Diesel scrappage scheme
Discussion
culpz said:
Car's in general are still expensive and have continued to become so over the years.
Balls.Let's do some quick googling for new car prices across a few decades and generations...
A 1975 Vauxhall ad for the new Cavalier Mk1, starting from just over £2k. That's nearly £19k now.
1981, Cavalier Mk2, starting from just under £4,200. £16,300 now.
1996, Vectra B, starting from £13k. £22,500 now.
2008, Vectra C, starting at £17,200. £21,500 now.
A new Insig starts at £17k.
Looks to me like they're pretty much as cheap as they've been for 40 years.
300bhp/ton said:
otolith said:
The thing is that current EVs meet most people's *needs*, if not their *wants*.
I think this is the thing that bugs me the most. A completely false and wrong statement with nothing to back it up or supporting.The simple fact is, it isn't true. Most of the population are not new car buyers in the first instance. So on this base level a 'new' expensive vehicle simply cannot suit or fulfil most peoples needs. As it is beyond the reach of a great many. And that issue has nothing specific to do with it being EV or not.
And claiming it suits the people that use the item the least is not really the answer either and is just playing with the figures. Let's assume that 90% claim of everyone does less than 10 miles a day. It's wrong, but even if right, that would mean 90% of the people are not the issue, as they are doing almost nothing to contribute to what are the perceived issues.
And addressing this 90% will have minimal or no impact on the actual issues at hand.
The vast majority of people, the vast majority of the time, do not exceed the range capabilities of current EVs. To do 100 miles a day, five days a week, they'd be putting 26,000 miles a year on their car and that's way in excess of what is typical. So most people could meet their regular transport requirements with an EV with little or no inconvenience. Now, many of them also do occasional long journeys, beyond the range of an EV, and in order to meet their transport needs they might have to compromise on their wants. They might put up with breaking their journey for a charge. They might hire an IC car for the day. They might drive to the train station or the airport or the coach station and travel that way instead.
There are relatively few people who actually *need* a car, particularly in urban or suburban areas. Cars are, generally, a luxury. They make life hugely easier, but the actual incremental improvement in utility between a Leaf and a Golf is a lot smaller than between public transport and a Leaf.
First world problems of need and want.
FiF said:
otolith said:
FiF said:
MarshPhantom said:
otolith said:
300bhp/ton said:
And were do you think people park for work? And do you think it's a) possible or practical to have a charging point located there, b) enough of them for all the cars, c) how will pay to put these charing points in place.
a) In many cases, yes. Look at the system used in Norway.300bhp/ton said:
And being picky, but for an important point. What sort of amp ratings are those chargers points rated too? The cabling looks very small and the cars also tiny. If you want to rapid or fast charge a large battery, you need substantially more heavy duty equipment.
Yes, like the kind of equipment you see at charging points at motorway services. The point is, you don't need fast charging if you are basically charging a car over the course of a working day at the workplace for a typical sort of commuting distance. The idea that all charging needs to be done on a fast charge at a dedicated station is applying petrol thinking to electric.culpz said:
otolith said:
Because they are more expensive to buy and less capable than a comparable ICE car.
Yes exactly. That's my whole point. Why are we assuming that's going to change at any point soon? EV technology and batteries are expensive and always have been. Someone's got to pay for them and their upkeep. Will the incentive be that the Government(s) contributes towards this? I think not.
king up our air quality, nobody would be talking about moving away from ICE cars. EVs just need to be good enough to fill in the gap that can't be adequately met by public transport, walking and cycling. We might want them to be better than that, and manufacturers will strive to make them better than that in order to sell cars, but policy makers are more interested in what we need than what we want.bodhi said:
I do have to laugh at some of the tortured statistics being used here too. There are currently more places to fill up an EV than a real car! Well no, there might be more charging points than petrol stations, but how many pumps does the average petrol station have? And how many people can refuel in an hour compared to a charge point?
The number of stations has been declining, but in 2012 there were 8600.There are about 25 million houses in the UK, most of which have at least one plug socket.
Unless the average petrol station has several thousand pumps, I think we can say there are more places to charge an electric car than there are petrol pumps.
otolith said:
The point is that we already have more places to refuel an electric car than we have petrol pumps. We would need far fewer petrol pumps if you could have the car fill itself up on your driveway overnight.
And what about the many millions of people who don't have a driveway?otolith said:
It doesn't need to. They're going to improve, but the bottom line is that pressure to reduce carbon emissions on the one hand and pressure to reduce emissions harmful to local air quality on the other are going to force the situation. If we didn't have pressure to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and exhaust emissions weren't fking up our air quality, nobody would be talking about moving away from ICE cars. EVs just need to be good enough to fill in the gap that can't be adequately met by public transport, walking and cycling. We might want them to be better than that, and manufacturers will strive to make them better than that in order to sell cars, but policy makers are more interested in what we need than what we want.
