Rob
Full Member
Posts: 2,779 
|
Post by Rob on Jan 23, 2018 19:01:00 GMT
But here's the thing... how do they know you didn't take the diesel estate  Okay it's dishonest so not advised. Booking trains was an arse the last I had to (a year ago admittedly). You had to buy via the expense system and get approval which came after approval. I then had to pay for tickets to be posted (claimable). But I could walk to my local station and get them in advance. I think that's changed but I still think pre-approval is needed? If I turned up to the local station without a ticket, Euston return was £321 so must be more in 2018. |
|
|
|
Post by lygonos on Jan 23, 2018 23:11:16 GMT
Used to have to state the engine size of your car as bigger engines got a slightly higher mileage rate. They stopped requesting that for the 2 non-GP jobs I have and I simply claim for the miles I drive. The juice might be free but tyres/servicing and depreciation all need paying for. Also I'll get 100% WDA for the cost of the car as it's an EV : www.gov.uk/capital-allowances/business-cars |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 24, 2018 10:47:28 GMT
Alanovic, I can't claim for mileage at all because I have a company car and a fuel card that I pay for personal fuel. I'm not sure you'd need receipts though. But is there an EV rate? I'll have a look now and let you know. There was a time when you could convert a petrol car to LPG and were still allowed to claim the petrol rate. They eventually stopped that. I think I'd use the train/underground if this was my journey. Who'd want to drive in. Although maybe traffic is much lighter these days - I last drove into central London a long time ago. If I'm going to a 10/11am meeting, say, and leaving a couple of hours after (before the rush hour), then the traffic isn't too bad. My morning routine with the school run takes me near the M4, but getting back in to Reading to the railway station is a fight at that time of the day, so driving to London might actually make sense. Also, last time I went, buying a peak rate train & Zone 1 tube ticket, plus station parking, meant an expense claim of £65 including parking at the railway station. I could save the company quite a bit by driving there on electric and using a charging bay, which doesn't have a parking cost attached to it. So if it were practical I would prefer to do that, but the big obstacle is the probability of blocked charging points at my destination.
Corporations this size seem to have trouble moving with the times.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 24, 2018 10:50:21 GMT
But here's the thing... how do they know you didn't take the diesel estate Okay it's dishonest so not advised. Booking trains was an arse the last I had to (a year ago admittedly). You had to buy via the expense system and get approval which came after approval. I then had to pay for tickets to be posted (claimable). But I could walk to my local station and get them in advance. I think that's changed but I still think pre-approval is needed? If I turned up to the local station without a ticket, Euston return was £321 so must be more in 2018. My problem there is don't have diesel receipts any more. Well, my last one is so old it would look odd submitting it. Besides, I hate dishonesty and wouldn't do it.
I don't seem to need pre-approval for my train tickets, I've submitted 2 claims recently and they've just whistled through. I scan the ticket receipt and attach it to the online expense claim. Money appears in bank a few days later.
|
|
WDB
Full Member
Posts: 7,427
|
Post by WDB on Feb 12, 2018 8:27:17 GMT
Rex roars. Well, not really, but as we set out for London yesterday (LSO concert at the Barbican) up popped a message to the effect that Rex was going to do a gratuitous run because we hadn't been using it.
This still can't happen with the battery at more than 75 percent, so I couldn't make it run on the M40 where it would have caused least local inconvenience. But it started up as we passed Northolt on the A40, ran for 15 minutes and had stopped by the time we got to Paddington Green. Still couldn't really hear that anything unusual was going on round the back.
Barbican parking, incidentally, was easy in the i3, and excellent value at £9, for which we could have stayed all day. But I wouldn't take the CLS there, even without the question of fuel cost. The spaces are big enough but there are tight, snaky ramps that would be very hard to negotiate in a big car without Humphing a wheel on a kerb. In any case, the i3 is such fun to drive in city traffic, I wouldn't want to be in anything else.
|
|
Avant
Full Member
Posts: 691
|
Post by Avant on Feb 12, 2018 14:23:18 GMT
Was that Mark Elder and the LSO, very favourably reviewed by Richard Morrison in the Times this morning? I've always thought that nobody could conduct Elgar's 1st Symphony quite like the incomparable Boult - but maybe we've at last found an equal.
