Luckypants

Seriously? With rising poverty in the country, real world wage erosion, record numbers reliant on food banks, people working full time reliant on food banks and benefits you question how people do not have savings?? Many people who did have savings have spent their 'minimum safety net' a long time ago. Those of us able to save and pay our way are in a position many, many hard working people are not. Definitely out of touch.

Fair point. I was merely comparing the most costly component on an ICE with that of an EV and on that basis the cost is comparable.

A google away, while trying to find the link to the E-UP pack, I came across this. BMW I3 pack for £3683+VAT - granted only a 22kWh pack but these are out there. https://www.secondlife-evbatteries.com/collections/ev-packs/products/bmw-i3-60ah-22kwh-pack

For what its worth, I saw an E-Up battery pack with less than 10K miles on it second hand from a written off car about 6 months ago. £3200+VAT delivered. ISTR I posted about it at the time, but cannot find the post. £3200 seems very reasonable for a major component akin to a new engine. Like ICE cars, major parts will become available reconditioned and second hand as the market matures. EVs will not be more expensive than ICE, its the supply of cheap parts has not yet developed.

European Taycans have always had the possibility of 22kW AC charging as an option. This is now available for retrofit. The first link is to an American site, they do not do 3-phase hence the 19kW weirdness.

My point was more the UP/Mii city car with modern tech batteries could be significantly more efficient due to weight savings. Owners regularly report 4.5-5 miles / kWh, maybe that would be pushed to 5-5.5 with lighter battery? This is a 150 mile range car, which is plenty for it's intended city / commuter use. There is no more room for batteries really, its an adapted ICE design after all. VAG claim they make no money on small cars and so are killing this off, but they've sold plenty with a waiting list. This car with a lighter battery of same capacity could end up a 200 mile car, better acceleration/braking and generally improved. I'm saying development of this concept of small car/light battery would yield great results and would sell like hot cakes in Europe.

Improvements in energy density are a magic bullet. Either the battery becomes 10% lighter=more range or battery has 10% more power stored = more range. Personally I hope they use the improved energy density to lighten the vehicle, making it better overall rather than keep weight same and get 10% extra range. Improvements in packaging of the cells into a pack should also give weight savings. Hopefully this new technology will help produce smaller and lighter EVs. Efficiency improvements are where its at now. Oh, imagine an e-UP or Mii with this battery tech, rather than the outdated batteries currently used! I hope we can find something like Moore's law applies to energy density in batteries.

Charging at home is the game changer, no doubt about that. Public charging is pricey and for me many chargers would be more expensive than a diesel. My break even point is currently 58p/kWh, so I can find some public charging below that cost and thus the EV is still cheaper. I agree not having facility to charge at home is a disadvantage and more needs to be done to make charging affordable for those without private parking. As for space in an EV to compare with a Superb, you should have a sit in a Skoda Enyaq or VW ID.4 or their rivals. Purpose built EVs rather than an ICE car converted to run BEV (e.g. Stellantis group) provide more internal space than a similar sized ICE. We bought the ID.4 as it was a similar size to our Skoda Karoq, but had not sat in one. We soon realised internally the ID.4 (Enyaq is more roomy!) is much bigger than a Karoq and we would happily down-size to an EV mid-sized hatch.

Even when not on a time of use tariff, just fixed rate / offers that any reasonably diligent homeowner should take advantage of, EVs are cheaper or even cheap to run. I cannot get a time of use tariff due to smart meter issues but manage to keep my leccy costs down by diligent use of fixed rates and now a tracker tariff. Lifetime fuel costs for 30K in my ID.4 is 6p/mile - real world costs. By comparison our Citigo costs 12p/mile in petrol while averaging 50+mpg.

