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Electric cars – are they worth the hassle? – politicalbetting.com
Electric cars – are they worth the hassle? – politicalbetting.com
A couple of days ago I was driving North up the M6 when we stopped at a service station. The car pictured above was was being charged as we arrived and was still being charged when we left after about half an hour.
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On topic: is it worth waiting an extra 20 minutes at Clackett Lane to reduce CO2 emissions? Probably, yes. Are there significant infrastructure and behavioural challenges to overcome with BEVs? Probably, also yes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE4QLkIPjrs (or other podcast platforms).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/snooker/65641122
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/golf/65827786
More recently, I bought a Rivian.
EVs are great if:
(a) you have somewhere to charge it at home
(b) you don't regularly do 300+ mile trips
If either of those things are not true, then either a straight ICE or a plug-in hybrid is perfect for you.
(c) If you can afford one. EVs are still hellishly expensive compared to ICE cars - unless you go for ones with limitations, such as even more reduced range.
That's going to change fairly quickly, as the major manufacturers get their new factories running, and sometime beyond that, simply stop making ICE cars.
The market will solve the charging problem, eventually. But there are going to be some very pissed off voters for at least a couple if electoral cycles, if governments don't accelerate that solution.
Well I'm sure you've all read and debated this* but Rowan Atkinson, famously knowledgeable on motoring, wrote a rather good piece about electric cars last weekend.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/03/electric-vehicles-early-adopter-petrol-car-ev-environment-rowan-atkinson
* I only come on here fleetingly, usually first thing
Three months ago a dashboard warning light came on saying there was a problem with the (main) battery. The dealership from whom I bought the car couldn't fix it so it had to be sent to a centre in Tilbury (200 miles away). They had the car for 8 weeks but on the plus side they completely replaced the battery free of charge.
I'd agree with (a), (b) and (c) though. Much as I think it's essential we go electric to solve the problem of emissions, as can often be the case a sensible goal is being thwarted by a lack of attention to policy detail (charging network issues, cost of vehicles, environmental impact of manufacture/disposal, etc etc).
After she resigned, another county hired her to run elections.
Now investigators have seized an election server there, too.
https://twitter.com/AnnaBower/status/1666229884165693441
Police in Richmond, Virginia, say seven people shot, six more injured after a graduation ceremony.
Two people are in custody, authorities say.
https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1666227976504221696
Anil Seth (@anilkseth) is exploring the possibility that consciousness may emerge from neuronal activity the way flocking patterns emerge from flying starlings. Hear more on The Joy of Why:
https://listen.quantamagazine.org/jow-208-s
Or read the transcript
(* If you've done photography and intuitively understand white balance, it's quite easy to make yourself see the dress as either white and gold, or blue and black.
Though interestingly, one of those two perceptions is still the dominant, 'natural' one.)
People will continue to grouse about the charging problem. It will be solved quickly for the wealthy, which might slow the process of solving it for everyone else.
Range anxiety is pretty short lived when owning an EV. How often do you drive more than 250 miles without a half hour break? EV cars are also a pleasure to drive, smooth, powerful and very quick acceleration.
Labour’s tax raid on private school fees could raise ‘very little’
At best the party’s calculations could be off by £600m, a report finds
Labour’s plan to add VAT to private school fees is badly flawed and could raise very little revenue, according to a think tank.
The party has said ending the tax breaks enjoyed by independent schools would raise £1.6 billion, which it would invest in the state sector.
However, a new analysis suggests that the figure is likely to be much lower and that in a “best case” scenario for Labour, the changes would bring in £1 billion. In a “worst case” scenario, there would be “very little” new revenue.
EDSK, an education think tank, said the wealthiest parents and the most expensive schools would be the least affected.
Most independent schools have charitable status, giving them at least 80 per cent relief on business rates. In September 2021, Labour said that in government it would end the charitable status of England’s private schools, raising an estimated £1.6 billion from VAT and £100 million from business rates.
