Graham Butcher

Thanks for the figures; I'm quite happy to keep on paying that taxation to keep the services that are reliant on that £25B pot of money being there to continue to operate. But, seriously, it does actually make us ICE drivers/owners wonder. What if there were no actual financial advantages in owning an electric car? If they cost the same as the ICE equivalent to buy, insure, tax, and fuel and operate. They provided the same power output, miles per battery full. In other words, the EVs matched the overall costs and performance exactly as an ICE car. Charging at home was banned, so you had no option but to go to a charging hub, just as ICE cars have to go to a filling station. Just how many there would be on the roads when the above have been negated and there was no instant torque available and thus no instant acceleration to be the first to pull away and get to the next set of traffic lights, etc. All the other advantages of being able to preheat the cabin on a cold day and defrost the windows, etc., were taken away. The only current characteristic that EVs would be able to carry over is the actual charging time; that is to say, it would be available from a 100 kW charger that would necessitate spending approx. 1 hour each time to recharge the battery as opposed to the 5 minutes for an ICE car to refill its fuel tank. Then it really would be purely down to personal choice; I would expect the number of them on the road would drop dramaticly and make them a rare sight indeed. One thing you can be certain of is as the number of EVs on the road increases as a result of government policies and the revenue from ICE cars drops, the government is going to make sure that the shortfall is going to be forced onto the shoulders of EV owners/drivers to replace.

Wow, I don't have any fixed tarrif and my cost per KWH is 23.75p.

Personally I don't see petrol, diesel or gas going anywhere anytime soon. It is / was demonised for an agenda by those that will cash in big time by those with their vested interests. But like I have said before, I don't hate electric cars, I just hate the fact that they are trying to remove people's choice, end of.

A bit if a faff though.

What is the name of this village where it is either electric or oil then? Why on earth does your brother not switch over to storage heaters and get considerably lower monthly running costs?

Yeah, the VAT cut is just window dressing.

This weeks eFIXX video highlights the real dangers of Chinese-made 13A sockets with a warning that using a particular one could result in death. Even the country's premier brand, MK, has, I think, contracted their manufacturing to China and they are also advising not to use one of their own sockets because of safety issues. There is also a dedicated section on home EV chargers that may interest some of you.

I see that we are finally going to get the 5% VAT on domestic electric removed; however, that is still only pocket money a year for most people. What I found interesting, however, was the irony; this was something the leave brigade promised would be able to happen once we left the EU. I seem to recall it later becoming a promise to make it happen if we left, as they were unable to do while we remained. It only took 6 years to deliver and will help a bit; but sadly nothing is planned for doing something similar with public charging systems, though.

It is alleged that on June 23rd 2026 with temperatures hitting 34°C, the UK grid came close to shutting down as it fell out of safe operating parameters several times with zero backup supplies, whistleblowers reveal. This is something that I have raised before when there were calls for more HGVs to be made BEVs, which thankfully at the moment has not happened yet. If this problem was caused through the addition of fans being used in attempts to get some cooling across the country, then it does, in my view, raise serious questions about the future being electric.

Yes, I've had those bouts of phantom braking as well, and I've had the ACC fail to understand, without a fairly lengthy pause, that the vehicle in front has either turned off or has pulled into a layby before understanding that has happened and resetting itself back to the original setting. It makes you wonder if things wouldn't be better without all of these modern driver aids.

@lol-lol Yes, I think one of the issues with Tesla Vision is sunlight; fog is going to be another.

This is a very interesting video; it's an interview of a couple who were driving their Tesla with FSD active at 140kmh when it was involved in a head-on crash and lived to tell the tale.

Boy racer mode, just wanting the go-faster stripes to complete the impression. Personally, if it was speed I wanted, I'd much prefer the wolf in sheep's clothing look.

@lol-lol Hmm.... As to the cost of energy coming down as more solar, wind and storage is added on the grid, I seriously doubt that either of us is ever going to see that in our lifetime. Perhaps now you've retired, you might take time to explore more investigative channels that explore and explode so many myths about the promises that are made. Then discover about just who is benefitting from the policies and how when it is time to deliver said promises, ducking and diving before doing a U turn.

Oh, come on, you have to admit on the running costs you had a few years of cashing it in big time; even with that PPM, surely you're still going to be better off than running an ICE car? Anyway, I thought you always claimed that it was all about saving the planet and less about the cheapness of running and maintenance costs?

More roadblocks on allowing homes with no off-street parking, installing a gully across the footpath to allow them to drop a cable in the gully and then charge their cars. As I fully expected, it is getting loads of opposition on the grounds of safety to the public, not just from cables being a possible trip or entanglement hazard but also a real possibility of fatal electric shocks from earth problems. It seems I was right that the big push and rush towards getting electric cars to become the major means of personal transportation are being driven by the policymakers who do NOT fully understand the implications of their policies.

Personally, I'd rather have more sedate progress but longer range in an EV.

Looks like a great fun car to have, and it demonstrates the point I made above about ICE cars with the soundtrack, this car tries so hard to emulate a ICE in so many ways that Matt Watson loves it.

This is a bit of good news and shows how batteries are improving.

Hills?? The cars I would expect would be as near to fully charged as it is possible to get, in order to maximise the amount of traction power they can draw down. Don't forget that a fully charged one weighs just about the same as a fully discharged battery, unlike the equivalent fuel tank on an ICE vehicle. A full tank is so much heavier than an almost empty one; advantage EV. That Goodwood Hill is only just over 1 mile long, and the elevation only rises by 93 metres, so it's not that onerous, is it? As to that torque being there almost from the get-go, well, that is one aspect that insurance companies are wary of as that is the possible reason why so many older people are crashing into rows of parked cars, through walls in multistorey carparks and even into shops when they attempt to exit a parking spot.

No surprise there at all, electric should dominate, certainly on the hill climb, but speed is not the only thrill factor at play which is why so many electric performance cars have fake sounds in their speakers to replicate the missing ingredient.

When I go on a longish trip, that is exactly how I see many EV's being driven: tailgating large trucks, sitting in their slipstream and thus broadcasting that they are prioritising range over time. That spot, however, is also the most dangerous position to be in; they risk being crushed between the truck they're tailgating and the one behind should the front one become compromised. I accept that in the case of reps, that is how they drive because of time constraints.

Yes, that is much the same with ICE; if running really low in an emergency, that is what any sane person would do. All that I was attempting to demonstrate was for those EV drivers who show and deploy that scrooge mode time and time again that it is perfectly possible to come unstuck when a sudden massive diversion is imposed upon them and then the vulnerability exposes itself, with possible chargers not working, as @Evolution13 has discovered and documented on many of his trips; some had not been working for some considerable time and were awaiting repairs or, of course, were at remote locations or in the middle of the night, so thieves might have struck and nicked the cable for the high-value copper, leaving such persons possibly stranded. Whereas a sensible precaution of doing a zap and dash earlier when they knew that would be cutting it fine would have been the wise move. That way, if such a diversion is forced on them, as it only takes a second for an accident to cause such an event, they would still be able to make it home with ease and then top up with cheap leccy. A sort of insurance policy on being able to complete one's journey and get back to their loved ones. These problems tend not to normally affect ICE drivers, as the hosepipe has zero value to thieves so thats an issue that an ICE driver does not have to worry about

As we saw in that Johnny Smith video, life in the slow lane: everyone else is overtaking and getting to their destinations quicker.

That's where the type of car you have may come into play to a larger extent. If you have something like a Leaf, basically a city car, and you take it on a longer run, then range anxiety is going to weigh massively on your mind as opposed to, say, something like a Tesla, I expect?