I think 'Humph' makes a wonderful verb for scraping an alloy.... And there's a 'Nogbad' (noun) = a serious contretemps with a bus.
|
|
WDB
Full Member
Posts: 7,427
|
Post by WDB on Feb 12, 2018 14:41:07 GMT
Was that Mark Elder and the LSO...? Yes, and the excellent Russian-based Danish violinist Nikolaj Znaider in the Bruch G major concerto. He was a huge hit, and seemed to enjoy the occasion as much as we did. The symphony was Elgar 2, though. I must admit I struggle with Elgar, even the rightly-renowned Cello Concerto. This was beautifully played, and the dark and menacing mood came through in the middle movements, but I don't really get the work as a whole. My neighbour in the hall clearly loved it, though. We'd had a good chat at the end of the interval, which took in my plan to go to Berlin in May. That's for Rattle doing Bruckner; turns out he has the same trouble with Bruckner as I do with Elgar. We each agreed to persevere! The Standard's reviewer was more equivocal than the Times's. www.standard.co.uk/go/london/arts/lsoelder-review-good-but-not-quite-rattle-a3764171.htmlI now realize we're talking about two different concerts. The Times review is of one given on Thursday (Elgar 1, as you say) and the Standard covers the one I was at. |
|
Avant
Full Member
Posts: 691
|
Post by Avant on Feb 12, 2018 18:57:33 GMT
I don't really get Elgar 2 either - probably because I'm too fond of the 'big tune'. If you don't know Elgar 1, you might find it more approachable.
Judgiong by biographies I've read, I think Elgar himself might sympathise. It seems that he sometimes wasn't sure where he was going - almost as if he was a Romantic who tried more and more not to be as he got older. His last years, especially after his wife died in 1920, seem to have been sad and unproductive.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2018 19:30:48 GMT
I would add 'to Espada' = to slide down a snowy driveway into a passing Mercedes, but I do wonder if to be fully accurate you need to be driving an Espada??
|
|
WDB
Full Member
Posts: 7,427
|
Post by WDB on Feb 13, 2018 15:51:07 GMT
Do we need a verb for
To fret aloud and at length that one could have been the spearhead of the electric revolution, if only one had somewhere to plug it in?
|
|
WDB
Full Member
Posts: 7,427
|
Post by WDB on Mar 8, 2021 23:14:09 GMT
I had a call today from the dealer that supplied the i3. They’d done a complicated sum that seemed to amount to us having already paid enough to have some equity in the car above the GFV, and would we like to replace it with a new one? I said probably not, but show us the numbers and we’ll see what stacks up. So I’m now getting another call on Thursday to do that.
|
|
Rob
Full Member
Posts: 2,779
|
Post by Rob on Mar 8, 2021 23:19:13 GMT
With all the BEVs available now, would you want another i3? I suspect a deal on a VW iD3 is possible soon that's pre-reg. Our local dealer has a lot still sat outside in a row and all registered and on 70 plates. And then I see this: www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry-news-retail/inside-industry-pre-registering-evs-helps-manufacturers-avoidWhat I was looking for though was for a link to a Chinese BEV that might be available in the EU soon which is good value for what it is (range of over 400 miles) and well made etc. Read it on RB Digital earlier on the tablet. |
|
|
|
Post by dixinormus on Mar 9, 2021 0:02:14 GMT
Your i3 is a ReX model isn’t it WdB? You could possibly go full EV now, and don’t newer i3s have a bigger battery anyway?
I think I read somewhere that the ReX model, with its added weight and complexity, was potentially more unreliable too?
Be curious to see what mathematics gymnastics the dealer tempts you with anyway!
|
|
WDB
Full Member
Posts: 7,427
|
Post by WDB on Mar 9, 2021 7:39:30 GMT
The Rex has more components, so ‘potentially more unreliable’ is hard to argue with. But it’s given us no trouble and does make it possible to get home from just about anywhere. But a new one would take the battery from 33KWh to 42, which adds a quarter to the range we’ve only twice come close to running out of. It would put just about any day-trip destination within entirely electric range. No VED either, not that £140 a year should sway us either way.
But the i3’s other talent is as a city car — specifically for us, a London car. It’s made possible outings that would have been more difficult and less fun by public transport, but for which a diesel car would have been antisocial and inappropriate. Whether an iD3 would fit as neatly into tight underground car parks, I’d have to find out, but a benefit of the i3’s strict four-seat layout (three if I’m driving) is that it’s slim enough to be very wieldy in small spaces.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2021 9:15:24 GMT
Must say I expect it's hard to beat an i3 once you've had one. For my needs I still think the Leaf a preferable car, as it has a more traditional, practical layout and boot. And it's cheaper of course. But all that aside, I'd be hapy with an i3 I'm sure. There's nothing else like it, I don't think even the most recent generation of EVs are comparable. It's a pretty unique proposition.
Speaking of the new generation of EVs, I embarked upon my first school run in a long time this morning, and saw my first 21 reg car. A Porsche Taycan. It was in traffic alongside, to my absolute astonishment, a tatty, dark blue, Triumph 2500 Pi. How's that for contrast.
|
|
Okay it's dishonest so not advised.
