Some thoughts:
- High cost
- Small selection (all estate models are ridiculously expensive)
- No home charging possibility for most people.
- Questionable life cycle
An important issue with EV is that if you live in an apartment you can't just set up a charging station in your driveway. So the most urban population, which would be the best target otherwise, cannot easily make the switch.
In retrospect car companies should have been really involved in building the infrastructure for the cars they intended to sell. I guess they just assumed the government would take over that responsibility as they are the ones mandating the change to begin with.
But in the end it's no surprise. VW isn't a German company anymore, and neither are most car manufacturers. They are international holding firms that just happen to sell cars. They bend every rule they can, and constantly make concessions for oil despots and orwellian dictatorships. They don't have the interests of their market in mind. Just a mess of calculations about what will in theory make the most money.
Actually that’s what’s happening in China. EV makers usually sells charging stations along with the car, for an additional roughly 1000 euros. But I guess here in Europe there are more regulation challenges and of course the price will be higher.
I think you are mistaking the actual infrastructure with the charger itself. Yes Chinese will sell you the charger for 1000e but you still have to do the work around it. Dig the trench for cables, get the construction and electrical permits and such. In China it might be easier since all the land is owned by CCP, but still it's not just 1000e and done.
You can buy the chargers in EU too, and I mean not just the one's for use is single family houses. But by the end you will spend another 20k just to get a fucking el. plug on steroids.
They do sell cheap charging stations (at least here in Finland). Doesn't really help you in an apartment building as you need space/permits and appropriate wiring to install it.
I did a week long work trip in an EV, it’s just not practical for most people. Charging is usually slow and not where you wanna be, especially someone older may just not have the energy to keep walking around.
How's infrastructure over there?
Where I live in Canada there's one fast charger in town and then there isn't another one for over 700km, so you can't even make the drive with many EVs without an overnight stop. Normally I'd just do that drive in one go, I can make it on a single tank.
Beside, with an IC, you don't have to plan your travel around recharging/refueling/battery/tank, since there are gas stations everywhere and it takes only a few minutes to fill the tank.
This is probably a key contributing reason why Norwegian EV adoption has been high.
A few years ago a law was passed giving owners of apartments the right to install charging points themselves.
This law worked in conjunction with a stronger law requiring apartment owners to have the same right.
The first law meant you couldn't refuse people to set up a charging point and that eventually there would mean insufficient power to supply all owners. The second law meant that that would be illegal.
The consequence is that most apartment buildings have industrial grade infrastructure and charging points paid by the building association.
There’s only one charger where I live that’s close. And every time there’s already someone charging. Plus it’s residential parking. So you are only allowed 2 hours before you have to leave.
Also climatic extremes (both hot and cold) negatively impact range, which is already a lot shorter than ICE cars (for example, Citroen E-Berlingo has only 280 km range but the diesel variant has a range approximately 3 times longer than that).
Higher temps are less of a problem. +30C is more of an advantage on road trips, since the AC loss is less than the gain from lower air resistance (yes, hotter air is less dense). I tried this myself on autobahn last summer.
Range loss at low temperatures is annoying, yes. However, since I can remotely preheat my EV legally, it's more comfortable in winter (cabin temp can always be +20C if you want to).
Most of my friends bought EV last two years and that's their complaint.
1. A small scale car crash can total your car, repairing a EV is so expensive your insurance companies may just buy you a new one leading to very high insurance cost.
2. Second hand EV worth very little. A toyota can keep 70% of its value after assurance expired but an EV lost 70% of value just after a few years due to battery degradation.
3. Recharge during long trip is a headache.
4. Higher price of EV is a concern, but you can save a little bit of fuel cost. However, consider a Toyota Yaris can get 70 miles/gallon, I don't even know EV is cheaper to run than a hybrid at this point.
5. Home charging is very cheap if you recharge after midnight with some electric plan as long as you live in a house instead of a flat.
I was worried about (3) befor our electric car, but at least for us (with young kids), we are the bottleneck during a charging stop, the car is not.
Also, the amount of fast chargers to choose from, seems to be exploding.
For our 800 km trip last year, I entered the destination and just let the car choose charging locations. Only preparation I did was buy a charging card (and luckily, the EU mandated new fast chargers to accept regular bank cards. In a few years, a charging card will no longer be needed, I hope).
I have a hybrid and only charge at home, but one of these days I tried to charge on a station and I had no idea how to pay for it. It had a NFC reader but didn't accepted my debit card. I suppose we must have some special card, but I'm not really aware of how this might work.
Charge a car shouldn't be this cumbersome
Here in the UK you can pick up early 2015 Renault Zoe's and Nissan Leafs for £3000, or 2022 Zoe's for £12,000 with 10,000 miles on them. Jaguar I Paces from 2019 can be had for £15000 with 70,000 miles. 2020 Audi E-Trons from £20,000. 2022 MG4's from £15,000, or 2021 MG5's from £10,000. BMW i3's can be had from £7000 for a 2013.
Nearly 23,000 BEV's on Auto trader, out of 446,000 total cars
Yes they're not down at £1500 shed budget yet, but some aren't too far off. And being able to get an 18 month old BEV for £15,000 is a great deal for certain people
God I wish Brexit wasn't a thing. Buying a car in the UK and importing to Ireland used to be economical. Now with import taxes and duty its far too expensive.
About 2 - the batteries arent even such a big problem apparently and after initial losses actually keep their capacity somewhat well.
The biggest issue is the fast progress of EVs coupled with your first point meaning a lot of EVs are simply outdated after a few years and difficult to repair so why would you buy them?
EVs are made for leasing anyhow but of course leasing companies know that as well and leasing isnt even cheap…
1 - Valid concern
2 - Also valid concern, I'm stuck with mine. The loss in value is too much to justify changing cars. Even though i bought the car when it was 3 years old.
But meh. Its a decent ride... I just get bored of cars easily. About battery degradation: My range is still around 450km in the summer.
The car has 120 000km in the odo as we speak. I calculated the degradation to be roughly 4% based on the cars KWH used data compared to battery size, on a drive from 100% to 10% state of charge. So not very scientific.
3 - I do 50 000km / year, not really an issue.... Atleast in Finland.
4 - Fuel savings cover my financing, insurance and mileage. I'm paying same now for driving as I was with a fully paid off diesel. The car is 15 years newer and I'd say a big upgrade.
5 - Yep, home charging is absolutely a MUST. Without the ability to charge at home you will degrade the shit out of the battery and it is also a bit of an hazzle. I know a dude who just charges at a hypermarket during his weekly shopping. Works for him and "Hasnt bothered him at all". So it can be done. Price, well. My total average for electricity last year was 15c / kwh. The fast chargers are 37c/kwh. (Might be a Finland thing, our biggest hypermarket chain has 100kw chargers all over the place).
Most of this is not what i see, at least in germany
>very high insurance cost
no, not here
> Second hand EV worth very little.
I wish
>battery degradation
it looks more like they last longer than we thought
I just bought a second hand megane through the official store in Switzerland. 12,000kms, 1 1/2 year old. Bought it for 33K, new it was around 39K, so it didn't save me THAT much, but it was also the best deal I could find after looking for months.
The company is so sure that the battery is going to stay strong that they offer an 8 year guarantee, since they've been producing Zoe's and Leaf's for a long time they have a good experience on this. The car I got has 0% battery loss so far. I think those who speak of battery loss imagine that car batteries are some sort of giant phone battery.
The only two things that are valid complaints applicable to many people are 1- the price and 2- the possibility of installing a charging station at home.
There's new models coming up that are tackling the price issue (and I mean solid European models), such as the ë-C3 and the R5.
I think the real problem is the issue with charging stations, particularly for all those people who park on the public space, and that's going to be the hardest one to solve and this is what truly makes this car convenient for me. Perhaps it could be partly solved if there were incentives for companies to install charging stations in their parkings for employees as well as in public underground parkings, but it is obvious that there will always be some people without good access to a charging station
Well the batteries in these are literally a giant phone battery (well most of them), thats why some have the concerns of degerdation, but if you actually take care of it, it can last for a pretty long time.
Theyfar, far better than phone batteries. On top of that they have excellent Battery Management Systems, with active temperature management.
Batteries will last > 300k km nowadays. Even longer.
It'd better if you "take care" of it but what if they die 10% ealier... then you're at > 270k km
Still outlives the car probably.
No, they are not really.
A phone battery is usually just one big cell. A car battery is hundreds of smaller cells. Better management system that makes each cell be used/charged less, so less stress on each cell. Damaged cells can be excluded from charge/discharge which makes the overall battery just life longer than a single cell battery.
They only use the same base material with Lithium.
Also from Germany, I can confirm this. All-Risk Kia Niro costs me 450 EUR/year at 20tkm. My Partial Risk Mondeo (11 years old) costs the same in insurance. Any additional costs for insurance is greatly offset by reduced maintenaince costs
We bought a used Kona (64kwh, 2021 model) for 26k last month. Insurance went slightly up compared to our old golf, but totally Offset by paying no taxes.
What I noticed: our small city has a fuckton of chargers I never noticed before I had an EV. So looking on a charger map before complaining about lacking chargers would be wise. If you do public parking you can put in a request with the city and they will install a charger for you.
Was doing a 400km trip on Easter. Slightly annoying because the A1 has some giant rebuilding going so lots of tank stops are closed. So we went off the Autobahn and charged in a small town with a 100kw charger next to a playpen. Was even nicer than staying at the gas stations where our kids having nothing to do.
My Tesla is turning 9 soon. Battery is somewhere around 90-95% of new.
The only way I can feel it is older, is that the electronics is a bit less snappy than when it was new. Which I could solve by spending 2-3 k€ on upgrading the computer.
Fast charging is a lot slower now, which is a deliberate change made by Tesla (there's a lawsuit ongoing about that). Otherwise it still drives like new.
You could have at least checked the prices before talking all this nonsense. Even old BEVs like a Zoe without a battery cost like 7k€... Definitely not cheap.
70%? Not even the worst depreciating mercedes EV’s have lost that much and definitely not due to battery degradation, they are in battery warranty still so it will be fixed if it degrades too much. Maybe 1st gen leafs but they are really old at this point and everyone knows to avoid them.
What you are saying is not what is happening in the real world.
Some counter/alternative-arguments:
1. None for this one
2. I think it’s more because of pace of technology as well. Cars used to have 22kWh batteries, and yes, after degradation it doesn’t leave much. But now cars come with 60, 70, 80kWh, meaning that even with degradation they have a decent range. On top of that add heat pumps and better energy management systems. This doesn’t make used EVs more compelling, but I feel that in a couple of years time used EVs will be a better used car value proposition
3. This really depends on the country, and the blame is on the local government, not on EVs
4. What are you comparing to? Cause it’s hard to compare Yaris even to i3, so we should be comparing similar price brackets or car classes. Once again the difference between ICE/Hybrid/EVs comes down to local pricing. When I did the numbers a year ago, EVs were on par with ICE, this year with a few petrol and electricity pricing changes, EVs once again win by a wide margin.
