“The auto industry’s gamble on electric cars has turned into a catastrophe”, reports the Telegraph.
The gamble on electric cars has turned into a catastrophe and it will be many years before the industry recovers.
With less than four years remaining until the original target date for banning the sale of all new petrol and diesel cars, the giants of the industry were meant to be riding a boom in sales of battery-powered vehicles by now.
Sleek new models would be rolling off the production lines, new battery plants would be creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, while the billions poured into investment would be the catalyst for reindustrialising both Europe and the United States.
“We’re going to need 70,000 skilled people just to make batteries across this country,” announced Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, back in 2021. He promised unlimited government support for British EV production.
Over in France, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, was pouring billions into making his country a force in battery and EV production.
So we are starting to see the results of all that investment, right? Sales are booming, profits are rising and new jobs are being created? Well, not exactly.
The article goes on to mention EV-related losses and potential losses incurred by Stellantis, General Motors, Ford, Porsche and even Tesla.
Antonio Filosa, the chief executive of Stellantis, conceded that the company had overestimated “the pace of the energy transition that distanced us from many car buyers’ real-world needs, means and desires”.
It is a painful admission but one that is at least honest. One point is surely clear. We are not hearing very much about how the transition to EVs would lead to an industrial renaissance any more.
There have been two major problems. First, EVs may only be a niche product.
Drivers are worried about the range, it is far from clear they are better for the environment once the impact of all the raw materials in the manufacturing process is taken into account, the charging infrastructure is not in place and we don’t generate the electricity to power them all at a price cheap enough to make EVs cost-effective.
Next, where there is a market, the new breed of Chinese brands led by BYD is walking away with it.
But fear not, our forward-thinking and tech-savvy government is on the case. Er…
Even worse, under the direction of Ed Miliband, the fanatical Energy Secretary, Britain is pressing on blindly with the 2030 target for phasing out sales of new petrol cars even as the rest of the world recognises that it is complete madness.
In January, the government’s Gambling Commission introduced yet another set of restrictions on gambling advertisements to stop people being enticed into making wagers they cannot afford. In most cases, I’m all for people – and industries – taking responsibility for their own choices, including the choice to gamble. But given that the government’s view is that gambling promotions that are too tempting should be banned, maybe it should refer itself to its own commission. In fact, the pressure placed on auto makers to switch to electric by both this and previous governments went well beyond high-pressure advertising and into coercion.
Governments picking winners. What could possibly go wrong?
That this whole ideologically driven fantasy has hit a brick wall is a surprise only to those who don’t know their arse from a grand piano.
Funny that!
As Scotty would say, “Ye canna change the laws of physics.” You cannot transfer the necessary number of joules for a reasonable range into a battery in an acceptable time, (even if you had the joules available, which you don’t.) No amount of technical improvement in batteries or motors can overcome this fundamental limit, and apparently no amount of engineers pointing out it can’t be done can convince mad Ed it isn’t possible.
https://youtu.be/fmbZwxEnAFc?si=KXRkLFdfMSx1KVte
Strong language warning.
This is starting to become repetitive 🌝.
llater,
llamas
The idea was not for most people to have motor cars – the grid would never have powered millions of such cars.
The idea was for a few important people to have motor cars – and the rest of the population to rely on “public transport” not a pleasant prospect in a “Diverse” society which is also undergoing (and has been for a long time) cultural decline – the rise of general anti social behaviour.
As for the the motor companies who thought they would sell millions of electric cars – they were mislead.
The regulations in places such as California were a trap – they led car makers to think that the future was about making lots of electric cars, whereas, in reality, the planned future has no real place for mass car makers at all.
As for Britain – it is basically modern California (or worse) in terms of taxes and regulations, but it is also cold and wet, and has increasing millions of followers of the Crescent Moon in it.
Linking this with the other thread where so many people are blaming universal suffrage rather than elite malfeasance and stupidity for things, I would just point out that the lack of market demand for EVs suggest again the masses are less at fault than elites.
You could say well the voters voted for parties that supported this. But in the past 20 years at least, all of the major parties supported this. The voters could avoid complicity by either not voting or voting for minor parties. At which point they get sniped at for wasting their vote and letting the socialists in or letting the Tories in because it is a FPTP system, pick whatever spurious argument people use etc.
One place gambling is largely legal is in the stock market, and I don’t think they agree with your conclusion Natalie. Currently Tesla is worth ten times more than Ford and GM put together.
I certainly agree that the government making stupid bans of ICE cars is ridiculous. But the Tesla Model Y was the third best selling car (excluding trucks — which is a unique American phenomenon) in the US in 2025 despite a huge drop off due to the CEO’s political activities.
