Electric Cars:what's available?

[NewcastleFalcon]

There are many salary sacrifice schemes through which vehicles can be leased to employees, and for electric vehicles right here right now, it is probably the most cost effective route towards having the use of new electric vehicle.

Larger employers, and the biggest of them all the NHS offer such schemes to their employees, but it is by no means only available to the big providers. It can be a win win for employers and their staff.

At the moment over the next three years the benefit in kind assessment of having use of an electric vehicle is virtually zero (From April 6th 2020 new lower rates become effective. In the UK all BEVs will pay no company car tax in 2020-21, just 1% in 2021-22 and 2% in 2022-23.)

The employee pays the costs of leasing their vehicle via salary sacrifice, which means that the income they are taxed on is reduced, saving Tax and National Insurance payments. The employer also benefits from reduced employers NI Contributions.

Octopus, as mentioned by Chris in a previous post, also have a wing "Octopus Electric Vehicles" which has introduced their "Go Green Car Scheme" , aiming to provide an easy route for employers offer such sacrifice schemes.

New salary sacrifice scheme gives all employees access to EVs

Regards Neil

[andy5]

Remember reading a couple of weeks ago that a German higher court had backed a previous lower court ruling that using a touchscreen while driving was covered by the same legislation that covers using mobile phones while driving. The car in question was a Tesla which crashed while the driver was trying to adjust the wiper speed. Hopefully if this interpretation is adopted elsewhere it could force car manufacturers to think a bit more about their headlong rush into touch screens.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53666222

Tesla model 3 has a limited stalk control for the wipers. A push-button on the end of the indicator stalk(opposite side to the Xantia) a touch will wipe once whereas a more solid push will wash wipe 3 times with another a few seconds later. It also has voice-controlled wipers. So there was no need to be reaching for the screen for that purpose. But what isn't voice-controlled are the fog lights. And when you run into a bank of fog at night, is exactly the scenario that you want full concentration in the road and want to turn on the fog lights, which in involves a screen selection a swipe and another selection( from memory) not great. I'm told there are more voice commands on the way, they can't come soon enough and hopefully they'll recognise my voice rather than " navigate to charger" and the reply " navigating to Georgia"!!!!

I don't know whether to be amazed or amused.

My 21 year old Xantia can figure out the wiper speed for itself. If I want to override it, just shove the stalk upwards one or two clicks, without even looking. What can be simpler and more sensible than that?

Sometimes being too clever isn't too clever.

[NewcastleFalcon]

I have seen a couple of Jaguar I-pace 100% EV's with number plates sporting the Volkswagen Financial Services name. I speculated that they would be part of the salary sacrifice scheme offered to NHS employees. Old news from 2017 but this llittle snippet of info suggests that may not be far off the mark.

NHS Fleet Solutions opts for 200 Golf GTE Plug in Hybrids


Regards Neil

[mickthemaverick]

Here's a quest....find out how far A new Golf Gte Plug-in Hybrid "goes" on Electricity alone.

Regards Neil

I like a quest:

From The Sunday Times review:

It is equipped with a 8.7kwh battery and

"What you get is two cars in one, combining eco-friendliness with Golf reliability. Charge it each day at home or at work, and it’ll comfortably run in silent electric mode for the length of the average commute — a 17-mile round trip."

[andy5]

Here's a quest....find out how far A new Golf Gte Plug-in Hybrid "goes" on Electricity alone.

Regards Neil

First let's have a few guesses in a sweepstake

37 miles.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Here's a quest....find out how far A new Golf Gte Plug-in Hybrid "goes" on Electricity alone.

Regards Neil

First let's a few guesses in a sweepstake

37 miles.

Quite far out there Andy, Micks has done a bit of research and come up with 17!

I like a quest:

From The Sunday Times review:

It is equipped with a 8.7kwh battery and

"What you get is two cars in one, combining eco-friendliness with Golf reliability. Charge it each day at home or at work, and it’ll comfortably run in silent electric mode for the length of the average commute — a 17-mile round trip."

Regards Neil

[andy5]

Not necessarily. That might just say the average commute is 17 miles return.

[mickthemaverick]

Indeed it could be but the 8.7kwh battery is a better guide in terms of actual range. Perhaps Simon could make a good approximation of the range knowing the size and weight of a golf?

This quote from an owner on the forum at https://www.speakev.com/threads/gte-ele ... rge.13273/

Hi All,

Just wondering what range everyone's getting in pure electric mode? I took delivery of my GTE two weeks ago and can only manage 12-16 miles range in pure electric on a full charge. This is driving sensibly, with AC switched off, etc.

