Are Electric Campervans Realistic? The Truth About EV Motorhomes

[00:00:00] Keith Gooden: In today’s episode of the Motorhome Matt podcast.

[00:00:02] Matt Sims: We dive into the future with a close look at a new van. Could electric vans make realistic electric camper vans?

[00:00:10] Keith Gooden: In the news the Supreme Court has ruled wild camping on Dartmoor is allowed.

[00:00:16] Matt Sims: And we answer your questions on the best SIM cards, getting air suspension fitted and the stuff that goes in your water tank.

[00:00:23] Keith Gooden: Is that water?

[00:00:24] Matt Sims: Water.

[00:00:34] Keith Gooden: Welcome to the Motorhome Matt podcast. I’m Keith Gooden and.

[00:00:36] Matt Sims: I’m Motorhome Matt.

[00:00:37] Keith Gooden: Industry insights and expert advice for the world of motorhomes, caravans and camper vans and is brought to you by That Leisure Shop dot com and sponsored by Ripe.

[00:00:47] Matt Sims: Now remember to follow on your favourite podcast app and please if you’re watching on YouTube, subscribe and click the little bell ding ding!

[00:00:55] Keith Gooden: In the news. The Supreme Court has decided you can wild camp on Dartmoor. Tell us about it, Matt.

[00:01:01] Matt Sims: Landowners on Dartmoor wanted to stop people camping on Dartmoor. The bit of Dartmoor they owned and tried to block them from doing it. And so the Supreme Court has just ruled that you can. They’ve overturned this protest by these landowners and said, no, everyone has a right to wild camp on Dartmoor. Let’s just redefine again what wild camping is. So it’s arriving on foot or horseback. Pitching a tent.

[00:01:28] Keith Gooden: With a backpack.

[00:01:28] Matt Sims: With a backpack. Backpack is fine. But at sundown and then leaving at sunrise. And most importantly, leaving no trace. It does not allow you to camp out in your motorhome with your heating and your hot water. That is not, well, camping. So this doesn’t arguably really affect us in our motorhomes. But there was however a restriction wasn’t there, on disability access. So people in wheelchairs having access onto the land and the ability to park in the disabled car park. That was stopped. So has that been overturned as well?

[00:02:00] Keith Gooden: Well, I think with the ruling, it just goes with wild camping. I’m not a legal expert, but I’ll tell you one thing, Dartmoor is different to everywhere else in the country because it’s a national park. And I know there are other national parks, but the Dartmoor National Park specified that if you owned land, people could. Wild camp that was challenged. The Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, has now decided that you can wild camp providing you follow those rules of leaving no trace whatever you do with your horse. I just don’t know about about the horse or your backpack, about the horse, but or disabled parking. Look it up is what I would say.

[00:02:36] Matt Sims: But the good news here, though, that this whole landscape we’re on of of restrictions on motorhomes and campervans. That’s why we thought we’d report on this, because this is about some freedom being given back to us that we can wild camp on Dartmoor.

[00:02:48] Keith Gooden: Just on Dartmoor. So there you go. So you can take your motorhome. You can park it in a legal parking space. You can put your backpack on, take your tent down and wild camp on somebody’s privately owned land on Dartmoor. That’s not to say that you could pitch in somebody’s front garden, but like I say, look it up. Now, can we finish this story? Oh, no. One last thing to say about it. It’s the law until Parliament changes that law. So if Parliament decides to change the law through an Act of Parliament, then this Supreme Court ruling is null and void. But up till now, if you want a pitch on Dartmoor with your tent, leave no trace. You can.

[00:03:24] Matt Sims: Cool. Let’s go.

[00:03:26] Keith Gooden: Okay, Matt, it’s product of the week time. And what’s been saving your bacon on the road recently?

[00:03:31] Matt Sims: Well, it’s something I’ve come to rely on a lot when I’m travelling abroad in the motorhome. Especially when you’re hopping between countries. It’s an app called Sally. It’s basically a digital sim, an e-sim, which means you don’t need to mess about with swapping cards or risking your usual mobile plan getting hammered by roaming charges.

[00:03:49] Keith Gooden: So how does that work then? Is it like pay as you go?

[00:03:52] Matt Sims: It’s exactly that. Yeah. You download the app, Pick a plan for the country you’re in or for a bunch of countries. If you’re on a proper tour and off you go, you’re online in minutes. It works in over 190 countries, so unless you’re off somewhere completely remote, you’re covered.

[00:04:07] Keith Gooden: And that’s handy as well. If your signal drops the second you cross a border. I’ve been there, done that.

[00:04:12] Matt Sims: That moment when your map disappears, your campsite booking won’t load, and you’re stuck on the side of a road somewhere in France wondering which way is north. Yep, been there too. Sally fixes all of that and they even bundle in web protection. So if you’re using a campsite, Wi-Fi, or a dodgy cafe connection, you’re a bit more secure.

[00:04:31] Keith Gooden: Okay, so how do people get it?

[00:04:33] Matt Sims: Just head to Niesmann + Bischoff Motorhome Matt or download from the App store. That’s s I l y and use the code Motorhome Matt at checkout and you’ll get 15% off your first plan. We’ll pop the link in the description as well. You’ve probably heard me talking about ripe for a while now and with good reason. Their covers solid. The price is fair and the team in Manchester actually get the motorhome lifestyle. Loads of you have said how much you’ve saved by switching to them and quite honestly the feedback has been brilliant.

[00:05:06] Keith Gooden: Yeah, and they’re not just stuck behind their desks are they? You saw them recently at campervan camp out, didn’t you?

[00:05:12] Matt Sims: I did, yeah they were busy. Their stand was packed with people queuing up. And not just for the freebies though. They were giving away some great bits, including one of our pathway 4G routers, but also to actually talk about insurance. It was clear that people wanted to speak to the experts about this US motorhome as a techie, people and Ripe get that they’re not just selling policies, they do really listen to people.

[00:05:36] Keith Gooden: And that’s the key, isn’t it? They take feedback on board and make changes. They know this lifestyle is all about freedom, and if your insurance doesn’t work for you, it can really throw a spanner in the works.

[00:05:47] Matt Sims: Exactly. So two quick things. If you spot them at a show this summer, Go and say hi and spend a few minutes checking out their cover and how much you could save on your insurance with them. Plus, you get 15% off your premium just because you’re a Motorhome Matt listener.

[00:06:03] Keith Gooden: Give them a call and quote Motorhome Matt over the phone, or click the link in the description and the discount is automatically applied. It’s the Motorhome Matt podcast. I’m Keith Gooden.

[00:06:13] Matt Sims: And I’m Motorhome Matt.

[00:06:14] Keith Gooden: It’s brought to you with Www.thatleisureshop.com and sponsored by ripe. Okay, then let’s get into the podcast. Before we get into those vans though, what’s the latest on this Zev mandate?

[00:06:25] Matt Sims: We keep on hearing About the zero emission vehicle mandate. What it means. Yeah, absolutely. So the luxury supercar firms such as Aston Martin and McLaren are still going to be allowed to keep producing petrol cars beyond the 2030 date because they only manufacture a small number of vehicles.

[00:06:42] Keith Gooden: So rich, rich people are going to be okay.

[00:06:45] Matt Sims: Yeah, that’s the.

[00:06:46] Keith Gooden: British establishment in action. Rich people are going to be okay.

[00:06:49] Matt Sims: Yeah. Fair point. So petrol and diesel vans will also be allowed to be sold until 2035, along with hybrids and plug in hybrid cars. Okay. So that’s our little Toyota Yaris that we love. That’s a little plug in hybrid. The government is also going to make it easier for manufacturers who do not comply with the government’s Zero Emission Vehicle Zev mandate, which sets sales targets to avoid fines and the levies are going to be reduced. So that’s going to reduce the motivation for these manufacturers to comply. I think if the if the fines are going down.

[00:07:20] Keith Gooden: But the fines were huge, weren’t they? £15,000 per vehicle.

[00:07:23] Matt Sims: £18,000 a.

[00:07:24] Keith Gooden: Car. I mean that was just stupid. That’s that’s a sledgehammer to crack a walnut, isn’t it? And, you know, these people are trying to run businesses, aren’t they? They’ve got factories. They’ve got stylists and painters. Honestly.

[00:07:38] Matt Sims: What?

[00:07:39] Keith Gooden: They’ve got people who are stylists, but they’re taking all the risks. They’re taking all the risks. This was always going to happen. Says, you’ve got to do this or we’re going to charge you 18 grand. It was just ridiculous.

[00:07:49] Matt Sims: Yeah, this was always going to happen. I think there’s going to be more softening, I’ll be honest, because I think the manufacturers are going to kick off even more. And I think a move to zero emission has to be a positive thing from the perspective of the environment, looking after the planet, looking after the people that live here and our own health. I get that and that I fully support, but it has to be it has to be commercially viable with the landscape we live on. And until there are really, really viable alternatives, we have to work together to move toward a zero emission world.

[00:08:24] Keith Gooden: Yeah, it just seems to be government policy for the last 25 years or so is that you lump the responsibility for stuff onto the private sector, rather than the government funding huge tracts of it and benefiting the private sector by pumping that money in and through it. So you get the advantage of the private sector, don’t you? And the the skill of manufacture, the speed of design, the brains behind it, but with government money, that all seemed to have been thrown away. And up to the point where they say, we’re going to find you £18,000 unless you do what we tell you to do.

