A bit out of date John. Fusion used to be “always 30 years away” but now, thanks to mayonnaise, it is always 10 years away.
Of course, you are right. I must practise my skills of irony a bit more.
Fusion has been “just round the corner” since the 60’s, as the article itself admits - don’t hold your breath 
Yes, some of the spin-offs might be useful, wind and solar will benefit from developments in grid-sized storage but the rest seem to be as firmly in the world of fantasy as fusion itself.
@Mik_Bennett @billybutcher Ahh, ye of little faith 
I may embark on a mayonnaise based experiment myself at dinner this evening. One small step for Hellmans’s…
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Near always make my own mayonaise. Fusion will have to wait, I am too busy
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FWIW, we ran a Renault Zoé for three years and literally the only thing we changed in about 35,000 kilometres was the front tyres. We’re now on an MG4, 18 months in, done as many kilometres in that as we did in the Zoé already because it has far better range and charging ability (so the ICE car, an old Volvo 940 estate, only does tip runs and skiing holidays). Same story, except the tyres are wearing far better, probably because it’s rear-wheel drive. We’ll have to change the tyres this winter, but nothing else to do.
If you search the web loosely for EVs that have been around for a while, basically Renault Zoés and Teslas if you want something 10+ years old to have a good idea, it seems to be entirely brakes and tyres (obviously) and general suspension components, springs and dampers, ball joints, that sort of thing. Surprisingly few horror stories.
Indeed, I know two people now with relatively old EVs. One has an early Zoé 24kWh, range is pathetic but it still does the commute, school run and shops and charges overnight on a granny charger (10A socket) so he’s super happy with it. The other has a fairly early Tesla Model S, he’s done everything “wrong” from day one. He has free Tesla supercharger usage and pretty much only charges on a supercharger once a week, because it’s on his way to a client, so the original car was super expensive, but he got a decent government kick-back because it’s a company car and he’s never paid for “fuel” ever. He isn’t particularly careful with it, he’s had it years and he’s only lost 5% of his original range despite only supercharging. He says he’s fine with losing 15 miles of range in almost 10 years of operation and it certainly shows all the FUD about batteries is just that. In both cases tyres, brakes and some replacement of parts in the running gear as you’d expect, but nothing else.
As an aside, the only thing with the MG is it has far better recuperation on braking, so from time to time you need to set the recuperation to “pathetic” (which was the only setting in the old 40kWh Zoé) and stamp on the brakes a few times on a nice, straight, clear stretch of road, just to stop them squeaking! I imagine this is going to be a minor irritation for almost all modern EVs. You don’t use the brakes, so they get a film of muck on them and squeak.
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À good post Greg. It is refreshing to hear the views from someone who has had years of experience of EVs. I have heard, many times, people denigrating EVs who have never owned and run an EV or even actually driven one. They simply repeat stuff they have come across on the Internet. There’s nothing wrong with that if you check your sources but, for me, the most convincing argument is the fact that there are very few drivers who have owned and run an EV for some years then changed back to driving an ICE. In fact I have never come across a single one.
Are there any on this forum?
It was tempting to give this it’s own thread, but here seems a more appropriate place. Plans for managing electricity transfer in the UK.
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It is about time for some forward planning. The ASTI project will help rid ourselves of dependence on fossil fuels and enable us to switch to renewable electrical energy from wind and wave.
Oil is running out. Enough oceans have been polluted and the easy sites of deserts, steppes etc. have been exploited and new locations will need to be found which will have increasingly greater environmental impact.
Has anyone noticed how the price of oil had been increasing lately?
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That’s one aspect of this that I have never understood - you’d think that itself would have incentivised development of alternatives.
I guess extracting oil always provided “jam today” and the alternatives were “jam tomorrow”.
Greed is not good.
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There does seem to be a pandemic of greed everywhere at the moment.
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Yes, a lot of renewable energy comes from Scotland (lots of wind) and the highest demand is in the South of England and so this makes a lot of sense. But, there needs to be more renewable energy projects based in the South of England so that more can be produced a lot closer to where it is consumed. Unfortunately, rampant nimbyism in the South has stalled or cancelled many renewable projects in the past and this needs to change.
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It’s not just nimbyism, so much as population density. However there’s a lot of arable land going under solar panels here in Oxfordshire, which may or may not be good. Wind turbines aren’t generally welcome - there was a question about siting one around here, but I suspect there’s simply not enough consistent wind to make it worthwhile.
Its all short term thinking these days.
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I wouldn’t go back.
We got the Zoé 5 years ago because I calculated the total cost of ownership was only going to be slightly more than our 10 year old Fiat Panda at the time, and we’d be driving around in a brand new car, so it was a bit of a no-brainer. I blogged about it at the time over a couple of posts - the second is linked to at the end of the first. (Medium, sorry!)
