Dealer: the Taycan was good for us; it's now a disaster

[MaxFromage]

I was fairly oblivious to Taycan woes, but a client has just been explaining the issues he's had. It's being handed back next week.

He's very friendly with the local dealer(s) and always gets to the front of the queue for a number of cars. The OPC have confirmed the Taycan really hasn't done them (and Porsche) any favours.

[CABC]

this is ver 1.0
they'll fix it and all will be forgotten in a few years. painful if you suffered, but a mere blip historically.

the bigger issue for all the Germans is that the Chinese really are coming - good price and good performance. there's going to be a shift in next 10 yrs.

[Nomme de Plum]

CABC said:

this is ver 1.0
they'll fix it and all will be forgotten in a few years. painful if you suffered, but a mere blip historically.

the bigger issue for all the Germans is that the Chinese really are coming - good price and good performance. there's going to be a shift in next 10 yrs.

People who can afford a Porsche would be unlikely to swop for a Chinese product.

To a slightly less extent Mercedes and BMW are also very popular because of the Brand but maybe their loyalty will not be inelastic.

For people on or about average incomes the greater the competition the better.

[Nomme de Plum]

DonkeyApple said:

Low income workers are not net contributors but net recipients. The tax breaks on EVs are being paid out of the net contributions of higher rate tax payers. It's command economics in order to build a free market on the back of higher income earners that can then benefit lower income earners.

Low income workers are indeed net recipients but there are several million workers on or slightly above average pay that are net contributors.

It is inherently unfair that a vehicle over £100k should have any tax breaks attached to it. Where the exact number should be is difficult to assess but certainly over £40K there could be a sliding scale reducing the benefit.

[DonkeyApple]

Nomme de Plum said:

People who can afford a Porsche would be unlikely to swop for a Chinese product.

To a slightly less extent Mercedes and BMW are also very popular because of the Brand but maybe their loyalty will not be inelastic.

For people on or about average incomes the greater the competition the better.

It does depend on how one defines 'Chinese' as there will be no shortage of consumers who can no longer afford the Porsche brand and moving back down the ladder and the same with all premium marques and at the lower rungs the market is screaming for cheap, overtly branded Chinese goods the same way it leaped at Japanese cars in the 70s, some Russian tat in the 80s, Korean stuff in the 90s and then took a 20 year hiatus due to free money for everyone and endless ability to borrow next year's wages.

20 years of everyone being able to 'get into a German' as I believe the street parlance is? But that's clearly over so people will be notching down within a marque, going used, switching to EV and then ultimately dropping down some marques.

The U.K. is now outside of the EU and so all the EU regs designed to keep Chinese cars at bay don't apply as much and nor do we have millions of Union backed car manufacturing jobs to protect.

It doesn't seem implausible that the softening in consumer demand for premium German cars will be met by the formal appearance of overt Chinese brands as opposed to hiding behind old European labels like MG etc?

I can't imagine that Ora Funky Cat thing being a hit because even Bristolians and Brummies can spot a £10k turd with a £30k price tag as being not the choice of champions but BYD et al have perfectly viable cheap products that all the current anti China rhetoric can only keep away from U.K. consumers for so long?

Edited by DonkeyApple on Saturday 8th April 12:06

[theboss]

Nomme de Plum said:

DonkeyApple said:

Low income workers are not net contributors but net recipients. The tax breaks on EVs are being paid out of the net contributions of higher rate tax payers. It's command economics in order to build a free market on the back of higher income earners that can then benefit lower income earners.

Low income workers are indeed net recipients but there are several million workers on or slightly above average pay that are net contributors.

It is inherently unfair that a vehicle over £100k should have any tax breaks attached to it. Where the exact number should be is difficult to assess but certainly over £40K there could be a sliding scale reducing the benefit.

Your millions of slightly above average earners are still being subsidised broadly by the highest earning 10% which will include most expensive EV drivers, not the other way around. Revert ICE levels of BIK on expensive EVs and they'll just stop selling, which is a shame for the treasury as there's a substantial amount of VAT on these cars. The money can find its way into pensions instead. What you're very unlikely to see is any great numbers of earners just saying "oh well I'll pay the extra tax then". It's a fallacy to think it's there for the taking.

[Nomme de Plum]

theboss said:

Your millions of slightly above average earners are still being subsidised broadly by the highest earning 10% which will include most expensive EV drivers, not the other way around. Revert ICE levels of BIK on expensive EVs and they'll just stop selling, which is a shame for the treasury as there's a substantial amount of VAT on these cars. The money can find its way into pensions instead. What you're very unlikely to see is any great numbers of earners just saying "oh well I'll pay the extra tax then". It's a fallacy to think it's there for the taking.

