Electric Vehicles (EV's)

That is exactly what everything to do with power and energy IS about. Greed and profits. They may add tags to make things popular but don’t make the mistake of thinking EV or any other type of propulsion is ultimately about anything other than profit.

It will be a while before we see commercial airlines replacing fossil fuel I suspect
They already have short hop aircraft, Belfast Glasgow & Edinburgh should be on soon, hope they carry extra fuses. :eek:
 
I agree, and the invasions will get worse and over different shortages until we press the big red button, water, food land, we are rapidly killing our planet but there is not much we can do about it really, we can re-use and recycle etc, but what we really need to do is stop making thing that are single use, or needs to be upgraded year on year like phones etc
Perhaps we need to stop making so many people?
 
this might be good if it works and it can be made for all ICE vehicles.



Today I have been counting the number of planes that have flown over the countryside I can see from my seat in the lounge, I can see them as far away as Tamworth which is 85 miles from here straight line and further on a less hazy day, and I've been out shopping and not been looking all the time and there has been cloud cover too.

Guess How many to now since 8am today?

Roughly my field of view

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this might be good if it works and it can be made for all ICE vehicles.



Today I have been counting the number of planes that have flown over the countryside I can see from my seat in the lounge, I can see them as far away as Tamworth which is 85 miles from here straight line and further on a less hazy day, and I've been out shopping and not been looking all the time and there has been cloud cover too.

Guess How many to now since 8am today?

Roughly my field of view

View attachment 65603

View attachment 65602
Dunno, Kev, but any flight from Tamworth is likely to be a good one! BTW, I was born in Stourbridge, roughly where a perpendicularline from Wolverhampton and a horizontal line from Birmingham [running west] would bisect, so a tongue in cheek comment based on regional rivalries!

Steve
 
Heres a calculator to see the theoretical distance to the horizon, so you can maybe see a contrail at 200 miles plus. Link

I can see aircraft as they pass you of course.

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Several weeks late I know, sorry about that, but trying to get my head round CriftinsCampers response to my posting about EV's from Dec 5th. When charging my car using the 3 pin socket it takes 10A at 230V AC. i.e. say 2.2/2.3kW. Over an hour this gives me a range increase of 9 miles, a figure I have checked many times. If the efficiency of the on board charger (OBC) was as low as 67% it should only increase the range by about 6 miles. Using a charger at a supermarket supposedly at 7kW but actually only giving an indicated 6.6kW the range increased by 25 miles over one hour, instead of 26.5 miles. So I am not sure the efficiency figures for the OBC quoted hold true for my car. Am I missing something?
Anyway it doesn't matter much because we have solar panels and even at this time of year we do get some decent power for about 4 to 5 hours per day. I set the car to charge up between about 10:30am and 3:30pm and most days 90% of the power I need comes from the solar panels.
 
Good link that as you say you can see a lot further up into the sky.
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Took company Nissan Leaf up to Perth today. Left my campus EV @ 100%. Working the various controls such as, heat on when required, blower on to clear windows. Reached my destination with 52% in the battery bank, great says I, as I asked where campus charge post was located, on reaching charge point, only one of two plug in points working, and plugged in. Ok says I, on my way home I'll i'll pop in to Broxden Park and Ride. On reaching P&R, no plug in points available, one fast charge, which I wanted, not working, I counted four in total out of order. Fair amount of TESLA outlets available, no good to me.

Pondering what to do, headed south, no heat, blower when required, lights required at Bridge of Earn, due to thick fog. Fog left behind, lights off. I made it back to my campus with 10% in the bank, and readout stating miles available, 15 mile. Round trip totalled 125 mile.

Campus has eight charge points, four of them not working, a TESLA taxi making good use of our free electricity charge points, when he left, I parked up and put on charge EV I booked for the day.

Where am I going with this, Broxden P&R, EV's fully charged and no owner in sight, fair to say with this being a P&R, possibly at work? My destination campus, one out of two EV charge points worked, with the one working in use. My own campus, four charge points down. Today's experience of broken EV charge point does not instil confidence for me to move to EV's in the future.

I like EV's, great technology, and even when road tax is introduced in 2025, EV's will still be cheaper from a fuelling cost point of view, but the infrastructure is not there from my experience today, which is a snap shot, I wonder how the rest of the UK fairs with out of order charge points.
I wonder when some Chinese factory will start making and selling an adapter so you can use Tesla charge points ?
 
A garage in Ballyclare near me wanted the NIE to bring a cable a few hundeed yards to his garage forecort for a charge point, price qt was £100.000, cannot see the garages here doing it.
 
