Go Ultra Low enlists a Top Gear legend for the ‘Gran Prix’ challenge and reveals Britain’s most passionate female car fan aged over 60.
In this video we go behind the scenes as our winner, Helen Mary Jones, stars in her very own car review video at the iconic Brands Hatch racing circuit – with a little help from motoring TV presenter Quentin Willson.
Helen swapped her own Aston Martin DB9 sports car for a pure-electric Volkswagen e-Golf for the day, but can electric cars be just as fun to drive – and which was quicker off the line?
Electric cars are getting better all the time, making them a more realistic proposition for more people. These are currently our experts’ favourite five
More and more people are coming to realise that an electric a car is a genuine proposition for 21st-centrury motoring.
With increasing amounts of us living in the city or the suburbs, and never needing to undertake long journeys by car, the relaxing drive and low running costs of an electric car are making them all the more attractive.
Of course, most are not without their limitations – most have a real-world range of no more than 100 miles; they’re comparatively dear to buy; and, you need easy access to charging facilities – but as long as you can live with those restrictions (and more people than will admit it, can…), an electric car is a very sensible choice.
The question is what to buy, but with more and more makers selling electric cars, you can find pretty much whatever you want – from city cars to sports cars, and all points in between. And, if you are tempted, let our experts guide you through the best of the current crop.
Nissan Leaf – the British-built one
More than any other, the Leaf is the car that convinced a sceptical public that an electric car was something to consider; and, even now, it’s a compelling proposition. Around town – which is the natural habitat of an electric car – the Leaf is smooth, comfortable and near-silent. Even in the heaviest traffic, the way it drives is supremely relaxing. Above all, apart from the range, there are no sacrifices to make: the Leaf is a decent five-seater, while the boot will take plenty of luggage. As with any electric car, everyday motoring can cost just pennies, and to cap it all, it even costs less to service than a comparable Pulsar.
Renault Zoe – the (relatively) cheap one
One of the main attractions of electric cars is that they cost so little to run, but the trouble with so many of them is that they cost so much to buy. Not so the Zoe, which is yours for little more than the price of a decently-specced Clio. The beauty of it is that, despite the fact that you’re not spending a million dollars, the Zoe is still a very smart-looking little thing. The blue accents on the outside are complemented by a hi-tech interior; and, as the car was designed from the ground up as an electric car, the batteries don’t limit the car’s practicality too much. It’s good to drive, too, and the icing on the cake is a five-star Euro NCAP crash test rating.
After the pain of public charging on our way to Stoke the rest of the trip went very well. We found the public charge points in the John Street car park easily (though only one had its light on).
Unfortunately they didn’t have any signage indicating what network they belonged to. On a whim I waved an old Plugged-in Midlands card at the charger and it started to work.
We left the car on charge for the rest of the day while we had lunch and then watched the gym displays. I was able to monitor the charging on my phone like last time, but this time it completed without a hitch.
At the end of the day we got back to a fully charged i3. With its long range we were able to get home, some 100+ miles south, without a single stop.
I haven’t written one of these posts for some time as the public charging infrastructure has improved significantly in scale and reliability over the last three years. However, so far today has been a bit like returning to the bad old days.
We’re driving from Northampton to Stoke for one of our daughter’s regular gymnastics events. It’s fairly relaxed as with the new i3 94Ah we have plenty of range to get there without charging en route.
However as the family needed two comfort breaks on the way I took the opportunities to try charging. The results were disappointing.
At Corley Services on the M6 there was a Leaf at one of the two Ecotricity charge points. Unfortunately it was the only one that had a CCS connector compatible with the i3 so I could see I wasn’t going to get a charge. In fact it looked like he was having problems and was on the phone to Ecotricity. However when I came back out of the building later I could see and hear he was charging.
I was more hopeful at Stafford services when pulling in as both charge points were vacant. However I had 3 failed attempts to charge using the Ecotricity app, with the message ‘Remote Start failed’.
At that point I gave up and we got back on the motorway. At least with the i3 94Ah we could get where we were going without needing to charge.
Falling costs of renewables and batteries will boost EV market over next 20 years and have huge impact on wider global economy, BNEF paper argues
The rapid rise in electric vehicle numbers expected across the world over the next two decades will reverberate throughout all business sectors and make a huge impact on the global economy. That is the…
The electric vehicle market is set to grow quickly, but so far there has been no consensus on the ‘second-life’ of the used EV batteries.
In this report, senior analyst Claire Curry has compiled the first data and shows that low-cost energy storage could be here sooner than previously thought.
She projects:
There will be 29 GWh of used EV batteries coming out of cars in 2025. This far exceeds the size of the current stationary storage market.
