@Lee Correct, although the Superb is not a particularly wide car by today's standards, it however far longer than lots of cars and bays. It is very noticeable when backing out of a bay that the back is extremely close to the next row of cars, making the manoeuvre at best a 2 stage and sometimes 3 if the car opposite is long or badly parked.

Heading off for Ballater.

Going across to the A93 and to Braemar.

5 charge points and 4 showing out of order on 5 different sites / apps and just a 22 kW ac showing as available.

The CCS / DC has been out of order for weeks. 

It is actually an 7 kW and might not be working either.

 

There is 7 kW charging in Ballater if working,  Does not show on some of the apps.

6 Charge points in Aboyne and showing 5 available and 2 are Rapids if they actually work. 

 

That is how it is for tourists, locals or those trying to travel in the southern Cairngorms / Royal Deeside area, dire. 

Best arrive with plenty charge coming from South and Blairgowrie, south & east and Alyth or Kirriemuir, or East from Aberdeen, North and Grantown on Spey /Tomintoul way.

Edited 31 August, 20232 yr by toot

29 minutes ago, toot said:

Heading off for Ballater.

Going across to the A93 and to Braemar.

5 charge points and 4 showing out of order on 5 different sites / apps and just a 22 kW ac showing as available.

The CCS / DC has been out of order for weeks. 

It is actually an 7 kW and might not be working either.

 

There is 7 kW charging in Ballater if working,  Does not show on some of the apps.

6 Charge points in Aboyne and showing 5 available and 2 are Rapids if they actually work. 

 

That is how it is for tourists, locals or those trying to travel in the southern Cairngorms / Royal Deeside area, dire. 

Best arrive with plenty charge coming from South and Blairgowrie, south & east and Alyth or Kirriemuir, or East from Aberdeen, North and Grantown on Spey /Tomintoul way.

Yep, this a thing that the Taycan clickbait man has mentioned in many of his videos as well that you can plan your journey using these apps but all too often the apps aren't showing true information and you can arrive to find either the chargers are out of service or have been vandalised, some have even had their cables stolen, its utter madness. 

41 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

Yep, this a thing that the Taycan clickbait man has mentioned in many of his videos as well that you can plan your journey using these apps but all too often the apps aren't showing true information and you can arrive to find either the chargers are out of service or have been vandalised, some have even had their cables stolen, its utter madness. 

 

This is why most sensible ev owners only go to the sites where there is half a dozen, dozen, two dozen chargers where one or two chargers out is not so bad and even at busy sites on those rare occasions the queue moves quickly.

 

These days it is rare to not be passing such a site on a journey and with two thousand charge point being added per month hard to keep up with all the new charger installs.

 

Plus new evs are being launched weekly with 50 miles plus ie ranges of over 300 miles, than last year's moldels.

 

Edited 31 August, 20232 yr by lol-lol

Well no issues.  3.9 miles to the kWh up to Braemar.  Scorchio.  Roads full of motor bikes and camper vans and the car parking mobbed.  Roadside every space.   Straight on to the rapid in Braemar.  Works fine but a blank screen but I know this type of charger well so do not need the screen, I know the beeps, and how to use.   I will fill to 99%.  I will have about 120 mile range in this weather in Sport and AC used. Downhill to get back home later and cheaper or free charging back in Perthshire or Angus.   47 pence a kWh in Aberdeenshire.     Pictures later. Best driving roads possibly 'in the World'.    MINI kept up with the bikes downhill and regenning.  Issue was the All Seasons on the grippy road and the high road temp in the sun.  NSL is 60 anyway. ..    PS.  Edit. That was quick. At 99% and off to play.   Need to watch the Taycan and Polestar that seem to think the while road is there and you need to dive onto the verge or in a ditch because no way are the slowing down.  Well they find out sometimes they need to or they have a long reverse to do. 

Edited 31 August, 20232 yr by toot

Next charger 34 miles later just to be sure of enough for tonight and tomorrow and used 20% of the small battery.  5.1 miles / kWh.  First charger failed to start but there is a 2nd rapid and then Podpoint in town so all well.   Just need to watch to the front and rear for motorbikes and everyplace and every junction for anything.  The place is hoachin.   Not so many Green Flash number plates. But then Tesla's seem not to have them. Unless a hire car. 

Lots of dealers don't bother with the green flash either, maybe for cost or just CBA? I don't have one and really not bothered that I don't.

Spoils the look of their Cherished Registration. 

Mercedes EV coming off the Freemantle Highway gets dunked:

 

 

As said, and noted in the comments, it didn't look particularly damaged, so I wonder why this one, and not other EV's that are being offloaded.

