Hopefully the ADAC cleaned up their act and are no longer Little Liars when it comes to VW products.

9% loss of a battery capacity is more than only 8 miles, even if a 100 kW Battery.

Edited 13 November, 202513 Nov by Evolution13

I expect there's buffers being used up as part of degradation.

For example, 93% of battery capacity was used when new to produce WLTP range. Degradation report now says 10% degradation, so that now eats into WLTP range and thus 3% of WLTP range has been lost. First 7% degradation would be invisible to end user.

I expect Audi to have even bigger top buffer. They rapid charge very quickly at the top SoC.

Nissan Leaf does similar trick where first the health bar is lost at 15% degradation rather than divide the 12 bars equally.

And at end of vehicle life, battery can be re-used for stationary applications.

At very end of battery useful life:

InsideEVs

Why China Is Quietly Winning At EV Battery Recycling

Thanks to new techniques, some Chinese companies say they can recover 99.6% of the key battery materials like nickel, cobalt and manganese.

From that article, this company is currently recycling 120 thousand tons of battery aiming for 1 million tons, with above 90% for all rare earth materials.

https://en.brunp.com.cn/services-products/recall

"

In the U.S., Redwood Materials is one of the biggest battery recyclers. It says it too has technology to allow it to recover up to 95% of the nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper from an end-of-life EV battery pack, but it has yet to do it at scale. The company wants to use these recovered materials to create new battery packs and is targeting a production capacity of 500 GWh by the end of the decade.

"

Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedures / WLTP is really not Real World or World Wide Testing,

it is often the figure that is the battery capacity and times the max miles it might go per kWh.

4 miles is one thing, 5 miles often a wish and a dream,

and where a 29 kWh gross 27.5 kWh usable times 6 is taking the p!th.

eg Renault Twingo EV 163 miles WLTP.

RDE2 = Real Driving Emissions Step 2. ICE vehicles. Can also be kidology / fiction.

Edited 13 November, 202513 Nov by Evolution13

From January the London congestion charge will increase to £18 a day, up from £15. For the first time EV's will have to pay the congestion charge, but at a reduced rate of £13.50 a day.

Just more guessing and speculating on what might be in the budget,

but as far as Porsche and others they might well know what you are doing with your or their cars. (if Media / courtesy / demonstrator cars) But they did the same with ICE vehicles.

Today, I have seen locally, new electric buses, police cars, both are 100% electric and also PHEV paramedic vehicles, the latter was plugged in to charge at a public charger half a mile away from me.

This guy has one of the most monotonous voices of any presenter on the internet / Youtube but his video below is the best I have seen on the impact of pay per mile for pure EVs an which ever hybrids, presumable PHEVs, that the tax changes bring about.

Bit of a spoiler alert but he shows that a 3p per mile tax is taken in their stride for EV owners. It would be nice is the flip side on the coin of us EV drivers paying PAy Per Mile if we got a cut in VAT on Public Charging which would help adoption by those with driveways at home to charge on.

The big point also made is that the 5p per litre reduction brought in for Covid is due to end in April 2026 ie only 4 and a half months away. Pay per Mile is not due until 2028. Very comprehensive mathematical modelling, with some admitted flaws but generally looks a fair model..........

EVs will continue to be have far lower running cost even in a post Pay per Mile scenario, certainly at 3p per mile but logically this could go to 4, 5 and even 6p per mile in the next decade.

1 hour ago, lol-lol said:

This guy has one of the most monotonous voices of any presenter on the internet / Youtube

I always click on the cog and adjust the playback speed to at least 1.75 and pause graphs when needed

There are many videos and also articles about this topic, and while I sympathise with you as you have all been encouraged to buy into the ethos of electric motoring and cheaper running costs for those home charging. Fact remains those with ICE car are still paying for more than 3p a mile in fuel duty, plus the 20% VAT, so every time oil goes up, so does duty and VAT pro-rota.

It was predictable that, governments were bound to wake to the fact that they were loosing so much revenue by the continuing subsidizing of electric motoring and realise their folly. As we live longer, the pressure on their reserves and income is going to be under more strain than it was before.

1 hour ago, Graham Butcher said:

There are many videos and also articles about this topic, and while I sympathise with you as you have all been encouraged to buy into the ethos of electric motoring and cheaper running costs for those home charging. Fact remains those with ICE car are still paying for more than 3p a mile in fuel duty, plus the 20% VAT, so every time oil goes up, so does duty and VAT pro-rota.

It was predictable that, governments were bound to wake to the fact that they were loosing so much revenue by the continuing subsidizing of electric motoring and realise their folly. As we live longer, the pressure on their reserves and income is going to be under more strain than it was before.

