Thursday, March 20, 2014

A new electric car

We have added another jigsaw piece to our attempt at a sustainable life here in Clacton with our purchase of a second-hand Citroen C1 Eva electric car which we will fuel (mostly) from our solar panels.
Electric cars pay no road tax.  The main on-going cost will be maintaining the (expensive!) batteries  and replaceing some of them over time as they fail.

The car is 5 years old and was created new by converting a Citroen C1 petrol car
The Citroen C1 Evie, is a pure electric car that has been produced by the British-based Electric Car Corporation. It runs on a 30kw electric engine powered by lithium-ion batteries that are placed where the conventional fuel tank is, and also under the bonnet along with the electric motor. This leaves the interior of the C1 Evie unchanged from a standard Citroen C1, making it the first pure-electric four-seater on sale in the UK.
Energy produced from friction under braking is also stored and used to aid the 60-mile range.
We have been cautiously experimenting to find out the cars range and so far it has been using just over 2% of the battery charge per mile driven.
The amount of battery charge it consumes depends on how many people it is carrying and on how carefully it is driven.
One of our concerns was how to fit in our (large) Labrador dog. I am glad to report that we can carry three people and our dog at once!