Thank you, you’ve made my day.

The world needs more people like you.

Those images are awesome.

I’d be so excited.

One of my colleagues doesn’t have a TV and doesn’t watch anything at all, not even YouTube.

She started buying a license a few years ago just to stop the TV licencing people hassling her.

And EV’s.

Everything is really simple and straightforward when someone else has to do it.

Anyway, I’m a relatively well off northerner so this issue doesn’t affect me at all, I just think that it’s not always as clear-cut for folk at the bottom.

This has turned into quite an inspirational thread. Well done and good luck OP.

It has indeed.

Got me thinking I might just hand my notice in as I’m sick of a the bull****.

Not everyone has to be ‘perfect’ or indeed not have an environmental or social impact – but if everyone gives a little, it works.

Except its not everybody, its the 1 in 3 poor people who want/need a car who are being targeted.

A fairer way would be to charge all vehicles in the city then use the vast sums raised to provide small clean vehicles to those who really need them in the city (essential workers) and a much improved public transport and bike network for the rest.

Anyone who wants a personal car but doesn’t actually need it continues to pay.

I managed home care teams for years and I know how desperate they are for staff. Her council or agency will pay the expense, pay her additional mileage rate or provide a pool car. They cannot afford to lose any staff. It was a non argument.

For nhs and council that might be true but many careworkers with private agencies only receive 10 pence per mile now so their journeys are already underpaid.

I’m not convinced that agencies are willing to throw any more money at their staff, shortages or not.

https://www.homecare.co.uk/news/article.cfm/id/1671962/Home-care-workers

Three out of four care staff who look after people at home are not being paid for the time it takes them to travel between appointments, according to new research.

Source:  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/unison-government-england-alan-jones-b2357803.html

As a result of parking related moaning rather than CAZ our community team have moved to (presumably leased) pool iD3s. Don’t know what they do in the private sector.

I work in an NHS Trust on the community team and we don’t have access to pool cars but can buy a car for work on salary sacrifice.

I do, however, work with lots of private providers and their staff do tend to drive old cars, you know, the things with 8 months MOT for £900.

They’re probably not earning well enough to go out and buy much better either.

As an example my mate does home care part time since he retired due to ill health as a community nurse, and he’s paid around £11 an hour.

BUT only whilst he’s in the call. So a 20 minute call followed by a 15 minute drive followed by a 10 minute call then another 15 minute drive gets him £5.50 (and no help with car costs either). He only does it to keep busy and earn a bit of pin money but others hve to try to live on it).

That’s West Yorkshire but I reckon it’s probably true in most areas.

Bradford is struggling greatly for home care since it’s ULEZ was introduced, although on the plus side for us lots of Bradford staff are moving to work in Kirklees now.

Don’t really know what the solution is beyond paying carers a decent rate so they can actually afford nicer things and better cars.

As drone pilot – who films proper organised material with a full license, and tries to improve my skills etc – I think these guys who like testing drone rules on unsuspecting workers and security guards are wasting everyone’s time.

They have small sub 250g drones , don’t need much in the way of formal qualifications and insurance – but like to exploit the fringes of CAA regs and ignorance of the general population.

It’s a total waste of time where no one gains. Their footage looks rubbish and often the police are called who don’t always no the rules either.

Maybe go and get a job where you’re commissioned if you want a challenge?

And actually they may be doing things legally but they’re not always flying safely.

Don’t be silly, they’re valiant freedom fighters ensuring that Taylor Wimpey and similar housebuilding companies don’t take over the planet with their vast armies of minimum wage security personnel.

It’s Pets at Home they really need to worry about.

Am I being naive, what’s with your yoofs and disgarding baking equipment?! For a long time I thought we had a cyclist/puncture problem round here with all the co2 canisters disgarded, is this the same sort of thing?

They’re Nitrous Oxide not CO2; laughing gas. Used to get high as well as whip cream.

NHS community workers can have cars supplied if they want – either pool cars or leased thru the NHS

Some, not all,  NHS Trusts offer pool cars.

I work for a large mental health trust with a significant proportion of us being community based and there is no pool car option; it was dropped a number of years ago.

The 2 acute trusts that operate in my local area also have no pool car option.

I’m confident that there are other trusts in the UK that don’t either but I only know of those local to me.

We can salary sacrifice for a lease car but it’s not an attractive option for everyone, for example if you already own a car, you’re a Band 2 HSW on £21k per annum and your budgets are already tight, or you’re not intending to stay with your team for a long time.

Plus the salary sacrifice reduces your pension contributions and your final pension on retirement.

We are really struggling to recruit to the community as people would rather be ward based as they will be paid more (unsocial hours) and have reduced costs; we are also steadily losing staff back to based jobs for the same financial reasons.

