10000 miles for £100

[otherclive]

I am warming to the idea of electric vehicles after reading that a Nissan Leaf has completed the London to Mongolia Mongol Rally at a cost of £100 of electricity. Prepared and driven by two Scots and it didn’t carry a petrol generator. Average distance between charges around 95 miles. I guess that once the car had passed out of Europe the crew probably got very friendly with locals in order to use their electric.

 

[Dodger524]

I am warming to the idea of electric vehicles after reading that a Nissan Leaf has completed the London to Mongolia Mongol Rally at a cost of £100 of electricity. Prepared and driven by two Scots and it didn’t carry a petrol generator. Average distance between charges around 95 miles. I guess that once the car had passed out of Europe the crew probably got very friendly with locals in order to use their electric.

What sort of caravan were they towing?

 

[Jaydug]

But doesn't a full charge on household electric take 7 hours? That's a long stop every 100 miles.

 

[otherclive]

But doesn't a full charge on household electric take 7 hours? That's a long stop every 100 miles.

Well I guess they weren’t up for the fastest time prize. Down into Turkey they found plenty of rapid chargers. After that roads deteriorated so 95 miles per day isn’t bad going. Then you just hook up to some kind locals power outlet as you eat and drink their goodies. So 7 hours allows more than enough time for a nice evening and a kip.
The reports from the Mongol Rally participants make for a good read.

 

[Craigyoung]

I'll stick with my diesel beast for the minute !!

 

[Raywood]

It may be cheap to run but the limitations make it no more than a second car. Having said that a Tesla should be able to do that distance for about £250 on the basis of a 200 mile range and £5 to recharge so once you get one up to towing we might just get one.

 

[Mel]

Electric cars are clearly getting better and better. They may not be where they need to be yet, but sooner or later there will be a breakthrough that makes them completely viable. Only question is, will this be sooner or later?
Mel

 

[Martin24]

And when that break through comes we will need to invest in more power stations to charge them all. As long as they're nuclear that's okay but I for one don't want any more views blighted by windmill things.

 

[otherclive]

Sorry, but I put this thread in General so people could have a lighthearted look at the Mongol Rally 2017 which can be interesting and amusing when you see some of the cars that are entered. And The difficulties some teams get into. It was not my intention to resurrect the recent plethora of views on the future of electric vehicles and the associated means of generating electricity.
Not withstanding I must say the Leaf team did pretty darn well and could be caravanners given the wide range of electrical connectors that they took with them into Europe and beyond.

 

[DrZhivago]

But doesn't a full charge on household electric take 7 hours? That's a long stop every 100 miles.

I don't suppose they needed 7 hours at every stop. I expect they seized every opportunity to charge as it arose, even if they did not actually need it, as they never knew where the next opportunity would be. Same principle applies to accepting cups of tea and public conveniences!

Sorry, but I put this thread in General so people could have a lighthearted look at the Mongol Rally... It was not my intention to resurrect the recent plethora of views on the future of electric vehicles

Inevitable. Surely part of the intent of using such a car, and publicising the experience, was to generate interest in the fact that it was electric and that such a journey was possible even outside the First World.

 

[emmerson]

I have an aquaintance who had a Leaf, but could only get around 65 miles per charge, and around 30 if lights and heater were in use!
He ended the contract 12 months early, as the thing was useless.

 

[HNB]

So 95 miles from 1 charge at a time. What a useless piece of....

Alot needs to be done to get people out of their normal motors....

I just dont see it happening

 

[Buckman]

In addition the trade in value is very poor taking into account the price paid originally.

 

[Jaydug]

In addition the trade in value is very poor taking into account the price paid originally.

And when it needs a new battery you'll need to find around £4000.............. Or rent one which is £60-£80 per month depending on mileage.

 

[Gabsgrandad]

And how many 'cycles' are you likely to get out of a battery? (Might just need to carry a cycle [bi]!)

 

[00buzz]

saw a Tesla X in he flesh yesterday.....now that is the future if you have a spare 80-100k....and yes they do tow a caravan with a range of approx. 180miles hooked up.

 

[ProfJohnL]

I'm really sorry if this offends anyone, but so many of the comments on this thread are simply repeating the out of date scare mongering points the die hard petrol heads have thrown into the arena to try and put down electric motive power.

Don't bury your heads in the sand becasue electric cars are coming and coming far more quickly than most people realise. We will be forced by government and local authorities to relinquish the free for all motoring we have enjoyed for years, and that will mean we will have to review all our motoring want's and needs, and that includes caravanners.

