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I checked what Ford offers on their ICE vehicles: "The Powertrain Warranty covers components such as the engine, transmission, and drivetrain. It begins at the Warranty Start Date and lasts for 5 years or 60,000 miles, whichever occurs first." So… EV makers are generally 60% more confident in their product's longevity than big auto is. Yes, you're right. The range degradation in cold weather has very little to do with any loss of capacity. It's partly due to having to keep the occupants warm - there's little waste heat in a much more energy efficient vehicle. Partly rolling resistance; partly wheel slip. In fact, all the issues which affect ICE vehicles and people are so used to they ignore - or can ignore because around 83% of the energy they are paying for is totally wasted in normal conditions! The Norwegian government (where very few ICE vehicles are now being sold, and a world leader in BEV adoption) advises citizens to allow for a 20% range reduction in cold weather. Better BEVs allow you to automatically precondition the car on mains power before you leave home. All you do is set a departure time. This warms the battery pack so that your regen works properly from the outset, and so you don't need to waste any energy braking either. And of course it also heats the cabin, steering wheel, seats, and windscreen before you enter the vehicle. I've not experienced this myself (only pre-cooling), but I've watched plenty of videos from people demonstrating this. Surely this is a much more pleasant experience than approaching a frozen petrol or diesel vehicle, where your primary concern is: will the engine actually start? Crazy that they still use lead acid batteries in vehicles, where you need hundreds of amps to overcome huge engine friction in freezing conditions. You'd think that the better marks would have switched to far smaller and lighter Lithium batteries a decade or more ago.

Ah... you got me! By the time I got to 8 time was getting on, so I said to myself, "no 3G, don't mention heat pumps, etc. This is already a bit complicato, and that sort of thing will likely put more people off from reading this, so the basics won't get out. No one reading it is going to live at the North Pole, or the equator, so just K.I.S.S.". Life being life, up pops someone living at (or too near) said North Pole and dashes all my hopes and dreams! (Greta does this far better!) So, answering one of your last questions - "What improvements have you seen in the four years?" - first: it's heat pumps. 9) Try to buy a vehicle with a heat pump if you anticipate using your EV in extremes of climate. Living where the sun is strong and temperatures frequently hover around 40C it's what I miss most, and one of the main reasons why I will be trading my EV for a new one in a year or so. People decrying EVs because of reduced range in cold conditions seldom, if ever, mention that ICE vehicles also suffer from decreased range in the cold. Maybe not as much, but it's not exclusive to EVs. Not too many EVs have a heat pump, and particularly not cheaper and used ones, but they are rapidly becoming more common. "battery life, replacement and disposal cost"? : Any good EV will have a battery life way beyond the useful life of any petrol engine in mileage terms - generally several times. I've never heard anyone asking a salesman what the likely life of the engine in the car he is selling could be. Don't charge too fast too often, and you'll easily exceed the manufacturer's warranty (it's often 8 years). Disposal is another red-herring from the ICE mob: when the battery pack is below 70% capacity it will still be highly sought-after for domestic storage, and you can still expect several thousand pounds for it - on say eBay. I'd really really like to know where this oft-mentioned "landfill" is. I dream of successfully scavenging for carelessly abandoned large Lithium-ion battery packs for my planned solar photovoltaic system! A totally clapped out pack is still far too valuable in mineral terms to throw away. The only problem with EV battery recycling is that there's nothing like enough to recycle at present. Budding recyclers are generally reduced to small, marginally economic, stuff extracted from electronic equipment waste.

Headline: Cramlington drink-driver flipped car on duel carriageway in busy morning traffic then fled on foot Oh, dear! Still, the so-called quality papers have all the best information. Today's Telegraph informs us that Prince Harry is 48 years old. I knew I'd slept in, but surely not an entire decade?