They've already had more than enough time to and more than enough reason to. Do you really believe everything you read in the papers?king up our air quality, nobody would be talking about moving away from ICE cars. EVs just need to be good enough to fill in the gap that can't be adequately met by public transport, walking and cycling. We might want them to be better than that, and manufacturers will strive to make them better than that in order to sell cars, but policy makers are more interested in what we need than what we want.Mr2Mike said:
otolith said:
The point is that we already have more places to refuel an electric car than we have petrol pumps. We would need far fewer petrol pumps if you could have the car fill itself up on your driveway overnight.
And what about the many millions of people who don't have a driveway?It is likely that local authorities will attempt to make kerbside charging available; like this pilot project in Hounslow;
http://www.hounslow.gov.uk/index/transport_and_str...
Subject to local authority permission, you can have a kerbside charging point installed outside your house at your own cost.
culpz said:
otolith said:
It doesn't need to. They're going to improve, but the bottom line is that pressure to reduce carbon emissions on the one hand and pressure to reduce emissions harmful to local air quality on the other are going to force the situation. If we didn't have pressure to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and exhaust emissions weren't fking up our air quality, nobody would be talking about moving away from ICE cars. EVs just need to be good enough to fill in the gap that can't be adequately met by public transport, walking and cycling. We might want them to be better than that, and manufacturers will strive to make them better than that in order to sell cars, but policy makers are more interested in what we need than what we want.
They've already had more than enough time to and more than enough reason to. Do you really believe everything you read in the papers?king up our air quality, nobody would be talking about moving away from ICE cars. EVs just need to be good enough to fill in the gap that can't be adequately met by public transport, walking and cycling. We might want them to be better than that, and manufacturers will strive to make them better than that in order to sell cars, but policy makers are more interested in what we need than what we want.I could live with a Model S now. It would do everything I need. That wasn't the case a few years ago.
otolith said:
They would either have to continue to use an ICE car (and suck up the fact that they will be restricted on where they can use it and probably eventually financially penalised), work out a way of charging an EV (park it somewhere else, charge it at work, buy a house with a drive, buy a house with a kerbside charging point, have a kerbside charging point installed yourself, ask your local authority to install one) or do as the millions of people who don't have a car do and rely on public transport, taxis, walking and cycling.
Which defeats the original argument about everyone having their own fuel pump.otolith said:
I could live with a Model S now. It would do everything I need. That wasn't the case a few years ago.
And how much does a Model S cost? You have a choice of a single, expensive EV or hundreds of IC engined cars.Mr2Mike said:
otolith said:
They would either have to continue to use an ICE car (and suck up the fact that they will be restricted on where they can use it and probably eventually financially penalised), work out a way of charging an EV (park it somewhere else, charge it at work, buy a house with a drive, buy a house with a kerbside charging point, have a kerbside charging point installed yourself, ask your local authority to install one) or do as the millions of people who don't have a car do and rely on public transport, taxis, walking and cycling.
Which defeats the original argument about everyone having their own fuel pump.But really the original point I was making (a little facetiously) was that thinking one would charge an EV in the same way that one "charges" a petrol car is a mistake - we fill petrol cars up in one go at petrol stations which we have to drive to because that's the only reasonable way of doing it. If we had petrol supplies to our houses, suddenly being told that we couldn't do that and had to use this new paradigm of driving to a fuel station would seem outrageous. The petrol fuelling model which we have to use for ICE cars doesn't work well for EVs, but it doesn't have to, that's not how you would generally use them. It's like fretting that there's nowhere to stick your bookmark in a Kindle.
Mr2Mike said:
otolith said:
I could live with a Model S now. It would do everything I need. That wasn't the case a few years ago.
And how much does a Model S cost? You have a choice of a single, expensive EV or hundreds of IC engined cars.otolith said:
They have improved. A Tesla is massively better not only than earlier EVs but also than most other EVs on the market. Where are you getting this idea that they haven't improved from?
I could live with a Model S now. It would do everything I need. That wasn't the case a few years ago.
Why don't you then? Why is no one prepared to take the plunge bar a few here and there? I could live with a Model S now. It would do everything I need. That wasn't the case a few years ago.
The Tesla's are great apart from the fact that they present the same problems as any other EV.
culpz said:
Why don't you then?
Because I think spending 50k plus on any car (electric or ICE) is insane and that's about the entry point for a used one.Because I don't actually need or want a big, new luxury car. I'm not in the market for a new 7-series or an S-class either.
Because two of my cars are toys, and there aren't yet comparable electric alternatives in budget.
Because the other car is just a cheap, practical load-lugger, and I'm not interested in spending serious money on boring everyday cars.
