I had a sit in an Ami when my wife bought her ec4. I'd be really tempted to wear a helmet, they are literally made of cardboard and plastic. :D
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Cycling News
"Are Electric Cars the future of Low Carbon Transport?"
(719 posts)- Started 15 years ago by chdot
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Posted 8 months ago #
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I'd be interested to see if there's a trail of fossil-fuel money behind the clearly staged stunt of rolling over an Ami in Monaco...
"Make the inexpensive and innovative threat to fossil consumption look dangerous, small, and for clowns. Not for the real people who drive petrol land-yachts*"
*Also easily capable of being rolled over at 20mph on a roundabout when it mounts the rear of a small car:
Posted 8 months ago # -
If we must have electric cars, can they please look like this:?
Posted 6 months ago # -
A lovely red and white Citroaen Ami came past me on New street the other night. Such a lovely small vehicle
Posted 6 months ago # -
This is a very interesting article. BYD car batteries don't use cobalt.
Northvolt in Sweden has gone bankrupt without producing anything.It appears that Northvolt will enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week; a troubling development given that no other European startup has raised as much money and carried as much responsibility for Europe’s green industry ambitions. Europe has little chance of success in battery manufacturing and for the sake of decarbonization and for its own productivity it should reconsider its play in the battery space.
Posted 5 months ago # -
"Less than 2% of private cars in Scotland are electric. What's stopping you from buying an EV?"
Today's phone in on Radio Scotland. Not suggesting you listen but the figure for EVs is amazingly low considering how much money has been thrown at promoting them! Car ads abound but outside of wealthy Edinburgh I don't see so many. In village and around here there are maybe four and two of these are publicly owned. That's quite high I suppose.
Posted 5 months ago # -
The proportion of new cars which are electric is presumably higher, and also relevant.
Petrol & diesel cars have also had an enormous amount of money spent on promoting them, too!
Posted 5 months ago # -
Interesting snippet from the 2023 edition of the annual Transport and Travel in Scotland publication, which is hot off the press today:
4.7% of driving licence holders owned an electric car or van in 2023. This is up from 0.3% in 2016. 54% said they wouldn’t consider buying an electric car or van in the future, up from 42% in 2022.
That is 54% of the general population, not current EV owners!Posted 5 months ago # -
The report also illustrates just how glacial the increase in active travel is. Walking is pretty much unchanged over the last ten years, and cycling up barely half of one percentage point (though you might spin it by saying it's increased by about a third in ten years...).
It certainly isn't the case though that the 54% of people who say EVs are too expensive or too hard to charge are buying bikes instead.
Posted 5 months ago # -
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The online vehicle platform expects a “seismic shift” towards electric vehicles (EV) in the next 10 years as affordability improves, from 1.25m in 2024 to 13.7m. The EV share of the new car market will rise from about 18% to 23% in 2025, according to Auto Trader.
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Posted 5 months ago # -
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While Toyota has remained relatively financially resilient because of its early lead in hybrid vehicles, Japan’s other carmakers are struggling to come up with the money to invest in the switch away from polluting petrol and diesel to cleaner electric vehicles. Hybrids, which combine a petrol engine and a smaller battery, remain less expensive to produce for manufacturers.
At the same time, Chinese manufacturers such as BYD and SAIC have aggressively targeted electric cars as a way of grabbing a much bigger share of the global car market. China’s Foxconn, which makes iPhones under a contract with America’s Apple, had reportedly started early discussions about an approach for either Honda or Nissan, prompting accelerated merger talks.
“
https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2024/dec/23/honda-nissan-mitsubishi-merger-talks-deal-china
Posted 4 months ago # -
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“The inclusion of full hybrid technology would be a catastrophic misstep and make a laughingstock of the UK government’s world-leading zero-emission vehicle policy,” he told the PA news agency.
“If lobbyists do persuade government to include full hybrids it would be a big backward move.
“The ramifications for the nascent EV industry and for fragile consumer confidence could be profound.
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Posted 4 months ago # -
Plug in EVs still seem to sell. Prius model popular with taxi trade of course. Their modest all electric mode good for the tiny LEZ if they care to engage it.
They are a bit crazy though in terms of weight with two engines etc. In future VED will maybe have to be on vehicle weight as the pollution aspect will diminish.Article linked below shows how the vehicle share is swinging towards Chinese brands. New make BYD just supplied buses to TfL. Something Tesla are unlikely to do as South African born Musk doesn't 'get' public transport. Local new build house has a BYD battery so they're going for all sorts of markets.
Don't agree with all of it but interesting graphs. Rest of the world is of course a tiny amount of sales - currently only about same as UK which is only double that of Norway (with EVs zero VAT rated)
https://autonomy.paris/has-the-european-auto-industry-hit-rock-bottom/Posted 4 months ago # -
The figures also confirmed the SUV’s rise to dominance in Britain. The “dual purpose” vehicle class, which contains many of the models marketed as sports utility vehicles, outsold other types of car such as the supermini for the first time. SUV sales were helped by the shift to electric, as bulkier cars have more space for a battery.
Bigger car = bigger battery = more weight = even bigger battery
21st Century Vehicle Logic. The answer is always more. Weird.
Posted 4 months ago # -
I recently bought an electric car - MG5 range 235 miles. Reasons for doing so
1) a lot cheaper than I originally thought
2) our existing car was a Ford Ecoboost and I was spooked by the timing belt stories so I wanted rid asap
3) we have already invested in green living eg solar panels etc
4) I can often get electricity very cheap so 'fuel costs' will now be negligible most of the timeIt is really nice driving it but I would recommend you look at both pro and anti videos before getting one.
