9 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

Apart from the dark winters, the traffic, I remember waking up in Aberdeen one morning and thought I had gone color blind. The city is so grey due to the stone used.

Haverhill area is nice. Will be over that way in a few days to do my tax return with my brother. Going to attempt the journey in my son's EV mini which i wish to show to a lady who has a petrol one to turn her away from the dark side.

Mega EV journeys planned in next few days. Son taking my Scenic down to Brighton so he will need to charge somewhere abd I have ateip to Liverpool on Sunday which I will use my 40 KWh R5 for so a cgarge needed there as a near 250 mile journey.

Use of Gridserve and MFG anticipated which I think are all 59p per KWh for the next 5 weeks or so !

One of the downsides to going electric for many, including some of those who can home charge, is that it seems to be a requirement with some existing EV owners/drivers seem to make any long-distance trip into a round of almost military strategic planning as regards to charging stops, etc.

Edited 21 hours ago21 hr by Graham Butcher

15 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

One of the downsides to going electric for many, including some of those who can home charge, is that it seems to be a requirement with some existing EV owners/drivers seem to make any long-distance trip into a round of almost military strategic planning as regards to charging stops, etc.

There is elements of that. My son just wants to drive and have the car systems tell him where he can go to charge up a bit if he gets low. The Google, or Tesla software makes that much easier telling the driver how busy the location is ie number of available bays and what the price is which can be half as much again even for the same public charging company.

Reading Services has a lot of chargers as does Crawley so should not be too difficult.

Edited 18 hours ago18 hr by lol-lol

30 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

According to Google, you are right; only Russia and China have any up and running. Also, it's rather damning of the UK in that we are one of the very few nations to reduce our reliance on nuclear power stations; since 2006, we have slashed the amount of power generated this way by some 50%, while most other nations have either remained pretty constant or are actively increasing their nuclear power generation contribution.

The UK takes so long to get work operational I despair.

We are seeing, and theun governnents seems to realise, mych more gets done by individuals ie they buy their solar and batteries rather than uk infrastructure which just drags on an on. What is incredible is the hundreds of thousands, becoming millions, of solar abd battery are rivalling the infrastructure projects ie GWs of energy production and tens of GWh of energy storage. Australia had shown tge way on thus by transforming from almost total Grid dependency to home energy production and storage being very significant in a normal daily cycle.

The UK Government with the loudest voice (Sir Ian) AKA Sir Iain Duncan Smith is so very worried about China that they got their nickers in a twist about China and France building the new Nuclear in the UK. This government is so concerned over security and China that they do not want a Company fabricating wind turbines in a Yard in Scotland. No issues with how many Oil licences that a Chinese business has for oil and gas extraction in the North Sea because the is in partnership with Sir Jim Ratcliffe's company. (China National Offshore Oil Corporation / CNOOC) No issue with how many ports / terminals Chinese companies own (3), or business,s or allowing a huge Embassy to be built in London. This is a very very strange state of affairs in the UK. So wind turbines could spy on shipping. China has satellites............. & Oil fields and structures in the UK,s North Sea. & already many Chinese built wind turbines.

Edited 4 hours ago4 hr by Evolution13

@Evolution13, just maybe they should have thought a bit more seriously about letting most of the UK, production jobs leave these shores for China years ago in the pursuit of even greater profits. By allowing that to happen they just handed the vice grip that a foreign power could if they so wished, use against us.

1 hour ago, Graham Butcher said:

@Evolution13, just maybe they should have thought a bit more seriously about letting most of the UK, production jobs leave these shores for China years ago in the pursuit of even greater profits. By allowing that to happen they just handed the vice grip that a foreign power could if they so wished, use against us.

We always have the power and now out of the EU. EU levies extra 35% on Chinese EVs, but not hybrids so the Chinese do even more on hybrids. UK chooses not to.

Protectionism tends to harm all but the EU countervailibg duties on EVs, extra 35% on SAIC ie MG vehicles !!! Less on BYDs.

When UK was in EU there were hundreds of Anti Dumping now there are only a few tens.

UK continues to prioritise finance and specialised industries ie military, pharma, luxury cars, sports etc. Difficult to change when China has such a lead in mass production and cheap energy.

There is so many strange things that the UK Government & politicians think is acceptable and then others that they are dead against.