Towing a T/A with an EV - real world

The first non horse drawn vehicle was electric but other designs overtook it. Fuel was a problem, there were no petrol stations but this was overcome.

No-one is being forced to change vehicles, no-one was forced off a horse, in fact ICE vehicles were only affordable for a few....then look what happened mass production came along. The change at present is gradual but the aim is to replace ICE with something which is better for the environment, less wasteful for limited fossil fuel stocks, maybe not even electric in the end, other systems are being developed.

Maybe caravan design will have to change to accommodate these changes, sometimes it's worth thinking outside the box? 

using their company car

and that is the critical bit, isn't it? 

Depends how you look at it. I went back in to the company car scheme specifically to choose an EV, knowing I could tow my caravan with it. I could have stayed out, and carried on using my old diesel, but it was cheaper and a better experience to go electric. 

It's been so good, we sold our PHEV and bought (yes actually bought with our money) a second EV as our second car. No special discounts. No tax breaks, just plain old cash and personal choice. Can we tow a caravan with it? No. But we don't need to - its a second car. 

Clearly not everyone has access to a company car. And clearly EVs are more expensive (for now) than ICE cars up front. And some people just don't want them for all sorts of very valid reasons - like not wanting to unhitch to recharge when towing because they think it's a PITA. Or because they cant charge from home. Or because they don't have a stick to change gears with and don't make a big loud noise.  All fine and I have no problem with that. 

But it does not change the fact that you can tow a caravan (small or 1800kg MTPLM T/A) with an EV, and some people will choose to do so, because for them, it's the right thing to do. 

We currently tow with a Outlander PHEV using E10 we now see only 28/29 mpg towing as opposed to 31/32 mpg using E5, at present we charge up off peak at home for 5 pence kWh on Friday this changes to 20.4 pence a kWh, the increase from 5 pence to 20.8 pence a kWh has increased the average cost per mile to around 14.5 pence per mile , we no longer use public due to the increase cost. 

Not that I'd be buying the BMW iXM60 .... far too expensive, but I'd hope it comes with a choice of interior colour! That tan is horrible (Obviously IMHO!). And that steering wheel doesn't look too different from The All-agro's Quartic wheel that was deemed to be a laughing stock at the time! 😉

EV’s are moving to price match ICE cars simply because the costs of compliance with new EU7 regs will add upto £4k to the cost of an ICE and is already killing the budget city car sector. This is pricing low income car drivers off the road (no doubt what technocrats want) and leading to closure of car factories and significant redundancies. As cars gradually become the preserve of the middle and upper classes there will be social unrest. No one voted for net zero and whatever poeple say in opinion polls and the tiny minority post on social media, the masses will rise up and revolt against the undemocratic elite effectively forcing a reduction in living standards on people. Various car industry heads are quietly very concerned about the direction unelected officials and politicians running scared of Greta are taking. As for wood pellet fuelled power stations - a very significant proportion end up at the bottom of the North Sea. They are transported by diesel fuelled ship from North America and because of the risk of spontaneous combustion can only be offloaded in port below a certain temperature. If the load is above a specific temperature they are dumped at sea. This happens quite frequently. 

I thought the pellets were unloaded from the ships on the west coast and transported across country by train - similar to coal in the past.

Flatcoat

I totally agree with you. Stellantis, VW and BMW CEO's have already voiced that opinion to HMG and EU leaders. They have also said that they cannot justify further investment in Euro 7 for an engine that will be obsolete a few years later.

You can’t stop so called progress but my real concern is with the massive environmental damage being done and the human exploitation.

In Australia, only two percent of the country’s 3,300 metric tons of lithium-ion waste is recycled. Unwanted MP3 players and laptops often end up in landfills, where metals from the electrodes and ionic fluids from the electrolyte can leak into the environment.

Because lithium cathodes degrade over time, they cannot be placed into new batteries. Researchers are using robotics technology developed for nuclear power plants to find ways to remove and dismantle lithium-ion cells from electric vehicles. There have been a number of fires at recycling plants where lithium-ion batteries have been stored improperly, or disguised as lead-acid batteries and put through a crusher. Not only have these batteries burned at recycling plants, but auto makers are seeing battery-related fires leading to vehicle recalls and safety probes. In October, U.S. safety regulators opened a probe into more than 77,000 electric Chevy Bolts after two owners complained of fires that appeared to have begun under the back seat where the battery is located.

Because manufacturers are secretive about what goes into their batteries, it makes it harder to recycle them properly. Currently, recovered cells are usually shredded, creating a mixture of metal that can then be separated using pyrometallurgical techniques—burning—which wastes a lot of the lithium. Alternative techniques, including biological recycling where bacteria are used to process the materials, and hydrometallurgical techniques which use solutions of chemicals in a similar way to how lithium is extracted from brine are being investigated.

It is estimated that between 2021 and 2030, about 12.85 million tons of EV lithium ion batteries will go offline worldwide, and over 10 million tons of lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese will be mined for new batteries. China is being pushed to increase battery recycling since repurposed batteries could be used as backup power systems for China’s 5G stations or reused in shared e-bikes, which would save 63 million tons of carbon emissions from new battery manufacturing.

Cobalt Extraction Also Poses Environmental Problems

Cobalt is found in huge quantities in the Democratic Republic of Congo and central Africa where it is extracted from the ground by hand, using child labor, without protective equipment. China owns eight of the 14 largest cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo and they account for about half of the country’s output. While China has only 1 percent of the world’s cobalt reserves, it dominates in the processing of raw cobalt. The Democratic Republic of Congo is the source of over two-thirds of global cobalt production, but China has over 80 percent control of the cobalt refining industry, where raw material is turned into commercial-grade cobalt metal.

Like lithium, the price of cobalt has quadrupled in the last two years.

The emotional child having her life taken away has nothing to complain about compared to the ragged and shoeless children being exploited in having to hand dig cobalt mines in Africa.

Oneputt - sorry but posting the text of an article verbatim from a biased source (specifically - the one you already posted) does not make it any less biased or any more accurate. 

CT I’m not going to get into a tit for tat over this as I don’t want the thread closed but perhaps you could tell me where you get you information