[00:08:54] Matt Sims: But I think this keeps happening. So this is where it’s an interesting trend where these new kind of criteria, requirements, restrictions, laws are introduced, which are just, you know, they’re just dare I use that term. They’re just heavy handed. And then industry responds with whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on a minute. And then they soften. And that just seems to be the way we’re governed these days. We see it all the time. But anyway, maybe that’s just my observation.

[00:09:23] Keith Gooden: And it’s not just the government that we have in power at the moment. It’s governments, like I say, the last 25 years. It just seems to be a trend which, to be honest with you, we all agree that cars and vehicles should have fewer emissions or no emissions. It’s just, you know, we just argue about how we get there and lumping it all onto the private sector, I thought Yeah, it was just a mistake.

[00:09:45] Matt Sims: And the problem is instability just doesn’t brood well, for it doesn’t breed stability in industry. You know, we need stability and certainty in order to thrive and survive.

[00:09:56] Keith Gooden: So what does all this mean for us in the motorhome world?

[00:09:59] Matt Sims: So in the motorhome world, we’re kind of this weird end of this because we want to go a long way at full weight. We’re like the van nightmare and a real challenge for that sector. And one of the things I’ve been doing is trying to engage with that community to ensure we’re not overlooked and not forgotten, because this move to electric vans is going to massively impact our little corner of the world and our pastime. You know, we’re hundreds of millions of pounds worth, billions of pounds worth of industry from an affluent community and a growing community, and this will have a massive impact on our pastimes. So I’ve been trying to campaign kind of behind the scenes with the EV world and making sure we’re visible to them. I think we’ve done it. I think, you know, there’s been some success. I’m in good conversations with a number of people from that world, including a chap we’ve got on this week a very dear friend of mine. But in terms of impact to the motorhome world, I think it’s going to happen. Vans are going to go electric and motorhomes will go all electric. Already we’ve seen huge steps forward, strides forward with Habitation Electric. So the living area on lithium batteries sodium batteries are coming. I’ve seen some early developments in this and they’re amazing. Really light and barely any lithium phosphate in them at all. And that’s the next step for battery technology. That change is happening. And then I think we’re going to see as well where we’re taking power electric from the power plant that’s in the vehicle. So the battery drivetrain itself and we won’t have any separate habitation battery. So those changes are afoot. They are coming. And I’m watching this very closely. And what’s fascinating is we’ve spent the last few years kind of whiteboarding and vision boarding what we think is going to happen. And now we’re seeing some strides forward, and it’s a fascinating time. I’ve always said it’s an exciting time to be alive, to witness this change. It is now happening.

[00:11:59] Keith Gooden: So today we’re discussing the new XRS, aren’t we. Pardon Chris Evans.

[00:12:05] Matt Sims: Chris Evans.

[00:12:06] Keith Gooden: Get.

[00:12:06] Matt Sims: It?

[00:12:07] Keith Gooden: No Chris Evans. Oh for heaven’s sake, I’m wasted. Here you are. So. So who are you talking to?

[00:12:18] Matt Sims: So did I say I recently went to China?

[00:12:21] Keith Gooden: Yeah. And you missed your flight home as well?

[00:12:23] Matt Sims: I did, yeah, I did, yeah, that’s another story. So I was terribly impressed. Right. Super impressed by how advanced the Chinese are with adopting e-cars, vans, ebikes, you name it. Ee motorbikes. It is everywhere. And charging points are everywhere. They’ve just completely transformed the place. The air was really clean. It proved to me that a move to a zero emission world creates a clean environment. China is proof of that. And I’ve always said and predicted we are going to see new names on the radiator grilles of motorhomes. And those names are going to come from China. They’re going to be brands we’ve never heard of. And it’s happening. So there’s a new brand being launched called Verizon XV. That’s the name of the van, and it’s a fascinating product. It is now available to buy in Australia, all over Europe, in the UK and Ireland. And one of the first Verizon vans has arrived in the UK. And we had a chance to go and look at it and explore it. And of course it is made in China and it’s made by a company called Geely. Have you heard of Geely?

[00:13:30] Keith Gooden: I haven’t heard of Geely.

[00:13:31] Matt Sims: So Geely own Volvo, Lotus and Polestar. You’ve heard of them? I have and they are massive and they are incredibly well funded. They own Verizon, and I had a chance to catch up with my good friend Paul Kirby. The electric van man is his handle on YouTube. And Paul had one of these Verizon vans in his possession, and he brought it to the recent Newark show and had a look at it. Well, a very warm welcome to the Mac Live Advice Centre. Right. I’m very excited to welcome Paul Electric Van Man and was once voted the fifth most influential man in the world of EVs, with Elon Musk at number one. I suspect you’re ahead of him now, are you? He’s fallen out of favour, isn’t he?

[00:14:16] Paul Kirby: Whilst I’m not a fan of the list, I do think I might actually be slightly more popular than him these days.

[00:14:21] Matt Sims: So, Paul, just tell us a little bit of background about you. You are in the world of vans, and you’re very much an influencer in that world, and it’s so great to have you here. Thank you for coming and just keeping an eye on our world, because one of the things I’m really concerned about is as as motorhome as we’re not overlooked as we transition toward electric vans. Because it’s happening, isn’t it?

[00:14:43] Paul Kirby: It absolutely is. I mean, I drove my first electric van really, after I got into the van world. So I started out in traditional diesel vans some 20 odd years ago. But in 2004, I drove an electric sprinter. So it was a Mercedes-Benz sprinter. It did about 40 miles an hour and carried a bag of crisps. Finally, it’s just got a little bit better than that more recently. And and we’ve seen an incredible journey from there to here.

[00:15:11] Matt Sims: And what do you do though in that van world. What’s your day job?

[00:15:15] Paul Kirby: So about four years ago, I jumped out of the corporate world that I was in because the world needed a voice of electric vans, because there was a lot going on. There was a lot of misinformation. And what I’ve tried to do is help people, not you have to have an electric van, but you have to make an informed choice, not a Uninformed choice. So I want to give people the opportunity to compare. Like for like versus electric versus diesel. And also make sure that the vehicles practical fit for purpose for your job.

[00:15:47] Matt Sims: So you work with companies then who manage a fleet of vans and that’s your customer base, isn’t it?

[00:15:52] Paul Kirby: So a mix of customers that need to run the vans, but also the OEMs themselves, the manufacturers to say, guys, this is what you need to do, which is kind of why we’re here with the Verizon today, which we’ll talk on later. But I’ve helped them kind of get that vehicle right, get the approach right to the market because I understand the needs of the user, but also the constraints, perhaps, of the OEMs and what they’re trying to achieve as well.

[00:16:15] Matt Sims: And you’ve got a very active YouTube channel. You run a podcast called the EV cafe. You run lots of shows. You speak at lots of corporate shows, vehicle van shows, commercial vehicle show. You are the man, aren’t you? When it comes to.

[00:16:30] Paul Kirby: A van.

[00:16:31] Matt Sims: Love a van. What can I say?

[00:16:33] Paul Kirby: But yeah, and I do talk about them a lot. You’ll have a job to keep me quiet because, I mean, the EV cafe is a great resource across all kind of vehicles. And you can you’re welcome to tune into that. The Electric Van Man is my YouTube channel, and what I try to do there is to say, this is the van. I’m not going to give you my opinion whether it’s a great van or a bad van, because there’s queues of people to say, this doesn’t work and this is wrong. What I try and do is give you the insight and understanding of what works, whether it’s practical and what you can do with it, how far it will go and all. And the practicalities around this change to electric vehicles because not everybody gets it. It’s not straightforward necessarily. You’ve got to think slightly differently.

[00:17:14] Matt Sims: You have and I have big concerns about the feasibility of an electric van as a campervan and motorhome. Would anyone agree with that? Here today everyone is nodding and there’s hands in the air. Tough crowd. Yeah, you have got a tough crowd. We’re a tough audience because actually we’re a pain in the neck for you because we want to go a long way whilst we weigh a lot and we want to take all our stuff, and sometimes we want to take the wife, you know, and occasionally we take the kids. I mean, you know, we’re a nightmare for an electric van, but this change is coming. And I think one of the things that if you leave today and all you do today is you leave feeling a little bit more clued up about this change. And I keep saying it’s coming because it is. And I think the word to the wise is get wise on this, because I think the more we know about it as a, as a niche and we are a niche for you, we’re a niche within your niche because the vans that Paul’s researching and talking about are going to become the campervans and motorhomes donors for those in the future. Because you’ve got to remember, we do forget that the motorhome we’re driving around is also a DPD delivery van. The Fiat Ducato was made as a delivery van. It’s an Amazon van. They’re everywhere and it’s people like that. That meant that we couldn’t get chassie post pandemic because they went to all these huge delivery companies instead, and we were overlooked. And I don’t want you to overlook us. So thank you for coming and giving me the opportunity to have a chat with you today.

