Random EV thoughts.....

I thought initially they had gone do the road of Nissan's e-power system but no it's just a basic hybrid system supported by another bullshit bingo EV term. I see also Renault have also decided if you can't beat em [Toyota & Hyundai] join em

Electric vehicle marketing jargon buster:

Mild hybrid (MHEV) - petrol car with an unnecessarily complicated gearbox

Hybrid (HEV) - petrol car with somewhat more unnecessarily complicated gearbox

Plug in hybrid (PHEV) - A fully electric car with the good bits removed and replaced with a petrol engine, see above

Any other model type with "e" in the same but still has an exhaust - see the 3 entries above

Battery electric vehicle (BEV) - a vehicle powered solely by an electric motor and batteries, charged from an external source. The only thing that comes out the back are sunshine, rainbows and the occasional sound effects to let you know it's coming

Electric vehicle - often used to describe a BEV but can technically describe any vehicle that uses an electric motor for movement. The term has been appropriated recently to describe several hybrids (looking at you Nissan 😉)

Yeah I saw the ad saying 600km+ of 'range' and was telling my missus you don't quote petrol cars in range.

Even though my petrol Golf did say 'range' on the screen nobody says it has "750km range" they'd say it's 750km to a full tank. Cars are never advertised with range either, only L/100km consumption. Really shady marketing from Renault.

Picked up my auction leaf and drove it home yesterday. 2.5k for 9/12 bars, 80k km, taxed and tested (short on both) with all cables included. Can't see a thing wrong with her, glad to be in the leaf family again. Charged on Chademo on the way home too. She's topping up on solar as we speak.

I really don't understand why people would not have one of these as their second car.

Because an old Corolla is just as reliable and your not limited to 50-60km ( very few gonna risk going under 20% battery and charging to 100% is not recommend )

In that old Corolla the low fuel petrol comes up at 80km and that's the max range of the Leaf

Probably not, but air conditioning, usb charging, auto wipers etc ain't much use with that battery haha :)

I drove a brand new Corolla rental in Lithuania in October 2021, and it was an utter pile of shite.... Overtaking was very dangerous, as you had to floor it (it was an auto) about 5-7 seconds before you actually began the overtaking manoeuvre.

It had a sport mode, and when engaged, the only thing it did was changed the background lights on the dash/display from blue to red... and that was literally all it did!!

As a second car... give me a Gen 1 leaf with 40-60km range any day.....

Would agree unless you reasonably regularly exceed 40+km in a day, then it becomes a pita. My leaf does about 110km per charge and covers the majority of my daily usage but as the battery continues to degrade this will become an increasing pita. So as per usual horses for courses and while a low range Leaf will suit some it will not suit others

You only need to travel at leaf speed if you're short on range. I was doing proper motorway speeds yesterday as I intended to charge twice anyway (due to spacing of chargers I couldnt make it home on one stop and if I did leaf speed Id literally have to stop anyway so what was the point)

I mean that's not really its use case tbh but I would expect more than 40km.

In any case, the best use case for an early leaf - especially a degraded one with no % display, like mine - is as a second car, pootling about town, collecting local errands etc.

For me it will have a few uses, we have a builders merchants 5km away that I would like to have a car to transport stuff in with better space than the model 3, a backup car until herselfs ora arrives (was supposed to be yesterday, will be any day now), and as a third family car for the young lad to learn in. We didnt really need it, but I like the idea of collecting early EVs that make no sense and this is the first on that list, along with a fluence, twizy, and maybe the new citroen ami!

Be use our second car gets little use but when it does it’s often longer distances that a leaf with only 9 bars

Anyone following the pole to pole EV challenge?

Looks amazing, they've already done the arctic and are halfway down the US

One thing I haven't figured out, how did they charge the car in the Arctic? I'm pretty sure Tesla doesn't have any Superchargers up there, and they're driving an Ariya anyway 😂

They made some small mention of portable solar panels but are very short on details

There's a couple of fossil trucks following them for support, what's the bet they're charging the car off a diesel generator? 😕

That would be in the "anything with an e in the name category" 😂