54 minutes ago, olddog said:

Dont know that there are any plans to let the Cybertruck escape from the U S of A

 

Probably is wide for UK rules and UK needing Right Hand Drive, and Japan, Oz etc means both delays and slightly higher cost, KPMG once estimated 6% I recall.

 

4 hours ago, Rooted said:

On the Land Rover subject, earlier at my local single Rapid DC charger there was a 73 plate Discovery charging so a Plug in Hybrid & on the CCS so i checked the screen & it was @ 19% and getting 20kW.  

I thought quite impressive.     I just checked and it is a 15 kWh battery.  & i think they are supposed to be able to charge at 32kW.

 

 Good to get DC / CCS charging but at 41 pence a kWh is it worth it. 

 

 £6.15 to charge the battery.   

Maybe it is i have not checked out the miles per kWh they get in EV mode or with Battery and engine the MPG.  I will later.

I personally think it's a mistake to for parallel hybrid to have capacity to charge on rapid chargers. Especially with such a small battery on that huge vehicle. Its main EV mode use is local. When going further afield, it's not going to be able to rely on battery for meaningful distance or driving power with just 107 hp under powered motor. Satnav would have the ability to keep charge until in city traffic, so what's the point of rapid charging on a mostly petrol vehicle?

 

32 kW is terrible rate for a new vehicle, and in real life it's not even getting that! My 9 yo Leaf with just 18 kWh capacity can still charge at 48 kW.

 

These days, serial hybrid should be minimum for PHEV. Then there is a point for rapid charging, just like the 22 kWh i3 REx.

Just how reliable is a serial hybrid, or plug in hybrid when compared to either full on EV or an ICE? To my mind, there are more bits to go wrong and so less reliable, but is that true?

What is see for a Land Rover Discovery PHEV with a 15 kWh battery is a WLTP range EV of 37.7 miles / 60 km.

 

If 15kWh usable it is 2.5 miles a kWh.

If that is 13 kWh usable then near 2.9 miles a kWh.      No idea if they get anything like that.   But at 41 pence a kWh to charge £6.15 to maybe get 30 miles. 

 

What a pity he never just charged the battery and set off for a 40 mile drive in EV mode and told us how far he got before needing the petrol engine to work.

Do a few 0-62 mph,s and maybe take it up to 70 mph with the AC on.

 

On a Public Rapid Charger of 50 kW & able to get 38 kWh then charging full to empty should be less than 40 minutes.

 

 

 

Edited 9 December, 20232 yr by Rooted

6 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

Just how reliable is a serial hybrid, or plug in hybrid when compared to either full on EV or an ICE? To my mind, there are more bits to go wrong and so less reliable, but is that true?

 

It is very hard to find the actual truth as on the owner forums one reads pages of complaints and hybrid versions but much less about the mild hybrid ie versions without the motive element of hybrid, my mild hybrid Arkana only does coasting and that is it.

 

The mild hybrid is substantially quicker in accelerating, weighs 100 kgs less but it does 10 mpg less.  But then much of the complaints of the full hybrid are not about the drive train but other areas of electronics oddly.  We have the full hybrid in the Clio etech we have which is very pleasant to drive with the electric motors, yes two of them, adding quite a shove at low revs where the naturally aspirated 1.6 engine would not have the torque.  In the mass produced Clio the etech works very well. MPG is in the upper 50s and my lad drives it with no real thought about being economical.  Renault have decided to bring back the little 1 litre engined module after dropping it because Ford have stopped selling the Fiesta.

 

The car market is quite screwy really.  One reason I bought the Arkana mild hybrid is that I have a petrol fuel card but company will not provide an Allstar EV charging card so I am better off using a fuel card, effectively paying 30p a litre for fuel and this keeps me having a petrol car  This will finally change when we get the Salary sacrifice system going and I can get a model 3 for sub £40k and 3 hundred and something pounds monthly payments.

 

Hybrid, the full type. also lose quite a lot of boot space ie nearly 100 litres, in the case of the Clio, which is nearly quarter of the boot space.  Zoe has more boot space than the Clio ETECH.

