The biggest seller of EVs here is the salary sacrifice schemes that give a huge discount to high earners, especially those with kids.
Imagine you're on taxable income of £120k and have two chidlren in nursery. Currently you get no help with childcare costs from the government. From my own experience it's ~£6000 subsidy per child.
You can currently take out an EV salary sacrifice scheme for ~£600 per month (pre tax), and that brings your taxable income down by £7200. Put another £13k in pension. Boom, you're now getting £13k in pension p/a, and your car is effectively free, because you get £12k back in childcare subsidies.
Your car isn't 'effectively free', because you could sacrifice all £20k into the pension, paying no tax on it, and get the £12k in childcare subsidies because your income is <=£100k. The EV is costing you £7000 pa out of this.
If you're at that income level, your employer pension contribution is already likely high and you've likely been stacking it for a while anyway. At some point there is a diminishing return to how much you should put in your pension too; it's tax on exit after all. You only need 2-3 years of maxed out contributions in your late 20s/early 30s to set yourself up very well for the future.
But how long until those children are no longer in nursery and you are not subsedised for it? In ~2 years you will no longer have this help, you will be paying through the nose for the outstanding amount on your new car, and your take home will be significantly less each month.
Yeah, but you're still taxed at 72% between £100 and £125k if you have a student loan (as most people in that age bracket will be), so even in that case the hit to your take home isn't that much.
There is no need to go that high in salary (a lucky very small minority). The higher income tax band (40%) kicks in at 50k. Salary sacrifice schemes offer huge savings to many people.
What I mean is that if salary sacrifice schemes on EV were only used, and very good deals, for people over 100k then it would be extremely niche as we're talking about the top 4% of earners whereas about 16% are higher band taxpayers...
People on higher salaries are disproportionately likely to be the ones doing it though - much much more likely to work for companies that implement the schemes for a start.
Yes, "higher salaries" as in higher tax band (median salary is 39k, higher tax band starts at 50k), which impacts 16% of people. That's why it has an notable impact on sales and also on the used cars market (salary sacrifice schemes are usually PCP/leasing over 3-4 years).
Perhaps it is the "London bubble" on HN as I feel that no-one is registering that 100k+ is a really, really small minority...
This oil crisis was a huge boon for EVs. In Brazil, despite the "hate" most people have against EVs, BYD went from breaking into the top 10 in March to taking the #1 spot in consumer sales for the first time ever.
Yeah, money talks. And every time you drop another $100 bill into the fuel tank, maybe you start to wonder what it is like to not pay that. Or to not drive to a gas station at all. Then you drive one and become one of the vast majority of people who suddenly have the epiphany "I will never go back, I like this way too much."
Curious as to why American EVs never took off. The US is the most advanced country technologically and has the greatest soft power in history to make deals.
> The US is the most advanced country technologically
Certainly not in cars. The US car industry really more or less stopped even _trying_ to compete internationally in the 90s or so. The sole exception was Ford, but they went for an unusual approach where Ford Europe designed its own cars, using parts from Bosch etc. Ford Europe is now also all but dead in the consumer space, too. To a large extent the US car industry survives due to protectionism (notably this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax).
Incidentally, it's far from what you'd expect, but the US is actually probably more influential in public transport than private transport on an export basis; Cummins is very competitive in the diesel engine space for buses, and the ridiculously-named Wabtec (previously GE and Westinghouse's train-y divisions) is big in locomotive tech.
Though AIUI US companies are largely failing to keep up there, now, too; diesel city buses are on the way out, and electric bus powertrains are largely Chinese or European.
1. Unlike the rest of the world, EVs were sold in the US as muscle cars for rich people (e.g. Tesla). Everywhere else they're cheap cars for urban commuters (e.g. BYD).
2. Republicans sabotaged every attempt from the Democrats to get EVs going on.
3. Space and demography: EVs do very well in small countries (e.g. Europe) or big countries with a concentrated population (e.g.Brasil, Nigeria). They do poorly in countries with big distances and a spread out population.
Incumbent American automakers had a hard time switching over. EVs require significant expertise that they didn't have, and didn't particularly want to acquire.
Only Tesla designed cars to be electric from a clean sheet. And they were doing extremely well for a long time, and had an enormous lead. But they squandered it in a variety of ways.
The automakers and oil interests spent a lot of effort badmouthing electric cars. To hear Americans talk about it, they need to haul giant boats on their daily 400 mile commutes into uncharted forest. They didn't come up with "range anxiety"; it was deliberately spread.
For a while there was a partisan divide about it, with electric cars seen as a hippie-liberal choice, much as hybrids used to be. Then circa 2020 Elon Musk began to systematically alienate that market.
If they have electricity they can charge from a regular power outlet.
A large portion of the population is well served by 120V charging and don’t need more than that. And for what it’s worth, parts of Brazil also run on 220V, so they’re even more set in that regard.
this is the exact kind of misinformation that prevents progress.
Brazil does not "fuel" cars on sugarcane any more than the US fuels its cars with corn. No one is missing any forests or trees. What you are missing is that the cost savings in fuel are so large with any EV that by itself, the money saved is an extremely compelling incentive to many people.
Wrong because Brazil DOES fuel cars on sugarcane alcohol. Most petrol stations in the country have pumps for sugarcane alcohol, nearly all the ICE cars sold in the last two decades have a flex engine (in the past you had to chose when buying the car if you wanted a alcohol engine or a gasoline engine, now the engines just takes whichever you trow at it and adjusts the injection accordingly), and roughly half the personal vehicles in the country run daily on alcohol. That fact has softened this oil crisis a tiny tiny bit in the country (when oil is expensive many people just pump alcohol instead of gasoline).
And right that electricity is much cheaper than gasoline or alcohol, so people are changing to EVs because of the cost savings in fuel. In fact electricity was already much cheaper even when the price of oil was down, what was holding back EV adoption in the country was never the price of oil, but the relatively high purchase prices of EV vehicles (the average upper-middle-class Brazilian can't afford a Tesla like an American or European can), but the latest batch of basic EVs (like the BYD Dolphin-mini/Seagul) started to break that barrier about one or two years ago, and are now on the top sales charts.
> Brazil does not "fuel" cars on sugarcane any more than the US fuels its cars with corn.
In Brazil "ethanol" is sold separately from normal gasoline, and as far as I know it's entirely made from sugar cane, without fossil fuels. It's why flex cars are so popular there, since they can use either fuel depending on what's cheaper.
Meanwhile, you can't buy 100% corn-based fuel in the US.