 

Gaz

 

Edited 31 August, 20232 yr by Gaz
an 'e' escaped

10,s of thousands of smaller hubs like these in Dundee are required around the UK in the next 5 years if the  Government are to continue with the plan for Net Zero.

Turbine and Solar & Storage Batteries at or near essential, and public toilets.

 

So these are required well as Schools, Hospitals and many public building needing replaced because of their building materials, & the NEW promised hospitals built.

What a wonderful chance for full employment in manufacturing and construction, training and much more. 

Putting the GREAT back into Britain. 

Edited 2 September, 20232 yr by toot

53 minutes ago, toot said:

10,s of thousands of smaller hubs like these in Dundee are required around the UK in the next 5 years if the  Government are to continue with the plan for Net Zero.

Turbine and Solar & Storage Batteries at or near essential, and public toilets.

So these are required well as Schools, Hospitals and many public building needing replaced because of their building materials, & the NEW promised hospitals built.

What a wonderful chance for full employment in manufacturing and construction, training and much more. Putting the GREAT back into Britain. 

 

But is the commercial case there for these tens of thousands of hubs ?  They cost several tens of thousands of pounds to create for the smaller one and hundreds of thousands for the larger ones and with electric cars of ever greater range, improving year on year, are these private companies going to invest millions in charging stations when many of the cars they were hoping to sell electricity to have increasingly large range, half or so have charging at home and need these places less and less.  I have charged once at a public charging bank of chargers, a Shell recharge, and once at a cafe who had a 16 kW charger, all the other times I have charged at home or work on 3.6, 7 or 11 kw chargers.

 

Grid Serve have does acquired funding for half a billion pounds but one can imagine that this investment will go in to vastly expanding those motorway and A road service areas and TESLA will double and triple its Motorway service area chargers which, as we know, will all be Version 4 chargers that non TESLA can use.   Drivers will be drawn to the TESLA super chargers which look as if they would continue to be about half the price per unit of lecky.

 

Northern Scotland seems particularly badly serviced by such banks of chargers. The lack of provision much be commercial as I would have thought sufficient power around but plumping in to full bore grid supply so adding a mega battery pack is a solution but then that adds to the cost massively.

 

TESLA and GRIDSERVE banks can be thin on the ground in the less populated area.  Here a round trip of at least 35 miles is required to a decent TELSA or GRIDSERVE bank, a bit much but it will get better and quickly I think.   Like all things the issues is going to be who is going to pay for all this and is the investment worth the return ?? 

 

Someone has to provide the Public Charging and for these companies with Drivers who are self employed but with the EV,s the companies own.    These businesses have vehicles parked up overnight at public chargers because there are not depots that take in the vehicles or have parking for the drivers own vehicles.    It is an industry.  It is an opportunity and it needs the use of land public owned or land banked.   It is not rocket science.  But then Westminster and the Government's are not like Norways and that includes the Scottish Government.        Getting local authority vehicles and Government department agencies and utilities vehicles chargers is the starter for one.   As it is many of the Utilities vehicles are using public chargers and blocking the use of them for the general public. 

The answer to that question is yes. Think about how many filling stations there are currently for ICE vehicles, and they can be filled to the brim in 5 to 10 minutes including paying, and then think about how long it would take to do the same with EVs. What about people living locally, they may only use their cars locally, but they should not have to drive far to be able to fill up if they can't charge at home.

I was talking just now to a couple with not a clue about EV,s and they are traveling lots and paying Tesco Podpoint prices to charge and only to 80% any time because their Vauxhall is set to only charge to 80%.  They have no home charger, no CPS account and no idea how to use them.    This kind of thing is not unusual and this is costing then double what driving a petrol would cost them. 

2 minutes ago, toot said:

I was talking just now to a couple with not a clue about EV,s and they are traveling lots and paying Tesco Podpoint prices to charge and only to 80% any time because their Vauxhall is set to only charge to 80%.  They have no home charger, no CPS account and no idea how to use them.    This kind of thing is not unusual and this is costing then double what driving a petrol would cost them. 

Only charging to 80% is probably better for extending the life of the battery pack - but not going to help their achievable range.

Exactly.

As for believe, and actual, and leasing / renting a car and needing to get places with a car with a 30-50 kWh battery you might well go to 98% when you want, 

maybe with AC and not DC, but driving actual distances you might well want more than 80 miles before the next charge.

 

If you only go short distances, charge regularly and do not need more than maybe 80 miles or 60 miles in cold weather then 80% is plenty.

