lol-lol

That wad generally down to staff at Revenue Directorate to work it out, write the law. Some of the chat had there were amazing, blue sky thinking. As mentioned before when talking about claiming mileage that has been around for decades and the system is full of holes about which measurement to use, dodgy vehicles odometers, Google. Customs tend to like people doing returns and the accepting them, or not, and perhaps issuing their own assessments if they wish too. Sort of what the do in Oregon where it has been in for a while.

How is it going to work ? What if I drive on private roads quite a bit or take the car abroad. Westminster going to charge me for driving on Irish or French roads ? Lots of shortcut trips i can see. Going thru towns and A, B, C, D and E roads, more point to point, clogging up villages, towns and cities ! Bigger wheels so odometer records less, big tall all season and winter tyres pumped up high !

At least Mk 4s moved on from leaf suspension but it was still not great.... Friend had an earlish Lotus Cortina Mk1, twin cam, over 100 hp, deadly

All these stories about the problems with supplier software talking to charger software makes me glad I keep it simple with Octopus GO rather than Intellgent Octopus GO. Yes I only get 5 hours of cheap lecky at a slightly higher price but still 20p per kwh than the single or Day rate and in hundreds of charges, I have an INDRA charger and a PodPoint, I have never had a failed charging session. Once or twice a year I reboot the charger to update the software as the both talk to my router and to the charger manufacturer but absolutely no issues with GO. Just hope the ultra low prices stay when Day rates and Single rates get hiked in January.

Think my Day rate will be close to 30p per kwh. Key thing is my 8.5 p per kwh Night rate does not change at all or if it does is still below 9 p per kwh. Am trawling the Black Friday deals to see if there are some battery deals, plenty advertised at half price but prices should be naturally falling as the key component batteries have been falling big time in cost. Aim is always to use no day time lecky and only nighttime, or solar generated lecky.

Oh yes we need to wack those profiteer oil and gas companies supplying the peaker electricity as they are making a killing, far more the the suppliers who pass on those costs. UK needs to pay properly for that very expensive 4pm to 8 pm electricity. £1 per kwh or whatever the cost really is, i have heard it can be as high as £5 per kwh true cost at times. We get cheap power at night but the other side of the coin is nany using power at tea time when actual cost can be 2, 4, 6,8 times and more than the 28p or so people are paying for lecky.

Not related. Prices going up loads not due to renewable, but due to the nuclear program, debt relief to those who cannot pay etc. Renewable prices, particularly solar, has been dropping like a stone. UK is now looking at sourcing cheaper but bigger Chinese wind turbines, 1000 feet plus in size, 20, 30, 35 MW which produce power at a lower pence per kwh than the current crop of 15 MW turbines. It is the peg of electricity prices to gas and then all these add ons for the likes of Sizewell C and debt relief. Martin Lewis and Greg Jackson just did a good session on this on MSE show.

Some murmurs that the quarterly published rates to compensate thise who drive for the business because as diesel and petrol cars progressively get better mileage due to the increasing amount of the electrical traction side ever increasing resulting in better mpg then the mileage rate will go down. New rates, expected to be lower, due out Monday 1st of December.

Solar and Wind us producing power at about 1p per kwh. It is nuclear which is the really costly electricity source. But we need to generate electricity during those non windy non sunny times or take the obvious route about installing hydro schemes like the Great Glens 30 Gwh pump storage scheme and Bristol Channel and Scottish Island tidal power schemes which can supply more consistent power. Let hope we never get a Chenobol or Three Mile Island disaster.

With UK electricity costs going up big time in 35 days ie about 5% on the daily cao price but I hope the Octopus 🐙 Night rate, GO and IOG, are lovely and cheap abd hope it stays that way. I can see the single rate electricy cost and the Day time rate for the dual rate users like most of us EV users have. UK government needs to off load much of these expensive add ons to electricity to put them on to gas or somewhere else across hydrocarbons ie natural gas, oil.

North of Worcester ie Frankley Services i have used the the Tesla V4 chargers. Going south not sure there are TESLA V4 chargers. Think the R5 can talk to V2, V3 chargers but not sure the 2024 Scenic can. I like Ionity and have used Gridserve a few times but I would rather slow down and become more economical usual but this time I am taking a bunch of lads to a clay pigeon shoot as part of a Stag weekend so may need to get a shift on but it is all A roads across Salisbury Plain and watch out for the 70 tonnes Chiefton tasks which can move much quicker than you think and seem to have no respect for right of way ! Think there are some MFG chargers at Poole.