> this is the exact kind of misinformation that prevents progress.
lol
> Brazil does not "fuel" cars on sugarcane any more than the US fuels its cars with corn.
Brazil has been building cars which can run on 100% ethanol since the 1970s.
These are not obscure facts; this is common knowledge the US teaches to schoolchildren.
In the US gasoline is a 10% ethanol blend, sometimes 15%. E85 is available only in some midwestern states (I've NEVER seen it for sale anywhere on the west coast) and it's only good for flex-fuel vehicles, which most manufacturers stopped building ~ 10 years ago when the free money from the government shifted towards EV incentives.
Ethanol is not a good fuel source for something like a personal vehicle. Corn and rice based ethanol are barely energy positive and can be slightly carbon positive.
Sugarcane-based ethanol does have a strongly negative carbon footprint and positive energy but ICE engines are notably less efficient overall that large utility scale cogen plants, even after you factor in transmission and distribution losses.
Making sugarcane into ethanol is good. It's less clear that distributing that chemical feedstock to a zillion people is a net benefit. Just send the electrons and keep the fuel at the plant.
> Ethanol is not a good fuel source for something like a personal vehicle.
It is about as good as gasoline (or better), Brazil has been running a good chunk of its personal car fleet on sugarcane alcohol for decades. Yes, EVs are better than ICVs, but there is nothing uniquely bad about ethanol that makes it worse as a fuel source for a personal vehicle than any other combustive fuel.
A low cost 120v charged EV is a wildly practical thing for everything other than very long distance travel. They are simple to maintain, require fewer spare parts, and have fewer parts to fail in general. Don't think Tesla, think golf cart and trailer.
There may be places where grid access is impractical, in which case chemical fuels are a decent alternative, but as africa has shown solar microgrids are also quite effective and enable a ton of additional economic activity.
EV utility vehicles match quite well to the second and third world, when they benefit from sufficient economy of scale. I don't know if we're there yet but we're very close. These things are getting quite cheap.
Imagine how much faster electric car adoption would be if incumbent auto makers weren’t using them as dumping grounds for experimental, half-baked, and unsafe design experiments?
We never wanted their “electric cars” … we wanted their cars, but electric.
All of the German car makers, plus Hyundai, are very serious about making really good mainstream electric vehicles because they all believe that will be their core of their business sooner rather than later.
The basic Seat Leon combi is currently 22.000€ on promotion. And that's a spacious family car. No EV car exist at that price point in that size with a range that most people would be comfortable with it.
Yes they will exist in the future but we are still a decade away from that at least.
> No EV car exist at that price point in that size with a range that most people would be comfortable with it.
Disregarding the range because that's a different topic. Fundamentally EVs will be of a different size than ICEs because the big and heavy battery has to placed somewhere low, which is usually under the passenger area floor. Then the car must be higher to accomodate that and also sturdier etc., so at that point we have a bigger and heavier car for the same interior space. And also pricier of course. So it's better to forget the Seat Leon Combi and look at the EVs with fresh eyes.
Or you can retrofit an EN to a ICE shell, like Stellantis did with eg the Opel Astra TS which is also cheap for an EV, but mostly everyone agrees this is a dead end.
One more point regarding the price - that's our own (EU) making. Chinese EVs in China are much much cheaper.
Coulda fooled me. From what I’ve seen, it seemed like they were dragged to electric kicking and screaming after other options didn’t pan out - even with assistance from regulators. Germany has a severe problem with rational consideration of energy issues.
The Achilles heel of EV adoption, and why I think Tesla has had such a leg up, is that your classic dealership really doesn't like selling EVs.
The salesman aren't knowledgeable about them, they don't have ownership experience with them, and EV's generate dramatically fewer lifetime "service" visits and parts sales.
This was common with the f150 lightning, where salesman were pretty much "If you want it I can do the paper work, but let me show you the regular F150's we have here if you like to drive places without headaches."
We have a lot of big dealer groups who are not tied to a specific manufacturer. Independent franchisees tied to a single manufacturer are uncommon I believe.
Even within each sub-brand of the group, they often work with different manufacturers.
Though Sytner (the biggest) tend to have single-manufacturer dealerships.
Probably a mix of both on both sides of the pond I imagine?
And there's less rigmarole during the process. Less aggressive sales tactics I believe
VW tried that, particularly with the eGolf (which was pretty much indistinguishable from a normal Golf); it didn't really work. A lot of people thought VW didn't even _make_ electric cars until the weirder-looking id3 and 4 came out years later.
There are some where the EV is largely the same as the non-EV other than the necessary differences because it is in an EV such as instruments and menus.
For example Hyundai Kona EV differs inside from the Kona ICE and hybrid models by having the shifter on the column instead of on the center console and the floor is flatter from not needing to accommodate the transmission tunnel.
A mix of Googling and LLMing suggests that BMW, Genesis, Mini Cooper, Volvo, and VW also have some EVs that are very similar to their non-EV cars.
Yeah, the first EV I bought was an otherwise boring Hyundai Kona. Great car and great EV but you could easily mistake it for the gas version if you weren't paying attention.
And surprisingly to me it is even pretty damn efficient despite being originally designed as a gasoline-powered vehicle.
I think they were trying to say that it's surprising the Lightning sold so poorly considering the popularity of the ICE version.
I do think F-150 buyers tend to be more conservative than average car buyers and more receptive to anti-EV FUD for both political and cultural reasons.
What's galling is Tesla's influence. Why do electric cars need to have screens besides (or instead of) the dashboard? WHY? Or any other of Tesla's misfeatures.
I own a Kia Rio hachback. It was incredibly cheap for the features and has been incredibly reliable. I just want an electric version of that with as much range as possible and a heat pump for cabin climate control and battery management.
But nope, can't have that, instead we have a market full of cars 4+ times the cost with a bunch of stupid, useless, asinine bells and whistles.
I assume they'll eventually sell that, in about 10 years time, which makes me sad.
> The increase reflects a rebound from an unusually weak April last year, when buyers pulled purchases forward to March to beat incoming vehicle tax increases
I am so confused by the categorisation of cars: BEV, HEV, PHEV and so on. I think the industry insiders who write some of these articles don't realise how hard it is for some of their readers to keep track.
To be fair, the article is written on a website for the auto industry, so it's reasonable for them to assume their target audience is familiar with these terms. I argue the onus is on OP for explaining these since they're sharing it to a different audience than it was written for.
> Same as a hybrid but you can charge up the hybrid battery at home
And, in practice, the battery tends to be much, much bigger. Some PHEVs are basically mediocre-range electric cars which happen to have a petrol generator.
