Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms EV beckons....

Some interesting elements.

I used to go a high mileage as one of those "damn sales minkeys" and unless it was a particular car I always paid for the sports/comfort seats to aid comfort over long mileage. Volvo 850T5 standard seats were among the very best. AMG upgraded sports seat (Recaro in some) also excellent. Otherwise I stayed away from the options list, most of my cars were black!

I agree re the modern design languages being just another cube with a cheese grater run around the edges and decorated with silly LED forms. Wonder what they will cost to replace for insurance and how that will all hit premiums. Mazda has been consistently a lighter touch and more pleasing for quite a long time, even the SUV boxes in most cases? I will admit to liking the current brutal judge dread statement that Hyundai are bringing to the market if only because it means they are choosing to do something different. The vans are very solid.

I was going to comment on the CLA daily mileage issue. The limited throughput of the home charging (subject to getting a 20amp fitted?) would result in having to do consistent public, high power, top ups, These high power public chargers are usually quite expensive per kW? It feels like a case for a petrol-electric hybrid? I would say a diesel hybrid but given the way diesel is pricing I do wonder. I am guessing that as it is a company car this will be paid through a company provided "fuel card" in which case the additional use of public charging becomes their issue. I wonder if it was calculated into the savings. Still the way petrol pricing is going who knows what it end up looking like to tax vs savings etc.

I did look at the Merc E400de Estate. Quite a smart compromise for power and electric short hops. I failed and bought an AMG E63 in the end, I know, save the planet. However my mileage now is tiny and you need something to smile about in life. I also looked at the complexity of the 400de and asked the service specialist I use. The mechanics face and slow deep swallow of fear as soon as I said 400de told me what I needed to know. He said anyone needing to fault find one of those would be the person who drew the short straw among the staff. They were all scared having been on the course!

I think the next couple of years will see some real improvement around battery technology coming through into the cars. Increased charging rate being the remaining challenge for high mileage replacement exactly as you outline. It feels like they have fixed the lifetime/lifecycle issues and cost per kW descending rapidly.

I do worry about the service backup of many of the companies as the dealer channel is being eroded and service pricing is being used to replace the profits of sales. The price and availability of parts is under pressure. The Jacoooooo owners threads on Fishbook are quite funny/worrying to follow. The lack of established backup, spares, trained engineers does seem to stand out. We said that about the first wave of Japanese and Korean cars didn't we?

They will have to prise the keys of the V8 from my dead cold palm. It's starting t feel a little like we are walking towards the opening of the original Mad Max film, the last of the V8 interceptors! The roads are not far off either.

Cars are becoming white goods insanely quickly. Over complex electronics, diminishing dealerships, diminishing expertise will all create a disposable product. If it goes wrong, you but a new one. The problem is the £30k new one.

And nobody cares about the depreciation of a fridge.

I can well understand the negativity around EV, and more so if one feels forced into driving one as a company car. If your good lady does less than a few hundred miles on a daily basis, hopefully she can charge the car at home for most of the time which minimises the inconvenience of re fuelling...(-:
I fully admit that my Tesla is considered no more than a very convenient personal transport device, When I picked it up I asked when it was due it`s first service, and was told "we would not expect to see it till it`s first MOT....As best I can remember it cost £44k new and a year later with circa 3k miles covered when renewing it`s insurance, it was reckoned to be valued at around £25 to £27k, so quite a bit more depreciation than the average fridge..?

A further two years on and it still only has circa 9k on the clock I hardly ever use the brakes, and am well used to one pedal driving using re-gen to slow up in traffic and to bring it to a stop, I have to remember to make use of the brakes to give them a bit of exercise and stop the discs from rusting up.

Also that all recent/new ICE propelled vehicles have a similarly high degree of on board tec as an EV, it seems logical that with only an electric motor and no gearbox involved there is far less to go wrong..

Once your good lady gets used to the convenience factor of an EV, I would suspect she might not ever want to go back to a dirty smelly and noisy ICE ....(-:
Hoe it all goes as well as I suspect it will for you both.