 

 

Edited 2 September, 20232 yr by toot

True, when I filled mine with diesel the other day £73ish my trip computer was telling me that if I was doing longish trip without stop/start like you get in towns I had a range of 680 miles, when they can replicate that with EVs with a recharge time of just 20-30 minutes we might just have a chance of changing the world. 

I had cars that showed over 800 miles range and i might drive 450 miles without much stopping, then drive again and top up, 

a couple of times a month.

I managed to do the same with a car with a 45 kWh usable battery, and for much cheapness. 

 

It is quite a while since i did 800 mile non stop drives. 

Yeah, I was not trying to say 680 miles non-stop, but saying that if doing long trips, like Chelmsford to Birmingham and back like I used to do on a regular basis for business meetings, then that kind of driving could result in 680 or so miles to the tankful, as opposed to short trips in town/city with stop/start nature of town driving and the slow uneconomical speeds.

 

I have seen my trip computer showing a range of 870 miles a couple of times since I acquired the car, but conditions have to be just right for that to happen.

It will be years i suppose before the 150 miles or less from Chelmsford to Birmingham is not a desert for EV ultra rapid chargers with 100 / 100 + kW and people able to travel that empty wasteland with more than a 30-40 minute stop. 

Edited 2 September, 20232 yr by toot

2 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

Yeah, I was not trying to say 680 miles non-stop, but saying that if doing long trips, like Chelmsford to Birmingham and back like I used to do on a regular basis for business meetings, then that kind of driving could result in 680 or so miles to the tankful, as opposed to short trips in town/city with stop/start nature of town driving and the slow uneconomical speeds.  I have seen my trip computer showing a range of 870 miles a couple of times since I acquired the car, but conditions have to be just right for that to happen.

 

 

An Audi A4, with the 1.9 PD engine, 130 hp I recall, something like a 65 litre, maybe 67 litre tank, after a fairly slow speed cruising session, fill it up on the company fuel card and range-ometer shows 960 miles, wow.  Not that I would every drive more than 3 hours or so without a comfort break and I did not know then just what pollutant the car was putting out.  Quite good for CO2, as it was clearly an economical car but I probably had no idea about the NOX, the PM 2.5 and 10s, THC (thought that was in cannabis). 

 

Driving home from a footie match this afternoon, the permanent restriction signs on the elevated beginning of the M5, down to 60 mph due to "AIr Quality" the sign says.  But I am not in my mild or full hybrid this time, I am in the Zero Emission ie ZE50 Zoe, running on sun shine and the tears of squirrels, so can do a nominal 70, ie 77 or even 79 mph please ?

 

I have the same annoying messages, there seems to be more of them around as time goes by, whether it is South Wales or Yorkshire, speed limit down to 60 mph due to Air quality.

Time is money and I am being slowed up due to other people (mainly diesel I presume) polluting cars, and the older non EV vans and trucks of course.

 

New EVs with range of 400 miles sounds fine to me.   As long as there is a service area with a rapid-ish charger, adds a hundred or two hundred miles in ten or twenty minutes that sound great, can take me a several minutes to walk to the loo, have my pee, wash me hands, get to the Starbucks and get a cappuccino and take that back to the car, not as swift on my pins as was nor is my bladder.  

 

Would be nice to have the air quality at a quality I can drive at the National Speed Limit again.

 

Would be happy to have all the service stations uprates to 36 or so, maybe 42 or 48 if a really busy services, TESLA V4 chargers, or a nice GRIDSERVE, lots of other ones too, hopefully tie in to Octopus, especially now they at No 2 in the UK, so I can use my Octoverse card and just stick it on my home bill.

 

Happy see chargers at McDOnalds and Garden Centres too where I might spend 20 minutes or so getting some food.  Community centres sound like a good idea too, especially if they have a coffee shop.  Really not sure if we need thousands of  charge stations in addition to the above, just not sure they will be needed with the quantum improvements we are seeing in EV battery ranges plus portable battery packs.

 

 

 

Yeah well, I have yet to be convinced about the air quality aspect, especially when the air quality website shows the air quality is fine and does not pose any health risk, it did many years ago and there were indeed 4,000 people who lost their lives due to the air quality, that was back in 1952 and yet the London mayor is actually claiming that is case of today. This article relates to 1952 Great Smog of London | 1952, Cause, Deaths, & Facts | Britannica.

 

This is the link to the air quality website, which I think is funded by the World Health Organisation  and is worldwide. Air Pollution in World: Real-time Air Quality Index Visual Map (aqicn.org) By interacting with the map can clearly see areas of concern including countries and by careful use of the map you can zoom right in to street level in detail and cross referencing the locations with Google Earth maps at street level you can very often see the monitoring stations and in particular where the air intake is located in very close proximity to known sources of bad air quality and have very little to do with road transport or indeed transport of any kind.

