224 - The Jack Scarlett Returns Episode

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Episode 224 • 9th September 2024 • The EV Musings Podcast • Gary Comerford

Gary:Hi, I'm Gary and this is episode 224 of EV Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today, we'll be looking at what's exciting in the world of new and preferably small electric vehicles. Before we start, I wanted to remind you that later this season, we're looking at the whole area of payment processing, different methods of payment, pre-authorizations, roaming, etc. Keep an ear out for that one. Now, our main topic of discussion today is the progress that EVs are making towards becoming cheaper and more available. And to help me have this discussion, I'm delighted to welcome Fully Charged show presenter, Jack Scarlett, back to the show. Welcome, Jack.

Jack:Hello, Gary. Nice to see you again.

Gary:Jack, got a couple of things to talk about today, but I want to sort of start off with, as part of your job, you get to test drive pretty much all the new EVs that are released in the UK and indeed elsewhere. And I want to talk specifics about those in a moment, but I also want to go a little bit inside baseball and talk about how that works. Because if I was to generalize the work that you do for Fully Charged and put it into a soundbite, sorry, but it seems that you do two different kinds of car reviews. There's the 15 minute, well, we'll be given access to this model in a room and we can get in and touch and play, but we can't drive it type review. And then there's the, well, we've got the car for a day or longer so we can hack around on the roads and put it through its paces kind of review. So, talk to me a little bit about those different approaches. How and why does that happen for a start?

Jack:You're absolutely spot on. Those are the two stages of launch that most car brands will sort of host for media. First of all, as you say, it's come to this all white studio and have a look at it. You can't drive it. It may not even be real. It might be a clay model. It might be an early pre-prod car. Some things may not be quite finished yet. There may be a few 3D printed components here and there. The infotainment screen may just be a television showing examples of what the infotainment may look like. And you get all the stats or potentially some of the stats or potentially none of the stats. The fun thing about those is oftentimes you don't actually get the information at all until you arrive on the day and have signed the NDA. If you're lucky, you get a press pack 24 hours or 48 hours beforehand and you get to prepare a wee script. But sometimes you get there and you go, right, what info have you got for me? And they go, well, we can't tell you anything at all yet. And those videos end up being shorter, but I'll never get sick of the excitement of seeing a very new car for the absolute first time and the novelty of being one of the first people to see it as well. And then, of course, a few months later, or maybe many months later in the case of a few recent launches, you get to drive the car and that will usually be a production model. It might still be pre-prod, but very, very close to finished. And they might just caveat and say, we're just dialing a few things on the suspension, but everything else is good to go. And that's when you really get to find out what it's about. That can vary in terms of how much time you get with the car. Sometimes it's just a couple of hours and you've got to make some swift assessments. And that's why we always characterize those as first drives and not comprehensive reviews, because they are by no means comprehensive. Sometimes if we're lucky, we'll get to arrange something bespoke with the brand and we'll get to go, hey, let's go here. Let's go to the Scottish Highlands for two days and make something really, really epic and really take our time filming it and taking our time to familiarize with the car. Those are our favorite shoots. We don't get to do them all that often, but they're a real treat when we do. And I guess the kind of final third potential stage, once the international launches have taken place, is the cars arrive on the press fleet. And that's when you're able to book in some time with one, borrow one for a week, perhaps, and really delve into the nitty gritty of it, really live with it, understand it and do the in-depth review. The sort of dichotomy to doing what we do is the later you are, the less views it's likely to get, right? So that first look, no one's ever seen it before. That's likely to be the most popular video when I know the least about it and have the least to say about it. Conversely, the in-depth review, having lived with it and driven it for a couple of weeks, I'm speaking with the most authority there, but the chances are that video is going to do the least views in the kind of spectrum because people know about the car by that point. So yeah, there's a balancing act, but I enjoy all stages of the process. Will Barron

Gary:Do you find those 15-minute, I mean, notwithstanding what you've just said about the views, do you actually find those 15-minute ones worthwhile or would it be better from your point of view to say, right, we're not going to do those, but we're going to go to the next stage where we've actually got a working one that we can drive around and do something with that rather than we've got a non-functioning vehicle or a half-finished vehicle and we don't know all the information.