If an employer insisted I needed a car for a job and wouldn’t provide one, I would be taking my labour elsewhere. There’s no point working at a job that has a personal financial penalty for being in that job.

You’ve just described most home care workers and community health care workers.

If they have to take their labour elsewhere it will have to be out of the caring professions.

This. The affordability argument doesn’t hold water.

For people on minimum wage in the current economic climate with a non-exempt vehicle that might not be true.

Anecdotally, Bradford has seen the number of home care workers fall substantially since the ULEZ was introduced, and I personally know of 2 who have moved to Kirklees jobs simply to avoid buying a new car.

I’m not arguing that ULEZ isn’t necessary nor right but there will be a fair number of people that will struggle on the grounds of affordability.

Similar to the EV thread where affordability wasn’t seen to be an issue now as you could get EV’s for around £15K.

Presumably because it’s worthless anyway (irrelevant of ULEZ), otherwise you’d just sell it.

I believe you have to scrap it to qualify for the grant aid to buy a compliant vehicle.

There will  be a financial tipping point but if scrapping it plus the £4500 grant exceeds what you can sell for then that will make it viable.

Judging by what I got to scrap my Transit Custom that would mean it would be worth scrapping a £7k to £8k van using the scheme.

I’d say the community nurse bit is where the premium is getting hit. Lots of short trips, usually under time pressure – they’ll have the data!

Most likely, pretty much everyone on our team has at least one work related speeding fine from trying to get to visits on time when they’re behind.

Plus loads of parking fines for leaving it where we shouldn’t to get to a call, or not getting back to the car in time when a visit runs over.

Had my van with NFU for years, always competitive even with business use in the community – went from a Transit Custom to the CMax and they weren’t competitive at all – much dearer for like to like cover for the car – same mileage, same job, same addresses.

Mine aren’t too bad…

My MG TF – £376

My Civic Type R – £394

Wifes Kuga – £376

All fully comp, protected no claims, legal expenses, no mileage restrictions, business use and road rescue (including home) on all of them.

This is with LV multi-car.

Don’t know what I’m doing wrong then.

Ford CMax 999cc but covered pretty much as above – never had a claim or accident in 40 years, best quote I’ve had is £490 from SomeoneI’veNeverHeardOf Car Insurance via Comparethemarket.

LV wanted just short of £800 as did pretty much all of them – ended up at £580 with Admiral.

Maybe West Yorkshire and Community Nurse are high risk.

What are you driving a Hillman Hunter?

Lol. A 2016 Ford CMax, it has ABS, Traction Control and Rear Parking Sensors but no automatic lane or braking capabilities.

More likely is actual road testing would be used for that, statistics used to extrapolate the results and decisions made to mitigate.

That’s what I was meaning.

There is shit loads of data out there about numbers of accidents avoided/mitigated against and those where the severity has been reduced by vehicle systems. Obviously the data about accidents that didn’t happen is the least reliable. But you can see (on the vehicle data logs) where the various systems cut in and either amplified what the driver wasn’t doing enough of, or did something the driver didn’t even think to do.

I’ve never driven a car with any of these driver aids but there seem to be quite a few reports of cars slamming on the brakes with nothing to avoid, following the original lane lines in roadworks,  steering cars back into lane when there’s not enough room eg. Country lanes.

Are these statistically insignificant, bullshit or just ignored in the research?

Are there numerous instances when the driver prevents the car from causing an accident which are not recorded?

Possibly dumb questions.

I assume that the car will record when lane assist is turned off and this could be accessed in the case of an accident.

Is it likely that turning it off will make you be seen as contributing to the accident.

Also, if it’s on and steers you into something as per the comments about not always picking up lanes accurately, this would also be recorded so you would be able to claim against the manufacturer.

So long as it goes far enough on a charge, fits all my kit in, is comfortable and cheap I don’t care what it looks like although I know lots of people do.

When I first started driving my mate came up with a conversion for mph to furlongs per fortnight.

Multiply by 2684 if I remember correctly.

Not the cars veering over, the ones they were heading towards.

It looked odd as the offending vehicle drivers immediately pulled their cars back into lane.

I was a few cars back and it looked like when people jerk the wheel to spook another driver into moving over.

That might explain why 2 cars on the M62 roadworks suddenly lurched across,  nearly putting those in the inside lane into the hard barrier.

Luckily all of them slammed on.

Bugger this block quote thing.

Tried to quote and respond but doesn’t seem to want to work so I’ve deleted my post.

£15k is a lot of money for a lot of people.

It’s roughly the combined cost of the last three cars I’ve bought.

I’m not convinced a community NHS worker would cover more than 100miles per day?

Brainfart on my part, was still thinking about Molgrips advice to fill up at 50%.

