lol-lol

You must have missed the reports of substantial damage to both gas and oil facilities in the Persian Gulf. About one sixth of some facilities damaged with a quick estimation by them the repairs could take a few years rather than weeks or months. I tend to watch Aljazeera and Bloomberg rather than BBC or other British channels.

Clarkson not even a good British farmer, not been to Agricultural college abd it shows. Governments act or sometimes the right action is not to act. Israel, Iran and US, with the Gulf states as side actors, have chosen certain paths overvthe last few weeks, months, years and decades to bring us where we are today. I think many how foolish it was to rely on the pricing and supply of a remote and despotic region. This should logically spur on the adoption of more renewable and local powet generation and fuel for transportation. The policy of the different hues of UK political parties has been to financially encourage EV adoption as well using heat pump technology. Both have come on leaps and bounds in the last decade or so to make them level in many regards to fossil fuel versions and in some ways vastly superior ie running costs. One thing is fairly certain that Gulf War 3 has prompted us all to look more closely at components of our lives. The meeting at Downing St with industry to discuss the fuel hike price issues did leak a few points. I presume they may have signed NDAs but main thing i heard was a request to delay the hike in fuel Excise duty in September. Government would have asked dirsek and petrol retailer why they hiked so fast and so high. There was a report to parliament in late March ie about 2 weeks ago. Think it was saying retailers were on to make over a billion pounds on there preemptive and exorbitant actions on price. J would be angry if I was a fuel buyer, particularly diesel. Act of God is a colloquial term used for Force Majeur. Smart contracts gave clauses to pass on certain types of supply chain cost surprises. Whilst my recently left international logistics employer is one of the biggest in airfreight, rail freight and sea freight and contracts have such clauses it is oft that such companies are not massive road freight providers leaving it to smaller independent firms who i am afraid are very exposed as their contracts are not usually as watertight and tend to go bust in these sorts of times sadly. I don't think transport is going to be the same after GW3. Some might think that is a good think in the end !!

As just said both Cons and Lab government chose this path. Trump has not and he cancelled EV subsidies but he has managed to **** off ICE drivers even more with relatively expensive diesel and petrol. Whether Reform would emulate Trump we will hear over the next months and years. We still have massive choice in the UK. Those choosing pure diesel and petrol gas dropped to under half of new sales. Big middle ground of mild, self cgarging hybrid and PHEV is a big middle group and BEV continue to tick up. Most BEVs don't get the full £3750 but Asian makers are matching those European subsidies from their own margin which they are able to do as the battery packs get cheaper and cheaper. I don't dwell on this relatively little EV subsidies which compared to other financial matters the government and am more concerned with lending costs, inflation, energy cost as well as the move at best speed for the UK to be self sufficient for energy and supply of oils for plastics etc. If the UK can sell oil and gas icences to secure supply but the concern has always been that the North Sea etc is relatively expensive to extract from compared to Middle East land based wells abd from what I hear there is not a massive amount of oil and gas left that would nowhere near get us back to being an exporter as we were decades ago. There might be more fields out there. Italy just found a load of oil off Egypt. Oil and gas have to compete against renewables which continue to fall in generation costs with taller turbines and more efficient solar panels. Only if private industry bear most the financial risk with maybe some early years tax consessions so the UK has security of supply. Maybe for aviation fuel but European crude does not seem to be good for producing diesel, just the nature of the crude.

The Uk and other countries, like the largest European economy of Germany, tried a period of not giving EV grants but sales dried up and they did not get the net billions of Euros of tax and were not going to hit their emmissions targets so they reintroduced the grants. Who can say which was the dominant factor ie net tax income or emissions target or fairly equal. Didn't influence my decisions or my decision to give up my fuel card which was worth a grand or two a year. My decesion was based on no me finding it unacceptable to keep on polluting not financial. For many, particularly thise using salary sacrifice system for EVs I suspect it was mainly financial. Whether it is Con party or Labour running the scheme they gave acred similarly. I can live with my conscious as I reckon I pay about 4 times what the median tax payer pays ie average is about £5k tobm £6k where i have paid closer to £20k each year in the last few years. The 5 year old £3k grant for car and charger and recent £1500 for the 5 is chicken feed to the circa £100k in income tax and NI in that period paid.

