Gregg: 00:16

Hello, everybody. Welcome to yet another episode of TechyDv. Recorded our Everything Electric show in Harrogatz or Harrogatz. Once again I have my beautiful panel with me, Rob and Gary, and we're gonna be talking about everything electric show and our experiences and other things. And, of

Gary: 00:40

course, we're we're very happy to be here because as joint Yorkshiremen, to actually have an event here in our home not necessarily our home county because, of course, we're not posh enough to live in Yorkshire, Yorkshire.

Rob: 00:50

No. We're we're both from West Yorkshire.

Gary: 00:51

We're both Yorkshire.

Rob: 00:52

Slightly slightly down the scale, but not that far.

Gary: 00:54

It is. But it's good to be up here rather than rather than back down south.

Gregg: 00:59

It's a beautiful place. That's all we gotta say. There's gonna be loads of sea sea lienus today, but we obviously gonna be talking about the episode and, oh, sorry, the the show. I'm saying we're gonna be talking about the show. It was gonna be mostly Rob and Gary because I've been stuck in the room recording podcasts.

Rob: 01:18

Yeah. You, the listeners, are in for a treat. He's got so many podcasts that he's done over the over the course of the weekend. So Yeah.

Gary: 01:24

A 111 he's managed to record, I believe, over the last 3 days. Yeah.

Rob: 01:28

It doesn't suit. If you're if you're listening to this just as a as a, like, a curiosity to see what we're gonna say about the show, subscribe and get all the other stuff. So he's spoken to some really good really good people from the industry. So

Gary: 01:39

Yeah. And a plumber. He had a plumber in, and they were talking about how to, how to fit a new head on a shower.

Gregg: 01:46

We're not gonna go with our silliness. That's that's too much. Okay. Let's turn this back down. So we've arrived on Friday.

Gregg: 01:54

What did you guys experience on Friday? What do you remember about Friday?

Gary: 02:00

I slept since then. So, because the the beauty Friday is it's, it has two things that are different to the other days. First of all, that's when the, the media are allowed in. Well, not they're allowed in every day, but they're especially, sort of accepted on day 1, and they have access to the show a couple of hours before it opens to the public. So we got to go around and have a look at the release of the Skywell BE 11.

Rob: 02:27

Which I've which I've filmed, so it's coming to my YouTube channel, so search for RS Thinks, and you'll see that soon, probably next week.

Gary: 02:34

Why doesn't he get that beeped out when I get my stuff beeped out?

Gregg: 02:37

Keep talking, Gary.

Gary: 02:41

And then, of course, the the other main thing about the First Data Fully Charged Show is that that's basically, the business day. Yes. It's open to the public, but there's a lot of b to b work that goes on there. So there were a lot of people that we're all familiar with because we're we're in this area. There's people that we've met before at the trade shows and things like that.

Gary: 03:01

So they come in, and they talk, and a lot of business deals are done, on that particular day. So it's it's one of the special days, of the the 3 days here. So it it was fun. I enjoyed it. Rob, did you get anything specifically out of that other than the media day, the media access?

Rob: 03:17

Yeah. I I kinda use that to make connections with people that I maybe wanna do videos about, obviously, for the YouTube channel. So it enables me to kind of, figure out what I wanna film, then I've I've basically got 3 days to do it. So I've I've literally shot something every single day this week every single day this weekend, just so, obviously, once I'm away from here, I've got all the footage I need. So, if you do have YouTube channels, like, there's no such thing as not enough footage.

Rob: 03:44

So

Gregg: 03:44

Yeah. You always wanna

Rob: 03:45

was great for that.

Gregg: 03:46

You always wanna have to have a bit of b

Rob: 03:48

roll. Exactly, says Greg taking pictures of us now. Yep. As we're talking. Yeah.

Rob: 03:52

Yeah. And and and it's also good to, sort of get some test drives sort of put in as well because because we can get here a little bit earlier. We don't have to do the sprint down from the main gate to get to the test drive area. We can just leisurely walk across and, join the queues Yeah. To get into those as well.

Rob: 04:08

So

Gregg: 04:09

Yeah. I I like the, yeah, the, obviously, the dance introduction for for the, or, the walk around for the press is for press when we were invited here as a press, which is amazing. But the, at the same time, he was actually purposely targeting it for people who've never been to one of these shows. So, you know, we obviously we've been around and we're in the industry, so to speak. But the, I I like the fact that he was kinda making sure that everybody's included.

Gregg: 04:34

So if there was a, you know, a local radio station or whatever coming around, they would know they would get an induction into stuff. It wouldn't be just like, oh, yeah. Obviously, you know about this. You know about what the mission and all that. It was it was pretty good.

Gregg: 04:50

And, well, I mean, personally, on Monday, I've been stuck in this room for a for a few hours because I recorded 3 episodes on Monday, so I don't think I got to see much. I, like you guys said, you know, you walk around and you basically see loads of familiar faces, but the, there's also new new businesses and new things on the show. The the one thing that, piqued my curiosity was the Air a or Aira, whatever. I I don't know how you pronounce it.

Rob: 05:16

Aira. Aira.

Gregg: 05:16

Aira. Okay. Which is like a heat pump subscription system, which sounds strange, but the, you get a heat pump of 15 years maximum included with the, with warranty and and support. That's the word I was looking for.

Gary: 05:34

Installation as well, I believe. Yeah.

Gregg: 05:36

Yeah. And it's all for the same fixed price, which obviously depends on your house.

Rob: 05:39

And I believe those are service planning as well in there too because, like, obviously, you need regular maintenance. But it it was about you don't need the initial outlay to do it, and they were, plugging the government grant as well of, like, 7 and a half grand as well. So

Gary: 05:53

Did we find out what the actual subscription cost is?

