If only the people who promote EVs knew maths.

They do...

Here in Blighty, EV adoption is mostly a salary sacrifice/tax avoiding lease arrangement where the punters might as well save 40+% tax when getting a new motor. This means someone who might privately buy a £40k car can grab a £70/80/90k car for effectively the same monthly payments. The Germans were quite happy to oblige with things like the e-Tron range, Taycan etc...

In other words, they've focused on the top end of the market which has left no progress on cheap, mass market motors for the plebs. And those expensive motors depreciate like a brick and languish on the used market at 25% of list when only 3 years old. Even then, not many people want to spend £20k on a motor that might suddenly identify as a battery-less car and need another £20k spending on it.

Not sure where this extra demand will come from as most people with a tax-avoiding company car already have one.

Only the availability of cheaper EVs or banning petrol/diesels will increase demand in any meaningful way. Or, maybe if the tax advantages of a company car could be extended to the used market then the huge swathes of ex-lease EVs would find a buyer rather than being 'recycled'.

If someone builds a *cheap* "small city car " that's electric, it will sell like hot cakes. Most of the petrol cars in that class (in the UK) have been discontinued over the last 2 or 3 years, meaning that if someone can sell an electric version for a little more than the price of the petrol versions, there is an absolutely huge market.

I direct your attention to the [1]Dacia Spring , which will come to the UK later this year, priced from £14,995 - Only £1200 more than their Sandero (Currently the UK's cheapest brand-new combustion car).

[1] https://www.dacia.co.uk/hybrid-and-electric-range/spring-city-car.html

What's the point if you can buy a small used petrol banger for well under £2k.

"Someone builds" implies a new car, not a used one.

For "city car" use, you can get a used 24kWh Nissan Leaf from around £2000 on Auto Trader, which will have a 50-60 mile range.

The point being that your home electricity can be as low as 9p per kWh overnight on certain tariffs, compared with north of £1.50 per litre this week.

The Dacia Spring, the base model has a 44bhp motor which sounds a bit weedy for a car that weighs ~1000kg. The torque curve of the electric motor might well mean it's still nippy around town though....

Home electricity can be 7.5p/kWh... or lower.

Some of the time it can be negative...

" home electricity can be as low as 9p per kWh overnight on certain tariffs, compared with north of £1.50 per litre "

How many kWh per litre though?

The trouble with an old banger is that it's an old banger..... Don't get me wrong, I drive a car that's ~25 years old, and intend to try and keep it going for another 5 years or so, but you've got to have a good understanding of what the problems with the old banger might be, and be prepared to either repair it yourself or pay someone else when something critical goes wrong, or just write off the car and buy another one. A lot of people aren't happy in an old car because of this.

Going back to electric cars, you *could* buy a 2nd hand Renault Zoe for about £5000, but you then either have to lease the battery from Renault or buy it off them (another £2500 to £3000, I believe, for an old Zoe battery) Does anyone have any thoughts on whether that's a good deal....?

There are few rental battery Zoes left on the roads. Renault stopped doing it altogether in 2019.

I know of an EV trader who bought a 110,000 mile 2020 Zoe at auction for under £5000.

The car can _still_ do over 200 miles on a charge.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHhiqu7LB3YV_61j7_eoSD72RTfl4N5Dh

I know plenty of people who drive such old bangers and they don't have much issues. If something is wrong (rarely) they go to their local mechanic and get things sorted. Usually don't need to do anything apart from yearly service and MOT.

It's not like you buy a new EV and you will have smooth sailing.

Old petrol car does not need you to have a drive way or dedicated charging space and babysit the battery.

> If something is wrong (rarely) they go to their local mechanic and get things sorted. Usually don't need to do anything apart from yearly service and MOT.

Sure, and while they're doing the MOT the loan vehicle is a pink fluffy unicorn. I'm now starting to wonder if you've ever actually owned a car.

> It's not like you buy a new EV and you will have smooth sailing.

Petrol and diesel cars by contrast, literally never fail. They are perfect in every way, down to their cute little button noses.

Look, by now we all get that you think EVs are terrible, and it's clear that those of us that actually have them disagree. So you carry on spinning your fictions. I'm pretty happy with my two fault-free (so far, naturally) EVs. No, they're not Teslas.

"If someone builds a *cheap* "small city car " that's electric, it will sell like hot cakes"

Vauxhall e-corsa. Full electric, decent enough. Starts at £27,000. £27k for what is only a Corsa! So that fails on the cheap criterion. Add stuff beyond the base model and you can spend over £38k, for a Corsa!

