Heard a report on LBC that blind people are asking manufacturers to incorporate engine noise into electric cars so they can hear them coming when they cross the road.....I know I shouldn’t have laughed.....but I did!
All I can say to those of you quietly congratulating yourself on the [relative] cheapness of your electric car is enjoy it while you can. Because as sure as heck isn't going to continue long term.
The Government is losing a fortune with the move to electric cars. A recent study by the RAC Foundation showed that that when a pure electric car is purchased instead of a petrol car then the Chancellor loses, on average, around £897 in the first 12 months after registration. For a diesel car the figure is £1,139. (See Q18 in the economics section of these FAQs - https://www.racfoundation.org/motoring-faqs) That sort of loss of income is unsustainable.
Currently, there is also a review going on into VED (See Q19 in that same section). This is being couched as a a way of overhauling VED as a way of encouraging the take up of greener vehicles. I will have a little bet that the outcome of the review will be large increases in VED for petrol and diesel vehicles - explained away as hitting dirty, old technology - but also that taxes on electric cars start to rise substantially from their current levels. Also, in the longer term, don't write off the introduction of a road charging scheme under which there would be little incentive to charge electric vehicles at a cheaper rate to ICE vehicles.
I'm still not totally convinced electric vehicles are the way forward and having spent many hours in the early 2000s in meetings with senior Government officials who told the motor industry unequivocally that the Treasury wanted to encourage the take-up of diesel vehicles I know that these things can change very quickly. I wouldn't totally rule out hydrogen - for the simple reason you can fill a hydrogen powered car at up at a pump and so not have to worry about charging it up. It will be very interesting - to put it mildly - to see what develops over the next few years.
I think long term that hydrogen makes way more sense.
Except with hydrogen you still have to transport it and the energy to manage that and convert it is still significant. Electricity is already plumbed in to all our homes and the infrastructure is established and growing.
I totally expect a shift to taxing on mileage in the future.
Isnt fuel already taxed on mileage though. The more petrol / diesel you use the more tax you pay ?
Yes, though if you switch to electric then the tax rate/ fuel duty is a lot lower and difficult to differentiate between vehicle electric and household electric. To make up for the loss in tax I would expect a new system to be based on mileage.
Almost certainly. It is being talked about now. Just a question of which Government is brave enough to go down that route.
And when the cars are automated, it will become cheaper to keep them running than to pay for parking. So the roads will be clogged up with driverless cars roaming around waiting for their owners to call them!
There won't be the need to personally own one. You just call it on an app and it just arrives at your door. Think of all the space saved through not needing parking everywhere.
Just out of interest, i know the technology will probably change given time, but how long does an electric car hold its charge for, ie if you don't use it much , does the charge 'wear off' or just stay in the battery until its all used up?
It loses charge at an incredibly slow rate. I can have my car 100% charged and not use it for a couple of weeks, and it will still be 99% charged.
Sort of defeats the object of having an electric car if it’s not being regularly used. A lot of resources would have been used to produce and ship the car to the UK so it needs to be constantly used to get the payback for the planet but if I had an electric car I suspect from experience of once also having the use of a small city car that for various practical reasons it wouldn’t be the first choice set of keys I’d grab when I needed to drive somewhere.
The UK government can’t push the sale of electric cars because we are committed to reducing our carbon footprint and mass switching to electric cars would mean we would have to start relying on more carbon generated electricity to charge them.
We used to drive a Mercedes CLA220d Shooting Brake and averaged 45.5 mpg for a 2.0 litre diesel. We’re now 18 months into our ownership of a Toyota RAV4 hybrid (2wd) and are averaging 56.5 mpg at the moment for a 2.5litre petrol engine. It ticks all our boxes, has more room, more comfortable to get in and out of and is generally a more comfortable drive. My only criticism would be the outdated GPS system.
Had my Rav4 Hybrid for almost a month now. Spend most of my time trying to just drive on electric and am hitting over 60mpg.
Quite impressed so far, though the CVT can be a little bit noisy. Will be doing a long run oop north in a couple of weeks so will be interested to see how comfortable it is after 3/4 hours in the driving seat.
