Graham Butcher

Again, this is being disingenuous and is actually totally ill relevant, as only diesels need Ad Blu, and even then, only some, mine doesn't, neither did my previous car and likewise ICE cars of 12 years ago were way less technologically advanced as those of today are, but they still have not lost 75% of the range from a tank of fuel.

Yes, I accept that, but here is the real point, those same ICE cars will have the same range or maybe slightly more than the same car had when it was brand new because it is well run in and needs slightly less BHP to get it rolling. Plus I have been saying for a long time now, we could all actually get away with less BHP and smaller engines and thus be a hell of a lot greener and kinder to the planet and thus produce considerably less greenhouse gases and actually help to slow down the rate of climate change. My own car has a top speed of around 137mph, which I could never reach anywhere in the UK other than on a track, also I only do 70mph, which is the maximum legal speed in any case, and I certainly don't use anywhere near the maximum acceleration rate of the car therefore have plenty of power under my right foot which is never being used. So saying that you have tested many ICE cars which had much of their rated BHP lost, is actually being disingenuous and is actually totally ill relevant.

Hmm, ok, putting aside his confusion with the AC charging port on one side of the car and the Chademo on the other side, £1,000 for a 12 year old that only has 25% of the range left is nuts, I have never heard of the 12 year old ICE where the fuel tank had shrunk to 25% of its original capacity.

Interesting that he said he had 7 miles left on his range and even with diversion on his way home, he still made it to home with 6 miles of range left, so not much of a diversion was it? Now if I'm coming home on the M25 and there is an accident which closes the A12, the next suggested route to bypass the A12 is to use the A127 and then A130, adding an extra 12 miles. On that route there never used to be any public chargers (might have changed now), possibility that I'm not going to make it home without running out So that range anxiety is still going to be there, especially in my area until the number of public chargers increases along the way increase.

There is no question about it, some of the climate change is natural, it has been happening for millions of years and some of it man made, now the natural part, we can do nothing about it, but here's the catch, the man made part of it we can do something about. Is what we are doing the right thing? I doubt it, it's already happened and all that we are doing right now with the all the clean air zones and net-zero drives is trying to prevent it getting any worse, so the global warming effect is going to remain at what ever level it gets to when we think that we have achieved the goal. So if man made the situation worse, then surely it can't be beyond the wit of man to reverse the damage down by finding the antidote to all the excess CO2 and the all the other harmful pollutants, without all the current problems and needing to change the way we do everything, we just need to find a solution to neutralise the things that we have added to the atmosphere etc and at the same clean up the emissions that we are making by the fitting of exhaust scrubbers to the things that we already have and also cease making excessive emissions when we make new items to replace old worn out items?

Yes, there is a new incinerator being built a few miles from me that is causing a stir at the moment as there was no consultation with locals, and the flue is now going to be 35 metres lower. It is supposed to burning single use plastics.

I use a TomTom does it, traffic updates and automatic re-routing and speed camera alerts as you approach them, including know mobile hotspots.

Also it does prevent becoming landfill and thus polluting the ground and it makes sense to leveridge power generation from the resultant heat so we are preventing one form of pollution and getting almost free energy so almost a perfect win-win, especially if the exhaust gases are scrubbed before being released to the atmosphere.

We have had electric taxis for a while now in Chelmsford.

I don't believe that legislation and the terminology relates to taxis but the autonomous driving of cars fitted such equipment, like the Tesla autopilot. Legal jargon can be very confusing I admit, but I could not find any sign of the mention of hackney carriages, private hire, taxi or for hire in that document, I may wrong on that however, so we shall have to wait for further developments.

Of course things change but then I don't have the powers of Mystic Meg who was supposed to be able to foresee the future, and neither do you.

Apparently they say that Elon Musk has said that they will not be available in the UK, and apart from that, they are only 2 seaters so are useless for families and it is requirement for UK taxis and a bit of Google magic reveals the following, all of which currently rules out any chance of them coming to these shores. I would have expected similar rules in the USA and most of the other countries as well? Taxi Vehicle Licence Vehicle specifications Hackney Carriage specifications The vehicle must meet the following specifications: Saloon vehicles shall not be more than 6 years old when first licensed and shall not have undertaken more than 60,000 miles. Transit vehicles shall be no more than 8 years old when first licensed London type taxis shall not be more than 10 years old when first licensed The age of vehicles will be judged by, so far as can be ascertained, the date of manufacture or first DVLA registration of the vehicle Vehicles shall have at least four doors and should not have an engine capacity of less than 1274cc They are to be suitable for carrying not less than 4 passengers in comfort with adequate luggage space Seating should be padded Slatted wooden seats are considered inadequate Where seats are continuous, 1ft 4ins. measured horizontally along the front of each seat should be allowed for each passenger Any vehicle which is constructed or adapted to seat more than 8 passengers cannot be licensed as a private hire vehicle

According to Autocar, Tesla do not plan to sell the Robotaxi in the UK.

Just been watching this video about the Tesla Robo Cab and Robo Van, anyone here prepared to trust these autonomous vehicles?

I watched that video on IPlayer tonight, and you're right, if that did happen for real then with all infrastructure destroyed, so to would all the cars with shockwave ripping and shredding everything in its path, the only cars and people who were underground at the time and even then, highly unlikely to reach the street for all the rubble blocking their path. With all the current wars going on and the existence of these nuclear weapons, then such a scenario is becoming even more a reality.

