Dangerous electric switch.

Do people switching from internal combustion to electric crash more because of the higher speeds that can be attained quickly?

That is the question raised today by Autocar.

It's an interesting question and the commenters at the bottom of the article make some interesting points too - well done for an interesting debate - I'd like to continue it here but virtually nobody reads my Blog and I can't be doing with promoting it.

Hertz, who have got shut of 20,000 Teslas say it is because "they were involved in more accidents than the renter’s ICE vehicles."

I would dispute that the reason was their electricness though - I'd have thought it was more down to renters struggling to get used to the stupid controls and lack of indicator stalks and the distracting central screen.

Other factors making electric more likely  to crash would be they tend to be:

• heavier
• taller (bloody SUV cross-overs)
• driven by younger people
• have more distractions for the driver

The weight may be countered by the fact that they have a low centre of gravity due to mostly underfloor battery packs.

And, as well as the more distractions, there will also be more safety features.

So what do the insurers tell us?

The Autocar story quotes Howden UK&I Retail who tell us “There are 26% more accident claims for EVs than for ICE vehicles.”

That seems quite conclusive.

Except, Thisismoney (who I nicked my photo off) tell us that HPI tell us "Looking specifically at cars up to a year old, the study found that a total of 40 EVs (0.01 per cent) were scrapped out of the 334,525 on the road last year.  This compared to 701 of 2,026,146 ICE vehicles (0.03 per cent)"

And Fleeteurope.com have this story telling us that the German Insurance Association analysed data showing that electric cars are responsible for five to 10 percent fewer accidents on average than comparable vehicles with ICE engines. "responsible for" though - not "involved in"

I honestly don't know the answer to this - maybe nobody does yet.

In the meantime - just enjoy the charged discussion.

Solid State Drive

This, I reckon, is a game-changer from Nissan.

And just like the solid state bit means you have solid stuff where the moving stuff should be in a disk drive, solid state batteries have solid stuff where the sloshy stuff should be.

Autocar have an interesting piece on it today.  The technology in there today but Nissan claim that they will be able to mass-produce them at a reasonable cost. 

And it would mean lighter EVs with longer range.

That cost less.

And EVs using them could be in production by 2028.

But are they less damaging to the environment that the current lithium-ion EV batteries?  And less prone to igniting?

The article doesn't tell us.

But this one from New Scientist last October does.

Apparently, they are less damaging to the environment that the current lithium-ion EV batteries and they are less prone to igniting.

And Toyota has made a breakthrough that will allow “game-changing” solid-state batteries to go into production by 2028.

Turkish Delight

I take no delight in another new SUV:

which, let's be honest looks like all of the others out there: 

 

And that's only a selection.

 

Yuk.

 

This one though is an EV and it has an interesting interior:

The other thing interesting about it is that it is Turkish.  Car+Driver have the story here.  They say that this car is from the first ever Turkish car company.  Although Wikipedia tends to differ with that statement and given that they provide photos of various old Turkish cars, I'll go with Wiki on this one.

 

This new brand is TOGG - which Car+Driver helpfully tell us stands for "Türkiye’nin Otomobili Girişim Grubu" which it doesn't helpfully tell us translates as "Turkey's Automobile Enterprise Group" - Google did that.

 

As opposed to FIAT which stands for "Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino" meaning "Italian automobile factory of Turin”

 

Or SEAT which stands for "Sociedad Española de Automóviles de Turismo" with the altogether cooler translation of "Spanish Society of Touring Cars"

 

Turkey has been advertising a lot on telly lately as a holiday destination but given their current president (in this story getting involved with TOGG) and what he has done to the Kurds, I think I'll give it all a miss.

 

Here's the only Turk I find delightful: 

and he's Northern Irish.