lol-lol

SMMT data for UK sales year to date for April and year up to end of April 2024. Change over to BEV, and full Hybrids, has advanced quite slowly in the first third of 2024. Diesels way down, now less than 7% of the overall market, Petrol down from approximately 57% to 56%, BEV sales up over 10K but as a percentage of sales only taking another 0.3% of the total car market, various reason I think mentioned below, and both PHEV and HEV increasing their share from below 20% to over 21%, steady progress, if not stellar, for the move to electrification The guy in the video is a known click bait jerk who skews data, yes petrol sales are well up, but down as a percentage of total sales. I would not even say I was disappointed or surprised with the SMMT data. The start of 2024 had been financial tough for many businesses and for individuals and many EV buyers will be look at the SMMT data and considering what the car companies are going to need to do to hit their 22% mandated threshold for EVs. Probably sell EVs at cost or below and/or load the cost of buying diesel, petrol and HEVs and PHEVs cars so that buyers look favourably on BEVs to get the new car sellers up to the 22% level. Some companies have lots of BEVs coming to market in Q3 and Q4 of this year, Dacia and Renault particularly come to mind. Many of us would like to see the cost of financing come down and hopefully this period of high borrowing costs will start tailing off soon. Our similar sized economy over the channel ie France, has already far exceeded 22 % EV sales. Be interesting to see how the Dacia Spring sells, and Renault 5 EV and even the new MG3 which look a HEV bargain and well quick for the smallish price.

Not pointless if you get a massive reduction in BIK for UK taxation I suppose.

Indeed. Some PHEV drivers have never unwrapped the charging cable in the boot. Have no intention of ever charging it up, either at home on AC charging or Rapid DC charging. Even worse, and this is something one can setup in the menu's of some PHEVs is they can choose to have the electric power to mostly be there to assist the acceleration, say adding 100 hp to the 250 hp ICE. Driving the PHEV like some F1 car to do the fastest times from A to B. Now I would expect even with this setup the PHEV would go in to pure EV mode when they enter a 30 mph zone and the cabin is toastie etc but these drivers get unbelievably bad fuel consumption ie down towards 30 mpg by having the car setup this way and driving briskly. Perhaps they think time is money and have a PHEV for tax avoidance and with a big salary are not worried about fuel consumption, maybe have a company fuel card too. Such is life. I imagine this cars are semi-automatic like my hybrids ie have a gearbox with a bunch of fixed ratios but an auto changing gear changing system which works in combo with the electric assist and sometime solo EV mode.

You should take a ride in a Full Hybrid because your comment that " highly likely that most of these will never be used in electric mode" is just plain wrong. I imagine that the Renault e-tech range of Full hybrids are typical and they move off in electric mode and the ICE only kicks in when the traction battery drops below 40% and it also considers ambient temperature ie if low then the electronics seem to say that the one good feature of an ICE engine is it produces lots of waste heat, more than it actually produces traction power of course, so the power management software fires up the ICE to "prioritise thermal comfort" a message can sometime be seen. This is great ie the starting up in EV mode as Full Hybrids go singing down the road in EV mode, not waking the neighbours and then only firing up the ICE a few hundred meters down the road, good for pollution in my home street. Worth remembering that your ICE car does not meet emission standards until it Catalytic converter is up to temperature which could be miles down the road if even in cold conditions. My lad's Clio etech he belts it over from Worcester to Kidderminster, much A road and not hanging about, he leaves it in MySense so the onboard computer chooses whether to be EV ie at the start always, mixing it to give the full 145 hp or just use ICE and use regen and ICE to top the traction battery back up to 3/4's full si when one comes down from highway speeds it drops in to EV mode which is great so it is not adding to all the pollution that pure ICE cars are making. If one is relaxed, not in a rush and toddling through mainly urban areas the percentage of time in EV can be over 3/4s and the fuel consumption better than vast majority of ICE cars I am aware of, as below, almost 86 mpg and the pollution noly tending to be dropped outside built up areas, brilliant and as Hannah Montana said "The best of both worlds", engine sends quite fruity when one cracks on a bit. Be interesting to see how the new MG3 sell as this is a quite powerful EV and ICE combo, a bit crudely put together, but cheapish and be interesting to see its "True MPG" figures.

