Graham Butcher

But generally speaking unless you are looking at long term ownership, there is little incentive for loads of people to switch. it is easier to do if you have off street parking and can home charge, but there is the onboard cost having the charger installed etc. With battery technology changing all the time, it could be the old Betamax/VHS scenario all over again.

10 years makes sense, what car did you get then? Can you be sure that on most occasions that you will actually get that 200 miles comfortably from a single home charge?

Really pleased for you as you have found the current ideal scenario, if charging at home, on a cheap tarriff running short local trips is right in most EVs' wheelhouse and is where combustion engines are at their most polluting. So I would suggest that you're looking to retain the car for longer than the normal 3-year cycle that company cars seem get swapped, I say that assuming that you don't want to take a rather heavy depreciation hit? As to clinging onto the past, well lets see what transpires on that score with many of the car makers actively returning to combustion engines, and they are getting far more efficient and cleaner all the time.

What these figures show you is not actual sales but registrations, which we know is not a sale but a way of massaging the figures to appear to be doing better than they actually are to avoid having to pay so much out in fines for missing their quotas. Working on the basis that it is far and away better to take maybe a £5k hit on selling the car later as a demo car, etc., rather than the £18k fine per car below the quota. Do the SMMT and all of those who will not accept the actual truth believe the rest of us cannot see through the smoke and mirrors and subterfuge that they are creating? You only have to go on Autotrader and you will find plenty of cars on there, being listed by dealers that are 2 years or more old with basically delivery miles on, listed as new with massive discounts, and the price drops weekly on them. Who wants to buy a new "old" car thats been in storage and now comes without a manufacturer's warranty, etc.? The battery may or may not have kept charged during that period, whatever happens, it has already lost 2 years of its life. Very few private buyers of electric cars, partly maybe as they are still really unproven technology and the public are in a way doing the type testing for them and this can also be seen by the speed of the progress with the improvements in the batteries, etc., along with the very poor support in the event that something goes wrong and most dealers have loads of cars awaiting repairs / spares for cars that have already experienced problems.

I agree with the solar aspect; it has been mentioned before here by me that they occupy prime farmland that we should be using for producing food. It was also pointed out to me that these solar farms grow food between the rows of panels and beneath them. All of the new solar farms, and there are loads of them springing up all the time; that clearly is not happening. The panels are all very close to each other in all directions. Less food production means more of our food has to be imported and even more pollution is being generated, so what one hand gives, the other takes away. You couldn't make it up could you?

@Dieselgate That is the main problem with many of the main EV drivers/owners participating in this "the truth about electric cars" topic. Very few of them can even bring themselves to deviate from the narrative that all things electric are good and burning dino juice fuel is bad and anyone burning diesel is nothing short of a knuggledragger. If all BIK and salary sacrifice schemes, cheap or free charging at work etc., grants towards buying an EV and the cheap electric tariffs for home charging were removed. If showroom prices were on an even keel with their combustion variants, the cars would have to stand on their own merits, and people would make the choices based on their own personal preferences and which type of motive power best suited their needs.

It will be partly due to to you being retired now and no commuting now. The safety systems have zero to do with it, nor does the fire risk, as EVs are currently no different to combustion cars in that respect.

So sad to see the news about Glasgow Central Station fire and its partial destruction. Interestingly it started in a vape shop as the video shows and it very quickly got out of hand. Thankfully, nobody, it seems, at least so far, was injured as a result.

@Evolution13 😁This shows you are still missing the point of the video; it shows the wind in London is strong even by tall buildings and the sides of them, etc. As I tried to explain, air still flows around all sides of a building. Also, Regent Street just happens to be a bus- and taxi-only road at certain times of the road. So no standing traffic pumping out fumes, etc. It really does pay to look over the wall before jumping over it also to look under the rock to see what is lurking there. I'm not in the habit of saying things unless I do some basic research. Incidentally, the last 3 links below indicate that domestic heating, cooking, etc. produce 50% of the PM2.5 particulates. This also backs what I have repeatedly claimed in the past about reading the figures coming from the official air monitoring stations, and those that are showing very high readings just happen to be located in either residential areas, adjacent to tube stations, or close to places where commercial cooking is taking place, e.g., cafes, etc., as they have large extraction fans sucking the smell and fumes out of the premises and into the outside air, often within a metre or so away from the inlet to the monitoring station. I have spent plenty of time looking at these on Google Earth Street View, so there can be no other explanation for it. The YouTube vlogger Brown Car Guy even managed to demonstrate that inside your home is way more dangerous than being outside where the prevailing breeze etc wafts the particulates away; inside it is many times higher than the legal limits and is not being extracted. Once again, many people dismissed his findings with the monitoring meter because they did not go along with the narrative. But it seems that very few people are prepared to check if the official narrative is anywhere near factual, or is it just a blind to achieve another goal? Air-Polution-Lies FOI request detail - Transport for London EIR - ULEZ and deaths attributable to air pollution [Mar 2023] | London City Hall Ulez: London Mayor accused of 'quashing research' questioning the scheme - BBC News No investigation over ULEZ research collusion claims | LocalGov List of most-polluted cities by particulate matter concentration - Wikipedia List of least-polluted cities by particulate matter concentration - Wikipedia You’ll be surprised at what releases PM2.5 particulate matter Half of PM2.5 from domestic burning comes from outdoor sources, says stove industry - AirQualityNews How polluting is your heating? | Do You Fuel Good? campaign | Oxford City Council

