lol-lol

These headline figures are quite eye watering. The journos tend to test the top of the range models with all the toys on them, Renault's incredible photoelectric chromatic roof panel is a wonder but would not be on my list of things to have. The eleventh commandment, left behind by Moses on the third tablet which he did not go back for says do not pay retail. I have gone for the cheapest version of the Scenic etech but I still get quite a wack off the list price of £37.5k and also the finance at 4.9% is a nice to have too, plus a decent wallbox that would cost a grand to buy and have fitted I presume. I am not even sure what the luxury car tax will be doing on cars over £40k, even if already registered...... https://www.carbuyer.co.uk/car-tax/112227/car-tax-2024-ved-rates-explained-and-how-to-tax-my-car#:~:text=If you purchase a new,cars are exempt until 2025. I did not want to risk it so was happier to get under £40k to be sure to avoid. Also the more expensive models are fitted with 20 inch wheels as OE. Too big for this type of car IMO plus it dents the range significantly as well. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zero emission vehicles Electric and hydrogen cars are currently exempt from paying road tax, however, as of 2025 any car registered from 1 April 2017 to 31 March 2025 will pay standard annual rates of road tax – currently £190 per year. New cars sold from 1 April 2025 will incur the lowest rate of VED in the first year (currently £10), rising to the annual flat rate in the second year. EVs costing over £40,000 will lose their luxury car surcharge exemption in 2025, as well. Owners will have to pay an additional £410 per year from the second year through to the sixth. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So cars might only effectively cost well under £40k and have plenty of room for 5 persons, some who are a long way over 6 foot as in my family's case. Expensive, well a matter of perspective, very cheap to run, for lecky and servicing every too years quite cheaply, practical longish ranges. As to devaluation this is the beauty of PCP, one has the choice to hand it back or keep it for the ballon price if one has grown attached to it. I will find it hard to part with Zoe next year as it has been such a good car. Little birdie tells me that Renault might sell it to me well below the balloon payment price as its market value will probably be several £k less than that balloon payment !! Considering the tech in these cars (though I am Renault through and through and not Stellantis and I find some of their marketing just wierd) these cars have massive more tech year on year and I just am really looking forward to getting stuck in to my Scenic 60 kWh in a few weeks time, it is due to arrive in Bristol shortly according to my App tracing it.

Well I knew the Zoe, latest ZE50 version, was a queen of the long range small EVs but Gott im himmel, or should I say Sacre Bleu or the like, just got back from driving from Worcester to Liverpool, work in Liverpool this morning and drive back this afternoon in the little EV and guess how many time I charged up on route ? Answer below V V V Drum roll.... V V V V V V Not once !! Google say 240 miles, Zoe thought it was only 233 miles. And was I in turtle mode at the end of the journey ? No still had 25 miles showing in the miles of range left guessommeter, which seems quite accurate on the Zoe (better than Nissan according to Modern Hero is his high mileage Nissan van). I am blown away just how good the Zoe is on distance. I thought Worcester to Manchester airport and return was about it and not Liverpool which is about another 40 miles further. Even 233 miles plus 23 is impressive but really it is 240 miles plus 25 miles ie 265 miles range. Good conditions ie started with ambient temp fo 12C and it was 18C on return. I am thinking that maybe 300 miles is going to be possible in the Scenic 60 kWh if I can get over 260 in the Zoe. Wowser. Oh and will be claiming mileage at 45p per mile tax relief of course. Cost of energy for this journey 52 kWh at 8.5 pence per KWh from Octopus on new 5 hours per night Go tariff.............. about £4.40 !!!!!!!! Even my son's etech Clio would have used the best part of £24 of petrol. Even using my fuel card on the Arkana it would have cost me of £10 on the BIK on 4 gallons of petrol !! Not even close on fuel costs even with best tax advantages !

