I’ve just spoken to a Kia car salesman who tells me that no one is buying electric at the moment due to the massive rise in energy prices here in the UK:
Owners of electric vehicles will face drastically increased charging costs in the coming months due to the energy price cap increase, the RAC has calculated.
Yes all of us who have been reading here know EV is not a great or even a good deal right now.
That said it has been deflationary all along and will become more deflationary over time. There are deflationary leaps in battery tech and in alternative energy.
We are having very pressing problems with heatwaves. I believe UK’s heat is crazy. The friends I have who were saying climate change is a hoax are now saying it is here.
While we can plan to stay put with ICE or make it a bit better…we can do better planning for batteries and alternative energy.
They are planning to build millions of EVs. That is the big question. Will people buy them?
No one wants to be first. As a commuter car close to home they may be fine. But recharging remains a problem on the road.
In Europe regs force manufacturers to sell EVs. California seems headed that way.
When push comes to shove, what yields? Will better batteries, better technology, recharging numbers all be ready in time. Grid improvements too. Or will regs be adjusted to the situation?
EV investors make their choices. A risk with no certain answers.
BTW be careful trusting the Kia dealer. I scanned something very briefly two months ago that the Kia EV was total crap. The buyers out there might be avoiding Kia like the plague.
Paul all of it is incremental. My sister and BIL love their Tesla. They had an electric BMW before that. They wont go back to having to ICE. They will go forward to two EV.
Someone said “lets keep making the ICE better”. My question is how exactly? My 2018 Accord has the 2.0L turbo making like 260hp, mated to a 10-speed automatic. The complexity of this all is absurd. I’ve said it before I’ll say it again, one reason every major manufacturer is going EV is because they are tired of the complexity of the ICE and the transmissions.
I feel this way every time I go into Honda to service either car. Go in for oil change, they try to upsell you this and that and what else. “The code says oil, transmission and coolant. Tech advises the brake fluid and an engine treatment as well.”
Every argument against the EV I see is an argument that is rapidly going away with advances in technology. Battery prices, vehicle range, vehicle prices. It’s all coming down. And I haven’t even talked about the driving experience of instant torque, zero throttle lag, and no upshifts and downshifts. We’re actively trying to get away from as much Lithium. We even found a bunch of it in Nevada if we can just convince people to let us get it.
“But the summer road trip”. That one time a year people need to drive far, and they complain about that. Fly. Or rent a car. Problem solved.
Battery prices, vehicle range, vehicle prices. It’s all coming down.
Are they? At least for now, the prices are going up:
One of the major barriers to mass adoption of electric vehicles is cost. EVs are just way too expensive, with the average price hitting an all-time high earlier this summer of $66,000. That’s disappointing because the auto industry has always promised that prices would come down as EV battery packs became more efficient to manufacture.
But even more disappointing is the rate that EV prices are increasing as compared to their gas equivalents. According to a recent analysis by car shopping database iSeeCars, electric car prices saw a year-over-year increase of 54.3 percent while gas-powered cars were up just 10.1 percent.
That’s consistent with basic “Econ 101” macro theory. Generally speaking, once you get past the ‘economies of scale’ section of increasing the amount produced, it usually gets more expensive to increase production volumes. The marginal cost rises, because you’ve “used up” the cheaper resources that go into making your product and start putting a strain on your input costs. That applies to both components and to EV’s themselves. Rising commodity costs for key materials push battery prices up. And then, with production constraints on batteries and chips, automakers are - quite reasonably - allocating those scarce resources to their more expensive models.
In 2019, you could (theoretically) get a Model 3 for $35K. Now it’s $47K. The Model 3 you get today is better than the early 2019 version, of course - but the ‘floor price’ for getting into a Tesla is that much higher.
And “on the road” could mean while an work. BIL works building super computers for the Dept. of Energy. At his job site, if you have an EV you can’t park it nor charge it in the multistory garage. Why? Don’t want to deal with issues of hard to control/contain fires from the batteries.
And now California is “warning” the public about NOT charging their EVs at home with potential brown outs/black outs in the future.
Rising commodity prices for inputs in EV are based on money supply coming off Covid economic policies. It is a poor example to section as a change in input prices longer term.
The appreciating USD and this winter Euro will alter our industrial inputs. The inflationary forces on commodities will be mostly low for over a decade. Time of the cycle. The development of batteries and alternatives should well out pace any rising costs ON AVERAGE over the decade.
And now California is “warning” the public about NOT charging their EVs at home with potential brown outs/black outs in the future.
Major work on the nation’s grid is very important. I believe the monies have been enacted. This is changing.
Listen somewhere between my age and being over 80 people more and more do not want EV. It upsets their applecart. This board has fewer people under 50. You wont find much more than a chorus here of not for me.
And now California is “warning” the public about NOT charging their EVs at home with potential brown outs/black outs in the future.
That is not true. It is FUD you are making up.
Due to hot weather the next few days the utilities are asking customers to cut back on the use of A/C, major appliance usage as well as EV charging DURING PEAK HOURS of 4-9 pm.
You can still charge your car during those times, but it is just better if you charge at night.
Every argument against the EV I see is an argument that is rapidly going away with advances in technology.
Still no EVs that I can hook behind my motorhome and tow down the freeway at 60+ MPH for a few hours. Not without involving yet a third vehicle, a flatbed trailer.
albaby:“Model 3 you get today is better than the early 2019 version, of course - but the ‘floor price’ for getting into a Tesla is that much higher.”
