50 September 2019 http://www.completekitcar.co.ukFIRST DRIVE | MEV ELECTROCETABOVE: Basic
interior has a
notable lack of
transmission tunnel.RIGHT: Charger uses
a three-pin plug.that we don’t necesserily need if we’re trying
to create an economical car. The world is
not providing what I see as the solution for
electric vehicles.”
Stuart believes that the most frequently
asked question of an EV – that of range –
is the wrong thing to be asking. When
you talk of an ICE powered car,
you want to know how many miles it can
do on a gallon of fuel; with an EV, people
are fixated on how far it will go on a |
single charge, and not how much it’s
costing to cover the distance. Perhaps
that’s because even an inefficient EV,
the electric equivalent of a gas guzzler,
is much cheaper to run per mile than a
fossil fuel burner, but Stuart doesn’t believe
that even that argument stacks up. “I’m not
sure they are that cheap actually, because
when you replace the battery pack after
5000 charges you then find yourself paying
out £20,000 or £30,000 and that doesn’t
make it cheap to run at all.”
So if we’re looking at how much energy
an EV consumes, the question is how
many Watt hours per mile (Wh/mile) itMEV founder Stuart Mills thinks there
is mileage in electric kit cars and has built
many battery powered cars over the years.
And this despite also being a fan of internal
combustion engines – we drove his newly
finished Electrocet at Curborough, and
he towed it there behind his 4.0-litre Jeep
Wrangler. “I’ve liked electric cars since I was
a kid,” says Stuart. “Me and my dad made
an electric soap box car with a couple of 12v
batteries and a lorry starter motor, so I’ve
always been fascinated with it... but at the
same time I love V8s, so work that one out!”
More to the point, he believes that the
kit car industry is in the ideal position to
maximise the benefits of an electric car.
Why? Because if electric cars are all about
energy efficiency and being parsimonious
with resources, the kit car scene’s bias
towards lightweight cars aligns perfectly
with that goal.
“The real problem with mass market
electric cars is that they’re basically
adaptations of traditional internal
combustion engine vehicles,” he says, “so
they’re all heavy and full of creature comforts048 MEV Electrocet.indd 50 01/08/2019 4:13 pm