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For me it's not negativity, but total disinterest. The same way I feel about sport. I see people cranking up about sport, spending hours and money on watching, sometimes actually doing, but my interest-anometer, never twitches.

Actually I'm the same for motorbikes and watches!

My diesel Golf was doing 62-66mpg indicated in the Highlands last week. Range 600 miles. We can get home from there without refuelling. It's 14 years old, and owes me nothing. If VW made anything comparable now I might be interested, but they don't.

Yep, and the charging stations ones I've seen on motorway services are all very brightly lit and under CCTV surveillance. Not trying to dismiss or minimise entirely legitimate concerns, just trying to provide a bit of reassurance.

I’m not anti EV but it just doesn’t meet our needs. We did over 5100 miles in 7 weeks and apart from the Spanish French border did not have to wait to fill up.
I don’t know what mpg I get on the Volvo but it seems good. Filled up in Slovenia,, filled up in Luxembourg town and drove to London , 960 miles and still have a third of a tank of Luxembourgs best 95 It was daytime driving both days, air con on occasionally , overnight stop and not driving at really high speeds, with few hold ups which probably helped.
You really cannot complain about that, cheaper than flying and no need for a hire car.
Where we stayed overnight, small village, had no shops, no garage and no chargers, so an EV would nave been hopeless? You could buy 5 litres of new wine in plastic ‘cans’ much cheaper than German petrol prices though……
MM

The wife of a friend, (who knows stuff) told me last week that "Of course you will have to buy an electric car soon". I don't know what world lens she looks through, but she was visibly shocked when I told her that there was no way I would ever buy an electric car. I would actually rather manage without. We have great railway connections here.

In a different conversation with her partner. aged 72, he tells me that I will have to change my cars eventually. I asked him how long he expects to be driving, and his answer was basically that he expects to carry on as now, into the distant future. When I pointed out, that at our age, our life can switch in a moment without warning, and that there can be no guarantees that he will be driving in 7 years, at 80, he was shocked and thinks I'm a doom-ster. The truth is, that most of people we know at our age, have medical conditions of various sorts, and some arrived unannounced, and rocked their lives in days. He's not that fit either but subscribes to an aspirin a day over the last 20 years to keep him alive. At a recent consultation, his doctor referred to that as the miracle drug.

Anyway, my pragmatic reality midset, tells me that our current Polo and Golf will easliy go another 7 years, unless some catastrophe befalls aither, which is why I have no plans at all to change cars Electric or otherwise..

Haha. My wife has an electric Dacia. We bought it because as I have a company the entire costs are tax deductible, including the charger installation. It cost about £1.50 to fill it up. She has had it for a year and loves it. It goes really well. Easy to get into and out of!

My BMW 435d Convertible is my second car. The Plus4 is my toy! So I have a feeling that in time Electric Chinese tat will be the norm. At age 75 I run retirement seminars, because I am retiring but have not quite got there. Long may we all live to enjoy Morgans.

If one has any real interest in the plusses and minus of EV this 45min Australian documentary gets into some degree of practical and nerdy detail, though it seems they tend to perhaps go overboard on some aspects which causes me to question their primary objectives. Other than that I found it informative and to some degree confirming that my thinking that buying a Tesla (all be it made in China) was not a bad choice at the time, and for more reasons than I was fully aware of until watching this vid... Best visit the kitchen to create a tin foil hat, should you decide to watch it....? (-:

As this is not the section for posting vids, I have deleted the first "h" in the link to the vid, in order that it does not present the graphics.. hopefully just typing the missing "h" at the front of the link should take you to the vid..

Not to worry Luddite - I try to move posts that start with a video - in essence, a post that is created because of a video, and the following discussion, to the Films, Television, and Video section; however, if someone posts a video in response to an ongoing discussion in another section, that is fine and there is no issue with that. I see a video posted in response to a thread as additional information / background, rather than topic itself.

Like most things TM, it isn't a hard and fast rule (I miss some, no doubt, due to time constraints, etc); however, placing posts that pertain specifically to a video in that section allows those who want to browse film type posts to easily find them.