Gregg: 05:57

It varies. Depends on so they do a survey for you. Yeah. They'll they'll take your location, and they look at it, and then somebody's gonna come to your house and do the survey. But I don't know what the rough estimates.

Gregg: 06:08

I was trying to get that out of them, but they they don't wanna, you know, say a figure. I presume over the 15 years is gonna be more than if you had money up front, which is fair. But at the same time, 15 years is a long time, and you have the peace of mind that this was is gonna work. Obviously, the PISA kit is supposed to work more than 15 years, but this is what they're currently doing. And this is a Swedish company that's trying to make the heat pumps more affordable, which is, I think, a pretty cool thing.

Gregg: 06:34

Uh-huh.

Gary: 06:34

And not only that, they're actually pretty cool looking bits of kit. I mean, you, Greg, and myself, we've both got heat pumps, and I'm not sure exactly which

Gregg: 06:42

one you've got, but Veyland.

Gary: 06:43

Yeah. I've got the Midea, and the big grey lumps that sort of sit out the back of the garden. Whereas these ones from Aera are nicely they're aero ergonomic, aerodynamic,

Rob: 06:56

brown. Swedish design?

Gary: 06:58

Swedish design. You know, really, really good looking piece of kit. I know Rob, you're looking potentially at having one, but you won't have one out the back because it might be a bit ugly, it might be a bit of an eyesore. Would you reconsider that for one of these?

Rob: 07:11

No. I wouldn't because I we we sit outside the back of my house, so we wanna we wanna use that for, sort of recreational things. So I'd be looking to put it on, say, the the the roof of my sort of side extension maybe, which which I say is possible as long as it's reinforced, but I wouldn't necessarily want it out the back.

Gary: 07:27

Is that down the west wing or on the east wing of the house?

Rob: 07:31

It's above the utility.

Gregg: 07:33

Is that a white house? Yeah. I'm just Yeah. I also like the fact that the the kid that goes in the house, one of the versions looks like a boiler, like a bigger boiler, so you can basically take off your gas boiler and just put it on, and your, you know, aesthetics inside is not gonna get any worse, which is kind of fair. I think that includes, actually, the hot water tank inside.

Gregg: 07:57

Don't quote me on that. Yeah. But everything looks cute because it's, you know, because it's Swedish.

Gary: 08:01

It's good design, and of course, as you've alluded to, Rob, I think it was, one of the 2, you know, it's only been 2 minutes since we've been talking about this, and I've already forgot what we said, but, you know, I put out a fairly heft hefty chunk of cash to have the heat pump installed. I know you did as well. So at some point, it's gonna you're gonna have to offset how much you're gonna charge or how much you're gonna pay on the subscription service over 15 years versus how much you would pay with a 7 and a half 1000 pound grant from the government and the amount of money that you're having to pay for the installation. So if you'd if you're in the situation where you wanna do that and you don't have any savings or anything that you can put in for the the capital outlay, I think, is an excellent solution.

Gregg: 08:46

I mean, yeah, we were because we had the extension being built and a lot of work, we ended up paying, you know, £1,000. I don't want to say how much, but it was Yeah. But you

Gary: 08:59

had the underfloor heating put in at the same time? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that cost you another another load.

Gary: 09:05

Yeah.

Rob: 09:07

This is like Craig's message doesn't know how much it cost.

Gregg: 09:09

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. She doesn't she has no idea to this day.

Gary: 09:13

You think it was a she thought it was a gift from somebody, didn't she? Yeah. For review. Yeah.

Gregg: 09:17

That's what people think. Oh, you've got a podcast. You're getting free stuff. Of course. Yeah.

Gregg: 09:20

I do. Yeah.

Rob: 09:21

She keeps asking about, when when does this have to go back? When do they have to come and uninstall it?

Gregg: 09:26

So, yeah, that just in all seriousness, that was the something curious. And the, for people who are heat pump curious and wanna go to one of these events, they always have a whole area where you can go and talk about energy, not only not only heat pumps, but, you know, you can have a a, like, a a an Consultation. Yeah. Consultation from an independent, in theory, independent builder or heating engineer or whatever. And the, I mean, this year was sponsored by OVO, but I don't think they put their people in there.

Gregg: 09:58

I think it's still local, you know, handymen, basically. Or I shouldn't be calling them a handyman. But you know what I mean? Like people Specialists. Specialists.

Gregg: 10:05

Yeah.

Rob: 10:06

Independent tradesmen. That's right. In a wedding.

Gary: 10:08

I think that's something that's worth calling out because we've been going to these fully charged shows for quite a few years now, and it was all predominantly the Everything Electric Show. My bad. Have we got the sound effect of somebody slapping me here?

Gregg: 10:21

Not yet.

Gary: 10:22

Okay. So we've been going to these shows for quite a few years, and it was always predominantly electric vehicles and war charges. And now I think Dan and his team have taken a a deliberate decision to say, right, we're still gonna have the electric vehicle aspect. We're still gonna have some of the charger aspect, but we're gonna have a look more at including the what they're deeming the home energy. So yes, as as you've already mentioned, Rob, we've got that whole section down the far end there where you can go in and, you know, this is my situation.

Gary: 10:53

I'm thinking of putting a heat pump in. I think of putting storage in. I'm thinking of putting solar panels in, and they'll give you the lowdown on that. And there are the suppliers in the area that can provide the heat pump, that can sort out the solar, panels that can provide, I think Mixergy are here, which are, like a smart water tank. Exactly.

Gary: 11:12

Yeah. So it's all here. It's all under one one room, one roof, and they didn't have that 3 years ago, so it's something that's new. And I think that's it's quite a popular asset.

