In the UK we can currently obtain a £5k government subsidy to buy an electric car. The annual road taxes in this part of the world were effectively polarised by the last government, which means the lowest emitting vehicles are free and the highest emitting ones are very expensive. The electric vehicle is of course free to tax annually (even taking into account power station emissions, they are relatively clean in terms of Co2/km), it is also exempt from London city congestion charge. That’s pretty much as far as we go! The only other incentive is the colossal price of petrol (approx £1.35/litre). I can’t believe it was at £1 only 2 years ago!!.. Surely we’ll go bankrupt on the back of increases like this?? ?!

What does worry me, and has kept me from going electric is the ridiculous Government fees and taxes on electric vehicles. I enquired and found it would be cheaper to buy a Tesla in Hong Kong, put it in a container, and ship it to Australia myself than to buy one in Sydney from the local distributor!?

This is absolutely crazy. The government “incentives” are one or two “green vehicle” parking spaces in major cities, and the allowance to drive in the taxi or bus lanes. Neither of which exist in the country. On the other hand they add several fees and charges that close to double the price of a Tesla (even though the Australian dollar is currently higher than the US dollar). Just ridiculous. A real incentive would be tax breaks for owning/driving electric vehicles, instead of adding significant cost penalties for those who are trying to lower their CO2 output.

I’m not sure if the UK Government is doing better in this regard than the Australian Government is – but it’s very frustrating situation Down Under.

Please do let us know when your ‘network’ allows a production EV to travel around the UK while charging at a sensible rate… in 2015 maybe?

Cheers.

To enable those early adopters (since we can’t affect the price of batteries ourselves) we’re tackling the very real issue of where and how fast to charge – to make these relatively expensive early cars – more practical.

I hope battery costs do fall as you quote, and I’m sure you’re right, in response manufactures will maintain range and cut the cost of cars. It makes sense that they would, since 99.3% of all car journeys in Britain are less then 100 miles. Why lug around the cost and weight of a 200 mile range, for the 0.7% of the time you might need it.

Cheers.

Cheers.

I’m sure developers would jump at the chance to work with you on this as they are keen to be seen employing cutting edge eco-tech.

I also think you should be charging for this service if I’m honest. I would gladly pay a couple of quid for a full charge. It currently costs me around £50 to fill up my tiny Citroen C1! If the revenue is directly reinvested in rapidly expanding the network it’s worth every penny.

I’d buy a Nissan Leaf now if it was cheaper, or at least if the price differential was just a reflection of the lower fueling costs and no more, and just live with the range issue through mitigation measures like Dale’s Electric Highway.

Cheers

I’ll try and update on the car soon. We’re preparing for a land speed record attempt now….

Thanks for the support Russ….

Thanks. Here’s a further response from our researcher:

“As I explained previously, the customer number was the best available at the time. We provided the Daily Mail with the correct info, so I’d be surprised if Ovo didn’t. I’ll admit that the customer figures for Ovo are a bit of a mystery. If you look at the most recent copy of Which? magazine where they replicate our customer complaints league table method you’ll find that according to their figures Ovo must have around 90,000 customers (incidentally, we come top of the Which? version too).

I’m happy to amend our numbers if someone from Ovo contacts us and can confirm how many energy customers they had at the end of September 2011 – the Mail figure, their website figure or the Which? figure.”

Hope that helps clarify further? I do wonder if the “pleased to serve over 63,000 customers” includes losses or refers to a calendar year or something? That might help explain the confusion…

BTW – we update our customer numbers publicly on our homepage weekly, so if anyone else wanted to do the same thing for us – they’d have no trouble

Cheers
Paul

Thanks for your response but from the Ovo website
https://www.ovoenergy.com/contact-us/if-you-are-unhappy/

“In line with the OFGEM Complaint Handling Standards, Ovo will publish annually the number of complaints we received that could not be resolved by the end of the following working day. Between 1st October 2010 and 30th September 2011 Ovo received 652 complaints which fell into this category. It has been a very busy year for Ovo during which we were pleased to serve over 63,000 customers. . . In addition, during this period, we had just 7 complaints referred to us by the Energy Ombudsman”

Which seems to be at odds with your explanation. It’s not really a major issue except to clarify whether energy suppliers are generally honest in their complaints reporting.

I have a new project for you turning disused quarries into pumped storage facilities, could be a good link with your wind farms and your tidal-bicycle-pumps? Let me know if you want to know more about it. I too am a bearded entrepreneur and believe that the markets can be a force for good.

I raised £450k in the first round and we are on schedule for planning submission soon. I’m starting the second investment round now which will give us the landing strip we need to land the first sale, as well as help secure the next 5 sites, already identified.

Would love it if you got in touch.

Dave

We are very much behind green energy and are open to any cooperation which will take us a step closer to a completely sustainable lifestyle. I am British and based in China now where I manufacture many products.

I have some interesting projects here which I will be happy to discuss with you. One of our products is environment protection machinery such as tracked dumpers.

I believe the green energy industry needs low cost research and development which I can help with here in China.

Here in China we have a wealth of intellectual and engineering resources to tap.

Please contact me if you feel we can help in any way with manufacturing or sourcing products.

Yours, Sincerely,

David Thorne

if so, please take your blinkers off and try again.

And, most people disgust, or dislike, another because that other has somthing you dont. It’s envy 9 times out of 10

…Don’t count on that Justin…

Our researcher said:

“The reporting year for customer complaints runs from 1st October to 30th September, so this is the date that customer figures relate to and not the end of December. At this point Ovo only had ~50,000 customers, we took the figure from a contemporary article published on thisismoney (http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-2039671/CITY-FOCUS-Upstarts-Big-Energy-Huhne-plans-make-switching-accounts-easier.html?ito=feeds-newsxml). For this item Ecotricity were approached to give our customer numbers, so we assume that Ovo also complied with a similar request.

652 /50 = 13.04 complaints per 1000 customers

Hope this clarifies things?”

Cheers
Paul

Thanks for the nice comment, glad you enjoyed it.

James

Thanks for reading and for the very kind words.

Take care,

James

All the best.

James x