Graham Butcher

Not at all, there literally many thousands of cars all over the country that have been purchased solely for the purpose of popping to the shops, keeping contact with elderly local relatives etc because local transport is not suitable for them and that can be from a mobility view point, personal safety concerns etc and may only being doing 20 or so miles a week and I see reports claiming that EVs need to be driven 50,000+ miles before they can begin to be greener overall then a petrol engine in terms of CO2 which is what net-zero is all about, and diesel engines, particularly I'm given to understand from Euro 6 onwards produce even less CO2 than their petrol counterparts, in which case it could be greener with diesel. Still have vested interests.

Given that I'm 75 now, I'd say that is almost certainly going to be the case, so I'm not really concerned about how it will affect me, it's just the principle that I find distasteful and wondering if when we have burnt all our bridges to fossil fuel engines that they might then decide, that they had it all wrong as they discover something nasty that EVs do to humans health etc. just as they did with diesel. So in a way I'm thinking about future generations, when with a really concentrated effort a complete break through for ICE might just be around the corner, with a little bit enticement to do more research.

By the way, I just went to edit my post in reply to @wyx087 to add in that the Audi TT was 20 years old with just 1,820 genuine miles, and he has other cars kept in identical conditions with similar mileage figures. Just look around on AutoTrader and similar sites and you find similar low mileage cars being offered for sale. In cases like that, an EV car will have generated far greater emissions before it even rolls out of the showroom.

Nobody is currently apart from certain employees maybe forced to drive EVs, but come 2030 anyone who wants to buy a brand-new car will not a choice, it will have to be some form of EV but I can see that will not last for long before they mandate that ICE cars of a certain vintage will not be allowed on the roads and from then on they will get steadily more aggressive until there are no ICE cars allowed on the roads, then they will turn their attention onto hybrids. The only thing that will stop them is if some sort of massive runaway event occurs, with a lot of lives being lost. Although, thinking about it, that sort of happened with the Grenfell Tower blaze, but they still carried on building with flammable cladding on the outside, so maybe they won't change course.

You said in an earlier post dealing with the range, a quick stop and a 10-minute rapid charge. I was saying that do all cars have the capability of a rapid charge, I know the Telsla and Porsche do but about the more everyday cheaper end of the spectrum cars, are they capable of accepting a rapid charge? Well the first 2 are more to do with electrical engineering than motor industry therefore increased work for their members building the required infrastructure and the 3rd is a university in America, which may have interests not declared, i.e., need to know who is bankrolling them for their reports and what linkage to those people have to other things going on around the world etc. The above statement is incorrect, it all depends on how often and for how many miles the cars are driven, many cars are sold at auctions many years after they were purchased and they have garage queens for most of their life with only a few thousand miles on the clock. I personally know the owner of a few cars like that, keeps the cars in air-conditioned bubbles with battery savers plugged it to keep the battery topped up. He recently sold at auction a Audi TT 4WD with 1,820 miles on the clock. Ok, what about the IEEE, IET and MIT? What interest do they have for mass EV adoption? Think about it, Power companies, of course they have a vested interest, they want to sell you their power don't they? Electric in a battery is very like liquid petrol/diesel, if you spill or leave the filler cap off, liquid fuel will evaporate and you get zero benefit from it, likewise electric in a battery will not remain there for ever, batteries will self discharge internally, very slowly. Now when it comes to cars, you can only drive the car in both cases by using either the liquid fuels you mentioned or battery, when it comes to your cooling example, there some AC plants around that use liquid fuels just as you can liquid fuel powered heaters, often used in caravans and even in some Skodas you have diesel powered heating that you can even control from a phone app to preheat the car in really cold countries. So the battery really is nothing more than a fuel tank, full of fuel when charged and empty when its discharged. Yeah, unfortunately like you said once before a Golf is a ICE car firstly that has been modified to become EV, and is seen as a premium brand, this will make it a fairly expensive car, maybe a Renault Zeo or a Vauxhall Corsa might have been a better example. Elon Musk understands that he needs to be in the mass market area and that is why he has said that he hopes to be launching a cheaper car for the mass market about 2025ish. Thanks for explaining how to do this kind of post, it has been a big help, I'd been looking for a solution for some time, once again thanks.

Yep, its well and good people advocating the use of 2nd hand battery packs but if you had any issues with them, or the car was involved in an accident and the insurance company discovered that you had fitted 2nd battery other than the 12v one. I'd expect them to wash their hands of any responsibility leaving you to pick up the tab, including the other parties claim if it was deemed to be your fault. We have to remember that the insurance companies also have access to data that we don't. I fully expect that their reluctance in respect to 2nd hand battery is because they have extra knowledge that is not in the public domain.

The problem is still higher no matter which way it is dressed up, Telslas are still seen as premium brands and it is the mass market cars like the Golf that most people can hope of affording, surely you're not suggesting that folk who cannot afford a better class of car which will retain a higher value should go carless are you???

The problem being is that the battery is not akin to a new engine, though. It is in reality, just a glorified fuel tank and that is it in its simplest form, the engine would be the electric motor(s), this makes it very hard to fully grasp the cost comparison between EV and ICE. The higher purchase price of an EV is a major stumbling block for many, yes I know that many people will say that you have to look at the total package from cradle to grave. But there are many things that make that view point irrelevant, the biggest and most obvious one is no one knows what the prices for electric V fossil fuels are going to be from 1 month to the next. But assuming they are right, you still need to be able to afford the ticket to the dance in the first instance.