Let stop both BS, Burning Stuff and Bull ****.. In other good news it has been said that TESLA Berlin is starting to make RHD model Ys. Yippy, should now be soon a grand or two off the RRP !! If TESLA would sell Model Ys Standard Range for less than £40k that would be great. Still prefer Model 3 Highland looks but nice to have choice especially one might be thinking about carrying extended family and their kit ie prams etc.

Diesel engined vehicles are being singled out as they are the worst polluters, particularly for NOX and PMs. the regulation even allow diesels to emit up to 80 milligrams of NOX rather than 60 for petrol as they know diesel struggle even to get below this level. The etech version of my Arkana is 6 milligrams, my Arkana is an embarrassing 22 mg/km. Average, still available diesel cars are about 40 mg/km and this is with Ad Blue systems. It is logical diesel are continually under scrutiny and the PMs situation is also bad too. The UK emission "standards" are at levels twice the WHO have set so just because Uk say UK air quality is moderate etc is against its own poor standard. EV owners tend to be on the intelligent side I have found but you of course get some idiots, we have seen a few on the Youtube channel, and getting about what one expects in terms of energy per mile, based against WLTP, which is still a test condition and at ambient temperatures is understood by anyone with at least half a functioning brain. I have always seen the Renault range, both actual and estimated by the car, as reasonable a gainst what it was advertised, informed on the WLTP test ie 238 miles. If it is cold, windy, rainy then simple slow down a few mph, makes little difference to the journey time and one will still get over 200 miles even in adverse conditions. Some of the big Audis only get about 2.5 miles per kWh as the are big, heavy, block shaped, do not have the best motors etc so hardly surprising compare poorly to TESLAs and even Renaults and Nissans. EV drivers enjoy the cheap running costs and if they have to do a longish journey the plan and use a stop with some of the tens of thousands of chargers in the UK and these are getting cheaper as TESLA roll out the V4 versions.

I do not think of these cars as automatics is the classic sense but rather semi automatic is automatic changes but fixed ratios. Zoe only has one gear, Arkana has 7 fixed ratios and God knows what the Clio has, two electric and four ICE ratios with 15 combinations I read somewhere. Putting in neutral is electronically declutching in my mind. Some circumstances I think if can be good to energy/ petrol consumption.

I coast in my EV sometimes. Just knock it in to neutral down the right hill then tickle it back in to light or heavy regen if near a speed limit or just need to brake for junction. Did like the Megane e's 4 level regen on paddles, seem to work well, just not overall that much better than the Zoe. Wish I tried the European Car of the year Scenic with its big battery but do not like the shape.

Not as I read it, yes tailpipe gases remain broadly similar but Euro 7 tightens up on PMs from brakes and tyres. Brake dust generally not an issue for EVs and full hybrids as the have strong regen an only use their brake pads in emergencies and very heavy braking. Tyre PM emissions might have been an issue for some EV makers who make heavy EVs but French companies and some others make quite light EVs where tyre PMs should he similar to ICE. Paris charging heavy EVs mainly will hit German EVs and some big Chinese and Korean EVs where the tyre PM pollution will be bad unless tyres are advanced type. EURO 7 transfers increased focus on to brake dust and tyre dust I understood.

All vehicles are electric. Full motive, partial motive or have electrical systems, even wiesel cars, some of which are hybrid now. If obeyed properly they should be quite few cars in the car park and Euro 7 looks like will kill neatly all cars that are not atleast hybrid.

