What will happen to ICE Car values now that EV's are getting closer.

Petriix

Ditzy_Mitzy said:

Petriix said:

dipsomaniac said:

Got no problem with people wanting a ev (as long as they pay road tax) but don't force it on the rest of us. In the last 25 years we have really started to perfect the ice - reliable, economic, low emissions etc. This feels like a backward step

This is such an ignorant point of view (but sadly not uncommon).

There is no such thing as 'road tax'; there is Vehicle Excise Duty which is based on CO2 emissions. Emissions from new ICEVs have been rapidly *increasing* as people buy bigger and less efficient SUV style cars.

My EV runs roughly half from zero emission solar power from my own roof, with the rest coming from the grid at an average of under 50g of CO2 per km.

The cost of ownership over 8 years will be roughly £10,000 lower than the equivalent ICEV, which goes a significant way to offset the higher purchase price. In 4 years, my EV is expected to be valued at just over £9,000 which seems pretty affordable. By that time, many more EVs will be available new with longer ranges and faster charging.

EVs are fast, smooth, clean and refined. It's hardly a step backwards to do away with the inefficiencies of engines, turbos, clutches and gearboxes before we even mention KERS braking. Did I mention that it costs about 2p per mile to drive and I can wake up with a full charge every morning.

I drive beyond my maximum range less than 20 times per year. I don't remember having been able to drive even close to that distance before the kids' (or my) bladders requiring a stop. A 300 mile journey would require a single 40 minute stop or, more likely, two 20 minute stops.

My battery is warrantied to have 80% capacity after 7 years and the residual value will likely never drop below £5,000 due to the inherent value of the battery.

I really don't know what will happen to the value of ICEVs but I really hope that they are rapidly taxed out of economically viable ownership, once of course there is sufficient supply of EVs and the accompanying infrastructure to meet people's needs.

You state that the car charges up overnight and also charges up during the day, courtesy of solar panels.  Do you ever actually drive it?  
Conversely my car does nothing during the day, other than holding an amount of petrol in the fuel tank.  My solar panels are thus freed up to provide power to the appliances I'm presently using.  It's all swings and roundabouts, when you think about it; trickle charging an electric car that doesn't go anywhere seems like a waste of the clean electricity that could be powering your washing machine.  

In practice we actually plan ahead based on the journeys we intend to do and the upcoming weather forecast. The car has a 52.5kWh battery and we typically don't need more than half of that on any given day. If we need to do a long journey then we'll charge to full overnight, otherwise we'll leave plenty of headroom for surplus solar, depending on the weather.

The washing machine runs its 3kW element for around 15 minutes during a cycle. The EVSE detects the extra house load and pauses charging then restarts when the load drops again. Obviously this is more useful in the summer months, but even in the darkest week of the winter we were able to add around 15kWh of solar energy to the car that would have otherwise been exported. That's about 45 miles of range in this cold weather.

There is absolutely no reason why lost VED and fuel duty revenues need to be replaced by taxing EV usage. These are not hypothecated funds. Taxation definitely does need a significant overhaul in the medium term and I would hope that it is moved towards a much more progressive system (targeting unearned income and profits of big businesses then individuals based on their ability to pay) rather than some arbitrary adherence to an antiquated convention.

princeofpounds

I suspect the whole transition process is going to be relatively gradual. EVs will become increasingly cost-competitive and a decent segment of the market will be able to adopt them pretty quickly. Ranges will improve as cheaper batteries permit higher capacities for a given price and will probably prove to be much less of a problem than they currently are. If it was only about EV performance the tipping point would be sooner and quicker than we think.

However, infrastructure will prove a serious constraint beyond a certain point. For everyone with solar panels and a driveway, there are twenty people who have to park on a public street, can't run cables to their car and can't even guarantee where they will be parking each evening. There are others who don't want to wait for 30 minutes at services to charge - that time can cost almost as much as the fuel, for some people. Infrastructure will improve steadily as the end-market for its services develops, but don't forget it's often being run by Tracey Jobsworth from the local council, not Elon Musk, and it requires huge capital investment. Think about what it was like rolling out cable or fibre optic or 4G, or renewing the water mains in London etc. It takes time.

Plug-in hybrids probably have a bigger potential in the medium term. They have the capital cost disadvantage of requiring two motors, yes, but that's not as bad as it sounds given the ICE components are more simple than in a normal ICE car. But they are fully compatible with legacy infrastructure and possess the most important functional benefits of ICE and EV.