Gregg: 11:22

They caught on. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, the, I remember the first one that was happening in Farnborough, I believe.

Gregg: 11:28

It was occupied, like, it was busy all the time, more than test drives. I think people kinda got used to it and, you know, it's not as busy now with these sort of things, but, it it you know, you can prebook it and kinda make it ensures that you have a space.

Gary: 11:42

Well, I've gotta say you, obviously, as you have great pains to point out, you've been stuck in this room for the last 2 odd days. Yesterday, which would be the Saturday, the weather was great. There was a huge number of people here, and it was very busy down the far end with

Rob: 11:57

the year.

Gregg: 11:57

I didn't make it that way, sir. Yeah.

Gary: 11:59

Exact I mean, today, it's a little bit wetter. Not quite as there's many people here. It's not quite as busy down that end, but I think it's actually been very popular overall.

Gregg: 12:06

Okay. I well, I don't wanna talk too much behind the scenes, but, basically, you know, idea was basically to bring the kids and get people because they're all here. As much as I love talking to people on the show, Flora, you know, we we're in this industry that speaks, so we know enough, we don't wanna take away the spaces. So did you guys do any, let's just move on to, test drives. Right?

Gregg: 12:29

Because you've done loads of test drives, both of you.

Rob: 12:32

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

Gregg: 12:33

Have you done any on Friday?

Rob: 12:35

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I did. So the first one I wanted to do was the Ioniq 5 n, which is here.

Rob: 12:41

So as soon as the gates opened, I made my way over and got a got a spot. Then I also booked in for the day after with the BYD seal, again, which was, like, very, very busy. That's that's that's what people wanna do here. Like, there's no no pressure to buy or commit to buy or make buying noises to get a test drive. You just turn up here, and you sign up, and you get a test drive.

Rob: 13:03

So it's it's it's a very good event for doing that.

Gregg: 13:07

Just bring your driver's license and the codes from DVLA.

Rob: 13:09

Bring your driver's license. Bring your, DVLA check codes, and you're in, basically. Before, the test drives have been longer in duration, but I think they've had problems in the past, with, I don't know, cars possibly finding their way into ditches and things like that. But they've they've they've changed the format now. So the ones that I did were both accompanied, apart from the Tesla Model 3 that I did, and they were, like, 15 to 20 minutes or so on a good mix of roads, and the roads around Harrogate are really good.

Rob: 13:43

You've got hills in there. You've got bends. You've got long straight. So if you're in a performance car, you can put your foot down where legally allowable to do, some speeds that are quite high, which is quite good.

Gary: 13:55

You mean up to the speed limited,

Rob: 13:57

what does it cost? Yeah. There's there's a good dual carriageway, so you can do 60, 70 if you wanted to do that. You can also stop on a road that's quite quiet and then floor it and see what it does up to 30 miles an hour or 40 miles an hour, of course. Yeah.

Rob: 14:11

So I I drove quite a few. The Ioniq 5 n was was a good well, a nice car, but just I think my test drive experience was a bit a bit naff because we literally came out the, showground, took a right, drive down the road, got to the roundabout, turn around, and came back again. So I was having to, like, drop back myself to be able to create speed to sort of experience the acceleration. Did the BYD seal. That was great.

Rob: 14:37

That was a really sort of like a 20 20, 25 minute test drive, on different sorts of roads, straight, bends, all that kind of stuff where you really got the feel of the car. And and in both cases, you've got some rep in there from the from the manufacturer who's on the stand, who's giving you all the specs and answering your questions and saying, oh, let's try this now. Let's let's, press the boost button in the in the ionic, and you can experience the 10 seconds of 650 PS on your right foot, which is just amazing. Same with the BYD seal, that's a not to 60 or 3.8 seconds, and, again, that was amazing to experience that. Model 3 was actually unaccompanied.

Rob: 15:17

The reason being is that they're fully tracking their cars. They can disable the car from an iPad that they've got in their in their booth. So if anything goes awry with that, then you're gonna get locked down. It's not gonna you're not gonna go very far. So and then lastly, I had to go in the Mustang Mach E GT, which, again, was a very good car.

Rob: 15:39

Because it's the GT one, it's it's one of the most power I I forget the horsepower, but it's it's very, very high. Acceleration's very quick. It had something called the untamed mode that when it was activated, you get a low kind of v eight grumble noise coming from the rear. There's a a sub speakers and things in the back just for that noise. And when you floor it, you get a really sort of, like, V 8 sort of grumble in the back, with the acceleration as well.

Rob: 16:08

Yeah. Great experience. Really great car.

Gregg: 16:11

It's it's called, Untamed because it's a horse. It's a Mustang, isn't it?

Rob: 16:15

Exactly. Exactly. And there was an Untamed Plus mode as well, which when I asked what that was, the guy said, I I don't know what that is. We can't select it. And it just kinda coincided when we came to a stop on a roundabout, and it sort of became available.

Rob: 16:28

So I pressed it quickly, and it gave it sort of a little bit more throttle response. It it soft hardened up the steering a bit, made it a bit more firmer. So I think it's 110 pluses, like, more more performance, more more kind of, yeah, like, makes it stiffer. So Okay. But yeah.

Rob: 16:45

Yeah. Great great great experiences. Didn't have to queue much to be able to get the test drives either, and each manufacturer has quite a lot of vehicles here. So it's not as if they brought 1 or 2. They've they've probably got 4, 5, 6, 7 of of different models, so they've they've probably got through a fair few amount of test drives this weekend.

Gregg: 17:02

Yeah. They're they're all quite busy.

Gary: 17:04

If I might play devil's advocate

Gregg: 17:06

Go on.