Well, you can order one, but delivery is about one year right now.
Just read that China produces 80% of the world’s Lithium Ion batteries.
They were ahead of the pack locking up sources.
So far, US mines for Li have been put on hold after dozens of lawsuits from Native Americans, Sierra Club, and others.
China still does most of the Li processing , too, taking the raw Li CL and purifying it and make it battery grade.
You can buy half a dozen or more ICE cars for under $30K. Even if you save $10,000 over the life of the car on fuel, it’s hard to justify $60K for a Tesla or Ford Lightning or GM Silverado. Worse, in 10 years, you’ll likely be looking at $25,000 battery replacement costs to keep it running.
You can put a rebuilt engine and transmission in a car for $6K if you drive 200,000 or more in 10 years and just keep driving.
And now California is “warning” the public about NOT charging their EVs at home with potential brown outs/black outs in the future.
That is a misrepresentation of the facts. They asked the public not to charge their EVs between 4pm and 9pm yesterday and today because of the current heat wave and associated high demand from air conditioning.
It’s not a long term problem, just a couple of days that are stressing the system for a couple of hours each day.
Volvo says emissions from making EVs can be 70% higher than petrol models - and claims it can take up to 9 YEARS of driving before they become greener.
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Here is what Volvo actually says:
The Swedish car maker said that over a car’s lifetime the electric version will become greener overall, though this will only be achieved after covering between 30,000 and 68,400 miles - taking between four and nine years for the average UK motorist.
But it all depends on how clean is your recharging electricity:
When charged with clean energy, such as wind power, the lifecycle CO2 footprint of the new electric SUV comes down to approximately 27 tonnes of CO2, compared with 59 tonnes for an XC40 compact SUV powered by a combustion engine.
So EV becomes greener in 9 years when using using dirty global electricity, but it takes about 4 to 5 years for EV to become cleaner when charging with the much cleaner electricity in UK.
So the bottom line says EVs cost more to buy but government subsidies can equalize EV and ICE purchase price, CO2 emissions will be better for EV than ICE as cleaner electricity is used for charging, UK electricity is much cleaner than global electricity, battery manufacturing will also see improvement in CO2 emissions as cleaner electricity is used in manufacturing.
Thus EVs reduce CO2 emissions better than ICE, and EVs cost less for fuel and maintenance than ICE.
Only from 4 to 9 pm, which is not when most people charge their cars.
Survey after survey show about 80% of charging is done at home.
Most of these people probably charge at night or could if told about the flex alert condition.
But, just for fun, at 4pm I went to Google maps and checked the status of a couple of Supercharger locations. Google just counts cell phone location data, not charging data of course.
You access by clicking on a location pin and scrolling down the popup to the “popular times” section where they show a histogram of business vs time of day. Not all sites have this.
I went to the Kettleman City supercharger because it is fairly busy and about midway between LA and SF. It has 40 chargers, but was so busy they just built a 56 charger location a few blocks away (for some reason google doesn’t have “popular times” for this second location yet (and the map picture just has a dirt lot still)
Anyway, at 4pm the histogram showed about 90-95% of average for a Thursday at 4pm. I also (visually) summed the histogram and found that about ~30% of charging and this location takes place between 4 and 9 pm. Other days were about the same, a few less than this. Except on Sunday’s it is more like 40% (makes sense as people return from weekend trips)
And now California is “warning” the public about NOT charging their EVs at home with potential brown outs/black outs in the future.
I’m keeping my ICE for now.
This bit of misinformation is currently being circulated by pro-Putin disinformation bots. Not suggesting you are one of those, just that you are blindly repeating and amplifying anti-American misinformation.
The utilities have recommended reducing high demand appliances like air conditioning an EV charging between 4-9 pm for the next few days. Now if you are too hot, reducing air condition might be hard. But setting your EV to charge after 10pm is trivially easy, and takes only a few seconds.
Now, if setting your EV to charge at 10pm instead of whenever you want is such a high burden you cannot handle it, the alternative is to send thousands of young Americans to die in the Middle East at the cost of trillions of dollars and supporting unsavory dictators like Putin.
I’ll accept the burden of setting my EV to charge at 10pm. Enjoy your ICE.
But setting your EV to charge after 10pm is trivially easy, and takes only a few seconds.
I suspect most people charging their EVs at home are already charging their cars outside of those 4-9 hours. California has largely switched to time of use billing. 4-9 pm is the time when electricity costs the most. So people set their cars to charge outside those hours unless they absolutely have to.
I suspect most people charging their EVs at home are already charging their cars outside of those 4-9 hours. California has largely switched to time of use billing. 4-9 pm is the time when electricity costs the most. So people set their cars to charge outside those hours unless they absolutely have to.
Can confirm as a California resident. The billing is normally about 60% higher for electricity used between 4PM and 9PM, so anybody with half a brain wouldn’t routinely charge their EVs then anyway. During periods of very high demand, like the current state-wide heat wave, you’ll get public reminders about not using large appliances etc during those times to help reduce grid loads.
The reason for routine time-of-use billing isn’t actually about peak demand… its because renewables like solar and wind aren’t as available so they have to increase the output from the fossil fuel power plants to handle loads above a nuclear/hydro baseline.
Basically time-of-use billing is to encourage electricity usage in off-peak hours to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and smog-producing emissions.