WLTP Bladder Rating with Jonathan Porterfield

Hi, I'm Alex, he's Jim, and this is the Charging Status EV Podcast. How are you doing, Jim?

Not too bad. And we've got an illustrious guest with us this week. He's usually hobnobbing

with the likes of Robert Llewellyn and Johnny Smith and other important and intelligent people.

But this week, he's with us, so apologies for that. But Jonathan, Paul's fields with us.

I'm honoured to be in your presence, Jim. It's EV royalty, I think.

In fact, such EV royalty, you've got a little anniversary at the moment, haven't you?

We have. It's 10 years. So, September 2015, me and Chris Ramsey of Polterpolphone,

we were the first to drive a 24kWh leaf. It was a press car from Nissan.

They got it delivered up to Orkney, and we got it all graphic top. And we drove from

Jonogroats, non-stop, except for charging, all the way down to Land's End. We spent 40 minutes

at Land's End posing for pictures, and jumped back in and drove all the way back. It was absolutely

bonkers. We were awake for something like 42 hours. It was just madness. And I had the mother of all

headaches when we got back. We used to take it in turns to sleep on the back seats on the way

back in between ravers. But yeah, crazy. 10 years ago. How much things have progressed in 10

years? How was the infrastructure then? It was just ecotricity. And good old Dale Vance, he was

behind us. And he ranged to try and meet us with a bottle of champagne, but for some reason it didn't

work out. But we just went from ecotricity rapid one to another. So we did 33 rapids in total.

And as you can imagine with the Mark 1 Nissan Leaf, we had no thermal management,

case with a previous generation leaf. We very often very soon hit rapid gate.

So to alleviate the boredom, me and Chris, every conceivable means to try and call the pack down.

After about the fourth rapid, you can see the temperature going up, we had leaf spy on

phones bolted to the window and looking at all the stats and everything getting really geeky,

because there's nothing else to do for 33 odd hours we were driving. So we were like,

do you know what? Cold air is dense and it was seeped down through the car. So we put the air

conditioning on. It wasn't particularly warm out. We put the air conditioner on maximum

in the belief that the cold air would sink to the base of the car, seep through the car,

through the chassis, into the battery pack and help alleviate some of the temperature.

One absolute load of rubbish. All we got was feet we couldn't feel. Our heels were numb.

They were just frozen beyond belief. We literally couldn't feel our heels.

So yeah, we tried all sorts of weird and wonderful things. We even took out the little

inspection, the little triangle inspection thing for the main fuse on the old leaf. We whipped

that up to let some of the cold air filter down into the pack. He did make a shot of

difference. We still got it. Yeah, good fun times.

Right. And obviously you've done a few very long EV trips since living in Orkney helps I guess.

Yeah. The long road trips.

When I was, so just a bit of background, I used to run a business called EcoCars where I

supplied used electric vehicles to customers all over the country. But when I moved to

Orkney in 2014, there was a huge demand here. So I used to buy something like in Bristol or Birmingham

at the auctions and then just use social media, Twitter and YouTube to just catalog my trips back

to show how easy it was. So from Leicester where my parents lived to Scrabster, which is the port

before we get on the boat to Orkney, I did it around about 70 times in different EVs. From

Mitsubishi IMFs, System C0, Peugeot Ions to the Leaf right up to Teslas. Yeah. I just drove every type

of EV at the time just to prove it could be done. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. And I mean, I know

you've just recently been down to Spain, haven't you? Yeah. So in the Nero, so we went last

December and we spent three or four months down there, well two months and then came back

early March. And the E-Nero, I'm a massive fan of the old shape E-Nero. Yeah. But it was just,

it's just a really good used car. Yeah. And my, you're a man of a certain age, but Jim,

you know, my bladder range is about two and a half hours. Two and a half hours, that's good.

Mine's about two and a half minutes, I guess. If I don't drink coffee or tea in morning and

just water, I can go to three hours. I can't push it to three without tea or coffee.

