Electric vehicles

[MusicMan]

Just heard that the OLEV brant for installing a home charger is being cut (again) by £150, and I can't get the higher one despite it being on order as this is in effect from April 1, and key installers aren't working because of the virus. Government's left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, again. Oh well.

McNally EV that installed my charger were at our house yesterday, they are still working. That was through Podpoint.

The day before arrival they ring you and ask you to confirm if you are anyone in the house has symptoms or a diagnosis.

There's no trouble with OE (the charger installer) nor Octopus (the smart meter installer). The trouble is with Western Power, who control the distribution network in half (?) the country. The main fuse on our 1960s house has jammed in its holder - excessive bitumen I am told - and can't be replaced by the usual meter installers. Western Power are the only ones allowed to do this and there are no alternatives, I am told. Only when they are done can the rest of the chain start. And WP have shut down all its installers nationwide, because of the virus, with no options to check the health of the household.

I have to respect the decision. And as i said, the present charge in the car will probably last me all 12 weeks!

 

[MusicMan]

None of us knows other people's business well enough to tell them how it should be done, not at least without an in-depth study by somebody experienced. And as Beech says, the business may actually depend on the client's choices not their own.

And yes when "all this" is over they may insist on the previous service returning. But new models of work simply have to be found for the next few months or more, probably a year or so. In some cases at least, the different method of working could come to be seen to be an advantage to the client. They may come to prefer to have an issue fixed in one hour by remote control rather than in 24 hours by a visit, and this could even become a valuable USP.

And I do have experience of running a network of field service engineers in the USA from a single location, including huge customers (major computer manufacturers) who demanded that a problem be fixed in four hours. They didn't care how, and if it was not a hardware problem were more than happy to have remote software fixing (if you could get permission to get through their firewall) or a phone call to talk the user through the problem and its resolution.

When the initial investment is paid off, companies may even be able to offer cheaper service (or retain more profit) in the long run.

 

[Lons]

Completely different to beech's business, but when I was working I lost count of the number of times customers and potential customers said "thanks for coming to see me/us".

In some cases it was unavoidable (I had to go and physically look at their aeroplane and paperwork), in other cases not so.

Unsurprisingly, the most grateful for a personal visit were those "far off the beaten track".

But I stress, completely different business to Al's.

Yep there are many types of business where it's essential to travel.

I've been out of the loop a while but if I discount my own business where it was impossible to have anything else but face to face contact I spent my life working for and managing companies in extremely competitive sales markets. If you have several aggressive competitors in your area selling broadly similar products then the only way to maintain and grow the business is to build relationships with your customers. It's the manager / owner who does that along with his reps and it's maintained and reinforced by internal sales personnel. The companies who don't do that go out of business!
Like it or not there's still a **** of a lot of business takes place on the golf course and over lunch.

 

[Woody2Shoes]

Completely different to beech's business, but when I was working I lost count of the number of times customers and potential customers said "thanks for coming to see me/us".

In some cases it was unavoidable (I had to go and physically look at their aeroplane and paperwork), in other cases not so.

Unsurprisingly, the most grateful for a personal visit were those "far off the beaten track".

But I stress, completely different business to Al's.

Yep there are many types of business where it's essential to travel.

I've been out of the loop a while but if I discount my own business where it was impossible to have anything else but face to face contact I spent my life working for and managing companies in extremely competitive sales markets. If you have several aggressive competitors in your area selling broadly similar products then the only way to maintain and grow the business is to build relationships with your customers. It's the manager / owner who does that along with his reps and it's maintained and reinforced by internal sales personnel. The companies who don't do that go out of business!
Like it or not there's still a **** of a lot of business takes place on the golf course and over lunch.

I think that beech has mistakenly taken my observation/questions as negative criticism of the way he does business. I detect a sensitivity that I should have spotted sooner. Client relationships are at the heart of every business, and face-to-face is still the best way to nurture client relationships in certain circumstances. My main point is that we may learn over the next few months that f2f is less vital in many situations than currently assumed by many (not necessarily beech, who I'm sure knows all he needs to know about his business and his clients).

