It’s definitely Autumnal at the moment, so naturally, I am planning a reasonably long journey with the Leaf.

116 miles in the South of England is not a treck across the Himalayas!

No it is not.  But it is the first long journey I have done in the Electric Car on my own.

It will also be the first time I have used the Leaf for business (albeit training) and to be absolutely fair, I could do this journey in our diesel.  Which would probably be much more sensible on so many levels.

One of the reasons we have the Leaf is to help with air quality: that’s why the UK government is still subsiding this technology.  So, having done the preparation with routes etc, I am looking to do this in the Leaf.

On your head be it! So, what’s the plan?

First leg: Ipswich to Thurrock Service Centre, M25 (that’s just before the Dartford crossing to you and me).

Then on to Chertsey.  Charge that evening at Cobham services.

Return: Leave the hotel and charge again at Thurrock via Ecotricity point.

This time though, I’ll be travelling during rush hour and will take the time to enjoy tea at Ikea, which also has an Ecotricity point, before completing the journey.

Sounds reasonable, how was it in practice?

When you learn Prince 2, you are taught to anticipate what risks can de-rail your plan.  In my case, every charge point has some options in case one doesn’t work.  Where possible, the plan has two points available at each stop or a fast charger within 12 miles.  All I need to ensure is that I have at least 12 miles on the clock.

The exception is Cobham, the nearest one to there is 40 miles away.

So I left Ipswich at 5:40am on Tuesday and headed to Thurrock.  It has to be said, Lakeside’s turning is amazingly quiet at 7am as I turn in to Gray’s services and quickly find the charge points.

It’s the first time I have used the Ecotricity card but the fast charger had the same user interface as the ones hosted in Glyn Hopkins’ Colchester and Romford branches, so I started the process.  I found that with the first charger, my card wasn’t accepted at all.  As this was something I wasn’t expecting, I got in touch with the help number on the card.

Marcus, from Ecotricity, answered my call.  He asked me the try the 2nd charger and this time my card was accepted.  It has to be said that the fast chargers are not the most trivial pieces of equipment I have ever used and it took a couple of goes to get the cable seated and ready to go.  Only to find it had a fault.  Blast.

“How much charge do you have?” Marcus asked.

“11%, around 11miles.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Oh, the only one I can guarantee you can get to is 12 miles away and I am not happy to recommend that.  Ikea has a working point but I don’t know if it will be accessible before they open at 9am.”

Marcus very kindly texted over the postcode for Ikea and I headed over.

I knew from my previous research that Ikea opened at 10am and the one at Thurrock has a serious number of gates which are locked while the shop is closed.  I also knew this was probably my best option, so I drove the extra 1.7miles to find the gate I encountered was closed and the deserted car park did have 4 cars parked.  Did that mean a gate somewhere was open?  I headed towards the parked cars and turned towards Ikea as I ran out of road to find an open exit 🙂

The point is really obvious and within 2 minutes of parking, I was recharging with enough to get me to Chertsey and back to Cobham.  Time was now the big worry.  As was keeping warm – I had remembered my mobile so set the heater on while I charged and dealt with my planned toilet break thanks to B&Q and bought a planned item as a thank you.

Did you make the meeting?

Absolutely, with 20 minutes to spare.  The experience did mean I made the effort to charge the car that evening.  Cobham worked beautifully (well, one did!) and that meant I could return to Chertsey for the remainder of my course and get back to Thurrock the next day.

And home again?

Again, I returned to Chertsey and spent 12 minutes getting the charge up so I could make Thurrock and travel at an average of 60mph (traffic permitting).

As per plan, I headed to Ikea.  While one space was occupied by a petrol driven Merc’ the other was available and I started the charge and headed for food.

I had a comfortable meal, toilet break and wondered around and return to find the car ready to go and a 2nd Leaf driver ready to start their charge.  I found they were heading to Peterborough and would get a 2nd charge from Cambridge.

This stop enabled me to get back home easily.  The entire journey took just under 4 hours including the queue for the Dartford crossing.

Would you do it again?

Yes, not least because this allowed me to claim expenses and the company has not caught on to the fact that EVs do not cost as much to run as ICE’s.  The single claim more than covers the electricity for the quarter we have bought for the car and the charge for the SourceEast card.

begins with one small step.

Today is a beautiful Autumnal day in the East of England.  Last Friday, my family and I finished the final stage of a flight from Cape Town, ZA to Heathrow Airport, UK and finally the last lag home.

