Would you have an electric car if you had the money for a new car and were in the market for one?

[Mr. Dazzle]

Popped up on my LinkedIn this morning, American firm Redwood are making inroads into battery recycling.

https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/news/s ... s-process/

But of course, no one does Battery Recycling, the materials are all dug up by children.

Oh right...Toyota are already starting to use recycled materials.

https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/news/t ... ode-anode/

[Taipan]

Lets hope that trend continues as cobalt mining isn't a good thing!

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cobal ... s-wiz-serp

Sent from my iPhone...

[Mr. Dazzle]

'tis true, which is why Recycling gets so much interest and investment now.

Let us not forget that Fossil Fuel mining is an environmental disaster too which is just settled into the public consciousness as something which has always been happening. It also has the added bonus that you have to keep on doing it, there's no option to recycle. A typical ICE car gets through (literally) tonnes of mined products in it's lifetime, on top of the all stuff you had to dig up to build it in the first place.

[Taipan]

Thought Toyota had currently rejected EVs on the 1/6/90 rule?

[Mr. Dazzle]

They're spending an awful lot of money for someone who's rejected EVs

Recently announced more than a billion dollars for a battery plant in the US. They're leaning more towards Hybrids at the moment but they're a long way from "rejecting" EVs. Something like $50bn earmarked for the tech up to 2030.

[Slenver]

Lets hope that trend continues as cobalt mining isn't a good thing!

It really isn't. And using alternatives (as well as recycling) is a big area of investment and research.

But let's not forget that cobalt is in almost all lithium batteries currently. So by all means, avoid EVs if you want to protect cobalt miners, but remember to ditch your phone, laptop, camera, headphones, toothbrush etc etc first!

[Count Steer]

The argument that we're only replacing one bad thing with another bad thing is a bit thin. (Particularly since the new bad thing is in addition to the old bad thing.
- Fossil 'fuel' extraction doesn't seem to have reduced. I say 'fuel' because plastics don't all grow on trees. ie not all of it ends up in vehicle tanks).

<Goes off in search of a wind-up mobile phone made of recycled grape pips>

[Taipan]

Lets hope that trend continues as cobalt mining isn't a good thing!

It really isn't. And using alternatives (as well as recycling) is a big area of investment and research.

But let's not forget that cobalt is in almost all lithium batteries currently. So by all means, avoid EVs if you want to protect cobalt miners, but remember to ditch your phone, laptop, camera, headphones, toothbrush etc etc first!

Well yes, hence the last line of my post, but let's not kid ourselves that EVs haven't made an unprecedented demand on supply and the horrors of the additional child labour it's causing. Their conditions makes Asian sweatshops look like a weekend at Champneys!

My neighbour appears to have chopped in his Range Rover for a EV, which i thought was a Tesla at first but i'm not sure as it has a black grill with some sort of emblem on? Anyway, I'll be interested in finding out how it works out for him as he's quite blunt about things.

[Taipan]

My neighbour appears to have chopped in his Range Rover for a EV, which i thought was a Tesla at first but i'm not sure as it has a black grill with some sort of emblem on? Anyway, I'll be interested in finding out how it works out for him as he's quite blunt about things.

Jaguar i-Pace and apparently they were very generous with his RR p/x price.

[Mr. Dazzle]

iPaces are actually pretty old now and not long for this world, not surprised Jaguar are doing deals on them. They'd be doing deals on them even if they were ICE.

[ZRX61]

I'm fed up of comments from people ridiculing EVs. They don't know what they're talking about.
Personally, I drive two top of the range EVs, a Jaguar and a Porsche.
Their acceleration and handling is fantastic. They look brilliant and they're really cheap to run. They need hardly any maintenance and haven't depreciated since I bought them.
Literally the only criticism I could make of them is sometimes, if I really push them into a corner, they can fly off the track and get stuck under the sofa....

[Mussels]

I've started to look into this more closely now, my youngest is about to fly the nest and I no longer need an ageing large family car.
BEV is still out of the running, high cost and charging issues mean it's a non-starter. Range itself isn't such a problem but time and availability of charging is.
So I started to research hybrid and PHEV and was dismayed at how little info there still is about living with them, most articles seem to be the same regurgitated bland info that looks to be written by AI crawling said articles.
Occasionally I find a decent one that mentions hybrids tend to lack power compared with PHEV or that the Niro PHEV reverts to normal hybrid when the battery is flat (implying others don't?).
I'm left feeling that I'm missing some important details that will make me regret making the switch so the result is I probably won't.
A Volvo V60 PHEV caught my attention, looked great until I saw the VED was almost £600 per year.

