widdershins

FTFY

I think the other big question is will they get the software working properly before the Ioniq 5 launches early in 21. Given how good the efficiency of the current Hyundai and Kia EV's are, plus the strong warranties they give, I think VW will have some stiff SUV competition even before the Tesla Y is available from Germany. Rumours are that the Ioniq 5 will be launched this financial year.

And require new housing developments to have lamppost/kerbside chargers so visitors can charge their ev without grandpa having to come out to move his off the single charging spot on his driveway. I also think the best motorway option would be to start by building some intermediate EV only services in the style of gridserve. Especially on the long distance N/s and E/W routes where demand would be highest from longer distance journeys. Since EV's have shorter ranges it would actually allow drivers to safely go lower on battery before stopping for recharging. Most EV drivers would be reluctant to risk pushing on past the services if the next charger was 50 miles away and they had 51 miles of range. But if they knew the next charger was only 25 miles away they'd be more likely to go on to that, and they'd also get a faster charge for longer if their battery was at a lower SOC when they started charging again.

I think you are both right, and at the same time wrong regarding EV charging hubs. There are two distinct use cases and must be thought of independently I think. First I'll call town and country driving. This is the usual commute to work, shops, etc. In this I think you are correct that there will be a significant amount of overnight charging at home which will reduce the need for "filling stations". But here will still be some need since around 60% of uk households don't have a driveway to charge at home, and lamp-post and workplace charging is quite some way off from national availability on every street and office. The slower charging times of EV's at filling stations will offset the reduced demand for them due to home charging. So I think that overall we'll see a similar number of local charging stations as there are ICE filling stations at present unless 350KW/hr+ charging becomes the norm at these chargers (and in cars). The second use case is long haul motorway driving. If we look at the number of pumps at motorway service stations and take that as representative of long haul demand - since no-one pays the extortionate motorway fuel prices if they can avoid it, and motorway service stations wouldn't incur the excess maintenance costs of more pumps/tanks/etc. than the demand merited. Then we can see a problem looming when everyone switches to EV's. They don't have the equivalent range to ICE vehicles, so more "fill-ups" will be required on long haul journeys, so more chargers will be needed than current ICE pumps to meet demand. EV's also take longer to recharge than equivalent ICE to refuel, so more chargers again will be needed. Again 350+KW chargers & vehicles would reduce charge times and so reduce the pump requirements, but unless EV range dramatically increases they'll still need to charge 2-3 times as often, so that part of the equation would stay the same. And I'm talking about times stopped and occupying a pump/charger rather than just time stopped at present in the services. Many ICE drivers will park at the services to use the facilities without ever using the pumps. I know when I drive south I hardly ever use the pumps, but do use the facilities. Indeed, if you look at the number of cars parked at motorway services at any given time you could easily argue that is the number of additional rapid chargers that each services will need over and above the number of pumps they have at present. These are the people not using the pumps in the usual "well I need to stop anyway in an ICE car for 20 mins to use the loo/get coffee after a couple of hours" argument that many EV owners use to excuse the shorter EV range.

This is what will improve EV adoption, not one or two possibly working chargers at a motorway service station, perhaps ICE'd, perhaps not working, who knows. But regular dedicated facilities with multiple points and different speeds. https://youtu.be/FoN4WCpuxHY

Here's the backstory on that "report" the newspapers were doing articles on this week. https://electrek.co/2020/11/30/did-aston-martin-publish-fake-emission-numbers-about-evs/ it makes interesting reading about how the PR and lobbying are being carried out.

Not as hard to implement as you might think. https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and-emergencies/emergency-assistance-vehicles-ecall/index_en.htm New EU cars since 2018 already require the technology to be present to communicate without your permission, providing location to emergency services in the event of a serious accident. So they don't have to invent very much! If the phone/data link is already present, the location sensing is already present, and the onboard computer already calls for help if it detects a crash, how hard would it really be to introduce legislation that requires manufacturers to alter that code to record the vehicle location and speed every few seconds and send that data to - say- HMRC to have your charges (and speeding fines) collected by PAYE from your wages, pension, or benefits? Also the GPS co-ords and time wouldn't take much space on a memory chip, so there would be no requirement to have an always on data connection. If you go out of range, fine, it'd dump all the data next time it made contact. You might not have phone signal at some points in your journey, but it'd be unlikely you'd have no signal at all unless you were cheating the system by knobbling the transmission. Signal loss could be recorded and that data passed back on next contact so dead areas could be filled in. There are however some things which might mitigate against a lot of extra duty being required. Firstly EV's would still pay VAT on the electricity consumed whether at home (unless you have home solar of course) or a public charger, so there would still be some vat revenue. Granted not much if you can home charge and can get a special low price for overnight charging, but that won't apply to around 60% I believe, of car users who won't be able to home charge. Secondly as renewables bring down electricity costs the vat on it could be raised without impacting peoples pockets, they just wouldn't get the reduction. Thirdly the reduction in vehicle pollution is expected to save the NHS billions in treatment costs. I do expect however the government will find some way to still charge road users, a) Because they have a massive COVID debt to pay off, b) because it would force people onto more environmentally friendly public transport, c) Because they'll want to tax the peasants off the roads to leave them free for their party contributor billionaire cronies. I'll leave it to you to decide which one depending on your political inclinations.

TeslaBjorn has also identified a fairly repeatable case of phantom braking in Tesla vehicles. On narrower single carriageway roads it get's scared if a large truck is coming the other way. The extra width means the lorry rides closer to the dividing line than a normal oncoming car would, so the tesla gets scared and brakes thinking it's about to get hit. Perhaps this is partly due to the software having been developed & mainly trained on wider US roads, and may improve when they focus more on narrower European roads.

I'm in agreement. It passed the MOT so the brakes must've been good enough. I'd just keep an eye on the rear disks until the corrosion is significant. One thing though you said they were new disks, were they OEM disks from Skoda or unbranded disks made from Chinesium. I've had aftermarket disks on cars in the past and they corroded/warped faster than OEM. Now I get them replaced with either OEM or aftermarket depending on how much longer I'm planning to keep the car. Fully agree with the MOT advisories being a bit of a revenue earner for the garage. I once went to Kwick Fit for an MOT out of desperation because it was open on Sunday and, due to an error on my part noting my diary, the MOT was up on Monday! The list of advisories was impressive, since Kwick fit staff have sales quotas to get bonuses. I knew their game though and politely declined all the "repairs" for the advisories. They included tyres, brake pads, brake disks, and exhaust, plus a few other bits and pieces. That car was traded in about 5 yrs and around 90k later and still with the exhaust on it that had been given an advisory by their MOT examiner, and that the fitter, or should I say salesman, confidently assured me would be lucky to last a few months...