Not an environmentally friendly trip, but over the past three years we’ve travelled to Europe by car rather than aeroplane for our holidays so we don’t increase our carbon foot print more than we have to for this special journey.  It was incredible, if you get the chance, South Africa is an amazing country.

So, you took the Leaf to Heathrow?

Unfortunately, I lost the distance argument.  Seriously,  I believe the Leaf would have breezed the 111miles from Heathrow Terminal 5 to our place.  We travelled outside of rush hour, so kept a constant speed the majority of the way (roughly 67mph on average).

I think we could not only have made it there on one charge but it would have been as convenient as taking the diesel.

Here are the sums 🙂

Our road to Heathrow Terminal 5 = 111.86 miles (as the car drives or rather Google Maps and Nissan’s zero emission route master).

So that’s only a maybe.  Looking at Zap-map and the various web sites the obvious thing to do is fast charge at South Mimms going to and returning from Heathrow.  It has to be said at this point, South Mimms services has no mention of having a charging point on the South_Mimms page!

So, home to South Mimms is 81 miles approx.  Allowing a 100% battery to get us there at an average of 60mph.  On a good day that should take us 90 minutes.  As I have a Ecotricity card, we can charge there for free.

From there, onwards to Terminal 5, another 30 miles.  We can charge here for free if we need to but that charge would need to be done while we were through security, potentially, as it is a 3kW charger.

Or we could leave the car, while away on holiday and come back to a car which will almost certainly need a 30 minute charge before getting back to Ipswich or even South Mimms.

The closest fast charger (CHADeMO), to Heathrow, seems to be the Moto Services on the M4 Junction 23.

That would give us a fair 95% in 30 minutes – so we could make it all the way back to Colchester (our nearest fast charger).

In short, going there:

1. Leave Ipswich with full charge
2. 80-90 minutes later have a 30 minute break 90 miles from starting point, 95%
3. Park at Heathrow normally.  Total journey time approx. 2 hours and 50 minutes.

Coming back.

1. Leave Heathrow with 50% charge.
2. After 10 minutes, charge for 30 minutes, giving approx 95-97%
3. 98 miles later, park in the centre of Colchester and fast charge to 80%, 30 minutes.
4. 16 miles to home.  Total journey time, approx. 3 hours 20 minutes.

What would have enabled this journey to be a guaranteed choice?

Let’s face it the Leaf would have got us there, we just weren’t willing to make the choice.  We did discuss what would have made it an immediate yes rather than a no for where we live in the country.

A single step would do that: charging points every 60 miles along the major routes, e.g. all dual carriage ways and a fast charger every 120 miles.  It’s beginning to come, in large thanks to Ecotricity who are installing many of the fast chargers at service stations along the major routes.  This is a completely free service, which is amazing.

(Personally, I think a fast charging point at the junction between the A12 and M25 would have sealed the deal, even a paid one.  This is currently a void, the nearest one in Romford, within the M25).

I say 60 miles as a 3/7kW charge point, the Leaf seems to get about 10% in 30 minutes (remember the trip back from Colchester) which if you are driving carefully and getting something back on the regenerative braking that would allow you to to ensure you had an extra 12-18 miles.  The 60 mile distance then ensures you have opportunities to get enough to get to a quick charger if you stick to the UK speed limits.

When we bought the Leaf in January 2014 there were only 146 fast DC chargers available in the country and few public charging points in East Anglia.

Since then the numbers have grown in the UK.  There are 490 rapid DC chargers sited throughout the UK today and 210 AC ones.  Nine of these rapid charging points are in East Anglia including Bury St. Edmunds (9am-5pm most days) and just past Cambridge on the services bridging the A14 and M11 (this is really new, the last time we looked at going to Cambridge we had few options of getting back to Ipswich on a Sunday).  This really opens the country up for the Leaf.

What seems to be happening on the A12 and A11 is the adoption of “Charge your car” pods.  This works by attaching a credit card to the account allowing a fixed price per charge.  The charge is only collected by “Charge Your Car”: the pod owner actually gets the cash.

The most common form of pricing for these is a fixed price per charge no matter how much electricity you use or time you spend occupying the point.

A fixed price per charge is fine if you are charging from 0-80% but not so good if you only need an 10% to get you home.  This something I have used on longer journeys because that is only 8 minutes on a 50kW DC charger.  £5 is a high price for 10 units of electricity (retailing at £1.60).  There is much debate on the forums about how this should work and compared to petrol which is governed by the weights and measure act 1985 this seems to be an unregulated market.