Its time to call a spade a spade - the bulk of the PHEV category sold to date (with a few exceptions like toyota) has been an emissions scam, designed to skirt EU fleet emission laws.
In practice, most are mediocre range, low-speed only evs that effectively no one bothers to charge regularly because its impractical and annoying. The manufactures claim 80% reductions in emissions, and use those credits to allow them to sell more gas cars in the EU market. But real world emission reduction is 20%. They know this, they've known for years. Its a scam.
Some newer toyotas, newer BMWs and the coming EREVs will actually be able to be electric cars most of the time, and might live up closer to the claims. Doesnt change the fact the category has been mostly fraud until now.
Maybe blame consumers rather than manufacturers. And if a government sets up incentives incorrectly, blame the government schemes, not those using such badly designed incentives.
The buyers wanted a petrol car. And they choose to fill with petrol. You need your own garage to make plugging in worthwhile (and avoid getting charging cable nicked). Consumers perhaps prefer to avoid the hassle of plugging in?
In New Zealand there's a visible disincentive of a yearly tax on pluggable hybrids (to pay for road use). In NZ roads are paid by taxes earmarked for that.
> In NZ roads are paid by taxes earmarked for that.
It would be better to say that all of the money from road use and petrol taxes are spent on the roads. Those taxes don't actually cover the cost of maintaining the road system.
At which point it kind of becomes moot that those taxes are ring-fenced for paying for roads. Since I've lived here people keep repeating that ring-fenced fact like its some kind of special thing. General taxation and council taxes are subsiding just the road maintenance, and completely paying for new build roads.
> Those taxes don't actually cover the cost of maintaining the road system
Yes they almost did.
Only a few years ago the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF) was almost entirely self-sustaining, funded by road users.
Recently Crown funding (grants and loans) expanded significantly to ~40% of fund income.
But approximately 30% of government transport spending is being spent on rail (to placate voters I think). Before the Land Transport (Rail) Legislation Act 2020, not much we spent by the NLTF on rail.
Currently ~3% of driven kilometres by car use electricity - so as that number increases, BEV and PHEV vehicles will need to have increased taxation. Presumably something like $700 per annum (currently about how much a person driving a petrol car pays on excise tax).
Ultimately it is almost tautological that road users pay for roads, since government spending comes from taxes, and most people use cars. How things get earmarked is just sophisticated accounting.
I find that strange just looking at my current PHEV the engine now is at 75,000 miles or what my previous one was at only 30,000 miles. Most trips we barely use the intent if we use it at all, but every once in a while we do go on the long road trips. Plus, they are great for Americans who normally don't do those long trips, but they don't get rained to anxiety or any other issues with charging.
1. you are you and your data and your use. I believe you, but thats not useful compared to the real world data from "981,035 vehicles across Europe".
2. i suspect but i have no way to prove... the PHEVs sold in america tended to be way better EVs - there's no similar total fleet emissions laws so no incentive to subsidize shitty/fraudulent PHEVs in the US.
In theory, a PHEV is the perfect middle ground for someone that wants to drive electric but has major range anxiety about road trips.
Something with a 60 mile electric range will likely satisfy all of their day-to-day driving. The generator means they don't have to charge though, so they can still take road trips without worrying about electric range.
In practice though, they're somewhat impractical. You still need an entire ICE drivetrain AND a moderately sized battery and electric motor, driving the price up.
My Prius Prime PHEV has a range of about 25 miles on battery. My daily commute to work is about 10 miles each way, so I can get to work and back on electric alone. If I happen to need to make a longer trip, then my car switches to gas. I plug in the car when I get home from work and I only need to refill the tank every few months. And even then, it's extremely fuel efficient because it's still a Prius.
This has been a perfect car for my use case, but the big caveat is my short commute. If your daily commute fits inside that short range (or one way commute if there's a charger at your workplace), this can be a great fit. A+++, highly recommended.
If your work commute is significantly longer than a PHEV's battery range, or if you don't have a convenient place to charge it, then it's a much less attractive proposition.
Most people don't end up charging their battery because it still has an ICE so why bother? So now they have the worst of both worlds. Complex ICE machinery that needs regular service and heavy battery that doesn't end up being used.
Only true for a plug-in hybrid with a series drivechain (a.k.a. "extended range electric vehicle"). The more common type has two parallel drivechains linked with clutches, so you still have all the drawbacks of a conventional internal combustion engine drivechain when you're using it.
> The more common type has two parallel drivechains linked with clutches, so you still have all the drawbacks of a conventional internal combustion engine drivechain when you're using it
I don't know about the whole world, but in both the US and Europe nearly half of the hybrids on the road are from Toyota, so unless nearly everything else is two parallel drive chains linked with clutches whatever Toyota does is the more common type.
Toyota uses a series-parallel system that works by having a planetary gear system that connects the ICE, a large electric motor, a small electric motor, and a drive shaft all together.
The planetary gear system functions as a power splitting device and a continuously variable transmission. It lets them direct power flow in a bunch of different ways. Here's a summary based on Wikipedia. (MB == the bigger battery, 12V == the regular 12V batter, ICE == the ICE engine, MG1 == the smaller electric motor, MG2 == the larger electric motor):
This is a big part of why Toyota hybrids are at the top of reliability rankings. Compared to a pure ICE they replace the clutch, the transmission, the starter motor, the alternator, the reverse gear set, and the flywheel with the planetary gear power splitting device. the two electric motors, and electronics. The power splitting device has very few movings parts--just the gears themselves, a pawl that can mechanically lock the gears when parked, and fluid pumps. The gears only move by rotating, unlike in a conventional transmission where they also change position. This makes their hybrids mechanically much simpler than a pure ICE.
If you charge the battery, sure. Most people simply don't.
Data collected across 600.000 vehicles in Europe show that most people don't and that emissions are just a smidge under typical ICE vehicles. If you factor in the high emissions produced during battery productions it looks to be an overall bad package.
The idea itself is certainly good but the real world simply doesn't show it.
You have to factor in regerative braking. Toyota's had ~25 years to get their system dialed in. Hybrid is worth it unless you're only ever doing freeway speeds flat out with no braking.
As a Toyota hybrid owner, you see that Toyota's design is kinda at a local optimum, hitting limits in every direction which sometimes rear their head in the user experience.
For example, the sluggish 0-60 is due to the design being unable to get all the power from the engine to the wheels at slow speeds, due to the electrical path through the CVT gearbox being too small.
