Graham Butcher

According to some people in the trade, especially in the trade of sourcing 2nd hand BEV's for their customers from auctions are actually reporting significant price jumps in the prices of used BEVs so the bubble has it seems been well and truly burst.

A 3 pin charging lead is not going to hack it on a car that already has a low SOC following a reasonable journey the day before, or had forgotten to charge it, and the following day you need to have a full battery for that day's trip. There are always going to be life's curved ball lobbed at you, and you have to react in a hurry, that odd emergency trip to rescue a stranded family member, medical emergency etc and with an EV you could be caught unprepared. It's fine for you as PetrolDave has already pointed out, you seem to be in a far better financial position than most people and have readily admitted that you have a larger ICE car for longer journeys, that you always fall back onto in such emergencies. Most folk only have the one car to rely on, and a slow charge is not going to cut it in emergencies, is it.

It appears that Essex is about to get what the council call a major uplift in the charging points for electric cars, including 2 within 1/2 mile from me. 😏 Locations of charging points planned across Essex Basildon 48 Stokefelde, Pitsea. Four EV points Braintree 43 West Street, Coggeshall. Two EV points 136 Rickstones Road, Witham. Two EV points Brentwood 53 Warley Hill. Two EV points Castle Point 193-195 Link Road, Canvey Island. Three EV points 3 Park Avenue. Four EV points Chelmsford 4 St John’s Green, Chelmsford Two EV points St John’s Church, Moulsham Street. Two Ev points 47 Melbourne Avenue, Chelmsford. Two EV points 91 Grace Bartlett Gardens, Chelmsford. Two EV points Galleywood Library car park. Two EV points Colchester 4 Wimpole Road. Four EV points 11 East Hill. Two EV points 16 Colne Bank, Colchester. Two EV points Opposite 2 Recreation Rd, Colchester. Three EV points 51 Wimpole Road. Two EV points Epping 45 Turpins Lane, Woodford Green. Two EV points 3A Forest Road, Loughton. Three EV points 186 High Road, Loughton. Four EV points 36 Westbury Lane, Buckhurst Hill. Two EV points 170 Queens Road, Buckhurst Hill. Two EV points 55 Station Way, Buckhurst Hill Two EV points Harlow 115 East Park. Two EV points 9 Old House Croft. Two EV points Maldon 1 Victoria Road. Two EV points 4 The Hythe. Two EV points 84 Fambridge Road. Two EV points 24 London Road. Two EV points Harwich Trinity House Depot The Quay. Four EV points Tendring 3 Orwell Road, Clacton. Four EV points 90 Warwick Road, Clacton. Two EV points Uttlesford Opposite carriageway to 18 Hunters Way, Saffron Walden. Two EV points

Well to a large extent I suppose it makes a lot of difference depending on which EV car you have for the trip and if you actually needed to have a stop or not. In my car, depending on what the trip is, I can on the right kind of trip do well over 600 miles to a tank. What car did you go for in the end? One thing I can't get my head around is how do you reckon the EV might have been quicker because you planned a stop? If the stop was to get a charge, that was for 20 minutes, it doesn't take that long for refill of diesel. Also the destination charger helped to extend the range, although you said you didn't need it, it was insurance in your back pocket incase of any delays on the return trip that might have prevented you reaching the planned stop for a charge?

How about this method of generating electric power, to get the part of interest, fast forward to 18:00.

How about one of these for a true city car? I agree with Jack, I used to have one of the cars predecessors, an Isetta, almost identical in looks and concept but with a small ICE power plant.

@Rootedyes and we need trees to convert the CO2 from ICE into oxygen for all those numpties to breathe. Everybody wants the power but how do they expect it be delivered without pylons etc 🙄

The Longfield Solar Farm is currently at the landscaping stage where they are planting hedges etc to screen it from the massive housing estate being built across the road from it where my son lives. It just of the new link road to the right of the new bridge and quirky roundabouts mentioned in the video and there is already a substation at Bull's Lodge and another just a few hundred feet from it next to the rail station being build to serve that massive new estate.

Those discs are badly scored, I wonder if you do have issues with the brakes, I've never seen discs wear like that unless there are stones or something under the pads and are scoring the discs. Do you get any weird noises, squeaks etc coming from the wheels at all?

