Ford pulls the plug on EV strategy as losses pile up The reality of electric vehicle prices has finally caught up with the venerable US automaker Ford, which said yesterday that it's rethinking its loss-making EV strategy. The news came during Ford's Q4 2023 earnings call yesterday, and included revelations that the Detroit-based biz was also reassessing its EV battery strategy …
Sorry, Ford
"Ford CEO James Farley laid much of the blame for the losses on EV pricing - a known sticking point for consumers unwilling to pay thousands more for a vehicle while inflation is up and interest rates remain. high "
Ford EV vehicles are a hard sell because they aren't good values, expensive with *known* range issues. The F-150 Lightning is a known DOG when it comes it range, from almost useless towing range to watching your range indicator fall before your very eyes in cold weather. The Mustang Mach-E has the same range issues. PLUS, plus, your scumbag dealership network adds up to tens of thousands of dollars to the retail price as "Market adjustment" - on top of the fact that no one is buying your EV's.
Yet another self-inflicted wound by STUPID American greed and trying to blame everything else but yourself.
Tell me you don't understand physics...
Adding a trailer to any vehicle will impact it's range - and that impact is basically down to increased rolling resistance and increased aerodynamic resistance.
Typically you don't get as much benefit from regen braking with a larger trailer since they throw energy away as heat through friction before they push the vehicle hard enough.
Tell me you didn't do a single bit of research.
Ford claimed a certain towing capacity with a certain range whilst doing so. The F-150 Lightning failed real world tests miserably,
Of course everyone knew range would get affected whilst towing, are you daft? But it couldn't even meet Ford's modest claims and buyers were, understandingly, pissed. Add in the cold weather range collapse and the Lightning turned into quite the little scandal. Sales collapsed almost as fast as that battery indicator in cold weather.
Tesla handles the weather issue much better, which is why Tesla is selling EV's...and Ford isn't.
Not dissimilar to an idea I had a long time ago, after yet another 7 mile, 2nd gear, drag up the hill out of Newtown towards Builth Wells towing my mates Land Rover to an event. But back then my idea was a small engine and auto box, coupled to the hitch so "pull hard = open throttle" - would need the R-N-D and ignition/start taking through into the car. I suspect the legalities of such an arrangement could be ... "interesting" (would it be classed as a vehicle ? would it need it's own MoT ? Insurance ?, ...)
But with EVs, it should be much simpler to equip the trailer with it's own battery pack and electronics such that it's electronically coupled to the tow car. So could react directly to driver inputs (press go pedal, trailer drives; press brake, trailer does regen braking). But since the manufacturers can't agree on anything, can we really imagine them actually agreeing any sort of standard for such an interface ?
Yes you could just use a load cell, but an intelligent connection would work better.
In particular, using a load cell means braking working somewhat similar to over-run brakes. But then you lose the intelligence of "driver is braking gently, just use regen" vs "driver is braking a bit harder, use real brakes" - and even just "driver has lifted off the go pedal, apply light regen". In some countries over-run brakes aren't allowed, or are severely restricted in trailer weight, such that coupled brakes are the norm - and hence the development of systems like Sensabrake.
Having towed a variety of trailers, sometimes on "interesting" terrain, I can tell you that over-run brakes have a lot of downsides. Apart from the problem of needing a certain amount of compression force before the trailer tries to brake (a problem going downhill in slippery conditions), it also doesn't work at all when reversing down a slope (the coupling is in tension when trying to stop), and it doesn't work when reversing up a slope or even on the level (need to disable the trailer brakes). Just using a load cell in a trailer coupling to (almost) effectively replicate this with an ET (electric trailer) would be very suboptimal.
"In particular, using a load cell means braking working somewhat similar to over-run brakes. But then you lose the intelligence of "driver is braking gently, just use regen" vs "driver is braking a bit harder, use real brakes" - and even just "driver has lifted off the go pedal, apply light regen"."
No - you get that information from the load cell, it's a sensor with more than just on/off values.
The more force the trailer is applying to the hitch the more regen is needed.
The more force the hitch is applying to the trailer the more drive is needed.
(Yes I know Newton's third law, but the above is clearer to read).
You'd need a dead zone in the middle to stop the trailer bouncing itself back and forth, and you'd want the reversing lights to reverse the logic (or just turn all the logic off) to avoid the various issues with classic overrun brakes.
To be honest you'd probably want *both* a load cell and overrun mechanical brakes, though the overrun would want to be tuned a little "harder" than normal, so that it's basically an emergency brake.
If it's so slippery you can't apply any meaningful compression force to the hitch then I'd suggest it's too slippery to be going down that hill....
At least with a load cell the trailer could vary the size of the dead zone based on speed (i.e. reduce the hitch load required to apply the brake), and could be configured to apply some braking based on brake lights (rather than compression/tension) at low speed.
Yes, my thought here is to plan (I would say design, but I really haven't got that far) a system that doesn't require additional connections. Because not requiring additional connections would allow a design to be immediately used with all existing towing vehicles, irrespective of power train. A trailer which can do this *and* be used as a domestic battery when it's not on the road is probably quite saleable.
We already have several signal wires, which carry (basic) information about the driver's inputs - and I suspect those are probably sufficient to make enough decisions about how to interpret the load cell data.
If additional connections are available, then by all means - but I think a system that can fall back on basic data it already has access to is likely useful for many more people and therefore more likely to be commercially viable.
Maybe an optional canbus extension?
I agree, the "works with any vehicle" aspect is appealing. It's just that it could be so much better if coupled.
But If it's so slippery you can't apply any meaningful compression force to the hitch then I'd suggest it's too slippery to be going down that hill....
All I'll say is that it isn't such an uncommon issue. It can take a significant force to compress the hitch (any less and you suffer from other issues), so you are controlling an outfit in difficult conditions, and thee trailer is actively trying to upset things. With coupled brakes, the trailer is doing it's bit properly. And for reversing down a hill, overrun brakes do nothing at all which can make it "interesting" 8-O
I do recall a good few years ago we were discussing it at the local club. Someone else had this idea for coupled brakes that effectively involved a brake cylinder connected to the tow vehicle's hydraulics, and you'd "plug in" a (master) cylinder connected to the trailer brakes. When you press the brake pedal, pressure pushes the piston, which pushes on a rod, and that pushes in the cylinder on the trailer brakes and applies it's brakes. I'd also considered tapping off the vacuum from both sides of the brake booster, then using this to control air, or vacuum, or hydraulic, or whatever for trailer brakes - but then it's probably just as easy to tap into the hydraulic brake lines.
I'd also considered tapping off the vacuum from both sides of the brake booster, then using this to control air, or vacuum, or hydraulic, or whatever for trailer brakes
Works for trains... :-)
but then it's probably just as easy to tap into the hydraulic brake lines.
I'd imagine it's not so easy to allow quick (dis)connect without letting air or moisture into the lines, so taking a feed from pedal or vacuum is probably more reliable. Or perhaps go for an electric/servo model.
Tapping off all of those is great, and it potentially gets modulation, but brake lights already convey that information to the trailer, and combining that binary input with speed data, and a load cell (which doesn't have the "stiction" of overrun brakes) should allow appropriate modulation - I think...
My octogenarian parents have a Ford hybrid electric. I think it's an "Escape" but I"m not sure. It's a typical hatch-back vehicle that they make these days. It's an expensive machine, but is it ever nice. Unlike EV's, it's even more practical than a regular car because you don't have to stop for gas very often. My folks go back and forth to the city for doctors appointments and stuff and still wouldn't need gas that week.
They've had it for more than a year and haven't had any trouble, but we'll see how long that expensive tech goes without needing major money.
Sounds like a PHEV? I have a PHEV too (by Hyundai, but still) and i'm really happy with it. It's a weird concept, but I find it's actually a pretty good compromise. You can drive around the city without using any gas (or maybe a little bit for heating if it's winter), and just use it as a regular car for longer trips.
PHEV's are the only viable solution to making a large pickup. What is so stupid is that large pickups, with their gas guzzling when you are just nipping down the road for a pack of fags, benefit far more from being a PHEV than other vehicles. On the other hand, because of their weight, poor drag, and towing, and use way from the highway and charging stations, they are even less suitable for full electric that all others.
The overall benefits of PHEV's should have played to the strengths of the existing car makers, and made Tesla much less attractive. They let you sell far more cars for each battery plant you build. They give 80% of the environmental benefit for 10% of the batteries. You have a gradual path to smoothly increase the electricness as your battery manufacturing capacity and cost improve.
I just find it incomprehensible that Ford and even moreso Toyota, didn't jump boot's n all into PHEV's.
Why Toyota didn't just stick a prius engine in a HiLux with a 20kWh battery, has always mystified me.
I just find it incomprehensible that Ford and even moreso Toyota, didn't jump boot's n all into PHEV's.
It's economics - why do something if you really don't have to? Toyota are selling Rav4 hybrids by the bucket load and most of their range outside the US are available as hybrids (Yaris, Corolla, Camry, C-HR, Rav4, Kluger). I understand in Europe you can get Toyota PHEVs, but when their hybrids are selling just fine why incur more cost rather than sell old research - their hybrid concept has been around since the dinosaurs and is well established? It's why emissions standards exist - without a prod manufacturers have little incentive over "business as usual".
A hybrid vehicle works best as a combination of an underpowered electric motor and underpowered petrol engine- when the user is just cruising it provides good mileage and once it's pedal to the metal it combines the power of the two units to provide reasonable ooommph for the duration of an overtake or acceleration. So no...hybrid pickup trucks wouldn't make sense, the Prius engine in a Hilux would feel like driving a Ford Transit from the 1960s as you need that extra power for hours when towing something, it'd be a road hazard for the tempo of contemporary traffic.
Replace a small chunk of battery or 'trunk' space with a small* 100kW high speed gas turbine, and leave the electric motor and powertrain the same as the EV model
* gas turbines, the faster they spin, the higher the power density can be. Electric generators need no gearing, any frequency can be rectified to DC and switched to the correct voltage for the battery
Parallel hybrids where the ICE and motor share the same shaft are underpowered as you say. But series hybrids have the power and torque if an EV with the range of an ICE. They are heavy and expensive though, but a pickup doesn't care about that
No, it's not a plugin EV, it's a 2021 Escape. It uses the engine only to charge the batteries.
They've actually had it for longer than I remembered, time flies. I asked Dad about it and he said it will be 3 years in June (and they haven't had any trouble with it)
It also wasn't as expensive as I thought, ... $44,000 Canadian.
Most hybrids are just a way to get subsidies with ranges around 40 km for the electric motors. In some city contexts this can mean they generally run electric all the time, but then why have all the additional weight and complexity of an ICE? Smaller, lighter EVs would be possible but the prices would be lower and thus the industry generally doesn't produce them. That might change as countries which do care about things like the size of vehicles, such as India, go electric. But that will just hand the advantage to manufacturers there. Western companies are still obsessed with upselling larger and heavier vehicles.
We've still got a long way to go to produce non-ICE vehicles with a long range at a reasonable price.
In some city contexts this can mean they generally run electric all the time, but then why have all the additional weight and complexity of an ICE?
Because otherwise you need two cars.
I don't know many people in the South East of England who couldn't live with an electric car for most of the time. Temperatures are generally mild and distances are mostly short. However, most people also have several family members or close friends that live a long enough distance away that an electric car might be a problem. Of course you can always plan a couple of twenty minute charging and coffee stops into your journeys - but when you're starting to have to plan your life around the capabilities of your car, that's when you start to think you shouldn't buy that kind of car.
It's that "just in case" mentality that wouldn't be a problem for electric cars if ICE cars didn't already exist. But they do. Which makes the plug-in hybrid look a lot more attractive.
Gladly. Every time you want to drive to the next town you schedule a reinstall, wait until then, then pay shop rates for the job. Then when you get back, you pay them again to pull and store, plus you oay the monthly storage. Yes, for just the price of a new car every 6 months, you can increase the EV range by 10 miles.
I also wondered about an extra battery in a trailer you can hook up when you want. Or maybe an extra motor, which in that case probably should be in front of the car itself. In fact, don't have any motor in the car, just have it be towed all the time, using whatever technology is appropriate.
I was up there today so I had a look at the car. It is indeed an Escape, a 2021 model Hybrid (not plug-in hybrid, it uses the engine to charge the batteries)
They have had it for longer than I remembered (time flies). They will have had it for 3 years in June, dad says. (and they haven't had any trouble with it)
Also, it was not as expensive as I thought. Around $44,000 Canadian (which is still a lot, but you could easily pay more for a car than that)
I can't edit the old post, so I'll just reply to it for the sake of correctness.
She was a great advocate of early EV's. With all the competition (everywhere but in the USA where it is basically a MuskMobile or nothing) piling in with EV's and loads of new ones on their way from Korea and China they seem to be signing their death warrant.
Ford could be the first of the big three to fail. GM won't be far behind. Stellants may last a bit longer thanks to the multiple brands that they own in Europe.
As for the US Stealership of marking up cars over MSRP... That is viewed by the rest of the world as somewhat arcane. Stop it and you might survive. Dealers seem to exist here in Europe and elswhere by not adding thousands to the price.
Neither Ford nor GM are going to fail, because American taxpayers are waiting in the wings with a huge pile money to hand over as soon as they need it really badly.
What's more, management at Ford and GM are well aware of it.
Yay capitalism!
Killing the focus and fiesta in Europe (2 top selling models) was always utter lunacy, NO ONE is going to pay BMW, Audi or Mercedes money for a Ford.
Particularly not with their latest Tesla aping sync4 infotainment system with virtually everything on the touch screen and a useless hey ford voice assistant
I'm afraid it's on purpose - Ford of Europe is going to transition to some kind of commercial vehicle company, like DAF or Isuzu did. They have an agreement with Volkswagen that still grants them some kind of access to car platforms if they make up their mind, but Ford is now all about the vans. And vans are not your childhood tinboxes anymore - they are really expensive stuff and there are so many delivery companies looking for them - it's a market segment where everybody wants to keep a young fleet and is ready to place big orders. So as much as I'd love to hate Ford for it, I can see this move of disbanding the car division work out for them.
Is it really? Can't say I see many of them around where I am.
However, the other thing Ford (like other companies are doing) is pulling out of small local dealers and putting them all in the cities. Dundee at the moment has no Ford dealership afaik, but they're also leaving the dealers in the smaller towns round about in the next couple of years.
Vauxhall is the same, as the nearest dealer for them recently closed - I can't currently think of my nearest. Aberdeen maybe?
The USA led the world. Unleaded fuel AFAIK originated because of US laws like the Catalytic Converter.
Now they are laggards.
Here in Europe we have a lot more models at the lower end of the price scale to choose from including the Citroen AMI.
The reason is that the EU has put in place laws that give an end date to new ICE only sales and even for PHEV sales.
sure, some US States have done the same but at the moment the march of the Monster Trucks goes on. The TeslaCyberPOS is just a silly vanity project from Elon. It's lack of serious real world testing will hit sales hard. It's performance in the snow is AFAIK, laughable.