That's quite impressive in itself. We should have WLTP bladder rating, shouldn't we? Yeah. But,

you know, the EPA is actually more like the realistic number. And was the Chinese won the

CL, something CL? CLTC, I think. Yeah. Yeah. That one's six hours, but you know,

how are we going to grow? Yeah. Driving down to Spain, we used it as part of the holidays. It

wasn't a race to get down there. And my wife, she's a whiz on booking.com. So she just booked

hotels with type two chargers, destination chargers. Nice. Which was, there was another

story because there were so many different providers, so many different apps. It was

really frustrating. I did a video on it. It wasn't always easy to understand, especially

in a foreign country, trying to get the old Google Translate to figure out how to download

the app to pay for it to set up an account. Yeah. So that is still, there's room for

improvement there. But again, that's another big plus for Tesla superchargers because,

you know, the language is on your phone. You know, it's 1A, 1B, 1C to charge your position.

It's just, they're just miles ahead when it comes to the thinking of what an EV driver needs.

And even the thing I came up with, because I just did a road trip as well, is that it,

even if you don't know any languages, it makes it easier than petrol because you haven't

got to go into the shop and ask for each pump and work out what they're saying.

So you can just use it as all self-service on your phone. So it's easy.

Let's do another podcast on your trip, Alex. We will do. Yeah. But just to fill you in,

last time I saw Alex was in Munich, which he'd driven to Munich in VW ID3 GTX.

Since circumnavigated Europe and go home yesterday, didn't you have a day before?

Got him on Tuesday. I think I've lost track of what day of the day it is. So, yeah.

The only real question I've got for you is, how did you survive for that long without Greg's?

Greg's. I'm not that obsessed with Greg's. I mean, I did have a Greg's the day I got back,

to be fair, just the coffee. You need to hire standards. You do need to hire standards.

All that time in Europe, these amazing bakeries and little coffee shops,

and he comes home, Jones in for a Greg's.

Dreadful. One of the plus points of Altnews, they don't allow chain store,

fast food out there. So, there's no McDonald's or Wimpy or Greg's here.

So, when I do go south, I quite like Greg's, I have to say. Quite like the vegan sausage rolls.

Quite tasty. Yeah. There we go. I'm upset now. I think we should call it,

we'll call it a podcast and say goodbye.

Now, this is not really the best sort of subject matter for the podcast, but I absolutely harken

back to the days when every high street had three separate bakeries, and actually the ice buns were

quite good in that one, but the bread was better in the one up there. And yeah, they were simpler

times, weren't they? Yeah. If I can less where I used to live, there was a shop that just sold

cheese, and they had a bakery, and it's just like that's all gone, it's now just Tesco's.

And I bet it was known as the cheese shop. It was, it used to call it the cheese shop, yeah.

There you go. Simpler times. Everyone knew where they were. Yeah. They've got old days,

then they invented penicillin. Everything went wrong.

I love your content, Jonathan, because like just the auctions, I mean, now you've got obviously

your regular videos showing normally showroom. Yeah, because they're not touching about me

doing it. One of my friends was asking, he's doing a sort of trading up series,

and he's got an account with BCA, and he's like, I think I'm going to put the bid in a video,

and I said, I could see BCA getting the right hump with that. Oh, really? And yeah, that is the

case, is it? Yeah, it is. Yeah. So they sent a very stiff, stern email to the new owners of

EcoCars, because I love into that old EcoCars BCA cow just to record the stuff. So they got

win because it was getting loads of views and everything, and just sent this very stern email

to the new owners and said, stop it or else. Right, okay. Yeah. So I thought, great, that's

given me a great reason for a follow-up video that said like, for me, 139,000 views,

because amazing. I just I just know who's behind BCA, which is the Constellation, which own Weebuyne

Car, Cinch, Marshall Group. They're just these massive monster, the motor trade that are trying to

dictate used values for the whole of UK, if not Europe, they're just massive. I think they've

bought Kazoo now as well, haven't they? Yeah. And the British Motor Show. Oh, really?

Constellation Group. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they're massive. They're probably by Greg's next, and we're all done

for. But I was genuinely quite flattered to think that my little pathetic YouTube channel with

20,000 followers got them so worried that they have to send a stiff email, which is cool.

