RE: Honda e | Driven

[otolith]

DonkeyApple said:

otolith said:

I believe that our choice is between electric cars and public transport. If it’s not EVs, it’s the loser-cruiser all round.

But you appreciate that this will take decades to achieve right? In the meantime do you then disagree that more should be done to reduce the biting of fossil fuels as best possible or disagree that any action taken to limit the use of fossil fuels will drive forward the rate of EV adoption?

Your view seems not only a little extremist but tremendously flawed and yet you make posts attempting to mock discussions which actually support your own personal desires.

My personal desires are to continue with things as they were some years ago, with large petrol engines remaining a viable form of transport, but I think that ship has sailed.

The only way we are going to decarbonise personal transport is to stop making cars which burn fossil fuels and simultaneously decarbonise our electricity generation. If, as it is claimed, that is not viable, and the only way we can continue to have cars is if they burn petrol and diesel, personal transport is fundamentally incompatible with the intention to stop emitting CO2. As far as I can see, EVs are the only option we have to save the private car.

It is likely to take some time to transition, with PHEVs likely to cover some of the interim (though really they are a stupid solution - they're carrying round a big, heavy engine that takes a lot of energy to manufacture in order to be able to do the occasional journeys that people should be doing by train - and a similar argument applies to long range EVs) - but if as some on this thread claim EVs are an environmental disaster and not a solution, then that transition should not happen, we should just stop using cars at all.

[J4CKO]

Jex said:

The problem with EV and anti-diesel arguments is that they a metro-centric. They want to get pollution out of the cities and in cities short journeys are common. If you don't live in the city, the range of EVs can be a problem and the generally better fuel consumption of diesels is an advantage.

This is how a diesel car driver will look to others, I reckon in 10 to 15 years,



"Yer like that"

[Krikkit]

DonkeyApple said:

Krikkit said:

Honda probably won't get the same rates as GM or Tesla yet as they're only taking low volumes for now... Even assuming they do get $120 it still doesn't change the fact that the drivetrain is hugely more expensive than an ICE that's produced for group-wide use.

We're still ignoring the fact that just about everyone is producing an EV of some kind now, and either everyone is price-fixing, or they cost more to produce...

How many countries can you sell EVs in? It’s only the small number who have tax incentive programs. And then how many of those countries can those tax incentives be obtained only via a pure EV?

Lots of EV fans don’t recognise the real world but demand to live in a fabricated utopia that fits their needs. Other EV fans are more pragmatic and appreciate that this is an evolution of the motor vehicle not the apocalypse of the ICE.

The higher prices of EVs isn’t really due to their batteries alone. People make the mistake of trying to compare the cost of the battery pack to cost of the engine and drivetrain. The battery pack is just the petrol tank. It’s the electric motor that is replacing the engine, gearbox et al. How expensive are these electric motors and how many are being fitted to some cars? Gearboxes and engines are actually really very cheap and there’s only one of each in a car. Electric motors are still very expensive and often there is more than one being installed.

So you have a more expensive drivetrain at factory level costs, a much more expensive fuel tank in terms of initial purchase and you have very low volumes but your product development costs haven’t changed much and the maintaining of completely new and untested supply lines adds an additional cost.

Agreed - I was thinking about total drivetrain costs really... Tank, pumps, piping, engine gearbox for ICE. Battery, cabling and management hardware, inverter, motor(s), possibly gearboxes all coupled with low volumes.

[CooperS]

This thread made me chuckle.

1 - people buy new cars in 24/36/48 month cycles. Nothing new to anyone and just changed one car with another
2 - not everyone is poor and some can prioritise spending more to have something funky (how many people with average incomes are have a £1000 iphone or anything tech which is superfluous to their actual needs). Theres no problem with this. I can't afford a Ferrari but I don't bh that its too expensive and there isn't a need for it
3 - the Honda E isn't comparable to the Type R and visa versa so please stop comparing one £30k car with another £30k car.

Saying the above for me the range and size means it's not for me but I appricate Honda doing something different which isn't another small SUV. this isn't a massed produce car just a starting place for Honda (I hope)

[Jex]

J4CKO said:

Jex said:

The problem with EV and anti-diesel arguments is that they a metro-centric. They want to get pollution out of the cities and in cities short journeys are common. If you don't live in the city, the range of EVs can be a problem and the generally better fuel consumption of diesels is an advantage.

