lol-lol

There are lots of very good second hand EVs around now and for quite small money. Also increasingly cheap monthly payments on new as the subsidies feed through and for people who need lowish monthly payments abd very low running costs meaning lowish monthly outgoings are options out there. Putting 60 or 70 pounds of diesel or petrol two or three times a month is expensive when although the PCP etc might be a bit higher when one looks at the all in cost EVs are looking better and better as months go by. 2026 will be a pivotal year I reckon as ICE vehicle running costs leap upwards with the rises in fuel duty but EV cost continue to fall with electicity cost coming down and ever cheaper vehicles due to cheaper batteries, more cars getting the full £3750 grant and the Expensive Car Supplement getting pushed much higher.

I am guessing you are specifically referring to CO2 and it is true that producing an EV requires several tonnes of CO2, one way or another, to be made. We have no replacement yet to sea transport, or air, than burning diesel or as we do currently but increasingly we are replacing our container ships with LNG as a fuel which about a quarter less CO2. But there are the other pollutants such as NOX and brake dust that EVs produce little to none of not just CO2 but ICE vehicles produce significant amounts of.

Every ICE car is horrendous for emissions in the first mile or so ie as the Cat gets up to temperature. Tests show those emissions are up to 6 or 7 times worse than the lab test emmissions results. On top of that a car with some tens of thousands of miles on the clock, leaking piston rings and it will ve even worse. EVs don't really change their emissions through their lifetime. The new UK EV government grant system rewards local biulding of battery packs and this is why the UK government is rewarding BMW MINI Leipzig factory, Nissan at Sunderland and Renault's Northern France ElectriCity site for their green production techniques clustering battery and car production together. I have had horror stories with second hand out of warranty ICE cars, simple thermostat problem costing hundreds of pounds, no thank you. EV simplicity and reliability. Worth putting up with the less range for all the benefits of massively lower running costs, fast warm ups, instant acceleration etc.

Very understandable. Glad I am not having to go on to new employers VAG scheme, only wish to stay on the cash scheme so I can choose. Loved my dozen Skodas from Felicias to Octavias and numerous L&K and VRSs but nothing in the Skoda range tempts me any more when compared to other marque offerings sadly. Hope Skoda will be sold by VW at some point and be as successful as Dacia is to Renault….. Needless superfluousness snipped , Briskoda staff New company does have EV charging at most sites though either free or at around 30 p kwh so one plus.

Time is money and to get ready to travel a mile for mother and child is not easy, sure we use to do it because we had to, one car in the family which usually went with the dad going off to work but now many families are two and 3 cars but I was simply saying how far superior EVs are at short journeys. Less damage to the engine, pre conditioning the cabin is standard, running cost for short journeys less too. When the rain is coming across near horizontally, high winds for person and pram. At least it is fairly flat i suppose, a mile in Yorkshire with those hills sounds like a big physical challenge.

Normally yes but forgot to mention she is driving a bit more than that to drop the granddaughter off at nursery. Also the weather has been exceptionally foul and one would arrive like a drowned rat if walking or riding in this horrendous weather we are having.

Your borderline ? It is legally allowed and encouraged by the state though creation of the legislation and promoting of the schemes. Car schemes and allowances have been part of UK employment practices for decades. Companies have treated these add ons as sacrosanct for as long as I can remember. Even post Covid where there is much less travel and when Companies introduce travel restrictions when work mileage drops from tens if thousands to hundreds the car schemes stay. I think the big companies do more so go down the route of car lists rather than other schemes and no doubt get a massive discount on those cars the likes us private buyers would see, even those of us with "Blue Light" discount access. The bigger the company the more convoluted their tax avoidance schemes seem to be. I don't like their restriction of choice. Out if all VAG cars the Audi e- tron GT is really desirable. Near £90k which can be had for about £800 pm on salary sacrifice which is similar to my car allowance. BIK tax is ramping up and still have to get your insurance so well over 1k a month cost.

Very synical. Cannot remember the last car I actually owned, I think figures such as 90% are lease, PCP etc. With EVs, as they have been getting so much cheaper so quickly it is a brave person to actually buy one. My Zoe had just gone back and ballon payment was about £13k but car worth about £8k so Renault, sort of, take the bath with that and not me. The R5 i might keep but not until the 0% finance period ends. One has to be very careful picking tge right EV Salary Sacrifice deals as some of them just do not look like good deals at all. Also Salary Sacrifice for EVs, I think, really only works if one is a 42% or 47% tax payer rather than 28% as the deals i was looking at did not really even show that margin od advantage of a normal PCP deal one could get in the normal non EV salary sacrifice deals. I have not had the opportunity and my present company do help provide company acquired cars but only from the VAG stable. SEAT is probably the only marque I would consider of VAG but their choose is narrow as VAG sort off missed the boat with EVs unless one looks at the top end Audis of recent biuld. So I have been stuck with a £9k pa car allowance which the best i can do is to add that to the third to a half of wages I put from wages to salary sacrifice to pension and launder the money that way and get it as a part of the tax free lump sum next year and other 3/4 into Annuities and Drawdown funds which will be taxable of course. Ideal of an outgoing of £500 a month for cars is quite horrifying when in retirement, must make sure provision is made. Mortgage should be gone in next few weeks so cars will be one if my biggest outgoings. As Martin Lewis says pay down debts with highish interest rates ie over 4% i reckon.

