Real Sceptic

The Renault Zoe

I’ve always liked Robert Llewellyn’s down to earth reviews of electric cars. He mentions what he doesn’t like, what could be improved, answers questions he often sees, and above all gives an honest and good assessment of what a vehicle is capable of with praise where it is earned.

A good example of this is his latest review video about the Renault ZOE where he gives a nice rundown on the capabilities of this car:

It’s a lovely little car that shows electric vehicles are starting to mature.

Top Gear And The Nissan Leaf

It has been silent for a while at Top Gear about Electric vehicles. But with their latest review on the Nissan Leaf and the Peugeot iOn they have stirred up a bit of a controversy.

In it their report on both cars Jeremy Clarkson and James May set off for Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire, 60 miles away. During their report they made a lot of palava about the range, searching for a charging point and actually ran out of power. And they stressed the point they had to wait for 15 hours before the battery was charged again. Slamming the electric car quite hard for a lack of infrastructure for charging and battery range. Read more

Sitting On The Nuclear Fence

Previously I’ve written about Robert Llewellyn and his Fully Charged show on YouTube. But this is not the only channel he actively maintains. One of the other channels, where he expresses his views on diverse topics, is Wet Liberal Whenever.

In his latest instalment he talked about nuclear power and his sitting on the fence with nuclear power. His position is very much comparable to my own. There are risks and problems with using nuclear power, especially with decommissioning and spent fuel. But it probable does have a place among our sources for electricity, and especially technologies like travelling wave nuclear reactors look very promising (these ‘burn’ and reduce the waste of our current reactors).

But the main point, and one I fully agree with is that a lot of nuclear power will not solve the problem of our CO2 emissions. For that we need to implement current renewable technologies and invest in research to improve these technologies. As these might be expensive to install, but running them is extremely cheap as they don’t use fuel and most require very little maintenance.

Geneva Motor Show, Signs Of Change

Most of us Europeans know Robert Llewellyn from either Scrapheap Challenge or from the science fiction series Red Dwarf. But he’s also very active on YouTube with several channels where he talks for example about politics and even has a full fledged show called Fully Charged.

In it he reviews electric cars, news and developments about them and his experience in using them in his day to day life. All with a very high production quality and with his trademark humour and voice. Always a joy to watch.

And in his latest episode he visited the Geneva Motor show where he saw, as he described it, “more electric cars than you can poke a stick at”. It shows the big switch the motor industry is making towards electric vehicles.

It looks like there are exciting times ahead with a lot of beautiful and powerful electric cars.