This is how a diesel car driver will look to others, I reckon in 10 to 15 years,


"Yer like that"

Yes, but not now.

[otolith]

Krikkit said:

DonkeyApple said:

Krikkit said:

Honda probably won't get the same rates as GM or Tesla yet as they're only taking low volumes for now... Even assuming they do get $120 it still doesn't change the fact that the drivetrain is hugely more expensive than an ICE that's produced for group-wide use.

We're still ignoring the fact that just about everyone is producing an EV of some kind now, and either everyone is price-fixing, or they cost more to produce...

How many countries can you sell EVs in? It’s only the small number who have tax incentive programs. And then how many of those countries can those tax incentives be obtained only via a pure EV?

Lots of EV fans don’t recognise the real world but demand to live in a fabricated utopia that fits their needs. Other EV fans are more pragmatic and appreciate that this is an evolution of the motor vehicle not the apocalypse of the ICE.

The higher prices of EVs isn’t really due to their batteries alone. People make the mistake of trying to compare the cost of the battery pack to cost of the engine and drivetrain. The battery pack is just the petrol tank. It’s the electric motor that is replacing the engine, gearbox et al. How expensive are these electric motors and how many are being fitted to some cars? Gearboxes and engines are actually really very cheap and there’s only one of each in a car. Electric motors are still very expensive and often there is more than one being installed.

So you have a more expensive drivetrain at factory level costs, a much more expensive fuel tank in terms of initial purchase and you have very low volumes but your product development costs haven’t changed much and the maintaining of completely new and untested supply lines adds an additional cost.

Agreed - I was thinking about total drivetrain costs really... Tank, pumps, piping, engine gearbox for ICE. Battery, cabling and management hardware, inverter, motor(s), possibly gearboxes all coupled with low volumes.

Some consumer prices for electric drivetrain components on this site;

https://www.evwest.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=8

Including a complete Model S drive unit starter kit for $11.5k;

https://www.evwest.com/catalog/product_info.php?cP...

[RemarkLima]

DonkeyApple said:

We can already buy an endless supply of smaller, frugal transport boxes so using taxation to steer those who favour not using them is a very sound concept.

Why would someone favour the adoption of EVs and yet not favour other, more efficient means to reduce petrol consumption without restricting mobility in any way?

Why wouldn’t you levy additional taxes on excess consumption? Or on any engines above 1L etc? Or restrict credit to no greater than that required by someone on minimum wage to be efficiently mobile?

We do... VED is rated by CO2, as is year 1's showroom tax... Aaaaaaaand there's duty on fuel, so the more you burn, the more duty you pay.

Very low polluting, efficient cars already see a reduction in both direct and indirect taxation. Shame it's just on CO2 and pushed everyone into stinking diesels.

Or am I missing something here?

Edit to add - didn't realise new cars were a flat rate after year one, with the bulk upfront. It'll amount to the same amount over 5 years I'd assume so a slightly different way to present the tax, and I'd think wouldn't be a clear way to push the buying choices... C'est la vie.

Edited by RemarkLima on Thursday 30th January 20:46

[Kolbenkopp]

RemarkLima said:

We do... VED is rated by CO2, as is year 1's showroom tax... Aaaaaaaand there's duty on fuel, so the more you burn, the more duty you pay.

Very low polluting, efficient cars already see a reduction in both direct and indirect taxation. Shame it's just on CO2 and pushed everyone into stinking diesels.

Or am I missing something here?

All true. Problem IMO is some parts are a flat fee independent of usage, some scale with consumption. That automatically makes costs / distance go down if you drive more. And in sum it's not enough to make an impact on consumer choice. Else we would see cars become lighter and more efficient instead of the opposite (SUV boom).

Fuel is a small part of car TCO, probably even less than most people realize. For the UK, I think average 7600 miles / year @ 38 mpg or less than 100 GBP in fuel per month? Compared to say depreciation + finance, not much IMO.

In turn, efficiency isn't important to consumers.

So what do governments do to meet Co2 targets? They come up with a pretty complicated and unfair way to force the OEMs to produce cars that fit. The regulation cost money, the compliance testing costs money, policing the scheme costs money etc. Dunno how much just the WLTP testing time on the rollers is -- but must be in the 10.000 of man hours combined...

