Martin963

I might add Norman that a French friend - not noted for his sympathy towards foreigners of any sort - used to introduce me to French friends with the words "c'est un Anglais, mais ce n'est pas comme les autres". You know nothing about me so you're in no position to judge, not that that ever stops you.

Ooohh Norman, that's me told. You'd be bitter if you'd been refused residence in flagrant breach of EU law, and when - unlike so many other Brits I can think of - we'd integrated and were much loved in our village. Not least for fixing an awful lot of satellite problems amongst French households all around our area, for free I hasten to add.

AIUI Macron has ruled out (oh so lofty, so lofty) a Left Wing government, Melenchon now wants to start a destitution process, and Fabien Rousell has called for a mobilisation of the people, which on the lips of a Communist sounds remarkably like a call for insurrection. I have to say that the popcorn is flowing freely here in Martin963 Towers. After all the appalling insults and attempts to undermine Britain during the Brexit process that came from Macron, (or his little sidekick Beaune, also now a politically clapped out old has-been), the snivelling little runt (Macron) is now having meted out to him the sort of treatment that I wouldn't normally wish on my worst enemy, but which seems deliciously appropriate in his case. He now has to get through each day knowing how much he is hated by everyone, and not being able to control the destiny of his country or his own situation, something that I suspect he finds extremely difficult. And no obvious escape route for him, trapped by his own hubris. I liked the expression Le Monde used yesterday, <<Tel est pris qui croyait prendre>>, I mutter that to myself with glee now. I doubt I will set foot in France again until he is toppled, it's been five years now since I did so (although that's not all down to Macron) which I find extraordinary, given that prior to 2019 I would visit France at least four times a year, and have spent over 12 years (if you add it all up) living there (albeit not as a resident, given that I was refused residency long before Brexit was even thought of). Coupled with the fact that my paper driving licence is no longer valid (odd that one, given that most French people still drive perfectly validly on a paper version), and the soon-to-be-introduced extra border controls, I do wonder if I will actually ever set foot in my beloved France again. So many other countries make it so much easier to visit, and aren't ruled by that odious little creep that - for the moment - is still President de la Republique. Mind you, I could properly let go and tell you all what I really think! 😃 Where do folk on here think this crisis is going to go in the next few weeks?

Doesn't it come from a long French tradition of tiny slow unlicensed-category cars, often aimed at precisely the people who have lost their permis de conduire. In our twenty years in Perigord we followed a good number of them.... Years ago I was trying to describe this type of vehicle to French friends, but unable to find the precise word I came up with "vouz savez, une voiture des imbeciles". Ever after in our circle of friends it was fondly referred to as that. For town only driving I think this model - and similar - will become widespread. Perhaps for anything bigger it'll be a case of hiring it only when one needs it, particularly if the "library" of cars becomes self-driving and an available vehicle will drive itself to your door, you then use it, and dump it at the far end to go on to the next user. Maybe it's a few years off, but I can see that scenario eventually.....

Although I can't get a "real" price for the Alpine 290, the rough guess seems to be about £36,000. It's Mrs c's money of course, but that seems to me an AWFUL lot of money for a town runabout. Which may of course reveal me as someone not really "into" vehicles, but I could find a similar thermique car for about £15,000, and have spare change for a lot of visits to the pub or whatever. In terms of Greenery, as I said earlier the thinking seems to be that an EV is actually no Greener than an ordinary car UNLESS you do at lesat 80,000 kms in it, at which point the reduced CO2 in its emissions balance the huge CO2 emissions in its manufacture and eventual disposal.....

Fair enough.....

Goodness, I hadn't heard of Alpine but that model seems to be described as a "hot hatch". Mrs c will be the talk of the town. Seriously, if you really aren't covering great distances and have good access to chargers I can see that an EV would suit you. TF1 ran another test last night - journey from Villeneuve d'Ascq to Etretat, three vehicles, diesel, hybrid petrol and EV. The EV took an extra hour and a half because the first borne de recharge turned out to be broken. You can watch the battle of the vehicles on the TF1 website https://www.tf1.fr/tf1/jt-20h/videos/le-20-heures-du-lundi-12-aout-2024-22940483.html starts at 20 mins 55 secs, although I suspect you need a TF1 account. (Difficult to tell, this link might not need you to log in) https://www.tf1.fr/tf1/jt-20h/videos/electrique-thermique-ou-hybride-on-a-teste-pour-vous-97912649.html

Interesting that in spite of la canicule that we keep seeing on French TV (here in Devon it is cool and cloudy and breezy, we have yet to have any sort of real summer) the demand from the grid in France is currently 48 GW, pretty low, given that in past canicules the air con has been flat out everywhere and the grid under considerable pressure (and that was before the nuclear station outages a couple of years ago). I seem to remember one summer when the demand was well over 80 GW on a couple of days....

Is it the fortune per se that you resent ssomon, or Mr Musk as an individual?

