New diesel and petrol vehicles to be banned from 2040

[jack]

10 hours ago, JSHarris said:

I happen to think it's a hell of a lot more convenient to just open the charge door and plug the cable almost every time I get out of the car, than it is to faff around at a garage, filling the thing with petrol, queuing to pay, etc.

 

It's certainly a lot more pleasant than my usual experience of getting into the car and finding the petrol light on, because my missus (who excels in so many other ways) seems incapable visiting a petrol station until the reserve shows zero miles.

 

Of course, with an electric car, she'll probably not get around to plugging it in... 

 

I'm seriously looking at electric cars at the moment. The Nissan Leaf ticks all the boxes for us in terms of being a small, electric-only car that we can use for the 95% of our driving that's less than, say, 50 miles round trip (we have a second car - beat up Toyota estate - for longer drives). Thing is, it's just so damned ugly. I can live with that for all the other advantages, but my wife is really resistant. The new model for next year is better, but I don't want to buy a new car: https://electrek.co/2017/07/31/next-gen-nissan-leaf-design-revealed/

 

The VW e-up! is a much nicer looking car. Quite a bit more expensive, but the main problem is actually finding one for sale second hand. I'm assuming they've been nothing like as successful as the Leaf in terms of sales, because the other day I could only find three for sale second hand anywhere in the country!

 

That leaves the Renault Zoe. Cheaper even than the Leaf, better(ish) looking, and with a decent range. However, I'm concerned about buying a French car. My first car was a Peugeot, and the horrific experience I had with that has put me right off French cars for good. Since then, I've always had Toyotas. Boring as hell, but my god they just go on for ever.

 

Why did Nissan make the current Leaf so ugly?! 

[gravelld]

13 hours ago, Roger440 said:

 

You mean, just like we do now? 

 

 

Don't count me in your "we".

 

You do imply something of import; that even if behaviour is undesirable, it is still done.

 

However, you have to remember that no advances in the history of civilization have been perfect. Thinking up scenarios that might not work in the status quo when using electric vehicles is easy to do; but it's whether they actually matter that is important. Some things you think are important may not be once people get used to them, workarounds are found, or some other (metaphorical) seismic shift means they are irrelevant. For example, by 2040 truck drivers may not even exist.

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, Nickfromwales said:

Nobody has died on this part of the road

This is a fun map of the country:

http://www.crashmap.co.uk/Search

[Jeremy Harris]

1 hour ago, jack said:

 

It's certainly a lot more pleasant than my usual experience of getting into the car and finding the petrol light on, because my missus (who excels in so many other ways) seems incapable visiting a petrol station until the reserve shows zero miles.

 

Of course, with an electric car, she'll probably not get around to plugging it in... 

 

I'm seriously looking at electric cars at the moment. The Nissan Leaf ticks all the boxes for us in terms of being a small, electric-only car that we can use for the 95% of our driving that's less than, say, 50 miles round trip (we have a second car - beat up Toyota estate - for longer drives). Thing is, it's just so damned ugly. I can live with that for all the other advantages, but my wife is really resistant. The new model for next year is better, but I don't want to buy a new car: https://electrek.co/2017/07/31/next-gen-nissan-leaf-design-revealed/

 

The VW e-up! is a much nicer looking car. Quite a bit more expensive, but the main problem is actually finding one for sale second hand. I'm assuming they've been nothing like as successful as the Leaf in terms of sales, because the other day I could only find three for sale second hand anywhere in the country!

 

That leaves the Renault Zoe. Cheaper even than the Leaf, better(ish) looking, and with a decent range. However, I'm concerned about buying a French car. My first car was a Peugeot, and the horrific experience I had with that has put me right off French cars for good. Since then, I've always had Toyotas. Boring as hell, but my god they just go on for ever.

 

Why did Nissan make the current Leaf so ugly?! 

 

 

I agree, the Leaf is a bit ungainly looking, but it does drive well.  I had one for an extended test drive (24 hours) and was impressed overall; the deal-breaker for me was the load space - nowhere near as big or versatile as the Prius.