The trend to Electric Vehicles is now well established, and it's inevitable that most people will be considering one in the next few years. As someone who has spent an absurd amount of time over the past decade studying the progress of EVs - and who is now well into the fourth year of running one - I'm happy to answer member's questions in this thread. As an opener, I'd offer a few key points of advice: 1) Don't listen to the media! They operate with a strong bias toward what their advertisers want to see in print. A lot of what they print is pure bull. An article in this morning's Sunday Telegraph was so laughably ill-informed it's what actually prompted this post. 2) Consider the total cost of ownership, and not the sticker price. The cost of an EV is heavily front loaded. By that, I mean that you're spending (or borrowing) to save. The extent of those savings are very likely to be a lot more than you can presently anticipate. There are still some unknowns, but if you chose wisely, those unknowns (like the soaring cost of petrol) will average in your favour. 3) Don't think that in buying a hybrid (including a Plug-In Hybrid) you're taking the first cautious step to electrification - you're not! Hybrids are the worst of both worlds, and this fact has now dawned on the buying public. Hybrid sales are falling, and many manufacturers are abandoning them. This is resulting in many tempting bargains - which you'd be very wise to steer well clear of. 4) Don't buy an EV with pouch batteries. They are cheap to produce, but the manufacturers who went this route (like BMW) have learnt a lot and are now firmly committed to cells in future. Pouch batteries swell and have a very much higher propensity toward spontaneous battery fires. Likewise, avoid like the plague any vehicle which doesn't have a proper liquid cooling system for the battery. It's truly amazing the number of buyers who shell out tens of thousands of pounds without carefully checking what they are buying here. If the salesman can answer this question (truthfully) then there's little point listening to anything else he/she has to say. 5) Don't obsess about range and so-called "range anxiety". The media loves to focus on this, but after you've bedded in your EV experience, you'll find their obsession amusing. If you want to be assured that your EV will comfortably get you where you want to go, then download the Zap-Map app onto your phone (UK only, but many other apps are available). There you will discover that there are more public charging points than you could ever dream of. 6) Charge wisely! Pretty much 95% of your charging is going to be done at home (or work) and generally on cheap rate electricity. Unlike a petrol or diesel vehicle, you will actively plan to return from long trips at a low state of charge; that's so you can take advantage of cheap home charging. You have to accept that you're going to be paying a considerable premium for some part of longer journeys, but that it will still work out cheaper than petrol or diesel. If you're crafty and take the time to plan ahead, it's still possible to "bum free power" on a long road trip. 7) Whilst it's nice to "have your own petrol pump at home" it's NOT essential to have a dedicated wall charger at home. Many people manage just fine by using the portable charger supplied with the car, plugged into an existing 13A wall outlet. Most cars will allow you to set up a schedule of when they draw power and their charging rate. Then all you need to do is to get into the habit of plugging it in immediately you return home. Overnight charging (inside the strict cheap rate hours) at the minimum rate (5A = 1.25KWh on many EVs) will often be all it takes to ensure you've plenty for next day use. You're never going to be stranded because this will provide easily enough energy to get to a fast charger in an unforeseen long-trip emergency. 8 ) Don't pay for more range than you actually need. Whilst a four-hundred mile plus range might make for good boasting points at the pub, carrying around heavy batteries that you're seldom going to need costs energy as well as money. Bladders (in my generation at least) don't go for anything like that distance, and fast chargers generally complete well before motorway diners can do their thing. ------------------------------------------- Lots more, but I have to go and wash and polish the EV. Discuss...

The compliant media is avoiding any mention of the US Banks that are refusing US depositors access to their own money. Apparently, as of 36 hours ago, there was a jaw dropping thirty of them! If you need to know the names, then the "Black Conservative Patriot" YouTube channel is your goto. This worthy gentleman is clearly exercising his black privilege by ceremoniously donning his "black banker glasses" and exposing them to the world. He's plainly daring the (putatively racist) wokies who control YouTube to deploy their take-down digit. More amusing still was the Signature Bank's video on using the correct personal pronoun from its infinitely wide palette. I'm not sure if it was intended for staff or for customers - probably both. I said was because that has been rapidly taken off the bank's website, together with all other evidence of terminal wokeism. It's a pure gem, with a smiling bank CEO introducing his chosen lecturer, reportedly on some obscene salary, to present his brain-numbing whiteboard of "valid" personal pronouns. As we are so frequently reminded: woke rhymes with broke - almost as well as banker rhymes with ...

Convicted criminal fraudster (base salary 421,308 euros per annum + endless perks and expenses) raises glass to toast the continuance of the ECB Ponzi scheme, whilst trying hard to look very purposeful and resolute.

Here's why it's not a terribly good idea to get into Lithium-ion battery manufacturing, and certainly not a good idea to build your community on it: The price per kilowatt is currently driving down to below $100, and many plants now under construction won't be able to produce a quality product at the prices pertaining at the time they get into real volume. That's at least three years, and more likely five or six. If you've taken public money to build your plant, well.. it's not really your own loss, is it? Best to avoid big gesture politics I think and concentrate on helping small local enterprise. Just persuading local people with get up and go, not going, has a lot to say for itself.

Check the URL in your browser address bar, and you'll discover that we've replaced the .co.uk with a coolio .uk This means that your browser cookies won't be able to recognise the URL until you log in again. It's a once-only process, and when your browser stores a new cookie, you'll be right back to normal. All the old links are preserved though, as the former bedlington.co.uk domain will be preserved for posterity. With soooo much less typing to do, you'll be able to post more and more often!

That sounds like the right thing to do, but I don't think it ever works out in the end, Eggy. I think you'll find that practically all the public money spent in Europe eventually goes down the drain. It might produce a short term boost, but that way is the way to a crushing disappointments up ahead. In case you think I'm too pessimistic about things, I'd simply say that I'm very upbeat about EVs and have now had one myself for over three years. I follow developments very closely and will try to find a bit of time to update everyone as to what's really going on internationally and how I see the future panning out. The media coverage on this subject is terrible, and we generally only get to hear what their big advertisers (often German motor companies) want us to hear. Interesting to hear what others have to say.

