Adamski wrote:Yes I do think they'll be the future eventually, if we have the charging network, the journey range, and the prices come down. However there's no guarantee it'll be in place for 2035 or 2030.
I think you're letting perfection be the enemy of the good. We're already pretty much there for many people. What kind of journeys are you planning to do? There was a survey 10-15 years ago in the US (where they drive more than the UK) that found 90% of cars never do more than 180(???) miles in a day. 70% of UK households have off-road parking so in principle can charge at home - plus all the people who may not be able to charge at home but can charge at work or wherever. I know people who only ever charged at home all the time that they owned an EV and I've had an ICE car that did just over 250 miles to the tank - it was fine, a bit of a pain but I didn't have the option of filling up with petrol at home.
Not that it's not getting better with every month that goes by, but
exactly how good does the charging network need to be, if most people can charge from home and most people don't do more than their car's range in one day?
And even for the minority doing long distances - where are you planning to go? If you have a car with a range of 250 miles and can charge 80% in 30 minutes as is becoming the standard for that kind of level - you can (just!) do Southampton to Stirling with one charging stop of 30 minutes. I don't know about you, but I need more than half an hour break on a car journey of more than 7 hours, and how often are you doing Southampton to Stirling?
And the fact that BEVs made up 90.2% of new cars in Norway Q1 suggests that for new car-buyers in Norway at least, the basic technology is good enough (but the difference that generous subsidies make suggests that cost is a factor).
So
in what way, exactly, do you think there is a problem with journey range? As for prices - what matters is the price relative to ICE cars, which have gone up quite a bit - and higher interest rates have made leases much more expensive, which combined with incomes being squeezed and the lack of use in lockdown has meant private buyers have been squeezed out of the new car market in general. But something that has changed is that the technology matured a lot about 5 years ago, which means the cars now coming off lease are "good enough" for many people in a way that wasn't true when the second hand market was just Leafs and Zoes. Also those cars have relatively low mileages thanks to lockdown. And while there's been a lot of talk of high depreciation lately, that's mostly been driven by Tesla and seems to be overdone - what I'm hearing is that decent secondhand cars are selling quickly, those £13k offers for scotview's ID.3 sound like they're taking the mick in the current market unless there's something badly wrong with it.
And running costs have come down whilst fossil fuels get ever more expensive. I know someone who was quite a sceptic about EVs until I took him through running costs which worked out just over £100/month less for him with EV over ICE. That kind of saving then meant he could afford the cost of a charger and somewhat higher lease costs and still be quids in - he's gone from being a sceptic to actively looking for an EV, based purely on costs.
Just to give an example,
here's a 70-plate Hyundai Kona for £15k with 29,800 miles on the clock, 150kW charging (ie 32 minutes for 80%), 64kWh for 279 official range, say the real-world range is 80% of that or 223 miles. How often do you drive more than 223 miles in a day? Originally was 10% more expensive than
its petrol sister, but insurance group 24 vs 27 for the petrol, no road tax vs £190 for the petrol, and the petrol version does 32.8mpg officially. Boot's a bit small, not the most exciting to drive, but 0-60 in 7.6s is quicker than a 2-litre X3 and comparable to brisk Golfs like the GTD/GTE.
It's not sexy but I'd say that looks a pretty good package for £15k, it's hard to say it looks expensive against similar ICE cars - and then you save money on running costs.
So
exactly how much more do prices need to come down?That's not to say the current state of the art works for everyone, it doesn't - but I'd suggest the technology is already at the stage where it is good enough for a majority of people, affordability is getting better, and the comparison with the internet of 2000 - quite expensive and not quite there technology-wise, but getting there on both counts - is not a bad one. At the very least, the onus falls on sceptics to state their case more specifically than "I don't believe this".
Adamski wrote:Guess we'll see in the Q1 figures but Tesla is worst performer in the S&P YTD down 40% so the market is anticipating bad results, or correcting to a lower growth rare.
I know one Lemon will always disagree with me on this <g> but the Tesla shareprice is so divorced from what's going on at Tesla let alone the wider EV market that it's not a good proxy for either.
i suppose the EU will look at the disaster unfold here, and adjust their date accordingly.