I well understand climate change and global warming and why it is happening and getting worse, but will a move to electric cars in the UK make a significant difference. No. We know the polar ice is melting big time and the Siberia perma frost is thawing and with it large amounts of locked up Methane is released into the air adding to the greenhouse warming effect. Forest fires in Alaska and Siberia are uncontrollable and wood burning creates vast amounts of CO2. We can't stop this happening. We have to accept it and live with the consequences. All this electric cars nonsense will make little difference to the world's air overall. In the UK, electric cars with their zero emissions pollution would help inner city air quality though and may catch on there.
If the ID Buzz really does 250ish miles on a charge then i'd have one, love the styling and if it can do that sort of range then it becomes a properly usable vehicle. All the comments around there not being enough charging points etc seem to assume that we'll swap all internal combustion engined cars over to electric overnight - in reality it'll be a gradual shift i think with the infrastructure constraints.
It's almost like people think we will suddenly start driving the maximum range of a car in a day for no reason. How many people drive 250 miles in a week? Average is 8000 a year which is about 150 a week that's a charge a week with 100 mile spare. Sounds a bit like filling your car up once a week when you get your shopping.
Agree unfortunately, i think with today's mobile phone technology everyone has already developed battery (range) anxiety which is misplaced - the car won't run down the battery if it's parked
Be it in 1 day or 5 years, the majority of people still wont be able to have charging points at home. For me, that'd be the deal breaker.
I still feel the cost of going electric would shut most people out, like everything else in life, rich people can afford these things while the majority would have to stick with petrol and diesel vehicles which are dirt cheap. Can anyone on here really afford the ID Buzz and would they splash out such sums for an electric camper?
Perhaps you could make a bit of money Hanging out at some of the remote surf Spots rescuing These electric surf buses as they turn up without thinking about how they can get back from where they came Note the safety cone by the wire
People happily cough up more than £60000 for a new T6 California, so paying a bit more for an EV isnt the issue. No doubt people will set up glamping sites with EV chargers and they can all be happy there paying £100 a night feeling very smug. For those of us who prefer fields in interesting corners of the country with maybe an electric light in the toilet block or even just a field, the EV camper is no go. For middle class people with a big house and a driveway or allocated parking space in a city, OK. For people who cant park their cars in the same place every night or its across the road or a pavement, forget it. I think an EV rescue truck with one of these on the back will do nicely .. just big enough to run a Tesla Supercharger. And to wake up the campsite. Bit like the tractor pulling T5s and T6s out of the mud..
I think we have got a long way to go before we can convert truly to electric vehicles, and it not just be to keep the greens happy. I regularly drive 900 miles in less than 30 hrs. I leave from Blackpool and drive to the North of Scotland. Stay overnight, and then I visit a few customers which can be 100 mile apart . I then drive home the same day. Doing it on Public transport would take probably 4 or 5 days. If using EVs I would need to charge, half way up, another charge overnight,a and then 3 or 4 times the next day, adding many hours to my journey. This would probably add an extra day to my trip. It can be difficult to find a petrol station let alone a charging point. I can do it in my car or van with only 1 fill of fuel. I visit building sites and noticed an electric mini-digger It runs for about 2.5hrs and then needs charging for minimum 8hrs with a diesel generator, maybe not the least environmental way of doing things
Hybrid and full electric are certainly becoming more popular. Then there is Hydrogen power which seems to be emerging more slowly. The big question is how are the government going to tax us on these vehicles when petrol and diesel demand dwindles?
I’d ask most of you replying on here to just change your thoughts on ownership. Imagine you don’t actually own a car, certainly not for more than a day or two.....the model certainly one UK manufacturer is taking is that your lease a self driving pod to take you where you want at your convenience only for the time you actually use it, but you don’t own it. The flaw with cars isn’t their consumption, it’s their cost of existence when they aren't in use. Even heavily used cars spend 20+ hours per DAY sat doing nothing. If you added all the hours of actual use up and compared them with cars being dormant you can see that we could get rid of 65% of cars. Self driving cars is partly to get it to you when you want it, not just driving you. I’d love the convenience of a car that arrives just before I set off for work, same on the way home and the rest of the time it’s working it’s nuts off for other people.....that is far less environmental damage. Remember, running it is laughable compared to building it.
shared ownership or use when needed is a great idea but most people who work or take kids to school need a car between 7am to 9am and then from 3pm to 6pm. We would have to change our work patterns and make the kids walk. It would be safe because fewer cars on roads. In the village I used to live in taxis did not start until 9am and finished at 9pm. Taxis from the nearest town only 5 miles away, wouldn't come to the village on Friday and Saturday nights because they could make more money being local. Only option was not to drink but drive my car
The assumption is people would share their needs information and best fit response would apply where a vehicle can be shared. Maybe it’s a series of hubs at which you drop the kids off and larger vehicles take them to school.
Johnny Cabs ftw (Total Recall film) I'd like to be able to book my journey online, state what type of vehicle (as I often have to lug a bit of kit around), then have it drive me there. That may not work quite so well for a camping trip with days out, or you'd need to keep transferring your stuff into the fully charged replacement that automatically arrives as your battery gets low. It's doable for longer business trips though, jump out of one car into the next while the old one then trundles off for a recharge
