Electric cars

zeupater

Herzlos wrote: »

For the EVs being taxed argument, presumably that only makes sense if you think ICE isn't going to see an equivalent tax? EVs will likely have their tax increased to where ICE is currently, but you can be pretty confident ICE will have an equivalent tax increase.

Even if we go to a flat per-mile tax, EVs will still be cheaper.

Hi

That's exactly my point, some form of carbon taxation will be used as the tool to encourage away from ICE to EV and it's also a pretty good (ecological & economic) fit for the additional proceeds from ICE carbon taxation to directly fund a scheme to encourage/subsidise EV uptake, so of course the taxation gap between the technologies will progressively widen as opposed to close ...

It's almost certainly going to involve a standard carrot & stick approach ... bash the pockets of those wedded to ICEs with bigger & bigger sticks every year whilst dangling the temptation of a tasty carrot before those willing to make the change over to EVs ... those that haven't realised this yet and hold onto the idea that ICEs will linger on as cheap bangers changing hands for decades to come are probably in for quite a shock as the clarity of reality finally dawns through their pockets! ... :doh:

HTH
Z

buglawton

Herzlos wrote: »

For the EVs being taxed argument, presumably that only makes sense if you think ICE isn't going to see an equivalent tax? EVs will likely have their tax increased to where ICE is currently, but you can be pretty confident ICE will have an equivalent tax increase.

Even if we go to a flat per-mile tax, EVs will still be cheaper.

Of course ICE will be penalised via tax up to time the old stock is off the road.
But the economic arguments as in that video all assume that the taxation landscape won't change at all. With a long UK tradition of punitively taxing personal powered mobility, I'm practically certain British EV motoring will be as expensive per mile in real money as ICE is now. With the downside that it won't be good for productivity, social life or the wider economy.

The change will be more technological than personal finance.
This is why that while I find EV very technically and environmentally interesting, I'm in no rush at all to go there with my own wallet.

buglawton

The other thing to say that if all motoring energy consumption were to switch to electric, there'd probably have to be carbon taxes on EV due to renewable sources being unable to cope with demand, until the far off future.

AdrianC

buglawton wrote: »

The other thing to say that if all motoring energy consumption were to switch to electric, there'd probably have to be carbon taxes on EV due to renewable sources being unable to cope with demand, until the far off future.

Gridwatch has had a facelift recently - and now adds a single total of all renewables.

http://gridwatch.co.uk/

26% right now, on a breezy, sunny Sunday morning (so low total demand, high renewable output). That "renewables" figure, though, includes biomass - much of the fuel for which is transported long distances by sea using oil...

Look also at the import interconnects - right now, 5.5% from France (almost entirely nuclear) and nearly 4% from NL (80%+ fossil).

Martyn1981

buglawton wrote: »

The other thing to say that if all motoring energy consumption were to switch to electric, there'd probably have to be carbon taxes on EV due to renewable sources being unable to cope with demand, until the far off future.

Have you 'done the maths'?

If all cars switched to BEV's, then 30m @ 7,900miles pa and 4miles/kWh works out at 59TWh gross, about 17% increase, and around 10% net after deducting refinery savings.

Next, assuming 10%* of all car sales this year are BEV's, 20% next year etc, then we get to 100% sales in 10yrs, and approx 1/3rd of the road fleet being BEV's**.

*Obviously much lower, but worth looking at worst case.
**10% + 20% ...... +100% = 550%, or 5.5yrs sales, which will probably represent around 1/3rd of the fleet at that point in time.

1/3rd of 10% is 3.3%. So we have 10yrs (for step one) to switch 3.3% of our FF leccy to RE. Given that we are now at approx 30-33%, up from about 4% 10yrs ago, then the annual change is around 3%. Also costs now are a fraction of what they were 10yrs ago. Looking at off-shore wind for example, a resource that for the UK is effectively unlimited***, early CfD's (contracts for difference) were ~£160/MWh, against a wholesale price of about £50/MWh. The 2017 CfD auction brought in prices of £64/MWh, and this months auction has bid caps of £63 (2024) and £60 (2025), so close to net subsidy free.

IF we wanted to speed up the rollout of RE then we can as their are no real scale-ability issues.

***Based on a much higher leccy consumption UK future (transport and space heating being electric) the UK waters could (via off-shore wind) provide around 10-100 times our needs. And that's just off-shore wind.

I'd suggest that the 3.3% increase in leccy demand for BEV cars in the next 10yrs will actually be more than covered by efficiency savings (low energy lamps, fridge freezer compressors, LED TV's etc) over that period as UK leccy demand is falling year on year.

Note - we will probably see an increase in demand from space heating switching to heat pumps, but that's a separate issue as it displaces gas consumption, and again the rollout of RE displacing FF leccy generation should exceed any HP additions to demand.

What date for "far off future" did your calculations suggest?

Edit - Apologies for repeating all this information so many times on this thread. M.

Martyn1981

AdrianC wrote: »

Gridwatch has had a facelift recently - and now adds a single total of all renewables.

