reading about how ford has walked away from ev's and toyota saying that it's more about hybrids, i was just wondering what's the perception of ev's on the other side of the world. the Aust gov keep pushing but it's not working. the Aust gov have lost the plot with the renewables push for solar farms and wind farms that are proving to be a joke at best. i think the biggest issue with ev's is the way they have been pushed as a replacement for ice cars, they will never replace an ice car with today's technology. they were rejected a 100 years ago when they came up with the petrol engine cars and it will happen again if they are not careful. i do believe there is a place for ev's but that is not on the open roads, stay within a 100km's of home and do your own charging from home and that is how they should be advertised, city vehicles only.
not a range rover issue but if we were in the pub, it would be up for discussion.
After rising for the last few years, the percentage of EVs sold in the UK has dropped from 16.6% to 16.5% from the latest figures released a few days ago. Reasons given are the high purchase price, the introduction of road tax on them coming shortly, the shortage of charging infrastructure and the cost of charging anywhere other than at home are what are putting off private buyers. I read a review of one that was taken on a family holiday around France recently (I think it was in Autocar and was a test of a BMW X5 EV) and the costs of charging at public charging points worked out at almost the same as I would pay doing a similar trip on LPG (and a P38 isn't exactly the most economical vehicle on the road) but one part that I wasn't aware of was the reduced range when cruising at motorway speeds. The reviewer said he had been getting a range of around 230 miles when cruising at 65mph but on his return wasted so much time looking for a working charger that he drove to the ferry at Calais at the legal limit of 80mph (130kph) and was down to 10% charge after only 140 miles. Now I would probably go further on a tank of fuel if I drove at 65mph but my consumption at 75-80 is still better than I get running around town and I get to where I'm going a lot quicker on a 500 mile journey.
As for Aus, my other half works for Cummins, the truck and ship engine makers, and they have sold a large number of diesel generator sets to Aus to power EV charge points away from the cities. So instead of a car generating pollution , it is simply moved to the means of charging. They have also developed a fully functioning Hydrogen engine for trucks, as have Mercedes, so the haulage industry seem to be ignoring EV technology. We also have an increasing number of trucks running on LPG and CNG.
I'm with you, an EV for someone that only drives in the city and charges at home, makes perfect sense. My sister has one but will be moving house soon to a more rural area and is looking at changing for a hybrid as the range on her current car simply won't be sufficient. Although, as she put it, her husband has a real car so if they need to go any distance, they use that.
I have always wondered if electric cars were going to be a temporary way to reduce emissions until hydrogen can take over. Volvo are stepping away from polestar and BMW seem to be heading towards hydrogen now.
As Gilbert says, EV are an urban solution. They make a lot of sense in that application at low speed, lots of acceleration from stand still, 0 emissions at the point of use.
Overall, as more of our electricity generation switches away from fossil fuels, we'll be able to waste some capacity on bridging the efficiency gap between EV at 80% and hydrogen at 40% especially if someone works out how to leverage the huge investment on charging infrastructure by installing local H2 production. This would minimise the transport of H2 which is inefficient.
NZ is a bit the same for that...
The government had a green car deal where you go a rebate if it was a hybrid or EV and that stopped in December last year. I think a bunch of rich people (including the PM's family) were buying like $80K Teslas and getting massive rebates on them. But we also don't have the charging infrastructure to do long distances.
The other push has been that plug in Hybrid and EV's haven't been subject to any road user charges - in NZ the road user charge for petrol vehicles is collected in the price of petrol. for diesel vehicles, they pay an additional Road User Charge (RUC) which is bought based on mileage - say in 10000km blocks. The main reason is we don't have 'Red' diesel like the UK does for agricultural and non-road applications - so the diesel price at the pump is cheaper as it doesn't include the road user charges like petrol does.
Plug in Hybrid and EV vehicles have been exempt from paying any RUC as an incentive to buy them, but this year from I think the 1st April, they will all have to pay a RUC of $76 per 1000km for an EV or $38/1000km for a plug in Hybrid. Funnily enough since that was announced late last year, and green car discount finished, in January there was the lowest sales of EV/Plug in Hybrid vehicles in years...
I also feel there is a place for them - but also in and around the city... but for long distance, there isn't a viable alternative yet. I'm interested to see what comes up in the Hydrogen sector.
What I want to know is when are they going to start charging duty on EV owners for charging at home? Petrol, diesel and LPG sold at filling stations has Road Fuel Duty (RFD) and VAT at 20% on the price. If you live in a rural area and have an LPG bulk tank for heating and cooking and have a tank with a bottom take off for liquid so you can fill your car from it too, the tank supplier has to inform HMRC. You then have to log how much LPG you take out for your car and notify HMRC who then charge you the RFD and, as domestic fuel only has VAT at 5% applied to it, the extra 15% VAT. However, if you have an EV and charge it at home, you aren't paying RFD and are benefiting from the discounted, domestic, VAT rate. Surely they should also log how much they use to charge their car and be billed for the RFD and extra VAT?
It's an interesting discussion, sure enough. Just to add another dimension to the discussion - a company in the States which builds hydrogen powered trucks is call Nikola.
Nikola was supposed to team up with GM, which they did for a while, and now I think Nikola are working with another truck manufacturer, and one would think that the future is looking bright. Based on the reviews in the US financial papers I fancied a punt on the Nikola shares, they looked good at $10, and being in league with GM they should have a pretty solid background. But what happened after two years - the shares tanked, to about 0.50 cents a share. I just hung on until last year, when they got another decent share review and the price went back up, but not quite to the original $10. I didn't lose too much, fortunately. Now I am putting those losses into my P38, with as much chance of getting my investment back as if I had stayed with Nikola !!!
Pierre3.
be careful when it comes to hydrogen, look up what is happening in California and the sales of hydrogen powered cars , once again they are tanking badly, sorry another failure from the powers to be. it's outragedly expensive to run hydrogen after the free fuel ends. buyer beware.