Scottish Elises

Interesting post on electric cars.

https://medium.com/editors-picks/7cbf5130e11

The solar powered part is surely a gimmick whilst vehicle/recharge volumes are low ... presumably as volumes increase they'll connect them to "the grid".

The urban situation is still a problem - once 10% of cars are EVs, pretty much every parking bay would have to have a recharging point, or there would have to be bays reserved for EVs. In the short term maybe they could do it like a parking meter ... so you get a ticket if you stay longer than it takes to charge your battery ... but that would be a PITA - come home from work, find a charging point, hook up, walk home, walk back, move car to another parking space, walk home again.

Once we can recharge in approx 10 minutes then I can see urban recharging work using conventional petrol station model, maybe.

Anyway, I am sure it will all happen one day but not without a lot of pain for the betamax EVs (e.g. the guys that were banking on exchanging battery packs that went bust recently) and their venture capitalists!

Cheers,
Robin

Elon Musk will have the answer.

Bays and bats if charging stations cannot be the answer.

Hot swap cells swapped in the forecourt?

Hot swap cells swapped in the forecourt?

I think those guys just went bust.

Once the urban charging issue is solved, it should be much easier in the UK than in the US simply because there is much less distance to be traveled.

What we really need is an affordable electric car, then we need the battery replacement cost solved, then maybe it'll start to work.
I commute 14 miles round trip a day in a 5 year old Alfa that cost me approx. 8k.
SO, looking at autotrader, I could buy for around half that a gwiz, or axiam if I want to ship it from the other end of the country and drive a plastic box that's about as safe as driving my desk to work.
Or a Renault Twizy for approx 6-8k which looks fun but probably isn't especially when it rains on the lack of doors, or I want to take more than 1 other person with me.
Or there is the i-miev or citreon c-zero for around 10k with little use. This is where it starts to interest me, but they look silly, and aren't remotely comparable to my Alfa.

Looks like another few years wait for me then.

Chris

I dont see the charging as the issue - the cost of buying an electric car is the issue .

A Renault Twizy, little better weather protection than a motorbike, cost if based on even the lowest performing bike or scooter say... 4 x as much? Has no where near the flexibility or performance of a bike for getting through the city and has a monthly battery hire charge that costs more than you would spend on petrol for the 2 wheeler

I like the idea of a leccy car that you can charge at home but until the price plummets its just not viable, and when the price does plummet and people start switching to electric cars & the fuel revenues arent coming into the government of the day they will find a way of taxing / surcharging to get their income back