Hi John you might enjoy these
Obie was one of my staff at Rhodes - an ‘old school’ one off, seldom sober after noon, but a demon with a camera who photographed Africa from Cape to Cairo
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Wìth our relocation back to England getting nearer I see no piont in taking our left hand drive French registered car with us.
I have always been anti EV but now looking at buying in the UK I perhaps should consider the option until I read the following on Sky News
‘Ms Reeves is also thought to be considering bringing in a pay-per-mile tax for electric vehicle drivers.’
Is this the thin end of the wedge and the end of the honeymoon period for EV owners in the UK and eventually further afield?
That aside I am rather smitten with the new Citreon C3 Aircross.Being old school, the petrol version comes in at 3k cheaper than the EV version so would be my first choice.
Perhaps the UK budget on Wednesday will helo me decide.
It was floated and apparently dropped. Anyway, it would need to be set pretty high to come close to the running costs of an ICE.
Ours isn’t new, so maybe some things have changed. We like ours for its practical size and it has quite a lot of oomph in the engine. It’s also an automatic, which is good in traffic / for our country lanes. So for day to day run-around it’s been useful.
A few small things: the engine sounds a bit rough/noisy (maybe the age of ours). It has an infuriating habit that it’s impossible to permanently turn off the lane guidance system so it beeps every time it goes over the white lines - on our country lanes that’s often almost inevitable. The tyre warning light is on at the moment for no apparent reason other than the cold weather. The back seats go down, but not nice and flat (but then it seems these days few cars do).
As much as anything it is the ease of access that attracts me. I measured the front door size which is the same width as our Kangoo which surprised me so should be easy to get into although slightly lower in hieght.
I am not that flexible so need a good space to climb through.
I have tried sitting in one here but of course the steering wheel was missing from where I will be sat in the UK version.
My insurance company have advised I can keep our current french car in the UK for up to 3 monrhs so should have plenty of time to test drive and decide.
Then will bring Kangoo back to France to sell.
Back in the summer we sold our Smart car to these people vendezvotrevoiture.fr who gave a great price and really easy to deal with.
If anyone is looking at selling they are well worth contacting.
We have a 2YO aircross as well as the Karoq. It’s a slightly bouncy vehicle, the engine is enthusiastic for a 1.2 petrol, and it’s reasonably comfy but I definitely prefer the Karoq (2L diesel) for longer drives.
One thing to note is the windscreen is high, and that can make scraping ice off more difficult than expected.
That in itself says a lot John 
Making the transition in the UK wouldn’t be pleasant.
Despite both our daily drivers here being EVs, trouble free and joys to own, after driving extensively in the UK this summer in our i4 (loads of range) I wouldn’t consider owning an EV in the UK. Lousy infrastructure and electricity costs.
Thanks John, as always the voice of reason and practical experience.
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I’m humbled. I’m sure many wouldn’t agree
Though it depends on your driving patterns and typical journeys. If I was mostly doing journeys within the range of a single charge and had home charging, I wouldn’t hesitate. If I would be regularly using commercial chargers then I’d be thinking long and hard as the pricing is pretty outrageous unless you take a subscription.
Indeed it does John. But you as a purchaser should not have to make that decision.
Based on personal experience and many miles (we bugger around a lot🙂) the infrastructure in the UK is shit compared to any other Northern European country. I have no range anxiety in Northern Europe, in the UK, all the time.
That said, Northern Italy is a bit dodgy, like the UK, you have to deviate to high speed chargers in the middle of nowhere (though we did once discoverer and stay in a charming little town as a result). I wouldn’t bother trying in Southern Italy. The Northern Spain public network was very dodgy (apps- language - working) though that was two years ago and the hotel we chose was surprisingly well equipped, thank goodness. Otherwise we wouldn’t have made the Santander ferry.
All in all if I was living in the UK, and with UK electricity prices, I’d say to myself “do I need this bother”. A little petrol VW hybrid would do me nicely
Personally, I’m on the wait side of all this.
Live in Burgundy, +/- 250km from central Paris, which I travel to at least 6 times a year, sometimes more so in the greater Paris region. I certainly don’t want to charge en route if the temperatures are too hot or cold to reach my destination.
I also have to travel to Bordeaux, Brittany, Grenoble & the South of France ( when I’m down your way next @John_Scully, love to meet up for a coffee, I may have to go to Valbonne soon). Travelling for professional reasons, I can’t & I don’t want to sit in a motorway cafe watching the time left for when I can set off again to the next charging point. Travelling 7hrs in a car with ICE is more than enough time.
If I didn’t have these constraints, yes, certainly I’d buy an EV, if it could easily do 400km & I could carry a couple of bales of hay / straw in the back.
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Indeed but I make decisions based on the world we have rather than the world I would like.
Having travelled the length of the UK a few times over the summer, I don’t have an issue with the infrastructure as such, just the pricing. As I say, for my driving habits I still wouldn’t hesitate to have an EV so long as I could charge at home for the most part.
I find this a problem with most modern cars, as a result I have driven for years with the visors permanently down.
I agree with you on most things but I have to disagree about your infrastructure statement, whilst seconding the issue about exorbitant kWh costs in the UK.
I’ve run my 40kWh Leaf (real world range 200-250km) for over 7 years & taken it on trips north of the channel many times, usually 2 or 3 times a year, with some trips totalling around 2000 kms. I’ve not had any range anxiety as I’ve found that distance between rapid chargers to be a lot less than France (for fairly obvious reasons). The provision at a lot of UK motorway services has gone from a couple of badly maintained units to rows of shiny reliable ones, often with two suppliers present at the same stop. Yes, busy times can be frustrating (especially if you need to find the less common Chademo outlets) & the charging speeds can be throttled if there are too many cars drawing dull power, but on the whole I’ve had no problems in recent years.
There are also many destination chargers (slower chargers away from the motorway network) available, some in the most surprising places. I’ve found Connected Kerb to be very good in this respect. Such chargers are also a lot cheaper than the headline grabbing rapids.
Obviously, I second @JohnH 's comment that if you live in the UK & can home charge for most of your needs the rapid charger provision is a lot less of an issue.
N.B. Despite wider availability I always do my homework for any new route trip by using apps like ChargeMap & ZapMap
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It certainly it is, but you must be taking breaks in that time…?
You’d be surprised how much charge you can put into a car in the time it takes to walk from the charger to the services building, use the loo, maybe have a coffee, & back again. If you decide to have a proper break (as you should on such a journey) then charging time becomes irrelevant.
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I’m back to thinking about it - the tax advantage to having an EV through work has shifted a bit in my favour so it could be worth it. But charging away from home is typically more expensive that petrol (not hat I’d need to do that very often).
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FTFY
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Not a problem on my “modern” car. Before I leave the house, I press a button on my smart phone and it sends an instruction to the car to switch on the heating (or clime in summer) and warm the seats so that by the time I get to the car the ice is gone and the car is nice and warm. I know this is not helpful or of interest to you David as you have neither an EV nor a smartphone but it is an additional bonus of having an EV 
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Indeed, but I have a bottle of hot tap water with a couple of squirts of washing up liquid in to scatter all over the screen, mirrors and side windows. Within seconds the screen is not only clear but clean as well. 
But the remark about high screens was nothing to do with icing, excess and unecessary light from above is my gripe.
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