Got to travel to Bournemouth from Worcester so outside my there and back range in the Scenic so need to charge in Dorset or Wiltshire which are not great for charging. Always please that I can generally find a charger I can use my Octopus Electroverse card, get a bit of a discount and it goes against my house energy bill so may not feel or see the hit if I am in credit and can manage that and of course one can be super accurate on how much energy to draw from the public charger to get me home and then fill up with the cheap lecky.

I dod not hear what battery size it was, presuming 30 khw and tgat battery which is air cooled and no active cooling system has gained a reputation of being susceptible of losing capacity due to overheating, rapidgating so just was pleased to hear a battery reckoned to be one of the weakest out there had survived so many charging connections and still ran even jf yhe capacity was done by a quarter or a third or so. Think Modern Hero did get rid of it after a while and the way the vans battery just dropped like a stone in tge final quarter of the range was frustrating and one would rather see less range at the upper SoC than have it fade too quickly in the lower SoC part. Good to see that all car traction batteries are liquid cooled now as air cooled traction batteries can be a pain. The Renault Zoe will hardly charge at all if the ambient temp is well in to the 40s degree C. Hope Nissan gets lots of sales for the LEAF, Micra, Ariya etc for the sake of Nissan in the NE of England. Good to see the new LEAF get the full £3750 EV grant.

Scottish guy with an EV business in Gloucester. This van Rapid charged nearly six thousands times !!!!!!

I have the smaller battery version ie 40 / 43 kwh. R5 great to drive with the multi link rear suspension. Space in the back seats seats is tiny but I have the Scenic if I think need to give people taller than the average French man (apparently 5 foot 7 inches! my daughters are taller than that ). A policy of charging to 80 otlr 85 % normally abd then topping up to 100% just before I leave for a longer journey I reckon could be the right policy.

Aspmam.... We've done a little research and apparently 100% on VWs is actually only 94%. Was an unoffical source. But I do think it's a bit out of order to say that a car does say 200 miles on a charge but then very forcefully set the car to only charge to 80% to 'preserve the battery'. Really the range should be on the 'recommended charge level'. We certailly didn;t pick the car based on 80% of it's max range nor did anyone at any point suggest that we would only get 80% or would damage the car.. I think this 5 or 6 % buffer above and below the displayed SoC is common with European cars, not so surecabout Far East cars which i suspect report smaller buffers. Toyota / Subaru not withstanding which seem to make a pigs ear of their first fill EV launch. What would be nice is to have a 97 or 98% setting or a displayed 100% and a real 100% charged as 95% displayed seems like it is really 90%. Think i will charge to 95%, stop record the SoC shown and then add the remaining 5% which hopefully is more like 10%. Both my Renault EVs suddenly show about 20% more range now the temps are up by 10c or so. Either as you trundle along or press the trip rest and suddenly you have another 30 miles of reported range !

Nah because you dont want the car battery pack to be equal to the 400V charge you want it to be a good few volts less so 390 is probably a good fully charged voltage with 93 packs. 3.7v is a nominal figure. In fact you can see over 4 volts, almost 4.15 volts and the Lithium ion cells, below is for a 18650 type cell, and amazingly the pack can drop to 3.35v and still be giving power. Nominally a car display showing State of Charge will probably show 100% charged when the cell is showing about 3.95 volts and the same call SOC display will show 0% when the voltage hits about 3.2V. We are warned the first and last 5% or so are preferable not to be used and preferable the manufactures would like us to use the 20% to 80% range displayed, but many owners use 10% to 90% as a guide and many owners are not aware of the 5 or 6 % "buffers" or steeper parts of the curve. Big question are all Chinese, European, Korean manufactures working with similar buffers or some less? Bjorn https://www.youtube.com/@bjornnyland/search?query=drive%20until%20die Bigger battery R5, 45 km past zero !!!