Well that is the plates fitted to them, could it be that they are trying to create an artificial shortage of ICE Skoda's so they can sell their quota of EV's easier, I wonder?

Not a bad deal that TBH, as he says, at that price and for his work, it's a no-brainer. It was very refreshing to hear him being 100% honest about an EV is natural fit for any one doing about 20 or so miles a day and can charge at home and to hear him also say that anything longer then what he did, then ICE as the way to go, thanks for posting. To pinch your phrase, "nail on head" I have spent today over at my local airfield helping my friend rearrange his 2 Spitfires, P51 Mustang, and his classic cars in his hangar ready for the winter months. His car collection consists of a MG TA, AC Cobra, Sunbeam Tiger, and 2 Mustangs, 1 is a soft top and the is fixed top coupe signed by Shelby and these are as near to mint as you're going to get. We spent the day playing planes and cars Tetris. and the by day's end we all the cars neatly tucked away in their custom-made covers and also air bubbles coupled to their battery keepers. All planes rearranged to create space to allow his couple of vintage Massey Ferguson tractors and sufficient space to also store his lovely normal plane that he uses to hop from home to the airfield in, great day, in my element there. On way I drove past all these preregistered Skodas and all the front row are all 24 plate but ICE, maybe the back rows might be EVs, maybe next time I have more time I'll check further to see if any of them are electric or not.

Thanks, I've put that in my playlist to watch tonight.

Good I'm very happy for you, and of course your personal experience may just be down to the places and distances you drive to along with the actual range that your car is capable of providing you. Others with smaller batteries might not be sharing your opinion

There is a planned pylon route passing about a mile away from and some locals are trying to get it stopped. They are all Nimbys but are perfectly willing to shout from the rooftops if their supply goes down etc, except the fact that there will pylons around, its the quickest and cheapest way to move power around, these same people are also conspiracy theorists as they pop onto the social media site that I'm a moderator on (over 10million users in the UK) and ranting and raving if they see a vapour trail in the sky from high-flying airliner, claiming that they are spraying chemicals to control us, FFS.

No disrespect, but absolutely nobody has ever suggested they hadn't had petrol or diesel cars before or were new drivers, however the map does clearly show areas which have poor infrastructure, granted areas 1,2 and 3 do have other reasons for this such as mountains which will have a limiting effect on the demand and also siting of chargers, but that most certainly does not apply to area 4 which is predominantly a flat area of the country. Hence the huge numbers of WW1 and WW2 RAF airfields (many are now defunct) located in that area. We do actually know what is happening on our own turf, we can understand maps and use our eyes when we go out and about so we can see that certain parts of the country are not as well blessed as others, we also go much further afield than just our own county and its neighbouring ones.

This is a common theme with some EV'ers they seem to misunderstand what is actually being said and automatically assume that anyone without an EV posting in this thread must have an agenda against them. 🙄

Who is saying that there is no infrastructure? All that I have seen anyone say is that it is not consistent across the UK as a whole, the East Anglia and the South East in particular are very poorly served as shown on the map posted earlier.

I'm glad that you can see my genuine interest in EVs and I too feel that the future will be all electric however I cannot see it in all honesty within the stated time frame, I think it is being pushed too hard and fast while there are still many problems to be resolved, like infrastructure spread evenly across the country and proportional number of chargers to the adoption of EVs, as more are sold then number of chargers particular at key popular locations need to increase to ensure that any queue etc is kept to an absolute minimum and also resolve the position of those unable to home charge. More qualified people to work on them when they need repairs, at the moment it can be an absolute nightmare getting a car repaired in a timely manner. More needs to be done to the batteries safe and reliable, i.e., sealed correctly against water ingress as salt water can and has caused many bad fires and destroyed car, garage and house on many occasions. Battery tech needs to step up before mass adoption, by that I mean they need to find an alternative material that does go into thermal runaway and that needs to be done without all the overly complicated thermal management system as a failure in that system could enough to set a chain reaction off. We also need to find a more effective way to deal with any fires quickly and suppress them and then put them out once and for all before too much damage is done. We also need to speed up the safe recycling of batteries once they are beyond useful life, without creating massive piles of potential fire balls or toxic waste. Previous governments around the world had all pushed diesel as the fuel of the future and didn't set a deadline for cessation of petrol cars, but they did offer all kinds of incentives to companies to convert over to diesel for their fleets, and we all know how that played out with many companies offering get compensation for people who were mis-sold diesel cars, just like they did people being mis-sold PPI on loans etc. Without all those incentives, had they just left it to market forces then the pollution from diesels would not have any near as bad as they claim it is now, as most people would have preferred to keep with petrol for many reasons. As I have said many times, I'm not anti EV, just anti the way that authorities are rushing headlong into the electric era even before we have fully investigated so many aspects of it, and we may well see another diesel gate or worse play out in the not too distant future

@domhnall if you read my earlier posts I have said that seeing the actual price of the Costco, that I did not blame you going there to fill and I also said that I would have done the same if I had the opportunity, which I don't for 2 reasons 1) is it is a subscription to get an account and then you still have to meet certain conditions, 2) my nearest Costco is about 20 miles away. The coppers difference refers to normal main stream PFS which Costco does not fit that bill as most people cannot fill up there. I really do wish that people would actually read and understand the context of what people write and not see everything that a non EV driver writes as being anti EV etc, as that is not the case, but it seems that is how most EV drivers react if anyone dares to ask a non EV question or try to get a point clarified.