I mean, what's the worst that could happen? Someone watches it and thinks, oh, this

looks great. I've always wanted to have a go at this. Yeah. I'll sign up and give them some

business. I know. I couldn't get my head around it, but there you go. Is it just that you're showing

the values or something? It seems a bit strange to me. Yeah. I don't know. See, what I've always

done, even when I was buying cars to order was just be open and honest. I just wanted to get

bombs on seats of EVs. I used to say, yeah, it's a 10,000 pound Mr. Leaf, if I can earn

300 quid out of it and I just tap away on the keyboard. Great. Yeah. It just going back slightly.

It all started. I should never forget it. I bought a Mr. Leaf out of Bristol, Mannheim.

So I flew down, picked it up, drove all the way back, did the videos and socials and everything,

did the video here, cleaned it up, test drive, video it, presented it, sold it to a

bloke in Torquay. I'd gone from Bristol to Orkney and he wanted to deliver it. So I thought, well,

I'll do a video about driving all the way back down again. And obviously I made enough margin on

it to make it worth the while. But I thought, there's got to be an easy way of this. So now

the scenario was, there's a Mr. Leaf coming up in Bristol next week. It's this much

miles, this is the colours of the chips. It should be 10 grand.

Getting touch. And people are getting touch going, well, yeah, I love it for 10 grand. Well,

it can be plus the fees plus my 300 quid if you want it. That's amazing. So the bloke from

Torquay will then jump on a train and after he bought it and paid me and I'll pay the auction,

he'd go there. He'd be sort of on the inside of the motor trade for the day, which they love.

Yeah. And jump in and drive home in the car and be absolutely over the moon. He's got a text

with the valets and give me a quick wash and a vacuum. And that's what my business started

to really explode on was just this honest buy to order, which is what I try to do with the

videos. We're all in this life to make a crust one way or another. The days of motor dealers,

burning 50 pound notes and eating caviar for breakfast have long gone. It is really,

really hard work. So if you can simplify, which is what the other big platforms like

Kizu and Zinchi do, it is just doing this buy to order. Especially with an EV because you've got

no clutches to check. You've got no cam belt servicing and all the usual paraphernalia.

So yeah, that's what I did. It just got to the point where it got too much for me to handle.

So, you know, it was nice to just sort of walk away from it and retire that a bit early.

But I've gone slightly offline. But yeah, I don't know why BCA don't like the honesty

because the public works. They know that, you know, things are cheap with auction.

But it's their loss. I mean, sure, I'm I know the manager really well in the auction here.

They get at least two or three people a month turning up saying, I've seen Jonathan's videos

kind of standing in the hall and sticking the hand in the air and the buyer can't.

They message me and go, this car's brilliant. I've earned nothing out of it, but I just want to

get people in EVs. Yeah, I mean, it seems seems like a win-win for the auction house really.

Yeah, great work with someone that appreciates it. What's the deal of the moment? What's

coming through now at like that sort of 10, maybe 12 grand that, you know, we wouldn't

have seen six months ago, for example, that looks like stunning value in your own opinion.

So in any used car, people always get really jittery. If it's gone over three years old,

you know, the manufacturers warranties gone, et cetera, et cetera. So I know I keep banging

on about it, but Hyundai and Kia in particular, Kia product, so the old shape, Kia Enero,

64 kilowatt hour, the Ford Cross is the best trim. It's such a great all-round car.

Yeah. It doesn't look, it's not in your face. It's not out there styling wise. It looks like a

normal car. Okay, it doesn't charge particularly quickly, but how many times, well, I got to

South of Spain without any problem. Yeah, nice. But it's got a seven-year warranties. If you

buy it at three years old when it's come off lease, you've got four years warranty left.

Yeah. It's just a no-brainer. It is completely. Yeah. So, you know, you can look at all the,

you can look at all the, the IDs and all the other stylish ones, but if it's a three-year warranty,

you know, you're on your own when it's, it's, it's third birthday. So, yeah. I'll tell you

the other Kia that I, I've got a hankering for. That's the second time I've used hankering in

this podcast. I don't know. I don't know what's happened to me. I really like the old Kia Soul EV Max.