I know that stated range is 30 miles and most people say around 25 is more realistic, but I'm way off this range.

Look forward to hearing any thoughts.
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[andy5]

There is one article saying even VW only claim 31 miles (which sounds like a very rounded number to me - 50 km), so not much over 20 to be expected.

[mickthemaverick]

Have a look at this article and you will be as bewildered as I am!

[c.morewood]

Remember reading a couple of weeks ago that a German higher court had backed a previous lower court ruling that using a touchscreen while driving was covered by the same legislation that covers using mobile phones while driving. The car in question was a Tesla which crashed while the driver was trying to adjust the wiper speed. Hopefully if this interpretation is adopted elsewhere it could force car manufacturers to think a bit more about their headlong rush into touch screens.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53666222

Tesla model 3 has a limited stalk control for the wipers. A push-button on the end of the indicator stalk(opposite side to the Xantia) a touch will wipe once whereas a more solid push will wash wipe 3 times with another a few seconds later. It also has voice-controlled wipers. So there was no need to be reaching for the screen for that purpose. But what isn't voice-controlled are the fog lights. And when you run into a bank of fog at night, is exactly the scenario that you want full concentration in the road and want to turn on the fog lights, which in involves a screen selection a swipe and another selection( from memory) not great. I'm told there are more voice commands on the way, they can't come soon enough and hopefully they'll recognise my voice rather than " navigate to charger" and the reply " navigating to Georgia"!!!!

I don't know whether to be amazed or amused.

My 21 year old Xantia can figure out the wiper speed for itself. If I want to override it, just shove the stalk upwards one or two clicks, without even looking. What can be simpler and more sensible than that?

Sometimes being too clever isn't too clever.

Oh the Xantia auto wipe is so far ahead of the teslas!! I couldn't believe it when I tried the auto wipers inThe tesla for the first time. I.leave them.ln manual most of the time..although we are promised improvements his the 2 weekly software updates.

[Mandrake]

Oh the Xantia auto wipe is so far ahead if the teslas!! I couldn't believe it when I tried the auto wipers inThe tesla for the first time. I.leave them.ln manual most of the time..although we are promised improvements his the 2 weekly software updates.

I suspect the reason why the autowipe on the Model 3 doesn't work very well is because it doesn't have a dedicated reflection based rain sensor...

Most cars with auto wipers use a sensor glued to the inside of the glass (with optically clear glue) in front of the rear view mirror which sends an infrared beam at an angle which reflects off the outside surface of the glass. (Total internal reflection) When the window is dry it reflects in a predictable way.

When a rain drop sits on the glass in front of the sensor it effectively extends and alters the optical surface shape of the glass and alters the reflection angle so the return beam arrives at a different location and a sensor detects this. This type of sensor is very reliable - it's generally not fooled by changes in outdoor brightness, dirt or anything other than optically clear water droplets resting on the surface of the glass.

The Model 3 has no such sensor - instead it simply uses a normal forward looking video camera - one of the cameras used for autopilot, (which is fitted to the car even if you didn't pay for autopilot) and then uses heuristic AI to analyse a regular colour image to try to work out if there is rain sitting on the window, or whether what it can see is something else. As you can imagine this is complex to do and not as reliable as a sensor that is directly measuring the reflection properties of the glass, for example glare from driving into the sun is likely to fool it by washing out the image, and certain kinds of backgrounds may make it hard to see the rain drops.

Personally I don't think it will ever work as reliably as a dedicated optical reflection based rain sensor, and I put down the lack of such a sensor to the cost cutting measures that went into trying to hit the original (never reached) $35k price point along with the lack of any kind of heads up display behind the steering wheel. Tesla sold the "centre screen does everything" as a feature but IMHO it's really about simplifying and cost cutting in the name of trying to reach that original $35k price point.

My Leaf has an optical sensor similar to the one in the S2 Xantia and while it works OK I don't think it works as well as the one in my 1998 S2 Xantia! It's sometimes a bit reluctant to start wiping and at other times it gets over excited and starts wiping at high speed for moderate rain.

[c.morewood]

I always wondered how they worked..thanks for the explanation. I can't remember Raymond Baxters explanation on Tomorrow's World all those year's ago.
I think it was being demonstrated on a Jaguar?

[white exec]

T.I.R.! Takes me back to O-level Physics. A critical angle of 43º rings a bell...

[NewcastleFalcon]

Have a look at this article and you will be as bewildered as I am!

Didnt read the link Mick due to the site's either accept cookies or wade through a vast quantity of options with no clear simple option to reject cookies.. I'm fairly sure I have dumped that sort of thing in my personal 101 before.

Regards Neil