lol-lol

UK Government seems to back EV manufacture with loads of UK tax payer's money by putting hundred of millions of pounds in to the Nissan plant near Sunderland........ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67517522 UK's Gilts ie the government bonds, have been falling in value since the Autumn Statement as faith in the UK economy continue to ebb lower. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Nissan to lead £2bn investment in UK electric car plant Nissan and its partners have announced a £2bn plan to build three electric car models at its Sunderland factory. The Japanese firm will build electric Qashqai and Juke models at the plant alongside the next generation of the electric Leaf, which is already produced there. The scheme could help preserve the jobs of about 6,000 workers directly, and thousands more across the UK. Nissan said that alongside this, a major new battery plant known as a "gigafactory" will also be needed. This is in addition to the current factory adjacent to the car plant, and a further gigafactory already being built by its partner, AESC. Nissan will spend £1.12bn on preparing its UK facilities and supply chain for the new models and training its workforce. Alongside the gigafactory the total new investment will be up to £2bn, according to the company. The UK government has provided support for Nissan through the Automotive Transformation Fund, which received a £2bn top-up in the Autumn Statement on Wednesday. Mr Johnson declined to comment on how much funding the company has received from UK taxpayers. He said: "The support we have received in the past has been excellent and we're very grateful for the support we do receive. "The truth is discussions are ongoing with the government, not concluded, and therefore I'm not in a position at the moment to make any announcement or any comment about any numbers." Brexit In the summer, Mr Gupta also warned that the UK's largest car manufacturing plant in Sunderland would be "unsustainable" without a post-Brexit trade deal on tariffs. Rules due to take effect in January next year mean there will be a 10% tariff on cars sold between the UK and EU unless carmakers have sourced at least 45% of their components by value from the UK or EU. Batteries are the most expensive part of an electric vehicle, and some manufacturers in both the UK and EU have said they will struggle to meet the requirements, and have called for the rules to be deferred.

So is the granny cable quite efficient ie close to 90% then ? My Pod Point is only a 3.6 kw one, I was being a bit tight and save £100 rather than going for the 7.2 kW version so it only cost me £449. Granny cable was £129 or so I recall. Works at 10A, 220/240v. Both seem fine in terms of efficiency, close enough to 90% to not really bother but yes alway worth noting that one pays for 100% of the energy used at home or public charger but "only" about 90% gets in to the battery as stored charge with the other 10% being waste heat but a little bit of humming as noise. Still way better than a 35% ICE at converting chemical energy in to motion.

If one small criticism I would say that if somewhat under-emphasises the fairly obvious step that EV owners get on to an EV tariff like Octopus GO or Intelligent to tap in to 8/9 p per kWh. All wondering exactly how much the night rate will go up in January 2024 ie just over 5 weeks time. Looking at Allpower R2500 or even the R4000 to use even less day time rate power and store cheap night time power to use during the daytime. These unit can use granny chargers to put electricity in to an EV using granny chargers ie 2.4 kWh and are now being sold at way less than £1 per wh and with lithium phospate batteries show should last 10 years even to 80% charging capacity. Getting cheaper all the time.

It is about 300,000 Zoes made. Must be a couple of tens of thousand in the UK. Renault have not seen any appreciable bad outcomes with the downgrading of the head level airbag, the shell is the same basic form that got the Zoe 5 stars back in 2013. Whilst the Zoe has about 17 safety features, auto emergency braking, lane departure etc etc this was not enough as the Arkana has about 30 of these safety features and that got it 5 stars.... https://www.renault.co.uk/renault-news/renault-arkana-scores-maximum-five-stars-euro-ncap.html Do I feel unsafe or worried in a Zoe ZE50, no not a bit, as Jonny says........ Just did 200 mile round trip to Manchester, no need to charge even in 5C starting temps. Still had over 30 miles range when got back home.

Timing, tick a tick a tick a timing. Started to save up for the £20 a year to be introduced from my Zoe in 2025. If I save 20p a week should have enough in 2 years time. Arkana is £170 as I think I get £10 a year off as a hybrid. My Jag Type S was over £500 a year even though it could do over 40 mpg with it quite efficient 2.5l V6 mondeo engine. There is little logic to it.

