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Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2022 5:45 pm
by Martin Y
Grumble wrote:
Thu Jan 13, 2022 5:22 pm
1,000 mile journey in an ID4
https://youtu.be/Z3VNti14Kj0
Ugh. 05:50 The sort of throwaway line that makes my heart sink. "...went to Paris recently to do the Dacia Spring, we tried all manner of random chargers; about 9% of them worked". Even if that's hyperbole for comic effect it's the kind of stress that would gnaw at me on a trip. Offputting.

And he's using that joke to praise the brand of charger they are using. Which he's happy to see is charging about half the rate the car will accept and only about 20% of what the charger is rated at. It's not a ringing endorsement.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2022 6:17 pm
by Aoui
[/quote]

Ugh. 05:50 The sort of throwaway line that makes my heart sink. "...went to Paris recently to do the Dacia Spring, we tried all manner of random chargers; about 9% of them worked". Even if that's hyperbole for comic effect it's the kind of stress that would gnaw at me on a trip. Offputting.


That was pretty much our experience in our ID3 in France in November. Actually, a lot were not broken but just did not work with our car. The cable fit and there didn't seem to be any reason that the charger companies, or various people from VW that we talked to in both France and the Netherlands. My husband even contacted a guy who does YouTube videos about ID3's and other electric cars and he was equally stumped. The only reason we were able to continue our vacation was because we were able to use a granny charger at the houses we stayed at. We had some very stressful moments and nearly called off the vacation. Glad we didn't, because it was otherwise an amazing vacation! We could only use chargers from two companies ..one of which we could only use some of their chargers....and they were all on the toll roads. We were able to charge at a VW dealership once. Next year I finally have to go home for a visit, but after that I want to go back to France and they really better get their act together by then!!!

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2022 6:18 pm
by Grumble
Martin Y wrote:
Thu Jan 13, 2022 5:45 pm
Grumble wrote:
Thu Jan 13, 2022 5:22 pm
1,000 mile journey in an ID4
https://youtu.be/Z3VNti14Kj0
Ugh. 05:50 The sort of throwaway line that makes my heart sink. "...went to Paris recently to do the Dacia Spring, we tried all manner of random chargers; about 9% of them worked". Even if that's hyperbole for comic effect it's the kind of stress that would gnaw at me on a trip. Offputting.

And he's using that joke to praise the brand of charger they are using. Which he's happy to see is charging about half the rate the car will accept and only about 20% of what the charger is rated at. It's not a ringing endorsement.
Fully Charged are very critical of the current state of the public charging network, but they do think it’s getting better.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2022 5:07 pm
by lpm
VW has sold out all 2022 production, allegedly. For ID3 and ID4, plus the Skoda and Cupra variants.

Demand is there, possibly over inflated by subsidies, but battery production isn't.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Fri Jan 21, 2022 7:30 am
by TopBadger
lpm wrote:
Thu Jan 20, 2022 5:07 pm
VW has sold out all 2022 production, allegedly. For ID3 and ID4, plus the Skoda and Cupra variants.

Demand is there, possibly over inflated by subsidies, but battery production isn't.
And what of the semiconductor chip shortage? Is that still dragging production down?

Must be a real bummer to go into a dealership all excited to buy a new car and then learn you'll need to wait in line for a year.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Fri Jan 21, 2022 8:47 am
by nekomatic
And secondhand prices have shot up as (presumably) a result. I’ve been idly keeping an eye out and I’m pretty sure if you’d bought a 2017 Leaf, say, eighteen months ago, you could now resell it at a profit. This is not how cars are supposed to work :shock:

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Fri Jan 21, 2022 9:30 am
by TopBadger
nekomatic wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 8:47 am
This is not how cars are supposed to work :shock:
It's how supply and demand works... what the thing in supply/demand is doesn't matter.

Thinking ahead I'm wondering if I should buy a new gas boiler (or 5) in 2030... leave them in the garage, keep a spare for me and sell the rest privately after the ban. Saying that, you wonder how long having gas mains will be a thing for afterwards...

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Fri Jan 21, 2022 1:05 pm
by dyqik
TopBadger wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 9:30 am
nekomatic wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 8:47 am
This is not how cars are supposed to work :shock:
It's how supply and demand works... what the thing in supply/demand is doesn't matter.