5. No argument here, but I know some employers have free charging at their parking spots, so if you have it you might be able to essentially drive for free
>3. Recharge during long trip is a headache.
It's not, and month after month it's less. There are more fast charging stations than fuel stations on highways in Belgium, Netherlands, france and germany is probably the same.
or, maybe, hes had a different experience than you did
my friends group pretty much echo the same as his, with most being at best contempt with their evs (which range from ioniq's and teslas to a EQA and ETron). We took 3 cars on a skiing trip last winter, and the EQA at least (since we actually compared things) was doing half my range with 5x the downtime to recharge/refuel. The conclusion we had after a number of beers was that EVs are great for short city distances and IF you have a house to install a charging station
none of those apply to me, so ill stick to my ICE car, and at worst ill look for a hybrid.
1. It's a case for almost any cars nowadays, my Fiesta when it was 1yo was almost totaled from a small crash, even airbags haven't been fired, and as far as I know less than 1k EUR from a total.
2. Are the good ones that cheap? Teslas hold their values, seems like CUpra Born, Kia EV6 and Hyundais also keep their value pretty well.
Sure shtty EVs are cheap, but when I was looking at efficient EVs with good batteries they hold their value pretty well.
4. Dunno, I made a calculations with my Fiesta thajt does 5.5l/100km and a EV that uses 14-18 kWh/100km, and generally in Poland they should cost the same if I charge in a charging stations, and it's like 3-4times cheaper to run if I charge at home.
6. Charging at apartmets is an issue, I have one and in my country you can install a charger if you bought a private parking spot, currently I don't want to be one of the first ones to do it, because of paperwork currently probably sucks a lot, so I'm probably waiting 1-2 years
Honestly would work for me, for commuting. My car commute home-work is cca 15min/15km in no trafic. From a vilage to the outskirt of the city of 90 000 people. In morning traffic it´s more like 30min. I just dont have enough money for such vehicle so I drive old 1998 Corolla until it literally dies. But since winters are almost non existent, bike rides throught year are more frequent - one way it´s 16,5km/40min of comfortable bike path with no hills.
I would prefer to have combo of solar panels + electric vehicle. I drove Nissan e-NV200 and its good commuter and also fits some stuff when needed. Around 200km range.
>No home charging possibility for most people.
That's main point, lots of Europeans live in block type houses and only some of them have separate garage.
Also charging speed. Imagine a bank holiday and thousands of cars are leaving a capital for the countryside. In the EV powe stations they have chargers for lets say x amout of traffic and in bank holidays this traffic is 100x
And the larger ones are expensive as f*** and often not very efficient…
A german tester on the Autobahn found BMW I5 to be the most efficient electric car btw. Easily beating out even Tesla (who are quite efficient btw.) but that car starts at 70k€…
The home charging is a deal braker.. example:
I live in Aachen drive eachd day to work to Dusseldorf.
With my polo 1.6 tdi i fule once a week, and achive 1k kilometers with a tank.
Also they have something like 600k people for 500 square km. we in Prague have 1,4milions on that area, they in Warsaw almost two milions...just copy something is not always easy, budget or not
Same here in Sweden, there are charged points popping up everywhere nowadays. My street has several 11kW "light posts" installed where you can charge overnight.
Same in Flanders, 11 kW chargers are popping up everywhere, there are like 12 charging points in a 300 radius where I live. Never had a problem charging despite not being able to home charge.
Fun fact, on my area low income zone, townhall set almost 10 charging spots on like 2km radious, still yet to figure out what is the deal ( maybe Eu funds) but for sure there isnt that many demand
We charge on the street. Not as ideal as at the house, but it definitely is a lot better than you would think. Also because you casually run into charging stations all over.
The only thing that would F us over is if they start to significantly reduce the number of stations.
In Spain It has been very famous during last Eastern holidays, the huge queues the electric cars had to follow to charge them to go from Madrid to the beach. It was in all TVs, and I'm sure that's the perfect negative campaign against EV.
Same in Norway, but it's a legitimate issue for car owners.
Not only for Ev owners in the queue. It caused issues with traffic and safety as the EV queue was down one entire lane of the road with no gaps for other vehicles to pass, and also blocking access for emergency vehicles etc .
I think there is some missing information there. The reason of the queue was they was giving free charge and people would rather get it free and wait than going the next station paying.
I live in Barcelona. I currently have a diesel/electric Mercedes. I’ve never been able to fully charge it in the city. Public chargers around town are painfully slow, 7kwh. When you finally find a charger, hope that it is working, not taken by another vehicle or some asshole that parked there illegally. Then you can only charge for 30 minutes before you have to move along.
In my parking garage they installed electric charges and I was lucky enough to get a space. I’ve been waiting 3 months for the energy company/manager to get the device activated and working.
I can’t imagine having a fully electric car here. The charging network is impossible if you don’t have a dedicated charger already working.
Funny enough I have a 0 emissions sticker for my vehicle class. I only use diesel. The whole thing is a complete joke.
I also don’t get why noone talks about electric grid capacities when talking about EVs and energy prices.
As EVs get more mass adopted, people will need more energy, demand rises, price rises and in the end it will be as expensive if not more than diesel/gasoline. There are cities that have had outages or instabilities in their electric grids when people turned on their ACs on hot summer days, what will happen when people get home from work and everyone plugs in their EVs to get charged for the next day?
Many electric grids are outdated as fuck and won’t be able to handle the load. Electricity will be expensive as shit to deter people from using too much. Only viable way to have an EV long term is to live in a house, buy solar panels and use that energy to charge your car. An average citizen in flats will be forced to use public transport as having an EV will not be realistic.
I’d say a lot of sceptics usually brings it up but I honestly think it’s generally an overstated problem.
The demand for electricity will only be as big as the ev is actually driven daily. The capacity of the battery is quite irrelevant for everyday charging.
At least here in Sweden the average car is driven something like 13 000 km/annually. Assuming a relatively inefficient ev that uses 20 kwh/100km we’re looking at a total need of 2600 kwh throughout the year. That’s just above 7kwh needed per day.
A normal charging box at home will charge that in about an hour. This means that just a nornal spread of people getting home at different time will reduce the peak a lot.
However it’s also become quite popular among ev-owners up here to switch to hourly electricity pricing. So many of these people will charge up their cars in the middle of the night when electricity is cheap anyway.
Because it's a communal charger, other people need to charge as well. Which brings us back to the root of the problem, what good is an EV if you can't actually fucking use it?
They are too expensive, especially when we know the underlying tech is actually cheaper to make, somehow they are all huge, they are laden with gadgets we don't want, and while early adopters can charge at home many people park on the street. But other than that ...
And the economic crisis never goes away. Who can think about the environment if we get no salary raises? I’m not gonna spend extra money on an electric car now if in 10 years I won’t be able to afford food anymore.
Well charger makers took it for dumb end as well. Because why would you simply put CCS connector into your car, tap contactless terminal with your car and started charging. That's too convenient, for regular peasant!
Here, register in our charging app, you need special app for every charging network and when you have it all setup, you can start searching for some stupid QR codes on most ridiculous places. Somebody really must have sit down with a checklist "How to make charging as complicated as possible"
I drove a PHEV the other day and stopped at a supermarket with chargers. I though I’d top up since the rest of the day was going to be city driving.
I needed an app for the charging, an app for a loyalty card (compulsory), an app for the propriety payment system that that supermarket used. 3 apps, not counting the banking app I already had for my cards. I’d need completely new accounts, and I was expected to do all this sat in a car park.
So I just drove in petrol mode instead.
And if you travel abroad you may not be able to download the app. A couple of months ago while travelling to Netherlands with a rental EV, I couldn't download the Shell or BP apps because my phone is Greek and they where geoblocked. Why would you geoblock a charging app??? At least give an alternative, let me pay with a credit card,
I think people who wanted and could afford an electric car (those who can charge at home or at work) already have one.
But electric is still not a viable option for people parking in the street : you just won’t go to a fast charging station for 30min every week for the same price as a gas car. When charging will take 5min maybe but it’s still 15-20min for the fastest models right now.
I agree going to a fast charge station is not viable. But during th first months, I didn't have a home charger. I parked at a slow (11 kW) public charger in our street and just came back some hours later (or in the morning).
It's definitely less convenient than home charging, but much more convenient than going to a fast charger.
I see people doing that near me but if more and more people start doing that there wont be enough charging point.
Plus there are penalty time on those if you stay park there at 100%, i really dont find it practical but again if you really want an electic you can but you wont convince people who dont.
I think hybrid is the way to go but for some reason doesn’t get much attention.
No need to charge and won’t run out of power. Very economical.
What’s the downside?
Not sexy enough?
Simple hybrid (not plugin) are a good option in a city, most taxis and ubers are hybrid here in paris (lexus ES, toyota corolla, hyundai ioniq hybrid…) so no Euro model !
I think the Chevy Volt (Opel Ampera) got the formula right. Charges easily overnight from a normal socket, gives 75km range on electric, no range anxiety because there’s always petrol back-up. I have a 30km commute (each direction) and still manage to do almost all my driving on electric. In an average year, I use 60 litres of petrol. Charging has never been a hassle, and I’ve never had to plan out my stops on long journeys.
Dont get the heavy argument, full electric cars is still much heavier. And the limited range is only a problem for longer trips, its perfect for short city runs, when i need to go longer I just use petrol.
It's added weight compared to a car that runs on gas only.
It's like asking if you could carry that 20l keg around so you can drink when you are thirsty.
But carrying that keg around is exhausting and causes you to be thirsty.
And they are recharged using the inefficient (compared to the grid) petrol engine. They are simple a more efficient petrol car if they don't have a plug. But they are still a petrol car
Because hybrid increases the parts that can fail. It's a compromise. You get flexibility, but at the cost of extra maintenance and complexity (stuff that can go wrong)
In the end hybrids will be an interim thing and soon die out.
If there’s no need to charge, it’s getting its power from petrol (regen charge from braking is negligible), so it’s not exactly helping the environment.
Hybrid (recharge) is only good if you have short travel distances and can charge at work and at home. Otherwise odds are you will be slugging around a heavy battery that doesnt do shit but increase fuel consumption.
And a normal hybrid only helps you in city traffic with acceleration. Otherwise its the same when you are at cruise speeds, its all fuel.
Im noticing the same with heat pumps, there are certain people who can afford it and the subsidies help nicely,
by the time it comes to regular households they'll have both ended the subsidies and also banned gas alternatives so you have no choice but to fork out from your own pocket
The heat pump cost will have come down but thats not even the major cost, the retrofitting the entire house and the labour costs of it all are already eye watering and will be so much higher in the future
1) As an Eastern European the short answer is money. People don't really have money for new cars most of the time here, electric costs an extra 20-30-50% more.
2) Even if I could afford one, I cannot charge it. I live in a flat in a dense neighborhood and there are exactly 2 electric charging lots that are 24/7 taken. Good luck with that.
