Is electric really the answer?

[Bibs]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/end-of-the-road-for-tesla-grants-after-surge-in-electric-car-sales-pzs6pdq3x

The govt have dropped the grant to cars under £35k only making most medium sized BEV's no longer eligible and reduced it in size. I'm really not surprised, the amount of money lost in tax revenue to electric car drivers is huge and I personally thought that offering a grant to people who can spend up to £50k on a car anyway was pretty over generous. 

I'm 1,600 miles into the e-niro now and on cheap electric overnight so it's cost me £18 for those miles. That would have been 3 x tanks in the VW at £65 a go of which a large amount was tax so there's another loss for the revenues.

[Barrykearley]

What fantastic news - it’s about time too. Just watch the correction of prices over the next year.

[exeterjeep]

So I will not get the government grant on my Evija then. Have to cancel it then.

[Techyd]

Looking forward to electricity getting more expenses to make up for the lost revenue or perhaps, finally, a mileage based road tax system!

Have to say as well list prices are getting really expensive !

[C8RKH]

On 24/02/2021 at 23:30, pete said:

Hyundai is to replace the electric batteries in nearly 82,000 of its electric vehicles worldwide because of a fire risk. Most of the affected vehicles are Kona cars built between 2018 and 2020, tens of thousands of which have been sold in the UK, vehicle-registration

@Kimbers probably shifted a lot of them!

[Bibs]

1 hour ago, Techyd said:

Looking forward to electricity getting more expenses to make up for the lost revenue or perhaps, finally, a mileage based road tax system!

It'll be roads tolls. Everyone uses electricity for daily life and there's not a way I'm aware of currently (see watt I did there (twice!)) to differentiate domestic/business and vehicle usage.

[Techyd]

You should ‘charge’ a fee for those jokes.

 

my energy providers smart data analysis is quite good at telling what devices I have from the way they consume power (I assume), so maybe possible with electric vehicle charging

[electro_boy]

That would just be a good guess based on normal habits and energy consumption.   Might be OK as a rough guide but I think if you are going to use it to tax people on their EV usage then you'd need to be more accurate.

It's a pretty small step technology wise to enable electricity providers to see when you are charging a EV.  but it would require new tech, eg smart meters and the car charger to talk to the smart meter etc ... 

So would require adoption by everyone for it to work.  I don't see people with existing systems paying extra to "upgrade" their chargers and meters etc ... so I don't know if it will be practical to start charging extra tax on EV usage?

Maybe have a two tier system something similar to water billing, whereby anyone with out a water meter pays a flat fee based on their house size and pipe diameter? and people a meter pay for what they used?

But yes I guess there is a money hole that needs fixing as people shift away from using less petrol and deseil in their cars and more towards electricity.

[Mysterae]

I imagine the government is having a major debate round the table about how to plug the funding gap:

- Mandatory of fitment of trackers to every vehicle, charge per mile, the amount dependant on the vehicle type, size, price, fuel and colour (x2 for red cars).
- Mandatory fitment of smart EV chargers and apply an EV road tax for electric cars.
- Whop up the tax on dinosaur fuels to make up the tax shortfall.
- Make EVERY road a toll road with APNR everywhere.
- Assign the car/driver to their mobile phone and track'n'tax them based on their journey, top-up as you drive.

Don't think about protesting about any of the above either, the latest doozey of bill has that covered.

[exeterjeep]

Putting your new Land Rover on charge....

https://www.am-online.com/news/dealer-news/2021/03/23/new-land-rover-defender-4x4-destroyed-in-dick-lovett-dealership-fire

Does not say what sort of Defender this is PHEV/MHEV or not. But if a LR dealer has issues then what hope for the rest of us.

[Bravo73]

55 minutes ago, exeterjeep said:

Does not say what sort of Defender this is PHEV/MHEV or not. But if a LR dealer has issues then what hope for the rest of us.

I read elsewhere that the number plate had this car registered as a petrol model. 

[exeterjeep]

1 minute ago, Bravo73 said:

I read elsewhere that the number plate had this car registered as a petrol model. 

Our evoque is a petrol MHEV, was thinking of a P300e, which is a PHEV.  

