Once one just wants to get from A to B in a vehicle that looks like a brick, its time to get a bike 
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https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wawgnm5sgcE
“Oh no, its far too dangerous to refill at home” - excellent
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No way would a even consider an electric vehicle. If I did a long journey I don’t want to spend a couple of hours finding a charging point and recharging a battery.
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Mostly they hire high performance petrol vehicles & on the Police TV shows, the officers say they call these individuals “weekend millionaires.”
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But the reality is almost allcar journeys within the UK are far from long distance. If you look at the statistics, the average journey is just 8.2 miles. It’s 7.4 miles without a passenger onboard & 8.9 miles with a passenger & very few car or van drivers within the UK do more than 200 miles per day & electric cars are easily capable of far more than that.
I am not saying I want an electric vehicle. I am saying some of the reasons we give for not wanting one, make little sense, if we look at the evidence.
Personally I hate the fact that governments are attempting to force us into electric vehicles. To me, that dooms electric vehicles to failure.
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We will end up like Cuba in the old days when they would make the most of classic cars.
On the balance of things it’s likely similarly sustainable to keep the old bangers going for as long as possible, rather than keep building new ones. There is likely to be a global lithium shortage the way we are going. There’s apparently over 200m tonnes on the moon. Go figure what will happen next…
I am guessing they will start to restrict the usage of lithium to critical developments such as defence.
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it depends where you live in the UK. Being tucked away on the south coast going anywhere can be a long journey
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That is definitely true for hybrid vehicles.
However an electric car is much more simple than a petrol or diesel car. The combustion engine plant and transmission train is now complex - with an engine management system, synchro mesh gears, fuel injection, catalytic converter, etc. etc. And electric car is battery and electric motor(s). Yes there are electronics to manage the system … but all cars are something like 30% electronics (by cost). And those two principle components - battery and electric motor - do not go wrong at the frequency or mileage that combustion engine parts go wrong.
But note, I’m no fan of electric cars, still running old diesels for now and quite some time.
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That’s the definition of a “long journey” that I wasn’t previously aware of.
My daughter’s parents in law have two cars - a Diesel SUV and a Kona EV. The latter is used most of the time because, as some one pointed out, most journeys are less than 40km a day but it quite happily makes the 259km journey to Canberra on a fairly regular basis.
When they are in Canberra they can do most of the local travelling without charging the car but will need to do so to return to Wollongong. I was there once when we went for a meal at the local club which has a EV charging station. The EV was fully charged by the time we finished our meal and ready for a bit of local driving and the 250km trip back to Wollongong.
BTW 250km from Bexhill would take you to Peterborough or Weston Super Mare - are those the type of journeys you do regularly?
I’ve said it before but my next vehicle will definitely be electric:
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Had this conversation with my neighbor yesterday, his son, is about 20 years old and was driving a fifteen year old Honda Civic or similar, a month or so ago he turned up in a 22 reg Polestar, so, I says, “How come your son is driving a Polestar, hardly the choice for a young man”, his reply was, his son was putting about £225.00 of fuel a month in the Civic, fuel is now free (on the house so to speak) and the HP payment on a PCP agreement is just over £300.00 slightly more than he was paying in fuel.
Seems like good logic to me, to go from £225.00 a month on fuel to a payment of £300.00, £75.00 a month to go from an old Civic, to a nearly new Polestar.
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Found this interesting little snippet of information for all you patriotic petrol heads out there…
It was written in 2020 during covid though…
Which brings me seamlessly into my next post about Electric Vehicles…
I think the heading should be Hybrids and Electric Vehicles because we are dealing with two very different vehicles.
An Electric Vehicle, is as Lincs points out, just an electric motor/motors powered by a very large high voltage Lithium Battery together with it’s associated circuits and switch gear.