We had this in our Paris and other cities EV car schemes. We were using solid state batteries so technical safer rather current Lithium ion and even Lithium Iron Phosphate, were use Lithium Metal Polyamide and Super Capacitors but there were some car fires. Fire investigators found that homeless persons were breaking in to the cars sat on their charging stalls and making a little fire to keep warm inside the car in the cold Paris nights. Not good in a car body that was composite as I recall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolloré_Bluecar Estimated we lost 25 cars to vandals. Damn those mid European nomads.

Solihull, the home of the not eco Land rovers.

Not a 3 bearing crank A series engine. Bit better than Mr Vizard got out of an original engine. My 850cc engine put out 32 hp I think. Probably similarly noisy at motorway speeds.

Concern about higher battery degradation on some Leafs? Earlier leafs only had passive battery cooling and suffered from overheating whuc h could result in much slower second charges in a hot day ? Does zero Euroncap may have hurt some values but maybe not much. I wanted a 64 kWh LEAF but the waiting list was long. Range in the 52 Kwh Zoe is reportedly as good if not better than the 62/64 kWh LEAF so happy days on my choice except the Zoe is a bit smaller and therefore not really a 4 or 5 seater car but more like a 2 or three seat with a couple more seats for small persons.

Yeah but is this really being measured properly or on numbers which were never real in the first place. As always I take the Zoe as the example, one of the biggest selling EVs in the last ten years. RRP of my Zoe ZE50 was around £34K when I acquired it, via PCP of course, just over 2 years ago. But that is a number which i certainly did not pay anything like. There was the £2.5K Government grant, I recall Renault took £5k off, the dealer another £1K. I got the car on 2% flat APR and I pay about £280 a month for the £25k or so loan it actually was. The car costs next to nothing to service ie basically £99 a year for a general check over, less than 3p a mile to charge up at home which I do for 99% of the mileage I do. When the car goes for PCP return in two years will consider keeping it I suppose. So yes the car has reduced value to just over one third in 2 years if one looks at the RRP and current market value but that £34k was never its really value to compare against for the value drop from then to now. Just silly numbers to work on. How much a month is it, 90% of newish cars are leased !! Very happy with the economic model of running an EV. But as I do couple of thousand miles a month I have the hybrid too, with a fuel card attached, so can actually run cars for less than 25p a mile ie the Treasury over 10k miles in the tax year. First 10K miles can make a good profit I reckon. Love driving the EV, most relaxing car I have ever driven.

The Dacia Spring is fulfilling this in Europe and due here in a few months.

Ooooh, smelly, dirty and noisy.

Yes you can, Allpower, Ecoflow etc make portable batteries which can supply a granny lead to supply and 3 pin charging lead at 2.4 kWh. Ecoflow make something similar but my Allpower S2000 pro was about half the price of the Ecoflow. Can act as backup for home and store for cheap night time lecky to use during day. Can carry portable solar panels too. Bjorn Nyland uses the Ecoflow Delta Pro Max which is similar after he deliberately runs EVs down to zero miles and until they stop, usually do 10, 15 or 20 miles past zero.

