Smart ForTwo; Electric Drive

The Drive To Push Electric

This is long, so I suggest you get a cup of you’re favourite brew and get comfy. I’m sure others will have a myriad of opposing views to mine, regarding the drive towards electric cars. This blog is based purely on my own thoughts, opinions and actual real experience, as I embarked upon recent EV ownership.  As time passes this may all change, and if so I will update the blog accordingly. Ok, lets get into it.

Maintenance, Servicing & Charging

It seems everywhere you turn you’re bombarded with EV car adverts, the government and manufacturers are going full on pushing us all to transition to electric. All well and good, but from my limited exposure I see a few problems, these being charging, servicing/diagnostics/repair and then there is the cost of the actual car and a home charger. That’s without opening the can of worms which is range, which for many will depend on charging hops for long distances.

Servicing & Who can Do It?

More importantly are all local garages geared up for parallel services for both ICE & EV and the eventual transistion from ICE to EV servicing and repair. I think from my recent experience of the past 14-days, the answer to this is a plain simple NO! Maybe in more populated areas this is not the case, perhaps you know differently, if so drop a comment below.

For example the local garage and mechanic I’ve used for a number of years, and wished to continue using cannot touch electric cars. When I asked why, he said they would need to install a dedicated bay purely for electric vehicles, at considerable cost. Why would he bother as the percentage of people with EV’s being so low. Secondly, he would need to have all the relevant retraining and gear to be able to so, especially due to the HV battery system.

This was not a singular case, literally every other garage I contacted in the local area repeated pretty much the same story. I’ve ended up having to take out a club membership at Mercedes Benz 18-miles from me in Stockton-on-Tees. This is a monthly fee that gives me full annual servicing, which included parts, software updates and labour & VAT. There was literally no other choice. I’m not too bothered by this, it’s a fairly reasonable fee and at least I know the techs are fully trained on the car. The only gripe is the distance, my goto garage was within walking distance, no longer will I have that luxury, not until all garages are EV capable.

V.E.D. & Charging, Plus EV Grants & NETZERO

As of 2022, the government have ceased the discount grant incentive for new EV cars, they also ceased grants on home EV charge pods. Also announced in 2022, that as of April 2025 all EV cars manufactured from March 2017 – March 2025, will have to start paying £165 road tax p.a. EV cars manufactured after  March 2025 will pay just £20 p.a. Finally the luxury vehical TAX will apply to all EV cars over £40,000 for the first 5-years of the cars life.

The new tax on electric vehicles reflects mounting concern within the Treasury that the drive for net zero will rob the government of huge tax revenues paid by motorists. Electric vehicles have been exempt from both the annual £165 VED standard rate and the £335 ‘premium supplement’ levied on new cars costing more than £40,000. Figures suggest (as of 2023) there are almost 600,000 electric vehicles on the UK’s roads and they now account for one in six new cars sold. A further 430,000 plug-in hybrid cars also pay a reduced rate of road tax.

Studies have forecast that the switch could eventually cost the Treasury £7 billion in lost VED, along with a further £27 billion a year in fuel duty unless taxes are introduced to cover electric vehicles. All this is hardly conducive to encouraging transistion to electric vehicles, but I guess inevitable considering the revenue they were loosing.

Home chargers are not only fairly expensive to purchase, but equally expensive to have installed and to be honest you’re going to want one at home. These cannot just be hooked into your existing consumer unit, there are a whole load of regs around them. I also wonder what are multiple occupation dwellings or high rise blocks of flats are meant to do? For example do building owners have to install 150 pods, how, where, and who pays for that?

Public Pods. More investment is also needed to the public infrastrusture to increase UK-wide charge pods. For example, in my small town in County Durham (21,000 population) alone there are only 4 at Tescos, 2 at Morrisons, 2 in a town car park and finally one at the local college. Allegedly there are a couple at Sainsbury’s, but I’ve yet to find them. Conversely, there are more petrol stations with multiple pumps in town than you can shake a charger at.