PS I'm not saying much different from what beech wrote: "I said in a message a few days ago about a client which is so hugely profitable that they do not invest in their staff training and rely on us travelling to compensate. Such poor management is rife across the UK and will become a major issue soon if say 60% of working age people are infected with Covid"

 

[Lons]

I think that beech has mistakenly taken my observation/questions as negative criticism of the way he does business. I detect a sensitivity that I should have spotted sooner. Client relationships are at the heart of every business, and face-to-face is still the best way to nurture client relationships in certain circumstances. My main point is that we may learn over the next few months that f2f is less vital in many situations than currently assumed by many (not necessarily beech, who I'm sure knows all he needs to know about his business and his clients).

Unfortunately Woody many of those businesses that rely on F2F relationships won't survive to prove it one way or 'tother.

 

[Woody2Shoes]

I think that beech has mistakenly taken my observation/questions as negative criticism of the way he does business. I detect a sensitivity that I should have spotted sooner. Client relationships are at the heart of every business, and face-to-face is still the best way to nurture client relationships in certain circumstances. My main point is that we may learn over the next few months that f2f is less vital in many situations than currently assumed by many (not necessarily beech, who I'm sure knows all he needs to know about his business and his clients).

Unfortunately Woody many of those businesses that rely on F2F relationships won't survive to prove it one way or 'tother.

I guess, but this covid won't go on forever, and capitalism is all about 'creative destruction'. When the Forestry Commission was set up they decided that all the new spruce tree plantations would provide the nation with 'pitprops and newsprint'. There's no market for the former and a rapidly dwindling one for the latter. Putting it a another way, how many of the FTSE 250 constituents from 20 years ago are in the current lineup and doing what they did then. Of course covid is going to cause huge upsets of all kinds for months to come, but life will go on and we will all learn/improve as a result one way or another.

 

[Geoff_S]

I think that this thread has mutated.

Anyway, when I was working and travelling I know for a fact that the company was not happy about it, too much cost and not one of
the travelling employees was happy about it either. Hours of motorway tedium and drab commercial hotels for the evening. I don't miss any of that.

And I'm sure that owning an EV at that time would have made no difference whatsoever. (Back on track (hammer) )

 

[RogerS]

..... When the Forestry Commission was set up they decided that all the new spruce tree plantations would provide the nation with 'pitprops and newsprint'. There's no market for the former and a rapidly dwindling one for the latter. .....

Bad analogy ! They have plenty of other markets for the timber. Iggesunds. Egger. Hoover the damn stuff up. He said knowing that in a few weeks time this is going to happen. For 12 weeks.

 

[beech1948]

Geoffery S,
Yes this thread has mutated and it's probably my fault. Sorry. I will give one final update and then take it elsewhere.

Its Sunday and I'm stuck in the office after helping a mate this am. I'm trying to think about what to do next week as our guys out there will be vulnerable to the Covid-19 all the time they are out there. Unfortunately there are not too many options other than keep them at home or send them out.

1) Set up a Triage scheme to identify which technical errors are going to close down a company and deal with these with a visit

2) Put 4 people onto the network development to be able to link into clients and negotiate with clients for this access

3) Send all but 8 people to work from home

4) Train all those at home on what to say to clients, how to guide them through a remote diagnosis and how to guide them through a remote error correction routine.

Take care all of you.

Cheers Al

 

[beech1948]

So back on track with a Tesla thought.

It is Tesla policy to disconnect from Supercharging any and all Teslas which have been repaired from salvage vehicles. In other words you do not own your car and can not make all of the decisions about it. Tesla policy is to deny salvage repaired vehicles access at the Supercharge points even when presented with a valid credit/debit card.

Interesting. Of course any new Tesla would not be crashed and need repair would it. This came from a friend of a friend who found out the hard way as he tried to recharge his Tesla. He is now back to home charging but this reduces the value and likely range of his £30k + vehicle.

 

[Geoff_S]

So back on track with a Tesla thought.

It is Tesla policy to disconnect from Supercharging any and all Teslas which have been repaired from salvage vehicles. In other words you do not own your car and can not make all of the decisions about it. Tesla policy is to deny salvage repaired vehicles access at the Supercharge points even when presented with a valid credit/debit card.