 

The Zoe is a problem because of the leased battery, which makes a second-hand one expensive, as although the car is relatively cheap second hand, the battery lease isn't, it's £70 a month, IIRC.  The majority of older Zoe's will have leased batteries, I believe, as the option to buy the battery outright was only a recent change.

 

I'd try and see if you can blag an extended drive of a Leaf, as I reckon it's probably the best small'ish electric car around, and a bit of a bargain second hand (although again look out for leased batteries - some early Leafs were supplied with them instead of batteries that were an outright purchase).

 

The Volkswagen e-up is OK, but it seems a bit small, and few have been sold here, hence the reason there aren't many around second hand.  That's one reason there are a lot more Leafs around; they've sold pretty well here over the past few years.

Edited August 2, 2017 by JSHarris

[AliG]

I often hear the range thing from people at work. In fairness one of them has family in France and sometimes drives there during the school holidays so does do longer journeys.

 

I am currently considering a Tesla Model X. You can have a 75D with 237 miles range and a 100D with 295. These are the EPA ranges which are a lot closer to real life range than the longer NEDC ranges in Europe. The EPA partly take into account using AC. The hit from AC is driven by the difference between the outside temperature and in care temperature. In the UK it is likely to be around 5%, in Texas it might be over 10%.

 

If you drive at a steady 40 the car would actually beat the EPA range handily, driving at a steady 75, a UK type speed, the range would be 10-15% less than the rated range. 65 seems to give around the rated range. Like any car lots of accelerating hard will hit the range.

 

The worst case scenario is winter driving. The heater uses a lot of power and you may be running lights, windscreen wipers and AC as well. Also wet roads have 30-40% higher rolling resistance. In this scenario you might lose 30% of the rated range.

 

What range you need becomes a very personal decision. The people most vociferous about it are understandably the people who drive the most. The last time I drove 200 miles in a single day was the last time I drove from Edinburgh to Aberdeen which was close to 10 years ago, so that was a round trip with plenty of time to recharge. My parents would have similar use. Ex that I never drive over 100 miles in a day which takes me to Glasgow and back.

 

I found this from a piece of academic research n the US where trip lengths tend to be longer than in the UK. 95% of all trips are under 30 miles and 98% are under 70 miles. thus for the majority of people, the majority of time around 200 miles of range is plenty. 100 miles a workday is 25,000 a year, hardly any cars do over that mileage.

 

By the way, I often hear people talk about battery degradation. Batteries now degrade at around 1% a year. Frankly the car will be junk long before the battery gives out. Actually I often hear people on Tesla forums talk about how they will run a Tesla for 10+ years as without an engine it will last much longer than a normal car. They are kidding themselves. I doubt many cars are scrapped due to the engines giving out, instead it is the electronics and this will be just the same. 10+ year old cars have very little value compared to new cars.

 

The new cheaper Tesla Model S (£35-50000ish), so not cheep but in the range of a 3 series, has 220 miles of range in the base version and 310 in the long range version for an extra $9000(£9000ish). Looking at falling battery costs, within 5 years I would expect the extra price of 300 mile range to be around $3-4000. Actually the cost will be around $2000 versus $5000 now but the car maker needs to charge for options like this to make money. It will take longer for smaller cheaper cars to become electric as they have relatively cheaper drivetrains. It will work its way down from the top of the market.

 

Tesla have been pretty clear that they don't intend going much over 300 miles for range. As batteries get more efficient a better idea is to make them smaller. Thus the car gets more efficient and the battery weight penalty reduces. We might see range drift up toward 350 miles, but as that covers well over 99% of journeys then that is it and long journeys will require charging.

 

Tesla's next generation of chargers should take a 200 mile charge time down to around 15 minutes. This is similar to what companies such as VW are aiming for. There are two limits to charging time, the batteries and the actual power available at the charger. Current Tesla batteries are limited to around 30 minutes for a 200 mile charge. Newer batteries will be faster. At the 15 minute point, stopping to charge will only take 10 minutes longer than filling up with petrol and the charging/range issue should really start to go away. There will also be chargers everywhere. Even today there are circa 5000 EV chargers in the UK and 8500 petrol stations. There are expected to be more chargers than petrol stations by 2020. One issue will be if they plan to make electric trucks these should be quite buildable but they would require a massive electricity supply at a single point for charging.