Sorry, must have skipped or something. Oh and Autos can be more economical too. The 7 speed DSG in my beautiful Mk 2 Octavia, L&K, with the now unusual in the UK 1.8 TSI, short stroke version of the EA888, was a fantastic tool for both acceleration and economy, 57 mpg I think it was quoted at, 2 mpg better than the manual one could get.

The nine speed Mercedes is about the best I have seen in a car, ZF box in my jap was nice and the 7 speed dry clutch DSG DQ200 although the lowish toque handling of 250 Nm was a bit limiting. Not a great fan of the DQ250 six speed though it was better to have that than the 5 speed manual I could have had in one Octavia but it had the last of the good diesel engines ie the noisy but frugal 1.9PD. It is all auto for me now as hybrids and BEVs are always automatic but this is the future. EV, one gear, some EVs have two are gather but they are rare. Can crawl along in the single gear, maximum torque come in at 8 mph and it will spin up to over 90 mph, cover the standing kilometer in 30 seconds in serene silence. 7,8,9 speed gearboxes are just another chunk of tech, like the ICE motor, more to go wrong, wear out, cost a fortune to fix, turbos, mechatronic units of DSG, now unnecessary tech IMO to be replaced ASAP.

Just saying that sometimes, and Renault own Dacia, car companies can move away from only providing white as a free. But then nothing is really free. Doing RHD version of car compared to LHD was once quantified at around 6%, think of the tooling and different parts. I hate paying extra colours so never do. White cars have less accidents..... I had a canary yellow Octavia VRS, ex showroom car https://www.citywidelaw.com/los-angeles-car-accident-attorney/car-color-and-crash-risk/#:~:text=We've referenced the safest,white cars and its surroundings. What Car Color has the Least Accidents? Studies have revealed that the following color vehicles are associated with the lowest risk of an accident. White We’ve referenced the safest color car on the road. That color is white. White cars are 12 percent less likely to be involved in an accident than black cars at any time of the day under any conditions. This is because there is often a lot of contrast between white cars and its surroundings. As a result, white cars are easy to see. Yellow At least one study found that yellow, and not white, cars are the safest on the road. Why? Yellow is the brightest color and stands out in any conditions. There’s a reason that most cabs are painted yellow or another vibrant color. It makes those vehicles incredibly easy to spot on a busy road. Orange Orange is also correlated with a lower risk of accidents than other vehicles. The reason? Like white and yellow cars, orange is easy to see. Few surroundings on the road are orange, which helps these vehicles to stand out.

Not always just white with free colours. My Flame Red Scenic due in 3 weeks is a free colour from Dacia/Renault......

France has been doing subsidies for low earners to their credit but the scheme was oversubscribed and quickly exhausted. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2023/07/13/an-electric-car-for-100-a-month-the-government-is-still-trying-to-make-it-work_6051261_19.html Not sure the name translates ie Zity. It is needed for those doing community nursing, mid wives etc where 45p a mile for the first 10k miles just does not cut it any more.

One of the strong reasons for autos is the acceleration compared to manual. Several factors ie gear change time, weight, number of gears to optimise acceleration but in the majority of comparisons I have seen the auto, or semi auto like DSG, EDC, eats the manual for breakfast.

Running cost ie fuel and servicing not worth the savings EV provide ? Sister just buying a T-ROC with the 1.5 EVO cylinder deactivation tech, think she should get 50 or so to the gallon, probably 55 mpg in the morning coming down off Dartmoor and 445 mpg going back on to the more in the evening. Servicing. think she has found a local guy who appears good who is half main dealer prices ie closer to what EV drivers pay for services.

Wow, when is super cheap even cheaper, carwow.....

The correct tax is what the law says it is and I fully support adherence to the law. Those who avoid some uk tax are oft the ones that pay two or three times what the average person pays. I do agree chasing those who park money offshore but if ones keeps money in the UK then use ISAs, salary sacrifice systems or choosing to have ones annual VED registration date in accordance with the UK government website and the rules behind it. Ban cash if one really wants to get all the tax in one should.

