Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

CKhalvashi

Hoenir said:

1961Nick said:

Coastalwatch said:

Could well be GC. I'm also wondering if it's anything to do with China having only very moderate reserves of FF's so rather than continuing to rely on the financial burden of importing it all are sensibly moving away to renewables which they are building out at an enormous rate. Also, I believe they have the worlds greatest supply of rare earth materials to suit EV's.

Pro  rata I seem to recall our FF reserves are not much different to theirs but for some reason we seem to have hesitated in making a similar choice.

EVs are now significantly cheaper than their ICE counterparts in China. 

Models are relatively cheap in Western terms though even with 3 battery options the maximum range is often just 100 miles. In China people don't seem to travel long distances by car. (Which is hardly surprising). Weaning Western drivers off the convieniance of a car and returning to public transport is an entirely different matter. 

Occasionally that has to come down to time vs cost.

I'd happily use public transport more, but (as an example), getting from mine to moms via public transport would require a train to Stansted Airport and then a bus, taking about 2 hours in total each way.

Driving takes about 15 minutes.

Public transport is great if it's convenient, unfortunately in rural areas it rarely is convenient. We live in the same County (and in fact same district of that county) so there's not the excuse of cross-border travel. I'm not sure if you've ever tried dealing with Essex County Council, but at best it can be described as 'fun'.

When even local areas aren't well connected there is a huge problem for getting people onto public transport.

Martyn1981

Further news on Ethiopia banning the import of ICE vehicles (old and new), and I think this fits in well with Grumpy Chap's comment about PEV adoption in China/countries with growing car markets. Ethiopia has about twice the population of the UK, but only about 1.2m registered vehicles.

Ethiopia Says ICE Vehicle Import Ban Continues As Part of New Economic Reforms, Only EV Imports Allowed!

In an unprecedented move some months ago, Ethiopia became effectively the first country in the world to ban the import of internal combustion engine vehicles. That ban was not some futuristic target for 2030 or 2035. It was an immediate ban on the import of ICE cars.

Ethiopia’s motivation? A high fossil fuel import bill of over US$5 billion a year, taking a huge chunk of the country’s scarce foreign currency resources. Energy security and self-sufficiency was another major driver. Ethiopia recently commissioned the first units from the 5,150 MW Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). The GERD will add another ~15,500 GWhs of clean electricity to the country’s energy mix. This means Ethiopia now has some exceptionally good locally generated renewable energy that can be used to substitute a significant portion of that huge import bill.

Ethiopia has a population of 126 million people, but the total number of vehicles registered in Ethiopia is around 1.2 million. Most of these vehicles are over 20 years old. According to reports and announcements from the Ethiopian government, Ethiopia had a plan to catalyze adoption of electric vehicles with a 10-year target of seeing 148,000 electric cars and close to 50,000 electric buses on its roads by 2030. However, Ethiopia has made incredible progress on this path, to the extent that the Ministry of Transport and Logistics recently said that this target of over 100,000 electric vehicles has already been met in just the first few years of the plan.

With the government reiterating its position and maintaining a ban on the imports of fully-built ICE vehicles, Ethiopia could become one of the fastest countries to transition to electric. Loads of work ahead to sort out things like charging infrastructure and technical support for vehicles, however, all of this points to a remarkably interesting next couple of years for Ethiopia’s transport landscape. We will be following these events very closely.

Hoenir

CKhalvashi said:

Hoenir said:

1961Nick said:

Coastalwatch said:

Could well be GC. I'm also wondering if it's anything to do with China having only very moderate reserves of FF's so rather than continuing to rely on the financial burden of importing it all are sensibly moving away to renewables which they are building out at an enormous rate. Also, I believe they have the worlds greatest supply of rare earth materials to suit EV's.

Pro  rata I seem to recall our FF reserves are not much different to theirs but for some reason we seem to have hesitated in making a similar choice.

EVs are now significantly cheaper than their ICE counterparts in China. 

Models are relatively cheap in Western terms though even with 3 battery options the maximum range is often just 100 miles. In China people don't seem to travel long distances by car. (Which is hardly surprising). Weaning Western drivers off the convieniance of a car and returning to public transport is an entirely different matter. 

Occasionally that has to come down to time vs cost.

I'd happily use public transport more, but (as an example), getting from mine to moms via public transport would require a train to Stansted Airport and then a bus, taking about 2 hours in total each way.

Driving takes about 15 minutes.

Public transport is great if it's convenient, unfortunately in rural areas it rarely is convenient. We live in the same County (and in fact same district of that county) so there's not the excuse of cross-border travel. I'm not sure if you've ever tried dealing with Essex County Council, but at best it can be described as 'fun'.

