Diesel & petrol alternatives? Your thoughts please

Which suggests the development of EVs has dome way to go before they can be considered practical by many people.

We will be driving to the NE quite frequently when our son and family move there this Autumn. As I've said several times on this thread we have an EV with a range extender and it is quite capable of long distance journeys with fast/rapid charging probably taking 20 mins at the most. It's most unlikely that anyone will run a battery into the ground any more than they will run their diesel/petrol down to the last drop so most EV charging is part charging, a top up. What we have noticed in the last year is that there are increasing numbers of EV owners and we can see that provision for charging will have to be increased rapidly to keep up with the need otherwise at busy times people will be kept waiting for charging.

I have put links on this thread to Ecotricity who run the motorway service chargers, the details about different types of charging can be found on there. 

The problem with Tesla cars is the wheelbarrow load of money required to purchase them and antics of the person running the show. Seems that every time he opens his mouth something goes wrong.

For me I will rely on my diesel, until my dying day, as I know that it does the job required and I could afford it when I bought it.

Until an all electric vehicle does the job then I will not consider changing my car.

Little also seems to made of the environmental impact of EV's in their manufacture and, in due course, the recycling of old batteries which seem to rely on materials that are themselves quite rare.

I was interested to see the adverts on tv for the new Audi e-tron - a quattro indeed. On further investigation and a starting price of £71K, it seems it has a max range of 248 miles:  "The e-tron goes the distance too, with a range of 248 miles* on a single charge under stringent test conditions"

In real world terms you'd be lucky to get 200 miles imho, put a caravan on the back, reducing it further to 100 miles (if it is possible?) meaning a trip to Newquay, Cornwall from North Shropshire would take approximately 9 hours instead of the current 6 hours allowing for 3 charges en route.

Whilst I applaud the merits of owning such a vehicle, plus the green credentials which are important the world over, at such an eye-watering price, I'm sticking with my current vehicle for now.

Producing all these battery powered vehicles will surely have an environmental effect in future years, maybe not quite as difficult as disposing of nuclear waste, but there has to be some downside, somewhere?

Until we get EV s that are capable of towing a couple of tonnes at least 300 miles on a single charge, AND cost very little more than a diesel version of the same vehicle, they are merely a pipe dream or a rich mans toy.

The powers that be will force us out of our towcars and Motorhomes with stricter emission controls in the MOT, until only very expensive electric cars and their well heeled owners can afford to run a vehicle at all. 

Rural communities who usually run 10 year old vehicles or older. Either that or Tractors....anyone ever made an electric Tractor or Combine Harvester I wonder?

And of course hardly any Public transport because of austerity.

I can see masses of folk having to drive their vehicles with or without an MOT  simply to get about.

Hopefully i will be pushing up the daises by then.

Interesting point of view in this article.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45786690

The comments on this article are a more realistic scenario.

The batteries on our EV are guaranteed for eight years, they are modular and I think the developments are heading towards replacing modular units etc rather than the typical "one big " battery found on conventional motors. Our batteries take up the space in the sub-frame like a flat pack of dominoes, a totally different engineering concept. I've said before our car is 95% recyclable and it isn't made from conventional materials either, so yet another different concept. We have a carbon fibre body and an aluminium chassis (BMW i3.)

Before purchasing the EV we ran a cheap Citroen C3 Picasso (petrol) so we made a leap of faith in this purchase which we hope to hang on to for as long as possible. 

The developments in EV design are growing apace and we've seen a big increase in EV ownership over the year since we bought ours. I think there are now five in our 500 pop. village so that's one per hundred locally, I don't think it will be long before we see more.

No doubt other developments will come along, the hydrogen fuel cell seems to be more of a possibility.

'Prophets of doom', 'thumping on about' ! Pretty loaded and biased comments there in my opinion! Surely, any move away from fossil fuel, partially or fully, is just another acknowledgement that we can't continue, for what ever reason, like we currently are!