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In the UK, EVs are cheaper than petrol cars, thanks to Chinese competition

electrek.co

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Re: In the UK, EVs are cheaper than petrol cars, thanks to Chinese competition

#81

Post by AnthonyMouse »

znkynz wrote: post #68
tshaddox wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't fill up your gas tank at home or at work, which is presumably where a significant portion of EV drivers charge their cars.

There are many, many homes in the UK with no garaging, where cars are parked in non-reserved spaces on the street overnight.

If a significant percentage of cars start to become EVs then spaces where people regularly park overnight will get chargers because it will allow whoever is operating them to make a bit of money selling electricity. You don't have to be making a huge profit margin to make it worth your while to have people passively buying ~200kWh/month of electricity from you.

The same applies to workplaces, especially if solar causes electricity to cost less during daylight hours, and then it becomes convenient to get an EV if there is a charger where you park at night or where you park during the day.

Re: In the UK, EVs are cheaper than petrol cars, thanks to Chinese competition

#82

Post by throwaway85825 »

sega_sai wrote: post #13
eterm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal is to migrate everyone to EVs, and it sounds like the government incentive mechanism is working, albeit in a roundabout way.

The problem is that there is not enough infrastructure for EVs. If you can't charge at home (e.g. you live in a flat), it is hard to live with an EV and it's much more expensive than the ICE.

Governments would do better to try to fix the bureaucracy around installing L2 chargers in shared living spaces. It's a problem they created and it should be on them to fix. But it guess that's harder than impossible mandates and high EV taxes.

Re: In the UK, EVs are cheaper than petrol cars, thanks to Chinese competition

#83

Post by [deleted] »

protocolture wrote: post #80
CMay wrote: post #44

"thanks to Chinese competition". More like anti-competitive practices. They can force down Chinese wages to keep labor costs down. They can require companies involved in component technologies to share their IP in order to do business in China, then replicate it and subsidize the hell out of it to push them not just out of China, but out of business globally. Then subsidize the whole final vertically integrated manuf…

Honestly chinese manufacturing doesnt look like the market you describe. If anything it looks like from the outside that working conditions, manufacturing processes and technology are all escalating. EV's in particular, their EV industry used to make terrible cars that were basically just chewing up and spitting out low quality batteries with no range. Now they are making cars that I actually want to drive. >Not very…

[deleted]

Re: In the UK, EVs are cheaper than petrol cars, thanks to Chinese competition

#84

Post by throwaway85825 »

sigio wrote: post #20
sega_sai wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there is not enough infrastructure for EVs. If you can't charge at home (e.g. you live in a flat), it is hard to live with an EV and it's much more expensive than the ICE.

Local government can quickly change that, if they get their act together. Here in the Hague, there's literally thousands of public chargers available on the city's residential streets. Coupled with the fact that the charging-price is city-mandated at a fixed rate (currently around 35ct/kwh), this gives a perfectly fine solution for most people. (I can charge at home, for 20ct/kwh currently, so that's even nicer)

35ct/kwh is highway robbery.

Re: In the UK, EVs are cheaper than petrol cars, thanks to Chinese competition

#85

Post by bee_rider »

muyuu wrote: post #45

The treatment of our betters regarding "nudged" electrification is borderline misanthropic. For people with a garage or a driveway who can charge at home, EVs are overwhelmingly a better option. The problem is that large swathes of the population are outside of that and you're making their lives miserable by punishing ICE car ownership. Meanwhile, adoption numbers are thrown about ignoring that for those in optimal c…

It would be interesting to see how the market would shake out without all the nudging.

Petroleum companies also get a lot of subsidies—especially if you count implicit things like the cost of cleaning up all this carbon, and oil based geopolitical problems.

Re: In the UK, EVs are cheaper than petrol cars, thanks to Chinese competition

#86

Post by cogman10 »

quibono wrote: post #75
cogman10 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A £1500 car is £1500 because it's expected you'll need to replace the engine or transmission pretty soon. That can be up to a £4000 job (£2500 on the low end). And, as it turns out, a brand new 50kWh battery costs around £4000 to manufacture. Used will be cheaper.

With most modern ICE cars everything but the transmission and the engine will fail before those two go out. Also: I don't think that's the usual case. Plenty of sub 2k cars that will happily keep driving for years (I've had 3 such cars). ~700 mark is where you start seeing 300k mile "finish-them-off"-type cars.

Plenty of EVs will drive for years as well (so long as they have a good thermal system for the battery). So I'm not sure what point is being made.

Saying "It costs a lot of money to replace the battery" doesn't mean much as the battery, even if it has 70% of it's original capacity, is still perfectly functional. Very much the same as the engine which also costs a lot of money to replace.

Re: In the UK, EVs are cheaper than petrol cars, thanks to Chinese competition

#87

Post by gib444 »

sigio wrote: post #20
sega_sai wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there is not enough infrastructure for EVs. If you can't charge at home (e.g. you live in a flat), it is hard to live with an EV and it's much more expensive than the ICE.

Local government can quickly change that, if they get their act together. Here in the Hague, there's literally thousands of public chargers available on the city's residential streets. Coupled with the fact that the charging-price is city-mandated at a fixed rate (currently around 35ct/kwh), this gives a perfectly fine solution for most people. (I can charge at home, for 20ct/kwh currently, so that's even nicer)

Not in the UK. Local governments (councils) are going bankrupt and are saddled with an overwhelming burden to pay for adult and child social care. There's no money for much else

Re: In the UK, EVs are cheaper than petrol cars, thanks to Chinese competition

#88

Post by nslsm »

eterm wrote: post #4
martinald wrote: post #3

Not quite. The UK govt has a rolling target of how many EVs are sold as a proportion of all vehicles. The manufacturers get "fined" £15k per ICE car sold over the target. The targets are ramping up rapidly - 22% in 2024, 28% in 2025, 33% in 2026, etc, reaching 80% (AFIAK, keeps changing) in 2030. There's various trading mechanisms in place and what not so it's a bit more complicated than this. So it's far better to s…

The goal is to migrate everyone to EVs, and it sounds like the government incentive mechanism is working, albeit in a roundabout way.

The goal is that if you’re poor you can’t own a car.

Re: In the UK, EVs are cheaper than petrol cars, thanks to Chinese competition

#89

Post by throwaway85825 »

cogman10 wrote: post #46
sega_sai wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there is not enough infrastructure for EVs. If you can't charge at home (e.g. you live in a flat), it is hard to live with an EV and it's much more expensive than the ICE.

In the UK? Nah. Electricity is expensive in the UK (~25p/kWh) But not gas car expensive. It is £1.57/L (£5.94/gallon). The EV infrastructure is also pretty dang far along, especially compared to the US. Remember that everything in the UK is a lot smaller and closer together than it is in the US. Further, the UK has a functional train system for long distance travel. You can go from the top of Dunnet Head to Lizard Po…

"Functional train system" is not how anyone would describe the UK. It's cheaper to fly than take the train.

Cost to fill up doesnt matter, only the cost per mile.

Re: In the UK, EVs are cheaper than petrol cars, thanks to Chinese competition

#90

Post by throwaway85825 »

Jblx2 wrote: post #11
dalyons wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So 20 years from now, all the old gas regular people cars have aged out. You’re left with what, 1 or 2% of enthusiasts cars? Seems like success to me, and fairly inevitable

There will undoubtedly be a death spiral of sorts when it comes to gas stations, refineries, etc. where they become fewer and farther between as less people buy fuel. And that makes it more expensive and inconvenient, so more people buy EVs, which in turn...

Is AVgas in a death spiral? It's survived as a niche product for a long time.
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