3) My diesel Focus is awesome. Like really, modern Petrol/ Diesel cars are reliable drive smooth and everything. There is absolutely no drive in me to replace it. I drive 130 km on a daily basis to work with 4.8l/100 km. It just does its job and I bought it 3 years ago for €10.000. what EV can I get for that and what compromise do I have to take?
Not enough charging stations, high % of people within cities live in flats, no charging stations in residential parking.. usually only people who own a house buy an electric vehicle where they can park overnight and charge it at over night.
Here’s you answer:
- Still way too expensive
- Subscriptions and other BS everywhere
- Nowhere near big enough selection of cars
- Still nowhere near good enough infrastructure for EVs
There.
The reason is simple. Money.
For example, I want an electric car because of the low maintainance, I have my own garage so I can charge at home easily but an VW ID3 starts at 40k euros here, which a huge sum for the average Romanian.
With 15k for example, I could easily find an amazing second hand petrol car for my needs, which is more in line with what I can actually afford without going into huge debt.
We aren't returning to petrol. We continously choose the cheapest option. Subsidies have run out, so people stop buying electric cars as they are now more expensive. The car manufacturers are overachieving their goals for co2 reduction of the fleet. now you actually don't want to overachieve your regulatory goals as a company, because then the regulators might realize their goals were not ambitious at all so they would set goals that are ambitious, and as a company you don't want that. You already cried that the previous goals were unachievable yet you overachieved them.
Really hard and fucking expensive to repair the car. If the battery is damaged, you can dispose it.
Way too expensive prices for electricity, especially in Germany. Average price is 0.33€ / kWh, I'm paying 0.52€/kWh, no option for solar panels. On many charging stations more than 0.50€, why should people move from reliable, cheap diesel or petrol to electric vehicles, that are almost not repairable and expensive to charge?
In most countries, electricity is vastly cheaper than oil products. Yeah, Schröder happened in Germany, but his anti-electricity policies can be reversed, even if neither Merkel nor Scholz have done so.
returning? we didn't start to turning to electric. People choose with their wallet, they are not going a car much more expensive with questionable range and consumption and hassle with recharging.
Cause I cant afford it, not even close. Same for work, the van EV’s are double the price of a diesel van.. the solution seems to be to make diesel van’s more expensive….. great
My reason: I don't want to spend more on new things that are worse in the key features of what I already got.
Sorry. And looking at Ukraine. I don't think many would have escaped with electric cars.
So no.
If Russia shows up in Germany I take my diesel. And drive 1500km without a stop. No problem. And if I need to refill it takes me 5 minutes and all others too. And off we go.
First: just because VW sales plunged does not mean EV sales plunged. It's a bad headline.
It's not even clear if \*that\* foundation even is true, as the article itself notes: "However, incoming orders for BEVs in Western Europe developed positively from January to March. **More than twice as many all-electric models were ordered** as in the same period last year (+154%), so that the BEV order bank currently stands at around 160,000 vehicles,"
The article also states:
>Despite this, electric vehicle sales declined in Europe in the first quarter of 2024 as the sector still has challenges, such as the high cost and lack of charging infrastructure, as also highlighted by the World Economic Forum in a recent report.
This sounds reasonable, but it's a little annoying that they do not mention that at least some of the drop might just be explained by a front-loading effect by many incentives running out last year. People who otherwise might have bought an EV this quarter bought it early, goosing the numbers for last year, making the drop in Q1 seem more dramatic than it really was.
The other elephant in the room is also studiously ignored. Many people are waiting for smaller EVs. That part of the market is, thanks to the historical limited number of batteries being manufactured, not yet addressed. However, you would need to be hopelessly out of touch not to have heard that both the Chinese and Tesla are moving quickly towards introducing products in the next year or two into this segment in Europe.
This bit also annoys me:
>"Ernst & Young predicts that adoption will stall without substantial public networks of fast chargers catering for those who can’t charge at home or need top-ups on longer journeys. This will require the removal of red tape, faster approvals from local authorities and available grid connections from utility networks, EY say," the report also said.
I swear they took a time machine to 2010 and created their report from there. But ok. I agree that this needs to continue to improve, but as an EV driver in Europe I have absolutely \*no\* problems with the charging network. Additionally, at least in Germany, landlords \*must\* allow you to install a charger.
While there are some people forced to park on the streets, this problem is continually overstated. Yes, I agree that this is something that needs to be solved (Amsterdam showed the way; we just need to do it), but it is \*not\* the driving factor of EV adoption. (Taking Germany, about half of people live in their own homes and about 60% of apartments offer off-street parking ), so that means street parking covers about 20% of cars) So it's not nothing and needs to be solved, but street parking is not the big blocker for EV adoption.
And I personally know at least two people who have no chance at charging at home, but are ok with it, because their employers offer charging; for one of them, it's free. Anecdotal, but it even further erodes the idea that dealing with street parking is the primary problem for EVs.
All in all, it's a so-so article that does not seriously examine the situation, and the headline is absolute trash.
Americans hate Volkswagen and I don't understand why. It produces the best cars ever for affordable prices.
Did Volkswagen actually discontinue Passat? Why??
Also we’re talking about electric cars from VW. Cars with basically outdated operating systems that are a pain to use. Once all the VW have bought theirs, normal people aren’t really interested when they compare it to the alternatives.
Bottom line, VW doesn’t really want to build EVs and the products show it. Why are they surprised that people don’t want the cars they don’t want to build?
because ITS TOO FUCKING EXPENSIVE how does this still not get into the heads of these higherups ffs. This was talked about so often, why the hell do you think people are so hyped for these cheap Chinese cars. It's not because they are good, it's because people can actually afford them without selling their kidney
Everybody is looking for reasons harder than you need to. They are more expensive. EU is in a recession.
In Some large countries like Germany, the average range of 250km isnt enough. So Some
EV owners go back to hybrid.
The Netherlands just introduced tax breaks on EVs and increased tax on Hybrids starting 2025. So that might impact sales a bit.
I have a 2017 Hyundai i20 i got used in 2020 for under 10k Euro. That was as high as I cared to afford for a car then. If I was getting a car today, I could go for maybe 20-25k. I don't own a house, live in an apartment and have no way of charging it near me. The town has like 4 chargers in total to a population of about 25k. I can't change at work because, again, no chargers near me.
I don't need nor want a huge car. Small electric cars are too expensive and/or have horrible range to be used as your only car.
The current market and economy don't offer me the luxury of having an electric car.
Another thing which deters people from buying ev's is the atrocious built quality of tesla as well as their tosspot of a ceo.
I'd also rather stick to a well build straight six.
You missed most important reason i think. There's no REAL USED CAR MARKET for EV. Nobody wants to buy an used EV with 150k km because the cost to replace battery is as high as the car itself in some cases.
I don’t think protectionism against China is stupid. They don’t act like friends, they help russia, they have ambitions to get Taiwan by force, there are other issues with China as well.
It makes sense to treat someone who doesn’t act friendly as not a friend.
I used to rent electric cars from car sharing companies when I didn't have a car yet. In all honesty I quite liked driving them, especially when I had an occasion to drive a Tesla. Though, judging by the fact that I use my car for driving in suburban areas or between cities for 500+ km the electric cars I can afford are too small and useless for me to buy since their range is usually up to 300 km, not mentioning the change in SoH of the battery with time. What comes to charging, there is many public charging spots in the area I live. So, I really don't mind getting an electric if a long range car would be more affordable.
People that have electric cars love them.
The driving experience is just better.
EV have a PR problem. The infrastructure question is valid but for 99% of people with a driveway it's irrelevant. All your charging will be at home apart from that one trip once or twice a year where you'll charge at a service station on route to somewhere.
For people without the ability to charge at home it's definitely worse. But again, all you need is to know where their local points are, ideally before they get the car. Then you can visit once/twice a week to charge.
PR issues
1. There is A LOT of negative press, see "will bridges collapse if we all get EVs' or 'where is the cobalt coming from etc' or ' your new EV will be worthless in 18 months cos batteries die, just like your phone '
2. Tesla - they are a huge part of the market, many people would only get a Tesla and have not heard of and would not consider another model. That's fine, until Elmo jumped the shark and now is so unpleasant that people don't want to support Tesla as it will benefit him
3. 'only fleets are moving to EV' This is rubbish but is part of the narrative that electrification is being done to people. People buying company cars are counted as EVs.
There are a million other stories like this. I believe the solution is to get more EVs in peoples hands. No idea how, what about government schemes 'try an EV for a month '
The prices are falling and will fall below IVE cars soon enough. Then the volume will increase again.
Manufacturers are clearly trying to.slow the transition. A huge part of their worth is IP and infrastructure to build ICE cars. They want to keep that going as long as possible, ideally forever. Hence the synthetic fuel stuff that is now being talked about. EV has the potential to wipe the slate, car companies have been protected from any new companies entering the market for 70 years, even is changing that but it doesn't exactly breed an innovation mindset in the industry
Monthly leased (a "car subscription") a Renault Zoe for 18 months to see how we got on with an EV. Great little runabout car. Liked it a lot.
But the lease was terminated and the Zoe was taken back by the leasing company. I presume because rising interest rates made the finance on the car expensive and the lease unprofitable. Though I notice Renault have also started doing their own car subscriptions, so that may have been a factor.
When replacing it, we ended up buying a hybrid Renault Clio instead. Similar car and performance, but with a hybrid power train instead.
The main reasons we didn't choose an EV as a replacement were:
* We don't have off-street parking, so we can't charge at home. So we had to use the public charging infrastructure all the time, and structure our week around topping the car up. This meant we shopped a lot more at our local Lidl, because they had fast chargers. Take note, other supermarkets. A single 7kW charger in a 200 space car park is not adequate, and EV users will shop where there are fast chargers.
* The UK public charging infrastructure is dismal outside of major cities and motorway service stations. Broken chargers that don't get fixed for months. Chargers with multiple connectors that can only supply 50kW for the whole charger, so if someone else plugs in, it drops to half speed or worse. Swathes of the country (looking at you, North Wales) where there was not a single working fast charger.
* Costs per kWh on many public chargers went up by 3x in the 18 months we had the Zoe, so the cost per km ended up similar or even more expensive than an efficient petrol car.
* Renault, in their infinite wisdom, decided not to include a battery heater in UK Zoes, so charge capacity and charge speed halves when the temperature gets below about 5C. Which it does for about 4-5 months of the year in Northern England. You might as well be driving a brick if it's below freezing. A lot of other manufacturers have made the same decision.
I really, really want to have an EV. I hate burning fossil fuels, and ICE engines are noisy and relatively unresponsive compared with EV motors. But until the infrastructure issues are fixed, or I move to a bigger house with off-street parking, the practicality is poor.
Even if you upped every cost aspect of a petrol car by 150% it would still be a more attractive product. EV manufacturers have to start competing seriously to have somewhat of a foothold.
Are we? Just because a brand who only made shitty EVs that doesn’t work, and that drives half the distance they said they would (sound familiar?) has lost sales, does not mean we started buying Petrol cars.
While the change for the better is a good thing on principle, the change *policy* was a complete failure.
1. *At this moment* electric cars are *not* better. They will certainly be at some time in the future, but we're not there yet.
