Motors What do you drive? - The Photo Gallery

Good info, I'll have to remember that for when I eventually go EV

 

Electroverse is fantastic. As someone who had been driving EV from 2017, Electroverse and government's contactless payment mandate had made public charging a doddle in comparison to early days. Tesla (because car) and Electroverse are the only ones I need now, even in Europe mainland.

I'm renting a "VW ID4 or similar" late August in Norway. I'll be relying on only Electroverse + Tesla app.

Curious why it's 7.9p off peak, Intelligent Octopus Go is 7p off peak.

I agree with longer charging cables. Make sure it will reach 3 corner of your primary parking spot and most of your secondary. I currently have a 7.5m untethered cable for my socketed charge point. It only reaches 1 corner for the outer space. This means if I change the 11 years old Nissan Leaf and it's not at left-rear, I'll need to buy a new cable. Luckily it can be easily changed because it's not tethered on the unit.

 

I found this out the hard way, when I switched from a Renault Zoe (socket behind nose badge) to an MG4 (socket left rear).
A narrow 1960's driveway with a wall down one side means I can either park nose in & get out of the car or reverse in and charge it.

The Zoe came with a free charger, and I stupidly specified the 5m tethered cable version. It's obsolete now (BP Pulse), and needs replacing anyway.
I'll get around to it one day, but for now I have free 7kW charging at work.

 

Yup I think for me I need a cable that in some far off future when I have given up my need to burn all the fuel and play with my gearstick could reach three EVs without having to play the parking Merry go around game, so probably need a 12m cable.

 

I'm never going to be able to charge an EV at home, as my house is set back from the road about 20m (with public green space between my front garden and the road) and doesn't have a drive. I'm not really sure how owning an EV is ever going to be practical for me, to be honest - I could charge it at public charging stations, if there were more than a bare handful around here and they weren't so expensive.

 

With the new mandates to councils to put these things in, you would likely get permission for works and grant support from them.

Though there of course is an annual charge associated with upkeep of the installation on public land.

Of course this assume you can always park outside your house, if not it is no good.

 

There's no designated parking on our street and it's always busy. Even then, I'm not quite sure how having a charger, hooked up to my own electricity supply, would work if it was sitting on the pavement 20m + from my house?

I do think EVs are the way to go but there are going to be a lot of people who simply won't be able to charge one at home - if you live in a house without a drive or immediate on-street parking, if you live in a block of flats etc. I suppose one solution is to make public chargers ubiquitous, cheap and quick enough to be shared effectively between multiple EVs per day, but we aren't there yet.

I kind of wish mild hybrids were more popular - benefits of reduced emissions, good for urban driving, still have the range of ICE cars for ex-urban driving, and smaller batteries meaning less resources being consumed per vehicle. But they seem to be pretty rare birds.

 

Currently, EV isn't for everyone, especially those who don't have driveway. It must be frustrating and feel left out for people who want to get cheaper motoring.

I'm in Barnet, I've managed to tested these charging sticks:
https://trojan.energy/ev-charging-for-drivers/



Not a fan due to the size. But it does seem to offer a viable alternative to people on that road no option for driveway.

There's more out there. There's also government grant for "cross-pavement solution". It'll take more time for public infrastructure to be in place.

One thing we must not do is to replace petrol station with rapid charging stations. Hopefully people in power will realise plugged in EV are more than cars, they are an asset to the national grid to soak up excess renewables and help balance the grid. V2H/V2G will go one step further and can be a drain as well as a tap.

For example, things like IOG and this:
https://www.indra.co.uk/v2h/

 

(perhaps a EV thread might be better for discussions, not everyone is interested in EV's and this is off topic for "what do you drive")

Yes, that's a concern and only time will tell.

Theory is that generally calendar ageing will be more than cycle ageing.
Let's take a modest 50 kWh battery doing 3.5 mi/kWh can drive 175 miles per cycle. 1000 cycles is ~170k miles. NMC are generally quoted to be 1000 cycles degrade to 80%, not taking into account calendar ageing. LFP are said can do 3000 cycles.
So I personally would prefer to use it rather than let it slowly waste away.

Personally, I've not noticed any accelerated degradation for the daily V2H cycles I've put on to the 24 kWh Leaf. (V2H started late 2023, I furiously started recording data)

 

I would 100% agree with you, but... given how few posts there are in here (in general) I don't see the harm in having a singular driving thread that's relatively active rather than two separate driving threads that are tumbleweed central

 

Counterpoint to battery degeneration:-

A Mustang Mach-e with 92% battery health after reaching the moon - https://electrek.co/2025/07/22/afte...ord-mustang-mach-e-still-has-92-battery-life/
An ID3 that's lost 8 miles of range after 107,000 miles - https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/...-3-loses-eight-miles-range-after-107000-miles

 

But, as batteries deteriorate with age, not just usage, achieving those mileages at a slower rate, e.g. 10,000 per annum, would result in a greater loss of capacity, especially as the Ford would be 25 years old. The amount of usage of high speed charging, will also have an effect on battery life-span.

 

Good tip, ta . Have to muck about with a bunch more apps tomorrow just to get the charger working, so I'll look this one up when I do.

I couldn't tell you where I got the "7.9p/kWh" figure from, because the confirmation email I just checked says it's "7p/kWh"

For our circumstances this is not an issue, as the position of the driveway and charge socket line up nicely. A 5m tethered cable is more than enough to reach from the charger on the wall to the socket on the car.

We'll have this car for at least the next 4 years, and we do not plan to be living here that long. Taking the charger with us when we leave is going to be a lot more hassle than it's worth, so we'll just pay for a new charger when we move. The landlord isn't going to be terribly bothered either way; we're adding value to their property just by having any charger fitted, and the cost to them is precisely £0.00 . (For the purposes of completeness, yes we cleared it with them first )

 

Indeed, the numbers are all driven over a short time compared to typical car lifetime.

As someone who don't drives as much. I'm only counting years.
This is why I so want V2G/V2H. Battery health seems to be "use it or loose it" kind of thing. So might as well put those embedded carbon (from manufacturing) to work.

There's grant money available for renters:
https://www.gov.uk/electric-vehicle-chargepoint-grant-household

I spy 9 and 0 are next to each other on the keyboard

 

Wait, we believe figures that come out of a VW car now

 

I'm inclined to, as the VW belongs to ADAC (Germany's AA/RAC equivalent)

 

I totally believe the ADAC report, but hold on there. how many independent and government agencies did they successfully manage to con with their ECU programming fudging their emissions??

 

Just picked this up yesterday, Royal Enfield Himalayan 411, you'll have to excuse the gormless look (I don't do photographs ), really pleased with it, it's pretty much new, only done 1600 miles.
Plan is to eventually do some trials on it, hopefully including the Lands End, Edinburgh and Exeter Trials.
Just need to get my bike license now, ,

 

Looks pretty sweet, have you any experience of riding bikes? If it was me I'd be spending all my time off road and keeping away from motorists as much as possible