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[Wittsend]

In the shops and dropping through your letter box now.

[Neil Bymouth]

The article on the electrified Series 1 is an absolute disgrace. I won't read it.

[LN11AAB498A]

Yep, mine arrived this morning.

And as for the Electric Series I  , I completely agree with Neil. Ripping the heart out of these historic vehicles and replacing it with a battery is shameful.
No doubt the usual "its yours and you can do what you like" comment will arrive soon 

[S3upra]

Yep, mine arrived this morning.

And as for the Electric Series I  , I completely agree with Neil. Ripping the heart out of these historic vehicles and replacing it with a battery is shameful.
No doubt the usual "its yours and you can do what you like" comment will arrive soon 

 
It's sacrilege

[Neil Bymouth]

"its yours and you can do what you like"[/i] comment will arrive soon 

Inevitably.

[haddock]

A lot of EV stories in CLR this year. Not for me I'm afraid, I love my slow and oily 2.25

[Neil Bymouth]

We're being brainwashed into thinking leccy junk is best. Imagine if every car owner now had an electric junk and all were charged up at the same time when returning from work, the National Grid would collapse. Politicians just don't think about the consequences of jumping in with both feet without looking first. I heard that a leccy Land Rover conversion is only good for 80 miles. What use is that?

[Morson]

it is a disgraceful taking the purity out but i must laugh at the battery fanatics, batteries will fall flat on its face in a few years, letr me elaborate 1 the batteries have to be mined by gas guzzling plant, and refined in a gas guzzling plant which you then charge is a non eco friendly power grid, if anything they are worse offenders than the petrol or diesel. the solution i soon see will be hydrogen, the earth has very little to do with it and its natural occurring, you can retain your actual engine with minor modification and be completely eco friendly. just waiting for all to see what mistakes they made and the cost of it. that poor chap who has got rid of his S1 engine will soon regret that decision especially in 2030 when no new petrol and diesel cars can be sold, the 2nd hand market will sky rocket!!!

[Romahomepete]

Prices of second hand petrol and diesel Berlingo s and variants are already hiding their own or increasing now that you can only buy electric new.

Peter

[haddock]

I am not against electric engines but just not in classic cars.
And at about 20.000 pounds for a conversion kit it is not really the same as converting to TDI or V8
I would be interested to learn more about better and cleaner fuels for our older combustion engines.

Sold my 22 year old Berlingo for 1000 euro recently

[Craggle]

There is a myth that you can simply pump hydrogen in a standard engine and it will run fine, that is far from the case.
Hydrogen is a pretty poor combustible. Look at the Hindenburg airship disaster film and you will see that it burnt really quite slowly. If that same airship had been filled with a petrol and air mix the same as your engine uses, it would have exploded in milliseconds and bits of it would have landed miles away, not all in the same field in a twisted heap.

I looked recently at a car that uses a hydrogen fuel cell to generate electricity. It drives just like an electric car but generates its own power and can be re-fuelled in a matter of minutes. It sounded very attractive and the figures all added up but how many hydrogen filling stations do you think there are in the UK, 14 of them, none near me either....

I have been fortunate enough to drive an electric vehicle and if I was offered one, I'd jump at it. They are very smooth, quiet and generally really nice things to drive. I just don't drive one as they aren't that cheap to buy yet. My 12 year old Toyota keeps going as well but maybe one day I'll change and get one for the work commute.

Craig.

[oddjob]

I'm on the fence regards electric but that Electric Defender on Top Gear recently looked a lot of fun when it out accelerated those sports cars.
Think it did a 4 second 0-60 which has got to be entertaining. 

[Neil Bymouth]

I'm on the fence regards electric but that Electric Defender on Top Gear recently looked a lot of fun when it out accelerated those sports cars.
Think it did a 4 second 0-60 which has got to be entertaining. 

.......and how lfar does it go on a charge? That's far more important than boy racer antics.

[oddjob]

No idea I’m afraid. It just appealed to my inner boy racer!
I’ll stick to my 30 year old Tdi for some time yet as I like doing big euroleafing trips in my series 2.

 

[Exile]

I suspect hydrogen is at the same stage that diesel was at when Rudolph Diesel was developing it.

And look what happened to that.....

The future is undoubtedly hydrogen, and I fail to see the logic of spending so much money investing in stop-gap solutions....