hahahah!!! Jip, you spot correctly yes. I think it was basically there to assist some of the electrical stuff. It’s got a small solar panel in the rear spoiler.
AAAAA nice!! X1/9. I was after one a few years ago. Yellow color. I wanted to do a Uno turbo motor conversion on it.
The intresting thing about it is that the Uno turbo engin was actually designed for the X1/9, but it was to powerfull (no weight at the front) so they parked that idea and rather did a 1.5L engine which is the model I have. The turbo then was used in the Uno.
The brackets are the same so it is an easy swop out to add the turbo engine to the X1/9.
Mine is green
I think all-electric cars still have a 12v battery as all ancillaries will run off 12v. Window motors, wipers etc.
They also disconnect the “drive battery” using contactors while parked. The 12v drives the “boot sequence” of connecting the contactors when the car starts. Varies a bit by manufacturer, but it’s an important safety issue.
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My electric motorcycle has a DC to DC converter instead of the 12V battery to run the lights etc.
The motorcycle battery is 116V and I think as the voltage on the battery gets higher, its easier and likely more reliable to rather run a 12V battery. The car EV battery voltage is often more than 300V.
Well… we’re waiting… 
As others have said. Yes, still has a 12V battery. Because everything else is from the ICE parts bin: wiper motors, indicator lamps, head lamps, that 12V socket where you charge your phone, head unit, AIRBAGS!.. are still 12V.
I cant upload a photo at the moment, not sure why…
I lived in Germany for 6 months 3 years ago and they gave me the company car to drive which is the i3 with Rex. It really is fun to drive and I still get to drive it when I go there although I always get in on the wrong side of the car at least once.
The thing that always got me was when the range extender was doing maintenance. Every couple of weeks / months the range extender will kick in and start running to ensure that a maintenance cycle is done. I always got the message that it will happen soon on the way home, forget about it and get a fright the next morning when the silent car now suddenly sounds like someone loaded a running generator into the back just before I got to the office.
The office has a charging station, so I didn’t even bother plugging in at home. I drove my 15km home, maybe another 5km or so getting groceries and then the 15km to the office again the next day and plugged in there. More than enough for the ~120km that the i3 could do.
The difference is of course that they’re public transport is pretty decent, so there wasn’t even a need for a rental for longer distances. My office is extremely rural. My 15km to the office is through 2 towns, but if I wanted to go to the city I would just walk ~1.5km to the bus stop and take a bus. Same thing for weekends where I went away to other areas in Germany or the Netherlands where I’d just take a bus to the train station and off I went.
I actually read an article this morning that referenced this thread on reddit about someone in Western Europe who had to take a drive to a customer 300km away and on the way back a lot of the fast charging station didn’t work and they ended up getting towed to another town to get charged before being able to head home, so it seems like if there’s only one or two on your route it might still not be perfect for longer trips unless there’s major cities on route where you know you’ll be able to plug in.
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This distribution of fast chargers will just increase as more electric cars hit the road. They have been in a chicken/egg scenario for some time.
Prior to cars and in their infancy, you needed to buy petrol from the pharmacist.
FWIW, a review of Toyota’s Mirai hydrogen car “that pees” 
Is that a Zero?
Toyota had their EV media briefing this morning. I think the Q&A is still ongoing…
Edit: They actually upped their estimate of 2 million BEVs worldwide by 2030 (I think this is per year) to 3.5 million. Mr. Toyoda explains that even the 2 million estimate was not an insignificant number and represents the entire output of many of their competitors.
I did a whole writeup on the Eskom angle for EVs over on the other forum, but its like 3 pages long. Do I yank that and post it over here in a new thread or just drop the link?
It’s called: just-have-a-think-ice-cars-and-power-generation over there.
Groetnis
Linking is fine. They have a problem with us, not us with them.
It would be best to comment on this side, so that everyone here may participate.
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It is better to probably make a copy of it. Posts get deleted there pretty frequently if there is no praise for the forum sponsors.