It is clear the Government want's to push low emission motoring becasue of their stated aim to have no production of IC cars for the UK by 2040. No I will be honest I#m not sure if that really does mean no IC cars or whether its their looking for Zero emission vehicles, which could allow Hydrogen based vehicles - we will have to wait and see. - But currently (no pun intended) the motoring world in general sees electric vehicles as the way forward.

With the present state of development Electric motive power is not suited to every application. But the genre is developing quickly in part becasue of the governments 2040 deadline. The present Achilles heels of electric motoring seem to be range, and charging times, which both come down to battery technology. This is where there are so many new developments are taking place as we speak. New types of battery will see energy densities increasing which should address the range issue. The present limitations of charge time are basically caused by the battery construction (functionally battery internal resistances) and managing heat dissipation, there are developments which look promising to improve this 100 fold or more, which will reduce fast charge times. One company is claiming to be able to fast charging when teh vehicles are able to accept very high power recharging

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2017/01/05/chargepoints-new-stations-promise-fast-charge-in-minutes-for-your-electric-car/#7a724ea5492d
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/862987/Electric-car-battery-recharge-six-minutes
Concerns about the recharging infrastructure, can our national power grid handle it, and the answer is we actually have the capacity to generate all the power we need and to distribute it, but not all at once at the same time. It needs the recharging systems to become SMART or more flexible, and the implementation of local storage points (batteries) to serve localities and balance the load on the grid. It may also mean that new houses are built with a battery system that can be charged by solar or wind generation or trickle charged by the national grid, but are there and can provide the necessary high power demand to recharge cars and supplement the national grid at times of high demand. As we stand at the moment this would means teh grid will be working harder more of the time and soaking up what is currently standby peak supply systems more often so there will have to be more power generation capability created. What form that would take is not clear. Incremental increase in solar voltaic and wind generation will help but it will probably need more large scale generating units.

Inevitably there will be tales of woe about specific cars, Whilst it is clearly a disaster for the person concerned and of course they need to be able to end up with a suitable vehicle, but if you drill down into the statistics, you will find that most electric cars fail to meet the manufactures optimistic range figures, but then almost exactly the same complaint can be raised against the IC counterparts. Bu specifically emmersons post does seem particularly bad, and I wonder if the vehicle was faulty, or the owner was not being realistic in the way they were using or charging it - we will never know.

Batterie life - there were dire predictions about the life of electric car batteries, the all-be-it short history so far suggests that battery life is much longer than originally predicted by the manufacturers, and certainly nowhere near as controversial as the ner do well's predicted.

Battery replacments have been much fewer than expected, and teh cost of the excise whilst it may seem high, consider teh other saving you have made on servicing replacements of parts, and of course fuel. I'll bet if some one did the whole life costs of an electric car they would be no more expensive than a conventional similar class of of IC car.

As for the resale values of electric cars, Its no different to the S/H values of IC cars, some are good and some are not so good, and it down to what the customer is prepared to pay and how much competition there is for that particular car.

There are going to be changes in what we are allowed to do in terms of motoring, But as we progress towards 2040 we will also see a lot more improvements in electric and other low emission forms of transport.

 

[JonnyG]

