Hi there. Thanks for reading this newsletter. This is timed to go out a day or so after the main podcast so if you missed this week’s show you can link to it and know you’re getting the most up-to-date episode.
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This Week’s Podcast
In this week’s podcast I chatted with Jonathan Porterfield about used EVs. During the discussion he said that range anxiety continues to be an issue for some EV buyers. This is despite the fact that when EVs did 60 miles on a charge the consensus was “I’ll wait until they can do 100 miles”. Then they did 100 miles on a charge and the consensus became “I’ll wait until they can do 200 miles”. A large proportion of EVs will now do 200 miles and the consensus seems to be “I’ll wait until they can do 300 miles”. Tesla recently announced that their latest Model S long range can do 402 miles on a charge. Jonathan jokingly said that there will now be people complaining that they’ll need cars to do 500 miles on a charge. Sure enough Twitter is abuzz with commenters proclaiming that their diesel SUV of indeterminate make can do 520 miles on a full tank, or 580 miles on a full tank, or 660 miles on a full tank. The Tesla Roadster is rumoured to have a range of 600 miles (1000km) and I can guarantee that this still wont be enough for some people. The last four non-ev vehicles I’ve bought were petrol fuelled and non of them could get more than 300 miles from a tank. At no point while driving these vehicles (and I once did Inverness to London in a single day) did I ever think “I wish this car went longer between refuelling.”
I think the long and the short of it is that many people just don’t want to buy an EV and they’ll find any excuse.
The EV Musings Podcast: 50 — Second Hand EVs — evmusings.libsyn.com
This is episode 50 of EV Musings a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today we’re looking at buying a second hand EV. We talk with Jonathan Porterfield who runs one of the countries most well respected outlets for second hand electric vehicles:
Articles Of Interest.
Bad news for the oil and gas industry
Obviously any story which portents the demise of an industry is not to be looked at lightly. These are people’s livelihoods after all. But in the oil and gas sector it looks as though the Covid-19 pandemic will cost $108T in 2020, globally, Why? Because governments globally are building green energy into their stimulus plans. This also means that investment in oil supply has collapsed and may not roar back.
Tesla is officially approved as an energy provider.
The UK has finally given Tesla approval to register as an energy provider and link into the National Grid. The key question is why? What are tesla intending to do with this? Surely they’re not going to position themselves as an electricity provider for Tesla owners?
Did you know that each EV sold can bring in up to $10,000 of social benefits?
A new study has started to quantify the benefit of EVs in the community. This is both from an environmental point of view as well as a health point of view. The figures are quite interesting
What has the pandemic done to car sales?
Most vehicle sales are down across the world due to Covid-19. but the one bright spark in all this gloom is that EV sales are bucking this trend. For example in Italy BEV sales are up 55% year over year with the Renault Zoe taking pride of place as the biggest selling BEV in the country
Larger capacity electric family cars are a sector that is sadly lacking at the moment.
I was asked recently what BEV a family of 8 could purchase and the only answer I could give was the Mercedes EQV — when it was released. But this is an area that manufacturers are starting to adress now. Citroen, for example, have recently introduced the MPV e-Space Tourer, which seats up to 9 passengers.
I can also see this becoming a very popular taxi vehicle.
A cool EV or renewable thing
We’re all fans of Formula E on the podcast and watch the races whenever we can. So we were delighted to see that someone has put together a documentary ‘And We Go Green’ about the inside story of Formula E. Well worth a look.
Watch ‘And We Go Green’: The inside story of Formula E documentary — electriccarsreport.com
Experience the highs, lows and blows of the ABB FIA Formula E Championship in the feature-length documentary ‘And We Go Green.
Something To Think About.
Fonts. They’re great!
Everyone is familiar with ‘The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over The Lazy Dog’ as a means of testing a font to ensure every letter in the alphabet is used. But there are other sentences which go into much more depth to test the usability of various fonts. What about letters that are curved but appear next to letters that are straight (‘clear’, for example) how do they look? One person in a font creating company has figured out the best sentences to use.
Something for your pocket.
With the trend towards keyless entries in many vehicles the ability for thieves to use this to their advantage increases day by day. There are numerous videos of thieves scanning front doors for keys left on windowsills and diverting the signal to the car to allow keyless entry. Once inside they start the car and drive off. To combat this it’s recommended you store your car keys in a safe place. This is known as a Faraday Box and you can get one from Amazon right now!
Finally…
Thanks for reading (and subscribing if you have done). Each week I’ll send out this quick email the day after the podcast so you can keep up to date with what’s going on in the world of renewables and EVs. If you don’t wish to continue subscribing there’s a link to unsubscribe at the bottom of the page but, obviously, I hope you’ll stay subscribed.
Thanks.
Gary
