Prices of the electricity we use to charge

Woosh

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May 19, 2012
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The city doing the most rapid EV switch outside of China is London, in our individual case entirely due to very obvious physical evidence of long standing and worsening unacceptable health consequences.
I notice the gradual improvement in air quality in London since ULEZ was introduced. I go fairly often to London to see my grandchildren. Each time, I come home with a sore throat which I link directly to the bad air quality while driving inside the ULEZ, 40 minutes there and 40 minutes back.
Paris is only slightly better despite the imposition of ZFE (zones à faibles émissions ).
 
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guerney

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Sep 7, 2021
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Looks very expensive. Wonder how many heat pump thefts there will be? :cool:
It's a Bosch, therefore probably CAN bused and encrypted or whatever up the wazoo... unless it contains precious metals like catalytic converters, I doubt it'd be worth stealing, but I could be wrong.
 

flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
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I notice the gradual improvement in air quality in London since ULEZ was introduced. I go fairly often to London to see my grandchildren. Each time, I come home with a sore throat which I link directly to the bad air quality while driving inside the ULEZ, 40 minutes there and 40 minutes back.
Paris is only slightly better despite the imposition of ZFE (zones à faibles émissions ).
It's good that you can detect a difference, but there's a very long way to go to reach acceptability.

Ella Kissi-Debrah died, aged nine, after an acute asthma attack in south London on 15 February 2013. She had had more than 25 emergency hospital admissions in the previous three years. In 2020, a landmark coroner’s report made Ella the first person in the world to have air pollution cited as a cause of death.

Decades before, the retarded physical development of Inner London's young had been notable in comparison with elsewhere in the country and as an Inner London employer I'd seen that at first hand. I'd also inherited too many more mature employees failing to reach any retirement before death.

I could give much more personally known evidence, including the very premature deaths of those who became friends, but it's blindingly obvious that much more action on this issue is very long overdue. So I am grateful to Sadiq Khan for his personal efforts as mayor in the face of criticisms which are so often ignorant, politically biased or racist.
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flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
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I wonder if this staged? Are chargers not locked, or switched from *inside* house? :cool:
They aren't normally switched from inside the house but can be locked installations.

He may have foolishly had an open one installed where others could get access to it and perhaps think it was a public one. There are 3,568 free public chargers in the uk so the woman could have made a genuine mistake.
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saneagle

Esteemed Pedelecer
Oct 10, 2010
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Exaggeration, we have thousands of them, 56% of our entire bus fleet. There are 3,835 hybrid buses, 950 battery electric buses, and 20 hydrogen fuel cell buses operating in London, as of March 2023, out of a total bus fleet of 8,643.

In many cases other countries are not suffering the same, despite often using the same models. China has over 600,000 e-buses now, the city of Shenzhen alone having 16,000 e-buses and 22,000 e-taxis so already living in the future.

We still have some learning to do to get this right, but it will happen simply because it has to, regardless of the objectors like yourself. Here this is not about climate change. It''s about premature deaths, not just of the elderly but also now of the very young, who have also long been suffering retarded physical development and long term health problems compared to the wider UK population.

Out in Shropshire this issue is probably inconsequential for you, there you are never going to make any difference to climate change and don't have the same severe locally caused health problems we have. So I have a lot of sympathy with your views in your circumstances. It's just a pity that doesn't get reciprocated.
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That's right 950 buses burning at a rate of 3 every two weeks should last about 6 years if their batteries don't wear out first.
 
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soundwave

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May 23, 2015
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That's right 950 buses burning at a rate of 3 every two weeks should last about 6 years if their batteries don't wear out first.
will keep the homeless warm for a bit :p
 

flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
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That's right 950 buses burning at a rate of 3 every two weeks should last about 6 years if their batteries don't wear out first.
More exaggeration, they have not been burning at anything remotely like this January rate. There's no point in my replying to this anti EV silliness, the three classes of e-buses are here, they are staying and will be the entire fleet eventually.

With new designs still being introduced there will inevitably be some problems which will be solved, just as they have long been on our mainstream EAPCs, plus the longest established e-cars like the Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe and Mitsubishi MiEV.
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Woosh

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May 19, 2012
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Yes, but you can't resist it.
The present rate of London buses burning is 3 in 2 weeks. It might be worse in the future.
It's not like hundreds or even dozens of buses have burnt this year or in the last decade. Some early models don't have LFP battery but their number is small. They will eventually get an upgrade.
 
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flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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It's not like hundreds or even dozens of buses have burnt this year or in the last decade. Some early models don't have LFP battery but their number is small. They will eventually get an upgrade.
Exactly. The first electric bus entered service in Central London in 1907 with the London Electrobus Company. The electrobus needed 1.5 tonnes of lead-acid batteries to carry its 34 passengers. It could travel 60km (40 miles) on one charge. So at lunchtime the buses went to a garage in Victoria and drove up a ramp. The batteries, slung under the electrobus, were lowered onto a trolley and replaced with fresh ones. Truly over a century ahead of its time.

The next move onto e-buses was in 2004 when a small number built by Mercedes started Central London trial operations. There was a huge boost in e-bus numbers with the 1000 NBL4 Routemasters bought late in the 2008 - 2016 period, these all parallel hybrid with continuously operational lithium batteries. Those early batteries proved to have very short working lives so had to be upgraded by replacement, but they did not commonly catch fire. I only know of one burning out despite them remaining in service to the present on certain routes with operators obliged to use them there, albeit at very favourable rental rates. In fact to deal with the shortcomings of their hybrid design, there is now a proposal to convert them to fully battery electric operation, getting rid of the diesel engine. The promising prototype of that is now on trials. If successful it will be a big saving on replacing them.

The arguments of the critics are silly and irrelevant, based on combining the unlike. For example, the latest fire was in a Go Ahead Optare-Switch model. Go Ahead have hundreds of them and their last fire in one of those was in May 2022, both while charging, far from the rate of 3 fires in two weeks being advanced as possible. Go Ahead are thoroughly convinced of the e-bus future, using some government subsidies to buy over 500 of them operational in London, 670 nationally, shortly being supplemented with a further 106 in Oxford.

The critics will be looking very foolish in 20 years time when our UK roads will have tens of thousands of e-buses and between ten and fifteen million e-cars filling them. The path to get there will undoubtedly be rocky at times, but get there we will and be very thankful for it.
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flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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It's 3 in 2 weeks so far!
No, three different makes and models, mixed BEV and Hybrid.

The latest fire at Putney was in a Go Ahead Optare-Switch model. Go Ahead have hundreds of them and their last fire in one of those was in May 2022, both while charging.

So two fires in ten months.
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saneagle

Esteemed Pedelecer
Oct 10, 2010
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Telford
No, three different makes and models, mixed BEV and Hybrid.

The latest fire at Putney was in a Go Ahead Optare-Switch model. Go Ahead have hundreds of them and their last fire in one of those was in May 2022, both while charging.

So two fires in ten months.
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It's thee London buses burnt in two weeks. Make, model, cause, previous history, names of the drivers, the winner of the football match last week and the price of bread can't change that fact.
 

flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
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It's thee London buses burnt in two weeks. Make, model, cause, previous history, names of the drivers, the winner of the football match last week and the price of bread can't change that fact.
Exactly, the different make, model, cause, previous history, names of the drivers, the winner of the football match last week and the price of bread are all as irrelevant to the issue.

Where fire risk is concerned, only the relevant matters. Are you even aware that some hybrid e-buses use NiMh batteries?
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