 

For instance you have to ask if the air in London is so bad, why did TFL pay hundreds of thousands of £ to University College London to produce a custom report to back up their claims when it were true, all they would have to is to direct people to the air quality website which they could do for free?

3 hours ago, toot said:

It will be years i suppose before the 150 miles or less from Chelmsford to Birmingham is not a desert for EV ultra rapid chargers with 100 / 100 + kW and people able to travel that empty wasteland with more than a 30-40 minute stop. 

True it is not a desert for chargers, but it does add on an extra 30 to 40 minutes onto the day when you have already had a very long day with around 6 hours driving on top of a full 6 to 8 hours in these meetings. Plus of course the time taken to actually locate a charger that is not being used and also one that is actually working. I was doing that journey in a VW Passat diesel (manual) and at that time (Euro 3 engines) I could and often did twice a week and a full tank used to allow me the whole trip once, then some shorter ones around Essex in the week and then all the back to Birmingham again on the same tankful. I would then fill up round the corner from the factory before hitting the M6 again to come home.

15 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

Yeah well, I have yet to be convinced about the air quality aspect, especially when the air quality website shows the air quality is fine and does not pose any health risk, it did many years ago and there were indeed 4,000 people who lost their lives due to the air quality, that was back in 1952 and yet the London mayor is actually claiming that is case of today. This article relates to 1952 Great Smog of London | 1952, Cause, Deaths, & Facts | Britannica.

 

This is the link to the air quality website, which I think is funded by the World Health Organisation  and is worldwide. Air Pollution in World: Real-time Air Quality Index Visual Map (aqicn.org) By interacting with the map can clearly see areas of concern including countries and by careful use of the map you can zoom right in to street level in detail and cross referencing the locations with Google Earth maps at street level you can very often see the monitoring stations and in particular where the air intake is located in very close proximity to known sources of bad air quality and have very little to do with road transport or indeed transport of any kind.

 

For instance you have to ask if the air in London is so bad, why did TFL pay hundreds of thousands of £ to University College London to produce a custom report to back up their claims when it were true, all they would have to is to direct people to the air quality website which they could do for free?

 

Well unless you are going to become a law maker ie Minister of Parliament or part of the London Council that makes these policies you protesting against the experts science is not going to move mountains of direction of policy.

 

One can spot check ones local pollution level but the monitoring systems that recorded pollution has gone over safe levels more than 150 times, as I quoted in this website a few days ago, is likely to be the driving evidence rather than a spot check on a link to a website.

 

Change will happen as EVs increasingly become a higher percentage of the vehicles in the road. I just do not like be painted and restricted as a polluter when I am driving my zero emissions vehicle. Let me do the full speed !

2 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

 

Well unless you are going to become a law maker ie Minister of Parliament or part of the London Council that makes these policies you protesting against the experts science is not going to move mountains of direction of policy.

 

One can spot check ones local pollution level but the monitoring systems that recorded pollution has gone over safe levels more than 150 times, as I quoted in this website a few days ago, is likely to be the driving evidence rather than a spot check on a link to a website.

 

Change will happen as EVs increasingly become a higher percentage of the vehicles in the road. I just do not like be painted and restricted as a polluter when I am driving my zero emissions vehicle. Let me do the full speed !

Oh no, if you look at that website and in particular if you subscribe to it, you will see the data from each station for each of the items monitored be they PM's and CO2 etc, all tabulated for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and for a rolling full 12 months and then for 4 years. It is not gimmicky website, it is full-blown scientific fact gathering website for statistical data and analysis by the scientific organisations.

 

You can test part of this yourself, select a station that you want to see the readings for EG, I have selected the one near me and the results can be seen here AirNet Sensor Data Quality Validation Service (aqicn.org) and it will allow you to look PM10 and PM2.5 for the 14 days and also some of the data gained by that station over the last 4 years and that data is also downloadable as a CSV file. As I said before, it is a serious scientific website, not some clown sitting in his bedroom pranking the internet nerds.

 

I'm not trying to stir up things or etc, just making it clear that I'm not at all convinced by all these claims of air quality being responsible for up to 4,000 Londoners or anyone else across the UK loosing their life, and providing the link to a live international website that people can look at the evidence in a bit more detail, if they so wish, or they can just pretend it's a hoax or whatever, its no skin off my nose, it's up to each person to formulate their own opinions. I'm not going to attempt anyone to change their minds, but if there are other people who are interested in checking is they are being lied to, then those people might find this website useful as a fact-checker.