Gary: 17:07

We I was definitely there. I think you might have been there as well. Rob, we were in one of the panel sessions, about misinformation. He was very, very well attended, and Quentin stood up Quentin Wilson stood up and said, how many people here are actually driving electric vehicles? And it was well over 90% of the people who were at that panel session.

Gary: 17:27

If everybody's already driving electric vehicles, how come the test drives are so popular?

Rob: 17:33

I think it's because people want to experience a car outside of the dealer pressure and in their own sort of on their under under their own circumstances, just to be able to have a go and see what they wanna get next. So I've been using it to look at the seal. I'd I'd like to get the seal. It's a bit more, at the top end of my budget, but I didn't wanna go to the dealer to do that, to commit, to do the the whole kind of, oh, what you're looking for, what car you're driving now. Basically, jump through the hoops to be able to get the keys to go for test drive.

Rob: 18:05

Here, you just sign up, and you're in.

Gregg: 18:07

Yeah. And some of the dealers might not exist in your area, potentially. Right? So

Rob: 18:10

Yeah. Exactly. My my nearest BYD is in Milton Keynes. I have been there when I've been in Milton Keynes for other reasons, but I wouldn't necessarily wanna go all there to say I want a test drive, and they say, oh, well, we can't do it today. So

Gary: 18:23

How many test drives do you think are being taken by people such as you and I? We've both got in fact, all 3 of us have got electric vehicles. I've got at least a year before I need to replace mine, but I seriously wanted to go out in the 5 n because I wanted to have a mess around with it. I've got no intention of buying 1. Well, that's what I thought until I sat in 1, and now, you know, I really, really want 1.

Gary: 18:47

But, you know, how how many people do you think are like that? They wanna go out the Teslas because they don't have any intention of buying 1, but they wanna sit in there and try Exactly. A launch. You know, is is is there gonna

Gregg: 18:57

be a large amount of that?

Rob: 18:58

I think there would be a lot. Yeah. I came here last year with a couple of other friends, like, family friends, and and one of them had never driven electric before, so we basically booked her in for, like, a test drive of model 3 without telling her. And when she got here, it's like, you've you've got test drive at 11. What?

Rob: 19:14

Me? What? Why? And then she loved it. She she absolutely loved it.

Rob: 19:17

And she she came here thinking, oh, I wasn't gonna do that, but I'm glad I did because I'm now driven an electric car. I can see what you guys are saying about acceleration and smoothness and, like, silence and all that. So I think there'd be lots of people coming here that are gonna be in the same boat. There's again, it's just a no pressure test drive environment.

Gregg: 19:37

And, you know yeah. How many people attend sessions, versus you know, what what is the demographic that attends sessions versus the ones that go for test drives? Right? The the the all these things are happening at the same time. There's 2 stages, I think.

Gregg: 19:50

Unless there's another one somewhere else I haven't seen, and there's sessions going on on both at the same time. Yeah. So, you know, you can only be in in one place. So I I suspect what's happened is, like, the that session that you guys attended, people who have already electric car and have some, people in their guys shouldn't mention by name or, you know, specific words, who nag them about, you know, how terrible electric cars are. They wanna kinda know how other people deal with it and have suggestions.

Gary: 20:22

I think there's definitely a case to say that some of the audience could be self selecting. Yeah. Yeah. We're here because we wanna be here, and it's an the reason that we're here is because we have the electric cars. Therefore, 90% ninety 5% attendance of that is perfectly understandable.

Gary: 20:40

And it is quite possible that if we go outside of the actual sessions themselves and speak to the general people on the floor, the percentage of people with electric cars could be a lot lower. Yeah.

Gregg: 20:50

Well, that's what I think, anyway. Who knows what it's like? I'm sure they've got the numbers. I'm sure when you buy a ticket online, they probably ask you, like, have you do you have electric car already? Or I don't know.

Gary: 20:59

Which electric car do you already have? Yeah. VW. Yeah. It's a BMW.

Gregg: 21:06

Apologies. Apologies on on behalf of Gary.

Gary: 21:09

Yes. Apologies to any, Czechoslovakians.

Rob: 21:12

So the other good thing about the event as well is there are lots of other other cars here that you can kind of sit and poke around with as well, not necessarily test drive. Because one one thing that seems to happen here is lots of the big manufacturers don't come here. I I believe they get invited, but but they just don't want to attend for whatever reason. They prefer to go to the normal motor shows and everything else. So we've we've got, like, JCT 600 here with lots of different manufacturers, lots of different brands.

Rob: 21:39

We've got loads of VWs in there, some Porsches, Audis, all those types of cars that are kind of like more, I don't know, more from, like, mainstream legacy brands that don't seem to embrace this type of event to show off their electric wares. So

Gary: 21:54

I was in a discussion with somebody yesterday, and he made the observation that of all the manufacturers that are here, almost without exception, those manufacturers that have a presence as a manufacturer are all from the Far East. You've got all the Chinese manufacturers. You've got, both Hyundai's and all that. Yeah. Hyundai's that.

Gary: 22:15

You've got Volvo, which of course is now Geely. Yeah. There aren't BMW aren't here as a manufacturer. Audi aren't here as a manufacturer. VW aren't here as a manufacturer.

Gary: 22:24

Mercedes aren't here as a manufacturer. But I

Rob: 22:28

Ford Ford is here. Ford Ford's the exception.

Gary: 22:30

Yes. Yep. And they had a so so display. They brought their big articulated lorry that turns into a a display centre like they have at the Formula 1 races.

Rob: 22:41

And and they brought a plug in hybrid. They brought the Kuga, and they brought the Explorer.

Gary: 22:46

How How how come he was allowed to say plug in hybrid without it being beeped? You know? Me too myself. Well, say say plug in hybrid again. What did they bring, Rob?