A couple of general points about EV and practicality. The range anxiety is really a myth: most modern EVs have about the same range as a car with a full tank of gas. Regarding charging — I don’t have an EV but what my friends who do tell me is that on a road trip typically you are at the super charger for 15-20 minutes. This is certainly longer than the five minutes to fill a gas tank, but that is only looking at one side. The other side is that you generally only have to do that on road trips. Most of the time you charge your car overnight at home, which is to say you never have to “fill the tank”. This is an ADVANTAGE over ICE which, regardless of your driving habits, you have to regularly stop to fill up. Most cars are used for short distance commuting that can easily be supplied by home electric charging. So the charging time, from a practical point of view is really advantageous to EVs, except on road trips, where they have a small disadvantage. In terms of cost — again one of my friends who drives about a thousand miles a month tells me he saw an increase in his electric bill from home charging of about $20, which, here in the US, is less than half a tank of gas.
I think we are going to see this in spades over the next ten years with Robotaxis which are going to take over that business. (Don’t take investing advice from a random dude on the internet, but short selling Uber seems like a good plan to me.) They are by their nature going to be electrically powered and the nature of the thing — lots of short local trips — aligns them very well with this. I think the future where, for most city dwellers, the economics of even owning a car are less and less appealing.
It terms of environmental destruction — this is mostly caused by NIMBY where governments won’t allow the work done here, better to used dark skinned kids in the DRC instead. However, that is also changing. Tesla has a gigantic lithium refinery in Corpus Christi, TX that produces no environmental pollution and I believe they are working on more things like this. It is easy to complain about these things, surely it is better to solve them instead.
Certainly the lack of permits to build more electrical power is a huge problem for this and many other things, but that is a matter of getting the government out of the way. FWIW, EV related technology is part of the solution here. In the US we have a total generating capacity of 1TW of electricity but we consume only an average of 500GW. This is because of uneven usage between (for example) night and day. This can be solved by buffering with batteries. So, for example, installing Tesla megapacks at power generation stations will double average power availability.
These big batteries have had some trouble with over heating, but that is an engineering problem that will be solved soon enough. I’m convinced that EVs are what the majority of cars will be in maybe thirty years, though definitely not by 2030. And the stock market, where people put their money where there mouth is, apparently agrees with me.
@Roué le Jour
“Ye canna change the laws of physics.”… No amount of technical improvement in batteries or motors can overcome this fundamental limit, and apparently no amount of engineers pointing out it can’t be done can convince mad Ed it isn’t possible.
Ye canna change the laws of physics but you can certainly bend them to your advantage. The process of engineering is finding solutions that accommodate these realities. Just on a trivial level, for example, if I make many very small batteries and charge them in parallel, I can move as many joules into the overall total I like. Of course many small batteries are a lot more expensive than fewer larger batteries, and many smaller batteries are harder to cool than fewer large batteries, but that becomes a cost verses features discussion — which is what most of engineering is.
I (owner of 3 EVs and two ICE pickup trucks) largely agree with Fraser Orr on this. EVs are great. Legislating/Regulating their use is NOT. It is the worst thing they could have done if they actually wanted adoption of the technology. If they let those of us willing to take a chance as early adopters pioneer the thing, let people who see an advantage take that advantage, and those who do not stay in their comfort zone it would be fine. But the urge to control others is the defining characteristic of those involved in government.
Can you imagine a world in which air conditioning was required in all new construction starting in the 1930s? AND they promoted banning fans and windows that open by 1940? Or picture a mass government plan to phase out landline telephones, newspapers, adding machines, and hand held calculators by 1980. The Apple IIe was widely available and the IBM PC was right around the corner. No need for all that antiquated stuff.
There is something in the psychology of a lot of people that just can’t let things take their course. “All which is not forbidden is compulsory.”
And, yes, now that the backlash has begun, I’m seen a few calls — admittedly from the lunatic fringe — for banning EVs…
Oh BTW we were talking about federalism in a different thread. There is a story on that here too about electrical power. At xAI’s (or I guess SpaceX’s now) Colossus computer center south of Memphis they could not get the permits to build extra electrical infrastructure in Tennessee. So they built it in Mississippi across the river and shipped it in. Gotta love federalism.
Huh? TN and MS are both East of the river.
llater,
llamas
@llamas yes you are right, I misspoke. I have actually driven through there many times, but getting confused that you drive across the river from Arkansas not Mississippi. Which is probably good. I doubt you’d easily be able to run power wires across the river. Nonetheless, they did build in Mississippi to overcome the difficulties in Tennessee.
I live in a city that has a big technology corridor just west of Chicago. There are dozens of technology companies along this corridor including many major research labs for network and phone companies. They tried to build a small data center here and the people went nuts, and the council banned it. For what reason, I have no idea. These NIMBYs drive me crazy. FFS its not like they were building a strip mine. The only people who would have known it was there were the people who got new jobs working in it.
I’ve had two EVs, neither one a tesla. I agree with the generally positive remarks made above, and EMPHATICALLY with the denigration of the role of government.
The new mandate, here in California, not only for an EV charger installation in new homes and major remodels, but for a PARTICULAR TYPE of charger, is just insane. California, home of schizo policies since the last half of my lifetime.