 

Can get 80 mpg out of the Clio ETECH but one has to hypermile the hell out of it to do so.  With petrol at about £1.40 a litre not much incentive to be frugal. 

Choice of car is more complex that most people might think.  Best not to under estimate the massive attraction of salary sacrifice on EVs and this is why, I think, we see a lot for EVs and hybrids than once might expect ie UK government tax breaks via salary sacrifice and the taxation rules around CO2.  The CO2 one is not well targeted in my view as CO2 figures for PHEVs are just crazy low numbers and not at all close to reality ie 100 and 200 mpg.  Nonsense.    

2 minutes ago, Rooted said:

What is see for a Land Rover Discovery PHEV with a 15 kWh battery is a WLTP range EV of 37.7 miles / 60 km.

 

If 15kWh usable it is 2.5 miles a kWh.

If that is 13 kWh usable then near 2.9 miles a kWh.      No idea if they get anything like that.   But at 41 pence a kWh to charge £6.15 to maybe get 30 miles. 

 

Over 20p per mile, no wonder few bother to plug in their PHEV, it is just a tax dodging wheeze.  Who is going to plug in when the effort bring zero to little reward.

 

Sky news running a good story today on the National Grid.

 

How they are having the Gas Fired Power stations generating electricity while it could come from Battery Farms which are sitting redundant and the wind farm turbines are not producing as the electricity not needed for the batteries.

 

National Grid working on it.  Just keeping producing the emissions.

London needs the new pylons down the length of the UK to feed it,s electricity.  Farm land wasted, if no pylons the cost of electricity will rise.

 

Well double the tariffs for London and half them for those with electricity generated within 10 miles of them.

 

@lol-lolMaybe the guy sitting charging was away to tow a trailer or happy to run 30 miles for £6.15 after sitting 30-45 minutes, 

or just experimenting to see how good the fuel economy is with the battery charged.

 

Next time i see him charging if i do i will ask.

 

Bottom vid.

A Skoda Superb iV / PHEV.

 

 

 

 

Edited 9 December, 20232 yr by Rooted

1 hour ago, Rooted said:

Sky news running a good story today on the National Grid.

How they are having the Gas Fired Power stations generating electricity while it could come from Battery Farms which are sitting redundant and the wind farm turbines are not producing as the electricity not needed for the batteries.

National Grid working on it.  Just keeping producing the emissions.

London needs the new pylons down the length of the UK to feed it,s electricity.  Farm land wasted, if no pylons the cost of electricity will rise.

Well double the tariffs for London and half them for those with electricity generated within 10 miles of them.

@lol-lolMaybe the guy sitting charging was away to tow a trailer or happy to run 30 miles for £6.15 after sitting 30-45 minutes, 

or just experimenting to see how good the fuel economy is with the battery charged.

Next time i see him charging if i do i will ask.

 

If Land/Range Rover guy has a fuel card then he may not be so bothered about cost.  Apparently Fuel cards account for £16B of fuel bought out of the £40B or so which is nearly half and probably a lot higher than many might think.   Also I doubt most people do not know that that fuel bought is not paid for a the pump price shown as fuel card companies charge the card holding company a bit less than the displayed price and the agreement the fuel card company has with the fuel sellers.

 

Much diesel used is actually sold in bulk to transport companies who also get a discounted price. My uncle ran Cornwall's largest trucking company 50-odd artics, and would buy the diesel in bulk for his own tanks at the depot, diesel company cars also got filled from there I think.  The eleventh commandment.  Never pay retail.  Octopus Elecktroverse card helps me do that with public charging as well as a hydrocarbon fuel card for the dino juice mode for my "mild" ie hardly at all,  hybrid Arkana.  Looking forward to the Rafela launch next year.  

 

Over 60 mpg, 700 mile range, low emissions.  Might be a tough choice between this and a Model 3 or Y.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 9 December, 20232 yr by lol-lol

If PHEV guy works for Angus Council or A.N.Other and gets a Car Allowance and handed a CPS card and does not pay for electric then sitting charging while being paid a nice salary is just one of those things.

