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A key point there I think - resistance to change. Much of the potential burden can and should be handled by the car itself. For a long time I would have said if anyone needs regular long trips, Tesla was the only sensible answer, but that is thankfully changing. It used to be kind of frustrating, now it has darker undertones thanks to the political persuasion of musk. Tesla have somewhat opened up their charging network to non-tesla cars, but there are caveats and ad-hoc changes which is exactly what nobody needs or wants. No denying there are still lots of issues with charging networks in this country, but it does look to be getting organised finally, albeit slowly. Octopus do an all you can eat subscription that gets you unlimited charging on their supported network for £30 a month. Their network includes a lot of chargers including rapid ones. For those that won’t be doing long trips much or at all, if they can home charge, I just can’t see the objection myself. I had a PHEV because I thought it gave best of both worlds - no cost on short trips, long range when needed. In hindsight, I think that was true, but it also came with the worst of both worlds. Complexity and cost. Time will tell if my move to EV was the right one for ME or not. At the moment, I really can’t see any downsides to it. Most of my driving will be done on solar that I already get paid for even if I use it myself. My electricity tariff gets me a discount on charging at apparently almost 1 million charge points in the UK (although I bet a large number of those are not all that useful). The car has a 2 year service interval at which the big ticket item is new wiper blades…..

Maybe next time. Family holiday tomorrow Andy

Not envious, one little bit! Have an amazing trip, I’m sure it will be epic. I would love to send you off at Tagg Lane Dairy but will be in Anglesey with family. Looking forward to Bagpuss TV updates! Andy

I think we agree on your use case. 600+ miles a day sounds like purgatory to me though. Sadly, there are a lot of unreliable engines out there these days. Wet belts are sadly very common now, and just as problematic in many brands. MB even managed to cram one behind the flywheel on their A45 engine. Even Honda use them now. And the engines that still have chains? Ingenium anyone? But they all seem to suffer chain issues to some degree. Direct injection WILL lead to clogged inlet ports that need cleaning. EGR clogs, NOx sensors failing with expensive regularity, DPF clogging, low tension piston rings leading to early engine demise. The list goes on. The majority of these issues arise from the ever increasing demands for reduced emissions and increased efficiency. Many are aggravated by short trips. Proper servicing can help, but not prevent all these issues. Some actual stats on engine lifespan would be interesting. There is a vague claim that ICE lasts 150 to 300k miles…but I suspect there won’t be many achieving that figure, particularly Ford and JLR….oh, and BMW with their appetite for big end bearings. Not sure when ICE peaked in terms of longevity. Maybe the 90’s? GDI & EGR started the rot imo.

It's fascinating how many people are convinced that EV's can't work 'for them' without having tried. Is it easy to jump from an ICE car to an EV and use it in exactly the same way? No, it isn't. You need to be comfortable with satnav route planning, install apps, learn where the fastest, cheapest, most reliable chargers are dotted around all over the country and learn what the car is capable of and what works best for it. Or buy a Tesla, which is infuriatingly well catered for in those respects. For example, for long journeys it isn't even enough to navigate to a charger location. The car also has to KNOW it's going to that charger, as well as knowing what the charger capacity is, and it needs to know that more than 30mins beforehand because this lets it condition the battery (heating or cooling) in preparation, otherwise it won't hit peak charging speeds.

Price reduced too £600

Price drop too £155 for the pair.

The assertion was, and still is that for people who do more than "commute", and there are plenty of us, and (a point which perhaps I failed to make as clear as I wanted) where road transport infrastructre is the only option for the journey, EV's are a non starter. Perhaps non-starter was a bit harsh. Definitely a compromise that needs careful thought. I did also say it was about me and my use case as that is all I have direct experience of. As I say, there are plenty of us driving far in excess of the double charge range of an EV quite a lot of the time. EV's turn those journeys into a potentially costly affair in both "fuel" and time. Not sure I agree with ICE engines being more unreliable, the Ford Eco-Bang notwithstanding (wet belts? Really, Mr Ford?)

