You Cannot Take Them Seriously.

There is one electric car I quite like the look of, a wee honda, retro looking thing, like an old civic perhaps? But as said many times, its not good enough yet... nowhere near it! Probably ok if you live in a city and never need to go far. I couldn't care less about cars, it gets me from A-B. Purely practical. The bikes are for kicks and can't see me ever wanting an electric one.

 

Never driven an electric motorcycle so can't really say if I want it or not. But it will prob attract the younger ones that isn't getting a stiffie when they hear a combustion engine roar.

The retro Honda looks really cool. But that particular one comes with a few compromises such as a fairly small batterypack.

 

My personal "hat in the ring"!

I've been driving LPG (propane) fuelled cars - more accurately, in this context, dual fuelled - for more than 20 years now and though, initially at least, my focus was on fuel cost saving, I've been aware for some time that the harmful emissions from dual fuel cars are dramatically lower than those of conventional petrol or diesel fuelled vehicles.

Overall, my fuel cost savings have been reduced substantially in more recent years as the government has consistently, and rather myopically, clawed back some revenue via increased road fuel duty on LPG. Still, I'm more than happy with my old Astra G with its 'factory fitted' system which, fundamentally, means that I buy perhaps 12 or 15 gallons of unleaded during the year, most of which is used in the colder months to start and cover the first few miles of my journeys before the automatic switch-over. I'm rather hoping that I'll be able to keep running my ancient 2002 Astra 1.6 for many more years and many more miles to come ..... assuming that the tin worm doesn't eat too quickly into the ageing, salt-worn metal ..... and I feel (perhaps more than a little self righteously) that I'm making some slight difference in the push towards much lower harmful road vehicle emmissions across the board. The car currently has over 162,000 miles on it now and I'd like to think that I can keep it running well into the 200,000 to 250,000 mile range, perhaps even more.

But, if it ever does die, my primary aim would be to look to replace it with an EV. Yes, there are issues around practicality, range, cost and even on the environmental equation but, given my optimism that my old car can keep going for another few years, I'm hopeful some of those issues will be addressed by the time I start looking for one.

The point about the limited range of an EV isn't entirely lost on me and that's where my most serious concerns would lie. I recently had need to drive an all electric Smart 4/4 EQ some 100 or so miles back to its owners. That didn't seem too onerous a task until I got onto a fast (and busy) dual carriageway where keeping up a steady 65-70mph saw the battery range dropping like a stone from its initial 90-odd miles range reading! The most immediate problem then became finding a suitable charging point - not easy in Devon and Cornwall - and waiting whilst the car's 'top up' gave me sufficient confidence of completing the journey.

As a kind of 'side bar' to the story, the owner of the vehicle had been pretty well sold on the EV idea by a slick salesman with tales of cheaper motoring and easy access to home or nearby charging points ........ "OH, yeah, there's charging points at practically every petrol station!" Turned out that the nearest suitable charging point was more than ten miles from his rural Cornwall home meaning he'd use a substantial chunk of his range to get to the refuelling point, and immediately lose that amount getting home! Amusingly, the owner had been tracking my progress on his mobile phone and couldn't work out why I'd connected and disconnected the charger about 5 or 6 times in 10 minutes. As a first timer it seems I was very unlucky to get a charge point that needed to be remotely reset before it would deliver any charge! That 'simple' refuelling stop eventually took about 45 minutes!

Despite a less than satisfactory introduction to EVs, I have to say that I will still look towards the EV marketplace first and make any reasonable and necessary lifestyle adjustments second when the time comes to replace the car. I'd also be more than happy to look at Triumph's electric motorcycle, too, but that would be in addition to, not a replacement for, the personal "Triples Collection".

 

Not sure if it is like this today, but I remember years ago that Californa was the state that forced the car manufacturers to think new and find solutions to prevent pollution from cars.
Most countries has since implemented what California has had in place ages ago.
I think you guys were very early forcing manufacturers to develop the catalytic converters standard in cars.

 

I'll probably not get an ev not because of any issues with them, I prefer automatics for everyday driving, living on the IOW is mostly 30 - 40 mph anyway so would be ideal for ev but I have no drive so would need a cable across the pavement and there's a 2 hour parking limit from 8 am till 6 pm. So not practical I do have a Toyota auris hybrid but that will only run on the battery for maybe a mile. The battery just supports the petrol engine and allegedly increases the mpg which I think it does at least I get more mpg from its 1800cc engine than I used to get from the 1ltr Toyota aygo that I had before. The only problem I've had is with retiring and lockdown and not using it as often I've had the axillary battery go flat so it won't start. The garage said you need to start it every so often to keep it topped up. So I did get in press the start button and the engine would start itself after a short while but only run for a few minutes then switch off, which I thought meant it was changed. Turns out that's not quite right that just top's up the hybrid battery and the axillary battery gets topped up by the hybrid battery but that means that you have to just sit in the car for around an hour for the hybrid battery to charge the auxiliary battery. So basically you need to use it regularly something I wasn't aware of. Don't know if this applies to all hybrids but definitely Toyota as the garage said they have had lots and lots since the lockdowns as people have not been using them as much. Apologies for going on .

 

I think Toyota using older battery tech in their HEV cars, reliable and cheaper but NiMH doesn't hold charge as good as the lithium ones. Could be a case of that.