 

I think people have to consider how fast things change both in technology and use cases. Battery prices are falling all the time and energy density is rising. They should reach cost parity with combustion engines in around 5 years (part of this is driven by the big tax saving in electricity versus petrol which is artificial and will go away eventually). People will get very used to the charging times etc. Frankly I am looking forward to never having to go to a petrol station which is a waste of my time if I forget to fill up.

 

 

 

Edited August 2, 2017 by AliG

[Ferdinand]

The BMW i3 is a hoot, and secondhand prices are becoming more acceptable.

 

Ferdinand

[Jeremy Harris]

I know a chap that lives in Scotland and drives a Tesla Model S with a 90kWh battery and he regularly drives down to London in it.  He reckons that he can do around 450 miles in a day, with a single 30 minute lunch and recharging break, and in his view that's more than enough driving for one day, anyway.  His view is that there just isn't a range problem at all in reality, and like me is convinced that 99% of the people that think range is an issue just haven't bothered to look rationally at how they drive or how EV charging is so very different to fuelling a conventional car.

[jack]

1 hour ago, JSHarris said:

I agree, the Leaf is a bit ungainly looking, but it does drive well.  I had one for an extended test drive (24 hours) and was impressed overall; the deal-breaker for me was the load space - nowhere near as big or versatile as the Prius.

 

The plan is to test drive the Leaf and the Zoe. We don't need load space, due to our other car being an estate. We just need something compact and decently priced (it'll be replacing a Nissan Micra that we inherited from my wife's grandmother a couple of years ago - now that I've had this, I'd never be without a compact, automatic car).

 

1 hour ago, JSHarris said:

The Zoe is a problem because of the leased battery, which makes a second-hand one expensive, as although the car is relatively cheap second hand, the battery lease isn't, it's £70 a month, IIRC.  The majority of older Zoe's will have leased batteries, I believe, as the option to buy the battery outright was only a recent change.

 

Yes, been looking at this. There aren't that many around that don't have leased batteries. The (new) price difference between leasing and buying the battery outright is about £5k. I haven't gotten around to figuring out how that price difference ends up expressing itself on a car that's two or three years old.

 

1 hour ago, JSHarris said:

I'd try and see if you can blag an extended drive of a Leaf, as I reckon it's probably the best small'ish electric car around, and a bit of a bargain second hand (although again look out for leased batteries - some early Leafs were supplied with them instead of batteries that were an outright purchase).

 

The plan is to try the Leaf and the Zoe. We had a Renault Clio hire car in Europe recently and frankly it was terrible to drive. Most of my complaints were about the engine and drivetrain though, so perhaps the Zoe won't be so bad. I'm personally hoping that the Leaf is that much better that 'er indoors will prefer it despite its looks.

 

1 hour ago, JSHarris said:

The Volkswagen e-up is OK, but it seems a bit small, and few have been sold here, hence the reason there aren't many around second hand.  That's one reason there are a lot more Leafs around; they've sold pretty well here over the past few years.

 

Basically, the smaller the better for what I want this car for, so that doesn't rule the e-Up! out. The main reason I'm not seriously considering one is that they do seem to be a lot more money for really no more function. 

 

53 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

The BMW i3 is a hoot, and secondhand prices are becoming more acceptable.

 

Yes, seems like a properly good car (although not sure about the looks), but it's quite a bit more expensive than the Leaf. The cheapest I could see when I started looking at electric cars was around £16k - most are £20k+.

[MikeSharp01]

2 hours ago, JSHarris said:

His view is that there just isn't a range problem at all in reality, and like me is convinced that 99% of the people that think range is an issue just haven't bothered to look rationally at how they drive or how EV charging is so very different to fuelling a conventional car.

