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Shoulda got a Tesla truck.
https://www.tesla.com/cybertruck
My neighbour thinks it's awesome, I think it may be the ugliest vehicle ever.
Why don’t they put cables overhead on every road and have a long pole from the car to the cable. They could call them “trolley cars/buses”
Or go the other way and lay tracks on the roads. They could call them “tramcars”
It’s the future
Been on a new build site that has them built in on the drives. Whole site is electric only, heating comes from underground and they have solar panels for electricity. This may become more popular as time goes on.
As for terraced, imagine its a nightmare, park outside my house probably 30 percent of the time so even if I had the means I doubt I'd be able to put them to use if I had an EV. Parking is manic round here!!
I drove an EV here in China for about a year. As you can imagine, most people (myself included) who live in Chinese cities, live in high-rise apartments. We have underground parking in my complex, however, the electric supply in the parking area was from extension leads and not suitable for charging an EV.
I had a kind neighbour who lived in a ground-floor apartment, she would kindly allow me to pass the charging cable through her window and charge the car that way. It wasn't really a suitable long-term solution though and the car would take about 9 hours to fully charge from about 10%.
So I found myself looking for a public charging point, the nearest I could find was about a mile and a half away from where I lived - so, not really that convenient. It was also frustrating to find cars that were fully charged but the owners had just left them there and so I couldn't access the charger.
I got rid of the car (this was about 5 years ago) it was, for me, a somewhat frustrating experience. In fairness, the situation has improved greatly and there are far more places to charge an EV now.
I was there last week and it was one of those moments when you see something out of the corner of your eye as you're driving past it that you cannot be 100 per cent sure about, but I thought it was something I would check next time because the notion that it would be free was a surprise to me.
I have sold EV’s pretty much from their mainstream inception on 2011.
One of the first qualifying questions is and still is “do you have off road parking?”
“How many miles do you drive a day/week?”
This is meant to rule you in or out.
If you live in a terrace or block of flats then this isn’t for you and I used to more than emphasis this.
If you visit aunt ness in Scotland once a week then again this isn’t for you.
Fast forward to 2021 and the range is getting bigger across the board and more and more charging stations with rapid charging means that the frequency of charging is reducing. So in theory it’s now becoming more viable and less inconvenient for you to drive an EV.
Free chargers are everywhere Bob. I took the kids to some national trust place in the middle of nowhere recently and they had a free charger there. What I do find a bit frustrating is that they are normally in premium locations ie right by the front door of the supermarket. There is no need for this and I suspect it leads to people in ice cars parking in those spaces which does happen (and can lead to their cars getting damaged). I’d rather they were at the back of the car park to be honest where nobody else would want to park anyway. Although personally I have no real need to use supermarket chargers- I can charge at home at the same speed.
The places that should have them but don’t always are theme parks etc where you might well drive 100+miles to visit. Thinking of my recent trips like that: bluestone has 3 or 4 chargers and asks people to use them for no more than 4 hours at a time which is fine, but folly farm did not have any at all and nor does peppa pig world. My car can quite easily do that round trip to Pembrokeshire from Cardiff on a single charge but for anyone coming from a bit further afield or with a smaller range, it means you have to factor in a stop at a charging point somewhere on the way home which is a bit of a faff (but then on a lengthy journey you’d want to stop anyway). Nobody drives more than a few miles to the supermarket and while it’s great that there are so many chargers out there in places like that, I’d much rather see them in the sorts of places you might go to for a day out.
Interesting points you make about the etron, we've got one on order and should be taking delivery at the start of August. Currently have a Mini Electric and is intended as our 2nd car but has been difficult to manage with the 145 (real life 105) mile range so looking forward to utilising that extra 100 miles! Both are company cars and combined value is over £100k but our monthly cost has dropped to something like 5% of what it was with cheaper ICE cars.
I love mine. I took it during peak lockdown so hadn’t ever seen one in real life before mine arrived. It’s not really an suv shape, more of a blown-up hatchback. But it’s a very nice place to spend your time. It’s my first EV and the one thing that has taken us by surprise is the acceleration/speed. In 40 years of combined driving my wife and i had a single speeding ticket and that was a dodgy one issued abroad. In the first 3 months of driving the EV we picked up 3 more- it just accelerates so quickly and goes so fast without you noticing it due to to the lack of noise.
And it is genuinely easier to live with than an ice car. For us.
yeah my last place was terraced and it was a total nightmare to park, sometimes I'd end up 3 streets away.
I grew up on a terrraced street as well, but I can't ever remember my dad having to park anywhere other than directly outside the house. Going down that old street now it is utter chaos - cars everywhere.
A lot of companies are putting a lot of money into self driving electric cars - and the business model that many people think will evntually win out will be pay as you go car usage. Summon a car when you need it, it does the journey and then ****s off to do someone else's trip while you're in asda or whatever. Actual car ownership may one day be greatly reduced - and these old victorian streets that weren't built with parking in mind may become a lot more open.