JA of London highlights the problem many will face when electric cars are eventually forced upon us. OK for the general short journey but entirely useless for the long ones. We must not be deprived of a reasonable range of at least 500 miles via conventional engines before appropriate charging times of at most 10 minutes and charging locations are in place.

To be honest, I thought the original writer's comments condescending and even the above appears written by someone with an uninformed knowledge of EVs. 'Oh, there's unlikely to ever be charging points in North Cumbria'! You what? Do you think we all wear clogs, get around by horse and cart and light our home via candles?!

Maybe ginger Tom regularly drives from London to Aberdeen (500 miles) without stopping during the 9 hr drive.

for me with a daily commute of less than a hundred, I just plug in when I get home. Not for everyone but really enjoying mine and with a weekly mileage of around 400 miles I never need to use public chargers.

Once EVs become 'normal' places like supermarkets will install charging points, a "free charge while you shop" will replace the "5p off a litre" offers to get customers into the store. If a big store installed solar panels on their large flat roofs the running costs will be minimal. Incidentally, no one should driving 500 or even 250 miles without a break anyway.

Glidermania seems to have decided to read stuff I didn't write. If you bother to read it again I was pointing out that for the long journey that we need to make now and again an electric car with a 150 mile range is no good unless we have more charging points and faster charging times. I don't think this is unreasonable. I don't fancy shelling out 30k for an electric car that cannot do my trips to Devon without sitting in a charging station for an hour or so to complete the trip I can currently make in one go.

German vehicles;

Whenever there's some terror incident in London I'm appalled that 95%

or more of police/ fire & ambulances in attendance are imports from Germany.

Now we've left the EU I sincerely hope that public procurement rules are changed so

they are weighted towards UK manufactured fleets, wherever feasible.

Do you see anything but nationally produced emergency vehicles when you drive in Italy,

France, Germany?

As always the UK gold-plated EU Procurement rules, whilst

other EU nations ignored and supported their local manufacturers.

Really? How do you know they are made in Germany (or at least carry the badges of German manufacturers) and not converted in the UK from base vehicles imported from overseas given that equivalent UK built vehicles/marques no longer exist? Don't blame the EU, blame a domestic political/social/financial system that failed to recognise/support UK manufacturing.

It's horses for courses.

Most UK police forces use BMWs for motorway patrol and X5s as ARV response vehicles That's because the are reliable, comfortable, take high mileages comfortably and are a match against most cars on the road - and in an X5, plenty of space for the gun safe. I suspect forces buy in bulk too, so get extra discounts which offset the fitting of specialist equipment. If other manufacturers cant/wont give such discounts, you can hardly blame those in procurement for spending taxpayers cash wisely. I'd add the Beamers dont have leather seats, just fabric. Given comments on this site about JLR products, it's no surprise they are not widely used. Also, British Transport Police have a number of Kuga's on the fleet.

In Leicestershire, local beat cars are Astra estates, community support vehicles Corsa's and the force has recently acquired a large fleet of Vauxhall Insigna 2.0 diesels as response cars.West Midlands police use lots of Insignia's too. Elsewhere I've seen Peugeots, Hyundai's, Kia's, Fords and Skodas.