The future starts now

no there isn't. And I have just discovered "Sports Plus Ultra Dynamic" mode. Its sole reason for existence seems to be  dropping the fuel consumption needle to 0MPG and shooting off into a whole world of trouble very quickly indeed in a very noisy manner. 

Why would you ask ? Are you the admin ?

147km / 93 miles, all on battery yesterday evening, with some preconditioning, plus lights and heating all the way. Home with 11% / 20km still showing - plus the petrol in the tank, of course.

Used mostly Comfort (default) mode but switched to Eco Pro (limited to 120km/h but otherwise no discernible difference) on the way home. The car marks my driving out of 5; I got 2 for acceleration (probably lost points for a few squirts into gaps on the A40) and 3 for anticipation, so there's clearly scope for improvement.

Drove into central London for the first time in 20 years, which was great. We even found somewhere to park. Now I need an excuse to do it again - and to experiment with public charging. I reckon the trip cost less than £4, and it was nice not to be dependent on late-evening train timetables, especially after Friday night's mess at Paddington.

Yes, we should have thought of Waterloo to Windsor, then an easy taxi ride to Maidenhead. Instead we went Marylebone-Wycombe and a ride in a grubby old Vectra-Saab. Did the job, though; certainly better than walking.

My electric running costs on the Zoe are of course, similar. However, I made a Gross Error when purchasing. I "bought" it on pcp, and didn't choose enough annual miles.

This means that it's due back at the end of March, but I've now run out of miles. So each mile now costs me about 4p in electricity but 15p in excess mileage. At just under 20p a mile, that's almost double the cost of diesel in the Volvo.

So I find I'm choosing to use the Volvo more often than the Zoe now. Shows my my green credentials are worthless anyway. It's all about the cash.

For similar reasons, the Zoe will go back and not be replaced with an EV. An acceptably workable one for us doesn't stack up financially I'm afraid.

Ah well, back to ICE in a while, for a while at least. It's been fun.

Is the Zoe on a normal PCP or is it a deal peculiar to the model? I've often gone over the contracted mileage on PCPs, and apart from a slightly lower trade-in value, I've never been penalised in terms of pence per mile. That would have happened only if I'd been handing the car back and walking away rather than PX-ing it for a new one. I presume that on a pure leasing contract you can't avoid a pence-per-mile penalty if you go over the mileage.

I admire your honesty: in principle we would like to 'go green', but how many of us are willing to do so if it costs us more? WDB perhaps? In many ways a plug-in hybrid would suit our needs, but they cost between £6,000 and £10,000 more than the equivalent petrol. SWMBO and I make a very small contribution by taking the 45-55 mpg petrol A1 if we're together on a long trip, rather than the 40-50 mpg diesel V60.

Possibly, but remember that that same WDB also has on his drive a large - very large - six-cylinder estate car that would need Herr Flick's powerful binoculars to even see its official 46 mpg, and uses it when that would be more comfortable or convenient than the i3.

I do value what you might call 'elegance', which I think of in terms of economy of effort.  Think of Bill Nighy's acting: no look-at-me histrionics, but he gets the job done in style.  It seems crass now to take the CLS to Tesco when the i3 does it so much more cleanly. In a few years it will probably seem as bad to take it to on our long summer road trip, but that will because there's a more elegant alternative; I had no worries about it taking us to Durham last month, and we'll be using it for a four-up lunch outing on Sunday. Today I was out alone, visiting a friend 25 miles away, and took the i3, which cost about £1.75.

The news yesterday that the UK generated more than half its electricity this year by carbon-neutral methods mostly debunks the fossils' second-favourite canard: that electric vehicles simply move the carbon dioxide elsewhere. (I wonder if the Telegraph even mentioned it. Ah, it did! www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/12/28/record-year-renewable-energy-low-carbon-sources-top-52pc )  The coming network of fast chargers will deal with their no.1. I occasionally wonder how the fleeces back at the other place are dealing with this.