Mundane Moments

E-Golf. They stopped making them in 2020 so there are some decent deals to be had currently. Our thought is to lease one for three or four years to see how we get on with the switch to electric and go from there. No interest in owning one of that age.

It would be replacing Mrs BW's old diesel hatchback, so we'll hopefully be able to keep mine running alongside. At the end of the lease term, I feel we could then go down to one car given the way our working lives have moved more towards WFH. Mrs BW disagrees.

The next generation of solid state batteries (more stable, increased power per kilo etc) give me cause for optimism.
Living in a smaller town means a PHEV would be my preference, given the higher likelihood of an unplanned longer journey. Small battery covering 95% of my journeys would be good.
But no real reason to replace my old petrol Kia as yet.

I agree. BMW is already moving in that direction. But given we're likely a minimum 15 years away from widespread market availability at sensible prices with refueling infrastructure, which means a minimum 3 vehicles for me and likely closer to 5 before I consider hydrogen, electric is the logical fuel of choice. My next vehicle, probably at some point this year, is almost certainly going to be PHEV, because most days I do no more than one run into town and back which is 20km or so and thus can be done entirely on battery, but I do also drive to NY/NJ multiple times a year and electric is doable for that but slightly less practical given the intermittent nature of charging availability in upstate NY.

What really ticks me in this whole debate though, as so many these days, is the absolute polarisation of people.

"Electric cars are unusable because the range is so bad!" You don't know how far I need to drive, or how often.

"Electric cars are dangerous because they catch fire and blow up!" Driving is dangerous because people are idiots, gasoline is dangerous because its sole purpose in life is to blow up.

"Electric cars are environmentally unsound because the electricity comes from fossil fuels and batteries are made from small African children!" All of my electricity comes from the hydroelectric dam 10km from my home, and a couple of nuclear power stations. Many of the rare battery elements are mined about 8 hours up the road from here by handsomely pain union workers.

Your value decisions are based on your criteria and assessments, but others have different criteria and will arrive at different conclusions. This isn't aimed at you specifically tricky, these three points are regurgitated endlessly on any post ever seen anywhere on the internet that might remotely mention electric vehicles. Worse, over here the love of gasoline and its derivatives appears to have become yet another identifier in the ridiculous team sport that politics has become. It's all very frustrating.

For households with 2 cars, making one of them electric for the 95% of journeys would seem to be good for everyone though. Especially if the electricity generated is clean. Less noisy, less smelly for people around them too.

Sure. But I'm not in charge of national or global transport policy, and those considerations are not for me to spend time on. I'm responsible for transport policy in my own household, and from that perspective an electric or hybrid vehicle (or much as BW is considering, a full electric plus an ICE) makes a ton of sense for me. I'm not going to sit here pouring increasingly expensive gasoline into an increasingly old car based on a hypothetical big picture in which hydrogen is the ideal solution, when it isn't actually available.

Tricky knows all about battery fires. He’s has Android phones go up in smoke and it was probably an old Casio calculator of his that set Cotgrave church aflame.

Again, you're speaking to your situation, not mine. Electricity here is the cleanest and most reasonably priced fuel source.

But you also have to factor in how often you have to do it. It clearly isn't effective if you do a lot of long journeys.

My personal approach is that I don't want to rely on having to charge at a public facility, so if I go full electric next time it will be with a view to retaining an ICE vehicle for those journeys that are too long to be done on a single charge, or as previously stated to go PHEV so that the short stuff around town which makes up the majority of my driving can be done on a domestic charge and longer journeys will be done on ICE with electric providing additional efficiency, so that's really not a concern for me.

I recognise that for myriad reasons - single vehicle household, no ability to charge at home - others may have to factor the cost and convenience of public charging into their decision. The same is true of hydrogen and will be for a very long time yet, given the current paucity of refueling facilities.

This is pretty much our thinking. The Golf (should we opt for that) has a short-ish range of around 140-150 miles but given that it will be Mrs BW's car and she does just two 25-mile round commutes a week for work, that would mean pretty much all charging will be done at home.

Currently her 15-year-old, taxed diesel sits on the drive for the rest of the week and mine is used for everything else from ferrying Little Miss BW to and from after-school clubs and activities, to shopping trips, appointments and days out. Doesn't seem to make whole load of sense. My larger-engine diesel, bought when I was clearing more than 200 miles a week in work commutes, isn't designed for four-mile trips into town.

Plan is that my car sits parked away for longer journeys and the EV takes the strain of most else.

I can’t afford one and I’ve no idea if they’re any good or not, but the new VW electric campervan/minivan is something I could see myself getting in the future.

I’ll be running my diesel for quite a few years yet though.