Electric Cars:what's available?

[Hell Razor5543]

I think the MG electric vehicles might be worth avoiding for a while, based on this article'

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/ma ... 0b8d&ei=29

[bobins]

On reading that, my thoughts immediately turned to that episode of Father Ted with the milk float they couldn't slow down

[ChrisRobin]

I got this the other day as a news feed on my phone, about EV owners kicking off about charge points.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... tions.html

We had a chap in the other day trying to return his ID.4, as he was having trouble charging it, he let it get down to 20% and is really struggling now to get it up past 70%, he can't get on a fast charger as they are always taken, tries it in fuel stations but it takes so long to charge he looses interest, worked ok at home until he had a smart meter fitted, charged fine over night on the old meter but on the new smart one, it does not, he puts it on when he gets home around 30% leaves it over night and it just over 70% by the morning by a fraction, contacted the company that fitted it, they online tested it and it reported as ok, oddly all his neighbours are starting to complain about his as well, he live on a small development of 15 houses, in that development there are 8 EV,s now with his, they have all recently in the past 3 months gone to smart meters, they are starting to wonder if the smart meters are grid monitoring and sharing the power to the charging cars at a reduced rate, hence the really slow charge over night, Octopus say no they don't do that, As our customer said, odd its all the EV people on this estate now reporting this problem with over night charging, yet on his old meter he was fine this only deteriorated with the smart meter.
He is trying to give it back to us but as it is on a mobo contract I don't think Motability will let him yet.
Stick with ya diesel, it makes the weather warmer.

[bobins]

Whilst Smart meters have the capability to do 'load balancing' as you might call it, I don't know that it's actually been implemented so far - or at least not without the customer actually signing up to it. Octopus do have a tariff that allows for demand led pricing, but unless the customer has some rinky-dinky little clause that says 'Don't use x Kwh of electricity over a certain price' I don't think Octopus would be actively managing the individual supply. There were murmurings of some of the DNOs wanting to regulate individual supplies in times of energy (electricity) shortness - but again - I don't think this has been rolled out. My money's on the customer not reading the Ts&Cs of their electricity supply and meter installation


Edit.....

Aha ! Octopus do actively manage electric vehicle charging on some of their tariffs, so your customer might well be signed up to one of these and hasn't realised that Octopus is taking control of when their car charges.

"2.4.1.4 If we schedule your electric vehicle to charge outside of the off-peak hours, we will apply the night rate for your EV charging and any underlying household usage will be charged in the relevant half hour billing periods.

2.4.1.8 By signing up to the Intelligent Octopus tariff, you agree to:

a) Give us permission to integrate and connect with your low carbon technology using your home wifi, in-built sim card, or other method as agreed between us.
b) Give us permission to influence the times of operation of your low carbon technology. We will always strive to operate these assets in line with the preferences you have specified in our app, but this service cannot be guaranteed.
c) Us collecting data about your low carbon technology, including but not limited to model, power consumption, operating preferences, any actions you take to operate these assets and how these assets perform. We will use this information to optimise your asset operations, send operating instructions to your low carbon technology, and generate bills."

https://octopus.energy/policies/smart-t ... entoctopus

Say hello to your friendly Big Brother

[myglaren]

May be available but would you want one?

A driver has told how he was "kidnapped" by his runaway electric car and forced to dodge red lights and roundabouts.

Brian Morrison, 53, from Glasgow said he was heading home from work on Sunday night when he said his brand new MG ZS EV became stuck at 30mph.

The brakes would not work and he had to dial 999 from inside the car.

Police were forced to stop the runaway car by allowing it to slowly crash into their police van.

'I was kidnapped by my runaway electric car'

[ChrisRobin]

Makes sense Bobins, I have no idea I am still gassing people and killing the planet in my diesel, it all sounds very controlling to me, I am a firm believer than when EV's tip the balance on IC's Smart meters will be forced on us all to save us money and get refunds for low use Etc, Etc but mainly to get us in to them so they can levy and extra "charging" fee for your home charged EV to make up for some of the fuel tax loss, I don't believe you will get it as part of your electricity bill as you do now, I think it will be separated and the relevant "tax" added.
When you think they are road tax free, well ours are at the moment, and fuel tax free, that's a big revenue loss for the Government especially when you think how many IC,s where and still are on the road.
We get a Company news letter, mainly about the USA as we are part of a large US Company, mainly bangs on about NASCAR and US dealerships, but this time there was a small section on Hydrogen vehicles and how EV,s in US are struggling due to the distance they are expected to travel, and US owners are kicking off about it, not so much the distances but the time it takes to travel that distance now, and this guy who wrote the small article was saying the problem is Governments world wide have largely settled on electric, so manufactures and put all their efforts into EV tech, but in reality the most ideal way to go forward should of been hydrogen as it resembles more closely to the driving habits we now use and would be able to refill these vehicle as quickly as we do now with fossil fuels instead of parking up and waiting so driving styles would have hardly altered.
Tech for EV's is bounding ahead now but it just does not seems to be that bullet proof, well not ours anyway, I do wonder if they are getting over complicated too quickly.

