Driving, Maths, Psychological Musings and Very Long Blog Post Titles.

Sorry I've not posted here for a while but there's not been much to report. The iOn has been going quite nicely thank you but I've got some stuff to talk about now.


Little Niggles
A few things that I have found irritating or just don't understand about the car:

1) It doesn't have a clock on the dashboard. Not even on the radio. This was a pain when my watch was in for repair last week and I just don't understand why there isn't one. It would be so simple just to fit a radio that has a clock display option like the one on every car I've ever owned since and including my F reg Mk2 Polo.

2) Why does it have "always on" running lights? Surely they just use up battery power unnecessarily? They've also confused me into thinking I had my headlights on in the dark when I didn't more than once.

3) The wing mirrors that fold in when you lock the car up. I know this is one of those things that has become fashionable on cars these days but the iOn simply doesn't need it. OK, it looks swish but the car is narrow enough anyway and surely, again, the motors to move them use up battery power.

Public Charging and a Little Bit of Maths
My card finally came through the post that allows me to use public charging points. I paid £5 for two weeks of unlimited use. Normally, if you were to buy an electric card you would buy a year long card for £100 which isn't bad at all. So for no other reason than sh*ts and giggles I took the car down to Riverside Park and plugged it in to one of their new charging points.

Charging at Riverside Park, Chester-le-Street.

Unlike the one at work these charging points tell you how much electricity you are using. Like this:

Taken about 30 seconds after I plugged it in.

Which normally would really just be there for interest but it allowed me to do some maths. Yippee! All the time I've had the car I've been wondering how much it was costing me in electricity. I should have prepared by checking how much electricity I normally use before I got the car and comparing it to how much I'm using now. But I didn't. So, in the time it was plugged in it used 1.6kWh which added an extra 2 miles of range. I've just checked Scottish Power tariff that I'm on and I pay 10.618p per kWh (after the first 225). So that means I'm paying (roughly, because the gauge in the car doesn't measure fractions of a mile) 8.4944p per mile. In my Fiat Stilo I get about 41mpg which equates to 9.02 miles/litre (I know I'm mixing my imperial and metric systems there but stay with me...). According to www.petrolprices.com the average price of petrol within 10 miles of where I live is 134.38p per litre so I'm paying 14.8980p per mile. If anyone wants to do the maths using the lowest possible price of petrol feel free. I couldn't be bothered but I think it's safe to say I'm saving on the fuel costs. Which we all knew but a few people have tried to tell me "People forget they have to pay for the electricity. It's not as cheap as you think."

That's another thing I've just thought of that I find interesting. People's reactions. Most people are genuinely interested and ask questions about what it's like to drive and how far it can go. Pretty much everyone, me included, has made a joke or two about it but I have met a few people who are actually quite hostile and react as if I'm some kind of environmentalist nut. They come out with all kinds of weird arguments about why electric cars are actually worse for the environment and seem to expect me to defend them and myself. I simply don't understand that. Well, actually I think it's fear of new technology that they don't understand. They don't know how to cope with that fear and think that the best defence against it is attack. What they don't seem to get is that I'm driving the car because I'm interested to know what it's like and to help build, in a very small way, some evidence for or against electric cars. I've already pointed out some floors and I'm more than willing to find that actually they don't work but I don't understand the mentality behind the the sort of thinking that says "I don't understand it so I'm going to pick out a few quotes from the media that help me to dismiss the idea of this new thing out of hand." It saddens me how incurious (is that a word?) some people are and how they don't understand people who are curious.

Anyway, that's enough for now. Tune in last week and miss next weeks instalment of Pigs in Sp....... Hang on, that's not my line is it?

Edit:
Just found out that all the additional electrics like the lights, mirrors and radio are powered by a standard car battery hidden under the bonnet. So I can continue to make the car flap it's ears like Dumbo and not worry about it reducing my range.