I do not think that most EV drivers with around or above average IQ just rely on any old charging network. Just like ICE drivers we oft have preference for certain networks so for my high performance motorcycles I prefered Shell petrol and so it is with EV charging networks. I like Ionity network which seems to be rolling out bigtime, I can see Instavolt have a high reliability ie 99 point something, as do several other networks. Just to use ZAP MAP and go to any charger listed is not smart. EV drivers know the networks that are good, much as you might not buy diesel or petrol from unknown named chains or even supermarkets I think EV drivers will tend to go to the charging networks the know to be good for reliability, good charging speed etc. I have actually been disappointed recently that my little Zoe has been so good at its range ie well over 200 miles and been disappointed I did not need to charge as it was such a pleasant experience ie quick, cheap with the Octopus Electroverse discount and monthly billing on to my household energy bill which is massively in credit. The change from ICE to EV is evolving at a pace of the middle part of the S curve.... https://www.electriccarscheme.com/blog/celebrating-50000-electric-car-charge-point-milestone ZapMap recently announced a significant achievement in the UK's electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure, with the country now boasting over 50,000 public EV charging points. The symbolic 50,000th charging station was an ultra-rapid device installed at a service station in Weston-super-Mare. A growing number of people are making the transition from petrol to electric cars. This is driven by the approaching deadline to phase out petrol cars (2035) and the steady rise in fuel prices over recent years. According to ZapMap, electric cars made up 17% of new car registrations in September 2023. This post will explore the significance of reaching this 50,000 charging point milestone and provide insights into various methods of charging electric vehicles, along with tips for maximising range with each charge. The government later introduced a new strategy to improve consumer experience by making more convenient, affordable and reliable charging accessible across the country. It also committed to a £1.6 billion investment to expand the UK charging network, with 300,000 public chargers expected to be available by 2030.

Like the Green line Skodas with their under the floor flattening aero work. Worker to get the Octy up to 228 mph at Bonneville, plus the 600 hp double fuel rack and the turbo turned up to to 11 like a Marshal Amp.

Rolling resistance is an element worth considering and us EV owners are listening out for better ie tyres which absorb less power ie sometimes called hysteresis loss ie the flexing of the tyres, it is what warms it up and as EVs are on average 10 or 15%. A bunch of UK ex military guys ran a Renault Zoe ZE50 for 424 miles on a single charge round Thuxton and then used some low hysteresis tyres ENSO tyres. Zoe drove over 10% farther. Yes more of an effect on city driving speeds that motorway speeds of course. Since EVs spend so little of energy for the car and for servicing tyres is the one place costs are an even more significant place to review for EVs than ICE vehicles. I like to change tyres at around the 3mm tread depth, one previous employer wanted to run the tyre down to 2 mm, was not happy with that situation. But what tyres to get ? Always gravitate to Michelins but torn with their EV tyre which was OE, Michelin Primacy is mostly OK but I think there is better out there now. https://www.renault.co.uk/renault-news/renault-zoe-e-tech-covers-475-miles-on-a-single-charge.html

Unless they ban the electric plug it is not going to affect EV 'in a terminal sort of way. One could use the Granny charging method. Charge the car via ones solar panels and home batteries . Electricity is everywhere. Where as diesel and petrol comes, mostly, from nasty regimes run by despotes. Yes governments want to control spikes which cause brown outs, they are way behind the curve at throttling EV car users drawing massive power. They need to get a move on a soon thousands of EV trucks will be drawing down electricity on 1 MW truck chargers !!

All EVs I can think of love trundling along at 60 mph or so and can even do better than there quoted range if they are kept down to 40 mph due to being on slow country roads and being held up by lorries now and then. The crunch tends to come, not for the Taycan, but for most EVs as they are SUVs or tallish city cars, that their efficiency in miles per KWh goes off quite quickly much over a true 60 mph ie indicated 64 or so. Tesla Model 3 excluded as it is low, new Highland model I think may even have hunker down mode for highways, even the taller Model Y does pretty well. Tesla software is so intelligent it could probably tell you what the optimum speed is to complete the journey as it already works on which on route chargers are available and their speeds etc. It cannot tell you, yet, when you need to stop for a jimmy riddle. EV can be constantly talking to various inputs, charging network availability, wind effect on consumption. Due to the fact that it is electricity being used for motive power and not hydrocarbon juice there is much more scope for journey optimisation and we are only just at beginning of the technical journey to optimise such matters and with the car driving itself shortly it the software will just let you know what it has decided. I, robot tunnel scene.....

