Tesla Taxi, Mini E & Postman Pat | Fully Charged news
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
- Robert and Jonny chew over some recent news from the world of electric cars, vans and taxis.
Links to stories
Tesla Taxi goo.gl/YhXNsh
Mini E goo.gl/5VvEuS
Cummins Electric Truck goo.gl/5DLpdK
Postman Pat electric van goo.gl/QLEZFP
Patreon: / fullychargedshow
Good to hear news from around the world and from the UK as always. It is amazing the scale of ships and how they measure in tons instead of gallons.
Robert, I can see the article in The Daily Mail now, " Robert Llewellyn admits to producing poisonous methane gas!" :)
My favourite UA-cam Channel. Informative and hilarious in equal measures! Thanks guys.
Loved the banter on this episode. Keep it up fellas, great to enjoy a well produced show on a fascinating topic.
i can never get enough of this show.....
I was one of those 20 or so who had a Mini E in the UK, in fact Robert did a little EV talk to us all at Oxford Brookes. Was an awesome car and we were all very sad to hand them back. See my channel on here for a video of my Mini E.
I watch Postman Pat with my little fella regularly, and it's fun to see he now drives around in an electric van (sometimes).
I live in Southern Brittany and several of the Postal Routes in my area have been partially electrified, either with electric vans and/or trikes. Without exception the operators of these vehicles I have spoken to have been delighted with them. It is an obvious case for electrification - short, stop, start routes
I like these videos before I even watch just because I know they will be good
Yea - me too!
I bet you are the type of person to comment "how can you dislike a 15 minutes video when its only been up for 8 minutes :/"
Electric delivery truck with 100 mile range will suit most deliveries fine, provided you have a refrigerated trailer with another battery pack ( you could share the 2 packs as well to increase range or make charging easier) to run a refrigerant system to keep the contents cold. Most of the time the truck spends hours waiting in a line for a loading or unloading dock, where having an electric unit will save running an engine for hours at idle to keep a fridge running, or have a separate diesel engine running all the time for load cooling. This will work out well, especially with regen braking recovering the stop start energy of creeping in the line and in traffic.
SeanBZA; could you recharge the batteries while waiting to deliver or load up?
The UK always had the largest EV fleet in the world, using electric milk delivery floats, which have the same operational functions as the mail delivery men - door to door.
Milk home delivery trucks in the UK is true. How many people watched Walt Disney's 101 Dalmatians? First thing that comes on the screen is a milk delivery driver placing the empties in their place and heading down the street. Sadly most home delivery of dairy products to homes has gone by the wayside.
The EV-1 in the Museum in LA was made inoperable by GM when they donated it but the students got it working again and it is the only surviving EV-1 unfortunately.
The milk floats were silent, which was superb for early morning deliveries.
Great show. I really enjoy these updates and I DO NOT care about sound, lighting or whatever. The quick reading of good news on the renewable energy front is very welcome in what seems like a sea of bad news.
One small idea for the mugs. Use temperature sensitive ink for the fully charged battery logo so it will appear when hot liquid is inside and slowly disappear as the liquid cools.
Guernsey Post (Channel Islands) recently replaced 18 vans with Nissan ENV200s. They stated that the cost per mile would be 2p compared to 21p for the diesel vans they replace and will pay for themselves within 5 years. They are much more suitable.
I bought a 2014 Nissan Leaf Tekna on Nissan's switch scheme. Sticker price was £10,150 and I was given £2000 contribution plus £500 for my old 2006 Fiat Grande Punto. The Leaf is on a 3 years PCP with 2 years free servicing & a free home charger via POD POINT. I'm extremely pleased with the deal got from Nissan. Only works out just over £120 a month for a top spec Nissan Leaf 😎👍
As all commercial vehicles nowadays have computer logging it should be easy to see that many urban freight routes are within the range capacity of an EV truck. With off-peak overnight charging and extremely low maintenance costs I would have thought that pure market forces would cause fast adoption of electric vans, taxis and trucks.
A friend of mine works in a shop as a supervisor. Majority of their deliveries are done at night, outside business hours. So off-peak charging is not really an option.
Short rounds via Electric vehicles has been a staple of the UK morning for many years from the 50's until the early 90's with the milkman. I remember growing up in Birmingham having our morning milk delivered by electric milk float every day. They'd come round early, deliver, and then spend all day charging back at the depot.
