Random EV thoughts.....

The internal combustion engine is a fantastically reliable piece of engineering really. Generally the engine out lives the machine. Anecdotally over 20 years and probably 30+ cars/tractors I have never had a major engine failure. The biggest issue is actually replacing 12v batteries in the older machines!

had to replace a turbo in a 7 year old 3 Series ~ €4400

Obviously you've never owned a 2.2 Mazda or a 1.6 Octavia or an insignia or or or..... I could go for a long time.

Had my 2011 insignia for 7 years and it hasn’t missed a beat yet.
Have to get the timing belt and water pump and brake pads done due to age but it’s grand otherwise.

Watching Bjørn Nyland's long winter range test videos of Ioniq 28kWh back in 2016 in extremely cold Norwegian winter weather, convinced me that the car would be suitable as our family car. I watched both the videos twice, then booked a 24h test drive in one. First thing in the morning, the day after the test drive, I contacted all 30 Irish Hyundai dealers, spent all day communicating and negotiating and by the end of that day had agreed a deal with one of them, ordered it and paid the deposit.

Bjørn will always have a special place on my respect list even though I haven't really watched much of his content over the last 2-3 years

He seems financially naive, his >€1 million mortgage is fine but not sure why he got himself forced into this additional high pressure high interest loan with his house builder, but that seems to be his only mistake. And he wouldn't have been in any financial trouble at all if Tesla had delivered the two (!) free Tesla Roadsters that they have owed him for years because of the worldwide referral program that he topped for many years in a row.

Anyway the guy has huge leverage / sympathy in EV circles and I am sure all will be well for him and his family. Best of luck to him, he has done the world some favours.

Terrible attitude to customer service but hardly surprising considering they’re still peddling cars with no CCS charging ability. I hope the owner has the financial ability to take them on with a good solicitor. If they get away with this once, it won’t bode well for others. SIMI will be hiding in a ditch somewhere no doubt. IEVOA should be out in front here lobbying Nissan for fair play.

Shooting themselves in both feet penny pinching like. It will hurt their sales far in excess what it cost to fix this.

How often do trucks spend parked up.

Maybe, the problem with those automated battery swap stations is they seem very finicky

The Nio ones for example require the driver to sit in the car for the duration of the swap, something like 10 mins

Moving a 500kg or so battery is always going to be a bit tricky, especially if trying to automate it. What happens if the truck is at a bit of an angle, or it's snowing and the vision system freaks out

Often it just seems easier to bite the bullet and plug the thing in

One thing I'm surprised didn't take off was a battery that could be swapped by a forklift. Most warehouses would have a bunch already so no extra infrastructure.

You could have some "booster" packs of around 100kWh which could be added or hot swapped into trucks as needed. It would make the tractors themselves cheaper and maybe lead to some better utilisation of battery capacity

Might work well for construction sites or farms as well, where there isn't always power available where the work site is

If you think there aren't enough charging stations, which are vastly cheaper (and easier) than a battery swapping station. There will never be enough battery swapping stations. As such it's a dead end.

One that will cause great, even existential difficulty to the lives of our grand children and their offspring? Yeah who gives a **** about them, let's use that.

Ev trucks definitely aren’t the solution to that conundrum anyway. I’d ban non essential air travel personally.

Not entirely sure what trucks going 24/7 but not running....or licking the tail pipe of JCBs has to do with anything.