Electric car owners?

Mike-B posted:

..................        This morning (07:35)  renewables are at 16.5%,  this is practically no solar & low wind,  nuclear is running at 16.5%.  The biggest generator is CCGT at 51.3%.   The other generator types are adding to that but at that time we are buying 5.5% from France & 2.9% from Holland. 

Out of interest I will take another look around mid morning when the working day is fully up & running.

At 11:00    23.7% renewable,  5% coal,  15.6% nuclear,  9.1% solar,  5.3% wind, 46.9% CCGT,  7.7% biomass,  5.9% France & 2.9% Holland.     

Nuclear has dropped from 6GW output down to to 5.9GW so must be maintenance.

Whatever it looks like we have a long way to go to meet renewable targets when the wind drops & the sun don't shine.

From Ofgem. Electicity generation mix by Quarter GB. 

Interesting trends.

Bruce

hungryhalibut posted:

I’d love to have an electric car, but as we have a little caravan pretty well all of them are ruled out. 

Saw great electric caravan concept a while back. It had its own battery and wheel motors. The control was largely via a strain gauge in the hitch so that the self-driven caravan effectively "chased" the car, placing very little extra load on the EV towing it. Added bonus was that when you weren't using it, you plugged it into your solar-powered house to act as a storage battery. It was just a concept, and will be expensive to begin with if ever released.

Of course, a Tesla Model S or Model X with the 100 kwhr battery pack is more than capable of towing a caravan significant distances. But they aren't cheap.

SamClaus posted:

I would say the biggest issue is that there's little glamour attached to owning an EV - it won't impress the Joneses. It's the same with cycling, which is not the best way of telling the world how wealthy or powerful you are.

Oh, I don't know about that......

I will stay on Diesel as long as it’s offered, and there are a couple of reasons for that...

1. Diesel has become cleaner with the ad Blue and the development of more efficient engines and the driving feeling is great.

2. I haven’t seen the numbers - but I am skeptical on the green aspect of the electric cars. Saving versus what is required to be done on electricity production to produce one kWh of electricity.

3. The product is still in it’s initial stages and makes it quite difficult to be flexible mobile.

Just had my beamer written off by another driver so am in the market again for another car. Electric with me is almost out of the equation as there are very few charging points around where I live.

ewemon posted:

Just had my beamer written off by another driver so am in the market again for another car. Electric with me is almost out of the equation as there are very few charging points around where I live.

I would have thought a cable connection to Loch Sloy or Foyers would be all that was needed..........

The i3 range extender has been dropped from the range.

Living in a hilly area, there are many undulations that go on for miles and incorporate a slow vehicle lane on the up section. It is common, particularly in the rush hour when people are on a driving mission, to see a queue of late shiny, model, rep-mobiles queuing up behind slow traffic, waiting for the crawler lane. When the road splits into two lanes they floor it. To the accompaniment of a giant black/grey cloud of particulates which you can easily see from a considerable distance away. These cars are not old rattlers. But it's OK because it is now clean soot. Evidently.

Harry posted:

The i3 range extender has been dropped from the range.

Living in a hilly area, there are many undulations that go on for miles and incorporate a slow vehicle lane on the up section. It is common, particularly in the rush hour when people are on a driving mission, to see a queue of late shiny, model, rep-mobiles queuing up behind slow traffic, waiting for the crawler lane. When the road splits into two lanes they floor it. To the accompaniment of a giant black/grey cloud of particulates which you can easily see from a considerable distance away. These cars are not old rattlers. But it's OK because it is now clean soot. Evidently.

Yes, it's clean soot.  

TDi stands for Tractor Derived Installation ya know.  It's where they get the engines from. 

Bert Schurink posted:

I will stay on Diesel as long as it’s offered, and there are a couple of reasons for that...

1. Diesel has become cleaner with the ad Blue and the development of more efficient engines and the driving feeling is great.

2. I haven’t seen the numbers - but I am skeptical on the green aspect of the electric cars. Saving versus what is required to be done on electricity production to produce one kWh of electricity.