Given that milk floats were primarily electric many years ago, it is somewhat surprising that local delivery vans have continued to be petrol/diesel.
I think they were electric due to noise early in the morning rather emissions which is today's emphasis - but i totally agree - the royal mail should have 100% electric for local deliveries - a van version of the LEVC would be great
My latest guilty pleasure. You guys are inspiring me in a big way. Thank you 😊
The holiday park I am staying in has a fleet of the Renult ev vans some from 2013 up till this year they are really good was speaking to the guy who looks after them they worked out that the 2013 vans have paid for them selves already in fuel savings and maintenance savings
I think personally it time for the government ramping up tax on diesels vans and lorries, with some generous tax credits as well to really encourage them to move diesel to electric or at the very least hybrids.
Link it to the size of the company so individuals or small companies aren't clobbered.
Does Ford really need another trial or is just another excuse for them to stick to diesel and delay their investment into electric vehicles.
There been plenty of other companies have taken the transit van and added a electric powertrain to the vehicle.
Higher taxes on diesel vans & lorries results in higher delivery costs which are ultimately paid by the consumer (own goal) and a further squeeze on drivers' pay. Electric vans & trucks need to be viable & desirable without handicapping the competition. They're getting there. Evolution often works better than revolution.
Get well soon!
As for the postal van it is closer to the Postman Pat SDS Vehicle - Delivery Van
Thanks for this wonderful information.
Today i got on a hybrid bus in london it was magnificent cant wait for full ev tfl network
For commercial use, installing a fast charging station or even a hydrogen pump at distribution centres for short or medium range deliveries has to make sense to cut costs.
That mail van is a winner! Let's see you film one soon, please.
10:27 Deutsche Post already has one.
Deutsche Post together with Professor Günther Schuh from the RWTH Aachen ( a technical university in Germany) designed and built their own electric delivery van.
It is called " *Streetscooter* " and in april 2017 2500 were in operation already. By the end of 2017 they want double that in daily operation. I personally saw one of these in Bad Oldesloe and chatted with the driver for couple minutes. He said the thing is doing absolutely fine but he personally misses the sound of a petrol engine.
The Container ship i worked on Running between UK and Australia did about 3 feet to the gallon at service speed of 28 knots
Holy..... But yeah, one battle at a time. There are electric big ships in development so we'll get there.
Also; while it doesn't help slow/reverse global warming, car pollution is right where we live and breathe, ship pollution not or less so in case you live near a port, so switching to an EV matters more in that regard.
11 m3 per km, right?
But what does this equate when turned into litres per km per tone? If I remember correct, when it comes to fuel used to move 1 tone of cargo for 1 kilometre, it is way more efficient then any truck on the road.
true. most CO2 efficient transport. only NOx and fine-dust proplems. and oil pollution in the oceans
To be honest I expect a return of ships taking advantage of wind. I mean, it's free power right? And if free = cheaper transport...
Robert: There are allready Large Electric trucks in use.
Info: There is allready 1 truck driving in the Groning Area in The netherlands. It is a 44ton (metric) Truck Witch a range of 130km/173kwh The company using it is Boonstra transport b.v. produced by Framo in Germany. This is twice the capacity of the cummins-concept, but it is allready being used in contracted work.
We had scrapage as you say in the USA about 10 years ago. Getting people to get rid of their old vehicles to help increase sales of cars in the USA.
Been saying it for years, all-electric post delivery vans just makes so much sense
Tough job Robert! I hope you're better now.
Scrapage: in the USA we had a similar program called cash for clunkers. It didn't quite work as advertised. People got rid of their "older" (some were really old and some were only 5-10 years old) cars for something newer and effectively more efficient. It did give some people that couldn't afford a new car a way to get into one. It was more of a stimulus program than anything.
I test-drove the Mini-E at a meeting of our EV Club. Our Southern California club was founded to convert ordinary cars to electric many decades ago when manufacturers refused to make them. We even had the EV-1 prototype 'Impact' as a presentation event, though without test rides. I wonder which museum (if any) has that vehicle now?
10:30 :here in the Netherlands is a compagny that takes out the DPF , IN the ad they warn that it might be illegal ....
It's nice to see genuinely electric trucks.