Because currently I'm not affected by any of the measures aimed at encouraging a switch to electric power.
I could live with one, it wouldn't be any hardship, but good ones haven't been on the market long enough to have depreciated to what I'm willing to pay. Because they have only recently got good enough. Because progress has happened.
The problem with this discussion is that some people are assuming that the future has arrived already, and every parking space will have a charger. Others are assuming that the present position will never change.
In a future where every parking space has a big fat charger on it, EVs would be great. They're clean, fast, quiet. What's not to like?
The current situation is that there are very few chargers. Many of the journeys I do are within the range of EVs one way - but depend on a charge at the far end. If I can't get that charge, I'm stuffed. A journey I do reasonably regularly is well within the range of a high end Telsa one way - but certainly not 2 ways. Having looked at it, I either do a 20 mile detour to get to a supercharger, and fanny about for half an hour, or I stop 10 miles short of my destination, leaving the car on a Ecotricity charger for 8 hours - needing a cab for the last bit. It's not really working when you have to make those sort of compromises having shelled out 80K for a car.
Lets consider the half way position where there are lots of chargers in parking spaces - say 30% of the typical street had chargers. You arrive home in your EV - all the chargers are full. Oh dear. Unless your neighbours come out to play musical cars that evening, you're not going to work tomorrow. To be honest, in a lot of places, you're just grateful for somewhere to leave the damn car, quite apart from charging it.
In a future where every parking space has a big fat charger on it, EVs would be great. They're clean, fast, quiet. What's not to like?
The current situation is that there are very few chargers. Many of the journeys I do are within the range of EVs one way - but depend on a charge at the far end. If I can't get that charge, I'm stuffed. A journey I do reasonably regularly is well within the range of a high end Telsa one way - but certainly not 2 ways. Having looked at it, I either do a 20 mile detour to get to a supercharger, and fanny about for half an hour, or I stop 10 miles short of my destination, leaving the car on a Ecotricity charger for 8 hours - needing a cab for the last bit. It's not really working when you have to make those sort of compromises having shelled out 80K for a car.
Lets consider the half way position where there are lots of chargers in parking spaces - say 30% of the typical street had chargers. You arrive home in your EV - all the chargers are full. Oh dear. Unless your neighbours come out to play musical cars that evening, you're not going to work tomorrow. To be honest, in a lot of places, you're just grateful for somewhere to leave the damn car, quite apart from charging it.
otolith said:
Because I think spending 50k plus on any car (electric or ICE) is insane and that's about the entry point for a used one.
Because I don't actually need or want a big, new luxury car. I'm not in the market for a new 7-series or an S-class either.
Because two of my cars are toys, and there aren't yet comparable electric alternatives in budget.
Because the other car is just a cheap, practical load-lugger, and I'm not interested in spending serious money on boring everyday cars.
Because currently I'm not affected by any of the measures aimed at encouraging a switch to electric power.
I could live with one, it wouldn't be any hardship, but good ones haven't been on the market long enough to have depreciated to what I'm willing to pay. Because they have only recently got good enough. Because progress has happened.
Most of those are points that aid my argument as to why EV's will not be taking over anytime soon, funnily enough.Because I don't actually need or want a big, new luxury car. I'm not in the market for a new 7-series or an S-class either.
Because two of my cars are toys, and there aren't yet comparable electric alternatives in budget.
Because the other car is just a cheap, practical load-lugger, and I'm not interested in spending serious money on boring everyday cars.
Because currently I'm not affected by any of the measures aimed at encouraging a switch to electric power.
I could live with one, it wouldn't be any hardship, but good ones haven't been on the market long enough to have depreciated to what I'm willing to pay. Because they have only recently got good enough. Because progress has happened.
What can a Tesla do that a generic EV can't? Slightly better range? The rest of the drawbacks are still unaddressed.
Edited by culpz on Wednesday 7th December 17:14
Edited by culpz on Wednesday 7th December 17:15
Wow I've never seen such extreme stereotypical sweeping statements of assumption used in a single thread (on both sides)!
I have an EV & I have an ICE and the combi works great (I have driveway so this puts me apparently according to a lot of posters on here in a tiny fraction of people who own cars)
My brothers live in the middle of the city and don't have a driveway - but they also have no interest in having a car and when the need arises they hire one by the hour like zipcar... Have you seen how unpopular car ownership is for the younger generations who care more about living beside bars than having gardens, cars and driveways?
Having an ICE with a 150 mile range would be the biggest pain in the arse ever but an EV with 150 mile range is a doddle. If you drive over 70 miles more than once a week don't buy an EV. If you drive less than a couple hundred miles a week don't buy a diesel. If you drive tens of thousands of miles don't buy a petrol or EV. Different technologies suit different people - why is an EV so different than arguements between diesel vs petrol?