Thinking ahead I'm wondering if I should buy a new gas boiler (or 5) in 2030... leave them in the garage, keep a spare for me and sell the rest privately after the ban. Saying that, you wonder how long having gas mains will be a thing for afterwards...
Gas stoves and boilers commonly last at least 20 years, even if not on average.

I assume the 2030 ban is timed to meet 2050 targets for emissions, so you've probably got 20 years. But the price of gas will rise a lot in that time, because as other customers switch away from it, the distribution charges will be transferred to the remaining customers.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2022 12:37 pm
by lpm
lpm wrote:
Thu Jan 20, 2022 5:07 pm
VW has sold out all 2022 production, allegedly. For ID3 and ID4, plus the Skoda and Cupra variants.

Demand is there, possibly over inflated by subsidies, but battery production isn't.
ID3 sold out for 2022
VW rationing supplies of ID4 and Cupra to dealers
Skoda Octavia next availability August 2023
Audi Q4 e-tron next availability mid-2023

Never thought Tesla would do it, but they've triumphed because they can produce in the millions needed. Starting from zero appears easier than transforming a huge ICE production line in a huge existing factory to EV. China can do it, Hyundai/Kia seem to be delivering, but Europe can't.

Really wish I'd bought some Tesla shares. But Musk is such a wild card with zero credibility. Proves a great team can compensate for a terrible leader?

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2022 12:41 pm
by headshot
Or is he a brilliant leader because he brings together great teams?

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2022 1:44 pm
by dyqik
headshot wrote:
Tue Feb 08, 2022 12:41 pm
Or is he a brilliant leader because he brings together great teams?
Nah, you really only need consistent high cash flow and a distracted CEO to do that.

Leadership matters more when resources are limited and variable.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2022 11:41 am
by lpm
The UK have ended what's left of the grant.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61795693

Probably for the best. It was a subsidy to people who can afford expensive cars.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2022 3:49 pm
by bjn
dyqik wrote:
Tue Feb 08, 2022 1:44 pm
headshot wrote:
Tue Feb 08, 2022 12:41 pm
Or is he a brilliant leader because he brings together great teams?
Nah, you really only need consistent high cash flow and a distracted CEO to do that.

Leadership matters more when resources are limited and variable.
Early days at SpaceX and Tesla were a bit tight. However Shotwell has run Space-X for ages, and done it very well.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2022 5:27 pm
by Grumble
lpm wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 11:41 am
The UK have ended what's left of the grant.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61795693

Probably for the best. It was a subsidy to people who can afford expensive cars.
Even the more affordable cars that qualified have gone up in price recently to above the threshold so it wasn’t really achieving much.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2022 6:17 pm
by basementer
lpm wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 11:41 am
The UK have ended what's left of the grant.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61795693

Probably for the best. It was a subsidy to people who can afford expensive cars.
Expensive cars costing less than GBP32k, if the article is correct.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2022 8:09 pm
by lpm
It used to be £5,000.

Then £2,500 for cars under £35k.

Then under £32k.

The EU should subsidise cars at the £20k price, to try and get that part of the market going. Private enterprise is focus8ng on the luxury end.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2022 10:56 pm
by dyqik
lpm wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 8:09 pm
It used to be £5,000.

Then £2,500 for cars under £35k.

Then under £32k.

The EU should subsidise cars at the £20k price, to try and get that part of the market going. Private enterprise is focus8ng on the luxury end.
The TCO of electric cars at $32k is quite possibly lower than for $20k ICE cars, so it's not clear that that's really needed. However, financing might not in a state to make that realizable.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2022 7:41 pm
by Imrael
If they do as I've seen stated and put the subsidy budget into charging infrastructure that would probably do more to drive adoption. The market focusses on range, which naturally drives towards mid-high price vehicles. But a lot of people dont need the range regularly.

A fairly cheap fix would be to support cross-pavement off street parking in front of your house. There are some experiments here and there which look promising. This would allow a lot of urban/suburban drivers with lower range requirements to use electrics. Subsidies for flats with parking would go further, but might be more complicated.