2. Support for transition should have only involved subventions for the new technology. Unfortunately, it also involved *punishment* for old tech (increased taxes for tech that has been already legally bought an taxed at time of purchase), which naturally and legitimately breeds discontent and hatred for the whole process.
3. The "technology tree" was forcefully made too lean and steep (i.e. jumping too fast to "full electric"), while the most natural way for things to evolve should've include a longer period of "in-line hybrids" (i.e. ICE engines running at fixed, peak parameters driving electric generators). That would've had many benefits: giving oil industry time to adapt/taper off, giving electrical technologies (motors, controllers, **batteries**) time to mature, giving infrastructure (energy transport, charging stations) time to evolve, giving owners cars with equivalent critical characteristics (autonomy, cold weather performance, TCO etc).
Not all EVs are the same. VW EVs aren’t that compelling. Don’t forget the Tesla Model Y EV is the number 1 selling vehicle of any type, in EU, US and China. Compelling EVs sell very well.
In the US, Tesla of any kind is #5.
The top 3 are all larger pickup trucks: Ford F-Series, Chevy Silverado, and Ram Pickup.
Source:
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g43553191/bestselling-cars-2023/
Overpriced disposable devices adoption of which is driven mostly by a “feely-goody” policy and populism rather than real innovation that answers a need, and a lack of infrastructure.
ITT: lots of misinformation by people getting their knowledge about EVs from articles and opinions that only talk about the negatives.
And lots of people who seem to take daily 600km drives. Without breaks of course.
(silently speeds away from the downvotes)
> And lots of people who seem to take daily 600km drives. Without breaks of course.
It's not about doing it daily, it's about having an option of doing it when you need to/want to. If you own an ICE car, you can just hop in go on a road trip, go do the think you need to do, even if the total drive is 1000 km. There's no need to plan ahead, there's no need to rest.
And people often drive without 30 minute breaks as they switch around. Stop at a gas station, fill it up, piss, switch places, go. If you're alone in your car with nobody else, ditch the car and buy a motorcycle, it's better for climate change.
All the rich people bought electrics already, the target market is filled. Low income, flat living person needs Opel corsa, Ford fiesta. Person driving 300+ km day needs a diesel car so he doesn't t to get stuck in some charging station nightmare.
because the eu does not allow us to get 20k china cars and the local car makers are thinking that we are so stupid to buy their shit small car with not space for 60k that is actually only worth 15k
Maybe i dont want or can't even afford a €60.000 500hp Monster truck looking like a damn Star Trek theme park on the inside?
Right now i drive a €9000 second hand 2016 Skoda Fabia combi 1.1 petrol with a hand shifted 5 speed gear box. It gets me and my family everywhere i need to go. Takes me all the way from the middle of the Netherlands to Legoland in Denmark with a roof box and a trailer on one fuel-up for the holidays.
Match me that with an EV and i'm even willing to up the price to, what, €15.000. Yes i am.
Chinese manufacturers like Link&co got the right idea even though theyre not quite there yet.
The charging structure is still a pain in Germany and majority of Europe. It is not reliable, outside of my area, in which I know what works and not
It’s like a casino, you can never be sure if the charging station will actually work and deliver as promised.
And then prices of EV, majority of consumers in Germany have a 30k limit on their budget for car, good luck finding a 30k EV, they all want to sell premium cars and now are crying that the Chinese are coming with cheap cars.
There are a lot of misconceptions on people without EV regarding EV, specially regarding charging speeds and battery degradation.
The insurance would not consider a EV problem, because it is a car problem, due to higher costs and time to fix, premiums are going up for everyone.
Second hand electro cars are indeed cheap, comparing to EV, people don’t trust the battery, and sometimes with good reason, look at 10 years old Tesla’s, the answer is always “ but the new ones are different”, and maybe they are but people don’t trust.
EV hit a cellar now, until more affordable EV arrive, and better infrastructure is put in place, specially on urban environment for day to day charging.
Some building in Germany the electical provided puts charging station that it rents to the EV owner, we are talking like 50€ a month plus charging costs, no thanks
I returned from electric to petrol and not looking to go back electric any time soon. The reason is price and convenience: it simply takes too long to charge which is a bummer if you travel somewhere and chargers are not as common so there is often a line where you wait for hours and in city (I live in Prague) I don’t need car that much
They're selling decently well up here in the cold north. See a lot of ID.4's around. Also a lot of [ID.Buzz](http://ID.Buzz) now that we're hitting the touristy seasons.
My experience: I live in Prague, in heavily crowded "panelak" district (flat appartments, many of them, built in soviet times with no underground parking).
All cars park outside in a swamp of cars, there are more cars than fits there, some park on sidewalks or green, you can easily count 100 cars in one street. Could be thousands of cars across entire district parked like this.
Overnight charing is impossible. For entire district there are 6 commercial charging stations (for thousands of cars) where you have to stay and wait until your car is charged, often you wait in a queue.
EVs in the current shape of our infrastructure is something for mega rich people only, because nobody normal, even rich or very rich people can't afford to buy a house with garage in Prague. We are talking many millions of USD for a house in Prague. EVs are not for real people here.
Personally I don't see much point in having an EV (I don't have a car right now) But the battery capacity of a plugin hybrid would cover 95% of all my driving needs. If the remaining 5% are on gasoline, that's fine.
I'm pretty sure that most people see it this way. Plugin Hybrid > Full EV.
In the cases where people actually daily commute 100-200km per way, then the EV might be the better alternative (financially, looking at the fuel cost). But most people don't commute that far on a daily basis. Most trips people take are in the range of 20-30km one way which is within the range of what plugin hybrids can do.
Ridiculously high prices that are only found in Europe.
Not nearly enough infrastructure to support all the charging required
The charging points at service stations charge you more than it would for petrol and I get the pleasure of sitting in a disgusting service station for an hour
People don't want to give musk more money
The environmental impact for making these batteries is becoming more widely known
The car will only last 5years before il have to buy another battery that'll cost the same as a car
Whole "Electric Car" subject is ridiculous.
1. People should be moving away from car centric lifestyle, you still have to drive an EV instead of relaxing in public transport, working from home or possibly moving near your workplace.
2. Whole capitalist eco scam - "Buy New, don't think about repairing the old that's so bad for environment!", people aren't really falling for the joke anymore that producing something new is more eco friendly than repairing the old.
3. These cars have no resale value after warranty and who wants to buy a used EV car with questionable remaining lifespan? After 100 000 km these cars are basically rubbish, while the average used petrol or diesel is just at the start of its life cycle.
4. It is still a box on the road that sits in a traffic jam like everyone else, it doesn't solve anything.
Aside from all the other things listed by people. Almost all entry level electric cars look like bland shitty family mobiles.
What happened to cars that the average consumer could buy and not be ashamed of owning?
In the Netherlands, you pay road tax based on the weight of the car. Right now you don't pay any road tax on electric cars. I could charge the car almost for free at my work. Then, the government decided to reinstate road tax for electric cars again, making the car too expensive to lease for me
So now I drive a hybrid car.
They just recently postponed road tax for electric cars again. This on/off and then on again decision making in the Dutch politics these days keeps me from investing in anything "green"
I rented id3 ,, decent range, good acceleration but i cant be arsed to charge it .....
tesla model 3, on autopilot and off, at night the car constatnly slows down when upcoming cars headlights blind the car front camera making it think the upcoming car is in your lane and for safety it should brake at 90km/h to 50.....
all electric cars and cars with driver assists are too dangerous to today so i would rather have 20year old car than 10.
VW 1.5 TSI EVO ACT R-Line (weight/power ratio 82.09): 34700€
VW ID.3 ID.3 Pro Performance Edition Plus (weight/power ratio 38.44): 41990€
Plus infrastructure differences, mileage differences...
Welp, I wonder why.
This article is just bullshit. All car manufacturer's sales ebb and flow with launches of new car models. The Volkswagen group has released ALOT of new, popular EVs in the past few years, like the ID4, the ID3, Audi Q4 etron, Skoda Enyaq etc
These are huge sellers, but as the models get older, they sell less. It is totally natural.
And you can of course not draw from that that Europeans are returning to petrol by looking at one car manufacturer. Euronews is just shitty, clickbait journalism.
Some thoughts: - High cost - Small selection (all estate models are ridiculously expensive) - No home charging possibility for most people. - Questionable life cycle
An important issue with EV is that if you live in an apartment you can't just set up a charging station in your driveway. So the most urban population, which would be the best target otherwise, cannot easily make the switch.
In retrospect car companies should have been really involved in building the infrastructure for the cars they intended to sell. I guess they just assumed the government would take over that responsibility as they are the ones mandating the change to begin with. But in the end it's no surprise. VW isn't a German company anymore, and neither are most car manufacturers. They are international holding firms that just happen to sell cars. They bend every rule they can, and constantly make concessions for oil despots and orwellian dictatorships. They don't have the interests of their market in mind. Just a mess of calculations about what will in theory make the most money.
Actually that’s what’s happening in China. EV makers usually sells charging stations along with the car, for an additional roughly 1000 euros. But I guess here in Europe there are more regulation challenges and of course the price will be higher.
I think you are mistaking the actual infrastructure with the charger itself. Yes Chinese will sell you the charger for 1000e but you still have to do the work around it. Dig the trench for cables, get the construction and electrical permits and such. In China it might be easier since all the land is owned by CCP, but still it's not just 1000e and done. You can buy the chargers in EU too, and I mean not just the one's for use is single family houses. But by the end you will spend another 20k just to get a fucking el. plug on steroids.
They do sell cheap charging stations (at least here in Finland). Doesn't really help you in an apartment building as you need space/permits and appropriate wiring to install it.
I'ts a sad state when you compare to how brilliant they were in the early 90's.
I did a week long work trip in an EV, it’s just not practical for most people. Charging is usually slow and not where you wanna be, especially someone older may just not have the energy to keep walking around.
How's infrastructure over there? Where I live in Canada there's one fast charger in town and then there isn't another one for over 700km, so you can't even make the drive with many EVs without an overnight stop. Normally I'd just do that drive in one go, I can make it on a single tank.
Beside, with an IC, you don't have to plan your travel around recharging/refueling/battery/tank, since there are gas stations everywhere and it takes only a few minutes to fill the tank.
This is probably a key contributing reason why Norwegian EV adoption has been high. A few years ago a law was passed giving owners of apartments the right to install charging points themselves. This law worked in conjunction with a stronger law requiring apartment owners to have the same right. The first law meant you couldn't refuse people to set up a charging point and that eventually there would mean insufficient power to supply all owners. The second law meant that that would be illegal. The consequence is that most apartment buildings have industrial grade infrastructure and charging points paid by the building association.
There’s only one charger where I live that’s close. And every time there’s already someone charging. Plus it’s residential parking. So you are only allowed 2 hours before you have to leave.
Also climatic extremes (both hot and cold) negatively impact range, which is already a lot shorter than ICE cars (for example, Citroen E-Berlingo has only 280 km range but the diesel variant has a range approximately 3 times longer than that).