Jack:Is it worthwhile? I mean, if we're being brutally honest, what we are doing at that stage is essentially reading the press material that we've been given with some pizazz and potentially opinionating a little bit on the design and the layout of the interior. So in a word, we could probably, in a word, no, we could potentially do without that stage. But I know I get a kick out of seeing a shiny new car that's never been seen before for the first time and seemingly so do our viewers. So I can totally understand why that is part of the process. But on the rare occasion when the first time we've seen a car, we've been able to drive it, that's the best, because then you get the double hit. You get all the buzz of, oh my God, it's a new car, and you get to really get into the nitty gritty of it straight away. So I'm trying to think what that last happened with. MG are quite good for just springing a new car out of absolutely nowhere, but it doesn't happen very often.

Gary:Sort of finally on this before we move on to the bulk of the discussion, talk to me a little bit about the mechanics of how that filming actually works. Do you physically go in and say, right, we've got 15 minutes, we're in the white room, I'm literally going to walk around and whoever you've got on the camera will just sort of... He's kind of tuned into you because he knows how you do things and you know what happens. So you're going to go around the outside, you might sit in, he's going to be filming in from the passenger seat, you might have a look over the dashboard and that, or does it change depending on what the vehicle is?

Jack:That's a great question. We've had to become masters of making do with whatever allotted time there is. We have a clear idea of what our preferred timings are. If it's a studio video and it's up to us, we'll say, could we have three or four hours, please? If it's a car review on the road, we'll say, can we have a couple of days, please? If it's up to us, which it rarely is. Sometimes it's 30 minutes in the studio and sometimes it's three hours on the road with the car and the roads are quite trafficky and actually you're struggling to find anywhere to stop and pull over. So yeah, I like to think that our production team is so good that you wouldn't necessarily be able to look across our uploads and tell which ones we did in a terrible rush. You can certainly tell which ones we had lots and lots of time for because I think they really stand out in terms of the production quality. But that's a fun part of the job. I try to view it not as frustrating, but as an interesting creative challenge. Okay, we've only got an hour today. Let's see what we can do. As far as how we use that time, generally speaking, we like to get all the talking done first. That's the A-roll, that's the me stuff. And then once that's over and done with, Andy or Louis or George or whoever I'm filming with knows exactly how much time they have remaining to get all the B-roll. And they'll start with the essential stuff, you know, the wide shots, the front, the side, the three-quarter angle. And then with whatever time they've got left at the end, they'll get funky and they'll experiment and they'll try some new stuff that they've seen online or they'll whip out a new piece of equipment that they've been dying to try out, which is always our favourite bit, actually. But that's not a hard and fast rule. Sometimes the cloth comes off the car. I've just been given the press pack and I'll say to Andy, look, could you just get cracky on the B-roll while I jot some notes down? So, yeah, it's a real team effort and I'm grateful to have a production team who I really kind of trust and love to work with because you wouldn't really want to be doing it with a complete stranger each time. It's important to have synergy when the time is against you.

Gary: Moving on, when we spoke last time, we talked about the mythical £10,000 Chinese car. And you said at the time that according to correspondent Elliot out in China, these £10,000 Chinese cars wouldn't necessarily come to the UK because they don't want to be seen as cheap and nasty. Do you think that's still the prevailing opinion from, say, the Far East?

Jack:A little bit. A good recent example that kind of informs this is the new Dacia Spring, which is not Chinese, of course. It's Romanian, but actually it's French because it's a Renault Group brand. And that is now the cheapest new electric car that you can buy in the UK, starting price of £14,999. That is remarkably cheap. Bearing in mind, I think the cheapest new car that you can buy is the Dacia Sandero, which is like £12,000. So we've almost reached the very bottom rung of the ladder now. Great to see. And it's cheap. It's got a certain charm about it. It's utilitarian, but effective. But there are certain components that you touch and feel and you go, oh, this is made to a lower standard than what you might be used to. The reason for that is it's actually based on something called the Renault Kwid, which is an India market only Renault product, which is built to a lower standard for a different market with different expectations. And I would say that that car is just about at the bottom of what a European customer would accept, which is to say there's quite a lot of wind noise when you go beyond 50 miles per hour. The rearview mirror kind of feels like it might come off in your hand when you adjust it. You know, these are not terrible things, but these are the things you have to do in order to achieve that price point. And in the UK, interestingly, there's three trim levels for the Dacia Spring. We're not getting the bottom one. The £15,000 car is the middle trim level. And the reason we're not getting the bottom one is because it doesn't have air conditioning, and it doesn't have an infotainment screen. It just has a phone holder on the dash, which I actually think is fantastic. But I think the aircon thing specifically, it was deemed a bit too bargain basement for the discerning British customer. So I think there's your bottom end right there. I just don't really see how you get much cheaper than that without making the steering wheel an optional extra.

