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IDD15

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Everything posted by IDD15

  1. What to do if you forgot to put your BlackFly on charge overnight! 😁 BlackFly Parachute Test idd
  2. For any DF aficionados out there here is another EVTOL currently in development... Lilium in transition idd
  3. From Volocopter web site: "VoloCity air taxis feature multiple redundant systems, making this aircraft virtually fail-safe. The rotors, electric motors, batteries, avionics, and display all have at least two replacements. This actually exceeds the technical requirements and should give you the peace of mind to sit back, relax, and enjoy the view." I've been following electric aviation developments for quite a while and was aware that redundancy was being built into the Volocopter systems. As @Cuban8 rightly said the market has also got to want these systems as well so if you can provide a step change in safety, and in one of their videos Volocopter are claiming it as safe as an airliner(!), that is a big selling point. So it wasn't too "shabby a statement" to make, but yes it could have been worded better. You do realise that when you're commuting to the fusion power plant you'll do it by transporter/teleporter, aviation will be just soooo last century! 😉 idd
  4. Quite agree re the challenges in getting certification but if the operating costs of say the volocopter are significantly lower than your average small heli then that may be enough to swing the argument. As you are very probably aware small helicopters are ferociously expensive to run and maintain with so many parts needing replacement or complex servicing after quite low hours in comparison with fixed wing. I have only ever been lucky enough to experience a couple of short hops in a Jet Ranger, but even in a turbine powered helicopter I was quite taken aback by the noise and vibration in the cockpit. I see only 18 moving parts in the Volocopter and probably three maybe even four times the redundancy over a single rotor helicopter. I think I would feel safer in the Volocopter than in a piston powered R22. It is going to be really interesting to see how this all pans out… idd
  5. You could try soaking them in neat Dettol, though I've also read that oven cleaners and even brake fluid can work. I think Deluxe Materials also have a paint stripper in their range. Cheers Idd
  6. You can already buy one of these for personal use: Pivotal BlackFly Lots of development going on in China and the UAE as well with commercial flights planned for this year. idd
  7. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    So February has been quite a busy month for new car announcements for the UK and elsewhere. Significantly these are for more affordable (a relative term obviously!) practical day to day EVs as opposed to great hulking SUVs with a price tag north of £40k. Dacia are finally bringing the Spring to the UK. Its been available on the continent for about 3 years now where its racked up around 140,000 units sold. Price is supposedly going to be around the £18 - 20K mark with the order book opening in the next couple of months. Dacia Spring - Late Brake Show Next is the new Citroen e C3 which is I think around £22K with order book opening early summer: Citroen - e C3 - What Car Finally my favourite, and Johnny Smiths too, the new Renault 5 with pricing again in the lower £20Ks but probably more than the e C3: Renault 5 - Late Brake Show Happy memories of rolling round the lanes to the pub in my late teens using my mates mums brand new 5! Given that four years ago when Honda launched the Honda e (and already discontinued) into this segment of smaller/city cars with a price tag north of £35K I think this is quite a significant change in the market. Parity with ICE pricing is not there yet but given a new Toyota Aygo is around £17-18K its getting closer. Will it be enough to stem the tide of cheap Chinese cars the EU is getting its knickers in a twist over I don't know? But interestingly the European car makers federation has decided NOT to oppose the 2035 ban on sales of new ICE cars. Given a lot of those manufacturers are now in partnership with Chinese automakers and the Chinese are building car plants and battery plants in Europe well "Go figure" as they say! Elektrek - Automakers say they won’t try to push back EU’s 2035 ICE ban I think there's been a few announcements of new EV SUVs but we've been there done that... Oh yes there maybe an estate version of the MG4 coming to replace the MG5, watch this space. Pip pip idd
  8. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    You should be able to get a battery health check from the dealer, which is no more complicated than plugging in a terminal into the cars obd2 diagnostic port. This should show the voltage state of each individual cell in the battery. In addition it should be possible to get a read out of the number of charges and type of charge carried out. Certainly this was the case with my Nissan Leaf, indeed Leaf Spy is a well known piece of software that is freely available and does this. I’m not sure where this “if you charge to 100% you’ll degrade the battery” comes from because all EV batteries are managed by the battery management system such that you can never charge to 100%, or discharge it to zero. There’s always a buffer top and bottom! Strangely VW cars always advise to regularly charge to 80% and only go to 100% if needed for a longer trip, but I suspect this stems from an abundance of caution. Nissan Leafs most certainly do not have any such warnings. Am just in the process of helping my son buy a s/h EV and we’ll be wanting to see a full report from the car before we part with any cash. HTH idd
  9. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    Meanwhile back in the real (not Mr Bean) world: There are now just over 1 MILLION EVs registered in the UK with 20935 BEVs sold in Jan 24. A 21% increase in sales for the same period in 2023. You can crunch the full stats here. Significantly the used car market for BEVS also grew dramatically in 2023 rising 90.9% 118,973 units. Again you can crunch the used stats on the SMMT website. Charging infrastructure and rollout continues to improve with the installation rate of new devices running at about 1400 per month, a good detailed summary can be found here. In terms of oil and gas subsidies it is estimated the industry received over a TRILLION dollars in 2022!!! At the last OPEC meeting they were demanding another $45 Billion dollars to transition to "greener" methods of production. OK then... The first sodium battery EV is also now on sale, but not in the UK. And to top it all to the best of my knowledge the lights are still on, and the electricity sub station has not blown up at the end of my road. Nor have I been turned away by our security man from the multi storey car park, and the Born has not turned into a portable BBQ. Oh yes and after one years wonderful quiet, responsive and smooth driving am loving my Born more and more. Now if I could only get it to wash itself... Pip pip idd PS Still got over 7mm on the tyres as well...
  10. Thx for that, really appreciate being labelled as a “corrupt” civil servant. Honestly, anything mentioning RID in this forum just seems to get downright unpleasant. Merry xmas idd
