Monthly Archives: March 2022

Massive cargo ship carrying electric cars sinks in Atlantic Ocean after fire

March 17, 2022Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, Pollution, UncategorizedRepost

A large cargo vessel carrying cars has sunk in the Atlantic Ocean, thirteen days after a fire broke out on board.

The ship’s manager and Portuguese navy confirmed on Tuesday that the Felicity Ace sank around 400 kilometres off the Azores.

The Panama-flagged vessel was being towed after a salvage team had extinguished the fire, MOL Ship Management in Singapore said in a statement.

The view from our hotel window in Falmouth, ZOE in foreground (Image: T. Larkum)

The 200-metre-long vessel had been sailing from Germany to the United States before it caught fire last month. Portugal’s Air Force had evacuated the 22 crew members, before letting the ship drift for several days in the mid-Atlantic.

Ocean-going tugboats with firefighting equipment had been hosing down the ship’s hull to cool it.

It was not clear how many luxury cars were onboard, but vessels of the Felicity Ace’s size can carry at least 4,000 vehicles.The ship was transporting electric and non-electric vehicles, according to Portuguese authorities.

Authorities suspect the fire may have broken out due to the lithium batteries used in electric vehicles, but an investigation into the cause of the blaze is still underway.

The Portuguese navy confirmed the sinking of the Felicity Ace, saying it occurred outside Portuguese waters.

There were also concerns that the sunken vessel could pollute the ocean, given that it had been carrying 2,000 metric tons of both fuel and oil.

The Portuguese navy said in a statement that only a few pieces of wreckage and a small patch of oil was visible where the ship went down. The tugboats were breaking up the patch with hoses, it added.

A Portuguese Air Force plane and a Portuguese navy vessel will remain at the scene on the lookout for signs of pollution.

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New Nottinghamshire solar point can charge 100 electric cars a day

March 16, 2022Charging, Charging, Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, Solar PowerRepost

A new solar-powered hub could charge up to 100 electric vehicles a day, according to the authority behind it.

The hub is opening in the car park of Gamston Community Centre in Nottinghamshire.

Rushcliffe Borough Council said the facility formed part of its carbon management plan and would, in time, largely be powered by natural light.

It said electric and hybrid users would be able to charge their vehicles up to 80% in 30 minutes.

‘Greener transport’

The facility will add to the council’s network of sites in Keyworth, Radcliffe on Trent, Cotgrave and Rushcliffe Arena in West Bridgford, the authority said.

The council’s portfolio holder for communities and climate change Abby Brennan said: “The charging point is an essential part of our work to… help reduce the environmental impact of our operations.

“As a council, we’re committed to installing more electric vehicle charging points across the borough.

“This will continue to encourage the use of electric or hybrid vehicles, as the infrastructure to support them becomes even more convenient and available to residents.”

The authority has been able to provide the site, near the A52, as part of the government’s Transforming Cities Fund.

The council’s portfolio holder for environment and safety Rob Inglis said: “We’re once again thrilled to bring more public electric charging points to Rushcliffe by providing this new solar-powered facility in Gamston and just yards from one of our major road routes.

“This infrastructure will continue to support residents to make the switch to greener transport and complement our existing sites with more to come later this year.”

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Renault’s Mégane E-Tech: a seductive bet on the EV future

March 15, 2022Buying/Leasing, Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, Renault, UncategorizedRepost

Renault’s new 100%-electric Mégane E-Tech is the French company’s non-hedged bet it can convince drivers they’ve nothing to lose in swapping their traditional ICE rides for modern a EV – and gain considerable performance, cost, and flair advantages in the bargain. A day test driving the car on the roads of southern Spain suggests the company stands a good chance of winning that wager and setting some standards for European EV development as it does.

Renault electric SUV (Image: Auto Express/Playback)

Renault is in no way a newcomer to electric vehicles, having sold over 400,000 EVs since the 2012 rollout of its Zoe e-compact. Yet the Mégane E-Tech represents a veritable milestone in several ways. For starters, it’s the first battery-powered vehicle built using the firm’s common module family (CMF) platform, meaning it will inevitably influence later models. And while Renault is adamant the car is positioned to enter Europe’s C-segment at the top of the family hatchback class, its design, spaciousness, and operating chops may well convince some cross-over and the occasional SUV shoppers to reconsider their plans.

Indeed, as Renault staffers acknowledged when asked, the Mégane E-Tech is playing to several kinds of drivers and expectations at once. Conceived to provide the sound, solid, and powerful performance of a German-engineered car – rival Volkswagen ID.4, for example – Renault’s showcase EV is also an unabashed demonstration of French seductive flair. Its innovative design, stylish flourishes, myriad creature comforts, and various features play as much to the eye and heart as its emissions-free, sustainable, efficiently manufactured hardware and tech appeal to pragmatic buyer demands.

And it does so under the name of Renault’s most popular and recognizable Mégane model – but with everything in, on, or about it completely new and different.