Oh, yes. Yes. Which looks, I mean, I had a red one as a press car for a week and it looked just

like Postman Pat's van. But that was great. You know, it's again really decent range. Probably

the best sound system I've ever heard in a bog standard car. It was incredible. It was a

lovely little thing to drive and so easy to deal with. And I did sort of enjoy the arrogance of it

looking a bit like Postman Pat's van somehow as well. But I think they're good little cars and

no one ever sort of mentions them too much. But there wasn't that, there's not that many around.

There was one at Shoreham. What was it? Aston Bartlett, I can't remember. About three weeks

ago, and that was in red, the Max trim because I wasn't sure on what the Max meant and somebody

enlightened me. Yeah. Nice mile, I think it's 30,000 miles, a few scrapes and chips, nothing

serious. It's all 311 grand. Geez. Wow. Like that's got another four year warranty on it.

Yeah. 64 kilowatt battery. It's just, yeah, great value. Yeah. There's a load of quite decent EVs

for about 10 grand at the moment. Yeah. Just, you have a little auto trader or whatever

sort of platform you want to look at it. Just a bunch of stuff just around that price. It's crazy.

Yeah. It's quite interesting time at the moment, isn't it? Because you're now looking at what you

can get in an EV used for say 10 or even up to 15. And then you look at what you can get as a

petrol for that. Yeah. And there's quite a lot of disparity now. And obviously it used to

be, well, EVs are for the rich and all this kind of stuff. And you think, well, it's

going to cost me bugger all to run if I can charge from home. Maintenance is negligible, really.

And you can buy perhaps a two, three year old car for the price of a five year old.

Yeah. Petrol equivalent-ish. Yeah. What's not to like. I still see people in the press saying,

well, EVs are just still too expensive and they make a big fanfare about the Dacia,

whatever it's called, the cheap and cheerful thing. Yeah. Tiny little battery in it. Dacia Spring, yeah.

Yeah. But I keep banging on about, well, get a Kia eating era or the Kia Soul that three years old.

It's like you've got a brand new car with four year warranty left. Okay, it's not brand new,

but it's such a capable car at a great price of around, you know, 12, 13 grand.

So people just seem so hell bent still on brand new when it comes to EVs. It's got to be a new one.

No, it hasn't. Get a second one. Yeah. You've got no clutch to worry about. You've got to know,

it's not been thrashed. It's not been hit at the rev limiter all its life. Or the clutch hasn't

been slipped by granny. It doesn't have to drive properly down to the shops once a week.

So nothing to be abused on an EV, other than tyres. Yeah. Yeah. You know, not a big

that's it really. It's a good point. And I mean, this is this is like one of the things I repeat

constantly is is least new by used. Yeah. And like the leasing company take it on the chin,

the depreciation, because they're going to take the full brunt of it, especially on EV.

Yeah. They're going to take the brunt of it. Obviously, they've often bought a massive,

massive bolt to get a huge discount, which is something that's often missed out in the

press when they talk about some of these things and how unsustainable it is and all the rest of it.

And then pick one up used when they're an absolute bargain. Yeah. So I mean,

sorry, I worked out because we were doing it. There was a project up here called Reflex,

which was to help decarbonise transport for me, a massive government funded project. And

long story short, I've known Drive Electric, a leasing broker for years and over two directors

really well. And I was their representative on Orkney for the project and we leased over 200 EVs

to people and it was discounted. It was so this government funded project. So we were doing EOPS

basically for 99 quid down in 99 pound a month. It was just bonkers. We did about 30 EOPS. We

did about 30 EOPS. It was like 230 quid a month. Just crazy cheap. So what I'm getting around to

saying is that so I had my EOPS 4 Plus that cost me like 260 quid a month over three years, 10,000

miles a year. I think I put down 800 quid or something. But it was with Aval. It was quite

interesting. Though it was a personal contract hire a PCH, normally you don't get the option

to buy at the end, unlike a PCP where you get a guaranteed balloon. But because Aval got this

agreement with bless and British car auctions, you can actually ring up BCA or contact Aval

the end of three years, which is what he did. I did a video about it. Ring them up. They gave me

a price of what the car was worth, which at the time was 16 and a half, 17 grand. And

I'd worked out with the payments I'd made from having the car brand new to purchase in the car as a

second hand car, even though it never left my possession to stay here on the, you know, on the

drive. I'd saved 10 grand. So the least price of the car was 39,900. Basically, I got it for

29 grand, a brand new car. So there are ways and means of saving money through a personal

contract hire with certain companies that will allow you to buy it at the end if you wanted to.

