Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) buying an EV

Why do those living in London need cars at all? Tube / busses /taxis - they have an excellent public transport system.

Going long distance either use train or plane or hire a car short term.

They probably don't fancy being stabbed.

Interesting view & thoughts Howard. When my kids passed their driving tests both wanted us to get them a car or help fund one. We resisted, saying their lifestyles just did not need a car . How right were over the last 10 years and they both would agree. They would see it as a real waste of money & unnecessary . My daughter is no longer living in London and now does have a car and motorhome built during Covid.
Today I needed to transport stuff so went by car. Recently I visited the same place by walking to the tube, 2 different tubes, a train and a walk…….that was 6 weeks into getting a total knee replacement and no sticks ! Also transport is FREE for me.
I would rarely head into town now with a car . Friend went to John Lewis this week - 4 hours in the car park behind £40:….
Our cars, now no longer for business are for regular shopping, visiting kids , visiting friends in the North, evening entertainment visits and regular holidaying..
Public transport can be very unpleasant and 2 weeks ago I was in the middle of a fight (with one crutch) on a 100 metre (?) flat travelator. . Two people kicked off a yard or so away - punching and one hitting the other with a painters roller pole. It was scary with my new leg . In my rugby youth I would not have worried . Gone are the days I emptied a dustbin into a car, having seen the driver and his girlfriend throwing gurkins and Mc D bags into my garden whilst parked outside. “You littered in my garden, I littered in your car” You grow more careful with age ?
Best MM
PS Few drive for pleasure in London but thankfully we still can enjoy the convenience when and where required

This article by Ed Conway (Sky News) is interesting.

The Clay Christensen he refers to is author of The Innovator's Dilemma & The Innovator's Solution - 2 business books I kept post retirement. The other relevant book is "Crossing the Chasm" by Geoffrey Moore. All 3 were essential reading for anyone grappling with getting break-through products to market.

Ed goes some way to explaining the strategic background to Jaguar's thinking.
We will all have opinions on how successful they are likely to be but only time will answer that one.

Very interesting, good article, thanks for posting

As a child in the 50s, I lived in Bradford where we still had woollen mills and most of the workforce, usually including the managers if not the owners, lived in estates built round the mills. They walked / cycled / took the bus to work. Most didnt have cars. My three uncles, all tradesmen, had motorcycles and sidecars to carry tools and materials. The city had an electric ie trolleybus bus system. Yes the environment was heavily polluted by coal fumes but from heating and power.

The end of this approach is what has brought many of our problems. The mills shut, people moved into office jobs, increasing prosperity allowed the workers to do what the mill owners always had done and live far away from work. That continues today with the "barn conversion" approach. It requires transport and public transport doesnt fit well with high levels of dispersal.

I live in one such "village". No bus service - it wouldnt be economic. Ditto the rail line. I used to work before retirement in a city some 30 miles away and had to commute by car. 85% of the working population of my village do just that - and its not a figure picked out of the air but the result of work done on our local Long Term Development Plan.

Why am I writing all this? Simple really. The economic development of the industrial revolution was based on people leaving peasant style work in the country and coming into towns where their output was far greater because of working together. Its what has powered Chinese economic development in recent decades. And its what IMO we need to get back to. Maybe not so much in the cause of efficiency at work but certainly for economic efficiency in travel. I used to commute maybe 90 mins per day - all wasted time using a machine wasting energy, my car.

There is a delicious irony in the modern man convincing himself that he is living the life of a country gent in his converted pig stye in the middle of nowhere, going to work by car whiclt his wife takes the kids to school in the 4x4. Both of them wasting hours per day out of the maybe 8 hours when they arent at work or asleep. Trashing the environment whilst doing so.

I agree with a lot of that Howard and in particular the last paragraph.

We are well served with hourly buses in either direction and of course the sublime quality of life but no plans to relinquish any of our trio of cars.

I've just got round to reading this, very interesting thanks Paul.

It strikes me that what we are witnessing is the result of a multi-decade strategic industrial plan, something that only a centrally-controlled economy could achieve. One of the major weaknesses of the west's economies appear to be that the prioritisation of short-term investor returns mitigates against being able to do anything similar. It looks like the Chinese have got us beat.

I was born and spent my childhood in east London all the public transport in those days in London was electric Trolley buses, the only diesel transport was the long distance Greenline buses. If only "they" had known

Gosh Howard, it sounds like Shangri -La !
How I miss going to my Uncle in Leeds, having to use the pee pot at night and then later go to the 40 unit toilet block 30 yards down the road. Newspaper or hard toilet paper if the Mill owner had given a shilling bonus . . Back to back houses. Then luxury, a trip to York Road Baths for a scrub up and then to church 3 times on Sunday Newspaper .
Thank god when Filey army camp opened …sorry Butlins - and I had a holiday in 1953 (?): oh how we doffed our hat and enjoyed the beauty pageant.

I simply cannot understand anyone wanting to live in a barn conversion, highly insulated with a heat pump…….?
Surrounding one with a modern car heading to the office , listening to the awful news.
Beats me . MM
PS God forbid they had an au pair to take the children to school whilst both parents proudly March off to work.
This is a dilemma that I certainly would not wish to tackle and feel sorry for a government of any colour.