Electric vehicles, pros and cons. Have your say.

[Jerzy Woking]

Only EV I'm considering at the moment is a pedalec, purely on the basis I'm a fat cunt who doesn't do gradients.

I have one, mostly used on the ECO setting, which gives a useful amount of assistance and about 200 kms on a charge. Boost mode cuts the range to 22 kms, but then I only use that for about 400 metres of the steep hill up to my house. And that's because of my knees, and not just because I am a fat cunt.

[Eddie Honda]

Electric motorbikes can fuck right off for me. I did some 30,000 miles on them in 2022, mostly long trips.

Must have been ever so slightly more exciting than riding a Dullville!

[Jerzy Woking]

Electric motorbikes can fuck right off for me. I did some 30,000 miles on them in 2022, mostly long trips.

Must have been ever so slightly more exciting than riding a Dullville!

I meant I did 30,000 miles on my ICE bikes in 2022. I had a loan of a Zero DS, range somewhere around 130 miles. Riding it the 60 miles to work left me with just 5 miles range left.

The Dullville is dull, but I did 17,000 kms on it last year. Will keep it for distance rides, as dull it maybe, but dependable and worth fuck all.

[Eddie Honda]

Electric motorbikes can fuck right off for me. I did some 30,000 miles on them in 2022, mostly long trips.

Must have been ever so slightly more exciting than riding a Dullville!

I meant I did 30,000 miles on my ICE bikes in 2022. I had a loan of a Zero DS, range somewhere around 130 miles. Riding it the 60 miles to work left me with just 5 miles range left.

The Dullville is dull, but I did 17,000 kms on it last year. Will keep it for distance rides, as dull it maybe, but dependable and worth fuck all.

Oh right. I was thinking you had a lot of time on your hands for all that charging!

[JimH]

That will be me then.
I have this
20230204_122231.jpg

And isn't it just lovely? If it suits what you use it for then that's great and, most importantly, fuck all to do with me.

The problem starts when someone tries to project it as some sort of global transport solution or suggesting that the way to make it work is for almost everyone else to change what they do.

[FhakeConcern]

First for my own situation a small EV would work well to replace Mrs Concern's Modus 1.6 pez as we use it for seeing my mum twice or three times a week which is a 60 mile round trip and other local shop trips. However the 19 year old Modus generally only needs the usual service items each year and uses the now cheap petrol at 40mpg however you drive it. So laying out for any new car doesn't make financial sense.
My Volvo C30 T5 is used for long journeys mostly from our home on the Sussex coast up to Norwich where our kids live. If we leave early and come home late I can do that in about 2 1/2 hours each way leaving us maximum time with the kids. I usually fill up with petrol before I come home as if I really press on it will be on the red, but obviously that only takes about 5 minutes. If I drive slower it will go there and back without a refill. Any EV (including Telsa) would need at least one proper charge maybe two and I'm guessing would take at least 1/2 hour each charge that I don't want to spend standing around. It wouldn't be possible to charge at either of the kids houses. That means an EV is out to replace the Volvo as well.
Second the environmental impact is something that is now coming to the attention of everyone. Some time ago Volvo and Polestar compared the carbon footprint of an electric Polestar to a similar ICE Volvo (XC40 I think) and it calculated at least 50k miles before the EV broke even. Of course that isn't the end either as pointed out earlier in the thread (sorry can't remember who) the extraction of minerals for the cars, batteries and infastructure to produce electricity to charge the things is ruining the environment in ways worse than exracting fossil fuels! I saw this article in my mum's Torygraph...

IMG_6042.JPG (719.06 KiB) Viewed 2106 times

It all sounds pretty dreadfull and I wonder if the politicians will switch to promoting hydrogen fuel cell motors...

[DodgeRover]

They have their place, for a lot of my jobs an electric CF would do, then again I would also need a proper engined van for all the others, in reality unless I splashed out on a second set of every tool I carry swapping from one vehicle to the other would be an absolute pain as would take long enough to put me off using the vehicle that didn't have the tools in it..

[BusmansHoliday]

To me, anything that is electric power is directly connected to a mains supply, trains, trams, trolleybuses. Modern, zero emission vehicles are battery powered. Yes you can argue the toss that the batteries provide electricity, but if they tried selling them as battery cars people would have a different view, I'm quite sure.

After all, you'd not going to get some boring twat going on about their EV in the pub because as a 'battery vehicle', people will start taking the piss and asking how many Duracell's does it take etc. Add to that asking how many kids have died mining the lithium to run it will definitely shut the twats up. I've tried that, it works.

Yes, battery powered vehicles have a place in the future, but they are not new, battery powered cars and buses were available over a century ago. They're useful in cities and picking the kids up from the school a mile away (because the fat little bastards had too many McD's for lunch), but anything over a hundred miles is still Dino juice for a time to come.

[AMCrebel]

Stuff I can see in favour -
Less noise, no fumes coming oot the back*, torque means they have brill acceleration. Easier servicing - I wouldn't miss oil changes a bit, and there are fewer moving parts to fuck up and wear out.

Against
Everything everyone else mentioned.

*doesn't mean there are nae fumes being emitted, just not oot of the auspuffer. They also produce particle emission from tyres and brakes just like all shite.

I'd get a Leaf or maybe an Ampera but they are still out of my price range at present - and by the time they are cheap enough for me, they'll be fucked.

[treehugger]

You could be a selfish cunt and just say let's outsource the misery to Africa for mining the lithium, so long as we have clear air in the UK?