Eco Numpties Unhappy With Charging Costs
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
Meanwhile back in Eco-Land, the numpties are unhappy:
The cost of charging an electric car on the road has soared by nearly 60pc in eight months, making the vehicles more costly to run on long journeys than petrol motors.
Rapid charge points used by motorists topping up on long drives are now nearly £10 more expensive than filling up a car with petrol, analysis by motoring body the RAC revealed.
Alongside surging energy prices, a key reason behind the cost is that VAT is charged at 20pc on public networks, compared to 5pc for domestic energy use.
Charging an electric car at home is still much cheaper than buying a tank of fuel at the pumps, but many drivers are unable to install a charger at home because they do not have off-street parking.
It comes as new petrol and diesel cars are due to be banned from Britain’s roads within years as the Government pushes to reach net zero by 2050.
Yet critics say the tax levied on public electric vehicle charge points poses a threat to the Government’s ambitions.
Some believe ministers are reluctant to take the “obvious” step of setting VAT at 5pc across the board because electric vehicles are seen as elitist.
The numpties apparently have not realised that owners of petrol cars don’t only pay 20% VAT on petrol, but also swingeing fuel duties, which the aforesaid numpties will soon have to pay as well.
Maybe money grows on trees in Eco-Land!
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Not only will it cost more…..as we have seen it will take a lot longer.
I think we refer to this as a “learning experience”……for those who lacked the foresight to see it coming.
Those who lacked common sense too?!!
Starting with Boris and NetZero
Including Boris with NetZero
C’mon, Paul, be fair, it costs a lot of money to ‘save the planet’ – they just need this to be explained to them and they’ll be happy!
It was supposed to be a lot of everyone else’s not theirs.
Explain how EVs ‘save the planet’. 😇
They help solve child unemployment in the Congo….
I am convinced that when it is explained they need to stop freeloading off ICE drivers and pay the equivalent of fuel duties the rest of us have to pay to create and maintain the road infrastructure they will be delighted to comply. I estimate around £1200 a year.
Wait till the numpties get hit with road tax in 2025 (although it is only £10 increasing to £165 in the second year). Now that the geeky early adopters have got the BEV they so wanted in order to impress the world, the rest of us that have a modicum of common sense will stick with our ICE vehicle until it rolls over and dies. Sales of new BEV’s are slowing and the BEV second hand market is over supplied. The charging infrastructure costs should be loaded on the manufacturers and BEV owners, not the local authorities and domestic electricity users. Its all going tits up. Schadenfreude is great!
“will stick with our ICE vehicle until it rolls over and dies”
100%!!!
Hear hear!
I reckon someone will inherit my ICE vehicle. No3 son doesn’t buy a vehicle unless it’s a dozen or more years old, also needs to be a marque not known for reliability currently an Alfa and a Citroen
What does swingeing mean? rising?
Swingeing = violent
Swingeing increase in price
Exorbitant
Wide ranging.
Swingeing = big, as in a swingeing new tax.
https://www.wordnik.com/words/swingeing
‘but many drivers are unable to install a charger at home because they do not have off-street parking’
[citation needed]
How many is ‘many?’
Eight?
It beggars belief that people would buy an EV without having a charging plan.
Friend in our camera club bought a Ford EV. In addition to the subsidy on the car he also got a hefty subsidy on installing his home charger system.
Hmm….people living in terraced houses and flats cannot have a “charging plan” but nevertheless will be forced by our Govt to buy EVs from 2030.
Or be forced to run an older fuel-powered car, if they can get hold of one as the supply dwindles.
2035 before we are forced to by a full BEV (Battery Electric Vehicle).
As of 2030 we are restricted to hybrids rather than full BEV’s I believe.
Not sure about that…
Toyota has threatened to stop manufacturing in the UK if the government goes ahead with its plans to ban the sale of hybrid cars from 2030.
https://bmmagazine.co.uk/news/toyota-to-leave-uk-if-government-bans-hybrid-car-sales-from-2030/
Dated 2 August 2022
https://media.rac.co.uk/pressreleases/more-drivers-than-ever-expect-to-go-electric-next-time-but-many-likely-to-delay-making-the-switch-3210955
Obviously after 2030, if someone in such a situation wants a new car, it will have to be an EV without the benefits.