Just had near tearful goodbye to the Zoe after 4 years of cheap motoring and noe gave the Renault 5 and the Scenic, 5 even cheaper to buy and run anfmd got an EV grant like the Zoe did.

If there is only 2 5 years of the really cheap motoring then that is fair enough. Will always appraise the situation abd make choices accordingly. ICE xars could do over 100 mpg if designed optimally and I do not completely rule out getting something with a little ICE. More Lilley have no car at all and just dial up a driverless one I see as the future.

37 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

Just had near tearful goodbye to the Zoe after 4 years of cheap motoring and noe gave the Renault 5 and the Scenic, 5 even cheaper to buy and run anfmd got an EV grant like the Zoe did.

If there is only 2 5 years of the really cheap motoring then that is fair enough. Will always appraise the situation abd make choices accordingly. ICE xars could do over 100 mpg if designed optimally and I do not completely rule out getting something with a little ICE. More Lilley have no car at all and just dial up a driverless one I see as the future.

Huh, you have greater faith in autonomous vehicles than I have, at least you can shout at and prod a human driver and hopefully stop an accident from happening...

Or cause one by shouting and prodding aforementioned driver 🙄

Just now, Lee01 said:

Or cause one by shouting and prodding aforementioned driver 🙄

Arh yes true, but you would only do that in an emergency of course, i.e., they fall asleep like a driverless car would do if the software crashed (equivalent of the dreaded blue screen of death on a computer). 😊

23 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

Huh, you have greater faith in autonomous vehicles than I have, at least you can shout at and prod a human driver and hopefully stop an accident from happening...

The testing is to match similar journeys with an average human driving to the autonomous drivibg system. In my tests the computer already outscored the human.

The Tesla optical system worries me and I prefer the systems that use radar I think.

Many already rely on it for adaptive cruise control though I don't personally believe in it 100% but there will come a point i suspect. Auto parking and more and more features demonstrate how well onboard driving systems can work.

Emergency braking for a large leaf blowing across the road has given me some doubt but as Emile Coue said, I thought it was Yogi bear, "Every day in every way I am getting better and better"

Agree 100% with the Tesla reliance on cameras, Lidar is far better, maybe a combination of both system is even better, but then the problem comes when one system thinks it detects something and the other doesn't! What happens then which system prevails or even cancel each other out and so no action is taken when there should have been etc. It is the same thing as these psychometric tests, the person who compiles the test leans towards what ever outcome they think is the desired result, i.e. one person's belief.

A few years ago, I attempted to better myself by applying for a technical position with a German company, and I failed their psychometric tests, so I was not accepted, skip forward a couple of years and the company I was working for was taken over by the German company, so I ended up working for them anyway. The area manager of that company remembered me, from my earlier attempts and within a year, most of the other technical people doing the role that had applied for, were gone as I was outshining them in every dept and the area manager complained to the MD about the tests, and they were scrapped. He cited my case, where he had a gut feeling that I was right for the job, but their tests said otherwise, and then when I became part of their team through acquisition, I proved to be the best performer in that role.

That and the fact that despite how many people are working on Microsoft Windows software and the years they have been doing it, they regularly get some major bugs and screw things up. I have equipment here like NAS drives that worked flawlessly under Windows 7, XP, 10 etc but will not work on Windows 11, they did get it working briefly a while ago, but it is not working now and that is why I don't trust software driven systems with my life.

1 hour ago, Graham Butcher said:

Agree 100% with the Tesla reliance on cameras, Lidar is far better, maybe a combination of both system is even better, but then the problem comes when one system thinks it detects something and the other doesn't! What happens then which system prevails or even cancel each other out and so no action is taken when there should have been etc. It is the same thing as these psychometric tests, the person who compiles the test leans towards what ever outcome they think is the desired result, i.e. one person's belief.

A few years ago, I attempted to better myself by applying for a technical position with a German company, and I failed their psychometric tests, so I was not accepted, skip forward a couple of years and the company I was working for was taken over by the German company, so I ended up working for them anyway. The area manager of that company remembered me, from my earlier attempts and within a year, most of the other technical people doing the role that had applied for, were gone as I was outshining them in every dept and the area manager complained to the MD about the tests, and they were scrapped. He cited my case, where he had a gut feeling that I was right for the job, but their tests said otherwise, and then when I became part of their team through acquisition, I proved to be the best performer in that role.

That and the fact that despite how many people are working on Microsoft Windows software and the years they have been doing it, they regularly get some major bugs and screw things up. I have equipment here like NAS drives that worked flawlessly under Windows 7, XP, 10 etc but will not work on Windows 11, they did get it working briefly a while ago, but it is not working now and that is why I don't trust software driven systems with my life.