Well I fail at your imposed hurdles for advice, because I don't have an EV and I no longer have a house in France. However.... If you - or rather Mrs c - are just going to potter around in the local area, with a limit say of about 30 miles (60 miles round trip), then an EV might be of interest, as you'd be able to charge it at home, both convenient and economic if you're on a suitable electricity tariff. That said, why would you want to pay over the odds in the initital outlay for a vehicle that does the same job as a thermique, and - if you're worried about that sort of thing - isn't really going to be any Greener, because EVs only really score on the Green front if they do a lot of miles. For anything requiring greater range, I wouldn't dream of an EV. Greater planning needed for journeys, longer stop times, risk of chargers en panne, etc etc. And in fact TF1 JT this weekend took a look at undertaking a journey in an EV from Lyon to Marseille in the chassée croisée, and, with the need for charging required, it took an awfully long time, AND cost more than it would have done to do it in a conventional vehicle (although if you left the A7 and charged up on the route nationale it was a lot cheaper). We have friends with a Tesla, in fairness they do seem the best of the bunch, but theirs is now three years old and has suddenly started needing attention, it broke down near Truro, and then more recently had a puncture, don't ask me why but Tesla had to come out themselves and fit the new wheel from their Exeter base, 30 miles away. It will have cost a fortune. And the horror stories one reads about some other manufacturers' EVs are the stuff of nightmares. There are cheaper and more effective ways to signal one's virtue. Before anyone ups and ats me, I should say that we have a Tesla Home Battery, in the right circumstances electricity is perfectly useful, but in an EV? Not in my view, at least not yet, unless you're just pottering in a town. Is Mrs c going to finance the vehicle? In which case let her have what she likes! And if she gets one, I for one would be genuinely interested to hear about it, even if it totally contradicts what I've written!

It's certainly an odd post as an opening gambit to one's presence on this - or indeed almost any - forum. A bit like phoning 999 for an aspirin....

Yes, sorry, quite right, tax foncière. Brain fade on my part. Relieved in many ways we don't have our house in France any more, we would of course be paying the taxe d'hab as well, I don't know if our commune has upped the rate as some have, but either way the local taxes were getting to be too high for us to carry on. Particularly galling when we had been refused residency fifteen years ago in flagrant breach of EU law,

That sounds at least plausible. Our immersion heater tank is probably a lot smaller than your French one (how I wish I could get hold of one of those French chaudieres) and over the year uses an average of 3 kWh per night. So annually roughly 1000 kWh. Let's say you use double (larger family, bigger tank) giving 2000 kWh per year. Our annual production on 14 panels of PV is 4300 kWh. It probably would be about 4600 kWh if our max output wasn't throttled (not much but a bit) in order not to overload the backfeed capabilities of our local grid (this was mandated by the distribution company unfortunately) If we had three panels it would be 3/14 x 4600 = 985 kWh production per year. It would be hard for you - even in Northern France if that's where you are - not to have significantly more sun than we do in the south west of England. A friend up near Basingstoke does considerably better than us, say by 20%. So whilst I'm not sure that three panels would entirely - averaged over the year - run your hot water, it would make a significant contribution, even if in winter it would be very low in helping power anything at all. Your problem is having all the installation base costs (which aren't going to vary entirely proportionally with the number of panels) for a small number of panels. I don't know how much electricity costs now in France having not been there for five years, but 200 Euros a year is quite small fry in relation to say taxe d'hab etc.....?

It's very difficult. When we decided to get the solar and battery (we had just one Tesla battery orignally) bank interest rates were on the floor, and having been nailed there since 2009 by the policy of "financial repression" on the part of central banks and complicit governments, I had come to the conclusion that we'd never again see interest at realistic levels again. So anything that saved us £1500 a year was a good investment. Of course that has subsequently all changed, but with a complete f*ckwit now in charge of our energy policies (and the last f*ckwit wasn't any better!) I don't for a second regret the investment in terms of protection from rising costs and likely outages. But up thread I was careful to say that I really had no idea whether in strict accountancy terms the system would ever truly pay back, that is before the batteries need replacing etc. 3 solar panels is better than nothing, but I'd guess your max output would be in the region of 1000 W in full sunshine, so useful but probably not economic given that your ideal would be to get shot of a supplier. You'd end up still having to pay the abonnement. And it wouldn't even run your washing machine if you washed at anything higher than 30 deg C. My feeling is that you're going to have all the big installation costs (ie linking to the grid) and only the smallest of benefits.... Maybe you need to buy more bikes, then build a bigger shed with more roof space, then recalculate....😁 Seriously though, if we all were able - economically - to do a little bit, the problem would diminish. For example I'd have a turbine like a shot here in Devon where we have howling winds a lot of the time, but having looked at the costs (ouch!) and the ongoing maintenance costs (more ouch!) it just isn't worth it. As I said, our game changer is being able to use the batteries in winter to store cheaply imported overnight electricity, meaning that we never pay more than 8.5 p per kWh for our power, whereas in the day time it would be at least 25 p per kWh if we had to use it. And then in the summer our imports become pretty small anyway. As an aside about how much difference full sunshine makes, in the first couple of years on our PVs we almost got to 5 MWh per year output, it was actually about 4950 kWh annually, and co-incided with some remarkably good weather. In the last year to date, ie since the weather collapsed in Britain, and since the last period of really sunny weather in June 2023 finally dropped out of the figures, we're down to an annual output of 4300 kWh. It's a huge drop, and it isn't just us, that picture is reflected nationally from what I've heard.

I think that in extremis there are systems to actually close down your PVs in the event of that scenario. In our case the battery takes what it can, and then exports the rest when it is full. However, if we go off grid deliberately (you can do that with a Tesla system) or there is a failure of the grid connection, there is a system which closes down the entire caboodle until the sun stops shining. That said, I don't know how it works and have never seen it happen. You could always put black out material over the PVs......? 🙃