Here's something to put the petrol heads in a tizzy.

5 people a day dead on roads in UK etc etc.
(I own two, and would dearly like to get rid of one)

Not surprised – I guess they’re beginning to smell a bit?

Blimey crikey your hype-meter’s a bit sensitive. Sorry I’ve offended your sensibilities.

Sorry I’ve offended your sensibilities

With that idea?

Do have a word with yourself.

so hang on, are we talking about firing up the c5 factory?

i’d love an electic vehicle, but without a garage to keep it in overnight, it’s a terrible idea.

unless you can carry the battery inside?

Could I drive one of these things without a license? And will it fit a bike in/on the back? 🙂

so hang on, are we talking about firing up the c5 factory?

i’d love an electic vehicle, but without a garage to keep it in overnight, it’s a terrible idea.

unless you can carry the battery inside?

Any small 3 wheeler is always going to be compared to the C5 and while it was a bit of a joke to all but the inventor, it was very forward thinking and only didn’t really work because the batteries and motor tech wasn’t really there and the rest of the design was shocking.

What do you mean about the garage and why would the batteries need to come in over night? Surely it’s just another car you can leave outside and you can get a grant for fitting a charge point outside your house which means it’s effectively free.

we’ve an old mill sat on a large plot with a number of outbuildings by the side of an unclassified road in the country

so you’ve built your home around owning a car. Your house sounds nice and all but you can’t really move to the middle of nowhere then moan that there isn’t a bus running up your street unclassified road.

I live in a big town near a big city, lots and lots of people drive from big town to big city and vice versa for work everyday. We need to somehow get those people out of their current mind set. Make public transport cheap, reliable and quick, make cycling and walking a safe pleasant experience and gimp the driving* even more than it is now – cause the conditions aren’t putting many people off car use and hopefully drop all those 2/3/4 car houses down to one/none. Work on the easier to fix bigger population centres, cut car use drastically then see what could be workable out in the sticks – more car/rail links at a guess.

*aimed specifically at that car traffic between places well served by public transport but also keep an eye on not creating too much of an incentive for everyone to move 50+ miles from work and getting an easy fast drive into work. It shouldn’t all be price/tax based either, PT should be faster cheaper and more convenient than car use for commuting (and school run – the stuff people do every [week] day that cause the most congestion).

There’s a lot of good things to say about the C5, it sounds like your proposing something similar ish.

small, electric, simple, 3-wheeler, maybe with a roof this time…?

Speeder – Member

What do you mean about the garage and why would the batteries need to come in over night? Surely it’s just another car you can leave outside and you can get a grant for fitting a charge point outside your house which means it’s effectively free.

have you ever left anything outside overnight?

join the dots:

1) car plugged into a funny piece of street furniture.

2) pissed up student/football enthusiast, or just some pikey after something they can scrap.

can you see what i see? kicking over bins is fun, but imagine the hours of entertainment the ‘evening folk’ will have with this stuff…

i’m not convinced that the price of petrol is enough of a problem for people to try something new/not as good.

a litre of petrol will move a small efficient vehicle 20km, for the cost of £1.50, that’s a bargain. it’s certainly not enough of a problem for me to worry about someone parking next to ‘my’ charging point before i get home.

kei cars look like good fun 🙂

As long as electric cars need to be plugged in to charge there’s going to be massive resistance (pun intended) for many reasons. Find some hybrid solution or solar power. What about wind power? It’d be like Mad Max with us all tacking the country lanes with our “land yachts”.

Only some of the above was in jest

can you see what i see? kicking over bins is fun, but imagine the hours of entertainment the ‘evening folk’ will have with this stuff…

The ones I’ve seen aren’t really in the order of a three pin socket and an extension cord. They tend to be the heavier duty armoured cable secured with lockable sockets at either end. If someone wants to trash them they’ll have to be packing a pair of bolt croppers (not what students are generally carrying around), and anyone doing that to a charging electric car is at risk of a slight (massive) shock!

As long as electric cars need to be plugged in to charge there’s going to be massive resistance (pun intended) for many reasons.

There is potential for wireless charging, just drive the car over an inductive loop style arrangement and it charges automatically, a few new developments I’ve worked on have these built in to the car parks to future proof them (retrofitting is expensive). Don’t ask me how it works though, looks like magic to me…

Don’t ask me how it works though, looks like magic to me…

Same as leccy toothbrushes, the tooth faerie what lives in the little placcy thingy does it.

I might be tempted by one of them cars, to use it for local stuff, shopping and errands, leaving the petrol monster for distances.

i seem to recall when the smart car was first announced, there was a fair amount of ‘ooh, it will never sell, its too small, it cant possibly be safe etc’
yet they sold relatively well for a ‘niche’ vehicle.
i, for one, would be interested in something like the gordon murray T25 type of vehicle, extremely light, but strong, 3 seats, which for many is enough, it would be for me anyway.
but it has (i feel) to be a normal car to drive.
the biggest barrier, i feel, is public attitudes, bigger is better.
and cost, no point being cheap to run if it costs the same as a mid range merc.

Just looked on Autorader – Twizy’s go for less than six grand. Thought they’d be dearer than that!