It is little wonder that sales are down.
Yet here in my non-afluent part of the UK, I'm seeing plenty of new EV's on the road. When I went full EV 5 years ago, seeing another EV in the area was a rarity. Not now. A neighbour has just taken delivery of an MG4. They love it. Their previous car was a Ford Focus. Ford here are just as bad as the US when it comes to EV's.
EV is just another Diesel.
Some people made a lot of money on subsidies. The gravy train is coming to a stop and they'll find another gravy train.
While the idea of EV may be sound on the surface it has more holes than Swiss cheese. They are much worse than current ICE cars in every aspect, including environmental impact.
"While the idea of EV may be sound on the surface it has more holes than Swiss cheese. They are much worse than current ICE cars in every aspect, including environmental impact."
I think you got ICE and EV the wrong way round there - actually I know you did, and I;m equally willing to bet you think you didn't.
I'm not sure I understand your point.
Diesel engines are better than petrol engines in most cases, but the emissions are a problem, albeit a solvable one. But I don't really see a subsidy at work here: duty on and thus the price of diesel varies a lot from country to country, but most owners spend less on fuel than they would with petrol. Of course, the efficiency of any ICE is way below what is desirable.
EVs have great motors, just a braindead approach to the power source. Subsidies are being run down because they are ruinously expensive. Also some governments are starting to get worried about the future costs for all the additional power networks and generation capacity needed for nationwide charging networks. If we wanted an EV charging point at our house, we'd have to provide the power for it ourselves.
Subsidies are probably unavoidable to encourage demand at scale to support manufacturing at scale. But there are plenty of other options available to lower emissions: speed limits, parking pricing and restrictions as we're going to see in Paris and other cities. Smaller, lighter vehicles could be encouraged through regulation: no small car needs 100hp. And we could start switching to electric motors in wheels which only need generators. All this could be done without subsidies and wouldn't mean more expensive cars.
"The MG4 is actually a quite a nice EV... in summer its range is around 200 miles, in the winter it's not that great (120-150 miles)."
Why is 150 miles of range not that great? IF you can charge at home, it could be more than adequate given how far most people drive on a daily basis and especially how far people drive in the middle of winter. The variance is also much less than you state. Moggy at Electric Classic Cars in Wales did some tests on three different EV's. His YouTube channel is a lot of fun. If you lose 20% range in the winter due to a cold battery, that's still 180 miles of range or ~3 hours of driving. Most people make long trips in the warmer months. There's no EV that's going to be a "one size fits all".
A car that runs on petrol or diesel needs to have a fairly long range or you'd be stopping to fill up too often which would mean there would need to be many more petrol stations and it would be inconvenient. Charging up at home by spending 30 seconds plugging in the lead each night or every few nights isn't an onerous task. It's also much easier to fit charging points in a car park over some sort of refueling scheme. A very limited level 2 charging point (3kWish) at a train station where you catch a train to get to work would be sufficient to replenish a battery over the course of a working day. Even somebody buying a Ford Lightning and towing short distances with it could bide fine if they can plug in every night or every couple of nights.
"A very limited level 2 charging point (3kWish) at a train station where you catch a train to get to work would be sufficient to replenish a battery over the course of a working day."
For the one driver who gets to it first. Not for the rest of the drivers who may have been hoping, or even depending on getting it. For EVs to take off the charging infrastructure away from home needs to be much better. PHEVs really ought to be a stepping stone to getting enough demand for charging whilst giving the drivers confidence they're not going to get stuck without a charge on a long journey. Remember that the long journey might not just be driving from home to destination today; it might also include driving back tomorrow and if there's no vacant charging point at the destination that might have to be on one charge.
"For the one driver who gets to it first. Not for the rest of the drivers who may have been hoping, or even depending on getting it. "
The point of not fitting high power charging is so many more can plug in for a given amount of power to share around. There are fleet management schemes available so people could pay a premium to be sure of a charge or only buy in at the lowest level if they aren't desperate. If the system is in full use most every day, that would be a strong signal that it's in high demand. If nothing is put in, nobody will ever know.
I think there are areas of the uk or even England where this hasn't happened yet, but the routes round here have multiple charging places along them.
There is no dependence on charging at the destination, although it is nice if that downtime can bd used.
Stopping for a pee has morphed jnto a charge discharge cycle ;)
Start undoing the work of the latter with a cup of tea from cafe or flask, and you can be on your way.
Chargers are popping up like a rash.
What I don't see are attended charging points. I'm old enough to remember when people worked the fuel pump for you. Given a surplus of cars over sockets at a destination that might catch on, and indeed anywhere that parks cars for you might return them charged.
" I'm old enough to remember when people worked the fuel pump for you. Given a surplus of cars over sockets at a destination that might catch on, and indeed anywhere that parks cars for you might return them charged."
For petrol of diesel, having a pump at each parking space would be problematic, but with an EV, it's much easier and charging can be managed so the charging points are turned on and off depending on whatever factors need to be in place. If you will be parked up for 8-10 hours, you could choose a lower priority and save money per kWh. If you are only going to be shopping for an hour, you could pay more for priority charging. The EVSE that often gets called a "charger" is just an interface and tells the car how much power it can supply. That can be changed so if there is 10kW of power available and two cars are plugged in, they can each be told the limit is 5kW or some other ratio that adds up to that 10kW. Scale that up or down as required. If two cars are plugged in and one completes charging, the other can be told it can now use up to the 10kW limit if the car's onboard charger is good for that much. I'd guess that it would be cheaper in labor and insurance to not have a valet moving cars around. There's also no requirement that a 50 space installation is put in place all at once. A location can start with a few and add on to keep up with demand.
Not sure why you got the downvotes for that - seems eminently sensible to me.
With work hat on, there's been some discussion along the lines of "are we getting any charging facilities at work" - where work for many of my colleagues is a large site where around 15k people are based. Speculation is that instead of a "modest but expandable" number of low power chargers (i.e. plug in, go to work, come back to full battery after 8 or 9 hours), there'll be a very small number of high power chargers and some sort of broken system where you are required to remove your car once charged (and bear in mind, people have meetings, and some work where mobiles aren't allowed), and presumably a dozen others all rush out to play musical parking spots for the charger which may or may not become available when/if the current user comes out to move their car.
As you say, instead of one charger capable of 150kW or more, just put in a system that allows 50 cars to have 3kW all day, or perhaps a bit more for those who won't be there all day. And as you say, as long as the system is designed from the outset with that in mind, no problem starting with (say) 10 points, and add more as demand dictates.
Clearly that's not going to be suitable for most "non workplace" setups. But I would suggest that many customers going to large complexes could be there for a long time - "shopping, meal, cinema" type of thing. Having more points, but needing 4 or more hours would be more use than ones where you are forced to charge at high rate and then move the car.
Charging up at home by spending 30 seconds plugging in the lead each night or every few nights isn't an onerous task.
This is viable to a very limited number of people who are in privileged position to have a drive way or a dedicated space for their car where they can charge it.
Imagine having yet another, completely unnecessary thing to do in your day, to add to the pile of things you have to do. This is a non starter.
30 seconds sounds benign on the surface and perhaps sometimes you can do this ad hoc, just put some shoes on plug it in, done. But it's something you have to have on your mind.
and in case you forget, the consequences may be catastrophic. Having that job interview to go to in the morning? Oh no I forgot to plug it in! Ok, taking an Uber. Wait what? No driver wants to accept the ride? What do I doooo. Panic. Mini cabs? Oh where do I find one. Closed? Oh no oh no.
partner suddenly having abdominal pain? Call an ambulance. The dispatcher says none are available at the moment. Best to take a cab or drive to A&E. Screams. Panic. Go to the car. Oh no, forgot to charge. Partner dies while waiting for ambulance.
A very limited level 2 charging point (3kWish) at a train station where you catch a train to get to work would be sufficient to replenish a battery over the course of a working day.
Also unrealistic, unless you live in the area where train service is impeccable and there is ample parking space. Most people I know who bought cars recently, bought them specifically to be able to get to work, because they can't rely on public transport. It's late, crowded, unsafe and expensive.
This is viable to a very limited number of people who are in privileged position to have a drive way or a dedicated space for their car where they can charge it.
The 'very limited number of people' being c.70% of the UK population who have off-street parking, you mean?
Imagine having yet another, completely unnecessary thing to do in your day, to add to the pile of things you have to do. This is a non starter. 30 seconds sounds benign on the surface and perhaps sometimes you can do this ad hoc, just put some shoes on plug it in, done. But it's something you have to have on your mind.
I've driven EVs for 4 years and c.60,000 miles now. This is a completely baseless argument. I've never had to 'remember to plug it in'. It's just something that I do when I return home at the end of my journey. Get out of the car, plug the cable in (takes <10 secs), open the boot, grab my bag and lock the car. It just becomes part of the parking up routine. Plugging the charging cable in isn't something you do as an isolated activity.
When I wake the next morning (while it's recharged overnight at 7.5p/kWh), I have a full battery again and can go wherever I want. I can guarantee I've spent far, far less time in the last 4 years plugging a charging cable in compared with having to make visits to petrol stations. I've also only ever had to use public charging precisely once - on a day where I needed to cover 350 miles in a single day. Popped into a motorway service area on my way home, plugged it into a GridServe charger and by the time I'd gone for a toilet break and my wife had bought a coffee (approx 15 minutes), I had the additional 100 miles of range I needed to get home and I was on my way. It literally didn't take me any longer than if I'd stopped without needing to charge.
being c.70% of the UK population who have off-street parking, you mean?
No, I mean private driveway.
It's just something that I do when I return home at the end of my journey.
Good for you.
You seem to be living in a privileged position and being hopelessly unaware of it.
No, I mean private driveway
Even if you restrict it to private driveways, you're still talking over 60%, making those who can't charge at home on a private driveway the minority group here.
Nevertheless, there are options out there even if you can't charge at home. One of my colleagues is in this position yet still has an EV - he uses a combination of workplace charging and rapid charging at the local supermarket when he's doing his weekly shop, and not had any problems yet. The infrastructure is growing.
I don't believe that 60% of people in the UK have a private driveway?
Where I live I am surrounded by people in flats or semis which are on street parking only. We recently got a new car and went self-charging hybrid, as in no way are we ready to go electric as we can't easily charge a car at home, even with the free chargepoint we would have got with an EV.
And if you look at cities, how many people are living in flats or tenements? When I lived in Glasgow, I lived in an area that was full of what we called 4 in a blocks - very few of those had off road parking available, and with the recent move in Scotland to ban on-pavement parking, in those streets, there's not even going to always be the choice to even park near the houses either.
I don't think Lloyds Bank has released their report, all I can see is a press release and no details how they arrived at those figures.
"Can support" can literally mean being able to pull mains cable through the window.
The press release itself is short on details and given that Lloyds has a stake in EV market, I'd take it with a heap of salt.
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" I had the additional 100 miles of range I needed to get home and I was on my way. It literally didn't take me any longer than if I'd stopped without needing to charge."
Ah, ah, ah, but what if that 100 miles of added range took you 20 minutes? What about that, huh? Multiply that by 400 days in a year and that extra 5 minutes will cost you 83 days of your life every year for the next 100 years! /sarc (duh!)
Your scenario fits mine although with a trip to mom's once a month, I'd have a few more public charging stops, but not always. There's loads of charging around her house and if we go to lunch, which we often do, I could plug the car in while we eat and have plenty of range to not need to stop on the way home. The savings over buying petrol would make it that much easier on the wallet to make that trip. On the weekend I can take the train for less than driving as they have very cheap fares, but I don't always want to get up before the chickens so the train schedule with transfers works well or I might be taking things to and from that would be a chore to carry on the train. There's only one train back with a fast transfer and the rest would have me waiting an hour or so in the middle.
I think the "70%" is a "misleading" statistic. I very much doubt that it translates into "70% of cars could be charged off street".
But I agree - plugging in shouldn't be a chore, you already have shoes on unless you normally drive barefoot and don't put shoes on to get to the house (and if you did, you'd not be bothered about putting them on to plug in the cable).
>Imagine having yet another, completely unnecessary thing to do in your day, to add to the pile of things you have to do.
It takes at least 5 minutes to fill an ICE tank (between stopping, fueling, paying and leaving), possibly more depending on circumstances. It takes about 5 seconds to plug an EV at home (you do it as part of parking, so there is no putting shoes on involved), and there is no variance to that. Unless you're filling up less often than once every two months, which seems unlikely, the EV is actually saving you time.
>it's something you have to have on your mind.
No, it isn't, because, usually, you don't have to decide if and when and how to plug in. You do it as part of parking at home. There is zero mental effort involved. Fueling up, on the other hand, requires a conscious decision to look for a gas station and then interrupt your driving.
>and in case you forget, the consequences may be catastrophic
Sure, but this is exactly the same thing as forgetting to refuel an ICE. If you're a person who's prone to doing that sort of thing, the car being stuck is going to happen regardless of what kind of car it is.
You're not comparing EVs to ICEs, you're comparing EVs to... the Ford Nucleon, I guess?
-- Sure, but this is exactly the same thing as forgetting to refuel an ICE. If you're a person who's prone to doing that sort of thing, the car being stuck is going to happen regardless of what kind of car it is. --
I keep a can of diesel in my boot, part of my "just in case" kit. Only used it once when it went into someone else's car to help them out (can an EV carge an EV?) but then refilled. If I sold the diesel at today's prices I'd make a bit of a profit.
I once got waylaid in a supermarket carpark to jump start a vehicle (IIRC it was a Harley Davidson that lacked a kickstart?).
While I was hooking it up his wife was giving him grief about why he approached a random stranger his response was "He looked like that kind of man who keeps a set of jump leads in his vehicle".
"(can an EV carge an EV?)"
Yes. If the supplying vehicle has V2L (Vehicle to load) and there is a "granny charger" to hand. It would be rather slow, but running out of battery is silly in the first place as EV's will generally bitch and start shutting things off such as HVAC if the battery is nearly flat. Most EV's (not Tesla apparently) do a very good job of constantly projecting the range left and if you've put your destination in the SatNav, it will tell you if you won't make it and start suggesting places to charge.
There are some service trucks with DC charging and those are likely going to be more widely deployed as time goes on so it won't take ages for a quick charge for enough range to get someplace to plug in.
-- A car that runs on petrol or diesel needs to have a fairly long range or you'd be stopping to fill up too often which would mean there would need to be many more petrol stations and it would be inconvenient. --
Why does this statement not also apply to EVs? I know you then mention plugging in at home but if I need to drive to Inverness and back that's c200 miles. Let's say both ICE & EV cars do 180 miles to a full top up. I have to stop once for each of them. With the ICE car that's < 5 minutes. Probably the same for the EV just to get the 20 miles range to get me home but would I want to risk it?
