Electric Corsa–A Snip At Only £33,310
By Paul Homewood
Electric car makers really must stop getting the Daily Express to review their models, otherwise they will be a bigger laughing stock than they are now.
This week it is the turn of the Corsa-e, a snip at £30k, even after the govt subsidy of £3000.
Who on earth would want to pay £33k for a Corsa, which you could buy for £15925 with a proper engine?
It has a range of just 209 miles, which means well under 100 miles in real driving conditions.
And to cap it all, it conked out on the test drive. Colin Goodwin may laugh it off as a one-off glitch, but if he had been on the motorway, he would not be around to tell the story now.
Phasing out petrol and diesel vehicles is one of Ursula von der Leyen’s main planks of her Green Deal, which is aimed at turbo-charging the EU economy.
I would have thought that forcing people to buy cars,which they don’t want, which cost twice the normal price and which manufacturers don’t want to make, would have the opposite effect!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
With rapid acceleration and noiseless power it would be a good weapon for murder. No doubt scriptwriters are working on it but wondering how they can avoid censorship from the Beeb.
In case you miss it Emily Gosden is at it again in today’s The Times : “Burning coal to generate electricity is one of the biggest contributors to climate change” Page 32. Wood Mackenzie’s researcher Natalie Biggs is quoted at the end of the article ” …if you are losing your job or your economy is faltering it’s clean air versus getting paid” .
Emily is not just wrong, she is insane.
Could be a mistake by Colin Goodwin on the pricing. What Car? says £30, 665 before the £3,000 govt grant. What Car? summarises ……” Decent range and pleasant driving manners but drab inside and no bargain ” . Nor will it be when the time comes to replace the traction battery.
That tallies with the info Vauxhall gives. They just quote £27000. I still disagree with the state subsidising cars that only the well off can afford. The bold assertion that this thing won’t achieve more 100 miles is a bit off too. E cars may be overhyped but they do tend to be capable of their stated range. I might not want to chance running my e corsa 200 miles between charges but nor would I run my diesel Fiat 500 miles between fill ups.
You can always carry a 2 gallon spare can of petrol in the boot which could give you another 80 miles or so. How far would a spare battery of the same weight get you?
Does anyone remember the episode on Top Gear when Jeremy Clarkson drove a car from London to Edinburgh and back on a full tank of diesel, no refills.
Claiming zero CO2 emissions is a lie and an accounting scam worse than Enron
If the car can suddenly fail like that surely it should be subjected to an immediate recall and investigation before someone is killed?
As James May said, the real range of a battery car is about 90 miles, as it was for the first ones in the 1890s. Truly we live during the first time for centuries that humans are regressing.
You can’t but laugh – ‘after switching it on and off A FEW TIMES…’ You are only supposed to need to do it once. As Paul says, have that fault on a motorway, even with a hard shoulder, life will get interesting very rapidly.
I hope the auto manufacturers will be keeping up the manufacture of engines so that when we keep our proper vehicles, we can fit a new engine at a fraction of the cost of a battery car and keep on going. Cuba here we come…..
If he was in the outside lane, in this sort of car you would hardly be hugging the slow lane unless you wanted to achieve the stated rage, coming to a sudden stop would be like committing suicide I reckon. Goodness knows how many other cars would be involved in the inevitable pile up.
“If he was in the outside lane coming to a sudden stop would be like committing suicide”
Decades ago I was driving in the middle lane of a fairly busy M1 when an MGB came belting past in the outside lane only to have the engine blow up (a large puff of oily smoke appeared from underneath). He was able to dip the clutch and/or or put it into neutral, indicate left, and squeeze between all the other vehicles onto the hard shoulder. It was all over in a few seconds, and without any damage to anyone. Imagine the scenario if the brakes had been applied at the same time!
So the car’s AI was confused by the roundabout and shut the thing down as programmed to do. My guess. That’s almost what I did when I first encountered one of these road improvement structures. A little mental restructuring was needed. The Auto company’s coders need to work over the weekend to fix this.
Then add another £1k to the cost.
Don’t think it was an autonomous auto, N&J.
Good point, Harry.
I did borrow a car a year or so ago. There was a rain
“event” so fast the windscreen (shield) was covered
with wet, and the car shut of the throttle. I immediately
started the wipers and the car returned to normal.