New tech always begins at the high end of the scale, as that's how it gets paid for - this isn't something new. You're spot on about the tax implications for company car users though - my Mrs effectively gained a £200/mo pay rise by going from petrol to petrol hybrid and, two years later, the charging cable remains in its wrapper and the CO2 emissions (via increased fuel use because of hauling a heavy battery around) are way higher than the ICE car's were. Having said that, when this car hits its next - presumably private - owner, they'll have more impetus to actually charge it and therefore benefit from its electrical ability, albeit without quite the tax gain the original company driver gets. Charging a PHEV for a corporate user is rarely/never going to happen - u remunerated on our home electricity or sitting at a public charger *as well as a pump*? Nah...

I'd be delighted if you could show me a three-year-old Taycan for 25% of its original cost, mind.

Tax and subsidy shenanigans are definitely a problem, in the sense that while promoting uptake they actually incentivize manufacturers to keep prices high.Better remove the subsidies and allow EVs to compete purely on merit, while making registration and road tax for EVs cheaper.

"depreciate like a brick and languish on the used market at 25% of list when only 3 years old"

I haven't seen any data on that but it sounds wrong, I'd expect a 3-year old car to anyway be at around 50% of purchase. With regard to "suddenly identify as a battery-less car ":

" Numerous studies and real-world data show that the average Tesla battery can retain up to 90% of its charge capacity even after 200,000 miles. " (yes that's a Tesla-related source, but even retaining 90% after 100,000 miles would mean a 3-year-old car driven 1000 mi/mth has easily another 7-10 years life in it ). And of course that's only going to get better the newer a car is, for example latest solid-state batteries are indicating 95% retention after 1000 charge cycles (ie at least 200k miles)

"Only the availability of cheaper EVs or banning petrol/diesels will increase demand in any meaningful way"

Absolutely! But traditional manufacturers don't want to cut prices on EVs because it would undercut their ICE range (also think about it, if you're an exec at say Mercedes, you can't sell any ICE cars in the EU after 2035, you want to make sure you sell as many of them as possible before then). That's also why noises are being made about banning Chinese EVs in the US

Just why should road tax be cheaper for EVs?

They weigh significantly more than an equivalent ICE car and cause commensurately more damage to the roads. Less tax means less funding available to repair them.

Road tax should be based on how much it costs for maintain the roads. Heavy cars cause more damage than lighter ones. Basic physics.

It should not be based on vehicle emissions, since all that does is take money ouf of the potential fund for road repair. ICE drivers already pay an effective emissions tax per mile driven, it's called fuel duty and is paid every time you refuel.

Because if we did that, the road haulage industry would see its costs go through the roof and destroy a nice little deal they've had going since the then government had Beeching destroy the railway system to force everything onto the roads.

Road tax was historically cheaper (i.e. non-existent) for BEVs as an incentive for consumers to purchase BEVs, bearing in mind that they are expensive vehicles to buy. The incentive is being withdrawn in 2025.

The top five heaviest cars on the road are not EVs. Should they pay more road tax for road repairs? Roads are designed to carry buses, vans, lorries and all manner of heavy vehicles. Road damage is far from "commensurate", as there are many factors that contribute to poxy potholes on UK roads.

It is is very basic physics indeed if you imagine that a few hundred kilograms additional weight will contribute much to the state of our roads. If you are that worried, you can chip in to charity every time you carry a few passengers in your car.

Road repairs are paid through general taxation. Road tax (or Vehicle Excise Duty to give it its proper name) is not hypothecated, and has not been for many years. The VAT charged on a new BEV likely amounts to more than you will ever pay in road tax for an ICEV.

Modern high performance tyres are as much to blame - they have more contact area and are designed to literally suck the road surface, causing more damage than yer grandad's old skinny radials.Who knows, a small light ICE sports car whipping along may be just as bad as a slowly driven BEV SUV...

"might suddenly identify as a battery-less car "

As opposed to an ICEv suddenly identifying as an engine less car... which is *far* more likely... Batteries degrade, gradually, gracefully. they don't just stop at random.

You're far more likely to be stranded by a failure on an ICE, which has thousands of moving parts - and pretty much any of them can fail, causing the whole thing to come to a grinding halt.

And "banning ICE cars" = "banning cars".

It's not unreasonable to interpret that as the next step. Since most people can't afford an EV, banning an ICE car will effectively make poor people carless. Another step toward returning to feudal society where the lords ride around in comfortable private vehicles and the peasants have to walk or cram into public transport. And isn't it a great way to eliminate all this traffic congestion.