I have been too busy to work with the party up until now but with retiring soon I hope to much more going forward. I was invited to the party conference in Liverpool but could not fit it in as I have a lot of HMRC case work to finish before I leave my present work. Anyone has the opportunity to joining the ruling party and be involved and feed in to policy. My MP replaced the Con MP and regularly invites us for discussions and whilst he is a junior MP he can forward to the appointed Minister or one can go direct. Have considered becoming a Councillor and might do in the future but would not want to go as far a becoming an MP and too old for all that. Done my stint of regular trips to London meetings to HM Treasury when part of JCCC Groups.

It is why I am fully behind raising the minimum wage despite the protestations of businesses. Everybody should be paid enough to save for their secondary pension and it is a crying shame if people choose to opt of pension schemes as they need they extra few hundred pounds of income or feel they had not enough headroom to join salary sacrifice. I explained the negative side to one of my daughters about Salary Sacrifice for pensions and I think she understood. She is lucky enough to drive less than a mile to work and an ICE car is totally unsuitable for that journey where an EV would be perfect. As EVs become ever cheaper due to the battery costs falling plus the increasing Government grants hopefully we can get those doing short journeys in to EVs where ICE cars are not even getting up to running temperature and their pollution is bad. On another note it is sounding like Ford want to start using the incredible successful Renault 5 platform as well as Nissan with the Micra of course, and the Alpine A290, Renault 4, Twingo etc.

But this is what Salary Sacrifice can be about. Not putting any more than mandated by law, 5% think it is currently, but that money is not taxed and goes straight to pension pot meaning more can go in. Employers benefit as well ad their Employers NI is cut. Downsides are it costs the employer something to operate the scheme and employees see a bit less in their payslips which might affect their house buying potential. Similar for SS for EVs, employers could be giving staff less money to get them in a car to do their job and employee get a car at a big discount plus governments help get closer to their EV % mandate.

It is a fuzzy area and gaming is a lose term. The UK government creates tax law to collect taxes and encourage certain behaviour, like saving for one's pension and obtaining a market for its debt ie by pension funds buying the UK government Gilts. Also like with facilitation of ISAs and the government grant for EVs and salary sacrifice for EVs and well as pension savings. I am oft reminded of the saying of Britain richest family (the long line of the Dukes of Westminster), richer than UK royalty it is said that...... UK government, past and present, wants its citizens to adopt EVs, save for their pensions, and they use the tax laws to do so. It was every thus !

IOG is bringing in rules to stop abuse ie a fair usage clause for those who were getting over 6 hours 7p per kwh. More of a rule change and still full 6 hours available. Think it us those with large ev batteries who were bending the system. Several YouTube videos and Octopus giving some examples. No big problem.

An amazing place. Probably only happened as we had the Central Electricity Board. 0 to full power in 20 seconds. Built to deal with a million kettles going on at half time in live events like World Cup. Would like to see the Great Glen hydro project go ahead which is more than 3 times bigger than Dinorwig. Australia has a hydro project more than 3 times the Great Glen hydro. Wonderful tech.

The Angelsey reactors can link into the Snowdonia high voltage lines that link Dinorwig, think they are over 2 GW lines. They needed to bury them as they crossed though Snowdonia National Park and produced thermal vents which were made to look like shepherd's day time rest huts, cute.

I last read the plan was to have under sea interconnectors between Scotland and England. There is already the ultra high voltage Grid close to Bristol and along the South Wales coast which is also being used to plug in new Battery Storage sites in that area. As with Scotland the area of North Wales and Merseyside pay very high standing charges etc. I would like to see a UK rate for standing charges ratger than this inequitable situation. National Grid national pricing.

Good news that the government is removing hundreds of millions of pounds of these add ons off our unit price in April only 111 days time, abd off gas as well. 3 5p per kwh of electricity and about 0.4 p per kwh off gas which is already very cheap compared to even the Night time rates for electricity.

We can easily have benefits from both the worlds largest wind farms which are off the English coast in the North Sea and if we get our finger out and biuld those tidal generation systems in the Bristol Channel which can provide about 5 GW and do it with consistency with only the relative minor variations of Neap and Spring tides. Of the 3 ie solar, wind and tidal tide is the most reliable which is the main criticism that renewable get.

