The sheer amount of wilful ignorance is staggering. I leased a BEV for the simple reason that it was cheap and fits my mission. Everyone with a detached or semi detached can easily charge their car on an household line and wind energy is still produced in the black of the night. And the best thing is the extremely low maintenance required.
Nobody questions that these cars are of little use to the rural population or for people who need to go long distances, but the things aren’t necessarily useless just because you want them to be.
@inkognito the arguments of the detractors of EV’s here now seem to be centered on the fact that they are not powered by electricity but by (acquisition) subsidies. As if big oil is not heavily subsidized. 
Also, only a few people here wish to notice the progress being made in terms of increase of range and decrease of acquisition cost.
EDIT: not to mention the used EV car market which is growing day by day.
Everyone with a detached or semi detached can easily charge their car
Sure. Now do a google/images for “city” (these are places where most people live) and ask yourself the obvious question
I have no dog in this fight; I could park and charge five+ Teslas at my house (well, once I get a 100kW 3 phase feed which will be about £10k).
As posted previously, the %number is most probably known but I have not seen it published. It is likely around “70 % can’t” so with “30 % can” the EV market still has a lot of growth in it.
There are numbers on all this; no need to get religious about it.
aart wrote:
Also, only a few people here wish to notice the progress being made in terms of increase of range and decrease of acquisition cost.EDIT: not to mention the used EV car market which is growing day by day.
Are they getting cheaper? Even if they are, is the dial really moving?
We have to remember that we’re not the whole market. We’re recreational pilots – most of us have incomes several (or many) multiples of the average. Some of our incomes are completely off the scale. Average people on average incomes do not buy 30k+ vehicles, not in the sense of paying the price and taking it away.
In the UK at least, some small % of all new cars ‘sold’ are paid for in full and I’m going to work on the assumption that this is also true across Europe. Most are on some form of lease / credit / hire-purchase, and provision for EVs in that market is very twitchy because of concerns about future value. That market makes expensive cars ‘affordable’ to people on average incomes with relatively high monthly payments (that the customer can just afford) and a long tie-in. They can’t really do the long tie-in to the same extent with EVs (future value) so the monthly payments become unaffordable.
What I am noticing is that used prices for petrol and diesel vehicles are very, very strong. Stronger than I have ever seen them. As I have doubtless bored you with before, my own strategy is usually to buy a 7-8k used car, selected very carefully to meet my needs – often an ‘unloved’ model as @Silvaire does with aeroplanes, and then drive it until either my needs change or it becomes uneconomical to keep going – this can easily be 10 years. I did a bit of research last night and my present car is worth approximately twice what I’d assumed, and paying 7-8k right now would not get me anything as young as I’d perhaps hoped.
Inkognito wrote:
And the best thing is the extremely low maintenance required.
Modern ICE cars are generally highly reliable and in reality require very little routine maintenance. The days of balancing carburettors, adjusting tappets, greasing trunnions, flushing radiators and changing gearbox oil are long gone.
The whole industry keeps the servicing and maintenance myth going because it doesn’t want to give up the revenue. And thus people who know nothing about cars pay hundreds (or more) each year to have them ‘serviced’. If you actually looked at a job sheet you’d see that ~95% of it consists of inspection items – beyond the oil and filter there is literally almost nothing to adjust or replace on a time/mileage basis. And of those inspection items, 99% are totally pointless to do on a routine basis because you’ll find out when it breaks and not before.
Engine oil I’ll concede, not having to do that is an improvement. But still that’s an annual £50 job really, which most of the business prefers to wrap up into a £300 ‘service’).
The only thing really left is brakes and tyres, and as far as I’m aware EVs still have these.
Graham wrote:
The only thing really left is brakes and tyres, and as far as I’m aware EVs still have these.
Brakes wear less on EVs because most braking is regenerative.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Brakes wear less on EVs because most braking is regenerative.
How is it typically set up – is the brake pedal itself actually linked to the regenerative braking system, such that you press the brake pedal and you get regenerative braking as a response, and only if you press it much harder do the actual brakes come into play? Or does it not work like that and you’re referring to regenerative braking when coasting?
I don’t know how the cars are set up, but some cursory research suggests that current regenerative braking technology does not deliver ‘significant’ speed reductions or serve bring the vehicle to a halt. Thus I suppose it depends on your driving style, but ‘most braking’ being regenerative might be contentious.
Regardless, brake pads are not expensive and (depending on how you drive) not a regular item. But they are one of the favourite scams of the whole ‘servicing’ racket – what the garages really like doing is replacing pads and discs that still have years left in them because “they’re a bit worn, love” and the customer knows no better. Same with tyres. Personally I cannot remember when I last had any brake components replaced, it is that infrequent.
Car servicing costs are negligible, compared to fuel burn and depreciation.
Anyone who doesn’t burn off a pair of tyres on the driven wheels in a few k miles is clearly not enjoying driving When I had an XR3i I used to burn through a pair of Pirelli P6s in 2000 miles. From 1983, near Pamplona:
What I am noticing is that used prices for petrol and diesel vehicles are very, very strong. Stronger than I have ever seen them.
As far as I can tell, my wife’s 1999 car that was bought in 2011 with 18,000 miles is now worth what we paid for it – 12 years later and now with 84,000 miles.
My car was bought new in 2017 for $21K, now has 103,000 miles and is worth $13K. Not too bad for a daily driver bought new and the maintenance has been engine (only) oil changes, one set of brake pads and one set of tires. I haven’t even replaced the air filter yet and it’s never been back to a dealer. I plan to drive it to about 200K miles over the next few years before tossing it. I think right now the replacement will be a similar make/year/model bought used with low miles, paying cash as I always do, repeating what I did with my wife’s car. I wonder if I’ll end up paying as much as I did for the current one brand new!
I believe I’m finished with new cars after 20 years of buying mostly new, and especially with new limited utility EVs powered only by the utility, or buying any car with data and control links established forever by the manufacturer. The potential fly in that ointment is the cost and availability of clean used replacements but as before I’ll set a large radius of 1500 miles or so on my search for the best deal. The beauty of the market is that it extends beyond the supposed ‘system’.
P.S. @Graham I prefer ‘under appreciated’ to ‘unloved’
@graham
The regenerative system in most (possibly all but there’s bound to be some exceptions) operates on the accellerator. If you lift off the regen starts and recharges the battery. The Evs that I have driven typically have a “normal” and “full/high/max” regen settings. Normal is like taking your foor off the pedal in a standard manual or automatic car. Max is a different matter – its more like dropping down 1 or 2 gears then taking your foot off the pedal. So very marked resistance. Some EVs will allow you to use regen down to a standstill others down to a slow walking page. One thing not normally brought up is that regen relies on having some space in your battery for the charge to go. The firrst time I fully charged my EV I got a shock going down my hill when the regen didn’t do anything as fally charged battery! No a sefety issue just a different characteristic.
On the brakes side, one issue that is arrising at MOTs for EVs is that the brakes can be corroded as ther are seldom used. I probably use my brakes once a month as all my driving is done with max regen on the accellerator.