“How many is ‘many?’”
Estimated 40% – 45% of the country.
I took it to mean electric car drivers, which left me wondering who would buy one without a charging plan.
But you may be right, they may be referring to the portion of all drivers. 40-45% probably about right for UK. Which would seem to put a ceiling on all this happy horse$#|+.
Around 35% of British homes do not have their own driveway. Presumably that would be a factor when thinking of buying an EV. However some might hope to charge at work or use a public facility. Some firms are devising a unit that can go under the pavement so the vehicle could be charged in the road but that assumes you can park right outside your house.
So EV drivers will have their own personal, designated parking spot then ?
How on earth do they expect everyone to be able to afford an electric vehicle? They’re in cloud cuckoo land – it will never happen. It’s already coming home to bite EV owners that it’s just not practical. I’m all for council vehicles and tradesmen having EVs – great idea, but for most, it can’t work.
They should certainly be taxed more heavily. They are still responsible for generating particulates of brakes and tyres, plus most of them are huge heavy things that damage the roads far more than small cars.
What about all the classic and cherished cars? There are many thousand of them in the world. People won’t give them up easily – plus these cars are probably not making a big so-called carbon footprint. They’re not used often and they are well-kept, so probably run cleanly.
People do not want a lot of this – it’s all based on ridiculous modelling. Having clean air zones is all about collecting revenue – or they would ban all vehicles from certain areas in towns. We need a revolution!
If you want to get a feel for what will happen to classic ICEs – and also where the unelected WEF is going to take us – you should have a read of Shute’s ‘On the Beach’.
On the Beach is an excellent novel and perhaps should be put forward as a life guidance manual for all those climate doomsters who think the world is about to end. After if you think there is no hope, you might as well!
Swingeing = big, as in a swinging new tax.
https://www.wordnik.com/words/swingeing
Sorry about the comment above, messed up.
Regarding books, my favourite is “Fallen Angels” by Larry Niven, et al.
The weighted average cost of the top ten selling EVs in the UK in the most recent quarter for which data is available was £44 grand.
“How on earth do they expect everyone to be able to afford an electric vehicle?”
Westminster doesn’t care if the proles can afford BEV’s or not, this is their command.
I suspect, however, that following the Ukraine debacle and assuming Russia can’t be kicked out, we are looking at a very different world. NATO will be wholly discredited as they will have, for all practical purposes, been defeated by Russia. The EU will be on very shaky ground (over internal corruption as well as the lies Van der Lyin has told over Ukraine) and God knows what will happen with energy prices. I suspect they will begin to fall at latest by 2024 as Russian gas is reinstated in many places. Japan is already buying it and defying the price cap.
The Great Reset and the NWO will be wrecked as it’s difficult to establish them when Russia, India, China, Africa and Latin America won’t play with Klaus Schwab. What’s he going to do, impose globalism Lite?
In what respect was/will NATO be defeated compared to Russia as a result of the invasion of Ukraine?
It’s cost Russia a great deal, including to their defence industry which will probably see China stepping as the non-Western supplier of Armour and Aircraft and probably Naval equipment. The only piece of equipment that seems to perform are the Iranian suicide Drones. Even the SU57s are deployed with caution
On the otherside after decades of steadfast neutrality both Finland and Sweden have applied to join NATO. Whether there’s increased defence spending in members remains to be seen, but the countries of the former Soviet Empire have managed to upgrade a lot of the weaponary by supplying Ukriane with Soviet made stuff in exchange for Western (US) made more modern upgrades meaning NATO, equipment wise, is more integrated.
NATO has been defeated by demonstrate that its weaponry is far more advanced than Russia’s? That in a relatively short time it would defeat Russia? And by showing that Russia losing thousands of pieces of equipment and tens of thousands of men to a relatively small and poorly equipped nation it’s won? And that its rlite troops are nothing of the kind?