TL;DR, the outlay on the car is ouchy, but if you’re spending €200 a month on fuel and that goes down to €20, plus there’s no MOT and no servicing to speak of, you can afford €250 or more towards a lease. At the moment the model is a bit shot by higher interest rates, but they’ll come down again and there’s starting to be a lot more choice at the cheaper end of the EV scale. I reckon a year from now you’ll be able to lease a nice EV for €300 a month again - as we did with the Zoé - and that’s a no-brainer against any ICE car. The MG4 cost more because we got the Luxury one to have the range and heat pump, but it’s a much nicer car, and the MG4 Standard was €300 a month at the time, even a little less. (Worth noting this is with the French government paying the deposit - when that changes the cars will need to be cheaper for the economics to work, but that is already happening at pace.)
Plus the whole driving experience is so much more pleasant, before you even get into environmental benefits (we charge with solar). I’m keeping the old Volvo because it refuses to die and it’s almost a “voiture de collection” now! 
But we barely use it.
On the subject of total cost of ownership, another myth/misunderstanding is that you need some kind of fancy charging thingummy. You don’t. A driveway is handy of course, though I have heard (not verified!) that in France if you live in an apartment and have a dedicated parking space you want to run electricity to, the landlord cannot refuse. Otherwise we just have one of these 16A sockets on a dedicated breaker. That gives you a charge rate of 3kWh, if I emptied the MG4 it would be full in 20 hours, and we basically never use more than half the battery in a day (usually nowhere even close) unless we’re going somewhere, and then we’ll be fast charging at a motorway service area so it’s a moot point. In short, you can totally charge overnight with a socket, no need to spend thousands on a fancy wall box. If you’re feeling flush you can spend a few hundred on that Legrand Green’Up socket, but we didn’t even have that for the Zoé - just charged it overnight on a normal socket, no worries.
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This is pretty much what I’m doing. I have it set to charge overnight on heures creuses and I can get about 25% in one evening which is typically plenty. If I know I’m going somewhere further afield then I’m happy to be extravagant and charge on heures pleines, though not on red days of course 
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Hmm, my Partner now that I am down to 5,000 kms/year from the previous 80,000 of a few years ago costs me monthly, total cost, € 269. That is everything, fuel, maintenance, insurance and even depreciation although that hardly applies after 12 years of age and 8 years of ownership.
Apples and oranges though, init. If I’d kept my Zoé I’d have paid for it by now and it would be costing me less than €100 a month for the next seven years, which would make your Partner the expensive option again. In fact, the longer you keep any car the better the economics, but you win even harder with an EV.
Ps - an ICE car did this:
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Well let’s overlook the fact that that fire was caused by an electrical fault and is now used in defence of electrical vehicles, I’m surprised you didn’t see the irony in that. Or maybe I am not, evengelists do tend to overlook such things.
But your arguement seems to be if if if, so why didn’t you keep your beloved Zoe for all that time, instead of buying or renting yet another manufactured object. I have bought just 2 vehicles in the last 24 years, both of which remain with me. No doubt if I keep them both for as long as you suggest, they will be saving me even more money. The first of my 2 cars, which is perfectly serviceable after nearly half a million kms, costs me precisely € 10.29 per month. In fact the only reason that it is not my only car still, is because medically I needed an automatic.
I am not against the production and sale of EVs, but I do object to the holier than thou missionary zeal and accompanying insults towards those who choose, or cannot afford, to make the change.
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This was done to death at the time.
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Long rant coming up…
Was back in Blighty the other week and needed a hire car. The Polestar at Hertz was still a cracking deal - I paid about £180 for a week.
I stayed at my mum’s a few days. She doesn’t have a car, let alone a charging point for an EV 
Despite living in the middle of Wiltshire I could charge it at an ultra fast charger really easily.
Same when I stayed with friends in Swindon. And I charged it before heading to stay for the weekend in Daventry via Luton airport to pick up some friends.
On the Monday I had to drive Daventry to Heathrow via Luton. The battery was 60% iirc, and had to be at 80% when I returned it to Hertz.
My first mistake was when I didn’t charge it before leaving Daventry. Left Luton and still had plenty of charge left. My second mistake was when I thought I’d just recharge it closer to Heathrow.
I eventually got to a garage with fast chargers near Heathrow, and found they wouldn’t work with the car. I’ve used this garage before with a Polestar, and they worked that day with other people’s cars… But the dashboard on my Polestar just glowed red and said “error”.
I then drove to another charging station not too far away. It was the only one showing free spaces… And their card reader was faulty so impossible to pay for a charge. I could’ve paid with an app but you needed to set up your bank details in advance which wasn’t any help as my plane was leaving soon (plus my Sosh sim card was playing up so internet access was flaky).
My third mistake I think was searching for chargers using the car’s Google Maps. In hindsight I should’ve used the app on my phone but my internet wasn’t great and I was panicking a bit.
I made the call then to just go to the airport and drop the car off with whatever charge was left. Looking at the Hertz receipt, it only had 8% battery left…! They only charged me £55 to recharge it, though… Was expecting worse!
It hasn’t put me off driving an EV, but I might think twice about using one as a hire car in the future in an area I don’t know well.
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