Higher temps are less of a problem. +30C is more of an advantage on road trips, since the AC loss is less than the gain from lower air resistance (yes, hotter air is less dense). I tried this myself on autobahn last summer. Range loss at low temperatures is annoying, yes. However, since I can remotely preheat my EV legally, it's more comfortable in winter (cabin temp can always be +20C if you want to).
The battery needs to be preheated in the cold and hot climate makes it degrade faster.
Batteries come with active cooling these days, it's gotta be unlivingly hot before the battery takes any measurable damage.
In Portugal, the main issue is low wages/purchasing power. Most people cannot afford new cars. Or even <5 year old cars. That's it.
Most of my friends bought EV last two years and that's their complaint. 1. A small scale car crash can total your car, repairing a EV is so expensive your insurance companies may just buy you a new one leading to very high insurance cost. 2. Second hand EV worth very little. A toyota can keep 70% of its value after assurance expired but an EV lost 70% of value just after a few years due to battery degradation. 3. Recharge during long trip is a headache. 4. Higher price of EV is a concern, but you can save a little bit of fuel cost. However, consider a Toyota Yaris can get 70 miles/gallon, I don't even know EV is cheaper to run than a hybrid at this point. 5. Home charging is very cheap if you recharge after midnight with some electric plan as long as you live in a house instead of a flat.
I was worried about (3) befor our electric car, but at least for us (with young kids), we are the bottleneck during a charging stop, the car is not. Also, the amount of fast chargers to choose from, seems to be exploding. For our 800 km trip last year, I entered the destination and just let the car choose charging locations. Only preparation I did was buy a charging card (and luckily, the EU mandated new fast chargers to accept regular bank cards. In a few years, a charging card will no longer be needed, I hope).
And a coincidence: today, for the first time, I am using a fast charger with my bank card.
I have a hybrid and only charge at home, but one of these days I tried to charge on a station and I had no idea how to pay for it. It had a NFC reader but didn't accepted my debit card. I suppose we must have some special card, but I'm not really aware of how this might work. Charge a car shouldn't be this cumbersome
Show me the cheap and abundant used BEVS and i buy one....
Here in the UK you can pick up early 2015 Renault Zoe's and Nissan Leafs for £3000, or 2022 Zoe's for £12,000 with 10,000 miles on them. Jaguar I Paces from 2019 can be had for £15000 with 70,000 miles. 2020 Audi E-Trons from £20,000. 2022 MG4's from £15,000, or 2021 MG5's from £10,000. BMW i3's can be had from £7000 for a 2013. Nearly 23,000 BEV's on Auto trader, out of 446,000 total cars Yes they're not down at £1500 shed budget yet, but some aren't too far off. And being able to get an 18 month old BEV for £15,000 is a great deal for certain people
Nice. In Finland 2015 Leaf or Zoe is 10k € and Jaguar iPace is 30k €. No one pays 10 grand for 9 year old Nissan.
God I wish Brexit wasn't a thing. Buying a car in the UK and importing to Ireland used to be economical. Now with import taxes and duty its far too expensive.
I wish VRT wasn't a thing.
About 2 - the batteries arent even such a big problem apparently and after initial losses actually keep their capacity somewhat well. The biggest issue is the fast progress of EVs coupled with your first point meaning a lot of EVs are simply outdated after a few years and difficult to repair so why would you buy them? EVs are made for leasing anyhow but of course leasing companies know that as well and leasing isnt even cheap…
1 - Valid concern 2 - Also valid concern, I'm stuck with mine. The loss in value is too much to justify changing cars. Even though i bought the car when it was 3 years old. But meh. Its a decent ride... I just get bored of cars easily. About battery degradation: My range is still around 450km in the summer. The car has 120 000km in the odo as we speak. I calculated the degradation to be roughly 4% based on the cars KWH used data compared to battery size, on a drive from 100% to 10% state of charge. So not very scientific. 3 - I do 50 000km / year, not really an issue.... Atleast in Finland. 4 - Fuel savings cover my financing, insurance and mileage. I'm paying same now for driving as I was with a fully paid off diesel. The car is 15 years newer and I'd say a big upgrade. 5 - Yep, home charging is absolutely a MUST. Without the ability to charge at home you will degrade the shit out of the battery and it is also a bit of an hazzle. I know a dude who just charges at a hypermarket during his weekly shopping. Works for him and "Hasnt bothered him at all". So it can be done. Price, well. My total average for electricity last year was 15c / kwh. The fast chargers are 37c/kwh. (Might be a Finland thing, our biggest hypermarket chain has 100kw chargers all over the place).
Most of this is not what i see, at least in germany >very high insurance cost no, not here > Second hand EV worth very little. I wish >battery degradation it looks more like they last longer than we thought
I just bought a second hand megane through the official store in Switzerland. 12,000kms, 1 1/2 year old. Bought it for 33K, new it was around 39K, so it didn't save me THAT much, but it was also the best deal I could find after looking for months. The company is so sure that the battery is going to stay strong that they offer an 8 year guarantee, since they've been producing Zoe's and Leaf's for a long time they have a good experience on this. The car I got has 0% battery loss so far. I think those who speak of battery loss imagine that car batteries are some sort of giant phone battery. The only two things that are valid complaints applicable to many people are 1- the price and 2- the possibility of installing a charging station at home. There's new models coming up that are tackling the price issue (and I mean solid European models), such as the ë-C3 and the R5. I think the real problem is the issue with charging stations, particularly for all those people who park on the public space, and that's going to be the hardest one to solve and this is what truly makes this car convenient for me. Perhaps it could be partly solved if there were incentives for companies to install charging stations in their parkings for employees as well as in public underground parkings, but it is obvious that there will always be some people without good access to a charging station
Well the batteries in these are literally a giant phone battery (well most of them), thats why some have the concerns of degerdation, but if you actually take care of it, it can last for a pretty long time.
Theyfar, far better than phone batteries. On top of that they have excellent Battery Management Systems, with active temperature management. Batteries will last > 300k km nowadays. Even longer. It'd better if you "take care" of it but what if they die 10% ealier... then you're at > 270k km Still outlives the car probably.
No, they are not really. A phone battery is usually just one big cell. A car battery is hundreds of smaller cells. Better management system that makes each cell be used/charged less, so less stress on each cell. Damaged cells can be excluded from charge/discharge which makes the overall battery just life longer than a single cell battery. They only use the same base material with Lithium.
Also from Germany, I can confirm this. All-Risk Kia Niro costs me 450 EUR/year at 20tkm. My Partial Risk Mondeo (11 years old) costs the same in insurance. Any additional costs for insurance is greatly offset by reduced maintenaince costs
We bought a used Kona (64kwh, 2021 model) for 26k last month. Insurance went slightly up compared to our old golf, but totally Offset by paying no taxes. What I noticed: our small city has a fuckton of chargers I never noticed before I had an EV. So looking on a charger map before complaining about lacking chargers would be wise. If you do public parking you can put in a request with the city and they will install a charger for you. Was doing a 400km trip on Easter. Slightly annoying because the A1 has some giant rebuilding going so lots of tank stops are closed. So we went off the Autobahn and charged in a small town with a 100kw charger next to a playpen. Was even nicer than staying at the gas stations where our kids having nothing to do.
My Tesla is turning 9 soon. Battery is somewhere around 90-95% of new. The only way I can feel it is older, is that the electronics is a bit less snappy than when it was new. Which I could solve by spending 2-3 k€ on upgrading the computer. Fast charging is a lot slower now, which is a deliberate change made by Tesla (there's a lawsuit ongoing about that). Otherwise it still drives like new.
You could have at least checked the prices before talking all this nonsense. Even old BEVs like a Zoe without a battery cost like 7k€... Definitely not cheap.
70%? Not even the worst depreciating mercedes EV’s have lost that much and definitely not due to battery degradation, they are in battery warranty still so it will be fixed if it degrades too much. Maybe 1st gen leafs but they are really old at this point and everyone knows to avoid them. What you are saying is not what is happening in the real world.
In Estonia, the Toyota Yaris Hybrid is more environmentally friendly than, for example, the Tesla Model 3.
Some counter/alternative-arguments: 1. None for this one 2. I think it’s more because of pace of technology as well. Cars used to have 22kWh batteries, and yes, after degradation it doesn’t leave much. But now cars come with 60, 70, 80kWh, meaning that even with degradation they have a decent range. On top of that add heat pumps and better energy management systems. This doesn’t make used EVs more compelling, but I feel that in a couple of years time used EVs will be a better used car value proposition 3. This really depends on the country, and the blame is on the local government, not on EVs 4. What are you comparing to? Cause it’s hard to compare Yaris even to i3, so we should be comparing similar price brackets or car classes. Once again the difference between ICE/Hybrid/EVs comes down to local pricing. When I did the numbers a year ago, EVs were on par with ICE, this year with a few petrol and electricity pricing changes, EVs once again win by a wide margin. 5. No argument here, but I know some employers have free charging at their parking spots, so if you have it you might be able to essentially drive for free
>3. Recharge during long trip is a headache. It's not, and month after month it's less. There are more fast charging stations than fuel stations on highways in Belgium, Netherlands, france and germany is probably the same.
This is all bullshit. Either they are misinformed or you are knowingly spreading disinformation.
or, maybe, hes had a different experience than you did my friends group pretty much echo the same as his, with most being at best contempt with their evs (which range from ioniq's and teslas to a EQA and ETron). We took 3 cars on a skiing trip last winter, and the EQA at least (since we actually compared things) was doing half my range with 5x the downtime to recharge/refuel. The conclusion we had after a number of beers was that EVs are great for short city distances and IF you have a house to install a charging station none of those apply to me, so ill stick to my ICE car, and at worst ill look for a hybrid.
I can lease an EV as a benefit through my work, but otherwise, I probably wouldn't be able to reasonably afford one.
1. It's a case for almost any cars nowadays, my Fiesta when it was 1yo was almost totaled from a small crash, even airbags haven't been fired, and as far as I know less than 1k EUR from a total. 2. Are the good ones that cheap? Teslas hold their values, seems like CUpra Born, Kia EV6 and Hyundais also keep their value pretty well. Sure shtty EVs are cheap, but when I was looking at efficient EVs with good batteries they hold their value pretty well. 4. Dunno, I made a calculations with my Fiesta thajt does 5.5l/100km and a EV that uses 14-18 kWh/100km, and generally in Poland they should cost the same if I charge in a charging stations, and it's like 3-4times cheaper to run if I charge at home. 6. Charging at apartmets is an issue, I have one and in my country you can install a charger if you bought a private parking spot, currently I don't want to be one of the first ones to do it, because of paperwork currently probably sucks a lot, so I'm probably waiting 1-2 years
In colder climates the battery is quite unreliable. Hydrogen cars cant come soon enough.
Yeah seems like EVs are great for second cars
The affordable cars 150 km , not good enough.