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How Much Range You Really Need in an Electric Car

March 14, 2022Buying/Leasing, Charging, Charging, Electric Cars, Leaf, News, Reviews and Comment, NissanRepost

Stop trying to re-create your gas engine car from electricity and the answer will become clear.

If you’re considering an electric vehicle, don’t make the mistake of buying one with too much range. Unlike combustion engine cars with virtually unlimited range, electric cars make the most sense when they have the right amount of range, not a surfeit of it.

There are several reasons to temper your instinct to get the most range possible.

Cost

Range costs a lot of money. For example, a Nissan Leaf with 226 miles of range costs $6,600 more than the same trim level with 149 miles of range.

There is no real parallel with combustion cars as their cost of range is in the price and consumption rate of fuel, not the vehicle’s MSRP. You can argue that an EV earns back its overall cost premium in per-mile energy savings, but a long-range electric car will need many more of those low-cost miles — and probably years of covering them to do so.

The cost of EV range can make buyers recoil from one without knowing that their perception of sufficient range, not cost, is the real problem.

Weight

Longer range versions of a given electric car have larger, heavier batteries. Unlike a tank of gas that weighs about 100 pounds and gets lighter as it’s used, an EV battery can easily weigh 1,000 pounds and stays just as heavy as it is “emptied,” increasingly becoming dead weight the remaining amount of charge must lug around.

The long range Tesla Model 3 (358 miles of range) weighs 172 pounds more than the RWD version’s still-generous 272-mile range, a weight difference equal to the entire payload a car will most often carry: the driver. The difference is even more pronounced when comparing a long range Model 3 to a comparable conventional BMW 3 Series, which is about 475 pounds lighter.

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END of British petrol station: UK urged to ditch iconic locations as revolution looms

March 11, 2022Charging, Electric Cars, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

PETROL stations are predicted to become a thing of the past as electric vehicles allow drivers to fit charging more around their lifestyles.

As electric vehicles become more popular drivers will be able to incorporate charging into day to day activities such as visiting a supermarket or while they are at work. That’s the view of leading UK charging provider Pod Point who have partnered with Tesco to provide charging facilities in hundreds of branches around the country. Their CEO Erik Fairbairn told Express.co.uk many people assumed they would charge an electric vehicle in something resembling a petrol station, however this often didn’t match reality. Instead he explained charging would likely come in a variety of settings to reduce the time taken out of peoples’ days.

“We say about 97 percent of all energy flows into electric cars at something other than something that feels a bit like a petrol station.”

A number of forecourts have begun to feature electric charging options with Shell opening its first all electric charging hub in Fulham.

Mr Fairbairn said in general terms such an approach could be a dead end although there would still be a role for service station style options for long distance journeys.

“It’s not fair to say none are required but it’s certainly significantly the minority and the future of the petrol station network in the UK in 10 or 20 years looks nothing like what we’ve got now” he explained.

“The vast majority of petrol stations in my view probably don’t really have a role to play in the electric vehicle future.”

In the long run companies such as Pod Point want to rollout charging points in every parking bay however this would require a big increase in the number of electric vehicles to encourage the investment.

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The 10 best electric cars to buy for the new 22 registration and their benefits

March 10, 2022Charge Your Car, Charging, Charging, Electric Cars, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

We have picked the top EVs you can buy now in terms of range, efficiency and desirability ahead of a ban on fossil-fuelled cars by 2030

Thinking about buying an electric car? You’re not the only one. Plenty of British buyers are wondering about when to switch from petrol or diesel to an electric model and it will be interesting to see the percentage of EVs sold in March with the advent of the new 22 registration.

There’s good news if you’ve decided to make the leap: the market is brimming with brilliant options. Indeed, it feels like each week a new electric car (EV) comes out that brings with it more range, more equipment, a lower price or even a combination of all three.

To keep up, we’ve revised our list of the 10 best electric cars to buy for 2022. This list, of course, is not exhaustive; there are plenty more excellent EVs on sale, and indeed, it’s taken us no small amount of teeth-gnashing, hair-pulling and some heated discussion to come up with this ranking.

With that in mind, it’s important to remember that these cars are very closely matched; there are no bad cars in this list, and what’s more, several very good EVs missed out by mere fractions of a hair’s breadth; honourable mentions must therefore go to the incomparably affordable MG ZS EV, the brilliantly practical Vauxhall Combo-E Life, a glut of much-vaunted Teslas, the quietly competent Skoda Enyaq and the surprisingly sporty Ford Mustang Mach-E.

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Wandsworth Council EV charger rollout progresses with Liberty Charge installs

March 9, 2022Away From Home, Charging, Electric Cars, Electric Motorhomes, Electric Taxis, Electric Vans, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

On-street electric vehicle (EV) chargepoints are being rolled out across Wandsworth, with 35 sites set to see installations.

Wandsworth Council began the rollout of the infrastructure in 2021 across 26 sites, with 10 already live. The latest installations will take the total number of sites to 35, comprising 65 dual socket EV chargepoints able to charge 130 vehicles at any one time.

Liberty Charge is to own and operate the chargepoints, which are to be delivered by its sister company Virgin Media O2, with the council having chosen the company due to its ability to deliver fully-funded chargepoints for residents without the means to privately charge their EV.