i suppose the same things were being said about combustion engined carriages 110 years ago .. high maintenance unreliable no infrastructure short range ,so nothings changed. alas the nothings change has 2 meanings when talking about electric cars. the first meaning is clearly in the paragraph, the other is pessimism of many and optimism of the rest ... i have no first hand experience of electric vehicles nor any data i can observe and there lies the problem. where are electric cars in the greater scheme of things , i mean its OK saying things like technology is improving and there range will improve and we can recharge them if we take shifts at charging our cars but none of those thoughts really truthfully answer the problems that electric vehicles will bring and why shouldn't we be pessimistic about it ..history proves we tend to be caught short and wingers are looked upon as not helping but as i said i cannot find any real answer to all the future problems just opinions even from experts who tend not to look at the total picture or take into account just how much more power will be needed in the future and clean power at that. nuclear ..fussion is still decades away ,carbon capture plants are miles away too. so how does going all electric solve all our problems ? sorry about that back to electric cars which as i said i have very little data on but plenty of questions .so some can go 200 miles between chagres that take what 2 hours 3 hours ? more? ok so that will come down but by how much society isnt good at hanging around for hours on end movement is important delays cost ect.... 200 mile ranges? is this with the heater on full blast, all lights on, electric wipers on ,radio. stop start traffic ? or is this the best they can do on light foot driving? is this the range on a nice sunny day and a freezing winter morning or does this effect its range, if so then those ranges are a lot like the EU fuel cycles, no good for real world use and therefore the problem of going all electric has far more problems than most optimist believe,and jo public is being duped yet again.. because lets be clear here they are still like toys, very few do any real mileage like sale rep type cars do, most i see are driven 10 or 20 miles each way to work and back and put on charge in between. so i have no idea how good or reliable or fixable they are all i hear is batteries will get better and we will be able to recharge them .umm what about the infrastructure to fix them to keep they running long term and what happens when they break down and how safe will these modern powerful batteries be when put under the same stresses the combustion engine has been through in its century lifetime ? batteries blowing up or catching fire arent exactly environment friendly,or people friendly for that matter .and look at modern cars today, decades back you worried if the engine was ok ,today you worry about all the electronic stuff ,it does go wrong and cost a fortune,electric power means even more electronics even more to go wrong even more cost to owners, i was looking forward to electric power now i'm not so sure companies are there to make money and money firstly i want to be optimistic but by doing so i play into there hands so being pessimistic and asking questions means if enough do so they cannot ignore you and they might have to look into jo publics concerns and actually tackle them rather than fob you off with "its all in hand "

 

[otherclive]

I'm really sorry if this offends anyone, but so many of the comments on this thread are simply repeating the out of date scare mongering points the die hard petrol heads have thrown into the arena to try and put down electric motive power.

Don't bury your heads in the sand becasue electric cars are coming and coming far more quickly than most people realise. We will be forced by government and local authorities to relinquish the free for all motoring we have enjoyed for years, and that will mean we will have to review all our motoring want's and needs, and that includes caravanners.

It is clear the Government want's to push low emission motoring becasue of their stated aim to have no production of IC cars for the UK by 2040. No I will be honest I#m not sure if that really does mean no IC cars or whether its their looking for Zero emission vehicles, which could allow Hydrogen based vehicles - we will have to wait and see. - But currently (no pun intended) the motoring world in general sees electric vehicles as the way forward.

With the present state of development Electric motive power is not suited to every application. But the genre is developing quickly in part becasue of the governments 2040 deadline. The present Achilles heels of electric motoring seem to be range, and charging times, which both come down to battery technology. This is where there are so many new developments are taking place as we speak. New types of battery will see energy densities increasing which should address the range issue. The present limitations of charge time are basically caused by the battery construction (functionally battery internal resistances) and managing heat dissipation, there are developments which look promising to improve this 100 fold or more, which will reduce fast charge times. One company is claiming to be able to fast charging when teh vehicles are able to accept very high power recharging

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2017/01/05/chargepoints-new-stations-promise-fast-charge-in-minutes-for-your-electric-car/#7a724ea5492d
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/862987/Electric-car-battery-recharge-six-minutes
Concerns about the recharging infrastructure, can our national power grid handle it, and the answer is we actually have the capacity to generate all the power we need and to distribute it, but not all at once at the same time. It needs the recharging systems to become SMART or more flexible, and the implementation of local storage points (batteries) to serve localities and balance the load on the grid. It may also mean that new houses are built with a battery system that can be charged by solar or wind generation or trickle charged by the national grid, but are there and can provide the necessary high power demand to recharge cars and supplement the national grid at times of high demand. As we stand at the moment this would means teh grid will be working harder more of the time and soaking up what is currently standby peak supply systems more often so there will have to be more power generation capability created. What form that would take is not clear. Incremental increase in solar voltaic and wind generation will help but it will probably need more large scale generating units.

Inevitably there will be tales of woe about specific cars, Whilst it is clearly a disaster for the person concerned and of course they need to be able to end up with a suitable vehicle, but if you drill down into the statistics, you will find that most electric cars fail to meet the manufactures optimistic range figures, but then almost exactly the same complaint can be raised against the IC counterparts. Bu specifically emmersons post does seem particularly bad, and I wonder if the vehicle was faulty, or the owner was not being realistic in the way they were using or charging it - we will never know.

Batterie life - there were dire predictions about the life of electric car batteries, the all-be-it short history so far suggests that battery life is much longer than originally predicted by the manufacturers, and certainly nowhere near as controversial as the ner do well's predicted.

