Do you think that the UK switching to electric vehicles is realistic?

[Ediswan]

I saw a report yesterday about the world's highest mileage car. Since 2014 it has covered 1.2 million miles. It is a Tesla S and has had three new battery packs.

That report says highest mileage Tesla. The highest mileage car is over 3 million miles.

 

[E27007]

I would imagine the impact on a hybrid battery is far greater as the batteries are tiny (even a PHEV would typically have a 30 mile range battery to start with.

With a hybrid, the battery pack is used intermittently, it has a low duty-cycle, in fact on my hybrid I can isolate the battery by a circuit breaker and the car still drives on the petrol engine, a BEV , the duty cycle is 100%, I would say the BEV battery has the harder life.

In London there is FAR less need to own a car (even compared to other cities). Also this planning applications are generally applied in areas where the PTAL level is higher (where 6 is high and 1 is low).

A regional station with 4tph and 6bph is likely to have a PTAL of 1, maybe if that's a few different routes a 2. Bexley station is a 3.

Most such planning applications would be in areas with a PTAL of 5 or 6.

In London you can live without a car, but not everyone, those properties denied car ownership by planning permission may be people who really need a car for their livelihood, I'm thinking of the tradesmen who need a vehicle to carry tools and materials, and the train driver who books on at depot 4.00 am 4 days in a row to work the commuter service .

 

[WelshBluebird]

In London you can live without a car, but not everyone, those properties denied car ownership by planning permission may be people who really need a car for their livelihood, I'm thinking of the tradesmen who need a vehicle to carry tools and materials, and the train driver who books on at depot 4.00 am 4 days in a row to work the commuter service .

If you really do need a car then when choosing to rent or buy you factor that into your decision, the same as you would any other requirement of where you live. Given we are talking about planning permission, that only applies to new developments and so would have been a factor right from the start. No excuses. If you need a car then don't move to such a flat.

 

[jon0844]

Lots of cars have lane departure systems. What's specific about this one?

It isn't very good in terms of implementation, although there have been many software updates and I don't see people mentioning it much now so assume the supposed 'it tried to kill me' problem has mostly gone away. Plus you could/can disable it.

I don't see this as being anything related to an EV. The MG4 is a very affordable car that everyone seems to agree is also a great, enjoyable, car to drive. The XPower seems to be selling very well to what I'd assume are former petrolheads, who seem able to cope with a lack of engine noise.

If you really do need a car then when choosing to rent or buy you factor that into your decision, the same as you would any other requirement of where you live. Given we are talking about planning permission, that only applies to new developments and so would have been a factor right from the start. No excuses. If you need a car then don't move to such a flat.

Didn't New Labour being in some or all of these planning rules? It isn't even a recent issue and has nothing to do with supposed conspiracy theories that the Government is trying to stop us driving etc.

 

[paul1609]

Lots of cars have lane departure systems. What's specific about this one?

Basically its a Lane departure Asist system rather than a lane departure warning system.
On a single track road with side lines if the line on either side is intermittant on for instance a bend where its worn out when the line recommences the car will try to drive you to the left of the line ie on the verge or in a ditch.
To turn the assist off you have to go in to a rather fiddly and slow touch screen system. Every time you stop and restart the car the system resets to its on default setting. Apparently new software has been promised since the car was launched it may have even happened by now I lost interest in the car after it tried to drive me in to a drystone wall in the lake district on the extended test drive.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Basically its a Lane departure Asist system rather than a lane departure warning system.
On a single track road with side lines if the line on either side is intermittant on for instance a bend where its worn out when the line recommences the car will try to drive you to the left of the line ie on the verge or in a ditch.
To turn the assist off you have to go in to a rather fiddly and slow touch screen system. Every time you stop and restart the car the system resets to its on default setting. Apparently new software has been promised since the car was launched it may have even happened by now I lost interest in the car after it tried to drive me in to a drystone wall in the lake district on the extended test drive.

That's very, very poor. LDA isn't suitable for use on country lanes at all, only on wide single carriageways and dual carriageways, so it really should be easy to disable and should use the parking sensors to know not to push you in a ditch.

Has a bit of a Boeing 737 Max feel to it, does it not?