(OTOH doing as they say is not guaranteed)

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2022 1:44 pm
by IvanV
lpm wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 8:09 pm
It used to be £5,000.

Then £2,500 for cars under £35k.

Then under £32k.

The EU should subsidise cars at the £20k price, to try and get that part of the market going. Private enterprise is focus8ng on the luxury end.
I agree with the general sentiment of your series of posts, that subsidising the cars has been a subsidy to the better off, and that private enterprise has found most profit in the luxury end of the market.

Lower income people rarely buy new cars. They mainly buy second hand cars, if they buy them at all. So there is a sense in which subsidising new cars at any price is always a subsidy to the better off.

The replacement idea of subsidising public chargers is, in principle, if properly directed and managed, a much better idea. Many of the less well off live in the kind of property where you can't fit chargers, and public chargers tend to sell electricity at much more than the domestic rate of electricity. Even when you take into account depreciation of the charger, public chargers typically cost far more to construct than private home ones. So, since the public chargers are typically trying to recover that much higher depreciation, it costs a lot more than your own charger, even in the long run.

The best value for subsidy, and focusing on lower income beneficiaries, would seem to be paying for public chargers in residential areas where lower income people live. Even better, they should control the price of electricity from such chargers and requiring the electricity sold from them to be at a price similar to typical residential electricity, so that people who have to use them are not worse off.

But OZEV's announcement of the policy change refers to subsidising public chargers to reduce range anxiety. That seems that they have more in mind en-route and at-destination public chargers, rather than near-home public chargers for those who don't have them. So that's focusing the benefit on the better off again, if taken at face value.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2022 3:36 pm
by Grumble
IvanV wrote:
Sun Jun 19, 2022 1:44 pm
lpm wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 8:09 pm
It used to be £5,000.

Then £2,500 for cars under £35k.

Then under £32k.

The EU should subsidise cars at the £20k price, to try and get that part of the market going. Private enterprise is focus8ng on the luxury end.
I agree with the general sentiment of your series of posts, that subsidising the cars has been a subsidy to the better off, and that private enterprise has found most profit in the luxury end of the market.

Lower income people rarely buy new cars. They mainly buy second hand cars, if they buy them at all. So there is a sense in which subsidising new cars at any price is always a subsidy to the better off.

The replacement idea of subsidising public chargers is, in principle, if properly directed and managed, a much better idea. Many of the less well off live in the kind of property where you can't fit chargers, and public chargers tend to sell electricity at much more than the domestic rate of electricity. Even when you take into account depreciation of the charger, public chargers typically cost far more to construct than private home ones. So, since the public chargers are typically trying to recover that much higher depreciation, it costs a lot more than your own charger, even in the long run.

The best value for subsidy, and focusing on lower income beneficiaries, would seem to be paying for public chargers in residential areas where lower income people live. Even better, they should control the price of electricity from such chargers and requiring the electricity sold from them to be at a price similar to typical residential electricity, so that people who have to use them are not worse off.

But OZEV's announcement of the policy change refers to subsidising public chargers to reduce range anxiety. That seems that they have more in mind en-route and at-destination public chargers, rather than near-home public chargers for those who don't have them. So that's focusing the benefit on the better off again, if taken at face value.
The money would be best spent with local councils developing on street and community charging.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2022 4:30 pm
by lpm
God no, keep local councils well away. They spent money on installs, withdrew money from maintenance and it's left broken chargers across the country.

Let capitalism do it, with central subsidy.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2022 9:03 pm
by Herainestold
Some chargers in remote locations are free.
Make all public chargers free and watch the sales of electric vehicles skyrocket.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2022 9:29 pm
by lpm
God no, sales are already rocketing, make public transport free.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2022 10:04 pm
by Herainestold
lpm wrote:
Sun Jun 19, 2022 9:29 pm
God no, sales are already rocketing, make public transport free.
Make them both free and triple the price of petrol.

Re: The Age of Electric Vehicles

Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2022 6:56 am
by headshot
Herainestold wrote:
Sun Jun 19, 2022 10:04 pm
lpm wrote:
Sun Jun 19, 2022 9:29 pm
God no, sales are already rocketing, make public transport free.
Make them both free and triple the price of petrol.
Cool. What are you going to do about all the business who Rey on road transport that will go bust?