cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/17620489

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An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that's the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.

Thoughts? I doubt the base version will be £30k, but I think this looks decent.

Car manufacturers have called for urgent action to reignite the switch to electric vehicles, after sales figures showed slowing demand among ordinary motorists for battery-powered cars.

While overall UK registrations grew by 1% in April year-on-year to 134,000, the increase was caused by fleet sales, with private buyer sales down by almost 18% on last year.

Manufacturers are alarmed by slowing sales growth in battery electric vehicles, which in the first four months of 2024 have only increased market share by 0.3% from the same period in 2023, to 15.7%, despite the rapid take-up in previous years.

While the industry expects the figure to improve this year, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said that BEV sales would be below government targets of 22% of all new cars, and called for steps to “re-enthuse” buyers, including tax cuts, incentives and more chargers.>

The journalist and electric vehicle campaigner Quentin Willson has said he is "staggered" after the Government did not cut VAT for EV charging in the budget.

He explained: "FairCharge is staggered that the Chancellor is prepared to spend £5billion on a fuel duty freeze and continuation of the 5p cut, yet won't spend 125th of that - circa £40million - on cutting the VAT on public EV charging.

"Why wouldn't you support a drive for cleaner air in our towns and cities? Might it have something to do with an election, we wonder."

"There is an anti-EV story in the papers almost every day. Sometimes there are many stories, almost all of which are based on misconceptions and mistruths, unfortunately."

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/6354036

The number of new cars registered in the UK has jumped by nearly 18% but electric vehicle demand is flatlining, prompting the industry to call for a VAT cut to stimulate sales.

Annual figures released by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) on Friday show 1.9m new cars were registered last year, well up on the previous year’s figure of 1.6m and the highest level since the 2.3m registrations of 2019.

The increase is a boost for the automotive industry after the pandemic led to supply chain problems and a shortage of vital computer chips that slowed production.

Across the year, 315,000 new battery electric vehicles were sold. That was 50,000 more than 2022, but the number being bought as a share of total registrations failed to grow as expected. They represented just 16.5% of the total, slightly down on last year’s 16.6%.

Just saw this in Tesco!

I was considering buying a Chevy Bolt lately to use as my daily commuter but found out it collects a lot of data and phones it back. It's hard to do research on what kind of EV I could buy that doesn't collect your location data so I'm hoping someone here might have some good suggestions.

I think that charging stations should display their prices like fuel stations.

I don't mean the ones on pavements or hotel car parks, but locations with 6 or more outlets.

Anyone else agree with me?

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/4062479

The project would involve changing the use of the half an acre site, installing 18 electric vehicle charging points, with landscaping, resurfacing and other external works

This article is a couple of weeks old, but interesting stuff.

The first results of UK Power Networks’ Park and Flex Study have revealed the enormous potential of using long-stay car parks, such as those at airports, to help power the grid.

Early research in the study has found that more than 1.3 million homes could be powered by filling up electric vehicle’s batteries in long-stay car parks when energy is cheap and demand is low - and returning that power back to the system during peak times.

The study used advanced modelling alongside both UK Power Networks’ and energy specialist Baringa’s forecasts for the number of electric vehicles on Britain’s roads in the coming years.

With airport parking, details of a customer’s flight dates can dictate the exact length of a vehicle's stay which gives the network operators greater insight into spare power or capacity.

It's great to have this. Being bombarded with USA related EV news which has nearly 0 impact on our lives is pretty tiring.