So where is the break even point where a person moves from recipient to contributor?

I'm still well into that top 10% but still maintain it is inherently unfair that a really expensive vehicle is subsidised by the tax payer.

The high earners will have maxed out their pension pots.

The exchequer will not lose as the money will be spent one way or the other. In reality it's relatively small beer in terms of VAT on cars over £100K

[OutInTheShed]

Nomme de Plum said:

So where is the break even point where a person moves from recipient to contributor?
...

That probably depends on how you think about the budget deficit.

[DonkeyApple]

Nomme de Plum said:

So where is the break even point where a person moves from recipient to contributor?

I'm still well into that top 10% but still maintain it is inherently unfair that a really expensive vehicle is subsidised by the tax payer.

The high earners will have maxed out their pension pots.

The exchequer will not lose as the money will be spent one way or the other. In reality it's relatively small beer in terms of VAT on cars over £100K

Net contribution via income tax typically needs a couple of decades at the highest rates of tax. Just being in the 40% band doesn't do it.

I agree completely re the granting of benefits to people who are breathing etc but actually take a different view re the EV objectives as the U.K. will gain hugely from migrating to EV mobility over its peers but we must not impinge on lower income mobility while forcing the market. The creation of the free market must be done by those who are able to pay over the odds, willing to do so and have the lifestyle to accommodate.

Ergo, pretending to give those people some cash bonus for saving the planet when in fact you are using them to launder subsidies to manufacturers that would not be legal to make directly is a viable means to get the right people to spend the next 15-20 years creating the used network and the charging infrastructure.

Personally, I would have advocated doing it more intelligently by simply going to the FCA and instructing them to not allow car related debt greater than £25k on ICE but to leave debt against EVs uncapped. Instantly, anyone wanting anything more than a basic, frugal new ICE car would have no choice but to either have the money to buy it or switch to an EV. This would have meant no subsidies or incentives required, non of the political backlash but simply if someone did t want to potter about in a Ford Focus and instead wanted a big Audi then they could only have that big car by switching to EV.

We could have brought in the FCA lending cap back 2011 during the review or any time since bit up until recently the FCA was being piloted by a potato and modern government is obsessed with getting as many people as possible onto benefits while also desperate to be everyone's bestest friend ever.

[DMZ]

Not a bad idea!

[skwdenyer]

DonkeyApple said:

modern government is obsessed with getting as many people as possible onto benefits while also desperate to be everyone's bestest friend ever.

That's quite a statement, with little to no obvious correlation with reality.

I'd say it was truer to observe that modern government has done such a poor job of running national economic strategy that it finds itself forced to rely upon benefits, tax breaks, and so on to maintain the illusion of prosperity.

It isn't dogma. It is incompetence.

[Nomme de Plum]

DonkeyApple said:

Net contribution via income tax typically needs a couple of decades at the highest rates of tax. Just being in the 40% band doesn't do it.

I agree completely re the granting of benefits to people who are breathing etc but actually take a different view re the EV objectives as the U.K. will gain hugely from migrating to EV mobility over its peers but we must not impinge on lower income mobility while forcing the market. The creation of the free market must be done by those who are able to pay over the odds, willing to do so and have the lifestyle to accommodate.

Ergo, pretending to give those people some cash bonus for saving the planet when in fact you are using them to launder subsidies to manufacturers that would not be legal to make directly is a viable means to get the right people to spend the next 15-20 years creating the used network and the charging infrastructure.

Personally, I would have advocated doing it more intelligently by simply going to the FCA and instructing them to not allow car related debt greater than £25k on ICE but to leave debt against EVs uncapped. Instantly, anyone wanting anything more than a basic, frugal new ICE car would have no choice but to either have the money to buy it or switch to an EV. This would have meant no subsidies or incentives required, non of the political backlash but simply if someone did t want to potter about in a Ford Focus and instead wanted a big Audi then they could only have that big car by switching to EV.

We could have brought in the FCA lending cap back 2011 during the review or any time since bit up until recently the FCA was being piloted by a potato and modern government is obsessed with getting as many people as possible onto benefits while also desperate to be everyone's bestest friend ever.

The simplest way to promote EV uptake was to keep the now abolished subsidy and for vehicle up to a certain new value.

