Is electric really the answer?

[madmax]

What astonishes me in this era of 'enlightenment' is diesel trains sitting at stations for inordinate lengths of time with their engines running. I was waiting at a platform in Leeds the other day and actually had to move to another platform as the fumes from the train were unbearable. I stood for at least twenty minutes expecting it to move off at any moment but it was still sitting their belching out black smoke when my train (actually electric) came and went.

Maybe they need to keep their heaters on in readiness for passengers but it's always struck me as odd that they're just ticking over and choking up the station - can't be good.

Anyway, back to cars................sorry - should be in the 'What made you shake your head today' posting! 😄

[C8RKH]

The Kia EV6 is one of the best looking (in my opinion of course) BEV's on the market. End of last year, used models were selling for more/the same as new ones, due to the long waiting lists.

Now, thay are effectively half price!

EV6 with 9k miles is now down to £25k!  An absolute bonkers bargain!

Maybe now is the right time to buy a BEV, just not a new one!!!

I've even seen a brand new, in the box one, with a £5k off list discount. That was unheard of in the whole of 2023.

[exeterjeep]

https://cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish/bombshell-decision-by-watchdog-rules-that-electric-cars-cannot-be-described-as-zero-emissions/297375

Bombshell decision by watchdog rules that electric cars cannot be described as ‘zero emissions’

The decision has infuriated green car campaigners, including former Top Gear host Quentin Willson, who described the ruling as ‘bizarre and very unhelpful’.

[C8RKH]

It may have upset Quentin, but then the truth often upsets people!

[JimmytheTurbo]

Geoff buys cars has a vid talking about the EU has a plan to scrap all cars over 15 years old to reduce emissions. 

Like all of us know the most emissions and cost to the planet come from making a car. 

We all know these institutions have been nobbled by cash from the motor industry to get people to buy more cars.

We all know its horse shite but yet it goes on

[Escape]

@JimmytheTurbo that story has been exposed as fake news. The actual EU proposal is about the disposal of cars over 15 years, to increase recycling in Europe instead of scrapping or exporting. But only when they reach their end of life, nothing about forced scrapping. Of course, history does show us scrappage schemes can result in a loss of classic cars.

As for the non-zero emissions of EVs, it's about time that lie was exposed! All those manufacturers campaigning with zero emission should be sued for false advertising.
I'm surprised Wilson doesn't agree, he was my favorite presenter on Top Gear and later Fifth Gear. I should say favorite male presenter, let's not forget miss B-H. 🙂

[C8RKH]

Anyway to keep on topic or one of the Moderators will be getting their orange hi-viz jackets on and giving us the usual bollocking....

Every new home needs to have two, not one, EV charging points (can be 1 EV charger with dual guns) to ensure it is future proofed as we shift to forcing everyone into electric cars.

But on each new estate, they also need to provide a secure store for the lock-up of e-bikes and the like. So they can be securely and safely recharged away from the home. The number of e-bike and e-scooter fires in homes is scary.

[Kimbers]

As the Govt start to force people into EV's you will see a huge increase in price of having your own charger. One of my neighbours just paid £4000 for a Tesla one! 

Edited February 8 by Bibs

[Bibs]

 

[C8RKH]

6 minutes and 20 seconds in Harry makes some very insightful comments re manufacturers who have rushed down the all electric route. He is right when he says that manufacturers took their eyes off the ball, and stopped thinking about what customers wanted.

Remind us of any manufacturers?

We have an opportunity right now that our politicians and the House of Lords are in danger of completely screwing up. Again.

We have them clamouring for the reintroduction of BEV tax breaks and subsidies. Nooooo............

We cannot and must not throw any more subsidies, which is basically tax payers money, at the problem. All that does is to encourage manufacturers to continue to focus on the upper premium end (again, remind us of anyone?) and produce cars that are in the £80-140k price bracket that is way outside of the average person's affordability.

Instead, we need to focus on the infrastructure to support BEV's.

That means encouraging (but not subsidising) charge point operators to install more public chargers to increase capacity, through making it easier from a planning and network connectivity perspective.

That means enforcing reliability standards on public EV chargers, so they are properly monitored, maintained, and highly available.

