge left so I am having an absolute range of around 220 miles in this winter/spring period and I expect that to return to 240 miles when the temperature warms up by 5 or 10 C. It is a worry after Renault's decision to change the head airbag system for the ZE50 from the ZE40. My Riviera model has Emergency Automatic Braking, Lane Departure and Blind Spot alerting which the the tested Play model does not have have and I sit with the seat full back with my head level with the B pillar rather than level with side window so I do think I would suffer the same head trauma but we would all like Renault to do a retrospective fix on the head airbags. Comfortable, fairly quick, actually low 8s to 60. Probably only spent around £25 to charge for the near 3k miles I have done. Super please just wish we could use the TESLA chargers in the UK as the non TESLA network is still pretty poor and sounds like it is going to be many months or a couple of years before being good enough to think about long distances without a care.

Interesting article. Of course electricity is now 2 or 3 times the price they quoted. As a mech eng person having spent years in the classroom, engine room and lab with all the teachings of thermodynamics ringing in my ears I immediately cast my systems boundary around the parts in question and look to identify all sub systems and their energy input and outputs and their energy transformation and considering low grade heating, sound etc as all part of it. When working with three phase, 400v, 800v etc we can see considerable advantages. Volts good, amps bad was an oversimplification I recall for efficiency. With the energy crisis coming to most peoples door mat this spring, summer, autumn, winter we all should learn lots more about electricity I reckon. Just try to figure out my next stage to start paralleling my solar panels and make sure I have the right solar generator and battery storage, fun fun.

Of course we have a second battery in our EVs, which peeves me that it is one of those last century, or is the century before that, lead-acid jobs, very heavy and a poor power retention characteristics compared to Lithium. Cars use up to 1 kWh per day for their sentinel functions and then they have to top off the lead acid which will tend to lose about 1% of its charge per days so this would account for some of the power needed to top off the car 24 hours later and when charging there is all the displays that kick in and little lights that show it is charging. Whilst the charging process is nowhere near as bad as diesel and petrol cars which barely get close to converting half of the energy in the fuel to forward motion we are maybe in the 90% range but as some of the manufacturers seem to intimate this is when the car is in the 20 to 80% range of operation with that tailing off for a whole set of reasons in the 0-20% and 80-100% where it may be a few percentage points lower than that 90%. Looking forward to replacing that dinosaur lead acid battery with a Lithium one in a year or two down the line. Older Zoes were suppose to charge, or test check, their 12v battery after 3 years. I would have thought it had an easy life compared to ICE 12v batteries. CAr would be some 15 kgs lighter too I suppose.

To me it must be that charging that last few percent is a much less efficient process. I suspect that there may be several factors adding to the apparent higher losses on charging that last few percent. Firstly it take much more time per percent in that 95 to 100% zone compared to say 75% to 80%. I have read that this is largely down to slight differences in individual cells and the system "wasting" power on some cells that will not take any more power whilst others will take so more and of course that charging applied to cells that will not take any more manifests in damaging local heat which damages that/those cells. Also the onboard AC to DC electrical parts will have a hysteresis loss which is present every second and if it is taking several minutes to tick over that last percent I think it is mainly due to these types of issues. I think the Renault system is typically French in the 100% is probably anywhere between an actual 98% and 103% and the Zoe's system takes a protective and gentle actions in charging that last few percent and it does the same with the rapid charging DC. The Zoe does not allow more than 124 Amps on the DC charging circuits which is particularly slow compared to smaller capacities batteries which are clearly allowing 150Amps or more. In other lithium battery applications than cars I cannot remember seeing any situation where zero to full is achievable in less than an hour and typically it is about an hour and a half and this is to maintain and allow a life time of a couple of thousand charges rather than only a few hundred charges which can be the case is over fast charges are allowed. Think I will avoid charging much over 90% as a continuing policy. Over 90% the Zoe's aggressive regen cannot add the 30 kw throughput that it can below 90% state of charge. If I take it easy, travel at the double nickel 55 on those A roads and bits of motorway and if the temperature is not too close to zero I should be able to get 4 to 4.5 kW per mile and have my 170 mile range without dipping below 10%. Interesting comment by mega Youtuber "Battery life" that the ID3, and presumably the rest of the VW family, that his ID 3 annoyingly heats the battery pack if it starts at less the 7C and brings it up to at least 13C with its 6 kw heater. He reckons this is often not the right thing to do and is costing him 50 Euros a year unnecessarily. Zoe is only self heating, except in Scandinavian countries, with air cooling if it gets up to the 45C which can make charging on very hot summer days a relatively slow process. Overall impressed with the Zoe energy management but not had and -5C to -10C temperatures to really test it. With the Zoe (ZE50) the big issue at the moment is the recent EuroNCAP and the head airbag performance which is leading to some owners asking Renault to take them back. I am not so worried as I sit right back and my head would hit the B pillar rather than the window but we would still like the airbag fixed!