@Phoenix. The elite troops being used by Russia appear to be the modern equivalent of the Black Army of Hungary and Genoese Crossbow men
“…as Russian gas is reinstated in many places. Japan is already buying it and defying the price cap.”
There is no price cap on Russian gas. The idea was floated in September but rejected until at least the end of winter.
Japan does import 9% of its LNG from Sakhalin but that is nothing new.
Of course, Japan is IN an energy bind because of its insane anti-nuclear policies. But it is quite easy to get LNG from somewhere else than Russia, given a year or two.
In any case, Japan is more afraid of upsetting the USA than it is of upsetting Putin. If the USA left the Japanese to their own devices, China would gobble them up. So, for as long as the USA orders them to be nasty to Russia they will be nasty to Russia.
There is an EU (not G-7) cap on Russian gas prices from February 15 but it is so far above the present price that it means absolutely nothing.
“How on earth do they expect everyone to be able to afford an electric vehicle? “
They don’t, which is the whole pointy of this lunatic exercise – to force people out of their cars and onto public transport.
‘Having clean air zones is all about collecting revenue ‘
Just like parking zones for permit holders only.
With press like this and others we can expect EV sales growth to slow down. Plus as VW, BMW and others slow down their EV manufacturing plans we can expect supply to reduce apart from Tesla who are continuing to grow at 40% YoY.
Have you seen the Tesla share price? And with an American recession looming all but the very wealthy virtue signallers won’t be willing to pay $10,000 more for an EV. Especially a luxury EV like Tesla.
Can we start lynching greentards and politicians yet?
“We are at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.”
I’m starting to wonder whether this is all going to come crashing down sooner than I thought? Each bit of madness puts up all costs, including the costs of Green tech. That means the costs spiral as more and more madness is enacted. As we now see, lots of renewables leads to escalating electricity costs which makes EVs and running EVs much more expensive. Councils that buy EVs find they can’t charge them and if they can, it’s much more expensive than they budgeted for. Businesses making Green stuff find costs escalating as EV delivery costs rise and energy costs rise…
This has all the makings of rapid collapse.
I think it will take a generation for the green daftness to end.
J Powell of the US Federal Reserve said they will not lead in climate change – which I took as at least someone sensible who looked at the figures. This was reported in The Telegraph; barely in the Times; and not at all in the Financial Times. The FT is like an expensive Guardian and any climate doubters are shouted down. From The Telegraph:
“Mr Powell singled out climate change as an “inappropriate” topic for unelected central bankers to address.
He told the audience in Stockholm: “We should stick to our knitting and not wander off to pursue perceived social benefits that are not tightly linked to our statutory goals.
“We [Federal Reserve] are not and we will not be a climate policymaker.
“Taking on new goals, however worthy, without a clear statutory mandated would undermine the case for our independence.”
—–
Wow!! Well said Mr Powell!
Add that to the mounting pressure on investment firms ESG policies (Vanguard have already abandoned ESG and various US States are moving their investments away from Blackrock) and we can see more evidence of money retreating from green policies.
And he’s right – climate change policies are political choices.
In 2005 I gave a talk in Calgary for the Canadian SEG society. The night before I was taken out for dinner by 3 or 4 committee members which turned into a bit of a nightmare as one was a climate nut who, because Willian Connoll(e)y had been spending his entire waking moments editing every Wiki page to say that its always been global warming (until he finally got a ban), simply droned on and on that it was all true and climate sceptics were idiots and I should shut up.
I reckoned then that the global warming fuss would be all over and forgotten about by 2020. I was wrong. Every year I still cannot believe that the climate hysteria gets turned up another notch. 5 years ago I already thought we were at 11 but now….
I do think the collapse, when it comes, will be very sudden. I also think it must be less than a decade away, simply because of ecomomics. It probably won’t happen before the ban on gas in new build homes comes in (2025 I think) but I do think the banning of the sale of new ICE cars will keep getting pushed back beyond 2030. I think that one is simply a step so far that the public will just say enough is enough.
The enduring mistake I have been pointing out for the last ten years is that sceptics have been fighting the wrong battle.