Rob: 22:55

A plug in

Gary: 22:57

Wonderful.

Rob: 22:58

There we go. And and the Ford Explorer, which, as we know, is based on the DWR ID 3, so it's fun. Sorry. ID 4. So it was kind of fun going through there and looking at, oh, that's an ID 4 button.

Rob: 23:07

That's an ID 4 store. That's an ID 4 switch. So but, as yet, that that wasn't available for test drive. So

Gary: 23:13

But, and, as you say, the only way you could actually get in and sit down in a Porsche or a Mercedes or a BMW Electric was through the dealers, JCT 600, for example. And I think that's actually quite indicative, but I don't know what it's indicative of. Why is it that the Chinese manufacturers, Far East manufacturers feel

Gregg: 23:37

that it's

Gary: 23:37

a good investment to come here? Whereas the ones who are currently contesting the ZEV mandate and complaining that they're not selling enough electric cars are not here. I wonder whether those two things are related.

Rob: 23:52

I just wanna point out as well that that the people manning the j c t 600, like, knew their stuff. Like, we were talking to people from, Porsche, from VW, and it it seems they were from the actual dealerships that where these cars came from. They weren't just, like, generic people brought into, for the event. They were actual dealer staff. So we were asking them, some quite technical questions, and they knew the answers, which was great.

Rob: 24:16

So

Gary: 24:16

I I know for a fact that JCT 600 have employed non sales people to provide answers to potential customers who want to come in and learn about electric vehicles. I've interviewed one of them on my podcast and they're not, commission based. They're not incentivized to sell, but when someone comes in wanting to know about electric vehicle, the salesman will go, ah, here's Ben. He's our guy. You ask the questions.

Gary: 24:45

And I suspect those are the kind of people who've been asked to come and attend.

Gregg: 24:48

Yeah. It's always great when you have people who will not try to sell you whatever, gives them the next commission. Yeah. I think that's a terrible model, personally.

Gary: 24:56

Totally.

Gregg: 24:58

And yeah. We we can spot it when we walk into a dealership. Like, I remember when I was trying to get a Kia in Euro in 2020 or 2019, and the guy was like, oh, yeah. But our plug in hybrids are great. I'm not gonna press the button again.

Gregg: 25:10

Sorry. And I was like, no. Just stop. I just basically had to tell him, like, no. There's no way I'm not buying an electric car.

Gregg: 25:17

Now you walk into a Kia dealer and every single car is electric. And I said there or bar like 2. And I said, they're waiting for somebody, and people are coming in asking which one's electric because they want that one, or they wanna hear from the salesman, you know, Kia's not here, but, obviously, Hyundai is. So they're kinda representing the the brand. Yeah.

Gregg: 25:40

I don't know why VWs and all that are not here. They should seriously be here, but, again, going back to our other discussions, you know, we're missing the, EV experience center.

Gary: 25:52

Totally.

Rob: 25:53

Yes. Yeah. Absolutely.

Gregg: 25:55

What what else have you guys done? Have you done any test drives on Friday, Gary?

Gary: 25:59

I didn't do any on Friday. I did 3 on Saturday. Okay. Though I I quite like the look of the Volvo EX30, so I thought I'd go have a go go in that. And, I summarized it as being it's very close.

Gary: 26:16

It's very close to being a good electric car, but there's a couple of things that that kind of let it down.

Gregg: 26:22

It is quite popular, you

Gary: 26:24

know. What? The Volvo? Yeah.

Gregg: 26:26

That well, that particular model Yeah. For electric.

Gary: 26:28

Yeah. I mean, as as you point out, Robbie, it's got a lot of commonalities with, obviously, the sister brand Polestar. There's a lot of

Rob: 26:35

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

Gary: 26:36

Similar kinds of things. From a software point of view?

Rob: 26:40

It was it was running Android Automotive. Yep. So that that's where basically, think of Android Auto, but it's fully integrated in the car. So when you say, okay, Google, it's, it's it's actually controlling the car. So, okay, Google set the air conditioning to 17 degrees.

Rob: 26:56

It it actually does it. And another good feature is when you're using the navigation, it's full Google Maps, but it actually gives you your estimated battery percentages for your for your trip, so you know roughly what you're gonna get at your destination, which Android Auto doesn't do because it doesn't tie him with the car. That's that's just an overlay that's running. So

Gary: 27:15

You do realize that if anybody is listening to this in a Polestar or a Volvo, the fact that you've just said, okay, Google set the temperature to 17 degrees means their fans have just turned on, and their car's now getting cold.

Gregg: 27:27

Okay, Google. Subscribe to Take It EV podcast. Okay, Google. Subscribe to EV Musings podcast.

Rob: 27:34

And my phone just going nuts now. It's just on the desk in front of us. So so yeah. Yeah. I was I was riding shotgun with Gary on the EX 30 test drive, and I I thought the car had been basically Teslarified.

Rob: 27:46

So everything was on the front screen, the speedo, everything else. There there was nothing on the door because the switches are transferred to, like, the center armrest, for the driver and passenger. There wasn't much to do of as a as a passenger. No buttons to press anything else because, again, everything's in the screen. The glove box had been moved underneath the screen in, like, a central position and was probably very, very small.

Rob: 28:12

I I didn't like it, to be honest. I I like the the materials. The materials are are kind of nice and Scandinavian and wool and natural fibres and things. Very nice.

Gary: 28:22

In terms of hard plastic or anything like that.

Rob: 28:24

It was nice. Yeah. Of soft touch plastics, but it it just felt like it was it was missing loads of things, and and that kinda made it really sparse and basic inside.