We do have a big patch being North and South Kirklees combined with some services we access in Barnsley; not unusual to have the odd 60+ mile day.

We used to be allocated caseloads by geographical area but not any more.

To charge my car from full from nearly empty would take about 14hours on a 3pin plug hanging out the window….

Which is why I’d prefer a dedicated charger so I don’t have to leave a window open constantly.

Regarding your longer trips… I’ve no answer to that… I guess you have to accept the PERFECTION of an EV in and around town (and they are soooo good for that) had to have a downside… Longer journeys being that…

I think the answer is to either borrow money for a more expensive car with a better range or wait for them to become cheaper, probably the latter as I really don’t like borrowing money and prefer to save for anything I want.

Last question (honestly). When recharging can you keep the heater on so you don’t freeze charging in winter?

Do you have a work base? Most NHS premises here have a couple of charge points. All the pool cars at my wife’s work are electric and there are 4 charging spaces.

We do but we are a satellite base on another Trusts site with a small carpark of our own – no chargers.

Plus most of us start our journeys from home to first visits rather than driving to base then setting off from there and usually finish our last visit then straight home – they class us as finishing work as soon as we leave the last patients house if we don’t return to base to end our shift.

That saves me the commute in the morning which, for the 8 miles, can be an hour to Dewsbury and it seems pointless to drive to base when I’ve finished just to clock out.

Obviously costs me in expenses as they deduct the 16 miles from my mileage claim every day as they argue if they didn’t give us the perk of starting and finishing at home then we would have to do the mileage to get to and from work.

That is a conundrum I agree. Regularly driving long distance in Scotland with a small battery and slow charging is a more difficult proposition.

If I were you, I’d be waiting another couple of years before newer cars with bigger batteries start to filter down the second hand market

This is my thinking.

The Polestar is arriving in a few weeks

I’d never even heard of Polestars before today. Out of touch? Me? Nah?

And looking at the prices I could afford a steering wheel.

They do look nice though.

50kW and a 22kw at of all places the cemetery, at a reasonable 30p/kw.

When I googled it an app called Zapmap brought up that one but it says Zero devices and Zero connectors.

Did you use a different app?

How do you know which apps are accurate?

 I urge you to consider it, presumably you are curious by posting on this thread?

I am.

Looking at something like that Ioniq28 that Molgrips mentions seems to be approaching the range of my pricing if I take something with high mileage and an average range of 115 miles according to the Electric Vehicle Database.

I’ll need to have a charger fitted to the house which looks to be about a grand, have smart meters fitted, change to an EV tariff and accept more expensive daytime heating bills; the car should be great at home except for long work days in cold weather – not sure the NHS will be happy with me sat charging on their time, we’re not even supposed to fill up in working hours.

It’s longer journeys that I’m struggling to get my head around, stopping hourly for a 30 minute charge on 50kWh chargers, possibly more frequently in cold weather (quoted range is 85 miles for cold highway driving).

I can’t imagine driving to Italy stopping every hour; it must have taken you ages.

Some of the chargers in Scotland seem to be slower (7kWh?) so 4 hours charging per hour of driving- Eek.

@dangerousbeans not sure where you stay near Elgin but on the ChargePlace Scotland app there are 18 chargers in the area between Forres and Elgin. I’m sure you’d be near one at some point.
IONITY fast charger at Perth and Tesla Supercharger open to all in Aviemore.  For coffee stop charges on way up if the car can handle fast charges.

Not saying EV would be best for you but it’s not as hard as you think it is

Thanks.

Usually Burghead so not too far to get charged once we get up there.

I have never come close. Just charge up at 40%, don’t wait until 10%. Or even, just charge up whenever you want to stop anyway. You don’t randomly run out. You know how much you have left so you don’t just keep driving watching it go down to zero. You stop at say 50% and if it’s busy you make a choice if you want to wait or charge later. If you get to the next one and you’re on 20% then you’ll just choose to wait.

PS when I was in Aviemore last summer there was a 28kWh Ioniq on Dutch plates in the camp site.

Using you strategy with a real world 130 to 140 mile range for the Ioniq28 (according to Google), that’s roughly stopping every 50-60 minutes to recharge at Motorway speeds – half his travelling time must have been sat still.

Even me going to Aviemore from Yorkshire would require 7 stops.

For cheaper cars I would recommend a Hyundai Ioniq EV (not the Ioniq 5) with the 38kWh battery. It is very economical and the range does not drop much in winter. It is good for 170-200 real life miles, in bad and good weather respectively.

They look OK but I’d be lucky to stretch to a 28kWh let alone a 38kWh.

Sitting working out where you may, or may not, get charged seems like a pain to be honest and the idea of running out gives me the willies.

