EV Discussion thread

JKenH

MeteredOut said:

JKenH said:

Perfect for those who believe an EV is the ideal car for a runabout while keeping the ICE car for long journeys. Not great though for the used EV market. It probably won’t come in at £8k though - perhaps nearer the estimated £16k for the Dacia Spring. 

On the contrary, I'd argue this is great for the used EV market, if you're looking to buy a car with cheaper running costs (especially if you have the ability to charge at home).

Glass half full

Fair enough if you are a buyer, but I was thinking that it would reduce residuals which in the long term could impact on people’s/fleets’ appetite to buy new EVs. This is why businesses like Hertz have turned away from Tesla. As someone on the look out for an EV runabout, it’s good news for me. 

Like, with most things, there are two opposing, but valid, perspectives. 

silvercar

JKenH said:

Perfect for those who believe an EV is the ideal car for a runabout while keeping the ICE car for long journeys. Not great though for the used EV market. It probably won’t come in at £8k though - perhaps nearer the estimated £16k for the Dacia Spring. 

Cheap Chinese electric cars with price tags of just £8,000 set to hit UK dealerships

The maiden voyage of BYD’s first ocean-going truck carrier was a success with 5,449 new vehicles on board.

Reaching the ports of Vlissingen in the Netherlands and Bremerhaven in Germany, the models will soon be distributed across European dealerships.

A typical Tesla will set customers back around £40,000 whereas BYD’s entry-level new Seagull supermimi comes in at just £8,000. Although not at the top end of the power spectrum, Seagull's top speed of up to 60 mph and 100 miles if battery range could make them ideal for city centres.

https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/1869582/cheap-electric-car-prices-byd-tesla

Edit:  thinking about this, it would be cheaper for the likes of Ford and Toyota to just buy these cars off BYD and rebadge them then sell them for £8k, taking a loss on the way that is a lot less than the £15k penalty they would otherwise have to pay under the ZEV mandate. 
To date this year Ford have sold just 325 Mach-Es compared to 1311 BZ4X from Toyota. As a comparison Tesla have sold 1964 Model 3s and 1871 Model Ys. 

I wouldn’t buy a car with a top speed of 60mph

EricMears

silvercar said:

I wouldn’t buy a car with a top speed of 60mph

I wouldn't either but that's because I've only got one car.  If the new EV was only ever intended for running around locally and you had another car for longer trips,  60mph would probably be OK

1961Nick

MeteredOut said:

JKenH said:

I find this interesting because it is only EV drivers surveyed - people who have the experience to judge for themselves how practical EVs are - not Joe Public who only gets his EV information from the Mail or Express. It isn’t surprising that half of EV drivers mainly use their vehicles for journeys less than 30miles but it is surprising that only 18% use them for trips over 60 miles. This may be related to how the survey questions were worded so maybe not read too much into that. What is significant, though, is that 73% of the EV drivers surveyed have no plans to get rid of these their ICEvs and go fully EV anytime soon. This goes against the sentiment commonly expressed on here that once you own one EV it is natural that you will progress to become an all EV household. While the EV may be the main car (in terms of miles driven) it seems most EV drivers still prefer to have the comfort of an ICE car as back up. (That makes sense to me.) Weaning drivers off the ICE back up may be more difficult than was thought. 

<snip>

I can't recall that sentiment being expressed on here at all, never mind commonly.

Does anyone else recognise this? 

The sentiment I recognise is that those individuals that have have moved to EVs would not move back to an ICE vehicle.

Having both an EV & an ICEV works for us. The EV does all the 'heavy lifting' & the ICEV is used for airport parking & trips to the landfill. Mileage wise it's over 90% EV... akin to having a hybrid with an 82kWh battery but spread over 2 cars.

michaels

JKenH said:

Perfect for those who believe an EV is the ideal car for a runabout while keeping the ICE car for long journeys. Not great though for the used EV market. It probably won’t come in at £8k though - perhaps nearer the estimated £16k for the Dacia Spring. 

Cheap Chinese electric cars with price tags of just £8,000 set to hit UK dealerships

The maiden voyage of BYD’s first ocean-going truck carrier was a success with 5,449 new vehicles on board.

Reaching the ports of Vlissingen in the Netherlands and Bremerhaven in Germany, the models will soon be distributed across European dealerships.

A typical Tesla will set customers back around £40,000 whereas BYD’s entry-level new Seagull supermimi comes in at just £8,000. Although not at the top end of the power spectrum, Seagull's top speed of up to 60 mph and 100 miles if battery range could make them ideal for city centres.

https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/1869582/cheap-electric-car-prices-byd-tesla

Edit:  thinking about this, it would be cheaper for the likes of Ford and Toyota to just buy these cars off BYD and rebadge them then sell them for £8k, taking a loss on the way that is a lot less than the £15k penalty they would otherwise have to pay under the ZEV mandate. 
To date this year Ford have sold just 325 Mach-Es compared to 1311 BZ4X from Toyota. As a comparison Tesla have sold 1964 Model 3s and 1871 Model Ys. 

