Home » The Mini Electric Is A Great EV But The United Kingdom Is Not Ready For It

The Mini Electric Is A Great EV But The United Kingdom Is Not Ready For It

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Pop quiz time Autopians. Can any of you tell me, on what planet something taking five hours could be considered fast? Well, Adrian, since a great man once informed us that time is relative,  shouldn’t you qualify your question by telling us what’s taking this brain-softening amount of time? Ha. Trick question, because I’m writing the article and therefore I am going be smarter than all of you until you’ve finished reading it. Five hours should be considered “fast” because here in the UK 7kw EV chargers are labelled as such. And five hours is the amount of time it would take to fully charge the Mini Electric Resolute. I didn’t need a watch. I needed a fucking calendar.

Mini2

Vidframe Min Top
Vidframe Min Bottom

When I reviewed the Honda e last year, I wanted to dig into the ROPID cute design rather than waste half the piece detailing my range and charging struggles, guaranteeing the comment section would turn into a flame war quicker than your humble author got duffed up on Twitter by the Tesla stans the other week. But there were struggles, and they were real. Like approximately two in five UK households (not number of cars) I have no off-street parking (don’t worry, the Ferrari is safely tucked up in a garage a few minutes walk away). My neighbor a few doors down recently purchased a new Fiat 500e, and I regularly see it plugged into a cable trailing across the pavement (sidewalk) to their house.

Mini5

Well Gentleman, It’s A Long Walk Back to England. And It’s *That* Way.

[Editor’s Note: I’m not sure I fully understand all these subheads, but I suspect they’re all deeply British in some way that makes sense if you’re from that charming island of mild pleasures, so I’m just gonna leave ’em as is. – JT] [UPDATE: Adrian told me, and now it all makes sense: they’re lines from The Italian Job, the original one! I’m such a dummy. – JT]

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When it comes to range, the tiresome EV evangelists constantly refute range requirement argument by asking how often you need to drive 300 miles in one trip. That’s a spectacularly stupid to look at it. What they should realize is having that much range means you can do 300 miles in TOTAL before having to plug in for a few hours. For those with busy lives full of mewling children and soap operas and whatever else it is normal people fill their lives with, if you can’t charge at home or work, that is a major sodding inconvenience. It doesn’t matter if it’s an electric car or an electric monocle polisher, if you want the mainstream consumer to embrace your shiny new product you have to offer the same or better than what they have now, for less cost.

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And in terms of how much Mini you get compared to a petrol Cooper S this Electric Resolute is motivational power aside, basically the same car. Some clever packaging of the cells under the rear seats and along the spine of the car means you don’t lose any interior or boot (trunk) space. But crucially you don’t gain any either – there’s no frunk because all the other assorted on-board chargers, inverters and control units an EV needs are under the hood. The two charging cables, a Type 2 and good old UK household 3 pin foot murderer are kept under a false boot floor. The only dimensional differences with the standard car are 18 mm (3/4”) in extra ride height and 145kg (320lbs) in added lard. The financial difference is wider: at £35,000 the Electric is about £5k more than the Cooper S Resolute.

Adrian, Shorten the Sleeves, Will You, Love? I’m not a Gorilla

Mini1

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Despite what you might think, this is still an extremely bijou car, and avoids the unfortunate puffer fish proportions of the bigger models in the range, which have to platform share with FWD BMWs, cars from the next class(es) up. The three door is still only 3900 mm (150”) long and 1730 mm (68”) in girth. Getting my radio control  car racing gear in the back (which appears to be becoming my standard boot space comparison shot) required a bit of Tetris-ing, and although I didn’t need the driver’s seat all the way back, even Torch wouldn’t have been able to sit behind me unless he wanted to ride side saddle across the rear bench.

[Editor’s Note: I’m okay with that. Hey, where are we going, anyway? – JT]

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Those seats though, on what I assume is a run-out ‘shit we’ve got a load of these things to shift before the new model arrives’ trim uplift are covered in a splendidly jazzy light checkered fabric. This Resolute Edition has various bronze accents instead of chrome and is painted in a very dark ‘Rebel’ green previously only available on the John Cooper Works. Someone at the Oxford plant probably ordered too many barrels of the stuff by mistake. As you would expect it’s all very tasteful and well done, if a bit somber. I saw a standard Electric while I was driving this and couldn’t help but think in a lighter color with UK plug wheels and neon green highlights looked, well more fun. And aren’t Minis cheeky and not murdery?

