My EV - a Mini - is much the same insurance wise as my diesel Peugeot Partner, c.£350.
Servicing has yet to be seen - next service due in 2 years, and apparently it's just an electrical system diagnostic and brake fluid change. I'm sure BMW will charge a reassuringly exhorbitant rate for the privilege.
That seems... a lot.
I just checked Tayna Batteries for a battery for my 2 litre diesel. It offered a choice of 5 batteries, ranging from 80Ah to 100Ah, and £58 to £102, inc VAT (+ £8.46 for next day delivery).
Sounds lke a main dealer install. Batteries for that car should cost no more than £70.
Yes, it has all jumped a bit. Trumps buddies making a killing off the futures market i'd say
Heating oil just over a pound a litre today.
The poor farmers do not plant for profit, they plant for subsidy.
Whole new hawthorn hedgerow installed at taxpayer expensee to provide habitat for birds.
Strip of land makes more planted with wildflowers than it does with wheat.
Fallow headlands now provide grazing for a mushrooming deer population which destroys the woodlands
Burgeoning Badgers have killed all the hedgehogs
although (at least around here) there seem to be more badgers flattened by cars than any other livestock
Err, it has start-stop technology (that she has disabled anyway because of the low, short journey usage), so has quite a hefty battery for a small car. She bought it at NAPA the local motor factors. My ex MOT-tester neighbour fitted it for her.
Those Bosch batteries are not cheap, they come with a 6 year warranty. I bought one in 2016 for my Astra 1.6 Petrol estate but my ex-MOT-tester neighbour got it at the same place (where he has a *trade* account) and it was £80 back then. Add on inflation and especially metal price inflation and I would expect the same battery to be about £160 trade now, so I think she was stung for the full retail price, or maybe even the "AA retail price".
Indeed. There is a YouTube poster called Harry who farms up on the Cotswalds (I think he has Jeremy Clarkson as a neighbour).
Always moaning about something.
If she has it disabled she might as well have gone for a much cheaper battery.
Tim
They killed the other livestock innit?
People who kill badgers often leave them in the road as an obfuscation.
Yeah. go on believing that...
Whereas other roadkill is cleaned up ?
It does take the local scavengers longer to eat a badger (or a ewe) than a squirrel or a pheasant. How much this due to size and how much to palatability I don't know.
Watching a badger disappear:
Round here at least the crows, buzzards and kites seem to get to small carcasses before fly maggots are well established. My unscientific observation is that they seem less keen on badgers.
In message snipped-for-privacy@perry.uk, at 16:32:12 on Wed, 8 Apr 2026, Roland Perry snipped-for-privacy@perry.co.uk> remarked:
It seems the V2H project is uneconomic, so I'll be dipping my toe in the balcony-solar undertaking.
Will start with just a small battery and inverter, my aim would be to run the house's base-load entirely at the cheap rate.
Later, when I've seen some more figures, will buy perhaps 800W of solar panels and attempt to run the baseload completely free of grid electricity bills.
Heating is gas, and the main non-base electricity consumption is from an electric hob+oven, the latter being used perhaps every other day for around an hour. Dishwasher every other day and clothes washer/dryer once a week - but both can be timed to run overnight.
Having recently moved to the Octopus Go tariff I'm also considering a battery, but am not convinced about the economics so have decided to wait until I have more data about actual daytime usage. I've put a timer on the immersion heater and try to get SWMBA to use the timers on washing m/c, T/D and Dishwasher. The immersion heater gets the DHW to about 45 degrees just before the cheap tariff period ends and a short oil boiler boost in the late afternoon runs it up to just over 60 degrees for evening showers and to kill any bugs. The house is not well insulated and heated by oil (and not small) so I suspect money would be better spent on insulation than on battery or solar but the attic is fully floored with 5" floorboards so I keep putting-off the job. I'd be interested in hearing more about the battery you choose and how it all works out.
SWMBA ??
= She who must be annoyed ?
That's been known to happen (usually when I suggest that she is untidy). "Adored" is the more usual interpretation ;-)
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