Energy feedback

I have to take issue with some points in Jude Woodside’s article in the November/December issue of The Shed.

The first is that he claims road user charges on a car are now “$0.72 per kilometre”. This is incorrect by a factor of 10. It is $0.072 per kilometre, or 7.2 cents, up from 6.8 cents earlier in the year.

Like for like, and with the much lower price of diesel, there is generally an overall cost advantage to using diesel, but it does favour larger and heavier vehicles rather than the very economical small diesel cars.

The second is that electric cars and hybrids will not tow trailers. Many hybrids will do so — the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, for example, has the same rated towing capacity as its conventional version and, for pure electric vehicles, a Tesla can tow a large load. It is true, however, that the small electric cars will not do so because the regenerative braking might be damaged by the extra load.

And finally, does Jude mean 7.5kWh when he refers to the size of battery his system would need? 7.5kW is a power rating, not a storage capacity.

Regards

WR Phillips

Jude Replies: Mea culpa you are quite correct and not the only reprimand I received for that. I apologize for the gross error — it should have been 7.2c per kilometre. Never do maths when you are feeling indignant.

I know that there are some hybrids that will tow and more are coming but when I looked at buying an Outlander some four years ago, I was told categorically that it wouldn’t tow anything. Although that will change, at present, if you have a decent-sized boat you will be hard-pressed to tow it with a hybrid. I know that Toyota has some new SUV hybrids that will tow coming too.

As to the battery question I was quoted for a system capable of 7.5kWh output. I couldn’t even begin to guess at the storage capacity needed for that.

A very chastened Jude Woodside