Is electric really the answer?

[jep]

EV sales were initially boosted by businesses receiving massive tax breaks to buy one (or more). Private customers followed with Government subsidies, though I still can't fathom anyone buying an expensive EV from taxed income. 

As the subsidies fall away, the inevitable is happening.  

If you really want a luxury EV, go in with your eyes open. I'm sure it will be great but the capital depreciation is most likely to be massive.  

Justin

[oneshot]

Vauxhall's latest advert is interesting. It starts with "think that electric is more expensive than ICE?" they then go on to say you can have an EV for the same monthly payments as an ICE car. 

The catch......

ICE payments over 4 years
EV payments over 5 years

[Kimbers]

Are they guaranteeing the price of Electricity then? Otherwise it's twice as expensive to do the same mileage filling up at a filling station! 

And I notice TESLA are offering cheap home fitted chargers! Yours for only £6400!

[exeterjeep]

Not that I'm knocking EV's........

https://cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish/fire-service-has-reason-to-believe-that-bristol-car-dealership-blaze-was-started-by-an-ev/301784

 

Fire service has ‘reason to believe’ that Bristol car dealership blaze was started by an EV

Huge blaze at car dealership may have been started by an EV – fire service

Smoke was seen billowing from Drive Vauxhall Bristol North yesterday morning

Avon and Fire Rescue Service says an investigation is ongoing

 

[C8RKH]

21 minutes ago, exeterjeep said:

Not that I'm knocking EV's........

The fact you think you need to say that is a damning indictment of how we have to carefully walk a tightrope so as not to upset the fanboys too much.

I am sure we will get reported a "final" view on whether an EV was to blame or not. Personally, I don't think it matters and should be newsworthy - a car (battery, petrol, or diesel) goes on fire at a dealership. Shit happens. What is newsworthy is the "impact" based upon how the car is fuelled, if that makes sense. So more intense fire, higher temperatures, longer burn time and the need for 3, or 4, times the fire appliances and man power when EV's are involved.

Not knocking your post by the way.

 

 

[C8RKH]

https://thedriven.io/2024/05/11/lotus-cuts-nearly-50000-off-price-of-its-first-electric-suv-before-deliveries-begin/

[mdavies]

Has the very recently announced CATL Shenxing Plus battery been mentioned here? AFAIK not.

Changes quite a lot of EV considerations I'd have thought, putting it mildly. One report says China is apparently to ship cars with that battery later this year.  Apart from having jumped ahead with the tech, it seems China alone has large scale access to all the minerals needed for the battery. Geely is Chinese I understand - perhaps not quite as bad a base for Lotus after all...........

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/17/china-revolutionary-electric-car-battery-charge-10-minutes/

 

[Kimbers]

If people aren't buying EV's it makes absolutely no difference no matter what companies make, even a 10 minute charge. It takes me less than a minute to fill my car and I don't have to wait at the pump.  

One of our company car users (only one with an EV) found themselves 200 miles away and 40 mile charge. They stopped at a large Motorway services to find 5 charge points out of 10 working. and cars waiting at each.

Knowing there was another services 20 miles (half their range) they decided to go there. 10 miles into their drive their 40 miles had gone to 20 at motorway speeds. They made it with 4 miles left. To find 3 working charge points because the site didn't have enough electricity to service all of them and even more people waiting. To make it worse none were superfast because the site didn't have the capacity. The whole debacle added 3 hours to their trip in the end and they are now handing back their EV. 

It makes absolutely no difference how long a battery can be charged to 80% because you need the charging points that can do it! Do you know how many fast chargers there are in the UK? 18% of those fitted. How many are the New Superfast chargers? less than 5%. 

Figures we see in the industry say to even get within 50% of the infrastructure as we have for ICE cars, well over a £trillion needs to be spent. And that isn't going to happen.

Roll on 2030 when the Govt have to revise plans and open the market to proper cars or lose massive swathes of their GDP due to the unsuitability of what they are forcing people to drive.

[mdavies]

".......... CATL’s latest announcement last month, that it has developed a new battery, the Shenxing Plus, capable of ranges of 600 miles between recharges."   (Telegraph)

Ready access to en route recharging is clearly important at present - but the range quoted above - yes, some kind of max I expect - would likely enable many full trips without a recharge en route.