As You Go Round, Look For That Bloody Exit. We Can’t Go Round Here All Night.

Exterior colors and trim aside, one place where the Mini sense of fun definitely remains is in the driving. Is it anything like my old 2010 Clubman? Don’t be daft. There’s seven years of chassis improvements between them. Is it an absolute hooligan machine that goads you into driving like you’ve just stolen $4 million in gold from under the noses of the mafia? Making 180 bhp (135 kw, whatever the fuck that is) and about 205 lb ft (280 nm) the Electric makes as near as makes no difference the same outputs as the Cooper S.

With the traditional instant EV throttle response it’s hilariously nippy. The 0-62 is 7.3 seconds, and you’ve got about 3 more seconds of foot to the floor fun after that until the speed limiter cuts in at 93 mph. Even when driving like this the regen is strong enough for one foot driving, so it’s very occasionally a bit head noddy when you’re just pootling around town. It’s all exactly what you want and expect from a Mini: alert steering, wicked ability to rotate thanks to the short wheelbase, and the ability to zap instantly into any gap in the traffic that appears.

Mini8

If you’ve driven any nuMini, everything here is instantly familiar and high quality. The central binnacle has a rectangle screen slightly awkwardly crowbarred into the middle of it, there’s the line of trademark toggles (one of which adjusts the drive mode and hence regen), rotary HVAC controls and another digital display in front of you for power, speed and charge. The hidden glovebox is no more, but the “mood ring” around the binnacle automatically does a few fun things like counting you down to a direction change or display remaining battery. I went through the iDrive looking to turn off the “mimic cheap wedding disco light”’ function until I realized what it was doing. The heads-up display emerges Thunderbirds like from the top of the IP on start up, but unlike the one in the BMW it can’t display directions from Apple maps (it does with the native navigation though).

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The Map Will Be In Your Head Chris, I’m Burning This One.

Usually when doing these reviews, I give the standard infotainment a cursory flick through for a couple of days to get the feel of it, reset the trip so I can get an idea of my overall mpg, discover where the important settings are hidden, and then revert to Carplay. This time I was determined to use iDrive because I wanted to understand how the Mini would handle finding charge points.

I still have a confection of various apps and maps on my phone from my time with the Honda, covering various companies, but I wanted to see how the built in software worked. I figured this would be crucial, because the Mini battery is only 32.6 kWh, of which 28.9 is usable. Mini tell you this should be good for up to 143 miles of range, but I was determined to use it for both my regular RC car racing on a Friday night (about a 60 mile round trip) and then a trip to Santa Pod drag strip (90 mile round trip) the next day. Don’t worry Mini UK, I wasn’t about to hurl it down the quarter mile in the Run What Ya Brung. A check on the website stated VERY CLEARLY there were no EV charging points on site anyway.

Mini15

Ok in the first paragraph of this review I was a bit facetious. But it’s indicative of the problem if you must use public chargers. 7 kWh charging is right next door to bloody useless. All these should be yanked out of the tarmac and fired into the sun. I stopped trying to use the built in navigation because it listed chargers in corporate car parks and private chargers as well. When in you’re in an unfamiliar area desperate to hook up, this is immensely frustrating.

On the Saturday evening I gave up, opened up Zap Map on my phone and headed to a big retail park where there appeared to be plenty of charging available. When I got there, I had to drive around looking amongst the rows of parked cars for the green painted bays to figure out where the chargers were. Why on earth were they not all located together? When I found the only two Rapid (22 kWh and over) chargers, both bays were occupied by Teslas. Because of course they fucking were. I waited around half an hour or so, but in the end went and found one about ten miles away in a health center car park. 21 minutes gave me enough to make the remaining forty or so miles home.