Given that fossil fuel distribution infrastructure will be sticking around for some time (for both hybrids and commercial vehicles), running an ICE vehicle won't be practically that different to now for quite some time. You may get some pressure from policy action etc. that accelerates depreciation, but if it gets too bad then a lot of vehicles will end up being shipped to markets that don't care so much and will still have a value. And the government will find itself losing popularity if they push too hard. If done well, a lot of the policy will be directed at changing decisions on purchases of new vehicles, not wiping out the capital people already have invested in existing ICE vehicles. That way, you can achieve a pretty complete transition without too much pain over the ~14 years it takes to renew the whole car parc.

Robbo66

Grumpy_chap said:

Robbo66 said:

A claimed range of 350 mile and just like their ICE counterparts actually don't get anywhere near this
my destination was a little over 400 miles so an EV still wouldn't be any good for me.

So, that would be a real-range greater than 200 miles, which will require at least one stop on a 400 mile journey. That stop needs to be of sufficient time to recharge the driver, refresh, toilet and eat.  The same time can be used to recharge the car without needing to add to the total journey duration.

Er no it isnt, I stop every 100 miles or so use the toilet at few minutes at most, I eat before i leave home and eat when I arrive at destination. I keep a couple of bottles of water in the car  should I need a drink, my total stopping time is probably no more that 25 minutes, far less than wait for a charge point and then charging the car. Each to their own, my preference is ICE and by the time EVs are the norm and the infrastructure is in place to accommodate them I probably wont be driving anyway

Ditzy_Mitzy

princeofpounds said:

I suspect the whole transition process is going to be relatively gradual. EVs will become increasingly cost-competitive and a decent segment of the market will be able to adopt them pretty quickly. Ranges will improve as cheaper batteries permit higher capacities for a given price and will probably prove to be much less of a problem than they currently are.

However, infrastructure will prove a serious constraint beyond a certain point. For everyone with solar panels and a driveway, there are twenty people who have to park on a public street, can't run cables to their car and can't even guarantee where they will be parking each evening. There are others who don't want to wait for 30 minutes at services to charge - that time can cost almost as much as the fuel, for some people. Infrastructure will improve steadily as the end-market for its services develops, but don't forget it's often being run by Tracey Jobsworth from the local council, not Elon Musk, and it requires huge capital investment. Think about what it was like rolling out cable or fibre optic or 4G, or renewing the water mains in London etc. It takes time.

Plug-in hybrids probably have a bigger potential in the medium term. They have the capital cost disadvantage of requiring two motors, yes, but that's not as bad as it sounds given the ICE components are more simple than in a normal ICE car. But they are fully compatible with legacy infrastructure and possess the most important functional benefits of ICE and EV.

Given that fossil fuel distribution infrastructure will be sticking around for some time (for both hybrids and commercial vehicles), running an ICE vehicle won't be practically that different to now for quite some time. You may get some pressure from policy action etc. that accelerates depreciation, but if it gets too bad then a lot of vehicles will end up being shipped to markets that don't care so much and will still have a value. And the government will find itself losing popularity if they push too hard. If done well, a lot of the policy will be directed at changing decisions on purchases of new vehicles, not wiping out the capital people already have invested in existing ICE vehicles. That way, you can achieve a pretty complete transition without too much pain over the ~14 years it takes to renew the whole car parc.

Have you just expressed a fair, reasoned, pragmatic and well balanced view?  Tut!  That's not the done thing in electric car discussions.... 

born_again

Petriix said:

There is absolutely no reason why lost VED and fuel duty revenues need to be replaced by taxing EV usage. These are not hypothecated funds. Taxation definitely does need a significant overhaul in the medium term and I would hope that it is moved towards a much more progressive system (targeting unearned income and profits of big businesses then individuals based on their ability to pay) rather than some arbitrary adherence to an antiquated convention.

Sadly the lost ICE texes will have to be replaced from somewhere. Expecting businesses to pay is a pipe dream. We people on the street are the ones, who pay the ICE duty now, so it will be the same who pay for EV's.
ICE fuel duty alone was 27.57 billion 2019/20. To put that in some perspective it is 1.3% of national income That has to be replaced from somewhere. even when you factor out the Covid bills that need to be paid.