If the concept of history repeating itself is true, then hmm it won't end up well for the lords.

It's all very well installing charging points, but unless the underlying generation capacity increases to supply those charging points, it's all rather pointless.

As it takes about 20 years to get a new nuclear reactor built and online, I don't see any way the vast majority of countries can increase generation to keep up with the increasing needs of not just electric cars, but industry in general. Decades of short sighted planning and political incompetence have already put many countries in the awkward position where they already cannot generate enough electricity to satisfy today's demands, let alone the demands of ridiculous targets like not having any petrol/diesel cars on the roads in ten years time.

If everyone is supposed to drive electric cars, not only are the current plans for charging points woefully inadequate, generation to supply them won't exist either.

I live in the capital of Sweden. Most people live in apartments here and very, very few have dedicated parking. All parking is on a 'whoever gets there first' basis on the road outside. I can't see the city paying to dig up all the roads and put hundreds of charging points on every street, so I can't even see how they can provide enough charging points to meet demand, let alone produce enough electricity to feed them. I'm sure the same applies in many major cities all over Europe. Let's not even start talking about how the local substations in most areas are not capable of meeting the increased demand either.

It's all a pipe dream created by people who don't have to take any responsibility for the consequences.

" Local infrastructure is not the major issue

It's all very well installing charging points, but unless the underlying generation capacity increases to supply those charging points, it's all rather pointless."

I would argue that actually both are significant issues.

Local intrastructure is likely to be more of an issue at the lower end that it is at the higher. Mr BMW Driver on a decent salary is likely to live in a house with a drive, or in a city in an expensive block of flats with its own car park - and in both cases there will be provision to charge his car relatively easily (he can install a charger in a house, and in expensive flats the management company is likely to do so).

Now compare to Mrs Care Assistant who lives in an area of crowded terraces and has to fit her cheap car in wherever she can find a space, which might be half the street away from her house, or more. When on shift, she is driving around between appointments all day. How is she going to charge the car?

Even if you can fix all the local infrastructure issues (which is hard to start with), if there isn't enough power available in the grid, all the local infrastructure upgrades are pointless.

In the example of Sweden, the politicians can't see further than the next four years and have consistently failed to look at the problems they have been lining up for the perfect storm. They have closed working nuclear reactors in favour of generating power from unreliable sources such as wind. Now the country is in the position that the politicians are making lots of noise about how Sweden is going to produce "green steel" and are pouring billions into projects which need the combined electricity generation capacity of Norway, Sweden and Finland put together to provide enough electricity to make their hare-brained scheme possible. Due to underinvestment, even when the wind is blowing, there is not enough grid capacity to transfer all the electricity generated by wind power from the north of the country to the south where most of the industry is, making Swedish consumers in the south of the country reliant on expensive imported electricity and the excess wind power from the north ends up being sold at discounted prices to Finland and Norway. This also means that if you live in the south of the country, you pay up to five times more for electricity than those who live in the north.

They have absolutely no idea what they are doing, On calm days, Sweden has to rely on imported electricity. One fine, calm day soon there won't be enough imported electricity to keep the lights on and the perfect storm will decimate the grid as power station after power station goes offline and the entire country shuts down. The politicians have been warned by experts for the last two decades that they are mismanaging the country's electricity system and that it will all blow up in their faces, but they all work on the principle that they won't be in power when it happens and that as politicians, they cannot be held responsible for any decisions they made while in power anyway.

And if that sounds incredible, it is! All politicians have "ansvarsfrihet" or "freedom from responsibility". What a great incentive for encouraging responsible management of my taxes. NOT!

Doesn't Sweden have power sockets on many parking spaces for "block heaters"?

Many do, but these sockets are not capable of providing the current needed to charge electric cars.

"in China, 60 percent of electric cars sold in 2023 were less expensive than their conventional counterparts"

Not difficult to believe, since a large part of the cost of EVs is in the battery, and most of China's first EV efforts are focused on smaller/short range (and cheaper) city EVs.

My feeling is that traditional manufacturers worry about their EVs undercutting their own brand's ICEVs, and keep their EV prices artificially high (even abusing of government subsidies to do so). As battery prices continue to fall, and with more competition in EV markets it's likely that soon (within 5-ish years?) most EVs will have equivalent or better power, acceleration, range and equipment than a comparable-price ICE car, with the only thing still falling on the positive side of the ICE being refuel time vs charging time.

Except that it's already faster to recharge an EV than a liquid fuel vehicle.

99% of the time it takes me an extra second or two as I get home, and on long journeys the car beats my bladder.