Where do you get the data for sales by model?  Thanks

JKenH

EricMears said:

silvercar said:

I wouldn’t buy a car with a top speed of 60mph

I wouldn't either but that's because I've only got one car.  If the new EV was only ever intended for running around locally and you had another car for longer trips,  60mph would probably be OK

The car looks a lot more practical than the Citroen Ami. 60mph is the maximum speed limit on UK roads other than motorways and dual carriageways and in many urban areas, or indeed outside them, even they are restricted to 60mph or less. Lincolnshire has very few roads with a speed limit above 60mph - MI80, A180 and A15 from M180 roundabout to Humber Bridge (all technically in North or North East Lincs administrative counties) and sections of the A1 which skirt the Western boundary of the county and a short section of the A17 bypass round Sleaford. That’s it I think but you can check it out here along with your own area. https://www.openstreetbrowser.org/#map=12/52.8576/-0.0488&basemap=osm-mapnik&categories=car_maxspeed

As a small second car, for a lot of people, I don’t see the 60mph maximum speed as being a problem but that’s just my opinion. 

Veteransaver

JKenH said:

EricMears said:

silvercar said:

I wouldn’t buy a car with a top speed of 60mph

I wouldn't either but that's because I've only got one car.  If the new EV was only ever intended for running around locally and you had another car for longer trips,  60mph would probably be OK

The car looks a lot more practical than the Citroen Ami. 60mph is the maximum speed limit on UK roads other than motorways and dual carriageways and in many urban areas, or indeed outside them, even they are restricted to 60mph or less. Lincolnshire has very few roads with a speed limit above 60mph - MI80, A180 and A15 from M180 roundabout to Humber Bridge (all technically in North or North East Lincs administrative counties) and sections of the A1 which skirt the Western boundary of the county and a short section of the A17 bypass round Sleaford. That’s it I think but you can check it out here along with your own area. https://www.openstreetbrowser.org/#map=12/52.8576/-0.0488&basemap=osm-mapnik&categories=car_maxspeed

As a small second car, for a lot of people, I don’t see the 60mph maximum speed as being a problem but that’s just my opinion. 

Could also be an ideal first car for young drivers, assuming that the limited top speed could go some way to making insurance premiums reasonable.

Grumpy_chap

JKenH said:

Several OEMs had made the decision to drop their smaller (less profitable) models as the cost of Euro 7 compliance would have rendered them uneconomic. 

That seems like a highly unintended consequence - impose strict environmental requirements that mean manufacturers then default to a larger and heavier model range which the law of physics dictate will require more energy to move.

JKenH said:

BYD’s entry-level new Seagull supermimi comes in at just £8,000. Although not at the top end of the power spectrum, Seagull's top speed of up to 60 mph and 100 miles if battery range could make them ideal for city centres.

IMO, even a car targeted at the city user should be capable of safely keeping up with motorway speeds.  It is necessary to drive keeping up with the flow of the traffic.

JKenH

Apologies but this is only half of what could be an interesting article originally published by Autocar Business. I don’t have a subscription and this excerpt was the most I could find. I thought it was too interesting to just pass by. 

History shows appetite can return for electric cars

American farmers stalled in their willingness to adopt new technologies The stalling point for EV adoption in the UK could have been predicted in the 1960s - by American farmers

American farmers in the 1960s had a surprising amount in common with electric car buyers in the UK in 2024.�

EM�Rogers' diffusion of innovations theory looks at how quickly new ideas and technologies are adopted by different parts of societies over time. Of the five types of people identified in Rogers' bell curve, innovators and early adopters account for just 16% - the exact figure the UK's electric car has stalled at en route to the legislated 80% needed by 2030.�

Some 60 years ago, American farmers stalled at this point in their willingness to adopt new technologies to aid farming methods, and as Rogers' theory has shown, many other industries since have witnessed similar stagnation of innovation.��

Using Rogers' theory, the 16% stall point for EV adoption in the UK could have been predicted decades ago, and it suggests that the growth electric cars have enjoyed to date will by no means see them inevitably continue to become the mainstream, rather than merely a part of it.�

American farmers got there in the end, and inevitably so too will EVs in the UK for myriad reasons, the bluntest being legislative - yet there must not be complacency along the way or an assumption that progress in EV uptake will be linear.

https://www.thefoat.com/fa/news-article/article_id-3Q6bXtcj0dAlpwJD6s9cvg==

JKenH

Lease Firms Demand Cashback From Automakers Over Tumbling EV Values

Discrepancies between predicted values and true used values for electric cars is causing a major headache for leasing companies, Bloomberg reports

“Manufacturers today need to keep selling EVs,” Bloomberg reported Albertsen saying during the company’s earnings call this month. “We then need some kind of protection from the manufacturers in terms of their future pricing.”

Protection could come from agreements from automakers that they will buy back EVs to safeguard residual values. Without that reassurance, big corporate customers who make up a large chunk of the car market, particularly in Europe where many people are offered a car as part of their work package, may be forced to turn away from electric power.

https://www.carscoops.com/2024/02/lease-firms-demand-cashback-from-automakers-over-tumbling-ev-values/