The number of green cars sold in Britain has fallen for the first time in two years after the government cut subsidies.
Last month 13,314 “alternatively fuelled” cars were registered, 12 per cent less than in June 2018. Sales of pure electric cars rose sharply but this was offset by a huge decrease in the number of hybrids, which run on a combination of battery power and a conventional petrol engine.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said that it was the first time since April 2017 that the eco-friendly car sector had seen a decline.
The figures will come as a blow to the government’s ambition to promote clean alternatives to traditional petrol and diesel cars.
Ministers want to end the sale of combustion engine cars by 2040 to improve the quality of roadside air, ensuring that all new vehicles are effectively zero-emission models.
Motor manufactures have criticised the government’s decision to cut a £4,500 grant for those buying plug-in cars, which has already had a major impact on sales. The grant was abolished for plug-in hybrids last November and cut to £3,500 for pure electric cars.
Electric cars cost up to £10,000 more than their petrol or diesel equivalents and the government has acknowledged that the gulf in price is unlikely to close until the mid-2020s at the earliest. Price is often cited by motorists as one of the main reasons against turning to an electric or hybrid model. Concerns have also been raised over the lack of public roadside chargers.
I have seen press reports that many of the “plug-in hybrids” bought by companies never had the charging cable removed from the factory packaging by the actual users.
Yes, me too. The government had arranged that an SUV with a battery was cheaper than one without. The buyers had no interest in electric mode. The subsidy needed to be cut, and the effect seems pretty predictable.
If that’s true, I’d love to know where to get one on the secondhand market!
I could drive 100% electric on my commute while having the ICE for the long journeys.
Try the classifieds; the obvious place to look.
An obvious answer that makes your question rather silly.
Naww! Zatso? Well I’ve looked and found NONE in the North of the UK despite having a 5-station Charging point on my doorstep. Did see the odd car there, after it was installed at Christmas time 2018, but lucky to see one now at all. Reasons for selling their Hybrids? Moving to an ICE 4WD ! Why ~? example listings https://www.gumtree.com/cars/scotland/hybrid-cars
You might want to read-up about how hybrids work … if you are lucky … and drive like an annoying prick to the rest of us … you might just extend your electric mode from 2% … all the way up to 6%.
https://www.driveelectricmn.org/maximizing-ev-range-on-your-plug-in-hybrid/
Hybrids don’t offer you a switch to go from electric mode to gasoline mode … the batteries aren’t big enough to power your hybrid more than a couple blocks in electric mode. Oh the ignorance and disinformation of the eco-left … it’s astounding
My Ford C-Max plug in has just such an EV/Gas button. If you pay attention to when you use the battery, you can get very high mileage on hybrid trips.
Kenji incorrect. My 2008 Toyota Camry Hybrid would go almost 3 km or 1.5 miles on pure electric but u had to have special conditions to get that ie full batteries, stay below 70 kph with no heat or air conditioning on and a tail wind and a slightly downhill run helps. My daughter still drives the car and it is going strong and problem free in its 12th year. My daughter came in from soccer practice years ago and was ecstatic that she had made a 3 kilometre run on pure battery on the way home. Oh and u must drive like there is an egg under your shoe … the slightest aggression on the “gas” pedal would summon the gas motor to turn on.
RE not having a switch to lock on the electric many now do and I was looking at a Lexus just last week with this feature but the write up cautioned to not expect much more than a mile on electric before the car switched itself back to regular hybird mode. The Lexus wasn’t a plug in hybird …. just regular Toyota hybrid tech.
Okay Stewart,
given the amount of conditional statements you attached to your 3km drive I feel you perfectly reinforce Kenji’s claim. Even with perfect conditions you are getting, what? Five minutes of run time?
In my little home city the local council invested on a ‘green’ (both in colour and virtue) electric bus which they claimed was 100% solar charged. They used it on the free city loop service and was bloody awful.
They could run it for about 2 hours tops. It was unreliable. They also ran real buses but if the bus was late you could almost guarantee it was going to be the Green Monster that finally crawled around the corner, often so late that you were unsure if this was your bus or the next one that was meant to come 30 minutes later. If you had the misfortune of getting it in summer later in the day you have the pleasure of having the air con cut in and out as it struggled to climb slopes and to top it all off the internal layout had been designed by the work experience kid in an attempt to be wheelchair friendly resulting in a massive amount of dead space in the front half where passengers were both unable to stand or safely brake their wheelchair.
The only joy in this story was the two years they kept it locked in a shed after the battery system died and the council discovered no one in Australia had the ability to service it. Really unimpressed when it finally returned to the streets again.
Wow! 3km in electric mode? Whilst driving with extreme restraint (pissing off every other driver being held-up by your self-eco-mode). And all your power accessories shut down. Whoppee! And you are accomplishing exactly … what? Signaling your virtue? But you can’t use your turn signal … because it draws electricity.