Confused here. If you regularly travel 200 miles then you get an EV with a range of more than 200 miles. If, like me that happens maybe once a year then its really not a problem. Mine only does ~ 160 miles. Mind you as an ex-cyclist I know how to get 200 by draughting a high lorry on the motorway. Royal Mail ones almost pull you along!
Ok, if its 400 miles miles non-stop a PHEV may be the better buy right now. Just worries me that people aren't prepared to take a 45 minute or less break half way. Again there is a choice of fast/ultrafast charging rates depending on your model choice. Some drivers may think they can hold their concentration, hunger and bladder for 3-7 hours but they haven't convinced me.
If you can afford them. The really high charge rates tend to be on the more expensive marques.
And if there's a suitable charger available where you need to stop for a charge. How many motorway services have more than a handful? And how many of those can you be sure are working and not occupied when you need them?
"Some drivers may think they can hold their concentration, hunger and bladder for 3-7 hours but they haven't convinced me."
This is where I think Hyundai/Kia have hit a good balance. They have models that go for a good 3-4 hours on a full charge, say from breakfast to lunch, and can charge very quickly so in 20 minutes during that stop for lunch, the car is up to 80%+ and ready to go again. You may wind up breaking for dinner a bit earlier than normal, but only on a really long trip. On a multi-day trip, booking a hotel that has charging can mean a 100% battery in the morning once again. Even camping somewhere with RV hookups would charge most EV's overnight (240v50A).
Well, I *did* say 'not that great', not 'it's utterly shit'. Given that in summer months you get nearly 50 miles (25%) more out of the battery, I'd say I'm being nice here.
And variance is not 'much less than you state'. Why? I use an MG4 EV at least twice a week. I know what my eyes see when I start the car to set off (it's always at 100% when I get it). So, unless 'Moggy at Electric Classic Cars in Wales' uses an MG4 EV at least twice a week, I'll stick to what I see, thank you.
And no, plugging the thing in is not a hassle at all... the charging column's software that glitches is more of an issue. :-)
the EU has put in place laws that give an end date to new ICE only sales and even for PHEV sales.
This is true. Government can provide powerful signals to industry and consumers that can bring about desired changes.
But...
I like big buts and I cannot lie...
This is also the easy way to legislate. It requires no unpopular spending now - while sounding like you're doing something. Which to be fair, you are. But postponing unpopularity doesn't avoid it.
Hence, governments can change. Or, governments can change their minds, in order to avoid the voters forcing the former.
The problem with using the power of government to force desired change, is that the change might not actually be possible. The German government have legislated to outlaw new domestic boilers and force everyone to have heat pumps, but in quite a short timescale. Not only is this massively more expensive to do, but heat pumps aren't a like-for-like replacement for boilers. In the right circumstances, in a well designed system, they're an excellent energy saving idea. Used inefficiently, they end up being so inefficient, that a gas boiler would have been the better option.
Banning new ICE cars in 2030 is an easy thing for a politician to do today. Much harder for a politician to enforce in 2029.
I think what many people on the other side of the pond tend to forget is that the US is a _really big_ country.
It's not uncommon to have to drive 340 Km or more, one way, for something as simple as a doctor's appointment.
Couple that with a dearth of charging stations and the fact that charging can take an hour or more means that most EVs are pretty much a non-starter for most people.
Add into that mix the fact that many people rent, and so don't have the ability to charge their EV at home and that in at least half of the continent sized country the temperature can drop below -30 C for extended periods, which means that no only does your already anemic range fall precipitously, you might not even be able to charge your battery.
After all that, you have to remember that EVs can cost much more than an ICE and some repairs to your EV will cost you more than if you just purchased a new ICE.
EVs are a wholly unsuitable solution for whatever problem they are trying to solve. At least for people who aren't rich, don't own their home, don't live in a major metropolitan area, and don't live in the temperate or warmer parts of the country.
"Couple that with a dearth of charging stations and the fact that charging can take an hour or more means that most EVs are pretty much a non-starter for most people."
If you are someplace where your dentist is that far away, that can be an issue. The charging time can be mitigated by restricting choices to only EV's that can charge quickly. Some are very fast so 20 minutes might be all that's required. That can bring those cars up to 80% charge where they really start to taper off. Going higher will take a lot more time, so it's about the best point to disconnect and be on your way on a long trip.
Plenty of EV's have a cold weather option. Bjorn Nyland is an EV reviewer in Norway and takes test cars to the arctic circle in some tests. He'll also do an overnight trip in winter and park the car with what's left in the battery, let it cold soak overnight and charge in the morning. There are differences between winter and summer driving, but if you are forewarned, it's often not a big issue. Most people aren't going to go on a long trip in the dead of winter either.
Just because EV's aren't a silver bullet replacement for an ICEV in every situation, it doesn't make them useless. On average, they can be much better all around in terms of usability and for environmental issues. If you don't live where you can charge at home, either move or keep on with an ICEV for now. Eventually, there will be charging options for people that want to live in a crime-ridden big city and play dogems with all of the homeless junkies in the roads.
Just because EV's aren't a silver bullet replacement for an ICEV in every situation, it doesn't make them useless.
I agree. However, what I think gets a lot of people (including myself) worked up a bit is the way they are being pushed as "the best option for everything, everywhere, for everyone - and you'll like that regardless".
The latest nonsense I see is a push for trucks to go electric - and already hauliers are pointing out that for a lot of their work, they would be utterly impractical. I suppose the next big thing will be to mandate that every loading bay* is fitted with a hyper-mega-super-rapid charger so the truck can recharge at each stop - along with a mega expensive multi-megawatt supply upgrade of course.
* Of course, a lot of loading and unloading isn't done in bays so that wouldn't help in all cases.
In huge, and by huge I mean the entirety of Scotland, England, and Wales could comfortably fit inside of a single state with oodles of room to spare huge, amounts of the US, pretty much what is referred to as 'fly over' states, that's an issue.
The electric grid is anemic and driving hundreds of Km for seemingly trivial errands is common place. Unlike gas or diesel, which can be delivered by the semi tanker full, there's no way any significant number of slow charging stations will ever be built and you can forget about fast chargers. An ICE can add 1,000 to 1,500 km of range in a couple of minutes and can drive 1,000 - 1,500 km on a single tank of fuel.
You wrote: "Most people aren't going to go on a long trip in the dead of winter either."
I hate to break it to you but most people who live in the northern states don't have the luxury of simply staying home for half of the year just because their EV has almost no range and can't really charge.
Your counter to my points are basically; people shouldn't have to drive that far, they should pay for a more expensive faster charging EV to use with non-existent charging stations, and even the supposedly 'cold weather' EVs don't really work all that well in extreme cold, so they should just plan on staying home for half the year.
You aren't really selling EVs.
As I wrote initially, for many very practical reasons, EVs are a non-starter for a large segment of the population.
This is true. I put 200 miles in just running errands due to how far from town I live. If I go visiting, or need to check on property, that's 500 miles in a day. And just a few weeks ago, nobody with an EV north of Kansas was getting a charge as it was too cold for the batteries to take a charge even with the preheat. The thing about winter in the US is that cold almost always comes with strong wind, and that wind will suck the heat away faster than the car can generate it, and I doubt the car makers are adding insulation weight under the batteries.
Hertz aren't dumping their EV fleet. Hertz EVs are mostly Teslas, which are expensive to buy and repair, and have significant depreciation. Hertz bought expensive and sell low. Rental companies sell their stock off after a few years, and the depreciation hit Hertz hard. "We are experiencing the consequence of a material price decline in Teslas and EVs more generally". They are flogging off about 40% of their Teslas, about 4.4% of their total vehicle fleet. Hertz are now focusing on buying cheaper EVs.
Hertz aren't dumping their EV fleet.
From one of the articles linked to: 'Approximately 20,000 EVs are to be offloaded from its US fleet throughout 2024, and the company plans to spend at least a portion of the proceeds buying internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles "to meet customer demand."'
"Hertz aren't dumping their EV fleet. Hertz EVs are mostly Teslas"
I haven't seen any postings on where they deployed these Teslas. An airport location might be the worst place for them. Somebody on a business trip or holiday that isn't already familiar with a Tesla may not want to try and figure one out on the fly. A neighborhood location might attract people curious to try one out for a weekend or while their car is being repaired and could get along ok with one full charge if they can't figure out how to charge it on their first go and need some help.
Indeed. When I rent a car at an airport, it's either:
- I need a cheap little runabout like a Corsa or i10 to do < 100 miles to visit family, which isn't a scenario where an expensive EV would work for me or the rental company, or
- I'm planning a long holiday drive in an unfamiliar place, where I may not speak the language, and I certainly don't want the hassle of trying to find charge points and having the right app on my phone to pay at them.
In Europe the EU is making it the case that you can use any charge point without needing a specific app.
The benefits of wide-spread coordination. UK is doing similar with Public Charge Point Regulations 2023 so that public charge points 1) offer contactless 2) offer at least one roaming provide 3) 99% reliability
"and I certainly don't want the hassle of trying to find charge points and having the right app on my phone to pay at them."
It would be nice to be able to pay cash at an adjacent business for charging, but most non-Tesla stations have a payment terminal so you don't need an app. The cars themselves these days have charging locations built into the SatNav. That said, if you aren't familiar with the quirks of the EV on offer at the car hire or even EV's in general, renting one on a trip can be frustrating. What drives me nuts is how so many makers are trying to differentiate themselves by breaking the conventions on control placement and common icons. If you own the car, you can get used to it, but that doesn't work so well with a rental. An EV built for fleet service with no bells and whistles would be great for running around town on a trip. Even better if there's no bother about having to bring it back charged up since it could be simple enough for the hire company to do that while they do all of their cleaning and other checks when cars are brought back.
Ignoring the whole range thing and the initial high cost of an EV, one very important question is what happens when the batteries are end-of-life? Is everyone expected to just cough up £5000, £10000 or £20000 for a new set of batteries and also spend a couple of grand having them swapped out? What about the old ones? A discount on the new batteries of a couple of grand? Or will you have to take them somewhere for recycling and get a few hundred quid back? At least with an ICE car I can get a replacement engine for a reasonable cost, but if the cost of a new set of batteries is 3, 4, 5, 6, or 10 or more times the value of the car where is the incentive to change them? I've never seen anything even remotely addressing this from any of the EV manufacturers, although we do know Tesla will happily sell you set of new batteries at the competitive price of 20-odd grand and they're 'doing you a favour mate!'
Sarcasm aside though, I suspect this will be used as the perfect business model to ease consumers into accepting leasing a car over ever owning one.
There are several recycling companies out there who recycling EV batteries (both in Europe and the US). They are small because there's no major feedstock yet, but their output goes back to the large battery manufacturers. No-one in their right mind wants to dump lithium into landfill, not least because of the fire risk!
The battery packs in EV's don't just fail one morning as can happen with lead acid car batteries. They tend to lose capacity over time but, a 60kWh pack that's lost a third of its capacity is still a 40kWh battery and can run a home for a few days or a week with some conservation.
The reason quotes for a new pack are so expensive right now is there is no market for third parties to manufacture replacements. The Tesla Model S early models are out of warranty, but there's demand for those batteries sans the car as they are very high quality and modular. If you look at the Toyota Prius, there are lots of replacement and refurbishment options that are not outrageously expensive. The Li packs that are drop in replacements for NiMh OEM batteries even give a bunch more pure electric range for a reasonable price. There's no reason not to expect major aftermarket parts makers to be selling replacement and refurbished EV packs when it's economic to do so.
The difference is that a lead acid battery costs less than $100 to replace, and can be done by the owner in a couple of minutes. Many auto parts stores will replace them in your car for free with purchase.
They also tend to have a 3-5 year prorated warranty and depending on your driving habits and location some have been known to last a decade.
It's really an apple to dolphin comparison to be making.
"They also tend to have a 3-5 year prorated warranty and depending on your driving habits and location some have been known to last a decade."
EV battery packs come with at least an 8 year warranty on capacity where a lead acid battery will pack it in long before that. I don't think I've ever had a lead acid battery last a decade. To keep from getting stranded, I replace them every 2-3 years and buy well regarded brands, not just what's cheap. When I've had a lead acid battery need replacing it's been when I go to take out the car and I can't start the engine. With an EV, it will be that the range has faded to the point where the car isn't as useful, but that happens much more slowly and typically doesn't leave you stranded out of the blue one morning. Even when the EV battery doesn't have the capacity you need anymore, it's still worth more than a $5 core charge.
The problem with EVs is that Physics is a b*tch.
Cold weather - poor performance/range.
Towing - poor performance/range.
Range - poor without oversized battery that then makes the vehicle very heavy for its size. Let's not even mention the environmental impacts of large batteries.
Refueling speed - poor.
Coupled with this...
Fast charging doesn't work that well, decreases the life of the battery, creates a lot of heat which has to be dissipated somehow and is quite inefficient.
Charger networks in most countries are poor and will easily become overwhelmed by increasing ownership coupled with long charging times.
Reliability and availability of chargers seems low and costs are rising.
EVs have high initial costs and low residual values which drivers have become aware of.
All of this has really meant that EV ownership is starting to peak.
BEVs simply aren't the solution to the problem unless the problem is "how do we only allow the chosen few to drive"
You might also want to ask yourself "If EVs/BEVs are so good and are the future why do all politicians get around in big shitter ICE powered SUVs?" You really can't beat some arsehole telling you that you have to buy an EV whilst they rock up in a 6-cylinder Range Rover. My line with politicians is "If it's so good, you first".
"Refueling speed - poor."
The use of AC posting needs to be throttled back.
The refueling speed of an EV plugged in at one's home is nearly instantaneous. It's like a sleeper train, you sleep while it's happening so the time involved is very small compared to the process.
Public fast chargers are only necessary on motorways for long trips. The US is well covered along many of the interstate highways and getting better all of the time. Why are people expecting a charging station every 100m? Petrol stations weren't put in everywhere at once. Early in the dawn of personal motor cars for the masses, there were still plenty of trips that couldn't be made. You took a train (or even a stagecoach) as there were no places to refuel. With EV's there already is a vast amount of infrastructure in place even if some of it means waiting long than people are used to or it requires taking a specific route. I've been planning a route to travel to see the total solar eclipse in a few months while spending nights at a campground rather than wasting money on motels. Many campgrounds with full hookups offer EV charging during the day. Yes, it's not super speedy, but it will bridge DCFC gaps. I expect in another decade a much greater number of even two lane highways will have suitable charging options of adoption of EV's continue. Plenty of lower power options only require the fitting of an outlet and some way to meter the use.
"Around me, the speed of an EV refueling at home is infinite. Area is all terrace housing with no off road parking, so you _can't_ charge while you sleep."
**Attention, Rude response follows***
Sucks to be you. In many parts of the world where cities were designed around horse drawn carts, the modern automobile isn't a great option at all. If you live someplace with no charging options, mixing that with an EV is a bad choice. It's slowly being overcome, but it's the fruit at the top of the tree. Those that do have off-street parking are the best candidates for an EV right now and over time it will be less of an issue for others.