PS: Re anti-EV points, no need to make for me. I'm very far from an EV enthusiast!  But tech marches on. 

[Kimbers]

Believe it when I see it mate. Currently the technology won't allow that sort of miles within the confines of a car sized vehicle. But we will see.

[Escape]

More importantly, there is no viable technology to rapidly charge such large batteries. The currents involved and power demands on the grid are too high (up to 1000A and 600kW). Doable for a few chargers, but not for the large numbers necessary to support a fleet of EVs needing to recharge along the way.

[C8RKH]

9 minutes ago, Escape said:

there is no viable technology to rapidly charge such large batteries

We had this argument two, three, four years ago. But don't worry, as then, the fan boys will be along shortly to tell you that you are wrong, and the technology is just around the corner and the Grid will miraculously have the ability to cope without years and years and billions and billions of pounds of infrastructure investments and upgrades. Just don't mention the environmental damage and cost of all those upgrades. The copper, metals an d other raw materials needed. The millions of cubic metres of concrete that will need to be poured. Etc etc...  Shush. Quiet now boy.

Don't be such a dullard @Escape. The future is a battery for everything. They'll be ever recyclable by some future tech someone is working on somewhere. The environment will not be harmed and we'll soon forget the children and communities enslaved by the Batterymeisters, and the devastating impact of the open cast mining and sea bed trawling for the rare earth minerals will be but figments of our imaginations..

[NG5]

Don't worry about the battery technology, there is not going to be enough electricity to charge them anyway, the AI data centers are going to hog it all.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj5ll89dy2mo

 

[C8RKH]

But once the AI takes over, us humans will be farmed for our electric neuro energy, so we'll have no use for EV's. We'll become one big grid living in some soup. Neo told me all about it. The future is green...

 

Edited May 21 by Bravo73

[williamtherebel]

@C8RKH Soylent Green?? 

[drdoom]

Just a bit off topic but thought I'd share a point concerning ethanol as climate panacea. We regularly watch the HBO program, Last Week Tonight, with John Oliver for comic but pointed insights into the broadest of topics. There, in a piece covering the impacts of massive scale corn crop cultivation in America it was noted that the overall carbon footprint of ethanol thereby derived is 24% higher than that of petrol.

[Escape]

It is known... Ethanol or other biofuels produced from byproducts or waste can be a good thing, but once you start actively farming to produce it, there's all kinds of side effects and the net result is not so beneficial at all. It's the same with using wood pellets for heat or electricity production. Fine when it's only shavings etc from the timber industry, not so much when you start cutting down forests just to grind them up into pellets. 😞  

[Geoffers]

All goes back to one thing, too many people on the planet. Until this problem is tackled these other problems are just going to get worse & worse until something catastrophic happens. Fortunately I probably won't be around then.

[jonwat]

Car makers slash EV prices by as much as £14,000 to boost demand

[C8RKH]

Because if they don't they'll be fined £15k per car, so why not?

Edited May 22 by Bravo73

[pete]

Be interesting to see if the problems with EVs is discussed in the coming electioneering 

[C8RKH]

Tritium, a manufacturer of high capacity chargers, sold globally, with a HQ in Australia has folded into insolvency.

Another high profile, highly recognised and hitherto highly regarded EV infrastructure company bites the dust.

I'm expecting we'll see a number of OEM suppliers fall in the next three years as the chargers themselves are a largely commodity, me too, item.

The next to fall will be some of the smaller CPOs as the assumptions used for their financial models comes under renewed stress, with revenues not able to sustain lease and debt costings.

Overall, this is no bad thing, as it will force out some the "get rich quick" operators and allow a more mature, resilient and reliable model to develop.

 

 

[jonwat]

Electric car chargers out of action as thieves cut cables 

[Escape]

That was bound to happen, given the price of copper alone. We've had incidents when scumbags used 4x4s to tear out miles of cable along railway lines. And they knew what they were doing, as they only took the grounded return wires but never touched the live ones (a mistake you only make once), .

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

Admittedly Copper is at an all time high price, but you ain’t going to get much out of a charger, for all the risk and aggro involved.