@Evolution13 oh yes leafy boulevards and tree lined residential areas. 🤣 Try Regents Street, as in this video; look at the flowers in the florist's doorway, halfway through the video, right in the heat of the shopping area.

It's like the wind in built up areas, it does not create dead spots, the wind will hit a building and flows round it, it never leaves static air. I spent many years working and walking all around the city of London going from one consultancy to another and onto the tube etc. When the wind blows, there is always air movement on all sides of a building. True it be a direct pressure on the side the wind is hitting, on the other side air is sucked away by the wind rushing past the side of the building. In autumn when leaves are on the ground, surely you have noticed in areas not exposed directly to the wind, how the leaves and litter can be seen swirling about and eventually getting into the main airstream and blowing away? Don't you trust you own eyes, this wind on the sheltered side, you can actually feel it even. A similar principle to an air curtain blowing air downwards from above shop doors etc.

They, like the LTNs and 15 minute cities are just cash cows and a means of plugging shortfalls in central grants which have been cut. The ULEZ in London was supposed to be in place because many thousands of Londoners were dieing each year as a result. IIRC the numbers that Sadiq Khan quoted was exactly the same number as died during the great smog of London in 1952, 4,000 died in 4 days.

Well as that document I gave the link to is from the Office of National Statistics in Westminster, then using your example, London would almost certainly be included and yet that is where the pollution is supposed to be higher, and hence the introduction of LEZ and the ULEZ in London so how does that work? Plus pollution further up North should be less as nowhere is very far away from off shore winds that blow it away. I think the info you posted is by AI and we all know that AI is crap.

Except, not so much in my neck of the woods currently. I already mentioned that Amazon has gone from an electric van back to diesel on my particular route, as their depot is some 15 miles as the crow flies from me, and I tracked some deliveries that were many miles further north way out in the sticks where chargers are not plentiful, if they are at all. Royal Mail vans here are also still combustion-powered. I can well believe that in some areas BEVs are ideal where they have high-density areas so each van will only have a small area because of the huge number of deliveries in that area; that is the case with areas that have large rural areas as well to cover.

Yes, not denying that; it would all depend on the type of work and the area that they cover, as you say, it takes all sorts. As an example, the house I live in was once owned by Chelmsford Borough Council, and all of their maintenance services for their housing stock were carried out by their own DLO (Direct Labour Organisation). When the central government decided to make it compulsory to go competitive tendering, they were still the cheapest, so they kept the DOL; they had their own vans and only covered the Chelmsford area, so electric would have been fine. Then all the housing was transferred to an HA, which trimmed down the DOL to emergency cover only and sent the rest out to tender, with some of the contractors now doing their work coming from as far away as 60 to 70 miles, and they do often tow trailers with plant on them as well. Electric does not suit them, as they have to carry so much equipment and parts, etc., on them that they are always heavily laden, and charging locations are not in suitable locations, and of course they can't use destination charging either.

Scotland seems to be different to the South, then. HGV to hubs and depots, with I think the ones using vans now are Royal Mail/Parcel Force, DPD, Amazon, FedEx, InPost and DHL. InPost, I think, will only deliver to their own lockers, and then the customer has to collect from there. I think Evri must be the cheapest one as nearly all stuff delivered to me comes via them, and they do not use local vans here at all. They did at one time, but now I only see agents at their depot, parked all over the area around the depot with mobile cages from which they are loading their small private vans and cars. Delivery is never before 2pm and can be upto 9pm; even Royal Mail now delivers parcels up to 9pm. Letters take days or even weeks at times as they prioritise parcels, FFS.

^^^ None of the places here where Evri etc. do their transferring have any form of charging available. As to the van arriving into the town, nope, we have huge articulated lorries that run from the national hubs in the Midlands out to the various towns dotted across the country and these lorries are powered by diesel. The same is also true for Royal Mail and Parcel Force. Even Amazon Prime, the driver who used to come to me had at one time a 100% electric van, now that van has gone back to being a diesel.