Can’t be bothered to do something about burning stuff even when it’s been pointed out that it’s a really easy swap? No wonder the world is screwed.

It’s really not difficult to use an EV. That said they aren’t the silver bullet, the best option is no car at all. But that’s probably a step too far for most with the current “system”, particularly in the UK.

Except it’s not easy for me, I do apologise. Every answer from folk on here seems to make it even harder than I imagined to use an EV.

Obviously I’m not as clever as you in understanding this stuff, nor as eco friendly what with my going to Scotland on my holidays – I suppose you only travel local which is laudable, but I would like to see my friends sometimes.

I knew I shouldn’t have bothered asking for advice on here.

That Corsa mentioned earlier is good for I think 150 real life miles, a BMW i4 is 300 plus, so with the latter your stops on the journey you mention could be same as they are now. However the cost of said i4 puts it into the realms of accessibility mainly to those on higher rate tax and salary sacrifice lease schemes through work.

Yeah, I don’t think community nursing staff get enough for i4’s.

150 miles  – wow.

Not someone who can really afford thousands to travel abroad for my leisure/hobby time I have to slum it in Scotland. 150 miles range would be a bit of a pain (or very very easy according to Sam).

Depends what tariff you are on….

So I’ve been reading.

Seems like if I wanted to charge a car cheaply at home I’d have to get stuffed for having the heating on through the day in winter.

I’ve gone back to about page 85 of this thread and I’m thinking EV’s may just be more than I can be bothered with at the moment what with fitting chargers, choosing tariffs, planning routes, alternative options for if chargers are broken, stopping for breaks I don’t want to take.

No doubt the infrastructure will improve making it less of a technical exercise and that might be the time to go EV, but I’ll be 64 in 2030 so ICE cars will probably see me out.

@dangerousbeans – it can be that – 3-prong plug in a standard wall socket and charge, but it will take many hours to charge up…unless you are on a proper cheap rate, then those hours will add to the cost massively.

So it’s cheaper to drive it somewhere and charge it?

If charging at home then is it still cheaper than petrol?

https://abetterrouteplanner.com/

You can set this to either more shorter stops, or fewer longer ones. Or fastest time – because sometimes more stops is faster.

I wouldn’t want to be messing about with apps and stuff, I just want to get in, look at the gauge to see how much ‘juice’ I have and drive until I need to recharge.

I drove up from Blackburn to Perth this morning (235 miles). Left with a full charge at the hotel. Stopped at Gretna Services on the Ionity charger for 20 mins, which was enough time to buy a coffee and stretch my legs. Back on the road and home in just over 4 hours.

So for my run up to Elgin area the reality would be 3 sessions of driving with 2 stops being the most likely scenario – doesn’t sound too bad.

So looking at those Corsa prices it’s not outside the realms of possibility that someone like me could just about afford one when it’s a year or two older but I have no clue about what I’d be getting myself into.

Hope I’m not being too dim but I’ve never considered an EV an option before – thought they were just for the affluent.

I park next to my house so can charge at home, but assume it’s not just sticking a cable through my living room window and plugging it in next to the telly – so how much does home installation cost and can I just rip it all out and take it to my next house when I move (and is this a DIY job or pay someone again)?

For day to day charging there’s no issue but I travel to Northern Scotland for leisure a lot and currently set off from Yorkshire, do 3-4 hours to Glasgow, pee and coffee stop, then 3-4 hours to Elgin, maybe 9 hours total. I know some folk have said this is dangerous but it’s inside what my BIL does on HGV’s day in day out- he says he sometimes has 15 hour days when he does 4.5 hour stints x 3 with breaks between.

How many stops would I need to do for a journey of this length and how long would they be? I know people are saying it’s a non-issue but I don’t really want to spend 2 or 3 hours total sat in the car freezing cold in midwinter to make the trip – are there fast chargers which can refill the battery in 20 minutes or so to allow me on my way and can I leave the heater on whilst it’s charging so I don’t freeze? – I assume from Ianc’s comment that I’m actually worried for nothing and fuel stops are pretty speedy and infrequent so 4 hours fully laden to Glasgow is easily doable in modern EV’s.

Also, I’ve googled where we normally stay and there are 2 chargers within 10 miles so would need to drive to one of them to ‘fill-up’. Is there any other option?

 It’s quite nice to have a forced break sometimes!

No it’s not.

Just wondering what altruistic deeds you were doing for your country/community etc before brexit which you have now stopped?

I haven’t stopped doing anything I did before, I consider my community part of me and mine, that includes adults with learning disabilities which is my day job.

Admittedly it’s only a couple of hours a week now, but I am getting on in years.

The national situation is out of my hands, there’s nothing I can do but look after me and mine.