@ Fraser Orr, who wrote
” . . .the Tesla Model Y was the third best selling car (excluding trucks — which is a unique American phenomenon) in the US in 2025 . . .”
Well, it’s easy to claim just-about-anything you like about consumer preferences when you get to arbitrarily-exclude 4 of the most-popular vehicles in the market, which sold (combined) just about 7 times the number (estimated) of Tesla model Y’s sold. By this logic, I can claim that Bugattis are the most-popular automobile sold in the US, if you ignore all the others. If we’re going to make these comparisons, let’s compare the sales of ICE 1/2-ton pickups – the most popular vehicle style sold in the US – to the sales of Tesla Cybertrucks.
llater,
llamas
John, outstanding comment. But I’m leaning more towards Paul’s position on the real vision our betters have for my future: They don’t actually want me to replace my gas car with an EV. They want me to not have a car at all.
I agree with much of what Fraser Orr says but a major practicality problem in the UK and I’m sure elsewhere too is that home charging is not possible for those in high rise flats or the large number of people who have to park their cars on the street. Electric cables trailing across the pavement (sidewalk) is a safety no no.
@David Norman
I agree with much of what Fraser Orr says but a major practicality problem in the UK and I’m sure elsewhere too is that home charging is not possible for those in high rise flats or the large number of people who have to park their cars on the street. Electric cables trailing across the pavement (sidewalk) is a safety no no.
But it used to be the case that people living in houses couldn’t use a car because there was nothing more than a cart track to their house. But then they built infrastructure and the problem went away. When I was a kid it was really hard to get on the internet because the phone lines were not suited to it, and most houses only had one phone line (in fact when I was really young we had to share a phone line with another house.). Boy did it piss off my mother when she picked up to phone a friend to hear a horrendous screech of pops and whistles. Not so much anymore.
But I think in general you are right. People who don’t have garages are not a good candidate for electric cars until there is more infrastructure build out.
We’re going to need 70,000 skilled people just to make batteries
This is the sort of thing that makes me really angry. Feeding feedstock into a machine and loading the end results into trucks is *NOT* a skilled job. It’s LABOURING. And in particular insisting that people get 60 grand in debt getting *****ing degrees to be “allowed” to do it is downright fraud.
There is also a major issue in that the re-sale value of a used EV (currently) approaches zero after about 5 years. Battery technology improves, yes, it does, but it is still decades behind what is needed.
Elon’s answer to it all – and while it isn’t daft it is indescribably hard – is to capture more of the sunlight that whizzes past the tiny disc which is us 93 million miles from the sun. Still needs batteries for 12 hours of nighttime to charge those EVs on your drive.
Isn’t this why British economic growth since 2008 has, at the very best, been anaemic? That there’s been an absolutely huge amount of politically directed malinvestment. With net zero, we’re going to spend literally trillions swapping cheap, reliable power for expensive, unreliable power. Think of what could have been accomplished had that money been more usefully deployed instead.
Well, then I’ll add my anecdata.
I know maybe a dozen people who own pure BEVs. Due to the presence of the Rivian development facility in Plymouth, several are Rivian owners, perhaps a greater proportion than they might be elsewhere. And Rivian does not make conventional sedans. So that may bias what I hear.
Nobody I know owns a pure BEV as their only vehicle, all own at least one other vehicle, either ICE or hybrid. The BEVs are typically commuter rides, 40-80 miles per day. Every owner I know has home charging capacity at some level or other. Most shun public charging stations, all telling tales of non-working chargers, waiting in line, chargers that do not operate at rated capacity, and charging stations in inconvenient or sketchy locations.
I know 2 or 3 people who used to have BEVs, who traded them in for hybrids.
I know probably another dozen people who own hybrids, overwhelmingly Toyota products, and to a man and woman, they love them. One guy is on his 4th Prius and swears he’ll keep buying them as long as Toyota keeps building them.
Probably half of my Amazon deliveries come in Amazon-branded Rivian trucks. The drivers all more-or-less dislike them, citing poor range prediction, frequent system issues where the thing just stops working, terrible traction in ice and snow and poor climate control. Several have also mentioned that as the vehicles age, the range degrades alarmingly although the vehicle doesn’t recognize it, leaving routes unfinished. They also describe the vehicles as being significantly-less-rugged than the conventional panel trucks that Amazon also uses, but I suppose that’s not really a function of the drivetrain.
Several of my acquaintance have mentioned that the expiration of the Federal tax credit caused them to reconsider buying a BEV.
My conclusion is that pure BEVs have defined applications – predictable, shorter journeys – for a specific class of owners – people who own another vehicle, and who are equipped to charge it at home. By contrast, everyone I know that owns a hybrid seems to use it just as they would a conventional ICE vehicle, enjoying the undeniable benefits while avoiding all of the pitfalls of owning a pure BEV. To my mind, that makes pure BEVs a niche product, whereas hybrids are more-or-less seamless replacements for the ease and convenience that ICE vehicles have offered for 100 years or more.