Battery replacments have been much fewer than expected, and teh cost of the excise whilst it may seem high, consider teh other saving you have made on servicing replacements of parts, and of course fuel. I'll bet if some one did the whole life costs of an electric car they would be no more expensive than a conventional similar class of of IC car.

As for the resale values of electric cars, Its no different to the S/H values of IC cars, some are good and some are not so good, and it down to what the customer is prepared to pay and how much competition there is for that particular car.

There are going to be changes in what we are allowed to do in terms of motoring, But as we progress towards 2040 we will also see a lot more improvements in electric and other low emission forms of transport.

Prof thanks for the comprehensive post. One thing that electric will bring is a serious cut back to the motor trade in terms of reliability and servicing an electric Car requires far less than an IC equivalent. The Toyota and Honda hybrids have top class reliability for the electrical systems. So future electric vehicles should go far longer between services and show significantly lower through life costs. No synthetic oils, no Haldexfluid changes, no coolants, no gearbox/diff fluid changes, injectors, glow plugs etc!

 

[ProfJohnL]

Hello Johnny,

I do find some of your posts difficult to read without clear breaks between sentences and paragraphs, and references to other undefined posts, so I am at a loss to know what points you are picking on or trying to make.

You do I think say some electric cars can do 200 miles and then need 2 to 3 hours to recharge, and that is a problem, well yes it is, but provided the development of newer battery technologies continues (and there is no reason doubt that it will) recharges may come down to a matter of 10 minutes or less - less time than it takes to go to the loo, and get a cup of coffee and drink it. There is plenty of evidence the short brakes from driving like that are highly beneficial to road safety.

As time goes by more motorists have come to understand that the official fuels economy measurements are highly flawed, that as long as taxes for owning a car are fundamentally based on fuel consumption and emissions, manufacturers will do what they can to maximise those figures. I am sure the same will/does happen for electric vehicles. But whats the difference even now any form of heating demisting or even AC all relies on energy from the vehicles fuel to drive them, and so even with IC vehicles AC for example can sap a significant amount of power in some cases up to 13HP (circa 10kW) Headlamps at 55W each, electric heated seats, radios etc. will derive their power from the vehicles primary fuel thus reducing the vehicles range. I agree the proportion of the primary fuel used for such things in an electric car may be greater, but the fuel saving in driving economy will be better.

One of the points you make is stop start driving, this is where electric will shine over IC even with engine stop start technology.

I have always made the point that our driving habits will most likely have to change, but that is always the case when it comes to driving a different vehicle, but the difference here is we are likely to be forced by governments to make changes and that will mean personal compromises.

Provided the industry gets its act together and really starts to work together, then there should be ingenious ways to prevent your suggestion of the necessity for charging in relays. Local large scale batteries to feed localities charged a low demand times, and supply the high demand periods. These might well be battery systems on domestic premises.

Your breakdown scenarios are no different to whats available now for IC engines. And that ignores the fact that there is less to go wrong with an electric vehicle, and evidence so far confirms they do tend to be more reliable than conventional IC vehicles.

As you point out, there were all sorts of negative view expressed about IC engines when they first started to appear. I seriously doubt that anyone had conceived of all the possible failure modes of IC cars at the begging of their usage but they invented ways of coping as the use of IC increased. Why shouldn't the same be true of the electric car?.

The risks of batteries and powerful electric motors are of course present, but then so is the risk of petrol which is far more volatile than electric systems.

As for the cost, again the same argument applies to the early development of IC engines a vehicles. When they first came out they were prohibitively expensive and only affordable by the upper echelons of society. But as the technology matures and with economies of scale a wider public was able to afford them. The same is happening with electric cars.

There is no doubt what so ever that companies prime concern is to make money the same applies now as then, but there are differences now. With the advent of the internet, it becomes far easier for an individual to raise concerns about a product ( PC Forum is prime example of this) and with greater public awareness of product performance, companies are far less likely to take a chance on a flawed product, knowing its flaws will quickly become public knowledge and it will affect company sales. Though the caravan industry has been slow to respond to public concerns in the past, you can be sure they will be monitoring social media and whilst not necessarily publicly acknowledging it they will be using information form forums etc to inform design and product realisation.

Like it or not change is going to happen, and it will affect our traditional expectations of what we can and can't do with private transport.