They call this 'Range Anxiety' according to a friend of mine at FORD. There was some research in the states a while back that said people look for a range about twice their round trip commute / typical journey - which is daft but that was the range anxiety effect at work! They have a special training pack for the sales teams to help them get across the message about how people actually drive and that you only use the fuel when you are actually moving (other than the ancillary gear EG headlights!) Also I am with you @jack my Micra has now done 184000 miles and I wont get rid of it until it falls apart, which it is showing no signs of. (touch wood) When I do it will be time to get an electric replacement.

[Bitpipe]

I frequently drive my diesel A6 when it says 0 miles left in the tank, mostly because I'm lazy and can only be bothered to fuel up once a week (the joys of not having a commute), so not worried about range anxiety 

 

Planning to get a Tesla S for a weekend's trial (£150 - viewing this as a bit of a treat) and then try others on the market over the next 6-9 months.

 

If you have a ltd company (i.e. family business or are a contractor) then you can offset the purchase or monthly lease cost of a ULEV against company profit, so save 20% and (potentially) VAT. You then need to lease the car to yourself and pay benefit in kind (BiK) tax, currently 7%, rising to 16% in year 2. However it does work out cheaper than just buying it as an individual, for IC cars it's cheaper the other way round.

 

Apparently this is why the BMW i8 has become the car of choice for many IT consultants... 

[daiking]

17 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

They call this 'Range Anxiety' according to a friend of mine at FORD. There was some research in the states a while back that said people look for a range about twice their round trip commute / typical journey - which is daft but that was the range anxiety effect at work! They have a special training pack for the sales teams to help them get across the message about how people actually drive and that you only use the fuel when you are actually moving (other than the ancillary gear EG headlights!) Also I am with you @jack my Micra has now down 184000 miles and I wont get rid of it until it falls apart, which it is showing no signs of. (touch wood) When I do it will be time to get an electric replacement.

 

57 minutes ago, jack said:

 

The plan is to test drive the Leaf and the Zoe. We don't need load space, due to our other car being an estate. We just need something compact and decently priced (it'll be replacing a Nissan Micra that we inherited from my wife's grandmother a couple of years ago - now that I've had this, I'd never be without a compact, automatic car).

 

I had to scrap a 17 year old automatic Micra in 2015 when it needed a new battery. Replaced it with an auto Suzi Ignis which I find hateful apart from the noisy but eager engine. Incidentally the Ignis needed a new battery within 2 months.

 

I am unsure what to do with my own car, a Mazda that I bought new in 2006. MOT this week cost me nearly £600. A large part of that is 2 tyres and 2 front shock absorbers - which are consumables on a 140,000 miler. However, the MOT advisories are now a litany of problems not worth fixing till they break on a car this value - although the oil leak from the rusty sump is a maybe repair soon. I expect I will be replacing it in a year or 2 as I'd like to get to 150,000 miles (next summer) at least.

 

But what next? Committing to long term ownership at this stage post VW-gate and with electric still in its relatively infancy, I am at a loss as to what to buy. Automatic, family sized and decent reliable longevity required.

 

It is a shame Dacia don't do autos...

 

 

Edited August 2, 2017 by daiking

[ProDave]

2 hours ago, daiking said:

 

 

I had to scrap a 17 year old automatic Micra in 2015 when it needed a new battery.

 

 

I am struggling to understand the economics of scrapping it for the price of a new battery?

 

My last car  I sold a couple of months ago was a 170K miles Subaru Forester that had given me 9 years of reliable motoring, but the tin worm was eating it. It had to have a cill welded to get through an MOT in March and the tester pointed out the long list of other bits on the verge of rotting away but this year only still an advisory.  Because it was such a reliable car I replaced it with a near identical one, a bit younger, a lot lower mileage and a lot better condition. If that gives me another 9 years I will be happy.

 

I do wonder how EV's will be treated when they get to the 15 year old "banger" category? With so much of the capital tied up in the battery, I guess it will be battery end of life that sends them to the scrap heap as the cost of replacing the battery would not be worth it? 