Gary: 28:34

I'm a big fan of physical tactile buttons that you can press, and there was there were not a huge number of those. So that was a little bit disappointing. But as I say, other than that, it it was very close to being something that I could could've gone for, but it was just lacking. And then I went to the, Ioniq 5 n, and unlike Rob, I got the different sales guy or the different guy who was sitting in.

Rob: 28:58

He got a longer test drive. So I

Gary: 28:59

got a little bit of a longer test drive, and the guy sat in and he said, right. We've got lots of good goodies on here. We'll have a play with those later on the way. Oh. Yeah.

Gary: 29:10

Foreshadowing. Foreshadowing. And I did the same route as Rob, went out, turned right down to the roundabout. But instead of going all the way around the roundabout coming back, he said, right. Let's put the boost button on here, and we'll we'll take a look at it.

Gregg: 29:23

What? What? What? What? What?

Gary: 29:24

Take her out at the roundabout. And we did a couple of nice tasty, launches in that. And my one word review of that car is insane. It's just unbelievable as a vehicle.

Gregg: 29:40

Subscribe to EV Musings for more ASMR.

Gary: 29:45

Insane. 3rd car I went out with in I used to be able to speak English. The 3rd car in which I took a test drive was, like you again, Rob, it was the BYD Seal.

Rob: 29:58

Seal.

Gary: 29:59

My 5 word review of that, liked it. Didn't love it. Very nice. It's obviously going for the Tesla Model 3 market. Very well appointed inside.

Gary: 30:12

Lots of gadgets.

Rob: 30:13

It's got buttons.

Gary: 30:14

It's got lots of buttons. It's very tactile, nice materials. There were just a few little niggles in the, the software, some of the ways it worked with cruise control, that sort of thing, and it it wasn't quite there. But, you know, if somebody says, hey, Gary, here you are, you can have a BYD seal, I would happily accept it.

Gregg: 30:39

I wouldn't mind one either, but I I'm not I'm not the biggest fan of the looks as we spoke. I you know, this this, BYD doesn't seem to have a common design team across all the other models in the cover shows, and they're stealing loads of things or borrowing loads of ideas from the Western designs, which, you know, fair enough, a gin manufacturer who's trying to appeal to the Western customers has to have a, you know, like it's a reverse culture appropriation almost. So they have to have a bit of a, you know, hopefully, they're gonna refine it. If you by the way, if you hear any noises, again, we're recording at the Everything Electric, show, so we have loads of, background noise. And we're just outside of giga theatre, basically, in the room.

Gregg: 31:22

So there's some echoing noise. I think

Gary: 31:23

they're about to wrap up. I think it's the last session of the day. So, cool.

Gregg: 31:26

So, yeah, so let's just, let's just walk forward. It's like, what else have we done that was exciting and worth mentioning? And, there were a couple

Gary: 31:37

of, very interesting panel sessions. Imogen Bogle and Jack Scarlett, 2 of the, Fully Charged Show presenters, did a panel on behind the scenes of Fully Charged itself, and they told some, you know, quite interesting stories about, if you look in certain videos, you'll find out that at the start of the video, they're wearing one set of clothes, and at the end of the video, they're wearing a different set of clothes because they broke for lunch and spilled food all over themselves. So they've had to scramble to find a a new set of clothes to, to complete the shooting. EV acceleration. Right?

Gary: 32:15

Yeah. Well, yeah. I see. Just spill everything over. And there's also this is a very famous one of, Lou I forget which one it was, but Louis was one of the cameramen, was following could have been a Rivian, I think, or something like that.

Gary: 32:27

And he was in the camera car, and he went over a bump, and he actually it smashed the rear window of the the vehicle that he was in, because it it was just so rough. And, you know, to think the EV managed to survive that, but the car that was following it with the camera in didn't, or the car that was preceding it with the camera in didn't because he films out of the, the boot at the back,

Gregg: 32:51

the hatchback. He doesn't open the, the hatch?

Gary: 32:54

No. He did. But it it Oh, I see. Smashed the glass. It sort of fell in on him.

Gregg: 32:59

Oh, wow. So yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's not good.

Gary: 33:02

No. Not at all.

Gregg: 33:03

Again, missed that session because

Gary: 33:04

because you were in here recording 211 episodes of

Gregg: 33:07

Take Your E Podcast.

Gary: 33:08

Take Your E Podcast.

Rob: 33:09

For the benefit of you, the listener.

Gary: 33:11

Yeah. There was also, as I said, the session with, Quentin Wilson, Colin Walker, couple of other people who I think Lorna McAteer was on there as well. They were talking again about misinformation, fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Some of the the latest myths that have arisen. What was one of them?

Gary: 33:32

The Tesla accelerates so fast that my hair is falling out.

Gregg: 33:36

I've never heard that one. That sounds ridiculous. Tell me, Morris.

Gary: 33:39

You know what? They're all ridiculous.

Rob: 33:42

Oh. That was a that was a story from America that someone had picked up on. Yeah. So yeah.

Gregg: 33:46

I mean, in America, the hair might have been attached rather poorly by, you know, somebody who's just doing hacky job. I'm sorry.

Gary: 33:53

But then there's the other one of, well, you're actually in you're getting all the microwaves that are coming up from the the battery because you're inside a a Faraday cage or whatever, and it's it's causing cancer or things like that.

Gregg: 34:07

And it's kind of no.

Gary: 34:08

It isn't. There's people driving around in with, pacemakers. And Lorna McAteer, who's the head of fleet at National Grid, said she had people with pacemakers in her fleet who were coming in concerned about this. And they did the test and they reviewed, and it's it's absolutely fine.