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You see the problem? And that’s only part of it. Getting to 85% or so charge is fine but squeezing in that last 15% to maximize your range is what takes the time as the speeds slow down to protect the car battery. So on the hoof you’re really limited to 85% of your quoted maximum range, in this case about 119 miles. In reality the most I had to play with was 110. Oh, and high-speed charging is expensive. I spent about £29 ($36) to do roughly 200 miles. I will add though, at no point did the indicated efficiency drop below 4.1 miles per kWh, which is excellent.

Hang On A Minute Lads, I Got A Great Idea

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There’s an inherent tension about this Mini Electric. I loved driving it. It makes you want to nip about in it, taking advantage of its driving dynamics. But in a way you can’t, because you’ll dim the lights faster than a lonely forces-partner plugging in the Magic Wand. And truth be told, even though we are all enthusiasts, ninety-five percent of the time despite what we might say on the internet we’re not running up to the redline in every gear and banging through every shift like Lewis Fucking Hamilton. Nope it’s running boring life errands, picking up cat food or shower spaghetti and sitting in traffic, making no noise, emitting no emissions, using no power, and for these things an EV makes perfect sense. I can see why David was so captivated by his i3 he bought another, slightly less good EV.

Recently Vauxhall contacted every local authority in the UK to find out how many are planning on installing on street charging. Of the councils who responded, 72% had no strategy in place, 69% had yet to install any, and London, which has the best public transport anywhere in the UK, will soon have more than double the amount of on street charging than the rest of the UK combined. How much range do I need? About 250 miles a week should cover it. Which is what the new 2024 Mini Cooper promises.

Don’t be too sure about the English, cousin. They are not so stupid as they look.

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Cryptoenologist
Cryptoenologist
6 months ago

We recently bought a 2019 Kia Niro EV. I have a 20 mile round trip commute, and we like to take the occasional short road trip. My wife can charge free at work, but it is a 3kW solar charger, so we have to plug in all weekend and hope it’s sunny to get a full charge. Since we can charge at home as needed(super slow for now 120v, but getting upgraded soon) we don’t have any issues. But it’s certainly true for anyone who can’t charge at home and doesn’t have a second car, that 200ish miles is a bare minimum without getting into regular stress and inconvenience. 240 miles means we can generally plug in whenever is convenient and not worry the rest of the time. A bit more would be great but even for mellow/scenic(60mph not 80mph, where you actually stop and visit POI) road tripping it is great. Real world is better than 240, and sticking in the 80%-10% fast and safe band we still have enough juice to go three hours between stops. It even fits a double camping pad in the back! This weekend we are planning a trip to the Sierras, where we will use a mixture of occasional fast charging stops where they are on the route, and staying at RV campsites where we can get a full charge while we sleep.

SonOfLP500
SonOfLP500
6 months ago

5 gold bars to Adrian for being such a rapid-fire comment replier. It’s like having an extra couple of paragraphs added to the original piece.

Andrea Petersen
Andrea Petersen
6 months ago

I assume all these numbers were clocked in a few days of reasonably bland English weather. What happens in the winter in Chicago or the summer in Vegas? Batteries don’t like extreme temperatures, then you add in heavy HVAC use and it’ll get drained faster than my lily pale neck at a vampire convention. We’re already seeing this with range extended MiniE and i3 owners at work. I can’t imagine the full on electric only is immune to this. I’m also hella not trusting brand new range extended Minis right now because two have recently showing up with CELs that we immediately pointed towards the dealer for warranty work.

Jeff Wood
Jeff Wood
6 months ago

Hang On A Minute Lads, I Got A Great IdeaGreatest ending ever. As far as range we have put 60k miles on a 2015 Leaf we bought off lease. 90+% of the charging done on a 110 volt outlet at home. 80 mile range can work and Mini has significantly better looks and range.

Lockleaf
Lockleaf
6 months ago
Reply to  Jeff Wood

It can work…if you have home charging. 2 out of 5 homes have only street parking in the UK according to the article. Rnnning extension cords simply doesn’t work as a long term solution. So you are already citing a luxury many people simply don’t have.