Chloe, that is a distinct problem in larger cities... I can only commiserate. And if you're in a major thoroughfare (like a major road, or where a lot of pedestrians walk), you can't simply have a charger installed and pull your cable through a window (I've seen this here though). That needs dealing with first before the death of ICEVs is announced and celebrated.
Small town, but my area is all terraces built in the 1860ish time. All parking is on road, pavement between the road and the houses, street lights are on the house side of the pavement, so that would still have cables crossing the pedestrian area, etc... There's lumps of the UK like this. And the government's view as far as I can tell is "don't be too poor to afford a house that your new car agrees with"
"Early in the dawn of personal motor cars for the masses, there were still plenty of trips that couldn't be made. You took a train (or even a stagecoach) as there were no places to refuel."
But we're not there any more.* The alternative to an inadequate personal EV would be a personal car..** Also in the early days the motorist embarking on a longer journey might have started out with a few cans of extra fuel. You can't carry a can of electricity.
The infrastructure needs to be addressed. Anyone on a long journey would have to be able to expect to pull into a motorway services and find a fast charger available. That would mean a considerable proportion of parking spaces would have to be fast chargers and the supply to the services would have to be able to support those chargers being in use.
So far the UK government's targets have been vestigial and missed.
* We never were there in terms of stage coaches. When the first railway service between Liverpool and Manchester opened several stage coach services went out of business in the first week.
** Yes, yes, we've heard it: "You rent an ICE car for those journeys." It doesn't work on two grounds. The first is that ICE vehicles are supposed to be phased out so long term there wouldn't be any to rent. The second is that at least since I retired I make most of my journeys within a fraction of EV range from home but half of my mileage on those few long trips. Do I want to hve to hire another vehicle for half my annual mileage? Pre-retirement the ratio might not have been quite as tilted but enogh to present a serious consideration.
"The second is that at least since I retired I make most of my journeys within a fraction of EV range from home but half of my mileage on those few long trips."
You see that the details will vary from person to person. The vast majority of my field service work is well within the range of a basic EV. The bulk of my long trips already have charging along the way. The few really long journeys I am planning over the next couple of years also have enough charging to do them with, admittedly, little margin but two years ago they weren't all that possible at all without many stops to charge very slowly. Really really really long trips I'd rather take a train than drive.
Long trips in an ICEV are easy to make now, but that's after 100ish years of the personal automobile. To expect the same level of "jump in and go" for an EV in the next week is silly. Change costs money and rapid change costs lots of money ( loads of it due to fraud). The US is thinking that the government throwing loads of taxpayer money at it is a good tactic. They also think that "to be fair" money should be allocated to low-income and historically disadvantaged neighborhoods to install chargers. I predict zero charging and a 100% chance the copper will be stripped from end to end in the first few days in those places. People that have to scrape together bus fare aren't buying EV's.
"Right now you can buy an old Leaf and drive to work gasless."
I was exploring that option at one point since there was free charging where I had applied for a job. A first gen leaf with ~70 miles of range are very inexpensive. From my driveway to work would have been 20 miles so I could do all of my charging at work for free which made buying a Leaf a very good option and I could keep my ICEV for the weekends and long trips. Even if I needed to charge at home from time to time, the cost would have been minimal. On the used market right now, an early Leaf is half the price of my ICEV. The Leaf isn't a bad car either and perfectly fine as a commuter. Too bad the job when to a family member of an exec. The supervisor wasn't very happy since she didn't know much about aircraft and couldn't be used for many tasks.
Which is exactly why forcing BEV as the only long term choice is an inherently terrible idea.
Solutions exist to make ICE fuels carbon-neutral and dramatically lower all manner of emissions, but no, that's not good enough. Come 2035 if you want a new car it's BEV or nothing.
It's not like EVs don't produce emissions. They just don't come out the end of a tailpipe. There's a load of particulates from brakes and tyres, moreso than ICE cars because of the extra weight. And never mind the increased road damage from that extra weight. Most roads just weren't built to take that much load. Decades of poor maintenance has many roads crumbling already. Making cars dramatically heavier will only accelerate that.
It's not that BEV as an individual choice is a bad idea. But the realities make them a bad choice for the mass market, and the worst possible only choice. It only makes sense if the endgame is to force most people into public transport.
You wrote:
"The refueling speed of an EV plugged in at one's home is nearly instantaneous. It's like a sleeper train, you sleep while it's happening so the time involved is very small compared to the process."
That glosses over two very big problems.
First, the vast majority of people in the US don't own a home.
Second, for a significant number of the minority of people who do own a home, the grid isn't capable of handling the installation of a home charger in more than a handful of homes.
So no, the refueling speed of an EV is not nearly instantaneous. It's a many hour process, assuming that you can get to a public charger, the charger is working, it isn't too cold to charge your battery, and there's one available for you to use that isn't plugged into someone else's EV.
Not sure where your definition of instantaneous is coming from.
While you're asleep for several hours is not instantaneous. The act of plugging in / unplugging it may only be a couple of minutes (including retrieving / stowing the cables), but that's a tiny fraction of the overall "refueling" time. You still can't use the car to go anywhere while it's plugged in. Therefore not at all instantaneous to fill it up.
Almost feels like you're deliberately trolling.
"Not sure where your definition of instantaneous is coming from."
Ok, it's "effectively" instantaneous since you don't have to stand next to the car the entire time and the car charges while you are doing something else such as sleeping.
"You still can't use the car to go anywhere while it's plugged in. Therefore not at all instantaneous to fill it up."
There's no law that says you can't unplug the car to make your trip and plug it back in when you get back AND THEN leave it charging while you sleep.
"I'm afraid people are still going to say things you don't like, whether they are posting as AC or not."
I'm good with that. Echo chambers aren't nearly as interesting as an informed debate, but unless there is a good reason for somebody to post anonymously, I find it better if there is a name attached to the comments.
Petrol stations weren't put in everywhere at once. Early in the dawn of personal motor cars for the masses, there were still plenty of trips that couldn't be made.
Perhaps you need to read some history books.
When the first ICE vehicles came along (remember that the first cars were battery powered), petrol was sold at chemists and other shops in cans. In effect there was no "rollout" needed for refuelling as the infrastructure was already there - a network of shops and the supply chains to get stuff to them. I guess it would have taken a little while for the supply-demand catch-22 to resolve into petrol being ubiquitously available, but I doubt it would have taken long.
The roadside pumped facilities came along later - but weren't a necessary condition for having ICE cars.
The situation with EVs is different. You can't pop into a shop and "buy a can of lecky", and you can't "take a couple fo cans of lecky home" to use later, and you can't "chuck a couple of cans of lecky in the boot" for a long journey.
For some years I ran on LPG - the affordable way to run a V8 powered Land Rover :D In many ways that mirrored the situation with EVs. I had my own hand pump to fill up at home from orange cylinders (doing quarterly returns to pay my fuel duty). On a longer trip I had to look at the directory, work out where the filling stations were en-route and around my destination, and when they would be open (Wales seemed to close at the weekends back then !). Of course, that was before smartphones, "always on" internet, and the benefits an "app on a smartphone" would have brought to the situation.
Ok, so in the time it takes to get a coffee and go to the loo, my EV can add close to 200 miles of range.
Plug in, waft card over reader and go for coffee. A phone alert tells me when it have 5 mins left to reach my desired charge level.
Not that hard and most certainly not slow.
Here are the real times from my bill
Start : 02/01/2024 11:50
End : 02/01/2024 12:11
kWh added : 55.13
at 3.6 miles/kWh (which I was getting that day, I added 198 miles of range in 21 minutes or the time to drink a cup of coffee and visit the loo.
My I humbly suggest that you sir are speaking out of the bit of you body that you were sitting on when composing this post.
"The nearest charger to me that would be £43.55"
Why use the nearest Shell charger with that sort of price tag? The vast majority of fast chargers are much cheaper than that. For giggles I planned a trip in a Ionic 5 from southern California to Phoenix, AZ and the charging estimate was $35 each way. Petrol would have been considerably more and still not have saved any time as I could take care of personal needs while the car charged and there would be needs on a trip that long including a meal break which I've timed on long trips to be around 45 minutes (petrol, loo visit, lunch, windscreen cleaning). A non-meal stop on a long trip is around 20 minutes. I've been keeping track and it's not 5 minutes to refuel in a petrol car. Perhaps it would be faster visiting the most expensive station as they generally don't have a line for a pump. I still have to stand there fueling the car where there's no requirement for that with an EV.
As I do field service work, there's always paperwork which can be done while charging if I had a day where I needed to charge. As it is, I very rarely drive that far and wind up doing the paperwork at home. I do still have an ICEV as the cost of an EV still doesn't make financial sense even accounting for less time filling up. When the numbers on the spreadsheet converge, I'll buy an EV.
"Why use the nearest shell charger" There's no shell chargers around me. The closest public charger is 16 miles away, and is motorfuels group, they charge 79p/kWh.
That's my entire choice for a fast charger.
Everything else is 7kW chargers with a max charging time of 2 hours (the chargers in the local aldi and lidl)
And as for petrol would cost more: I don't drive a petrol ICE, I drive a diesel that returns an average of 75mpg on trips.
""Why use the nearest shell charger" There's no shell chargers around me. The closest public charger is 16 miles away, and is motorfuels group, they charge 79p/kWh."
You might want to check every month or so and see if there's more competition (lower rates). If you can charge at home, a public charger nearby isn't a test. You want to know if there are public chargers along the routes you are most likely to take. I like A Better Route Planner and it's international so it works just about everywhere. I'm not sure if some of the others are US only or not. 79p/kWh is very expensive for charging. 50p would be more in line with prices in the US where there's competition. The price varies by location and charge rate as well. If you need better than 150kW, it's more than a charger that's only good up to 150kW which is more than one rated up to 80kW. I find it funny to see articles where a "journalist" complains about plugging into a 350kW stand and only getting 75kW max when that's all the car they are "reviewing" is capable of.
I'd say about 90% of the reasonably priced+ EVs are leased, so resale value isn't important.
Many companies offer tax-swerving schemes like the Octopus one for example, to lease an EV at a reasonable cost.
Within another 8-10 years I'd expect there to be a practical and more reasonably priced way of replacing the battery pack, we've advanced a long way EV wise in the last 8.
The difference between the "you own nothing and you'll be happy" dystopia and this is the existence of an option to own one outright.
Being given the option to lease if and only if it's convenient to me? Sure.
Being forced to lease one with no option to own and no control over the car? Hell no.
resale value isn't important.
The resale value is crucial. The leasing model only works because the leasing companies know what they can sell the car for at the end of the lease, and they set the lease payments accordingly to give them a profit. If the resale value is minimal, then the lease payments effectively become just an installment plan for you to buy the car over the lease period.
"Within another 8-10 years I'd expect there to be a practical and more reasonably priced way of replacing the battery pack, we've advanced a long way EV wise in the last 8."
That's my expectation as well, mainly since there will be the incentive for 3rd party suppliers to offer replacement and refurbished packs. What I've noticed though, is getting the packs open to rebuild them is usually destructive and the cover will need replacing. That sort of thing is likely something that regulations can go after. Sandy Munro showed a partially torn down Model 3 pack where it looked as if the cells were glued together with some sort of silastic material. That's going to be a major chore to do anything with. GM had to replace the packs in the Bolt after LG (the supplier) had a manufacturing issue with their cells. The new packs have 10% more capacity in the same volume. They could have also gone the other way and fitted a replacement with less capacity that also massed 10% less leading to the same range, but I'm sure people wouldn't be able to understand that (Why not just make 10 a bit louder and go to 10. But mine goes to 11).
The difference being that a degraded battery won't leave you stranded at the side of the road in the same way that any one of a thousand worn ICE components would. They fade predictably.
And of course a degraded battery is still perfectly serviceable, and valuable as a second life battery.
You can't claim that batteries are both very expensive and worthless in the same claim.
"And of course a degraded battery is still perfectly serviceable, and valuable as a second life battery."
A good second life for EV batteries may be as a buffer so fast charging can be installed in places where there is limited electrical service. A highway rest stop is an obvious location and many of those in the US are located on very desolate stretches of highway where there's plenty of adjacent land to install solar panels or a wind turbine and recharge the onsite batteries. That could be far less expensive than routing MW class power lines to those locations.
40kWh of these (from a crashed Tesla Model S) run my home during the day. They get charged at night on cheap power.
What's heading for landfill? Not these.
The recent Fully Charged Show Podcast that features the head of Gridserve shows how they manage sites with limited Grid capacity using Battery storage.
This is in use today.
"The recent Fully Charged Show Podcast that features the head of Gridserve shows how they manage sites with limited Grid capacity using Battery storage."
FCS has become a bit too polished for me. Helen Czerski did some very good episodes on battery recycling and tracking back the origins of the materials used for Li batteries. I wish she'd come to one of the US shows so I can ask her to marry me. Any woman that does their doctorate on explosives is going to be awarded a lot of points.
Repurposing battery packs from EV's is going to be more and more brilliant as time goes on. It can be a gentler use of the batteries so they could remain in static service for well over a decade after being removed from an EV. I can's remember if News Coulomb did an episode on Gridserve or another company that was using battery backup for EV chargers in places that don't have electric service big enough to be used directly. Any excess capacity would be used to charge up the site battery so the charger could be boosted letting EV owners charge quickly.
No rechargeable battery technology will maintain 100% capacity over a large number of charges.
You are obviously going by what some display in the car is telling you, and it is lying - as have gauges in ICE cars have for the past 20 years (coolant temperature and oil pressure gauges are no longer anything of the sort, the needle will sit in the middle and only ever move when there is a major fault, dealers were feed up feed up with stupid people complaining their cars were broken if the needles weren't perfectly centred).
The only way to tell is to have determined the range to empty when new, and reproduce this after 5 years under the same environmental conditions.
"The only way to tell is to have determined the range to empty when new, and reproduce this after 5 years under the same environmental conditions."
Not really - BMS systems are pretty good at determining the energy capacity of batteries...
The BMS on most EVs will tell you, if you use ODB tools, both the nominal capacity, and the "displayed" capacity, which is usually lower, since they "protect" the top and bottom ten percent or so.
They also show a state of health, which shows degradation from the factory, most of which doesn't impact the perceived range.
After three years and 30k+ miles my MG (not the best battery management in the world) was still at ~97% SoH, and 100% of it's original usability.
The warranty on EV batteries are typically 8 years (which is substantially more than any ICE component), with at least 70% capacity, often more.
"My EV is over 5 and a half years old and still has 100% capacity on the battery. Battery life is far more than expected in real life."
Most manufacturers seem to be installing packs with more capacity than they advertise and have software dole out the excess as the battery degrades so it appears not to degrade. It makes sense as the batteries settle initially and spend their middle years at a fairly steady capacity.