As per the map above, I am really glad I don’t live in North Wales or North West Scotland.  Outside of the M4, there doesn’t seem to be much interest in providing the infrastructure for the Welsh despite a reasonable population size.  I am not sure what the population of North West Scotland or whether that’s reasonable.  The Isle of Harris looks good though 🙂

Part of me wishes I lived in Northern Ireland.  All of their points are free and within the magic 60-80 miles.

In fact, while we were discussing it, I’ve noticed that my husband could easily take the Leaf down to his office in Woking the next time he has a meeting: there’s a new fast charger on the M25 at Junction 9/10.  Thanks Ecotricity 🙂

I like winter, from when the leaves start to drop from the trees to when the  rain is sheeting down and when you wake up and the snow has decided to stay beyond the rising of the sun.

It is no where near that cold outside yet (this is a picture from Dec 2010), though after the warm summer, it might as well be.

This drop in temperature, from 20°C to 9°C has brought concerns to many I speak to about the electric car.  The chief one being, doesn’t it take longer to charge in the cold?

Obviously, now really isn’t the coldest part of the year.  I have many pictures showing conditions in East Anglia during January and February, which is when the UK is at its coldest.

This is when we first had our car.  The only time we had a slight concern was visiting my parents with the new car and needing to charge it up from their 13Amp socket.  The car was outside with the cable running in to their garage and it was 2°C during the whole charging time.

Now we have our home charger, things are much more civilised.

The Leaf displays the temperature of the battery while you are driving.  This shows that during the cold, the battery heater does come on automatically or its cooler, ensuring the battery is at optimal temperature for use.  This means when you start charging, this equipment is being run from the electricity source.

Also, because we’re not using the air conditioning the impact of driving on the lithium-ion batters is much less.  The dash can show that break down.

Basically, because the car is producing no C₂0, I am not worried.  When we go and see my family, we use the fast charger at the Nissan garage in Norwich, on a Saturday.

As part of the Adastral Park Electric Vehicle showcase, I borrowed a Vauxhall Ampera as a demonstrator for the day.

At first glance, on paper, the Ampera looks like a hybrid, yet the petrol engine included with the Ampera does not drive the wheels of this great looking car.  Instead, the “engine” acts as an electrical generator feeding extra electrons into the lithium-ion batteries supplying the Ampera’s electric motors.

In practice, this makes for a civilised driving experience.  The cabin is sound proofed in a way our Nissan Leaf doesn’t need to be and it’s really hard to notice when the engine is running.  There are no gears like the Leaf, so acceleration is smooth and instantaneous, yet the range is over 300 miles when the petrol tank is full.  Different driving modes are accessed from a button on the fascia.  These include “normal”, “sport”, “hold” and “mountain”.  Normal runs the car economically as an electric car (equivalent to “brake” mode on the Leaf) and Sport is electric with less regenerative braking.  Hold and mountain both engage the petrol generator to either maintain battery charge level or allow more power to be provided to go up a hill.  Otherwise, the generator will come on when the battery has reached a factory set low level.

In my case, I never put any petrol in from arrival of the car, so it hovered round the 136mile mark and I topped up the battery both at work and at home.  At work, I used the 3-pin plug charging cable at the pod-point at work and at home it used the normal Mennekes type 2 I use with the Leaf – the British Gas install charge point worked beautifully although it does look different to the Leaf with the connector’s different surround it is completely standard and charged quickly off our solar cells.

The battery is not huge, even really trying, my journey to work consumed a third of the battery.  True, I don’t have to charge at work with the petrol, but that’s not really the point.

The layout of the cabin is much more traditional than the Leaf, with a lever for the “gear” selector: park at the top followed by reverse and then neutral and then drive and low gear.  This translates in terms of the Leaf’s drive and brake modes.

One of the biggest disappointments is that the cabin does not seem to be designed for as a right hand drive model.  For example, the parking brake is to the left of the main console just above the gear selector.  This distracts from an otherwise serene environment.  Or at least I thought so driving it.  On providing my son a lift, he was not impressed with the red patterned fascia trim.

The boot was the biggest shock: it was large and had space for the charging cable under the boot floor (which the Leaf lacks) but there was no rear shelf – so although it was a hatch-back you had to peel back the cloth boot cover which protects the contents from the sun and prying eyes.

Entertainment wise, this car is packed.  The £37,000 version has everything including DAB with a pause function – need to take a call, no worries, pull over, pause the live radio and rejoin the programme you left before rejoining the carriage way!  Beware though, if you want the satnav displayed on the screen, the radio has to be on although we found that choosing an empty source meant you could enjoy the sat nav at lights without having to endure anything while moving.  There is also a DVD player, which is useful to read the manual on while parked up.