Cars, buses, trucks... What's missing, is ships and planes (planes are difficult ...but why ships aren't turning electric, all over the place, is beyond me)
Top episode chaps, as always. Agree with the Mugs comments, would make excellent Xmas pressies. 'specially like the heated battery idea :-) Keep up the good work and get better soon Robert.
"If I stood naked in mud, I'd still feel guilty"😂
I don't think you've covered agricultural tractors. Fendt e100 can do 5 hours serious work.
only 5? That's not nearly enough. During all the major works like ploughing, planting and harvest, tractors run for way over 12 hours. As long as weather and daylight conditions allow. City dwellers with their 9-17 jobs wouldn't get it.
Having grown up driving tractors I actually know how much a tractor works. Five hours is a pretty good stretch for a smaller yard tractor for, say, a dairy unit. The point being that a couple of years ago nobody would have taken any electric tractor seriously.
well, my family used to own some farming business. But we were not doing dairy. And on most occasions, if tractor left the base, it would only get back late in the evening. Thou, on certain jobs it would either come back during the day to swap the equipment. But during the plough it would work from sunrise till sunset. And "supervisor" would swap the driver during lunchtime.
It is a small tractor you would have on a small farm, it isn't one of those house sized tugboats you set off onto a 20 mile field.
oh, ok. The one of that size actually didn't use that much. Mostly for moving things around, cutting grass etc. Our main workhorses were John Deere 7810 and 7800.
I love to see you guys do a show where you are drink, drinking.
You could then call it the "Fully Charged, Fully Charged Show"
You're welcome! :)
Why no mention of the all-electric eCanter 7.5t truck from Daimler truck/Mitsubishi Fuso? built in Portugal and can be ordered right now.
Send them a link on twitter about it. Maybe they missed it.
Every day we receive acres of announcements from all kinds of companies, I have heard about the eCanter truck, will be featuring the launch very soon
For decades I had wondered why a Semi couldn't be a Hybrid, analogues to the Diesel-Electric train.
Is that an 80s tape deck - wow that takes me back.
Robert, while ships are very polluting, you should bear in mind that they are by far the most efficient mode of transport and we should be taking as much road haulage off the road and onto ships as possible. The average ship CO2 emission is just 8grams/tonne/mile vs 62g/tonne/mile for road haulage. Obviously that will change a little if/when trucks are electric, though the efficiency of maritime transport will still come out on top unless we have a much greener electric grid
+fullychargedshow As a Nautical Officer student I feel the need to point out that you have to take in consideration the amounts of cargo carried when talking about fuel consumption on ships.
Yes we measure fuel in mt and yes a ship uses a lot, but in many cases CO2&SOx/unit of cargo carried is lower when transported by ship compared to transporting the same cargo the same distance by lorry.
That said we need to transition to better energy alternatives in the maritime industry, efforts are being made and LNG is a step in the right direction but I hope to see fuel cell powered long distance cargo/tanker ships (or something as good) in my lifetime.
You should check out the online (delivery only) supermarket Picnic in the Netherlands. They drive around in little electric delivery trucks.
A friend just bought a 500e for $8000 as his in between EV since he had to return his i3 lease and he's waiting for his #TeslaModel3
Love the mini e
Assuming you are from the UK. Did you notice the Union Jack tail lights :)
Union Jack tail-lights on the mini!
Like it. Hope that makes production.
Great presentation
Before the Breeching axe and the advent of the Ford Transit there were railway stations practically everywhere and most goods where delivered to the station and distributed locally by small BR vehicles. They should replace all the lines and stations which would allow a reduction in vehicle traffic and cleaner, cheaper local transport. Last time it was suggested as a solution to kick start the economy after the 2008 crash it was about £55billion. The reopened lines like the Borders line have seen a good result in use.
I think you were referring to the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wiltshire Blvd. As I recall, they have a red 1996 EV1.
Absolutely love your channel and content. Currently driving a 2017 Chevy Volt (195 mpg lifetime),2011 Mini Cooper Countryman and lastly a 1971 Chevy Camaro RS. Looking to replace my Mini with something full electric, it would be nice to replace it with the Mini-e. Don't think I can wait on the Tesla Model 3. Also Faraday Future has just leased a factory building in my home town of Hanford California. I wish them well but from what I have seen they have major mountains to climb. Seems not to be a lot of there, there.
The Cummins rig is only a concept, because Cummins don't make rigs - they make powertrains. So it's like Bosch making a concept car - it's so the vehicle manufacturers know that they can start using electric powertrains in their vehicles. In this case, semi trucks.