[00:18:44] Paul Kirby: And let me just say on that subject, you’re absolutely right, because I worked in the industry for Mercedes Benz back in late 2000 and the noughties and the campervan world was a very important world to anybody that produced a chassis. Now that has changed, there’s no question, because it is really difficult and you see the proliferation of of vans that have been converted. When I think your preference would probably be the coach built chassis that have gone, but they’ve gone into industry, they’ve gone into commercial uses. And you know, that’s challenging. And I do think that we absolutely have to focus on this sector and and recognise its importance again in the sector. So I don’t think you’re you will be overlooked for much longer.

[00:19:29] Matt Sims: Thank you, I appreciate that and I do believe you. So let’s go back in time, Paul, to over a hundred years ago. And we were talking about this. This is bizarre. So tell us what how we were travelling around in the early 1900s.

[00:19:42] Paul Kirby: So in the early 1900s, almost all of the local transport in the boat world was electric. There were three types of propulsion available, and they were in the car world or the vehicle world. And that was steam, petrol and electric. And according to documentation, that’s well versed in the Smithsonian Museum in America, electric was the most efficient and most effective way of propulsion at that time. So somebody discovered oil. And that was the end of the conversation because they just went hell for leather around down the oil front. Now, to be fair, why wouldn’t you? Because it was the simplest thing to do. Nobody had any concept of this impact on the environment business. But now we’ve done the science and done the maths, and the impact on the environment is quite considerable. The impact on our health is quite considerable. There is a lot of things that are impacting us because of diesel and petrol vehicles. So now we’re back to electrical.

[00:20:44] Matt Sims: Could be monetised. Yes, far more easily than electric I guess.

[00:20:49] Paul Kirby: I guess it could be.

[00:20:50] Matt Sims: Taxed and so governments can make more money out of diesel and petrol. Yeah, maybe. I mean, we all know the history of the diesel engine, don’t we? It was designed to run on it was always a waste product of creating petrol. And so diesel became the thing and we’re all told. Yeah, yeah, go and get a diesel car. Remember this? And now we’re told, no, don’t get diesel car. And governments have monetised it really successfully. And so we’re kind of going full circle. Would you agree.

[00:21:18] Paul Kirby: That’s, that’s where we’re at right now. It looks like electric is the most suitable method of propulsion and and fuelling that propulsion of of the available sources, hydrogen is often talked about another CNG and other gases are talked about. But typically electric is proving very, very effective.

[00:21:40] Matt Sims: Okay. So let’s talk about the landscape we’re on now. The government are driving this change with the Zev mandate, the zero emission vehicle mandate. It changed recently. But this is a timeline. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Zev mandate. And it means by 2035, all new vehicles, cars and vans have to be non-fossil fuel so they can no longer be diesel or petrol. They have to be electric.

[00:22:06] Paul Kirby: Zero emission, zero emission.

[00:22:07] Matt Sims: Yeah, that could be hydrogen. But we’re very much down an electric road at the moment. And there are alternatives out there. But we’re focussed today on electric. We’re just going to talk about that. 2035 is not very long away. That’s ten years. That’s not very long is it. Most of us in this room, all of us in this room, I hope will still be here. Not in this room, but still be still be breathing. We are going to let you out at the end. It’s okay. But ten years is not a very long time and it feels like it’s been rushed. But some of the pressures on manufacturers were recently relaxed. Can you just tell us briefly about that?

[00:22:41] Paul Kirby: Yeah, briefly. As briefly as you can do with any government legislation. Legislation was designed to drive the change. Right. So in 2020, it was it began to be laid out by Boris and his group. Then in 2023, they kind of had a bit of a wobble. And then in 2023, 24 they created this Zev mandate. The Zev mandate has a number of percentages, year on year, that go up to complete sale of petrol and diesel cars and vans. Also, just as an aside, trucks as well, but not in the Zev mandate. So that’s slightly different. So we’ve got a planned out trajectory 80% and of cars and 70% of vans need to be electric by 2030.

[00:23:21] Matt Sims: That’s five years.

[00:23:22] Paul Kirby: That’s five years away. Less than five years. And then 20, 35, all of the rest. So and it’s a dramatic change. It is for sure.

[00:23:31] Matt Sims: So in terms of vans how many are currently being made that are electric now in terms of percentage terms of total production.

[00:23:39] Paul Kirby: So percentage that is required this year officially is 16%. We’re about 8%. And that’s likely to we’ll probably get to ten maybe 12% by the end of the year. Now, the relaxation of the legislation meant that the fines that were talked about and were quite stringent, and manufacturers were fearing the worst have been pushed back, really in effect from 2027 to 2029, and they’ve also been lowered in the amount.

[00:24:09] Matt Sims: So tell us about those fines.

[00:24:12] Paul Kirby: So the fines. The fines for for each vehicle that is effectively deemed over the target. It was 15 and £10,000. It’s now £15,000 for a van and £12,000 for a car.

[00:24:25] Matt Sims: So in real terms, if a if a diesel vehicle is made and it’s outside of that target, it’s going to be 15 grand more than it should have cost. Yeah. You and I have got to pay for that if we’re buying it. I’m not paying 15 grand more just because a manufacturer didn’t make the target.

[00:24:41] Paul Kirby: And I think this is the thing about pricing because everybody’s talked about pricing. I don’t know if it’s a good time to talk about price, but price is going to be driven by two things. First of all, the increase in volume and availability of electric and the improvements in technology, but also the fact that much lower volumes of diesel and petrol vehicles will be made. So they will in turn become more expensive because of just natural volumes. But also when you factor in all of the fines and all the other bits and pieces like that, then suddenly those prices are going to go up and the electric vehicles will come down, and suddenly we’re going to see the seesaw go the other way.

[00:25:14] Matt Sims: Okay, well, let’s come back to that in a minute. We’ll talk about pricing of new and pricing of used. Because a used Tesla is a joke in terms of buying one. I nearly bought one this morning. Honestly, it was so cheap. Just looking this morning before I met with you today. So I want to talk about some huge elephants in the room. Every one of you has sat here thinking the same thing as me. Yeah. We want to go and drive to Edinburgh, don’t we? We want to do the NC 500. We’ve been inspired to do it today. Yesterday we were inspired to do the Wild Atlantic Way. So the whole loop of Ireland. I can’t do that in an electric van pool. It won’t go far enough.

[00:25:56] Paul Kirby: So let’s take the NC 500. I know this one because I’ve been I’ve done the NC 500.

[00:26:01] Matt Sims: In an electric van.

[00:26:01] Paul Kirby: In an electric van with lower range than the vans today. So did anybody tell you to do the NC 500 or this Wild Atlantic Way and not stop?

[00:26:12] Matt Sims: No, I need.

[00:26:13] Paul Kirby: Not have a wee.

[00:26:14] Matt Sims: Not.

[00:26:15] Paul Kirby: Have a cup of.

[00:26:15] Matt Sims: Tea.

[00:26:16] Paul Kirby: Not No. So you’re allowed to stop, right? It’s not. It’s not like the TT or anything like that. You don’t have to go around 180 miles an hour. You go, you enjoy the journey. You’re taking the slow road, right? This is a holiday, isn’t it? Not a race. You’re going to stop now. The NC 500 is really interesting because the Scottish Government 12 years ago actually put in charging all around Scotland. There is a lot of charging, doesn’t always work at the moment. It’s getting better to be fair, but there is charging in all kinds of weird and wonderful little villages and towns. You know, 50 kilowatt chargers that you could sit and, you know, get a decent charge. But the range is on. Vehicles have moved up. So the large vans, the vans that you use at the moment, used to be somewhere between 80 and 120 miles that that sort of range. Well, the Vauxhall or the Peugeot or the Fiat that you’ll all be very familiar with as campervans are now operating with a 260 mile range, so on their 111, 110 kilowatt hour battery. So they’re big vehicles, but they’ve got a range and that’s measured at 50% payload.

[00:27:23] Paul Kirby: So give or take. So you’ve already got some of the payload. And yes, there’s lots of in things that influence that range. And this right foot thing here being the biggest thing that influences the range of your vehicle. But there is so many options now in the large van sector with a reasonable mileage. Now, if you’re driving more than 180 miles in one go, then if you like me, you’d need a wee or a cup of coffee or something and you just find the right places to charge. It’s a great company called oh gosh, wildfires. I think they’re called they were they were they have an ID buzz that you can take, but they will book you a route and they’ll take in all the most picturesque charge points and all of that sort of stuff. And you just park up, plug in, have your cup of tea and enjoy the view and and then move on to the next place. So it’s a way of thinking, it’s a mindset, but also the technology is improving dramatically.

[00:28:17] Matt Sims: And I think that’s the thing. It’s a mindset. You make it sound romantically easy.

[00:28:21] Paul Kirby: I know, isn’t it? Don’t worry about.

[00:28:23] Matt Sims: It. There’s someone in our niche called Steve Radford who I’m sure has a big YouTube channel, and he filmed himself trying to do Scotland. Did you see it in his ID buzz? And I think you’ve met Steve, and he just spent the entire trip trying to find charging points, and he would get there and it was broken, or he’d get there and it wasn’t compatible with the van, you know, it was just a challenge every turn. So you make it sound far easier than I think it probably is.

[00:28:48] Paul Kirby: And I’m sure I do. But so I’m the ying to others yang in that sense, I, I have done the NC 500. I do know the problems that the NC 500 as a as a route holds. But I also know the possibilities that it holds as well. And the fact is that people are focussed right now as we speak, on improving that charging infrastructure. The fact that it’s there in the first place means that you can build on it, you can improve it, you can repair it. And that that process is happening in government. If you go across the main arteries of the UK now, there is high speed charging, high power charging, and the vehicles themselves are able to take that energy much more quickly these days than they could five years ago. So five years ago it’d be 50kW. Today it’s 150 to to 200.

