5 grand grant off electric car Jan 2011

smitchy73

mpmbm wrote: »

So is that £27K before or after the £5K grant?

It's after the £5k grant, so about £5k on top of a normal Prius and for only getting about 15 miles on full electric seems a complete waste of time to me.

For those on this post I like the idea of the Renault Zoe/Fluence where for the Zoe you pay for the car between £13500 and £15,000 then you pay a monthly lease for the battery which protects your battery, I think it's about £70pm, so if you work it out, it's about 15 years of battery lease payments before you get to same price as the Toyota Prius plug in, oh and because you lease the battery and have it fully protected, when it looses it's power below, I think 70% you can get it changed to new batteries.

The Renault cars also have the ability to drive in to a 'service' station where a robotic arm removes the battery pack and replaces it with a fully recharged one for your onward journey, the process supposedly only takes a few minutes. They are trialling this in Israel from what i've read, but as usual the UK government is against any support for a network like this, but there are some companies who are looking at a more widespread charging network where you can pay a monthly charge again, and this gives you access to their network of charging points by the use of an access card(RFID?) and you're charge will be free(due to the payment of the monthly fee).

I personally drive about 35 miles each way to my work from a rural town, and share 'A' and 'B' roads, as well as motorway, I have placed a reservation on the Renault Zoe but will wait to get an extended test drive before signing on the dotted line to buy it, because I need to make sure I will be able to do the return journey on one charge if I can't get charged at work, I might be able to get it charged at work and they have asked me to make a case to get a charging point installed.

smitchy73

mpmbm wrote: »

But how many of these garages will have the robotic arm change your batts?

The car I would like would be a plug in hybrid deseil that you can convert to also run on veg oil, or home made bio fuel. I think you would need 2 fuel tanks and start with pure Deseil every time but them run on veg oil after a mile or so to charge the battery. This car would coover all bases if/when fuel becomes too expensive.

The chances are the changing stations I mentioned won't be coming to the UK, so we'll just have to make do with charging it from our homes/work/shopping centre's.
I think there is talk of some plug in diesels but they won't be about for a wee while i'd think, seen as the diesel hybrid's have just been launched, Peugot 3008 and 5008 come to mind.
I'm going to the Ecovelocity show at Excel in London in a couple of weeks time, if I see anything I'll let you know the first time i'm on here after the show.