Drop all that nonsense, tax energy in a way that has enough impact on customer demand and let the OEMs & market decide what cars are built. We could have our Jimny's and supercharged V8s (because hobby), but 2.5t cars for the school run would become rarer.

[Kolbenkopp]

DonkeyApple said:

How many countries can you sell EVs in? It’s only the small number who have tax incentive programs. And then how many of those countries can those tax incentives be obtained only via a pure EV?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage

Guess would be the top 20 in the above list. Luxury items for the world's top earners. Likely not a very significant percentage of the 80 million cars sold every year. And realistically. only the better earning in those top economies buy new cars...

Edit: fat fingers .

Edited by Kolbenkopp on Friday 31st January 00:21

[DonkeyApple]

Yup. We’ve all seen first hand that the only event in living memory that has caused people to drive less and to be more economical was the fuel price rise when the West was soilinging itself over peak oil. We can have all the gentle taxation’s that can be amortised into a lease but the only metric that actually causes people to actually change in any meaningful manner is the number that stops rolling on the pump.

[Kolbenkopp]

RobDickinson said:

If you dont have off street parking and/or home charging then large battery Evs are fine, fast charge them once a week whilst you shop for groceries etc. Small battery EVs are more of a pain as you need to charge them every other day.

Good suggestion, thanks (really)!

We thought of that, but last time we checked it just doesn't work out.

She won't drive a SUV or even a larger compact as the little driving she does (around 4k miles/year) is mostly urban. There are no small EVs with big batteries available. The exception perhaps the latest Zoe. That would need to a) be really fast chargeable and b) not loose too much energy if left parked for ~ 2 weeks at a time. Basically ICE usability in a small long range EV would be required. We'll check it out when the ageing smart comes up with it's next larger bill, but not optimistic on functionality (never mind cost) of an EV alternative.

Myself, I'd like something that can do 160 miles highway in any weather and temperature @ target speed 120 mph, plus some 40 miles reserve, so I have a bit of mobility left to visit a fast charger at my convenience. Such an EV does not exist. The Tesla 3 LR is the closest, but still lacking. Admittedly a very German use case, not relevant RoW.

[DonkeyApple]

Kolbenkopp said:

RobDickinson said:

If you dont have off street parking and/or home charging then large battery Evs are fine, fast charge them once a week whilst you shop for groceries etc. Small battery EVs are more of a pain as you need to charge them every other day.

Good suggestion, thanks (really)!

We thought of that, but last time we checked it just doesn't work out.

She won't drive a SUV or even a larger compact as the little driving she does (around 4k miles/year) is mostly urban. There are no small EVs with big batteries available. The exception perhaps the latest Zoe. That would need to a) be really fast chargeable and b) not loose too much energy if left parked for ~ 2 weeks at a time. Basically ICE usability in a small long range EV would be required. We'll check it out when the ageing smart comes up with it's next larger bill, but not optimistic on functionality (never mind cost) of an EV alternative.

Myself, I'd like something that can do 160 miles highway in any weather and temperature @ target speed 120 mph, plus some 40 miles reserve, so I have a bit of mobility left to visit a fast charger at my convenience. Such an EV does not exist. The Tesla 3 LR is the closest, but still lacking. Admittedly a very German use case, not relevant RoW.

If someone lives in a small house with no means to charge their car at home does it not sound a little offbeat to then suggest that their solution is to buy a massive £50-100k executive chariot?

It would certainly be amusing to watch what happened to the chappie who tried to explain this to the residents of a normal street of terraced houses.

There is no EV solution for the poor as of yet just a solution for some of the more affluent. This car is a £30k indulgence not a transport solution for the masses. That still firmly remains the cheap, frugal and highly flexible ICE car.

Range really doesn’t come in to it. Humans can adapt pretty much anything to fit. That’s why there are 8bn of us and we enjoy eating all the other animals. If the only car that someone could use had just a 100 mile range then humans would make that work. If someone can’t make that work then you’ve made the slight mistake of going to the zoo and striking up a conversation with a chimp. If we had all woken up this morning to find that all of our cars just had their max range limited to 100 miles we would all simply adapt. Those with British passports would make an awful racket about it in between bouts of punching the Spaniard over holiday photos in the Daily Mail of the latest woman we are being told is apparently famous but even they would simply adapt. Commerce would adapt, lifestyles, journeys, how we use our cars would all adapt but we would still have our cars and still be fully mobile.

