Coronavirus

Must never forget to fill up - errr, I mean charge up.

 

Exactly mate. I didn't know the figures you quoted, but as you have stated this just aint correlating at the moment. We got nine years to get it together and I can't see it happening.

 

£7 for a bus! Fook off mate.

 

I was like thinking buses are 50p!

 

He probably got that info from google

But yeah, the Govt want people to switch to electric, but simply aren't putting the infrastructure in place to give people the confidence to do so.

 

I'd literally rather burn a rainforest than pay 7 quid for a ****ing bus journey ffs.

 

Yeah but what if you want to go on a 300 mile journey the next day, charging it to get you home, aint going to help mate, because your be fooked the next morning, and can we honestly see charging points littering all our streets. The idea has not been thought through at all.

 

It ain't going to happen.

 

I know mate. I kid you not and that was for a 9 mile return journey.

Problem is down here, that buses aren't subsidised like they are in a lot of cities, so the bus companies only run routes for profit.

I grew up under Ken Livingstone's fare's fair scheme where every bus journey was 20p. Granted that was a few years ago, but bus prices in London are still really cheap for what you get.

 

I agree, it certainly isn't going to happen by 2030.

 

It will be fine for cars that run on fuel and electric, but not just electric. So yeah you can get emissions down for sure, but if the government think we are going to be totally electric by 2030, then Boris is talking out of his arse.

 

I think the idea is to stop the production of petrol and diesel cars by 2030, rather than have every car on the road being electric. But yeah, this Govt simply aren't putting the infrastructure in place to achieve anything like that in 9 years time.

Plus as I mentioned, the eye watering prices of electric cars is simply out of reach for people like me who would gladly switch. I know you take the piss out of my Greta Thunberg rage inducing V6 monster truck, but I need a big vehicle for my business as I cart around loads of gear which is why I'm not driving around in a little 1.2 litre Mr Bean car. I paid £4.5k for my car, a new electric equivalent is £71,995 !

I had a look at electric Transporter vans too, they start at £50k ! I guess the prices will come down in time. But how long will all of that take to make an impact on the environmental issues that it's trying to address ?

 

Think the idea is for just new cars for 2030 isn't it?

 

There’s a lot more charging points popping up around the place than most realise tbh. If you do a search of charging stations close to where you live I reckon you’d be surprised how many there already actually are tbh.

But yeah it needs a big step up, the batteries will improve and reduce in size as the billions being thrown at it continues, in a similar way we saw with mobile phones when they went from bricks with a very limited battery life, to a wafer thin thing complete with TV level screen that lasts all day.

Most people will only need to charge up once a week or even a fortnight, and if you can’t have a charge point at home, it’d be no biggy to plug the thing in while you’re in Tescos or wandering round the shops. The pace of change will massively accelerate imo.

 

Just need the price of the actual vehicles to come down next. Or for Govt to subside with grants or support people with leasing schemes etc.

 

Ah get yer, so we could be running petrol cars for another 10 years after. That's ok then, I can't see me still driving come 2040, that's if I'm even still alive, phew!

 

The major cost of production is the batteries. The cost per KW will reduce with scale and the prices will fall over time. They’ve just reduced the grants available to buy one btw lol. Joined up thinking.

 

That's good to hear. What sort of figures are we talking regarding grants ?

 

The max is now £2500 on a car costing under £35k anything above that now gets **** all. It was £3k for anything under £50k.

 

That's peanuts tbh. They really need to do a scrappage scheme like they did a few years ago. Although I think some car manufacturers still offer that ?