I didn’t mind the touch screen controls although I have spoken to a few people who found them a little annoying.  What was difficult was achieving the basics like turning off the aircon’.  I managed it in the end but the user interface is a little clunky.

Parking it in the garage was no trivial – unlike the Tesla Model S and the Nissan Leaf the Ampera doesn’t even have folding mirrors as an option.  This is strange as by far the cheapest way to run it is through charging it at home rather than filling it with petrol.  Maybe in America garage doors are much wider.

So?

I wouldn’t swap the Leaf for it per se, but if range were an issue it’s a much better option than a Honda Insight and much cheaper than a Tesla Model S.  It has a much softer, less sporty ride than the Leaf but the front spoiler was not a great edition in town (especially with speed bumps).

Were money no object…

NB this is not teaching you what pumping is and expects you to be familiar with some of the terms.  It is a breakdown of the operational and design features of some of the insulin pumps on the market with an in depth view on the Accu-chek DTron, Early Medtronic Paradigm and Animas Vibe pumps.

After my operation in February, my DTron insulin pump reached the end of its life. While I was recovering (and not working) I returned to multiple daily injections.

I did this for a number of reasons, not least because it was the first time in 12 years I had not used the pump (!!!). In those twelve years, I used the DTron for the first four years then changed to a DTron plus. I did try a Medtronic Paradigm with a combined continuous glucose meter system (CGMS) during that time.

The DTron and its successors were beautifully designed, from the ease of swapping out the cartridge to getting the status of any of the actions I had completed.  It was simple with

• a four button control interface (and the alarm codes on the back) that you can use with your eyes closed (or if you had retinopathy)
• a battery which lasted 8-10 weeks
• it was reasonably water-proof, I certainly used it in the pool for days at a time
• from realising I wanted to change to the cartridge to gathering all the items and plugging in the new cannula set took less than five minutes – no further prep necessary
• the 3ml glass pen compatible cartridge provided all three millilitres to me: I once swapped out a cartridge early for a trip, but used the remaining 10 units as back up in my Humalog pen
• a great size, smaller than my hand and beautifully curved.

I am gutted that Roche have stopped making it.

Hey, what about the Medtronic Paradigm?

Plenty of people love the Paradigm combined pump from Medtronic: I am not one of them.  I used it for eight weeks.

Compared to the DTron, the Medtronic had a 1.5ml “syringe” cartridge.  This meant you have to fill up a syringe and then load it in to the pump before priming (filling with insulin) the tubing and the cannula (the tube that sits under your skin).

I injected with both pens and syringes from 1977 to 2002 and nothing is as fiddly as the syringes used by insulin pumps.  Where-as a syringe used for insulin has a mechanism for gripping and holding the syringe while you draw up the insulin (and inject), a pump cartridge syringe has no such help (that may be a little mean, they do provide a detachable extender, but they always fall off, especially if you are trying to shake out air bubbles).  If I get a small air bubble in for an injection, it is no big deal and easy to resolve.  A small air bubble in a pump cartridge can mean not having any insulin for a couple of hours which leads to extremely high blood sugars.  But in December 2007, that was what I was trying.

Now though, this process is being performed twice as often.  Joy (or not).  The worst thing about this system is that you end up losing a lot of usable insulin so that you are not performing this hideous process at an inopportune moment (Dtron, change cartridge over at 3am, not an issue, trying to get the fiddly cartridge in at 10pm, nightmare).

But it would be worth it for the CGMS.  Or not.

The other big difference between the two pumps was how frequently the basal was delivered.  I use a very small amount of insulin mid-afternoon.  In the DTron, every 3 minutes the pump gave me 0.005 units of insulin.  The Paradigm didn’t, it gave me a 0.17 unit dose 10 minutes apart.  I felt grotty, which wasn’t something I was used to having got the pump set up back in 2002.

But it would be worth it for the CGMS.  Or not.

The CGMS was OK: when you learn to use the pump, you are taught the values it provides are a guideline only, available for three days.  For me, I have a little trouble spotting a fast drop in insulin (typically experienced with an infection say).  I am aware I am in the hypo, but because of the speed of the change in blood sugar, one minute every thing’s fine the next I have a hypo which needs treating quickly.

This was the reason I wanted CGMS, to provide that cut off in the change of blood sugar levels where I could spot the hypo and where I couldn’t.  It would also give me an idea of the changes going on over night to prove the over night basal rates.