So expect as Isle of Man to see a VED on EV's at some point soon. As they become more popular then expect VAT on Electric to increase, or overnight tariffs introduced where a charger has been installed that are at a higher unit cost. Alongside increased ICE fuel tax.
Could even see a pay by mile scheme introduced as well.
The future of motoring is going to be interesting and will not get cheaper. 
Take your savings on EV's now while you can. As just the same as there is only one certainty in life (death) your costs will rise to pay for any shortfall in Government income.

Herzlos

Grumpy_chap said:

How reliable is this past data as a future predictor?

When it comes to isolated science stuff, like battery degradation over time, it's a pretty good indicator. For things like human behaviour it's terrible.
Batteries have management systems to minimise the abuse from the constant deplete/charge cycle, usually by having an additional capacity preventing the vehicle ever charging to a true 100% (because the batter may be 10% bigger than advertised and really only charge to 91%) and then there's also an extra 9% of battery to balance load to in order to keep wear down.
Environmental factors don't change that much in terms of electronics. It's going to be weather proofed and spend all of it's life in ambient temperatures of maybe -20oC to +50oC, with internal running temperatures about 100oC.

So if 5-year old batteries are still showing as being 95% useable now, a new battery is likely to be at least that good in 5 years time (because it'll be a newer technology generation). There will be some outliers due to whatever faults, but the trend is going to be pretty reliable.

I'm also not convinced that the early adopters bought EV's and then rarely used them. Most EV owners I've seen have started using their EV as the main car, plenty use them for commuting and so on. So they will be fairly representative of all but the pensioners who do their weekly 1 mile round trip to the shops, as they won't be using an EV yet.

Grumpy_chap

Herzlos said:

I'm also not convinced that the early adopters bought EV's and then rarely used them. 

Well, depending upon data source, average mileage for a car is in the range 10k to 15k per year.
Autotrader currently has 240 five-year-old (2015) EV's listed for sale.  204 of these are <50k miles, so below average.  75 of them are <25k miles, so 30% done less than 5k miles per year.  Far lower than you'd expect for most cars.
The low mileage of early EV's will also be evidenced by the small battery capacities and resulting range - I think some of the Zoe's had 22kWh batteries or thereabouts, which is clearly not sufficient for the family holiday to South of France.

Herzlos

Average mileage is about 7500 according to this https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/jan/14/average-uk-car-mileage-falls-again-on-back-of-higher-petrol-prices

So they aren't that low compared to combustion.

Grumpy_chap

That data is rather lower than I had understood.

Mickey666

AdrianC said:

Petriix said:

dipsomaniac said:

In the last 25 years we have really started to perfect the ice - reliable, economic, low emissions etc.

This is such an ignorant point of view (but sadly not uncommon).

It's also inaccurate.

In the last 25 years, we've gone from utterly reliable fuel injected, mapped-ignition engines with diagnostics to massively over-complicated engines... Down-sizing with highly-stressed turbos. Common rail. DMFs. Post-treatment particulate filters. The payoff is, of course, better emissions - albeit with a degree of fixing.

EVs swap that mechanical complexity for complex drivetrain and charge management electronics.

The rest of the car has also got overly-complicated, too. Touch-screen climate integrated with control of various drivetrain and chassis options integrated with entertainment and nav, sensors monitoring the surroundings, alphabet-soup of driver aids, multiplexing.

THAT's what kills cars now, and it's only going to get worse. Cars are going to be electronically unfixable long before they're worn out.

I have some sympathy for the 'complexity' argument but it's really not so simple.  Up to, let's say, the 1970s cars used to be horribly unreliable and badly built.  Much of their mechanical unreliability would be masked by them simply rusting away before they broke down for good, but you're right that advent of things like fuel injection (eliminating horrible carbs), electronic ignition, even basic ECUs, made cars highly reliable machines.  Change the oil and filters once a year and they'd do 100k miles without blinking and 200k without breaking a sweat,
Emissions regulations have certainly added an unfortunate raft of additional complexity in recent years, but that's not really a technology problem as such. 
EVs however promise far higher levels of potential reliability.  Obviously there are build quality issues, like anything, but about the only wearing parts on an electric motor are the bearings so they should fare better than any ICE.  An EV is a better starting point than an ICE if you want to build a reliable vehicle.
As for all the electronic devices, I'd suggest that's more of a software issue than a hardware one.  Modern electronic hardware is incredibly reliable but alas software often lets things down.  We all know about software problems on our PCs, smartphones, tablets etc but how many times do we hear about a CPU chip failing and needing to be replaced . . . even though that one single chip will contain well over ONE BILLION transistors.  How much more complex can you get