  11. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    New pylon design. National Grid New Pylon Design idd
  12. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    Hmmm I rather suspect that Ron was quoted by Octopus was how it is planned to work, so there could be changes ahead. To be fair they do say that some of these rates are experimental or in beta test. idd
  13. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    Convention is 12pm noon, 12am midnight. idd
  14. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    They're talking to either the car or the charger, and they know how much has gone into the car either from the car or charger. Any extra and that will get charged at the "normal rate" at that time. I've just switched to IO myself this past fortnight and so far so good. It just feels a bit odd effectively putting Octopus in charge! Its a bit like saying to your chauffeur "have the car ready for me at 8am tomorrow"! 😃😃😃 Cheers idd
  15. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    Exactly this scenario is what came to mind when I looked it up in the manual! You do wonder what they are thinking at times... Might still be worth just having the software levels checked by the dealer though. Modern cars are rarely "off" these days and you may have some phantom draw somewhere. You're not wrong about the Sun. They would just ignore the fact that the car is available in both petrol and hybrid versions as well! Still never let the truth get in the way of a good story as they say... Cheers idd
  16. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    More info on the BMS update for Kia/Hyundai. Hyundai BMS update. HTH idd
  17. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    According to the Kia manual the doors would automatically unlock in the event of a crash when the airbags deploy. In terms of escape with a failure in the door locking mechanism you have to climb into the boot space and use the manual release in the tailgate! Not exactly convenient but the safety standards body must think it OK, I guess… I vaguely remember there being an issue with some Kia and Hyundai models discharging their 12v batteries, but there has since been a fix applied. Might be worth having a word with the dealership and checking this out on this car. Weirdly on my Born the customer has to turn on a 12V battery protection mode, it is not a default setting! Even more weird is that it is turned on using the phone app and not using a setting in the car infotainment system. Absolutely bonkers… HTH idd
  18. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    Thought the latest incarnation of a hybrid from Mazda might be of interest. Mazda mx 30 Theoretically I suppose it should be a bit simpler, lighter, quieter and smoother than your "typical" hybrid with this novel drive arrangement. I've always thought the Wankel rotary engine a really neat piece of tech, and always fancied getting an OS one. However, given I think Mazda are the only manufacturer to use them in cars (Rx7?) I'm guessing they're not easy things to manufacture and keep running reliably? Cheers idd
  19. Absolutely! 😃 Think we did most of the saving sessions last winter and got £22 credit back on our account. Not mahoosive by any means but it all adds up for very little effort on our part. cheers idd ps We can only cut back on consumption, we can’t export. So the savings are less than Gary but we were paid a fair rate for the savings we made.
  20. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    TBH I’ve not seen anything recently re sodium batteries since I posted those links a little while ago. But this is all in China for now… This mob have just opened their new factory for solid state batteries and have allegedly shipped production samples to car manufacturers. So we’re getting there. US solid state battery manufacturing To be fair when this thread started along time ago the prediction at the time was that solid state batteries for EV’s would not be around till 2025… So patience Glasshopper 😃 hth idd
  21. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    I was thinking in terms of these kind of posts which I have seen out in the wild in a few places. CEF Basic Charging post It’s likely posts installed by a management company such as BeV might be a little more expensive as they’d need a comms card for relaying energy supplied back for billing to the customer. But given the number they install I’m sure there will be economies of scale involved. Certainly you could get a lot of these devices for the cost of one high power rapid charger and spread the EV love a lot further! 😃 cheers idd
  22. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    Citroen have just announced the new E C3 at quite an attractive price point for an EV. Auto Express Citroen EC 3 review It will use an LFP battery pack and even has proper controls for heating etc. Things could get quite interesting early in 2024 as the Dacia Spring is also due on the UK market about then. Cheers idd
  23. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    TBH I think this is by far and away the biggest challenge to EV adoption. There need to be a lot more fast (7kw) chargers installed in communal areas and for street parking. These chargers are relatively cheap at around £1k as well. It needs Government to get behind councils to just donate a bit of land in these places for chargers. There are plenty of firms who will do the rest for the council without costs to them. It's not right that people who can't charge at home/work face this barrier. Some councils get it but many do not. Idd
  24. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    Some good news reported by Zap Map is that we have now hit 50,000 public charging devices! Zap Map News - 50000 UK Public Charge Points Most importantly the rate at which devices are coming online is increasing sharply, as quoted from the article: "Indeed, the timing of the milestone also demonstrates the acceleration in the rate of charge point installation over recent years. October’s 50,000 charge point milestone follows hot on the heels of the 40,000 mark, which the UK surpassed in February 2023. In this case, the milestone installation was part of the GeniePoint network, at Morrisons Southport. Looking back further, the UK hit 30,000 charging devices in February 2022 (bp pulse, Botany Bay), which followed the 20,000 mark in September 2020 (Pod Point, Tesco Superstore Scarborough). The 10,000 charging devices milestone came in August 2018, with the installation of an InstaVolt device at Meadowfield Filling Station." There is more to be done of course, there are still quite a few charging deserts out there, but with the number of home charge points now estimated at close to 1 million things are improving all the time. There are a lot more stats about charging infrastructure on the Zap Map website for those interested. cheers idd
  25. IDD15

    Electric Cars.

    Depends on what battery tech they eventually choose really. You don’t really need lithium for these big static jobs and flow battery’s like this recent site in China use quite benign and cheap chemistry. China Flow Battery comissioned HTH idd
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