Which it did, for £450, I had three days worth of graphs.  It was interesting.  But not enough to get over the inconvenience of using the DTron: I visited MIT during that time and the short life of the cartridges was a complete nightmare, jet lagged, tons of paraphernalia and in a hotel suite, it was just annoying when the DTron would have provided all the insulin in a single cartridge.

The deal breaker came after my third sensor.  Remember, one of the reasons I had the sensor was to spot a fast drop.  I spotted the drop one beautiful sunny Sunday morning while the sensor said there were no changes (none, nada, not one) in my blood sugar levels (it maintained that my blood sugar varied a little between 6.4mmol/l and 6.7mmol/l over an hour.  When I tested I was 2.7mmol/l which is a massive drop from the 10.3mmol/l I had been an hour earlier).  I was back on the DTron within the hour.

So, it’s a really bad thing they stopped making the DTron

I feel that.  But injections are such hard work.  In the end, with alarms reminding me to inject, I ended up on six injections a day with highs indicating that that may not have been enough.  After 6 weeks I was ready to accept any pump.

When I got the DTron in 20002, I was choosing between two pumps (really).  Now I had a choice of four: the Roche Spirit pump, Medtronics latest Paradigm, Animas’ Vibe and the Omnipod.

Wireless is the new latest fad which must be great if you have a really young diabetic you are reasonable for as you can  bolus and check the screen while the youngster is off playing 10 feet from you.  As an adult, rushing around much of my time I do not want to be hunting for the user interface of my pump in my bag or round the house.

Cartridge size was the other important consideration, which meant the Animas Vibe was the only choice.  The Vibe has a 2ml cartridge and a similar basal rate delivery as the DTron, so even if the CGMS was not good, it would behave as a better pump for me than the Paradigm had.  (It was also seriously water-proof, up to 3.6m).

The CGMS would be provided for 7 days and had a really good reputation.  So, with the choice between that and injections, I chose the Vibe.

Learning how the vibe works

Basals and setup

The Medtronic was a nightmare from the training on.  I wasn’t told that I needed a vial of insulin to draw up the cartridge – obvious I know, but I didn’t consider it.

So this time, I was really sorted out.  Animas have a really useful orientation course too.  I was promised it would take 90 minutes by the hospital but it was much longer than that, nearer 3 hours.

Chris Sargent, from Animas, helped me set the basal rates and although there wasn’t a straight copy through from the DTron to the Vibe, it was reasonably close (remember that’s the back ground insulin the body needs to function).  The vibe has 12 slots for a day’s basal rates compared to 24 in the DTron but it is programmable in 15 minute segments.  It’s close to perfect by the end of the week.

Bolusing

It is reasonably difficult to place the pump under my clothes and perform a bolus.   There are buttons are all round the pump, so no convenient carriers/bags are available to do this anyway, but even if there were, I have not been able to successfully perform a “fast bolus”, which should be available by pressing a single button.  The idea is obviously to prevent accidental pressing but it is not something I can do easily and requires more presses than using the “normal” bolus menu.

I compensate by a double click of the OK button to get to the simple bolus screen.  This I all miss from the DTron: switching from a simple (a single dose) to a combi (a set of small boluses to cover slowly released carbohydrate) was really simple.  This is a completely separate menu screen, however some thought has gone in to the flexibility of this extended bolus.

One of the nicest features on the Vibe is insulin on board value available from one click of the button on top of the pump.  The CGMS has all its history available from the CGMS sub-menu – this would be great from the bolus screen, it’s not, which is really annoying.  To go from any sub-menu to another takes four button presses!  Though a tip to the wise is to use the fast bolus button: a quick hold on here and a press on the OK menu gets back to the home screen really simply.

There is a lot of data accessible by the pump everything from complete total insulin delivered in a calendar day to total bolused, when the last bolus was to basals and temporary basal rates.

Even now, some of it still doesn’t feel very logical.  It would be great if the insulin on board (that’s how much of the last bolus is still active in my system) was available from the bolus screen not the CGMS screen.  If I don’t think about it that means 6 button presses if I land on the bolus screen and think, I’d better check.

Battery and use

The battery is pretty good and I can swap in a standard AA battery as an emergency measure, which is good.  Unfortunately, to see the screen, I have to press a button, which makes hanging the pump off my belt reasonably pointless, not least because the holder means that I am reading the pump upside down.  I gave up after day one.

What about the CGMS?

It’s really good: the sensor lasts for 7 days minimum and it seems relatively accurate.  I have used four and the data has been really interesting.  It has led me to change some of my behaviour as well as my doses.