Proving my repeated statement that electric and hybrids are cars for people who hate cars, and hate driving. Uggh. You all need to follow the Basic Speed Law and … SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT.
Yeah … I was really “wrong” about the futility of driving hybrids in electric-only mode. SMH …
Kenji – you are right about “parallel” hybrids (like the Prius, which is a useless bit of kit) but series hybrids are different: after 6 years my Ampera has a lifetime petrol usage of 158 m.p.g. For the record I don’t think CO2 matters much but street level air pollution does.
Mostly though an EV is a far better drive. I’ll never drive another suck-squeeze-bang-blow with its’ narrow torque band, noise and vibration and high maintenance costs.
It may be daft buying a brand new EV, but buying a secondhand EV is insane. Effectively, you are buying a secondhand battery. A three year old battery will not have the performance of a new one. How well has the battery been treated in terms of disciplined charging. Topping up on a charge is not good for battery life. Continuous topping up reduces performance even more. Then, while not impossible, a three Y.O. car would be hard to come by. If you did, I suspect the price tag might still be quite high. So realistically you would probably be looking at much older cars and therefore much older batteries. Of course, this (aging battery) is also an issue for the original purchaser too.
Nothing I dislike more than seeing a 20-something space cadet driving a new hybrid or battery car I paid for. These things along with windmills and cells should have to compete without my help. Pricing to the consumer needs to be totally transparent so evert bill payer knows exactly what the film flams are costing.
“Brits Lose Interest In Green Cars As Government Cuts Subsidies”
Funny that! Maybe extension cords will be more effective?
🙂
Cheers
Roger
The hybrid mode is much more efficient than a gasoline engine.
Hybrids actually have a gasoline engine, they also have an electric motor (or two). The two work together, hence the term “hybrid”. These vehicles are more efficient than either system by itself and can give you a 20-30% improvement in fuel mileage, depending on model, how it’s driven, and where. That can be enough to more than offset the initial higher cost of the vehicle for many consumers. If you need lots of interior space (for a large family for example), or tow heavy loads, then a hybrid may not be practical.
Rubbish.
Give us your costs.
Here’s mine:
ICE
Toyota Yaris Ascent Hatchback 4 Auotomatic = $125.90 per week.
https://www-cdn.rac.com.au/-/media/files/rac-website/car-and-motoring/running-costs/2018/voc_2018_light.pdf?la=en&modified=20180704034715&hash=85290DD8AF7EA0954081F962EAF8C13640FDD4DC
Hybrid (same URL)
Toyota Prius-C Continuous variable Hatchback = $135.70 per week
Mitsubishi Outlander (Hybrid) = $251.21 per week.
https://www-cdn.rac.com.au/-/media/files/rac-website/car-and-motoring/running-costs/2018/voc_2018_electric.pdf?la=en&modified=20180704035925&hash=E67B0D8B49123D5EE7E74853DB7E164A3951E363
The problem with these green brainwashed chappies is that they can’t do arithmetic.
They can’t drive either, in my experience.
Ha ha ha! Nail on the wee headdie!
“Ministers want to end the sale of combustion engine cars by 2040 to improve the quality of roadside air, ensuring that all new vehicles are effectively zero-emission models.”
Wha? Pure Greenie-inspired gibberish. They are trying to pull a fast one, confusing and conflating actual air pollution which may be a concern in cities with “zero-emmissions” meaning producing zero CO2, which is itself a lie based on the Big Lie, that CO2 is “pollution”.
The biggest pollution is car tires dust. And even 100% electric will not stop that problem.
The vegetation next to roads will hate electric cars.
I never realized where the rubber worn of tires went until I had to park next to a freeway every day. “black dust”
Some of that dust will be from the brakes and some of that will be asbestos.
No longer used. And any three way cat. car will clean Oxford St. air by burning off pollutants.
None of it will be asbestos, as that was banned in the USA by 1997.
Banned in the UK, by 1999, so unless there’s a few old cars around, that have never had their brake pads changed, they’ll be no asbestos in roadside dust.
Ministers are puppets of the money changers. That’s why elections normally don’t change a thing.
The problem is, there has never been an honest critical assessment of the green schemes.
Engineering reality is engineering reality. The green schemes can never work. They are flawed at the conceptual engineering level.
The green solution lie is perpetuated by ignoring the cost and additional CO2 which is the result of installing the green stuff.
For example:
1)Power lines, power line right-away (cut down the trees and maintain right away), switching equipment to carry the power from massive wind farms that are located where it is windy far from where the power is used.
2) Extra CO2 caused by a change from 60% combined cycle natural gas power plants that use the waste heat from the first pass gas turbines to produce steam. The problem is the combined cycle power plants take 10 hours to start and are less efficient during start up so they must be left on. As the amount for green intermittent energy exceeds around 50% of total load combined cycle power plants must be turned off. This forces the change to single cycle natural gas power plants that can be turned on/off but are only 40% efficient. In addition single cycle power plants are inefficient on start-up and reach peak efficiency in around hour so varying wind and solar power cause significantly more CO2 to generated for the times when it is not available.