Tax avoidance is not illegal unlike tax evasion and I think it was one English gentleman who said that organising ones affair to pay the least tax was something all should be doing within the framework of the law. There is no spirit of the law, only the written law.

Definitely worth doing the re registering for road tax for EVs in March 2025 to get another year virtually free it is looking like.

Good to know. Will do that in March 2025 to maximise the benefit. I think Labour will be sensible about this to keep the transformation from ICE to EV moving and to keep the VED in favour of EVs. Do not paying something for the roads of course.

On the road ? You mean on people's drive mostly and driving less than 5k miles a year in many cases. I just do not see this creaking infrastructure which is mainly me driving through the service station as I do not need to charge put I do need a comfort break. Most place now I see most of the chargers not occupied and IO am wondering if I should support them by just charge up a few kilowatts hours, using up the free ones Octopus energy, cannot remember a time I got free fuel, even the fuel card fuel as I have to pay about 50p per litre of each litre that goes in, nowhere near as good as the home lecky at 8.5p a kWh or free destination charging ie clients or at work. In nearly 20k miles charged up twice when I sort of needed to. Could have driven home at 50 mph but that is boring so use an Ionity charger nest, never seen any more tan tree of the six charge bays being used, never seen on out of action and always get as much as the little Zoe will take. I am sure the Scenic which charges at 3 times the rate will sup it up as those chargers are beasts. Subway 100m away which will probably cost similar to the lecky I put in. The really Ev experience is not the Youtube world of click bait the anti EV fraternity like to view to 99.9% of the time a serene experience driving and charging and good on the pocket too most of the time.

Century is a hundred year, millennium is a thousand. I think we are due to see a rise from zero for EVs, is it £10 its going up to in the first year and I would have thought it would be £20 in the second year rather than £190 as that would be more than some ICE cars. Hopefully Labour will clarify. Some talk that some EV owners will take their car off the road in Feb 2026, the re register in March 2026 and pay the £10 but then the will have March registrations rather April to December or so which could save then a bit of money. UK Treasury will need to up the 45p and 25p per mile rates to compensate users or I can see even more people withdrawing their car for work use and especially after the 10 miles when the rate drops. We would do this within HMRC / HMCE when te dreaded 10k mileage threshold hit and wait for it to restart on April 6th and the full rate return. God I miss the 63p per mile rate there was for cars over 2 litres.

In transportation we already have extensive rules of carrying lithium batteries which are classified as dangerous good with quite some small amount of lithium battery time. they are only allow air transport under very strict rules and same for sea transport, land moving is oft the option that is used to avoid the restrictive rules ie the silk road or the very strict carriage rules. No sure what this video has to do with a how vehicles with lithium ion batteries, compared to a cheap SE asia e-bike where most people know that quality can be somewhat variable with goods from this area. Who knows what had happened before. He may have accidently dropped the battery down a concrete stairway before and the case may have been in a very damaged state, we just do not know but we do know the spontaneous fires of EVs are rarer than petrol cars. “The overall arching takeaway (from the data) is that the rate of fires happening is less for EVs than petrol or diesel cars, and quite substantially,” said James Edmondson, Research Director at Cambridge, England-based independent researcher IDTechEx in an interview. Edmondson said various surveys showed EVs represented far less of the reported fires than might be expected given their market share. Estimates by the Phosphorous, Inorganic & Nitrogen Flame Retardants Association reported 55 fires per billion miles travelled in ICE vehicles and five fires per billion for EVs. A report from AutoinsuranceEX said EVs exhibited 61 times fewer fires per 100,000 sales than ICE vehicles.