That being so, you could still buy 5.5 golf engines for the cost of one battery and unless you're unlucky, you would more than likely not need a new engine anyway, the car will often find its way to the scrap year with its original engine still going strong. As a matter of interest, I'm waiting for a quote back from a supplier of reconditioned engines for my Superb just to get some ideas of the cost.

As John Cadagan says, the World's most criminal car company. Although to be fair, Mercedes and BMW were also found to have their own emission scandal but as it came after the other one, nobody paid much attention to it, so it largely went unnoticed.

Is that an induction charging system, or does that pop up? Either way they also present other problems, induction charging requires the installation of the receivers being installed beneath the car, further reducing ground clearance, and then you need to position the car in the right spot. If a pop pole, then it becomes an extra hazard for other road users and also a potential fail point with it not popping up when needed, being hidden beneath parked cars or buried under snow and ice, or of course failing to go back down again and thus becoming a hazard again.

Well, one thing that clearly indicates is that manufacturers are doing their level best at suppressing anything about battery issues and fire risks, and fires on EV's from leaking to the public at large. There can be no doubt that these things will get resolved in time but in the meantime with governments passing laws banning new IC powered cars, we are in effect to being unpaid crash test dummies in a figure of speech.

What, erect a lamppost or install some sort of street furniture outside of everyone's house? What about if you have multiple vehicles, like 2 of my neighbours who have no less than 10 vehicles between them and often people come and stay overnight, adding to the number of cars?

If you are only doing 15 miles a day, 20% reduction in range may not be important, but it sure as hell is important if you're doing 300 to 400 a day or even less in some lower spec EV cars as you would need to factor in some extra time for recharging in order get home again. That has to be one of the dumbest things in this thread, you wrote there, so if your car had a new range of 200 miles, and now it only has 160 miles left that's all fine? If my car had a new range of 600+ miles, it still has a range of 600+ miles after 9.5 years, zero degradation. I'll refrain from commenting on the phone comparison 💀 So just how do you propose to solve the issue of not everyone having a driveway, talk is cheap, solving the issue of ensuring everyone has the capability of charging their car at home is not so easy nor cheap. To really gain traction with the public, EV's need to get much closer to the refuel time and frequency of an IC vehicle otherwise, everything will have to change, things will take far longer to get done be it delivering items or whatever and of course all the associated costs would be increased, cost of living would shoot up, but your wages wouldn't because suddenly you are no longer as productive as you used to be and money doesn't grow on trees. Where did you get this notion that we ever have a excess of renewables, the wind or sun is not always there, so you could be charging your car and actually producing far more CO2 and PM's than your IC car would? The only way you could sure of that is if you had your one wind or solar generator and used it solely for recharging your car. You might think that you're doing the planet a good deed by running a EV, but you might not in reality, all you can safely say with 100% certainty is that you can drive in a city or other densely populated area and not be generating any tailpipe emissions because you don't have a tailpipe.

Differanc is that my mk3 was 9.5 years when wrote off, had 78,000 miles, original engine, no oil burning etc and unlike your leaf which did have less range due battery aging, my car gained range because it had been correctly run in when it was new and the mpg was climbing not declining, just saying.

TBH I don't know how much it would cost, but if looked after right it shouldn't need rebuilding. There are examples of diesels doing well over 250,000 miles without major work to them.

Thoughts on this persons take on the EV market?

I noticed that there is a cambelt mentioned on the checklist, WTF

@J.R.No I had allowed for the fuse but as you rightly said, petrol cars do not have a fuse in the ignition circuit and so anything fed via the ignition switch is also highly unlikely to be fused, but there will be some that run circuits via fuses after the switch, except for the ignition itself for safety reasons. But irrespective of the fuel type, there is always the risk of the DIY amateur electrician doing their own dodgy wiring, just as you did with your air horns. In the case of an EV, if it is a sub circuit of the normal car's wiring then the scenario you painted would be on the level of the diesel powered car, and it would like a diesel car in respect of the fire because it is just going to be the wiring and interior plastics etc in the fire at first and there would be every chance of the fire brigade turning up before the battery pack got to the critical stage as they are mounted beneath the car and flames and most of the heat will be going straight up. If the battery pack suffered a direct impact and penetration of the battery casing, then it would be very likely to create a dead short within the pack it and would quickly enter the runaway stage in a few seconds, and then it might be worse than a petrol fire in terms of the exit time you have to get out safely?

Oh, thats od when I read your post, the video wasn't there, now it is. Oh I must have got that wrong then, it seems as if he is buying the car and now wishing he wasn't, not that he doesn't like it because he does, but claims the infrastructure is not there at the moment and there also take a massive hit on the resale value. Maybe he should have done his research a bit better?

What valuation, for the battery or the car?

Thanks for the reply, so it would seem, reading between the lines as if there might have something wrong but Skoda didn't want to commit themselves to saying what it was. Fingers crossed I don't have anything like that happen with my car, I'm on my 5th Superb now in 19 years.

Except, I believe he said in an earlier video that this is a Porsche lease car and is still under warranty, so he would not be allowed to do that.

Agreed but with modern video editing etc, it does not mean that things happened in the sequence he portrays them though. TBH, I was hoping that someone might be able to verify if the reported £40,000 was correct or was that figure inflated? Of course the whole thing might just be one giant revenue generator for him and so could be staged?