[00:29:35] Matt Sims: I guess one of the things I’m not an EV driver, so I don’t have a plug in chargeable car. We have a hybrid, a Toyota Yaris, which you don’t have to plug in, and we love it. It’s great. But I guess one of the differences and the big difference between a charging point and a fuel station is the fuel stations. Pretty obvious? Like it’s massive, isn’t it? Whereas a ChargePoint is tiny. Our local farm shop have just introduced two super fast chargers. I didn’t even know they were there. And there’s an app, isn’t there? Where Zap-map it’s called, and I downloaded it. I thought, I wonder what this is like. They’re blooming everywhere. In fact, I found an interesting thing this morning. Online, it said the UK’s charging network continues to grow at pace. There are now over 50,000 public charge points, with 44% more than this time last year. This was very recently written, putting the country well on track to reach 300,000 charge points by 2030. How many fuel stations are in the UK, do you know? Yes, 8500, 8500.

[00:30:39] Paul Kirby: So but let’s let’s give that its full context because I think, I think we in the EV advocacy industry get like a bit of a bad press for making things overly positive. Right. And let’s be honest. So each petrol station has about let’s call it eight pumps. Eight pumps.

[00:30:58] Matt Sims: Okay.

[00:30:58] Paul Kirby: As a minimum. Right.

[00:31:00] Matt Sims: So times your 8500 by eight by eight.

[00:31:02] Paul Kirby: So you’re up to 70,000. But that’s still a lot less. And it also takes five minutes to fill your vehicle. Not 35 minutes or 40 minutes or 50 minutes or whatever it takes at the time. So let’s let’s have it right. There is a long way to go, and 300,000 is probably too many because what we what we miss actually is at home. About 60% of the population of the UK can have access to a driveway and put a charger on that driveway. And so that means that there are there’s already 650,000 private charge points, in addition to all of the ones that we’ve talked about.

[00:31:39] Matt Sims: So these are public ones.

[00:31:40] Paul Kirby: Yeah, those are public ones. And these are the private ones, 650,000. And there’s a mixture of businesses and private homes in that. And as your private home, you just plug it in and you charge overnight. But there is also an encouragement between businesses and private homes to share those charges with other people travelling. Now it’s not it’s not prevalent yet, but it’s going to become more prevalent. And so there will be other opportunities to charge overnight and do other things. You’re not going to want to go and stay at somebody’s house overnight. And I know you probably wouldn’t want to park your motorhome there. They might not want you to park their motorhome there. But what I what I’m saying is there’s much more opportunity to charge than we think. And the only reason we don’t know about it is because we don’t know about it. You don’t know what you don’t know, do you? And so if you don’t know what you’re looking at, don’t know what you’re looking for, you can’t spot it.

[00:32:30] Matt Sims: We also have a challenge, though, when we go to a campsite, if you’re driving an electric car and you want to charge it on the campsite, in my experience and the campsites I’ve spoken to, they all say, no, you’re not doing that here, pal. I was watching a video that Peter did very, very recently. It was a model three Tesla that had this big box on the roof. What was it called? Peter a dash away. It is a hilarious video. It’s very good, but it’s a really interesting idea. It’s like a roof box tent, but it’s permanently fixed onto this model three. Jack it up and drive the car out from underneath it. So it’s like a demountable. Demountable. Yeah. And inside the roof pops up. You can stand up in it on top of your Tesla. And it makes a rock and roll bed. It’s a kitchen in it. You can cook in it and you’ve got this amazing view from on top the roof of this model three Tesla. Now it’s very small production, but it’s very innovative. And the chap who made it was asked the question by Peter, how do you recharge the car? He saw that easy. He said, I talked to the campsite and I recharge it on the campsite. He said, often they say no, but I have a quick chat with them. And overnight he said, I can gain 120 miles. I think he said, didn’t he? But he had to educate the campsite on how much power he’s going to draw, which of course, he’s happy to pay for.

[00:33:45] Matt Sims: And the campsite said, well, okay then. And I think for me, this is a journey of education that we all need to go on. Our industry definitely needs to go on. The manufacturers are kind of starting it. I think we’re too slow at the moment. I think campsites need to go on this journey. But there’s a great quote. I’ll quote you, Paul, you said to me a little while ago, we’re going to spend the next six years. You said, relearning what we’ve been doing for a hundred years in terms of our cars. So once a week we drive to the fuel station, we fill up with fuel, and then we go home and we have our week and there’s just fuel in the car with an electric car. Electric motorhome. You have to charge it little and often. And my kids. It’s interesting. I liken this analogy to my children. They are constantly trying to recharge their phones. Dad, can I borrow a power cable all the time. I’m always losing phone charger cables to my four kids. It’s constant and I think they will be very accepting of an EV as a result, because they’ll just be used to charging stuff all the time. So there’s a big education that we need to go on, and that is a big resistance. Is it to this change?

[00:34:57] Paul Kirby: Do you know, I just don’t think there’s enough education going on. And you mentioned the manufacturers. I do a lot with the manufacturers directly, but also the dealer groups. And I had a dealer principal, a managing director of a dealer group go into Renault and Ford with my picture. And when we’ve got to pay for this guy to come and train our people because you’re not doing the job, and that’s the reality that there’s not enough going on in terms of education. And we within our industry are trying to educate. But the reality is this is being driven by big business. So the big companies that are getting the company cars and the ones that are making the big green commitments like BT and Royal Mail and British Gas and all of those kind of guys that are putting lots and lots of vans on what we need is lots of information across a wide spread of people, and it’s really challenging. And government need to take some responsibility for that. Definitely manufacturers, the OEMs need to train their dealers in order to be able to communicate with us in a way that we understand and we accept, and we can get on board with. Because if we don’t do this, we have got we have got a problem. There’s no question we have got a problem because it’s the small businesses. It’s the people like you and me that buy our one car or two cars. You know, for a family that need the information, we don’t want to be, we don’t want the education of big business, because that’s easy, right? You tell one person and they cascade it all through their business. Easy done. But we want to tell the masses and that’s that’s the that’s the purpose of the EV cafe. That’s the purpose of me with my YouTube channel. It’s not my natural habitat. I’m a was a corporate guy, but now I’m doing this because that’s the way to get to the masses.

[00:36:35] Matt Sims: I want to just talk about residual values. I mentioned Tesla’s Model three. How much is a brand new model? 345 K.

[00:36:43] Paul Kirby: Yeah, starts at 45 4945.

[00:36:45] Matt Sims: K. So five years old I can buy one for 11 grand retail. I rang a friend of mine’s car dealer and said, I want to buy a model three Tesla with 100,000 miles on it. It’s still in warranty. The battery’s eight year warranty, isn’t it? Yeah. So I’ve got three years of warranty left and the car’s going to go for another 100,000 miles. I’m probably going to change the tires. That’s probably all. So very little servicing cost. How much am I going to buy it from you? Trade. He said, oh, I could probably get you one for about six and a half grand. Five years old. And he said, if you put 125,000, definitely six grand. And that’s what they’re worth. I mean, they’re worthless almost. That’s a lot of car for. Not a lot of money.

[00:37:26] Paul Kirby: Absolutely. And so when we wrap that into the van world. So let’s take a Ford Transit that you might be able to convert that, that type of vehicle, the right sort of size physically to be able to transfer into a camper van rather than the Coachbuilt. They retail at around about 50, £52,000.

[00:37:45] Matt Sims: So I was looking at those as well. So yeah, brand new van, electric van E-transit, E-transit custom and something else I’d never heard of. That was electric. 50 K yeah. And diesel brand new. 4748 K.

[00:38:00] Paul Kirby: So the prices are close in terms of list price. But then you go into a year old year old with a couple of thousand miles on it, and you are talking probably 50% of that price. Wow. Now, so that is both a good thing for those of you that want to buy a second hand van and convert it and do that whole van life experience, right. But it’s not so good for the overall market because the residual values are just way too low.

[00:38:24] Matt Sims: And that is not a trend we are used to. You know, the last five years our motorhomes have gone up by 30%, haven’t they? And if you’re buying one, you’re now kind of it’s a life changing sum of money to buy a motor, as you’ve seen today as we wandered around together. Blimey. 120 grand. I know, yeah, it’s a diesel van.

[00:38:41] Paul Kirby: But. So the residual value is important. And the reason that we’re getting this residual value. Tesla is a unique storm, of course, but the residual values in general for a used electric vehicle mean that instead of that premium that you expect to pay for an electric vehicle against a diesel or petrol vehicle, you’re paying around the same price. And that means that your total cost of ownership, the life cost of a vehicle when you’re wrapping in the maintenance and when you’re wrapping in the fuelling of those vehicles, then it’s cheaper to run an electric vehicle. If you buy it at the same price as a diesel vehicle or petrol vehicle.

[00:39:16] Matt Sims: Because the cost of ownership, the cost of ownership.

[00:39:18] Paul Kirby: Is so much cheaper. So residual values are good at the moment in terms of like if you’re buying, but if you’re selling, it’s not so good and it’s not so good for the new market because the residual value.

