* Posts by Ecotricity

4 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Feb 2010

Look inside ELON MUSK'S CAR! Tesla S wundervehicle has voom

Ecotricity
Stop

Doing the math

Firstly, thanks to everyone who posted corrections about the Nissan Leaf charging times, and the availability of our Electric Highway (which is capable of charging Nissan Leaf and others) in as little as 30 mins at many motorway services in the UK :)

Now, Tesla says that they can offer free supercharging to their customers forever, and they can do that because all the cost is in the infrastructure, the actual electricity cost isn't so great and they build the charging cost into the car. When we looked at it the cost was around £2,000 to add free supercharging to your Tesla order, or free if you have the top end car - but safe to presume the £2,000 is built into that.

We can see that the 60kW car does 2.9 miles to the kWh and the 85kWh does 2.6 (these are the most gas guzzling EVs on the planet BTW) - and against that you have £2,000 most of which is spent on infrastructure. If you assume infrastructure is free, that £2,000 would pay for about 44,000 miles of driving in the 85kW car at today's prices (assume 12p a kWh).

That's hardly a lifetimes driving - it's more like a couple of years worth - and that assume zero infrastructure cost, whereas Musk says it's the other way round, negligible energy cost.

Something clearly does not add up. Are Tesla making promises they won't later be able to keep?

Hippie windfarm kingpin Dale Vince slapped down by ASA

Ecotricity
Alert

More Semantrics from Graham Trave (of Save Berkely Vale)

Mr Trave, you need to be a little more honest with yourself and with the rest of us. First thing is to put your name to these posts.

You say 'we only asked Dale Vince about one paragraph' - but that's not the whole truth, I have letters and e-mails listing 20 or more questions at a time, from you and the (probably only) other person in your group. We've been bombarded with your nonsense.

Below you quote a list of people I told you we have 'spoken to'. For a man so proficient in semantics I would expect you to be a little more accurate in the meaning you ascribe to words. I told you we'd spoken to lots or organisations, 'spoke to' being the operative description. That is not the same as 'consulted' there is a big difference. You do not understand the issues of wind or the process of planning, and that's fine, you are a lay person with much to learn.

Whatever you say the fact remains that we did not consult with the CCB at that meeting in March - CCB have confirmed this to us by e-mail.

Their letter to you is misleading (unintentionally I'm sure) - it says they did not give a positive response (which is true but not the whole story), it fails to point out that they did not give a response at all AND that's because the issue was not discussed.

Our letter was honest and factual. It would do you more credit to raise genuine issues regarding our plans rather than try to discredit us this way and rather than just offer your platitudes here about windmills being too big (for your backyard) - what I'm saying is, play the ball Mr Trave not the man.

Our appeal to the ASA has been lodged. We shall see.

Ecotricity
Coffee/keyboard

Semantricks

Hello Save Berkeley Vale, all,

Hmm... just to be clear - this ASA ruling came about from a single complaint made by none other than Graham Travé - the spokesperson for the local anti-wind group 'Save Berkeley Vale'. This whole thing is about hair splitting and semantics in an effort to simply throw some dirt our way.

That said the most important point that seems to be missed here is this - we never (ever) consulted the CCB on our proposal. So when they say in their letter that 'their response could not be considered positive' this is not the whole truth, it's misleading because they actually gave no response because they were not actually asked for one. If we didn't ask them and they didn't give one then how can our letter, which said 'all responses so far have been positive' - have been untrue?

It's worth also saying here that the CCB are not on the list of bodies that we are required to consult with, we did not conveniently overlook them - before someone jumps to that conclusion... :)

Here is a quote from another email from Malcolm Watt of CCB that we received:

"I am happy to confirm that the Council is not required statutorily to consult the Cotswolds Conservation Board on planning applications which fall under the thresholds for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP)."

He goes on to say:

"At no time has the Board made a statement, "positive" or otherwise, about your proposals"

BTW - a PDF that shows the original letter, along with Mr Travé's letter is publicly available here: http://tinyurl.com/ye5ubjt

We just found one to/from the RAF here also: http://tinyurl.com/ybdrwwp

So - this is just another case of a loud minority of people using every process available in order to derail and discredit wind projects. A bit like people using this 'news' article as justification to attack wind energy in general! Come on folks, think about the future!

Cheers

Ecotricity
Flame

Hello again Lewis...

For anyone who is actually interested - we're very disappointed with the ASA's decision, which has been reached in the absence of all the facts and in the face of others.

Nobody has been misled by our letter to residents. The facts are that we have never asked the Cotswolds Conservation Board for their opinion of our wind farm proposal - and we have never had their opinion offered to us. So when we said, in our letter,that all of the bodies we had consulted with so far had been positive - that was the absolute truth.

The ASA have told us they are too busy to get the facts themselves, which is rather shocking. They should have made enquires with the CCB (who have not been totally straight in this), in the absence of that basic diligence this judgement is premature and ill founded.

What's more the ASA have failed to meet the standard of their own code of practice (clause 7.1) - the one that says advertisers must have evidence to support up the claims they make. The ASA has no evidence to back up this judgement. The dictionary definition of such practice is hypocrisy.

This is a flawed judgement from an organisation too busy to establish the facts. It's a disgrace.

Cheers - especially to the green geeks who still read The Register ;)