I don’t know what might happen if it would have
continued to “think” I could not see.
I saw a news report today about a Tesla which went into the side of an overturned truck, while in “Autopilot” mode. Apparently the driver was expecting it to slow, but was surprised when it didn’t (until the very last moment!)
It’s all very whiffy when the unelected head of a ‘government’ can get said government to levy a huge fine (per vehicle) on manufacturers who do not show an across the range (dictated) level of CO2 emissions. In order for them not to be penalised manufacturers are forced to include electric vehicles in their ranges whether they want to or not. One is left to wonder, how many of the EU elite have fingers in pies or have relatives that supply EV parts etc? Like I said, whiffy.
Very cynical Harry. That’s almost like suggesting that the Chairman of our beloved Climate Change Committee promotes wind farms solely because his family has a business that, would you believe it, promotes and supports the wind farm industry. As if? Can’t see any possible conflict of interest there.
It’s not a £3K Government Grant. It’s tax money from people generally poorer than middle class, rich , garage and driveway owning virtue signalling people who buy EVs. The Govt have crashed ICE exports. And has it been made clear whether imports of ICE cars are banned? May I as a Frenchman import my ICE Renault? How long for? Ten years? Can I sell it? To another Frenchman? Or a Brit? Does Swansea track ethnicity?
Anyone know what a commercial EV plug in (viz at Waitrose supermarket) costs?
It really depends how you allocate taxes paid by people as to whether these subsidies are paid by all taxpayers or just the ones contributing most. I tend towards the latter, in which case it’s the better-off getting some of their money back. The real scandal is that the wealthy get to drive and park in places like London but the poor don’t because they can’t afford new cars – policies usually enacted by left-wing politicians.
Harry Passfield – I don’t know about ministers but the chairman of the “independent” (??) Climate Change Committee benefits via his business interests by six-figure sums from renewables interests and electric car battery makers,and I believe other members have vested interests too. If this happened in a banana republic we would be rightly scathing but this is 2020 Britain.
I have pointed out the vested interests of the CCC, including the presence of Rebecca Heaton from Drax, to my Conservative MP. He hasn’t replied, several months later.
Sales of electric cars have already ‘fixed’ Antarctic sea ice. After the unexplained ‘collapse’ in 2016, it appears to have returned to more or less where it was before.
With impeccable timing GWPF:-
https://www.thegwpf.com/britains-electric-car-strategy-is-doomed-to-failure/
Great post Mr Grim. The ‘gotcha’ element of the article is in relation to the requirements for the UK car fleet to go full EV.
“If we replace all of the UK vehicle fleet with EVs, and assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation batteries, we would need the following materials:
207,900 tonnes of cobalt – just under twice the annual global production;
264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate – three-quarters of the world’s production;
at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium – nearly the entire world production of neodymium; and
2,362,500 tonnes of copper – more than half the world’s production in 2018.”
And that’s just for the UK! And think of the fossil fuels and co2 emissions involved in mining that lot, even if it were possible.
What is obvious is that the next generation of cars, if the CCC have their way, will be of the Flinstone variety for the majority of us. And, unfortunately, our leaders are fully signed up to this insanity. Welcome back to the Stone Age folks!
The cobalt one is very important as this is needed to make fast charging batteries that are stable. Other materials either reduce the charge rate or mean that the battery could catch fire or explode. And there is a primary user for cobalt that has first pick of the supply – steel.
That GWPF article is a good start , but does not fully detail the insanity of the whole idea .
If all of the UK private cars went EV It would take 500% of the UKs generation capacity to charge them up at the same time .
Or put it another way , through the winter months , there is only enough spare power on the grid to charge up under 5% of the total cars per day .
The whole idea is just impossible.
No,no. Don’t forget we have to pay to have wind power curtailed when we can’t get it from Scotland due to the lack of wires. The answer is that we all have to drive our EVs to Glasgow to recharge them. In the winter. Simples.
The trouble is, far too few politicians actually unders8the very basics of economics. They think that “buying stuff” creates jobs and growth. So making us all buy stuff must be good for the economy. We are governed by ignorant idiots who mistake their shallow, childish opinions for knowledge and wisdom.
I reiterate, we need to get behind Metalectrique with its Al/air fuel cell which can increase the range of a vehicle to 1500 miles before the cell is simply replaced in a matter of minutes. But it is competing with the oil industry and battery manufacturers. And, of course, it is a British invention so it probably has no chance!