When it comes time to replace my current car, I’ll definitely be shopping for a hybrid. I wouldn’t have a BEV as a gift. I expect my car to accommodate itself to my needs, and not the other way about.
llater,
llamas
@mongoose
There is also a major issue in that the re-sale value of a used EV (currently) approaches zero after about 5 years.
A simple google search shows that that isn’t true. Tesla 3 new is about $38k, here they are selling for $25k after five years. I think they are holding up pretty well.
Elon’s answer to it all – and while it isn’t daft it is indescribably hard – is to capture more of the sunlight that whizzes past the tiny disc which is us 93 million miles from the sun. Still needs batteries for 12 hours of nighttime to charge those EVs on your drive.
Solar power is getting incredibly cheap. And FWIW, solar power goes online when demand is at a peak load. Moreover Tesla makes batteries for precisely this purpose. What I think we will see is electrical power substations replaced by something like a Tesla Megapack which is both vastly superior technology, balances the load between peak and off peak power and, being highly distributed, handles disaster situations much better. What exactly is “hard” about solar power? There is a lot of useless land that could be converted, and compared to the insane cost of building a nuclear reactor, is cheap as chips. And at least we wouldn’t have the blight of ugly wind turbines as far as the eye can see.
And if you want to talk about the killer application for the future — data centers in space — there is literally nobody better placed to do that than Musk’s company, which is why I think they are going to dominate AI and, via Optimus, the Robot future — which is to say, they are going to dominate literally all the society transforming technologies heading down the track.
In my vicinity, hailstorms. In sandy, dusty places, scratched surfaces or dust-covered arrays. Up North, long long nights. And as far as ‘useless’ land goes, you’ll have to fight the Greens in court.
The devil is in the details.
“About” doing some heavy lifting in that assertion. A mate of mine in the UK has a swanky new Mercedes EV, which is causing him endless trouble because in cold weather the range drops to crica 200 miles and he fairly regularly drives more than that in a day. This means he has to search for and allocate time for charging every trip. There are many such tales. The stated range of most EVs is a total fantasy. To make it worse (and I appreciate this is not 100% an EV problem) he has split up with his wife and moved out, thus losing his home charger. So now his car costs him a lot more to charge too.
In Britain at least, EVs are unsuitable for the vast majority of people and will be for a decade at least. Which is probably just as well, as the grid would collapse if take up was higher. At present, just over 5% of the cars on the road in Britain are fully electric (2% in the US), so let’s not get over-excited about the take-up of these vehicles.
I’ve now driven a number of EV’s – mostly Teslas – and I love them, as a driver. Power, speed, comfort, ease . . . . And, even living in sometimes-frigid Minnesota, the actual available miles would fit most of my driving.
They do nothing for climate or environment, really – just move crap around – so that’s not much of a consideration.
But once the government told me that it was mandatory, that I would join the Borg at gunpoint if needed, they came off of my possibles list.
Now maybe I can look again.
I repeat – the idea was never that most people were to have electric cars.
Even local councilors (at least in Britain) were told that, in the future, most people would-not-have-cars.
Hence “15 minute cities” or “15 minute communities” with people relying on “Public Transport” – people were to live in blocks of flats and on a “basic income” (which would not allow them to buy cars – even if they were available, which they would not be – not for most people).
None of this was a secret – the international agenda was quite open, and “Carbon Dioxide is evil” was just an excuse for a pre existing agenda.
I feel that if the EU (and the UK) had wanted to destroy their motor industry, and transfer the wealth to China, this is exactly what they would have done.
Sir Keir slithered to China to kowtow to his masters the other week. Can this be a coincidence?
One last comment on this with regards to some of the experiences shared above. TBH it is beyond my understanding why someone who was considering an EV would consider anything other than a Tesla. (With the exception of the Prius, which, I agree with llamas, is an excellent car and a good compromise option.) Tesla have an engineering team that far exceed anything in any other car company, they have, in many respects, reinvented the car irrespective of its drive train. The auto pilot is out of this world and the FSD mode, especially the latest one, is so good it almost feels sentient. They have rethought almost every part of the idea of what a car is. So I really don’t understand why one would by a Rivian or a Ford EV when Tesla is a clearly superior option. I guess if you need a truck that Cyber truck is pretty damn expensive (and pretty ugly), but if you are buying a sedan and want an EV why would you go for the also rans?
In regards to Britain, it might well be they haven’t built the supporting infrastructure. I don’t know, it is a long time since I lived there. But TBH I think that is part of a more general thing, which is to say “Britain is totally screwed.”
I also agree with @jgd about the 70,000 jobs comment. Firstly that it is not a high skill job, and secondly that it won’t even be a job because robots will do that sort of work in the future. So it is just political blather to pretend that Net Zero is not a total clusterfuck disaster, but it has some upsides. Even though the upsides are basically all lies.