I meet some that get the Fleet Van or Car and the CPS card and charge at the Public Charger and not at the Councils own chargers that the public have no access to

Out at the 5 rapids at the Hub next to the A90 and Council headquarters i got well peed off at those that chose to charge there and have lunch in the sun while 200 yards away are the council Fast (slow chargers.) 

2 hours ago, lol-lol said:

 

It is very hard to find the actual truth as on the owner forums one reads pages of complaints and hybrid versions but much less about the mild hybrid ie versions without the motive element of hybrid, my mild hybrid Arkana only does coasting and that is it.

 

The mild hybrid is substantially quicker in accelerating, weighs 100 kgs less but it does 10 mpg less.  But then much of the complaints of the full hybrid are not about the drive train but other areas of electronics oddly.  We have the full hybrid in the Clio etech we have which is very pleasant to drive with the electric motors, yes two of them, adding quite a shove at low revs where the naturally aspirated 1.6 engine would not have the torque.  In the mass produced Clio the etech works very well. MPG is in the upper 50s and my lad drives it with no real thought about being economical.  Renault have decided to bring back the little 1 litre engined module after dropping it because Ford have stopped selling the Fiesta.

 

The car market is quite screwy really.  One reason I bought the Arkana mild hybrid is that I have a petrol fuel card but company will not provide an Allstar EV charging card so I am better off using a fuel card, effectively paying 30p a litre for fuel and this keeps me having a petrol car  This will finally change when we get the Salary sacrifice system going and I can get a model 3 for sub £40k and 3 hundred and something pounds monthly payments.

 

Hybrid, the full type. also lose quite a lot of boot space ie nearly 100 litres, in the case of the Clio, which is nearly quarter of the boot space.  Zoe has more boot space than the Clio ETECH.

 

Can get 80 mpg out of the Clio ETECH but one has to hypermile the hell out of it to do so.  With petrol at about £1.40 a litre not much incentive to be frugal. 

Choice of car is more complex that most people might think.  Best not to under estimate the massive attraction of salary sacrifice on EVs and this is why, I think, we see a lot for EVs and hybrids than once might expect ie UK government tax breaks via salary sacrifice and the taxation rules around CO2.  The CO2 one is not well targeted in my view as CO2 figures for PHEVs are just crazy low numbers and not at all close to reality ie 100 and 200 mpg.  Nonsense.    

The Nissan Qashqai I had for 2 months was a mild hybrid and the acceleration in that for such a small engine was startling indeed, and it did coasting quite well, but I never really thought the mpg was much better considering the small size of car, and the assist on pull away and overtaking from the electric motor(s), I think it had a small motor on each rear wheel, I might be wrong on that point, however.

 

Are the batteries on the Clio under the boot floor then, hence the smaller boot? The boot on my car has a massive 625cubic litres and something in the order of 1,760 with the rear seat down.

 

Mpg is also good on mine in the ECO mode I have seen 67mpg on the trip computer, but that did include a lot of coasting but needs a decent run to achieve figures like that, around town the best I have seen is around 40mpg and worst is 23mpg with a cold engine so the Stop/Start is not operating. The best hypermile time is summer with dry roads, if the roads are wet, the mpg figure drops down  to about 48 to 51mpg.

 

If the government are really serious about the electrification, then they really need to do something to assist the retired motorist into being able to get into an electric car, the salary sacrifice scheme is good for those in work but does nothing for the like of me and if they think that retired people do not have aspirations of owning a new vehicle, then they are so wrong. For instance, I was considering the purchase of a new car, funded from my occupational pension schemes, but after we exited the EU, my pension pot was devalued by over 50% and so I have not yet invoked them in the hope the stock market might recover enough to allow that to happen one day. so one day I might end up in an EV, never say never I say.

 

I fully expect that you have me down as being anti EV's, which is far from the truth, I'm just extremely cautious as the technology is still relatively new and things are continually being improved and yes, I know that they do accelerated ageing tests etc to try and see how the tech stands up over time, but there is no test actually like the test of time itself.

 a work colleague has been running a peugeot 2008 ev for 3 years and has just traded it in for a Nissan Juke mhev.

 

he liked the Pug said it was brilliant for coming to work but not good if he wanted to go anywhere.