I have tried in various locations and have ended up with a site that is both accurate and doesn’t get in the way.  Unfortunately, it means the CGMS is on display, but that’s OK.  People assume it’s feeding in drugs and seem quite disappointed when you say it’s just the transmiter for the sensor and show them the readout.

The colour screen is so easy to use and get that fast reading on what’s happening: whether the readings are static or moving up or down, slowly or quickly.

It seems much more sensitive that the Medtronic had been and responds faster to a recalibration result (I feed it 4 a day: breakfast, lunch, go home/tea and bed).

Ironically, the screen layout makes it much easier to use the CGMS but also to not use it.  There is no wasted space on the home screen if you are not using the CGMS.  It is easily accessed and scrolls between the past hour, 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours and 24 hours and a single reading with the insulin on board screen.

The transmitter lasts for around 6 months.  The sensors seem really robust: they don’t need to be chilled while in storage.  The insert devices for the sensor and transmitter are really well designed and can be done single handed with very little hassle.

The alarms can all be configured.  This is really good, giving a welcome break if there’s nothing important going on, but you get that loud warning that things need checking when you’re outside or in the car.

I have had a little trouble with the cloud upload.  There is no way to get the data off the pump with the standard tools without it going to the web site.  That’s appalling.  I appreciate the thought is out there that all mindless morons but actually, there are plenty of us who can work out the numbers if we have the data.

And let’s face it, this is my data.

On the other hand, the sensors do seem to just work.

I still want MY DATA without HAVING to be connected to the internet.  Diasend will not work on a ship without access to the world wide web.

So not only do I have to pay for the sensors but network access if I want to access the data.  This is not cool.

It also is another set of tools that do not work with Linux.

It does seem to be accurate, lasts the distance and is reasonably comfortable and relatively easy to insert.

When in a jam

All of which means when I travel to Africa later this year, I will be taking my DTron and its adapter for my computer.  The night time carrier, the belt carrier, under-clothes holster and a spare injector pen.  Though the fact every one of the new infusion sets will work with my DTron and has its own inserter.

All the data from my testing kits and DTron can be analysed anywhere in the world.  I don’t even need a power supply to do that.  If I really want to use the other pump as a CGMS, I can do that.

In April, I got a phone call from Glyn Hopkin, Ipswich.  They asked me how we were getting on with the Leaf?

Great, I said.

Would I like them to bring some of their electric vehicles to my work place and show my colleagues what it was all about?  NIssan were doing a road show and as I worked at Adastral Park…

Yesterday, Nissan, Renault, Vauxhall, BMW and Tesla brought 18 electric vehicles to the combined value of approx. £540,000 to Adastral Park in Martlesham Heath.  Every taste was catered for, from the practical Renault Kangoo Z.E to the zany Renault Twizy, to the ultimate commuter in the BMW C-evolution, to the beautiful Tesla Model S and BMW i8.  All were greeted with interest by the people working in Adastral Park yesterday.

Test drives were made available on 6 of the cars, including a pair of Tesla’s.

A big thank you to all the manufactures who took part: the day would have been meaningless without the vehicles!

Adastral Park came to ask the questions they had about the latest technologies as well as try the cars on test drive.

The day proved that electric vehicles have come a long way in the past 6 years, there is a great deal of interest and these are now an option for the second car in a family in many cases, maybe even a first for some.  Companies like BT’s Adastral Park have helped that evolution by providing charges for their visitors.

One of my earliest memories was a “Watch” TV programme about the future of automation, in the late 1970s.  It discussed coal and gas powered generation of electricity for national consumption, petrol and diesel generation for automation and nuclear power.  It recognised acid rain and particulate pollution from vehicles and stated that we needed cleaner alternatives as population density rose.  I saw a hydrogen powered car and its “exhaust” of “clean water”.

At this time, of course, the West (Europe, Russia and America) were the obvious polluters: these were the rich countries and while car ownership was not yet cheap, it was affordable for most people with a job.

Times have changed: India and China are now recognised as producing more pollution than the West.  Smog in China is so chronically bad that cyclists often wear masks to protect themselves from the dust produced from car and motorcycle exhausts.  On internationally broadcast events from Beijing, the smog level is discussed much as the rain forecast is for a cricket match held in Lords.

Western car manufactures are being bought by Chinese and Indian firms and stretch versions of Mercedes and Jaguar models are aspiring models of lust.  It is unlikely though that China or India will be the first to bring in a ban on particulate emitting forms of transport.  That is much more likely to come from the West.

