Electric cars 'may be costlier than petrol vehicles'
Discussion
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11112820
Turns out they are only cost effective if you need to enter the London congestion charge area frequently. I still don't know who would spend £30k on an electric car the size of a matchbox when the same money will buy you a good slug of decent motors...
Everyone here should already know this. Electric cars also have a higher carbon impact. That said, this is early days for mass production of electric cars and with any technology the passage of time tends to improve things.
In the simplest terms, every time energy is converted or extracted there is loss (inefficiency) in that process and there are costs associated with each process such as capital cost of refining fuel and peoples wages. Therefore to use fossil fuel to create motive force for a car is one inefficient step. To use fossil fuel to make electricity and then use that electricity to create motive force is two inefficient steps. It is difficult to see how electric cars can ever be more fuel efficient than fossil fuel cars. Electric cars may become less expensive to own but that’ll be due to differences in government taxation, not fuel consumption.
In the simplest terms, every time energy is converted or extracted there is loss (inefficiency) in that process and there are costs associated with each process such as capital cost of refining fuel and peoples wages. Therefore to use fossil fuel to create motive force for a car is one inefficient step. To use fossil fuel to make electricity and then use that electricity to create motive force is two inefficient steps. It is difficult to see how electric cars can ever be more fuel efficient than fossil fuel cars. Electric cars may become less expensive to own but that’ll be due to differences in government taxation, not fuel consumption.
They even had a motoring journalist on BBC breakfast going on about how they're not that clean in overall terms & will depreciate like nothing else. They didn't bring up the whole life cycle ashes to ashes environmental impact thing, but what concerned me more than all of that was the discovery (to me) that China has virtual monopolies on many of the minerals required for our new green technologies (thanks often to environmentaly damaging refinement making them cheaper to produce), so even the future economic benefits of developing this tech may be outsourced and vulnerable.
http://www.wikinvest.com/concept/China's_Rare_Eart...
http://davidpugliese.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/chin...
http://www.wikinvest.com/concept/China's_Rare_Eart...
http://davidpugliese.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/chin...
To be fair they are comparing the cost of an iMev which is frankly silly at 30K for a 4 seater smart with a reasonable value car of similar size.
Compare it to a fully specced up petrol car and the purchase price will be similar and if you buy badly it will also suffer huge depreciation.
But the idea that early adopters are going to get hammered by depreciation in any technology is hardly headline fecking news
Also environmentalists have been screaming that we must all use electric cars because electric cars don't exist now that are starting to appear the environmentalists will scream we must all use public transport or walk as they need something to protest about.
Look at wind turbines 5 years ago they were jumping up and down screaming we must build wind turbines, now that wind turbines are being built they are jumping up and down screaming that they are destroying the country side
Basically many environmentalists are watermelons green on the outside red on the inside, they hate personnel freedom.
The HUGE advantage of electric cars is that swapping a million electric cars overnight from oil powered to nuke powered is merely throwing a switch. Well if we had any nuke power stations. Which can't be done with fossil fuelled cars.
Compare it to a fully specced up petrol car and the purchase price will be similar and if you buy badly it will also suffer huge depreciation.
But the idea that early adopters are going to get hammered by depreciation in any technology is hardly headline fecking news
Also environmentalists have been screaming that we must all use electric cars because electric cars don't exist now that are starting to appear the environmentalists will scream we must all use public transport or walk as they need something to protest about.
Look at wind turbines 5 years ago they were jumping up and down screaming we must build wind turbines, now that wind turbines are being built they are jumping up and down screaming that they are destroying the country side
Basically many environmentalists are watermelons green on the outside red on the inside, they hate personnel freedom.
The HUGE advantage of electric cars is that swapping a million electric cars overnight from oil powered to nuke powered is merely throwing a switch. Well if we had any nuke power stations. Which can't be done with fossil fuelled cars.
thinfourth2 said:
Also environmentalists have been screaming that we must all use electric cars because electric cars don't exist now that are starting to appear the environmentalists will scream we must all use public transport or walk as they need something to protest about.
Just like they did as soon as biofuels appeared to promise a future which didn't involve sackcloth and ashes. I did have a wry smile when this was on this am. I am really looking forward to all the pro electric loonies trying to pick the report apart.
Not only are they gutless, heavy, ugly, expensive and compromised vehicles it turns out that they are not actually that cheap to run unless you live in a big city like London....in which case you would be taking the tube anyway
Still you can still kid yourselves that your saving the planet and doing the right thing, until you need to tow something that is
Not only are they gutless, heavy, ugly, expensive and compromised vehicles it turns out that they are not actually that cheap to run unless you live in a big city like London....in which case you would be taking the tube anyway
Still you can still kid yourselves that your saving the planet and doing the right thing, until you need to tow something that is
yonex said:
I did have a wry smile when this was on this am. I am really looking forward to all the pro electric loonies trying to pick the report apart.