MiniDave
MiniDave
6 months ago

Contrary to most of these replies, I think the MINI-E is just fine as it is – “ask the man that owns one” and he says it is perfect for his uses, and because it doesn’t cost a shed load of money, he can afford to keep his gas car for the once or twice a year longer trip. OR……how about rent a gas mobile for that trip? Then you don’t even need to bother with warehousing that extra car!
Does an EV avoid all the gas/diesel charges in London? I understand they’ve extended the boundaries till it includes Heathrow now (or soon?) How do the taxi companies deal with those charges? Surcharge the customer or?

Phuzz
Phuzz
6 months ago
Reply to  Adrian Clarke

London might be slightly different*, but all the ULEZ’s in other big cities in England** use the same criteria (Euro 4). Which is handy because my 2006 Polo just squeaks in.

*because of course they have to be different, bloody Londoners
**because of course they have to be different, bloody Scots

Spikedlemon
Spikedlemon
6 months ago
Reply to  Phuzz

There’s an England beyond the M25?

Phuzz
Phuzz
6 months ago
Reply to  Spikedlemon

“Life begins at the Watford Gap”

Dogisbadob
Dogisbadob
6 months ago

Min-E

Rad Barchetta
Rad Barchetta
6 months ago
Reply to  Dogisbadob

Stahp

Sam Gross
Sam Gross
6 months ago

the shot of the mini in front of an abandoned gas station (petrol station if you speak correct english) is quite poignant. There’s probably a great case for replacing pumps with rapid (truly rapid 20kW+) chargers in exactly the same form factor.

You even save the environmental remediation costs of having to dig up the big underground tank — leave it in place and let EVs charge above it.

JaredTheGeek
JaredTheGeek
6 months ago
Reply to  Sam Gross

20kw is not rapid. Charging speed is more important on these smaller cars. They should have embraced an 800 volt architecture with 350 kw charging. Anything under 150kw should not be classified as rapid today.

Ivan256
Ivan256
6 months ago
Reply to  Adrian Clarke

Just to be sure we’re all on the same page.

Everybody agrees that BMW is wrong about that. Right?!

If you could reliably find a place to charge one of these to 80% in 10 minutes it would be world-changing.

Cheats McCheats
Cheats McCheats
6 months ago
Reply to  Ivan256

World changing? No, a start in the right direction? Yes.

Ivan256
Ivan256
6 months ago
Reply to  Adrian Clarke

The thing is, though, that it’s not a couple years ago anymore. We – hell, BMW – has the technology to make this better. And it wouldn’t be that big a deal to fit it into a model year change.

BMW’s argument has more to do with what they think is good for their business than what is actually possible, or what would make the best product for their customers. They could improve this by swapping out modular components for new ones with an improved design. An improved design based on off-the-shelf subcomponents. They could keep using the same production line and bolt them into the same spots on the chassis and everything. But that’s not where this vehicle is in its investment lifecycle, so instead they try to convince customers it’s not important.

It’s really just an extremely conservative way to run a business. It’s why we can’t have nice things until some “disruption” occurs and legacy practices are finally forced to improve.

Nic Periton
Nic Periton
6 months ago

I do not like these new fangled electric monocle polishers, I very much fear that they will lead to large numbers of staff becoming unemployed. The Guild of monocle polishers are a formidable force as well you know, it was they that forced us all to have both a boilerman and a stoker to assist the engineer in charge of our steam monocle polishers.

Manwich Sandwich
Manwich Sandwich
6 months ago

It’s 2023 and they’re still pushing a BEV with less than 100 miles of range?

Pathetic.

Manwich Sandwich
Manwich Sandwich
6 months ago
Reply to  Adrian Clarke

I was going by the picture that suggested the range you were getting was 90 miles… but regardless, even the “up to 143 miles of range” that they say it gets is still pathetic.

Matti Sillanpää
Matti Sillanpää
6 months ago

Also it’s a mini, and therefore not really roadtrip material, altough I did 6tkm trip in mine. Suffered every meter of it.

But to use it as intended, so stylish second car with home charging and it would be perfection. Light so it’s efficient and it’s fun to hoon in the slower speeds.