How about this idea for better use of the land, indeed they could be used even as fences so solar could be installed in loads of locations where it currently is not.

Indeed it was good arable land before and also had a farm shop. Have you not seen the TV news with farmers protesting in tractors outside the HOC that they are being prevented from growing crops to feed the people? Also the site is under construction so sheep may well be put there later, but man cannot live by sheep alone, and I personally hate lamb.

Going upwards is good as the land beneath them might be more usable then. The site I mentioned earlier are all low to the ground and seem to be close to each other so the land between them is also not usable.

Well one thing is certain, there does seem to be more Tesla in Chelmsford area than any other electric car. I put that down to the fact that they have about 10 chargers on site at the dealers, which is about the same number of "public" chargers for other makes.

There is a massive solar farm on the edge of Chelmsford that is being built and it looks like there is a fairly large battery storage bank also being installed there.

@J.R. If it had no DPF then I think it was more likely to be EU4.

Does that not suggest that it is more about money than clean air? Incidently public transport in London is also not fit for purpose if you need to visit other areas of London by bus, there is the Superloop express service which runs around London between the fringes and central London and it takes 9 hours to go end to end as this video shows, weekday and notice the apparent lack of traffic in the video as well.

The short answer to these questions is:- I doubt that it would make any difference now what party the next London Mayor comes from, the revenue stream has been created and they will not want to lose it. Vicky Ford appears to be making zero difference with the pot holes, congestion is getting worse, the ECC is Tory lead and they openly admitted that they have deliberately slowed the traffic entering my city and you will have seen my other post regarding the woeful provision of EV public charging in the city. Public transport in the city is also dreadful, all the supermarkets are towards the city fringes and are not served by any regular public transport, so the only way for most people to reach them is by car. City centre is rapidly becoming a venue for eating out and residential areas are springing up everywhere in the centre as many shops are converting what was upstairs sales area, into flats, office blocks being converted to flats.

I'm all for having clean air, but the point is we already have it, check on the official monitoring stations dotted across London, see where they have been located and you will see that the worst levels of air quality is in the south which is largely residential, check up on the precise locations of the worst reading stations and check on the surrounding road networks and buildings etc and it becomes apparent that the traffic contribute less to the reading then is being claimed.

Yes, because it had a Euro 4 petrol engine. Many people are driving around in diesels of similar age which is a result of the fact there were loads of diesels on the 2nd market because of the UK governments push towards diesels as the fuel of the future, subsquently proven to be incorrect and the reason for so many adverts now about class actions against almost every maker of diesel cars for compensation as a direct result of them being mis-sold. Those people are now finding that they cannot afford to change to a compliant car as their old car has lost a huge chunk of value and compliant cars have significantly increased in value as a result of ULEZ.

The truth is Londons air quality has been getting better year on year and also UCL who TFL commissioned to do a report in favour of the ULEZ were unable to come out and declare that the scheme was going to make any appreciable difference to the quality as international research and monitoring already proved beyond doubt that it was already rated good and that they could not back up the claim of X number of people were dying prematurely due to the poor air quality.

I presume that the Octavia Estate was a diesel Euro 5 engine, like my 2013 Superb was and yet all of these other compliant cars were pumping far more of dangerous for the planet CO2 which causing global warming.

Amen to the catalytic converter.

Yes, I'm aware that the relevant emission is based on Nox, not CO2 as my car emits 119gm/km of CO2 whereas the Aston Martin emits 394 gm/km. But that said, CO2 is being blamed for global warming so a reduction in engines would greatly impact on global warming and to reduce the rate of increase. In my view, 2 litre engines can produce vast amounts of HP and torque, so why do need big thirsty engines? On the Nox side as well, the UK air is extremely low on Nox and is well within the safe levels.

Well if the parameters for the emissions are right that might be true, but not so for diesels, and if I had to sell my old diesel and buy another that it comply, it would have been cost prohibitive for me. As it was my old car got written off and so I was able to get a newer model with the payout that did comply. This still came at a cost, I lost the car I had from new, with full known history and 78,000 miles on the clock for a car with unknown history apart from a HPI check etc, and 140,000 miles on the clock, one with similar miles was out of my reach.

Oh its one of those then, well I guess then the emissions are within the parameters.