One of the winners of the English Climate Launchpad (run by Climate KiC) this week was Rent E, a scheme for affordable flexible rentals of electric cars to uber drivers. Apart from anything else this would be a great way to spread the electric car message. Rent E now go the European final in Cyprus on Oct 17th-18th.
Taxi drivers in Finland are entrepreneurs who are rewarded in addition to fares by taking good care of their cars and selling them in every two years or so at a profit because they are exempt from Finland's very high vehicle tax.
Interesting comment, 35 tons of fuel to get started however compare this to many more tons would be used if the items delivered were not on one big container ship? also I imagine once its moving and used 35 tons it takes very little to keep it moving and to steer?
For what it's worth - the second Italian Job film had electric MINIs, as they weren't allowed to have normal ones driving in the underground railway system.
Oh yes I love them cups 🤙😎send us a few of them in that post man pat van soon as you can 💷 💷 💷
The i3 should be a Mini anyway, its a car much closer to the idea of original Mini than the Mini is, if you get what i mean
In Montreal, Canada there is taxi company that operates a fleet of EVs, mostlyTeslas, both S and X, plus some Kia Soul EVs. They operate year round in weather that is perhaps even harsher than Finland, to say nothing of the tons and tons of salt used in winter.
Royal Mail van looks like a scaled up mini road sweeper.Also with truck drivers, since they legally have to stop after a certain amount of time, surely range is only ever as far as you can get in that time?
The Cummins sem-eye could top-up at the supermarkets as it's being unloaded. That would supplement the 100 mile range and reduce overnight recharge time.
The container ship burns 35 tons of fuel, but that's neither petrol nor diesel. It's usually heavy fuel oil - pretty much what's left of crude oil when you've taken all of the valuable stuff out. It usually has to be heated to even make it flow out of the tank.
It's joked that some of these engines could run on scraped up asphalt if you could get it to flow into the engine.
The city semi truck you talked about with a 100 mile range 140 kWh battery pack is getting 26 mph equivalent as compared to diesel.
Local deliveries by electric vehicles will never catch on. You'll be saying it's possible to deliver milk in this way next :D
Someone had to float that idea. :D
RechargeableLithium don't milk it!
It's hard to keep good ideas bottled in, much better to express them.
lol
Would love to buy one of those Fully Charged mugs. Any chance you will make them available?
Thank you for sacrificing yourself and giving me a laugh.
Wow..I really want to see those pics of scrapped cars !!!
They won't be scrapped. They will get a new lease of life in a third world country.
This article was from just after the scheme ended www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1263548/Now-did-say-left-car-The-28m-backlog-perfectly-driveable-vehicles-waiting-SCRAPPED.html
Milk floats in the UK where powered buy electricity for donkeys years. still a great idea!
Dan Jackson Same thing in South Africa. Isn't it interesting to see old concepts now being treated as new? How about inner city busses being driven off overhead cables in years gone by now being shown as new?
Neil Bezuidenhout; I'm not sure if the combination of overhead cable and internal battery is not new though?
Dan Jackson I'm pretty sure they were made electric because electric vehicles are much quieter than ICE vehicles which is good since they were used for early morning deliveries to homes and other residences.
Dan Jackson I remember as a kid, that early morning electric whine and the ching ching of rattling milk bottles. I remember asking the milkman how far he could go. Interesting that I had range anxiety even as a 9 year old. I think he said about 12 miles and I thought at the time that was an incredibly long way!
What we really need before the real wave of EVs starts is to let vehicle and charge stations manufacturers have a meeting and think about using one perfect plug for all new cars.
Thanks for Scrapheap Challenge reminder
When are you going to do something on the new i3S?
There's quite a few Tesla taxis here in Norway, compared to buying a BMW or Mercedes (as a lot of drivers do), the Model S really does make sense, financially speaking
Taxi driving conditions are very different from normal driving conditions. Even a Lada Nova lasts easily 500'000 km when driven as a Taxi, which means the engine never getting cold.
Look forward to coverage on the upcoming Volkswagen electric efforts with the ID range and e-Golf!
You asked for users of the original electric mini test cars (years ago), to get in touch - seems this weeks guest on the Electrek podcast had one (and was very enthusiastic about it), might be worth getting in touch
Yay! Postman Pat. My first thought upon seeing a picture of it. I wonder whether the design was deliberately giving a nod to Pat? Thanks guys, and I hope you swallow that frog quickly, Robert. ;-p
Get well soon.
