Random EV thoughts.....

It is a big difference, I think you missed point about insurance. It is very unlikely to to damage O2 sensor due to careless parking. This is completely different situation as this frustrates only BMW customer. If you don't mind me asking what car has BMW provided as replacement for those 3 months?

Low cost could be 'all fur coat, and no knickers'

Brought to you by Shell.

Look over there pls.

I heard there was one over doing promotions, guess that must be the one

Don't show @ELM327 that Rivian. He'll be sick with envy 😁

Saw it on FB this morning. Between that and the lewis motors F150 being a fair bit out of budget (I think it will come down in time as he's building in a wedge of profit according to my maths), this has been a week filled with envy in the ELM327 house. 😁

Sounds like adaptive cruise control was on and he could not turn it off nor brake. It's very unlikely the brakes failed and the cruise control could not be turned off. Also holding the start stop button should turn off the car.

I expect it's driver error, maybe a floor mat stuck under the brake pedal but the article is unclear on what was done to try stop car and how it was eventually turned off. Errors after the fact may be related to the crash.

More EV trucks (the articulated kind)

Towards the end one of the prototypes was setting out on a longer range journey:

-40 tonnes fully loaded

-1,000km roundtrip

-1 charging stop

Electric trucks are here to stay 😁

EDIT: I'm trying to put some cost comparison of an electric truck to a diesel one. Quick look at Google tells me a fully loaded truck consumes 30l/100km on average. At €1.85/l that's €55.50 for a 100km journey

The Mercedes truck seems to consume 120kWh/100km fully loaded. Assuming they're paying Ionity subscription rate of €0.50/kWh that's €60 for the same journey

Cost is comparable, but still not exactly a clear winner for the electric. I assume part of the sales pitch is that companies can charge them at their own depots at night for a cheaper price

I can see an incentive of free tolls for trucks to help adoption. I also suspect there'll be a ULEZ proposed for Dublin at some point which electric trucks will get an exemption from

There's also the V2G argument, but I'm not sure it sells as well for HGVs. A truck that's sitting idle is losing money, I imagine the likes of DHL will swap drivers and try to keep their trucks moving 24 hours if possible

Looks like a much smoother ride when stopping and starting vs an oil burner.

Yeah I wonder if that'll have a knock on for driver health. Driving a truck is well know for being a very bad job for physical and mental health.

Long hours, the need for constant concentration and sometimes living worse than a homeless person all combine to some pretty bad health outcomes

It's part of the reason that not many younger people are taking it up as a profession, the money just isn't worth the hassle

Driving a much quieter and smoother truck might take some of the stress out and improve driver health

Hopefully the EU's new rules around charging networks might also have some guidelines for rest stops added on. They could really do with including proper lounge facilities for truck drivers to relax. Shower and changing rooms and maybe some exercise machines to combat the otherwise sedentary lifestyle would also be good

Back on the insurance situation in the UK, thought this video was an interesting chat on the topic

Seems insurers have lost a lot of money there over the past year and are trying to recoup it

There's a lot of people in the comments talking about how all of there insurance has gone up by 30-40%. Doesn't seem EV related, it's a general increase across the board

Hopefully it doesn't spread here. I did a quick quote there for my ID.4 and it's within €15 of when I renewed in January, so the situation seems stable for now

Slight correction to the article, the weight is 510kg, not grams

If they'd managed to pack all that into half a kilogramme then those lads are wasted on campervans, they should be working for SpaceX 😂

More expensive than pure heroin 😱

At least, I assume it is... 😂