The funny noises when going down really big hills are due to the system having no way to dump excess energy after the battery is fully charged and being forced to rev the engine at 5000 rpm with no fuel to waste some.
The slow throttle response is due to the engine always running at 80% throttle for efficiency, which means if you suddenly need more power you can only quickly get an additional 20% before waiting for the rpm to slowly rise and give lots of power in a few seconds.
EV's do have similar design limitations (drive on a racetrack and you'll need to let the hardware cool between laps), but they seem easier to overcome by simply sizing the system slightly bigger to hide the limits.
You make valid points, but to get almost 40 mpg in something that would get closer to 20 mpg without the hybrid system, there are gonna be some drawbacks.
Small batteries mean heavy cycling of those batteries. When on pure EV, the oversized battery means most days you sit in the middle third of the battery which is great for battery longevity.
I wouldn't be sure if that's often the case, most PHEVs are just minor upgrades over existing hybrids. The electric motors on most hybrids, except the Nissan system, tend to only cover zero to city speeds. They need the gas engine connected to handle highway and ramp situations.
It is true. most are much worse at being EVs than the toyota prime models. Toyotas were the top of the euro data on real world EV-only use. Every other manufacturer ranges from worse to hilariously worse. Toyotas are not over half of sales, so therefore "most" applies.
You're making this outlandish claim so it is on you to name any currently or recently-marketed PHEV that can't reach highway speeds in EV mode, and to demonstrate that this constitutes "most" of the market or installed base.
the link to the underlying most recent fraunhofer study referred to by the first two seems broken sadly, so i cant get the breakdown by manufacturer anymore. But the data on aggregate is clear - on average the PHEVs cars out there today spend very little time on average in pure EV mode. If they did there would be more than ~20% reduction in emissions.
You are not addressing the claim that PHEVs can't reach highway speeds on batteries. That is a ridiculous claim, and it is false. You will not be able to name even one PHEV on the market with this limitation, because they do not exist.
its acceleration that causes them to drop out of EV mode, when the weak EV drives cant produce enough power. Can you accelerate all the way to highway speed in real world driving without it dropping out? for some yes, for many no, from the guardian article:
"Even when the cars were driven in electric mode, the analysis found that levels of pollution were well above official estimates. The researchers said this was because electric motors were not strong enough to operate alone, with their engines burning fossil fuels for almost one-third of the distance travelled in electric mode."
The manufacturers dont list this admittedly complicated crossover, so you cant say whether one does or doesnt from a spec sheet. The aggregate data is clear though.
Here’s an even better source, which makes it absolutely clear that their electric engines are too weak in the real world.
“In practice, the combustion engine frequently assists the electric motor in CD mode, especially during acceleration, at higher speeds or uphill driving. On average, the ICE supplies power during almost one third of the distance driven in CD mode. This is largely due to insufficient e-motor power, as most PHEVs are not designed to operate fully electrically under typical real-world conditions.”
“
The largest gap between WLTP and real-world PHEV emissions occurs in CD mode, often
referred to as an “electric” mode where real-world CD emissions are even higher than the
WLTP average. According to T&E analysis, real-world CO₂ emissions in CD mode average
around 68 gCO₂/km, which is nearly nine times as high as the estimated 8 gCO₂/km in CD mode
under the WL TP methodology, and almost twice the WL TP average overall emissions (including
both electric and combustion modes). In practice, the combustion engine frequently assists the
electric motor in CD mode, especially during acceleration, at higher speeds or uphill driving. On
average, the ICE supplies power during almost one third of the distance driven in CD mode. This
is largely due to insufficient e-motor power, as most PHEVs are not designed to operate fully
electrically under typical real-world conditions.
This relationship is illustrated by the correlation between e-motor-to-combustion-engine power
ratio and emissions in CD mode: vehicles with an average power ratio between electric motor
and combustion engine of 0.9, emit approximately 45 gCO2/km in CD mode. An average PHEV
with a ratio of 0.7 has emissions of around 68 gCO2/km. Vehicles in the lower decile in terms of
their ratio of electric motor to combustion engine power, where it drops to around 0.5, have
average CD mode emissions of 105 gCO2/km.
In real-world conditions, petrol PHEVs consume around 3 L/100km in electric mode.
“
Sure, that's the obvious downside of them. But in the role where they spend ~10h slowly charging overnight from a standard plug, about 25-45 miles is all you'd expect to enjoy in a steady state.
I had a PHEV Honda and I put 20 gallons of fuel in it over 6 years. The system works in the niche for which it was designed.
A colleague drives a BMW 3something hybrid and as far as i know has a 14kWh battery..
Thats good for about a 100km, but i very much wouldn't consider that a "fully" electric car by any means (edit: did you edit your post? couldve sworn you said "fully electric" instead of "mediocre range"?)...
Also, what most people don't realize: if you're only (or mostly) driving it electric, you're putting many more cycles onto that tiny battery.
...which usually costs as much as a "regular" EV battery, x times the size.
The latest Honda Civic Hybrid (and its Prelude cousin). The ICE is a generator under most use cases - it's decoupled from the drivetrain most of the time. That said, the battery capacity isn't great - you aren't going to complete many trips out of your immediate neighborhood on EV power alone.
That's because hybrids aren't designed to do so. The battery is small in terms of both energy and power. Sometimes, if the car is initially pointed the right way, you could complete a very short downhill trip at low speeds without the engine starting. But hybrids are designed to run the engine often. The batteries are sized to capture approximately the kinetic energy of the moving vehicle when stopping, and discharge the same energy when starting to move again, and that's it. It's a great system, they all get 45+ MPG.
...and apparently most owners never plug them in, so people just burn expensive fuel to charge their battery, while offering little or no savings over a hybrid or just the gas version.
> PH = Plug-in hybrid (Same as a hybrid but you can charge up the hybrid battery at home)
You can, but in practice most people don't. And I can understand why -- it's inconvenient to have to plug in after every short trip, and the short electric range of most PHEV's means you do have to plug in after every short trip.
I plug in my EV around once a week, and it's more convenient than going to the gas station, but I'm not sure I'd want to have to plug it in every time I come home from even a short trip to the supermarket.
They vary widely. Some have 1 mile (and the plug is therefore fairly pointless and usually just to qualify for some subsidy), whilst others do 200 miles and are effectively full EV's with a petrol generator to travel further.
It still allows regen braking down a hill or at traffic lights in town, so you get a decent efficiency gain. It also gives you a bit more horsepower when overtaking (depending on design). Or an hour of running the AC without belching smoke.
Considering the battery and motors for these tiny EV's is only 100 lbs or so, it is probably still worth having.