Gary:Fantastic. I'm going to come back and go through sort of a list of vehicles in a short while and sort of get your views on that. But just sort of as an overall framing, what's your favourite car that you've reviewed over the last 12 months?

Jack:By a landslide, it's the Ioniq 5N, which also happens to be my favourite shoot of the year because the stars aligned for that shoot. We got to do that thing we rarely get to do that I just described. We got to take it up to the Scottish Highlands and just have the place to ourselves for a couple of days, which was perfect for that car. And it's just an astonishing vehicle. You know, I've a million times said on camera and on stage that the Koreans are leading the line among the OEMs. They are way out in front as far as just getting this transition right, going early, nailing the basics. And now they're so good at the basics that they're just mucking around with new design philosophies and performance-focused gadgetry, which is what we see on this Ioniq 5N. So it's a medium-sized family crossover. It's very fast. So far, so normal, right? There's plenty of electric cars that can do that. But then you've got some really lovely performance-y hardware in terms of the brakes and the suspension and the way that they've stiffened the chassis that makes it genuinely good to drive. And on top of that, you've got this mind-bending software in the form of imaginary engine noise and an imaginary gearbox. So I'm sure most people who listen to your pod are vaguely familiar with this. I'll run through it very quickly. You've got paddles. You've got paddles behind the steering wheel, which in other electric Hyundais you would use to adjust your level of regen braking. But in manual mode on the Ioniq 5N, you are pulling gears with those paddles. There's a rev limiter in front of you on the screen. You hear the engine rev up. If you get to the top of the rev limiter, you run out of power. It just bounces off it and you don't get to go any faster until you pull that paddle. And when you pull that paddle, it briefly disconnects the motor so you feel yourself jerked back in your seat and you start at the bottom of the next gear. And even saying this now, I know that it sounds a bit naff. I know it does. Even watching our video back, it doesn't quite capture it. You just have to try this thing for yourself because the software is so beautifully executed that you just forget. You just forget after a while. And even if you don't forget, you're having so much fun that you don't really care whether it's real or not. So that's a remarkable vehicle. And it is the most fun I've ever had driving an electric car. And I'm still in two minds about whether parroting internal combustion is the way to make electric cars more fun. But look, it's a way. And they've done it very well. And I look forward to seeing what their rivals come up with as alternatives.

Gary:I got to drive the 5N at Everything Electric in Harrogate. And just like you said then, it's kind of, well, you know, it's got these gears and it's got this noise and, you know, it's a bit of a gimmick. And, you know, I just want to see what it's like. And after about 10 minutes of driving this thing, I'm thinking if I can sell all my furniture and live off baked beans for a year, I could probably afford one of these because it is the most fun I've ever had driving, well, pretty much any car. And I've driven, you know, 911s for 10 years and I've driven the Porsche Taycan on a track. And that sort of stuff. And this was just, you know, I hit the red button on the steering wheel and then kick the accelerator down. And I giggled like a little girl. And I watched Gavin Shoebridge, who reviews electric vehicles for the New Zealand market, and he reviewed the 5N. Ivan, and he did exactly the same thing and giggled like a little child. It was absolutely a fantastic car. The problem is they will sell like hotcakes and two thirds of them are going to end up in a ditch because people aren't going to be able to handle the power.

Jack:That is potentially true, even with all the electronic aids, but I mean what a machine and again, Hyundai, just a moment for them. They now have, as far as I'm concerned, in my personal opinion, the best electric family car in the IONIQ 5, potentially the most entertaining electric performance car in the IONIQ 5N, and then I don't want to speak too soon, but the new Hyundai Insta, which we've seen in a studio and will drive soon, looks very much like being the finest entry-level affordable electric car when it arrives later this year. So I mean, just, yeah, remarkable form they are in.

Gary:Absolutely. Now, we've talked about your favourite EV that you've done in the last 12 months. Narrow it down to the, not necessarily the smaller, but the cheaper end of the market. Which of the cheaper ones that you've reviewed do you think has stood out most for you over the last 12 months?