[ChrisRobin]

"Police were forced to stop the runaway car by allowing it to slowly crash into their police van."

They then fined him for breaking the speed limit, dangerous driving, and tailgating.

[NewcastleFalcon]

... and this guy who wrote the small article was saying the problem is Governments world wide have largely settled on electric, so manufactures and put all their efforts into EV tech, but in reality the most ideal way to go forward should of been hydrogen as it resembles more closely to the driving habits we now use and would be able to refill these vehicle as quickly as we do now with fossil fuels instead of parking up and waiting so driving styles would have hardly altered.

There is a long thread on Hydrogen here Chris originally titled "Hydrogen fuel Cell Vehicles still alive?" but more generally changed into the "The Hydrogen Thread" to mop up all developments, news and views on Hydrogen. Over 20 pages and 4 years I have reached my own conclusion about it, others may have a different view.

The Hydrogen Thread
viewtopic.php?p=715143#p715143

I also laid down a bit of a tongue-in-cheek challenge here in this thread, it's been a bit dormant!

I-Spy Fuel Cell Vehicles (or an H2 pump!)

viewtopic.php?p=715144#p715144

I did receive a bit of Hydrogen News today which I will add to the Hydrogen thread in due course.

...and here is a picture of the Vehicle...still appropriate for Electric Cars What's almost available because all fuel cell cars are electric cars. After many years they are still on with beta testing round Abergavenny and its singular Hydrogen Pump! grant getting and crowdfunding where they can

Riversimple October 2023 Newsletter

Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

I wonder if this will ever get to be a classic for under 10k, it's under 10k new.

Not in BYD's interests to disrupt the European Market where they can sell their vehicles at more profitable prices than they can in China. By the time the UK/EU Price is announced it will be comparable to other vehicles in the same class. What about EU's tough stance to prevent floods of "cheap Chinese EV's" killing the EU car Industry. They fail to recognise that most of the royalty of Europe's Car industry make most of their worldwide profits by selling cars in the biggest car market in the world ie China. A tit for tat game of tariffs has only one winner.

Neil

[ChrisRobin]

On EV charging times we have just had manufacturer classification, they look at 20% to 80% charge time

Domestic charge time 20 hrs on a 3 pin plug, classed as emergency charging.
Domestic wall box is 9 hrs.
AC fast charge, (grid survey Required for home use) 3hrs.
DC fast charge 1 hr.

So that is were the VAG group is at the moment in charge times.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Lets pop over to India, its a big world out there and our small island is quite insignificant in global electrification in batteries/intellectual property, or manufacturing vehicles at any sort of scale, or productivity to match the global leaders in the field.

Here's an Indian assortment I came across when looking at Marc's Citroen electric teaser.

It may well be one of the featured cars in this article

Top 5 Budget EV's In India under Rs 20 Lakh.

https://www.carwale.com/news/world-ev-d ... s-20-lakh/

Neil

[Gibbo2286]

Priced in Lakh you need to add a few zeros to convert to GBP.

[myglaren]

Definitely a Lakh of zeros.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Priced in Lakh you need to add a few zeros to convert to GBP.

1 Lakh is 100,000 Rupees or roughly £1,000 sterling (£988 today)

The cars featured in the article, each have a video, with prices in India depending on spec in the ranges here.

https://www.carwale.com/news/world-ev-d ... s-20-lakh/
Tata Tiago EV (Rs. 8.69 lakh to Rs. 12.04 lakh, ex-showroom)
MG Comet EV (Rs. 7.98 to Rs. 10.63 lakh, ex-showroom)
Citroen eC3 (Rs. 11.50 lakh to Rs. 12.68 lakh, ex-showroom)
Tata Tigor EV (Rs. 12.49 lakh to Rs. 13.75 lakh, ex-showroom)
Mahindra XUV400 (Rs. 15.99 lakh to Rs. 19.19 lakh, ex-showroom)

Neil

[GiveMeABreak]

Just been watching some EV horror stories and noticed this one of concern regarding MG. What a nightmare this would be for anyone:



And our Mr lots to say for himself MacMaster got locked in his EV, which if you can watch it is quite concerning that he was unable to get out without external help! What an oversight by Porsche!