February Magazine - Nick Lomas EVs
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The government are already looking at how they will recoupe loses as more and more buy EV's. They are already loosing millions as not getting duty on fuel and no road tax. Whatever happens the car driver will always be out of pocket.
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I think motorists always complain about how much they are charged in taxes!!! In 2013 I paid £1.40 a litre for diesel but the last time I filled up at the end of 2020 I paid £1.15 a litre. I don't hear anyone saying that fuel is too cheap now? I can't see fossil fuels like petrol and diesel getting anymore expensive, if anything with the increasing numbers of LV's you could see the price get even lower. Where the Government has made a mistake in recent years is not applying any sort of price escalator on fuel duties to allow for inflation. So if they have it in mind to increase fuel duties now it will come as a bigger shock to motorists. The Government will have to change the way it does things as LV's start to be the dominant type of vehicle. They can't tax electricity as that would impact of domestic prices. As most people will be able to charge at home I don't see how they could do that. Eventually they introduce a VED tax for EV's but I imagine that is a few years off. As I mentioned upthread I imagine road pricing will be the main way Governments raise revenues from drivers in the future. Given that its unlikely all roads will be priced the same and time of day may make a difference then the motorist will have a degree of choice in how much it costs them, a choice they don't have at the moment.
David
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I think your "most people will be able to charge at home " does not compute ,when most house building from the 1950s has been to cram as many properties as possible in the smallest possible space without space to park vehicles, even the new estates being built now are not future EV charging friendly , even not seem to be built with cars in mind as how many now only have one vehicle
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My job takes me to numerous new build sites , I'm noticing more communial parking areas . What I'm not seeing are EV charging points being installed into the bays , which would be easy to do in a sites early stages . It appears to me the government are making the right noises , but the building trade isn't listening.
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I expect its a local authority issue. There are lots of grants available to include the infrastructure, here in MK we have the highest number of charging points outside of London. Having said that not many of them are at individual houses so I imagine people will have to go to a charging facilities, perhaps like that rather swish one, in Essex I think, which is like a garage forecourt. For anyone with a property where a charging point could be installed I am pretty sure there is grant from Government which covers a fair slice of the cost.
David
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It is what many are in this area are finding, and even the transport minister or ours and several. others of our friends LAs have no real plan it seems, to enable convenient charging of EVs, and they agree with what I have noticed with new build housing estates, even when HMG expect the UK to change to EVs in the future
Just one example is the road we live there are Over 200 houses and there is 7 houses that can have any chance of charging at the property
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You’ll go to ‘fuel stations’ the fuel being electric not diesel or petrol. Folk don’t have diesel or petrol pumps on their property so they don’t need electric charge points. We will manage it as we do all vehicle fuel. When it gets low-fill it up👍🏻
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You are thinking for 2021, when oil burners are banned the charging system will be up to speed👍🏻. 14 years is a lifetime in technology advancement terms.
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It’s going to be law JV, folk can bleat all they like it’s on its way-period👍🏻
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It’s 14 years away-it’ll be good to go by then. It will be for those who will be well on board re the planet & environment. Think on-‘look after our Planet it’s the only one we have’👍🏻
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We've found that motorway speeds work quite well at regenerating the energy in our EV...so do some types of slow speeds. It's a completely different approach to driving and a different mind set.
Much of the evidence is out there JVB.
If this is solely about towing a caravan with an EV it might be that caravans become a thing of the past and electrified motorhomes become the more economical norm. We hear a lot from the EV manufacturers but very little from the caravan makers, are they working together at all or just waiting for the end?!
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Slight difference between a fuel tank under your drive and what is basically a glorified extension lead 😀. Looking towards the future means acting now , and as I said earlier I'm simply not seeing it . Small independent builders yes , we have two new builds next to us and both have EV charging points installed. Unfortunately the big companies are still working on maximum profit , minimum input , so until the government make it mandatory nothing is going to change .
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Your EV being a Small BM with range extender? Or has that changed
I have read several "real world " tests ,and if commercial vehicles conversions are going to be Evs then they will need very big batteries to make them viable for other than local journeys as the last thing companies will want is downtimes with their vehicle to be charged,
Amazon are making big play they are using EVs but they do not advise of the add vehicles they have had to purchase, to make it possible to keep their drivers working by changing to a ready charged vehicle
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The future is just that the future. The World has been home to Luddites for centuries, flat earthers too. At some point the future becomes now. No offence intended but I prefer to talk to folk who can envisage a future without smoke belching killer cars rather than embrace them👍🏻
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No bleating on my part? just be interesting when the UK and other governments around the world it seems come into the real world and realise what they are "aiming for" is not achievable, unless they commit to an investment In the infrastructure that is required, that would put what the pandemic has cost in the shade
The UK transport minister when pushed has admitted that the large infrastructure costings required have yet to be looked at in detail
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It’s a pity you aren’t at the heart of Govt because-industry, tech leaders, scientists & World Govts are convinced it is achievable & will work🤷🏻♂️what do they knew eh?🙄. You wait till Joe Biden reads your post JV he’s gonna feel such a fool pumping $Trillions into Planet friendly vehicles in America.