3.) The energy cost when the green scheme requires batteries is astronomical as is the cost. At this point there is no savings in CO2 to continue with the green schemes. EVs will increase the total electrical load.
And now start installing this all over Africa. So where do you think our second hand petrol cars will go?
Pedant alert – ‘right of way’ not right away
It is fantasy to think that you can totally eliminate roadside pollution when the vehicles emit so little emissions that you cannot measure them with conventional methods and in many places, cars emit cleaner exhaust than the air going in.
Ford ran a test of a radiator coated with a reactive metal surface that actually reduced ozone from the air passing through it.
Nowadays, it is impossible to poison yourself by shutting yourself in a garage and running the engine.
Not sure I’d personally like to put Dr Bob’s last statement to the test. However, if he would like to demonstrate it himself ——-
Don’t forget what it was like in the 50s 60s. I was at an open air diner on Woodward Ave, Detroit a couple years ago for a muscle car rally. The exhaust hanging in the air was choking and eye watering. My own 64 Mustang in top tune is a stinker. The complainers (too young to know) haven’t a clue. The roadside air today is benign.
’64 Mustang … nice … lucky Mark. I fell in love with the Mustang as a 10 year old.
Some time ago I’ve done the test of removing the two ceramic elements of the front catalyser of my Subaru ’90, this car was not burning oil, had good and equal cylinders compression and a recent and functioning O2 sensor. The engine was in very good shape (an indestructible EJ22).
The smell of the car exhaust was horrible afterward, it was enough to convince me a working cat is not useless. Cleaned the cat elements and reinstalled them. BTW it was funny seeing how those honeycomb ceramic elements can combust unlighted propane.
Been done. Suicidal snowflake spent 6 hours trying to off herself with the old hose from the exhaust in the window in a locked garage. Result, bit of a headache.
My former next door neighbor closed and sealed his two-car garage … started up his 1968 VW Bug … and took a permanent nap. All it took was one night.
His daughters rented the house for 5-years … until the statute of limitations expired for real estate disclosure laws. Then they sold the dead man’s home for a boatload of $$$$$ … hey! I do live in the SF Bay Area …
Nowadays, it is impossible to poison yourself by shutting yourself in a garage and running the engine.
Ha ha ha ha! But, I’m guessing that’s really not true.
Eventually you will run out of oxygen.
CO₂ poisoning is reached about the same time that oxygen content is too low for flatland dwellers.
Either or both, the result is still death or suicide.
has to be a very leakproof garage
Mark W The answer is they don’t produce enough CO(Carbon Monoxide) to kill you and in all likely hood the car will run out to enough oxygen to run long before you will. CO2 levels that result won’t be pleasant for you but will not kill you. I would assume this day and age most people do not know how CO kills. CO kills you by not allowing your hemoglobin to carry oxygen the hemoglobin end up picking CO not oxygen since CO is 200 time easier for the hemoglobin to pick up. That interrupts the normal processes of the hemoglobin from carrying oxygen. Using and older auto to kill oneself was not that the air ran out of usable oxygen but you blood transportation of the usable oxygen does not happen because the hemoglobin is saturated with CO not O2. The CO carrying blood cell will not free itself from the CO easily. Carbon Monoxide poisoning is no pleasant, even if you survive the effect can be with you for months or years due to brain damage. Markw I hope you do know the difference between CO and CO2, I know some greenies do not.
Where exactly did I say anything about either CO or CO2?
No, clue: diffusion. Unless you have a hermetically sealed garage.
Actually, since modern cars put out so little Carbon Monoxide, it may be true. I would think that most garages leak enough that you won’t run out of oxygen, and if O2 did start getting low, the car would die long before you would.
Yep. Spot on.
Interesting about CO at such a low level to be unable to poison.. Any link on that as would like to learn more. I suppose asphixiation would still occur.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10084348
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/201873.stm
A few references:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/how_toxic_is_your_car_exhaust
https://www.treehugger.com/fossil-fuels/las-pollution-car-exhaust-down-98-60s.html
From the EPA:
Historic Success of the Clean Air Act
Congress passed the landmark Clean Air Act in 1970 and gave the newly-formed EPA the legal authority to regulate pollution from cars and other forms of transportation. EPA and the State of California have led the national effort to reduce vehicle pollution by adopting increasingly stringent standards.
The U.S. vehicle pollution control under the Clean Air Act is a major success story by many measures:
New passenger vehicles are 98-99% cleaner for most tailpipe pollutants compared to the 1960s.
Fuels are much cleaner—lead has been eliminated, and sulfur levels are more than 90% lower than they were prior to regulation.
