Electric Cars:what's available?

[NewcastleFalcon]

I was a little surprised to read that Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust were the headline organisation behind the "deal" with JLR, with the I-Pace joining the NHS fleet in April, and being accessible to staff at 200 NHS Fleet Service member organisations.

For NHS Fleet Service....I take it is NHS Fleet Solutions which I presume is this lot

https://nhsfleetsolutions.co.uk/

Will this be a benefit to allow NHS staff, should they choose to, the chance to lease a car at more favourable rates by salary sacrifice with the benefit in kind value for 100% electric vehicles set to incentivise their uptake.

From April 6th 2020 new lower rates become effective. In the UK all BEVs will pay no company car tax in 2020-21, just 1% in 2021-22 and 2% in 2022-23.

Jaguar's Deal with the NHS, the UK's largest employer , and the greatest pool of staff potentially available to take up leases on their EV's, is a smart business move. Dont think the story is really about the NHS greening their essential business milage, more selling leases to NHS staff, who may or may not do significant milage in the course of their NHS work.

Regards Neil

Autocar have done a piece on the changes to Benefit in Kind Tax rules for EV's from April under the headline..

New tax rules herald EV sales boom
From April, company car tax will be scrapped for electric car buyers; experts predict big surge in demand for EVs


Will there be enough to go round?

REgards Neil

WEll I do believe the appearance of several Jaguar I-Pace's recently is very probably linked to that scheme for NHS workers. I also had a chat with a community nurse who currently has a Renault Zoe, who is going to take up a new Nissan Leaf under the scheme. The salary sacrifice bit she said would cost her around £200/Month. Do a decent milage as she will, and the fuel savings will reduce that cost further. She will not own the car of course but not exactly a problem.

..and for drivers operating at that end of the newness scale the likely scenario is have a car for 2-3 years, turn it in for another one. No battery replacement anxiety!

No doubt many employers will have similar schemes.

REgards Neil

[Mandrake]

Very early sneak peak of the Citroen e-C4



The styling isn't really my cup of tea and a 50kWh battery is a bit meh for a car releasing at the end of 2020, (217 miles WLTP range, realistic range probably more like 190 miles) and it's no doubt going to be very over priced, but I suppose it's good news that one of our beloved Marquee's is actually making an effort to get into the BEV game at all...

Built on the same e-CMP platform as the Peugeot e-208 and Vauxhall Corsa-e and due out in Europe in November. (UK release date unknown yet)

From what I've seen on e-208 and Corsa-e reviews the e-CMP drivetrain platform is competant but nothing ground breaking - they're playing it relatively safe and conservative in terms of performance, battery size etc. It does at least have 100kW charging and active battery cooling though.

[Mandrake]

A while ago we were discussing that China could be the dark horse in the EV race - they make and consume more BEV's than anywhere else in the world already, however the vast majority of their models are not sold outside China so us Europeans are not even aware of them.

Some may know that Chinese company Geely bought LEVC and is responsible for the new Hybrid black cabs that have featured here before. However they also bought Volvo in 2010, and aquired the Polestar brand name as part of that.

The Polestar 2 is a full BEV that is just coming onto the UK market at the moment and really looks like they are trying to compete against Tesla.



Is this the first significant inroad of a Chinese BEV into European markets I wonder ?

[Mandrake]

A bit more detailed review of the Polestar 2.

[white exec]

Oh gosh. Impressive.
The ë-C4 looks as if it should sell (price permitting) on the back of the phenomenally successful C4 range.
See, this week, that Kona is also being heavily promoted.

[mickthemaverick]

Can't say I was bowled over, it seems to have far too many toys which will detract from driving concentration in my book!!

[NewcastleFalcon]

It is noticable that virtually every car advert these days is either for full electric cars, or mention the word Hybrid.
Of course preceding the word hybrid with "mild" or "self-charging", and finding the all-electric range of a plug in is never part of the advertising, and difficult to find on many websites.

On the China front, China's SAIC own MG Motor-UK and the MG ZS EV is one of the best value for money electric vehicles available in the UK. Made in China but ask the man or woman in the street they wouldn't know.

Certainly the one bloke I know who has one up here is delighted with his.



Regards Neil

[Mandrake]

Ah yes of course. I forgot about the Chinese made MG ZS. Thanks for reminding me.

Much cheaper than the Polestar 2 and will probably sell a lot more units!

[white exec]

Can't say I was bowled over, it seems to have far too many toys which will detract from driving concentration in my book!!

The toys can presumably be ignored or switched off.
With C5, Citroen dealers allegedly offered new owners a check list of on-board automatic options, at first service, with tick-boxes, including ones for Disable.

Have always been surprised by the long-running ban on video screens being positioned so as to be visible from the driver's seat, while we now have large, multi-level and touch-interactive displays forming the central part of new dashes. And still the simple use of a phone is regarded as a major driving hazard, and an actual offence. Some serious inconsistency there?

[mickthemaverick]

The toys can presumably be ignored or switched off.
With C5, Citroen dealers allegedly offered new owners a check list of on-board automatic options, with tick-boxes, including one for Disable.

Yes I am sure they can Chris, but with my "grumpy old man" hat on I have to say I doubt whether many of today's younger owners will disable any toy which might limit their "street cred" ratings with their peers. I can just hear the chat in the pub car park - "It even keeps you in the right lane and you can do your hair on the way!" etc.....

[Mandrake]

Have always been surprised by the long-running ban on video screens being positioned so as to be visible from the driver's seat, while we now have large, multi-level and touch-interactive displays forming the central part of new dashes. And still the simple use of a phone is regarded as a major driving hazard, and an actual offence. Some serious inconsistency there?

Completely agree Chris, with Tesla being the worst offender!

Even the central touch screen on the Leaf is a bit distracting to use while driving, and I bet there is fine print in the manual which says don't use it while in motion...

[mickthemaverick]

Even the central touch screen on the Leaf is a bit distracting to use while driving, and I bet there is fine print in the manual which says don't use it while in motion...

In my Prius you could only do adjustments to the sat nav or self-parking etc if the car was stationary, surely that makes sense for BEV's too?

[deuchebleu]

Remember reading a couple of weeks ago that a German higher court had backed a previous lower court ruling that using a touchscreen while driving was covered by the same legislation that covers using mobile phones while driving. The car in question was a Tesla which crashed while the driver was trying to adjust the wiper speed. Hopefully if this interpretation is adopted elsewhere it could force car manufacturers to think a bit more about their headlong rush into touch screens.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53666222

[white exec]

The implications of that court judgement could have some serious ramifications for vehicle design.
Add to that the legal minefield of autonomous driving (Who is in charge of the vehicle, and responsible in the event of an incident?) and the lawyers should have years of work ahead of them.
Tesla's response to this will be interesting.

[c.morewood]

Tesla model 3 has a limited stalk control for the wipers. A push-button on the end of the indicator stalk(opposite side to the Xantia) a touch will wipe once whereas a more solid push will wash wipe 3 times with another a few seconds later. It also has voice-controlled wipers. So there was no need to be reaching for the screen for that purpose. But what isn't voice-controlled are the fog lights. And when you run into a bank of fog at night, is exactly the scenario that you want full concentration in the road and want to turn on the fog lights, which in involves a screen selection a swipe and another selection( from memory) not great. I'm told there are more voice commands on the way, they can't come soon enough and hopefully they'll recognise my voice rather than " navigate to charger" and the reply " navigating to Georgia"!!!!