Anyone see Quentin Wilson BBC Breakfast this morning on EVs?
Discussion
He was talking about the merits of EV's.
The statement that caught me was when he was asked about the apparent short life of the car's batteries. His response was "well, a (petrol) car engine will need replacing after 7 or 8 years anyway".
Umm, are you sure about that?! I've had plenty of cars older than 7 or 8 years, and they've never needed any serious work, let alone a new engine! Our Civic is on 38,000 miles and is 8 years old. Runs like new!
At £25,000, you'd need to be doing a LOT of miles to make an EV pay for itself, over a cheap £11k diesel Skoda Fabia for example, and then you would be struck by the range problem again! EV's just don't add up when cheap to buy and cheap to run diesels are available for half the price. You'd need to be doing 10's of thousands of miles a year to make an EV pay for itself, but that's impossible as they're only any good on short runs. And then there's the battery issue which make them even less viable.
Or am I missing something? Quentin seems to have lost a lot of credibility recently. Spouting rubbish like car engines need replacing after 7 or 8 years.
Thoughts?
Dan
The statement that caught me was when he was asked about the apparent short life of the car's batteries. His response was "well, a (petrol) car engine will need replacing after 7 or 8 years anyway".
Umm, are you sure about that?! I've had plenty of cars older than 7 or 8 years, and they've never needed any serious work, let alone a new engine! Our Civic is on 38,000 miles and is 8 years old. Runs like new!
At £25,000, you'd need to be doing a LOT of miles to make an EV pay for itself, over a cheap £11k diesel Skoda Fabia for example, and then you would be struck by the range problem again! EV's just don't add up when cheap to buy and cheap to run diesels are available for half the price. You'd need to be doing 10's of thousands of miles a year to make an EV pay for itself, but that's impossible as they're only any good on short runs. And then there's the battery issue which make them even less viable.
Or am I missing something? Quentin seems to have lost a lot of credibility recently. Spouting rubbish like car engines need replacing after 7 or 8 years.
Thoughts?
Dan
t all the time, in fact there are very few people in the media that talk more rubbish than himSWoll said:
kambites said:
What proportion of the cars you see on the road are over eight years old? Around here, I'd say it's significantly under 20%.
That's got nothing to do with needing a replacement engine though. And that % is very much dependant on where you live.spitfire4v8 said:
There would be many more older cars happily trundling around if it wasn't for that damn scrappage scheme too. Old cars should be encouraged to carry on whilstever their net life costs (financial and environmental) are less than those of producing a newer replacement.
For that to happen, manufacturers need to stop subsidising the production of cars by the sale of parts. That's not going to happen any time soon. esvcg said:
the irony is that in a lot of cars, the engine is the strongest part, where as the body work, electrics etc fall apart long before the engine dies!
Too true! The engine part has been in development for 100 years or more. The electrics and uni-body chassis much less time, and therefore the most likely to fail.I have two cars over 10 years old on my driveway, but with both cars under 60,000 miles, I don't expect to be replacing engines on either any time soon.
However, he does have a point in that very few cars these days ARE over 10 years old. They dissolve to junk status at about that age in most people's eyes.
Quentin hasn't had any credibility for a while since he started promoting all the 'car warranty' services under the sun. It wouldn't surprise me if we see him on a DFS sofa soon and promoting BOGOFF for Safestyle UK.
Quite a few of the main manufacturers have hybrid plans in their wings, BMW, VW for their mainstream models. Hybrids make more sense to me than a straight electric car although the question that seems to be avoided is why not couple a diesel engine with an electric hybrid? I know some modern diesels aren't as efficient as petrol engines for a short run / quick start but for longer distance runs, they are still the fueled motors to bead.
yep, the purchase price is a killer. Plus most models designed for every day use look a bit limp. Who wants to spend £25k of their hard earned on a Nissan drizzle.
Quite a few of the main manufacturers have hybrid plans in their wings, BMW, VW for their mainstream models. Hybrids make more sense to me than a straight electric car although the question that seems to be avoided is why not couple a diesel engine with an electric hybrid? I know some modern diesels aren't as efficient as petrol engines for a short run / quick start but for longer distance runs, they are still the fueled motors to bead.
yep, the purchase price is a killer. Plus most models designed for every day use look a bit limp. Who wants to spend £25k of their hard earned on a Nissan drizzle.
kambites said:
What proportion of the cars you see on the road are over eight years old?
On a national UK level I'd say about half, the average age of the car parc being 7.something years (9.0 over here in NL), with an upwards tendency. Anyay, back to the point - in the olden days when cars ended up in scrapyards at 7-8 years old nearly all of them had perfectly functional engines in them - it was rust that killed them. Now the average age of cars offered up for dismantling in The Netherlands (which of course includes all the cars that met an untimely end by way of accidents) is 15.x years and guess what - most of them still have a perfectly serviceable engine...
Edited by 900T-R on Thursday 19th January 09:53
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