lol-lol

Pro...

It is probably so small as to be less of a factor than wind direction etc. The additive is only 0.1% of the volume of the winter diesel so even if it had virtually no calorific value it might only effect ones fuel consumption by about 0.1 mpg or less. More important to get tyre pressures right, a clean air filter and the other usually fuel efficient measures.

Even an efficient diesel will be pushed to hit 11p a miles under the current price of diesel ie as my Fabia 3 1.4 90 hp is doing with its 62 mpg but on a run it would get under 10p a litre but I find I can only get that 70 to 80 mpg on runs of 50 miles or over when one can overcome that first 5 mile leg that the diesel is in reality on doing 40 mpg or so ie until it gets up to temperature and gets worse as the temperature drops as well as the winter fuels anti coagulant additive which lowers calorific value. Always think that one should add in the 5 litres of engine oil that one has to change every 10k or so as well that adds a few tens of pence per mile as it seems the principal cost of a minor A service. Max is in the UK and Pro due here shortly. Could work as Home backup, part of solar equipment and take away out on journeys. fast recharge too.

Always like the RAC but a few little comments. I would be ashamed to need a charge from them but I suppose it might happen with some bad luck on faulty public chargers etc. 3.6 Kw is a bit girlie for a rescue. Octopus is 17% cheaper than RAC lecky. What I would hope rescue service woud use are these but they are only just starting to come out in the UK......

Funny enough having been a merchant navy sailor I think I can shed some light on this. Whilst there has been somewhat less wind there still has been quite a bit it is just relative and whilst the Earth continues to tilt its 23 degree 27 minutes 8.26 seconds each summer and winters and our star Sol keeps shining there will be some weather changes. As Montgomery Scott says "you canny change the laws of physics "...... (Albedo is the fraction of light reflected from the Earth back in to space)

I suppose that why the setups are between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn where there is loads of sun shine. Scotland is perhaps the most wind rich country in Europe but this year has been oddly weird, an Atlantic La Nina or something as wind has been lowest in 50 years. Tidal and wave power are much more consistent and reliable though one might need to store for more like a fortnight rather than half a day. My source of cheap electricity is nuclear as that is where those power stations are whacking out tens of Gigawatts and very low prices after midnight until people get up for work. The pump storage stations in Scotland, Wales and Norway all feed the UK grid as well as nuclear here and in France. Lots of plan to increase pump storage in Scotland as well as battery storage stations to temporarily hold as this made power that needs a storage place for a few hours or maybe longer. Some may use their EVs as temp storage place but I doubt I will even if they pay me a few pence per kilowatt.

I got the Pod Point and it seems OK quality. Did a few photos and form filling and they did the OLEG so it just cost me £449 as I went for the cheaper 3.6 kwh charger. Linked with Octopus Go it puts in 14 kWh ie about 60 miles of range for the Zoe. As it gets colder I will use the pre-conditioning a few minutes before I leave just to warm it up and give the battery a top up. I can see buying another charger when I go for something bigger like the Megane so will evaluate having a second EV charger and another OLEG grant and that one will probably be 7 kwh. The Rolec ones seem a bit flimsy and I manage to snap one of their posts almost in half when it would not give me back my 22 kw 3 phase lead and in a tug of war the post lost. I am looking at a home battery pack but do not intend to go down solar route and just want to store the cheap nuclear plant energy for use during the day and for blackouts.

Membership is £7.85 a month I gather. So would need weekly rather than month use to make it worth while perhaps.