I would. Why wouldn't I? I park my car in an attached garage. If I had an EV or PHEV, I'd walk right past the charger on my way to the door into the house. I don't like standing around at the gas station waiting on the tank to fill. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
I actually wanted a PHEV, since my car is mostly used for local driving but I also drive hundreds of miles for work trips. Unfortunately I couldn't find one I liked.
Mine does about 40 miles during summer and 23 miles during winter. Given that my trips are within 25-35 miles range, I charge it daily. It’s at 9.5k miles and I filled up the tank about 7-8 times in 2 years. Rest was all electric.
The question isn't how long the journey is, it's how long until you're somewhere with a charger where you can wait a long time, but not too long. Short-range EVs make the most sense for people with single-family homes. Charging at work or apartments helps, but then there's the "too long" caveat.
> PH = Plug-in hybrid (Same as a hybrid but you can charge up the hybrid battery at home)
Surely that's the "same as a battery but you can use petrol on long journeys"
The only energy input for a "hybrid" is from petrol. It's slightly more efficient. A Toyota Yaris 1.5 hubrid gets about 65mpg rather than the 45mpg on a Skoda Kamiq
> Surely that's the "same as a battery but you can use petrol on long journeys"
Not really. The petrol drivetrain takes up so much room there's no space for a large battery, so the much smaller battery will only take you a short distance if you used it alone, plus now it's much less efficient because you're carrying around a heavy engine with you.
Which is ~enough to cover the vast majority of commutes, and the majority of US commutes.
Keep in mind that even if 20% of your commute is done on petrol, the other 80% isn't.
---
[1] Yes, there are PHEVs with shorter ranges, but those tend to be weird luxury models that for some compliance reason have a battery strapped to them.
That data needs to be split out by how the person acquired their PHEV. In much of Europe the majority of PHEVs are purchased by companies because of tax incentives. I remember seeing a study which said that people who are driving a PHEV because it was assigned to them by their employer are much less likely to plug it in than are ordinary consumers who bought or leased a PHEV.
Does it? It’s a million cars sampled at random. Perhaps fleet affects that a little, but these are big numbers. Claimed 80% reduction in emissions, real world 20%. Some fleet skew is not going to impact that meaningfully
> In much of Europe the majority of PHEVs are purchased by companies because of tax incentives.
Love to see some evidence for that being the majority
In Portugal a whopping 87% of PHEV registrations are to corporations [1]. It was close to 60% in the UK a few years ago [2].
This should not be too surprising, once you learn another fact that is probably more surprising: corporate sales make up a majority of car sales in much of Europe. Around 65% in Germany, 60% in UK, 55% in France (the 3 largest car markets in Europe).
Corporate buyers love PHEVs. They get many of the same or similar tax breaks that full EVs get, whereas hybrids that are not PHEVs usually just get the same corporate tax treatment that ICE cars get. Even though a PHEV usually costs more upfront than a similar regular hybrid which usually costs more than a similar pure ICE, the tax breaks make the PHEV a better deal even if the company has no intention of ever plugging it in.
Compare to individual buyers. They get much fewer incentives from the government. For them the higher cost of a PHEV over a regular hybrid only makes sense if they are going to plug the thing in.
Countries are starting to phase out the PHEV tax breaks for corporations, so we should start seeing the percent of PHEVs that actually get plugged in start to go up.
Although outliers like Portugal are interesting, the whole EU averages are more useful.
you are right in that corporate sales make up ~60% of new car registrations eu wide, that is kinda crazy.
But 11.7% of EU corporate registrations are PHEV [1] versus 9.8% overall [2]. So, it’s a little higher, but not really meaningfully higher.
So yeah, ~61% of new PHEVs registered to corporations. But I’m assuming a majority of those corporate cars get resold after a few years , entering the private registered market. So I don’t really know how to guess at the % of corporate ownership of cars currently on the road. Let’s wildly guess that half of new car reg corporate PHEVs are in private hands now.
That leaves ~33% of total PHEVs corporate owned, which is a sizable chunk and would affect the statistics somewhat, if those folk truly have different behavior.
Btw this analysis of the whole situation has a ton more data than the guardian I originally linked [3]. A huge part of the problem is even in full electric mode the PHEVs still used gas 1/3rd of the time due to weak ev engines. So even if plugged in they’re still a lie in real world emissions.
So I doubt changing the corporate ownership % will change the results that much, but we’ll see.
The biggest change to watch for will actually be once the UF (utility factor) for EU PHEVs is adjusted down in 2027 to match the real world emissions [3]. If they do that, I expect the category to collapse in sales as it won’t make sense for manufacturers to subsidize them as an emissions loophole anymore.
IIRC, the latest Honda Civic Hybrid has the ICE decoupled from the drivetrain most of the time (even if it is running to generate power), but it can couple to the drivetrain under some conditions?
That sounds like what the Chevy Volt did back in the day. Turns out that it just was not feasible to achieve higher efficiency through the generator when cruising on the highway than just direct driving the wheels.
Almost certainly why nearly all hybrids have been parallel hybrids up to now. What is changing, I think, is that a significant number of people are warming to the idea of a BEV, and want all of the benefits of that, but want to fall back on gasoline in a pinch. Thus EREV, or series hybrid, which provides that crutch. Expensive, though.
I'm curious why exactly they haven't made 2-3 speed trans typical in EVs already, like Porsche did. Single gear is too inefficient at freeway speeds. Tesla supposedly solved this with dual-motor models where the second motor has a different final drive ratio, but I feel like that's more expensive than 2WD w/ trans, which doesn't need to be nearly as advanced as the ICE-driven kind.
To my understanding the increase in efficiency is marginal at best, highway efficiency is completely dominated by wind resistance in either case. It would never come anywhere near paying for the increased cost or complexity of implementing the transmission. It may not be quite as complex as a five or six speed ICE transmission, but my bet is that it is much closer to that end of the scale than it is to a single speed reduction gearbox.
Depends on how you use it. Some never plug in. Some always do. I save a ton of money without worrying about range since there is always gas when I make a roadtrip
> In California, PZEVs have their own administrative category for low-emission vehicles. The category was made in a bargain between automakers and the California Air Resources Board (CARB), so that automobile makers could delay making mandated zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs)—battery electric and fuel-cell electric vehicles.
Most user agents allow you to trivially search from selection. Double-click unfamiliar word, right click, select "search" or on macOS there's also "lookup" but that really only works on dictionary words.
It's actually dead simple: there are battery electric EVs and internal combustion cars. That's it.
