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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

#91

Post by JumpCrisscross »

testing22321 wrote: post #24

Meanwhile Ford’s CEO said that if Chinese EVs are allowed into USA it will destroy the US automakers. He is not even hiding the fact US automakers make a more expensive inferior product, but that US consumers should not be allowed have the superior one.

> Ford’s CEO said that if Chinese EVs are allowed into USA it will destroy the US automakers

I'm a strong advocate for giving Chinese EVs an import quota per manufacturer (with a 1.5mm-unit annual cap on total Chinese EV imports, downgradable to 1mm in a recession, representing about 10% of demand).

This gives American consumers–and designers–access to and a taste for what the competition is doing. But it preserves a moat for our own producers.

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

#92

Post by mytailorisrich »

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…

Chinese car manufacturers have state-of-the-art automated factories... probably more advanced than EU manufacturers at this point.

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

#93

Post by znkynz »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #81
znkynz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 caus…

that would depend on the infrastucture cost to install such charging and to maintain it? This is kerbside slow charging presumably overnight. Note that spaces in these residental areas are typically not even marked spaces; the worst outcome might be losing more footpath space to charging infra for road users.

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

#94

Post by cameronh90 »

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…

I have an ICE and don't feel like I'm being punished? It's exactly the same as it's always been. If anything, we're still benefitting from ridiculous subsidies and driving an ICE should be a lot more expensive than it is.

The reason for the EV nudging is it's a chicken and egg problem. The government doesn't want to run a national charging network themselves for obvious reasons, but private investors don't want to build it out either until it can make money.

So they've been trying to fix it from both sides, both by incentivising EV ownership and encouraging EV charging infrastructure. They're also trying to make charging at home easier, even if you don't have a driveway, by installing those little channels you can run the cable through.

Yes, the government are putting their finger on the scale in favour of EVs. Nobody's pretending they aren't. If combustion taxes were as high as they need to be to account for the externalities, the economy would collapse, but we need to get off ICEs for myriad reasons. Seems like they're doing a pretty good job overall and the main problem is just our high electricity price.

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

#95

Post by JumpCrisscross »

znkynz wrote: post #93
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 caus…

that would depend on the infrastucture cost to install such charging and to maintain it? This is kerbside slow charging presumably overnight. Note that spaces in these residental areas are typically not even marked spaces; the worst outcome might be losing more footpath space to charging infra for road users.

> would depend on the infrastucture cost to install such charging and to maintain it?

The UK runs on 240V. A regular outlet would probably be fine.

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

#96

Post by uni_baconcat »

cpursley wrote: post #74
rationalist wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whataboutism is not helpful.

There's nothing lazier than a whataboutism claim. If we're okay with Chinese made phones and other electronics, then let's give their cheap EVs a chance instead of worrying about a plethora of other hallucinated *isms. Anyways, if the Chinese want to hurt "US" they have plenty of other ways to go about it.

China is still banning Teslas from driving near government buildings and leaders' motorcades.

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

#97

Post by adrian_b »

hunterpayne wrote: post #63
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.

The problem isn't infrastructure. Its the amount of Li in reserve.

There already are in production cars with Na-ion batteries.

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

#98

Post by rootusrootus »

throwaway85825 wrote: post #90
Jblx2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To what extent is avgas effectively subsidized by the existence of gas cars?

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

#99

Post by adrian_b »

hunterpayne wrote: post #64
testing22321 wrote: post #24

Meanwhile Ford’s CEO said that if Chinese EVs are allowed into USA it will destroy the US automakers. He is not even hiding the fact US automakers make a more expensive inferior product, but that US consumers should not be allowed have the superior one.

No, its because the Chinese subsidize the costs of those cars. Say I live in a country that will pay me $50k to build a car. It costs me say, $55K to build the car which I now sell for $60K. How you do you, in a country that pays you nothing to build cars, compete? This is an extreme example but its what is happening here (just will different and smaller numbers).

Every time when any competitive Chinese product is discussed, there are claims that it is competitive because it is subsidized.

Perhaps many of these claims are true, but at least in USA I also see huge amounts of subsidies for a lot of products, which are never compared with the Chinese subsidies.

I have never heard about any significant investment in some factory in the USA, which was not conditioned by very large reductions in taxes for that company. I do not see any difference between this and any subsidies that China might have.

Even if there might exist some kind of subsidizing system for electric vehicles in China, there is no doubt that there exists healthy competition between many Chinese companies, so they continuously innovate in EVs, while much less efforts in this direction can be seen in countries like USA, who claim to be scared by the Chinese "unfair" competition, but they seem to do very little or nothing to reduce their technical inferiority.

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

#100

Post by btbuilder »

throwaway85825 wrote: post #89
cogman10 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

~1.5 billion train journeys a year is “functional”.
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