EVs... no one wants them! (Vol. 2)
Discussion
Mammasaid said:
A500leroy said:
Ok that's a sensible answer.
I'm typically a 7 year old car buyer at around the 6 k mark , expecting it to give maybe 5 to 7 years of service before big bills.
I can also live with 60-100 miles of range, so maybe it's just a waiting game for me until more suitable things are the market at my price point?
You're in luck! We're already there. Putting your requirements into AT, gives over 100 EVs, and if it were my money, this would be where it goes;I'm typically a 7 year old car buyer at around the 6 k mark , expecting it to give maybe 5 to 7 years of service before big bills.
I can also live with 60-100 miles of range, so maybe it's just a waiting game for me until more suitable things are the market at my price point?
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202411076...
A500leroy said:
Ok that's a sensible answer.
I'm typically a 7 year old car buyer at around the 6 k mark , expecting it to give maybe 5 to 7 years of service before big bills.
I can also live with 60-100 miles of range, so maybe it's just a waiting game for me until more suitable things are the market at my price point?
I would generally consider myself in a similar place when it comes to generic transport use. I don't like buying cars until the manufacturer has FRO from the equation. So that's after the first or second rental when the car is actually being sold for the first time. I'm typically a 7 year old car buyer at around the 6 k mark , expecting it to give maybe 5 to 7 years of service before big bills.
I can also live with 60-100 miles of range, so maybe it's just a waiting game for me until more suitable things are the market at my price point?
I'll then keep that car for years. But the ICE market hasn't been on our side for years really. We've been forced into over paying at the front end as the manufacturers are manipulated values at 3 and even 6 years artificially high to make their rental business work and then on the back end, the typical buyers at that level have been getting poorer and poorer so unless you can arrange junk finance then shifting the car on has meant a terrible price.
EVs offer a better proposition. Why on Earth some people are complaining, even wailing about depreciation just beggars belief and shows just how bloody stupid so many people are and how little they comprehend finance. We actually have idiots in the U.K. complaining about prices of used cars not being high enough!!! Or maybe, just maybe, they're just the people having to face reality with regards to their new car shopping frenzies?
Anyway, depreciation is you're friend and with EVs you can clearly see that the key when buying used is to buy at 3-6 years old and write the cost to zero over the intended ownership period. That's the simple sum to quickly show whether you want to buy in. Just assume a value of zero at point of sale/disposal.
Suddenly it becomes somewhat clear that holding for say 6-10 years is where the brains are at. We're always at and will always be at.
I look at used cars and aim to hold them for 20 years so divide the asking by 120 to get a very crude monthly amortisation figure.
So a £50k car effectively comes in at £400/month. A £25k car obviously £200. And we're starting to see a reasonable selection of used EVs coming off their rentals which can be had for around £25k.
The other reason to like that £25k level is that it's also the base point of change for unsecured lending so below that level it's easy to be free of bent dealer finance and instead get any required lending at a rate and in terms which are commensurate with your personal credit rating.
So the only question to then ask is whether a 3-6 year old ex rental EV will last ten years before you just bin it?
I think the answer is now yes. Just. We're really talking about 2020-21 cars so personally I'd wait for the more recent ones to be being offloaded. 2023/24 EVs have superior battery chemistry and management systems and also most manufacturers have ha a few years and some practice sticking them together and programming them by now.
Over that ten years you've got the usual running costs of mechanicals but with home charging you are probably going to offset those entirely via less servicing and cheap overnight electricity that is barely taxed compared to petrol.
So that £200/month is a much more genuine figure than it would be for an ICe.
To me that is a monumentally cheap way to cover of all the generic driving and all the money not spent on a generic s
t box can go into cars that are actually interesting and fun. So just write the purchase cost down to zero over the timespan you typically keep a ca for and see if that monthly number is ok. You'll almost certainly get more than zero for it when you do job it on and if it has sufficiently more range than you need at point of purchase it'll still be working perfectly for you when you come to change.
ChocolateFrog said:
A500leroy said:
Hmm £300 for a cambelt and oil change Vs £8000 for a new battery, which do you think your typical factory worker earning £400 a week would rather do?