[Jeremy Harris]

36 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I do wonder how EV's will be treated when they get to the 15 year old "banger" category? With so much of the capital tied up in the battery, I guess it will be battery end of life that sends them to the scrap heap as the cost of replacing the battery would not be worth it? 

 

I reckon that a market will spring up, refurbishing EV batteries.  EVs are mechanically a great deal simpler than conventional cars (which is one reason why some have a two year service interval) and so if they don't rust away, or suffer accident damage, the life of the vehicle itself could be pretty long.  That life won't be blighted by things like emission law changes, either, as an old EV won't be any more polluting than a new one.

 

[jamiehamy]

That's my issue with this whole idea that we save the planet by changing from buying 1.3m new petrol cars a year in the UK to buying 1.3m electric ones. Of course it helps in one respect assuming generation from fossil fuel stops. 

 

But Until we address our greed for goods and treating even high value items  like cars as disposable,  we are not taking the issue seriously enough. 

 

As much as I like old cars I do feel that running them until they are truly dead is better than trading in after 3 years and scrapping after 10. My cars have 188k,193k and 234k. I feel no guilt that they are theoretically worse for the planet. 

 

Too much corporate opportunism in 'saving the planet' for my liking. Thi k about it - if manufacturers can sell over a million cars a year basically replacing like for like,  imagine the bonanza they are in for to when electric really takes off! 

[ProDave]

The next environmental issue is disposing / recycling millions of end of life batteries.......

[SteamyTea]

This talk of usual journey distance is a bit of a nonsense when it comes to range anxiety.

I could do 90% of my journeys on a gallon of diesel.  It is the other 10% that I need the flexibility.

When I travel up country to visit my mother 300 miles away, I do the journey in one stint.  I leave early and have a simple 4 hour or so drive.  No need to stop.  Sometimes I pop into see some friends in Chipping Norton, adding a few miles to the journey and two trips via Oxford.  I still don't have to 'fill up'.

I really don't like driving, but breaking a journey I find even worse.  I worked for Welcome Break as a contractor, though there is nothing wrong with their services, I am in now hurry to visit them, ever.

 

I know a Tesla owner (the one that got hit), and he claims (via a third party) that he can get to Bristol on a single charge.  Hell, I can get to London and back on a single tank.

 

I think range is everything when it comes to cars (well apart from handling, grip, noise levels, acceptable performance (my old Suzuki Swift 3 pot was a great runner) and fuel economy).  I had a motorbike that struggles to do 120 miles on a tank, it was hopeless for touring.

 

 

[jamiehamy]

26 minutes ago, ProDave said:

The next environmental issue is disposing / recycling millions of end of life batteries.......

Yup 

[AliG]

Looking up the data, the average age of a car at scrappage is 14 years and the average age of cars overall in the UK is 8 years.

 

I think people here may be unusual in how long they keep their cars. To build a car only takes the equivalent energy to around 250 gallons of fuel or drive 10,000 miles(I have not had time to fully check this but it seems about right). An electric car is maybe a quarter more. Thus driving a car for very long periods is not particularly saving the environment.

 

Cars have been getting more reliable and longer lived. The days of cars failing to start seem to be behind us.

 

However, things may start to change. One reason that that the lifespan of something goes up is a lack of innovation. Fridges last a long time, there has not been a lot of innovation in fridges. On the other hand the average life of a mobile phone fell when smart phones were introduced then rose again as the number of changing features fell.

 

I suspect that we are in for a period of faster change in cars so shorter lifespans. Devices with high levels of fast evolving electronics are unlikely to have a long lifespan. This will indeed be costly when they are in a high cost item like a car. Electronic items are also often expensive to fix. Even though the electric motors and batteries could run for 200,000 miles imagine the touch screen control running with the smoothness of a 10 year old iPad or simply breaking down. At the moment that is a round a £2000 repair, a big ask on a 10 year old car. On the other hand emissions systems repairs will be a thing of the past and they can become costly on older cars. I wold be interested to know the lifespan of smaller simpler cars versus larger more complicated cars. I would think that something like a Mercedes S-Class gets very expensive to run eventually and so doesn't have a practical life much over 10 years. 