What no one can adapt to is having to find more money than you can earn or borrow.

That’s why the solution for lower income households who don’t own a driveway etc does not lie in buying a £50k luxury car . The solution to mobility is defined for the many by money supply.

You could easily pull the money supply from the top end of the market by simply changing the regulation so that a consumer could no longer borrow more than a base amount to procure a car unless it was an EV.

But you can’t use money supply to govern the majority. You can’t expect this majority to move away from ICE until there is a genuine pricing inversion between EVs and ICE at the bottom levels of personal transport.

[Kawasicki]

DonkeyApple said:

You can’t expect this majority to move away from ICE until there is a genuine pricing inversion between EVs and ICE at the bottom levels of personal transport.

Good post.

Make fossil fuels 100 times more expensive and job jobbed.

[DonkeyApple]

Kawasicki said:

DonkeyApple said:

You can’t expect this majority to move away from ICE until there is a genuine pricing inversion between EVs and ICE at the bottom levels of personal transport.

Good post.

Make fossil fuels 100 times more expensive and job jobbed.

To date this has been the policy of legislation. EVs have big tax breaks while ICE huge taxes. But even so we remain quite far away from the required price inversion. Almost solely because of the huge inefficiency of the Victorian bricks we have to use in EVs that are very expensive but also crippling in their usage restrictions. EVs themselves are brilliant and we will all benefit from being able to use them. It’s the batteries that power them that are totally pants in reality.

If we were to remove the BIK benefits, remove the subsidies, remove the VED taxes and the fuel taxes then EVs simply wouldn’t be anywhere near to being able to compete against ICE vehicles on cost.

It’s onlt when you look at the two products without the taxes on the one side and without the tax breaks on the other you can begin to see just how far away we are from a genuinely viable EV solution for all.

[otolith]

Depends whether you consider unreconciled externalities to be subsidies, as some economists do.

[rossub]

CooperS said:

2 - not everyone is poor and some can prioritise spending more to have something funky (how many people with average incomes are have a £1000 iphone or anything tech which is superfluous to their actual needs). Theres no problem with this. I can't afford a Ferrari but I don't bh that its too expensive and there isn't a need for it

Lets see how many they sell in the UK then. There are an awful lot more people who can't afford this, or can afford it but won't buy it because they feel it's not worth the asking price.

Plus it's a Honda and not an Audi/Merc/BMW.... the people with the money generally don't buy Japanese either. See NSX.

[DonkeyApple]

otolith said:

Depends whether you consider unreconciled externalities to be subsidies, as some economists do.

Yes. That’s absolutely the reason why small petrol cars are affordable and usable over EVs for lower income households.

[otolith]

DonkeyApple said:

otolith said:

Depends whether you consider unreconciled externalities to be subsidies, as some economists do.

Yes. That’s absolutely the reason why small petrol cars are affordable and usable over EVs for lower income households.

Those who make the argument would say that in fact it is only because users of petrol cars do not pay for the damage that they inflict upon others that they are economically viable, and that there is thus an enormous subsidy in favour of fossil fuels.

One may or may not agree. The system is as it is. People build their lifestyles around the environment they are given.

[Jaaws]

rossub said:

Plus it's a Honda and not an Audi/Merc/BMW....

And that neatly encapsulates the reason why I'm buying one. It's not an Audi/Merc/BMW, it's different!

[DonkeyApple]

otolith said:

DonkeyApple said:

otolith said:

Depends whether you consider unreconciled externalities to be subsidies, as some economists do.

Yes. That’s absolutely the reason why small petrol cars are affordable and usable over EVs for lower income households.

Those who make the argument would say that in fact it is only because users of petrol cars do not pay for the damage that they inflict upon others that they are economically viable, and that there is thus an enormous subsidy in favour of fossil fuels.

One may or may not agree. The system is as it is. People build their lifestyles around the environment they are given.

And this intangible posit does what exactly to reduce the use of fossil fuels while maintaining the personal mobility of the people you desire being confined once more to a life on the buses and the economic shackles that imposes?

The reality in a civilised world where contempt doesn’t form policy is that because battery tech is so archaic it will be years before EVs can serve more than just the affluent minority and as such an acceptance that ICE is essential for social mobility and how best to minimise it’s impact on all of us would be common sense. As opposed to the view that the masses must go back to the bus. Which frankly has really surprised me as I never once thought you were one of those people.