" Except that it's already faster to recharge an EV than a liquid fuel vehicle. "

Faster than the three minutes max to completely fill the tank of my ICE? I'd never do daily top ups for it - just refill when half full or less.

I would hazard a guess that it takes me about 3 - 4 minutes to fill "The Lady" with (up to) 110L, every 2.5 - 3 weeks.

Those short minutes can seem like an eternity when its -30C (Hence the coat icon).

Yes - faster than the three minutes you spend standing around waiting to fill your ICEv tank...

Because it takes me about a second or two.

Of course on a long journey it takes a little longer, but still less time than it takes to have a "normal" break in driving. The limits of concentration, bladder, and passengers all limit the time spent *at* the charger to the length of time it takes to get out of the car, and back in, to allow for the break that's needed anyway. It takes a few seconds to hook up and tap a card, but I'm usually still waiting for one of the other vehicle occupants...

Also

China accounted for 95% of the world's new coal power construction activity in 2023,

So all these EVs are indeed much green.

Literally everyone on this website understands where in the producer-to-consumer chain the problem lies when electricity is generated with coal. This isn't the Daily Mail.

Again, we get you don't like EVs, but must you continue to be so spectacularly thick with your arguments? You're just adding noise at this point.

A Chinese company took over the old Nissan factory near Barcelona last week. Much handshaking, chuffed government types etc etc but when the Chinese bunch announced they'll be building 150,000 EVs a year by the end of this year you could feel the "omg, they dont hang about" atmosphere and people choking on their cornflakes.

I'm in the "UK" this week and King Charles' "Operation Bunting" to bring the "nation" together post Brexit is in full flow.

I've just got to hold out until Sunday to get back to civilisation... Aka the EU.

Go China!

IMO we are undertaking a change in mode of transport equivalent to the introduction of ICE with many equivalent issues: capital expense of new tech, comparative underdevelopment of new tech by comparison with existing, unavailability of "fuel" distribution points.

The difference being that this will be a smaller change but effecting larger numbers AND we have a massively enhanced ability to drive both tech and industrial production forward.

While overall power generation is an issue, it can be overstated - it is reasonable to assume that the very greater part of charging will take place overnight. At that time we are ALREADY in danger of having over-capacity from renewables taken with other power sources, leading to a need to load-shed Soaking up over-generation will make our grids more efficient.

While we (UK) ae building 'massive' nuclear power stations (Sizewell C anyway) the technology exists to build Small Modular Reactors which, apparently, take only 5 years to build/commission. Of course this requires political will, which may be in short supply.

I DO think that distribution is a larger issue. If there is to be significant urban uptake then there will need to be a great deal of thought, and investment in infrastructure at a local, even domestic level. I am unaware of this taking place on any scale yet.

The other part of distribution that concerns me is that of the grid itself both above and below ground. While I think that generation issues can be solved through some large scale decisions, the enhancement of the network will be a series of difficult choices - new pylons, large scale buried cables. Essentially we are replacing our existing refineries, storage depots, fleet of tankers and fuel stations with 'something else'. Some can be direct replacements (substations on petrol forecourt sites, power grid running up and down motorways) but much will have to be new.

Again, I am not aware of any of the necessary debate taking place (except very loud objections to a new run of pylons across Suffolk).

I believe we will overcome a lot of this, but there will be many bumps on the road (!)

"IMO we are undertaking a change in mode of transport equivalent to the introduction of ICE with many equivalent issues: capital expense of new tech, comparative underdevelopment of new tech by comparison with existing, unavailability of "fuel" distribution points."

The Internal Combustion Engine was a technical advance on what it replaced. EVs aren't - they are being pushed for ideological reasons, and mostly seem to appeal to the company car / tax advantage market. The varioius problems with them and their manufacture, and the charging infrastructure / capacity, are largely being ignored by the politicians.

Either figure how to make batteries easier to recycle or how to economically recycle them.

Given that modern EV batteries are designed to last the lifetime of the vehicle, it's not a pressing concern. It will be big business, with lots of money to be made, in around a decade.

There is quite a lot of EoL batteries already and this is only to be a bigger problem.

https://envirotecmagazine.com/2023/12/11/china-is-leading-the-race-to-recycle-batteries/ it makes a lot of sense to step it up.

The report also notes that in China, 60 percent of electric cars sold in 2023 were less expensive than their conventional counterparts, a statistic that buyers in the US and Europe, where internal combustion engined cars tend to be cheaper, can only dream of.

The market works. As does supply and demand, something the west needs to understand about its energy supply in general.