To be clear, I am no Green Revolutionary. I think most of the CAGW talk is nonsense, and is more about political control than any real concern for the environment. I just think EVs are better (in many cases) simply on their own merits. And I think in one of the biggest applications of the car in the future, namely the robotaxi, they are going to utterly dominate.
FWIW, it is also worth saying that one of the reasons Tesla FSD is so good is because it is trained on billions of miles of driving experience (and trained by some of the world’s very best AI engineers.) And that leads me to my next conclusion. Tesla’s next big product is the Optimus robot. Tesla is really the only company in the world that can make millions of these machines, and once they do, once they are everywhere, they too will have “billions of miles” of experience meaning they will get exponentially better. That means all those other companies trying to compete in that robot space are simply going to get crushed and Optimus will completely dominate that space. Ten years from now there will be more robots than people, and the vast majority of them will be Optimi (yup, that’s the official plural.) The large majority of people will have one in their home, and there will be dozens in every business. The first ones will be limited, but they will quickly get better on an S curve. That’s what the future looks like.
To complete my thought, it is clear that the future of AI data centers is in space. It is only there that they have the capacity to gather enough power and cooling and real estate to build these data centers, especially with the growing opposition here terrestrially. Google just bought a rocket company acknowledging this. Of course there is no company better able to dominate that market too than a combination of SpaceX/xAI and Tesla. So not only is Tesla going to dominate the robot space, they are going to dominate the AI space too. That’s a lot of power in the hands of one man. Just as well he is a good guy.
Over in France, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, was pouring billions into making his country a force in battery and EV production.
Over in France, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, was pouring billions of taxpayers’ money into making his country a force in battery and EV production.
Ahem.
My point, apart from the snarkiness that I have after working a 12-hour day today, is that one of the concepts that appears alien to the entire Left and it seems, part of the Right, is “opportunity cost”. Every euro, pound, dollar or whatever that a government takes and spends on electric cars, high-speed rail, Apollo Moon landings or whatnot is money that is not available for something else. Money is, as the Austrian school of economics taught, a claim on resources. Money cannot be spent twice at the same time. You have a resource to deploy or consume, or you do not. Resources are not conjured from thin air. Even the “ultimate resource” of human ingenuity requires effort – and that usually involves a cost. A person who thinks hard about solving an economic problem is not spending that time thinking about something else. The “something else” is the opportunity cost.
This is basic stuff when you break it down, and yet much of the public, as a result of miseducation and a bad culture, has not a sodding clue about this at the macro level of a country, even if they can understand budgets at a micro, household level. In fact, the more “educated” many people are, or think they are (a key distinction) the more that such delusions about a French president “spending money” hold sway.
Fraser – “A simple google search shows that that isn’t true. Tesla 3 new is about $38k, here they are selling for $25k after five years. I think they are holding up pretty well.”
Quite right, Fraser. What do I know, eh? It turns out that not only is the US used market somewhat different to the UK one. (Again, who woulda thunk that? The US being a damn continent and the UK being smaller than several states.)
And the price of used cars – ICE and EV – in the UK is now scandalous. My daughter got one for her first job five years ago – and I just looked – it’s worth more pounds now than it was then! Adjusting for inflation, it’s about level to what we paid.
So my five years was quite wrong. It’s probably more like 8 or 10. But the useful life of a lot of motor cars still got cut in about half.
@ Fraser Orr, who wrote :
” . . . .it is beyond my understanding why someone who was considering an EV would consider anything other than a Tesla. (With the exception of the Prius, which, I agree with llamas, is an excellent car and a good compromise option.) . . .”
Firstly – again – apples and oranges. Apparently, we are still having trouble differentiating between a ‘pure’ BEV, like a Tesla, and a hybrid, like a Prius. They are very-different animals, with very different requirements and operations.
Secondly – I would observe that, if we’re talking compromises, for the majority of users, it is the BEV, like the Tesla, which is the compromise, whereas the hybrid, like the Prius, requires none of the compromises that the BEV does.
I shall now add more anecdata.
Last week, I had, on short notice, to drive from my home in SE Michigan to Asheville, South Carolina, and back – down in one day, back the next. This is a drive by the fastest route, of 640 miles.
Because of what we had to haul, I rented a compact SUV, a Chrysler Pacifica. Folded down the Stow-N-Go seats, put our Thing in the back, and off we went.
The car has a 19-gallon tank, which gives it an honest-to-goodness range of 500 miles. It came from the agency full of gas. Two drivers, three people. We slotted onto I-75 in daylight, set the cruise at 75. When we set out from home, it was 7 degrees F outside, and apart from a short stretch in Tennessee, it never got above freezing the whole trip. Quick bio-break somewhere in Ohio, our first fuel stop at Buc-Ee’s in Richmond, Kentucky, 370 miles down the road. 10 minutes. Pulled into Asheville about 10 hours later, still daylight, still 250 miles in the tank. Next morning, filled it up at one of the dozen gas stations in Asheville, each with a dozen pumps – 5 minutes. A relative heatwave at 21 degrees F, but never got above freezing all the way home. Drop off the Thing, head North. Fill up at the same Buc-Ee’s – 10 minutes this time – plus another bio-break somewhere in Ohio. Home in 10 hours, again in daylight. Filled it up next morning. Total gas cost – $123.