R53 Lifer
R53 Lifer
6 months ago

So I just bought one of these….it’s amazing and everything you could ever want from a day-to-day car. You can fit 2 car seats in the back and a week’s worth of groceries in the boot. I’ve been driving an ’02 R53 for 18 or so years, and none of the newer Minis have ever appealed to me until the SE (yeah, I totally got one with the plug-shaped wheels). For the price difference between this and even a cheap Tesla (and can we talk about how boring Teslas look?!), you can easily keep an older gas/diesel vehicle around for road trips that has a 500-mile range and can be recharged to 100% in less than 5 minutes (and once you realize how much fast charging costs it’s not like you really save money road-tripping in most electric cars). I mean, this is America, right, it’s not like any of us have enough vacation time to need that much range more than once or twice a year…

Buzz
Buzz
6 months ago
Reply to  R53 Lifer

It’s the wrong movie to be referencing, but those wheels are so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking them up.

Geekycop .
Geekycop .
6 months ago
Reply to  R53 Lifer

Agreed. Of course I’m a weirdo that has to have multiple vehicles just for daily life, stupid equine leeches needing 2000lbs of hay every month, so I have my R53 for my 55 mile commute once each week, the old f350 with a big block for the hay, and I’m considering a little electric for the 7 mile every day commute. I just have to figure out the budget on the pay of a parole officer.

Strangek
Strangek
6 months ago

Maybe I’m a caveman who can barely operate a complex machine powered by controlled explosions, but I don’t understand what those gauges do…The one on the right seems to be battery charge level? The one on the left is what? E-Power? What that? Ready? Ready for what?

Thevenin
Thevenin
6 months ago

What they should realize is having that much range means you can do 300 miles in TOTAL before having to plug in for a few hours

They do realize it, and that’s why they don’t recommend EVs to people who can’t consistently charge at home or work.

if you want the mainstream consumer to embrace your shiny new product you have to offer the same or better than what they have now, for less cost.

While I agree that EVs need more range, better charging, and superior infrastructural support, it is spectacularly stupid for any society to treat this market phenomenon as a philosophical imperative. (Not implying you’re saying this, but a lot of other people do.)

If for example running your computer 1% faster means burning an acre of someone else’s farmland, maybe it’s justifiable to ask people to suck it up and put up with slower computers. There has to be a line, a tradeoff point between collective harm and personal convenience, and that line should be decided democratically, not with dollars. A society that perpetually values the luxury of the wealthy over the material conditions of the working masses will eventually devolve into feudalism or self-destruction.

But anyway, yeah, the Mini EV is cute but underwhelming. Disappointing, really — it’s getting hard to find small cars in the US.

Last edited 6 months ago by Thevenin
Buzz
Buzz
6 months ago
Reply to  Thevenin

The people who say “well this EV is marginally worse than a gasoline-powered car in this one aspect, therefore the whole technology is bunk” don’t believe in climate change. They don’t care that we’ve been talking about it for almost 50 years now and that it hasn’t disappeared in that time. They don’t care that temperatures are getting warmer and storms are getting more severe.

They just don’t care.

They’ve swallowed the oil industry Flavor-Aid and anything less than the ability to dump used oil down the sewer is an infringement of their god-given freedoms. You might as well talk to a wall.

https://youtu.be/mK5TbGvvluk?si=YH8MFbD46yO_gKnj

Buzz
Buzz
6 months ago
Reply to  Adrian Clarke

The people saying “EV bad” are saying so because they refuse to confront the reality of human-caused climate change. Otherwise why would we need to change technologies in the first place? Why fix what ain’t broke?

As far as cost is concerned, cars are expensive everywhere, regardless of what makes them go. A Honda E is $40k and a Honda Accord is $32k. Add in some incentives/govt rebates for the EV and the cost is basically the same. The poor are priced out either way.

Al Camino
Al Camino
6 months ago
Reply to  Buzz

Chicago was under a mile of ice 12,000 years ago, a mere blip in geological time. When the ice sheet over the Great Lakes melted, it had weighed so much that the Earth’s crust lifted. What caused the ice to melt? Not many humans in North America 12,000 years ago. Henry Ford had not yet been born.