[00:39:29] Matt Sims: And the problem is those values are what make the headlines. Yeah. We don’t hear about I was chatting to a friend of mine who is a Tesla owner. He’s just bought a brand new one and he went to London and back for £7 of electric. Or maybe it was less than that and he charged at home and he said, I weighed it there and back, just about 20 miles left in the car. And he said, I would have got you. And then he got home and charged it again. But he said if I was paying that in diesel, it would have been £70. A 10th of the price. And we don’t hear about this. So that’s part of the education isn’t it. The education curve that we’re picking.

[00:40:05] Paul Kirby: On, we’re picking both ends of the spectrum rather than talking about the bit in the middle.

[00:40:08] Matt Sims: Yeah.

[00:40:09] Paul Kirby: We need to talk more about the middle.

[00:40:10] Matt Sims: We do. Yeah. And you only learn that when actually when you own an electric car. And my experience is people that own electric car are absolute massive fans of the idea of electric campervan. And I’ve seen that at numerous shows where we’ve had Q and A’s about it. But one of the challenges, well, I think, is this a road we’re being forced down. I mean, it feels to me like our government.

[00:40:31] Paul Kirby: Out there somewhere.

[00:40:32] Matt Sims: Let’s not get too political, but it does feel like the government are insisting we go electric. And people say, well, hydrogen’s a viable option, Matt. Yeah. And I mean, you say, no, it’s not.

[00:40:43] Paul Kirby: And I’ll tell you why.

[00:40:44] Matt Sims: Because you’re not hydrogen, Harry. You’re the electric van, man.

[00:40:47] Paul Kirby: I know, but I’m the electric van man for a reason, and it’s a considered opinion. Right. Hydrogen is vastly more expensive today than anything electric. I mean, it’s just off the scale. And in terms of infrastructure, there’s probably low teens of charging places. Now, hydrogen has been around a long time. It’s not this isn’t his first rodeo. It’s been around for a long. But it’s just never taken off. It’s not necessarily vastly more efficient than an electric vehicle. And basically, the hydrogen is creating electric to drive and propels the vehicle. So we’re still at electric. So if there’s a better way to do electric then just do the electric. And that makes more sense. So that’s the reason I am.

[00:41:30] Matt Sims: Okay. Okay. Well I’ll let you off then. Bill gates made a set, an amazing quote, and I’ll quote it. He said, most people overestimate what can be done in a year, but massively underestimate what can be done in ten years. And we’ve seen this with the way we move toward EV, and I am a fan of zero emission and electric vehicles or non-fossil fuel vehicles. I’m a petrolhead. I will still drive my petrol car, and I have a barn full of what my friends call scrap metal. And, you know, like an RX eight. It’s got a Wankel engine in it. Yeah, it’s an amazing car. I’ve got a 1934 Austin seven which is a phenomenal little thing. And I’ll hopefully still have those in ten years. But some of the innovation we’re seeing in the last few years is really quite kind of sci fi. One of the things I saw, a video of a country, I can’t remember where it is, but they were stripping up the middle of the motorway lane and putting a charging kind of, sort of. People have seen it too. So you charge what you’re driving along wirelessly. Quite. What would happen to a an animal stuck on the road having a little kip and you drove over it? I don’t know.

[00:42:40] Paul Kirby: I think it’s probably likely not make it across the whole road, is it? You know, it’s not going to get there and then stay there.

[00:42:46] Matt Sims: But I can’t see where this was.

[00:42:48] Paul Kirby: But it’s well, there’s Sweden and Norway, I think.

[00:42:51] Matt Sims: I think it was.

[00:42:51] Paul Kirby: Norway, Sweden, Norway and Nottingham.

[00:42:53] Matt Sims: Right, okay. Nottingham.

[00:42:54] Paul Kirby: So there is wireless charging in Nottingham. And I think there’s going to be on a stretch of the M18 in in Doncaster.

[00:43:00] Matt Sims: So this is wireless charging. We drive along and recharge our vehicle whilst we’re driving.

[00:43:05] Paul Kirby: Yeah. So the idea is particularly for heavy goods vehicles and there’s also what they call a pantograph, which basically means that like the trains, they just kind of go up and hit a wire and and away they go. These types of charging are innovation that are solving some of the problems. And what we’ve got to remember, we have solved just about every problem that gets thrown at us, you know, as the human race. Right? We’re still here, aren’t we? And we get a problem. We find a way around it and we deal with it and we move forward. And there are just so many different options around the charging of electric vehicles that make a lot of sense now. They’re expensive at the moment. They really are, but they do solve the problem. So the point will come when that balance will be achieved. But there’s so many different ways, and wireless charging is one really good example for the heavy end. As cars, you don’t really need it and you might think you do, but I promise you, I mean, I’ve done huge mileages in my cars and I never really get a problem, I really don’t. And because the speed of charging is really good and also the range of my vehicles is very good, I’ve got 260 on one and 330 on the other. If I stop, I charge. I don’t stop to charge very, very rarely.

[00:44:24] Matt Sims: There’s a lot of resistance to electrification of our little world here of motorhomes and campervans, and I understand why, and I’m resistant to it too. But what I find interesting is that whilst we might be resistant to electric powertrain, we’re electrifying our vans with solar power. You see all these vans at the shows that are gas free and they’ve got an electric induction hob electric cooker. They might have diesel heating because heating is hard on electric, but we seem to be, as an industry, moving, moving more and more toward full electric vans. But I find it interesting that there’s this resistance. And you have a great phrase in your industry called FUD. And I think that’s what it is. And FUD stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. Now, I think I’m a bit scared of this change because it’s going to impact my holiday ability to charge on our journey is a challenge and doubt. I doubt whether this will work.

[00:45:22] Paul Kirby: Yeah, so I don’t doubt that it’ll work. And for the aforementioned reason about our ability to overcome challenges and issues, the speed of charging is one critical issue. But we’ve already seen in charge in China. 5 to 6 minutes to charge up to 400km, you know, and that they can deploy that we’re going to see megawatt charging hit our country. Well there’s actually megawatt chargers. Megawatt chargers in Islington Council that charges their refuse collection vehicles. That means that they can put 1000kW into a vehicle in an hour.

[00:45:58] Matt Sims: So that certainly makes recharging a motorhome same as filling up with diesel.

[00:46:02] Paul Kirby: Oh gosh. Yeah.

[00:46:03] Matt Sims: I mean it takes me ages to fill hours. It’s now 100 and odd quid. Yeah.

[00:46:07] Paul Kirby: But I mean but so but the thing is it’s about thinking differently. And you come back to this the campervan, the camping sites need to rethink. And there will be ways of getting those to present viable options for charging on route. And they will make some money out of it as well. So I mean this is the balance we we just need to think about it and not put up walls. But we recognise that there is fear, there is uncertainty and there is doubt. We understand that. And I’m not the person that says you must. I’m saying, look, let’s let’s find a way and where it’s possible where your use case because, you know, if we compared all of your journeys and your reasons for having motorhomes and for the types of holidays that you go on, you will all have a different experience, a different goal, a different end game. And so it’s some of you will be perfect for electric vehicles. Some of you don’t think so because you’re choosing to go over here and do uphill and down.

[00:47:06] Matt Sims: You made an observation earlier that most of us are probably driven around 100 miles to be here this weekend. Some of us might have driven more. We’re not plugged in. Most of us don’t have a hook up. And then we’re going to do the same to go home. And our expectation is we probably will be able to do that trip without stopping. And what you’re saying is we’re going to get the range in the vans to be able to do that, and if we do, we could recharge in six minutes, potentially in the.

[00:47:31] Paul Kirby: Future, like a motorway service station, that type of thing.

[00:47:34] Matt Sims: I went to something called Canton Fair. In fact, I sent Paul a picture. I was stood by an electric lorry And there was an entire show at this show, a whole floor dedicated to electric fans, electric lorries, and you have to go. It’s amazing. And it’s like the neck, but about ten times the size. This show, it was massive. We realised that 15.2, 15.3, 15.4 didn’t mean floor areas of hall 15, it meant floors of Hall 15. And we’d only looked at one of them and suddenly we realised that the show was actually about eight times bigger than we realised. This is a company called Geely who own the van that’s outside. I’m going to go outside and have a look at it in a minute. Paul, tell us about the range of vehicles they’re making and who are Geely.

[00:48:19] Paul Kirby: So Geely, you will be familiar with some brands that they own like Volvo. They own Polestar, they own Lotus. So they own those brands. And they own a lot more as well. So, you know, all of the brands that you think might be UK or US are long since moved away from, from here. But these guys have a vast array of vehicles and the Verizon, the van that’s outside in our industry or in my side of the fence, the commercial vehicle world. We’re very worried about new companies because a lot of new companies have come. Some of you might have heard of a rival. They were touted as being a potential motorhome in the future, but they didn’t make it. And then there’s been a couple of other companies that have almost got here and not quite, but these guys have been going since 2016 as part of the Geely brand. It’s a massive brand. It’s just hit the top ten of the manufacturers in the world very recently, and the Verizon van has 20% of its domestic market, but they are building everything from small vans and bikes and all the way up through to 44 ton trucks. And it’s all what we call what they call new energy vehicles, battery electric vehicles.