Jack:I do want to just talk about that Hyundai Insta, and I'll give you a couple of others as well, just so that this doesn't turn into a sort of Hyundai enthusiast podcast. The reason I love the Insta is it's a K-car, essentially. It's based on something called the Hyundai Casper. In fact, it's called the Hyundai Casper in the Korean market, and they've had it there for ages as an ICE car. We saw them all over Seoul when we were there a couple of years ago. It's an adorable little thing. And it's just a masterclass in packaging because it's ditty on the outside, but inexplicably spacious on the inside, despite the fact that it has an ICE version, again, for the Korean market only. Everywhere else, it'll be EV exclusively. It's got these big sofa seats, these kind of open plan arrangement, and the seats are just, they're just big, squashy armchairs. There's a kind of cup holder in the seat, just next to your hip bone, like you know how in some sofas, you've got cup holders in the armrests, a bit like that. The seats go completely flat, all of them, so you can camp in it. You can get long objects into it. It's just a wonderfully innovative little car, and done with a real kind of tongue-in-cheek. There's something very cheerful about the design of it. So I'm a big fan of that. You touch on the Dacia spring, which is just simplicity done well, and the thing I love about Dacia is they have this kind of persona of ruggedness. And what that actually just means is the dials and switches in the cabin are made from slightly thicker cheap plastics than everyone else's cheap plastics, but it means that there's a lovely thunk to everything. You pull the gear lever back, and it's got a weightiness to it, and you turn up your air con, and that's got a nice heft to it, and that just gives it a little something. It gives it a bit of personality, and that's what you've got to do when you're making really cheap cars. You've got to do everything as cheaply as possible, and then you kind of pick one thing where you go, okay, well, we're going to spend a bit more here to give it some personality. And then the third in the trio that we've reviewed this year is, of course, the Citroen EC3. The video didn't prove as popular as perhaps I'd hoped it would, because it's a fantastic affordable electric car, potentially just a bit dull-looking on the outside, and maybe that's its downfall, but wonderfully comfortable. That's, of course, Citroen's USP, and they've done everything very cheaply, and then they've given it this incredibly supple, squashy suspension, which works well in a small, slow, affordable electric car, because you're not in a rush anyway. So between those three, it's been a pretty momentous year for small, affordable electric cars. Two years ago, if someone said, what's the best cheap electric car, I'd have probably said the MG4, which is, you know, what, £28,000? It's only relatively cheap. It's only cheap compared to what else there was at the time. Great car, but it always made me feel a little bit queasy having to answer that question with something, you know, knocking on the door of £30,000. So now we have a £15,000 electric car. We've got £22,000 electric cars, and they're really decent. And what always happens when one or two brands come out with these is everyone else has to fall in line. And now where the bar is, other brands have no choice but to try and hit those similar price points. So I expect many more in the next 18 months.

Gary:I'm going to talk about price points in a second, because I want to give you a quote that I heard from the head of Vauxhall recently. But before we go on to that, where are you on the whole overspec the car to make it luxurious versus basic is best? And as a typical example of that, the electric Mini used to be cheaper than the petrol Mini on which it was based. But that was only because the petrol Mini on which it was based was quite a highly specced version. It wasn't the basic, cheapest chips Mini. So should we be looking... I think I know what your answer is, but I'll ask you anyway. Should we be looking more at the kind of E-up type of vehicles where, you know, a very basic car, which, as you say, like the Dacia Spring, doesn't actually have an inbuilt screen. You've got to put your own phone in there. Or should we be looking at sort of, you know, the BYD Dolphin, which has got quite a lot of...