Only about 10% of the worlds population (I have been assured its much less) have a higher scientific qualification so attempting to persuade 90% of the population using science was always futile.
We should have been fighting the scam on practical issues like land and resource use, and especially financial implications because everybody in the world understands money.
Now the climate change issue is hitting people in the wallet questions are being asked.
Dr. John Constable of the GWPF predicted in 2021/22 that in around ten years there wouldn’t be a wind turbine left standing, so your instincts are probably about right.
I hope you’re right!
I don’t see how the ICE ban can change now. It’s too late in years of plant, equipment and infrastructure. Car makers have gone all in on EVs so there is no new ICE development whatsoever. Engine plants are all scheduled to close and petrol stations are being converted to charging stations. The risk is that people don’t buy new EVs, there’s no second-hand market because there’s too few EVs and batteries wear out and there’s too few petrol stations and parts for the ageing ICE fleet.
Phoenix44 – politicians won’t reverse the decision to ban because that would require them to lose face, I predict they will just keep pushing back the date.
If the ban does come in you can expect the UK new car market to basically collapse. New car sales will plummet, dealerships will go bust, manufacturers will be screaming for state support. And the secondhand market values will start to rise significantly. The other likely side effect (if the government doesn’t try to ban it) will be the grey import of “second hand” one previous owner with delivery miles only ICE cars.
Never forget the unintended consequences of the UK window tax introduced in 1696 and only finally abolished in 1851. The side effects of that tax policy can still be seen today in old houses. If there is a loophole, someone will exploit it as a business opportunity.
Scotland has pushed back the ban on pure petrol/diesel sales to 2032. I don’t know if they’ve moved the hybrid deadline as well, or changed anything such as boilers.
If His Majesty thinks we should all take action “save the planet” it is good enough confirmation for me that it is wild nonsense.
I’ll listen to His Majesty when he starts to lead by example. I think giving a few surplus Palaces to the National Trust would be a good start to ‘save the planet’,.
Well, I think you can be sure the NT won’t save ’em.
He owns only one palace and I dare say would like to keep it.
We could, though, insist he cycle there. London-Deeside for a chap that age, with a bad back, should take …?
5 hours a day at 10 mph = 50 miles. About 500 miles divided by about 50 = about ten days. And then 10 days back again.
Come to think of it, Balmoral is a “castle” not a “palace”. So he doesn’t own any palaces.
The royal Numpty formerly known as Prince. Maybe there is homeopathic cure for a planet. He thinks that the ghastly Dr Schwab has one.
As regards Net Zero, are we decarbonising thousands of massive diesel driven 12 wheel artics across Europe? If not what’s the point of EVs?
As regards Net Zero, are we decarbonising thousands of massive diesel driven 12 wheel artics across Europe? If not what’s the point of EVs?
Until we get driverless trains (free of unreliable self indulgent drivers) we have no alternative to artics.
It’s not the train drivers that are the problem, it’s our neglected rail network itself. We also have a neglected network of canals.
Both were built and expanded by the Victorians without a JCB in sight.
Were our government to invest in infrastructure instead of handing money to every lost cause across the world, we might be able to afford efficient commercial transport.
A lost cause is great for virtue signalling and that is far more important to politicians than boring, old infrastructure investment
Don’t knock the train drivers an their union. They managed to maintain their jobs at reasonable salaries over the years while many others were driven to accept minimum wage which also tends to be Mac=ximum wage (although that only applies to proles and not the elites who write their own pay scales
“Elites”, as in Union leaders?
Alistair Gray, that’s utter nonsense. The train drivers in Britain are the highest paid in Europe and work the fewest hours. Their pay directly contributes to the high cost of running the railway. They have resisted every attempt at modernisation and every attempt to increase productivity whilst insisting we pay them more to do less. They are bandits.
Bandits is a good word; for all Union bosses and their members who are so self righteous in their raucous demands to have more money for less work. A better phrase might be ‘bar stewards’?
26 tonne and under are to be banned in the UK from 2035. Everything by 2040.
Don’t forget that the percentage of battery cars sold is high in a market where supply of proper cars has been limited by part supply problems – and they always love to quote the percentage rather than the actual numbers.
