lol-lol

I don't have solar "on my home" nor to millions of Europeans but they do have solar panels on their balconies, gardens etc. Batteries, EVs and solar panels are not as elitist as you seem to believe. Batteries and panels start from a few quid. Some countries, like France, got less well off in EVs for 99 Euros a month. If one cannot charge at home then there are public charging firm contracts from a few pounds a month which half the price of public charging and then is always TESLA if you can stand using his network but it is generally much cheaper. There are still issues with availability which I found having to traverse Wiltshire and Dorset to go to a stag do in Bournemouth from Worcester, bit of a desert for charging between M4 and the south coast road. But public chargers are funded to treble in the next few years bringing them up to 300,000 and cost will fall with energy price reductions next April and competition and more off peak cheap slots and compared to what fuel is going to cost in 12 months time the price differential will be even bigger than now.

Wind has hit 24 GWs production and that records is being broken almost every month with all the new turbines coming on line. More and more solar with solar farms and hone generation is happening More battery storage sites are being built and home storage continues to grow. UK does need projects lije the Great Glen Hydro project and tidal schemes in the Bristol Channel and Western Isles, Orkney etc for a good reliable source of power as well as more country to country interconnectors. Some on this site are already largely self reliant for powet most of the year, it is this depth of winter that id tge only hard bit between i can generate some power here near the winter solstice if ther is a bit of sun shine then download the rest i need from the cheap wind and nuclear base load where energy companies can still make a profit at 7p a kwh and hopefully that will near half in April. When retired I might give Octopus Agile a go and get more of the free stuff. We are all waiting to see these new solar panels with double the efficiency and in combo with yet more wind, some tidal and pump storage no gas or oil will be needed hardly ever and UK can be net zero for carbon.

Think it is about 45 % and I am all for for levelling some of the aspects of home and public charging costs starting with VAT on public charging going down to the E rate of 5% like home lecky. Sunak did not even answer the question when asked in Parliament. Wish Octopus would do their own chargers. As well as VAT the unloading of additional charges on electricity to everyone should help bring prices dien by another few pence too. I love our Mini Cooper E but like many Minis it has lowish range. I have been wondering for a while why you choose an EV with such a low range when driving around in the Big Country ?

People, more ordinary drivers, will want to drive them as the running costs fall well below that of ICE cars. This is achieved by ICE car fuel rising faster than inflation, pension and wage inflation m, whilst EVs just gets cheaper abd cheaper to buy, PCP etc and cheaper to rub with cheaper energy costs. Octopus just confirmed that £150, average, reduction in energy costs will be passed to customers with fixed deals too and if on the unit cost, rather than standing charge as initially mentioned then EV users could see their energy costs dmdrop by £300 a year plus, pretty much negating the 3p a mile upcoming charge. We need to see Nissan to do well at Washington Sunderland but also JLR to pivot to EVs which they say they are doing. Hopefully Toyota at Burniston too. Whilst the EU, it appears, will drop the 2030- 2035 ICE ban the CO2 targets, and penalties are looking like being so stringent ie low CO2, that the ICE hybrids will be more like the BMW i3 with range extender or one of the Fiats tgat also had about a 600cc twin cylinder engine, maybe it might be a single cylinder engine of about 250-350 Cc and by then petrol will be about £2 a litre by extrapolation ? Certainly will give engineers a challenge to make vehicles with CO2 of say 75 gm/ km, then 50, the. 25, then 10 or less, in Real World conditions too not just in a lab. Possible but difficult.

I gather France is actually making the batteries itself now as well as the battery packs and need to check if Nissan is doing this in Sunderland and I presume BMW would be doing this at the Liepzig plant to qualifying for the UK higher grant amount of £3750. The cost of the 3 motor A390 looks like it is going to be pricey as will be the electric A110 even in rear wheel drive only version, might squeeze under £50k Expensive Car Supplement. Renault making the all Electric Ford badged Fiesta would get the full grant £3750 like the R5, A290 and Micra are getting / going to get. Try and find where Renault is getting its lithium but if more of these batteries are LFP rather than Lithium NMC you don't need as much lithium and iron and phosphate are cheap and plentiful.

Places like Cornwall have lots of the minerals needed and Sweden is opening up new mines in the far North and as long as they do not disturb any Trolls should be OK. Renault has imported LG Chem lithium batteries up until now and is starting to pivot towards LFP chem. The Lithium has come from Australian, Canada, Chile and several other countries and sometimes from China but that is the danger relying on China and giving them near monopoly status and therefore some companies have deliberate policies not to get more than a certain percentage from any particular sources. Renault are doing much more of the battery pack building in France hence some cars are qualifying for the larger £3,750 UK Grant EV (damn I only got the £1500 EV grant but I did get other discount as well bringing it down to just over £21k). £4B Tata factor in Somerset will be operational later next year, 2026, barring delays.