Jack:It's relatively cheap in the big scheme of things. It's got a lot of goodies on board, and those goodies are bumping up the price tag. I think give people the option to have less. I like to think that we're seeing a bit of a kind of comeback for the really, really entry level spec, because as you know, when electric cars were newish, we were seeing brands just throwing gadgets at them, in my opinion, in order to justify relatively high prices, which in turn were covering, you know, the behind the scenes costs of rebuilding their factories to facilitate electric vehicle manufacture, retraining their staff, you know, the enormous cost of getting into building electric cars. And it was frustrating, because I think most of us will get into a top spec version of a car and just kind of go, I don't need nine tenths of this. So when you drive something like the Dacia Spring, which is blissfully simple, there's not even any driving modes, you know, if you want to drive in eco, you just press a little bit less hard with your right foot. It's refreshing. And actually, you come out of it, I certainly came out of it thinking, God, I really didn't miss much just then. I really didn't miss much. And that's specific to affordable cars when it comes to kind of middling stuff and premium stuff. Brands have a brand image to uphold, right? So like Audi are never going to give you a car with no infotainment screen because they are Audi and that would not be very Audi to do. And I respect that. I understand that they have a, you know, a premium reputation, which must be upheld. But as far as affordable stuff, yeah, emphatic, yes, I'm desperate to see more of this, like really, really simple entry level spec. I even quite like it when they do a really small battery version, just to get that starting price down. The Fiat 500 is a good example of this. I think most people get it with the bigger battery, with the longer range. But if you can do with less, if you're just looking for a runabout because you've got another car for long trips, there is a really, really small battery one that just does, you know, 120 miles and is really cheap to buy. So more of that, please.

Gary:Absolutely. Just a quick word about Stellantis, because there's a couple. of those on the list that I want to talk about, Vauxhall, Frontier, and things like that, but they're making a major move in Europe based on that standard skateboard platform that they've got. But my impression is they always seem to be relatively inefficient as electric vehicles, a relatively low miles per kilowatt hour for the size of car. Has that been your experience in driving them?

Jack:What we're seeing with a lot of the Stellantis brands now is they're facelifted, the kind of V1.5 of some of their first electric cars. So your Vauxhall Mokas, your Citroen EC4s and the like have had midlife refreshes. And seemingly improved efficiency has been one of the focuses across the board with that facelift, which is really great to see. Because generally speaking, we're talking about brands that focus on smaller cars in the Stellantis family, and smaller cars must be efficient. It's just not acceptable. If you're making a little ditty city car and it's not clearing four miles to the kilowatt hour effortlessly, then something's horribly wrong. I won't do my whole efficiency spiel now, but it's a good thing for countless reasons, right? If a car goes further on a smaller battery, you can fit it with a smaller battery, it can be cheaper, et cetera. To their credit, I will say that I have driven facelifted versions of Stellantis cars and the efficiency has been noticeably improved, but it did have to be. It did have to be, because the two issues with those early Stellantis cars were they didn't go far enough and they were a little bit too expensive up front. They do appear to be addressing both of those things in earnest. And optimistically, I would say that we appear to be witnessing the kind of benefits of the Stellantis merger. It's all about parts sharing, knowledge sharing, and getting that cost per unit down so that they can compete with their rivals. On the whole, Stellantis are okay in my book. I do think that they're moving in the right direction. And actually, I think that some of their brands are starting to come out with some really exciting stuff from the Jeep Avenger, which is just a charming little crossover, all the way up to the new Maseratis, which I am really actively trying to get my hands on because apparently they're awesome.

went like this. By the end of: 2024

Jack:I think it's really encouraging. I think it's really encouraging. I think this is the day that we had dreamed of for years and years and years. And those of us who are clued up on EVs have known for a long time that actually the long-term cost of these vehicles may well have been cheaper all along, even when the sticker price was a bit higher to start with. But we're now, that gap is just shrinking so rapidly. Extremely encouraging to see that across the board, a brand like Vauxhall can now offer something like that. A tiny bit cheeky if they're doing 36 versus 48 month leases. They're slightly bending the truth there, but the fact remains that that gap is shrinking. It's shrinking as the cost of batteries tumbles and it will continue to do so. And Robert is very good at calling out the brands who still have a substantial gap in the sticker price between their petrol models and their EVs, in that their EVs are substantially more expensive still. Because, well, it's just quite hard to justify that now. It's difficult to really explain that price differential now that most of the legacy car brands have started making electric cars, which means they have the facilities to make them. And now that the price of batteries is less than it once was. So yeah, I'm sure that Robert will continue to do the Lord's work in calling those brands out wherever he gets the chance to.

Gary:And I always find it interesting because, you know, I've been going to conferences and meetings and webinars and things like that for a couple of years now. And everybody's been saying, oh yes, we're approaching price parity. And three or four years ago, it was, well, we're going to have price parity in two years. And last year it was going to be, well, we're going to have price parity in two years. And I was at the EV Summit a couple of weeks ago and they said, yeah, we're going to have price parity in about two years. And it just seems to me that if some of the major manufacturers wanted price parity, we could have that now. And I think that there's not necessarily an ulterior motive for keeping the prices up, because obviously, you know, they want to discourage EV uptake because they're making more money on the other cars that they're selling. More importantly, they're making money on the servicing of the fossil fuel cars that they're selling. But you'd think with something like the ZEV mandate coming in saying you need to be selling a certain number of electric vehicles, that they'd start to look a little bit more about bringing this differential down a bit. And I just find it interesting that they're not pushing forward with that as quickly as maybe we would like.

