Electric Vehicles

Cos they're very expensive.

A subsidised £250 per month, or another site quoted US$600 per month for three years, isn't that bad. Leasing over 3 years could be £250 per month for a Mini Cooper.

Electric Vehicles aren't too expensive for it to be worthwhile to import a few.

It's difficult to see how you're going to get the subsidy on an import though.

Coventry University use electric Peugeot Partner (IIRC) vans - I believe it is part of a testing programme with the PSA plant(s) in and around Coventry. Peugeot might be interested in selling/leasing a few

Jon

I don't believe their claim that their battery pack will last the equivalent of 100,000 miles or about 1000 re-charges in practice. And the real replacement cost would be horrendous.

Don't think they've mentioned either that the range would be severely reduced in cold weather - perhaps to zero. ;-)

The cost of the fuel is totally unrealistic due to the tax position - charging a battery with electricity made from fossil fuels is a very inefficient way of using those fossil fuels for transport. If it became a common method of transport the government would find a way of taxing it to the same extent as petrol.

They'll just tax electricity even more then.

That sort of performance (and lack of emissions) does suit city driving more than motorway or rural. But the downside is that most people in cities don't actaully have garages where they could recharge the cars, as they have to street park.

There's also the other arguement that it just shifts the pollution from the exhuaust pipe to the power station. The hybrid cars seem to be a good compromise, by essentially moving the power station into car.

The message from dave snipped-for-privacy@mailandnews.com (Davemar) contains these words:

I'd have said it was perfectly adequate for rural conditions.

Yep. Remember how cheap diesel used to be?

Si

Imagine how much the flex would cost for a 120 mile drive!. And if more than one car was out it would get tangled :}

Depends how much you want to enjoy your rural driving, and how many tractors/caravaners you need to get past.

The message from dave snipped-for-privacy@mailandnews.com (Davemar) contains these words:

I manage fine in a non-turbo diesel Maestro and don't seem to have trouble overtaking things.

I used to do OK in my 950cc Mk1 fiesta too... until it came to long hills when all my overtakees would catch me up again! Whereas in my ancient 205 GTi, most things can be dismissed quite easily which I would never has contemplated in the fiesta.

Check out

Only if he's funding them. It's relatively trivial to work out the energy stored in a compressed gas & it's laughably small compared to anything else.