That’s new car sales, which can be misleading if new car sales are depressed for some reason. NL is a densely populated country with not a big “car culture”, compared with say Germany and the UK, and has lots of public transport (which in turn feeds into the depressed car culture). Even the UK we have:
In 2022, 267,303 BEVs and 101,414 PHEVs were sold in the UK (accounting for 16.6% and 6.3% of all new car sales respectively).
However it depends on the market sector.
There is a huge amount of stats here.
This may be of interest. I watched it but not really sure whether this is something “around the corner”. It has indeed been notable that Toyota have not been interested in EVs (doing hybrids instead) but this may be changing.
This is from a Valero corporate report. This is a US oil company so you would expect that slant on the data, but it is an interesting perspective for Europe where few people care that China dominates the supply pipeline so strongly, and the materials which go into making EV batteries
Is IS really slanted.
Critical minerals and supply chain chain controlled by foreign power
That’s currently the situation for many things. Especially so when “foreign power” is everything outside the US. But rather than turn on backs on EVs because of it, surely we should be taking the opportunity to make the sources safer. Find new sources. Only recently the worlds largest lithium deposits were found in the US.
We CAN and SHOULD do something about this rather than ignore EVs and destroy our environment because of it.
The amount of raw materials in one batter electric vehicle could be used to make 6 plus in hybrid EVs or 90 hybrid EV. The overall carbon reduction of those 90 hybrids over their lifetimes is 37 times as much as a single BEV.
Sure. But we’re not currently limited by resources. And 90 BEVs produce a lot less carbon emissions than 90 Hybrids. So it’s 90 BEV v 37 BEV, meaning that 90 BEV is much better for our environment.
Charging infrastructure is costly
Absolutely it is. But so was electrification. So was moving from copper to fiber. We can do it, and better still it will reduce our dependence on foreign powers (I note that they don’t think of our dependence on foreign powers for fossil fuels here!)
Affordability for hard working families
Many people who buy BEV do so because in the long run they see cost savings. Much of the purchase price will be recouped in resale value. Then there are significant fuel savings (if charging from home), and significantly reduced servicing costs.
That document is nothing more than oil company propaganda to me. Twisting things to suit themselves.
It’s also a bit disingenuous (the “amount of raw materials”) because it’s ignoring the raw materials (petrol) consumed in the lifetime of the vehicle, it’s just including the materials that are permanently fitted to the vehicle. Sure, you can make 90 hybrid batteries with the same number of cells as in one large BEV battery, but if you then gloss over that the hybrid will burn through some 12,000 litres of fuel in a reasonable (~200,000km) lifetime, the claims about raw materials end up on very shaky ground.
dublinpilot wrote:
Many people who buy BEV do so because in the long run they see cost savings. Much of the purchase price will be recouped in resale value. Then there are significant fuel savings (if charging from home), and significantly reduced servicing costs.
Those people must be living in a different universe than me: my electricity cost is 43 cents/kw-hr, bought from a ‘regulated utility’ that generates the electric power largely by burning natural gas that I can buy from the same ‘regulated utility’ for 7 cents/kw-hr. With that in mind a car powered directly by US-produced natural gas would be far more attractive to me than an EV that in the absence of a $50-100K home solar system with battery storage (to allow charging at night) will be very expensive to operate as well as to buy.
I trust the oil companies and the energy market to supply my transport energy a whole lot more than a non-competitive government regulated utility with pricing/tax structure already so costly and complex that its almost comedy. The economics also don’t encourage me to buy solar/battery to avoid the utilities, despite living in a place where the sun shines almost every day, and having worked hard to be in the position where buying and using a solar/storage system for my house would be feasible if I need to do it: I could just schedule the work and write the check, but it won’t be my choice just as buying an EV won’t be. Solar/battery is not an option for people at lower economic level anyway, so God help them if they are forced into EVs and become subject to government/utility whim in sourcing their transport energy, most of which will continue to be generated by natural gas at night.
You are right Silvaire. Apart from 1 or maybe 2 states the US is unlikely to be a big market for EVs for a very long time.
Meanwhile, China has the largest take up of electric vehicles currently and it is becoming huge. India is also becoming a big EV market.
In Europe too except for the UK EVs are picking up a reasonable size market.
IMO it is unlikely that any large percentage of these markets will return to petrol or diesel. But it is possible that hybrids with elechric motors driven by alternative fuels such as ammonia which promises most of the advantages of petrol and diesel without many of the disadvantages will become the dominant form of personal transport. On the other hand battery technology could suddenly take a dramatic stride forward. Those who pick it right and put their money on it, stand to become very rich indeed.
Those people must be living in a different universe than me
Correct. When it comes to energy taxation and transport infrastructure, Europe and the US are indeed like two different universes.
Well, currently, and for the foreseeable future, and except Norway and Sweden, we have
There will indeed be different universes but it won’t be Europe v. US. It will be those who can and those who can’t.
Yeah – I have no idea what assumptions were used in those examples w.r.t. lifetime raw material consumption. You can shake those calculations in so many ways. The most severe calcs involve the cost of restoring the environment to status quo ante which is unrealistic but that doesn’t stop some people using that cost for e.g. decommissioning nuclear power to make it look totally uneconomical.
Peter wrote:
There will indeed be different universes but it won’t be Europe v. US. It will be those who can and those who can’t.
Yes, agreed… except that many of ‘those who can’ shouldn’t, and won’t, unless forced to do so by law and tax-makers creating an artificial economic reality for their constituents in both camps. And if everybody is manipulated in that way, ‘those who can’t’ will still suffer even when financially subsidized by everybody else so they they can sort-of participate (income based tax rebates and electric energy prices will be the political ‘solution’). As a result everybody will pay for a worse performing, less politically secure and more autocratic transport solution in most places worldwide, and EVs operated in the daytime will continue to get their power from a monopoly supplier burning fossil fuels at night. A lightly regulated market would do a much better job of choosing winners, and eventually will after a lot of drama and waste.