Arn't these big cargo ships oil tankers? I thought that one of the big benefits in using less oil was that the energy usage for shipping that oil would brake away as well.
please do an update on you're Nissan leaf milage age battery etc thanks
I do watch your videos, thank you for making them. I don't have an electric car, but I do have an electric scooter.
The Model S taxi story makes it clear that a large battery inside makes sense if you drive ALOT. I mean 400k km is only like what, 1000 effective cycles of the battery?
We had the "Cash for Clunkers" program in the U.S. All it did was move sales that were steady going to happen up a quarter. It also raised the price of used cars making it more difficult for the Working Poor to obtain transportation
Right. The impact on second hand car values was significant.
Will you be testing the new Fendt electric tractor?
Dashboard on the mini are a key feature and very important one, circular touch led dashboard would be an interesting design, as long it's not a horizontal /landscape or vertical type.
the flu you have Rob, is from huddling with tuna's all day in Japan Nissan Leaf motor show...
get well soon mate! Top notch! : )
Usually we seen Post man with diesels in my quiet part of London.
Bill Nye had one of those electric Minis. He might want to talk about his experience with it.
Amazon next day delivery is almost always done by air freight, so even less efficient than sea shipping, where you have the volume bulk of all the containers amortised over the 6 weeks it takes to travel, and the fuel used is generally a lot less refined. Basically ship engines will burn almost anything that you can turn to a liquid at some temperature below 200C that will burn, the standard fuel is road tar less the pebbles.
SeanBZA I
Are you sure about AIr being used for Amazon next day delivery?
Amazon have invested billions in regional distribution facilities to enable things like next day and same day delivery. Recently we've got Amazon 'Prime Now' with a 2 hour delivery service which is serviced from a 'smaller' warehouse just 20 miles away.
Most of my next day deliveries come from a warehouse 30 miles up the road.
Very interesting. I suppose you have to also consider how the goods were brought to the warehouses in the first place, but I think it would probably be by ship and rail/road freight. Air freight doesn't really make economic sense.
Take care of your health Robert!! Cheers Rick
BMW have already said that the current i3 will be discontinued by 2020, I have a feeling that the mini will be its replacement with a twin wheel motor and 40kw with Rex or 60kw to match the bolt for performance and range
The Cummins Class 7 concept is no doubt underspecced in the energy storage department. That range is for unladen perhaps. Typically the C7s will pull a 28 foot trailer for endpoint delivery duty, at most a 40 foot reefer. And by reefer I mean freezer, which would use 30 gallons of diesel a day for the refrigeration unit. Unbaked concept but nice to see the effort.
Will you be selling Fully Charged mugs?
David Lazarus I'll buy 2
With the battery level going up when pouring a hot drink? Hell yes!
MacGyver this should be a thing already
Need to be solar powered to keep your beverage of choice nice and toasty.
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You guys are Ace, keep it up!
I'm a big fan of these talks and it saddens me the fact that electric cars are so far away to become a reality, here in Brazil.
Hi. Yes I can imagine your sadness and possible frustration. But the only way change occurs, is when the consciousness of people change. So, if you're not already , spread the word, talk about EV's at every opportunity , to everyone. Best Wishes. V
You could start something positive by signing this Avaaz petition to stop Michel Temer from destroying the Amazon:
secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/all_for_amazon_loc/?slideshow
well, this 400k km finnish tesla had its motor changed and battery was send to netherlands for servicing. so main advantage is 8 year warranty.
Re Ships, it's the heavy particulates they refer to.
Now that Opel is owned by Peugeot- Citroen, we'll probably never see the Bolt make it to the UK as the Ampera-e
Have you checked out the Sion from SonoMotors? It is a solar-electric car and can charge up to 30km/18miles a day, has a range of 250km and an incredible price tag of 16000€. It will be the first mass produced solar, electric car and is adorable too! Would love to see you feature it in your upcoming videos! Keep up the great work :)
The Mini E will be assembled at Cowley, the battery pack and drive train will be made in Germany.
Is that a cassette player in the background on Skype? Sony?
There is an EV1 at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn Michigan.
Any news on the Colibri EV car (better competitor to the Twizy) coming to the UK yet?