U.S. cities have much improved air quality, despite ever increasing population and increasing vehicle miles traveled.
Standards have sparked technology innovation from industry.
Reducing pollution from transportation sources has led to healthier air for Americans. In cities, smog has been visibly reduced. Just compare the images of New York City below.
https://www.epa.gov/transportation-air-pollution-and-climate-change/accomplishments-and-success-air-pollution-transportation
I’m guessing that you would asphyxiate yourself first?
The engine might die before the person. Both need oxygen. Need data!
Normally as oxygen runs low, incomplete combustion produces carbon monoxide. I should think that’s what would kill you.
No the car will shut down first and before that the catalytic converter eliminates it. Cars are no longer stupid, they monitor their environment and operation.
sorry had to post this
You probably won’t die by CO poisoning, but I’m uncertain whether you or the car engine will choke first. CO2 is actually poisonous in extremely high concentrations like 100 000 ppm.
That is pretty remrkable by the way – I can’t think of anything else that won’t kill you until it reaches 250 times the normal concentration – oxygen and nitrogen for example are definitely poisonous long before that.
If you look at the history of the planet, CO2 levels of 400ppm are way, way below normal concentration.
Why not just trust the EU commissioners? I mean, haven’t they been right about green energy and diesel exhaust? Wasn’t their decision regarding vacuum power a boon to the average European? Surely this concept will be every bit as benevolent and beneficial.
Brits Lose Interest In Green Cars As Government Cuts Subsidies
It’s worse than you thought…
Electric cars are not the answer
Prof Frank Kelly said that while electric vehicles emit no exhaust fumes, they still produce large amounts of tiny pollution particles from brake and tyre dust, for which the government already accepts there is no safe limit.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/04/fewer-cars-not-electric-cars-beat-air-pollution-says-top-uk-adviser-prof-frank-kelly
Musicians like myself will no doubt have to get all our stuff on a bike and pedal it to the gig?
Frank should look into nasal hair, he’s got a lot to learn.
Maglev cars.
No, no. You will not be biking your musical paraphernalia to gigs. Bikes create tyre dust, too, and many, brake dust as well.
Better buy a wheelbarrow with wooden wheels.
Bicycles still have breaks and tires.
Yes! Cargo bikes. The pricier ones have electric assist, or even fully electric (pedal if you want to, I suppose). A local musician husband and wife duo are going on a 4-day (3 concert) music tour, by bicycle. They’ll be bringing their gear, merch, and young son along. It’s pretty cool, I suppose, just for the physical challenge of it, not because of “climate change”, which of course is the reason they’re giving. Of course, it helps that they’re still young and relatively fit.
How about pedaling to turn a generator that powers the electric motor
Went to the gym last night.
Pedalled like [[expletive deleted] for 12 miutes on a stationery exercise bicycle.
The readout told me I had produced enough enery to run a 15 watt globe for 9 minutes..
Hmmnn.
I think it would be more efficient to use direct pedal power rather than trying to turn person power into electricity to turn an eletric motor to turn the pedals
Greg: joke (sorry – obviously a poor one)
Magic flying carpets or Palanquins (if you can afford the slaves).
Scooters. They’re getting to be more popular than they were when I was 6. You carry your world on your back in a pack, get some exercise, and scare the Holy Hannah out of truck drivers. Wins all arround!
The truck drivers aren’t “scared”. That look on their face is DISGUST. Don’t believe me? Keep playing chicken with a truck … on your scooter. Eventually you will learn your lesson. It will be your last.
Since they have regenerative braking, hybrids and electric cars produce much less brake dust than IC cars. OTOH, the batteries are heavy, so they probably produce more tire dust.
True for normal driving, not for stop and go driving.
A step towards political and economic sanity.
Sadly, there is still a long way to go.
Jaguar-Land Rover have just announced that they are switching to manufacturing electric vehicles in the UK. I have no idea who they think they are going to sell them to. Maybe rich virtue signalling ignorami is a growing demographic.
It could just be a very good cover story for shifting the majority of production out of the UK on cost grounds. It would also be to their advantage to be EU based.
I have no idea who they think they are going to sell them to
Anyone who has >= £60K to spend on a car
The EU has fleet-wide emission limits, car makers have to make electric models, just to get below the limit. Not sure what happens if a maker produces a Flintstones car, with no engine.
So they will combine range anxiety with Lithium ion spontaneously combusting batteries, with Lucas the prince of Darkness Electrics. What could go wrong with that?
I think you should add a “Don’t try this one at home” proviso to your last statement Dr Bob.
Without green incentive, people are less green about Green.
They become yellow vest.
OK, why might I want an EV in GB? Maybe I want to avoid the Central London Congestion charge. link
The charge is £11.50 from Mon. to Fri. between 7 AM and 6 PM. If I want to commute to work, that’s 250 days a year x £11.50 = £2875 per year. If I keep my vehicle for ten years, that’s £28750, which is a healthy portion of its price.
