On the grid capacity, the story changes by the day. One minute we have the retiring head of NG telling us to get ready for power being supplied only when available. Then we're told there's no problem. Now they say charging should be off-peak.

Imo, EV charging is probably not going to be a big issue, at least not for many years. It's already normal for users to charge overnight - those who can.
The fun will really start if/when we get a large-scale move to electric heating, etc. That will be a far bigger load and it's not so easy to flex.

tomo; there is indeed much info/feedback which is not in the public domain.

A few which come to mind:
> Manufacturers recommend charging between 20 and 80 % for the health of the battery. That makes a nonsense of the range claims.
> Charging is complicated. Lots of cars manage the rate of charge, again for battery health, so the headline rate only applies in the car's "sweet spot". One example I have read is that charging a Tesla from 80 - 100% takes the same time as charging from 20 - 80%.
> Putting in a domestic charger is rarely straightforward, nor cheap. Depending on the local wiring (eg "looped supply" which I don't understand), modifications can be necessary. Authorisation is required from the local DNO which can be very slow.
> Rapid charging is tough on the battery so is not recommended on a regular basis. Folk looking at 2nd hand EVs are advised to get a widget which lets them check the car's charging history.

As for those points you mention...
Vehicle to grid would increase the cycle rate on the battery which is one of the factors in deterioration but I have no idea if it could be significant.
I've read of Tesla taking strong action to protect the batteries of certain models by reducing both the rate at which they will charge and the useable.capacity. The received wisdom is that they did this to prolong the battery life so that they would not have to replace them under warranty.
I haven't read much about other marques, except for the point you picked up about the early model Leaf.

Imho there's going to be much more of this reality checking as the number of EVs increases fast and the fleet ages.

Thanks tomo - I'll look out for that.

Meanwhile, in the EV world, it hasn't taken long for folk to work out how to gain a bit of bunce from an EV (if it has vehicle-to-load capability):
"I was looking at something along these lines here in Scotland where most of the public EV charging is free. Charge the car up while at work then bring it home and drop 80% of the charge into the domestic supply.
It doesn't really make financial sense for me at the moment as I don't need a new car yet, but it might do in some circumstances."

Article from Autocar about the CMA's intervention in the charger market:
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/electric-cars/why-electric-charger-providers-are-under-scrutiny

When you read the list of problems they want addressed it rather confirms that the present situation is a right old buggers' muddle.
Getting it sorted would also make the EV market more competitive because the present electrishambles means that anyone who needs to do a significant mileage has no option but to buy a Tesla.

So I watched that Greg's Planes YT on German fuel ( I confess to skipping a bit for reasons below).
I thought it was very poor. He droned on far too long about his ECR ratios but took little or no account of other detonation factors such as valve configuration, aromatics content, lead additives, etc..
He did make some passing mentions of Calum Douglas' work but showed that he hadn't read it in any depth by discounting metallurgical issues with the comment that they only became an issue after Operation Torch in 1942 cut off supplies of cadmium. Thus he completely missed that cadmium was only used in an effort to remedy the problems caused by the shortage of nickel, supplies of which were disrupted by the Russian-Finnish war and then lost entirely with the start of Barbarossa.
As I watched I remembered seeing a previous effort of his on the P-47. In that, as here, he had his ideas and spent a lot of time finding evidence to fit them.
I'll be avoiding his stuff in future!

Back on topic: GM is recalling all Chevy Bolts because of the risk of battery fires:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gm-recalls-chevy-bolts-fire-risk/

Going to cost $1.8 bn apparently.

How long is it going to be before the insurance industry starts to look at EVs in garages, domestic batteries, etc?

The GM Bolt batteries are made by LG, their stock price for the whole company lost 11% on the day of GM's announcement. LG also make batteries for Tesla and VW and others, so if the fault is common expect more recalls.

eBay 2019 Peugeot EV van 263 miles £17.5k

Another Peugeot van 284 miles £16k+VAT

A few interesting posts from an EV forum on the subject of voltage spikes and dips:

"Just checked input voltage at the office; surprised how much it fluctuates. I assume this is normal?"

"The grid has to handle huge changes in demand through the day, and most of the voltage control is done by changing the turns ratios on generator output transformers (known as Taps)
Is used to be simple.
In the morning, Tap down as industry with its large (inductive) loads come onto the bars, in the evening Tap up as things shutdown. At work, we get instructions to achieve target MVars (because, inductive loads do strange things to voltage and current wink ) and then change the Tap settings to achieve that (rather than adjusting the generator output voltage). We change in steps of about 50MVar at a time which means the adjustments are somewhat 'lumpy'
These days with wind and solar farms output changing, the grid has had to adapt so there are more voltage control devices embedded into the grid itself but the premise is still the same."