[00:49:31] Matt Sims: So you say domestic market. I mean, they’ve got 20% of the vans on the road in China.

[00:49:35] Paul Kirby: Yeah. New sales. Yeah.

[00:49:36] Matt Sims: They are Verizon.

[00:49:37] Paul Kirby: Yes.

[00:49:38] Matt Sims: One of the things you said to me as well is that the electric cars will come first. When we were chatting a long time ago. And of course that’s happened. I mean, they’re everywhere, aren’t they? And then interestingly, the big development will go into lorries, articulated lorries. Which sounds bizarre, doesn’t it? But I guess they have got the ability to carry the batteries and then will come the van that we need to make our motorhomes out of. Is that fair? Is that still true?

[00:50:03] Paul Kirby: I think so. I think what what we’re going to see is the truck world because of the order within the truck world. So they they have operating centres, they have to go from a fixed place and they can put power in those places. The reduction in CO2 emissions is really high impact for every vehicle that you switch over. The van is still high. It’s much higher than cars. And also, I think the vans, a lot of them are very much more car like in their size. We probably see your type of vehicle, the larger type of vehicle coming as a result of innovation that’s happening in the truck world and the batteries getting smaller, getting lighter, getting quicker to charge, and then they’ll come down into that. I mean, it’s speculation they could all move at the same.

[00:50:48] Matt Sims: Early days is what we’re saying. It’s a new pastime for them. While I was there, though, I couldn’t believe the number of autonomous taxis. These cars that don’t have a driver. I didn’t get to go in one. I wish I did. And also these little vans that were delivering food. And there’s no driver. They just know the road. They’re a robot, and they’re just driving around with everyone else. It was incredible. I got in the lift with a robot that was delivering food to a room service, and this little C-3po got in the lift with me, and I stood there and it’s glowing blue like this with somebody’s dinner in it. And I felt. I felt like I had to have a conversation with it. And it’s the lift stopped. It didn’t press any buttons. The lift stopped. It somehow communicated with the lift, and it got out and I sort of went by and I went up to my room. It was quite bizarre. So they are so far ahead and there are e mopeds everywhere and charging points literally. And people are nodding. You’ve seen it. You plug into the lamp post. It’s everywhere. Just whether it was free or there was an app, I don’t know. But these little E mopeds, there are thousands of them and I’d love to know where all the petrol ones went, but they are literally decades ahead. And I suppose in that culture, if you’re told you’re having an E car, you’re having an E car.

[00:52:04] Paul Kirby: The health impact is everybody talks about China and the amount of industrial pollution that they’re creating and all that sort of stuff. The impact on health for them potentially could be incredibly positive by removing all the negative stuff in the atmosphere. I mean, 40,000 people die every year as a result of air quality related health issues. And we’re spending billions through the NHS on keeping people well. So if they’re going to save money. You know, as an economy, there is a completely different impact.

[00:52:37] Matt Sims: Well, and again, the rhetoric of China is, oh, it’s smog everywhere you can’t see. Absolutely not true that the sky was clear, absolutely clear. There was no smog at all. And over half the vehicles were electric driving around because they scared the life out of me because there was no noise. This is a Verizon campervan.

[00:52:58] Paul Kirby: This is the van that we’ve got outside has been converted. The interesting thing about it is that they’ve done it with camera rails in there for live streaming and all that kind of stuff, because that’s really big in China that, you know, even as you’re out and about, you could almost have a little portable karaoke cabin and all that sort of stuff. They really go for it. But it’s I mean, it’s a cool conversion. Now, whether that’s a suitable conversion for us here in the UK, a couple of people have asked me would would we take this one in? Would Verizon bring this vehicle in? I’ve said probably not because we like what we like, don’t we? We we we like to trust the Adria and the Swift and the we do.

[00:53:36] Matt Sims: But whatever style, I mean, their styling is not ours. No, it’s they haven’t quite got that yet, but that ain’t going to take them long.

[00:53:44] Paul Kirby: Their beds are a bit smaller as well.

[00:53:45] Matt Sims: They probably are a bit shorter. So this is the van outside. We can’t drive it anywhere, unfortunately. Because it’s not registered on the road. One of the interesting things is there’s no B-pillar, the seatbelt. When you open the door, the seatbelt goes out with the door. I’ve got an Adria twin, which is a panel van with a sliding door, and I sit in that front seat and there is a post in the way to the idea of not having that. That’s really quite appealing. I think that’s cool and that’s crash tested. It’s safe.

[00:54:12] Paul Kirby: So in terms of safety, it’s Euro Ncap platinum rated. So it’s the highest possible achievement in terms of safety. And of course a lot of the Chinese vehicles are very, very big on what we call Adas features, advanced driver assistance systems. You know, so beeping at you and adjusting the steering and braking for you and all those good things.

[00:54:33] Matt Sims: So tell us a little bit then about this van specifically. This is the first one in the UK from China.

[00:54:39] Paul Kirby: Yes. So the so the first thing. So not it’s not the first Chinese van. No. But this is the first L3 h3 that that van. So this brand new they’re not the only just being sold. So there’s no sold vehicles on the road anywhere in the UK.

[00:54:55] Matt Sims: So it’s come here to the show.

[00:54:57] Paul Kirby: So when I said to them I put the idea to them and said, look, you know, can we say, oh yeah, great idea. You know, we’d love to kind of help people understand what we do, especially because of its camper heritage. It’s got a natural fit for the industry. So there’s a couple of things that I think. So the coach built version, the chassis version is not going to come for probably 6 or 9 months, maybe probably into 2026. But the L3, H3, which is this, that means the length is the longest length and the height is the highest height and it gives 13m³ is available now. These vehicles are very efficient in their use of space. So the small footprint of the vehicle physically because it was they used the strap line born electric because it has no diesel comparison. You’re not sort of forgive the phrase bastardising a diesel van to make an electric van, you’re just creating an electric van from the ground up. It’s a very flat platform, so there’s lots of use of space. You can move the driver as far forward as you possibly can to create a longer amount of space.

[00:56:05] Paul Kirby: So this compares in physical size to a transit custom, but has about a metre cubed extra over and above the transit custom in its exact same size. And the technology and the driving experience is really good. And this is the first van commercial vehicle to have a double wishbone front suspension. So double wishbone front suspension makes that driving experience that much nicer than the standard leaf springs that you would normally expect to see on a van. So that’s a plus point from a passenger version. Obviously there’s a lot of technology on it, the screens and the switchgear. We’ve actually got some genuine good old fashioned switches, which is good in the commercial vehicle world because, you know, gloves or ham fisted thumps get the action done rather than having to scroll through lots of menus and whatnot. And it’s just nice and easy and clean and simple. You’ve got a nice through space. So you have actually got three seats in this one. But obviously from a campervan motorhome perspective, you would just.

[00:57:05] Matt Sims: Have two.

[00:57:06] Paul Kirby: Two seats. Lots of space, nice flat dashboard so that you’ve got lots of space there in the front as well. So it doesn’t impose on the on the cabin.

[00:57:14] Matt Sims: Is a very nice place to be in the cabin. But come on, tell us then how far will it go.

[00:57:19] Paul Kirby: So there’s three different battery versions. So 6080 and 106. Six nominal. So the 60 will probably take you 160 miles or something like that.

[00:57:30] Matt Sims: 160 miles as a camper van or an empty van.

[00:57:33] Paul Kirby: So they’re never measured empty. They’re always measured with payload. So not full payload, but around about.

[00:57:40] Matt Sims: A load in it.

[00:57:41] Paul Kirby: Yeah. With around about 50 payload. And then you lose around about 2% per 100 kilos is a rule of thumb. So if you’ve got half payload of 1000 kilo payload van. So the biggest version has 1000kg payload. This version has 1350. It’s a smaller. But you wouldn’t use that as a camper. Or you could do, I suppose, but it’s got 150 kilos.

[00:58:05] Matt Sims: So to give us a benchmark then how does that compare to something comparable, like a Fiat Ducati?

[00:58:11] Paul Kirby: So the Fiat Ducato at three and a half tons, has around about 1250 to 1300, I think.

[00:58:18] Matt Sims: So this has slightly less.

[00:58:20] Paul Kirby: Slightly less payload in the large van.

[00:58:22] Matt Sims: At three and a half ton. Tons. There’s a new rule that government are about to rubber stamp that if you’re driving an electric vehicle, you can drive for 250 on a B license. You don’t need a C1. So does that get added on to that 1000? Yes.

[00:58:36] Paul Kirby: So basically what you would end up with and just a quick subnote that would be a footnote is that’s with two passengers. So most vans are the payload is given with no passengers, two passengers for this specific van.

[00:58:50] Matt Sims: So in our world, yeah we give.

[00:58:52] Paul Kirby: 75.

[00:58:53] Matt Sims: Kilos for a driver.

[00:58:54] Paul Kirby: Yeah.

[00:58:55] Matt Sims: That wouldn’t cover me. Nor me. Just you.

[00:58:57] Paul Kirby: No no no, no, you’re too generous, man.

[00:59:00] Matt Sims: Used to.

[00:59:01] Paul Kirby: This particular van is.

[00:59:02] Matt Sims: With three people.

[00:59:03] Paul Kirby: With two people in it.

[00:59:04] Matt Sims: Two people.