Posted 4 months ago # -
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But of late the sheen of owning a Tesla has begun to wear off. For years the brand has been synonymous with Elon Musk and his stance against the climate crisis. Recently, Schwede watched aghast as the Tesla CEO poured hundreds of millions into backing Donald Trump as he made promises to ramp up domestic oil and gas production.“
Posted 2 months ago # -
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“If you are an engineer who is working on a sixth-generation fighter jet and you have a work phone that you are connecting to your personal vehicle, you need to be aware that by connecting these devices you could be allowing access to data on your mobile,” says Joseph Jarnecki, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank.
Nate Drier, a tech lead at the cybersecurity firm Sophos, says concerned drivers or passengers can click the “don’t trust” option when they connect their phone charger with the car – but they then lose out on all the benefits that ensue, from using music streaming apps to messaging.
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Posted 2 weeks ago # -
The demonstration outside the Tesla showroom in west London was one of the smallest I have seen. But everyone who passed by was keen to show their support.
...just a score of people, one dressed as a shark for some reason, holding signs that said: “Honk if you hate billionaires.” Tesla drivers were honking as they drove into the showroom. It wasn’t the easiest thing to guess, a year ago, that you were buying an ad for the values of Elon Musk, nor what those values would transpire to be.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/28/tesla-drivers-hate-elon-musk-protest-london
Posted 2 weeks ago # -
There was a similar demonstration on one of the bridges over the M8 two or three weeks ago. I think the slogan was "Honk if you hate Tesla" and I noticed quite a few drivers confirming their feelings.
Posted 2 weeks ago # -
I think I spotted that one. There was some sort of point present so I assume it was organised by "Led by donkeys"
Posted 2 weeks ago # -
I confess I rather like Teslas, and may purchase a Model Y sometime in the future, when things settle down a bit. There's no denying as a car, they are great.
That man bothers me though, more that I even know who he is. I have no idea who the boss of WV or Toyaota, or any other car company is, they are all annonymous to the general public, as should he be. No one should know, or care what his politics are.
What is slightly ammusing though is for years the left saw him as some sort of revolutionaly hero, and now they despise him.
Posted 2 weeks ago # -
Which leftists have you been talking to? Musk has always been a complete <rule 2> as far as I and my Guardian-munching lentil-reading social circle is concerned. Well before he went full 4th Reich.
Musk's sometime pal Thiel is of course far, far worse due to being smarter.
Posted 2 weeks ago # -
Of course the far left minority who frequent places like here may not ever have seen him as a left hero, however he brought EVs to the masses and most of those early adopters of Tesla's are rich folk who are left leaning wanting to do right by the environment. He also has solar/battery solutions which appeal to the rich left as well. Most of his consumer products are aimed at the left.
Right wing folks want nothing to do with solar or EVs...Until a year ago young folk (mostly left) seemed to love him, I'd have had no idea who he was a few years ago were it not for young folk at work espousing his wonderfulness.
Posted 2 weeks ago # -
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Few individuals embody ladder-pulling more starkly than Elon Musk. Though he has been lauded as a self-made innovator and visionary entrepreneur, Musk’s empire only exists thanks to the support of massive public investment. Yet as leader of the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), he has directed and overseen the dismantling of the very government programs, regulations and subsidies that enabled his rise.
Musk’s companies, particularly Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity, have benefited from an estimated $38bn in public support, including government loans, tax credits and federal contracts. In 2010, Tesla received a $465m low-interest loan from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) program. That funding was critical to keeping Tesla alive – without it, insiders later told the Washington Post, the company would have gone under. The success of Tesla’s flagship Model S, the expansion of its manufacturing base, and even the illusion of its early profitability were all bolstered by public money.
Zero-emission vehicle credits and the $7,500 federal EV tax credit were equally pivotal. Tesla earned billions by selling regulatory credits to legacy automakers struggling to meet emissions standards. In the first nine months of 2024 alone, 43% of Tesla’s net income came from these credits. The company also profited from California’s emissions credit system through a scheme involving phantom battery-swapping infrastructure – credits that provided hundreds of millions in additional income.
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Posted 2 weeks ago # -
Talking about Elon Musk and the swing from left to right in terms of those who lionise him I remember him being name-dropped on Star Trek Disovery: http://www.naden.de/blog/bbvideo-bbpress-video-plugin -->
[+] Embed the video | Star Trek Discovery" target="_blank">Video Download Get the Video Plugin *SPOILER ALERT * This is now taken by fans as being a subtle hint that the Jason Isaacs character is actually from the Mirror Universe.
Also puts a different spin on his cameos in a number of pop-culture TV shows over the years (Big Bang Theory, Simpsons, Rick and Morty etc)
Posted 2 weeks ago # -
I wouldn't characterise solar power as being a particularly left/right or "woke" thing (whatever propagandists would have you believe). Notably right-wing locales like Texas and Florida have plenty of domestic solar as well as large industrial installations.
It's clear that many right-leaning folk love money even if they don't care about the environment per se and so will happily install solar.
Musk fans and haters alike do seem to belong to the same "extremely online" demographic like me. I think that only when Musk really started acting out in the past 3 years did people outside this space start to notice and have an opinion about him.
Personally I've disliked Musk since the Paypal days, long before he became a sort of embodied dilettante realisation of 4chan discourse, searching for edge by flirting with various unpleasant ideologies. The Musk-lovers of my acquaint seem more drawn to the theatrics than anything else.
Thiel is considerably worse and much more dangerous.
Posted 2 weeks ago # -
EVs *are* the future of low-carbon transport, as long as they are shared
Posted 1 week ago # -
I wonder what the charging infrastructure is for such a project. With 40mWH of storage capacity it must have an impressive charging system.
Posted 1 week ago #
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