Additionally, Liberty Charge’s chargepoints are 22kW, which the council said is faster than other street chargepoints.

Liberty Charge is a joint venture between Liberty Global and Zouk Capital, utilising Virgin Media’s existing infrastructure – as the telecommunications company is owned by Liberty Global – for the chargepoints.

Its creation followed an EV charging trial using Virgin Media’s infrastructure, the Virgin Media Park & Charge project, which aimed to deploy 1,200 charging sockets in towns and cities across the country by early 2021.

Liberty Charge is to own, operate and maintain the Wandsworth chargepoints without requiring local taxpayer support, while the council helps to identify locations and grants the necessary approvals, with the sites in Wandsworth agreed after consultation with residents throughout the technology rollout.

“We want to not only increase the number of available charge points but to ensure that a charge point is easily accessible to all our residents,” said Kim Caddy, deputy leader of the council and cabinet member for finance, resources and climate sustainability.

Over the past year, EV take up in the borough increased by just under 1,000 vehicles, with the new charging infrastructure to support and encourage EV adoption across the borough.

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E-transport is a game changer

March 8, 2022Buying/Leasing, Electric Cars, Leaf, News, Reviews and Comment, Nissan, UncategorizedRepost

Our company car is eight years old this month.

We purchased it secondhand just over five years ago. It’s a Nissan Leaf. All electric.

We purchased it in the days when people used to say ‘we haven’t got the infrastructure’ or ‘where are we going to get all the energy from?’ or ‘they don’t have the range’.

I let the wife conduct the research, just so she could build up her range anxiety until we saw an affordable great little car on sale from Stebbings on Hardwick Narrows.

Since we have had the car we have never used a public charge point, of which there are six times as many as there are petrol pumps in the UK and growing by around 200 a week on top of the hundreds of home chargers installed daily. No, we just use the ‘granny charger’ which is basically a three-pin plug charger, like your mobile phone. It uses about half the energy a kettle uses and stays on for an hour here and an hour there to keep us topped up.

A showroom tour of a Nissan Leaf (Image: T. Larkum)

Go out, come home, plug in. That’s all there is to it and for over five years, that’s my knowledge of electric cars.

Oh, you need to put washer fluid in for the windscreen and air in the tyres every now and then, but that’s it.

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GRIDSERVE and Moto open first high-powered EV charging hub in Wales

March 7, 2022News, Reviews and Comment, UncategorizedRepost

GRIDSERVE and Moto have opened a first high-powered electric vehicle charging hub in Wales, the first in the country according to the companies, as they continue their UK wide rollout of sites.

The Electric Hub is located in Swansea and features six 350kW electric vehicle (EV) chargers with contactless payment. It forms part of the GRIDSERVE Electric Highway, and has the possibility to add six more EV chargers when requested and GRIDSERVE said all chargers will be powered with clean energy, through their own solar farms.

Charging Station in Sunderland (Image: Fastned)

“This is a landmark project for GRIDSERVE and Moto and the first high-power charging facility of its kind for Wales. We’re really excited to be demonstrating that all parts of the UK should be able to embrace the EV revolution,” said Toddington Harper, CEO of GRIDSERVE.

“We cannot let a lack of infrastructure prevent drivers from realising the myriad of benefits that come with driving an electric vehicle. This project will help deliver the confidence for more people to make the switch to EVs, as well as support the growing number of people who already have.”

Harper added that Swansea’s Electric Hub is the first of many projects they are considering across Wales. Last year GRIDSERVE’s announced over 20 Electric Hubs, which are due to open across UK’s motorway services by the end of Q2 2022.

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InstaVolt sets sights on 1,000 rapid charger milestone by summer

March 4, 2022Charging, Electric Cars, InstaVolt, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

InstaVolt is planning to reach a 1,000 rapid charger milestone in the UK this summer, with its 700th set to be in operation later this month.

Rapid Charging Step 3: Choose to Charge (Image: T. Larkum)

Of the remaining 300 needed to reach their milestone, InstaVolt said they had 200 already in construction with new sites in development in partnership with McDonald’s, KFC, Costa Coffee and EH Booths.

“Improving public charging infrastructure across the whole of the UK is vital for people to feel confident enough to make the switch to electric vehicles. I’m proud to be spearheading the delivery of more rapid chargers to all four corners of the UK”, Adrian Keen, chief executive officer of InstaVolt, said.

Keen added that the company grew its network by over 50% over the past year, and it will keep on increasing the installation of chargers as sales of electric vehicles continue to reach record highs.

Another way for InstaVolt to increase their rapid chargers will be through Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which they aim to install their first rapid chargers later this year.

“Not only does the UK need more chargers, but those chargers need to be reliable, in great locations and easy to use. The InstaVolt network delivers these requirements to drivers, as well as corporate fleets making the transition to electric,” added Keen.

The installation of new chargers will not only be done in new sites the company said, as they will soon start their first expansion project at their hub on the M40 in Banbury, with the addition of eight chargers.

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