Rob: 34:22

And and when when the people that were already driving electric vehicles, they were happy with the electric vehicle, but then they'd read this story recently, and they were then questioning, is this story true because I'm driving an electric vehicle? It's like, well, you were fine with it before. The story's come out. The story's blatantly not true. Don't worry.

Rob: 34:38

Yeah.

Gary: 34:39

I that that's to me, that goes to the heart of some of the the misinformation.

Gregg: 34:45

And see it. This is once again one of those sessions that probably 50% of the people in attendance are gonna be people who already have EV cars and have funny members of the, the family or friends, and the other 50% are gonna be people who actually genuinely are concerned about these things because they read them. Mhmm. And it's really wasteful that we have to spend time talking about these things, but that's the that's the world we live in, I'm afraid. Absolutely.

Rob: 35:09

Well, it it's it's the negative stories always come to the forefront. The positive stories don't. Yeah. So we we we we have to mention them and bring them up. And, again, we have to use whatever platforms we've got to spin it the other way.

Rob: 35:22

Yeah. We we we have positive experiences using electric vehicles. So Yeah. We're we're gonna tell you about them as best we can.

Gary: 35:30

There was another session that I attended, actually, today, which was all about, sort of, the bigger picture of electrification. So you have a, an electric vehicle. You've got you can then use vehicle to grid. You can link it in with your battery, and you can create a whole ecosystem where you're helping the grid, and the grid is repaying you because of the help that you're doing, and and what that's doing is it's reducing the peak electricity demand. It means that we don't need as many gas power plants to to deal with the peak, and that's reducing everybody's bills overall.

Gary: 36:07

And it's aspects of this that a lot of people don't really understand the detail behind it. And because they don't understand it, they ignore it. And they're actually missing a huge part of the electrification, the aspects of electrification that are started by people like the 3 of us who bought electric vehicles. And, do you have the battery installed yet? No.

Gary: 36:34

I don't. But you think about it.

Gregg: 36:37

I would I would love one, but

Gary: 36:38

Yeah. Yep. We're back to the money issue, and that's fair enough. Scott, you only paid however many thousand it was. Go on, beep it for me.

Gregg: 36:48

You mean for the oh, the That's exactly it.

Gary: 36:52

But, yeah, you you've got this it's like, the gateway drug, basically. You get your electric vehicle, and then it's

Gregg: 36:59

a little well, I'm gonna get

Gary: 37:00

a battery that goes with it, and then I can start doing vehicle to grid if I've got the right hardware slash software, and

Gregg: 37:06

then I

Gary: 37:06

can start charging. So we're charging, arbitrage, so I buy my electricity in at cheap rate, then I can sell it back to the grid at at peak rate and make money on the difference.

Gregg: 37:17

It gets people from different angles, but it there's always a common you it swings you in a different direction all of a sudden, because you see, okay. Actually, this this whole electrification thing isn't that bad. There's more things I could do.

Gary: 37:29

And what are the examples they gave? I forget where it was, but there is a company Veolia who do the, refuse collections. Collection. Yeah. Yeah.

Gary: 37:39

They've got a couple of, electric bin lorries with huge batteries. Yeah. And they go out at half past 5, 6 o'clock in the morning, and they do the round. And they come in, they empty the the bin lorry, and then it goes back to the base, and it's still got 75% of its battery left. And they plug that in on a vehicle to grid, and they sell that electricity back to the grid at peak times, and that offsets the price and the cost that they have to pay at their fleet, and then they charge it again overnight with the cheaper rate and it goes back around, and it's

Gregg: 38:16

Here's an interesting thing. So I spoke to a couple of people about the waste lorries or, you know, waste, refuse.

Gary: 38:24

Refuse bins. Yes.

Gregg: 38:25

Refuse bins. That's the name. Bin lorries. Yeah. Apologies.

Gregg: 38:28

The, apparently, the actual squeezing of the content and, you know, putting things in takes way more power than actually driving that thing around. Even though it's super heavy, the most electricity or power go into the squishing and tilting things inside. And I was quite genuinely surprised by that. Yeah. Unless, obviously, you have to go 100 miles each way to to do it, but, which they don't.

Gregg: 38:54

They they usually just work on in the local area. Yeah. But, I always said to myself, That just makes perfect sense for the batteries then.

Gary: 39:04

Yeah. And sort of linked on with that, and I know you did an interview with Mark Potter from 3TI talking about vehicle to grid. Yeah. And, hopefully, coming soon to this very podcast. There is, the possibility then to leverage Vehicle TO Grid so that you can put one of their 3 t I units, the the solar powered units in there, hook 10 or 12 vehicles off it, run the office or the building that that is attached to from the battery in the vehicles, and still then recharge it back at the end of the day so that when the individuals leave, they've got the battery that they need and the power that's being used to power the building has come from their batteries and again there's the arbitrage of the cost of how much it's cost them to get the the, power overnight versus how much they've saved through using the batteries instead of peak time power.

Gary: 40:02

And again, it's not you might disagree. It's not rocket science for how this works. That, yes, there's an amount of complexity involved in the technical bits underneath it, but at the end of the day, buy cheap, sell expensive. Yeah. And it it works out for everybody.

Gregg: 40:21

Yeah. And it can be automated so you don't have to think about it. Yeah. I didn't go to as much detail in that regard or in that particular aspect with Mark because we geeked out on CCS

Gary: 40:32

and other things. But geeked out. Can you imagine? I know.

Rob: 40:35

Yeah.

Gregg: 40:36

Sure. You know, what happens when you, get to, like, minded people who are

Gary: 40:41

the word you're looking for is engineers. Well, thank you, Gary.

Gregg: 40:47

Anyway, because we might be kicked out of here in 10, 15 minutes. Who knows? What else is worth highlighting? What we're trying to say is basically if you have anything like this going around in your area, everything electric show, just don't think about it. Just go.

