Random EV thoughts.....

It's an investment in happiness, worth every penny 😉

It's actually not the worst value at €15k when you think about it. There's cheaper mini EVs out there, but very few of them can do 90km/h and have enough range to get around all of county Dublin. Also, €50 motor tax and no VRT to pay 😁

I'm curious if the Lite version is just software limited. It's possible you could get one and then unlock the higher top speed

If I was living in the city and I needed something to zip around I'd consider one of these. I imagine you'd never have trouble finding parking 😁

I could see GoCar or someone similar getting a bunch of these for cities, they can fit two of them into every car parking space they have rented from the councils and double their fleet

I think the rules changed for gocar and they did not want to install their own street chargers. They were getting clamped in high numbers for being still parked when charging was completed and they had no easy way to move cars when full. Naturally they all should have had a dedicated spot and charger but gocar does not even have dedicated markings in many places let alone chargers. From their point of view it's straying from the core business of car share. Supporting, installing, repairing public or private in street chargers is a headache they don't want. It also limits where the cars can be based and presumably creates more confusion and support calls for those new to EV. I am not saying they are right, just they are a profit driven commercial outfit.

True, but to give a counter argument they also have to cover the fuel, tax and insurance costs on their cars. Micro EVs would be cheaper on all counts.

There's definitely an investment required to make it work. But if other cities can make it work then I think it could work for Irish cities. There would definitely need to be some buy in from councils in terms of being flexible with providing reserved parking and chargers

Would be quite something to drive a huge machine around all over the shop and to charge it from your own solar 😁😎

Are you serious? It's a monster of a yoke. It's huge. Far bigger than a Tesla Model X

5.51*2.08*1.92m

I haven't had the opportunity, but I can't imagine it makes the car any more likely to be struck by lightning

Don't worry, that turbine off Arklow took one for the team and got struck by all the lightning it seems

The yanks class it as a mid size truck. What we would have over here as a ranger.

It's a full size down from the proper full size trucks like the F150 (eg look at TFL EV's comparison video of the rivian and f150 lightning, you will see the size difference).

As you know, I've had a few yank trucks over here but they were older. I'd be looking at north of six figures to have even a base F150 lightning or r1t here currently as a grey import.

Thats not a real risk though is it?

Insurance will cover it. I'm not plugging out anything.

Sound like one of those risk an electrical engineer would roll their eyes at. More chance you get struck going out to unplug it.

I suspect my insurance would not cover an electrical fault unless it was a direct hit with paint damage etc. In that case having it plugged in or not won't make any difference. Cars can be extensively be damaged by a lightning strike if you're unlucky. Happened to a friend of mine in Finland where a direct lightning hit wrote off their A1 with extensive damage to ECUs etc. They had actually bodywork damage as well proving that is was indeed a direct strike of lightning.

"marking spots with green paint is effective"

Like the DC chargers on Sir John Rogerson's Quay. I emailed them to ask why they couldn't have moved them further down the quay ie a dedicated charging area. Also why was the ground not painted green (I went down to charge and all 3 spots were taken by diesel SUV's).

They said they were doing it "next week". Weeks later and it still wasn't done.