Leighzbohns
Leighzbohns
6 months ago
Reply to  Al Camino

Your comment is both astonishingly ignorant and easily refutable with a few minutes of research on any reputable reference.

Last edited 6 months ago by Leighzbohns
Al Camino
Al Camino
6 months ago
Reply to  Leighzbohns

Refutable, as in proved false? So Chicago is still under a mile of ice? I checked the local weather forecast since you seemed so sure, but nope, no mile high pile of ice covering Chicago right now. It’s a total mystery as to where it went, guess we’ll never know. Quite the enigma.

The F--kshambolic Cretinoid Harvey Park
The F--kshambolic Cretinoid Harvey Park
6 months ago
Reply to  Buzz

It takes a full bank account to be able to care.

Jack Beckman
Jack Beckman
6 months ago

It doesn’t matter if it’s an electric car or an electric monocle polisher, if you want the mainstream consumer to embrace your shiny new product you have to offer the same or better than what they have now, for less cost.”

That’s the money quote right there – the thing everyone forgets. When this is true for most consumers (it’s true for *some* use cases right now, but not most) then we won’t need to bribe people with tax incentives not browbeat manufacturers with draconian rules.

Jonathan Myers
Jonathan Myers
6 months ago
Reply to  Jack Beckman

Well, without “draconian” rules nearly every city would look like Los Angles did back in the 70’s before there were any emission requirements for cars. I for one enjoy being able to breath relatively clean air and like the idea that children are not being poisoned by lead in most places on earth these days. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2567647/pdf/12471395.pdf) The science is clear that humans are dramatically impacting the climate. Electrified vehicles are not going to solve all our climate problems but they are a step in the right direction. There are plenty of EVs that are better than gasoline vehicles for many use cases (not all). This is not one of those EVs.

Jack Beckman
Jack Beckman
6 months ago
Reply to  Jonathan Myers

Not if they are unaffordable. Nowhere did I say we should not have electrics. But the current technology doesn’t cut the mustard for most people. I have no doubt the charging and affordability problems will be solved, but you don’t solve science problems by forcing companies to build stuff people don’t want/can’t afford that doesn’t fulfill their needs.

If the government wasn’t hell-bent on forcing BEVs down everyone’s throats, they’d see that the current tech is far better suited to PHEVs – something doesn’t exclude all the people who can’t charge at home, for one. And with our limited resources at the moment, it makes more sense to spread those batteries out among multiple cars, that people can possibly afford, to get some benefit, rather than put them into cars that some dealers have described as “bolted to the floor.”

Buzz
Buzz
6 months ago
Reply to  Jack Beckman

If people aren’t charging their PHEVs because they can’t access a charger, then all you’ve done is made a regular car more heavy, more expensive, and more resource hungry for no reason. You’ve actually made the problem worse.

Charging infrastructure is the key. Build it and they will come.

FleetwoodBro
FleetwoodBro
6 months ago
Reply to  Buzz

This sounds like all-or-nothing-ism. In our current situation, regular hybrids and plug-in hybrids are the answer for many people. Not all people, but maybe most people. People who want/need a vehicle to do more than tool around a dense city and don’t want to sit at a Bakersfield charging station for an hour in 114 degree heat just so they can pick up their kid from camp. They take road trips, they visit relatives who live in East Jesus, they see clients, etc. That’s a lot of folks who are not willing to give up the range and the ease.

The answer for the planet is different and it’s not full EV cars either in my opinion. Now that we know the majority of microplastic pollution comes from tire wear — not to mention the pervasive brake dust and destructive mining for rare earth minerals — full EV cars don’t get a pass. Cars/trucks regardless of propulsion sytem are an enormous negative for our environment.

The answer for the planet, if we were serious, might be an extensive nationwide electric rail system powered by solar, wind, nuclear and whatever other non fossil fuel energy sources we can dream up, with exclusive passenger train access to the rails, that is operated by the government at a substantial loss. That would cost many trillions of dollars, require draconian use of eminent domain, and in the USA would possibly result in civil war or at the very least spates of hillbilly terrorism blowing up track here and there. Doesn’t mean I’m not for it, it’s just unlikely.