I can't consider it really has much to do with it being an EV though, it's just some poor design on a budget (for an EV SUV) car.

 

[jon0844]

MG still make ICE cars so it's a software issue for any car they sell with this software, though this and a number of other issues (one more serious still, which saw some owners locked in their vehicle) are supposedly fixed now.

 

[trebor79]

The grid demand is going to look totally different to anything that has existed till now, electricity consumption is going to skyrocket and there will be heat pumps or similar electric heating in areas that have never had it before.

Actually UK electricity consumption peaked at 350TWh in 2005. It's been falling steeply ever since due to energy efficiency measure and the decline of heavy industry, and was 320TWh last year.
The National Grid (who really ought to know about such things) also say its not going to be a problem

Without a total reconstruction of the DNO system, for which the materiel and personnel do not exist, compromises will have to be made to allow the necessary increase in power delivery.

Well if the DNO doesn't step in to turn it off the main fuse on the low voltage feeder blows and you won't be getting your car charged any time soon!
Equipment to allow remote control of loads by the DNO already exists in the UK and has done for decades (using radio 4 longwave), indeed in New Zealand essentially every house already has that equipment. It's certainly far less expensive than smart metering.

But you haven't said why that can't be done by the energy supplier as just another feed into their algorithms deciding when to charge my car or heat my hot water cylinder. I don't know how the market works in NZ, but if it's a single state or privately owned entity perhaps that's why they've done it that way.
LW radio and simple on/off of the whole house is crude and unnecessary in this day and age where we can switch on and off just the big loads that make a difference without interrupting normal life.

In essence the DNO would keep watch on the load on the feeder and order car chargers/hot water heaters etc to throttle to avoid exceeding the rating of the circuit.
This allows the system to be run far harder than it can be today, which is necessary given the projected explosion in electricity use.

This is exactly what Octopus are doing right now. You're obsessed with it being the DNO having to do it. They don't

Because cars that are not plugged in when the power glut occurs will have to be charged with exceptionally expensive "peak" electricity rather than free electricity that will have to be thrown away otherwise.

That's my choice as a consumer though. 99% of my charging when at home is at the cheap rate. 80% of may charging out and about is rapid DC charging during a rest break, the remainder is 11kW AC charging when I'm asleep in a hotel. I'm just not going to plug my car into an 11kW post at other times as it's not worth the hassle. And I certainly wouldn't even contemplate a 3kW post.

Curtailing excess production is clearly not an attractive way of doing things, and certainly is not preferably to "inefficient" car charging!

Agreed. But sometimes that's all that's left.

"I don't want to waste energy on inefficiently charging the cars so I will throw the power away instead" is hardly a sensible position!

It is if I'm paying expensive public charging prices for energy that isn't actually going to get into my battery.

But in any case, yes we have those systems, and we will need all of them.
We will be looking at power gluts that last hours and run to tens of gigawatts of excess production.

Every kWh possible must be captured to reduce total system cost and thus cost to the consumer base.

Not really. Marginal cost of production of wind, solar and hydro is zero. As more of those assets are fully amortised, paid down and fall out of their support mechanisms the cost of curtailment will tend to fall.

We've not had a wind, nuclear and solar dominated grid, which has fundamentally different dynamics to a conventional fossil or hydro powered grid. The closest grid in a large country I'm aware of was the pre EU-harmonisation French one, where the time of use tarrif (Option Tempo) allowed for a factor of 20x in cost between lowest and highest price electricity (it used to swing from about 3 eurocents to 57!), although that has flattened out now (to 7x) because the broader European grid is not nuclear dominated.

You're conflating nuclear and renewables.
That cheap overnight rate was because nuclear has limited turndown (same reason Economy 7 came in here to avoid turning coal plants off overnight). So incentivise use overnight when commerce and industry consumption is low to try and shift domestic load so you don't have to take reactors offline.
With renewables, it's much more dynamic where the imbalance of supply and demand is. It won't necessarily be in the middle of the night or at the same time each day. That's why we need more dynamic pricing, such as that Octopus are offering on various tariffs.

Power will either be enormously expensive or it will be free, cars that are not plugged in when a power glut occurs will have to be be charged with the extraordinarily expensive electricity rather than the free stuff.

