Rob666 Sort of related to what all of you have said about cars….and I agree with a lot of it. To truly make a car economical can be expensive, unless adopted in large numbers….
Honda made an Insight, before the one they actually sold. It was a 2 seater and a test bed for most new Honda tech for the next 20 years. At the time, each car cost Honda 3K more than the selling price. It was a NiMh bybrid, the battery pack wasn’t massive at all, it was very small and was simply IMA. The engine was very special (I( think toyata raved about their lean burn at 18 to 1 (I think it was), at the time the first Insight achieved 25.8 to 1. Fuel economy was astounding. I regularly got 108 - 115 mpg from it, this was in 2000. Even pure city/urban driving and lots of stop start, still got over 90 mpg, with a light foot.. The best I ever achieved on a long run was 127 mpg!!
Did the public demand such cars….no. So they didn’t get them and eco cars certainly didn’t get cheaper. For my part, I consider it the best car I ever owned. It felt free to go anywhere. I only ever bought air filters, oil and tyres during 90,000 miles of motoring. Instead people wanted big 4×4s to take johnny to school or go shopping in Tesco, and we squandered our oil away.
Our move to electric cars is equally ill-conceived, driven by stupidity and greed rather than reason. I am all for electric cars, just not the way it’s being done (this is a different and interesting dfiscussion). I even own one. Our Politicians could have done things differently, but instead wrote “net zero all or nothing” on their forehead, stick the dildo beside it and said it was all good. Now we have a power infrastructure problem and energy costs spiralling out of control. They are hoping that the price rises will lower demand to the point that the severely lacking energy production capabilities of our national grid are hidden. Unfortunately, I believe most homes can’t lower electricity/gas demand much more. I don’t think they will be pushing heat pumps for a while either.
