Lady Elanore

The spark said it could sustain the load, but it was most efficient to share it with the batteries

I think the fuel cell genny that I was discussing with the 'Sparky' chap, used really big truck turbos to deliver the oxygen/air to the cell

I've been working with a chap who looks after the mobile generator trucks we use at work. Turns out they have been bought be a much bigger company (so serious investment is now available) and are now looking at hydrogen fuel cell gennies! Already some golf and tennis events have had a Hydrogen genny on site and I believe they can produce around 250kW from a cell that is surprisingly small. He described a cell area of around 3 x 4 feet, or there abouts, which seem tiny for something that can produce 250kW (I have no idea about the actual molecular science involved in this technology of course ). They also use a huge amount of conventional battery technology to supplement this generator, with a sort of topping up process going on continuously I gather, but the fuel cell can run full tilt as a pure generator if needed. They do have to redesign the truck/generator body however, so if it goes 'BANG' then the roof blows off and the sides stay intact. I might not be parking next to one of these though...just to be sure SKY TV are looking to go full hydrogen/battery for all their OBs by 2030, although I gather the costs at the moment mean the electricity bill will go up 3 or 4 times. I may well be still in the industry long enough to see these things appear I'm super interested to see one in action

I'm glad I got a Tesla too

I take back everything I have said about Tesla and their charging stations..... They are very convenient

Actually looking at the wheelbase and tracks of the M3 it seems to be bigger than the Superb!! Shows how big cars are getting these days 😞

If I had a RR my chaffuer would have the problem of parking it The front track on the M3 is almost 64 inches though, so it's not a slam dunk

The new Fisker Ocean is getting good reviews. It has a humongous battery size for the money!

Nobody can accuse you of not giving the EV thing a go. The cost of fast chargers is a pain and one that would impact me, as I regularly drive the sort of mileage you describe. I can live with the cost however, as it's for the good of the planet etc (still not totally sold on that one yet), but I am not time rich at work and the searching - and possible unreliability of service, could cost me my decent reputation. I work in an industry where turning up late is a dealbreaker. plus I don't want to be sitting around at 2 in the morning filling up the car in order to get home before sunrise. It seems that on talking to EV owners that have a similar lifestyle to my own, that the problems are not improving, at least not significantly. I wonder if it's because although chargers are increasing, so are EVs on the road, so the ratio of convenient and working charge points, are running roughly hand in hand with the current stock of EVs doing the rounds. I can't use the new Tesla chargers at my local retail park as they don't have a type 2 charger and the same has happened at my local water park where I go for walks a couple of times a week. A type 2 low power charger would be perfect. I go for a 6-9 mile walk so it would easily give the charge I need to get home, but they have fitted chargers for people who want to drive large distances I assume, not us humble hybriddidy types 😞 At least I assume that's why, after all, if you are the water park for a few hours then your car is already partially charged, then you will easily charge to max capacity with these blitz charging thingummybobs and so will then be attracting a penalty payment for hogging the charger? A colleague I work with extensively has just bought a Taycan (with the big battery) so it will be interesting to see how he copes, although he doesn't do quite the mileage I do, as he is trying to work less. In winter time, we do a job in London every year (I reckon it's a 220+ mile journey down for him), where there is a daily 20-mile round trip for the couple of weeks we are there, so that should be interesting (we are talking 14-hour work days too). I expect he will not be able to stay at the same digs as we normally do however, as they do not have any charge points 😞 I know EVs are the future 😞 but I'm hoping I'm retired before I'm forced to run one. Range, charge points, dashing around the country etc will no longer be of concern really, so although it will be a sad day when I say goodbye to ICE cars, at least I'll still be mobile.

It's the exit spiral that's the killer. It's the inside loop, so even tighter (the easier entrance loop lulls you into a false sense of security). The M3 with its long wheelbase and rather wide track and body, is something that focuses the mind on exit I got a discount for about £8 per 24 hours

We got a discount for the Q Park and it is a lovely thing on the higher floors.

I was thinking of that at the time I was terrorising inner Sheffield. Wasn't it around 170-odd miles an hour? Or a tad higher even?

I was trying to go faster than the trigger speed of the cameras It is a nightmare if you come from the Northern side of the city and try to work your way around to Charles Street. I remembered the trick after a bit. You go down to the roundabout where the big Decathlon store is and work your way back up into town

Most of the Arundel Gate pollution was caused by me driving around in circles for ages, trying to find my way through the roadworks, one way systems etc in order to find the Q Park on Charles street. Ruddy nightmare if you follow your nose or a satnav.

I remember spinning a Harley Davidson F150 pickup through 90 degrees in the middle of Manchester. It had the F150 lightning engine (slightly down-tuned) and a live axel. It was raining very hard, in my defence Sounded great....above the screaming.

I've never owned a V8 (been lucky to drive quite a few though) and it's an itch I would love to scratch before the fun police ban such things (Said tongue in cheek...of course). As I will be retiring sometime around the end of the decade, time is running out for me to get something like the F type and still be able to afford to run it, so although I told myself I was done with silly cars after my current one, maybe...

Go on, be honest, have you taken out fuse 15 yet

I read they can get up to 30mpg on the motorway at roughly the speed limit? I assume you have the four wheel drive version

Thank goodness, I was worried my Lamborghini might have been damaged. Don't care so much if the Bentley is a gonner though.

Where were the cars bound for? Anyone know yet?