I think its important that any automaker that wants to continue existing have a mature EV platform that they can rapidly ramp up production on since it takes years to roll out a new product. Mass adoption is still dependent on further battery energy density improvements that will reduce size, weight and cost. Perversely there seems to be a last mover advantage, waiting for battery prices to fall further. Toyota is only now just starting to think about EVs. I think the Japanese manufacturers in general have been holding out for solid state batteries.
" Mass adoption is still dependent on further battery energy density improvements that will reduce size, weight and cost."
And charging infrastructure.
"I think the Japanese manufacturers in general have been holding out for solid state batteries."
This will be a surprise to my daughter who's had her Nissan Leaf for a few years now.
"Japanese manufacturers in general have been holding out for solid state batteries."
Good luck with that.
Saving weight is a good goal. I wonder how much lighter an EV could be if all of the driver assistance carp was pulled out. All of the motors and solenoids that cater to people that are too lazy to manual open the "gas" flap. It will take a big jump in battery technology to see a rise in energy density. How close to C4/TNT in terms of energy density to you want to sit on top of?
Yes! The ability to make something and the ability to make money doing it don't always mesh and the last mover has the advantage of not having dug a financial hole in the mean time by having to sell under build cost to sell at all.
Even without a load of breakthroughs, there are plenty of good use cases for EV to be useful for a large number of people. How many of the naysayers are driving coast to coast in the US every other week as they seem to be saying? When called out they often have to back down to saying they'd "like to have the option". Why? If I needed to get half way across the US for a family emergency, I take off in my car immediately. I'd go home, find the first flight I could catch, shower and pack a bag long before I'd embark on a few days of driving. I once ran the numbers to get from Los Angeles to Chicago via the car, the train (with a room) or a business/first class plane ticket for two people traveling together. All in, they were about the same price. I don't fit in economy plane seats so those were out. Anybody over 5'4" is crammed in these days and I'm 6' with shoulders several inches wider than those seats. If I had to make the trip in the shortest amount of time, I'd (cringe) fly. My preferred mode would be train unless I wanted to dawdle along the way and stop a lot in which case I'd drive. I might also consider flying one way and taking the train in the other to shave a day or two off. It's not a bad trip in an EV now. There are plenty of high power chargers along the way so with a fast charging car, it's about the same time to charge while making a quick visit to the loo. I chose the city pair since they are well served by all three modes of travel. That can't be said for many trips in the US using Amtrak.
After rather a lot of posts telling us the battery doesn't hold enough energy and is heavy, so low energy density, we have one telling us that if it held more in smaller volume it would be dangerous.
C4/P4/TNT no, but something approaching the density and total energy of 20 - 40 litres of Diesel/Kerosene/RP1 would match or surpass the capacity of standard uk cars (which are mostly not topped up nightly)
20 litres because more than half of a petrol tank is turned into heat - a wastage if you are driving it, and a hazard if containment fails. 40 litres because it takes longer to fill up.
@Chloe Cresswell
"BEVs, maybe."
You mean EV's, electric only vehicles, yup that is what I said. The head of the company saying something about expecting them to only capture about 30% of the market and various other comments.
"If Toyota thought about EVs and said no, it's weird that the Mirai's been on sale for 10 years now?"
I took a look and the vehicle seems to be hydrogen powered. Is there another version or something?
Toyota have been fairly brave and realistic from what I have seen. Instead of chasing the electric pipe dream they are looking at various options including increased efficiency of the internal combustion engine.
It means it uses a fuel cell as a power source - I believe the Mirai uses a hydrogen fuel cell, and a smaller battery to smooth the power demand.
That implies that we could reasonably have a plug in fcev, which is an interesting option... massively reducing the need for hydrogen (or other fuel cell fuel) delivery network.
I'm British and I love Fords[1] - most of the cars I've ever owned were Ford. My current car is a Mondeo (Fusion in the US) that I bought from new. It's probably the best car I've ever owned.
But I'm a realist - I know that I will need an EV when this car dies.
So I looked.
In the same kind of type / size of car, the Mondeo EV was absolutely panned for sucking horrendously. One of the worst EVs ever made.
The next closest (at the time) was the Mach-E. One of the better rated EVs as the time and literally twice the price that I'd paid for the Mondeo brand-new.
Everything else is either absolutely tiny (useless to me) or huge (expensive and counterproductive for me).
I moved house in my Mondeo. Literally loaded it up with everything I could, made a dozen trips and moved the entire house and everything I own including 2 double-beds, wardrobes, etc. And I can still drive it to work every day, take the occasional passenger, and drive it round Europe (well, pre-Brexit). It's the perfect car for me.
And yet Ford's EV line of cars is pathetic.
[1] This has nothing to do with me growing up in Dagenham, but far more to do with the parts are dirt cheap, for 20 years I just bought knackered old Fords and ran them into the ground and then bought another (I'm no boy-racer, by the way, I really couldn't care about that stuff), and my dad - a mechanic - would happily repair them and change parts for me even if he does always complain about them "not having a single decent bit of metal to jack it up on!".
"I know that I will need an EV when this car dies."
How much does a used engine cost (parts and labor) if it's the engine that dies? With my car, I hope to get a low mileage used engine put in this year before there's an issue with the 235k mile engine that's in the car now. Cost should be around $2,000. Could use some paint, so maybe another $1,000 for that. A used Bolt is looking like $11,000 for one with DC fast charging (yes, it was an option) in good condition if I'm patient. The numbers just don't work right now. I change my own oil and the car has been very reliable. I leave off any common maintenance items such as windscreen wiper blades and tires since it's roughly the same either way. That's really the big barrier and it only gets worse with most EV's on the market being much more expensive than a Bolt when those models can be found used. I see 1st gen Leafs, BMW I3's (non-rex) and even the odd iMiev very cheap but those have very poor max ranges (<80 miles). I can buy two of what I currently own in good nick for the price of a Bolt and have 3 of the same thing (one for parts and two drivers).
There are lots of cheap used engines around as a chassis bending prang can leave a perfectly good engine which can be resold. Any damage to the chassis of an EV which contains the battery, will result in it being scrapped entirely, as there is too much risk that a short circuit could develop and we all know what happens then ->
I recently bought (well... PCP'd) a Ford Puma 1.0L EcoBoost MHeV, a mild hybrid.. Look it up, I had to! I went down this route despite the company I work for offering a very generous company car scheme for EV's (salary sacrifice tyre, servicing and insurance included etc..).
It was nothing to do with ICE vs EV, I'm very open the the idea of an electric car, I have off street parking and could make it work. In the end it was down to price. It was double the monthly cost. I had to ask myself will I spend the equivalent of £300 a month (the difference in monthly cost) on servicing, tyres and insurance. The answer was a pretty definite no. Add this to the fact I only now commute 1 or 2 days a week and rarely travel long distances, even the difference in fuel vs charging costs didn't swing it.
In short, EV costs are going to have to reduce dramatically for any major take up to occur.
I know its a mugs game trying to predict the future, but if costs don't reduce dramatically in the short term (2035 isn't that far away) we will see a new industry in keeping existing ICE cars on the road. They will be financially viable and worth repairing for much longer, extending their lifespan. The alternative if the government hike fuel prices so much that they can't be run economically, fewer people will be able to own cars in the traditional way and a new way will have to be found.
Each person needs to do the maths - for me the EV was substantially cheaper than the ICE.
I literally couldn't have afforded to change car to a newer ICE, and the EV has become substantially cheaper over time (as off peak electricity prices haven't really gone up, but liquid fuel is fully 50% more (and was the dominant cost when I had an ICE). In fact the newer EV had the same monthly cost as the (several) ICE vehicles I had previously, but I had absolute certainty about that cost, because the lease includes everything other than electrons.
"<...........liquid fuel is fully 50% more................>"
How old is your EV?
The last time that petrol/diesel prices in the UK were "fully" two thirds of the current prices was nearly 20 years ago.
I am currently running a 23 year old small, reliable petrol car that still returns an average of over 50mpg. I don't see the economics of running an EV improving on that TBH.
I can't charge an BEV at home, the charger I'd be using is (ignoring the cost of my time) £0.79/kWh.
To do my weekly mileage would be between £120 and £150. It's around £70 in my "smaller" car and £100 in the big one (Q30 vers Mondeo estate).
That's before buying/insuring/etc costs, atm it doesn't make any economic sense in my case.
Why would you choose the *most* expensive charger you can? Why would you waste time babysitting it?
Are there really no AC options anywhere?
190kWh divided amongst 5 working days (8 hours a day for 5 hours) is under 5kW, so you'd probably want to get a 7kW charger installed at work (or close to work or home).
But then commuting 60 miles each way is *way* outside of typical UK behaviour (I have done that, and more, and it's bloody awful - didn't realise how bad until I stopped).
DC chargers are _not_ for everyday charging... Or should I price my fuel based on having it hand delivered by Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.
AC? Sure. I can sit outside an adli for 2 hours (max time) at 7kWh.
I didn't choose the "most" expensive charger, I chose the _1_ fast charger I knew of in the area. turns out there's another. It's only 85p/kWh, or 6p more then the MFG one.
" so you'd probably want to get a 7kW charger installed at work" I'm a field engineer, you expect me to have a charger fitted at all 30 sites I go to? You do realise the standing charge of that alone would be £16 a _day_?
"But then commuting 60 miles" I don't commute. My "commute" is rolling over in bed and picking up a laptop.
The miles are to where I need to work. Today it was 87 miles, tomorrow might be 595 miles.
DC chargers _ARE_ for everyday charging _WHEN YOU HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE_
Again - why would you sit outside an Aldi waiting for a charge?
You don't need to babysit an EV whilst it charges, you leave it charging whilst you are doing something else (sleeping, working, eating), except on long journeys.
Field engineer is one of the rare jobs where you probably *don't* have a great electric option, though with that usage I'd recommend looking at a Tesla rather than anything else, purely for access to their charging network - which is well integrated, reliable, and a hell of lot cheaper than anything else (and bonus points if you get hold of an early model S which came with lifetime free supercharging).
You might also want to look at various membership options - Ionity passport would cost £5.50/month, but gets you 56p/kWh, rather than 74p/kWh.
So your ~150-190kWh usage drops to £90-112 (including the monthly subscription) for ~525-760 miles (using 3.5-4m/kWh).
And your Q30 is getting through (£1.42 current price) 49 litres, or 11 gallons of fuel at 55mpg for the same ~600 miles. I've only ever had one car that came close to that, and it wasn't using petrol.
There is only one Q30 that Honest John reckons could do 55mpg, and that's the 1.5 diesel.
Sorry, why would I not abandon my car outside a supermarket?
What else am I going to do?
Walk around the aldi for 2 hours?
Walk home, and imminently walk back?
As for a tesla with supercharging? Nearest supercharger is 65 miles away, so I'm back to the MFG charger at 79p/kWh.
And my Q30 happily hits (average) 76mpg on long trips. And I haven't even hit the official test results.
I get though 50 litres for 700 miles - that's a tank average of around 64mpg. My 2 litre tdci mondeo can do that, let alone the K9K in the Q30
"You might also want to look at various membership options - Ionity passport would cost £5.50/month, but gets you 56p/kWh, rather than 74p/kWh."
Except lonity doesn't apply at MFG, so that's £5.50/month and still paying 79p/kWh. I don't know where you're getting 74p/kWh from, as MFG clearly says 79p.
You seem to have this weird idea I'd be driving to places with chargers to do anything other than charge. No, the places I go to to do things _do not have changers_, therefore the only reason for me to go to somewhere with a charger with an EV is to charge it. Therefore yes, you will me babysitting it as it charges as there is _NOTHING ELSE TO DO_. As I said, with the aldi one the maximum charge you can do is 2 hours, that's 14kW, so to do anything else I'm abandoning it in the car park (against their terms of service, as I'm not a customer) and walking somewhere else. Except anywhere I'd want to go is between 45 and 60 mins walk away. So sure, I could drop the car off, walk somewhere, walk right back, move the car.. I might as well be sat in the car.
"You seem to have this weird idea I'd be driving to places with chargers to do anything other than charge."
No - I have this weird aversion to making pointless journeys to fuel stations, never enjoyed it with FF vehicles either - the vast majority of people never need to do this (save occasional long journeys, where a toilet/rest break should generally be sufficient).
You were the one who chose Aldi - but the point here is to have local journeys be self sufficient, you go to a shop (any shop) and charge whilst you shop, zero time taken - you go to the cinema/theatre/gym/wherever and charge whilst you're there anyway. Long journeys are the exception, where you need to minimise charging times down to the time it takes for a loo break.
And you then don't need a "local" DC charger, because you only use those on long journeys anyway.
Does all of this exist today? No - we need more AC points installed everywhere; they're cheap and sufficient for most day to day needs, you can equip dozens of spaces with AC charging for the same electrical supply and significantly less money than equipping one space with DC charging - there will always be a case for some local high speed chargers, but the vast majority should be AC - up to 11kW is trivial with three phase supply.
As I've already said - a field engineer without any ability to charge at home probably doesn't have any good electric options at the moment, but the least bad option is probably a tesla.
I got 74p from the ionity website, picked them purely because I could remember what their "membership" was called. Without any idea where in the country you're located I can't possibly suggest anything meaningful, so I asked "what is the cost of public charging if you have to do alot of it?" And the answer was "less than claimed".
"You were the one who chose Aldi - but the point here is to have local journeys be self sufficient, you go to a shop (any shop) and charge whilst you shop, zero time taken - "
No, I chose aldi as _IT HAS A CHARGER_. "You can go to a shop (any shop) and charge whilst you shop" Really? So I go to sainsbusys and what, roll a 50 metre cable into the shop and plug in to a BS1363?
Because here's a fact you keep missing.
You can only charge where there's a charger.
I can't "go to any shop and charge", I could only go to a shop that has a charger. And that means either Aldi or Lidl.
So lets check your idea of shopping and charging: I drive to Sainsburys and do my 30 min shop, I then drive to Aldi, connect the car to the charger, walk in... buy the 2 or 3 items I couldn't in Sainsburys and walk and disconnect the car after it's 5-10 mins of charging.
Total charging amount: 1.2kWh. Not much. But I've driven 4 miles to get that charge. Woo, net outcome pretty much zero.
"I have this weird aversion to making pointless journeys to fuel stations" Weirdly I have this aversion for making pointless journeys too, but in my case it's things like "lets drive to a shopping centre I have no interest in going too, and spending hours there doing nothing because the car demands it"
I'm glad you can happily find things to do in places like that, but I'm just wasting time and bored.
"the least bad option is probably a tesla" tell me which tesla estate you'd recommend then, as it would have to replace both my cars, and it it can't fit a 24U rack in the back, it's not upto the job.
I'm giving up, I said right at the start "the economics of this do not work for me" and you have spent days showing how exactly they don't work but you have tired to force useless "solutions".
Put your money where your mouth is. Do a week of 60-120 mile days, with out charging at home, only using public chargers, where the places you go _DO NOT HAVE THEM_ and see how long till you are making a "pointless journey". Ironically, that pointless journey you think I'd be making is the 80 metres to pull off an A road, and into the services, and the 120 metres to rejoin it. I'm impressed how managed your time is is 200 metres makes that much of a dent in it.