In 2003, London’s “congestion charge” was launched, quickly identified as creating a “Low Emission Zone”.  The intended outcome of the fee to ensure road users thought twice about bringing polluting vehicles into London, especially as motorcycles and “low emission vehicles” such as electric and hybrids are exempt.  The aim was to stop habitual users where at all possible.

Other towns and cities, especially in the South of England, have watched the adoption of the zone and its outcomes with interest.  In particular, East Anglia, with its sparse population, poor road design and the difficulties of providing meaningful public transport (cost benefit analysis will never come in).  Most of the intercity railway was electrified in the 1980’s which really does allow us to see that car, HGVs, buses and motorcycles are the polluters.

Cambridge has been notable in using excessive parking charges to discourage car users coming in to the city, but of course, this only works short term and drivers just add the parking or congestion charge to the cost of running their vehicles.  If you’re not careful, the outcome will be damage to high street businesses rather than benefits to the cities inhabitants.

Of course there’s more to the story than switching vehicles just to reduce your carbon footprint.  Other things need to be in place to win the heart and mind.

Heart and mind?

When I told a friend that I had bought a motorcycle, she wasn’t at all interested.  “Noisy, dirty things,” was her only comment.

Over the past four weeks, I have used my motorcycle twice and my diesel once to do the commute.  To be honest, that was the comment that came to mind with my beautiful diesel: noisy and dirty.

You very quickly get used to the lack of combustion noise with the Leaf.  Indeed, I find driving the diesel quite nauseating.  It’s not so bad with the motorbike and after the first 20 miles of a journey, I get used to the vibration again, but that effect wasn’t something I’d expected.

However, I got a bit of a shock from my 13 year old son.

Formula E had it’s first race yesterday in Beijing.  There have been big concerns that “petrol heads” would not be interested in a “quiet motor sport.”

Being part of the motorcycling community, there are many who would not want a silent bike.  I am not one of these bikers.  Not only do I wear my lid, but I have a pair of moulded ear plugs which are designed to protect my hearing from not just the bike but wind noise when travelling above 35mph.

We got tickets to see the MotoGP in 2010.  You arrive at Silverstone and signs every where point you to free ear plugs as the noise coming from the 20 bikes on the circuit is deafening.

With the first race from Formual E, it was lovely to watch a motor sport which didn’t have to stop the noise from the track in order to hear the pundits talk about the race.

All the drama was there, even up to the end – it was such a relief to watch Heidfeld climb out from the cockpit.

My 13 year old did not agree.  He didn’t like the “whine of the engines” and “it [was] a waste of time to watch something that slow.”  It wasn’t slow: far from it.  The road circuit supported speeds up to 115mph and the cars are capable of 150mph.

I loved the drama, many of the drivers have been top runners in GP and Formula 3/Ford (although both Katherine Legge and Michela Cerruti are less familiar to those following just F1).  During the race, you could actually “hear” the gear changes.  The only smoke was from the brakes and the conversation between Prost and Heidfeld.

To get engagement, social media has been used to allow the most popular drivers to use a “fanboost” – if enabled in their car it allows the driver to access an extra bit of power which should be available to the engines: going “from 150kw (202.5bhp) to 180kw (243bhp).”  Three drivers on the circuit get this facility; those most popular with the audience.

So, you like it?

I wish I could have been there in person, I am really looking forward to the next one: 22/11/2014 in Putrajaya, Malaysia.  Though, as it is so quiet and pollutant free, I would not mind this happening outside my house.

Not sure I would ever say that about F1.

Of course, the BBC must have had a slow news day yesterday as they finally broadcast the summary from the report studying the latest state of the ozone layer.

As I hit my teens, research had shown that not only was the ozone layer thinning but it was most likely caused by the use of CFCs. Now as I enter my forties, the ban on CFC use is allowing the ozone to recover (albeit slowly).

So?

Whether or not you believe in climate change and its causes, particulate and gas pollution from the modern motor is only going to be reduced if people make different choices.

Those are

• cycle or walk short journeys.
• use public transport (which in the case of a double decker bus does pollute more than a car but can mean 63 cars are not on the road).
• use a petrol motorbike rather than a diesel car if you are travelling on your own.
• use an electric vehicle.

The vast majority of journeys in the UK are < 25miles in length.  If each of those were done differently, the UK would be a better place to live.

We do all these.  Your choice.  Do you want to make a difference? 🙂

It’s been a busy few weeks and this is the first chance I have had to sit still at the computer and write something which is, hopefully, interesting.  This is one of two blogs looking at things you can do to improve your house.