I am against any other subsidies with regard to motor vehicle ownership, obviously excluding mobility allowances. eg Motability.

For those that advocate those tax breaks, why just cars?

[DonkeyApple]

skwdenyer said:

DonkeyApple said:

modern government is obsessed with getting as many people as possible onto benefits while also desperate to be everyone's bestest friend ever.

That's quite a statement, with little to no obvious correlation with reality.

I'd say it was truer to observe that modern government has done such a poor job of running national economic strategy that it finds itself forced to rely upon benefits, tax breaks, and so on to maintain the illusion of prosperity.

It isn't dogma. It is incompetence.

Really? It's an obsession since the 90s to get as many people under the yoke of handouts. There has barely been a social hurdle over the last 30 years where the de factor political response hasn't been to pay people off. Pretty much everything is handled via payoffs as opposed to simply saying 'no'. It's hard to find any significant 21st century national policy that isn't built upon borrowing the next generation's money and lobbing it adults who don't really need it.

And now we have a nation of beggars who demand free money for every little ill that befalls them in life.

[theboss]

Nomme de Plum said:

The simplest way to promote EV uptake was to keep the now abolished subsidy and for vehicle up to a certain new value.

I am against any other subsidies with regard to motor vehicle ownership, obviously excluding mobility allowances. eg Motability.

For those that advocate those tax breaks, why just cars?

Don’t worry, I’m making as great a use of every other available tax break, as I can.

Edited by theboss on Saturday 8th April 14:04

[DonkeyApple]

Nomme de Plum said:

The simplest way to promote EV uptake was to keep the now abolished subsidy and for vehicle up to a certain new value.

I am against any other subsidies with regard to motor vehicle ownership, obviously excluding mobility allowances. eg Motability.

For those that advocate those tax breaks, why just cars?

But those subsidies were just our tax payer funds being given to overseas manufacturers for cars that we are legislating they have to offer if they want access to our markets.

We're the 7th most affluent economy on the planet and we import almost all of our cars. If you think about it there is zero need to offer a manufacturer any kind of subsidy when there is more than enough of them desperate to access our domestic client base. Rather than paying them to sell cars they ought to be paying us.

[Nomme de Plum]

DonkeyApple said:

Nomme de Plum said:

The simplest way to promote EV uptake was to keep the now abolished subsidy and for vehicle up to a certain new value.

I am against any other subsidies with regard to motor vehicle ownership, obviously excluding mobility allowances. eg Motability.

For those that advocate those tax breaks, why just cars?

But those subsidies were just our tax payer funds being given to overseas manufacturers for cars that we are legislating they have to offer if they want access to our markets.

We're the 7th most affluent economy on the planet and we import almost all of our cars. If you think about it there is zero need to offer a manufacturer any kind of subsidy when there is more than enough of them desperate to access our domestic client base. Rather than paying them to sell cars they ought to be paying us.

The subsidy is to enable people on modest incomes to buy EVs. If people can't afford them then EVs will not replace ICEs.

I wasn't aware that in general MMs make huge returns on investment and I do not anticipate they will subsidise the UK consumer.

[DonkeyApple]

Nomme de Plum said:

The subsidy is to enable people on modest incomes to buy EVs. If people can't afford them then EVs will not replace ICEs.

I wasn't aware that in general MMs make huge returns on investment and I do not anticipate they will subsidise the UK consumer.

But people on modest incomes don't need to buy EVs yet, nor can many of them use EVs yet.

We remain very much in the first phase of the new market and if someone can't afford an expensive EV they simply can't have one. And if you want to incentivise those who could afford an EV to get one then just remove the funding from ICE above a base level where lower income workers are not impacted.

There's no need to give subsidies to folk with the means to lease an EV and the means to charge an EV. All you actually need to do is not lend them the money for an ICE.

[DMZ]

Well the approach in the UK is going to be EV quotas from ‘24 onwards so I’m assuming any tax breaks or rebates will be scaled back as there is no reason to do both quotas and tax breaks. The quotas will be higher than the current adoption rate which is an indication that the tax breaks didn’t do enough.

[Richard-G]

600 taycans on auto trader now and the prices are dropping In line with demand, I'll try and get out of my M3 long range and into one around october. Hoping for 60k. I wouldn't mind the rwd drive one with the 94kwh battery. Similar range to an M3 LR.

This 4S (not this one specifically) was a 75k car late last year...

[Terry Winks]

Still 20k more though for anything Turismo based! Damnit!