EV’s are no less affected by the computer chip problem than ICE cars.
Give it some more thought. They want to shift the expensive and low sales battery cars to ensure they get their money back. With what chips are left they sell what normal cars they can while the rest sit in fields where mice eat the wiring looms because some moron thought it was a good idea to reduce plastic use and make the insulation with soya.
Looking forward to the total collapse of this NetZero nonsense since it is based on rubbish misinformation.
Ironic that country and village folk that have room to fit a charger will probably continue to prefer their diesel landrover while the nouveau riche in the cities will want a EV but be unable to plug in at their flat overlooking Canary Wharf.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/01/10/electric-car-production-slows-drivers-opt-cheaper-models/#:~:text=The%20Advanced%20Propulsion%20Centre%20(APC,a%20recent%20estimate%20of%20360%2C000.
“Carmakers plan to slash the number of electric vehicles they manufacture as the spiralling cost of battery-powered models makes them increasingly unaffordable for drivers, an industry body has warned….”
Well, blow me down with a feather.
Apparently the Pope’s a Catholic too.
A couple of the many points in this article that are, at best, questionable are the numbers they are reporting. All those ‘huge’ numbers of EV’s being manufactured and sold are global numbers, not UK numbers. They are a drop in the ocean of conventionally propelled vehicles sold globally.
This emphasis on hydrogen propelled vehicles can’t be done in the UK (as far as I’m aware) in the UK because hydrogen vehicles are ICE and they are to be completely banned here as of 2035.
It also gives the government a cute ‘out’ of enforcing ICE bans in 2030 and 2035 as they can change it to “those ICE vehicles with emissions below…….”.
We have been told by our government to expect some years of high energy prices, up to at least the end of the decade, so people won’t be rushing out to buy EV’s that cost more to run than ICE’s with all the attendant inconvenience.
Government can raise petrol and diesel prices to force us out our ICE cars but that would perpetuate inflation and impact on productivity if people can’t afford to drive to work.
Regarding Hydrogen vehicles, they will still be permitted whether they are fuel cells (electrically driven) or ICEs combusting hydrogen. It would be very perverse to ban a car that can do this.
“It covered an unprecedented 845 miles on a single, five-minute complete fill of hydrogen on a round trip in Southern California, establishing a new distance benchmark for zero-emission vehicles.”
https://mag.toyota.co.uk/toyota-mirai-sets-world-record/
But then again both Toyota (world’s biggest car manufacturer) and Honda (world’s largest engine manufacturer) have told the US government to go swivel in their attempts to ban standard ICEs and I believe Toyota have said the same to the UK government.
“Apparently the Pope’s a Catholic too.”
Nope. They just buried the last Catholic pope.
On a quantitative level it is estimated that a quarter of all drivers (note not cars) do not have off road parking available.
https://www.field-dynamics.co.uk/25-drivers-no-off-street-parking/
In terms of actual homes it is estimated that over 9 million out of 28 million “housing units” do not have off road parking.
Seems like it’s just going to be tough luck for up to a third of of the population.
Levelling up, it ain’t. The government have pointedly ignored this issue and its potential to cause resistance to the EV mandate.
In the link Ray S provides:
UK private owners typically do 3,100 miles per year
US drivers drive an average of 12,785 miles per year
These may not be derived in an exactly similar manner, but let’s assume approximate similarity. The numbers confirm one of the great differences between the US (much of it) and the UK and much of the EU. Across a large swath of rural territory near me, my neighbors and I have a one-way 12 mile trip to the nearest town (grocery stores, medical facilities, retail, and offices). The next level up of medical facilities is 50 miles one-way. Temperature in winter will often be -10°C or lower. This entire week, windshield wipers will be needed.
A person would be irresponsible heading out to one of the bigger places in an EV.
If you went and made it home, the battery would be in need of a charge, so you couldn’t leave again for several hours. A person needs three of these autos – one being drive, one at home plugged in, and a third waiting for a new circuit board.
The figures I have seen is that 40% – 45% of households don’t have off street parking.