The forecast is.....expect cake to be served, the weather is looking good for this so we will go for a run out afterwards 🏎️🏎️🏎️🎂🍰

Having tried this once, see here…. I thought I could improve on it if I tried again. Main problem was it was a little too high, reducing the gap between steering wheel and my somewhat sizeable thighs, and also the back support wasn’t great. I could do a much better job with a second pair of hands, but that’s not possible currently, so this is where I am. Having been reassured last time that pouring the whole lot in one go wouldn’t fill the garage with foam, I went for it! I taped the bag up as high as it would go, to cope with any overfill, and poured it all in. Sparing you all the detail, it basically went well, filling up behind my back and around my shoulders very well, although ironically this time leaving a bare patch under my bum which I couldn’t manage to fill. At least I was low enough this time! I trimmed up the excess from the top and sides, cut the hole for the harness, put some foam over the bare patch, glued it to a thin piece of ply to give it some rigidity and then taped the whole thing up. Finally, I added some vinyl to make it look a little better. Beautiful it still isn’t, but it probably looks a bit better than the last one. More importantly it sits me lower in the car, giving me better clearance between wheel, hands and knees, and also has better shoulder support. You can see from the shoulder width that I’m not really built for a narrow Westfield 🤣. Having seen @Andrzejseat with the narrow shoulder support, I simply wouldn’t fit in there! So, I think this one will do me for a while, it’s comfy and secure, and gives me a better position than the previous version.

Glad you are enjoying the Yorkshire area @Martin Bell - (Bellyboy) East Anglia AO some good roads round ere and plenty of farm animals as well 🤣

Excellent idea ! The club has a few of these torches left for distribution at future events via @Marcus Barlow - Show and Events Co-ordinator 😎

Our friends have already arrived in Reims. 33C apparently 😲

The assertion was that BEV was useless as transport, no argument about costs, demographics etc. I pay 7p kWh when I pay anything at all. Most of the time I run on solar. When I don’t I run on stored cheap rate. I’d love to have a quiet word with those responsible for giving away our oil wealth though. We should have a bl**** massive sovereign wealth fund. Instead, we have a bl**** massive debt and a small bunch of obscenely rich a********s.

Safe travels @Quinten

Not as much fun as a Westie in the mountains perhaps, but 300hp E-Transits at 2000m altitude are a very surreal experience honestly!

Is Norway a fair comparison? 1.3 times the size of the UK with only 5.5m population. Lots of cheaper hydro-electric power too - c. 13p per kwh. Awash with North Sea oil cash not busted like we are.

Appreciate the 'support' Mike. I'm not an EV evangelist - I get they don't suit everyone but I was starting to think there wasn't anyone here who had even tried an EV. I only recently went EV myself for the daily driver. Previously I had a PHEV which convinced me that a full EV would do me just fine. I confess to a huge sigh of relief when the PHEV was gone. No more obscenely over complicated ICE to fret about. I'm perfectly happy with the Zetec in the Westy and the Busso in the Midlana (until it sells) for my ICE fix. For the daily drive, I'm more than happy with the quiet, comfortable, nippy (4.2 to 60) acceptable range (300 real world miles) car I recently bought. And I bought it used, not new, and intend keeping it a long time, so I didn't even get the buyers remorse I got with the PHEV, despite keeping that over 8 years.

I wish there was a stronger 'like button', I couldn't agree more! As you say, many people can very successfully charge at home for daily use with 3kW, never mind 7.2kW. I've driven big distances even in poor aero EVs (think Transit sized) and it's far more about the infrastructure, trip planning and technology aids than fundamental limitations of the EV itself in most cases - and that's improving monthly, not yearly.

For Christmas my son gifted me an entry ticket to the Spa 24 race. And because we both like driving, we planned a whole holiday around it. I set off today to Folkestone to stay in a hotel overnight to work around the thunderstorms tonight and will meet up with my son at the Eurotunnel tomorrow at 7. From there we will drive to Reims to meet up with a couple of friends who will join us for the trip. I’ll try to update the thread regularly 👍

That's @the stoat', drove it down from deepest darkest Wales (ok a few metres across the border). I nearly went on Sunday checked the traffic and it did look reasonable. Like you I think I'd have been stuck on the way out too.