Renault went the other way, called the latest model of the Zoe, 3rd iteration, the ZE50 implying 50 kWh battery but the blurb says it is actually 52 kWh. Dig deeper and one can find it is actually closer to a 55 kWh battery, or actually 54.6 kWh one can find out in some of the more technical blurb. Clearly on the time internal it takes to charge to 100%, watching how each percent is completed and I gather from the way it behaves when it show 0 % battery but keep going for a bit clearly there is a kWh or so not visible or reported both at the top end and bottom end of the reported percentage by the car's dash. The Zoe oft seems to be the weapon of choice for hypermiling challenges ie how far can one can on a single charge, 424 miles was a result for the ZE 50 Zoe during last summer or 474 miles if fitted with Enso tyres which must be pretty special to give an addition more than 10% miles. Good to see the e-corsa and family have been given a boost for this year with a better heat pump set up... https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/vauxhall/corsa/356874/vauxhall-adds-range-corsa-e-and-mokka-e-2022-update We clearly need better tyres more suited to EVs. We can bump our tyres up to the 40 PSI plus to help fuel consumption, Teslas seem to run at 45 psi which must be part of their hypermiling success in addition to all the fine tech and aero shape of course.

Having owned Leon Cupra, and at the same time has Octy VRS, I hope the Cupra EV has not achieved good handling by extra hard suspension as the Leon Cupra did as after weeks and months of ownership the hard ride of the Leon Cupra just became tiresome and the Octy VRS the preferred car as it was just more pleasant to drive the 99% of the time even though the Cupra looked much better which I think it does in the SEAT form compared to the VW form of the ID3. If SEAT have done it by clever adaptable suspension then great. This is where expended test drives are worth getting so one judges not just on a test drive of an hour or two but some leisurely drives as well. I agree with Fully charged also it is not enough power to stand out when there are so many quite old and plain EVs with 200 hp, needs a bit more ie and extra 10 or 20% more power to really have something to shout about.

If I understand it then some charger companies are still putting AC chargers out there as, of course, they are presumably easier to plug in being almost straight in to the 3 phase network and only needing measuring on the flow to the customer and not all this DC conversion at some cost, both capital and on-going losses so I see quite a few of the new chargers have CCS, Chademo and AC, hopefully at 22 kw, rarely at 43 kw I would suppose in the UK unlike Europe. I have a later Zoe with both AC (22kw) and DC and if someone desperately needed a DC charge I, and I knew the DC worked whilst someone was using the DC on the same charger unit, I would step down and use the AC so they can charge as well. I will only get 45 kw out of the DC whatever the spec of charge ie 100m 350 or whatever and one I have hit 80% charge I will be rapidly slowing down from the 44 to 30 and then 20 kW so charging over to the AC, if it it actually giving and wired in to actually give 22 kW, I would chop over to the AC. Oft the problem seems to be is that there are so many cases of AC points saying they are 22 kw, or 43 kw, and they are actually only 7-8 kw. I have seen AC charging post descibed as 11, 16, 22 and nearly all are actually 7- 8 kW. We have 26 AC outlets recently fitted at the new Worcestershire Park Railway station described as 22 kw ones and everyone says they are actually 7 kw ones. Now many may be not so switched on EV owners who actually only have 7 kw onboard chargers in their car so are never going to get 11,16, 22 or 43 despite what the charge post says put I do suspect that some post could handle the higher power but have only been wired in to one phase and not all three phases as the DC charger would have been. No wonder EV owners generally try and charge up at home, work or friends with so many inaccuracies within the charging network. Roll on those Gridserve purpose biuld station but I fear we are only going to see 2 or 3 built each year and the real answer looks to be the Tesla network being opened up to us non-Telsa drviers or to get a Tesla. The £43k RRP Standard Plus model 3 does not sound expensive when one can put up with the too digital interior and enjoy both its superior efficiency and the Tesla network and to be able to actually get somewhere over 225 miles in reasonable time compared to ones ICE vehicles.