Not that I personally need a local charge point as did opt to have my own at home, but the point being people travelling through and wanting to charge have limited points to do so, unlike petrol. This disparity is not unique to my town, but I suggest typical throughout the UK.  Encouragingly County Durham will be one of nine areas to benefit from a £20 million scheme to improve electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure under the govenment LEVi scheme. It will see 100 new EV charge points installed across the county, particularly in rural areas where there is less infrastructure and in areas where residents do not have access to off-street parking. The North East has only 3.1 per cent of the UK’s charge points, the lowest of any British region, compared to London and the South East with 42.5 per cent. This funding will enable County Durham to increase EV infrastructure and help bridge that gap.

https://www.durham.gov.uk/article/28064/County-Durham-to-have-more-electric-vehicle-charging-stations-

Charging Networks & Paying

The UK has a number of public EV charging networks, with some offering national coverage and others only found in a specific regions. Major charging networks include bp pulse, GeniePoint, GRIDSERVE, InstaVolt, Osprey, Pod Point and ubitricity. Payment and access methods across networks vary, with some networks providing an RFID card and others a smartphone app to use their services. While most require an account to be set up before use, some rapid units with contactless PAYG card readers are starting to be installed. More info her at ZapMap.

The trouble being a newb to it, it’s all so confusing, multiple apps a multitude of payment methods.

• BP Pulse: Subscription, pay via app, contactless payment
• PodPoint: Pay via app, contactless payment
• InstaVolt: Pay via app, contactless payment
• ChargePlace Scotland: RFID access card, pay via app, pay via web
• GridServe: Contactless payment

If the government truly want us to transition from ICE to EV, then they need ensure there is equalising of the infrastructure for EV. As of 2023 there are about 23,000 locations with a national total of 39,000 charge points.

How Green Are EV’s Really? How many Ooops.

To build an electric car battery manufacturers need lithium, and to find lithium, they need the high altitude salt flats of Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. There, beneath brine lakes, is the mud rich in manganese, potassium, borax, and lithium salts. It’s chemical and water intensive to isolate lithium from all that mud, and it takes even more energy to make a functional car battery from it. As a result, building a clean burning EV battery is twice as greenhouse gas intensive as making a conventional internal combustion engine, Ooop’s! No.1

Edit:
It would  seem I fell into the trap,  Ooop’s No.1 is at best tenuous
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/31/a-cut-and-paste-attack-on-electric-vehicle-batteries-and-renewables-is-spanning-the-globe-but-is-it-right

Thanks to Mike (Cathosvisor) for the link

The answer they say to that is the high emissions “buy-in” of an electric car can be off-set as EV’s are always cleaner to drive per mile, compared to an ICE-powered one, which is certainly true. The problem however to get that advantage, means you need to ‘burn off’ the emissions associated with manufacturing the EV car. An ICE-powered car has an emissions head start, but once the EV is driven enough, it regains a “green lead” with its low per-mile emissions. Guess that means for someone like me who only drives locally, I’m never going to off-set, and there lies the trouble, most of these cars are aimed at city commutes. Ooop’s! No.2

I’ve also heard rumours that the UK Gov is considering an EV “Brake & Tyre” pollution tax, yes you read that correctly EV’s pollute too.

Now I admit these are just rumours, but I would not put it past them. Apparently EV’s due to their increased weight emit more dangerous particles into the atmosphere than internal combustion engine cars. How might you ask? It would seem due to this weight the brakes and tyres have to work harder and the road surface more adversely impacted. Both these combined, release even more damaging particles into the environment than the emissions from an ICE.  Ooop’s! No.3

Oh how ironic and convenient! The skeptic in me wonders if the calculations were run showing that letting EV cars off road tax due to no combustion pollutants, combined with more over time moving to EV, would result in way too much revenue loss. Hence the possible new EV Brake and Tyre Tax? We shall see how that one plays out. I suspect the further one digs the more Ooop’s we could uncover.

Edit:
Another good bit of updated news, the UK looks set to get its first lithium refinary and its up here in the N.E.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/07/uk-lithium-refinery-electric-car-industry-green-lithium-pd-ports-teesport

Again, many thanks to Mike (Cathovisor) for the aditional research.

Despite all the above why did I buy one?

A number of reasons, the main one being I had just become car-less and needed something, he’s why I came to be without transport.

My previous car was a massive 3.0Ltr, AWD Lexus SUV, it guzzled petrol at an alarming rate. Road tax was £240 p.a.  Insurance was about the same. I never did any distance driving just town, and the farthest afield I went was about 30-miles. However, the deciding factor was the Lexus was now 20-years old, it was starting to cost a lot of money to maintain. Then it went and failed its recent MOT with a fairly hefty bill required to put it right.

This was the catalyst for me to change, so I sold the Lexus to an auction house and was pleasantly surprised at the money it returned. That got me thinking I need to be a bit smarter (pun intended) with my next choice of car.

What Did I Buy

I’m no ECO warrior, but it did finally make sense for me to perhaps go electric based on my driving habits. So I opted for the 4th generation of EV offered by Smart or in truth, Smart is a division of Daimler AG, the parent corporation of Mercedes-Benz.