Keep reducing in length ? Only IntelligentOctopus GO gave introduced a fair usage constain but users still get 6 hours so EV owners can get over 40 kwh in their cars. Some of us use Octopus GO which give us 5 hours of cheap charging between 0030 and 0530 and I find they enough to take the cars from say 25% to 80% charge, even the Scenic with its 60 kwh battery never mind the R5 with its 40 kwh battery and the Mini Cooper E which i can see stopping charging around 0400-0430 as they gave taken 25 to 30 kwh ie up to 90% well in advance of the 0530 cutoff. I was chuffed when Octopus GO cheap hours was extended from 4 hours to 5 hours cheap shift and continuallty pegging the rates of IOG and GO at 7p and 8.5 p respectively means tgat relatively the price has been dropping in real terms. If Grid supply costs were to go higher or less cheap time, I think we could expect ever more people to generate their own i tge grid and electricity wholesalers have to think about driving recover more users to making their own and not buying from the grid. Electricity is typically about 1p per kwh when being made or taken from the interconnects and then all the fluff is added on top. Users are adding more battery storage themselves so can choose even more when to buy from the Grid. Had a another peak at National Grid live ie iamkate website and great to see Wind commonly out supplying gas. I believe electricity is going to get cheaper abd onward, gas happen in many countries and needs to and wi happen here in the UK.

As far as I am aware the 3.5 per Kwh to everyone applies ? Including the Public charging networks, is not the case ? Public charging networks need to all have the 20p reduction for reduction in te cheap periods and perhaps a 10p a kwh when outside the teatime slot of 4-7 pm when I would be quite happy for them to charge a £1 a kwh as everyone should be who can shift but uses electricity when it is very expensive from the Grid. The pubic charging networks are slowly getting better at offering cheaper electricity when it is cheaper for them. Of course the connections fees for the Public Chargers companies to the grid are huge and their capital expenditure is also big. When my company owned Source London with its near 2,000 public chargers the cost of these charging units plus the associated install costs can be between £20k and £100k per rapid /ultra rapid chargers s that investment has to be recovered as well. So public charging cost should come down a lot over the next 6 months as they will with home charging. The cost of EV running is going to come down and down and the 3 p a mile is just a measure to get EVs to pay some tax as that amount we pay is just going down and down whether it is the VAT on the vehicle due to then getting cheaper and government grants making it so or ever cheaper electricity costs. Converse the case whether it is oil company profiteering, increase fuel duty and VED.

I think public chargers and destination chargers will have an increasing place and home chargers diminish as a percentage. I visited a nice MFG refilling site at Poole last weekend. It had 8 diesel/petrol pumps, 6 150 kw chargers, Subway, shop, toilets. Mtor Fuels Group, largest of the UK retailers with most forecourts, seem to the getting this right. Well over 1,000 sites and they seem to be planning to tuck EV charging on those sites where they can plus a few EV only sites where infrastructure dictates. On the other hand, my experience is that BP and Shell are getting it very wrong. With my company we have EV charging at most if out sites, offices and warehouse at prices close to home charging single tariff homes. So the big nut to crack is Public chargers and we should see those prices come down by 3.5p per kwh in April but also better sign in deals which I would use but I only use public charging half a dozen times a year so not really worth it but it could change in retirement when I do more visits to relatives. Public charging seems to be able to be had for around 43p a kwh with these deals but that should drop below 40 p per kwh with the electricity price drops in April. Like with all home "improvements" is it worth putting a channel in, as with adding EV charge boxes or buying a Granny charger to what c an save over public charging costs if they are only 12 p a kwh more than the home charge cost. If one is doing the miles then signing up to the Day / Night tariff schemes and sorting out home charging can be worth it. www.motorfuelgroup.comCreekmoor, FS1078 | Fuel Station | Motor Fuel GroupOpening times, contact information, directions, services & extras for our Creekmoor, FS1078 fuel station.

I gather this is more down to Renault CEO than RR as Renault upper its minimum deposit from 30% to 40%. New Renault CEO seems more busy savvy than the last one. No big discounts on the 5 either as Renault sort of saying it sells itself. Better deals on the Megane ie i coukd getvm a big Blue Light discount on that but not the 5. Was ever thus. Small discounts on the bread and butter cars but bigger ones on the segment C and D cars. Such a bargain now and with cheaper lecky from April first these is good. Hopefully cheaper Publuc charging as well as home lecky.

I think Stellantis are getting better quite quickly and their very large number of models there is something for most people. Going from Citroen Peugeot to the massive group it is now and some really quite good cars in the line up. I think their problem is they keep losing out to Renault in the awards etc. So 8 out of 10 for products etc but they could do with win or two plus getting cars in the bigger EV grant category. Of all I hope Nissan LEAF does well as it has the British factory.

We have a Cooper E but it is Chinese, ie GWL made and I have not heard of a change there. It is very well made and even the Cooper E is as quick as an Alpine 180 and not far behind a 220 hp version. Cooper SE quick and JWC another level. Good to see Europe doing some good work as Mini-BMW and Renaultare, just need Stellantis and VW to up their fame more too. Yarp.(Hot Fuzz).

Renault 5, and Alpine 290, and Renault 4 getting the full £3,750 UK government grant. Battery pack now hits the criteria for French ecological origin as of about 1st of December. Mini Countryman, made in Leipzig, also has gained full EV grant status of £3750 rather than £1500.