Is leasing going to be the way forward? Can't imagine there will be a critical mass of affordable second hand cars by the time the switch comes round. I've never spent more than £2k on a car and am loath to spending more!
Just out of interest, i know the technology will probably change given time, but how long does an electric car hold its charge for, ie if you don't use it much , does the charge 'wear off' or just stay in the battery until its all used up?
It loses charge at an incredibly slow rate. I can have my car 100% charged and not use it for a couple of weeks, and it will still be 99% charged.
Sort of defeats the object of having an electric car if it’s not being regularly used. A lot of resources would have been used to produce and ship the car to the UK so it needs to be constantly used to get the payback for the planet but if I had an electric car I suspect from experience of once also having the use of a small city car that for various practical reasons it wouldn’t be the first choice set of keys I’d grab when I needed to drive somewhere.
The UK government can’t push the sale of electric cars because we are committed to reducing our carbon footprint and mass switching to electric cars would mean we would have to start relying on more carbon generated electricity to charge them.
I answered a valid question.
It may have escaped your notice that we've been in and out of lock down for the past year - a lot of cars have been sat idle for weeks.
There's also holidays where you might drive to the airport and park your car, safe in the knowledge that it will still charged when you get back two weeks later.
When I research electric cars, the question I have doesn't seem to be covered, at least clearly. I have no doubt that when produced, electric cars are better for the environment, but what about the production and final disposal of the batteries? Is this factored in to the calculations. I would imagine a car would need replacement batteries at certain points when they lose capacity.
We bought our student son a Fiat Panda Multijet. Tax is £35 a year and it does 65 miles per gallon. Are the electric cars on the market really better for the environment than a car like this? Factoring production and disposal.
Of course technology advances, and you have to give the industry a nudge to make those advances, but is it really that beneficial on an individual level to own one, giving the issues around filling up and cost.
When I research electric cars, the question I have doesn't seem to be covered, at least clearly. I have no doubt that when produced, electric cars are better for the environment, but what about the production and final disposal of the batteries? Is this factored in to the calculations. I would imagine a car would need replacement batteries at certain points when they lose capacity.
We bought our student son a Fiat Panda Multijet. Tax is £35 a year and it does 65 miles per gallon. Are the electric cars on the market really better for the environment than a car like this? Factoring production and disposal.
Of course technology advances, and you have to give the industry a nudge to make those advances, but is it really that beneficial on an individual level to own one, giving the issues around filling up and cost.
The manufacturing process of an EV produces a greater carbon footprint than a conventional IC vehicle, but generally claws this back and some over the whole life cycle. I say generally as a lot will depend on how the 'fuel' is generated - the balance between generating the electricity from fossil fuels or by renewables.
I'm doing some projections for the charity I work for, on the extent to which our lease car costs will increase with the introduction of all Electric Vehicles and Hybrids, offset by savings on fuel. I've searched for savings on fuel data, and been surprised at how little there is. It seems that fuel costs for pure electric vehicles are about 35% diesel, but I can't find anything on hybrid fuel cost savings. I'd ask the lease car providers, but we piggy back on an MOD contract so I don't have access.
Has anyone come across any articles that discuss hybrid versus diesel fuel comparisons? I only need some approximate comparisons.
Few quotes I have seen on here saying you can get a Taycan for £500.... which I don’t doubt. But does that really make sense and can you really afford a car at that arrangement?
Its a genuine question - as I am currently negotiating for a Macan Turbo and the dealer has started sending me £600 a month PCP deals which he a stupid £40k balance left at the end.
How should you approach a PCP. I have a budget of £900-1000 a month to go on a car. My missus says if you can’t pay off a car you can’t afford it .... but my friend who is a car dealer says don’t sink cash into a depreciating asset. And treat it like a rental that you will swap at the end of the term. Essentially he has said to pay the £600 a month and stick £400 in the bank every month. Or even spend it on your house which will pay back in the future.
Who is right? What’s the best way to go about buying a car nowadays? Does it make sense to sink maximum cash into it to pay it off?
Baby steps for EV still. Not cheap enough yet for it to be a no brainier for everyone and I’d imagine the technology will not look anything like it does right now in ten years time.