So, is the Central London Congestion charge something like a subsidy?
Yes. Besides being obviously a fraud on its face – an EV creates just as much “congestion” as an ICE.
It was never intended to reduce congestion, just to incentivize the purchase of EVs and hybrids.
Maybe not a subsidy, if the purpose was to reduce inner city ground level ozone and NOx from IC engines. The level of the charge would need to be linked to damage according to some reasonable measure and it would be preferable to have a connection to engine performance/good maintenance.
But if that’s what it’s all about, “Congestion Charge” would be a misnomer.
They only want the 1% to drive in London like it was before. The rest of us can have cake. …..No they can’t too much sugar so we have to heavily tax cake so no cake. Sorry!
When the number of ICE vehicles travelling in Centrsl London starts declining, so will the taxes raised via these charges. Then they will start charging EVs.
You aren’t going to win no matter what you do as long as you stay there. Their objective is more money from you.
Virtue signaling catching up to reality but from an occupant’s perspective an EV is superior to an ICE vehicle. From a practicality standpoint they have a way to go until charge time, charge availability, battery range, and purchase price are acceptable to all user segments. Mandating EV over ICE will be a disaster until these issues are solved. Unfortunately the government answer is to increase living density so only mass transportation is needed. Agenda 21 is coming to your city whether you believe it or not.
Battery range will never ever be acceptable to all user segments.
Face it: there will never be a big breakthrough in batteries, there simply isn’t any atoms in this universe with enough valence electrons.
“The grant was abolished for plug-in hybrids last November and cut to £3,500 for pure electric cars.”
People respond to incentives. Surprise, surprise.
After the shaft given to diesel car owners by the UK government, I’m surprised they were able to sell as many EVs as they did. When are you going to learn that the correct answer to the government’s saying, “pull my finger, “ is, “no?”
+1 🙂
From recharge station to recharge station.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4AqHL8LvKrwQw1VOYNBHnQ/videos?disable_polymer=1
But if you’re not in a hurry should be great.
BEST ROAD TRIP IN THE WORLD | Scotland’s NC500
From the look of the beasts, I’d speculate that Scotland doesn’t have much winter tourism. Yes, I’m ready for your facts and invective.
Thanks for posting that. I enjoyed it. Now I want some fish and chips.
We have it drummed into us that miniscule amounts of CO2 in the exhausts of ICE cars is one of the prime contributors to climate change. Yet, when supporters of hydrogen fuel-cell cars brag about the fact that their cars only produce a greenhouse component – water vapour – 50 times more effective as a greenhouse cause, the likes of the BBC rejoice that, ‘It’s only water’!
What am I missing here?
Nothing, other than you think, they don’t. As Ron White puts it “you can’t fix stupid”
Harry: you are missing nothing. Commercial hydrogen currently comes from natural gas and is hard to store. I am a fan of battery driven EVs for reasons unconnected with climate change, but I regard hydrogen powered cars as silly unless you are an oil company executive trying to preserve a market.
Made me think back to when Benghazi was pleading for more security, but the State Dept under Obama cut security instead…while authorizing spending on a fleet of Volts, other plug-ins, and charging stations (reports about $108k for the US Embassy in Vienna drew the most attention).
The current top hybrids, aka Toyota Prius, Kia Optima, and other sophisticated hybrids have gotten very close to diesel cars in fuel economy using cheaper gasoline. The latest advancements in computer controlled compression ignition(Mazda) bring fuel economy up to diesel levels. If not too much patented technology is involved it could quickly spread across the industry.
At around 55-60mpg for a car it is pretty much the equivalent of a grid-powered, rechargable car, without all the negatives of of cost and exotic materials. Larger vehicles, regardless of power source, will always require more power and will never compete in energy usage compared to modest size cars and SUV’s.
https://gas2.org/2018/01/30/mazda-says-new-skyactive-3-engines-will-clean-electric-cars/
Mazda Says New SkyActive 3 Engines Will Be As Clean As Electric Cars January 30, 2018
latest videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6-38GNUjGA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD1mPPkuRIE
HCCI = High Compression Controlled Ignition
2nd one is very good. Jackson, Mazda spokesman says in March 2018 that there’ll be a year or year and a half before it goes into production. So, mid to late 2019.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNSxow3W7ek&t=51s
Good detailed white-board explanation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3yqb22fTwE
Jackson, Mazda spokesman, says that the Skyactiv-x can be used in Mazda’s entire fleet and bring down CO2 emissions by 23% (=30% more efficient), vs. bringing out an EV that would only be maybe 10% (IIRC) of sales or a hybrid that would be 46% of sales. He says that this engine will (also) be used in its EV / hybrid cars (EREVs?)