Oh, and as for your less than claimed cost: https://www.motorfuelgroup.com/ev-power/ It's right there. 79p/kWh.
"Because here's a fact you keep missing."
Which bit of "no good option for you" which I said in both of my previous posts didn't you read?
"You can only charge where there's a charger."
Which bit of "Does all of this exist today? No - we need more AC points installed everywhere" didn't you read?
I removed the bit of my post where I asked roughly where in the country you where, but I suspect you simply don't know about more chargers than you think (because why would you). Sainsburys are currently starting to roll out chargers to all their shops, the options are coming.
"I'm giving up, I said right at the start "the economics of this do not work for me" and you have spent days showing how exactly they don't work but you have tired to force useless "solutions"."
No - I have repeatedly said that there probably isn't a good option for you, you just didn't both reading that bit.
I *know* there are DC chargers at 80 and even 85p, I've never denied that - but those wouldn't be what you would choose to use if you were reliant on public charging. You don't go out of your way to use the most expensive petrol at the most expensive service station on your journey - because that would be daft. In exactly the same way, you've just decided that the only possible cost for charging is 80p, when that's clearly not the case. No - you just decided that since you are apparently only aware of two chargers in the country, that you know everything about owning a BEV. The cost is lower than you assume, because you've done the equivalent of only looking at a motorway service station where the price was £1.60-1.70 and made all your ICE calculations based on that.
How often do I need to say that your driving habits are both very unusual (in the grand scheme of the population) and currently don't have good BEV option? I've said it in *every* post since you actually said anything about your driving habits being atypical.
You're ignoring the tax/duty issues.
That 79p/kWh only includes 20% VAT, so before tax it's 66p/kWh. These days a mid-sized EV gets around 4.0 - 4.3 miles/kWh, depending on weather & driving style. If we assume 4.3 then you're paying 15p/mile before tax at a public charger.
£1.45 per litre for diesel includes 52.95p duty and 20% VAT, so before tax it's 68p/litre. At 50MPG (11 miles/litre) that's 6p/mile. With tax & duty it's "only" ~13.2p/mile, so an ICE driver pays 7.2p/mile of tax & duty.
If we take your home off peak prices from a previous post, of 7.5p/kWh (7.14p/kWh), it's 1.66p/mile before tax.
We can assume that the government won't easily part with its pound of flesh and will still want that missing 7.2p/mile from somewhere, tax or road pricing, etc., (especially considering the extra wear & tear on the roads that EVs with a 30-50% weight penalty cause). That would make the EV cost 8.9p/mile at your home off-peak price, or a colossal 22p/mile at public charge rates, and it's pretty clear that very low off-peak rates won't last if overnight EV charging becomes the new peak period. You can't justify an EV on cost grounds alone.
"At 50MPG (11 miles/litre) that's 6p/mile"
If my main car gets 50mpg, she goes into the garage, as something is _seriously_ wrong.
On long trips I expect 70+mpg, around town I expect around 60mpg.
Which just makes the comparison figures even worse *nods*
I said for me it doesn't make economic sense at the moment, with out charging at home, I'm stuffed on range, cost, and time. *nods* they have spent days saying how I should pretty much run my life and work around the car, rather then the car being a tool to do a job.
"I said for me it doesn't make economic sense at the moment, with out charging at home, I'm stuffed on range, cost, and time. *nods* they have spent days saying how I should pretty much run my life and work around the car, rather then the car being a tool to do a job."
And I've said on *every* post (since you mentioned your unusual driving pattern) that there isn't a good option for you at the moment. Indeed I explicitly said "least bad option"...
I've not told you to run your life in any way at all, just pointed out where your assumptions don't align with reality.
If you're going to cling on to "all EV charging must be DC, at the most expensive charger I can find" then it's going to look more expensive than it actually is.
I don't know where you work that has a need for you to carry a 24u rack to multiple sites, but doesn't have an electrical supply at any of them - that's the real puzzle for me (since you seem to think that an EV charger there would incur an additional standing charge).
that there isn't a good option for you at the moment
This is the key issue. BEVs work for some people, some of the time, but seem to have exhausted the early-adopter market. They don't work for everyone all the time, and in my view they never will. Unless we accept a multi-option approach (which will inevitable be more expensive due to lack of scale) we need to find a better single solution that works for everyone.
They work for the vast majority of people all the time.
Their market penetration is steeply increasing, so claiming they've "exhausted the early adopter market" is just complete hogwash.
Last year they made up 16.5% of all new sales (with phevs making another 7.4%). With a current "fleet" penetration of 1.5% (2.5%) it's clear that the market is growing substantially.
There is no need to enforce a "one solution fits all", but not burning shit in the middle of populated areas still leaves plenty of scope for multiple solutions.
JR, you are getting the pattern of the bricks on your forehead from the wall you keep banging your head against on this one, mate.
Some people will look for ways to not make something work. I try to see it the other way around and I happen to be in a place where an EV would work great, but they are too expensive for my budget. One of the reasons one would work is because I've looked for ways to make it work. If I plan a trip I might want to take that doesn't seem to have enough DC chargers along the route, I'll see if there are RV campsites that welcome EV charging to bridge the gaps. I'd rather spend effort trying to find a way to make something work. I do the same thing with my business. I've learned it's better to find a way to say yes to a customer than to automatically say no. Sometimes it is no, but not for lack of trying. Things change too so at some point I might find myself needing to replace my ICEV and find an EV at an affordable price. Since I've done the work, I know where that break point is where I can say yes, get the EV.
@John Robson
"Really? You think so"
Yes without a doubt. We pay far too much for such an important resource for our lives. The government likes to take a large chunk of change from such a vital resource.
"have you costed in all the external costs that it's use generates?"
People live, civilisation exists and the fuel is vital to it. A lot of work has gone into cleaning up the emissions however government intervention created a larger problem (remember Brown pushing diesel to save the earth?)
"Drivers are heavily subsidised in this country"
I would be interested to see where this idea came from
remember Brown pushing diesel to save the earth?
A classic example of a government picking one easy-to-change issue in isolation and pushing it to be seen to Do Something about climate change while ignoring the big picture. Just like they're now doing with BEVs.
"Drivers are heavily subsidised in this country"
I would be interested to see where this idea came from
From a study carried out by a left-wing environmental pressure group (Transport 2000) in the early 90s, which looked only at the costs of associated disadvantages such as congestion but ignored the corresponding advantages such as the leisure gains and ability to travel to better jobs. Like many such studies, on both sides of the argument, it cherry picked the data which supported the findings it wanted but ignored those which did not.
@John Robson
"Dresden University research across the EU"
Sorry I cant seem to find it. I do expect Phil O'Sophical hits the nail on the head when it comes to cherry picking and bias. There is yet to be a viable alternative to petrol and diesel so I doubt it could be realistic in its assessment
This shouldn't be seen as a comprehensive list of studies, merely some things I've come across:
Dresden (Becker group) 2012 study:
https://www.greens-efa.eu/legacy/fileadmin/dam/Documents/Studies/Costs_of_cars/The_true_costs_of_cars_EN.pdf
See also the more recent Gössling et al (2022) study:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800921003943#s0005
Also this on company cars:
https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/2020_10_Company_cars_briefing.pdf
@DaveLS
Thanks for those.
"Dresden (Becker group) 2012 study:"
Given a quick look it does seem to be biased nonsense which looks heavily at exaggerating the bad while ignoring the absolute necessity. If its the one John Robson was referring to, I dont see where it bothers with the UK only the EU and the MMCC co2 costs would be a write off in my opinion due to the problems with that theory.
"Also this on company cars:"
I stopped reading this pretty early on in the summery because of the glaring error that would suggest the same significant error throughout- "The deductions and write-offs for company cars in 8 largest markets alone cost European taxpayers €32 billion every year"
No it doesnt cost tax payers. The legal requirement to pay tax is not met therefore those criteria do not incur tax, there is none to be paid. It isnt paid by someone else, its not taxable. Using that logic we taxpayers have a huge cost because we dont all pay 100% tax.
@codejunky:
"Given a quick look it does seem to be biased nonsense which looks heavily at exaggerating the bad while ignoring the absolute necessity. If its the one John Robson was referring to, I dont see where it bothers with the UK only the EU..."
It's from 2012, when the UK was a part of the EU. The UK coverage is essentially the same as France, Spain, Italy etc. Some (like Germany) get more mentions in footnotes, others fewer.
"Given a quick look it does seem to be biased nonsense...co2 costs would be a write off in my opinion... ...I stopped reading this pretty early on in the summery"
Clearly, no further comment needed, or maybe just "Hmm" as you might say.
@DaveLS
"It's from 2012, when the UK was a part of the EU. The UK coverage is essentially the same as France, Spain, Italy etc. Some (like Germany) get more mentions in footnotes, others fewer."
Thats fine but the graphic and text seems to leave out the UK from what I could see (I might have missed it). The only reference being the literature section mentioning a link to leeds Unite union.
"Clearly, no further comment needed, or maybe just "Hmm" as you might say."
Exactly. If they have written something severely biased as well as hopping on the latest 'fashionable trend' to make their case it doesnt bode well.
@codejunky
"Thats fine but the graphic and text seems to leave out the UK from what I could see (I might have missed it)."
You certainly have "missed it"; perhaps if you had bothered to read the paper, or even merely glanced at the figures and tables, you would have seen that in all cases where data are presented by country (Table 4 and Figures 11, 12, 13 and 16), the United Kingdom is included (not "UK").
"The only reference being the literature section mentioning a link to leeds Unite union."
You found the reference to the "UK" there because among the literature cited there is a link to the EU UNITE project (https://www.its.leeds.ac.uk/projects/unite) at Leeds University — nothing to do with the Unite union. I guess that instead of bothering to read anything beyond an offending title, you simply searched for a few triggers like "co2" and "uk" (which found the link) before responding with:
"Given a quick look it does seem to be biased nonsense which looks heavily at exaggerating the bad while ignoring the absolute necessity. If its the one John Robson was referring to, I dont see where it bothers with the UK only the EU and the MMCC co2 costs would be a write off in my opinion due to the problems with that theory."
Really. You wrote that on the basis of...??? No, don't bother.
@DaveLS
"You certainly have "missed it"; perhaps if you had bothered to read the paper"
Thanks for pointing it out, I skimmed because I have a job and reading the 3 papers isnt part of it.
"I guess that instead of bothering to read anything beyond an offending title, you simply searched for a few triggers like "co2" and "uk""
Very quick skim read and search for UK. I opened the leeds link, I did mistake the EU unite for the UK unite.
"Really. You wrote that on the basis of...??? No, don't bother."
Because I didnt see (again I admit skim read) the section that accounts for the benefits against these externalities. The MMCC co2 section can be ignored as its effects and causes are still in question outside politics and extremism. The health affects and potential surrounding damage are legitimate problems, but I dont see where it balances that with a healthier and wealthier population. Again if you see such a section let me know but the 'costs' dont seem to outweigh the benefits.
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@John Robson
"Of course it does - it's a (legal) mechanism to pay less tax than would otherwise be due. It's explicitly a subsidy by the treasury (i.e. tax payers)."
That is the wrong way around. The legal mechanism is to tax money which belongs to the person who earned it. To not tax what not legally taxable is not a subsidy.
To view it your way the money does not belong to you no matter how much you earn. By not paying 100% tax you are being subsidised by the treasury.
The rules are for what the government can take (by force).
You don't get it do you - income is taxable, unless you get that income in the shape of a car, in which case it's not taxed (or is at least significantly undertaxed) - despite still being part of your income.
That's an explicit subsidy, i.e. it's a cost to the taxpayer to pay for people's company cars.
I'm not saying that the lower tax is illegal, but to say that it doesn't cost tax payer money is plainly wrong. Because if it was taxed at the same rate as a person's other remuneration then the treasury would have higher income.
@John Robson
"That's an explicit subsidy, i.e. it's a cost to the taxpayer to pay for people's company cars."
What does it cost the tax payer for the government not taking money from the tax payer? And the car isnt just part of the income it is part of conducting business.
"I'm not saying that the lower tax is illegal, but to say that it doesn't cost tax payer money is plainly wrong"
So 100% tax on everyone otherwise its a cost to the tax payer. See how that is wrong?
"Because if it was taxed at the same rate as a person's other remuneration then the treasury would have higher income."
The treasury does not own your income. If everyone was taxed the same as the highest rate the treasury would (theoretically) have higher income. You think it costs the taxpayers because taxpayers dont pay more?
"What does it cost the tax payer for the government not taking money from the tax payer?"
Well let's take the hypothetical case of a country with two tax payers.
One of whom is given a tax break of a hundred currency units.
That means that, in order to maintain government spending on such mundane and useless things as a health service (</sarcasm>) the second tax payer then needs to find an additional hundred currency - they are in fact required to find two hundred pounds more than the person to whom the tax break has been given.
I don't believe that 100% taxation is necessary, and I rather doubt you do either.
But if you explicitly give a tax break to someone, then you had better consider that the behaviour you are encouraging (maybe saving for a pension) is one that you want to spend money to encourage - because you are subsidising it (spending tax payers money to make it cheaper for people to engage in that particular behaviour)
@John Robson
"Well let's take the hypothetical case of a country with two tax payers.
One of whom is given a tax break of a hundred currency units."
And what is the reason not to take that money? If they didnt agree to this then (as happens through history) a revolt changes the mind of the taxer.
"That means that, in order to maintain government spending on such mundane and useless things as a health service"
And there is the logical flaw. Why maintain spending? The NHS as an example is a maw that can never be filled. At 100% taxation of the whole country it would forever demand more. No matter how useless it performs the demand is always for more. Also going back to working your arse off for an income, it belongs to you not the NHS (in this example), the NHS is supposed to be a health 'service' and we pay as much as we are willing to part with to the gov.
The sacrosanct funding of the NHS is why it was such a large purchaser of fax machines long after everyone else moved on.
"I don't believe that 100% taxation is necessary, and I rather doubt you do either."
Of course not and I didnt believe you did either, which demonstrates that the gov is only entitled to what it has rules to take, and if they take the piss people leave with their money/assets or revolt. There is no maintaining what the government believes its entitled to.
"And what is the reason not to take that money? If they didnt agree to this then (as happens through history) a revolt changes the mind of the taxer."
Huh - it's a tax break - the reason bloody well ought to be to encourage a certain behaviour which is societally beneficial.
Any money you give back to people in the form of *not* taxing that which would otherwise be taxable costs the taxpayer, since they all need to make up the difference. The trick is to encourage behaviours that benefit society... And the opposite is true, you can increase tax to discourage behaviours which are a net disbenefit to society, though for some reason we rarely tax enough to make up for the costs of the disbenefit.
And "to maintain spending" in a fictional country with two taxpayers and you invoke "NHS bad" as your straw man...