 

[Buckman]

TBH electric cars are not the answer as even in the future, give or take 50 years, our National Grid will not be able to cope. Even in 2030 it will be nowhere near coping with the demand especially if we have a few cold winters.
Imagine every one comes home about 6pm, car is plugged in and dinner is cooked. The grid would never be able to cope with a high demand during that period. If there is a major power failure, it will mean many people going hungry as no microwave dinner and not being able to get to work because the battery in the car is flat.
In addition, the electric has to come from somewhere so does that mean burning fossil fuel? If they went nuclear with additional power stations what is the point of an electric car anyway?
What do we do with the "old" used batteries as I am told it is difficult to recycle batteries? Replacement batteries have to be produced but where will they come from and how will they be shipped? Too many drawbacks with electric at present and in the near future. After all we had electric vehicles, i.e. trolly buses or trams 50 years or more years ago and they all ended up in the scrap yard.
I don't know an answer as to whether there is an alternative to using fossil fuel, but I am convinced that electric is not the way forward.

 

[JonnyG]

i am not trying to be negative here i'd like to read my concerns are groundless and not merely being side tracked by eloquent speeches. firstly reliability all well and good saying they should be more reliable and so far have proven to be but have they? there numbers are too small they do not do 500 miles a day, sale rep style and so until that is the case it is impossible to say they will be more reliable and the same applies to servicing.it really is jumping the gun to say that too, the electric car we have right now are not fit to replace the IC engine altogether or enmass ,which means it is wrong to assume the future electric car a decade down the line will be the same as todays electric car where servicing is concern... IC cars of a couple of decades back did not have the replacement costs of daulmass flywheels dpfs ,common rail injectors and associated parts . just to name a few . oh the good old days of only needing a 50p set of points and a qick twiddle of the carbs and all was well! costs have always gone up not down ..did watch the grand tour the other week when they crashed an electric car and it took 3 days to put the fires out!!! ummm i dont believe i'm being pessimistic,either a lifetime of seeing what we are promised and what we actually get tells me there has to be some or lots of truth in how i pecieve it..take my statement of stop start driving it covers more than just in town driving it covers hold ups on main roads and motorways wheres there a bigger build up of heat under the bonnet for long periods 1 or 3 electric cars doing a 100 mile jolt around the M25 is one thing 10000 electric cars is a totally different matter with regards safety ie electric fires that take days to put out and driving range when so much electricity is needed to cool the stationary car .and no they have not got that sorted because the electric car of a decades time cannot be an expensive toy like today it must perform as good or better than the IC car it is replacing and that also means matching the needs of the market and owners and not markets or owners having to change the way they drive or plan journeys, indeed that is a ridiculous statement ,nice sentiment but ridiculous never the less,you might as well say its ok if the milk and bread turn up out of date,the economic world doesn't work like that human world needs tool to help them not restrict or impend .

 

[otherclive]

i am not trying to be negative here i'd like to read my concerns are groundless and not merely being side tracked by eloquent speeches. firstly reliability all well and good saying they should be more reliable and so far have proven to be but have they? there numbers are too small they do not do 500 miles a day, sale rep style and so until that is the case it is impossible to say they will be more reliable and the same applies to servicing.it really is jumping the gun to say that too, the electric car we have right now are not fit to replace the IC engine altogether or enmass ,which means it is wrong to assume the future electric car a decade down the line will be the same as todays electric car where servicing is concern... IC cars of a couple of decades back did not have the replacement costs of daulmass flywheels dpfs ,common rail injectors and associated parts . just to name a few . oh the good old days of only needing a 50p set of points and a qick twiddle of the carbs and all was well! costs have always gone up not down ..did watch the grand tour the other week when they crashed an electric car and it took 3 days to put the fires out!!! ummm i dont believe i'm being pessimistic,either a lifetime of seeing what we are promised and what we actually get tells me there has to be some or lots of truth in how i pecieve it..take my statement of stop start driving it covers more than just in town driving it covers hold ups on main roads and motorways wheres there a bigger build up of heat under the bonnet for long periods 1 or 3 electric cars doing a 100 mile jolt around the M25 is one thing 10000 electric cars is a totally different matter with regards safety ie electric fires that take days to put out and driving range when so much electricity is needed to cool the stationary car .and no they have not got that sorted because the electric car of a decades time cannot be an expensive toy like today it must perform as good or better than the IC car it is replacing and that also means matching the needs of the market and owners and not markets or owners having to change the way they drive or plan journeys, indeed that is a ridiculous statement ,nice sentiment but ridiculous never the less,you might as well say its ok if the milk and bread turn up out of date,the economic world doesn't work like that human world needs tool to help them not restrict or impend .

