"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article
,
Tim+ wrote:
Everyone here seems to obsess over the negatives and refuse to
acknowledge the positives of EVs.

Oh yes, EVs have a lot going for them. The lack of a gearbox with variable
(continuous or stepped) ratios means the driver is in direct control of road
speed/acceleration, rather than controlling engine speed which translates to
road speed via *different ratios* (*). It becomes easy to configure in
acceleration profiles so the driver just has to command the car "accelerate
smoothly from 0 to 60" and the motors will accelerate gradually to begin
with, then more, then ease off to zero acceleration once the target speed is
reached - which a driver of an IC car tries to do, with varying amounts of
skill. They are quieter and cleaner (at the car, rather than the power
station!).

Just a shame that with present-day technology, range is a lot less and
recharging time is dramatically more than for an IC car, requiring a
complete re-think about when/where you will recharge. And it is those
negatives which people will remember: I'm the sort of person for whom one
negative or unwanted change completely annihilates a plethora of advantages.


On my current variable tariff my fuel costs less than 2p per mile. Even
if I was on a standard fixed rate tariff of say 15p/kWh, it would still
be under 5p per mile.

Enjoy it while you can. As the tax revenue from petrol and diesel falls,
the government will have to find a way to replace it. And the most likely
way, road pricing.

I remember during the Tony Blair or Gordon Brown Labour government of the
early 2000s, road-pricing was proposed. The principle was fine, but the way
they were proposing to implement it would have dramatically increased the
cost of a given long journey (ie cost with road pricing and fuel was a lot
more than flat-fee VED and fuel), and because they were proposing to apply
it only (or at a greater rate) for motorways, the law of unintended
consequences would have come into play: people who weren't in a tearing
hurry would have been encouraged to divert onto "cheaper" A and B roads
which couldn't then take all the extra traffic.



(*) ie the same accelerator movement produces different acceleration
depending on whether the gearbox is in second or third gear, which you
instinctively compensate for with a manual gearbox but end up fighting with
an automatic when you are not in control of which gear you are in. Or at
least I find it a problem: I never mastered the ability with an automatic to
accelerate briskly but not wheel-spinningly out of a roundabout, because
small pedal movement produces little power in high gear, whereas
fractionally more produces a bit more power but a surge in acceleration
because the gearbox has changed down and there is less mechanical load on
the engine - hitting the happy medium takes a *lot* of practice. In a manual
car I'd stay in the higher gear but apply more power, or else I'd already
have changed into the lower gear (and remain in it) before the acceleration.
Gearchanges are things that in a manual car I schedule to do before or after
but not during high acceleration, to keep things smooth.