The government needs to spend money on things, that's kind of the deal we have with them - and whatever they spend money on needs funding, and if they are giving that funding back to one person then they're going to have to increase the costs for the other.
@John Robson
"Huh - it's a tax break - the reason bloody well ought to be to encourage a certain behaviour which is societally beneficial."
You would hope. It does seem to be beneficial to people to keep what they earn (I like keeping what I earn).
"Any money you give back to people in the form of *not* taxing"
That makes no sense. You are not giving back if you are not taking. If you have £10 and the tax man doesnt take it, the tax man did not give you £10. A thief is not giving to you by not stealing from you.
"otherwise be taxable costs the taxpayer, since they all need to make up the difference"
Why would it be otherwise taxable and others need to make up the difference? How much should the gov get (what is the arbitrary number?). That doesnt work, the gov wants 100% and more, people want to keep what they earn. There is no arbitrary figure the gov should get that tax payers must make up. Government is what we will pay for.
"The trick is to encourage behaviours that benefit society"
That is a whole other topic for how much of a trick that is.
"for some reason we rarely tax enough to make up for the costs of the disbenefit."
Really? Seems we over tax at least some of these (including fuel).
"And "to maintain spending" in a fictional country with two taxpayers and you invoke "NHS bad" as your straw man..."
Actually no, you missed the point. The maw can never be filled. If we maintain funding with no consequence then (in this case) the NHS doesnt improve and costs more. Not just NHS its generally a public money service issue.
"The government needs to spend money on things, that's kind of the deal we have with them"
I agree with that. They serve us and so should spend on what we want to the degree we are willing to fund it.
"and whatever they spend money on needs funding, and if they are giving that funding back to one person then they're going to have to increase the costs for the other."
No. This falls over throughout history. The gov will happily do everything, and badly, and demand more from you. The gov can spend whatever you give them and more. Just because they dont steal something from one person does not mean they must steal more from another.
""Any money you give back to people in the form of *not* taxing"
That makes no sense. You are not giving back if you are not taking. If you have £10 and the tax man doesnt take it, the tax man did not give you £10. A thief is not giving to you by not stealing from you."
If you have a tax rate of 10%, and then to encourage certain behaviour you don't get taxed on remuneration that is in the form of coconut shells, then you are being given 10% of that coconut shell remuneration by the government in order to encourage more use of coconut shells.
Because it is part of what would be taxed.
A tax break costs the government money, there are times when it's worth it - for example encouraging healthy eating can increase productivity (which is likely to increase overall tax revenue) and decrease healthcare costs (reducing the amount that the country needs to spend).
There are times when it clearly isn't worth it...
@John Robson
"Don't know why my response to this ended up several comments up..."
Not sure if we have broken the formatting by too many replies.
"No - the question of "how much tax does the government take" is completely irrelevant to a discussion about the distribution of those taxes being affected by tax cuts."
If the amount taken doesnt matter why would the gov pass on tax increases for some when making tax cuts for others as if there was an arbitrary target amount?
"at no point have you told me what this arbitrary figure we should be paying the government"
Because that's not relevant to the discussion of how we finance tax cuts.
I suspect we both agree that we need to give _some_ money to provide services that enable society to function - the amount of money that is required is irrelevant, except in that we need to raise approximately that much in taxes (some years will be more, some will be less)
If you give someone a tax cut, then you need to raise that money from elsewhere, or be promoting a behaviour which will reduce spending.
As a very basic example we could zero rate pedal cycles, hoping that that reduced cost will encourage more cycling, with the health benefits that regular exercise provides both reducing the direct cost of healthcare, and increasing the productivity of the population through fewer sick days resulting in an increase in GDP.
If however we decide to reduce the taxation on motor vehicles, then we're not going to get those benefits. In fact I'd argue we get dis-benefits, we end up trying to spend more money building more infrastructure that isn't for people, but for cars. We try to give roads "just one more lane" despite every study showing that it won't make any difference to congestion. We actively reduce the overall health of the population through both a more sedentary lifestyle and worse air quality.
Any tax cut has to be balanced by either a reduction in spending, or increased taxation on the rest of society (borrowing can make some difference over the short term, but can't be the long term fix).
Therefore any tax cut has to either bring direct savings, or cost everyone else money. Encouraging more car use can not be an efficient use of government funds - it therefore increases the tax burden on others.
"Why do I owe you? You provide a service at an agreed cost in which you say keep the change. Tax is not a paid for service 'oh just keep the change', it is money taken from you by force because someone else wants to spend it."
Again it doesn't matter why you owe me... and tax is a paid for service, in fact it's *many* services which we pay for. If you don't want to pay tax to your countries government then a) you're a selfish jerk, and b) you're free to go and opt out of society entirely - either by living under a hedge and eating berries or by going to a different country (where you'll probably decide that you still need to live under a hedge and eat berries).
Again - I'm not arguing for any specific level of taxation, or any specific spending plans, I'm saying that if you subsidise something then it costs every other taxpayer, unless that tax cut can cause a reduction in required spending, or a growth in GDP that more than makes up for the initial tax cut or both; promoting more car use does neither of those.
@John Robson
Gonna chop your comment to make the point-
"you don't get taxed"..."then you are being given"
Tax is taking. It is removing from you. So not being taxed isnt being given. Someone not taking from you is not giving to you. I know you started with a 10% tax rate, but that is the gov taking 10%. If they dont not take they are not giving you something, they are not taking it away from you. You earned it, you worked for it, its yours and then it gets taxed.
"A tax break costs the government money"
So the interesting experiment is when the gov collects more money do they reduce tax for us all? If there is a set amount the gov should collect what is that arbitrary number? Have you any idea what it is? When they hit that figure with they give the money back?
The answer is no. They will collect more and more and demand more and more. Each department demands more and more each year. Those relying on the public money have to spend it before the end of the financial year so they can demonstrate they need the same or more from the next payout. I was on the receiving end of some of this money they were desperate to get rid of locally.
@John Robson
"Because that's not relevant to the discussion of how we finance tax cuts."
Actually that is entirely relevant to your claim that not taxing one increases tax on another. You seem to think there is 'an amount' the gov rightfully gets, I say the gov would take 100%, people want to keep more of what they earn and the tax take is what both sides agree on. As a feature of this discussion with you it seems very relevant.
"I suspect we both agree that we need to give _some_ money to provide services that enable society to function - the amount of money that is required is irrelevant, except in that we need to raise approximately that much in taxes (some years will be more, some will be less)"
The amount is the problem. The gov likes to spend, the NHS likes to spend, the education system, MOD and every department of government likes to spend. Local councils like to spend. The entire structure including off the books public workers moved into the private sector like to spend. Not just on the essentials to enable society to function, but to spend. Even to our detriment they will spend because it suits them. They will borrow against the tax payer because they will tax you more later. They believe your moneys and possessions belong to them, as long as they can get away with it.
Until you can provide the arbitrary amount the rest of your beliefs about reducing tax on one increases on another doesnt work. The more they collect the more they spend. They reduce tax and they still keep spending.
"Encouraging more car use can not be an efficient use of government funds - it therefore increases the tax burden on others."
Why? The entirety of transport is a huge part of what makes your rich country with civilised society possible. Without it you would be in a much worse situation and the government would absolutely lose a lot of tax (overtaxing fuel, road tax, etc which collects more than it returns to drivers).
"Again it doesn't matter why you owe me... and tax is a paid for service, in fact it's *many* services which we pay for"
If you go to the shop and buy product/service you choose to pay them for it. I dare you to 'choose' not to pay your tax. Paying for a service and having your earnings taken by force are extremely different things. Government may 'incentivise' actions by not taxing as a mugger may 'incentivise' you dont enter a certain area.
"If you don't want to pay tax to your countries government then a) you're a selfish jerk"
Perfect response you selfish jerk. I say that because all probability says you only pay the exact amount of tax you owe and dont send the government extra? And if you wernt such a selfish jerk and in your opinion of how this money is spent, you could reduce the tax bill of everyone else. However in reality the gov would take that money and spend it on top of everything else it takes. (obviously I dont actually believe you a selfish jerk)
"b) you're free to go and opt out of society entirely"
100% as I say. But instead of eating berries people move their money off shore, use tax efficient structures and some even evade tax (at many levels of society) which of course limits what the government can take. The more they take the more moves away, especially when its seen to be unjust.
Surely from all of the above you can see why I would completely disagree with your last paragraph as completely wrong.
@John Robson
"If you owe me £11 and I say "don't worry about the pound, just give me a tenner" then I have given you a pound."
Why do I owe you? You provide a service at an agreed cost in which you say keep the change. Tax is not a paid for service 'oh just keep the change', it is money taken from you by force because someone else wants to spend it.
Again at no point have you told me what this arbitrary figure we should be paying the government (in any terms) yet claim the gov must tax others more for reducing tax on some as if there is a fixed cost of government. Government takes as much as it can get away with, what they can get away with is determined by people refusing to pay. Your example assumes some sort of choice in the transaction, this is a forced transaction where your money is taken from you by force.
"There is yet to be a viable alternative to petrol and diesel so I doubt it could be realistic in its assessment"
In what situation? EV's are not a Silver Bullet, which should be obvious, but could be a good solution in enough cases to be viable for a majority of people.
My dad needed his pickup to pull the horse trailer and get supplies for the ranch, but it was a poor vehicle as a daily driver to get to and from his day job. He bought a cheap compact that saved money each month on the bottom line. There was no "universal solvent" vehicle that could do all of the jobs that needed to be accommodated so owning 3 cars (including my step-mother's car) was the best solution. I'm not saying that everybody has to own an ICEV AND an EV, but that an EV is not a drop-in replacement for everybody's FF car.
There are still a few, and it really is a pretty small proportion, of uses where current BEVs make substantial compromises. The option to hire a vehicle for a specific, infrequent, requirement is often forgotten.
But EVs are pretty close to a universal solvent, and getting closer all the time - partly because "EV" is just a description of the final stage in the drive train.
BEVs are good for the majority of people, and probably any EV will have some battery capacity to act as a rapid response unit, a boost, and as a really cheap power source for shorter journeys. PHEVs with ICE engines are already very popular; FCEVs may well make an impression at some point, probably requires an improvement to either hydrogen storage tech or methanol fuel cell tech....
To be honest I rather suspect that a swappable battery module is a more useful option, not the whole vehicle battery, but modules that you can buy and return - not having to own and carry them around all the time (though I can also see variants where you do choose to own them, and take them into your home/office and charge them for sufficient boost to deal with typical daily usage.)
I know Jake will be back with his "requirement" to tow half a dozen horses a thousand miles uphill for a weekend hack with no electricity available anywhere en route and then make the return journey uphill as well.
Sorry, but no.
EVs, and especially BEVs are most definitely *not* good for the majority of people.
People that need to travel long distances regularly
People that live in areas where it's very cold for a significant portion of the year
People that don't have an extremely robust power grid
People that don't own their homes
People that don't have large incomes
for those people, BEVs are a terrible solution.
Unfortunately for BEV proponents, there are a not insignificant number of people in one or more of the above categories.
Physics and the laws of thermodynamics will conspire to prevent BEVs from being a useful solution for the previously mentioned individuals, ever.
Someday there may be a viable replacement for our current fossil fuel powered vehicles, but BEVs won't ever be it.
"We can assume that the government won't easily part with its pound of flesh and will still want that missing 7.2p/mile from somewhere, tax or road pricing, etc., (especially considering the extra wear & tear on the roads that EVs with a 30-50% weight penalty cause). That would make the EV cost 8.9p/mile at your home off-peak price, or a colossal 22p/mile at public charge rates, and it's pretty clear that very low off-peak rates won't last if overnight EV charging becomes the new peak period. You can't justify an EV on cost grounds alone."
FUD territory much?
a) EVs don't need to weigh more than an ICE vehicle, but *all* cars are grossly overweight nowadays.
We seriously need to have a two part VED: an emissions rate (based on point of use emissions) and a mass rate (based on the cube of axle weight) - you pay both, so a heavy car would pay more than a light one, and a more polluting car would pay more than a less polluting one. Of course we could bypass that and just tax petrol/diesel properly (since that also factors in actual usage). Let's go one further and do mass*mileage, so that that's proportional to use as well.
b) Who said the only justification was price?
They are substantially better for the local environment, and the global environment.
They are also going to form a massive part of the grid in the future, we've got a *long* way to go before EV charging significantly affects the duck curve - and the result will be a flatter curve, or one that actively responds to the grid conditions. So no, overnight won't become "peak", the grid will operate more dynamically, since there will be substantially more "delayed usage" loads which can be intelligently scheduled. V2G will also be able to support the grid at times of high demand, reducing the demand for peaker plants - and therefore reducing the cost of *all* energy.
In the same way that you don't care when your hot water tank gets heated, so long as you have hot water when you open the tap an EV owner doesn't care which of the 23 hours the average vehicle is parked are used for charging - frankly it doesn't matter for most which *day* charging happens - so long as there is sufficient charge for daily usage. Obviously there are exceptions - when I have a long journey to make I'll ensure that I have a full charge by that morning, but I can usually say that days in advance.
FUD territory much?
Where? The figures are correct.
EVs don't need to weigh more than an ICE vehicle, but *all* cars are grossly overweight nowadays.
You know of a 100kWh battery that weighs the same as 50l of petrol? EVs are generally 300-500kg heavier than the equivalent ICE model. I do agree that all vehicles are excessively heavy, but that's at least in part due to obligatory safety equipment and "driver aids".
We seriously need to have a two part VED: an emissions rate (based on point of use emissions) and a mass rate (based on the cube of axle weight) - you pay both, so a heavy car would pay more than a light one, and a more polluting car would pay more than a less polluting one.
If you're going the be that specific, then perhaps there should also be a tax based on the environmental costs of production, like mining minerals and rare metals, maybe on a reducing basis with age over the expected life of the car as the production "eco damage" is amortised? Won't be great for EVs, though.
Of course, beware of unexpected consequences. Paris has just brought in punitive parking charges to penalise SUV drivers, but they included a weight-based element. Even allowing BEVs to have 400kg more than ICE, it's still causing a lot of upset because many EVs are caught. It'll be cheaper to buy a fairly recent ICE vehicle than an EV if you need to park in Paris.
So no, overnight won't become "peak"
I didn't say it would, I said that off-peak will disappear. The total UK energy use for road transport is much the same as current electricity use. Once that all comes from the grid, in evenings and overnight as people come home from work & charge, the demand curve will flatten and there will be no need to bribe people to use electricity overnight. It'll be the same price all day.
the grid will operate more dynamically, since there will be substantially more "delayed usage" loads which can be intelligently scheduled. V2G will also be able to support the grid at times of high demand, reducing the demand for peaker plants - and therefore reducing the cost of *all* energy.