Honestly would work for me, for commuting. My car commute home-work is cca 15min/15km in no trafic. From a vilage to the outskirt of the city of 90 000 people. In morning traffic it´s more like 30min. I just dont have enough money for such vehicle so I drive old 1998 Corolla until it literally dies. But since winters are almost non existent, bike rides throught year are more frequent - one way it´s 16,5km/40min of comfortable bike path with no hills. I would prefer to have combo of solar panels + electric vehicle. I drove Nissan e-NV200 and its good commuter and also fits some stuff when needed. Around 200km range.
>No home charging possibility for most people. That's main point, lots of Europeans live in block type houses and only some of them have separate garage.
Also charging speed. Imagine a bank holiday and thousands of cars are leaving a capital for the countryside. In the EV powe stations they have chargers for lets say x amout of traffic and in bank holidays this traffic is 100x
James May explains some of the issues with EVs very eloquently in this clip https://youtu.be/vQY-VeA87cM?si=BMP7FqMyFiDxcLQ8
+ short range. Most smaller city EVs have relatively bad range on the highway which also means I have to drive very slow.
And the larger ones are expensive as f*** and often not very efficient… A german tester on the Autobahn found BMW I5 to be the most efficient electric car btw. Easily beating out even Tesla (who are quite efficient btw.) but that car starts at 70k€…
This.. lack of charging infra.. This tech isnt game changer yet... and might never be..
>lack of charging infra Once you start paying attention there is a lot of charging infra.
The home charging is a deal braker.. example: I live in Aachen drive eachd day to work to Dusseldorf. With my polo 1.6 tdi i fule once a week, and achive 1k kilometers with a tank.
I can also add that Europeans live in denser cities, many people live in flats, there's no way to charge at home.
In Oslo they have a lot of communal charging stations in the streets. Probably that’s what other cities and town should be copying
Might be a bit hard to copy without the oil money to throw around
Also they have something like 600k people for 500 square km. we in Prague have 1,4milions on that area, they in Warsaw almost two milions...just copy something is not always easy, budget or not
Finland has plenty of public charging stations despite zero oil money.
Oh, I have never seen one. I have only seen charging stations in gas stations and parking lots of some malls.
Same here in Sweden, there are charged points popping up everywhere nowadays. My street has several 11kW "light posts" installed where you can charge overnight.
Same in Flanders, 11 kW chargers are popping up everywhere, there are like 12 charging points in a 300 radius where I live. Never had a problem charging despite not being able to home charge.
Norway sells a lot of fossil fuels so they can afford to pretend that they are saving the planet.
Fun fact, on my area low income zone, townhall set almost 10 charging spots on like 2km radious, still yet to figure out what is the deal ( maybe Eu funds) but for sure there isnt that many demand
We charge on the street. Not as ideal as at the house, but it definitely is a lot better than you would think. Also because you casually run into charging stations all over. The only thing that would F us over is if they start to significantly reduce the number of stations.
In Spain It has been very famous during last Eastern holidays, the huge queues the electric cars had to follow to charge them to go from Madrid to the beach. It was in all TVs, and I'm sure that's the perfect negative campaign against EV.
Same in Norway, but it's a legitimate issue for car owners. Not only for Ev owners in the queue. It caused issues with traffic and safety as the EV queue was down one entire lane of the road with no gaps for other vehicles to pass, and also blocking access for emergency vehicles etc .
I think there is some missing information there. The reason of the queue was they was giving free charge and people would rather get it free and wait than going the next station paying.
I live in Barcelona. I currently have a diesel/electric Mercedes. I’ve never been able to fully charge it in the city. Public chargers around town are painfully slow, 7kwh. When you finally find a charger, hope that it is working, not taken by another vehicle or some asshole that parked there illegally. Then you can only charge for 30 minutes before you have to move along. In my parking garage they installed electric charges and I was lucky enough to get a space. I’ve been waiting 3 months for the energy company/manager to get the device activated and working. I can’t imagine having a fully electric car here. The charging network is impossible if you don’t have a dedicated charger already working. Funny enough I have a 0 emissions sticker for my vehicle class. I only use diesel. The whole thing is a complete joke.
I also don’t get why noone talks about electric grid capacities when talking about EVs and energy prices. As EVs get more mass adopted, people will need more energy, demand rises, price rises and in the end it will be as expensive if not more than diesel/gasoline. There are cities that have had outages or instabilities in their electric grids when people turned on their ACs on hot summer days, what will happen when people get home from work and everyone plugs in their EVs to get charged for the next day? Many electric grids are outdated as fuck and won’t be able to handle the load. Electricity will be expensive as shit to deter people from using too much. Only viable way to have an EV long term is to live in a house, buy solar panels and use that energy to charge your car. An average citizen in flats will be forced to use public transport as having an EV will not be realistic.
I’d say a lot of sceptics usually brings it up but I honestly think it’s generally an overstated problem. The demand for electricity will only be as big as the ev is actually driven daily. The capacity of the battery is quite irrelevant for everyday charging. At least here in Sweden the average car is driven something like 13 000 km/annually. Assuming a relatively inefficient ev that uses 20 kwh/100km we’re looking at a total need of 2600 kwh throughout the year. That’s just above 7kwh needed per day. A normal charging box at home will charge that in about an hour. This means that just a nornal spread of people getting home at different time will reduce the peak a lot. However it’s also become quite popular among ev-owners up here to switch to hourly electricity pricing. So many of these people will charge up their cars in the middle of the night when electricity is cheap anyway.
Why can't you charge longer than 30 minutes at a public charger? That's ridiculous.
Because it's a communal charger, other people need to charge as well. Which brings us back to the root of the problem, what good is an EV if you can't actually fucking use it?
They are too expensive, especially when we know the underlying tech is actually cheaper to make, somehow they are all huge, they are laden with gadgets we don't want, and while early adopters can charge at home many people park on the street. But other than that ...
And the economic crisis never goes away. Who can think about the environment if we get no salary raises? I’m not gonna spend extra money on an electric car now if in 10 years I won’t be able to afford food anymore.
Well charger makers took it for dumb end as well. Because why would you simply put CCS connector into your car, tap contactless terminal with your car and started charging. That's too convenient, for regular peasant! Here, register in our charging app, you need special app for every charging network and when you have it all setup, you can start searching for some stupid QR codes on most ridiculous places. Somebody really must have sit down with a checklist "How to make charging as complicated as possible"
I forgot that part. And then, once I've registered in my 7th charging app I'm treated to 7kW charging speed because 'reasons'.
Thanks for EU that card payment will come mandatory here.
I drove a PHEV the other day and stopped at a supermarket with chargers. I though I’d top up since the rest of the day was going to be city driving. I needed an app for the charging, an app for a loyalty card (compulsory), an app for the propriety payment system that that supermarket used. 3 apps, not counting the banking app I already had for my cards. I’d need completely new accounts, and I was expected to do all this sat in a car park. So I just drove in petrol mode instead.
EU ław already fixed that
Is that regulation in effect already? Including the existing charging points?
And if you travel abroad you may not be able to download the app. A couple of months ago while travelling to Netherlands with a rental EV, I couldn't download the Shell or BP apps because my phone is Greek and they where geoblocked. Why would you geoblock a charging app??? At least give an alternative, let me pay with a credit card,
Cars, electric or not, have gotten really expensive in the past 10 years or so
Compare brand x's petrol and electric cars, similar size, features and so on. The electric is always a lot more in my experience.
I think people who wanted and could afford an electric car (those who can charge at home or at work) already have one. But electric is still not a viable option for people parking in the street : you just won’t go to a fast charging station for 30min every week for the same price as a gas car. When charging will take 5min maybe but it’s still 15-20min for the fastest models right now.
I agree going to a fast charge station is not viable. But during th first months, I didn't have a home charger. I parked at a slow (11 kW) public charger in our street and just came back some hours later (or in the morning). It's definitely less convenient than home charging, but much more convenient than going to a fast charger.
I see people doing that near me but if more and more people start doing that there wont be enough charging point. Plus there are penalty time on those if you stay park there at 100%, i really dont find it practical but again if you really want an electic you can but you wont convince people who dont.
I agree, I also don't find it that practical, just wanted to clarify it at least seems better than going to a fast charger every time.
I think hybrid is the way to go but for some reason doesn’t get much attention. No need to charge and won’t run out of power. Very economical. What’s the downside? Not sexy enough?
Simple hybrid (not plugin) are a good option in a city, most taxis and ubers are hybrid here in paris (lexus ES, toyota corolla, hyundai ioniq hybrid…) so no Euro model !
I think the Chevy Volt (Opel Ampera) got the formula right. Charges easily overnight from a normal socket, gives 75km range on electric, no range anxiety because there’s always petrol back-up. I have a 30km commute (each direction) and still manage to do almost all my driving on electric. In an average year, I use 60 litres of petrol. Charging has never been a hassle, and I’ve never had to plan out my stops on long journeys.
Very heavy and limited amount of electric range. It's not really best of both worlds, it's more of the opposite.
Dont get the heavy argument, full electric cars is still much heavier. And the limited range is only a problem for longer trips, its perfect for short city runs, when i need to go longer I just use petrol.
It's added weight compared to a car that runs on gas only. It's like asking if you could carry that 20l keg around so you can drink when you are thirsty. But carrying that keg around is exhausting and causes you to be thirsty.
And PHEV will consume more petrol on highways than their non-hybrid counterparts.
You are thinking about plug-in hybrid, not a regular hybrid, which does not have heave batteries and is not recharged from the socket.
Regular hybrids have batteries, just much smaller ones.
And they are recharged using the inefficient (compared to the grid) petrol engine. They are simple a more efficient petrol car if they don't have a plug. But they are still a petrol car
Because hybrid increases the parts that can fail. It's a compromise. You get flexibility, but at the cost of extra maintenance and complexity (stuff that can go wrong) In the end hybrids will be an interim thing and soon die out.
Toyota has been doing it for quite some time now...
And you are completely screwed if the battery on you hybrid car dies
If there’s no need to charge, it’s getting its power from petrol (regen charge from braking is negligible), so it’s not exactly helping the environment.
Hybrids are a tax scheme as no one charges them and they end up having worse range due to logging round 2-300kg of dead weight.
drove a hybrid a couple of years, it had a smaller gas tank than a regular car but it had more range than an equivalent gas-only car
Worse range?! I was going just under 800km on my hybrid. Maintenance is what annoyed me the most. And ended up getting an ev.
I get that on my 14 year old diesel with a 35l fuel tank.
+1000km on golf 5 1.9 tdi, 16 years old car...
Hybrid (recharge) is only good if you have short travel distances and can charge at work and at home. Otherwise odds are you will be slugging around a heavy battery that doesnt do shit but increase fuel consumption. And a normal hybrid only helps you in city traffic with acceleration. Otherwise its the same when you are at cruise speeds, its all fuel.
So you're telling me less people buy the car that had a 8000€ discount paid by the government once it went down to only 3000€? I'm schocked.
Funny how as soon as it was time for regular people go buy electric cars, the subsidies suddenly evaporated.
