Cars (all fuels and electric)

Graham wrote:

The only quickly-accessible data I can find at the moment goes back only as far as 2003, but it shows diesel a few pence per litre more than petrol consistently. As far as I can remember, it has always been thus.

In Switzerland it used to be cheaper than petrol until about 10 years ago if I remember right. But not decisively so. However, the gas milage is a lot better, so even with slightly higher than petrol prices now, it is still cheaper to run. And of course, all over the place, people who have access to heating oil sometimes “fuel” up at home, just seeing that they don’t over do it if they are confronted with a police check. And heating oil is massively cheaper, as it’s not taxed this insanely.

Silvaire wrote:

I’m just about to turn 90,000 miles on my 2017 daily driver. Looking around I’m surprised to see people reporting very few issues with the model until over 200K miles so I think I’ll be joining you in driving this thing for quite a while more before I toss it.

My “forever car” just broke 300k km last month. Will see how long it will last but I hope another 100k which would be around 10 years. If I still can get fuel for it by then.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

In Switzerland it used to be cheaper than petrol until about 10 years ago if I remember right.

Same in Sweden. I had a diesel car at the time so I remember that very well!

WingsWaterAndWheels wrote:

Now if you look at the number of cars on the Autoroute A6 in summer in France (you know, the one between Paris and Marseilles) and switch a majority of them to EV, you have massive problem: Currently if you stop at any gas station on this autoroute in peak period, you’ll most likely have to wait for one or two cars to fill up before you.

Entirely correct. The obvious solution here would to do away with a single holiday start for everyone and spread it out over a few days. This will also reduce the amount of traffic congestions.
The concept of everyone going to holiday on the same day is rather… peculiar, if you think about it. Always was. In the future more than ever.

Yes, it will change the way we live. And I really think that there will always be a demand for longer ranges than EV alone can provide in the near future, but for going to holidays once a year, you don’t need an extra car, you don’t even need a hybrid with secondary drive train (with all the maintenance hassle of a petrol car) – just go by train. Or take the plane.
This in turn means you need to provide alternative means of transportation for these instances.

No surprise. Well, I’m a little surprised that the Hybrids still form such a large portion. I guess range anxiety and the lack of charging stations still play a role. That’s bound to change but maybe not as quick as I thought.

It will be a few years before the known ceiling is approached (the % of the population which cannot possibly charge EVs). Someone told me about a recent article by Toyota, where they say they are concerned by that.

For 100% sure the “no piston engined cars after [insert some favourite BS year, like 2025]” is just BS. The motor industry would totally collapse.

As a factlet, in Jan 2023 over 5 times as many battery EVs (17,294) were sold as Diesel cars (5,280) in the UK (https://www.marklines.com/en/statistics/flash_sales/automotive-sales-in-uk-by-month). One issue with EVs is that purchasers are mostly uninformed having never owned one. So I can absolutely see why they are buying hybrids first. I did the same with my first EV, buying an Ampera before going fully electric.

The lack of charging infrastructure for people without offstreet parking is a serious issue that needs addressed.

were sold as Diesel cars

Understandable, since the new diesel car business is dead now. It started years ago with the VW and other software cheats (which, if implemented, removed much of the low end torque and landed you with expensive EGR replacements for ever) and carried on with the particulate issues. That’s why we are keeping our two diesel VWs (with the software cheats reversed). 60-70 mpg is about the same as our EV (Kona) neighbour is paying for a public charging point, which is an appalling robbery of “green” people who (in this case) bought an EV largely for ideological reasons.

In the villages were we live there are absolutely loads of Teslas.

purchasers are mostly uninformed having never owned one

One would think that they could work out whether they can charge it though It’s a bit like doing a PPL.

without offstreet parking is a serious issue that needs addressed.

It’s not clear how it could be. One approach would be under-pavement wiring to “your personal charging point” but most street parking is shared and anybody can park at “your” spot. The traditional solution implemented near railway stations (slashing the intruder’s tyres) is not a long term one

Some may be familiar with the expression “past performance is not necessarily a guide to the future”, which in this context is my way of saying that graphs which go up very steeply often don’t continue like that forever, thus you can expect EV sales to plateau at some point – probably in the next few years when uptake approaches 100% of those for whom an EV is a viable option, i.e. they are happy to buy a new car with all the depreciation that entails, they have the money to spend on it and they have an off-road charging solution at home. Those who don’t have (or don’t wish to spend) the money for a relatively expensive new car, or have anywhere to charge it, are never going to buy one.

EVs as a proportion of all vehicles sold may continue to increase as fewer petrol and diesel cars are sold and people hang onto their current cars for longer, but the number of EVs sold will plateau. I envisage an overall decline in the number of new cars sold, and a notable strengthening of used car values for ICE vehicles that are old enough to be reasonably cheap but new enough to have plenty of life left in them.

My current workhorse is coming up 14 years old and has 125k miles on it, costs almost nothing to maintain and has never let me down. I will be driving it for at least another five years, quite possibly more than 10. Before it reaches the end of its useful life I am likely identify something else (ICE) to buy (used) which I will have judged to have similarly longevity potential and represent similarly excellent value for money. I have no plans to buy an EV unless I am forced into it by either legislation or fuel taxation so punitive as to make dropping a large five-figure sum on an EV seem like a better deal.

The work the car industry did in improving reliability and longevity over the last 30-odd years has actually made an industry-led switchover to EVs quite difficult, because most of the ICE cars driving through my village as I type this will still (unless banned retrospectively, which doesn’t happen – at least not in this country) be in use 20 years from now.

Musk worked out something pretty clever which allowed him to be the first totally new major entrant into the car market since forever. He realised there was no point in trying to enter the overall car market as it already existed, and that the particular properties of EVs meant that (for now) it was only worth going after the relatively wealthy who readily drop 50k+ on new cars. I have seen nothing to suggest what the car industry as a whole intends to do in order to facilitate a viable used car market in electric vehicles, noting that the used car market at its many levels underpins widespread car ownership in first-world countries.

The distinction between “Plug-in electric cars” and “Battery electric cars” is really weird as all EVs have batteries and can be plugged in for charging.

aart wrote:

Well, I’m a little surprised that the Hybrids still form such a large portion.

So “Plug-in electric cars” really mean “Plug-in hybrids”?