Might just be me but I can’t see anywhere that mentions design in that article?
The interior doesn’t look much better either. It’s like we’ve gone back to the 80s with lots of cheap looking plastic:
Tesla still have it nailed in my opinion on both technology and design.
I’ve read that too. Even things like opening the glove box (especially on a Tesla) requires taping through a few screens to open. However I believe a recent update has password protected it which is a nice touch.
Do those models have voice control like Google assistant built in?
Have to agree there. I’ve leased two i30s and a Kia Xceed (basically the same thing) and they’ve all been fantastic value for money, solidly reliable and just all round great (if not exciting) cars.
Had this on on a Citroen C4 we leased for a year and it drove us nuts. Even if it was done well I’d still prefer buttons, but it was bad to the extent that if the drive was short enough we’d just leave the controls alone and either shiver or open the windows!
I emailed my local council to see if they have any plans to look into how people without driveways can charge EVs from home.
A minute number of councils allow residents to do this now, so long as they use a ramped cable cover over the pavement where the trailing wire would be, to remove the trip hazard.
The response is that they’re looking into different ways of allowing people without driveways to charge at home. Won’t hold my breath, they don’t have a great track record of making decisions, in a timely manner.
Tesla has voice control but as it’s tuned for american accents it works intermittently or not at all in the UK.
Oddly enough the open glovebox command is one of the few that seems to work reliably.
My local council are converting (and moving) lampposts into chargers.
Being a northerner I can relate 
A nice solution I’ve heard of being adopted is a gutter running across the pavement - these exist already in many places for drainage, but adding new ones so cables can be run is starting to happen.
That does mean being able to park outside your own house of course…
I have had a discussion with my council but so far no response to my question about installing at my own expense an easy access grating over the footpath to enable a charger cable to be run out.
I did some research and discovered this helpful piece.
This is Money website:
"A spokesman for LV told us: 'If someone was to trip or fall over a charging cable and our customer was found legally responsible or negligent our policy would cover it under "liability to other people”
With these type of claims, our customer would have to be found negligent in a court of law and there would be other things to consider too, such as the pedestrian perhaps not paying attention to where they were walking because, for example, they were looking at their phone - there could likely be an element of contributory negligence on their part.
While this might be the case, LV says it hasn’t had any cases of this type… yet.
It also added that the injury would need to be ‘pretty severe to initiate a claim’, and tripping over on a pavement may not necessarily result in a life threatening or altering injury in most cases.”
Yeah I’ve thought for a while now they could set up a process where a shallow ditch is made in the pavement just outside your house, along with some way of just lifting it to put a cable through and taking it back out when done.
They could then make it as simple as requesting via the council for permission like you do with a dropped curb request.
I picked my Model 3 up about a month ago now.
Really enjoying the car so far. Still waiting for my wall charger to be installed so charging from the 3 pin plug has been pretty slow. Other than that I have no regrets and couldn’t see myself going back to an ICE car.
A hinged grating would provide a good solution but it would be expensive to source.
You would need to be a special kind of person to go back to an ICE vehicle after having experienced the benefits of an EV.
Interesting shot of your car. Have to say I don’t think it is the most appealing angle. Having said that I would be quite happy to move from my Kona EV to one.
Could be cheap enough, if local councils got there heads together, came up with that as a solution and then bought in bulk 
My local council keep refusing to install due to low demand… but that low demand is partially caused by lack of infrastructure.
Ironically they’ve installed loads at their offices which are now no longer used as their staff are all WFH!
Then they wonder why people think they’re not a very good council.
Councils sadly won’t spend money for such projects, they want private enterprise to fund it or be provided by government grants.
My own council have grabbed around £100.000
from OLEV for EV charging infrastructure.
They promptly passed it on to a startup company, Connected Kerb, and we are still waiting for the project to be finished. Originally told it would be fully commissioned by late February of this year.
Last week I forced the Council Portfolio holder for transport to require Connected Kerb to remove a street, said to have chargers in, from both their own website and more importantly Zap-Maps.
Sadly the council broke off negotiations with
BP Pulse probably because they would not get as many chargers and the spaces would have to be designated, Connected Kerb don’t bother.
Not all that glistens is gold 
Might be a silly question but what exactly are (other) the benefits.
I wouldn’t say no to a Tesla but when I think EV I’m basically just thinking cheap to power.
Being that little more eco friendly is a nice side benefit but I’m not gonna pretend it’s anything like the main driver of my purchase.
Have they sorted out the recyclable batteries debacle?
The last I read was that the impact that all these batteries were having on the environment massively offset the emissions saving of the vehicle itself.
And I read that they are being recycled.
Being used in both domestic and industrial storage systems.
It is claimed that the cells are far from exhausted when removed from a car.
I saw a chart sometime ago that demonstrated that a Tesla battery pack after ten years had not degraded to the extent that was being forecast.