So I bought my enero that I leased your enero. There we go. Through Aval because Aval had an

agreement with BCA and I bought it and I basically saved 10 grand by leasing it and then buying

it at the end. So I wanted a brand new car. I wanted an enero. I got it brand new.

The list price was 39 grand. I actually paid because I worked it all out. I actually paid

29 grand. I saved £10,000 by someone else putting up the funding at the front and then me

paying it off and then buying it. Do you know, I did a video with my model Y when I,

because I bought that through the business because I wanted to get rid of some tax, basically,

having paid the Chancellor quite enough in the last few years. And the only reason I bought

it is because I couldn't lease it. My business was too new and no one would give me a lease.

And I said in that first video, I said I'm buying this and I'm doing it in a tax-efficient way.

But I know that probably in 18 months, this car will have lost more in its value than it

would have cost me to lease for three years. And then 18 months later, I did a video showing

you that, yeah, that had happened and it cost, I can't remember the numbers now, but I think

to lease it would have cost about, for three years, would have cost 16 grand or something.

The car had already lost 18 or whatever the numbers were. But you see at the end of it,

that car is an absolute bargain because you're going to get yourself a three-year-old

Tesla Model Y for the square root of Bugger All. It'll serve you well. There aren't many

squeaky bits on it. So it's just cheap motoring from that point on, really.

And I'll tell you what, when you buy something from auction as well that's coming back ex-lease,

I quite like that because no one's been involved in the middle of it. Nobody's given it a nice

little haircut at any point. Or you don't have to worry about Fat Dave in the office that's

got a draw full of service stamps or, you know, it's quite an honest car, isn't it?

It is, yeah. It's the funder wanting their money back. So as a Tesla team buying a car privately

or buying from a lease company, a lease company every time, you don't know what the private

buyer's done. Is he pranked it and paid Dave down at the wheel arches to, you know, the

railway artist to do it back up again? Yeah. But with a lease company, you know, the leasey

is gone wrong, throw it back in the manufacturer, it gets fixed. Yeah, so much safer bet. Ex-lease.

Well, how do you think the user market is now? Is it stabilizing a bit? There seems to be more

interesting in the used EVs now than certainly there would have been two or three years ago.

Yeah. So my appallingly-sounded video that's going out tonight, cheap plug, was a report I saw from

Cinch this week that in August, I'm trying to remember the figures, I think 16% of their sales

were electric EVs and 10% were diesels. So for the first time ever, they're selling more EVs

than they are diesels. So there's a definite shift and all the anti EVs there took it out on

YouTube like nobody wants EVs anymore. They burst into flames every 10 minutes. There's no demand

at auction. Who's buying these? It's all a scam. Well, there's a retailer with BCA and

constellation behind them saying they can't sell them fast enough. The demand is massive.

And there was another bit of that report. It's online with Kazoo's press release or

something. The most popular car that doesn't hang around long on their pitches or in their stock

was the Skoda Enyaq followed by the Nissan Leaf of all cars, the old shape now Nissan Leaf.

So stuff is being bought by the trade and bought by the public rather and it's not

hanging around long. There's demand for them. And I've seen a rise in prices over the last

month. Everything is going over what's called cap. So and some stuff, particularly the German

stuff, if it's spec right, you know with German cars, base price, you get an option to list as

long as you're armed. So it might have five grand's worth of options and it was a 40 grand car.

But some of those cars, they go way over cap. It's buoyant. There is massive interest

and a lot of car dealers are finally waking up to the fact they've got to get on this

bandwagon because when you're 30, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So there is huge interest.

I'll tell you the one that I'm going to be interested in in December is the VW ID buzz.

