EVs - are we going to be forced into this before time?

Bachelorplace

I notice the increase in VED across ICE cars, I wonder how far they might be willing to go to tax ICE cars off the road completely and how society might react to that?

MX5huggy

VED is such a small percentage of motoring costs, it should not but it seems to have a disproportionate effect on buying decisions. 

Bachelorplace

£40 a month on cars over £40,000 and increasing is still significant addition to monthly payment. And £2350 first year VED is ridiculous. But I hear you to a point.

Herzlos

For all but low value high emission cars, VED is pretty much irrelevant. I resented paying £495/year tax on a car worth £500, but just the same I resented paying £500 for tyres for a car worth £500.

On the actual subject, though, they aren't going to have to do anything to force people to go to EVs. There's still 18 years before ICE will be banned but ICE sales are already plummeting as people are going to EV's. For most people in most cars with an EV variant, the EV just makes more sense. Give it another 2 generations of cars and there's going to be no reason beyond stubbornness to buy a petrol car.

Even then, you can always buy a petrol car in 2029 and keep it for 20+ years whilst everyone moves on, but the economies of scale will kick in at some point and fuel will start to get horribly expensive. I think there will still be a scene for hobbyists, be it sunday rides in classics, track days, etc. in the same way that all horses are now leisure.

On the tax front, VED is going to get more expensive every year anyway, and eventually they'll need to do something to stop the EV owners 'freeloading'. I suspect they'll just make everything a flat rate.

Bachelorplace

Not wishing to be discourteous - but can you elaborate on "makes more sense" ?

EV's for me don't they are virtually useless at long journeys and with energy prices rocketing, the savings on fuel per mpg equivalent are not there. The last EV I used cost about as much to run as a car with a low mpg, or something like a petrol v6. 

For example 300 miles range in a V6 will cost for example £90.00 and it will be definitely 300 miles.

300 miles in an EV on the motorway can be anything from 70 - 130 miles. I once paid £17 to charge to 3/4 an Audi E-tron I drove from Southhampton to Wiltshire and it had used ALL that charge. In that example then - it used the same energy give or take in money terms or cost per trip as a V6 might. 

born_again

Bachelorplace said:

I notice the increase in VED across ICE cars, I wonder how far they might be willing to go to tax ICE cars off the road completely and how society might react to that?

Remember it is only new cars. Not a car already registered.

lordmountararat

 you can always buy a petrol car in 2039

I don't think so. Sales of new ICE cars will be banned from 2030, (2035 for hybrids) not 2040.

Car_54

lordmountararat said:

 you can always buy a petrol car in 2039

I don't think so. Sales of new ICE cars will be banned from 2030, (2035 for hybrids) not 2040.

He didn't specify "new"!

Herzlos

lordmountararat said:

 you can always buy a petrol car in 2039

I don't think so. Sales of new ICE cars will be banned from 2030, (2035 for hybrids) not 2040.

My bad, I thought it was 2040. I've updated it.

Herzlos

Bachelorplace said:

Not wishing to be discourteous - but can you elaborate on "makes more sense" ?

They already cost pretty much the same to buy as the top spec petrol models (give or take a few £k), but with vastly reduced running costs and better residuals.
Add in another generation or 2 of development and we're easily looking at 300+ mile range in a standard EV. Maybe 500+ in a long range EV, and then we're pretty much at parity with petrol.
No-one is really doing any development work on internal combustion now, so they aren't going to improve much.

Bachelorplace said:

EV's for me don't they are virtually useless at long journeys and with energy prices rocketing, the savings on fuel per mpg equivalent are not there. The last EV I used cost about as much to run as a car with a low mpg, or something like a petrol v6. 

For example 300 miles range in a V6 will cost for example £90.00 and it will be definitely 300 miles.

300 miles in an EV on the motorway can be anything from 70 - 130 miles. I once paid £17 to charge to 3/4 an Audi E-tron I drove from Southhampton to Wiltshire and it had used ALL that charge. In that example then - it used the same energy give or take in money terms or cost per trip as a V6 might. 

I'm not convinced at all, having run a few petrol V6's (both 2.5l and both barely touched 20mpg). I'm also skeptical that you had to fill an E-Tron 4 times at £17/charge. hich is still only £68 - nearly 1/3rd cheaper.

So £90 @£1.50/l fuel is 60 litres and works out to be about 22mpg which is a reasonable ball park. Or about 30p/mile.

I don't get the "300 miles in an EV on the motorway can be anything from 70 - 130 miles", but assuming you do the same journey in an EV but without any cheap charging. We'll assume the EV can do 2 miles/kwh (average is closer to 4), means you'd need about 150kwh of electricity. Pod point claim most of their chargers are £0.27/kwh. So you'd be looking at about £40 in electricity for the same journey. Less than half the cost.

However, that goes down drastically if you can charge on a home tariff where it can go down as far as £0.05/kwh for the same journey costing £2.


Most EV drivers will be charging the car fully at home/work, and only using expensive fast charging stations when they need to refuel mid trip, so will be paying nothing like the per mile cost that you get from petrol.

Edit: This link https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/tested-2022-audi-e-tron-gt-beats-epa-range-by-35-miles.html
Puts the E-trons range at over 220 miles cruising, and managing 4.1miles/kwh, so the cost above are double what I have above. The worst case cost for that trip is £20 and best case is £1.
Looking at older (2019 E-Trons) I can see the range is closed to 220 miles at 3m/kwh.

[Deleted User]

By 2030 EV will be doing way more range than ICE and charging will be widespread and cheap

In 2015 the weighted average off the dealership was 200km
In 2020 the weighted average was 350

The 2016 range of cars like the Leaf (155 miles), Zoe (150 miles) and E-Golf (118 miles) that were replaced in 2017 all had noticeably increased mileage (248, 248, 186 respectively). Tesla went from 265 in 2012 to 412 miles in the 2021 model. This is more than enough for 90% of UK drivers - the average commute is 23 miles around. These mythical lands where every driver has to do 300 mile motorway trips every day are just fantasy.