Gregg: 41:04

Take your family. There's ice cream outside. There's things to do. The next one, I believe, is October, or did I say there's pizza as well? Farmborough, yeah.

Rob: 41:14

Farmborough, yeah.

Gary: 41:15

Everything like Farmborough in sometime in October. It's 5050 about whether the weather's gonna be good or bad.

Gregg: 41:21

Well, in October, yeah. Just Google everything electric show or fully charged show.

Gary: 41:26

Yeah. But it's good. They've got stuff here for the kids. They've got competitions. We came past earlier on, and there were a whole load of kids building Lego.

Gary: 41:34

They had a keep you up competition that was being run by BYD. You could win one of the little octopus I have in the competitions to win the little Yeah.

Gregg: 41:41

There were always massive queues to that.

Gary: 41:43

Massive queues for the octopuses.

Rob: 41:44

The big the bigger that we also bring win win prizes, so the adults can win money off their bills, I believe, and the little little, the ones can win little octopuses. Octopi. Octopi.

Gregg: 41:53

Octopi.

Rob: 41:53

Of various sizes while stocks last.

Gregg: 41:55

Yeah. Did I mention pizza and ice cream?

Gary: 41:59

No. But you can mention it again, because, you know It's

Rob: 42:01

all here. It's all here. Yeah.

Gregg: 42:03

Pizza. Pizza. Oh, beer.

Gary: 42:08

Beer, the source of and answer to all life's problems.

Gregg: 42:12

Anything else, Rob? But, any other highlights? What did you like about the, well, people will watch, hopefully, the review of the, the car you,

Rob: 42:22

Oh, the Skywell?

Gregg: 42:22

The Skywell. Yeah. Forgot the name. Sorry. Any hots?

Rob: 42:28

Yeah. So so the Skywell is a new brand coming to the UK. It's gonna be by a company who's like a multi importer, so they're bringing in lots of different vehicles over that they've kind of cherry picked from various manufacturers, mostly from China. This car is very, very highly spec'd. Think about some of the German brands that I'm not gonna name, but it it's a comparable spec to those with the quality of the interior, the the specification, the toys you've got in there as well.

Rob: 42:57

So it's very, very, very, very good sort of, vehicle that that's obviously coming out. So so yeah. Yeah. That that that's good.

Gary: 43:08

I sat I sat inside that. It's a I quite like the interior. There's there's some wood in there. There's not huge amounts of hard plastic or the piano black, scratchable plastic. Scratchable stuff that leaves all the fingerprints.

Gregg: 43:22

Like, I've got in my Niro EV. Yeah.

Gary: 43:24

Yeah. You know, I get I don't know what this I mean, I've read the specs, but I don't know what the performance is like because of, obviously, we haven't we nobody's yet taken one of these out on the road. I believe you've got

Rob: 43:36

Yeah. I'm I'm trying to get, like, a, invite to the pressurize and things. So I've, obviously, with the video coming soon, I'm I'm gonna talk about the specs, but it's it's another thing to drive it. So, hopefully, that'll be coming soon later in the year when they get some over into the country. Yeah.

Rob: 43:51

But it's it's it's a really good car. It's it's lots of space in the back. I'm 6 foot 2. If if I'm sitting in the front, I can sit behind myself, and I've got, like, acres of leg room. The boot's massive.

Rob: 44:04

It's got sunroof that opens, which is quite niche. It charges quickly, big battery, all that type usual usual type of stuff, really.

Gregg: 44:12

So So more details to come. And, obviously, once we all start driving them, test driving them, then we're gonna have more details because it's a new brand in the at least in the UK. I've never heard about them before. So anything else before we wrap up?

Gary: 44:27

No, I think we should say thank you to the folks at Everything Electric.

Gregg: 44:32

Yeah. Thank you, Dan. Dan Caesar, Amanda who's, I think it was Amanda Holly. Hold on.

Rob: 44:42

Sophie Sophie who's been emailing us with all the details about the media things and sorting out our media passes. Yes.

Gregg: 44:48

So Sophie was amazing. It's Annabelle who's actually, you know, organised this whole media room for me, away from the actual media room. Mhmm. So I'm very grateful for that, because, you know, imagine imagine not being able to do this, I would have been enjoying the show, and we wouldn't be talking about this today.

Gary: 45:07

I mean, don't don't think it's anything posh. It's, you know, exposed brickwork. There's one tiny window and a whole stack of chairs in the corner there. But,

Gregg: 45:15

I think this is a cloakroom slash staff room, but still, it's a room.

Gary: 45:18

It's a room, yeah.

Gregg: 45:19

Big room. And this is what the venue has. So, you know, unlike the Farnborough, where you have multiple rooms upstairs that you can actually open up for people, this, you know, this is this is what they have to work with. So, and I have to share it with other people, but I don't mind, and they don't mind. So yeah.

Gregg: 45:34

And we all should thank people like Dan and and, and Robert and the, and Sophie for actually giving us access to to these shows because, you know,

Gary: 45:45

we're a 100%.

Gregg: 45:46

We are all, I mean, self deprecating, but we're not we don't have millions of viewers or listeners, you know, either of our podcast or or the YouTube channel. So, you know, other venues would have, would have told us to sling our hooks, basically. But the, but Don, you know, he's always very nice and and, and helpful. So, thank you guys. And like I said like we said, we're not we're not we were given access to this for free Mhmm.

Gregg: 46:16

But we're not getting paid anything. We could have been like, oh, it's crap, and you don't come to these things, but we genuinely think this is amazing and, you know Absolutely. And it's very useful. Yep. It is.

Gregg: 46:26

Right. So this has been Turkey TV show. I'll see you on the next one.