Because December before last, they had 800 went out in basically two days

that were all the same spec and they were all on two year leases.

And obviously they're all going to come back into the market at the same time.

So that could be quite an interesting month. Another car that fits that. Would you remember

that T90 Maxis Pickup? Oh yeah. They gave you one if you bought a box of cornflakes.

That's right. Yeah. I think there were some deals like £99 a month and £99 quid

down to my listing. What were they listing at, Jim? Was it like 46 or something?

Nearly 50, I think. That's £60,000, including the AT.

Oh yeah. Of course. It was basically 50 plus fat. Yeah.

Well, I see them going through auction now and not selling at 16 grand because there was a

whole glut of them that were all registered before they ran out of that model and they

flooded the market with £99 a year. It was £199. I can't remember.

They're all coming back and they, you know, someone wants a very agricultural,

you know, a farmer wants to chop lambs on the back of it or hay bales or something.

Fantastic crude, but you know. Yeah, it does the job.

How's the model wide, by the way? Because obviously you've got yourself a brand

new shiny one. Yeah. It was the 0% deal, mate. They just

Yeah. And the part exchange I got for my EMV 200 was just bonkers.

Yeah. I kept going through the process. It was either it might have been you or someone else

that mentioned it was 0% PCP on X on Twitter. So I thought I'd just go down this rabbit hole,

you know, I thought, yeah, but I bet they won't give me much of me a part X.

And when it was £5,700 and I know it's worth about four and a half grand, I'm like,

okay, well, I bet the insurance is going to be astronomical. Insurance for me,

an old fart living on Orkney where there is very little crime,

with Churchill was 360 quid. Oh, wow. With European cover. I'm like,

well, I'd be stupid not to accept this deal. So yeah, long story short, I put in 9 grand.

So it was a maximum deposit of 15. I'm paying £197 a month.

Nice. Three years, 10,000 miles a year.

So yeah. And I went for the free colour, which is that beautiful good metal grey.

Yeah. And I went for the white interior. I've always loved the white interior.

Yeah. And I'm well impressed with it. Rear wheel drive. Don't want four-wheel drive,

all-wheel drive. I don't need 0-60 in something. I don't know, is it 3.7 or something?

This is a four seconds slower 0-60. Don't bother me. No. Look, I'll tell you what,

it is so monumental efficient. Oh, yeah, they're incredible, aren't they?

I mean, you can see the size and weight of the car, how they produce that efficiency.

And the thing that always gets me with Tesla as well is people look at the WLTP and they're

like, well, things have got much better range now. They're not miles ahead like they used to be.

I'm like, look at the bloody sides of the battery. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just five miles per kilowatt

hour without me even trying. Yeah. And we came back up from Glasgow with some friends. So fully

loaded, four adults, all the gobbins, all the luggage. And we were just trundling up the A9.

Admittedly, we were sitting at 55-60 because it's the A9. I was averaging seven miles per

kilowatt hour. Wow. Just sitting at that speeds for mile after mile after mile because

there's trucks and caravans and goodness knows what. It's monumentally efficient. I'm really,

really chuffed with it. And I love the tech. I love my tech. Yeah. The thing I do like is the fact

I've got it on auto select. So, yeah, you set it up in a screen. I love that. I just think

it's brilliant. It's really, really clever. Do you know, I've got that on my Model 3,

but not on the Model Y. Yeah. And I often get into the Model Y now and just press the accelerate

and sort of sit there and then think, oh. Got a cool lever. Yeah. Show the caveman the flame again.

Yeah. I go to all that, burn all those calories, pulling the lever to put it into drive.

But I mean, I still think software-wise, there are streets ahead and certainly,

like, the efficiency is incredible. And the suspension is so much softer on the new Y compared

to the old one. It's not some nervous round corners. It doesn't jitter about a lot. Yeah.

It's so quiet. It's just, no, I can't hear any wind noise off the wing mirrors.

Yeah. I get in the E-nearrow now and it sounds really loud compared to what it's, yeah. No, I'm

well pleased with it. It's, yeah, it's, I'm satisfied in itch that I've had for a long time.