And even 30 million 3kW chargers will be able to absorb a spike of 90GW!

There aren't 30m cars on the road!

The answer is not to compel everyone to plug their car in just in case (which is only a one way solution - it can only take excess, not make up a shortfall). The answer is grid scale energy storage in batteries, pumped hydro, liquid air with those investments earning their payback through the arbitrage between times of excess and times of deficiency.
I have batteries in my loft, I buy all my power at the cheap rate of 7.5p/kWh. If I had an export tariff, I could have sold it back during a recent saving session at £4/kWh. That's exactly what large grid scale storage is doing, and it's a lot more flexible and effective than installing millions of low powered AC chargers and expecting everyone to fart about with a cable in the rain when they don't need to.

 

[Noddy]

Basically its a Lane departure Asist system rather than a lane departure warning system.
On a single track road with side lines if the line on either side is intermittant on for instance a bend where its worn out when the line recommences the car will try to drive you to the left of the line ie on the verge or in a ditch.
To turn the assist off you have to go in to a rather fiddly and slow touch screen system. Every time you stop and restart the car the system resets to its on default setting. Apparently new software has been promised since the car was launched it may have even happened by now I lost interest in the car after it tried to drive me in to a drystone wall in the lake district on the extended test drive.

That's very, very poor. LDA isn't suitable for use on country lanes at all, only on wide single carriageways and dual carriageways, so it really should be easy to disable and should use the parking sensors to know not to push you in a ditch.

Has a bit of a Boeing 737 Max feel to it, does it not?

I can't consider it really has much to do with it being an EV though, it's just some poor design on a budget (for an EV SUV) car.

It’s not just an issue with the MGs (EV or ICE), it’s a much wider issue. I have a Cupra Born and the Lane Keep system is terrible (but not dangerous) on anything that is not a dual carriageway/motorway.

Euro NCAP ‘upset’ carmakers did the bare minimum with lane-keep assist

The secretary general of Euro NCAP – sister organisation to ANCAP – has said many lane-keep assist systems are not "properly evaluated in the real world"

www.whichcar.com.au

Safety organisation Euro NCAP has said it expected more real-world development from carmakers implementing lane-keep assist systems.​

“When we started to develop these tests [for lane-keep assist] our understanding was that vehicle manufacturers would not bring these systems in if they would upset their customers”, Euro NCAP secretary general Michiel van Ratingen told Wheels at an Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) media event this week.

Yet with lane support systems – such as lane-departure warning, emergency lane-keep assist and lane-trace assist – now necessary for a five-star safety rating, Euro NCAP and ANCAP are updating their protocols to include real-world testing.

Van Ratingen was asked about a few recent five-star models – including the Chery Omoda 5, Isuzu D-Max and MG 4 – that have aggressive emergency lane-keep inputs designed to ace the program's lab tests with little attention paid to real-world functionality.

We are kind of upset that the vehicle manufacturers answer questions from you guys to say that Euro NCAP is forcing them [to implement LSS]

 

[HSTEd]

Actually UK electricity consumption peaked at 350TWh in 2005. It's been falling steeply ever since due to energy efficiency measure and the decline of heavy industry, and was 320TWh last year.
The National Grid (who really ought to know about such things) also say its not going to be a problem

Essentially all the models, or at least the ones that don't depend on vast supplies of magical hydrogen, show electricity use decline going into reverse and electricity demand stabilising at about two to five times current values.

EDIT: National Grid's own models put projected future electricity production at between 600 and 900TWh/yr!

It is if I'm paying expensive public charging prices for energy that isn't actually going to get into my battery.

The electricity from the charging points will not be expensive, it would be essentially free!

You can either take the electricity from the charging point for almost nothing, or pay for it anyway on your next standing charge (or through higher electricity unit rates).
Just because you've decided you don't want that power doesn't mean that the generating plant just stops requiring maintenance.

You're conflating nuclear and renewables.
That cheap overnight rate was because nuclear has limited turndown (same reason Economy 7 came in here to avoid turning coal plants off overnight). So incentivise use overnight when commerce and industry consumption is low to try and shift domestic load so you don't have to take reactors offline.