Interesting. Of course any new Tesla would not be crashed and need repair would it. This came from a friend of a friend who found out the hard way as he tried to recharge his Tesla. He is now back to home charging but this reduces the value and likely range of his £30k + vehicle.

Did he know it was a crash repaired vehicle when he bought it?

 

[Lons]

How does the charging point recognise that it's a repaired vehicle?

 

[beech1948]

I do not know except a salvaged vehicle is notified to Tesla Inc VIN data which is read by the charger and some computer somewhere says NO

 

[AES]

I know NOTHING about Tesla cars, but before the end of last year there was a big hullabaloo in our papers here because the Police in Basel (nearest "big" city) had bought a few and they cost a lot. Then the journo's noises got even louder because it turned out the Police couldn't use them because the cars were automatically sending data back to Tesla in the US and the Police couldn't stop it happening. What sort of data and what happened to the cars in the end I don't know/remember - to be honest I didn't pay all that much attention at the time, and as said it was quite a few months ago now.

Sounds like a typical "journo's story" to me (i.e. 5% fact and all the rest just made up BS) but as there's at least one Tesla owner here (sorry, I've forgotten the name of the member) perhaps he can shed some real light on that matter/the "crashed car" matter above? There seems a bit of vague similarity in these 2 "stories" to me.

 

[Droogs]

This is a big problem with the Tesla model of selling cars. there is a big debate about who really owns what in the car. They seem to think you are just buying the hardware and they still own the software and can do what ever they like with it. As much as I am pro BEV, I do not think that all their (Tesla's) bells and whistles are needed, especially if we are just looking to get people to change from the fuel type they use to something greener.
Tesla are very much like Google and FB and all the other IT software providers, they will give you the moon and its all free or cheap to use in terms of cash but in others costs ?????

 

[AES]

OK Droogs, so are you saying that my half-remembered Basel Police cars story has at least SOME truth in it?

But P.S. Those Tesla fastbacks don't arf look good, don't they? ;-)

 

[Droogs]

All Teslas pass back all their operational information back to Daddy Elon as that is how they advance the capabilities of the software. The S and X do look good, for me the rest are just blancmange or etcha-sketch

 

[Lons]

The S and X do look good, for me

I've just choked on my coffee!
Googled the S, thought that looks good then found a price, £82k as a starter :shock: not on my wish list, could buy a low mileage Aston Martin for that! If I had the funds that is. :lol:

 

[Droogs]

I did say looked good Lons not value for money (hammer) :lol:

 

[D_W]

I suppose a lot could change in 15 years but battery development doesn't seem to be developing quickly.

I think this is a line being fed to people, and it's not remotely close to true. I have no electric vehicles and am not a zealot, but think about your cordless tools from 15 years ago vs. now. Remember ni-cd tools, and how great we thought NiMH was? All a distant memory.

battery capacity in 2010 was $1,153 per hwhr. In 2019, it was $156. expected cost per kwhr is below $100 in 2024 and is expcxted to be about $60 in 2030.

Electrolytes will probably switch to salt or something other than lithium based, and batteries are likely to be dry electrolyte in the future.

By the time 2035 comes around, if oil is cheap, it'll only be due to the burden that battery takes on.

In the south here in the US, there are companies implementing battery powered buses. Their objective was to take the aging packs and use them to store electricity in the depots so that they could purchase smart meter power at the lowest rates and then use it during peak, but they've got an issue thus far that the packs are lasting far longer than they expected.

What's that mean? expected life of a current pack is 90% capacity at 1000-2000 cycles (half a million miles in the newer stuff coming out). What do you do with a 75 kwhr pack that still has 90% of its capacity? Put it in your garage and manage your power through it so that you can use the cheapest power you can get at a given time of the day.

It's going to punish car dealers (but they'll adapt) as they make more money from service now than anything else (Sales, finance) and that will dry up to a large extent.

Vehicles that go slow and start and stop a lot are first (buses, garbage trucks, delivery trucks) because it makes economic sense.