Norway doesn't appear to agree with that assessment. A typical EV may not suit YOU, but they could suit a lot of other folk. Average daily mileage in the UK is still only 20 miles. 20 Miles!! Motorway warriors need not apply, although plenty do have BEV and manage just fine. The Guy Martin thing was a clear expose on the lack of charging infrastructure and how that impacts long trips. Not BEV ability to do long journeys in reasonable time periods. Plenty of real-world evidence that a BEV can do long trips (1000km) in sensible times (9 hours), including charging. The caveat being that there is adequate charging infrastructure. If you like spreadsheets, have look here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V6ucyFGKWuSQzvI8lMzvvWJHrBS82echMVJH37kwgjE/edit?gid=15442336#gid=15442336 The reference is an ICE that did the trip in 8:35, the next best was a Mirai at 8:40, using hydrogen. Kind of impressed he was able to refuel it tbh. After that, lots of BEVs starting at 8:55 without using battery swapping. Technology & chemistry moves on at pace as well. Although it seems like nothing more than a gimmick to appease the "I can refuel my car in 2 minutes and absolutely refuse to acknowledge that I often stop for a pee when refuelling" brigade, BYD have introduced 1MW charging that can add 249 miles in 5 minutes. I spent that long trying to persuade 17l into the tank of the Westy this morning. The chance of building thousands of 1MW chargers is minimal though, and the strain on batteries can't be good. Looped house supplies have been a problem long before EV came along. Electric showers can be 10.5kW, an electric oven & hob, similar. Maximum load on a single phase EVSE is 7.2kW - the difference is that a car will be charging for hours, not a few minutes. It's also highly likely that a car will be charging at cheap rate, so I'm not convinced about the arguments against installing EVSE to looped premises myself, particularly if you add some intelligence to the EVSE so it can throttle back if other demands require it. To address the 'rare earth metals' issue, lots of manufacturers are now adopting LFP chemistry rather than NMC. LFP has some issues, though most can be dealt with easily enough. And, all the above against a backdrop of increasingly complex, expensive and unreliable ICE, mainly due to emissions regulations. Again, BEV isn't a perfect one size fits all solution. Neither is hydrogen, even if we dismiss the fact it can't be produced in volume at the moment. Fuel cells and hydrogen storage tanks have finite lifespans the same as batteries & ICE do. None of the complaints about any of the ICE alternatives mean we shouldn't try to make best use of them.....but we won't, because we are stupid, venal and selfish.

Can all those planning to join us at any part of the route, let me know via whatsapp (or a PM on here with your mobile no.) and I'll create a Whatsapp group for the day to aid finding each other etc

Living on a 1980s housing estate 2.3.4. bedrooms mostly with drives for 1 or 2 cars does not help with off street charging either , all the semi detached houses and some detached in the estate are being refused permission to connect 7Kw chargers as the houses are wired in a system referred to as loop through . a cable from the road goes to house a and is then looped inside the houses to house b . The connection is deemed unsuitable for two chargers so a new cable has to be run from the road to house b before either can be allowed a charger . Speaking to the survey engineer he also mentioned that when gas boilers are banned that a lot of streets will have to be completely rewired with larger underground cables and feeds to individual houses upgraded to cope with heat pumps , chargers and more electric cookers and showers. He also mentioned that they are getting more requests for three phase to cope with bigger heat pumps and a couple for larger chargers

Was there with the wife last weekend (Sunday) to (mostly) have a look at his Car collection - there was also a field laid on for classic and Performance cars owned by the general public visitors - which was very good too.... There were quite a few 7 type cars there also - mostly Caterhams, but did notice a couple of Westfields. One caught my eye - an orange one reg ending YUX with a 'Xflow Inside' sticker. Anyone off here? Great event, spoilt by taking 2 hrs to get out of one field - 3 hrs before the event finished......will not be going again unfortunately! Mart.