How's life with the Jag going. I must admit I've had a hankering for a V8 Jag F type for many years. Even with the OPF, they still sound great.

Car and Driver reported those charge efficiency figures based on what they read from 49 pages of certification documents Tesla submitted to the EPA But as I said, higher voltage and also DC will help charge efficiency. I'm pretty sure a large part of my inefficiency in charging is inverter loss which will probably in turn, be mostly heat loss. Also, not fully charging will probably increase efficiency, as that last push to fill a battery can cause residual heat loss etc. Mind you, that brings back the range issue again, at least for my needs if not most people's lesser requirements.

I've found this form a Tesla figure on a 2022 model Y performance using a 240v source For the 202``1 Model Y - Performance version, adding 81.052 kWh to the battery required 92.213 kWh, or 14 percent more. Although that didn't mention the temperature at charging other than it was conducted in a climate controlled chamber, not a baking hot day or a freezing cold one either. I would think that higher voltage, ie not from home charging, would reduce inefficiencies further.

Interestingly enough Tesla have previously only quoted their Scope 1 and 2 figures for emissions, but new legislation has forced them to release their Scope 3 figures taking the C02 figure from a reported 2,500,000 tonnes to 30,500,000 tonnes (I have seen figures that differ slightly from those, but in general they are a reasonable average of ones doing the rounds). Which apparently puts them on a more equal footing to someone like Ford when overall size is taken into account. The graph you show is interesting, the article it comes from is very thorough, but it does mention much later on, that some of the figures it talks about assume the battery last to EoL. I know that If I had a 300 mile range EV which in the winter struggled to top 220 real world miles and then after several years it was down to 80% range which in turn led to me getting less than 180 miles/charge, I would want a new battery. A big battery will be around £6-9k depend on size and manufacturer, but in a green world, we will keep our cars much longer. Also, the greenness of the energy in manufacture and use of the cars also depends on the country you make and drive these EVs and that in turn can alter overall figures depending on how much fossil fuel that country of manufacturer and charging, uses. That massive new battery factory they are once again saying they are going to build in Northumberland will be interesting to follow. I can see that to keep cost down (now the government has come to some sort of 'deal' with the Aussies), there will be some fudging of the green credentials in the build and a lot of concrete being used and not the more expensive green concrete either. But as I say, time will tell on that one. As I say, I'm not against EVs, but an inefficient Hydrogen production which produces very little absolute GHG vs a battery which may be clean in running, but produces a very large CO2 amount in mining, refining and construction, I prefer the inefficient plugging away Hydrogen manufacture. Storing electricity is still basically rubbish (big, heavy and expensive), but hopefully the next generation of battery will appear in my lifetime, possibly even before I reach state pension age...hopefully. My EV has a battery just shy of 13kW/h, of which around 10kW/h hours are available for drive (and heating). Putting a meter across the charge cycle shows I need over 12kW to charge the 10kW that the battery wants. I assume that much of this is inverter loss, but Peugeot doesn't say, at least nothing I found yet shows a break-down on battery charging inefficiency. If that figure is a scalable one, then you need 20% more juice than you get back from your battery. I suspect the smaller size and quite possibly the battery is less sophisticated than some, but I say what I see in my case. I've spent a lifetime working with rechargeable batteries and they are a pain in the arse in general, but I can see it is 'part' of an overall solution that is needed, I just think they are not a Holy Grail of any sort. Mind you, if I am allowed to have a big V8 as long as I also have an EV, then I'm in. Or maybe just get that big V8 and grown more vegetables?

I don't think that the inefficiency of renewables converting water to hydrogen is that much of a problem, especially when you consider the big impact that mining for minerals used in batteries is causing at the moment. But the 2 arguments for hydrogen are interesting. The ICE one relies on the fact we already have the infrastructure and manufacturing in place to make them (a redesign of cylinder heads and injects notwithstanding). The building of so many mega factories, designing EV cars (huge amount of emissions from all that computing) and completely new manufacturing facilities has produced a massive amount of green house gas over the last few years and the break even for emissions of a large battery EV are only after a surprisingly high number of miles. I've seen JCB being quite open about the challenges of Hydrogen ICE and accept they had to do a fair bit of work to sort the emissions out. In an ICE car we would probably have to accept that we may have a decent amount of torque, but probably not a huge amount of power, more akin to an average family diesel in its performance and not like a 911. Harry Metcalf got some Carbon-neutral fuel in, for his fleet and said he will report on it later. He did mention the cost, approximately three times the current cost of fuel, but that would come down to some degree if it was scaled up in its production. I like the idea of carbon-neutral fuel for pretty much the same reasons as hydrogen ICE, we don't need to add extra millions of tonnes of green house gases building and designing new 'stuff'. The hydrogen fuel cell is also fine with me and there seems to be a genuine move that manufacturers are looking at this in earnest. As far as I know, the number 2 car on the Dust to dust rating is still the series 1 Land Rover. Something I doubt electric cars will ever come close to replicating. It's not that I don't like the idea of electric cars and I accept that although I will never have any real interest or feel any more passion towards them than I do my fridge freezer, we need to do something about global warming and cars are a contributor to its rising. I simply feel that of all the alternatives, the wrong direction to head in, is the battery electric vehicle. On a positive note, this super warm weather of late has brought about my best ever range in my PHEV, even with the air con on full tilt, as its batteries seem happier.