I already have they could of easily a petrol car with similar running costs and depreciation to the electric car and the iMev is a very limited release car. Its very much a rich persons toy at this moment. The electric car is in its very early commercial development so yes it is going to be expensive to run.yonex said:
Not only are they gutless, heavy, ugly, expensive and compromised vehicles it turns out that they are not actually that cheap to run unless you live in a big city like London....in which case you would be taking the tube anyway
Go back a 110 years and look at the first carsThey were gutless, heavy, ugly, expensive and compromised vehicles it turns out that they are not actually that cheap to run and could only be refuelled at a few chemists Where as horses were cheap, quick and could be refuelled almost anywhere.
The horse was a dull piece of transport
Now the horse is a toy and the car is a dull piece of transport.
Hate electric cars all you want but I see them as the future and petrol cars to become toys
Ask yourself if you had 1000litres of petrol left to last the rest of your life would you use it for fuelling some dull boring s
t box to take you to work everyday?yonex said:
Still you can still kid yourselves that your saving the planet and doing the right thing, until you need to tow something that is
For towing i use a landroverElectric cars will catch up to and overtake petrol cars in a short period of time.
It's a different kind of tech, and it's a million times cleverer than this fossil fuel 150 year old tech that hasn't changed crap that we all put up with at the moment.
As a day to day means of transport electric cars will be in the majority sooner than some may want to admit.
You can compare it to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law More than anything else really.
It's a different kind of tech, and it's a million times cleverer than this fossil fuel 150 year old tech that hasn't changed crap that we all put up with at the moment.
As a day to day means of transport electric cars will be in the majority sooner than some may want to admit.
You can compare it to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law More than anything else really.
Edited by tossbag on Saturday 28th August 14:37
thinfourth2 said:
frosted said:
I can't see why so many people are against electric cars
As absolutely everyone on here has to commute 500 miles day and an electric car could never do thatI will place a bet right here right now that in less than ten years that will be more than doable in a clean, comfy electric car.
You are basing advancement of tech on pistons and millions of years old rotted vegatables.
In 1999 a PC magazine complained MP3s were 'pointless' - it's this realm that we are in with these cars, not your old view I'm afraid.
frosted said:
I can't see why so many people are against electric cars
There's something exciting about the sound, smell and feel of a Very Big Engine. You just don't get that with electric cars. Combine that with (current) range anxiety, poor economy in hybrids (when compared to the new era of modern diesels and things like Fiat's Multi-Air tech) limited supply of the minerals needed to make the batteries and the eventual 'death' of that battery and electric cars seem like a pretty dumb idea.Electric just isn't exciting/sexy/fun (delete as appropriate).
tossbag said:
thinfourth2 said:
frosted said:
I can't see why so many people are against electric cars
As absolutely everyone on here has to commute 500 miles day and an electric car could never do thatI will place a bet right here right now that in less than ten years that will be more than doable in a clean, comfy electric car.
You are basing advancement of tech on pistons and millions of years old rotted vegatables.
In 1999 a PC magazine complained MP3s were 'pointless' - it's this realm that we are in with these cars, not your old view I'm afraid.
thinfourth2 said:
tossbag said:
thinfourth2 said:
frosted said:
I can't see why so many people are against electric cars
As absolutely everyone on here has to commute 500 miles day and an electric car could never do thatI will place a bet right here right now that in less than ten years that will be more than doable in a clean, comfy electric car.
You are basing advancement of tech on pistons and millions of years old rotted vegatables.
In 1999 a PC magazine complained MP3s were 'pointless' - it's this realm that we are in with these cars, not your old view I'm afraid.
Go on Ebay right now and buy a mobile phone that is maybe 10 years old or so, charge it up and then come back here and complain about how crap the battery life is in all modern mobile phones.
If we're talking about suitability for purpose, an electric car would fail immediately for me. I do around 150 miles a day and would have no way of recharging a plug-in electric car (I live in a flat).
Until cars can be recharged as quickly as it takes to fill a tank with petrol/diesel and these recharging points can be found everywhere, plug-in electrics won't get off the ground. Also watch the price of electricity rocket once more are in use - not to mention we're facing a power crisis anyway, what with the last Government's failure to get new power stations underway.
Until cars can be recharged as quickly as it takes to fill a tank with petrol/diesel and these recharging points can be found everywhere, plug-in electrics won't get off the ground. Also watch the price of electricity rocket once more are in use - not to mention we're facing a power crisis anyway, what with the last Government's failure to get new power stations underway.
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