I admire your optimism, but I believe it is misplaced. People like certainty and consistency, and I can't see V2G being popular, it's too altruistic for mass adoption.
so long as you have hot water when you open the tap
Which is why people are delighted to rip-out old hot water tanks and storage heaters, to use gas combi boilers instead, there's a guarantee of heat on-demand, no worries about whether the tank will have been heated enough. It's a question of perception.
"You know of a 100kWh battery that weighs the same as 50l of petrol?"
Is that not a false equivalence?
Should be: 100kWh battery (+motors) that weighs the same as a 2.0 engine plus gearbox, drivetrain fuel-tank & fuel, Shirley?
Also do you know any electrical drive train that is only 30% efficient?
(Of the 50l of petrol, only 15 of those litres will actually be converted to motive power. Pretty ridiculous in the 21st century, no?)
No-one needs a 100kWh battery in their car - you end up spending the extra energy just moving the battery, without a significant gain for the vehicle (and indeed a loss to the vehicle, since it costs more to run and handles worse). We need to move towards having sensible sized vehicles (preferably including many more pedal cycles and much improved and protected pedestrian access) rather than trying to load as much battery as possible into a vehicle that will only use 20% of it 360 days of the year, and might use the rest on maybe two or four long journeys.
You seem to have forgotten everything else on a car which is needed to make the petrol do anything useful, from a heavy lead acid battery (can be replaced by a lightweight 12v system on an EV), no starter, alternator, engine block, gearbox, much reduced prop shafts, cooling, fluids... Battery energy density is increasing year on year - and it's already quite possible to convert an ICE to EV without increasing the weight, or even changing the weight distribution (though you can if you want to, you'll just need to change the suspension as well).
"perhaps there should also be a tax based on the environmental costs of production, like mining minerals and rare metals,"
Fine - Of course we should also be taxing based on the environmental costs of production of oils, petrol etc... and those are several orders of magnitude more damaging.
"I said that off-peak will disappear."
It won't - it will become dynamic though, in fact for many of the best deals it already is. I don't choose when I charge my car, I just plug it in when I get home and it's dealt with by the energy company. My "Off peak" rate applies a bit overnight, and also at any time they choose to charge the car. That means that they no longer need to curtail renewables, because they have a flexible demand which they can use to match generation capacity. I don't think we'll get to a perfectly flexible grid for a long time yet, but there is no reason that we can't take significant strides in that direction.
V2G is already popular amongst those who can do it. With a CCS equipped vehicle I can't yet, but I do use my home battery for 2G operation, and I am rewarded for doing so when the grid most needs the support. In fact the DFS is already proving that there is about 400MW of flexible demand already available, that's an entire power station that doesn't have to be warmed up and run, just by a slight change in behaviour.
Yes, there was a phase of our history when we got rid of tanks and installed _massively_ overpowered boilers so that we could get infinite hot water on demand. It's not an efficient way to get heat, and it comes with a number of risks locally as well as globally. Modern systems are going back to having efficiency as an important design requirement, and since all you actually care about is whether you get hot water when you turn the tap, a hot water system can be designed to do that very effectively and efficiently.
So yes - FUD throughout.
No-one needs a 100kWh battery in their car
Well, you could argue that no-one needs a car at all, there are countries in the world where private car ownership isn't viable. I would not want to live in such a country.
On the other hand, if you want an EV with similar range to an ICE vehicle, you do need a battery of that general size.
You seem to have forgotten everything else on a car which is needed to make the petrol do anything useful
Not at all, but most of them have equivalents in an EV, you may not have a gearbox but you still have a transmission. You need a heat pump for heating/AC and various things which are driven from the engine in an ICE vehicle need electrical equivalents.
The simple check is to compare the weights of equivalent cars, for example an ICE VW Golf weights in at around 1250kg, the e-Golf at 1540kg.
and it's already quite possible to convert an ICE to EV
With equivalent performance? Citation Required.
V2G is already popular amongst those who can do it.
There will always be fanbois. I admire your optimism if you think it will ever work for the whole driving population. It is naive to assume that a V2G grid will be run for the benefits of the consumers rather than the suppliers. Once your vehicle becomes a resource on their grid, rather than a customer who pays for supply, they will decide when you get power, and how much. Not my idea of motoring.
"Well, you could argue that no-one needs a car at all, there are countries in the world where private car ownership isn't viable. I would not want to live in such a country."
Agreed. Good public transportation network are for the plebs. Not us 1st worlders, eh? What shitholes they must be. Los Angeles is a haven in comparison.
Yes you could argue that no-one needs a car - and whilst I think the country would be a far more pleasant place if we focussed on the people rather than the inanimate lumps of metal that we seem to idolise I'm not actually advocating for that. We have, for the worse, built society around the assumption that everyone has a car and will use it for basically every journey.
Citation for mass: ECC in wales... plenty of conversions which massively improve classic cars without changing their weight. Any conversion (like the eGolf, or anything from ECC) is going to be a less efficient way of packaging an EV, since it assumes a hulking great engine which has substantial cooling requirements.
Yes things like power steering need a motor, but the electrified versions are already lighter than the old hydraulic ones.
You're obsessed with nonsensical range, and the assumption that a larger battery makes a longer range vehicle, there are diminishing returns on that particular investment.
The *vast* majority (99+%) of car journeys are under a hundred miles - 80% of them are under 10 miles, 94% are under 25 miles.
Once you have a range of 200 miles then you're looking at three hours on the motorway, time for a short safety/loo break. That's ~60 kWh, which at 300kW will take 12 minutes to replenish, that's pretty much the time it takes to go and have a wee at most service stations, and is a decent short break from driving. Leaving 10% gap above and below that 60kWh and you're still under 75kWh for a long range battery.
"V2G is already popular amongst those who can do it.
There will always be fanbois. I admire your optimism if you think it will ever work for the whole driving population. It is naive to assume that a V2G grid will be run for the benefits of the consumers rather than the suppliers. Once your vehicle becomes a resource on their grid, rather than a customer who pays for supply, they will decide when you get power, and how much. Not my idea of motoring."
You're a complete "I don't want to see the future" idiot if you think that we're going to see energy companies decide that you won't get power - though there might be an option (as there is with industrial contracts) to reduce your load on certain days.
They already make decisions based on my needs - I say that I want, for example, 20% by tomorrow morning, and they decide when to supply it - not whether to, but when. Given a different integration I might say "I always want the battery at 80% capacity at the start of each day", and the supply would be arranged to provide that energy at the cheapest times of the night.
I can quite easily see a situation where I say "I want between 50% and 90% at the start of each day... and then I plug in each evening and if the grid is expensive for a few nights not much charge will be added, the car will drop towards that 50%, and get topped up the bare minimum to meet the stated need - but then there's a really cheap day and the car gets charged to 90%, meaning that the next time the grid is loaded, the car gradually drops charge, saving everybody money - that kind of slightly longer term thinking is absolutely within the current capacity of operators, takes basically no effort on the part of the user, allows for cheaper energy for them, and actually cheaper energy for everyone, by avoiding having to fire up peaker plants.
Anyone who thinks that V2G will be a "mass control" mechanism has been infected with the Gates chip in their moon landing vaccine. It will be a way to get more value out of an asset that spends 23 hours a day stored, unused.
"I can quite easily see a situation where I say "I want between 50% and 90% at the start of each day... and then I plug in each evening and if the grid is expensive for a few nights not much charge will be added, the car will drop towards that 50%, and get topped up the bare minimum to meet the stated need - but then there's a really cheap day and the car gets charged to 90%,"
This is where a smarter grid would really be a big advantage. It can also mean that when there's a huge supply of wind, rates can drop encouraging people to charge, having programmed their car to take advantage and be plugged in, rather than turning the turbines out of the wind due to oversupply issues. It could even create services that look at the weather and other factors for the coming week and program the EV's of customers signed up for the service to be in a position to take advantage of cheap rates. One can always push the "charge now" button if they need to. All of this would mean better use of the installed infrastructure.
"On the other hand, if you want an EV with similar range to an ICE vehicle, you do need a battery of that general size."
No, you don't. EV's don't need a maximum range similar to an ICEV. My petrol car can go ~8 hours on a full tank. My bladder and blood sugar can't. The overwhelming majority of the time I have no need for as much as half a tank of petrol for a day's work. I like having a tank as large as I have due to it minimizing my need of filling up more frequently which is a hugely parasitic task against waking time. It's not 5 minutes, it's far longer unless I want to pay the top price and pull right up to a pump without waiting. If I'm planning a trip where I want a full tank when I leave, I need to plan for that the day before and stop to top up which can be at least a 15 minute time waster rather than a generous 1 minute plugging in the night before. I expect that plugging and unplugging is one minute so even if I could refuel my car in 5 minutes, that's 5x the amount of time required and usually more.
I commented much further back that GM might have replaced the recalled Bolt packs with a lighter one (didn't make that entirely clear) since the new cells were more energy dense rather than increasing the capacity by 10% through filling up the container. A lighter car is more efficient. Bigger and bigger battery packs have diminishing returns since very few people would use them to empty often enough to make lugging around the added mass worthwhile.
I can do a full day of field service work within the range of most current EV's. That's me sorted 90% of the time. That last 10% can't be accommodated with a bit of time and a bit of planning. Paying for double the battery capacity to get me past another 6% of my needs is silly since the battery in an EV is the largest component cost. This is the same reasoning why the lighting fixtures in the family bath aren't LED. The cost of specialty lamps to fit what's there or what it would cost to replace the fixtures is far more than what I'd save in electricity over the next several years given how much that bath is used.
I'm glad that *you* don't need a maximum range similar to that of an ICE, sadly most of the rest of us aren't in that boat.
I'm not sure about you, but hitting the head and grabbing a candy bar can be done in less than 5 min. How much of a charge would that add to my range?
In less than 5 min. I can completely refill my tank adding 1000-1500 km to my range. Of course with the increased range of an ICE I don't have the need to do that as often as I would in a BEV. I can even put a couple of 5 gal. petrol tanks in the back for extending my range when I have to travel to those places where there aren't any petrol stations. Can I do that with a BEV?
Your mistake is one that many BEV proponents make, just because BEVs work in your particular situation, you just assume that everyone else is similarly positioned.
I hate to break it to you, but they aren't.
"The last time that petrol/diesel prices in the UK were "fully" two thirds of the current prices was nearly 20 years ago."
I did the calculations in 2020, when diesel was ~£1.10 (that's the spot price I have listed on my calculations). I don't actually keep a particularly close eye on fuel prices except when people tell me how expensive EVs are...
RAC figures tell me it's currently £1.50, which I agree is only 36% more, but it was only a couple of months ago it was £1.63, which is a 48% uplift, and a year ago it was £1.70, which is 54% more. Last year's average was 43% higher than my recorded baseline spot price.
Meanwhile my off peak electricity price hasn't really moved. It was 7p/kWh, and it's now 7.5p/kWh, a mere 7% shift.
Oh - and the other thing I didn't mention - that fuel cost was ~40% of my total costs*, so 40% of my costs went up by, let's say 40%...
The electrical cost was 10% of my total costs, so that 7% increase only applies to 10% of my costs.
That's a "total cost" increase of 16% from fuel price rises, or less than 1% from electricity.
For us, it was a fairly easy decision, and that decision has become significantly better over time.
I spent well under £350 for all my "fuel" last year, as opposed to over £2k (even if I assume £1.40 it's still over £2k) - yes, I also sacrifice my PIP mobility, currently £71/w, which is still about the same as my annual costs in the 15 years to 2020 - and I suspect inflation might have pushed those costs up as well.
Yes, I know Vimes Boots applies in spades, and my leasing arrangements are better than is commercially available. But I was comparing ICE vs EV from motability against the ICE we already had, and the EV was the winner in terms of cost and predictability. The cost has shifted even further towards the EV over time - and as and when I get some bidirectional charging, it will swing even further.
* Total costs based on 15 years of servicing and other garage receipts, warranty, insurance, excise duty, breakdown cover, vehicle replacement...
A lot of the early EV hype was based on "these are only going to get better!" - and in the first few years, they did. Better range, better driving experience, better charging, lower costs...
But then, rather than continuing that cycle, the improvements have noticeably slowed. Range is good, but not great (and occasionally, actually lousy). Battery technology has stopped delivering significant weight loss or price reductions. Driving experience is still dominated by the massive weight. Costs are.. not actually magically free as early evangelists claimed. Depreciation is pretty much the same as for any other car.
And the bottom line is that once you go beyond the core market of enthusiastic early adopters willing to pay a premium on an already premium product, you find out that the majority of the market wants a cheap and easy way to get to work and the shops. Worse still, most people live in cities where a car *of any sort* is a less and less attractive option.
Lots of people are emotionally invested in various of the players in the industry, and want to see "winners" and "losers", or magic answers to environmental issues - but the reality is that the incumbents (like Ford and Toyota) and the newcomers (like BYD and Tesla) are going to continue to thrash around trying to beat the laws of physics and exploring new ideas for keeping us mobile for a long while yet. I'll bet good money that battery EVs in the form that are currently being sold and developed will almost certainly not be the dominant "answer" in ten years time.
"But then, rather than continuing that cycle, the improvements have noticeably slowed."
Not if you ask the makers. They'll tell you about all of the new features they have now. Not that I find any of them useful and likely to be pain points just after the warranty ends. I get the feeling that many makers have/had stopped trying to make real improvements and are in a bulking-up mode to get they hype factor and price both up. Folding mirrors don't add any benefit to me and neither does a glass roof. Flush mounted electric door latches I find to be more of a problem than something that would be nice to have. It was freezing this morning and will be for the next couple of days. Having my door handles iced up and stuck would be a huge annoyance.
I see above nobody will buy EVs because they are expensive, and i see above that 2nd hand EVs are going to have lost much or all or too much of their value.
Should you talk about that amongst yourselves?
Meanwhile in the last year I have seen one new petrol station in 6000 miles, can think of three that have closed within 50 miles of here, and see charge places popping up like a rash.
You'll be able to make a living selling petroleum, for a while.
Ford has only themselves to blame.
They KNEW their Stealerships were jacking up the prices to sometimes tens of thousands over MSRP and screwing over customers as hard as they could.
They didn't clamp down on it and let it happen and this is the blowback.
Ford Dealerships became almost legendary for insane price gouging on customers and being about as dishonest as is humanly possible.
Meanwhile you could buy a Tesla on their website at the price listed and pick it up or have it delivered.
No wonder consumers didn't want to get the Ford rip-off / lying / cheating / high pressure treatment.
Folks who would buy an EV probably aren't going to put up with that B.S.
The last vehicle I bought, I didn't want a full EV but wanted a plug in hybrid or a decent hybrid.
I was pretty pissed of about getting ripped off by a big brand name dealership in trying to order one (basically took a big deposit and then probably sold the vehicle to someone else and gave me endless run arounds and still refuse to return the deposit)
So I went out and bought a brand I'd never have thought about before, because they actually were decent, sold the vehicle at MSRP and were zero pressure and had the vehicle ready to be picked up when promised.
Ford can blame others all they want, but they have only themselves and their own Stealerships to blame.
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