When even local areas aren't well connected there is a huge problem for getting people onto public transport.

If reducing the battery packs to maximum 100 mile ranges to make them affordable to the masses. Going to be a hard sell. 

Exiled_Tyke

Grumpy_chap said:

Martyn1981 said:

Utterly massive milestone for China

June PEV sales were (almost) 50%.

I wonder, and have no data to back my wonderings up, whether that is easier to achieve in a growing automotive market.

My car purchase might well be influenced by lethargy & prejudice - always drove a Mondeo so just got the next Mondeo, or always had manual and don't want automatic, etc.

If, however, I'd just grown in relative affluence so could now buy the first car for the family, I have no history and would be looking for the good people's car to meet my needs, affordable motoring for the regular household.  Kind of like how the 2CV or the Beetle originally established.

I reckon you are right.  Business Strategy theories would suggest that this is very much the case.  

Martyn1981

Exiled_Tyke said:

Grumpy_chap said:

Martyn1981 said:

Utterly massive milestone for China

June PEV sales were (almost) 50%.

I wonder, and have no data to back my wonderings up, whether that is easier to achieve in a growing automotive market.

My car purchase might well be influenced by lethargy & prejudice - always drove a Mondeo so just got the next Mondeo, or always had manual and don't want automatic, etc.

If, however, I'd just grown in relative affluence so could now buy the first car for the family, I have no history and would be looking for the good people's car to meet my needs, affordable motoring for the regular household.  Kind of like how the 2CV or the Beetle originally established.

I reckon you are right.  Business Strategy theories would suggest that this is very much the case.  

And China is pulling every lever to move to PEV's, as they don't have much oil production.

So there are policies, subsidies, major pollution concerns (remember the Chinese Olympics and having to shut down industry to reduce smog).

One clever lever is that in some major cities it is very hard to get a new numberplate, you might have to wait years, or enter lotteries, or pay almost as much as a car for an existing issued plate - but plates for PEV's jump the queue, which is a massive incentive.

Martyn1981

UK sales data is out, with PEV sales for July at 27% (18.5% BEV + 8.9% PHEV). If the new Gov re-introduces the 2030 ban for full ICEV's, then a rough marker for PEV sales would be, year (of decade) x 10%, so for 2024 4 x10% = 40%. So far in 2024 we are at 25%, so (in my opinion) we are in no-man's land, not close enough to be doing well, but also not too far off, to be facing failure.

SMMT: Car Registrations - July 2024

silverwhistle

Well, I've been enjoying the revolution as just got back from Italy on Monday in my MG4SE which is hardly the most expensive or biggest ranged car. Biggest issue was a cracked windscreen and a small delay as we  waited for a big German car to get to 100% at an Ionity charger on a main route. To be honest it must have been an expensive car as the charge curve was still high.

Chatted at the ferry port queue with a lady who loved her earlier EV but approached me as she was wary about taking it to France, so I pointed her in the direction of apps and information resources. Bit by bit!

SuzeQStan

silverwhistle said:

Well, I've been enjoying the revolution as just got back from Italy on Monday in my MG4SE which is hardly the most expensive or biggest ranged car. Biggest issue was a cracked windscreen and a small delay as we  waited for a big German car to get to 100% at an Ionity charger on a main route. To be honest it must have been an expensive car as the charge curve was still high.

Chatted at the ferry port queue with a lady who loved her earlier EV but approached me as she was wary about taking it to France, so I pointed her in the direction of apps and information resources. Bit by bit!

That is great to hear your positive experience in the EV overseas.  We did our 1st big trip (big for us) last weekend in our EV6 to Whitby and it was seamless.  Contactless charging is the future have deleted all charging apps.

silverwhistle

In principal I would agree with you, but in view of the distances we were going it was worth having Ionity and Tesla subscriptions and the appropriate apps to get decent prices. Same with my Electroverse card that gets me an 8% discount.

Martyn1981

silverwhistle said:

Well, I've been enjoying the revolution as just got back from Italy on Monday in my MG4SE which is hardly the most expensive or biggest ranged car. Biggest issue was a cracked windscreen and a small delay as we  waited for a big German car to get to 100% at an Ionity charger on a main route. To be honest it must have been an expensive car as the charge curve was still high.

Chatted at the ferry port queue with a lady who loved her earlier EV but approached me as she was wary about taking it to France, so I pointed her in the direction of apps and information resources. Bit by bit!

Great to hear it's gone well.

Any chance you could elaborate a bit more, as you must have experienced a few countries getting to Italy, and I've heard that much of mainland Europe has better charging facilities/network v's the UK. Was that your general experience?

[Of course, no reason why the UK can't do better, so your positive experiences auger well for the UK (eventually).]