[Slenver]

I've started to look into this more closely now, my youngest is about to fly the nest and I no longer need an ageing large family car.
BEV is still out of the running, high cost and charging issues mean it's a non-starter. Range itself isn't such a problem but time and availability of charging is.
So I started to research hybrid and PHEV and was dismayed at how little info there still is about living with them, most articles seem to be the same regurgitated bland info that looks to be written by AI crawling said articles.
Occasionally I find a decent one that mentions hybrids tend to lack power compared with PHEV or that the Niro PHEV reverts to normal hybrid when the battery is flat (implying others don't?).
I'm left feeling that I'm missing some important details that will make me regret making the switch so the result is I probably won't.
A Volvo V60 PHEV caught my attention, looked great until I saw the VED was almost £600 per year.

If charging is an issue then I can't personally see the advantages of PHEV. If you can't charge once a week, how will you charge every day?

[Mussels]

I've started to look into this more closely now, my youngest is about to fly the nest and I no longer need an ageing large family car.
BEV is still out of the running, high cost and charging issues mean it's a non-starter. Range itself isn't such a problem but time and availability of charging is.
So I started to research hybrid and PHEV and was dismayed at how little info there still is about living with them, most articles seem to be the same regurgitated bland info that looks to be written by AI crawling said articles.
Occasionally I find a decent one that mentions hybrids tend to lack power compared with PHEV or that the Niro PHEV reverts to normal hybrid when the battery is flat (implying others don't?).
I'm left feeling that I'm missing some important details that will make me regret making the switch so the result is I probably won't.
A Volvo V60 PHEV caught my attention, looked great until I saw the VED was almost £600 per year.

If charging is an issue then I can't personally see the advantages of PHEV. If you can't charge once a week, how will you charge every day?

I can charge at home and most of my journeys are under 20 miles, charging is only an issue for longer journeys.
I'm not sure if I CBA with plugging in every time I come home so that's putting me off but not impossible.

[Slenver]

I can charge at home and most of my journeys are under 20 miles, charging is only an issue for longer journeys.
I'm not sure if I CBA with plugging in every time I come home so that's putting me off but not impossible.

Ah I see.

What's the issue with longer journeys? Do you do very long ones regularly?

I think the plugging in thing is logistics as much as anything. Our charger is near the garage at the end of a longish drive, so it's no big deal but not as convenient as just parking by the door... the actual plugging in itself is no real bother though. We probably charge about once a week.

[Docca]

I went for the EO mini 2. Largely influenced by my wife- who didn’t want the equivalent of a CPR resus box on the side of the house. (The EO mini 2 is tiny- the new mini 3 is the same).

All programmable via phone- so my charge kicks in during off-peak, Octopus rates.

The Volvo had a real world range of 250 miles in warm weather- 200 in winter. That would last me a week. If it didn’t- then it’s no biggy to charge.

I’m not a fan of public charging prices and TBH if I hadn’t got a home charger- I would not have bothered.

[Bowman]

I've started to look into this more closely now, my youngest is about to fly the nest and I no longer need an ageing large family car.
BEV is still out of the running, high cost and charging issues mean it's a non-starter. Range itself isn't such a problem but time and availability of charging is.
So I started to research hybrid and PHEV and was dismayed at how little info there still is about living with them, most articles seem to be the same regurgitated bland info that looks to be written by AI crawling said articles.
Occasionally I find a decent one that mentions hybrids tend to lack power compared with PHEV or that the Niro PHEV reverts to normal hybrid when the battery is flat (implying others don't?).
I'm left feeling that I'm missing some important details that will make me regret making the switch so the result is I probably won't.
A Volvo V60 PHEV caught my attention, looked great until I saw the VED was almost £600 per year.

If charging is an issue then I can't personally see the advantages of PHEV. If you can't charge once a week, how will you charge every day?

I can charge at home and most of my journeys are under 20 miles, charging is only an issue for longer journeys.
I'm not sure if I CBA with plugging in every time I come home so that's putting me off but not impossible.

My wife has an Audi Q5 phev and she does similar milage per day. The car is great on paper should be able to run on electric alone with her usage. It did mostly for the first six months but charging it every day has tapered off a bit, dropped to two or three times a week. A combination of building work going on, weather and human nature I guess. It was a toe in the water for us and she would definitely have another.
The battery is relatively small compared to a full EV and one advantage for us is that it can charge fully overnight from a 3 pin plug. To make it easy I fixed an outdoor socket on the drive.

[Slenver]

Good to see the little Dacia Spring will be available soon. From £15k and sub-1 tonne, so finally an answer to the complaint that all EVs are massive, heavy and expensive.

[Mussels]

Good to see the little Dacia Spring will be available soon. From £15k and sub-1 tonne, so finally an answer to the complaint that all EVs are massive, heavy and expensive.

If I needed a second car that would be a very strong contender.

[David]

I'm fed up of comments from people ridiculing EVs. They don't know what they're talking about.
Personally, I drive two top of the range EVs, a Jaguar and a Porsche.
Their acceleration and handling is fantastic. They look brilliant and they're really cheap to run. They need hardly any maintenance and haven't depreciated since I bought them.
Literally the only criticism I could make of them is sometimes, if I really push them into a corner, they can fly off the track and get stuck under the sofa....

Cats are a major hazard to them as well.