Diesel & petrol alternatives? Your thoughts please

@ Chocolate Trees ... My current trip to the lakes is 230 and we stop twice in the ICE on that run (once for comfort and once for comfort and fuel), so by extending those stops for about 10 mins each it should be doable

will it still be an extra 10mins when there are more electric vehicles in the queue for the charging point?

Reality check time-we live  in the middle of a village Conservation Area and we are fortunate enough to have garage parking but few of our neighbours do -so they park on street.I cannot see how EVs and Charging Points will fit into this scenario at all.The streets are very tight as they are with parked vehicles,some onto the pavements.Where would charging points be located in a Conservation Area,would cables trail across the pavements?Would the village's power cables stand the load of commuters' cars all plugging in at teatime?Newcomers to the area seem to be addicted to large 4wd vehicles and they have multiples of them in their households which already clog the place up without them all plugging in to on street charging as well.

This situation will not be a unique one outside of urban areas.I cannot help but feel that the" Powers that be" have jumped onto a fashionably "green" electric  bandwagon without seriously thinking it through.

For a host of reasons I think that  hydrogen cell technology may be the Future as fuel companies already have a nationwide network of stations which could be converted to fuelling hydrogen powered vehicles.EVs may not be the panacea that they are being cracked up to be?

 

Like you, and many others, I have my reservations about electric vehicles. I do believe we will get there with the battery technology but will be let down by the infrastructure to support them.

One point I have not heard mentioned is the comparison with how the UK gas supply system to homes is being upgraded. We had our first house in 1983 and soon after our supply was renewed with a new pipe in as part of a national update. 39 years later they have just started the same work on my mothers house. If/when the national upgrade is finished it might be in time for the replacement of a gas boiler with another gas boiler to be a non event. So will it take 40 years to upgrade our electricity supply network to cope with the increased demand, and by then will we be looking at an alternative power supply for our vehicles, such as hydrogen.

 

Colin

My comments on market demand for used EV’s come from ‘the trade’ and recent reports from auction houses and used car underwriters who set end of lease values. The reality is very few people want a used EV with a poor range and there are problems with diminishing range as the battery ages and efficacy wanes. There are many reports of used Leaf’s and Zoe’s which will barely cover 60 miles on full charge. 

i would never dream of stopping once in a 100 mile journey with the caravan unless something untoward happened en route. I hope the novelty of uncoupling and hooking up everytime you stop to charge doesn’t wear off..... i am all for the benefits electric propulsion but the way legislators are forcing the change to battery EV’s without consideration for all the other options and implications of a one size fits all solution will end up as another dieselgate in 10-20 years. 

A friend of mine has just retired from a very well known national organisation (perhaps I'd better not name them). His job necessitated the use of a van and it took him all over the east and west midlands visiting non-domestic properties to carry out surveys and occasionally some actual work.  For the last 6 or 8 months he was provided with an all electric van. Initially he was very enthusiastic about it. After a short time, though, he realised that there were pitfalls. First of all he was lucky to get more than 50mph from the vehicle which meant it was taking longer to get to customers. The available range also became a problem. There were numerous times, he told me, when he had to ask his boss which job(s) he should put off to a later date as there wasn't  enough battery power to get around all his call list and get him home again. 

Partially because of this it was arranged with a college in the east midlands, (one of their customers), that he was allowed to use their charging point when he was in that area. This was fine other than having to wait whilst the van charged up and also except for the days when he got there and there was another vehicle being charged and / or another waiting. Some calls for those days had to be cancelled, not good for customer relations.

Because of these problems which reduced daily productivity, at least one of my friend's ex-colleagues doing a similar job has already had to revert from an electric van to a diesel van again.

This post is from September 2017 and with interest, I note from more recent posts that this switch to electric vehicles is still just a total nonsense! Apart from more availability of new model electric vehicles, a few more charging stations, it is proven that the current flock of EV's have a lifespan similar to that of a domestic washing machine, before enormous costs are incurred in replacement batteries. Furthermore, nothing available in my budget that can tow a family sized caravan more than 100 yards.

We were all advised in 2001 to switch to diesel vehicles because they were less polluting than the petrol variants. Now we're being forced to ditch the diesels and buy hybrids or better still, electric vehicles.

Whilst I dont disagree with the moral ethics of changing to said vehicles, the reality is, in this current climate, impossible to do so for the majority. Thank goodness I no longer require a tow vehicle, caravan is sold and I can still potter about in my diesel vehicle until the time comes to surrender my licence.

I'll post again on this thread (if I'm still here) in another 4 years' time. I doubt anything will change, other than my road tax increasing, along with fuel price hikes.

HMG may well be getting some money from all types of road transport by then as well ,with charging by the mile to use roads

With the possible rise in their "prefered" type of vehicles the exchequer is loosing more and more income form fuel  taxes and road fund licences

As an EV owner of four years, all I can say the car has lasted well, it's not going to rot on it's aluminium sub frame topped by carbon fibre bodywork. Afterwards it's about 90% recyclable. By the time the batteries wear out (guaranteed for 8 years) the battery production costs may have come down, there maybe something else being developed. EVs are holding their secondhand value well.

They may not, indeed, be the future but as fossil fuel stocks dwindle and we all have to switch to renewables these vehicles have been at the forefront of new technologies.

No you won't find many EVs with good towing capabilities. Does anyone need to tow, towing wastes fuel, burning up precious energy.

There's no moral right or wrong but we have got a future problem with some types of energy running out. It needs to be conserved somehow.

 

 

 

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One of our neighbours has a 15 plate mitsubishi phev they need a large car for the family and dog(may be personal reg?) but they do say it now needs charging more often as it is used mostly for local journies and now seems to be running on the IC engine more often as the batt MPC is now getting lower.,but when said about an update they say they have checked but the PX offered is far below what they would consider to change