 

Actually one reason I will buy a Tesla is they give you a guarantee of 49% of the original price on a 4 year PCP at 1.5%. I have always bought cars for cash as I don't like paying interest but I would not take the risk of depreciation on such a fast changing item and the interest rate is very low. In 4 years advances in batteries and other technology as well as more competition could seriously drive down the price of the first electric cars.

 

I would think you want to run a car 10 plus years I would stick to something with less gadgets and Japanese such as Dave's Subaru.

 

 

[ProDave]

20 minutes ago, AliG said:

Looking up the data, the average age of a car at scrappage is 14 years and the average age of cars overall in the UK is 8 years.

 

It would be interesting to drill down into the details of why cars now go to the scrap heap.

 

When I was a young boy, I remember my dad's Ford Anglia van getting scrapped at 10 years old because the tin worm had turned it into a colander. There was no underseal or any other anti corrosion measures then.  If cars now with all the fancy paints, under seals and other protection, plus better deign to avoid rot spots are rusting out at 14 years then the improvements in body protection have largely failed. 

 

I suspect rot is the reason for scrapping in only a minority of cases. I wonder what percentage are scrapped due to electronics failure or emissions failure?

 

Plenty of things have changed. I can recall major engine breakdowns being common and expecting a clutch to last only 50K miles.  Apart from servicing I never touch an engine now and have not needed one repaired for a very long time. I don't believe my last 170K mile car had ever had the clutch replaced.

 

The other factor may be that car leasing is so much more common than owning now. Nobody will want to lease a 14 year old car, so as a "business proposition" it is worthless so more likely to get scrapped than if in private ownership.  The clue to this ownership model is you never now see a new car advertised as £xx,xxx for sale, rather advertised as £yyy per month.

[AliG]

I have never used a PCP as the interest rates tend to be high so if you have the cash available it is an expensive way to buy a car. If you have cash available earning next to no interest then it is not a great way to buy a car but as most people have little savings then I guess it works out similar to a personal loan.

 

Apparently, however, 87% of all car sales including fleets were on finance last year. The non fleet percentage still seems to be around 80%.

 

Someone at work was telling me that someone came up to him the other day and said of his Audi S3, "nice car, how much a month". It's an odd question as it all depends on the deposit etc but it seems this is basically how almost all cars are sold.

 

 

[daiking]

2 hours ago, ProDave said:

I am struggling to understand the economics of scrapping it for the price of a new battery?

 

 

It's not hard.

 

I don't mind nursing a car through MOTs if it is otherwise reliable and only sees the garage once a year. If, however, it starts peeing on the carpet you must do the humane thing and put it down. It just happened that a new battery was the point at which I said enough is enough. the car was relatively low mileage but the car was falling apart. 

[ProDave]

18 minutes ago, AliG said:

Someone at work was telling me that someone came up to him the other day and said of his Audi S3, "nice car, how much a month". It's an odd question as it all depends on the deposit etc but it seems this is basically how almost all cars are sold.

 

Om the basis my last Subaru cost me £3500 to buy, and I sold it 9 years later for £500 my answer would be £27.77per month

[Crofter]

2 hours ago, jamiehamy said:

Until we address our greed for goods and treating even high value items  like cars as disposable,  we are not taking the issue seriously enough. 

 

I doubt many people are scrapping cars for the same reasons that they discard personal electronics or clothing. It simply comes down to economics rather than fasion/greed/laziness.

Last year I had to scrap my 11yr old Kia with 100k on it. I really, really wanted to keep it but the figures didn't add up. It was costing an average of over £500 a year in repairs/MOT work and a rusty subframe was an outright death sentence. Perhaps nine years in the Hebrides was to blame?

[Jeremy Harris]

On 26/07/2017 at 21:27, ProDave said:

This is a good point.  WHY do so many commute so far for work? Something the likes of HS2 will only increase.  What is driving people to live so far from work? Commuting has never done it for me (an hour each way on the works bus during my aprenticeship put me off that for life) I have always wanted to live somewhere close to my work, and more importantly, somewhere with not traffic jams en-route.  It we tackled the commuting issue, that would go a long way to solving the vehicle emissions problem.