Full story: Musk tipped for Brexit U-turn in huge UK investment with Tesla gigafactory takeover

With the greatest sadness it would seem that we've just entered the New Carolean Era. That doesn't seem to have the ring of being New Elizabethans - but, as always, we must work with what we've got!

Wow, not even a token white male in cabinet! This IS interesting. Agree with you on the Heath-Wilson thing Eggy. And it was at a time when I used to vote Conservative too! Heath was actually a more dogmatic socialist than "pragmatic" pipe-smoking Harold. I'm no longer quite so sure that Heath was the worst PM ever though. Anyone with a mature sense of proportion wanting a good chuckle should revisit the news coverage of the Heath-Wilson years and the huge commotion there was about our £1.3 billion annual trade deficit. Everyone was blaming everyone, and the end of the world was predicted unless it was quickly eliminated. (Hint: It's now running at a cool £27.9 billion a year!)

Today's front page story headlined "How Liz Truss won the battle for No 10" has had a lot of people checking the calendar. In my case it was more an... "oh, I must have misunderstood when the result was to be announced". It's been fairly clear what the result would be for a number of weeks, but the sheer gall of the article has taken many aback. Some commenters have even suggest that it's a publishing error. One of my old mates has Liz as his MP and I thought that he'd be amused by the turn of events. Not a bit of it, it seems! I'm putting this down to the fact that most of his children and grandchildren have had a good helping of "Blairite university brainwash", and so the family generally are likely left leaning. Then again you'd have thought that such people would warm to the prospect of an (ex) LibDem remainer becoming PM!

God Save the Queen! Other than that I couldn't possibly comment. 😀

He was the Bedlington Coal Company over-manager; in modern parlance the Managing Director. I say over-manager because both the Doctor Pit and the 'A' Pit had under-managers. His son was the 'A' Pit (Bedlington Station) under-manager and my grandfather (James David Millne) was the Doctor Pit under-manager - though grandfather had a manager's "ticket" and was offered colliery manager positions elsewhere which he gratefully declined. Both reported to Mr Weeks Senior - which I've always assumed is the above depicted one. The Weeks family were succeeded at Laird's House by the Crudas family. Mr Weeks was also probably a board member of the coal company, and likely held shares. The house was owned by the coal company, so in fact he didn't actually own it. I can tell you this as a certainty as that's the party it was purchased from in the late 1940's or very early 1950's.

And here's me imagining it was for six of Bercow's car stickers!

https://www.mpsexpenses.info/#!/mp/540 Doesn't look like all those thousands of our money spent on "Publicity services and local paper column writing" delivered any results Ian! I'm fascinated to know what those six items below £1 are, and how much in administrative costs that fiver or so you couldn't spare incurred.

Another farce perpetrated by our utterly biased BBC! I'm not going to bore anyone with further comment, but will simply relay the correct answers to the questions. These are answers no one at the Brussels Broadcasting Corporation actually wants to hear! Credit for the above goes to Brian Chambers.

Really really sad, but all good things do come to an end. It's the way of retailing at the moment, and small retailers are by no means the exception: the iconic Boots is in meltdown, and who would have believed that retail analysts would ever be forecasting that now struggling retail giant M&S won't survive the next decade. I hope Bedlington.co.uk can preserve a bit of the Keenleysides magic for posterity.

Yes, I heard the ruskies hacked the scoring system - we must demand a people's score board.

Some interesting info from Lord Ashcroft's polls about how the establishment parties are fracturing: That's totally astounding, and obviously there are still more to make the jump. The establishment line will be that it's only a protest vote, but the polling indicates that a majority already see it as a permanent transfer of allegiance. So, things can never be the same again - thanks Theresa and Jeremy!

Oh, isn't this fun, and Labour's utter duplicity is clearly getting through to Labour voters too! TBP actually out-polled Liebour in Bradford. A majority of immigrants starting to think just like native Brits is socially cohesive and bodes well. It means Blair's cynical plan to flood the country with ever-grateful voters who themselves have no idea where he's actually coming from, is running out of steam. One more push and we are free of a system which gifts power to some pretty despicable and useless people at multiple levels (I'm looking at you too Mr Lavery) on the eternal basis that they are the lesser of two evils. Britain has finally woken up! Onward the revolution!

..totally destroy the Tory Party! Yes, you read that right! https://theblueanchor.wordpress.com/2019/04/11/brex-terminate-the-tories/ P45's all around for the current Westmonster lot! May they all rot in hell afterward; because few of them are in any way employable.

You've got the gender of Cympil wrong I think. Nothing wrong with patriotic Kippers, unless you've still got a dose of that leftie "common purpose" bilge they serve up at uni, and I'd have hoped you'd have got most of it out of your system by now.

And another one representing #1, and who refuses to do the honourable thing... Is he going to refuse to accept the money when he decides not to do what he was elected for, but committed to do in order to get the job? Answers on a post card...