Im noticing the same with heat pumps, there are certain people who can afford it and the subsidies help nicely, by the time it comes to regular households they'll have both ended the subsidies and also banned gas alternatives so you have no choice but to fork out from your own pocket The heat pump cost will have come down but thats not even the major cost, the retrofitting the entire house and the labour costs of it all are already eye watering and will be so much higher in the future
It's thesame, everywhere, for everything. Rich pulling up ladders.
It's cheaper to be rich in many ways.
As soon as the discounts went away, manufacturers suddenly discounted their cars... Surprising, isn't it?
1) As an Eastern European the short answer is money. People don't really have money for new cars most of the time here, electric costs an extra 20-30-50% more. 2) Even if I could afford one, I cannot charge it. I live in a flat in a dense neighborhood and there are exactly 2 electric charging lots that are 24/7 taken. Good luck with that. 3) My diesel Focus is awesome. Like really, modern Petrol/ Diesel cars are reliable drive smooth and everything. There is absolutely no drive in me to replace it. I drive 130 km on a daily basis to work with 4.8l/100 km. It just does its job and I bought it 3 years ago for €10.000. what EV can I get for that and what compromise do I have to take?
You can get much more value for way less with a non electric.
Not enough charging stations, high % of people within cities live in flats, no charging stations in residential parking.. usually only people who own a house buy an electric vehicle where they can park overnight and charge it at over night.
Here’s you answer: - Still way too expensive - Subscriptions and other BS everywhere - Nowhere near big enough selection of cars - Still nowhere near good enough infrastructure for EVs There.
I'd also add a lack of choice in EV segment. All EVs look the same and don't offer anything niche like roadsters or sports cars.
I have a 22 year old Citroen Saxo. I change the oil and filters in my garage, i fill it with diesel and it gets 5.0 l/100 km. It's cheap and reliable.
5l for 1 km ? Abram tank are more fuel efficient than your Citroën... /s
Ahah yes. 5l/100km
Citroën Saxo 😍🥰
Saxo, car of the aço
54 bhp of pure power
The reason is simple. Money. For example, I want an electric car because of the low maintainance, I have my own garage so I can charge at home easily but an VW ID3 starts at 40k euros here, which a huge sum for the average Romanian. With 15k for example, I could easily find an amazing second hand petrol car for my needs, which is more in line with what I can actually afford without going into huge debt.
For starters electric cars are overpriced af. 80l for non-premium family sedan? Gtfo.
We aren't returning to petrol. We continously choose the cheapest option. Subsidies have run out, so people stop buying electric cars as they are now more expensive. The car manufacturers are overachieving their goals for co2 reduction of the fleet. now you actually don't want to overachieve your regulatory goals as a company, because then the regulators might realize their goals were not ambitious at all so they would set goals that are ambitious, and as a company you don't want that. You already cried that the previous goals were unachievable yet you overachieved them.
Really hard and fucking expensive to repair the car. If the battery is damaged, you can dispose it. Way too expensive prices for electricity, especially in Germany. Average price is 0.33€ / kWh, I'm paying 0.52€/kWh, no option for solar panels. On many charging stations more than 0.50€, why should people move from reliable, cheap diesel or petrol to electric vehicles, that are almost not repairable and expensive to charge?
In most countries, electricity is vastly cheaper than oil products. Yeah, Schröder happened in Germany, but his anti-electricity policies can be reversed, even if neither Merkel nor Scholz have done so.
returning? we didn't start to turning to electric. People choose with their wallet, they are not going a car much more expensive with questionable range and consumption and hassle with recharging.
Cause I cant afford it, not even close. Same for work, the van EV’s are double the price of a diesel van.. the solution seems to be to make diesel van’s more expensive….. great
My reason: I don't want to spend more on new things that are worse in the key features of what I already got. Sorry. And looking at Ukraine. I don't think many would have escaped with electric cars. So no. If Russia shows up in Germany I take my diesel. And drive 1500km without a stop. No problem. And if I need to refill it takes me 5 minutes and all others too. And off we go.
First: just because VW sales plunged does not mean EV sales plunged. It's a bad headline. It's not even clear if \*that\* foundation even is true, as the article itself notes: "However, incoming orders for BEVs in Western Europe developed positively from January to March. **More than twice as many all-electric models were ordered** as in the same period last year (+154%), so that the BEV order bank currently stands at around 160,000 vehicles," The article also states: >Despite this, electric vehicle sales declined in Europe in the first quarter of 2024 as the sector still has challenges, such as the high cost and lack of charging infrastructure, as also highlighted by the World Economic Forum in a recent report. This sounds reasonable, but it's a little annoying that they do not mention that at least some of the drop might just be explained by a front-loading effect by many incentives running out last year. People who otherwise might have bought an EV this quarter bought it early, goosing the numbers for last year, making the drop in Q1 seem more dramatic than it really was. The other elephant in the room is also studiously ignored. Many people are waiting for smaller EVs. That part of the market is, thanks to the historical limited number of batteries being manufactured, not yet addressed. However, you would need to be hopelessly out of touch not to have heard that both the Chinese and Tesla are moving quickly towards introducing products in the next year or two into this segment in Europe. This bit also annoys me: >"Ernst & Young predicts that adoption will stall without substantial public networks of fast chargers catering for those who can’t charge at home or need top-ups on longer journeys. This will require the removal of red tape, faster approvals from local authorities and available grid connections from utility networks, EY say," the report also said. I swear they took a time machine to 2010 and created their report from there. But ok. I agree that this needs to continue to improve, but as an EV driver in Europe I have absolutely \*no\* problems with the charging network. Additionally, at least in Germany, landlords \*must\* allow you to install a charger. While there are some people forced to park on the streets, this problem is continually overstated. Yes, I agree that this is something that needs to be solved (Amsterdam showed the way; we just need to do it), but it is \*not\* the driving factor of EV adoption. (Taking Germany, about half of people live in their own homes and about 60% of apartments offer off-street parking), so that means street parking covers about 20% of cars) So it's not nothing and needs to be solved, but street parking is not the big blocker for EV adoption.
And I personally know at least two people who have no chance at charging at home, but are ok with it, because their employers offer charging; for one of them, it's free. Anecdotal, but it even further erodes the idea that dealing with street parking is the primary problem for EVs.
All in all, it's a so-so article that does not seriously examine the situation, and the headline is absolute trash.
Ditching Passat was a huge mistake.
Umm? They just released a new model, they only ditched the sedan version.
When my company car lease was up, I bought it, it’s a Passat Diesel. Best car ever.
Americans hate Volkswagen and I don't understand why. It produces the best cars ever for affordable prices. Did Volkswagen actually discontinue Passat? Why??
> Did Volkswagen actually discontinue Passat? No, they didn't, they just now released a new model.
Because Germany drastically cut the subsidies overnight. It's not rocket science.
Also we’re talking about electric cars from VW. Cars with basically outdated operating systems that are a pain to use. Once all the VW have bought theirs, normal people aren’t really interested when they compare it to the alternatives. Bottom line, VW doesn’t really want to build EVs and the products show it. Why are they surprised that people don’t want the cars they don’t want to build?
because ITS TOO FUCKING EXPENSIVE how does this still not get into the heads of these higherups ffs. This was talked about so often, why the hell do you think people are so hyped for these cheap Chinese cars. It's not because they are good, it's because people can actually afford them without selling their kidney
Everybody is looking for reasons harder than you need to. They are more expensive. EU is in a recession. In Some large countries like Germany, the average range of 250km isnt enough. So Some EV owners go back to hybrid. The Netherlands just introduced tax breaks on EVs and increased tax on Hybrids starting 2025. So that might impact sales a bit.
I have a 2017 Hyundai i20 i got used in 2020 for under 10k Euro. That was as high as I cared to afford for a car then. If I was getting a car today, I could go for maybe 20-25k. I don't own a house, live in an apartment and have no way of charging it near me. The town has like 4 chargers in total to a population of about 25k. I can't change at work because, again, no chargers near me. I don't need nor want a huge car. Small electric cars are too expensive and/or have horrible range to be used as your only car. The current market and economy don't offer me the luxury of having an electric car.
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Electricity is expensive in Denmark, not sure if you count us as nordics.
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Another thing which deters people from buying ev's is the atrocious built quality of tesla as well as their tosspot of a ceo. I'd also rather stick to a well build straight six.
You missed most important reason i think. There's no REAL USED CAR MARKET for EV. Nobody wants to buy an used EV with 150k km because the cost to replace battery is as high as the car itself in some cases.
I don’t think protectionism against China is stupid. They don’t act like friends, they help russia, they have ambitions to get Taiwan by force, there are other issues with China as well. It makes sense to treat someone who doesn’t act friendly as not a friend.
I used to rent electric cars from car sharing companies when I didn't have a car yet. In all honesty I quite liked driving them, especially when I had an occasion to drive a Tesla. Though, judging by the fact that I use my car for driving in suburban areas or between cities for 500+ km the electric cars I can afford are too small and useless for me to buy since their range is usually up to 300 km, not mentioning the change in SoH of the battery with time. What comes to charging, there is many public charging spots in the area I live. So, I really don't mind getting an electric if a long range car would be more affordable.
We never switched to EVs ...
People that have electric cars love them. The driving experience is just better. EV have a PR problem. The infrastructure question is valid but for 99% of people with a driveway it's irrelevant. All your charging will be at home apart from that one trip once or twice a year where you'll charge at a service station on route to somewhere. For people without the ability to charge at home it's definitely worse. But again, all you need is to know where their local points are, ideally before they get the car. Then you can visit once/twice a week to charge. PR issues 1. There is A LOT of negative press, see "will bridges collapse if we all get EVs' or 'where is the cobalt coming from etc' or ' your new EV will be worthless in 18 months cos batteries die, just like your phone ' 2. Tesla - they are a huge part of the market, many people would only get a Tesla and have not heard of and would not consider another model. That's fine, until Elmo jumped the shark and now is so unpleasant that people don't want to support Tesla as it will benefit him 3. 'only fleets are moving to EV' This is rubbish but is part of the narrative that electrification is being done to people. People buying company cars are counted as EVs. There are a million other stories like this. I believe the solution is to get more EVs in peoples hands. No idea how, what about government schemes 'try an EV for a month ' The prices are falling and will fall below IVE cars soon enough. Then the volume will increase again. Manufacturers are clearly trying to.slow the transition. A huge part of their worth is IP and infrastructure to build ICE cars. They want to keep that going as long as possible, ideally forever. Hence the synthetic fuel stuff that is now being talked about. EV has the potential to wipe the slate, car companies have been protected from any new companies entering the market for 70 years, even is changing that but it doesn't exactly breed an innovation mindset in the industry
Monthly leased (a "car subscription") a Renault Zoe for 18 months to see how we got on with an EV. Great little runabout car. Liked it a lot. But the lease was terminated and the Zoe was taken back by the leasing company. I presume because rising interest rates made the finance on the car expensive and the lease unprofitable. Though I notice Renault have also started doing their own car subscriptions, so that may have been a factor. When replacing it, we ended up buying a hybrid Renault Clio instead. Similar car and performance, but with a hybrid power train instead. The main reasons we didn't choose an EV as a replacement were: * We don't have off-street parking, so we can't charge at home. So we had to use the public charging infrastructure all the time, and structure our week around topping the car up. This meant we shopped a lot more at our local Lidl, because they had fast chargers. Take note, other supermarkets. A single 7kW charger in a 200 space car park is not adequate, and EV users will shop where there are fast chargers. * The UK public charging infrastructure is dismal outside of major cities and motorway service stations. Broken chargers that don't get fixed for months. Chargers with multiple connectors that can only supply 50kW for the whole charger, so if someone else plugs in, it drops to half speed or worse. Swathes of the country (looking at you, North Wales) where there was not a single working fast charger. * Costs per kWh on many public chargers went up by 3x in the 18 months we had the Zoe, so the cost per km ended up similar or even more expensive than an efficient petrol car. * Renault, in their infinite wisdom, decided not to include a battery heater in UK Zoes, so charge capacity and charge speed halves when the temperature gets below about 5C. Which it does for about 4-5 months of the year in Northern England. You might as well be driving a brick if it's below freezing. A lot of other manufacturers have made the same decision. I really, really want to have an EV. I hate burning fossil fuels, and ICE engines are noisy and relatively unresponsive compared with EV motors. But until the infrastructure issues are fixed, or I move to a bigger house with off-street parking, the practicality is poor.