Jack:100%. 100%. There's got to be some brands, especially some more premium ones who are looking at the ZEV mandate and really sweating and thinking about what levers they're going to have to pull in order to minimise the punishment that awaits them at the end of this year when they fail to hit that target. And it does seem to be the premium brands that aren't really that worried or in that much of a rush, I should say. And I suppose it may simply be because customers of those brands can afford the difference and they will just buy the one that they want to buy. Yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting. I don't want to single any brands out right now because we're being diplomatic. But there's certainly a few who you just look at the chasm in price between their EVs and their ICE models. And it's often the same car with two powertrains. And you just think, how can you justify that? It's £12,000 more. I know. I know. It's bizarre. Anyway, moving on, let's talk about specific vehicles. Now, I've got a list of them here. We've talked about a couple of them. I'll give you a name or a model. If you give me a quick 10, 15 second soundbite about the good and the bad and how you'd rate it, maybe one to five or whatever you want to do, and we'll go down the list and see what comes out of it. We'll start with one we've mentioned a couple of times already, the Hyundai Insta. On first impression, it's a five out of five for me. It's small, compact, affordable, yet innovative. And it's evidence of the fact that cheap does not have to mean uninspiring and unimaginative.

Gary:Do we know when that's been released? Have we got a price for that actually, at the moment?

I don't think we have a price yet. We'll drive it before the end of this year and might have some additional figures by then.

Gary:Fantastic. Citroën EC3?

Jack: I think it's the best thing that we've seen from Stellantis. far it's again it's a small cheap car executed in a really wonderful way without being drab and dreary genuinely comfortable so relaxing to drive a little bit pig-nosed and i think maybe it's slightly underwhelming styling is going to limit its success especially what with Renault cooking up the 5 next door which is just you know oozing with character but a really great little car which brings us on very nicely to the Renault 5 i think my whole career as a motoring journalist spans the development process of this car i think we knew about the Renault 5 before i started doing car youtube it's been a hugely drawn out process so the pressure really is on that thing to deliver now it's not going to be quite as cheap as we first hoped it would be but it looks superb i love the Renault Megane e-tech and the Scenic i think they've absolutely smashed those out of the park and the Scenic is really compelling in terms of the price as well for what it is anyway getting sidetracked Renault making some stonking electric cars very excited to see the Renault 5 and the Alpine 5 mind you

Gary: now you're probably a little too young to remember the initial hot hatchback hot hatchback Renault 5 turbo the Peugeot 209 GTI so i think you know there's a lot of people myself included who were looking at the Renault 5 and thinking you know is it going to sort of capture the spirit of those vehicles because you know we've recently had Ford announced the Capri don't mention it yes so i'm very interested to see how the Renault 5 turns out our personal favorite because you and i both ridden this the Microlino

Jack:oh it's just happiness on wheels i've never driven anything that turns so many heads and every head it turns there's a smile on the face it's not like driving a supercar where people just kind of you know scowl at you it it spreads happiness everywhere it goes and that includes you the person sitting in it driving it i think it is a wonderful example of how good design can make you feel good because it it handles pretty well it's it's well engineered but there are other micro cars that make more sense to buy and a far better value for money but it's just such a wonderful object that you can't really look past it and i'm so delighted for them it's a very rare case a depressingly rare case of a brand that we've covered on the fully charged show kind of just as they were really starting to get going and they have in fact gone on to be really successful and i wish them continued success because it's a it's a wonderful product and it's a really sweet company run by run by the family

Gary: absolutely citronami

Jack:i think it's right at the bottom end of what constitutes a car that when when micro cars get that cheap and simple i my and someone's looking at one my first question to them will be are you sure you couldn't make do with a cargo bike because that's kind of you what you've got there is kind of a cargo bike with a roof and there is a use case there is a use case for a six thousand pound ev with very limited range and weather proofing it i think it leaves me a tiny bit cold i think it was really really exciting when it came out but yeah my stance is with micro cars that are that utilitarian get a bike