With renewables, it's much more dynamic where the imbalance of supply and demand is. It won't necessarily be in the middle of the night or at the same time each day. That's why we need more dynamic pricing, such as that Octopus are offering on various tariffs.

Option Tempo pricing scheme does not required fixed scheduling of the high cost periods, they are signalled to the customer base about a day ahead through a suitably robust set of signalling channels. But in any case, I was mostly pointing out that the reality of near zero marginal cost generating systems is the price swings wildly between zero and huge based on the match of supply and demand.

And nuclear is capable of essentially arbitrary turndown, there is just no point because the marginal cost of production of nuclear electricity is negative.
Reducing load on the plant causes maintenance issues and saves fuel that is almost worthless.

The reality is that there are major parallels between nuclear and renewable generating plant, both will experience the "price collapse" phenomena at high penetrations into the grid system.
Renewables are less predictable but have the same fundamental dynamics at play.

There aren't 30m cars on the road!

As of the end of Q2 2023, there are 33.49 million licenced cars in the United Kingdom, out of approximately 41 million licenced vehicles. The bulk of the remainder are light goods vehicles (ie. vans)

 

[DustyBin]

It’s not just an issue with the MGs (EV or ICE), it’s a much wider issue. I have a Cupra Born and the Lane Keep system is terrible (but not dangerous) on anything that is not a dual carriageway/motorway.

Euro NCAP ‘upset’ carmakers did the bare minimum with lane-keep assist

The secretary general of Euro NCAP – sister organisation to ANCAP – has said many lane-keep assist systems are not "properly evaluated in the real world"

www.whichcar.com.au

Thankfully I can turn mine off and it stays off, as opposed to needing to be turned off each time I start the car like some.

 

[Noddy]

Thankfully I can turn mine off and it stays off, as opposed to needing to be turned off each time I start the car like some.

That’s almost certainly because your model was tested before 2023. The current 2023 regulations require Lane Keep Assist to default to ON every time the car is started in order to achieve a five star rating.

 

[E27007]

If you really do need a car then when choosing to rent or buy you factor that into your decision, the same as you would any other requirement of where you live. Given we are talking about planning permission, that only applies to new developments and so would have been a factor right from the start. No excuses. If you need a car then don't move to such a flat.

I think you are being harsh in your assessment, 1) London property is so expensive, a major multiple of income, you do not find a property which you want, it is what you can afford, 2) things change, you change jobs, your circumstances change 3) the CPZ is introduced after your take the property, 4} Social Housing for which you do not have much choice, you take what is offered, is affected by CPZ schemes

 

[The Ham]

I think you are being harsh in your assessment, 1) London property is so expensive, a major multiple of income, you do not find a property which you want, it is what you can afford, 2) things change, you change jobs, your circumstances change 3) the CPZ is introduced after your take the property, 4} Social Housing for which you do not have much choice, you take what is offered, is affected by CPZ schemes

The discussion wasn't about CPZ's rather individual developments which were not allowed to have a CPZ permit and have no off street parking allocation. Quite a lot of London is impacted by CPZ's.

At another point out; this is nothing new. I worked on planning schemes with this sort of thing at least two employers ago, which is at least 10 years ago (although some were most definitely over 13 years ago, so before the Tories were in power).

 

[Roast Veg]

Equipment to allow remote control of loads by the DNO already exists in the UK and has done for decades (using radio 4 longwave), indeed in New Zealand essentially every house already has that equipment. It's certainly far less expensive than smart metering.

Just to be clear, radio 4 longwave support for Charging Stations is not the plan for any Charging Station manufacturer. They will be controlled by OCPP and OpenADR via their internet connection.

 

[Busaholic]

What about the cost of battery replacement?

I recently spoke to an instructor on a driving experience and he told me they had just spent £18k on battery replacement on a 10 year old Tesla.

Someone I was speaking to said their friend had bought an around 2 year old Range Rover hybrid only to be told soon after that their car would need new batteries. They were told that the cost of replacement batteries would be more than the car is worth.

Oh, he'll be a 'conspiracy theorist' then, for daring to express the reality as opposed to the Emperor's New Clothes element on here.