Dont see it that way Graham. I pay tens of thousands in tax every year. I did not apply for the EV grant it is just the dealer who did the paperwork. He would have looked at me very strangely if I said no thanks. Possibly would have claimed it and added it to their margin. I have been a massive net tax contritutor. Don't use ISAs and happy to pay tax on interest on savings over the limited allowed. Like the EV grant my employer operated Salary Sacrifice in to pensions. Only opt out is to not pay anything in to pension which lets them off their contribution so as with the EV grant it is not sensible to not get it. There tends to be rules with all these schemes, minimum values to get it so the government never losses out and always gets a net receipt with it. Now Heat Pump grants is an entirely different scenario and scale. £7.5k grant, reportedly going to £9k or even £12k in certain circumstances ie low income. Now there is some big handouts but sound like we can get people off gas and heating oil and on to cheap lecky.

EV buyers, adopters still pay far more than they get in the handouts. I got the biggest handouts under the Con government ie £3k, the VAT on the car was about £6k so tax v handout was still a sizeable net receipt rather than handout for government. Scenic did not get a handout and wax actually a lower RRP than the Zoe such is the dramatic fall in EV cost. The Renault 5, bought under the Lab government reign got a handout half the size than under the Cons and I was either expecting or motivated by it as it came along after I ordered it. Again the handout was less than the half the size of the VAT on the car so government a real net gainer on the tax versus handout. It is like the net effect is that the VAT rate for EVs being lower than Standard rate rather than a big handout! Then there is the massive tax one gets on a car allowance which the government gets. In my case that was £3,600 a year of tax being paid. With ICE cars there was also the tax being paid on fuel on a fuel card, both by the employer and the employee which the government starts to miss and has to find elsewhere which is another dimension. The big miss on net taxation is where tax payers get to use the EV salary sacrifice scheme. Introduced by the Con government the tax avoidance on that can be massive. I was looking enviously at the numbers on an Audi etron where instead of paying £1300 a month one could be paying £900, a near £5k a year saving, or loss to government. All done by Cons of Lab to help achieve the lowering of pollution and reliance on non UK energy I suppose.

Think of the massive VAT collection from diesel and petrol with these evaluated prices. Maybe not wanting to kill a golden goose ?

What rate was that ? I would be very happy with anything around 10 p per kwh at least for a few hours a day. I think this Gulf war will encourage massive hone investment in batteries and balcony / plug in solar and with the nassive amount of wind power both in UK and other northern European countries there will be some hours most days and other periods of very cheap lecky it is just a case of storing it for a while. Newspapers reporting thise eith incomes of less than £35k pa could get heat pump grants of 9k to 12k as well as plug in solar grants effectively reducing annual energy bills from £2k ish to a few hundred pounds a year and therefore vastly reduce any household dependable on the sky high cost of electricity, gas and heating oil !! Wealthier households will be expected to adopt heat pump and solar solutions at their own expense or just put up with the high prices !!! Charging the 3 EVs will continue to be our main electricity usage with the house being an add on which benefits from the Octopus dual time of use tariff with the incredibly low Night time tariff rate.

Had a look but not enticing for either electricity or gas. It is the Night electricity rate which is key for my cheap running and that us not ruled by the price cap but at the discretion of Octopus and the other firms who offer dual rate tariffs. My 12M Gas is set at 5.39p per kwh until mid June abd I will start looking at fixes next month. Pla. To biuld up a but of credit, get my solar to provide all the day tine owerri need, even on cloudy days and find a nice big battery before Q3 starts. Less £100 per kwh in a criteria and at least able to supply 3 kw. Of course cpukd use thd R5 car at times as V2L. Some signs ships might get thru in bigger numbers soon.

My Renaults will not move if the cable is still attached to the car ie a movement lock. Suppose I should find out how to unbind the cable from the car if it came to it, on the Mini Cooper e too. Will check the location of both, or 3 including the Scenic, so I can use if worse comes to worse. Found this link, might be a bit generic but it does sound a common feature to have a manual release mechanism tucked away in the "engine bay" somewhere.... https://leap24.co.uk/support/cable-stuck/ In other news I had my first Octopus bill covering mostly March but a bit of April. Average electricity cost 8.35p per KWh including Day and Night rate for the 163 KWh of lecky used in the first 4 days of April. Be looking forward for plenty of that for the next 3 months. If electricity goes up 20% in July then new challenge. Whether to go for one of this Balcony, plug in solar systems but I would probably always have a storage battery between solar collection and my ring main as I tend to only be using about 200 W most the time in the day with occasion 3KW boiling the kettle and with 90% of power use during Night time period to keep the cost down. More batteries needed but one that can run over 3KW loading I reckon. But then the Renault 5 can act as Vehicle to Load which could be useful when electricity prices go nuts in July.