Tortoise and the hare. Mr Battery Life did a, what he calls, Range, Consumption, Best Speed test, does it for many cars he has driven, as he is on the Austrian-German Border he can do some average speed tests at speeds well about the UK national average ie 145 kph /90 mph. I think we all know the best speed for most cars, ICE or EV, is around 60 mph. Every car is different. Aero drag coefficient, charging speed for EVs. So Mr Battery life did the below for the ZE40 Zoe, slow charging car,. relatively, If one speeds on to 7:30 on the video one can see the cruising speed versus lost time ot charge but then one will probably, I know I do, go quicker than the 90kph optimum cruise as one would arguably go over the optimum ie 100 or 105 kph so one had more time for comfort break. Certainly at my age I do not want to, anf struggling with bladder range, do more than 2.25 hours driving in one go so stopping every 200 kms is needed more for me than the car.

Them posh mini (the original one not the modern german doppelganger) owners bought a rubber oversleeve for their distributor https://www.minispares.com/product/Classic/8G726.aspx Us misers just converted a marigold glove by snipping the tips of the fingers and thumb. What is a distributor ? say they younguns. My Arkana is nice and high as it was original designed for the Russian and Ukrainian conditions for Lada which was a Renault subsidiary so I have 8 inch clearance before water even touches any undertrays or bodywork. Next storm on its way for Wednesday onward which is called Ciaran but pronounced like Kieran I am told.

US military working on energy resilience using battery storage, solar etc, worth billions. One can only imagine the reliance on solar and battery in Gaza now to run phones and battery vehicles. When the supplies are cut being self sufficient in energy and a micro-generation and use level. US military probably have got battery with energy density of around 1 kw per kilo if not even better. Gaza will be getting less solar every day as the solar arrays are increasingly blown to pieces and the day-night grow darker and colder..... When it seems like the apocalypse the truth is electric cars may still be running, ICE not too much.

Of your list, looking at current economic performance, only Tesla will still be in business in a few years time but maybe Renault and Stelantis might be if their Chinese partnerships continue to go well. Who would not want one pedal driving and not filling up at petrol stations so a Citreon, Renault, Peugeot, Vauxhall EV, or Up, Mii, City go is what a would recommend an elderly relative and they could enjoy 21st century advantages and running costs.

Stellantis to join Renault in adding cheap Chinese made electric cars to keep competing with BYD, MG/SAIC and other Chinese brands now selling in Europe. Very bad news for European car workers and supply chain and millions of jobs. The paradigm has already been successful with the Dacia Spring which has sold well over 120k cars in Europe, cars made by Dongfeng in China. European car workers and the supply look like they will suffer hundreds of thousand of job losses in several European countries due to the lack of European car companies to prepare for the change to electric vehicles from Internal Combustion Engined vehicles sadly. A massive failure which leaves aerospace, pharma as well as film and sport as the increasingly small number of industries the west can say it dominates.

Just sent one of my daughter the Octopus referral code, she can have the whole £100. Still trying to get my Brother over to the Octopus Cosy Heat pump special tariff as he has a big house, new build, with heat pump system, a separate room for all the gubbins. Think his lecky bill gets up to about £500 a month in the depths of winter, he lives high up in the hills between Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Essex and a cold Eastern can make it feel very cold. Neighbour just about to get a grand or two worth of solar on his garage to charge up his EV. I am still not convinced on the payback timescale and will continue to look at battery storage over solar despite having a good southerly aspect. Some of the latest portable Solar generators look pretty impressive. Deals are getting better and better as Lithium battery prices continue to fall, as does solar panel costs of course. Might get an eco-worthy dual access solar tracker as they look cool and solar tracking get get 40% more power that fixed solar panels. Got 4 120W panels add another 2 or 4 and could get some useful power from dawn to dusk. Less than £400 now but may go even cheaper in Black Friday and Cyber Monday. ESS

Brummies. Then Solihull oft say they are Solihull and not Brummies. Guy at my TKD school work at the plant. Drove a Citroen. Impressed with a visit to the Castle Bromwich plant making the F type, wow, bit old tech compared to Toyota at Derby and probably Nissan at Sunderland but beautiful cars. Good to see stats of UK car production up but still a big worry how long volume production will last. We get to move the Astons and McLarens which are also beautiful. Range Rovers, boxy but goods. Uk Intelligence service still love them it seems. Had a race with an Overfinch version in one of my VRSs, top speed not great with the Range Rovers. Good export earner in the past.