 

 

In my case the reasons were pretty much forced by my choice of career.  When I joined the Scientific Civil Service, I effectively signed a contract with what was called a "mobility clause".  Like most, I never gave it a second thought, as it hadn't actually been invoked since WWII, and was a hang-over from then. 

 

I happily worked at the same research establishment from 1976 until 1992, commuting by bike a fair bit of that time, when government cuts and privatisation meant that the establishment where I was working  was going to close.  I was given a choice, take up a post in South West Scotland, within 6 weeks, or be summarily dismissed for breach of contract, with no redundancy pay or compensation.  Having around 17 years worth of non-transferable (at that time) pension rights, that would have been frozen from the date of dismissal, I had little choice but to move over 400 part of miles North.  I stayed there for five years, with a 9 mile commute each way, which was OK.  The main downside was that the job also meant working in London on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which meant driving to Glasgow (hour and a half), getting the shuttle to Heathrow (hour and a quarter), the tube into central London (40 minutes) and back again on those two  days most weeks (so 16 to 17 hour days, twice a week).  It also meant a lot of international travel, so I was away from home for around 8 to 10 weeks a year on average.

 

In 1997, the same thing as before happened, the place was to be closed and again I had the choice, move or get sacked.  I was asked to go and run two research establishments near/on the South Coast, one in Portsmouth, one near Chichester.  That meant a fair bit of travel, but frankly I didn't have a lot of choice by then, as I was well over 40, had a lot invested in my pension (that still wasn't transferable at that time) so I had to put up with it.  After two years, there was a decision made to privatise those two establishments, and I managed to escape privatisation by getting myself seconded to a management consultancy post for two years, working for the army (not fun.........).  That meant a 60 mile each way commute, until after a year I got sick and tired of driving for an hour and a half morning and evening, and we decided to move to somewhere reasonably central to anywhere left that I might possibly get posted to (a bit of a guessing game).  That's how we ended up in Wiltshire - because of the contraction in defence, most places I could possibly be sent to were within about 60 to 70 miles of Porton.  The next post was split between Bristol (70 miles each way), Yeovilton, (50 miles each way) and Main Building, in London (an hour and a half on the train each way).  The job after that was at the Royal College of Military Science, Shrivenham, so "only" a 40 mile each way commute, then, by pure luck, my final posting was a mile from where we lived, so I could cycle to work again!  

 

So, fate, and my desire to keep a decent pension, meant that my original plan to stay working at the same place, cycling to work much of the time, got trashed by circumstances outwith my control.  I could have binned my pension and tried to find a job in Cornwall, but as @SteamyTea can confirm, finding decent jobs in that neck of the woods is not easy, and there were no opportunities at all for someone who had spent virtually all his career to date in flight test.

 

The flip side of having spent a fair bit of my career commuting a fair distance to work is that I ended up being able to retire at 58 on a decent, index linked, pension and a lump sum that was more than enough to buy our plot.  I reckon the sacrifice of commuting a fair distance to work for a few years was worth it, personally.

[Bitpipe]

We have an independent garage up the road, I use it for all my MOT, servicing etc. They reckon that they'll be out of business in 10 years as the 'repairability' of cars in plummeting.

 

ECUs were the first issue, they're not cost effective for the small garages to remove, refurb / replace and reinstall. Now the issue is s/w which needs to be licensed (no such thing as 3rd party / after market spares there). So soon they'll be reduced to consumables.

 

At the same time, many cars that are mechanically sound are not economic to repair - case in point the auto gearbox ECU on mine is a bit flakey (I use a pen in the dash to override when it locks out) - a new one from Audi is going to cost a significant proportion of what my car is now worth.

 

Telsa is an extreme case I'm sure I've read that the difference in range options is entirely s/w controlled and not a h/w dependancy.  Can be activated remotely as an upgrade?