[00:59:04] Paul Kirby: Two people in it. So that. So that 1350 is with two people. The 1075 is with two people. So that’s all payload that you get to use. And then if you have this 4.25 tonne derogation, which it isn’t currently available on this van because because of the manufacturer, not because of the legislation. The manufacturer has been had that feedback now. So this is my job right. To tell them guys you need to utilise this dispensation. And they’ve gone oh right okay. They’ve got it in China. They’ll do it. So they’ll bring it over and we’ll get that extra 750 kilos. And that means that you get up to 1800 kilos in terms of build payload. So whatever you’re going to build it for.

[00:59:46] Matt Sims: Us in the motorhome world, build payload is great. It means we can get better quality motorhomes with better materials and have better payloads to take her shoes and my wine.

[00:59:57] Paul Kirby: Yeah.

[00:59:58] Matt Sims: Which is great. That’s what we need.

[01:00:00] Paul Kirby: Absolutely.

[01:00:00] Matt Sims: So actually, electric vans become a better solution, don’t they?

[01:00:04] Paul Kirby: Yes. And again. But there is that we’ve got to be clear in terms of the the ying to the yang, we do lose that 2% for every hundred kilos. So if we go beyond that too far then yeah, we get that.

[01:00:19] Matt Sims: But it’s still, I think doing the maths, we would still be ahead.

[01:00:22] Paul Kirby: Yeah. You’ll be in good shape. Absolutely.

[01:00:25] Matt Sims: So this is Verizon. There are other brands, though, that I came across while I was in China. You know that thing where you see something and then you drive around and you see them everywhere? You know, I think I’m going to buy a red car, and then every car is red. I’ve been driving around over here, and every turn I seem to see a BYD car. Build your dreams. And I drove past their headquarters. Oh my goodness. In China, it is massive. They are huge.

[01:00:51] Paul Kirby: Oh, yeah.

[01:00:52] Matt Sims: And we are going to see. I am convinced we’re going to see BYD vans. Are they in the pipeline? Yep. Which means we’re going to see BYD on the front grille of our motorhomes.

[01:01:02] Paul Kirby: I would say that they are a nailed on for that because. So I saw and feel free to look at my YouTube channel and see it there. Electric fan man. Don’t forget. I did a I did a just a walk past video point of view video. Me just talking about it walking around this van. It’s had over 50,000 views, which is a lot for little old Van World, but it’s a huge van, so it’s 18m³. So that’s as big as many of your.

[01:01:28] Matt Sims: Cubic metres is this one.

[01:01:30] Paul Kirby: This one’s 13.

[01:01:31] Matt Sims: Right.

[01:01:31] Paul Kirby: So another five cubic metres. So it’s similar to the type of cube that you would expect to see in your coachbuilt Luton style vans that come out of the side. So a lot a lot of space. Byd are well known for because they started out in batteries. So that’s what they did at first. Then they went, oh, we might as well build the rest of it, you know and, and did and did a very good job of it and are now beating Tesla in terms of monthly sales. Yeah. So they are significantly likely to become that. But the van world absolutely big vans perfect for the campervan world obviously still focussed on the commercial world at the moment. But they’re in Europe now and we’ll expect to see them in the UK within 12 months, I would say for for that van. And then if somebody’s bright enough and clever enough, they’ll grab it and convert it.

[01:02:22] Matt Sims: Well, yeah, they will come to that in a minute. So what I want you to do is, as you’re living your life throughout the rest of this year, next year is start looking at radiator grills. And if I see someone kneeling down in front of one looking at it, I’ll know you’re in this talk, but start observing the brands that you see on the fronts of vans, because there are makes that I’ve never heard of. And we’re very used to fiat to Peugeot, aren’t we. To Citroen, to Mercedes, to Ford. You know, all those brands are the kind of mainstay man have made a resurgence recently in campervans and motorhomes. But there’s a lot of change coming and we’ve got other brands coming here from China. Now, we’ve known for years we grew up with them, didn’t we? They’re now a Chinese brand. Xpeng is another one.

[01:03:04] Paul Kirby: Yeah. And the van version of MG is Maxxis. So Maxxis is the brand that will which of course.

[01:03:10] Matt Sims: Has been here for years already.

[01:03:12] Paul Kirby: Been here for years. In some ways. They were under the LDV brand many, many years ago. Built in Birmingham. Always guaranteed to do at least ten miles in their lifetime. They weren’t the most reliable of vehicles, but they’ve they’ve been rebranded as Chinese. There’s lots of brands. And Iveco actually is a really interesting brand as well. I know that they’re not a typical converting vehicle, but they’ve got up to 148 kilowatt hours of battery available.

[01:03:38] Matt Sims: What does that mean in terms of miles?

[01:03:40] Paul Kirby: Typically it depends how you use it and depends on the thing that’s built on the back. But, you know, upwards of 250. Certainly if you if you use it in the way that you would expect to use a motorhome. Yeah. I would say in that sort of order.

[01:03:53] Matt Sims: So this is coming, as I said at the beginning, it’s a change that’s happening and we need to get clued up. We need to get educated on this because otherwise we’re going to catch a cold. The question I’ve got, though, which you alluded to earlier, is how do we get these manufacturers of these vans talking to the manufacturers of our motorhomes? And I guess it’s just raising awareness, keeping contact between our industries and encouraging both to learn a bit about the other.

[01:04:22] Paul Kirby: The OEMs that have never played in this space are the likes of Verizon. Ford have played in this space a little bit. I don’t think they’ve really ever taken it seriously. Mercedes have played in a little bit, but all these new manufacturers, this is a real opportunity because we know how many vehicles used to be sold into this sector as chassis and that sort of thing. And I think it’s it’s my job. It’s your job. It’s all of our job to make the manufacturers aware of the opportunity that is in front of them, you know, and and to help them find the fix that would enable most of us or all of us to take a vehicle that actually is in keeping with the countryside. It’s quiet, it’s silent. It’s not putting out, you know, diesel fumes into that area. And I think we’d all prefer to do it if like, for like we didn’t have to compromise. But it’s about, you know, how to navigate that world of compromise and get to a point where, yeah, you know what? I’m comfortable. I can go.

[01:05:19] Matt Sims: And I think we forget that, don’t we? We just see the compromise and the inconvenience that’s put on us by having to have this electric van. But actually, there is a far bigger picture and a far bigger global impact. We’re actually protecting the thing we love, which is the countryside we want to visit, which is kind of ironic.

[01:05:38] Paul Kirby: And it’s so much nicer to drive. Can I just ask a question? How many people have driven an electric vehicle? Okay. So quite, quite a few.

[01:05:45] Matt Sims: Over half the room.

[01:05:46] Paul Kirby: And would you say that it is a really good experience to drive an electric vehicle versus versus a diesel or petrol.

[01:05:54] Matt Sims: No. So we got some notes.

[01:05:55] Paul Kirby: We got we got the odd no, but mostly never go back.

[01:05:59] Matt Sims: It broke down says the young lady at the back. Okay.

[01:06:03] Paul Kirby: Everybody’s got a different experience and I know the negative experiences will rise to the top, but the statistics will say that The voices in the room that have been positive and would never go back. That is the vast majority of the experience of people out there in the marketplace. There are definitely some some situations that aren’t good that didn’t work out, and they’re exempt or amplified by the fact that it’s electric because there’s not enough people to repair them.

[01:06:30] Matt Sims: But then internal combustion didn’t have a flawless start, did it, when it started off?

[01:06:34] Paul Kirby: No, of course not.

[01:06:35] Matt Sims: And there was huge resistance to it. And it’s a true story. Farmers used to run a rope across the road between telegraph poles or posts to try and decapitate the people driving petrol cars because of the noise and the pollution. They hated it. And they tried. They tried.

[01:06:53] Paul Kirby: I’m stealing that story.

[01:06:55] Matt Sims: It’s a true story. Can we have a please? A massive show of appreciation to Paul. Thank you. Paul.

[01:07:03] Keith Gooden: So that’s Paul Kirby, otherwise known as the electric van man. So, Matt, can you see converters jumping on these.

[01:07:10] Matt Sims: I think we will. Their only option at the moment is the buzz. The ID buzz and others have disappeared, come and disappeared from the market. So anything new like this is exciting. And it was brilliant talking to converters who were all intrigued. We got challenges around at the moment. Payload. I think it’s a campervan. So a panel van conversion. Yes, it’s already viable and in fact it’s already been done in China, as you heard, making it into a coach built. We’re not quite there yet, but it’s a matter of time before a heavier weight van comes along. And then we’ll see. I think independent converters innovating and then mainstream manufacturers either buying them or adopting them into their fold. And I think it’s coming.

[01:07:51] Keith Gooden: Okay then. So what’s going to happen to our diesel motorhome. Should I put off buying one now then.

[01:07:56] Matt Sims: Definitely not. No I mean these are not going to be cheap. They are going to carry a premium price. And I think the reality is your diesel van is going to hold its value for some time. And remember, this big Zev mandate change doesn’t mean your diesel motorhome has to disappear. Not at all. That diesel is going to be around for our entire lifetime.

[01:08:12] Keith Gooden: And you can still run them, can’t you? After the Zev mandate.