Being that about 25% of the public charging stations promised by or government to be installed by now have only been installed, and that number is not rising, there will be an acute shortage of them come 2035.
The problems this will cause will be immense. Not least, people not prepared to pay fast charging premiums leaving their cars on Tesco or Asda slow, ‘cheap’ chargers all night leaving no access for anyone else.
If people who do have to travel for work are spending an hour or two a day of company time charging their cars, even assuming there are sufficient numbers of working chargers, productivity across the board will fall.
And some companies, who have installed charging facilities at their premises, effectively reserve them for senior management. If you are a prole charging your BEV and a director turns up and wants to charge his then you are told to vacate – pronto. It’s doing wonders for motivation and BEV uptake.
Electric vehicles are a key component of the drive to net zero. I estimate that the drive to net zero has cost the UK population £500 billion to date, which is a lot of money to support an irrational belief.
All of the EV “conspiracy theories” are being realized. The goal is to force people to use public transportation and if they are rural to move into the city.
BBC’s being sued in the USA.
!On January 10, Children’s Health Defense, TrialSite News, and other plaintiffs sued the Washington Post, the British Broadcasting Company, Associated Press, and Reuters along with the largest tech companies for trying to stifle competition and free speech. In the form of the Trusted News Initiative”
I think you’ll find that only 40% of UK households have driveway or garage parking. Massive problem for those in flats, terraced houses etc. 2030 ban is never going happen.
The government dare not equalise VAT rates for domestic electricity and charge households 20%. Well you’d hope not but…
Then there’s the spectre of using your EV as back up for the grid. Maybe that’s the real reason for the 2030 ban.
Devoncamel:
It always bemuses me that nonsense about grid backup. A unit of electricity would charge the car, power the car somewhere (and hopefully back) and backup the grid.
If ‘cheap’ renewables can do all that, why not install another battery in each house to smooth the supply? A third battery could be charged up (when renewables work) and be used to charge the car. No room in the house for people or worried about fires, then surely the answer is a new bigger house?
Alternatively change your political classes (including a lot of public servants) to new people acquainted with reality.
Bigger house?
Count me out please, what a farce.
The entire notion of using EV batteries as “Grid” back up is pure and simple bullshit. Homes are connected single phase to the local distribution network (not the Transmission Grid) at 230V. The only other homes that could directly benefit from drawing power from an EV battery would have to be connected on the same phase and from the same last step down transformer which is usually no more than a few tens of homes at most and often far fewer.
Prior to that last transformer the voltage will be 3 phase and measured in kilovolts. The transformers can only (in practice) step down voltage from higher to lower voltages for distribution and not vice versa.
The best you could expect is inverting the DC battery storage capacity back to AC thence transforming up to 230V for minor local distribution, wasting a lot in the process, supplying very dodgy quality power and knackering the battery prematurely.
Issues like V2G (vehicle to grid), battery farms, large scale hydrogen storage (from electrolysis) are pie in the sky “solutions” trotted out by idiots who do not have the first clue about either how the systems work or the scale involved.
Rant over.
Spot on. There is no way that cars will be used as storage devices. Apart from the points you have made, who would want some idiot with a wifi connection draining your battery just before you want to use the car. As you rightly stated the last step down transformer provides the 240 volt supply to the local area. That places a limit on the power available to each house – generally about 15kW limited by the fuse size. The surge load can easily exceed the fuse which is bad news in the middle of winter. Our entire domestic supply grid would need to be uprated by 2-4 times if we are to drive EV’s and heat pumps ( don’t start me on the latter).
There is a grain of sense in amongst all the tosh: using EV batteries as domestic storage/back-up/peak-shaving.
It’s very niche but there are folk who do not drive great distances in the day so can use their cars to, for example, store solar power for use later. Another option is to fill the car during off-peak hours and feed it back into the house during peaks.
It’s basically driven by the fact that domestic battery storage is very expensive and, with an EV, there is large capacity sitting idle most of the time.
However, from what I have read, hooking it all up is not straightforward so is expensive and the amounts of energy that can be transferred are small relative to, say, heating loads.