I was going to buy a used one, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like the fact with the Tesla stuff as

well is that you can, you can go in at any of the levels. I mean, even if you go for the

bog standard entry level on all of them, they're all good. Like, it's not that massive a compromise.

No. And like, the charging process is just so simple, you know, pull up a supercharger, plug it in,

bugger off, unplug it, gone. And I don't know, it just all works so well. And I'm sure that's

because they came at the whole thing as a tech company and probably a long list of things people

don't like about cars or a long list of things that people find annoying, possibly with the EVs,

although they were sort of at the dawn of it. And it's like, well, let's take that one off.

Let's take that one off. Let's take that one off. But yeah, I'd have another one tomorrow.

Yeah. And for all of Elon's rant, rantings and Ravens and his weird things he comes out with,

you know, gonna take the hats off to Tesla, not just Elon, it's the whole team behind him. But

you know, to roll out that infrastructure before there was really that many Model Ss

on the road in 2014. Yeah. Just and I did read somewhere, apparently he offered

the supercharging network to the likes of JLR and all the other big manufacturers

years ago and they just weren't interested, you know, so he literally put the infrastructure

there first and had the vision to think, well, if the charging infrastructure is there,

then the people are common by the product, which is what it did. And, you know,

there's no other manufacturer that's done that. No, no, no, no, no, they haven't put

infrastructure in. They'll throw a seven kilowatt charger in the boot. And so there you go,

we've sorted you. But yeah, I've just, I was just with XPeng at the Munich Motor Show and they're

showing they've shown off sort of some of the infrastructure they've put in China. And I think

it's coming over to Europe, but they've got these like 850 kilowatt charges. And oh, yeah,

we've got however many 100,000 of them ready to go in in China. And I think some of those

brands will come over and do it. And where the old guard seems to still just sit back and

wait for everything to happen around them. But I do, I do get a bit twitchy. This whole

let's charge it up as fast as you can fill an internal combustion engine. I don't,

I do get it, but reality is most EV drivers, you know, plug it in when you're asleep.

Well, you see, I've been saying to a mate yesterday that, and I've said it on the podcast

before I think, but I find it a pain in the bum sometimes how quickly the car does charge.

So I mean, literally in the last year, I've probably used a public charger

15 times, 12 times. But on two of those occasions, like one, we were, we took the

kids up to York, and we stopped at Mansfield services at the Tesla charger. And it's like a

big outlet place. And we're like, oh, we're going to have a poot around a couple of shops

and have a coffee or something. Well, sort of 12 minutes in, I get a message on my app telling me

I've got to go back and move the car. And I'm thinking, well, that's about eight minutes walk

back to where where the car is. And then I've got to go back and find where my family are

again. And it'd be good if you could just say like, I know you can do this, mate, but could I

have 40 kilowatts instead? Because that would tie in nicely with my my trip to the the shops and the

coaster and the toilet, etc. At the same thing with the ID three would be we plug the car in

by the Tesla charger, and then I'd have to go move it because

just charges too quickly. Yeah. And I want to get the idle fees. So that happened more

than once when we did our trip. So yeah, I think the other massive thing is, you know,

they're going to work. Yeah. So many times, you know, driving up the A9 in leaf, it's like you

pull up to a charge place, Scotland charge across in your fingers. And I used to remember getting

this huge slide relief that it actually worked and it read the RFID card. And we did a bit

of digging here on all these trying to sort out the issues with the the rapids. And there

were so many people involved. There was the the network provider Vodafone. Then there was the SSE

networks of supply and electricity. Then there was the council it was put on. Then it was the

manufacturer. Then it was the warranty. Then it was transport for Scotland. And all of these

different bodies would blame each other for why it wasn't working. And it would be out of action

for months and months and months. Yeah. Someone did something and then everyone else

there's too many people involved in that kind of infrastructure. And it's now sadly just

I just avoid charge place. It's got a lot of plague if I'm going south. So I'll leave here

and I'll aim for IONITY and when I had the Nero at Perth, because there's nice star books at

Perth. I can get from here to Perth in the E-Nero and then I'll charge up over

the night and stay in the Trouble Lodge and then just go down South Booth in Penrith.