What you are seeing there is a degredation of development quality and investment.
MS decimated their QA teams and now proudly boasts that 30% of windows code is written by AI. Correspondingly you will note a concurrent drop in the quality of the output and major incidents casued by poor QA on MS software releases.
You will of course be please to note that 'shareholder value' has been maintained.

Going well OT but I have regularly had to resort to a second Linux based system because W11 is unable to do basic tasks now such as partition a USB drive. There were a few other basics I can't recall that forced a switch to 'nix to get things done.

Optical Vs Radar - We've had a couple of cars now with active cruise. The Radar based system on the Mini was pretty poor, the Subaru has an optical based system which I've found much more reliable.

Self-drive - My usual comment with regard to self driving cars is than until I can legally climb into the back of a car drunk as a skunk and get it to drive me home from the pub it's not a self-driving car. It's just cruise control with added boredom.

TBH I'm of the opinion that really it needs to be all or nothing. Either full automatic driving or remove all non-essential driver aids (not ABS, TC etc), no auto lights, no lane warning, no speed awareness, no blind spot lights since these are simply making people worse drivers IMHO (myself included)

Edited 17 November, 202517 Nov by Aspman

@Aspman Well if MS are doing that, then no matter whatever safeguards the legislators try and build in for self-driving software etc, there will be some operators who will attempt to circumnavigate around them in order to make more profits etc. I'll put my faith in a human any day of the week.

A somewhat weird one. The Mokka GSE. 275 hp, 0-60 in 5.9 seconds, sub £37.5k so one gets the EV grant, quite well worked suspension. As someone from the Opel Manta GTE appreciation club had to have a look but its an SUV shaped and just who is the target audience ???

27 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

A somewhat weird one. The Mokka GSE. 275 hp, 0-60 in 5.9 seconds, sub £37.5k so one gets the EV grant, quite well worked suspension. As someone from the Opel Manta GTE appreciation club had to have a look but its an SUV shaped and just who is the target audience ???

More down to market manipulation I think. If you can convince the market they only want one type of car (SUV) then you only have one set of R&D costs.
It's been that way for years with platform sharing etc but these days they take it to an extreme. You can have any type car you like but as long as it's an SUV two box design

Looking forward to getting a wee shoty in a Peugeot e-208 GTI. The Abarth e-600 Scorpionissma was a hoot. One issue was tyres really just for dry roads fitted.

Edited 18 November, 202518 Nov by Evolution13

11 hours ago, Aspman said:

More down to market manipulation I think. If you can convince the market they only want one type of car (SUV) then you only have one set of R&D costs.
It's been that way for years with platform sharing etc but these days they take it to an extreme. You can have any type car you like but as long as it's an SUV two box design

I am pleased with my recent EV acquisitions and the improvement in EV technology ie narrower battery packs.

My first EV was the Zoe and whilst not a SUV it was tall and energy consumption was highish at high speeds. Generally well fitted out but the lack of seat height adjustment a pain as i like to adjust the seat up and down, back and forth to change the seating position for comfort.

The Scenic Renault describe as a Famiy car rather than an EV, not as tall as most SUVs, do have trouble seeing it in car parks sometimes but again not great energy consumption at higher speeds.

The Mini Cooper E is low and handling great and energy consumption pretty good at higher speeds but small battery.

Renault 5 picked up last week,again not very tall, not a SUV but a City car specially in the Urban 40 kwh version i have. Very good handling with its multi link suspension at the back. Lots of seat adjustment but like the Mini very little room in the back seats.

So I have managed to avoid the ubiquitous SUV though all but the Mini are not great at National Speed Limit for energy consumption.

If one wants a EV motorway car then probably between the Model 3 or Polestars and more Chnese cars coming thru that contend. Blade battery packs and just thinner ones dropping from around 150 mm to more like 100 mm are allowing EVs to not be SUVs by default thankfully.

Edited 19 November, 202519 Nov by lol-lol

Local Renault dealership sending me a V2L adapter FOC !

Had a bit of a moan about something on the PDI of my Evolution Urban range Renault 5 and they are sending me the V2L adapter FOC.

It will run at up to 3.7 kw, 16A of course but has the uk 3 pin plug output so really 13A sort of 3 kw. Would be really good for blackouts or charging one of the other EVs if it was not around to charge at the cheap time but the R5 was !

Edited 19 November, 202519 Nov by lol-lol

Might be worth a watch

It is tough titty that they can not get cheap offpeak tariffs without a working smart meter. At least they can charge at home at a standard tariff of like 30 pence a kWh. so 100 kWh £30 for 350 miles. Lots better than those with EV,s needing to use public chargers at double or even treble that.

Yorkshire might be part of a North England South England divide. But really North in the UK where tariffs and standing charges are higher and excess electricity can be generated is part of the divide. Paying for wind farms not to generate.