Nissan making more, or some, money out of the finance than actually selling the car. If one could put a bit of a deposit I wonder if they would still play ball. LEAF is C Segment and I wanted to order the 64 kwh version but Nissan uk had none, only the 39kw versions which range was not enough for me. Even tge 64 kwh version struggles to get close to the Zoes range but I did like the form of these mark 2 LEAFs. Wanted to buy British but not possible with the larger battery version not offered at the time.

Quite so. Zoe pure EV. Clio full hybrid, lithium ion battery and gubbins of about 100 kgs to work in EV mode at any speed if load quite low. Arkana mild hybrid, incapable of driving on battery power alone, just uses lithium battery for powering electrical system in coast mode ie ICE off, and gentle 10 nm assist for acceleration. So is only the Zoe banned, Zoe and Clio etech or all 3 ? Arkana lithium battery is 0.2 kwh ie tiny thing much smaller than lead acideee battery.

There are now adapters that can fit a Chademo end in to a CCS one so less worries there.

Centripetal and centrifugal forces are huge at over 60 degrees of lean angle. In recent years both ground effect fairing and porcupine aero is helping cornering as well ride height devices getting speeds up to 360 kph. It use to be getting your knee down and now it is getting your shoulder or even helmet down !

Great to see Mr Munro do such a walk through, it is hard to think of a more knowledgeable person who knows about US cars development in the last 50 years. When you think about it TESLA model Y ticks along of boxes, particularly in the Long range and performance format. Having massive ability to perform in dry and wet conditions and with plenty of weight to "box" vehicles off the road, cars, vans, not so much trucks of course, and the Model Y LR'etc ability to catch just about anything, in the right skilful hands is a logical choice plus plenty of space. Same for police vehicles and what was HMRC drugs teams, presumably no part of Border Force and other units as, SAS, SBS etc, they will have to get rid of their Range Rovers and move to EVs. The sheer amount of Comms equipment and other technical tracking etc equipment needs lots of space and that weight of vehicle one can see why big beemers, Volvos, I recall fondly speeding long way in to 3 figures with the police in old favourites of mine like the Vauxhall Senator and the like. Just the old fruit of making sure one has the range to do what needs to be done. Even a long range Model Y, even the new one coming out with WLTP range, will not be great in an SBS run from Portsmouth to Aberdeen needing to be done in just a few hours. Perhaps we need the Top Gear on motorway recharging instead of refuelling team ? Less chance of fire I reckon.

Zoe ZE50 got 229 miles in the test below, best of all small cars, and that was without Matt Watson of Carwow really trying to be conservative, with a small "c". Bjorn, I have seen, done loads of test. He carries a Ecoflow max, with additional battery so he has about 3 kwh he can charge from these batteries in the boot to give him another 10 or 15 kms via his granny cable he carries. I have tried this with my Allpower S2000 Pro, which can also run at 2400 watts, but the Zoe is very fussy about the quality of earthing during charging so it has not started a charge via the S2000, don't think I can get extra side battery for the S2000. Have got a Bluettti EB180 which has a 1.8 kwh battery but can only output at 1 kw so not a great support for the S2000 but the S2000 will through charge I think ie power the 2.4 kW granny charger and accept 500 W in via the 8 mm barrel plus uo to 600 W via the XT60 as well, bit of a faff so looking to get a monster R4000, when the price is right, which can be charged from EV charging stations apparently ! Honda was worse, perhaps they should ahve given buyers a discounted Honda generator ?