[Bravo73]

Nope, this was was a ‘bog standard’ P300. WU21 BJF  

They were charging the 12V battery!

[electro_boy]

New EV car brand launched by the Geely group:

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/zeekr-launched-geely-new-ev-brand-global-intent

Not much info on it just yet.

Edited March 24, 2021 by electro_boy

[exeterjeep]

Government announces £30m investment in EV and hydrogen technology-

https://www.am-online.com/news/latest-news/2021/03/30/government-announces-30m-investment-in-ev-and-hydrogen-technology

 

Government’s £30m funding will be structured in two parts:

£9.4m for 22 studies to develop innovative automotive technology, including hydrogen vehicles and a lithium extraction plant at St Austell, Cornwall.

A further £22.6m committed by the government-backed Faraday Institution to build on vital research into battery safety and sustainability.

 

£30m does not sound enough to achieve much.

[Bee]

3 hours ago, exeterjeep said:

Government announces £30m investment in EV and hydrogen technology-

https://www.am-online.com/news/latest-news/2021/03/30/government-announces-30m-investment-in-ev-and-hydrogen-technology

 

Government’s £30m funding will be structured in two parts:

£9.4m for 22 studies to develop innovative automotive technology, including hydrogen vehicles and a lithium extraction plant at St Austell, Cornwall.

A further £22.6m committed by the government-backed Faraday Institution to build on vital research into battery safety and sustainability.

 

£30m does not sound enough to achieve much.

Agreed - it's piddly-nothing compared to the sums being thrown around in the industry, investing in electric vehicles. Porsche alone are talking figures of 10 billion euros invested into electrification by 2024. I believe they've thrown 'around' £30 million just into their e fuels project!

Edited March 30, 2021 by Bee

[au-yt]

Coming back to basics, I have just learnt two facts about the production of items using rare  earth,. 1 in the Un processed state, they have a low grade radioactive molecule attached that needs to dealt with so there is considerable radio active waste not to mention the energy required to process the the material

2 estimates are there isn’t enough for all the industries phones computers etc that use the material needs.. cars included. 
 

China has the majority of the deposits......

[C8RKH]

I'm pretty sure pages back in thread I raised all the environmental issues around batteries and was consistently accused of self projecting and spouting pish!  Ho hum...

 

[Bibs]

Can you link to the post?

Anyway, radioactive diamond batteries are the future.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a35970222/radioactive-diamond-battery-will-run-for-28000-years/

What's the worst that can happen

[Bee]

Excellent - in the dystopian future, 20,000+ years from now, I will have something to power my Nokia 3210, the only surviving technological device...

[windymiller]

chicken little the sky is falling in !!! the climate has been changing since its creation and will continue to change and the world and its inhabitants will change to suit the environment simples !! during our roman occupation grapes were grown at the point of hadrians wall, did they have suv's ?? or masses of farting cows ? no the big yellow thing in the sky is on an elipitacal cycle and were now on a closer cycle, anyone that dares oppose "climate change" or simply wishes to debate it is shouted down and shamed, yes its great to find more energy efficient means of transport and heating but what has been happening is taxes rise in the name of green taxes which causes fuel poverty to those that cannot change and thats the elderly, they simply switch off the  heating and put on another layer and dont complain      

[eUKenGB]

Completely agree. I am a firm believer in cutting pollution (of all sorts) and switching to electric powered vehicles is a good way to help with that (whatever some may say), but Climate Change? Nah.

[au-yt]

21 hours ago, C8RKH said:

I'm pretty sure pages back in thread I raised all the environmental issues around batteries and was consistently accused of self projecting and spouting pish!  Ho hum...

 

I was warned not to search for the information as the 

Australian Security Intelligence Organisation would pay me a visit, however the info is available to all online  so no visit yet

 

[C8RKH]

50 minutes ago, eUKenGB said:

Completely agree. I am a firm believer in cutting population

 

[Bibs]

That is without doubt the issue. That bloke in The Matrix was right, we are a virus that takes over the environment. Isn't in the case that 10% of people that have ever lived are alive right now? There's only so much resource on the planet and bad use of it has got us to this.