That means giving local authorities additional funding to increase capacity in public car parks, and allowing them to revenue share with CPO's to increase their operating revenues.

By doing this, manufacturers will be forced to invest in more efficient, lighter, and cheaper BEVs that consumers can actually afford to buy on mass. And when they do buy them, the charging infrastructure will be there to ensure they are convenient and cheap to run.

I do sometimes wonder if the House of Lords and our politicians ever see beyond the end of the lunch table they are being hosted at. They do seem to only think about, plan, and legislate for the time between those wonderful hosted lunches with lobbyists and interested parties.

[Kimbers]

I spoke to a member of a  "Discussion Group" of Automotive experts, who are tasked by the Government at looking at car related Policy.

What I find laughable is that firstly they (the Govt think tank) insisted there were 2 Environmental activists/Specialists on the group who knew nothing about cars or what people want and according to my contact "have never worked a day in their lives". 

And secondly, to agree with your point above, when they said about tax breaks and making EV driving cheaper they were told they were looking at it the wrong way and they didn't want ways to make motoring cheaper, they wanted ways to make using ICE cars more expensive, but that wouldn't be "obvious" like putting the price of petrol/Diesel up etc.

TBH it's why I stopped working with HMRC and Govt think tanks because when I was advising on Company car tax benefits they always wanted us to look at increasing taxes rather than making more efficient cars cheaper.

[ChrisJ]

Harry wasn't very complimentary about the Eletre's range.

[mdavies]

Not to plan.

If this report - from SEetc - reflects reality, it doesn't appear to be good reading for those who placed the future of Lotus in the expensive, luxury, EV market.

https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/geely-owned-luxury-carmaker-lotus-china-revival-falls-short

 

[mg4lotus]

Honda are planning affordable EVs, but you will have to wait until the end of the decade for them and obviously it doesn't say what affordable actually means.

Honda plans radical new entry level electric cars by 2030 | Autocar

[C8RKH]

It needs more time, but it was a high risk strategy, and the results delivered from those are usually binary, either a win, or a fail.

Geely pushed Lotus into a full EV strategy during the "hype curve" of EV's. We're in the trough of disillusionment right now, and haven't hit the bottom, but we will climb out of it, but it will take time.

EV market expectations are currently sitting at 30-40% of total car sales, will be achieved by BEV's. Hydrogen, PHEV and synthetic fuel cars are expected to make up the rest.

The future today, is looking a lot different to the future that was predicted, a few years ago.

Geely's overall strategy to focus on BEV must be being tweaked in the background.

[Dave Eds]

On 05/02/2024 at 12:08, C8RKH said:

 

So, because no one wants to address the elephant in the room re population growth

I'm pretty sure the Chinese had a good go in 2019 

[C8RKH]

That ^^^^ in the scheme of things wasn't even a drop in the bath, let alone the ocean.

[C8RKH]

Small PHEV's, that will be used for local trips, especially in towns and cities, will be a great answer. The battery will take care of 98% of the local journeys, and, when a longer journey is required, thye petrol engine will provide and reduce any range anxiety.

We need sensible solutions, not a focus on short term bias for ONE solution.

[ChrisJ]

and the petrol engine in the PHEV needs to be able to charge the battery (so breaking the need for the charging away from home) - which seems to be the case more often.

[JimmytheTurbo]

On 08/02/2024 at 15:48, C8RKH said:

to ensure it is future proofed

hahaha funny 🤣

I remeber a guy totally fitting his home out with cables and wires to future proof it. About the next week everthing went wifi!

Then again I remeber betamax and comador 64 too

[C8RKH]

25 minutes ago, JimmytheTurbo said:

I remeber a guy totally fitting his home out with cables and wires to future proof it. About the next week everything went wifi!

And yet even today for my PC, I use a wired connection as it is faster, and more stable  than wifi for sim racing etc.

My point was having a single EV charge point won't work in the future when it is possible each home will have two, possibly more, EVs.

You are right though Jimmy in that the tech around EVs is moving quickly, and what is the preferred, or state of the art now, won't be in two years time.  That's part of the reason why I would not even dream of shelling out £100k, or more, on an EV right now. Once the next gen of battery tech and technology comes out, the current stuff will be unappealing and the depreciation even more scary than it is now. Fine if you can buy using salary sacrifice, but it's still a hell of a sacrifice.