Gridserve steadily getting on with roll out........ https://www.gridserve.com/2021/12/09/biggest-motorway-ev-charging-upgrade-in-uk-history-underway-with-11-new-ultra-high-power-electric-hubs-in-construction-plus-world-first-electric-forecourt-at-gatwick-airport/ GRIDSERVE’s latest sites: Electric Hubs Currently in construction: Swansea (Moto), Heston West (Moto), Severn View (Moto), Wetherby (Moto), Burton in Kendall (Moto), Exeter (Moto), Woolley Edge North (Moto), Woolley Edge South (Moto), Thurrock (Moto), Leigh Delamere Westbound (Moto), Reading West (Moto). More than 150 x 350kW ultra high power chargers – capable of adding 100 miles of range in less than 10 minutes – ready to be deployed across the UK, with 11 GRIDSERVE Electric Hubs under construction at motorway sites, the first of more than 20 planned to open in early 2022 Electric Forecourts® Currently in construction: Norwich Electric Forecourt® (opening April 2022), Gatwick Electric Forecourt® –(opening Autumn 2022). If only there was one good source of new charge points opening up we could get notified of in those specific areas we oft travel in !

Took the Zoe down to South Wales over the last couple of days for work and going down, at 2C, I got what I expected which was to do the 93 miles to my target destination using half my battery so I did about 3.6 miles per kWh and was quite please and I use a granny lead to add another 20% of so back in to the battery. Did 20 miles down there and so set off for home with about 60% battery left and the range showing 114 miles left for the return 93 miles so should have 20 miles or so left at the end and about 10% battery. Well I set off back to Worcester midday-ish and the temperature was up to around 10C and I managed about 4.5 miles per kWh so ended up with 55 miles and 20% still showing. Very impressed with the Zoe's range but it does make a big difference every degree of ambient temperature. Fill in my spreadsheet for business miles which I will use in my self assessment to claim 45p per mile of tax relief so super economically running using Octopus overnight electricity at 5p per kWh and some free to me kWh at work. Happy days.

Loeb is truly magnificent although the other Seb, Ogier nearly had it and I was so please Bream made up the podium. Well done to Mikelson in the WRC2. Hybrid cars, with their 130 hp of extra electric motor push adding to the 380 hp ICE power seem to zip through the course OK. Very short development time so should get better over next races. Only a 4 kWh battery so vey much a hybrid system to give better acceleration despite the 100% non fossil fuel being used. I presume the 0-60 is less than 2 seconds on dry tarmac. No longer using the donor car chassis, only its name and external dimension but nice strong chassis to cope with those inevitable big crashes. Shame no UK round but should make some good telly this year.

I think AC should be charged at around 90% of the DC charge as in many cases the charger has to change the 3 phase AC to DC and take the 10% loss in the conversion from AC to DC. If I use AC, Zoes can take at least 22 kWh AC and some can take 43 kWh AC but that is rare in the UK I gather, but if I do I will lose 1 in 10 kWh in my onboard charger. As long as I was not in a rush for work or urgent personal trip I hope I would give up the 50 kWh DC to someone who needed it and step down to using the 22 kWh AC, if one is there as they are not always, but being cheaper who help ease the good Samaritan loss of my quicker charger. So many service station still only have two little sad chargers ie one with two 50 kWh leads and the other with a 50 kWh CCS and the over is a LEAF type one, not that I see many LEAF around for some reason considering how many tens of thousands of them they have sold, almost as many Zoes have been sold. Tesla is clearly the king and if I have any regret it is whether there was any way I could have scrapped together to get a Tesla. Do not like the no knobs in the cabin, though some my say many Tesla do come with knobs, not sue what they mean, but they are light years ahead on the charging network side.

Is the 22 kWh chargers AC ones which the Corsa-e and family can only draw down at 7.3/7.4 kWh anyways ie only single phase ?

