Electric Vehicles EVs

I loved my Insight. Shouldn’t have sold it, obviously.

I hear folk are putting in bigger, more efficient batteries now. I wonder how well one would do with that and a super efficient one-litre turbo. I bet 100mpg would be easily doable with newer tech.

XL1s are clearly bonkers money but it’s sad how little we seem to have learned from these two cars. Stupid car buying public and their stupid love of SUVs.

I mean so far as I'm aware there were never any real comeback to dieselgate so I wouldn't hold your breath.

It’s cost VW loads. Like tens of billions in fines and compensation payments.

Fair enough, I was thinking of this article I read:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n15/john-lanchester/fraudpocalypse

Which seemed to imply that everyone basically got away with it as they were shielded by the German government.

We leased a couple of VWs at work in 2016. Every now and then I think I’d be silly not to join the future claims.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/diesel-emissions-group-legal-claims/

@Belagerent yeah I doubt much will happen but fines/compensation etc could be possible.

@Hefty from a family member who did some sort of claim against VW (think she was targeted by some claims company) she ended up getting about £600 or something. I think these claims companies benefit waaaay more than anyone else.

At the risk of ending up in the golf club I can’t see how the vehicle owner has suffered a loss they got a car that was as fast and economical as VW promised for a lower price than if it had a miracle engine that had low emissions as well.
I’m was the rest of us who suffered

.

That’s why I haven’t claimed. It worked as expected. But it’s free money and they shouldn’t get away with being Klinsmanns.

I guess that they're now getting hit with ulez is one substantial thing. Increased parking permit charges too.

But surely any penalty against VW shouldn’t be given to individuals.
Aggi were the cars actually reassessed on emissions?

The ULEZ came in after so it wasn't reassessed.

Those diesel cars were sold as "clean" though and now quite recent ones are subject to ulez penalties unlike much older petrol cars

ULEZ is based on Euro emissions category, and AFAIK no cars had their category changed retrospectively.

In any case the majority of dieselgate cars were sold during the Euro 5 era, and all diesel cars from that era pay the ULEZ charge anyway. Only Euro 6 are exempt.

My in laws have a PHEV Mitsubishi Outlander which isn't ULEZ compliant which seems astonishing. The small engine in there must run on coal or something.

I can’t see how the vehicle owner has suffered a loss

They haven't. They have double dipped, first from the low tax bracket and reduced BIK (which is exactly why they bought them in the first place) and now from these bogus claims.

IMHO they can all fuck off and the class action should have been brought by the state with the procceds being hypothecated to clean air initiatives.

The one upside is thst usually these sorts of things benefit the economy through jobs and increased spending of these small amounts - ie if people were being awarded >£100k they'd stash the money, but <£2k they just buy a new TV.

Is this true though based on real world actual use?

We do a few medium journeys, occasional long journeys, but lots of short journeys - eg 5 miles p/d to nursery, 8 miles p/w to tennis, etc. etc.

I bet a 15 mile range would cover 80% of our driving.

I can believe rep spending their week on the M4 would be better with a modern diesel over a PHEV, but the majority of UK drivers? I struggle to believe it.

I see I've triggered a few PHEV owners in this thread in the last 24 hours.

There are a few news reports and studies, including this US one from the end of last year that suggest two things:

1. People aren't charging their PHEV at all or as much as they should be to come anywhere close to the claimed emissions figures
   
2. Fuel consumption (and therefore emissions) are much higher in real life for PHEV than the stated emission per mile anyway
   
   

It's also worth noting that calculations for emissions for fuel consumed do not consider environmental cost of extracting, transporting, refining, transporting again, storage and delivery of fuel over electricity which, even when created through the burning of fossil fuels, is far better for the environment.

Sure there are people on this thread who own super edge case, no longer for sale, hybrid oddities or who charge every day but there are also loads of people who bought a 330e or an X5 hybrid on their company scheme because of the massively lower company car tax who haven't charged them once in their life.

Even if they do, the range claims are clearly false, with that Guardian article that started this discussed yesterday showing the BMW tested as spewing out 3x more carbon on average than claimed.

Finally, the vast majority of hybrids are also large vehicles. Toyota make a few small ones but most are large SUVs which only exacerbates the problem.

Con. Job.

I don't think getting a plug in hybrid to use the electric range is particularly edge case. Sure there's probably people cruising around in a company PHEV Merc that have never been plugged in but if you're spending your own money on it and all you do is motorway driving why wouldn't they just buy a mild hybrid?

I'm not advocating buying a diesel or whatever instead. I'm saying that EVs (the thread we're in) are better and PHEV / mild hybrid are greenwashing nonsense.

Before the next person jumps in - of course having a teleporting device to get from one place to the next would be greener than an EV or getting the non-existent train or walking backwards etc...

Your criticism are right, but they’re right of all cars, not just PHEVs.

Car magazine tests never match claimed miles per kw on a straight EV or fuel consumption on an ICE car.

SUVs are just as big and heavy with ICE and more so with EV.

It's also worth noting that calculations for emissions for fuel consumed do not consider environmental cost of extracting, transporting, refining, transporting again, storage and delivery of fuel over electricity which, even when created through the burning of fossil fuels, is far better for the environment.

They did when I used to do LCA. You have two issues with current large, longer-range EV vehicles:
1) there's a circa 100kWh lithium battery onboard and this weighs in the order of 700kg. This is enormously energy-intensive and polluting to produce, compared to anything previously made by the car industry. It's an enormous one-off environmental impact that hugely eats into any benefits of electricity vs fuel during the use phase.
2) most bigger EVs do closer to 2.5 miles per kWh in real life than their stated mileage and that's not very efficient. That means it's very difficult to offset/recoup/justify that impact from the battery manufacture during the use phase.

It's a completely different story with small EVs. 25-30kWh batteries are 25-30% the environmental impact and the car travels almost twice as far per kWh.

triggered

super edge case

oddities

Ok Soul. Yawn.

the car travels almost twice as far per kWh.

Is 5 miles per kWh realistic for any current car tho? I haven’t read all the things, but high-threes seems to be the number that keeps coming up.

Yeah maybe but full electric isn't necessarily as helpful for the businessman who cruises motorways to client meetings all day who are currently driving a company Merc, there's still the issues of range, charging points, time to charge etc. There could be an argument mild hybrids are greenwashing nonsense but I don't believe that's true for PHEV where most journeys should be done on pure electric anyway.

I get over 4 (in the summer) without aiming to drive in any particularly efficient way. On the Zoe forums people regularly get to 4.8 but 5+ is a stretch I imagine.

The company I work for runs about 85 cars our annual fuel bill is about £6k per car so I have some real world experience.
The Toyota Corolla petrol self charge hybrids are around 20%more fuel efficient than the diesel Ford Focus/Kia Ceed they are replacing. The employees driving these don’t really have a choice of car. BiK tax is similar as the Ceeds are older and cost less new.

Those of us who have a choice fall into 3 groups.

We have a few Ford Kuga PHEV type cars they are almost never charged.(we have solar panels and free charging at head office I have never seen one of these cars plugged in).

I have a RAV4 self charge (1690kg so not actually very heavy).

About 5 people have gone for CrewCab trucks.

I think I have the lowest real emissions but pay the most tax if those who can choose their car.