The Hybrid is the same except mostly self charging (they can also be plugged in) from the petrol engine. Most of the hybrids only have a very short range driven on electric alone (30 miles ish the ones I’ve seen tested) so it’s basically a petrol engine powered car with supplementary power supplied by the battery.
A total waste of space in my opinion. Not enough range for even short trips into town or to work without needing the petrol engine. My neighbour has one of these and it constantly lets him down due to a flat 12 volt battery, which is not being charged while driving on electric. He brags that he has only ever filled up his petrol tank twice because he used electric wherever he goes. (Lexus Hybrid 37 - 45 miles range) It’s constantly plugged into the home charger, and had the bloke out loads of times…
A very complex system with lots of parts, all housed in a massive front end with a very heavy battery slung underneath.
Back in 1950 there were 3.3 million cars on the road, in 2020 there were 33 million so in 70 years the amount of cars on the road has increased by 90% and this doesn’t take into account, delivery vans and heavy goods vehicles, which in my experience, form an endless convoy along the length of the M1 Monday to Friday…And probably most other motorways also. This rise in traffic can not continue for the next 70 years, or else nobody is going anywhere. So what can be done? Make motoring too expensive for the average person, or give them vehicles that are practically incapable of going further than your next town/city.
I must admit, that a fully electric vehicle makes good sense if you are only driving to work or doing the shopping. Not everyone can afford to have two vehicles, one for the short trips and one for the long trips. My only criticism of the more simpler and fully electric vehicles is the battery. Electric vehicles have been considered since 1884 but it’s always been the battery that scuppered the idea…I don’t think they are there yet… 
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Might buy a Leccy car Foxy, at pensioner age, there is a good chance the battery will outlive me 
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There are several towns / cities in Florida where golf carts are street legal but think in Key west only from 7 am to 7 pm but either way that I love , unfortunately not street legal in Miami though I have pushed for it contacted politicians , etc but not going to happen here .
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Sounds like a Wawa 
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I love, love, love the idea of making community more accessible to golf carts. I don’t have one, but anything that will take cars off the roads, I’m in favor of. My town is finally replacing the old narrow sidewalks with wider multi-use paths. They are a good option for people to get around who are aging out of safe car driving. I just hope they don’t go the way of The Villages where folks in the decorate them in a way to signal their amorous interests (urban myth?)
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One of those four arguments you put forward holds water and that is Lithium mining. Service has not changed. People can still take the car to the same car dealer. The module technology is also used with conventional cars. Retooling is a standard procedure but, admittedly, a bit more comprehensive for EVs. Price is an issue but will go down in the course of time. There’re EVs right now that aren’t more expensive than conventional cars.
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FWIW my regular travel from my office 50 miles (25 to work and 25 return0. but I often did over 450 miles one way and then back home. The car I had could do it in a single trip. That’s for Diesel.
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Yes it is and I suspect you eat healthy since you are a vegetarian so not for you but that cheese cake smoothie /shake is outrageous.
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As you know the Village which think in Orlando is golf carts but so is Key West and other areas of Florida .
I have been trying to get that going in Miami via a road just for golf carts and no highway of course but side streets but not going to happen due to reasons like this but this is misleading because like ALWAYS close to all the hits came from Miami .
When Florida scores poorly on something all roads take us to Miami , lol but news prefers being bit PC and they do not single us out . .
Most of the bike deaths actually come out of Hialeah aka Cuba 2 .
When first moved here I drove there as incredible back yard bird breeders and bought my finches there plus the aviary cage and I was lucky that drove there at off hours when most working but due to their drivers alone I never went back .
Florida leads nation in bicycle deaths’’
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Definitely not street legal in NSW and unlikely to be, they are having enough trouble legislating for Ebikes and scooters - the self powered ones are strictly speaking illegal but are everywhere.and police turn a blind eye to them pending some sort of legislation.
Years ago they did legislate to outlaw petrol powered motorised bicycles (usually mower motors) - driving an unregistered vehicle without a licence.
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