The think tank’s report claims that the calculations behind the £1.6 billion figure do not take into account a drop-off in demand for private schools if VAT is added to fees or the extra taxpayer money needed to teach pupils who would be moved to state schools.
The most optimistic scenario is that 5 per cent of pupils would leave private schools and the addition of VAT to fees would only raise about £1 billion a year, it said.
The more pessimistic projection that 25 per cent of pupils would leave private schools means that adding VAT to fees would raise very little new revenue, especially when additional administration costs for HM Revenue & Customs are taken into account.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/labours-tax-raid-on-private-school-fees-could-raise-very-little-c2zf7j5l2
There are 615,000 private school places in the UK, with fees averaging £15654 per year.
If we assume unitary elasticity for a moment, a 20% tax would reduce the number of public school students to 492,000. This would mean the 20% tax would raise an extra £3130 per head, or £1539 million in all.
Divide that by the number of state school pupils (approx 10.5m), and you get £149.20 more per pupil per year to spend.
Ah yes, but there's a problem here. Finding places for the other 123,000 former private school students who now need a state school place.
Average spend per head in the state system was 6970 last year, so you'd need to find an extra 857m just to pay for the extra state places required.
This would therefore mean you'd actually only be looking at an extra £64.33 spend per pupil.
And for that, you would be uprooting the lives of 123,000 children, as well as significantly reducing their educational outcomes, and reducing social mobility (due to the increased bifurcation I mentioned in my previous post) all for an extra £64.33 spend per state school pupil.
The numbers don't add up.
I have only used public chargers 3 times in 3 years of EV ownership, and regularly travel between Leicester and the IoW.
Sure, EVs are not yet practical for everyone, but the point that they become so is approaching quickly. 23% of new car sales are EVs now.
But we don't have enough petrol station capacity to fill up 35 million cars simultaneously either.
More importantly, the move to electric is multi-decade. Even if every new car sold was electric (which hasn't happened yet) it would still take 7 or 8 years for half the cars on the road to be electric.
At the moment the numbers don’t quite add up to buy it, but leasing a cheaper one would probably be cost effective compared to the ICE I’m driving at the moment.
Equally, I have solar panels, a double driveway and own an ICE for other journeys.
Over the next decade we'll see large numbers come onto the second hand market, and that will change.
I own an electric car (well truck). Over Christmas, the family got into the truck and headed up the mountains to Big Bear. Over the Christmas week, we went round the ski resorts in the area, returning to our AirBnB every night.
Aside from one 20 minute wait for a fast charger, we had no problems whatsoever with a 500 mile round trip.
If you have a driveway, don't regularly travel 300m+ a day, and can afford it, an electric car is best.
The Coren piece
But that isn’t the point.
As many Labour people said, about the 45p tax band (for example) - “it’s the principle”
Many purchasers of earlier British Leyland / MG / Rover / Jaguar have suffered similarly with ICEs.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, Tesla tops the owner satisfaction ratings.
Of course, they could all be brainwashed. But the real world evidence is that people who buy Teslas buy Teslas again. And on this very board, everyone who has bought an EV (myself, Foxy, Dura, FrequentLurker) would do so again.
The weight differential is decreasing, as EVs get more efficient power trains and better batteries each year.
Because EVs require air cooling(for the water cooling system), they pull in a lot of air. Some basic calculations say that your EV is hovering up more particulates than it produces.
I note, that a previous thing was “brake particulates from those nasty, heavy EVs”. Which evaporated when someone pointed out that nearly all EVs (and all future ones) use regenerative braking, most of the time.
Charging infrastructure still needs a lot of work though, and peak demand last year over Christmas was overwhelming.
The worry is that the change is being forced on people faster than they can cope, and the losers will be the poorest. See Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ for a good example, where it’s been extended to areas with little public transport, and many cars less than a decade old are being affected. Millions of people run old bangers, and can’t afford to either to buy a newer car or to pay £4,000 a year in tax to use the old one.
Me, I have an old banger, but one with a V8 - save the V8s!
