EV Discussion thread

JKenH

Grumpy_chap said:

So, I received a marketing e-mail from VW for a new model of car - TAIGO.
It looks nice enough but is only available as ICE.

Why is any manufacturer launching new models of car that are not available as EV?

Maybe because they believe there is still life left in the old ICE dog. After all, excluding China, non-BEVs still account for over 90% of the new car market.

Every month it seems we hear reports of the strong growth of EV sales (market share) in the UK but looking at this chart from ZapMap it seems, at best, they are flat lining through 2022.

https://www.zap-map.com/ev-market-statistics/

In Europe the situation is similar. T&E reported

The share of electric car sales in Europe dropped to 11% for the first half of 2022, down from 13% in the second half of last year.

http://https//www.transportenvironment.org/discover/europes-electric-car-sales-stagnating-as-china-gains-foothold/

 It is even worse in Italy where in October 2022 EV sales fell 48.1%

https://www.marklines.com/en/statistics/flash_sales/automotive-sales-in-italy-by-month


Even CleanTechnica recognise a problem there

https://cleantechnica.com/2022/08/18/italys-ev-market-losing-steam-in-2022-a-long-term-trend/


Edit: this article published today suggests that in the first three quarters of 2022 BEV sales had increased over 2021 from 10.3% to 12.1%. It would seem in Q3 BEVs performed much better than in Q1 and Q2. Was this perhaps due to the arrival of the Berlin built model Y? I don’t know, just speculating.

https://autovista24.autovistagroup.com/news/european-car-buyers-hybrids-electric-vehicles/

Spies

Issue with BEV equivalents in the range they're like £5k more expensive, so people will still buy ICE.

Im still longing for a BEV but even the first gen leafs are crazy prices. 

Grumpy_chap

JKenH said:

Every month it seems we hear reports of the strong growth of EV sales (market share) in the UK but looking at this chart from ZapMap it seems, at best, they are flat lining through 2022.

I think, and I even think I said it at the time in these threads, that the high market-share reflected through recent times was distorted by the supply chain challenges driving manufacturers to only offer the more expensive (profitable) units.  That happens to be where EV's sit at present.

Spies said:

Issue with BEV equivalents in the range they're like £5k more expensive, so people will still buy ICE.

A like-for-like delta of £5k from ICE to EV is far less than I have seen on many models / comparable models.  

Spies

Sorry you're quite right, the £5k delta was comparing a HEV to a PHEV

thevilla

Maybe the price of charging is having an effect.  With public charging now similar to fossil fuel (with no extra fuel duty) costs anyone without home charging is less likely to look at an EV for reduced running costs.  Add to that the govt making noises about taxing EVs to make up for lost duty and its hard to see savings long term.  Even higher relative running costs could be the result.

It is to be hoped the present electricity costs are short lived otherwise the EV revolution could hit the buffers.  Dare I say the solution is a carbon tax which escalates fossil costs at an accelerating rate while keeping the status quo longer for EVs.  As an EV driver I like that solution

JKenH

    Spies said:

Issue with BEV equivalents in the range they're like £5k more expensive, so people will still buy ICE.

Im still longing for a BEV but even the first gen leafs are crazy prices. 

Used prices are starting to fall quite quickly now. On 8th October wbac offered £20685 for my 16,500 mile 2020 40kWh Leaf. Today the offer is down to £16,815. That’s not far off a 20% drop in less than 6 weeks.

There is a time lag between the trade price falling and the retail price falling but retail prices will soon follow down. 

You now see 2019/69 Tesla Model 3s on Autotrader with around 40k miles for £33k or less for higher mileages. A couple of weeks ago one was listed at around £27k (I forget the mileage but it was 100k plus). There is currently a TM3LR on for £33.5k but it has 102k miles on the clock. Given the mileage these cars will do that’s quite a saving (£57.5k new now).

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?sort=price-asc&postcode=dn213ps&radius=1500&make=Tesla&model=Model%203&include-delivery-option=on&exclude-writeoff-categories=on

Edit: meanwhile the wbac price for my petrol Golf has gone up £500 from £14.5k to £15k.

Edit 2: 2020 n-Connecta Leafs with similar miles are retailing around £20.5k so the price drops perhaps aren’t fully feeding through yet. It’s not going to help recent buyer’s confidence in EVs if they have bought at higher prices and are now seeing the values fall quite rapidly. 

Edit 3: IIRC when I bought my Leaf you could lease one at an average monthly cost of around £250/month with the headline rate (after deposit) of £190ish. Now the cheapest Leaf deal on Cars2buy.com is £328 (headline rate £262), that’s £3936 per year over 4 years.
(These deals are for 5000 miles but unfortunately there are no deals listed for higher mileages for the Leaf). 

https://www.cars2buy.co.uk/personal-car-leasing/nissan/leaf/

If you save £600 a year on fuel (typical 5000mile figure perhaps if you have a home charger), £165 on road tax and £100 on servicing compared to a petrol car your net cost after savings against an ICE car (as Tesla used to say) is £3071.

Or you could lease a Nissan Qashqai for £256/month (average cost) which equates to £3074.

https://www.cars2buy.co.uk/personal-car-leasing/deal/78424-10d717b8d91d-b829160e5c7b7c0d65cf6eab68f9fb011dba4cfa

Edit 4a: to put the above in a slightly easier to understand format, the annual costs are as follows. 

