Just been down to a conference in London on the glorious electric vehicle future which awaits us.
It was quite interesting actually, some very striking presentations including one from Mitsubishi who are developing the ‘Leaf’, a family saloon EV for mainstream production in 2012 and mass production in 2014. They seem pretty confident about the future for EVs actually, but it does all depend on someone installing the charging infrastructure. They reckon they have fast charging technology right now which will give a 80% charge in 25 minutes, with a 100 mile range, which does make long-distance journeys by EV feasible, with a few half hour coffee stops for ‘refuelling’.
The actual car itself was pretty snazzy, you can program it from your iPhone to switch the heating or aircon on ten minutes before you set off, for comfort and to avoid draining the battery unnecessarily during the journey. It also has an all-singing, all-dancing sat nav and onboard computer, cocktails replicator, diluthium crystal polisher etc.
Reuben Power will install you 3 adjacent charging bays (the practical minimum from a single high-capacity grid connection apparently) for £15k so could be worth thinking about for company fleets, especially operating in London where the congestion charge makes them a better proposition than elsewhere.
The Reuben Power presentation reckoned that after about 2020 nobody will be using ICE technology any more because oil will be unaffordable by then, which was interesting – their business model relies partially on peak oil for success.
At the moment you can get £5k towards the cost of an EV, but part of the event was a debate between three politicians from the main parties, and none of them seemed to think that it was especially important to spend public money on this subsidy, in fact they all seemed to agree that it would be better spent on public transport and cycling infrastructure.
There wasn’t really anything interesting to take a photo of at the event, but here is some kind of industrial thing I took a picture of from the window of the Pendolino train on the way down. 🙂
Green Cottage 