I am developing a theory that car manufacturers are lowering the point at which cars shows 100% charged. Now they are being forced to give 8 year battery warranties where the battery must still have 70% capacity. Manufacturers will assume the worse I think where an EV is charged up to 100% every night for several years. So those of use who only charge to 80% usually, 100% occasionally are probably being too soft on the car. Will go for 100% on R5 during the week for a little trip to South Wales, changing to 95% i got back with only 3% abd tgat was with choosing the A road route back rather than Motorway. Doing the 100% i will see if it adds more than 5% of related mileage and diesel a cell balancing which i understand they do. My R5 has 93 of the 3.7v L ion cell blocks, 52 kwh R5 has 186 cells but in two rows of smaller cell packs. My Urban 40 kw R5 can get 81 kw charging so not too bad a delay if I gave to splash and dash or zap and bolt i suppose. Not regretting going for tge 40 over the 52 kwh yet by the cold weather is invoking some thought.

Thank God the cold spell seems to over for a few days. I have my Renault 5 Evolution model, 40 kwh battery nominal, 43 kwh actual, repkacing the good old Zoe which was 52 / 55 kwhs battery size. Here in middle England where we do not get much sea temperature moderation we had -5c at night and not really above zero by day. R5 and Mini showing 120 mile range when charged to 80 to 80% OMG. Just charged the 60 / 65 kwh Scenic abd that is showing 165 miles at dawn. Trip to stag do in Bournemouth is going to be a challenge as is about 130 miles cross country or 160 miles using faster motorway and charging stops not great in Dorset and Wiltshire. Challenging.

The Chinese cars are so well appointed and safe in the main brands. A few things I worry about like their real range ie less range buffer. But also as the EU investigation into state subsidies and the consequential countervailing duties mean that it is that China is involved in under mining the EU and possible UK EV production to eliminate that competition. Fortunately we have Korea doing its bit and maybe we will see Vietnam and other SE Asian countries to challenge Chinese dominance. Their historic 1 child policy can come back to bight them and India might also become more of a chalenge too.

COP 30 had just finished with a very weak declaration as the Saudis and other oil producers would not even allow the word fossil for describing hydro carbons. It gas been. Increasingly obvious to nany of us that the transition to EVs and Geat Pumps has to simply be an economic choice rather than banning etc. Fortunately EVs are becoming cheaper and cheaper and more bass production of Heat Pump devices will bring prices to change down further. Heat pumps running from off peak electricity via LFP or Sodium batteries sound a good blend of tech. Interesting angle is EU protectionism by levying Countervailing duties on Chinese EVs to help protect their own EV industry that is struggling to compete.

Just following the ship fire in Los Angeles as it is a hybrid vessel of mainly container holds but holds 1 and are for cars apparently. Locals told to keep windows closed. Hopefully all firefighters ok.

Local Renault dealership sending me a V2L adapter FOC ! Had a bit of a moan about something on the PDI of my Evolution Urban range Renault 5 and they are sending me the V2L adapter FOC. It will run at up to 3.7 kw, 16A of course but has the uk 3 pin plug output so really 13A sort of 3 kw. Would be really good for blackouts or charging one of the other EVs if it was not around to charge at the cheap time but the R5 was !

I am pleased with my recent EV acquisitions and the improvement in EV technology ie narrower battery packs. My first EV was the Zoe and whilst not a SUV it was tall and energy consumption was highish at high speeds. Generally well fitted out but the lack of seat height adjustment a pain as i like to adjust the seat up and down, back and forth to change the seating position for comfort. The Scenic Renault describe as a Famiy car rather than an EV, not as tall as most SUVs, do have trouble seeing it in car parks sometimes but again not great energy consumption at higher speeds. The Mini Cooper E is low and handling great and energy consumption pretty good at higher speeds but small battery. Renault 5 picked up last week,again not very tall, not a SUV but a City car specially in the Urban 40 kwh version i have. Very good handling with its multi link suspension at the back. Lots of seat adjustment but like the Mini very little room in the back seats. So I have managed to avoid the ubiquitous SUV though all but the Mini are not great at National Speed Limit for energy consumption. If one wants a EV motorway car then probably between the Model 3 or Polestars and more Chnese cars coming thru that contend. Blade battery packs and just thinner ones dropping from around 150 mm to more like 100 mm are allowing EVs to not be SUVs by default thankfully.

A somewhat weird one. The Mokka GSE. 275 hp, 0-60 in 5.9 seconds, sub £37.5k so one gets the EV grant, quite well worked suspension. As someone from the Opel Manta GTE appreciation club had to have a look but its an SUV shaped and just who is the target audience ???