[01:08:15] Matt Sims: What’s going to happen is the cost of diesel is likely to go up. We talked about this before and where you can take it, it’s going to become more restricted. So with Ulez. So you won’t be able to go into the cities but.

[01:08:26] Keith Gooden: Ultra low emission zones.

[01:08:27] Matt Sims: Yeah. Thankfully for us we generally want to go to rural locations in our motorhomes, not into a city. So I think the impact of this is owning a diesel vehicle has become going to become more expensive. Owning an electric one is also going to become expensive. I don’t think they’re going to get cheaper, but I don’t think the price is going to crash on a diesel van. I think we’re going to see the price of diesel going up as electric comes down, and we talked before about price parity between the two types of power plant. I think we’re going to see that I would still happily in ten years time, unless there’s some massive development by an electric motorhome or I would consider a diesel motorhome.

[01:09:04] Keith Gooden: Okay. Thanks very much then, Matt. So basically keep your diesel motorhome or if you’re thinking of buying one, still make that purchase. There’s years to go before all this becomes normality I suppose is the right word, isn’t it?

[01:09:17] Matt Sims: As I say, it’s an exciting time to be alive, to witness this change. It really is exciting.

[01:09:23] Keith Gooden: It’s the Motorhome Matt podcast. I’m Keith Gooden and.

[01:09:25] Matt Sims: I’m Motorhome Matt.

[01:09:26] Keith Gooden: And it’s brought to you www.thatleisureshop.com and sponsored by ripe. It’s the Q&A, the question and answers. You ask the questions, hey, Motorhome Matt will give you the answers. If he doesn’t know, he’ll jolly well ask somebody who does. First of all, Nick Whittle has been in touch.

[01:09:43] Nick Whittle: Yeah. Hi, Mr. Matt and Mr. Keith Gooden. Lovely to be able to chat with you guys. I had a question and I’ve watched a lot of your podcasts, and I just wanted some updated information on the subject of SIM cards and which are the best value SIM cards to use first for UK use and also for easy use. I mean, I know the information that you gave us on the IQ go suggested that was the way to go, but then recent changes meant that you couldn’t use the full data allowance in the EU because of fair usage allowance. I mean, I look at that IQ go model and it looks very interesting and probably the way to go right now. I don’t like the fact that you pay for data, which basically at the end of four weeks, if you don’t use it disappears. I think that’s wrong. I think that there should be a model whereby you literally pay for what you use. And that to me is a fair use policy whereby you are paying for 100 gig and you use that 100 gig and. And you can use that up to as long as it lasts, with maybe a ceiling on it of perhaps a year. And I think that’s fair.

[01:11:04] Keith Gooden: So Nick got cut off because he used up all of his 90s.

[01:11:08] Matt Sims: Used up all his data.

[01:11:10] Keith Gooden: He used up all his data. So. Thanks, Nick. What was the question again?

[01:11:14] Matt Sims: I think it was. Which is the best sim. Probably. That was it. Thanks, Nick. So there’s loads of options open to you. You are right. There is a fair usage policy. When you take a UK registered sim and you go into Europe, you can only use 25% of the data if you want an eSIM. We’ve talked before a lot about Sally and I can’t recommend them enough. They’re so easy to use and I have one in my phone when I was in China and I’d say I went to China, it took me a little while because I’m a dad and old to realise you can’t make a voice call on an eSIM.

[01:11:47] Keith Gooden: And a creepy bloke. We were called a creepy bloke before we started recording this by Motorhome Matt.

[01:11:52] Matt Sims: Creepy.

[01:11:52] Keith Gooden: Creepy blokes. Yeah.

[01:11:54] Matt Sims: What did.

[01:11:54] Keith Gooden: You say? I said I was creepy ish. Yeah, it’s a great exception.

[01:12:01] Matt Sims: Well, at least she spoke to you.

[01:12:05] Matt Sims: Insults are a form of flattery. So, going back to sim card. So asole sim dead easy to use. It’s an eSIM, and it took me a while to realise I couldn’t make a voice call on it. And then Ben, my colleague said, you muppet, it’s an eSIM WhatsApp call, so you can only use it for data. And my kids all after me when I told them that because they all know what these things are. But if you want to just check email and WhatsApp or do a WhatsApp phone call, an eSIM is ideal if you want a physical SIM because you want to put it in a router, or you want to put SIM into something, then something like IQ go is a great option for you. We use in the UK a physical SIM in our pathway 4G router, and it’s an e-sim and it’s 120 gig and it lasts for 12 months or 120 gig. And on Amazon they are currently just £44. They used to be £60 and they’ve come right down in price. It’s a really easy solution. If you want a SIM card in the UK, I could use it in Europe and I will be, but I can only use 25% of it because of this data usage cap. The other alternative is just buy a SIM card in the country you’re visiting. So I use this example in my talk. We went to Belgium, bought a SIM card in the supermarket, and I had to register an address. And of course I don’t have an address in Belgium. So we went to a corner shop and bought another sim, and the lady there said, use my address. And it turned out this lady in this corner shop in Belgium had thousands of people living there because all using her address to make this SIM card work. So if you’re going to buy a SIM in Europe, then maybe don’t buy one in a Carrefour because the girl on the checkout probably won’t want to give you her address. So maybe. Or the guy. But buy one in a corner shop and if you need the address, you can use theirs.

[01:13:41] Keith Gooden: Other supermarkets are available. There you go, Nick.

[01:13:45] Matt Sims: Hope that helps.

[01:13:46] Keith Gooden: Cool.

[01:13:47] Matt Sims: He was very.

[01:13:48] Keith Gooden: Cool. He wasn’t. He? Lorraine. Dylan’s in Truro. Lovely. Cornwall. Hi, Matt. Love the show. We really appreciate your knowledge and advice. The following is not a question, but a thank you. Having bumped into you at a motorhome show in 2023, we recently discovered your podcast on a long drive to Scotland, and the information you imparted to us is immeasurable. You can measure it. As a result, we are fitting air ride and when we discovered our tyres are six years old, we had the knowledge to insist we had three peaks proper camping tyres fitted rather than the cheaper van ones for the reasons you articulated. We bought another eco flow backup battery in the sale using your discount code, and Propex are fitting a refillable gas bottle Monday. In essence, this means our credit card is taking a massive bashing. But we now believe that our trip to Europe will be as safe and as warm as possible, and that we have spent our money wisely just to say thank you for your advice and Keith for his upbeat banter. You’re a great team. Love, mum. Lorraine.

[01:14:54] Matt Sims: Thank you Lorraine. It was great to meet you at the show. And why did you only just discover the podcast after meeting me in 2023? What went wrong?

[01:15:01] Keith Gooden: She didn’t link the two together. No, she didn’t link the intelligent human being she met in 2023 with the facile show business type that you’ve become facile. Not my words.

[01:15:13] Matt Sims: Don’t misspell that one. Maddie’s blame. Maddie. Thanks, Lorraine. Love it.

[01:15:18] Keith Gooden: Anne Marie O’hagan’s in Derry. What do you call the stuff that you put in your water tank? Water.

[01:15:27] Matt Sims: We know what you mean, Anne Marie. So the cleaning stuff, you mean. Don’t you? So pure clean has been around for years. Never put Milton in it. I know we wash babies bottles with Milton, and I see people put Milton in their water tank all the time. I recommend you don’t do that. They make the water heater and it eats the heater coil, so don’t do that. The element in the water tank. So I can also recommend to you Sorbo’s new water tank cleaner. We’ve just used it on our Adria twin and it was brilliant. You take a bottle, you pour it in, you top it up, you flush it through all the taps, literally run the entire tank through all the taps and the shower head, and don’t forget the flush. And then refill it and drain it again through the taps. That washes it through. So you are going to use a lot of water. So it takes a little time. And then bring the tank and you can drink from it, which we do. And it was really good. Our tank had loads of little black bits floating around in it and they’re all gone. So I can recommend that. And it’s back in stock at That Leisure Shop. We just had a pallet arrive. So head to www.thatleisureshop.com and look for the sole water tank cleaner. And remember use the code Motorhome Matt. Get 10% off your first order.

[01:16:33] Keith Gooden: If people want to get in touch with you, Matt, and ask a question, what should they do?

[01:16:36] Matt Sims: Please do. We always say this, but if you’ve got a question, I guarantee there are thousands of others with it too. Just head to. Fill in the form and we’ll read it for you or record it. But please tell us if you do that where you are in the world, hit the orange button, you can listen to it back. You get 90s Nick, you can record the question and we’ll play it into the podcast.

[01:16:59] Keith Gooden: And if you’re looking for trusted brands and services, then make sure you visit the Motorhome Matt Approved directory. It’s at MH.

[01:17:08] Matt Sims: There’s loads of brands on there that I use some for years. Delighted that Brits have chosen to partner again with Motorhome Matt and be Motorhome Matt Approved. So do go and check it out.

[01:17:18] Keith Gooden: And if you’re on the old YouTuber, what should you do then?

[01:17:22] Matt Sims: Matt YouTuber just make sure you click that little bell and the subscribe button and if you are listening, please subscribe and follow on your favourite podcast app.

[01:17:34] Keith Gooden: Thanks for listening to the Motorhome Matt podcast. Remember to check back here for more episodes full of hints and tips and helpful advice. We’ll see you soon for another Motorhome Matt podcast brought to you with Www.thatleisureshop.com.