EV Discussion thread

shinytop

EricMears said:

shinytop said:

The hard truth is that a modern ICE car is, all things considered apart from emissions, just better at what it does than a BEV.  

 

Why say "apart from emissions" .  The main thrust of the change is to help reduce national emissions and the minor inconvenience of having a maximum range that's only ten times more than a normal day's use is no great hardship.

I know that but a lot of people don't care about the emissions from their cars.  And without emissions, I don't think EVs have enough advantages to counter the disadvantages. Hence it's going to be a hard sell and will probably need more carrots and sticks.

And averages don't always work very well in the real world.  

JKenH

Waiting times for new electric car deliveries dip to their lowest in nine months

According to our research, waiting times currently stand at an average of 24 weeks; down by 13% (from 28 weeks) since the same time in December, and 26% (35 weeks) from the peak in October 2022.

This means drivers wanting to make the switch to electric will now wait on average 6 weeks less to get the keys to their new car.

https://www.electrifying.com/blog/article/waiting-times-for-electric-cars

A market where waiting times are falling implies current production is exceeding current demand. This is the situation Tesla faced at the end of 2022 when backlog was falling as a consequence of production exceeding demand. Tesla remedied the situation by cutting prices. While there has been a small rise in Tesla inventory in 2023 supply and demand now seem more in balance. As I said in a previous post - where Tesla leads others follow. 

JKenH

ABrass said:

JKenH said:

Many secondhand EVs already cost the same as or in some cases less than the ICE equivalent but people aren’t buying them.

I have just done a search on Autotrader for 2019 Mk7 Golf’s and E-Golf’s excluding Cat S etc up to 50k miles. I have excluded a private sale E-Golf which was much cheaper but here is a comparison of a few around 40-45k miles. The prices are very similar. 

Why won’t petrol always be this cheap? Isn’t the narrative that we have passed peak oil demand and prices will fall so that it is no longer economic to extract oil. If petrol is going to keep going up perhaps I should invest my pension in Oil majors instead of renewables. 

Because a lack of demand will ruin the busines models that exist to extract, refine, ship and sell Petrol.

Because it will be taxed more heavily in the future.

Because cost to extract is only rising.


I'm not sure what you're trying to say with proof that, for one moment in time, there were three EV golfs and three Petrol Golfs for sale at the same time.

I missed this post earlier. 

Forgive me, but you are using circular reasoning. I had suggested one of the reasons EVs weren’t taking off was because the cost of fuelling was similar to ICEVs.You said that petrol won’t always be this cheap and when I ask why you say that a lack of demand will ruin the business model to produce petrol. 

Your argument for rising petrol prices relies on demand for ICE cars falling because petrol prices have risen.

As for the Golfs I was merely demonstrating that an Autotrader search suggested that 2019 ICE Golf’s and E-Golf’s were similarly priced. I do apologise if that wasn’t apparent from my post. 

JKenH

1961Nick said:

There's a problem comparing UK monthly BEV figures because they're often skewed by Tesla's quarterly targets. More linear deliveries from Berlin help, but boatloads of the 3 & Y from China every quarter end are still significant.

Yes Tesla’s delivery schedules always distort the monthly statistics but this year the EV % of new car sales has remained fairly consistent in the 13-16% range. I included the Q1 figures as they are more representative. This quarter, however, Tesla have always had inventory stock available. 

Do we get any deliveries from Berlin in the UK? 

Grumpy_chap

1961Nick said:

 The likes of the Zoe is £10,000 too expensive to have mass market appeal. 

The Zoe also, and quite disgracefully IMO, managed to join the humiliating company of cars achieving zero NCAP.

JKenH

Fleets are driving the switch to EVs but who is going to buy these vehicles when they come off fleet?

Electric vehicles drive leased fleet growth beyond pre-pandemic levels

The number of salary sacrifice cars rose by 34% year-on-year, between Q4 2022 and Q4 2021, to 42,616 vehicles, maintaining last year’s double-digit growth trajectory.

But growth was driven by the continued resurgence of business contract hire, up 4% year-on-year, thanks largely to the long-term clarity provided on electric company car tax rates, says the BVRLA. 

It has helped EVs become the dominant force on the fleet, with more than half (53%) of new business contract hire car additions battery electric vehicles (BEVs). 

https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/leasing-news/2023/04/05/electric-vehicles-drive-leased-vehicle-fleet-growth

ABrass

One of the goals of the BIK reduction was to kick the EV market into a more conventional pattern.

All this disruption is because it is doing what it was intended. Used EVs are no longer absurdly rare. Just rare.

Who'll buy them, someone who need an EV and can't afford new.

Martyn1981

The low BiK is a great way to get these EV's into the second hand market. The PiG discounts helped, but now that demand is probably similar to supply, I can see why the Gov cut it.

Got some friends who bought a SH BMW i3, an ex company car, they were told. They are so pleased, it's their first BEV. They are retired and it replaced their ICE as their only vehicle.

Grumpy_chap

JKenH said:

Fleets are driving the switch to EVs but who is going to buy these vehicles when they come off fleet?

We all will.
In the same way we all bought ex-fleet A4s, 5-series, C-class that we also couldn't afford.

JKenH

Grumpy_chap said:

JKenH said:

Fleets are driving the switch to EVs but who is going to buy these vehicles when they come off fleet?

We all will.
In the same way we all bought ex-fleet A4s, 5-series, C-class that we also couldn't afford.

But we aren’t buying them at the moment. BEV sales transactions last year (latest statistics I could find) accounted for only 1% of the used car market. https://www.smmt.co.uk/2023/02/used-car-market-down-but-evs-buck-trend/

Autotrader are currently listing 406,161 used cars for sale of which 4.3% 17,544 are BEVs. This doesn’t include Tesla’s stock of used cars which on 28 March stood at 2353. (That figure varies day to day as Tesla add and remove stock at a whim).

Edit: sales of used BEVs Plug ins in Q1 2022 accounted for 3.6% of the market but fell off a cliff to account for only 1% 1.8%(126124) over the year as a whole. 

https://www.smmt.co.uk/2022/05/used-car-buyers-double-up-on-electric-vehicles-as-market-grows-5-1/

Edit: correction to last edit as Q1 stats included PHEVs. Actually BEV sales were fairly consistent over the year with Q4 being the best quarter with around 23k BEV sales compared to an average of 16k over Q-Q3.  It seems the issue is not so much falling demand but increasing supply overwhelming what demand there is leading to a lot of unsold stock and falling prices. It may be a short term problem driven by high electricity prices or it may be more fundamental. Only time will tell.