Says that small companies can have different designers talk to each other in next room and develop subsystems in coordination, making room for one another.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TBphpfSH1s
Follow-on video about the car, not the engine.
Here are four recent videos on Mazda’s new “spark-controlled compression-ignition” engine, the best of which is :
“Skyactiv-X: Mazda’s Revolutionary Engine Explained”
http://bit.ly/2GxOg1K
It’ll be coming in summer 2019, with a claimed 30% improvement in fuel economy. Here’s an article and two other videos on it:
“Spark Controlled compression-ignition” gasoline skyactiv X engine; Feb. 2018 article:
http://bit.ly/2GPUrl9
“Mazda Creates The Holy Grail Of Gasoline Engines – HCCI SkyActiv-X”
http://bit.ly/2GBsH0p
Mazda Skyactiv-X HCCI Engine Technology Explained | AutoExpert John Cadogan | Australia 8/17
http://bit.ly/2wy9tUH
A Feb. 24 YouTube video of a German test driver commenting on a pre-production version of the latest iteration of the Mazda 3 with its new SkyActiv X engine. He says it’s quiet and more powerful
I know of no automakers who will be making gas powered cars after 2024. much less 2040.
Plug in hybrids have lost sales, while all electric sales have increased. Public fast charging
machines are being installed across Europe and Britain by several orgs – IONITY is a consortium funded by Ford, BMW, Mercedes and VW Group (VW, Audi, Porsche) – it installs the de facto worldwide standard charging protocol CCS, which is much faster than Tesla’s Superchargers and which will become ubiquitous . Exxon, Movil, hell Oil and 6 regional European gas station networks are installing CCS chargers. CCS chargers operating at 350 KW , which is what the Porsche Taycan
uses,can recharge to 80% in less than 15 minutes. VW promises to produce a low cost electric for under $20,000 (before subsidies)
Who is going to build out the extra electric transmission and distribution systems to handle the vastly increased EV charging load?
THANKS! I needed the laugh.
~¿~
I guess the Third World will be buying all the Western World’s used ICE vehicles …. like shit.
How are those batteries going to perform when they’re not always getting a deep charge?
They burn.
And where will all the cobolt and lithium come from? The entire world production of both is not enough to even replace ICE cars in the EU, much less in the world.
And where is the electricity coming from?
tty, please don’t bother the big picture dreamers with mundane details; somebody else is supposed to actuate their dreams.
Free markets and the rule of law will move the world forward, as they always have. Where they don’t exist, you get starvation and tyranny. Venezuela is just the most recent example. Aw hell, lets just thrown in most of Africa, the Middle East, Central America and North Korea just for fun.
Anybody that doesn’t recognize that the USA has pulled the World’s chestnuts out of the fire on many occasions just hasn’t read 20th Century history. And don’t bore me with a recitation of its obvious flaws.
Where is the electricity coming from? I can just hear A O-C’s response to that:
“Helloooo. My house has about fifty electrical outlets. My car will only need one! Duh!”
you are assuming car ownership levels will remain the same , not if the greens get their way for their hatred of personal motorised transport does not stop at ‘evil fossil fuel’ ones .
Will it be prepared for mass evacuations for a hurricane or if half the country starts holiday on the same day ?
Are they safe enough to park under a big residential building because if one of those batteries has a overheating problem .
And don’t forget Big Brother government. They too want their fair tax share so forget cheap electricity and you will only be allowed to charge the car with a government approved charging card.
That’s where the pay-by-the-mile taxation comes in, with the convenient tracking function, as well. That way big brother can make double sure you’re only engaged in double plus good activities!
I do not want anyone to track my vehicles for any reason whatsoever. Thanks.
I’ll pay the upfront road charge in preference to being tracked. That’s just rude.
Don’t come to Big Brother Europe !
The same idiots also said we’d all have personal helicopters by now.
You don’t go anywhere outside your neighborhood, do you, ColMosby?
So we’ll all be buying SUVs and pickup trucks? Glad I just bought a new Lexus GS350. Should be good at least until 2030. By then ICE cars will be being built again.
Seriously, man, you should offer to share whatever you are smoking.
ColMosby,
Ever heard of Ford, General Motors, Jeep, Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Nisan, Lexus, VW, BMW, Mercedes, Aston Martin, Porsche, Lamborghini? They will all have gasoline models for the 2024 model year and for many years after that, I’m sure. Unless you have inside knowledge at all these companies (and more) that says they are going to abandon the 95% of their customers that are demanding and buying gasoline (and diesel) powered vehicles?
Note: please don’t be offended if I forgot your favorite automobile manufacturer, but these are just the ones off the top of my head and frankly there are just too many to list.