Employments Right Bill in its Final Stages. https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3737#timeline Along with hike in minimum wage should help. I have always joined the Trade Union at work if there is one. More recently the companies I have worked for have Workers Councils but I am not so impressed as to how they work. Very big companies like mine try a demonstrate good working conditions as a matter of showing corporate responsibility. This as well as a bewildering amount of facilitation such as car schemes and pension savings though many of the base wages are kept on the low side by such cut throat competition in logistics I find. Being a unusual specialist, I find, rather than a generalist, helps keep salaries higher but then one in a job it is a nightmare keep the salary up with inflation and only option then is to threaten to leave and if no movement then actually leave. Some jobs out there I am finding, part time and full time.

Worth remembering that inflation rose 76% during the Con-Lib and Con 14 year reign. A £1 in 2010 was only worth 57p by 2024 ! All relative, except Junior Doctors pay and some other stuff. A Renault 5 for well under £20k, or a Micra, sounds good value to me. Paid £5.8k for a Campus R5 in about 1990 I recall.

Suspect i would not get a decent discount compared to the big discount I can get off some Renaults. Be interesting to see what the Sandero and Stepway retail for in Euros in mainland Euro. Manufacturers tend to put in quite a margin to sell in to the UK. I heard 6% premium for making RHD cars and then a margin to deal with Euro to Pound fluctuations. Euro has been getting stronger against the pound and so margins squeezed and dealers don't like to constantly tweak UK prices, down or up, to track tgd cost of making the cars in Euros. That said one can see more discount being offered or peachy finance deals. The prices of the Spring have been crazy low, £11k or less for a new one nmbut having driven one i am not surprised. I thought there were no bad cars anymore until I drove that. New Spring out soon which should be much better and it needs to be.

Think the R5 is more than the Scenic because I have the son on it. It went down from the ZE50 Zoe, 135 hp, to the 120 hp R5 even though the R5 is just as quick accelerating and handles so much better, think it is a bit less than £600 but son still in his twenties so adds a bit. His Mini insurance is lower with me on it then without. He's insurance went down massively going from the 145 hp to the 182 hp Mini Cooper E. Many factors at play here. Insurance went up big time after Covid and then reigned in earlier this year thankfully. The Scenic is in the low four hundreds I think with just ne on it. A few groups less than the more common 220 hp Scenic as mine is "only" 170 hp but it is actually almost as quick as torque is quite close and mine is lighter. I have got hit with higher cost as j was paying monthly and therefore interest as I choose to put more in to pension that pay outright for xar insurance. This year coming I will just pay the insurance outright upon renewal and save all that interest cost. Worcestershire is on tge low side for insurance loading compared to many places abd my mileage has come right down ie 8k for R5 and 10k for Scenic compared to 25k when j was rushing around trying to prepare companies for BREXIT. Sure my insurance will be less in 2026 due to things like paying all upfront. With LV and the seem to give us public servants and ex public servants along with Boundless ie was CSMA, and been pleased with the except for the post Covid spike but it seems to less this year than was year before. Not heard of it spiking again.

When can understand the popularity of very cheap ICE cars. The Dacia Sandero and Renault Clio, same platform, is the best selling car in Europe bar none and having owned a Clio with the 0.9 litre TCE engine and a Dacia Logan estate car with the same engine they are incredibly cheap to buy and run. My Logan was £10k when j got it a decad ago, could run it for less than 25p a mile all in and I got an extra grand when I traded it in after 3 years, total bargain. The 0.9 litre Clio, early mark 4 so the better looking one, one daughter would poodle it about and be getting 65 mpg but also still managed to out speed a fiesta showing over 115 mph on the speedo. Probably still be a market for such cars, the bew Clio mk 6 looks stunning too so I can see its success continuing. The hybrid version of the Clio, nicer to drive did not do better mpg than the 0.9 TCE engine abd cost thousands more to buy. EU would have to relax its annually decreasing emmisions requirements ie 95, 94 gm/km as thus is very difficukt to achieve without hybrid assistance. Like with EVs the battery packs are getting cheaper but to add all the gubbins of efficient EVs is costly on top of a car that is bargain price, but actually fine as a even only car for a small family.

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.