Which would also dramatically improve outcomes and enhance social mobility.
But that would be costly and difficult so they won't do it, hiding behind flawed studies by stupid and/or drunk statisticians claiming the bigger the class, the better the outcome.
For some people, yes. For others, no.
But as time goes on, the hassle will reduce.
Yes, there are some good $100k EVs, but 99% of people don’t spend that much on a car, so it’s still very much a luxury good.
If, like most people, you have £30k to spend on a new car, you have the choice of a Leaf, or, umm, not much else. Even the cheapest electric Mini is £33k.
Southern California has excellent fast charging networks*, mind, and I have a driveway. Plus petrol is highly taxed here.
For me, an electric vehicle is simply the best one I can get for the price.
* And Tesla is opening up its Superchargers which will make a big difference.
Every year electric range improves. Every year the price differential narrows. Every year the charging networks improve.
And that means that the percentage of EVs will relentlessly rise. Heck, it's relentlessly rising even in countries and States with no EV incentives at all.
And agreed - most motoring is well under 50 miles a day.
But - and its a big but - if you do longer trips, just get a Tesla. The public charger network is woeful - old, slow and confusing. The car in the picture is a Hyundai Ioniq 5 - one of the few cars with an 800v electric drivetrain capable of drawing power at 350kW. The problem is that there are still relatively few places that will vend at that speed.
The photo looks like Lancaster services, in which case those are legacy Electric Highway chargers which vend just 50kW. The Ioniq was sat there for a long time because it has a big battery and charges slowly.
I've done plenty of long trips in my Tesla Model Y where charging hasn't taken any extra time. One with the family from up here in northern Aberdeenshire down to southern Essex needed two charging stops which we combined with toilet and eating (not simultaneously). When we were finished we unplugged and were on our way.
A similar-sized petrol-power car, something like a Kia Sportage, comes in at £28k.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/07/150000-levelling-up-grant-went-to-tory-donor-lubov-chernukhi-amusement-centre-in-hastings
Nothing wrong with principles. I have a one or two myself, stolen from the poor.
EDIT : how will the Labour government define a private school? There are a number of educational charities providing tuition etc who might get caught in the net. A previous look at this suggested a simple “charitable % of revenue” would catch a lot of charities.
The inability of politicians, in this case the Scottish government, to recognise that actions have consequences and people and businesses react to being taxed, is truly remarkable.
Economic growth is of course the magic needed, but not easy for politicians to conjure up, particularly those politicians wedded to the grey vote, the '"Red Wall" levelling up and the autarky of Brexitism.
Then we have what is being installed. We need a lot of destination charging - quite simply a socket where you plug your own cable in and draw 7kW at 32A. Not enough of these go in, many have a lengthy process via an app to get them vending, and charge £stupid for the experience.
Worse is "rapid" charging. A decade ago a 50kW charger was all you needed, as Leafs and Zoes had small batteries. Now? We still see brand new 50kW stations being installed, branded as "rapid" and being charged £bonkers per kW for a charge which means a modern big battery EV needs a lengthy stop.
I don't need most public charging as I have a Tesla. The odd occasion I have have needed rapid charging on a non-Tesla charger, I feel for the other drivers in any other brand. Even the decent charger networks with maintained kit may only vend at 150kW at best (Instavolt as an example) and many chargers you expect to run at that speed only do 60kW.
The market needs regulating if any government wants to get people into EVs. You would need investment into the National Grid to supply power onto sites and well-maintained fit for purpose charging that doesn't cost way more than petrol. Otherwise, forget it.
That is not a very big sector of the car market though. I don't think myself unusual in only using a public charger once a year, which in itself presents a challenge to making a charger network viable.
The global standard connector is CCS2 - a 7-pin Type 2 connector (AC), and two pins below (DC) for rapid charging. America managed to get stuck with the older Type 1 AC connector. Which means it has been using CCS1 (older and slower 5-pin Type 1 for AC plus 2 pin Type 2 DC) which gets a lot of complaints.