ICE cars come with a variety of add-ons and schemes to improve efficiency: fuel injectors, ECUs, braking energy capture systems (aka hybrid), small batteries for short trips that no one plugs in (aka plug in hybrids), etc.
Is that extended range? I was reading about them the other day. A small ICE engine in the car but it only charges the battery, right? Basically the opposite of a Toyota hybrid.
Yes, also known as a series hybrid, though EREV has become the dominant term in my experience. Nearly all hybrids on the market today or at any time in the past have been parallel hybrids, where the electric and gas motors both attach to the drivetrain. BMW did make an EREV version of the i3. Chevy made the Volt, which was almost a series hybrid, but in the end still parallel.
The new Civic hybrid is a series hybrid. It puts down 200hp and does 0-60 in 6 seconds, all while getting 50mpg. It combines the torque of an electric motor with an Atkinson cycle engine, which is known for better efficiency but worse torque, as a generator. And it clocks in around 3200lb, a bit more than a classic Civic, but far lower than any BEV.
The slight compromise is at constant highway cruising speeds, it may let the engine take over, since the efficiency calculus likely is more favorable in those conditions. It uses a clutch to do this, and only has a single gear ratio, rather than the messy setup of typical parallel hybrids.
I would still call that a parallel hybrid, because it has the mechanical bits to connect the gas motor to the wheels, even if only when on the highway. I would guess that Toyota enthusiasts would be quick to point out that the Toyota parallel hybrid design is pretty elegant and ends up being more reliable, not less. But I'm not a Toyota enthusiast.
I've driven one. Zipcar UK (RIP!) had a few Fiat 500 Hybrids and I ended up with one once when every other nearby Zipcar was booked and I had a last minute need for a car.
Given they are a relatively gutless car to begin with (1 litre 3 cylinder 70hp tinpot engine) I did wonder what the zigzag/lightning icon was on the dash so I googled it.
Turns out the system uses a 11Ah lithium battery that lives under the driver/passenger seat that charges through regenerative braking. It gives a small boost during acceleration (mostly at low speeds so it's more for stop-start urban driving), I think it's not much more than a glorified belt around the crankshaft giving a few extra hp.
No appreciable benefit to it that I could feel, but if it's helping us burn fewer dinosaurs then that's all good. (It's still a car but much better than a massive wankpanzer.)
Quite frankly, today there is no need to look anywhere else than a pure electric car. No point to buy an ICE with battery + electric motor. It just adds complexity and makes it expensive to service. The newly released EVs today are so good and have fantastic range.
Unless you travel a lot and live in hotels for months at a time, like I do. Granted, that's not horribly common but there are still legitimate reasons to want an ICE.
That was always my thing about early EVs. Thumbs up to the early adopters but it took a while to take off as a lot of the early ones were just car but battery and they weren't very polished and had a lot of downsides.
Agreed, though I was disheartened to find that we are now forcing electric cars to be loud because won't someone think of the pedestrians. There was a moment when EVs were quiet, and now there are some which drive by my house (residential neighborhood, so around 20 mph) that are louder than a well maintained ICEV would be at the same speed. The worst offenders are hybrids (looking at you, Toyota, with that unholy screech you make...)
Why is the most unsaid part out of all of this fuel nonsense is that there are less cars dumping emissions into the air. The Iran war may be the best driver we've had for air quality. Bring more EVs, they're overdue by a decade.
Donald Trump and Beniamin Netanyahu in a single year did more to curb emissions than all green activists since the inception of green activism. Nobel Peace Prize worthy if you ask me!
I quit driving in the last century so buying petrol is not something I do. I have a bicycle for most journeys and the train for elsewhere.
Hence my perspective is different. To have everyone priced off the roads is going to make the cycling so much faster and pleasant.
I have considered getting an electric car in the past, but, one look at the traffic, and I decided against going that slow. So I thought about getting an electric bicycle, only to come to the same conclusion, a normal bicycle is all I want or need.
There is a similar story with food. No fertiliser? No problem! I only eat plants, with no processed food or dead animals. Soon the 'grow crops to fatten animals so fat people can eat them' idea will be too costly.
Of course, the world isn't going to stop eating animal corpses at every occasion or ween the adults off milk, so we will see what happens. Nonetheless, plants only is a good starting point.
I don't see electric cars as a solution except for boomers, particularly in the UK context, where the goal is to have 50% of urban journeys taken with active travel by 2030. Active travel means walking or cycling, and I am all for it.
If you are obese, car dependent and eating burgers, the situation is not good. However, if free from car dependency and able to cook from scratch with plants, then the situation is somewhat different, previously unpopular lifestyle choices make sense.
I also don't see what right I have to West Asian oil, it is not a birthright to have access to all the fuel one can afford. My view is that it is best left in the ground.
At some stage I wonder if the UK will need to regulate the charger industry. The price gouging is wild in places. If we look at the energy content of petrol, a litre of gas contains about 9kwh of energy, or at average pump prices 1.58/9 = ~18 pence a kwh.
For sure, EVs are far more efficient at converting a kwh of energy into forward motion, but if we assume 35 mpg (9.25 miles/litre) for the gas car, we need about 970wh to travel 1 mile. A modern EV can manage a mile on ~260wh, almost a quarter of the gas requirement.
There are public charging networks in the UK averaging 92p/kwh - we know we need much less energy to move the more efficient EV, but even with this adjustment fuel cost per mile looks like:
petrol at UK average today: 17p/mi
Electric at very expensive public charger: ~24p/mi !!
At many chargers, there are no savings at all. For comparisons sake, that 92p kwh would be just 28.6p on the most expensive domestic electricity supply, and charging at home would be ~8p per mile on the worst possible tariffs.
I've probably done some bad math somewhere here, but I think the broad picture is correct.
The market should sort this out by itself, not saying regulators shouldn’t watch closely, but competition should be enough to do its thing. Cartel formation especially should be watched for vigilantly.
Of course, thats why I've been clear all my assumptions are for 260wh/mi, which I think is a very fair middle ground figure to compare to a 35mpg car - one can pick far more fuel efficient gas cars for this comparison too, the possibilities are endless.
I think your numbers still illustrate the same point though; if you can't charge at home, an EV is not necessarily cheaper to fuel, and the gap between the public charger price and the cost to a private consumer with home charging is still far too big. 98p vs 15p is staggering.
But compared to the US home charging via a mains outlet is much more viable because it's 240v vs 110v. If you plug you car overnight you'll typically have enough charge to last you the next day.