Gary: moving a little bit more upmarket now the kia ev3

yeah it looks fabulous i i wish they'd gone a bit more blocky with the design i wish it looked a bit more like a baby ev9 which i adore but it does look pretty good in the metal i've seen it in a studio and it just looks like being another slam dunk quite frankly for kia as with hyundai they appear to be able to do no wrong at the moment it's well equipped it's going to have huge range with the big battery version and they've just released the pricing and it's seriously compelling i don't know to what extent the korean brands have an advantage in terms of sort of proximity to china and access to batteries i don't know i wouldn't care to speculate but it's certainly the case that they are setting the standard as far as the price point it's not just the quality of the vehicles so that's another one that we'll be driving in a couple of months time and i really can't wait

Gary: one of the things to look at on that and i could be wrong on this but my understanding is if you get the base version the the lowest spec it doesn't have a heat pump and it doesn't have vehicle to load included in that and i think vehicle to load you know nice to have but i think on any electric vehicle you need to have a heat pump to make sure that you're making the best use of the battery in cold weather so you know might be something to actually

Jack:i 100 agree gary that's a good point that is a miss as far as i'm concerned

Gary:it's the do-good zero

Jack:ah the do-good zero yes i wrote i returned to my just get a bicycle point so this is i think this is actually officially the cheapest new car that you can buy in the uk again if you have the very specific use case of you need something to make short journeys in with one passenger and a bag of shopping and you're terrified of bicycles and it rains a lot where you live sure i guess it's we had a lot of fun we had a lot of fun driving that thing around and squeezing it through bollards and yeah be prepared for some stairs as well if you drive one of those you're going to turn a few heads and you're going to hear a few giggles as you zoom past but hey you know that thing exists we get a million comments on our videos going when are we going to get an ev at this price point when are they going to get cheaper well they exist now and that's what they look like so be careful what you wish for

Gary: again we've talked about it a little bit already the dacha spring

Jack:as i said before i think that represents the cheapest that you can go in this day and age while still having a car that really is properly a car and just about fits for adults and is reasonably comfortable and can just about handle a dual carriageway but i like the way that dacha have gone about it i like their design i like their persona of ruggedness and chunkiness and and i like how much pride they take in being the affordable brand they don't shy away from that fact they they sing it loud and proud that's what they're all about and as i said earlier you drive a dacha spring and you get out of it realizing that your car has a bunch of gadgets and gizmos that you really didn't need and probably paid extra for

Gary: now i don't think we can sort of talk about we have mentioned it already but i don't think we can talk about cheap evs without mentioning the the elephant in the room which is the chinese brands now we've already got people like byd g was it gwm and a couple of the others but they're a very very small proportion of the number of manufacturers in china who make electric vehicles what are your thoughts on potentially which of the other ones out there may be coming across with an offering that that would be useful for the uk slash european market do you have any any thoughts on that

Jack:i think byd are the standout and continue to be i think byd will be a huge part of the story of automotive in Europe over the next 10 years. And they have smaller, cheaper models than the ones that they brought us so far, by the way. We've got the Dolphin, but underneath the Dolphin is the Seagull. And that's really small and really cheap. I don't know if they've deemed it too cheap to make sense in Europe, but Elliot loved it when he drove it on the channel. Elsewhere, Xpeng and NIO are two brands who it kind of seems like they've been imminent for a couple of years now, and it's not quite happened yet. And I'd be interested to understand why that is. I know that they are knocking about Western Europe, as is always the case. These brands, first they go to Norway and they see how they do there. And if that goes well, they go to the Netherlands and Germany and Austria. And us being a right-hand drive market, we don't tend to be high priority because it's actually really expensive to build cars for right-hand drive. What side do they drive on in China? I genuinely don't know. Do you know?

Gary:I don't.

Jack:Japan's right-hand drive. The last Elliot video that I saw, which side of the vehicle does he sit on? Oh gosh, I'm really outing myself as a fraud here. I should definitely know that off the top of my head. Anyway, Xpeng and NIO are two brands who have great products that could absolutely go toe-to-toe with their rivals here. I've driven the Xpeng P7, which is a sleek, fast saloon, allegedly with Porsche engineering, and it's mega. It's a great car to drive and it looks fantastic. So keep an eye on those two. The answer probably, Gary, in terms of what's the next really big influential Chinese brand, is one that we haven't heard of because someone just founded it yesterday.