Producing the aluminium with renewables only could be interesting.
Another pie in the sky solution? Spare me the bullshit! I am sick of people like you, grow up!!!
At the virus presentation today Boris was asked what help would be given to the car industry in Coventry in particular. Je answered that government grants to convert to manufacturing electric cars would put the industry ahead, as they had been in the past. That should reduce sales to near zero. Since he has had the virus, which attacks the nervous system, and been getting an earful of greencrap every night while changing nappies, it has to be asked ‘Is he OK and should he go back to journalism?’
In answer to your last questions ‘No, he isnt’ and ‘No, he shouldn’t’.
Boris writes great articles but doesn’t seem to believe a word of them. He used to be skeptical about man made global warming but, for the sake of domestic harmony, continued nocturnal entertainment and political advancement, I dare say that’s it’s been in his interests to bat for the other side at the moment. Hopefully, he doesn’t do a ‘Boycott’ like innings at that particular crease before he get’s caught ‘leg over’ wicket, yet again, and changes his mind back to climate realism.
There is bugger all he can do about the weather but he can wreck the economy, even more so than his response to Corona has done thus far, just by going down the green Kamikaze route of ‘ a renewable recovery’ to the current plague. The whole episode does not augur well for humanity.
Perhaps we should remind him of his view 6 years ago when he was London Mayor:
https://www.theage.com.au/world/wind-farms-a-disease-says-boris-johnson-20130915-2tt61.html
“I mean the windmills, the turbines – whatever they are called. I mean the things that look like some hideous Venusian invasion, marching over the moors and destroying the dales; the colossal seaside toys plonked erratically across our ancient landscape; the endless parade of waving white-armed old lunatics, gesticulating feebly at each other across the fields and the glens.
“They seemed to be everywhere, and I asked myself, when were we consulted? Was there a referendum? Did someone ever warn the British people that these moaning seagull slicers were going to be erected on some of the most sensational scenery that God ever called into being?
We already have a Joe Public!!!
Can you amend the username next time to avoid confusion
Thanks
In Norway in winter some roads can only be travelled on in convoy with a snow plough. I read somewhere that they’d banned electric cars on some routes due to batteries dying. You can spend quite some time waiting! The official web-site
https://www.vegvesen.no/en/traffic/planning-your-trip/how-to-drive-in-a-convoy
has this advice: “Make sure you have enough fuel in your tank. There are no petrol or charging stations on the convoy routes.”
‘Nuff said.
I like to go winter hill-walking here in Scotland, and the idea of coming down off the hill to an electric car, which has been sitting all day at the side of the road at below freezing temperatures, and then tackle a 100+ mile journey home simply fills me with foreboding.
My 15 year-old diesel passat will do 500+ miles on a fill, which takes me 3 minutes.
I think I’ll keep it.
Similar here, the legendary ASZ PD130TDI. It would be a significant negative environmental/carbon footprint to replace these types of vehicles with a new electric car.
There is a build it series on called How to build a… Last night I watched the one for the LEVC battery taxi. The only drive for this is an electric motor powered from the battery but to avoid the embarrassment of being stranded there is the ‘range extender’ at the back. This is a 1500cc petrol engine that drives a generator to charge the battery. If you think calmly about this you do wonder at the insanity of it. If you never use it very often you are effectively transporting an engine and some fuel around as luggage. A 1500cc engine is not something you can just tuck under your arm and carry. And you have something that could drive the vehicle but isn’t connected to the drive system.
The good news is that after watching that the next one was How to build a Quarttroporte Maserati with a 3500cc V8 Ferrari engine. Sweet.
Soon put that right.
Funny how times change isn’t it, in their time the ‘wedge’ Maserati was a laughing stock, you couldn’t give them away for £500 second hand. Now some are fetching £30-£50k – that’s the money laundering/tax evasion classic car market for you!
It’s not really the range that’s the issue, it’s the lack of places to charge it up and the time you need to do this, and the possible additional time waiting in the queue while the car in front charges up. You probably wouldn’t want to go touring in the Highlands with this thing. It might be a useful car for your daily commute. I would sooner get a decent e bike for this and keep my old Multipla for cross country journeys. In any case when did a £30,000 car become an economy option?