A new battery is equivalent to a new engine not a minor service if we're talking about most expensive element of the drivetrain. How much is a new engine? Particularly on a car with 400 or 500hp, might as well make it like for like.
Many are still in the main dealer network, who, even with manufacturer support cant manage to fix stuff. Thats not going to get better as they move down the food chain.
schedoni said:
With a used EV, you just interrogate the BMS via ODB and you have an accurate read out of the state of health of the battery. Most will even tell you exactly how many rapid DC vs slow AC charge cycles the battery has had. And you have none of the potential hidden issues of ICE engines.
I'd be a lot more confident buying a used EV than an ICE car in fact for all of the above.
In principle you are right. The reality is most of the public wouldnt have the first idea how what BMS or OBD even is. Never mind finding a dealer who is going to let you do it.I'd be a lot more confident buying a used EV than an ICE car in fact for all of the above.
If anyone is serious about increased uptake of used EV's, then this issue needs addressing in some way.
Right now, the state of the battery, or rather not knowing, would be the single biggest issue preventing me from buying a used EV. The lack of aftermarket support being another.
A500leroy said:
ChocolateFrog said:
A500leroy said:
Ah,
Therein lies the problem.
Average Joe has a salary of 25k a year, so won't be buying a 60k car until it's out of warranty.
Where? Ulaan Bataar Therein lies the problem.
Average Joe has a salary of 25k a year, so won't be buying a 60k car until it's out of warranty.
Average full time salary in the UK is more like £45k.
I don't know anyone in my area including my manager who takes more than 35k.
Who you know is irrelevant to the figures.
schedoni said:
monkfish1 said:
schedoni said:
With a used EV, you just interrogate the BMS via ODB and you have an accurate read out of the state of health of the battery. Most will even tell you exactly how many rapid DC vs slow AC charge cycles the battery has had. And you have none of the potential hidden issues of ICE engines.
I'd be a lot more confident buying a used EV than an ICE car in fact for all of the above.
In principle you are right. The reality is most of the public wouldnt have the first idea how what BMS or OBD even is. Never mind finding a dealer who is going to let you do it.I'd be a lot more confident buying a used EV than an ICE car in fact for all of the above.
If anyone is serious about increased uptake of used EV's, then this issue needs addressing in some way.
Right now, the state of the battery, or rather not knowing, would be the single biggest issue preventing me from buying a used EV. The lack of aftermarket support being another.
I couldnt care less what the dealer says, id want to verify myself, or more realistically for most by some independant means. Cars with knackered batteries will be what less scrupulous dealers will trade in in the future,
ChocolateFrog said:
A500leroy said:
ChocolateFrog said:
A500leroy said:
Ah,
Therein lies the problem.
Average Joe has a salary of 25k a year, so won't be buying a 60k car until it's out of warranty.
Where? Ulaan Bataar Therein lies the problem.
Average Joe has a salary of 25k a year, so won't be buying a 60k car until it's out of warranty.
Average full time salary in the UK is more like £45k.
I don't know anyone in my area including my manager who takes more than 35k.
Who you know is irrelevant to the figures.
sixor8 said:
I've seen a few EV car ads with the SOC declared, which should be compulsory.
The Nissan Leaf may have poor range, but I noticed when I was researching them that it displays the battery health permanently on the dash board. 12 bars is when new.
State of charge is meaningless.The Nissan Leaf may have poor range, but I noticed when I was researching them that it displays the battery health permanently on the dash board. 12 bars is when new.
Battery health is what you want to know.
monkfish1 said:
sixor8 said:
I've seen a few EV car ads with the SOC declared, which should be compulsory.
The Nissan Leaf may have poor range, but I noticed when I was researching them that it displays the battery health permanently on the dash board. 12 bars is when new.
State of charge is meaningless.The Nissan Leaf may have poor range, but I noticed when I was researching them that it displays the battery health permanently on the dash board. 12 bars is when new.
Battery health is what you want to know.
. As soon as you lose one bar though, it's only 85% health, apparently.A500leroy said:
Would putting a used battery in make any sense?
There's no denying, IF a battery based car goes wrong it does currently cost more to fix than a current normal car, and that's why average guys like me are nervous of them.