Gary: Yeah, probably. I say I was at a conference the other day and a guy came on from a company called Cherry, C-H-E-R-Y, which is huge in China. They make thousands and thousands, 100,000 of electric vehicles and batteries and all that. Never heard of them here. But he said, yeah, we're coming across. We're going to do Norway, then we're going to do the rest of Europe, then we're going to come to the UK. So yeah, it's happening. And like you say, we don't know who's going to win on this, but there we go.

Jack:Yeah. I guess there has to be a fair amount of anxiety around the kind of proposed gigantic taxes that are being discussed. I guess that's more in relation to the US, but I fear that we might follow suit and cheat ourselves out of some really great products that actually are kind of really helping facilitate this transition. So I hope we don't do anything rash in that regard. Yes. It will be unfortunate if we did that, but there we go.

Gary:That's all I've got for this particular episode, unless you've got another vehicle that I maybe haven't covered that you think it might be worth talking about.

Jack:I think we've covered the main bases there, Gary. I'm just looking at my list of stuff I've driven this year and we've definitely hit all my favourites.

Gary:I checked afterwards and China is actually left-hand drive. As a short sidebar, the right-hand drive countries around the world are basically the main UK colonies, Australia, India, Hong Kong, alongside a number of Southern African countries, most of Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, Japan, Guyana, Suriname and a scattering of islands in the West Indies. Everywhere else is left-hand drive. Jack and the rest of the Fully Charged Show team will be in Farnborough next month at the Everything Electric South event. Link to the tickets are in the show notes. This season, we're looking at raising the awareness of carbon literacy with our listeners. And one way we're doing that is with a carbon fact as read by carbon literacy trainer, Anne Snelson.

billion by the late: 2050

Gary:It's time for a cool EV or renewable thing to share with your listeners. Now I asked Jack if he had a cool EV or renewable thing and he told me about an e-bike he was reviewing the previous day from a brand called Tenways. I'll quote him on his thoughts. Relatively speaking, they're quite affordable electric bikes, but what I like about them is the pedal assist is paired with the torque sensor. So if you've ever ridden like a line bike or a ride sharing e-bike, if that's your own experience, that's your only experience of e-bikes, you'll remember this jerky sensation. You turn the pedal and the motor goes and you get a surge of electricity and it can be quite unsettling. Now what's nice about the ones with the torque sensor is that you just feel bionic. You turn the pedals, the bike detects how much energy you're inputting and it matches it. You press harder, you pedal faster, you get more electric assist and it's much more seamless that you can almost trick yourself into believing that you're just much fitter and stronger than you are. It's not very jerky, it's a lot smoother and it's just deeply satisfying. So that's e-bikes Tenways and I'll put a link in the show notes. Hope you enjoyed listening to today's show. It was put together this week with the help of Jack Scarlett of course. Many thanks Jack, always a pleasure to talk with you. If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms or other general messages to pass on to me, I can be reached at info at efemusings.com. On socials, I'm on twitter or x at musings ev. I'm also on instagram at evmusings where I post short videos and podcast extracts regularly. Why not follow me there? Thanks to everyone who supports me through Patreon on a monthly basis and through ko-fi.com on an ad hoc one. If you enjoyed this episode, why not buy me a coffee? Go to ko-fi.com slash evmusings and you can do just that. ko-fi.com slash evmusings. Takes Apple Pay too. Regular listeners will know about my two ebooks So You've Gone Electric and So You've Gone Renewable. They're 99p each or equivalent and you can get them on Amazon. Check out the links in the show notes for more information as well as a link to my regular evmusings newsletter and associated articles. Now I know you're probably driving or walking or jogging right now as you listen but if you can remember and you enjoyed this episode, drop me a review in iTunes please. It really helps me out. Thanks. If you’ve reached this part of the podcast and are still listening - thank you. Why not let me know you’ve got to this point by tweeting me @musingsev with the words [Scarlett Cars #ifyouknowyouknow] Nothing else.

Thanks as always to my co founder Simon. You know he’s got a drone and nowadays you can’t just buy a drone and fly it. You need to be registered and take exams. With his busy schedule, working, filming and actually heading out on his electric unicycle I always wondered how he fitted all this in to one day:

Jack:We've had to become masters of making do with whatever allotted time there is.

Gary:Thanks for listening. Bye.

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