BT/Openreach were working down my road yesterday connecting our newly moved in neighbours, unfortunately when they left I discovered that they had managed to disconnect me, some text messages were sent to BT as is the modern way, no actual conversations took place, but about 2 hours later a really excellent, polite, friendly engineer turned up to reconnect me.
Now here is the interesting bit, he actually lived in Manchester, but had been sent down south to help with the backlog of work down here, living in digs and getting paid overtime etc. he was very happy with the arrangement.
One thing he was not that enamoured with was the new fleet of Vauxhall Vivaro electric service vans, I think he drives home at weekends to Manchester stopping 4 times on route for a battery charge, during the extremely cold weather we have experienced during this winter he told me using the heater was not a viable option as it consumes 25% of the battery power, so 4 stops becomes 6 stops unless you felt like cutting it fine, he had worked in Portsmouth, a mere 6 charge stops, unless you use the heater, so most of the driving time was spent being frozen in a tin box, he mentioned -3c I forgot to ask about wipers and washers etc.
Apparently they do have battery regenerative braking, so drive accordingly, which I suppose is a good thing, whilst driving my fossil fuelled vehicles, braking is always the last resort.
So there it is, if all the details that were discussed were factual and correct, and I have no reason to doubt him, I don’t think I will getting and electric vehicle anytime soon, but I do love my electric bicycle!
Now here is the interesting bit, he actually lived in Manchester, but had been sent down south to help with the backlog of work down here, living in digs and getting paid overtime etc. he was very happy with the arrangement.
One thing he was not that enamoured with was the new fleet of Vauxhall Vivaro electric service vans, I think he drives home at weekends to Manchester stopping 4 times on route for a battery charge, during the extremely cold weather we have experienced during this winter he told me using the heater was not a viable option as it consumes 25% of the battery power, so 4 stops becomes 6 stops unless you felt like cutting it fine, he had worked in Portsmouth, a mere 6 charge stops, unless you use the heater, so most of the driving time was spent being frozen in a tin box, he mentioned -3c I forgot to ask about wipers and washers etc.
Apparently they do have battery regenerative braking, so drive accordingly, which I suppose is a good thing, whilst driving my fossil fuelled vehicles, braking is always the last resort.
So there it is, if all the details that were discussed were factual and correct, and I have no reason to doubt him, I don’t think I will getting and electric vehicle anytime soon, but I do love my electric bicycle!
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