Why wouldn’t it? If you fit a used engine what’s the difference, except that on a used battery you can get a full health check done.There's no denying, IF a battery based car goes wrong it does currently cost more to fix than a current normal car, and that's why average guys like me are nervous of them.
Complete battery pack failures which require a complete replacement aren’t common in any case and repair services are springing up.
In any case, there’s a couple of decades to go before the very bottom end of the used car market has to abandon ICE.
monkfish1 said:
This is all something of a red herring. The real issue is the complexity built into modern cars (regardless of drivetrain) is such, that the days of cheap motoring for the masses is going to die out anyway.
Many are still in the main dealer network, who, even with manufacturer support cant manage to fix stuff. Thats not going to get better as they move down the food chain.
And yet in China, they don't have that problem because they haven't been trying to build EVs using ICE methodology and financials. Many are still in the main dealer network, who, even with manufacturer support cant manage to fix stuff. Thats not going to get better as they move down the food chain.
This is the key thing that the Western manufacturers are absolutely terrified of, people in the West actually looking at China and seeing that it wasn't just Tesla who worked out how to correctly build cheap EVs but that how it is done is completely the norm and Western manufacturers chose to do it incorrectly because they simply assumed their customers were thick and that their governments would also jus keep giving them money and passing protectionist laws.
That's just how out of date the people running these companies are, they don't even realise that their customers have smart phones and can see clearly what's happening in the worlds largest EV market and where many of the Western firms have gone wrong.
Cheap motoring not only still exists but is the cheapest that it has ever been. Jus look at the price at which Tesla can knock out a Chinese car and then consider how much currency depreciation there has been this century!!! Tesla is living, breathing proof that cars have never been cheaper to make.
It's not that cars aren't cheap. It is 100% down to those cars being blocked from sale along with consumers shunning them for fear of looking poor so they prefer to hide by paying way more to rent a Merc or bmw.
Car are cheap. We just don't want the cheap cars because they don't have the right brand as well as our governments succumbing to lobbying to keep them out of our market and force us to only buy much more expensive cars.
An EV is a some stamped pit metal with a motor, a battery and a laptop slung in. That it. Motors last for ever. Batteries last at least a long as the metal box. And a laptop costs 50p to replace. And the factory requires half as many humans.
The next generation of factory will barely employ any humans.
And in the West they're trying to make EVs using ICE techniques and methodologies as if they've never seen the outside world and genuinely believe that's the only way it can be done. It's sad. Genuinely sad to see such immense corporate stupidity destroying so many great historic entities.
In 25 years of driving I've only had one significant engine issue. A snapped cambelt on a 2002 Focus.
It cost me under £300 for a couple of valves, a head skim and everything to put it back together, ran it for years after.
Significant battery issues will be, if anything, even rarer.
It doesn't concern me in the slightest.
It cost me under £300 for a couple of valves, a head skim and everything to put it back together, ran it for years after.
Significant battery issues will be, if anything, even rarer.
It doesn't concern me in the slightest.
romft123 said:
ChocolateFrog said:
A500leroy said:
Ah,
Therein lies the problem.
Average Joe has a salary of 25k a year, so won't be buying a 60k car until it's out of warranty.
Where? Ulaan Bataar Therein lies the problem.
Average Joe has a salary of 25k a year, so won't be buying a 60k car until it's out of warranty.
Average full time salary in the UK is more like £45k.
£34,963 across the country.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/416139/full-ti...
romft123 said:
ChocolateFrog said:
A500leroy said:
Ah,
Therein lies the problem.
Average Joe has a salary of 25k a year, so won't be buying a 60k car until it's out of warranty.
Where? Ulaan Bataar Therein lies the problem.
Average Joe has a salary of 25k a year, so won't be buying a 60k car until it's out of warranty.
Average full time salary in the UK is more like £45k.
It'll be way, way higher if it was only London, depending on which average you use I wouldn't be surprised if it was over £80k.
NDNDNDND said:
schedoni said:
This is the sort of data you can get in under 5 minutes
You’d never have that much info buying an ICE car.
You EV guys really are something, aren't you? You’d never have that much info buying an ICE car.
The main thing I can determine from that is that your phone needs charging.
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