They've got some offspray. No, it's IONITY again. I can't remember. Good serve. I can't remember.

But yeah, trying to avoid charge place Scotland because they're just not reliable.

Someone sent me a message recently saying about charge point Scotland and

sort of the files of it. And I must admit it's the first I'd sort of heard of

of it as an entity even. But it sounds like it started off with best of intentions and

no one got hold of it properly. Admittedly it's just been in for over 10 years. It was the first

to roll out and at the time it was the network in the UK. No one else was doing it and it was

down to the Scottish Government and Transport for Scotland. But as these units have got older,

they've not been replaced because the pot of money has not been there and the councils

don't want the hassle. And yeah, it's now fragmented. But you now just breathe a massive

sigh of relief. You can get to a charge when it works. So when are you two going to do a road

trip coming up to Orkney? That's what you've got to do. You've got a podcast from Orkney.

We should do that. You should. Yeah, we should go up in an EV and do that. I was

nearly up there a few months ago to be fine. I know. You went right round the top, didn't you?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you did the North Coast 500. Yeah, nearly. Yeah. Come and visit an island where

we've got more electricity than we know what to do with. Yeah. Since 2013, we've made more electricity

than we actually use. Wow. So it's bonkers up here. They turn turbines off because there's

not enough demand. There'll be a little old lady sitting in the cottage frightened to turn

on an electric heater because she can't afford the electricity bill. It's just immoral.

It's hideous from them. It's absolutely hideous. Yeah. Yeah. We should find a way to do that

along road trip and we could do like a 15 hour podcast or however long it would take us.

Yeah, that's not a bad idea. Yeah, we definitely should do that at some point. Yeah. Yeah.

Doing a 24 kilowatt leaf. Yeah, I was going to say do it in a Mark I leaf. Yeah. Yeah.

Fortune favors the bold and all that. We've probably kept you long enough, Jonathan.

I've really enjoyed it. Yeah. Yeah, me too. I think we should do this again. Ask me that.

I'd love to come back. Yeah. And perhaps next time, well, at some point, we'll do it in person

with a Greg's vegan sausage roll for you. You never know. You never know.

And if I'm down south, because everything's down south for me except Shetland, but when I'm down

south, I'll have to, because you messaged me a while ago. You said, oh, if you're coming

through the channel tour or something. I mean, it's not really a pop because I'm about three

and a half hours from that. I mean, I'm just outside Bournemouth. But yeah, if you're down

here, then do do let me know. And yeah, it'd be great to have a

Yeah. And you as well, Alex, I don't even think this is a J.P. Jim loving, but you know,

Yeah, of course.

You're all farts, rabbits, none of that.

Do you know what? Him and his girlfriend are horrible to me. They're always making no

one jokes about my age and stuff. Well, then go on. I can be your, be your wingman, Jim.

Yeah. Yeah. Luckily, he's only short. So I just stand on him and

that usually stops it.

Yeah, I've got nothing to say to that, to be honest.

Right. Thanks very much for coming on, John.

Thank you.

Great, great.

Great to finally have a chat, albeit a virtual one. And yeah, take us out, Alex.

Yeah. Thanks everyone for listening or watching. Thanks again, John, for joining us.

It's been good to be good to have you on to learn about auctions and all the different

deals that's going on. You can find this podcast on Apple Podcasts in audio. There's

a YouTube video version on YouTube as well. Where could people find you online, John,

if they want to find out more about you and what you do?

Just my name into YouTube. So that's my name, Jonathan Porterfield.

It sounds a bit pretentious, but I dropped the EcoCars because I no longer own EcoCars,

so it's just my name on YouTube.

Nice. Yeah. We'll put some links in the show notes if people can't find that.

And then what about you, Jim, where can people find you on the interwebs?

So YouTube, definitely not guru, or my website is notaguru.co.uk.

Sweet. Yeah, thanks everyone, and we'll see you again next week.

We'll do. Bye-bye.

I'm, I'm Simon, your Barry. I don't know.

WLTP Bladder Rating with Jonathan Porterfield

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WLTP Bladder Rating with Jonathan Porterfield