I agree with everything you say Colin.

But for me the PHEV is the way forward. The vast majority of our journeys are less than 30miles, and, although the cost of electricity has increased (and will continue to do so),at present the overall result is monthly electric+petrol = considerably less than my petrol costs would have been. The car is recording over 200mpg since purchase - 2500 miles - - the last fill-up was early June with a remaining petrol range of 265 miles. (Already covered about 1200 miles on this tank).

This is only achievable if you have a convenient home charging point and most of your journeys are less than a full charge

Of course this is not the case for towing, our last trip was 100 miles each way and we returned 42 mpg. I am happy with both results - towing and home journeys. I see no reason why this would be any different for Continental towing.

People argue about the added burden of carrying useless batteries when there is no charge remaining, but towing with a 1.4l PHEV petrol engine compares favourably with my previous VAG 2.0l TDi, with the added bonus of the local economy.

PHEV is better than pure electric, I suppose - particularly in rural areas like ours where electric is just a non starter for a hard working estate car. We saw a few electric towcars on the Épernay Municipal campsite last week - a Tesla Model X and a Tesla Model S. There was also a VW ID3 (carrying a tent), which looked fab, but sat there for four days not being used. All were Dutch registered and, when i asked the Tesla owners about how it worked for them, they said they had to go out for the day to somewhere they didn't necessarily want to go in order to find a charger to recharge their cars. A way to go yet. I feel...

Hydrogen's the future for mobile use. The only reason they aren't getting on with it is that they will have to build the infrastructure first - and we all know that the one thing that planners/governments don't like to do is build infrastructure with getting an instant return...

Thanks everyone an interesting thread and one which has been real for us as we have just changed our car we tow with.

We no longer buy this outright but use a PCP which we intend changing every two years.Our Karoq Scout 2.l diesel (which we loved) was ready to go back and we ordered a Octavia Diesel VRS Estate to tow our Troll.

however due to problem with computer chips and then the war in Ukraine Skoda could not give us a firm delivery date even 9 months after the order was placed. There then emerged the problem that Skoda were only fitting the wiring for towing and therefore the appropriate VIN plate, as some others on the Forum have discovered.

As such we looked at all kinds of alternatives including the lovely Enyaq. However we ended up identifying through Skoda UK all the available cars in national stock with the factory fitted towbar -there were just 5 at that moment and not a single diesel amongst them.

Having always towed with a diesel we reluctantly switched to a Karoq Sportline 4x4 petrol. I have to say that it has been a pleasant revelation and has towed our Troll with great ease. The consumption in real life hasn't been miles worse than the Scout. I think that I may be converted to abandoning diesel altogether.

But I think that I will be like many others and not move to electric until we have the sufficient infrastructure in place.

I am not a Luddite.... my son in law has a Tesla, and had a Leaf before that, and he loves it. However he loves planning his journeys and building in stops to fast charge whilst the family have a brew or some lunch. I think I am too scatty to plan in such detail.

What will I do when this PCP is ready to change in two years is unclear but we will see.

Thanks

MikeT

For caravanners there are two problems with EVs

One is that roughly the range halves when towing, so if your car will do 300 miles on a charge solo, you're down to roughly 150 miles when towing. Given that you could pull 300 miles, or so, on a tank of oil based fuel, so without a refuelling stop, there's a significant downside to long journeys where recharging is required.

That takes me to the other issue which is charging facilities for EVs towing caravans. They are very, very rare and generally you have to use solo facilities and uncouple the van with the inconvenience and risk that involves plus the concern about actually finding space to put it. Understandably EV facility providers concentrate their provision on solo vehicles as they're probably 99% of those that wish to use their points. However unless caravanners have confidence that there'll be available, convenient charging points along their route they won't shift to EV in a hurry.

Our week in France last week was to Épernay and we went in one journey, meaning (for us in sunny Suffolk) 150 miles to Dover and then 190 miles to the Camping Municipal in Épernay. I easily did both legs in my 2.0l diesel Volvo (a car that has an 800 mile range when driving solo), but would have struggled to to do either leg in one go in an electric tow car. We saw some investment in charging points while in France, but only 4 charge points at the one Aire de Service stopped at on the A26 (direction reims) and one at the one we stopped at on the return (may well be some, but we didn't see any). there were also two charging points at the large Carrefour in central(ish) Épernay. I wouldn't want to trust to luck of finding a suitable charging point whilst towing a caravan. There was a definite "no" stated at the campsite on charging electric vehicles too.

* "none at the one" (that makes more sense of the sentence...! :-))

Just found a site called Electricfelix.com - very good guide to using electric cars in France. Lidl, apparently, have excellent free charging - but not on a Sunday... Looking at the availability map it is very patchy across the country. Some motorways have good provision (I know the main south route from Calais to Bordeaux is well served by Tesla, for example), whilst others have very little. During my week in France I saw a number of Dutch and Belgian electric cars, one English Tesla, however no French registered ones at all. But then we paid £1.60 a litre for supermarket diesel there, so, perhaps, no great incentive to swap yet.