Good advice I think not to push every charge to 100% but to call off most charges at around the 90% mark. In the Zoe the regen does not work fully in the ninety percents and the regen makes such a significant difference to consumption ie mile per kWh as the regen made electricity is counted as not charge electricity and really helps the net figure of energy consumption. Still not been under 30% despite not fill to full and doing several 100 to 125 mile journeys and now driving at full motorway speeds much of the time and having lots of fun playing traffic like challenge where the EV takes of like a scalded cat up to 30 or 40 mph in 3 and a bit seconds. Eco button is on and off like a toggling switch as much just to keep me to 65 mph rather than exceeding 80 which I seem to do far too easily now. It either seems like the Zoe is becoming run-in and feels a bit quicker or I am just getting use to using the zip. I just once want to see the dashboard come up with the overspeed message which kicks in around 95-100 mph. Video below of Zoe shouting at driver with 158 kph on the clock....

This is part of my company that do numerous microgrid solutions in Africa and Asia...... (Our solid state LMP batteries) All-solid-state energy storage can be a reliable, long lasting, high-performance micro-grids solution for Rural Electrification in remote, hot, and extreme weather environments. Blue Solutions is becoming the default solution for Africa where we have deployed over 30 projects in 20 countries.

Ouch, 8 to 9 % loss in capacity in his 25k km first 14 months of ownership, seems high to me and does not reflect well on the VW Group ie his 58 kwh ID3 down to 54 kwh. He does reckon all that AC charging knackered it a bit, I am going to avoid that as much as possible and stick to 2, 3.6, 7.2, 11 or 22 kw AC charging I reckon. keep meaning to get the try and get the bluetooth ODBC and right software but that seems to be an issue on the ZE50 as it is not the same as the ZE40. Renault say ZOe battery is 55 kwh with 52 useable but Bjorn N had it measured well below 50 on one of his tests !

Not a big concerns as Renault and the other EV manufacturers warranty the batteries typically for 8 years and that they are still holding 75% charge. Number of ICE cars I have run on the rolling road after a few tens of thousands of miles on them and they are showing half the power at the rear wheels the engine is quoted as having when it was new. EV batteries are also guarantee for quite substantial mileage ie 100k is typical and there are EVs with two and three times that mileage. Eventually, probably after at least 10 years but probably more like 15 or more, we still do not really know as EVs tend to be no more than a decade old, they can be, and we do this for older LMP batteries my company has made, we put them in to banks within various sizes of steel frames and wire them together and use them in remote places, typically Africa with us, to provide overnight power to communities of grid deep in the Africa interior. I expect my R135 ZE50 Zoe to be a useful car within the family well in to the 2030s when ICE cars at banned from sale and most of the public would be too embarrassed to use one anyways knowing damage they do driving them around when most cars are EVs. Still seeing 200 mile range even with mornings at 5C and pelting it around as if range anxiety is something for others to worry about as it is not a problem for me for the vast majority of journeys I am undertaking.

Well my EV is only £280 pm and I have seen Renault offer deals of £199 pm with a few less miles per year and less than a couple of K deposit and then with the massive saving one makes by only spending a fraction of fuel costs it is easy to be quids in with running costs of between 34 and 38 ppm. https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/car-running-costs-calculator?Years=4&Miles=80000&CarType=&Manufacturer=renault&Model=zoe&CO2From=&CO2To=&BIKPriceFrom=&BIKPriceTo=&SortBy=IsFleetPick&SortDesc=False&FuelType= Having spent a decade working for HMRC, then half a decade with pwc, another half a decade working on tax declaration and avoidance software and the last decade helping firms minimise taxation I expect there will continue to be massive opportunities to continue to pay less tax than otherwise if one understands and maximise the tax system as are many of the new Tesla and EV owners but at the same time carrying out UK and international wishes to reduce CO2 as well as get a great featured car on their company schemes of getting a work car. Fuel (excise) duty is 57.95 pence per litre and then there is VAT at 20% on both the excise duty and the value of the fuel. Very difficult to go after electricity when it can be obtained from any one of the billions of 3 pin socket, I was just using a outlet in the warehouse this afternoon, no way of knowing if it was charging a forklift or a heater or any other electrical appliance. UK government has already planned to help its tragic balance of payments by whacking up NI for employees and employer, so that will fall on employees mainly then, unless one use lots of salary sacrifice of course for pension, car purchase and other such approved schemes where one can avoid much of the new NI hit and effectively lowering of tax allowance as they are not going up with the rocketing inflation which is running at 4 to 6 % depending on which measure one prefers.