Of this, almost a third will get a second life as stationary storage. (10GWh)
Today, a new stationary storage system can cost up to $1000/kWh. In contrast, repurposing used EV batteries could cost as little as $49/kWh in 2018, with an additional $400/kWh cost to convert to stationary.
The auto industry is divided on the issue. While Tesla won’t be involved in second life, BMW, Nissan and Mercedes Benz have second-life stationary storage projects in place.
Recently, BMW announced its second quarter and half year sales results with record number of deliveries and revenues.
BMW i3 94Ah
One of the strong points of that report was the high demand of plug-in electric cars, which are rapidly taking over production volumes at the company.
The German manufacturer expanded its lineup to seven electrified models in Q2, which resulted in total first half sales that were 87% higher than year ago.
In total BMW delivered 23,675 all-electric and plug-in hybrid cars in the first 6 months of 2016. BMW added that by the end of July, customers had placed more than 7,000 orders for new version of the BMW i3 with its upgraded 33 kWh battery.
The pre-order demand is three times higher as compared to the launch of the i3 in 2014, and suggests that we should pretty excellent results for BMW plug-ins going forward.
“The BMW Group currently offers seven electrified models including plug-in hybrids, such as the new BMW 740e or the recently launched BMW 330e and BMW 225xe Active Tourer, and the fully electric BMW i3.
Thanks to the expanded range of electrified models, sales of this type of vehicle in the first six months of the year were just under 87% higher than the same period last year: a total of 23,675 have been delivered to customers worldwide. Furthermore, to the end of July 2016, over 7,000 orders had been received for the additional BMW i3 model with significantly extended battery range, which only celebrated its market launch in July. This is more than three times the figure of orders received for the first generation BMW i3 at the equivalent launch period.”
Nuclear energy’s cost, and a focus on alternative technology, including research on a new generation of hi-tech battery storage, is leading observers outside the green lobby to question the project’s value
Should Theresa May take the axe to the troubled Hinkley Point nuclear project, it will propel wind and solar power further into the limelight. And for renewable technologies to become really effective, Britain and the rest of the world need breakthroughs in electricity storage to allow intermittent power to be on tap 24/7, on a large scale and for the right price.
Cheap, light and long-life batteries are the holy grail, and achieving this requires the expertise of people like Cambridge professor Clare Grey. The award winning Royal Society fellow is working on the basic science behind lithium-air batteries, which can store five times the energy in the same space as the current rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that are widely used today.
The floating solar farm on Godley Reservoir near Manchester (Image: A. Cooper/Guardian)
She is also focusing on sodium-ion and redox flow batteries; the latter store power in a liquid form, contained in vats or tanks that in theory can easily be scaled up to power-grid sizes.
“There has been an amazing transformation in this field. There is an explosion of interest and I am extremely lucky to have decided early on to concentrate on this area,”
she says, although she is keen to play down the idea that a eureka moment is just around the corner.
She is also thankful for Hinkley – if only because of the government’s long-term funding deal with EDF Energy that it gave rise to.
“It has put a price on [future] electricity in the market which is high, and this has potentially opened up further commercial space for new technologies such as batteries. But independent of Hinkley we do need better batteries and my chemistry will hopefully help find them,” she says.
The wisdom of bringing in the Chinese to help EDF, the French state-owned utility company, construct the proposed new Somerset reactors has been highlighted as a key factor behind the government’s reluctance to push the go button.
But ministers are also aware that, in the last 18 months, many experts in the field have concluded that the biggest argument against the plant is not that it is too expensive, at £18.5bn, but that the kind of “on-all-the-time” power it delivers is no longer what is required.
Month 3 running a Renault Zoe: the cure for range anxiety
It’s funny how your perceptions of things change through necessity. In a car burning dead dinosaurs I get a bit nervy when the fuel gauge reports that there’s less than 50 miles in the tank.
Now that I’m motoring like the Jetsons, if the Zoe’s range is anywhere above 20 I’m cruising along with barely a care in the world. Range anxiety? Not a chance. It shows that when you only have about 80 or so miles to play with, you soon recalibrate your idea of what is acceptable, not least because mileage in an electric car seems a much more precise figure. If there’s six miles left, you’ve got six miles and it seems to click down at a regular rate, whereas in a dinosaur car you might have six, or three suddenly, or 56.
Some of this certainty is down to Renault’s excellent range predictor, which learns the more you drive. So when I started it didn’t reckon much above 70 miles was possible, but the more time I spend in Eco mode, which limits the power of the air-con (which I switch off a lot anyway), slows the throttle response and doesn’t let you go above 60mph, the more optimistic it has become. My range is now up to 87 miles with a full charge.
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