electric cars and frosty roads

Designing any car with the option to put the brakes on as soon as you come off the throttle seems to me total nonsense. Perhaps electric cars are designed for drivers with poor skills?

For the last 50 years, my specification for a car is that it need to make my Surrey to Edinburgh journey as easy as possible. For the last 15 years, I also require the vehicle to carry my harp on that journey.

There does not appear to be an EV that meets my requirements. I was eagerly looking forward to the MG 5 which - on paper - appeared to meet my requirements. However when I saw the vehicle it didn't have a proper flat loading area and road tests showed a 'real world' range of 180 miles. That would mesn 4 recharging stops en-route - so probably forcing an overnight stop. I now await the promised Skoda.

I had a colleague for whom the accelerator and brake were simply on/off switches. Hard down on either one or the other.

Does the manual make it clear? Do most folk read their manual?

Many people I talk to don't even know what happens when ABS kicks in and it's not taught at driving school. I take any new drivers who are members of my family out in any snow/ice and find a bit of space to experiment with sliding, ABS, handbrake on etc.

Volvo?

Sir Lewis Hamilton?

To me, it would make a great deal of sense to make things like delivery vans etc electric. Vehicles where you can easily work out how many miles they need to do between charges. Would also get rid of many diesels - which may well pass emissions tests in the lab, but very rarely do in service. Long before forcing private EVs on the motorist.

But then the blame culture very much in existence here isn't really interested in the most efficient ways of cutting emissions.

They only do a hybrid - a ghastly idea.

My first car with ABS made it very clear when it was activated. I tested it on a snowy bit of road when there was nothing around, and travelling at a few mph. The brake pedal juddered and the whole care throbbed slightly. All my subsequent cars seem to have very little side-effect when ABS activates: the light on the dashboard is probably the most noticeable thing.

I remember being taught how to try (try!) not to brake so hard that I locked the wheels in a non-ABS car, when my driving instructor had me practicing emergency stops. He said that really skilled drivers could cadence-brake (the same action that ABS performs) - repeatedly taking the wheel just to locking point and then releasing slightly and reapplying as fast as possible. He demonstrated and said that even he, a police Class 1 driving instructor before he retired, couldn't reliably do it because the instinct in an emergency is to lock your muscles solid.

That was long before ABS was available on ordinary cars. Nowadays the advice in an emergency is to brake as hard as possible and let the ABS sort out the optimum braking force, and (most importantly) to look *where you want to end up*, not at the thing you want to avoid otherwise subconsciously you wont steer around it.

I've only once had to use ABS in anger, and that was when a car pulled out of a side road on the right when I was *very* close to it. The driver had been stopped at his white line as I'd approached, and he'd looked both ways several times. I do wonder whether I narrowly escaped being a crash-for-cash scam victim. Everything slowed down and I seemed to have loads of time to evaluate my options and decide that it was safer to veer onto the wrong side of the road behind him (there was nothing oncoming) than to veer onto the kerb on the left which would knacker my wheels and suspension; I'd already worked out that I would not be able to stop in a straight line without hitting him. The car felt rock solid: the back end didn't fishtail and although the front wheels skidded initially as I steered right and the car went straight on, they quickly regained adhesion and the car then went where I was steering, and then steered back parallel with the road to avoid me hitting the opposite kerb. The other car didn't stop and I didn't have a dashcam. The only thing I forgot to do was an elementary mistake: I forgot to hit the clutch so the engine stalled in gear and took a few goes to get it started again, but although by now there was an oncoming car, he saw me a long way off and stopped safely until I could move back onto my own side of the road and drive off, feeling slightly shaky.

It wasn't until I got undressed that night that I discovered a seatbelt-shaped bruise on my shoulder and neck ;-)

No, even he does 'lift and coast' to get the regen working

I agree that a straight hybrid is of dubious value, but a plug-in hybrid makes much more sense and are probably going to be around for a long time (until all the new power stations and distribution networks get built, or some other power source becomes viable).

Chances are the ABS never activates at all in normal driving. A panic stop, yes, especially if wet. And of course on ice.

A hybrid does work well in start stop traffic. Of no benefit on a normal long journey. May even be worse.

That ceased to be true last year when the XC40 recharge pure arrived - list price around £60,000.

Looks like a Range Rover that's been gently T-boned

Trouble is that you have 2 engines in the vehicle - all that extra weight.

I can only remember it happening once to me - a great many years ago, when the concept was pretty new. It worked - I didn't hit the pedestrian.

Thanks for that pointer - but a wee bit out of my price range.

True, but if we want the range and quick "recharge" (which many people do) we're stuck with ICEs for some time. Leaving aside the "recharge" time, batteries to give the equivalent range to a tank of fuel would probably be heavier than a modern ICE.