It is not really much if a hassle plugging in, either somewhere between plugging in a garden strimmer for the 3 pin so called Granny charging cable to dealing with some pretty heavy duty cable when I am plugging in using my meaty 22 kw 3 phase cable. The really high charge cables are always tethered to the charge ie the 50 to 350 kw DC charging cable so one only has to plug one end ie the one in to the car. All this will change to induction charging in the next few years. I think electricity will be the cheap and increasingly widely available with offshore wind, nuclear here and in France and more worldwide sharing of electrical power. On the other hand, whilst electrical charging add over 1,000 new chargers a month petroleum selling garages will naturally decline as the drivers migrate to EV from ICE and petroleum garages have to raise their margins as sales decrease. Still do not think I have spent more than about £15 as I approach 1500 miles driven by charging at night on the 5p a kwh nuclear base load lecky or charging at work, today with 3 pin charge cable at one of my more remote warehouses, only about 15 kWhs but added about 60 miles of range so I was back up to 180 mile range so I could zoom back to Worcester at the National Speed limits virtual for free. Will add my 180 miles today to my HMRC mileage claim for the 45p a mile tax relief so £32 made for the cost of about £2 charging last night. EV is a money generator not a cost burden pleased to say and the company car allowance way more than covers the PCP and all other expenses with probably quite a bit extra to pocket. Shame company does not supply the car as it would attract zero company car tax as an EV compared to well over £100 a month for the same RRP of an ICE car ! Hence why we are seeing thousands of additional Teslas and other EVs being added to the road users every month as the economics are just overwhelming.

Using one of the ten chargers at my Heathrow work, labelled up as 11 kw so presume it should have been a three phase connection but low and behold it only provide charge at 3.6kw. I reckon it was only connected to single phase and not 3 phase despite the labelling. Fortunately the Zoe is proving so economical, consistently running at better than 4 miles per kw hour, even after the 120 run from Worcester to Heathrow, it still had a hundred miles of range left after the run down from Worcester, which was done a near, and sometime over, the nominal National speed limits as displayed on my speedo. So the 3.6 kw charger added about 22 kWhs of charge in the next 7 hours I was back up to 90 % charge and around 200 miles of range so I could, again, zoom home to Worcester without any worry of range and I am just waiting to see that onboard message saying I have hit the 87 mph limit which is so easy to hit when one is not in ECO mode as it just goes from 60 or so to well over 80 mph indicated is a blink of an eye and before one realises. I might set the speed limiter as it is going to get me in trouble otherwise. I also noticed on the display of power output, despite it nominally being a 100 kW, 135 hp car, that the output from the battery pack shows almost 110 kWs which is almost 150 hp. I do enjoy the same meter showing the braking regen showing minus 30 kWs as the regen system floods power back in to traction battery. The onboard stat data shows that over 10% of all power used is put back as the cars kinetic energy, from downhill and junction retardation so is available to use to increase range by that amount. Will be watching over the next few days and weeks how the cooler weather due here in the Midlands over the next weeks effects that range but good experience so far.

Bye bye Vale Rossi, the GOAT of motorcycle racing. Good send of Valencia. Right was tweaks to we have 2022 ? Good luck Jack for your try in WSB.

