| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:EU to ban new petrol/car sales from 2035. | |
| Posted by: | Raymond Havelock | |
| Date/Time: | 13/06/22 08:19:00 |
| Ever since I was a kid I always wowed at the possibility of the electric car. Back then all the Milk floats were electric and even the council used electric hand carts for minor refuse. Just the City of London remain users of Electric utility vehicles. Now we have them and in the main they are excellent to drive, but still hamstrung with shortcomings. It simply has not been thought through and like so many things in this country completely lacks infrastructure to support properly. My own view is a car nowadays ought to be as versatile vehicle as possible, capable of long and short journeys and ample load space to make it an all round road vehicle as useful as possible. It's very hard to find a decent vehicle of any mode that fits that bill, making a high spec van/bus more of an option but not really economic. The modern 'global' cars are too large (at least for UK roads and many european cities) partly to create a safer vehicle, and yet some have almost less load space than a Mk1 Mini and none match the capacity of older estates and saloons.. Many SUVs are a joke for the tiny amount of internal space rendering them nothing more than a large car comfortable for occupants but hopeless for taking cargo with them. EV range is a problem. One of my colleagues has a Nissan Leaf. He's lost count of how many times he's been towed of the M2 and M20 when the fully charged vehicle runs out of power after 45 miles, in rain and cold weather thats even less. The wipers, demister and lights etc. all drain it very quickly. He spends hours stuck at motorway services charging or waiting for a charger. It places burdens on other colleagues waiting for him. But worst of all is being a passenger with him. He is sweating buckets and stressed each time the range display drops below the distance to the next junction. Stuck in a car thats doing 40 in rain on the M20 is scary and enough to convince me that far more needs to be developed with EVs. Little City runabouts and light vans are probably the best options but working vehicles that do 100- 175 miles a day are not. Reading to London and back including dwell time and actual locations at each end is near 100 miles. Even in a petrol vehicle the usual delays and diversions can push the fuel consumption over the 100 mile mark. Costly and annoying but at least not going to leave me needing a tow or a search to recharge or the stress of it. London to Northampton and back is over 100 miles R/T and EVs can't really do that except in perfect conditions with no ancillaries on. A long way to go, I'm sure it's a achievable but until the hype and hysteria gets levelled by pragmatism and proper solutions it's not really going to get there. The same for Hydrogen, it's nearly there, a far more versatile means of fuel and can use both the existing gas network and fuel station network and takes seconds to refuel. Not enough RD funds going into that but it is far more practical if the safety issues can be overcome. That is within technology and engineerings means but getting it right and standardised is the goal. |