Yes, if you live in St Albans or Sevenoaks, Wokingham or Wallingford and have a lovely shiny, reasonably new EV, perhaps provided by your employer, recharged at home overnight and able to access e.g. the Milton Keynes charging hub linked to National Express, 'I'm alright, Jack' will be your watchwords and you'll press those rose-tinted spectacles even harder over your nose.

Anyway, how exactly will HM Government replace the £24.3 billion that fuel duty is expected to raise in 2023/4 when all those still driving have battery-powered vehicles? Will a mandatory percentage be added to all commercial chargers to be passed on to the Revenue? In which case, will those charging at home then have to register and make payments every quarter, which would only be fair, and aided immensely by smart meters? Maybe it's why the government is so obsessed with everyone having a smart meter, come to think of it.

 

[jon0844]

Anyway, how exactly will HM Government replace the £24.3 billion that fuel duty is expected to raise in 2023/4 when all those still driving have battery-powered vehicles? Will a mandatory percentage be added to all commercial chargers to be passed on to the Revenue? In which case, will those charging at home then have to register and make payments every quarter, which would only be fair, and aided immensely by smart meters? Maybe it's why the government is so obsessed with everyone having a smart meter, come to think of it.

As has been discussed many times, even though we seem to like going around in circles on this thread, the most likely way to recover some of that revenue will be through congestion charges (EVs still take up road space and lead to congestion) and charges based on efficiency, given heavy SUV EVs with massive batteries often use a lot more energy to move the car a single mile.

Thus, you'll have something akin to VED in place to charge different EV users as appropriate.

There's no real way to charge more for someone using electricity at their home, but I suppose a tax could be imposed on the use of other chargers.

I don't think anyone assumes EVs will remain super cheap forever, but I think we all know petrol and diesel is only going to get more expensive as time goes on - and in due course there will be less places to fill up as petrol stations become charging hubs, or close entirely because destination charging has all but taken over.

I assume you can accept that no matter what, EVs are going to take over. It won't need Government intervention. Most people will choose to buy one, and the remaining choice of ICE vehicles will be tiny and there will be little demand for cheap cars, maybe just luxury sport cars - although most car makers in that space are heavily investing in electric also.

This means in the future, those looking for a second hand ICE car will find the choice vastly reduced and it will be more cost effective to buy whatever has taken over from the Leaf by then. Perhaps something like the Citroen e-C3.

Oh, he'll be a 'conspiracy theorist' then, for daring to express the reality as opposed to the Emperor's New Clothes element on here.

Did he mention how many miles the Tesla had done? That's sort of important.

Plus Tesla is well known to charge a fortune for a new battery. Other car makers make it possible to just replace with a second hand/reconditioned battery, or even offer batteries at a vastly lower price (see Nissan doing them for £2k) so while you might think your example is some sort of smoking gun, it really isn't.

 

[Energy]

Did he mention how many miles the Tesla had done? That's sort of important.

Indeed, someone doing 80 miles on weekdays (and assuming zero weekends) will hit 200,000 miles after 10 years, its a long commute but isn't unreasonably long.

Including weekends then its only averaging 55 miles a day.

 

[DustyBin]

That’s almost certainly because your model was tested before 2023. The current 2023 regulations require Lane Keep Assist to default to ON every time the car is started in order to achieve a five star rating.

Yes it will have been now you mention it.

I’m probably going to sound older than I am here, but I honestly believe some of these modern “safety” features are counterproductive, and by attempting to mitigate the risks of careless driving they actually encourage it.

Conversely, when I drive my Sierra (for example), I find myself concentrating solely on the road ahead as there’s bugger all else to do!

I’m not suggesting a 1983 Sierra is safer than a modern car (they aren’t particularly safe by 1983 standards!), but there is a serious point there in my opinion when it comes to bombarding drivers with distractions.

 

[jon0844]

The problem is the car industry has been able to use software safety features (which I guess can go wrong, or not work properly as per the example cars mentioned above) in order to get a higher safety score.

If there are insufficient resources to check on how well such software features work, it actually starts to make the ratings less trustworthy.

 

[DustyBin]

The problem is the car industry has been able to use software safety features (which I guess can go wrong, or not work properly as per the example cars mentioned above) in order to get a higher safety score.

If there are insufficient resources to check on how well such software features work, it actually starts to make the ratings less trustworthy.