Few quotes I have seen on here saying you can get a Taycan for £500.... which I don’t doubt. But does that really make sense and can you really afford a car at that arrangement?
Its a genuine question - as I am currently negotiating for a Macan Turbo and the dealer has started sending me £600 a month PCP deals which he a stupid £40k balance left at the end.
How should you approach a PCP. I have a budget of £900-1000 a month to go on a car. My missus says if you can’t pay off a car you can’t afford it .... but my friend who is a car dealer says don’t sink cash into a depreciating asset. And treat it like a rental that you will swap at the end of the term. Essentially he has said to pay the £600 a month and stick £400 in the bank every month. Or even spend it on your house which will pay back in the future.
Who is right? What’s the best way to go about buying a car nowadays? Does it make sense to sink maximum cash into it to pay it off?
Few quotes I have seen on here saying you can get a Taycan for £500.... which I don’t doubt. But does that really make sense and can you really afford a car at that arrangement?
Its a genuine question - as I am currently negotiating for a Macan Turbo and the dealer has started sending me £600 a month PCP deals which he a stupid £40k balance left at the end.
How should you approach a PCP. I have a budget of £900-1000 a month to go on a car. My missus says if you can’t pay off a car you can’t afford it .... but my friend who is a car dealer says don’t sink cash into a depreciating asset. And treat it like a rental that you will swap at the end of the term. Essentially he has said to pay the £600 a month and stick £400 in the bank every month. Or even spend it on your house which will pay back in the future.
Who is right? What’s the best way to go about buying a car nowadays? Does it make sense to sink maximum cash into it to pay it off?
It very much depends on what you want, miles you drive etc. As always buying new long term is usually the most expensive. The most cost effective is buying secondhand, trade.
Just because you have £1k to spend a month you don't have to. But if you don't have the cash to buy outright you could buy a secondhand £32k car over three years with a personal loan which is roughly £1k a month, after that you'll own an asset of at least £22k even if a dealer car. So £10k over 3 years, on a PCP you'll have paid broadly the same and own nothing but will have had a new car, so depends what you want.
Until recently I always had one main car (second hand) in the region of £35-50k cost, my wife something in the 20k range and a garage car, anything from £5k to £50k. My main cars I tend to keep for 2 years and try to break even or as near as possible. Best was a 2.5 year old £110k Cayenne, paid around 32k for it and sold it 2 years later for £100 less ,best car I've ever had. The garage cars I tend to make money on (old Porsches, Lotus's and the like).
All I can say to those of you quietly congratulating yourself on the [relative] cheapness of your electric car is enjoy it while you can. Because as sure as heck isn't going to continue long term.
The Government is losing a fortune with the move to electric cars. A recent study by the RAC Foundation showed that that when a pure electric car is purchased instead of a petrol car then the Chancellor loses, on average, around £897 in the first 12 months after registration. For a diesel car the figure is £1,139. (See Q18 in the economics section of these FAQs - https://www.racfoundation.org/motoring-faqs) That sort of loss of income is unsustainable.
Currently, there is also a review going on into VED (See Q19 in that same section). This is being couched as a a way of overhauling VED as a way of encouraging the take up of greener vehicles. I will have a little bet that the outcome of the review will be large increases in VED for petrol and diesel vehicles - explained away as hitting dirty, old technology - but also that taxes on electric cars start to rise substantially from their current levels. Also, in the longer term, don't write off the introduction of a road charging scheme under which there would be little incentive to charge electric vehicles at a cheaper rate to ICE vehicles.
I'm still not totally convinced electric vehicles are the way forward and having spent many hours in the early 2000s in meetings with senior Government officials who told the motor industry unequivocally that the Treasury wanted to encourage the take-up of diesel vehicles I know that these things can change very quickly. I wouldn't totally rule out hydrogen - for the simple reason you can fill a hydrogen powered car at up at a pump and so not have to worry about charging it up. It will be very interesting - to put it mildly - to see what develops over the next few years.
I think long term that hydrogen makes way more sense.
Except with hydrogen you still have to transport it and the energy to manage that and convert it is still significant. Electricity is already plumbed in to all our homes and the infrastructure is established and growing.