3. The product is still in it’s initial stages and makes it quite difficult to be flexible mobile.

Absolutely right. Let’s cause as much respiratory disease as possible. And if the soot gets into babies in the womb, who cares so long as the driving feeling is great. 

Don't jump off the 100th floor of a building when you can jump off the 50th? Surely that's 50% safer?

ewemon posted:

Just had my beamer written off by another driver so am in the market again for another car. Electric with me is almost out of the equation as there are very few charging points around where I live.

You don't need many. Electric cars are mostly charged at home, overnight. Where you need charging points is not near where you live, but near where you want to go (if that's further than out-and-back range). Charge points are being installed at an accelerating rate. But yeah, electric cars won't suit everyone just yet.

I'm on my second Tesla Model S and it works really well for me given it has about a 200 mile range and my daily work commute is 4.2 miles each way.  There are plenty of Tesla supercharger stations to get us to New York City if we want to drive there for a weekend.

In many big US cities, most or all of the taxicabs are hybrids now. 

And the diesels are going away in the States here.  The automakers no longer need them to improve fleet-wide average fuel economy, as the hybrids do that for them.

So the UK Govt has decided to chop the plug-in hybrid grant, and reduce the EV grant from £4,500 to £3,500 from early Nov. Discuss!

For my part it will be interesting to see how we decide who will be paying the extr0 on my vehicle order. I'm assuming the grant is applicable at the time of delivery rather than the time of ordering. I have a feeling it will be me paying it.

Bruce

...having re-read the contract for purchasing the car I cannot find a clause whereby the grant reduction is conditional. We shall see what the dealer says.

Bruce

Bruce Woodhouse posted:

...having re-read the contract for purchasing the car I cannot find a clause whereby the grant reduction is conditional. We shall see what the dealer says.

Bruce

Hi Bruce, check you dealer has already applied for the grant, if so I believe you should be ok.

In other news, Tesla outsold Mercedes (excluding commercial vans) in North America last quarter, and were only just short of outselling BMW.

I came on here to post this link, although Bruce has already shared the news.
https://www.theguardian.com/en...unding-says-industry

As far as 'discuss' is concerned, it's hard to see any logic to it. Of course the car industry point of view is primarily about keeping up sales, but cutting off the subsidy before the market is established and before economies of scale have begun to reduce manufacturing costs, seems barmy.

Clive

Will a Powerline be available for charging purposes?

G

GraemeH posted:

Will a Powerline be available for charging purposes?

G

Only for the Bentley and then, only if the car has the Naim sound system fitted. 

So, with one third of our supply being generated by “renewables”, we are still well short of our target.

Gas is the only big producer left to be reduced.

Do these figures reflect the through life output of CO2, or are they simply the fuel-burn outputs ?

Has anyone on the forum test driven a Jaguar iPace yet?  From the reviews I’ve seen so far, this seems to have a good quality fit & finish with a decent range as well (ca. 200+miles).  It’s still a heavy car and seems to use a lot more electricity (kW/mile) than other EVs, e.g. Kona, Leaf, Ioniq, Tesla 3 series, etc.  It’s quite a bit more money as well!

Thanks.  George.

We are having the joys of my elderly father-in-law just buying a 2015 Nissan Leaf knowing nothing about it. He lives beyond it’s range but has turned up at ours today without yet having the card you need to rapid charge.

We don’t have a drive or garage & I’m not too keen on trailing a cable accross the public pavement for hours. The whole visit so far has been us trying to sort a charging place...That’s after we got some hot soup in him as he said putting the heating on depleted the battery so quickly he worried he’d not make it to us. He’s not a smart-phone user either...gawd.

G

So what’s the deal with the batteries on these things now? How long is the life of them and how are they being disposed of or recycled? Honestly a 1960’s Land Rover has less impact on the environment than these things. How about we all start using out cars less? We’re a country full of lazy ba****ds. Nobody really cares that much about the world, we’re all guilty.