Tesla in America uses its own version of Type 2, now rebranded as the "NACS" North American Charging Standard. The deal with Ford will see its CCS1 sockets replaced with NACS. Will others follow? Possibly...
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
NACS is smaller and more convenient. CCS is (slightly) more prevalent and handles a higher maximum throughput.
In the US, 40% of new EVs are Teslas, which use NACS, but where you can buy an adaptor and then use CCS chargers. 60% use CCS. Now Tesla is opening up their charging, I think a lot of the problems will improve.
There are also some older vehicles which use the old Toyota fast DC charging standard of ChDaMo, but that's on the way out now.
The ideal for my family would be a small, low range vehicle for 95% of trips, and a large ICE for the occasional longer trip. Perhaps it might be more cost effective to hire the latter. We might mive to a different model of ownership to what we currently have.
But other people will have different circumstances.
My view is that there is still mileage in exploring other clean technologies for the bigger/longer market. But that represents a small minority of journeys.
My boss got himself a top of range electric mercedes eqv a year ago. It was very nice, fast and comfortable. He has already given it up as it was impractical and hideously expensive to charge. He had to abandon the vehicle 3 times as it had run out of charge and there was nowhere to charge it.
What makes it tolerable for her is (a) she has a home charger and (b) she's retired, so being late is not really a big deal. Relying on public chargers only is almost unthinkable, and she's still in two minds whether to retransition.
Since most lower-income people live in flats or rented accommodation, having a home charger often isn't an option. Coupled with the higher price and as yet more limited second-hand market, it isn't really an option for them, yet. If the 2030 deadline is serious, I think a publicly-funded network of fast chargers is going to be essential.
Sworn testimony by the guy who used to hand-deliver intelligence to the West Wing for the Daily Briefing. He held higher security clearance then AARO, the body setup last year to explore anomalous objects in controlled military airspace. And so is seriously reported by serious journalists, testimony has also been made by people he named to congress as having first hand knowledge / experience of these programmes. Insinuations from him that murders have been committed to keep the secret out of proper democratic scrutiny. Congressional oversight committee members now demanding answers.
Maybe it’s all one big setup for reasons that are hard to fathom. Maybe they’ve all been duped by the deep state, again for reasons it’s hard to fathom. Or maybe what they say is true. Whichever, that anyone on a supposedly serious political news blog is talking about anything else defies belief.
An EV cramps their preferred driving and pit stopping style considerably and I guess these people are a fair body of the EV complainers.
This is anecdote and stereotyping based on the sales and engineering types In have known over the years and I guess some have been happier than others to amend their long driving style to accommodate EV.
Let's imagine that there are 20 million EVs on the streets in the UK, and that they each require charging once per week, which consumes 100KWh of Electricity.
That means that there are 3 million cars, recieving 100KWh per day, which is 30GWh. Averaged over 10 hours, this is 3GW/hour. Which is a lot, but is massively less than the difference between 12pm (30GW UK demand) and 12am (20GW).
But as charging networks, range, speed, etc., all improve, then EVs will become the preferred horse for an ever greater share of the population.
The first Tucker on Twitter video is a study in Russian propaganda & attacks Zelensky for being “rat-like” and a “persecutor of Christians” while singling out (((Bill Kristol))). Subtle stuff! ...
https://twitter.com/Timodc/status/1666233392071835650
Much is said of it depends if you have a driveway. Never seen it pointed out as yet that actually doesn't tell the whole story. Many families , moreso now that children aren't flying the nest so young, will be of necessity multi car households. Being able to charge overnight on the driveway is one thing....being able to charge all cars overnight quite another.
I don't really have a problem with the existence of private education and I think the best way to 'deal with it' is to improve the state sector so that private schools are obsolete. That will take a lot of money and effort. I don't really see why these fee-taking institutions, that only benefit a handful of individuals, should be VAT exempt.
The massive Baker Supercharger station that I pass on the way to Las Vegas is all V2 Superchargers, but I see Europe is almost entirely V3.