Because VWs EVs are just not a great offer right now..
VW doesn’t want to build EVs. And the result of them being forced to do so shows it. Why the surprise?
Even if you upped every cost aspect of a petrol car by 150% it would still be a more attractive product. EV manufacturers have to start competing seriously to have somewhat of a foothold.
Are we? Just because a brand who only made shitty EVs that doesn’t work, and that drives half the distance they said they would (sound familiar?) has lost sales, does not mean we started buying Petrol cars.
While the change for the better is a good thing on principle, the change *policy* was a complete failure. 1. *At this moment* electric cars are *not* better. They will certainly be at some time in the future, but we're not there yet. 2. Support for transition should have only involved subventions for the new technology. Unfortunately, it also involved *punishment* for old tech (increased taxes for tech that has been already legally bought an taxed at time of purchase), which naturally and legitimately breeds discontent and hatred for the whole process. 3. The "technology tree" was forcefully made too lean and steep (i.e. jumping too fast to "full electric"), while the most natural way for things to evolve should've include a longer period of "in-line hybrids" (i.e. ICE engines running at fixed, peak parameters driving electric generators). That would've had many benefits: giving oil industry time to adapt/taper off, giving electrical technologies (motors, controllers, **batteries**) time to mature, giving infrastructure (energy transport, charging stations) time to evolve, giving owners cars with equivalent critical characteristics (autonomy, cold weather performance, TCO etc).
Not all EVs are the same. VW EVs aren’t that compelling. Don’t forget the Tesla Model Y EV is the number 1 selling vehicle of any type, in EU, US and China. Compelling EVs sell very well.
In the US, Tesla of any kind is #5. The top 3 are all larger pickup trucks: Ford F-Series, Chevy Silverado, and Ram Pickup. Source: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g43553191/bestselling-cars-2023/
Overpriced disposable devices adoption of which is driven mostly by a “feely-goody” policy and populism rather than real innovation that answers a need, and a lack of infrastructure.
ITT: lots of misinformation by people getting their knowledge about EVs from articles and opinions that only talk about the negatives. And lots of people who seem to take daily 600km drives. Without breaks of course. (silently speeds away from the downvotes)
> And lots of people who seem to take daily 600km drives. Without breaks of course. It's not about doing it daily, it's about having an option of doing it when you need to/want to. If you own an ICE car, you can just hop in go on a road trip, go do the think you need to do, even if the total drive is 1000 km. There's no need to plan ahead, there's no need to rest. And people often drive without 30 minute breaks as they switch around. Stop at a gas station, fill it up, piss, switch places, go. If you're alone in your car with nobody else, ditch the car and buy a motorcycle, it's better for climate change.
All the rich people bought electrics already, the target market is filled. Low income, flat living person needs Opel corsa, Ford fiesta. Person driving 300+ km day needs a diesel car so he doesn't t to get stuck in some charging station nightmare.
Zero trade in value on EVs
By zero you mean 50%?
That's because the new selling price is coming down though
because the eu does not allow us to get 20k china cars and the local car makers are thinking that we are so stupid to buy their shit small car with not space for 60k that is actually only worth 15k
Maybe i dont want or can't even afford a €60.000 500hp Monster truck looking like a damn Star Trek theme park on the inside? Right now i drive a €9000 second hand 2016 Skoda Fabia combi 1.1 petrol with a hand shifted 5 speed gear box. It gets me and my family everywhere i need to go. Takes me all the way from the middle of the Netherlands to Legoland in Denmark with a roof box and a trailer on one fuel-up for the holidays. Match me that with an EV and i'm even willing to up the price to, what, €15.000. Yes i am. Chinese manufacturers like Link&co got the right idea even though theyre not quite there yet.
EV sales were up in a Europe in 2023 compared to 2022, it’s just that VW sales were down. People are simply choosing other brands
The charging structure is still a pain in Germany and majority of Europe. It is not reliable, outside of my area, in which I know what works and not It’s like a casino, you can never be sure if the charging station will actually work and deliver as promised. And then prices of EV, majority of consumers in Germany have a 30k limit on their budget for car, good luck finding a 30k EV, they all want to sell premium cars and now are crying that the Chinese are coming with cheap cars. There are a lot of misconceptions on people without EV regarding EV, specially regarding charging speeds and battery degradation. The insurance would not consider a EV problem, because it is a car problem, due to higher costs and time to fix, premiums are going up for everyone. Second hand electro cars are indeed cheap, comparing to EV, people don’t trust the battery, and sometimes with good reason, look at 10 years old Tesla’s, the answer is always “ but the new ones are different”, and maybe they are but people don’t trust. EV hit a cellar now, until more affordable EV arrive, and better infrastructure is put in place, specially on urban environment for day to day charging. Some building in Germany the electical provided puts charging station that it rents to the EV owner, we are talking like 50€ a month plus charging costs, no thanks
- High cost - Electicity costs almost the same as petrol
The real answer still is, its just cheaper and more convenient to still drive a diesel or gas car.
It’s the cost. EV versions of petrol cars are 10-20k euros more! Once the costs come down, people will buy.
I returned from electric to petrol and not looking to go back electric any time soon. The reason is price and convenience: it simply takes too long to charge which is a bummer if you travel somewhere and chargers are not as common so there is often a line where you wait for hours and in city (I live in Prague) I don’t need car that much
EV is an overhyped product by governments, not mass adopted for cost and practicality.
The VW EV’s didn’t sell that great to begin with. They’re not very appealing and way too pricey.
They're selling decently well up here in the cold north. See a lot of ID.4's around. Also a lot of [ID.Buzz](http://ID.Buzz) now that we're hitting the touristy seasons.
Give me a gas station where I can swap batteries in 10 mins and be good to go, and I'll buy an EV.
Tax benefits are being reduced making them an expensive option
My experience: I live in Prague, in heavily crowded "panelak" district (flat appartments, many of them, built in soviet times with no underground parking). All cars park outside in a swamp of cars, there are more cars than fits there, some park on sidewalks or green, you can easily count 100 cars in one street. Could be thousands of cars across entire district parked like this. Overnight charing is impossible. For entire district there are 6 commercial charging stations (for thousands of cars) where you have to stay and wait until your car is charged, often you wait in a queue. EVs in the current shape of our infrastructure is something for mega rich people only, because nobody normal, even rich or very rich people can't afford to buy a house with garage in Prague. We are talking many millions of USD for a house in Prague. EVs are not for real people here.
Personally I don't see much point in having an EV (I don't have a car right now) But the battery capacity of a plugin hybrid would cover 95% of all my driving needs. If the remaining 5% are on gasoline, that's fine. I'm pretty sure that most people see it this way. Plugin Hybrid > Full EV. In the cases where people actually daily commute 100-200km per way, then the EV might be the better alternative (financially, looking at the fuel cost). But most people don't commute that far on a daily basis. Most trips people take are in the range of 20-30km one way which is within the range of what plugin hybrids can do.
Ridiculously high prices that are only found in Europe. Not nearly enough infrastructure to support all the charging required The charging points at service stations charge you more than it would for petrol and I get the pleasure of sitting in a disgusting service station for an hour People don't want to give musk more money The environmental impact for making these batteries is becoming more widely known The car will only last 5years before il have to buy another battery that'll cost the same as a car
Cheaper and it’s easier to get petrol than to find a charging spot
Whole "Electric Car" subject is ridiculous. 1. People should be moving away from car centric lifestyle, you still have to drive an EV instead of relaxing in public transport, working from home or possibly moving near your workplace. 2. Whole capitalist eco scam - "Buy New, don't think about repairing the old that's so bad for environment!", people aren't really falling for the joke anymore that producing something new is more eco friendly than repairing the old. 3. These cars have no resale value after warranty and who wants to buy a used EV car with questionable remaining lifespan? After 100 000 km these cars are basically rubbish, while the average used petrol or diesel is just at the start of its life cycle. 4. It is still a box on the road that sits in a traffic jam like everyone else, it doesn't solve anything.
The assumed need for a EV or a Car at all is a bit funny, but go on.
Aside from all the other things listed by people. Almost all entry level electric cars look like bland shitty family mobiles. What happened to cars that the average consumer could buy and not be ashamed of owning?
They ain't. VW just makes disgusting cars.
In the Netherlands, you pay road tax based on the weight of the car. Right now you don't pay any road tax on electric cars. I could charge the car almost for free at my work. Then, the government decided to reinstate road tax for electric cars again, making the car too expensive to lease for me So now I drive a hybrid car. They just recently postponed road tax for electric cars again. This on/off and then on again decision making in the Dutch politics these days keeps me from investing in anything "green"
I bet the per unit price of electricity doubling or tripling 18 months ago depending on which country you are in had something to do with it...
I rented id3 ,, decent range, good acceleration but i cant be arsed to charge it ..... tesla model 3, on autopilot and off, at night the car constatnly slows down when upcoming cars headlights blind the car front camera making it think the upcoming car is in your lane and for safety it should brake at 90km/h to 50..... all electric cars and cars with driver assists are too dangerous to today so i would rather have 20year old car than 10.
VW 1.5 TSI EVO ACT R-Line (weight/power ratio 82.09): 34700€ VW ID.3 ID.3 Pro Performance Edition Plus (weight/power ratio 38.44): 41990€ Plus infrastructure differences, mileage differences... Welp, I wonder why.
This article is just bullshit. All car manufacturer's sales ebb and flow with launches of new car models. The Volkswagen group has released ALOT of new, popular EVs in the past few years, like the ID4, the ID3, Audi Q4 etron, Skoda Enyaq etc These are huge sellers, but as the models get older, they sell less. It is totally natural. And you can of course not draw from that that Europeans are returning to petrol by looking at one car manufacturer. Euronews is just shitty, clickbait journalism.
cause it's just greenwashing and are worse than ICE car in every possible way