Like the Evri last mile drivers, who have to use their own mode of transport along with many other courier companies who just rent a small warehouse and when the trunk truck arrives, the cages with parcels for that area are unloaded. The last mile drivers spend the morning sifting through the cages looking for postcodes for their routes and then spend time loading them into their cars etc in the order of drops. Most of their cars / vans are old beat up things as they can't afford to buy anything new, they only get paid peanuts per item and hence you hear of some drivers chucking packages over garden gates etc in order to deliver a few more parcels for that extra income. Less than ideal.

Maybe, but you can also substitute laden for towing, eg, tradesman will not only be carrying the materials for the days work but also a quite likely a heavy kit out of tools and standard items such as large drums of cables, etc., as well as a couple of passengers. This is why I was saying we need people making these decisions who actually have some understanding of what is actually required and the conditions that these vans have to work under. I spent a few years working as assistant manager in an independent electrical wholesaler and had a few contractors who had national contracts for shop chains so had to frequently undertake trips of upto 500 to 600 miles in a day delivering all the items required for that particular shop. A BEV would not have even remotely suitable for that kind of work.

Strange thing is, that the video makes the claim the Luton plant actually met it's BEV targets. It cited that the UK government made it easier for them to close it as opposed to any of their other plants worldwide. So much for taking back control, I'd bet that it would still be operational if we had not left the club. 🤔 PS. Many of the Last mile vans that deliver to me, appear to be going back to older diesel vans, food for thought there.

Back on topic again, but it is still bad news for electric vans. Its about time we got someone in power that actually knew something about the subject rather than an idealist.

Although that video is funny, it does raise a few questions. And yes, 15-minute cities are real; some do exist, and I was actually involved with designing schools for one in Oxfordshire a few years ago. Part of them is also the LTNs (Low Traffic Neighbourhoods), and there are lots of those springing up, and the High Court has just ruled that some in London are illegal and are nothing more than cash cows for the local councils. Google for illegal LTNs, and you will find them, but this is getting way off topic now, so let's get back to electric cars.

Well, these are recent figures, 2011, and they must be based on actual live data, and I also have noticed that during my time on this planet I've observed that people do seem to be living longer. When I first started work, after leaving school, I always thought that it was tragic that lots of people who I worked with popped their clogs within 2 to 3 years of retiring. Back then it was retirement at 60 years as well, and very few people bucked that trend. I used to have really bad asthma in my late 20s, and loads of people I knew also had it and would often see them taking regular puffs from their brown and blue inhalers, as did I. Some even had spells in hospital in oxygen tents for a few days at a time; now I can't remember seeing anyone using an inhaler recently. One of my sons also used to carry one and often had to use it; that has not happened now for 20 years. As a past sufferer and someone who worked in an extremely bad environment, a bus garage with the best part of 100+ diesel buses, all with their engines running on cold winter mornings in order to warm them up before allowing fare-paying passengers on board. It was impossible to see from one side of the garage to the other on those mornings, and your eyes would be streaming and stinging from the acrid fumes. So I actually know first-hand from my own experiences and observations that things are not as bad as we are told to believe they are. This is why I keep on about the air quality being very good in the UK, and that is also backed up on the world live data maps of the air quality, the very thing that we are being told is so bad by the authorities. Yes, some of the readings on the map are high, and investigating these a bit more, like the one on the attached map that reads 500, hazardous, reveals that these are either amateur monitors poorly sited or proper official ones also poorly located. By that I mean in close proximity to commercial kitchens where loads of gas is being used for cooking, or very close vents for the London Underground, which I mentioned before about having dangerous levels of pollution. In the case of the one on the map, it is an amateur one and is slap bang in the middle of 4 cafes and a dry cleaners and also close to a railway. It is a dead-end street and so does not have masses of passing traffic. As you will see, other air monitors in the area are recording far lower, as shown in the second map, 1 mile away. We have 2 choices: either believe whatever the authorities choose to tell us that we should believe or do some digging around for ourselves and take note of what our eyes are actually telling us. Personally, I like to do some checking to see if I'm being gaslighted.

I understand all of that, but that does not diminish the reason behind my statement and the feeling that it is removing decades of freedom where we can all choose the type of car that best fits our individual needs. It has not been proved that ICE cars are the devil that that they are being made into. I mean is it not a fact that life expectancy today is considerably longer than it was 100 years ago? Check out this government site. ONS How has life expectancy changed over time? - Office for National Statistics This graph is lifted directly from the above site, so if the air quality and the pollution from ICE vehicles were actually as bad as we are being led to believe, then why is the graph not showing a downward trend instead of a continuing upward trend? We are being told that people are living longer and adding to the huge deficits in public finances because people living longer is placing increased burdens on the funds and the government are not able to cope with that.

Yes I knew that, I was talking about the ban on manuefacturers producing new ICE-powered cars.