Latest I've seen about cause of FH fire https://www.electrive.com/2023/08/14/it-wasnt-an-ev-that-caused-the-fremantle-highway-to-catch-fire/

Fair enough, comparing 400V architecture cars with 800V. I agree that 800V is the way forward to improve charge times, due to the 500A current limit with CCS2 standard. 200kW is the max any 400V car can pull on a standard CCS2 plug. I'm not sure what Tesla do with their Superchargers but that is not standard CCS2. You state you've never seen a VW or Skoda charging at high speed and I believe you, so I hope you'll believe me when I say I have gotten 140kW (Washington services 350kW chargers) and regularly get 100+kW since the V3.2 software update, on the rare occasions I do charge away from home. I have had one truly disappointing charge at Beverley MFG 150kW charger, where I initially got 80kW but then someone else plugged in to the other CCS port and charge speed dropped to 40kW and soon was down to 30kW - I like to think that was a charger issue rather than car issue but I cannot prove it. Its all anecdotal so I'd say MEB are no worse or better than other 400V cars, certainly not as bad as you made out. MEB cars do seem to be sensitive to being at a low SoC to get the fastest charge speeds, anything above 15% when plugging in will start charging at a lower rate of charge and it gets worse after that.

@cheezemonkhaiWhat do you regard as too slow to charge? 11kW 3-phase is pretty much standard on all EVs and VW cars support this. VW 77kWh battery cars charge at up to 170kW DC and even my 2021 ID.4 can now charge at that rate with the software updates VW have released. The 58kWh battery cars can charge at 125kW (owners report actual speeds can be higher). These speeds are competitive with anything else on the market in my opinion.

You see Enyaqs a lot in TdF and not just on short stages. An Enyaq is more than capable of approx 120 miles of longest stage. I'd say maybe another 50 miles for running about / liaison at start end of stage making the cars plenty capable. Skoda only provide official race organiser's cars, team cars are based on team sponsorship. My understanding is that as the specially modified Superbs wear out, they are replaced with an Enyaq. Neutral service cars provided by the ASO (race owners) and sponsored by Skoda / Shimano are Skoda Octavias. The reason for this is Enyaqs are too tall for getting bikes off the centre of the roof rack quickly. It is about being fit for purpose, same as using VW cabrio for doctors car. The cars used by the race organisers will be a sponsor to British Cycling (possibly through Vardy) and likely not coming from Skoda directly. If sponsored through the dealership network, the cars will be whatever is available, e.g. nearly new cars and demos. I haven't paid much attention to the cars, are LHD or RHD? RHD will confirm UK sourced. Given what I've said regarding Enyaqs in the TdF, I don't agree. Unlikely it would have it's range crippled. In general EVs do better in an urban setting than on a fast road. The reason is regenerative braking, where a lot of energy is recovered to the battery while braking. Zooming around the streets of Glasgow would be fine, hard acceleration followed by hard REGEN braking will not cripple range and an Enyaq will certainly have enough range for the 170 mile road race.

My ID.4 is a First Edition, the only spec. available when we got it. No longer available and I'm not sure where it fits relative to the latest spec.

My wife and I love it. It is our first EV, so have mothing to compare it to but we love the smoothness, the 'intelligent regen' (car slows itself for corners and junctions), the space, the quiet. We've had the car from new in March 2021 and have 29k trouble free miles in it. I could say stress free but driving back from Scotland in Storm Dudley with a puncture was stressful! The car coped pretty well, apart from heavily impacted range due to rain and headwinds. As a mark of how much we like the car, we cannot wait to tour France in it next month! Lane assist can be intrusive, but improved after V3.2 of the software (I've been upgraded many times) No modern car is allowed to permanently disable lane assist, its the law. To be honest, it doesn't bother us that much. It is possible to define a shortcut button to disable it, so it only needs a swipe to get rid of it. In my answer about economy, I meant to say Enyaq seems to do slightly better than ID.4 for economy.

My personal view is we need to get building more pumped storage hydro schemes to capture the excess renewables. At present Coire Glas is the most advanced plan for such schemes and should be progressed urgently IMHO. There are opportunities for similar schemes in Wales and Lake District, but NIMBYism gets in the way. We have a lot of wind power in north Wales now, mainly offshore that could be harnessed by more schemes like Dinorwig or Trawsfynnedd.