Almost everyone I know with an EV charging at home just reused the 240v dryer socket to avoid paying for a dedicated fast charger. It's often cheaper too to have an electrician fit a new 240v socket instead of the dedicated charger as well.
Home chargers with dedicated sockets is three phase 400v actually over here in the EU and every single home, and even relatively new apartments have that because of induction stoves.
Three phase power is definitely not 100% in the EU. Not even in Germany, though adoption does tend to be higher than neighboring countries.
And FWIW, I find that my induction cooktop works wonderfully on plain old 240V 40A, so I do not think it is a requirement to get three-phase for that ;-).
The US is 240V. We split it into two 120V legs for some sockets, and not for others. Some people do choose to get by on 120V, true, but they are the minority. Usually people who do not drive often.
Most? You mean all. 240V [0] as been the standard in the US basically since electrification started in the late 19th century. 120V has for all practical purposes never been a thing, it has always been an artifact of split-phase 240V. A deliberate choice to offer two voltages to every consumer.
[0] Okay, technically 240V did not become official until around 1967, but the split-phase design was there from the beginning. They capped it at 240V to stop the creeping up that had been going on in the earlier part of the century. This is why you still have a lot of people (not all of them old enough to have been alive in 1967, oddly enough) that refer to 240V as 220.
Sure, but that is the exception proving the rule. Not quite urban legend, you can find people on mikeholt.com who have actually seen one in the wild. Usually because of some shenanigans the local power company pulled to directly connect more houses by giving each one a phase of a three-phase feed.
Even in Wales, 25% can't. This isn't a figure you can ignore.
And that's a hypothetical, it relies on landlords playing ball etc. then there's the social issues. On the north of England we have lots of terraces built for mill workers, these aren't owned by the richest on society. So then you're in the situation of charging the poorest more for transport. And these are necessarily on towns with good transport links (think 1 bus and hour).
Many of those "can't" won't have cars. 20% of households in Wales have no car.
Now clearly that 25% and 20% won't overlap exactly, but they will overlap a lot
When 80% of cars in the UK are electric and 20% are those households who rely on public streets to store their belongings for 23 hours a day, then sure that will be a problem
Given that there's only about 2 million electric cars in the UK, yet 18 million homes which can charge electric cars, that's a long way off.
> In 2022 is was £1.89 a litre and spent most of the year over £1.60 a litre
Why are you choosing the 2022 energy crises as your baseline? Not only your choice was arbitary but you managed to choose the year fuel was at its highest as a reaction to the war in Ukraine.
That price was not representative or typical, it was a spike. You can see it here.
That is an interesting perspective. We do not forget how good we have it, because we choose not to put high taxes on gasoline and diesel. Do drivers in the UK tend to forget that taxes are more than half the retail price they pay at the pump? Sometimes way over half. That is a policy decision.
In the US, roads are paid for by other taxes instead. Property taxes for local roads, and general fund monies (income, sales, and inflation) for highways. Unfortunately that hides the real cost of using the roads, and makes it harder for people to make good choices. This seems unlikely to change though.
I think it is a complicated issue. People who do not drive still benefit from having a road going to their house. Either for deliveries, or for emergency vehicles, or whatever personal transportation they do end up using. So we want to spread the cost around a bit so everyone is paying something, in a perfect world as close as possible to how much they benefit from it.
I imagine it also varies somewhat across the US. Locally, our city does not use property taxes for road maintenance, we have a pavement fee which is billed through the utilities system (same one that handles water & sewer, for example). Plus gas tax from the state. It could be argued that the distinction between the pavement fee and property taxes is subtle, though.
I hope we can get the kinks worked out. Even in many 'blue' states, we have created a situation where the road maintenance tax paid by EV owners is twice or more what the typical ICEV driver is paying. I sort of expected that in 'red' states, since punishing EV owners is a political priority, but we see that same crap in Oregon & Washington, for example.
Yes well people like to complain, and people have a short memory. If it were really a massive problem you would see a lot more smaller cars, rather than Range Rovers and BMWs.
We will see exactly the same thing again in a few years when people are 'shocked' that prices are rising again. And then expect the government to step in, even though on the interim they've bought a massive car on PCP rather than take some personal responsibility and buy a car that they can afford when inevitably something goes wrong.
EVs aren’t exactly new; there’s a deep, accessble secondhand market by now. I’ve been using a 2019 Nissan Leaf as a primary family car for two years now, that I picked up off Gumtree for around £3k. It’s been one of the best (little) cars I’ve ever owned.
Not saying new EVs aren’t pricey, but if you want into electric on a budget (i.e. because you don’t feel like you can afford to fill up on diesel) it can absolutely be done.
If you're savvy you can get a really good discount on a second-hand EV as well because people overestimate the wear on the batteries and assume a second-hand EV will have terrible range.
The id.Polo starts at 22k GBP. The ordinary, petrol-driven Polo also starts at 22k. You can see how massive increases in the price of petrol and diesel might influence purchasing behaviour there...
Minor point: The id.Polo isn't released in the UK yet and prices are not confirmed. VW are not shy about price rises either I believe, so I wouldn't imagine the £21.7k figure in the media lasting more than a year if that price-point does happen.
Also, my god, £22k for a petrol base Polo! That's about £4k above inflation-adjusted prices from ~15 years ago
Diesel was traditionally the fuel of people who did high miles. Ie not the people that can't have an EV 'just in case they need to do 300 miles on a day's, because they probably legitimately are.
You kind of spoil that point by pull £80k out of your arse without looking at comparable diesels though.
The id.Polo is apparently starting at 22k GBP in the UK; the VW Polo's always been a pretty popular car (and also starts at about 22k). I'd expect those to sell very well.
And if they rent or otherwise don't own a home with a driveway? In the UK with its strict electrical codes, your charger must be installed by a loiscensed electrician. So add £1k right there.
Your money saving effort suddenly becomes a major inconvenience to fuel your car.
The UK is well suited to wind power, already has many wind turbines, and continues to install more. We have a good amount of solar panels too. Renewables provide the majority of electrical power when conditions are good and the share will only increase. Electric vehicles avoid the biggest weakness of renewables (unreliable base load), because they can be set to charge unattended when cheap electricity is available. Electricity suppliers offer variable rate tariffs specifically for electric vehicles.
You start running numbers the cost of solar and wind capacity to power an electric car is about 10% of the purchase price. And considering they have a battery that can store a weeks worth of energy and spend 95% of the time just sitting. Basically not a problem.
Maybe, in the best case, your gas engine is maybe 45% fuel efficient, but realistically, you're probably getting closer to 20-25%. By contrast, a combined cycle power plant gets over 60%.