I charge every night at home so every morning we're good to go, if I'm travelling a big distance I use the train or plane. If I'm going rural we use the old Volvo. The EV has done over 14k miles, the ICE has done less than 2k
A lot of folk without driveways don't want or need a car so this whole how do people in flats charge their cars is a tiny percentage of a problem (and nice apartments have underground or allocated parking so chargers are being installed there)
Lastly do you know how much electricity is used by refinerys to produce petrol and diesel? And then produce the fuel for the tankers to then take them out to the forecourts. A st-load so when the amount of fuel is less the amount taken up by EV charging is minimal. Add in the fact that most EVs will time shift their charging to off-peak it will put little strain on the grid: charging at work during the day (low demand) charging overnight at home (low demand)
That is all
I have an EV & I have an ICE and the combi works great (I have driveway so this puts me apparently according to a lot of posters on here in a tiny fraction of people who own cars)
My brothers live in the middle of the city and don't have a driveway - but they also have no interest in having a car and when the need arises they hire one by the hour like zipcar... Have you seen how unpopular car ownership is for the younger generations who care more about living beside bars than having gardens, cars and driveways?
Having an ICE with a 150 mile range would be the biggest pain in the arse ever but an EV with 150 mile range is a doddle. If you drive over 70 miles more than once a week don't buy an EV. If you drive less than a couple hundred miles a week don't buy a diesel. If you drive tens of thousands of miles don't buy a petrol or EV. Different technologies suit different people - why is an EV so different than arguements between diesel vs petrol?
I charge every night at home so every morning we're good to go, if I'm travelling a big distance I use the train or plane. If I'm going rural we use the old Volvo. The EV has done over 14k miles, the ICE has done less than 2k
A lot of folk without driveways don't want or need a car so this whole how do people in flats charge their cars is a tiny percentage of a problem (and nice apartments have underground or allocated parking so chargers are being installed there)
Lastly do you know how much electricity is used by refinerys to produce petrol and diesel? And then produce the fuel for the tankers to then take them out to the forecourts. A s
t-load so when the amount of fuel is less the amount taken up by EV charging is minimal. Add in the fact that most EVs will time shift their charging to off-peak it will put little strain on the grid: charging at work during the day (low demand) charging overnight at home (low demand)That is all
A Tesla is quick, well equipped, refined and has more than enough range for my needs. Earlier EVs weren't and some others still aren't.
EVs will gradually gain market share. More quickly as the prices fall, people get over their range anxiety, ICE cars (especially diesels) start to be banned from cities and fiscal incentives are pushed. The vehicle fleet turns over slowly, even if we went 100% EV today there would still be a lot of ICE cars about in ten years.
Personally, I'm hanging on to the kind of cars I like for now - if good EVs get onto the used market quickly enough that I can completely skip the current generation of nasty little turbocharged four cylinder engines, that will do me fine. It's not as if there are going to be any engines around worth mourning, there's already nothing to miss in the mass market.
EVs will gradually gain market share. More quickly as the prices fall, people get over their range anxiety, ICE cars (especially diesels) start to be banned from cities and fiscal incentives are pushed. The vehicle fleet turns over slowly, even if we went 100% EV today there would still be a lot of ICE cars about in ten years.
Personally, I'm hanging on to the kind of cars I like for now - if good EVs get onto the used market quickly enough that I can completely skip the current generation of nasty little turbocharged four cylinder engines, that will do me fine. It's not as if there are going to be any engines around worth mourning, there's already nothing to miss in the mass market.
300bhp/ton said:
FiF said:
Just as an observation, having regularly driven, as in daily driver, both Focus and Golf vehicles running on E85, 85%ethanol/15% petrol mix, well the fuel consumption was atrocious and if required performance was better, but at an even bigger impact on consumption. Blasting long distances at :cough: highish :cough: speeds during the ash cloud / no flights malarkey it seemed as if one could see the fuel gauge physically dropping. Spectacular difference on normal unleaded petrol. Sorry for off topic there.
Yes, I don't think E85 or sugarcane fuel is the exact answer. But it demonstrates it's possible to use an alternative fuel to a natural oil based one. Meaning there is possibility or growing or producing other fuel types. Ones that could potentially be more viable and even more sustainable. E85 is also being used in engines not built or designed for it. I'm sure with the correct incentive, dedicated engines could be produced that are more efficient on such fuel or new a yet undeveloped fuels.I don't know what these fuel might look like, but it's well known diesel engines will run on vegetable oil, so there is probably some offerings and ideas around this.
Growing fuel has already been proven to be unworkable in a modern world where machine gunning the indigenous folk seems to be frowned upon.
Incidentally, re your recalculation of those Governments stats to get a new figure, you could go to Ehitegall and replace thousands of civil servants and save us a fortune.
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