Just some general info for anyone looking to attend these events this year.
I went to the event in Edinburgh last year, and while the venue was easy to get to and easy enough to move around, the selection of cars we could view was relatively poor, and while we were specifically looking to sit in some of the EVs to assess comfort, accessibility, etc – this was not a good experience.
It’s astounding the amount of cars that you could sit in, but not power on, which is essential nowadays to test the aircon and comfort settings with pretty much everything going through the central touch screen. We were told it was a health and safety rule, that the cars were delivered – you could sit in them, but the keys had been taken away so they could not power on and presumably driven off???
I can understand this for ICE vehicles, where you don’t want engines powering off and throwing fumes round an indoor venue, but for EVs – there are no emissions, so what’s the danger in letting a customer turn on the ignition? There were at least a couple of cars we had to walk away from as you can’t get an idea how easy a car is to use with just a large blank inert touchscreen on the dashboard!
Some more thought about how to make these cars more presentable to the public would be helpful, for myself and my wife we wouldn’t go to another event like this – a visit to a dealership is a lot more productive.