" I have my IT stuff at home on a UPS and soon after getting it had to increase the over-voltage trigger from 255 to 260 as it was going off all the time.
Normally we, largeish semi-rural village, sit at 248V. Going to bed one night the UPS was beeping away and voltage was 273V - checked with multimeter and got same. Didn’t seem any other effect. Rang the DNO thinking they could turn it down a bit but they were anxious to send someone out - put them off as didn’t fancy staying up. Was surprised it was still same in morning then at 9AM it suddenly dropped."

"We had similar with a home UPS a few years back. Returned one UPS as it wouldn't run at all - when the replacement also didn't work I stuck a meter in the socket and saw ~260V. Called electricity suppliers who were skeptical but sent out a logging device - within 24 hours of returning it there were guys tweaking taps on the poles nearby!"

"How does that work?
Clearly the shaft rpm has to be constant in order to maintain 50 Hz.
But somewhere in the system a lot more physical grunt must be put into the generator if you want to get more power out of the transformer, whatever the voltage. And the current will change significantly when the voltage is moved."

"Its like a big jelly. But you have two questions there really.
Power - yes, the grid need to match power in to power out to keep the sets rotating to give 50hz, but that frequency is also all over the place, if we loose a generator you often see the grid frequency fall significantly. Grid control balance load and keep it as close to 50hz as possible and they used to ensure the average over a day was 50hz as synchronous clocks relied on that (they probably still do).
Voltage - Because AC in an reactive system (capacitive and inductive) means the voltage and currents are out of sync with each other most of the time, we dont really talk about voltage, but about Var (Voltamp reactive) which is the line on a vector between the current and voltage. Grid control give us an instruction to move the generator transformer tap position to achieve a target MVar (Million Voltamps reactive). It moves about 50 MVar per tap when we are generating anywhere between 180MVar to ~300MVar. The generators output voltage is fixed by an automatic voltage regulator, so changing the turns ratio on the gen transformer, forces the voltage we are putting into the grid to increase or reduce.
Practically, it means we push up the voltage at the gen transformer terminals or reduce it, to achieve the voltage on the lines that grid need to achieve the voltage at the points of delivery down the lines. The power being generated remains the same, but yes the current changes a bit, but that doesn't matter much as long as the voltage is right where its sent to because of course what the problem is, the lines are long and the voltage drops across the lines depends on the location and size of the demand. If Scotland is generating lots, and the demand is in the south, the voltage on the lines in Scotland can be pushed up to push the power down south (over simplification). We are stuck in the middle and have to respond to changes up and down the country.
Now, of course we are all pushing into a system (as I said, a big jelly), so if we increase our voltage and thus our MVar, another station will reduce depending where it is so we dont look at voltage, we look at MVar and all take our fair share of producing this 'apparent power' to achieve the grid condition.
AC transmission is fun. When you put it into a reactive load (either capacitive or inductive), the voltage and the current go out of phase with each other. There are lots of factors (pun intended), to much to discuss here (and my head hurts).
During the day, its mainly inductive loads, so we tend to tap into lag so that the current lags the voltage, at night it tends to become capacitive (mainly the overhead lines) and current leads the voltage.
Probably a bit confused and unclear but to go into in detail would mean going into AC theory which I did many many years ago and as I said, my head hurts"

"In an earlier comment you said: "These days with wind and solar farms output changing, the grid has had to adapt so there are more voltage control devices embedded into the grid itself but the premise is still the same."
Does this mean that the grid voltage is more variable than used to be the case? If so, what are the implications: can we expect more out-of-range spikes, for example?"

"Need a grid person to say how it is, but in the old days, tap changing was so predictable.
Raise MVar in the morning as the loads increase, lower in the evening as the factories shutdown.
Then, in the 2010's, tapping was happening at random times throughout, now its settled back down a bit. I know grid have installed some voltage control into the grid.
And while the voltage can go up and down, it should always remain within the stated bands. Remember the national grid is only part of the transmission and the local subs and transformers play their part."

"The DNO I work for have started putting in automated tap controllers at an LV level. Looking at the way things are going there'll be much more going in to control the LV side of things in the future too.
Would certainly solve the original poster's problem!"

Apologies for the huge post but I thought there were some interesting comments, esp the feedback from people working in the industry.
My take on all of the above is that taking increasing renewable output onto the grid has introduced a lot more voltage variability and control challenges.
Also there is investment going into the local grid to deal with these consequences - another extra cost that falls onto the consumer. If this affects much of the "downstream" distribution system, local substations, etc, I guess it could add up to a chunk of money.
One more point to check for anyone considering an EV - the voltage variations on the home supply. If they are excessive they will trip the charger so the EV will not be charged overnight: awkward.....

More on the joys of trying to get a charger installed for an EV:
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=247&t=1949820&i=0

As numbers are still relatively low, I doubt things are going to improve.

Those cars are from Paris' Autolib scheme which was supposed to be a 4-wheeled version of Boris bikes.
According to web reports, the scheme went bust in 2018 so the cars were taken off the road.
The comments about their batteries etc seem to be speculation/fake news.
The question is why haven't they been resold or scrapped?
My guess would be that's to do with the bankruptcy process.