350 KW! Wow! Imagine a charging station with 20 charging points all drawing 350 KW. That’s 7 MW. Unfortunately the cabling underground melts down with the load – if the sub station doesn’t first. Same thing happens all over the country as thousands of service stations try and draw 7 MW. And that’s before you even add in the home chargers – millions of vehicles parked overnight drawing a “mere” 10 KW each. This is where reality meets fantasy.
Sadly, it seems that the future politico msm greenies were already in dreamland when ARITHMETIC ( let alone Mathmatics) was taught. Oh, forgot, they were already dreaming of Fridays for future, but in their dreams, their body clocks were still at Weekend for Weed.
In other words, they can’t count nor have any connection with Reality.
No more ICE’s in less than 5 years? You are delusional.
Virtue signaling is soooo much more affordable when your stealing other peoples money via taxpayer funded subsidies! The essence of ‘Going Green’….
If EVs are really cheaper let them compete fair and square. No tax on gas or other taxes on gas cars.
In the US, one of the biggest subsidies for EVs is how the CAFE numbers are calculated.
The UK government gave me a grant to get rid of my old car – so I bought a diesel. He, he, he….
Ralph
Britain also had “cash for clunkers” fiasco, ralfellis?
The cost of electric cars is even more than the £10,000. The boss of Fiat admitted that they sell every electric car at a $5,000 loss.
If only there was a field of study dedicated to predicting this sort of outcome.
In my area of semi rural Southern New Jersey (yes, there is such a place) there is a preponderance of pickup trucks on the roads. These “dual use” vehicles can be seen hauling lumber, other building materials, hay bales, and other farming supplies much of the time. Other times they are seen at the grocery stores and parked at places of business. It is better to have one pickup truck getting 23mpg than both a pickup truck and an electric car which gets the equivalent of 60mpg from a total energy used, energy cost of production viewpoint.
Until you can find a way for electric cars to be able to carry 1500lbs or tow 3500 lbs, then you are ignoring the fact that the people who actually do stuff to make our civilization work need more than a little econobox to get stuff done.
Electric motors are stronger than ICE engines.
That is not a problem at all.
Eventually range is the only issue as with pickup trucks are mostly used in rural areas, where the networks of high power rechargers isn’t developed yet.
As with EVs, as soon as they will be out, you will see professional users of pickup trucks switching to EV pickup trucks in no time, as they are stronger, cheaper to use and have way way more torque.
RE_aly? Where did you get that info from? I was always well informed ( taught) that Horsepower was horsepower and KiloWatts were 1000 Watts. Watts to know that it makes NO DIFFERENCE what the source is! 100 Hp will always be around 75kW ( round Number for you to keep in the head for more useful occasions).
for work done, speed, lifting, ploughing, generating printing, flying, etc – they are all thesame and be:- 1 horsepower (hp) = 745.70 joules per second (J/sec) = 1 Watt. for your record
Except to get as much power for a full workday, you’d need at least three times the battery capacity.
Let’s see how quick adoption is when you have to add $100000 worth of battery to the cost of a pickup. Not to mention the rural electrical needs of all the farmers needing chargers with three times the capacity spread out over a large area.
All this debate with more unrealistic bollox about industrial equipment and energy use.
The day I see a COMBINE HARVESTER running on electricity let me know.
Fact is, one of the BIG costs of any decent size farm is diesel fuel (which they get at a discount).
When you have a change in weather coming, the chips are down and you HAVE to get that crop of grain in the door in the next 36hrs or so it blown down & rot in the fields, what you need is solid reliable power for those 36hrs without a break.
The power source has the highest energy density possible and the cost becomes irrelevant compared with the possible losses from a 50% destroyed crop.
It strikes me the people who are forcing this “energy transition”: on everyone else are people like “president des riches” Macron, and other career politicians who have never been out of a cushy office and done a real job in real conditions in their lives.
I can give another example.
Someone offered me a fork lift one day “dirt cheap”.
It was almost past refusing because the price was so good.
I hesitated, then they said “mind you the batteries are shot” you will have to replace them all before it’s any use.. (which of course costs a fortune).
That sums up the ‘lectric car re-volution.
Buy a Tesla today, and see it as a pile of scrap in under 5yrs.
No earthly good to anyone, and full of highly polluting dangerous scrap, which requires special skills to recycle, with no qualified backup to service it.
It sounds about as useful as a Sinclair C5 for ploughing the fields or even a chocolate teapot!
Electrics have better low end torque, however if you want to haul that load at more than 5mph, you better get an ICE.
The only virtue that I can see in using a hybrid car is if one drives in a badly
designed road network with lots of traffic lights, situation such as Australian
cities and the usual stop start driving. Its nice to know that if one is using
the IC motor and waiting at the lights, then the usual wasted energy is going
into the battery.
But its the replacing of the battery which s the problem, with no car subsidy and
a high cost of a replacement battery they are simply too dear for the average
working class person. .
As for managing on the battery only, no way in Australia, its cold on a
winters morning and very hot in the summer.