“We should stick to our knitting”
and bring out the guillotines across the land.
Now that would really be a great reset with the added benefit of being a substitute for the telly which has become so boring in the past few years
And another thing…
I just saw this – it’s referring to the city of Bath – this video is worth checking out as I think it’s going to be planned for all our cities! This must be stopped!!!
Bristol has a Clean Air Zone now – so beware of steath taxes.
The dictatorial mayor desires a mass transport system by way of an underground system.
Anyway – I was going to say that those in the know regard battery electric cars as laptops on wheels. With high range ones having the added feature of an in-built speed dial to a dedicated call centre for a connection to a local diesel tow truck operator.
These Greta disciples had better be careful what they wish for.
Yep you are right on that one. First Oxford started it, then Canterbury copied it and now Bath. Pretty soon every “Local Authority” ( do I hate that term!) will be copying this.
Watch “Mass leafleting in Oxford against 15-minute cities” on YouTube
It was May who ephedra enshrined the socialist/communist drive to a so-called net zero. Oh, and the one thing that will hit hard will be the huge additional costs for the triplication at least of the present level of electricity generation that will be needed, in both the unreliables primarily and the fully-reliable secondary, and all the associated distribution and control systems.
Britishvolt on life support?
A start-up that claimed to be worth nearly £800m this time last year is on the verge of being rescued by an obscure Indonesian outfit for just £32m. If there is a major business that has unravelled at greater speed, it is genuinely hard to think of one.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/01/12/daydreams-rhetoric-wont-solve-britains-electric-car-problem/
Wasn’t Britishvolt one of Bojo’s Saudia Arabia of Wind projects? I seem to remember a commitment of a £100m from some fund or other to get it going.
I seem to recall government funding was conditional on financial certain criteria.
One of the reasons for the recent BV re-financing was that government refused to pump money in as BV hadn’t met the initial criteria.
As an aside, just before Christmas, during the very cold snap, I was returning home to Canterbury late at night. After driving almost 200 miles, approaching the end of the M2 all traffic was (unannounced) diverted off onto the A251 down to Ashford, thence A252 and back up the A28 to Canterbury. The A2 had been closed due to an accident necessitating carriageway repairs. This detour added over 20 slow miles in the cold and dark with the lights, heater and windscreen wipers on continuously.
Just outside a small village (Chilham – no charge points) I rapidly came up behind a crawling along (and typically pug ugly) Tesla that I recalled overtaking me earlier on the M2. Who the hell really wants an EV?
I may have shared this anecdote with the Blog… but I was discussing BEV range with a (senior techie) colleague some time ago. He was a ICE car nut but figured he’d found the way to extend range in BEVs: ‘Simple’, says he, just like on an ICE we need to install an alternator and have two sets of batteries installed. Then, while driving on set of batteries ‘A’ the alternator can be charging set of batteries ‘B’. Then, when set ‘A’ reach a low point they can be dynamically switched for ‘B’ and receive charge from the alternator. He was not joking.
He was a little miffed when I laughed out loud at him. Trouble is, I think there are many in the HoC who would happily back such a venture. I bet you could get Boris and his missus to believe it.
“a senior techie … was not joking.”
A senior techie working for what company – so I can avoid its products?
Thankfully, long retired.
I remember quite a number of years ago somebody being fined for having a small windmill battery charging system on the roof of his car to collect “free” energy while driving.
I love the word “numpty”… I’m going to start using it here in the states!
Given a choice between a shovel and a ladder, a numpty in a hole will reach for the shovel every time.
Restrictions on personal travel = state control of individuals 😦 I don’t want “the state” to have any knowledge of where and when I travel.
You carry a mobile phone, I guess….
I do indeed have the use of a mobile phone.
Is Dacia’s first electrified car really its best option? The hybrid Jogger estate costs £5,450 more than the cheapest petrol – but it will take 31 YEARS of fuel savings to recoup that
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-11615665/Hybrid-Dacia-Jogger-takes-31-years-recoup-5k-premium-fuel-bills.html
Lots of unhappiness about the public chargers too (except Tesla):
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=247&t=2017136&i=40