Agreed, I think that’s part of the problem certainly.

If you take the aforementioned lane keeping though for example, I’m really struggling to see the point even if it works properly. Don’t get me wrong, none of us are perfect and may “wander” out of our lane very occasionally, but if you’re paying attention you don’t need the steering wheel to shake etc. to warn you.

The only occasion I can think of when it may genuinely be useful is if you’ve fallen asleep at the wheel, or have become distracted by another modern feature (e.g. infotainment system) for a prolonged period of time. The question is whether such safety features make people more willing to take the risk, knowing they’re more likely to get away with it. (I don’t know the answer incidentally, but anecdotally I find driving standards in general have deteriorated over the last few years).

 

[jon0844]

Lane keep assist could prevent a head on potentially, so I can see why it's a valuable safety aid (as this is way better than building a car to cope with a head on better - although they obviously, or hopefully, still do this!).

The problem is we see countless examples of people using it as some sort of auto pilot now...

 

[DustyBin]

Lane keep assist could prevent a head on potentially, so I can see why it's a valuable safety aid (as this is way better than building a car to cope with a head on better - although they obviously, or hopefully, still do this!).

The problem is we see countless examples of people using it as some sort of auto pilot now...

If you’re in a head-on situation I’m not convinced lane keep assist is likely to be of much use, as more often than not such collisions are the result of overtaking or (wilful) reckless driving.

I agree with your second point, and this is why I think it may be doing more harm than good.

 

[Alex McKenna]

So probably equivalent to my diesel car and way worse than my petrol car? Without any of the manufacturing impact of replacing both of them with EVs?

I don't object to anyone going for an EV but they're not quite as stunningly brilliant as a particularly vocal segment of owners make out. Apart from Tesla, the infrastructure is pathetic.

When I'm financially able, I'll be replacing my diesel with a petrol V8 for some fun whilst such things are ULEZ compliant. Hybrids are the logical choice after that whilst charging infrastructure remains at pathetic levels. By which time, fuel cells of some kind will be a reality and EVs will be the Betamaxes of the car world.

Fuel cells? Don't make me laugh. Hydrogen as a fuel isn't clever, isn't green, isn't efficient and isn't safe. Hindenberg Disaster 1937. Nobody wants that stuff being transported and stored in their locality, and definitely not near their house.

 

[GLC]

The problem is the car industry has been able to use software safety features (which I guess can go wrong, or not work properly as per the example cars mentioned above) in order to get a higher safety score.

Potato, Potahto, but, it’s safety regulators that are pushing car manufacturers into using active safety technology. There was a Dacia recently that was awarded 1 star in Euro NCAP, because Dacia chose to exclude lots of active safety tech like lane departure and the minimum AEB it could get away with to build cheaper cars. The actual car was rated 4 stars in terms of how it fared in an actual impact, but lowest score “wins” and so Dacias are made to look unsafe.

Of course the best kind of impact is one that didn’t occur, so preventing crashes is a laudable goal, but as you say, if the tech isn’t ready yet, what are we actually improving?

For the same reason, as much as I love electric cars and am concerned for the climate, I do wonder if the race to zero emission vehicles is getting a bit ahead of itself. I say this as the owner of a range extender i3, so an EV that isn’t zero emission. I chose that car because charging at home is not possible for me, and the Rex i3 gave me the most range at that price point, whilst also giving me a get out of jail free card in case public chargers near me are unavailable when I really need one(a prescient thought as it turned out). Around 80% of my driving in that car is zero emission, and I consciously save the rex for use on motorways outside of cities. But a small(for an EV) battery, which weighs less, and charges quicker, complemented by a small petrol engine that can be optimised just for charging a battery, and so will burn less fuel and create lower emissions itself? I think that would solve a lot of issues we have today whilst we migrate to fully zero emission cars over time, until we have the infrastructure to support ZEVs for everyone

 

[trebor79]

