I'll get an electric car when you get one new for ~22k that will do 450 miles and can be charged fully in under an hour at one of the many hundred charging points throughout the Highlands. I reckon I'll have another few petrol cars before that happens.
This brings up a point, basically, it may not be too long before we have no choice. We need to get away from comparing to ICE cars - I'm as bad - My wee van does 50mpg, I can theoretically do over 600 miles with 4 bikes in the back, no electric car will do that in the next few years at least, so I've resigned myself to thinking that this will be my last vehicle with those attributes.
I don't really see massive advances in battery technology, the gains now will be from efficiency, solar charging, recharging from braking etc. Tbh 280 miles is about all anyone should be driving anyway, is it not? without some form of break I mean. We don't allow lorries to drive for hours on end for that reason. The big advancements then will be the availability and speed of charging, massive investment required.
We also need to remember that what we do is far form the norm, the average UK journey is something daft like 5 miles, and those are also the most polluting journeys. There's not really the demand to build a leccy car for your average bagger!. I know folk that won't buy a leccy car as they drive south once a year, so they base their car choice on one journey per year. I think that's the mindset we need to escape from.
Oh, and once we do move over to electric, it won't be as cheap as it is now either, it'll cost us much the same as what we pay now per mile really. That network of chargers doesn't come cheap.
I'd love one tbh, hopefully my next car.
Does anyone have experience of how different the range on electric cars is in winter, is the battery less efficient in the same way as an iPhone packs up in the cold?
Iphone circuit protection kicks in in cold and shuts down, it's nothing to do with the battery. It's the reason I'll never buy another one.
I'm not convinced how long people own cars (of whatever type) individually has an effect on environmental footprint, as people don't throw them away and they will likely be someone's car until end of life
Manufacture must be a huge part of a cars carbon footprint, and there's a **** load of cars lying around in forecourts. Also, cars being insurance write-offs purely down to paint repair frinstance, then cars scrapped when it's still perfectly functional.