I am a huge fan of Grand Designs.  There are some amazing tools for your house that allow you to be comfortable yet save energy.  Under floor heating, solar PV cells, rain collectors, glass which cleans itself and light pipes.  Clever control systems that allow you to control the lighting and heat levels in any room of the house.

Retro-fitting these can be a complete nightmare, but some of these ideas are instantly available for any house.  In 2006, I discovered a source for one of these: a thermostat which not only set the heat for a room or zone but allowed you to programme different temperatures at different times.

Why on Earth would anyone want that?

To be honest, before Grand Designs and having a baby, I didn’t think you would.  One of the things you quickly discover with a small baby is that they will wake up in the middle of the night when the ambient temperature gets below 15°C.  In a traditional boiler, timer and single thermostat , that works out at around 2:30am every morning in October/November.

We moved house in 2000 with a very young baby to a house where we were recommended to keep the heating on all the time but use the thermostat to set the level for the house.  At night we set it to 16°C so the baby didn’t over heat and from the second night, we had much better nights.  The baby woke around 4am instead for a night time feed.

Yes, we slept better too.  It was never boiling but not freezing in the middle of the night meant we had a great night’s sleep.  We were both dreading the first gas bill.  That too was a surprise: the house never got cold, so the bill was more than reasonable.

That’s when I knew I wanted a thermostat I could set the levels to – warmer in the evening, cooler for breakfast and much cooler for the night time.  Heat miser had just the thing and I ordered one, hoping that it would be really obvious how to replace the mechanical thermostat had been fitted to our house built in 2000.  I followed the instructions and three hours (it took a bit of figuring out), it was fitted and running.
It was lovely.

So why are you talking about this now?

We moved house last year, to a self-build (not by us). It had five zones of heating, all controlled by Honeywell thermostats.
Having done the job once, I could do it again and actually why not go for a centrally controlled one.  As we all have tablets, wouldn’t a wi-fi controlled one be great?  After all, we are living in 2014.

We liked the quality of the Heat miser one, so that was my first port of call last August only to find these were “premium items” and carried a price to match 🙁

So I bought one: we could live with it and decide it that really was the way we wanted to go.  I replaced the upstairs one and compared to last time, the job was a bit quicker.

Although at this stage, you could see the difference between the mass produced estate house to the individually built one.  Every Honeywell had had the inside of the back box filled :~  No worries, I have chisel and I am willing to use it.

The Heat miser’s protrude into the room a few millimetres: but the back box is packed with the digital control unit as well as the power and control wires.

The photo montage below shows why this is not a trivial effort.

However, once installed, the wi-fi units are a joy.  Secured with a password, we can control them from the internet allowing us to make a last minute decision to stay out longer and not bother switching the heating on as soon as normal.

We did keep two off the internet but come the winter not only will we have the right temperature in the house, but it looks bang up to date too :).

There are many small jobs there are to do on a vehicle, nothing separates cars and motorbikes like replacing the “tax disc”.

Actually, the circular piece of paper that demonstrates that you have paid your vehicle excise duty not the vehicle tax, although, confusingly, the portal for paying the duty is called the tax disc site.

Anyway, whether a car or bike, the process to buy the piece of paper is equivalent.

Physically replacing the taxdisc on a car is a three second job once you have the car key 😉

This is not the case on the bike: first I get the right hex key (2.5mm) then the right socket or spanner (4mm) and take the first three bolts out from the weather proof cover holding and displaying the tax disc on the bike.

Then the holder is manipulated so I can get a further 3 bolts out and loosen a further two.  Now, fish out the old bit of paper and replace with the new one.  Now every bolt needs to be replaced and tightened and all the others tightened.  If I am lucky, I haven’t moved or lost the bit of paper displaying the legal status of my bike.  It is a legal requirement to display the tax disc on the vehicle but on the bike this is an £80 bit of paper that can be lost or stolen.

Unlike a car, checking the bit of paper on the bike is a bit hit or miss, depending on the weather.  So the police check everything via their radios.

Err…

Thanks to the increasing number of £0 rated vehicles and a final vote of confidence, the law has changed and from the 1st October 2014, this is no longer a legal requirement to display the payment on your bike, car or anything 🙂

In January, when we bought the Leaf, more money was spent on sending out our tax disc than was collected.  The abolishment of the need to display the tax disc is to save the government money.

For every biker in the country, it is going to save them valuable time.

Originally the tax disc came in to prove a vehicle was insured and had passed its MOT.

Surely, if the technology exists to automatically prove a vehicle can be taxed, further money can be saved by just performing the joint check on the fly rather than once a year with a monetary payment?