MJE VK5ELL
Charles: whilst I have the greatest respect for the GWPF this is hardly surprising. A drop in sales following a reduction in subsidy is to be expected. The same thing happened to Tesla in Q1 this year after their subsidy halved.
I don’t understand all the EV-bashing on here. This is about industrial survival not climate change. In March a US manufacturer, Tesla, sold more cars in Norway than any other manufacturer regardless of propulsion type. The last time a US car topped the sales chart in Norway Pontius was probably using a US car to get to his job as a pilot. BMW are worrying about a US manufacturer, Tesla, eating their lunch. The Chinese are building a lead in this technology that will soon be unassailable if Western manufactures don’t get their fingers out. China are already dominating the electric bus business (Shenzhen had a 100% electric bus fleet in 2016). Chinese NEV sales grew 1.8% in May whilst overall vehicle sales fell according to one source.
Folk need to wake up, smell the coffee and look at the trends. If the West waits until EV sales are big enough to destroy their margins it will be too late
You need to maintain a healthy skepticism with full EVs-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/motoring/news/bmw-isnt-convinced-on-combustion-extinction/ar-AADGrGY
If they’re not to run on Fossil fuel power grids that means lots of lithium batteries going into the grid and there won’t be the supply of raw materials for either. Lithium battery technology is now very mature with economies of scale and yet EVs are clearly the preserve of the wealthy. Hence you can see how dropping UK subsidies sees the cheaper hybrid sales fall while the wealthy demand hasn’t been satisfied yet.
Keep your eye on Australia without EV subsidies and no domestic car industry to protect and the cheapest EVs coming onto the market are over $50k AUD drive away when the median price of used and new cars on popular Carsales online selling tool is only $25k. Get up to $50k and above and you’re talking the top 16% of buyers and EVs don’t have the best selling dual cab utes that business buys in droves and business isn’t sentimental as large buyers. That’s further slashing that 16% market slice with respect to availability of private buyers who would possibly buy an EV.
My guess is EVs will be lucky to reach 2-3% of sales unless a breakthrough occurs with battery prices. A BMW exec claimed recently they can make a whole ICE car for the price of a reasonable battery and retorted ‘never, never, never’ to the question of lithium battery prices coming down. For the average punter the opportunity cost(finance?) of an extra $20-$25k AUD for an EV in Australia blows away any fuel savings. EVs are a pecadillo for the wealthy and the virtue signallers as Tesla well know and are milking it for all it’s worth. Nice cars if you can afford one.
Observa, pigs-in-space. You don’t understand what I am saying. I don’t care a button whether the electricity is generated by coal, treadmills in gyms or burning cow-farts. I’m not interested in “there’s no demand” theories which are a busted flush
Look at the trends.
observa re Australia. Obviously a market happening there too: https://www.carsales.com.au and /cars/nissan/leaf/. According to one website, EV sales in Australia grew 67% year on year between 2017 and 2018
Off what base though and good luck to Elon milking wealthy virtue signallers although his TeslaS is a bloody good drive by all accounts if you want to do your licence with all the speed cams around-
https://www.whichcar.com.au/car-news/how-australia-compares-globally-for-electric-vehicle-sales
The cabbies all use Toyota hybrids naturally after a love affair with local Ford and Holden(GM) big sixes and LPG until the price of LPG rocketted up as backup for solar and wind. Apart from that private purchases of hybrids is really poor even though the payback for city slickers would be only 3 years with average driving.
The BMW exec has it right with costs unless like Norway you introduce subsidies and ICE bans and even then Norwegians have a a big SUV to go with the mandated EV-
https://driving.ca/auto-news/news/motor-mouth-the-inconvenient-truth-about-china-and-norways-ev-subsidies
Get this in proportion mate!
China has a population of 1.6 billion.
I don’t really give a toss about China and their so called “domination”.
We already have their diesel powered buses all over Eastern Europe already.
So what? They are cheap and can be thrown away when worn out.
What population does Norway have? Does it have a vast farm network?
“China are already dominating the electric bus business (Shenzhen had a 100% electric bus fleet in 2016)?
FYI the Chinese electric buses are powered by COAL FIRED power stations.
Get it?
I have been there, seen them watched it.
All electricity for recharging in China is subsidised off peak, asked about it, seen it.
Zilch is eco-friendly anything at all, then they export them (dump them on the world market) and fill ships with heavy OIL to transport them around the world.
Better know what you want!
Do electric cars pollute more than gasoline?
https://www.google.com/search?q=electric+car+battery+emissions&oq=battery+emissions+electrical+car&aqs=chrome.
The actual preference of hybrid technology: for longer downhill driving no braking power is needed, brake discs are not worn, no energy is converted into heated brake discs.
The disadvantage of course: double drive technology means 2 motors, 2 output shafts + snchronization, additional space requirements, increased maintenance and repair needs …