You can see the situation at the car/van handling ports around the UK, I use to be responsible for part of Portbury Docks, Bristol car import docks where about half a million cars and van are handled, nearly a square mile of storage, also worked at Immingham where much of the German and central/eastern cars come in. Driving over the Avon bridge where one can get a good view of the car/van storage and processing areas I noted how empty the storage area was ie mostly white vans and very few cars, maybe hundreds instead of the many thousands. VW and many of the European car producers will have a very poor year where as Chinese producers have faired much better, including SAIC-VW, see numbers below picture..... SALES VOLUME History Vehicle 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 Company Sales Volume（unit） Oct. Oct.,2020 2021(YTD) 2020(YTD) Y/Y（%） SAIC-VW 120,001 155,000 970,438 1,186,385 -18.20% SAIC-GM 132,007 156,014 1,033,913 1,107,575 -6.65% SAIC MOTOR Passager Vehicle 100,001 70,381 595,363 473,649 25.70% SAIC GM Wuling 200,000 179,000 1,251,441 1,164,040 7.51% SAICMAXUS 17,067 19,884 180,798 141,338 27.92% SAIC Motor - CP Co., Ltd. 1,740 2,571 26,180 21,655 20.90% SAIC GM Wuling Indonesia Co., Ltd. 2,745 641 19,641 4,107 378.23% MG India Co., Ltd. 2,969 4,008 34,666 21,901 58.29% Others 5,607 9,220 88,740 89,297 -0.62% Total 582,137 596,719 4,201,180 4,209,947 -0.21% Including: New energy vehicles 76,988 48,725 555,896 193,310 187.57% Exported vehicles and those made by overseas bases 86,957 43,793 528,728 265,100 99.44%

It is a council car park and the city's biggest and the parking attendants have an office on the same floor as the EV parking and hopefully they will have Solomon's wisdom. Grey area is I PHEVs I reckon.

Worcester now an EV friendly and facilitating city. Just in time for Xmas market time etc........... St Martins Gate Car Park - Electric car charging points Twelve new electric car charging points are now available in St Martin's Gate car park - and under a special introductory offer, users will not need to pay for parking while they power up their vehicles. Six 50kw rapid charging points and a further six 22kw fast charging points are available on the ground floor of the multi-storey car park. The charging points at St Martin's Gate car parks are designed to accommodate the majority of electric vehicles currently available in the UK. They are listed on Zap Map and other information services for electric vehicle users. Electric vehicle owners will be charged at a competitive rate of 25p per kWh at all 12 of the charging points. Charging Bay Type Length of stay Fast Charging Bay Up to 4 hour Rapid Charging Bay Up to 1 hour As an introductory offer, you will not have to pay for parking while you are charging your vehicles. Drivers are asked to stay no longer than one hour in a rapid charge parking spot and no longer than four hours in a fast charger parking space. Permanent parking tariff arrangements may be introduced at a later date. Users of non-electric vehicles will not be allowed to use the spaces where the charging points have been installed and will be issued with a penalty notice if they break this rule.

Hi George, its premium content so we cannot see it as it is behind a sign up pay wall.

Oh I know about things that are/seem expensive but have an intrinsic value. I have the battle with Sky Sports every couple of years, I knock them down to £60 a month and then it creeps up to £90 a month. Having my full fibre fitted today so will be giving Sky a right going over especially as MotoGP and F1 end in a few days time and there will be little to watch except Xmas repeats. Get my subscription for Bike magazine as part of my Lloyds Classic account but then Lloyds give virtually no interest on savings or credit account balances . The car and bike are still one of mankind greatest inventions, separates us from the other animal of Earth. Just wish we would use them powered by sunshine and wind (and nuclear baseload) rather than the liquified biomass of long dead creatures and plant and the biproduct of combusting it in our boxes on wheel is the polluting of said Earth for the other 7 billion inhabitants.

That could be a scary calculation as to annual cost of the car ie = insurance,road tax, MOT and fuel used, servicing cost 400 miles travelled . You might be in Bugatti Veyron territory there. My motorcycle is probably another vehicle with a scary pounds per mile amount.