I have had a tug of war with 2 AC destination chargers where the locking pin failed to release my cable even though my car unlocked and charge stopped. The locking pin is quite a little diameter jobbie and whilst some force was needed it was not massive, maybe 30 or 40 kgs and not 100 or so. Not sure it counts as vandalism, they were my company chargers and talking to the engineer he blamed lack of periodic maintenance. Some chargers have little lever tabs one can press with the right screwdriver 🪛 and some gave a little extra release pull tucked away but that needs panel access. A new charge show above should not have such issues though.

With reports that some car makers, Stellantis for example, if was sounding like car makers were going to continue to make ICE vehicles beyond 2030 and 2035. Not sure about the Range Rover side of JLR who might see that ICE is still part of their future for many year to come. Certainly sales of the Range Rover knock offs such as Jaecoo are selling very well, PHEV versions particularly. Tough future I expects for JLR but at least Tara seem to be backing JLR but with some UK government backing it also appears.

As far as I can see all future Jaguar production models will be electric ie made at their UK sites and the Wolverhampton diesel plant being repurposed for electric motors. 800v architecture, tri motor configuration and 120 kwh battery packs to compete with the best of the Getnan output. Fingers crossed it is success further UK's export figures. Miss my Type S even though it had too many Ford parts for my liking. Felt special. Great jobs for Somerset for the battery packs.

Yes seems to be all about cost of local network divided by population size. Grid and capital projects ie as Dinorwig was and Great Glen hydro, Mersey and Bristol Channel tidal will be private enterprise or central government funded i guess. Sooner the better, should have been started a decade or more ago.

Saving up for the Mersey barage and then lecky weekly be so cheap locally. Scotland has the Great Glen hydro scheme then they will be set fair !

My Day rate a bit lower than that 27.16 p but I hear many are not too happy with the Standing Charge but them there is a £60B program to upgrade the Grid to be paid for. If we also add in some free sessions with Octopus the real cost can be even lower which will be very nice. Cooper E and R5 efficiency getting up over 4 KWh now temp hitting 15C and even thd much bigger Scenic should be getting close to that. I do worry public chargers are going to get much busier as dealer showrooms get emptied of EVs and EV usage also climbs and we need to get to that 200k public chargers eve though 90% plus of EV charging will continue to be done at home most likely.

Screen wash is about the only liquid I do buy. No oil for top up or servicing etc. Cabin filter changes at servicing, no air filters or oil filters. Hence why servicing and EV is so cheap as well as its energy top ups etc.

Like all marques the EV market has good and not so good marque. I gather BYD tend to be on the better side. Next door has the little Atto 1, looks decent. Ex boss bought a Jaecoo 7 PHEV, not so sure about that. The Mini we have, Cooper EV is really good quality throughout though BMW would gave overseen everything I expect. It us actually made by Great Wall Motors. Dacia Spring is Chinese biult and mych of the new RenaultcTwingo is Chinese j gather with just a final screw together operation in Europe. The prices are just so low many are taking a punt. Though some of the Minis, Nissans and Renaultvplus others are getting that £3750 UK government grant which on the cheaper models is making them quite low monthly payments abd even some good liw or zero finance deals with them in addition. Just seen my Octopus GO tariff click down to 6.5 p per KWh which is dandy for our running costs and means some savings to pay for those outgoings which have not gone down ie Council tax and water rates.

Think he had got virtual everything wrong and vack to front. Big Western car companies, perhaps with the exception of Renault-Dacia got things so wrong. Late to develop EVs, except Nissan-Renault, completely behind in the development of manufacture at scale of Lithium, LFP etc battery plants to feed the car production. TESLA did well for a decade or so but no cannot compete with the Chinese EV car makers ie BYD etc. US is an outlying case a Trump promised cheap fuel and an end to EV subsidies and now gas is expensive in the US and EV sales do not need subsidising and Harry has misread and misinterpreted the whole matter. I gave found some of his videos quite good but he seems to have stopped relating to the modern world sadly.