Bike doing over 140 mph..... Did need the dragster in front though

They will not need to ban and economic conditions will get ICE vehicles off the road. Electricity is and will continue to be so much cheaper as a fuel that ICE vehicles will be staggeringly uneconomic by comparison. The delivery companies already know this and hence early adopt. I even choose to use my little Zoe EV sometimes as its running costs are so much less that my Arkana Mild Hybrid and thats with me have a fuel card for hydrocarbon fuel as the Arkana will cost be about 4p a mile of fuel where as the BEV is less than 2p a mile. Add this to the servicing on the BEV being less than half the ICE vehicle it is only tyres that are in ICE cars favour as the BEV does seem to eat tyres with its rapid acceleration off the line and slightly higher weight. So cheaper running cost is part of it and also many ICE cars will increasingly be made to be ever higher cost on VED, vehicle Excise Duty. My lovely old Type S Jaaaag was just getting silly at several hundred pounds a year. There will be ICE cars still on the roads at the end of century but they will just be enthusiasts cars popping to car meets, shows etc as a labour of love as EVs will be the choice for those who want transport and ICE cars will cost a fortune to run, maybe having revent to buying the fuel at a few specialist outlets. It is also a better stat as to how many miles are being done on EVs compared to ICE as Reps etc are generally going for EVs due to salary sacrifice or super low BIK, as well as delivery companies and this would give a very different story as to what is registered ie you can register a car, drive it a thousand miles a year or like I do tens of thousands of miles a year.

The car I am getting in a few week, European CoTY the Scenic, has a variant, which is proving to be the one most go for, not me I am going for the smaller batteried version ie 60 kWh nominal, it has an 87 kWh battery and the WLTP is 387 miles I think the Poohjot 3008 has a WLTP range of over 420 miles, charge at 150 kWh so charging will be rare, except on the super cheap home charging or free or cheap destination charge. Gridserve recently got quarter of a billion investment to increase their charging network it can be very good business. I would say that in general the current network has sufficient charging and there is a few place where chargers are a bit thin on the ground and still a few trunk road service stations that are still to get their upgrade to dozens of chargers. Whether its Shell , BP or Gridserve, TESLA etc they know what the demand curve is and they will be there to make a great business of it. TESLA will be making more for energy than they are from cars, taxis and trucks it is commonly thought.

No not at all because I know in advance how many of the chargers are working and also how many are being used via either my Google software in the car or a quick flip over to ZAP or one of the other Nav Apps. As of last Friday there are now 100,000 connectors and the aim is to put in 300,000 but I can imagine that closing maybe not being reached as the latest batch of EV releases have 400 mile and more range and there are one due for arrival in the UK in the next few months with 500 and 600 miles of range. Soon the average battery car being sold will exceed the range of the average petrol cars either in operation or available. Diesel sales figures are dropping rapidly and look to becoming insignificant by next year. So whether we will need 300,000 chargers as is now the vast majority of charging will be done either at the start of the journey, usually at home or at destination ie offices one is visiting, hotels where one is staying so maybe will will plateau well below 300,000 chargers but they will better ie faster and cheaper as electricity continues to get cheaper via wind farms and international sharing. So those who half at least half a brain can work out where to go for that extra few kWhs to get where one wants to go ie the major hubs. I think there will be a change to more people carrying batteries in the boot which can give some charge too. Quite a few kWh is possible. So the rate EV tech is moving I dont see a problem if one think and does act like a twonk just for the sake of click bait Youtube videos. Hydrocarbon fuel stations will dwindle in number as their clientele become an ever decreasing group. We will also see what Labour does with fuel duty. The fuel price escalator was introduced in 1993 when it was in 1993 when the Uk was again in financial turmoil .... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_Price_Escalator Their was a fuel price stabiliser which triggered in when oil dropped below $75 a barrel so now would be a great time to restore the 58p a litre excise duty to add to the Uk coffers. https://www.hl.co.uk/shares/trading-commodities/brent-crude-oil

Charging where there are just 1,2,3 or even 3 chargers will always be risky in getting a charge. Six is probably a minimum to be sure there will be several working chargers and there are now many places where there are 12,24, 36 of more chargers and most of them will be working. There will be times when all the chargers are being used and one may have to wait for a few minutes for a charger to become available but this is rare. Rollout of chargers continues at a rate of another 2000 or so a month with highlights of TESLA V4 we can all use and Gridserve charging centres with great facilities and now 20% off cost with their new App. It is getting easier and cheaper on the motorways, less great on A roads and small towns rather than cities like Worcester where we are spoilt for choice.

