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

princeofpounds

Mickey666 said:

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

Funnily enough my computer's CPU chip failed - properly failed - earlier this year.

Absolutely agree that mechanical reliability on EVs should be vastly superior. And that ICE engines have become 'artificially' complex in part because of the tortuous way they are now designed to meet emissions standards, which certainly does impact reliability (like the dreaded DPF failures, or Adblue systems, or stop/start capabilities etc.).

Unfortunately when it comes to software, soon we may get to the point where vendor support is needed, and then we end up with built-in obsolescence. Also, the increasing numbers of electrical connections and components may prove problematic - all the car failures I've had in my driving career have been electrical.

A lot of the problems we will face on EVs won't actually be because they are EVs - it'll be the computer rather than the car, so to speak.

Mickey666

Bad luck with the CPU - were you overclocking it perhaps?
Yes, there's much scope for software improvement and it's disappointing to still come across 'problems' that would really nothing of the sort if the software was better written.  I can recount one such example from last year when I had occasion to hire a 16T excavator.  All was well for a few days until its screen displayed a large red warning symbol with no other explanation.  With no manual to hand I called the hire company and they said to carry on using it but they'd send out an engineer.  He duly arrived later that day with his laptop full of diagnostics software - seems the days of fixing large inductrial machines with spanners and hammers are long gone.  Turns out it was an "AdBlue Low" warning and the engineer said he gets a lot of call-outs for this!  Goodness knows why the original programmer could not have included a text warning as well as the graphical one, the screen was easily large enough.  I could then have just added more AdBlue (which I did anyway) and not had to call out the engineer.
So nothing to do with fundamental reliability really, just poor design . . . as you're predicting. 
Unfortunately, I think you're right.

mgfvvc

Grumpy_chap said:

How reliable is this past data as a future predictor?
...
How would this type of harsh battery cycle impact the longevity of the battery?  Given that the impact of a reduction in range for a higher mileage driver will be ever more so significant than a second car user only using the EV for the "right" journeys.

Battery chemistry and management should improve over time, so the past battery life data should be the worst case.

Given that newer batteries are higher capacity, they should also be less stressed by typical usage patterns, as a lower fraction of the range needs to be used. In non-typical cases there may be more stress applied because they are seen as more capable of dealing with it. OTOH if you watch the youtube videos from Go Green Autos, he reckons that higher mileage usage patterns actually preserve the battery life better than low mileage.

Personally I feel that the evidence suggests that battery life concerns are overstated, but there is still an element of risk and uncertainty. I feel it's less than the risk and uncertainty associated with ICE drive trains, but that is my own assessment and I understand why some (most?) people are more comfortable with the devil they know.

AdrianC

Mickey666 said:

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.

The 1970s were 40-50 years ago.
The discussion was around 25 years ago, which was 1996.

Mickey666

Seems a strange comment to make given that you went back to the 1890s . . .

AdrianC said:
Cars took decades to move from the rich man's toy of the 1890s to the practical daily mode of transport for Joe Average. The Austin 7 in the 1920s? Yes, but not totally. Post-war? More so. But it wasn't until the 1970s and 80s when people REALLY started to become totally car-dependent.

Bachelorplace

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. 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.

Worth reading twice this one! 
ON topic and clever.
Tracy Jobsworth - does she get particularly cranky on Tuesdays?

Petriix

I think the transition is already happening faster than people would imagine. EV sales are growing massively, against a backdrop of terrible sales figures for ICEVs. Plug-in cars accounted for 20% of new vehicles in the UK in December.

It's a bit like when smartphones started to appear. Think of the early EVs from 10 years ago as those enormous brick phones from the early 90s. Technology moves quickly. ICEVs are like landlines: your grandad will never give his up, but they're old and becoming obsolete.

Marvel1

Mickey666 said:

colino said:

As every serious manufacturer is working on their electric versions, the supply isn't going to be a problem, quality will go up and Teslas will be seen to be the shoddy goods they really are.  The reason that engine driven cars are going to be around for a very long time is due to still pretty basic battery technology and the biggest issue - we don't have the infrastructure to charge them.  Scrappage of the dreaded dinosaur juice drinkers will eventually come to get us into them, but not in my lifetime   Don't go holding your breath, CAP will get around to guessing at residual values nearer the time.

When cars were first invented, not only did we not have the infrastructure to re-fuel them but we didn't even have a decent road network for them to drive on!  Successful new inventions end up creating their own ifrastructure.  It won't be too difficult to add fast charging points to existing filling stations and 15-20 minutes of fast-charging can already add well over 100 miles to an EV's range and I'd guess that's only going to improve.  The oft-quoted 'problem' of flat-owners not being able to charge their EVs at home, or home owners with no parking space having to run power cables across pavements is simply not going to happen - no one ever suggested we should fill up our ICE cars from petrol tanks at home did they?

There are many issues around EVs, but charging infrastructure is not going to be of them.

Still too long to wait.

Grumpy_chap

Petriix said:

I think the transition is already happening faster than people would imagine. EV sales are growing massively, against a backdrop of terrible sales figures for ICEVs. Plug-in cars accounted for 20% of new vehicles in the UK in December.

I don't think that any secure predictions can be extrapolated from data derived during 2020.
If we were to, the entire car industry would be facing total decimation.

dipsomaniac

In 2003 I bought my most expensive car for £4500 - 1997 ford galaxy 2.8 v6.  I still have the car today and have done a average of 5k miles per year so I am sure my carbon foot print is lot smaller than many ev owners.  I love technology and all things mechanical so have nothing against ev cars.

What I do object to is banning new petrol and diesel car sales, tax payers cash given to rich ev buyers and temporary tax breaks from the tax for road driving (currently called VED). I am sure that when people on min. wage get round to affording these cars the tax breaks will have long gone.

If these cars are so good leave the car market to its own forces and maybe switch attention to getting people out of cars and walking/cycling those small journeys.