If you cannot accept that electric will be more reliable than IC then why don't you look up the figures for Toyota Pruis which are used everyday as minicabs and their electric systems give minimal problems if any. If you cannot see that the electric drivetrain is more reliable than an IC drivetrain then you clearly don't know much about electric propulsion. As an analogy why do cruise companies and the Royal Navy now go electric for their many of their major propulsion systems? yes there are problems but where are they? With the IC elements.
Others say that the national grid cannot cope, but can they honestly ignore the developments taking place and endeavour to soldier on regardless. Who in 1968 would have predicted what the world looks like today? People will and do change their habits. Look at a few years ago when fuel prices jumped. There was a 10 % reduction in UK of vehicle journeys/mileage. So people did respond to a price sensitivity. Presumably they still went to work so what went were the less essential journeys. Price is a great moderator of habit.

 

[Buckman]

The electric drivetrain may be more reliable when they running, but that is where it ends. Using the Prius is a very bad example as that is a hybrid car and not fully electric as it uses a petrol engine as backup. I would be interested to know of the developments regarding the national grid as I am only aware of one new nuclear generator being built that is replacing another generator that is becoming obsolete. Please enlighten us. Thanks.

 

[otherclive]

The electric drivetrain may be more reliable when they running, but that is where it ends. Using the Prius is a very bad example as that is a hybrid car and not fully electric as it uses a petrol engine as backup. I would be interested to know of the developments regarding the national grid as I am only aware of one new nuclear generator being built that is replacing another generator that is becoming obsolete. Please enlighten us. Thanks.

I am aware that the Prius is a hybrid, but until relatively recently the hybrid cars were the only ones with a form of electric drivetrain, and pure electric cars were a rarity. But things are changing with more pure electric cars and PHEVs coming onto the roads. But if you look on the web there are a lot of examples which show the electric drive train to be very reliable. Even battery life is coming out at longer than the sceptics forecast. The US Department of Energy Advanced Vehicle Testing Activity Department have a fleet of vehicles which cover 50000 miles per year up to 160000 mile usage. This equates to around 10-15 years UK life. One particular test compared a 2002 Prius which had done 208000 miles against the results achieved on a brand new 2001 Prius when it first went on sale in the US. The car with 208000 miles had virtually the same performance. The claims about short battery life are being shown to be unfounded. 'Which" in a recent review stated " finding horror stories about batteries dying is actually a painstaking process, as it appears they are going strong long after their warranty periods are up". £2000 is often quoted for the cost of a new battery which the used buyers couldn't accept. But I suggest that if you were buying car out of battery warranty it would have a high mileage or be quite old. So what's the difference there when compared to a IC engine? Wouldn't you buy one from a breaker? If you want to look further try the TUV website where vehicle reliability statistics for electric and hybrids are reported.

I don't subscribe to the notion that every vehicle will be electric in the future as I do think that there will be some types where alternative fuel sources such as hydrogen, CNG, CA, fuel cells etc may be suitable and of course what is wrong in using some fossil fuels to power vehicles when the specific need arises.

Regarding your comments on the National Grid you could read the National Grid Future Energy Scenarios document which was published in August 2017 which does recognise the changing future, and lays out various scenarios. Whilst you are correct in so far as Hinkley C is the only new nuclear power station currently under construction, new ones are being planned for Wales at Wylfa, and Cumbria at Sellafield, but I think that the financing model will have etc be changed when compared to the one at Hinkley C which is being built by EDF, a company under written by the French government. One development receiving funding from HMG is the Small Modular Reactor of which the UK has had up to 20 operating, but is now down to 10. Whist undoubtedly a viable engineering concept, the SMR has the normal hurdles of licensing, security, decommissioning, operator/maintainer availability and competence etc as well as financial model that would support the building of a construction facility.

So, if you look at the information that is available you will see that there are many avenues of development which are being pushed in UK and across the world. Some will be successful, and others will fall by the wayside, but the world is moving towards greater use of electric for vehicle propulsion and it isn't just Governments that are pushing the changes, it's the vehicle manufacturers responding not only to legislation, but people's valid concerns over air pollution and the potential effect on global warming too.

As I said in one of my earlier post on this thread I only submitted it as a piece of light hearted information on the adventures associated with the Mongol Rally. But i has taken on the permanency of a discussion on noseweight! So I am now off to buy a 12 year old Nissan Micra 1.0 petrol, and book my place in Mongol Rally 2108!