[USAndretti42]

On 05/02/2024 at 12:08, C8RKH said:

Today, the infant and child mortality rate is extremely low, so why are people having 3, 4, 5 or more kids? After the second world war, the population started to explode as (1) we had killed off a lot of our your lads in the war, and (2) advances in health, clean water, and nutrition meant that more of our young survived. From around 1960, the population exploded in the UK, but from a global perspective, it more than DOUBLED to over 8bn in just over 60 years!

The growth of population, globally, is the biggest, single, contributor to the impact on climate. I don't hear anyone advocating a ban on the number of kids people can produce. But, if they really wanted to "fix the climate" that's what they should be doing.

In many of the wealthy countries the UK included, people overall are not having enough children to maintain the population.  Kids can't afford houses so easily so work longer before having children compounded by getting into serious relationships later in life and starting to have children later. This is a problem with an aging population as going people are needed to support and care for old fogies like me.

[C8RKH]

@USAndretti42 - that may well be the case, however the rest of the world is more than making up for it.

Go and look at the population growth over the past 75 years. It should, absolutely, scare the shit out of you.

The reason house prices are too high is two things:

(1) our generation have forced them up as we "needed" the capital growth to fund our lifestyles - funny how we now moan as it has affected our kids.

(2) property developers are hoarding land and releasing it more slowly for building as it holds back supply which forces year on year new house price inflation.

There is no automatic right to "own" house. In fact, in both the US and the UK the thought of house ownership for the masses has probably only been a thing since the fifties. Prior to that, people generally rented.

But then our generation, in the UK, fooked up the rental market too. We got greedy and started to release the equity in our pensions and homes, to buy a second, third or fourth house for renting. Or we used that money to buy up old "do'er uppers" to maximise rental yields, returns etc.

Inheritance. House price rises and early access to pension pots, all fuelled the greed.

As I said, no one has a right to own a house. Most rented. So get back to renting - but that's not cheap anymore as interest rates has risen and housing regulations have become ever more onerous.

However, none of this is the issue. The issue is, that in reality, there are just too many people on the planet, for the planet to be able to support the rising per capita consumption. Convince me this is not the REAL issue?

[USAndretti42]

As the poorer countries get richer, their rates of population growth will probably decline and the populations will start to drop. The maxi.I'm expected population is around 10.4 billion.  Population growth rates have been reducing since the 60's.

That's the good news but, as you point out, richer populations consume more resources and I have no idea when or what the maximum resource consumption will be.

[Kimbers]

On 09/02/2024 at 21:48, C8RKH said:

It needs more time, but it was a high risk strategy, and the results delivered from those are usually binary, either a win, or a fail.

 

By the time 2030 comes around I feel that everything will be different. The Govts around the world are realising 2 things. 

1. They don't have the money to build a suitable infrastructure and the Power companies don't have the will as the demand isn't there.

2. A mix of price of the new car and charge cost, desirability, usability and general pig headedness of Car drivers means the majority just don't want or can't afford an EV.

I know I have upset people before saying the figures are being mickied but they are. Once again in January, to hit their targets many manufacturers pre reg'd EV's or forced dealers and employees into them. One huge OEM cancelled their company car policy on ICE cars and everyone, including regional managers doing 500 miles a day, now have to have EV's. Which they revolve 3 monthly! I know one employee who quit because there was no increase in salary to make up for the extra 2-3 hours a day he has to work which he spends at Charging stations.

Now there are large amounts of evidence that many countries are fudging their infrastructure targets. We have all seen Service stations with charge points that are out of order as they don't have the power to use them (Car Wow did a test and 2 out of every 5 were either not working or not connected) here in the UK. But many Eastern European ones don't exist or have been hacked by locals for free Electricity. Even Italy, which apparently has 36,000 charge points, reckons less than half actually either exist or don't work. The majority being on major routes and in Cities, so if you go out into rural areas you have no hope to fill up!

A very interesting article here about Italy. And shows you how much pressure is being put on manufacturers to build EV's. Surely the penny must have started to drop with people in charge by now? 

https://electrek.co/2024/01/24/stellantis-slams-italy-for-not-backing-evs-putting-fiat-at-risk/