The Council's Eco Van

[WBCouncil]

Thanks for all the names - some great suggestions!

 

As for Inky's questions, here's a bit more info that might help:

 

A study completed last month by Glass's, a residual value expert, found that electric vehicles purchased without the battery, but signed up to a battery leasing scheme, held their value better than electric vehicles that included the battery. Obviously that's too late for us to consider for this van, but recently Renault decided that all of their electric vehicles were going to be supplied with a leased battery rather than included in the up-front cost. They are leasing batteries from ?59 per year - when you compare this to the cost of buying the batteries it does look pretty good value. Presumably Renault think that it will attract people to buy their cars rather than other models - if this is true, they will all start to follow suit and we will have lots of choice for leased batteries, meaning we can get better value. We need to wait and see!

 

You're right about the limited resources from the rare metals used in batteries. The cost of battery technology reducing is mainly due to very focused efforts of the major battery and car manufacturers who are developing new ways of making batteries smaller, hold more charge and use these materials more sparingly. The drive is being spearheaded by the US; General Motors announced at a conference last month that 'the cost of electric vehicle focused batteries is set to fall to close to a fifth of its current expense in ten years time'. Everyone realises that without efficient, cheap batteries, the electric vehicles are never going to challenge the petrol and diesel cars, so it is a major focus of attention across the industry.

 

As for the electricity supply needed to charge the van, it's all down to the cable that is supplied with the van. You're right, a standard 13amp plug wouldn't work because the fuse would keep blowing as the van tries to draw 16amps from the grid. However the part of the charging system that is in the car has a 'charge control' system which effectively provides a 16amp fuse or breaker - this means that the plug socket itself doesn't have a fuse. You can't just use any old cable, it has to be the one supplied with the van, which is kept inside it.

 

We have reviewed how we move documents around and it's not just legal or archive files which are being moved. The vast majority of files are transferred electronically but as we've got one mailroom for all council post now, all the incoming and outbound mail to and from the council is processed in one location so we get better bulk postage rates and only have one main pickup point for Royal Mail. We still have to transfer internal mail where documents can't be sent electronically and the courier van doesn't only take post or files, but also moves equipment etc around as required. Our entire operation has been reviewed and streamlined considerably in recent years but the council still receives a significant amount of 'snail mail' and this is by far the most cost-effective way of dealing with it - and it's now much more eco-friendly too...

 

As for how the communal charging site might work, it's pretty much as you suggest, except that you don't usually put your debit or credit card in. In most cases, an owner of an electric vehicle signs up to a charging scheme, which then sends you a key fob or a swipe card. When you want to use the charger, you swipe your membership card or fob, and charge up your car. The charging company then debits your account for the amount you have used. Some companies charge a small amount for membership (usually only around a few pounds a year). One of the reasons we have not installed a charging point yet is that we are keen to make sure that whichever charger we install will be able to join the same charging scheme as those in surrounding areas such as Greater Manchester, where they have recently got a significant investment through the Government's Plugged in Places initiative to install a lot of charging points. We want Warrington residents to be able to use our charger as well as those in Greater Manchester without having to join two schemes. We're talking to them about it at the moment and hopefully we'll be able to make progress soon.

[Ricky]

I believe Electric vehicles are a fantastic idea, and WBC is on the ball with this one, but I wonder....

 

Currently our energy policy is hell bent on replacing reliable energy sources with useless windmills. So useless that it is not economically viable for energy companies to build and operate wind turbines under normal market conditions, so have to have Government grants of ?300,000 per turbine to build, and to artifically add extra costs onto energy bills. Bearing this in mind, since capacity is dropping, and demand increasing, electric vehicles will be a commonplace in a few years time, but there will be no electricity to keep them running!

 

Revenue from fuel duty runs into the billions per annum for the treasury, once nearly everyone abandons conventional engines for electric, the cynic in me tells me that the government will recoup the money somehow, so they will probably introduce "road" tax for electric vehicles, and add a duty for electricity used for road use.

 

so my estimation is that electricity wont be there half the time, and the other half it will be very expensive, sorry to be the b**tard on this subject, but once a great idea becomes popular, the government will try to cash in on it.

[Dizzy]

Yep

 

There was a spell of cars (especially 4x4's being converted to run run on normal cooking oil. The treasury then cottoned onto it and started saying that it had to be 'declared' and as such people were then expected to pay tax on the oil they used.

 

You could smell them as they gave a whiff of chips as they drove by.