Daughter was driving along a main road this morning observing the 30mph speed limit.

She was in an unfamiliar area, relying on directions from a passenger.... Read more

110 years old firm sell up

WBAC also own Cinch as well as auction sites... Read more

I am glad I have found your post. I was searching for it online for my buddy. Read more

We hear a lot about the chip shortage affecting the car industry but other impacts I've felt this week (literally) is on gas boiler spares. My combi has been playing up and my plumber has diagnosed the PCB. Usually he phones his supplier and gets one next day but they have none. Hopefully they are expecting some this coming week. The part comes from China. So for the time being I have no heating or hot water, except by electric convector heater and a kettle. I'm a hardy person having lived in a cold farmhouse with no central heating for many years so will be ok but for the old or frail not so good.

I expect it's just a dry contact or similar on the PCB but not being GasSafe I'm not going anywhere near it.... Read more

There has been quite a bit of talk on here about EV’s and there may be folk to whom it’s all a bit mysterious, so here’s my attempt at explaining some of the basics.
We’ll start with the units, and you’ll hear talk of kWh and kW. Starting with kWh, that’s the battery size - in effect the size of the tank. It’s not an outright definition of range since vehicle size, weight, etc will impact on how far it’ll go. If you could put a 15 gallon tank in a Peugeot 108, it’ll go further than a Mercedes S-Class with a similarly sized tank.
KW next, and that’s the rate at which it will change when plugged in. This will vary enormously, depending upon what the car is plugged into, and a bit of maths is useful here. A 230V domestic socket, with a 13 amp plug plugged into it will supply a midge under 3kW. If we know a battery capacity is 75kWh, divide that by 3kW and you’ve got a 25 hour charge from empty to full.
Upgrade to a 7.4kW wall box and, in our case, it’s 75 divided by 7.4 giving just over 10 hours. It it’s a commercial property with three phase wiring, you’ve got the potential of 22kW AC charging, but cars tend to have a maximum of 11kW chargers onboard.
On a point of pedantry, the charger itself is built into the car, and it’s the charger that will alter the speed of charge, or adapt from AC to DC. The wall box is simply a source of electrons.
That’s AC charging, which will have to be converted to DC as the motor or motors are direct current.
Anything faster than 22kW will be DC, and charging speeds are up to 350kW (rare). Typically a rapid charger will be 50-150kW. The same maths apply - divide the battery capacity by the charge rate to get a time. 150kW into a 75kWH battery gives 30 minutes - however it’s not not quite linear at this point as charging speed will slow as the battery gets to 80% charged in the interest of battery management. It won’t kill a battery repeatedly rapid charging to 100%, but it’s the EV equivalent of redlining a petrol engine from stone cold every morning. No appreciable downside initially, but potential excess wear in years to come.
Cables and plugs are now pretty universal, with the exception of some Japanese stuff, and any car will plug into just about any charger. You can plug a non-Tesla into a Tesla Supercharger but you won’t get anything out of it as the car and charge point do an ‘electronic handshake’ and it’ll recognise you’re not in a Tesla.
If this is already understood, then I’m sorry for keeping you this long. If it’s answered any questions, then that’s a result. Read more