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

electrek.co

181–190 of 231 posts

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

#181
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death spiral to gas stations? why? EV cars need to charge somewhere (and on long trip it can’t be at home) and people need to take a break and grab a coffee sometime too. They will change, sure, but certainly not die. Refineries will be fewer but we do need another products from them also.

Presumably a lot of people will charge at home which significantly cuts down the number of stations needed or the traffic to those stations. For example, I have 2 gas stations within a mile of my home. They stay pretty busy because people around me constantly need to fill up. I, on the other hand, basically never visit either of those stations since I switched to an EV. I charge at home. If everyone around me switche…

That might be the case in places where most people live in single-family homes with dedicated garage.

Where I live (Spain) that's not the case at all - our towns are very dense. People in big cities tend to live mostly in flats (Europe's highest elevators-per-capita). Even people in the countryside, where it's more common to have a 1-family homes, often don't have a dedicated garage.

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

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

British cars in the 70s and 80s were shockingly bad. The Austin Metro and Allegro spring to mind.

What's funny is the new owners of MG make a pretty nice car (reliable and good looking): https://www.mgcyberster.co.uk

That is a good looking car.

I knew someone who owned one of the original MGs. They used to drive around with a boot (trunk) full of tools, for when it inevitably broke down.

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

#183
post #175

Meanwhile in the EU, Chinese EVs face crippling tariffs that make them totally unaffordable.

Which EU countries? I see LOADS of them as taxis in Spain, for example

EU-wide tariffs: 10% on any imported car and an additional..

  BYD: 17%
  Geely Group: 19%
  SAIC Group: 35%
  Tesla (Shanghai): 8%
  XPeng, Nio, ...: 21%
  Others: 35%
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/eu-tariffs-imports-china...

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L...

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

#184
post #71

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.

Another problem is that fuel taxes are a reasonably equitable means of paying for the roads, and EVs don't have that -- the closest would be vehicle miles * weight or some such.

Equivalents of fuel taxes for EVs have been announced recently - charging directly on a per mile basis.

> The rate of tax will be 3 pence per mile for fully electric cars; this is around half of the 6 pence per mile the average petrol or diesel driver pays in fuel duty.

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/consultation-on-...

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

#185
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bu…

Far from ULEZ/CAZ areas I guess?

I live in inner London within the ULEZ zone. ULEZ is about local pollution not GHG and even then the newest cars it affected were 8 years old. My 15 year old car was fine. If anything it didn’t go far enough.

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

#186
Right, brand new. But I think if the UK government want everyone to be using EVs they really need to help out the used market by incentivising it in some way. I can't get much other than a Nissan leaf or Renault Zoe under £10k second hand, or some massive SUV which I don't want. So then I'll buy an ICE powered car instead...

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

#187
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just thought the parent comment was unfair to ICE cars to make the EV proposition sound better. I'm a fan of EVs but they are still more expensive to buy. That said, very cheap ICE cars have a sweet spot where any damage to engine / transmission / clutch+flywheel often means replacing the entire car since the repair cost exceeds the market value of the car.

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

#188
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. The cars used to be awful, but it's not surprising that they improved. I didn't say anything about the quality of the cars. If the CCP didn't have an iron grip on that country, maybe I would eventually think…

> What were we reacting to with Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Iran? Do you understand the historical events that resulted in those conflicts? Can you enumerate them?

With Iran specifically, it was Epstein files and wish to look masculine. Operation masculine insecurity, if you want. With Venezuela, it was wish to get some extortion money for Trump and wish to look like cool manly man.

From those four, only Afghanistan we reaction to outside world rather then deranged internal politics that just must have war.

> Do you understand how similar today is to the beginnings of World War 2?

It was about gaining living space for Germans at the expense of other countries. It was also about gaining world domination by Germans, extermination of all Jews as fast as possible and eventual extermination of eastern Europeans in about two generation (the plan was to prevent their breeding).

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

#189
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.

It sounds like ICE buyers are subsidizing EV buyers. The math starts to get ugly as EVs become a larger percentage of the mix. ICEs will be priced out of the market, but there won't be anyone left to subsidize the EVs. In short, it sounds like buying a car is about to get a lot more expensive in the UK.

Just introduce a charge per mile for EVs as the current government have already done

ICE cars are already hugely subsidised by ignoring the health issues they cause e.g. air pollution

What we really need in the UK is better mass transit systems in cities and their commuter zones to remove cars from the roads

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

#190

Just to give you an idea of what it costs to lease an EV in the UK. I use lingcars often for pricing and it is peanuts compared to the US. https://www.lingscars.com/car-lease-deals/?fuelTypes=electri...

Did lingscars get rid of their crazy website?

Yes… but (from memory) someone recreated it but can remember who
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