Leaving aside the fact that there’s not a lot of choice in BEVs that could pack what we had to haul, there’s no way that any BEV could make anything like the theoretical maximum range that’s claimed. You’d best believe that we had the heat cranking all the way, because we needed it, plus we were going 75 mph for hours on end, through the mountains and all. We’d have had to charge a BEV at least three times each way, plus a full charge overnight at the hotel, which had – oh, wait – a 15 amp outlet, so now we have to hunt around Asheville for a charger and sit around waiting for it. At an hour per charge, that’s at least 18 person-hours that we’ll never get back, plus the trip each way would have pushed the limits of the allowable on-the-road time, turning each way into a 2 day trip and adding hotel costs. Instead, we made both trips fast, easy, comfortable, in daylight. And – I would add – anyone who would take a car – any car – in FSD down I-40 in its present state, needs their head examined.
I wouldn’t have given a tinker’s damn if Enterprise had tried to rent me a hybrid – we could have made the exact-same trip in exactly the same way. See the difference?
llater,
llamas
And – on a separate topic – I call ‘foul’ on claims about Tesla depreciation, at least in the US.
The claim was:
” . . . .Tesla 3 new is about $38k, here they are selling for $25k after five years.”, or a depreciation of about 35% in 5 years.
Here’s current data:
https://caredge.com/tesla/depreciation
which shows actual depreciation more like 60% in 5 years.
llater,
llamas
Tesla vehicles – ABSENT the battery – last quite a while.
It’s the batteries that kill longevity.
The build process doesn’t help the brand. Take a huge battery – which will lose capacity fairly quickly in car-life terms – and then bolt everything on to it to make a car. Make it the center frame of the entire vehicle.
Now replace that battery. Have fun. Buy lots of tools.
But this is a function of the newness of the genre. If Tesla continued to refine design, I bet we’d see swappable batteries before long.
Sadly, Tesla will move on to robots before it really gets into the guts of continuing car design. I suspect Musk’s interest has moved on.
@llamas
which shows actual depreciation more like 60% in 5 years.
So not “practically zero” then? FWIW, the same chart shows a BMW 3 series or a Ford F-150 hitting about 50% depreciation in five years.
FWIW, I could be wrong, but I think that the difference is largely due to the way the EV tax credit interferes with the price. But like I say, I could be wrong.
And FWIW, EV battery capacity seems to drop and then mostly level off by 10-15% in 200,000 miles which is what? 25-38 miles of range per charge? I wonder how much the range of one tank of gas goes down on an ICE car after the wear and tear of 200,000 miles?
Fraser Orr wrote : ” . . . I think that the difference is largely due to the way the EV tax credit interferes with the price. But like I say, I could be wrong.”
Well, fortunately, we have a direct, apples-to-apples comparison which shows, what it shows.
The Toyota RAV4 “Prime” is the PHEV model of the RAV4, and when the Federal tax credit was in effect, it qualified for it, just as Teslas did. Here’s the depreciation for the RAV4 Prime – about 30% in 5 years.
https://caredge.com/toyota/rav4-prime/depreciation
From the same source, depreciation for the RAV4 Hybrid, which did not attract the tax credit – about 28% over 5 years.
So the tax credit had no apparent impact on depreciation, at least for Toyota hybrids. But perhaps, as with so many things, Teslas are different.
I never said that Teslas depreciated to ‘practically zero’. You should take that question up with the commenter that said it.
Regarding the degradation in fuel economy over the life of an ICE automobile, no doubt the range on a tank of fuel does decrease with total mileage compared to the decrease in battery life of a comparable BEV, especially if maintenance is poor. But you should probably see this in terms of whole-life cost – does the decrease in fuel mileage over time and/or the added maintenance cost outweigh the significant cost delta of the BEV over a comparable ICE vehicle? A base-model Tesla Model Y lists for right-around $40K, a comparably-equipped Toyota Corolla lists for about $27K – does the $13K difference, over the life of the vehicles, outweigh the added costs of maintaining the ICE vehicle?
llater,
llamas
https://caredge.com/toyota/rav4-prime/depreciation
Gene – yes they (the international establishment) do not want you to have a car at all.
Even at local government level councilors are briefed on this in environmental training.
The basic policy of the International Community is for people to live in little flats in “15 minute communities” – there would be no “need” for private transport for most people.
None of this is secret – it is astonishing that some people shut their eyes to it.