Not all renewables as the wind figure doesn't include embedded generation. They used to suggest this added another 40%, but I assume the figure is now lower, perhaps 25%, due to the large off-shore (and obviously metered) rollouts of the past few years.

If you want a better site then this one is good, and it's run by the same guy that compiled and authored the article on off-shore wind potential that I've referred to, and is also a very, very nice chappie to chat to on another forum.

The UK is the Saudi Arabia of wind energy

zeupater

AdrianC wrote: »

Gridwatch has had a facelift recently - and now adds a single total of all renewables.

http://gridwatch.co.uk/

26% right now, on a breezy, sunny Sunday morning (so low total demand, high renewable output). That "renewables" figure, though, includes biomass - much of the fuel for which is transported long distances by sea using oil...

Look also at the import interconnects - right now, 5.5% from France (almost entirely nuclear) and nearly 4% from NL (80%+ fossil).

Hi

Breezy ? .... you may have been looking at the total for renewable energy but obviously failed to understand the overall picture as the breakdown by source (which is still there!) suggests that this particular Sunday morning has very little breeze (~1.3%) ...

Regarding the electricity interconnections & nuclear, at the moment you'll note that solar alone is satisfying ~25% of UK demand, that's ~3.5x more than the combined contribution of the French & Dutch links (4.3%+2.8%) ...

We're currently powering & heating our house with solar PV and still exporting ~85% of generation for the neighbours to use ... and that's around 3 hours before our generation is expected to reach it's peak - that's plenty of energy for proportional diversion into a decent range BEV .... for an average mileage motorist just plugging the vehicle in at home yesterday & today would give a week of both monetary free and carbon free motoring energy ... can't see anything wrong with that! ... :cool:

HTH
Z

AdrianC

zeupater wrote: »

Breezy ? .... you may have been looking at the total for renewable energy but obviously failed to understand the overall picture as the breakdown by source (which is still there!) suggests that this particular Sunday morning has very little breeze (~1.3%) ...

<looks out window at trees wiffling around>
Yep, breezy.

zeupater

AdrianC wrote: »

<looks out window at trees wiffling around>
Yep, breezy.

Hi

Not here it isn't & that's fully supported by both the national level of wind generation from the sources in discussion & the met office itself which has mainly been showing windspeed in a range of 1-3mph for most of the morning, so officially classified as 'Light Air' & around 1/4 the speed of a 'gentle breeze' so there's not much energy available to capture ... which is why wind generation is particularly low at the moment (currently ~1.7%, so improving slowly!)

Looking out of our window there's the occasional movement of leaves in the treetops, but very occasional ... there's actually far more in low-lying plants, probably resulting from the ground warming in the sun ...

HTH
Z

buglawton

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Have you 'done the maths'?

If all cars switched to BEV's, then 30m @ 7,900miles pa and 4miles/kWh works out at 59TWh gross, about 17% increase, and around 10% net after deducting refinery savings.

Next, assuming 10%* of all car sales this year are BEV's, 20% next year etc, then we get to 100% sales in 10yrs, and approx 1/3rd of the road fleet being BEV's**.

*Obviously much lower, but worth looking at worst case.
**10% + 20% ...... +100% = 550%, or 5.5yrs sales, which will probably represent around 1/3rd of the fleet at that point in time.

1/3rd of 10% is 3.3%. So we have 10yrs (for step one) to switch 3.3% of our FF leccy to RE. Given that we are now at approx 30-33%, up from about 4% 10yrs ago, then the annual change is around 3%. Also costs now are a fraction of what they were 10yrs ago. Looking at off-shore wind for example, a resource that for the UK is effectively unlimited***, early CfD's (contracts for difference) were ~£160/MWh, against a wholesale price of about £50/MWh. The 2017 CfD auction brought in prices of £64/MWh, and this months auction has bid caps of £63 (2024) and £60 (2025), so close to net subsidy free.

IF we wanted to speed up the rollout of RE then we can as their are no real scale-ability issues.

***Based on a much higher leccy consumption UK future (transport and space heating being electric) the UK waters could (via off-shore wind) provide around 10-100 times our needs. And that's just off-shore wind.

I'd suggest that the 3.3% increase in leccy demand for BEV cars in the next 10yrs will actually be more than covered by efficiency savings (low energy lamps, fridge freezer compressors, LED TV's etc) over that period as UK leccy demand is falling year on year.

Note - we will probably see an increase in demand from space heating switching to heat pumps, but that's a separate issue as it displaces gas consumption, and again the rollout of RE displacing FF leccy generation should exceed any HP additions to demand.

What date for "far off future" did your calculations suggest?

Edit - Apologies for repeating all this information so many times on this thread. M.

Technically true. Then you have the reality of how slow the UK builds major infrastructure, not to mention planning objections British-style. Think Boris estuary airport, HS2, Crossrail sized infrastructure. All perfectly logical projects but either massively delayed or ain't gonna happen at all. On top of all that it'll the voters having to pay for this new renewables infrastructure. That's why I used the term far off future.