@Graham Butcher

The only reason the Quashqai exists as a Mild Hybrid is so that Nissan have vehicles that because of the WLTP & RDE2 can help them meet UK Average Emissions.

That might be low emissions under testing, but if in the real real world they are not just fuel sipping then it is kidology.

 

?

Was it a FWD or AWD version you were driving?

Edited 9 December, 20232 yr by Rooted

@Rooted I really don't know the answer to that question, but it would be my guess that it was just FWD, as I would imagine it sport some sort of badging if it was AWD? It was also a hire car that the insurance company provided me with, so I would think that they would have with the cheapest option. Considering that it was supposed, in their eyes, a comparable size to my crashed car, then I doubt that they had zero idea of the size of a Superb, it was more like a 2+2 seater with just about 100mm knee space between the front seat and the rears and had no power outlets in the rear at all.

What was the Nissan Hybrid that was the first to market, the one with a weird rear end, the one that all the virtue signallers were rushing to buy many years back?

 

Or was it perhaps a Toyota?

 

I'm sure that you know the one that I mean, it was pretty much the first mainstream EV, at one time you would see them everywhere usually white in colour.

 

I ask because I never ever see one these days, have they all been scrapped or just put on Sorn so the virtue signallers can continue driving their SUV's while still claiming to be saving the planet?

1 minute ago, Graham Butcher said:

just about 100mm knee space between the front seat and the rears and had no power outlets in the rear at all.

 

OMG 3rd world or what! However did you cope? 🙄

@J.R.Was that a Toyota Prius hybrid?   Did exactly what it was required to.  Then Vauxhall had  the Ampera. A range extender that many owners love, and they are pretty economical.

 

 

Note her using right hand on centre screen while stationary.

This is the issue. Right handed people not good at using touch screens or controls with a left hand while driving.

The screen a full stretch to the left, or for those that need te seat back and might have long legs and a normal body but not arms & fingers like a monkey.

 

 

 

Edited 9 December, 20232 yr by Rooted

Yes, thats the one, and yes I recall it doing what was said on the tin, no stories or controversies around it like todays EV's, exactly what I would expect of Toyota.

 

Thats why it is so weird that I no longer see them, the owners may have moved onto newer vehicles but surely they were sought after second hand?

Honda Insight hybrid? The hypermile king.

Toyota Prius hybrid, London Uber driver's favourite before Niro EV took over in recent years.

 

I don't remember Nissan made anything specially "green" until Nissan Leaf.

@J.R.It is maybe just you are not where they are that you do not see them, they are around lots in Scotland and i doubt many gave been scrapped and lots were produced.

5 hours ago, Rooted said:

Sky news running a good story today on the National Grid.

 

How they are having the Gas Fired Power stations generating electricity while it could come from Battery Farms which are sitting redundant and the wind farm turbines are not producing as the electricity not needed for the batteries.

 

National Grid working on it.  Just keeping producing the emissions.

London needs the new pylons down the length of the UK to feed it,s electricity.  Farm land wasted, if no pylons the cost of electricity will rise.

This was my point a while ago, while we all discussing the point that many companies were claiming that you would be supplied with green renewable energy. Some so-called green tariffs were actually more expensive per KWH. I had my doubts, knowing how large businesses operate, ducking and diving to make the maximum profit for their shareholders. I wonder just how many EV owners and drivers are driving around, especially here in England with a smug feeling, in the belief that they are doing their bit towards the planet when in reality they are currently making it worse?

No I used to see hundreds on the roads in France, I have been here 20 years so the vast majority I saw were over here.

 

Maybe its a fiscality thing but its the first registration that gets hammered, we dont pay road tax, only a registration fee on new and second hand vehicles, it drops a lot after 40 years old and down to next to nothing after 10 years.

 

I will look into it.

 

What drivers want with EVs is Cheaper, Easier, Quicker one presumes...

 

 

Nickel Hydride batteries according to Dracula, maybe the cost of replacements has put most of them off the road in France.

That was the reason, €2K for a new battery, €800 for a 22 year old second hand one where the donor vehicle had travelled 267000 kms plus delivery from Holland plus fitting.

 

They are cheap to register though.