The industry chose cowardly compliance. Let them suffer the consequences. I refuse to buy an EV. They could have sold me a nice new replacement for my Renault Megane RS a year ago, but they discontinued the RS line and can only offer me milk floats or hybrids, none of which come close to what I have. So, a sale lost. There are many more up and down the country. I can wait. I have plenty of popcorn.
Paul Marks’s comments about the plans that our leaders have in mind for us – cars for them, but not for us – put me in mind of the BEV road trip undertaken by Jennifer Granholm, sometime Energy Secretary in the Biden administration.
https://www.npr.org/2023/09/10/1187224861/electric-vehicles-evs-cars-chargers-charging-energy-secretary-jennifer-granholm
Her staff sent flunkeys ahead of her motorcade to “camp on” vehicle charging stations (in ICE automobiles, nota bene) so that Her Magnificence might not have to wait in line to charge her Cadillac, alongside the hoi polloi. The more I see of the BEV cult, the more I suspect that this is what TGATG actually have in mind – cars for the “comrades of proven worth”, including themselves, naturally – and busses abd bicycles for the rest of us. Change my mind.
llater,
llamas
The more I see of the BEV cult, the more I suspect that this is what TGATG actually have in mind – cars for the “comrades of proven worth”, including themselves, naturally – and busses abd bicycles for the rest of us. Change my mind.
I doubt I’m going to change your mind, but I really don’t understand this way of thinking, especially that encapsulated in the word “cult”. I think ICE proponents have their knickers in a twist about EVs principally because they think that to accept EVs is to accept all the nonsense associated with climate change disasterism. But I just think of them as an alternative technology choice, which is exactly what they are. An alternative choice with different sets of pros and cons than an ICE vehicle. And, frankly, I think a better choice for many suburban drivers, for reasons outlined above. But of course people can make their own decisions.
I mean do some people feel all self righteous about it? I guess so, just as a lot of people think they are superior because they drive a Porsche. But the people I talk to who own and drive EVs do so because they really like them and their utility.
As to her royal majesty Jennifer Grandhom, I mean, so what? She is a politician who thinks the rest of us peons should bow and curtsey to her. How is that any different in regard to this issue than any other? They are all self important blowhards. And as to the issue of if this is a trap to get us all out of our cars, I mean what evidence is there to support this? You might argue that things like the fact that the car knows your location or might have a remote kill switch is such an argument, but that is not at all unique to electric vehicles. FFS you have a tracking device in your pocket right now.
I’d find the argument that Net Zero is going to make all you Brits so much poorer so that you can’t afford a car or any type much more compelling.
And I think Longrider and I have had this conversation before (apologies if it was someone else) — to dismiss an EV as a “milk float” is ridiculous. EVs are some of the most sophisticated pieces of engineering that humans have ever made. I’m an engineer, and the beauty and sophistication of their design gives me the warm and fuzzies. And, AFAIK, they don’t make or use milk floats any more.
Fraser Orr wrote:
” . . . .But I just think of them as an alternative technology choice, which is exactly what they are. An alternative choice with different sets of pros and cons than an ICE vehicle. And, frankly, I think a better choice for many suburban drivers, for reasons outlined above. But of course people can make their own decisions.”
Well, that’s the sensible and (dare I say it) the libertarian view.
But it is most definitely NOT the view of many, who seek to eliminate those choices and to mandate BEVs to the exclusion of all other options. They don’t want people to make their own decisions, unless that decision is a choice between either a BEV, or no vehicle at all. Their ‘Net Zero’ objective requires these mandates, no other choice is acceptable, and that’s why they are/have been passing laws to prohibit any other kind of vehicle from being sold, on a very short timeline as well. And they try and force BEVs as the sole solution to any transport situation over which they can exert control now. So we see endless stories about BEV school busses being forced into situations where they just don’t work, BEV ferries that fail miserably after a few months, BEV semi-trucks that turn out to be nothing but vapourware (or simple scams), BEV postal trucks that can’t seem to make it into service – and ridiculous stunts like Jennifer Granholm’s road trip, designed to persuade the public that BEVs are a fine solution and a rational choice – ands not something that is going to be forced upon them within a very few years, whether they like it or not.
That’s what I mean when I refer to the BEV cult, which is a mixture of equal parts of ‘BEVs are great and work for any transport challenge’ and ‘BEVs are the only way to get to Net Zero, and so we’re going to impose them by force as the only transport choice’.
Irrational, wishful beliefs that defy the laws of physics, combined with a religious belief in a higher moral good – among the very definitions of a cult.
And – let’s not overlook the other part, which is simple grift. The amount of taxpayer and shareholder money which has been p**sed away chasing the BEV dream – the battery plants, the lithium mines, the carmakers, the research moneys – would – well, it wouldn’t surprise me much at all. Large parts of the BEV sphere are nothing more than a classic bubble, populated by stock hustlers and Ponzi schemers.