The Leaf costs £3936 plus £0 VED plus £150 (say) servicing plus £150 (say) home charging (based on 100% home charging at 12p/kWh and 4kWh/mile (for ease of calculation). Total £4236.

The Qashqai costs £3074 plus £165 VED plus £250 (say) servicing plus £750 fuel (50mpg at 15p/litre for ease of calculation). Total £4239.

Edit 5: my son has just informed me that the wbac price for his 2017 30kwh has come down from £12,200 in September to £10,050 today, most of the fall in the last couple of weeks. He sold it privately at the weekend for £11,500.

70sbudgie

When I bought my Zoe, I had the option to lease the batteries. This pretty much halved the purchase price of the car. I went for it at the time, because hired batteries would be replaced at 70% of original charge whereas the bought batteries were covered for 60%. I have also worked out that I would need to have the car more than 10 years for the battery hire option to be more expensive.

Did the option for hiring batteries never take off? Was it something only Renault did? It seems to me a solution to the issue of high purchase prices of EVs.

2nd_time_buyer

A lot of people these days are swayed by the ongoing running costs and don't necessarily look at the whole picture. Once you include the battery lease then the ongoing costs approach that of a BEV. Also, increasingly people buy new cars on some kind of lease deal, so it wouldn't make much sense to lease the battery separately. 

michaels

JKenH said:

    Spies said:

Issue with BEV equivalents in the range they're like £5k more expensive, so people will still buy ICE.

Im still longing for a BEV but even the first gen leafs are crazy prices. 

Used prices are starting to fall quite quickly now. On 8th October wbac offered £20685 for my 16,500 mile 2020 40kWh Leaf. Today the offer is down to £16,815. That’s not far off a 20% drop in less than 6 weeks.

There is a time lag between the trade price falling and the retail price falling but retail prices will soon follow down. 

You now see 2019/69 Tesla Model 3s on Autotrader with around 40k miles for £33k or less for higher mileages. A couple of weeks ago one was listed at around £27k (I forget the mileage but it was 100k plus). There is currently a TM3LR on for £33.5k but it has 102k miles on the clock. Given the mileage these cars will do that’s quite a saving (£57.5k new now).

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?sort=price-asc&postcode=dn213ps&radius=1500&make=Tesla&model=Model%203&include-delivery-option=on&exclude-writeoff-categories=on

Edit: meanwhile the wbac price for my petrol Golf has gone up £500 from £14.5k to £15k.

Edit 2: 2020 n-Connecta Leafs with similar miles are retailing around £20.5k so the price drops perhaps aren’t fully feeding through yet. It’s not going to help recent buyer’s confidence in EVs if they have bought at higher prices and are now seeing the values fall quite rapidly. 

Edit 3: IIRC when I bought my Leaf you could lease one at an average monthly cost of around £250/month with the headline rate (after deposit) of £190ish. Now the cheapest Leaf deal on Cars2buy.com is £328 (headline rate £262), that’s £3936 per year over 4 years.
(These deals are for 5000 miles but unfortunately there are no deals listed for higher mileages for the Leaf). 

https://www.cars2buy.co.uk/personal-car-leasing/nissan/leaf/

If you save £600 a year on fuel (typical 5000mile figure perhaps if you have a home charger), £165 on road tax and £100 on servicing compared to a petrol car your net cost after savings against an ICE car (as Tesla used to say) is £3071.

Or you could lease a Nissan Qashqai for £256/month (average cost) which equates to £3074.

https://www.cars2buy.co.uk/personal-car-leasing/deal/78424-10d717b8d91d-b829160e5c7b7c0d65cf6eab68f9fb011dba4cfa

Edit 4a: to put the above in a slightly easier to understand format, the annual costs are as follows. 

The Leaf costs £3936 plus £0 VED plus £150 (say) servicing plus £150 (say) home charging (based on 100% home charging at 12p/kWh and 4kWh/mile (for ease of calculation). Total £4236.

The Qashqai costs £3074 plus £165 VED plus £250 (say) servicing plus £750 fuel (50mpg at 15p/litre for ease of calculation). Total £4239.

Edit 5: my son has just informed me that the wbac price for his 2017 30kwh has come down from £12,200 in September to £10,050 today, most of the fall in the last couple of weeks. He sold it privately at the weekend for £11,500.

I'm after a used 40kwh - I wonder how long the fall in values will take to filter through to private sellers - was looking at one today, asking price £17950 - WBAC £9400

JKenH

In the autumn statement today Jeremy Hunt announced that from April 2025 electric vehicles will no longer be exempt from VED. 

A couple of questions: Will this be applied just to new EVs registered after that date or to all EVs? Will the higher rate of VED be applied to EVs over £40k?

Edit: Based on this report in the Guardian newspaper the answers are unlikely VED will be applied to existing EVs and likely that EVs over £40k will be taxed at higher rate.

Rates of VED vary largely according to emissions and the age of the car, with all zero-emission vehicles currently exempt. EVs will be charged the lowest band for new cars in the first year – currently £10 – and will then pay the same rate as other vehicles. Drivers of the newest diesel or petrol cars typically pay £120-£945 in the first year and then £165 a year for the next five years. More expensive cars are also surcharged, potentially hitting new EVs.

Some incentives would remain for businesses to transition to cleaner vehicles. Hunt said: “Company car tax rates will remain lower for electric vehicles … and I will limit rate increases to 1% a year for three years from 2025.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/17/electric-car-owners-to-pay-road-tax-from-2025-jeremy-hunt-autumn-statement