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If I am still around when EVs become a viable alternative to what most are used to now I would willingly have one ,although they will be no cheaper to run by then ; as all governments struggle to balance the books with the loss of fossil fuels revenue
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Has what changed JVB? Our EV is a very successful design. EVs run on a series of batteries. The batteries can be charged very quickly at rapid charge points. We are lucky enough to have a REX (range extender) which can top up the batteries when needed, however most of the time the REX isn't in use at all. The REX design doesn't fit in with the concept of conserving fossil fuels so this has been discontinued. But read HERE for further "real world" information about what is going on in BMW EV development.
Some companies, you mentioned Amazon, are indeed using electric vehicles where they are viable, as developments increase you will see an increase in this usage, it's not an experiment it's a reality.
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The above comments on EV's make interesting reading. However it would appear that very few are from people who actually tow a caravan with an electric vehicle . I was hoping to see some figures on range and ease of recharging with a caravan in tow.
My present(diesel) car will tow my caravan 300 miles before I must stop and spend five minutes refueling. How long will it be before there is an EV which will do this and will be affordable.
There must be many caravanners who think as I do that caravanning will no longer be viable either because such a vehicle would be unaffordable or being unable to to travel to remote sites conveniently without regular protracted recharging stops always assuming an available charger of the correct type can be found and which can be accessed with a caravan in tow.
This could clearly have an adverse effect on club membership numbers and even the viability of the club. I am sure that the club is only too aware of these problems but I cannot see a solution at present. Of course there will no doubt be a surge in sales of petrol or diesel vehicles in 2029 but, unless there are some rapid technical developments in, for example, a cobalt60 battery technology and which can be installed in a road vehicle (assuming motorists would be happy to have a gamma ray source in the boot) this merely delays the problem for another few years, fortunately when I will probably be occupying a pitch at that great big site in the sky. .
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The dates keep being changed, but presently around the time that the sale of new internal combustion engined vehicles will be prohibited there is also a ban on the production of steel. So what will the battery vehicles be constructed from? Cannot use plastics, and even use of wood is becoming frowned upon.
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If steel production is stopped world wide how are vehicles of any sort going to be built, never mind bridges etc? Or is it just in the UK that steel production will cease?
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I suspect it will actually just be in Wales as the rest is pretty well gone already. There is an argument in favour of the new deep coal mine in Cumbria that its output is needed for producing coking coal for steelmaking in Wales.
Not read anything about concrete though. Making cement is also a huge producer of flue gasses due to the high temperature drying involved, and one needs cement as well as steel to make concrete.
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you may not have read as far back as my post, but i did try to cajole Which Magazine to provide the information you are looking for, I think the club did some testing with a Jag fpace some while ago but was only towing something akin to a trailer tent and the distance towed was terrible
this was my post"Which magazine had a very good Feb supplement where they rated EV's/Hybrids giving costs for charging, mileage possible etc, i sent them an email asking them to grasp the nettle and put a caravan of say 1600kgs on the back of a suitably sized EV tow car and to publish the results for towing capability e.g. mileage, handling in tight situations such as pitching up on site, all the stuff a good diesel tow car would do
this was their reply
"As our reviews are designed to be a general overview for the general consumer, we wouldn't consider suitability for towing a caravan, ownership of which is estimated as being around 550,000 for the whole of the UK, as essential or universal enough to be included as part of our reviews. We always recommend that any members who have specific interests do outside research into those topics if a product that we recommend interests them"
take it as you will anybody got a printable suitable reply ?
P.S was talking to a friend in Houston yesterday, and he says they are now developing a battery that contains no cobalt can give a full charge in 10 mins and a range of 350 miles, 2 years to production, i guess it is a case of watch this space
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I imagine with JLR announcing that they will change over to all electric car manufacturing by 2025 they will start to produce cars with proper towing capability. It's hard to imagine Land Rover selling a Discovery that can't tow? Land Rovers are used for all sorts of things beyond towing caravans. Clearly they won't be cheap and there is a danger that there will be a period in history where many might be priced out of electric tow cars and that could well have a very negative impact on our hobby. Or perhaps as Brue suggests upthread lead to more people moving to motorhomes as the price differential could be quite small or even to the advantage of the motorhome if one takes into account of the cost of both the caravan and the electric car?
David
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