I totally expect a shift to taxing on mileage in the future.
If you look at the Xtreme E set up they use a piece of kit that uses a hydrogen cell to generate the electricity with zero emissions. It is setting out to show how the technology can be readily set up anywhere in any environment. You don't need to hook up to an existing electricity point and the hydrogen is generated from the air, not transported.
I think they fully charge these SUVs in 20 minutes.
Capacity of battery remains the main problem to be solved.
Methinks hydrogen will be the way forward in the future, electric cars might be more mainstream but I think petrolheads will move on to hydrogen engines rather than electric ones. Would suit the oil companies down to the ground as they can pivot using their existing infrastructure - electric basically cuts them out of the equation completely. I think that's what will happen with air travel especially, as you need highly effecient fuels for that - electric airplanes are a century away imo.
Methinks hydrogen will be the way forward in the future, electric cars might be more mainstream but I think petrolheads will move on to hydrogen engines rather than electric ones. Would suit the oil companies down to the ground as they can pivot using their existing infrastructure - electric basically cuts them out of the equation completely. I think that's what will happen with air travel especially, as you need highly effecient fuels for that - electric airplanes are a century away imo.
Methinks hydrogen will be the way forward in the future, electric cars might be more mainstream but I think petrolheads will move on to hydrogen engines rather than electric ones. Would suit the oil companies down to the ground as they can pivot using their existing infrastructure - electric basically cuts them out of the equation completely. I think that's what will happen with air travel especially, as you need highly effecient fuels for that - electric airplanes are a century away imo.
Comments
Quite impressed so far, though the CVT can be a little bit noisy. Will be doing a long run oop north in a couple of weeks so will be interested to see how comfortable it is after 3/4 hours in the driving seat.
We bought our student son a Fiat Panda Multijet. Tax is £35 a year and it does 65 miles per gallon. Are the electric cars on the market really better for the environment than a car like this? Factoring production and disposal.
Of course technology advances, and you have to give the industry a nudge to make those advances, but is it really that beneficial on an individual level to own one, giving the issues around filling up and cost.
There is a ton of stuff online about this.
https://www.myev.com/research/ev-101/how-long-should-an-electric-cars-battery-last#:~:text=Consumer Reports estimates the average,driven 12,000 miles per year.
I'm doing some projections for the charity I work for, on the extent to which our lease car costs will increase with the introduction of all Electric Vehicles and Hybrids, offset by savings on fuel. I've searched for savings on fuel data, and been surprised at how little there is. It seems that fuel costs for pure electric vehicles are about 35% diesel, but I can't find anything on hybrid fuel cost savings. I'd ask the lease car providers, but we piggy back on an MOD contract so I don't have access.
Has anyone come across any articles that discuss hybrid versus diesel fuel comparisons? I only need some approximate comparisons.
Its a genuine question - as I am currently negotiating for a Macan Turbo and the dealer has started sending me £600 a month PCP deals which he a stupid £40k balance left at the end.
Who is right? What’s the best way to go about buying a car nowadays? Does it make sense to sink maximum cash into it to pay it off?
Just because you have £1k to spend a month you don't have to. But if you don't have the cash to buy outright you could buy a secondhand £32k car over three years with a personal loan which is roughly £1k a month, after that you'll own an asset of at least £22k even if a dealer car. So £10k over 3 years, on a PCP you'll have paid broadly the same and own nothing but will have had a new car, so depends what you want.
Until recently I always had one main car (second hand) in the region of £35-50k cost, my wife something in the 20k range and a garage car, anything from £5k to £50k. My main cars I tend to keep for 2 years and try to break even or as near as possible. Best was a 2.5 year old £110k Cayenne, paid around 32k for it and sold it 2 years later for £100 less ,best car I've ever had. The garage cars I tend to make money on (old Porsches, Lotus's and the like).
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/5/20683111/toyota-prius-plug-in-hybrid-solar-roof-range-electricity-energy-environment
I think they fully charge these SUVs in 20 minutes.
Capacity of battery remains the main problem to be solved.
Many electric cars available today blow away most of the IC supercars when it comes to performance.