I wanted to replace both ie chop in both but the local Renault dealer wanted the Zoe like one would welcome a lepper with covid and the clap. The market value of the Zoe is so far below what the PCP finance has outstanding is so many thousands different the just did not want to take that hit now and would rather put that off until next year when they have to take it back at the end of the PCP. I hope they will sell it to me, not for the £13k that will be outstanding but for closer to £8k which is what I expect it will we worth in a years time. The Arkana 1.333 MHEV they were relatively happy to take back, still gather they was a gap but they agreed on a scratch return and it is only two year in to a 4 year PCP as is the Zoe deal. I think Renault are very very keen to sell the electric cars at the moment at I strongly suspect that Renault UK, Supported by Renault France, are offering subsidies to get these sales. I think Renault France are supporting the 4.9% financing with Euros, they can get cheaper deals in Euros of course and because the pound has been quit strong I think there has been extra discounts supported above the normal dealer margins. It has been like pushing an open door on asking for discounts. I am a very good customer of theirs ie a new car every year for the last 4 years as well as servicing etc but they do treat me very well which I appreciate, luck to have found such a good dealership IMO. I will use the Zoe for the shorter journeys for the next year to try and keep the annual mileage close-ish to the nominated Scenic PCP mileage. Still a good car for short to medium journeys. Lots of rumours that a high percentage of smart meters are duff. Mine seems fine and I have lots of devices ie my various home batteries doted around the house which I know how much power, via their own meters, plus some inline meters on the solar feeds, and Octopus's dashboard on their app, and their billing, to know quite accurately what power is going where but I would like to see the same with the car and really need to get in to OBD2 Car Scanner apps like Bjorn Nyland uses. Quite pleased with the small battery Ariya/Scenic charge curve, clearly the 60 kWh battery is well over 60 or even 63 the way it charges close to 100%, big buffers me thinks, SOC % is very rough/misleading to suggest to owners to stop charging at indicated 99% when in fact it will go on to add another 5% or so if one just hang s on. Not recommended to do often but there if one can for the occasional longer journeys ie over 250 miles when a stop not convenient. Zoe does the same, hits 100% but continues to take charge, wish it would show over 100%. Then when you drive it take ten miles of more to take off that first 15 ie drops back down to 99%. Scenic should arrive early September and will be very rare I think with more than 90% of sales going to the 87 kWh battery version.

You went there. I would have thought those DC chargers have significant PF issues but I need to dig deeper in to how they work. They we high value items I could see when I was involved in the imports for Source London before Total bought the network. I gather there is some new tech coming around which can potentially improve the efficiency from 90% to 99% which would be great if not too expensive With the quantum leaps in energy density, battery chemistry leading to even faster charging cars, latest batch of Chinese cars are looking at rates of some 550 kws, up from 350 kws so charging times of about 9 minutes for a decent sized battery. Vorsprung durk tecnik, or whatever it was and now we should be writing that in Manderin.

A device which can measure both voltage and current and record tge result every second or so and download those readings to a computer to analyse. Probably does need octopus's Kraken system but it would be good to know what we see on the charge screen is accurate and hopefully to less than 1% in error and leans in our favour if any. With AC it shows it might show us what we have taken, many ac have no screen for data, and then we have 10% or so as our EVs convert that AC to high voltage DC, some reports say with losses over 10% and other say closer to 20% but lots of dispute about such things. As long as it is much cheaper than hydrocarbons and come from renewable sources I am happy.