For the same reason, as much as I love electric cars and am concerned for the climate, I do wonder if the race to zero emission vehicles is getting a bit ahead of itself. I say this as the owner of a range extender i3, so an EV that isn’t zero emission. I chose that car because charging at home is not possible for me, and the Rex i3 gave me the most range at that price point, whilst also giving me a get out of jail free card in case public chargers near me are unavailable when I really need one(a prescient thought as it turned out). Around 80% of my driving in that car is zero emission, and I consciously save the rex for use on motorways outside of cities. But a small(for an EV) battery, which weighs less, and charges quicker, complemented by a small petrol engine that can be optimised just for charging a battery, and so will burn less fuel and create lower emissions itself? I think that would solve a lot of issues we have today whilst we migrate to fully zero emission cars over time, until we have the infrastructure to support ZEVs for everyone

I don't see the point of everyone getting hybrids as an interim. Quicker, cheaper and better for the environment to roll out chargers and go full BEV.
Both of our cars are EVs and we've had no issues at all with charging.

 

[Noddy]

For the same reason, as much as I love electric cars and am concerned for the climate, I do wonder if the race to zero emission vehicles is getting a bit ahead of itself. I say this as the owner of a range extender i3, so an EV that isn’t zero emission. I chose that car because charging at home is not possible for me, and the Rex i3 gave me the most range at that price point, whilst also giving me a get out of jail free card in case public chargers near me are unavailable when I really need one(a prescient thought as it turned out). Around 80% of my driving in that car is zero emission, and I consciously save the rex for use on motorways outside of cities. But a small(for an EV) battery, which weighs less, and charges quicker, complemented by a small petrol engine that can be optimised just for charging a battery, and so will burn less fuel and create lower emissions itself? I think that would solve a lot of issues we have today whilst we migrate to fully zero emission cars over time, until we have the infrastructure to support ZEVs for everyone

I don’t entirely disagree and for the 40% of the population who don’t have access to home charging it is certainly an option as we go through this transition. However, as has been pointed out many times before that type of car is more expensive to develop for manufacturers (will be passed on to customers), more expensive to maintain as it involves servicing an ICE, and less efficient (80% of time in your case) as you are paying to haul around an ICE and exhaust system which isn’t doing anything. Are there any new cars left on the market that have range extender ICE generators?

 

[stuu]

Fuel cells? Don't make me laugh. Hydrogen as a fuel isn't clever, isn't green, isn't efficient and isn't safe. Hindenberg Disaster 1937. Nobody wants that stuff being transported and stored in their locality, and definitely not near their house.

While i agree that fuel cells aren't the answer, and hydrogen is effectively a scam to stop the gas networks being useless in the future, a majority of households are connected to mains gas, with sometimes explosive results right now. Hydrogen isn't any more dangerous

 

[Roast Veg]

While i agree that fuel cells aren't the answer, and hydrogen is effectively a scam to stop the gas networks being useless in the future, a majority of households are connected to mains gas, with sometimes explosive results right now. Hydrogen isn't any more dangerous

Hydrogen carries a different risk profile to natural gas. Natural gas isn't safe either, and should be phased out.

 

[GLC]

Are there any new cars left on the market that have range extender ICE generators?

Mazda MX-30, LEVC Taxi(if you count that as a car), there’s some new Jeep or RAM or whatever that’ll use one. The Honda CR-V in some spec guise I believe is propelled only by an electric motor, but the electricity is generated only by an ICE. Rather like a diesel-electric loco.

I look forward to the day when I can drop the complexity of the Rex i3 as your rightly point out, but after having owned it for 2 years and driven 25,000 miles in that time, I don’t regret that choice. The slight pangs of shame of when the engine strikes up and I can see the exhaust fumes is balanced by not being held hostage by public chargers asking for £1/kWh or stuck outside, in the cold rain, on the phone to Gridserve asking to reboot their charger and hope it works otherwise I can’t get home.

The latter situation I was commiserating a BMW iX driver, on Christmas Eve at 6pm at Tebay services last year. There are 6(+?) Tesla chargers, but only 2 non Tesla chargers, and each of those chargers can only charge one car at a time, despite having 2 CCS plugs each. After a few attempts at charging, whilst on the phone, I simply gave up, bought 8L of petrol and carried on. The iX driver was stuck there with his family on the car as they didn’t have the range to go much further.

More reliable chargers, more chargers, more chargers that can charge simultaneously, longer range BEVs, faster charging rates, all of these would solve/mitigate the above, but we don’t have enough of that today and I can personally attest to that.