Damn my little Zoe, 205 mile trip, still couple of dozen miles still on range meter, trying to make it run lower for the last tens of miles as I have never seen the infamous tortoise/turtle. Got it down to 9%, about 23 miles left, but still no sign of it, only a suggestion about charging when I got to home. No thanks, I will wait a few hours for the 9p per kWh lecky and add 50 plus miles of range. Arkana sitting there with plenty of range if the daughter in Wales goes in to labour. Limited Performance Warning Light - The icon of the tortoise illuminating on the dashboard indicates that the vehicle has been placed into limited performance mode

Yo me it is the steady significant year on year improvements with battery energy density per kilogram, seems like more than 10% each year paired with cost drops of over 10% per year meaning big drops in production costs. ICE engines are improving year on year at a much slower pace. Hydrogen will only become economically viable if the renewable and nuclear base load equipment have so much spare lecky and not enough battery capacity that the best economic thing to do is produced Hydrogen, or maybe ammonia and get enough filling stations up and running. The Hydrogen filling station near my Heathrow office is closing I heard.

Sunak was even asked by one of his own MPs about reducing the VAT percentage for public chargers and Sunak did not even answer the question. It is typical Tory divide, hit the poor, look after the already well off, and I hope Labour will reduce the VAT for the lecky even if they have to split the charging cost ie connection and per minute use charge at Standard rating and electricity component at 5% E rate, not that difficult and would bring public charger prices down.

What I find weird is an apparent reluctance for companies to,hand out EV fuel cards compared to petrol/diesel cards. Perhaps employees are not being trusted to not use the evening charge card on other EVs they may have or know. Solution is for companies to only sanction TESLAs as cars as fuel cards are not even needed ie Tasks chargers know which indidivual tesla vehicle is charging. UK governed could,do much by aligning vat at public chargers to home charging vat rate ie 5 %. Public charging costs are falling with the roll out of Tasks v4 chargers so all good for the future.

Company card, which under current UK tax practices is dealt with directly within monthly pay so if I had three full ups of sixty quid in the month that would be £180 Benefit in kind which is added to my pay slip. I bounce between a 20%, 40% and 45% tax rate tax payer, throttling how much is going in to my pension pot with the aim of finishing the tax year just under the higher tax band and hence only effectively 20% of the price of fuel ie about 30p a litre. 30p a litre and the Arkana currently doing 12 miles per litre hence 2.5p cost to me of fuel per mile driven. I get no mileage allowance, rather a car allowance and I can claim as a 9p a mile, 20% of the 45 ppm, as part of self assessment which more than covers tyres, 20k and still tread on the tyres, servicing is £250 a year which is a significant cost, lease cost around £3k for the year. Happy days.

Tomorrow off to Manchester Airport in the Zoe, 102 miles there, I expect to get there with over half the battery left, wind assisted it looks like, coming back could be more interesting if in to stiff breeze. Might stop off at the newly super enhanced Frankley South services with its dozens of Tesla and Gridserve chargers, TESLA they preference with its much lower charging costs, or use the Gridserve cheap AC charger at 22 kWs. Or use the discounted Ionity chargers opposite West Brom, boing going, using the electroverse card and get a Starbucks. Big choices, may not need to charge at all as temperature should be over 10c and range usually close to the 238 miles quoted. Would like to change to a Megane -e or TESLA Model 3 SR if employer finally gets the salary sacrifice scheme going and 340 mile range on the 18 inch wheels sounds perfect.

As a driver of the beautiful Opel Mante GTE the term Crapi was oft used. Or Ford Cortina in drag. Much enjoyment blowing off 3 litre Crapis in a Doly Sprint too.

I think they might have been a bit of a oddball gimmick but the do stand as economic sense in this decade and beyond. My petrol car or the EV both cost about 2.5p a mile for energy but that is because I have a fuel card and can charge at home. Servicing is much cheaper in the EV, insurance about the same, EV uses its tyres up a bit quicker but as they are 17 and 16 inch they are both quite cheap. With government mileage rate at quite a lowly 45p a mile I can run both at not a loss and the choice to run one or other is tight, its mainly my EV is only good for about 220 miles whereas the ICE car can easily do 300 miles without slighly prolonged stop. Love them both and both make economic sense.

"Ford Explorer" is an ID4 which Ford have fitted their own body on to. It sounds 80% plus VW.