Indeed so. I love to try and drive a hard bargain going for the best deal in every detail I can but when getting the Zoe, RRP £34.8k-ish but then a string of discounts and over egged trade in and I was left virtually speechless on what the end price was after nearly down to £20k with my 5 year old 70k miles Octy traded in to. Turn that in to a PCP with a highish end value ie £13k and ones monthly payments are less than £300 a month and being lecky and charging with 5p a kWh, or getting it free from work, means quite low overall costs. I not sure about Renault or any of the other car companies currently earning much money as their net worth is incredibly low in my opinion, Renault as a whole is only worth a couple of tens of billions as are most the car companies with the exception of Tesla of course which has lead such as trailblaze that it is hard to think of any other industry where the building of a "better mousetrap" has just about wiped out the opposition financially. Maybe some people might think Apple in their field of manufacture and Amazon with their model of sales and distribution. Between the 3 of them they appear to be worth more than a hundred of the big household names of a decade ago. Two of them making such obscene profits that can sponsor space programs as play things and all three of them could buy major car manufacturers without denting their overall worth much at all and I expect each of them to buy automotive assets in the next few years and many car manufacturers names will be consigned to the history books and the new Giga firms will dominate the transport industry with their monikered product logos. As long as it is OK value I suppose we just have to accept it.

Suddenly thousands of pounds off the price of EVs so they still get the UK government now even smaller grant......... Stellantis cuts electric MPV prices as combustion variants axed https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/business-tech%2C-development-and-manufacturing/stellantis-cuts-electric-mpv-prices-combustion Citroën, Peugeot and Vauxhall have adjusted the pricing of their electric MPVs to lessen the blow of removing more affordable combustion variants from order. The brands, part of the automotive group Stellantis, removed all ICE versions of their MPVs from sale in most of Europe in an effort to accelerate the group’s move to all-electric power. With the UK government’s £1500 grant for EVs applied, the ë-Berlingo now starts at £29,495, while the larger ë-Spacetourer is now priced from £30,295. The decision to continue with only electric versions of these vehicles was announced in separate statements by Citroën, Peugeot and Opel/Vauxhall, which sell the technically idential Berlingo, Combo and Partner MPVs respectively. The group's mid-sized MPVs – the Citroën Spacetourer, Peugeot Rifter and Vauxhall Vivaro Life –will also go all-electric in the designated markets... “There is no alternative to electrification. In the future, Opel will gain even more traction with environmentally friendly innovations,” said Opel CEO Uwe Hochgeschurtz.

As I understand it cars with Heat Pumps also have substantial heating elements just like those EVs without HEAT pumps but what Heat Pump fitted vehicles can do is when the heating element has worked flat out for a few minutes then their is a temperature delta ie difference that the Heat Pump can start working with and then after that first few minutes the Heat pump can start doing its magic and take heat from the intermediate level zone in the heating matrix and dumping it in to the cabin that has already started to warm but give it a substantial boost turning mild heat in to proper really warm air. Hence it is so important that initial warm up is done as a pre-condition with the charging cable still fitted so one does not lose a kWh or two from the battery before one has even moved off the drive. Zoe cold weather test that was confidential but was later released..... https://www.renaultgroup.com/en/news-on-air/news/renault-zoe-confidential-3-cold-weather-tests/ More noticeable in cold conditions is reduced range, but Renault ZOE remains one of the best mass-produced electric vehicles in this respect, thanks in particular to its reversible heat pump, which reduces heating consumption in cold weather and generates approximately 2kW of cooling or 3kW of heat with just 1kW of electricity.

Apparently cars powered by these internal combustion engines, except the few that have heated windscreens, have to wait until the great big lump of engine gets it jacket water up to 50 or 60 degrees C or more so that the air in the passenger cabin can start using that heat to defrost the windscreen. How onerous......

There are all sorts of special rules ie if less than £136 value for each consignment. Sometimes can be cheaper sending in a couple of batches rather than all in one batch.