I had a Nissan Leaf for 2 years on a PCP - no upfront payment and no baloon payment, £185 a month. I have solar panels so of course when the sun shone I rushed out and plugged the car in. After two years and 8000 miles the range was about 35 miles from a full charge so I just gave the car back. The next owner phoned me and said it needed a new battery (£5000) and Nissan plugged in their computer and said the fact that I had recharged it when it was already 80% full disqualifies the warranty. They didn't tell me that when I took delivery.
@runnach I found three chargers not working, one was stolen, one was run into, and one was barriered off. I had to drive home down the motorway at 30mph, butt clenching with HGVs flashing past at 60, with - - - showing as the range.
Also, imagine if all cars were electric. If you can . . . . .the National Grid cannot supply our current energy needs, and if they could, as it takes 4 hours (in my experience) plugged in to a 13A supply to drive the car for 1 hour, that means there will be four times as many cars plugged into the mains as there are driving on the roads . . . . . .

Anyway, note this please everyone: When they come and install your outside charging point, they include a meter between your consumer unit and the charging point. This meter has a SIM card and transmits the meter reading to Who Knows Where? The only possible reason for this meter to exist is so they can charge you more for your EV electricity than for your domestic electricity. Furthermore, as the outside charger is run off a standard 15A circuit breaker, it cannot possibly deliver more than one of your 13A sockets in the house, so in fact the outside charging point is completely useless and a waste of money. I see Halfords are offering to install them for £500, I think.

JCB has made hydrogen engines from their standard diesel engines, there is an excellent video of theirs on Youtube.
 
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Electric cars sales has slumpt in a big way, folk are on the ball and find all the hype was pure sh one t.
Very few charge points, slow to charge, battery componants wrecking the planet, both digging up and getting rid of at end of life.
Then there is the value of it second hand, very little and folk not wanting to buy a new battery pack.
And folk like me who buy extremly cheap cars just wont be able to buy electric sub £500.
 
I've been following it for a couple of years and although still an ICE engine it has been massively redeveloped in all parts of the engine.

 
...........folk not wanting to buy a new battery pack.
...................
They don't realise that if you need a new £5,000 battery after 8000 miles and two years, that constitutes an annual running cost of £2500 even before you pay £250 for a service which consists of checking fluid levels and pumping up the tyres.
I do believe that some of them do last more than 8000 miles though. Mine didn't.
 
And another youtube:
Lord Bamford's stance which is irrefutable (phew now I need a rest, using big words) is that earth movers and building sites have vehicles that run all day but don't travel very far. Therefore they don't need to roam the countryside looking for a petrol station. The idea is that a lorry load of hydrogen bottles in crates would be delivered to the building site, and when an earth mover needs fuel it would just go to the bank of hydrogen bottles. This overcomes the problem of lack of distribution facilities that cars would face.
 
Yes, if they had told me not to charge it over 80% or it will invalidate the warranty, then I would have not done it. In any case the car is so full of computers it should just shut off at 80%, and maybe put a message on the dashboard saying "Are you sure you need more charge?" And the vendor's claim of 125 miles is the manufacturer's, and we know all about manufacturers' claimed mileages for ICE's don't we?

By the way, I paid the dealer that sold me the Leaf to service my petrol car before I did the deal because they were doing cheap 'major service to any car £145 including spark plugs'. I thought that would enhance the price I would get when selling it. After I paid for it I looked at the invoice and it didn't include spark plugs. I asked why and was told "Well Sir, that is because your car is a diesel, and diesel engines don't have spark plugs'. I was dumstruck. This is a major franchised Nissan dealer. I replied "I am a Christian, and I don't swear, but I can't think of anything else to say. It has a petrol engine, go and change the spark plugs". They went away and came back and said "Your car has a Wankel engine and we don't do Wankel engines". At this I lost my rag and shouted 'It has four round cylinders, with four round pistons, four valves at the top of each cylinder, and four spark plugs. Go and change the spark plugs". They went away and came back and said "We don't know how".
Service reception was at one end of a long showroom, with electric cars at the other end. I cupped my hands and shouted across all the potential customers looking at new ICE cars towards the electric car salesman "You expect me to buy an electric car when your service department cannot even tell the difference between a petrol engine and a diesel engine? What hope is there of you looking after an electric car?"
I had to go and buy the spark plugs (for which they did not refund me) because they didn't know how to buy spark plugs from the local supplier and give them to the receptionist. She took them into the workshop, all brightly lit, nicely painted floor, six hoists, background music, £30,000 worth of SnapOn tools, and gave them to the moron. She came back and said "We don't know how to change them". So I had to come home an do the job on my gravel driveway. That is Westway Nissan in Coventry, if you are interested.
This is how a Westway Nissan Coventry workshop technician interview goes:
Boss: Do you know the difference between a petrol engine and a diesel engine?
Candidate: No.
Boss: doesn't matter. Do you know what diesel exhaust smells like?
Candidate: No.
Boss: Do you know what a diesel engine sounds like?
Candidate: Same as a petrol engine.
Boss: Can you read a label inside a fuel filler cap?
Candidate: No.
Boss: You'll do, Start the job on Monday.
Candidate: When's Monday?
 
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