In the mean time, hybrids and plug-in hybrids save A LOT of gas. That’s a big deal. Hybrids are an enormous breakthrough that we’re not celebrating enough.

Space
Space
6 months ago
Reply to  FleetwoodBro

How do rubber tires lead to microplastic pollution?

Jonathan Myers
Jonathan Myers
6 months ago
Reply to  Jack Beckman

Car companies complained about the added cost of emission control equipment also. Only difficult regulation was able to bring us clean air. It cost the consumer a lot of extra money but we all benefited. It is a similar case with EVs and internal combustion. We can see the immediate extra cost of an EV but don’t factor in the huge cost to future generations that unlimited CO2 and other gases dumped into our atmosphere are bringing. Odds are that things are going to be ok in my lifetime but our pollution is going to be very expensive for our children and grandchildren.
https://www.hagerty.com/media/magazine-features/fifty-years-ago-the-government-decided-to-clean-up-car-exhaust-its-still-at-it/

Last edited 6 months ago by Jonathan Myers
Lockleaf
Lockleaf
6 months ago
Reply to  Jonathan Myers

What the consumer didn’t really see was a drastic immediate impact on their day to day life with those regulations. Cars still operated 100% the same for the appliance car driver. That is why that comparison, while common, isn’t highly accurate. Switching to EV’s for many people is like, I don’t know, being asked to give up your smart phone and instead carry around a laptop. They can do all the same things, but one of them provides a significantly different, and less convenient, experience. But for the white collar employee who has been on a laptop for years, they may not really notice at all.

Last edited 6 months ago by Lockleaf
Root
Root
6 months ago

+1 for the shower spaghetti quip, and +1 for the “power wand” reference that went by Torch.

Drew
Drew
6 months ago
Reply to  Root

And Torch has now removed the note that said something about it sounding charming or whatever it was. It was 1000% funnier with that editor note.

3WiperB
3WiperB
6 months ago

More cars need to come with the thigh supports/seat extensions. Now that I have a car with them, I don’t understand why every seat doesn’t have them.

Yep, not enough range to be usable, but I hope the 2024 is. The US needs more small EV’s, but we seem to mostly be getting full size cars or mid/full size SUV’s and trucks.

Speedway Sammy
Speedway Sammy
6 months ago

I recently spend two weeks in England. I can see where this rig would be great for zipping around the city and even the countryside Also their climate avoids most of the real hot/real cold weather that kills ev range. However, how many folks in England live/work in a place where they can charge it? Because as you say, nobody wants to drive around and park for hours to charge at a public slot.

Chronometric
Chronometric
6 months ago

That might be my primary issue with EVs. They tend to be fast and fast is fun. But EV fast comes with a price. Hoonery will cost you charge time later.

Drew
Drew
6 months ago

[Editor’s Note: I’m not sure I fully understand all these subheads, but I suspect they’re all deeply British in some way that makes sense if you’re from that charming island of mild pleasures, so I’m just gonna leave ’em as is. – JT]

Has David been rubbing off on you too much? Pretty sure they’re all referencing The Italian Job.

Last edited 6 months ago by Drew
OrigamiSensei
OrigamiSensei
6 months ago
Reply to  Adrian Clarke

Even if the powers that be don’t get you we love our goth uncle.

Drew
Drew
6 months ago
Reply to  Adrian Clarke

I’m glad there’s a man of culture on staff, even if you aren’t always fully appreciated.

Carbon Fiber Sasquatch
Carbon Fiber Sasquatch
6 months ago
Reply to  Adrian Clarke

Grandpa always said “It’s hard to soar with the eagles when you work with turkeys”

Canopysaurus
Canopysaurus
6 months ago

Love “The Italian Job” quotes.

Squirrelmaster
Squirrelmaster
6 months ago
Reply to  Canopysaurus

Thank you! The quotes seemed so familiar but I couldn’t quite place them.

Canopysaurus
Canopysaurus
6 months ago
Reply to  Squirrelmaster

I’ve pretty much got that movie memorized.

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