Reuters, very respected news agency, reporting a doubling of used EV sales in Europe earlier this month and they should be believed, not seen anything on the UK and we will see the normal publish of new EV March sales by SMMT some way in to April and will be interesting to see the UK seconds hand EV sales data but would expect it to be similar to mainland Europe. In other news relating to the truth of running an EV or 3 I have just had my email from Octopus relating to my GO tariff which they tell me is dropping by a quarter next Wednesday for the all important Night charging rate ie from 8.5p per kwh to 6.5 p per kwh, great news considering my 9% cost rise in the Reform led council tax and water bill cost rise from Severn Trent ! Even the Day time rate is going down considerably ie 2.45 p per KWh so not too bad to even charge during the Day time period when only 27.2 p per KWh ! Think the saving will be about £200 a year overall. Nice!

Quite expectedly EV sales jumping, particularly quick to react second hand EVs react first then new EV sales. Was in Dublin early in the week and the Irish government reduced excise duty of fuel on Monday and I expect UK government will have to do so soon else see inflation spike up when March figures are out. Inflation was staying the same at 3% when just announced, same as previous month but would spike up soon of course. Should be somewhat countered by energy prices falling but I for one am still waiting to hear Octopus GO rates for my EVs and house but hoping for about a 20% fall in te key Night time rate when the EVs are charged but also house hold items charged up too. Soon find out but the waiting is frustrating.

The key thing for us EV drivers is that we are on dual rate tariffs and the Night time rate, currently about 8p per KWh, as a rough average, is due to fall to more like 4 to 6p per KWh looked at what Eon, Octopus customers are being told and this is where EV drivers do the vast majority of their charging not the 30, 33 p per KWh charging. This will be the case for the April to June period. For July to September it is looking like a big jump up in prices, maybe 36, 38 or even 40p per Kwh for Day time and single tariff rates but with the 3.51 p per KWh of all rates, including the Nightime rate it is looking like it will still be in single figures and quite similar to what it is now. Also as I said if gas did jump up to nearer to 10p a KWh then I would use electricity to heat my water which is looking like it may be the cheaper fuel overnight. Octopus very quiet despite my asking for my new rates and it maybe next week until they publish mine but with some customers being told as low as 3.5p per KWh I don't think mine will be too shockingly higher than that, the excitement is palpable.

Expecting something similar, maybe 6.99 p per KWh as a Night rate but if could be less. Some getting deals even on GO as low as 4.5 p per KWh. That is lower than my gas which should drop to 5.2 p per KWh. Popping over to Ireland for a few days, sorry but will be visiting the Whsky with an "e" distillery in Dublin, sacrilege. All brilliant for us charging the fleet of electrical cars but gotcsome long journeys to do to Brighton and Devon so a quick flash of public charging needed but it would be right and proper if they dropped their prices 4p a kwh due to the eco levies going and the government harmonised the public VAT rate to the home charging rate of 5% !

Don't think so. The removal of the ECO levy had reduced the cost of overnight charging of EVs by a quarter, third or half depending on ones tariff. The projected rise in energy cost is less than 20% and is a combination of electricity and gas. Electricity will be so cheap for us these dual rate EV tariffs dor the night time rate i can see us sensibly heating our water electrically rather than by gas as it will be significantly cheaper to do. Still waiting for Octopus to confirm my Q2 energy rates but Night time looks lije it will be very cheap at around 5.5 p per kwh which is cheaper than my gas unit charge and if both want up by 20% as Cornwall Insights first guess is then the Night Electricity will still be much cheaper than it is now due to the removal of the Eco levy and I will use even more electricity than gas particularly in tge midnight to 0530 slot as I will be heating water, heating the house as well as charging the batteries etc. I think wr may have to be ready for LNG and diesel and petrol to be twice or 3 times the price it was but that does not mean by a long shot that translates in to the same proportion of costs to homes and motorists. Homes would be a couple of pence more on the unit energy costs and diesel and petrol up by a third and not 3 times as tax is still the biggest chuck of final prices.

The above us why PCP is so good. If car worth more than balloon payment then pay the balloon and have the extra value. If worth less than then just hand it back. If one is happy with the monthly payment, and I found them quire good as they gave been based on 0% APR of low APR rates. One drawback can be the set annual mileage which could ba a big problem but we tend to have 2 or 3 cars o. PCP in the family car pool so can balance mileage between them. Not gone over the mileage amount but it looked like the hit was only 6 ir 8 p per mile so not too bad. I suspect premium brands the mileage penalty is much higher but a tend to stay away from Audi, BMW and Mercedes and I think of them as poor value in many respects.