Hi. Germany and the UK are now in different customs territories so customs formalities need to be completed both for the export from Germany and the Import to the UK. If you bought them I would suggest one of the Fast Parcel Operators (FPO) would be best to handle it, logically DHL, not sure how they get around who is shown as Exporter out of Germany as usually they need an EORI number. So as well as the logistics charge the customs charge would be no customs duties if the wheels are declared as EU made ie not Chinese which can attract 22.3% Ad Valorem duty in addition to the 4.5% All countries duty if no proof or declaration which UK customs accept wheels are EU origin. https://www.trade-tariff.service.gov.uk/commodities/8708705050 Then there is import VAT at 20% which is usually put to postponed accounting on to the UK importer's VAT Account and netted off but if one is a person who is not VAT registered then it is paid and not reclaimable. The 20% VAT is applied to the total of the value of the goods, the freight and insurance cost and any customs duties. On freight alloy wheels for cars has been large scale cases for UK customs in regard to fraud of origin ie with the goods actually from China and then triangulated through intermediate countries in the UK or EU so they tend to get examined a lot but if you are only importing 4 which are clearly second hand then maybe you are less likely to get stopped for customs exam. So you can probably see that the overall import and transport charges could easily be half to equal the value of the wheels ? I work for one of the top 5 international European logistics companies but we tend to only deal with consignments over 75 kgs and even we put smaller loads via the FPOs. Do you not fancy a drive over and pick up from the buyer, think I would ? Perhaps not as one cannot go thru France currently which means longer channel crossing ie Belgium or Holland, hem. Tyreleader and Oponeo and doing these movements daily truck movements for tyres and wheels but I doubt would be interested. Do you know any Germans residents coming across who can carry as Merchandise in Baggage perhaps which has a £1k limit so should be fine. Good luck.

I am hoping for an AllStar Electric card with work which has ten of the charge point providers including Osprey but I wish they would add Gridserve or Instavolt. https://www.allstarcard.co.uk/our-cards/allstar-one-electric/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- REDUCE RANGE ANXIETY Allstar One Electric gives you access to a growing multi-brand network of over 5,000 charging points across 2,000 locations. To make things even easier our site locator and mobile app help drivers locate their nearest compatible charge point. 10 charge point providers: EB Charging, Mer, GeniePoint, Source London, Alfa Power, ESB Energy, Hubsta, Franklin LiFe, Osprey and Plug N Go Get back on the road with access to 1,550 rapid chargers and over 3,300 fast chargers Reduce range anxiety with UK-wide charging coverage Range of pricing options for electric charging so you stay in control

Also with the proper scale fitting of Gridserve at Rugby with a done chargers rather than the odd ones and two that are at most even key motorway sites. Le us hope 2022 sees the public charging station roll out gather pace but key is at the right places on those trunk roads and I would rather see two or three 50 kWh outlets, or maybe a 50,100 and 150 kWh, on a charging station rather than a single 350 kWh. I still quite like 22 kWh AC outputs but I expect they will start to phase out but then good to see six of these bays at the Plymouth Gridserve site. They sometimes have a 4 hour period before they starting charging overstay fees so I could go on charge there, watch the Green Army PAFC and come back after the match, heaven.

Always a problem for cars primarily built for the US/Canada market that end up in Europe etc and do not really fir the roads. I barely fit in most European cars being 6ft 1 and 18 stone and some of my in laws are 6ft 6 to 7 near 7 foot tall. I think the Dacia Spring will be the EV breakthrough and also depending on which Chinese brands make it. A few bad reports about the MG's 5s winter performance was on the disappointing side... (140 miles for the outgoing short range model)

Good points about the traction batteries being either refurbished or retired to battery banks. Interesting Mr Llewelyn said he had only paid out £200 in servicing in ten years, I presume he was not doing the annual service ie safety checks, pollen filter etc. I know from Renault website the Zoe is £299 for 3 years /30k miles compared to £499 3years /30k miles for ICE Renaults (excepts RSs which are more again). Robert mentioned charging was slow and maybe the throttling due to battery temp was holding it back more rather than less, odd.

I like my charge ports behind the badge on the nose of the car but then I am suppose to reverse in to the parking spaces at work so the parking checkers can see you have the legitimate parking permit to park at Heathrow as we sometimes get public or other LHR visitors/workers thinking they can park in our car park whilst nipping in to Terminal 4 or the Cargo centre. All well and good but then should I drag the cable all the way from the pavement round one side of the car to the front, would just about reach, to plug in on the nose parked arse in to the charger ! We need loop chargers in the ground preferable. No perfect solution only properly purpose built EV charging hub with good space and hatched areas maybe with channels that the cable sits in. How thick is a 350 kWh charge cable, must be pretty meaty to run over 400 Amperes !