Quite happy to stipulate that you, personally, are not a follower of this cult. But cult it is nonetheless.
llater,
llamas
@llamas, I certainly understand your frustration, and I credit you with more justification for rage living as you do in such a tyrannical land. But do you also refuse to use LED bulbs, despite their generally superior economics in many use cases? I mean there is a big push for them too for the same reasons. Do you really want to go back to the days of incandescent bulbs that did a better job heating your house than lighting it? Or what about trains, do you refused to use trains when they are the superior choice to driving? Or perhaps does it make sense for sensible people to make their own choices based on the actual utility of the choices, irrespective of what the blowhards in Westminster might say?
I too deeply object to the stupid agenda pushed by these people, but to allow that to influence your choices, even if it is a “hell no” response seems pretty illogical to me. I assure you, they do not give a damn about your “hell no”, so all it does is deprive you of choices with no actual beneficial upside, except a feeling of small, pyric victory against “the man”. I was going to suggest you make your own choices and voted the bastards out, but that’s probably never been a successful solution. But at least you can have the technically superior (in some use cases) choice available to you while your beloved blighty sinks beneath the ocean waves.
And FWIW, as I have said before, for sure there are people that are obsessed with the cult of global warming, but I suspect the intersection with people who drive EVs is rather smaller than imagined. As I say, my experience is people drive Teslas because they are better (at least for them.) and they really like them. I think you’ll find people who drive non Tesla EVs are more likely to be cult-y whackos for various reasons that are probably self evident, namely that one can no longer be both a leftie and be a Muskovite. Probably because he had the audacity to try to cut government waste and fraud, and worse still, broke bread with Hitler.
Principle.
Once gov and progressives TOLD me that I would be driving an EV, my mind was made up. What I would have happily purchased prior to that became anathema.
I love chocolate chip cookies. If Kamala Harris told me I was required to eat them, I’d avoid them like the plague.
Rational and logical? Yes, unless you only count engineering concepts. Then it “doesn’t add up.”
@ Fraser Orr – where is it that you think I live? I thought it was pretty obvious, but maybe not.
We do not seem to be able to get beyond the distinctions between a freely-made and -considered choice (as, for example, choosing to buy the excellent technology of a Tesla or other BEV if it meets our needs) and a forcible mandate that says ‘the only type of vehicle that you will be permitted to buy at all is a BEV, and if it doesn’t meet your needs, that’s too bad – change your needs or do without’.
It’s interesting that you raise the example of LED light bulbs vs incandescent bulbs, and ask why anyone would choose the latter over the former. But you conveniently overlook the intervening technology of the ‘compact fluorescent’ light bulb, which was forced upon the public by just such another ill-considered and short-sighted goverment mandate. Rushed into mass-production despite the known shortcomings, forced upon the public at higher cost and with promises of life and performance that turned out to be untrue, untold millions were wasted on mandating this dead-end technology when everyone knew that the far-better LED technology was just a couple of years away. We’re still cleaning up the mercury pollution from this bureaucrat’s wet dream.
I just want to leave people free to choose what works best for them, in this as in most other things, and millenia of experience of what happens when governments decide that they’re going to choose what’s best should have taught us to avoid that path like the plague. If a Tesla meets your needs, well, then, buy one and good luck to you. But a Tesla (or any BEV) doesn’t meet my needs, I don’t want to buy one, and it’s no business of government to tell me that I must, or (at the final reduction) to force me at gunpoint to finance your choice while denying me (again at gunpoint) my choice, all in the name of some subjective ‘greater good’. Now that’s tyranny.
llater,
llamas
@llamas
First of all I thought you were British, my apologies if I remembered wrong. Or maybe you are a Brit living in the US like me? Either way, apologies if I mis-categorized you.
I fully understand the distinction between a freely made choice and a mandate, and of course as I have said I’m passionately opposed to these stupid mandates. I think where our minds are not meeting is encapsulated in what BobbyB wrote. If it is mandated is that reason enough to not pick it, irrespective of whether it is the right choice? How heavily should that weigh in the decision?
After all, the government tries to manipulate the economy through taxes, for example, encouraging home ownership through mortgage tax deductions. I definitely think they shouldn’t be doing that kind of shit, but doesn’t change the fact that I take that deduction every year. They also banned the refrigerant used in my old ass air conditioner. But my AC guy still filled it with the new inferior product. I’m not sitting here sweating my ass off in the summer just to give a grand old “up yours” to the government, or try to buy some of the old stuff on the black market.
I think it is kind of pointless to let these things affect your decision either way, and maybe you and BobbyB see it is some small resistance against “the man”. If so, good for you. But TBH I think it is a matter of what you value and consider important. As for me, I try to ignore the government and their stupid ideas as much as possible. I find the concept of a libertarian political activist a bit of a contradiction. It’s not like there is much I can do about the mandates. I try to focus on the things I can control, and certainly choosing a car that best suits my needs is something I can control. But, I certainly recognize that, to coin a phrase, your mileage may vary.
Anyway, I want to thank you and others for an interesting discussion.