The countries with the highest percentage of EVs are places like Norway and Sweden and there cars tend to have seat warmers, and heated steering wheel and even battery heaters to help the traction battery work as efficiently as possible. Us EV fan boys follow those Nordic, and German Journalists and Youtubers as there experience and sharing, as well as Robert Llewelyn, guy from Red Dwarf, whose dedication deserves a knighthood in my opinion. I did not go for any of that as I thought I could go without heated seat, my arse has enough insulation to keep my core temperature up and my size 12 hands rarely get cold but a pair of driving gloves for the first 5 minutes until the Heat Pump kicks in will suffice. The windscreen clearing of the Zoe rivals a Ford or other car with heated windscreen as it is near instantaneous at providing hot air to the windscreen and I can use the my Renault App to start the process whilst I am on my final slice of peanut butter on toast and last sips of coffee whilst it is still connected to my Pod Point Home Charger. Maybe not at the 5p a kwh but sadly at the 15p but hey ho, all renewable power and expect I am only talking about 10 p of lecky to pre-prep the car. See how it goes getting colder but looking good so far. My October 2020 lecky bill including about 150 kwh of EV charging. 4 bedroom detached home in West Midlands. Breakdown by rate Rate Consumption Cost 4.76p/kWh 165.0 kWh £7.853 14.90p/kWh 226.0 kWh £33.677 Total consumption 391.0kWh @ 10.62p/kWh † £41.53 Standing Charge 31 days @ 23.81p/day £7.38 Subtotal of charges before VAT £48.91 VAT @ 5.00% £2.45 Total Electricity Charges £51.36

Also EVs are seeing strong residuals which is leading to low PCP costs. Not many other £35k cars would have a PCP of less than £300 these days as the second hand value of diesels is less than petrol cars now. Surprisingly also the average annual mileage of a EV is higher than the average mileage for a petrol EV I gather.

My insurance did not go up at all going from a 5 year old 1.4 TSI Octy, 150 hp, worth about £8k, to the Zoe, £34k RRP, 135 hp, only paid a few quick transfer fee. Most EVs have masses of safety sub systems, I think there are something like over 20 on the Zoe .... All the usual ESP etc and as well Blind spot, lane departure etc etc. https://www.renaultgroup.com/en/news-on-air/news/new-zoe-a-whole-suite-of-driving-aids/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Beneath the aerodynamic lines of the New ZOE lies a completely remodelled electrical architecture. It houses several advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) that contribute to both the comfort and safety of the car’s occupants, starting with the driver! Find out more. BY RENAULT GROUP True to their belief that an electric car should be practical and fit easily into everyday life, Renault took advantage of the new ZOE design process to redesign the entirety of its electrical architecture. What was Renault’s goal ? To make it easier to integrate and provide power to the components required by technologies designed to aid drivers, or ADAS (Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems). These systems rely on an array of sensors, cameras and radar. Located all around the car, they observe the conditions of the surrounding environment in order to guide a driver’s movements and improve the safety of both the vehicle and its occupants. The ADAS on board the new ZOE focus on aiding the driver, safety and parking assistance. DRIVING A feature like automatic recognition of traffic signals can, for example, helps keep the driver informed of the current speed limit in real time. It combines GPS data with images transmitted from the front camera to keep the maximum speed allowed permanently displayed on the built-in 10-inch display. A high-speed alert rounds out the information provided, as a warning sign is displayed when driving too fast. Without having to worry about watching speed, the driver can focus their attention on other parameters of driving. In the same way, the blind spot warning alerts the driver when there is an obstacle or another vehicle near the rear sides of their own car, preventing a dangerous lane change when a motorcycle is about to overtake you, for example. SAFETY Most driver assistance technologies help to prevent risks, but some can take on a more active role, demonstrating a real capacity to respond to problems. Such is the case with automatic emergency braking, a system that can trigger the car’s braking mechanism if the driver does not react quickly enough to an obstacle. As for the lane departure warning system and lane keep assist, they protect against any driving lapses that may be caused by drowsiness or distractions.