I'll weigh in as an ID.4 owner (as you have been chatting with one anyway). I have a 77kWh battery ID.4 (Enyaq 80 equivalent) which gives me 4.1 miles/kWh in general driving of mainly B-roads and some A-roads in summer which gives a max range of 300 miles. This then goes down to about 3.6 in winter. On the motorway I generally cruise about 65mph and get 3.9 summer and 3.5 winter. Wet roads make a dent in those figures. This economy is for V3.0 and above version of the MEB software, which you will get if buying new but you should insist on the software being upgraded if buying used. Economy on V2.x of MEB software was significantly worse. The software on Enyaq is much the same. Hope that's helpful.

I skim watched the video as those issues were known to me. They did not mention the huge amounts of electricity required to produce hydrogen. This alone makes hydrogen a non-starter for me, it is far more efficient to use that electricity to power a direct replacement technology. e.g. heat pumps over a gas ,hydrogen or oil boiler. More on this from Fully Charged show (now Everything Electric Show), I may have shared this before.

The battery swap idea on ships is the same as cars such as the Nio ET5. I think it makes sense on ships as the number of ships needing this service will be smaller than car numbers and also the TEU batteries work wonderfully with infrastructure already in place. with cars, if 20 cars turn up for a battery swap, its the same problem as not enough chargers at a location, there will be queueing. If a car swap station runs out of charged batteries, we'd be back to the not enough chargers scenario we have now.

Gridserve do have a lot of experience with battery tech at their charging facilities, using them at both Braintree and Norwich Forecourts to buffer solar generation from the roofs and nearby. In addition they can make extra revenue with grid support discharge or by taking power when prices are negative. So using batteries at places where there is a weak grid connection is probably obvious to them. For MSAs, they are leveraging a government initiative to provide battery power to enable chargers to be installed.(https://nationalhighways.co.uk/about-us/new-charging-systems-to-help-electric-vehicle-drivers-on-our-motorways/) The batteries are meant as an interim solution while the grid connection is built out, then re-used at another location with grid connection issues. However, they may be used long term where sites have particular issues such as Tebay whose nearest 33kV connection is 5 miles away and at capacity, so nearest viable connection is 10 miles away. Tebay is likely to use a solar and battery solution permanently and have applied for planning for a solar farm on land next door.

For those whinging about charging in Cornwall etc, here is a user maintained map of charging HUBS down that way. There are plenty of single or double rapids down there too. The problem is lemming tourists all turning up at the same chargers to "charge over lunch" at the same time. There were no queues at the 16 charger Osprey hub at Buckfastleigh for instance. https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1JFz9IAoX8-vjav4aSMsiJ6u0mQuYIWE&usp=sharing

Agree. For me I use previous car as a benchmark as similar in size to the ID.4. Current price of £1.48 ppl around here means my price per kWh before EV is more expensive is 59p/kWh. So basically any public rapid charger is more expensive than previous diesel car. Charging at home is the only way to be sure of cheaper running costs, otherwise you are into the realms of buying a subscription then searching for chargers which use that service and there is a discount. I do think CPOs are taking the urine with their current prices, since the very high wholesale prices of the recent past have dropped a lot over the past few months to levels they were when prices were in the 40p range. I hope we start to see some price competition soon, perhaps with the likes of Sainsburys opening charger hubs it will happen.

Also, maybe a little over budget, but have you looked at the e-Up/Mii electric/Citigo-e? The prices of 3 year old cars are just over budget, genuine 120 winter range and 160 in summer, CCS charging which is more common than the Leaf Chademo and recharges relatively quickly on AC thanks to 36kWh battery and 7kW charging. Might be worth taking a look.

This might help.

and of course, being the mighty Clarkson he didn't stop at all for a pee, a drink, food, stretch legs or just a rest. Obviously he then turned around immediately on getting to Edinburgh to drive back again without doing something there (work, dinner, sleep?).