But that's assuming we're just running power plants off of petrol and fuels. Coal is much cheaper than petroleum in some cases. There's also a lot of people who get their power from nuclear, hydro, solar, and wind. In many cases, your electric prices are not at all affected by the increases in petrullium prices, because most of your electricity is coming from something else. In fact, I doubt there's any place in the world that all your electricity is coming from petroleum fuels. Even if that's the major input, there are almost undoubtedly other sources in the mix.
> By contrast, a combined cycle power plant gets over 60%.
Over 25% of this is then lost in transmission and distribution[0] (down to 45%). Then 10-25% of that lost in charging the car[1] (down to 40%). Finally, the car itself loses about 10-15% of that[2] (down to 35%).
Total UK electricity consumption is around 300 TWh annually. That would put the grid losses at less than 10% based on your link. The charging is never as bad as 25% (internal house losses are negligible for any sensible charging rate) and the car is typically ~12% charging loss. Moreover, EVs recover quite a bit too. Even in purely dissipative driving (highway driving), I get around 4 miles/kWh, which is about 4 times better than an ICE vehicle.
Furthermore, if you're going to include distributional losses, then let's also drop the available petrol by 10-15% to account for refining etc.
Finally, on anything resembling a sunny day, my car charges entirely of rooftop solar, so what efficiency do we assign to that?
That depends entirely on where you are. In Ontario electricity is mostly hydro, nuclear, and renewables. But also, compared to burning gas directly, EVs are still more efficient and require less gas if you burn the gas to charge the EV.
Somewhat. But price rises for electricity aren't remotely on the same scale as price rises for diesel and petrol, and fuel/electricity was a smaller part of the TCO to _start_ with for electric cars.
Electricity generation is already diversified. Nuclear, coal, gas, solar, wood, witches, etc. The fuel mix can be tweaked as the economics change. ICE vehicle fleet is stuck with one energy source.
If you charge at home, and you don't have a car tariff, it'll be ~25-30p per kwhr
If you get a car charging tariff then you'll be paying ~9p a kwhr.
if you are brave then you can use an agile prices which depends on the weather you can be paid to charge (my record was -11p a unit) however in winter it can be a lot high, like 45p a unit.
Charging on the street can be around 50p a kwhr up to 98p a kwhr
Electric price in the uk on an off peak tariff overnight is about 7p/kWh, or about 2p/mile, so charging your car overnight with the average electric mileage (10,000 miles a year - higher than the average mileage) costs £200, about £1300 a year less than petrol.
Can you actually get different tariffs in the UK for residential?
In Canada most of that is pretty opaque. Electricity tariffs are not really something that most households would worry about. Businesses and Industrial usage do though
Yes, there are multiple competing providers - all the electricity comes from a single grid but competition in how you are billed for usage.
Many people choose a single fixed or variable rate tariff, but there are also off-peak tariffs that are very cheap at night but slightly more expensive in the day (designed for EV users), or even tariffs where the rate changes every 30 minutes depending on what is being generated - in this case when there is excess solar and wind generation then sometimes the rate even goes negative and you are paid to use the excess power.
Yes, the newer suppliers have EV and solar friendly domestic tariffs. Plug it in overnight, and the supplier determines when the charge happens and charges at the reduced rate.
Again if you put in a £5k 10kWh battery you are golden, as you put 8kWh into your car and 8kWh into your battery every night, dropping your electric cost to £38 a month (plus the standing charge, which is far higher)
A fifth of these last year were paid for by the government scheme that buys people cars - Motability. I wonder how many of these current ones are like that.
Motability is not 'a Government scheme that buys people cars'
People use the mobility part of their PIP payments to lease a car from Motability which is an independent company, they could use the mobility payment to pay for taxi instead.
I'm not talking about that. The government waives multiple taxes for the scheme. Off the top of my head, no VAT on the car purchases, no luxury tax on vehicles worth £40k+, no insurance tax, no VED (road tax).
The scheme has cost billions in lost revenue and it's the only reason it can exist. The exact accounting is up for debate because it's complex but nonetheless.
There are / were no £40k+ cars available on Motability
Can't find it now but there's a breakdown of the cars supplied somewhere and even when small BMWs etc were available very few people chose them - most people chose smaller average cars
Motability also plays a huge role in priming the used car market in the UK - without them there would be less choice and cars would be more expensive
It's also misleading to treat it just like another independent private company too (not just because Motability consists of both a limited company and a charity (or two, IIRC)). The limited company reinvests revenues or transfers to its charity, not to private shareholders. Its origin was a charity.
But the only reason it exists is because of government funds and government policy.
The scheme would collapse if the government stopped allowing benefit money to be used for Motability leases. The banks lent them money under the reassurance of the government funding.
But yes, they lease the vehicles, they don't sell them.
> And you can claim you have anxiety in order to get a brand new Audi.
You're gonna have to cite sources on that one, but I would sincerely doubt that £77 a week will allow you to lease an Audi.
Also the pip claimant has to be probed by a panel every three years to keep getting the benefit, unlike say a state pension (but I paid for that I mean possibly you did, its still a non means tested benefit, unlike PIP)
Personally I'm more pissed off about pensioners on final salary still getting state pension, even though they don't need it. Thats far more fucking expensive and doesn't serve a purpose, well apart from buying votes. means test that shit, right now.
Since this is a discussion, I would suggest it would be most helpful if you just provided your opinions explicitly. And you are welcome to post links to back up assertions that involve facts, of course!
Holy crap the scrolling behavior on this site is the worst I've seen. It hijacks my browser (Chrome)+OS X trackpad scrolling speed and inertia in a horrible way.
Interesting how that doesn't seem to be a front where Europe wants to isolate itself from foreign influence; the models mentioned in the link seem to be Chinese in origin, not European.
Unlike with fuel, we're not burning the EVs, so even if China cuts off the supply we can keep using the ones we've already got. It would be inconvenient, but not an urgent problem like loss of access to fuel.
The biggest seller of EVs here is the salary sacrifice schemes that give a huge discount to high earners, especially those with kids.
Imagine you're on taxable income of £120k and have two chidlren in nursery. Currently you get no help with childcare costs from the government. From my own experience it's ~£6000 subsidy per child.
You can currently take out an EV salary sacrifice scheme for ~£600 per month (pre tax), and that brings your taxable income down by £7200. Put another £13k in pension. Boom, you're now getting £13k in pension p/a, and your car is effectively free, because you get £12k back in childcare subsidies.
Your car isn't 'effectively free', because you could sacrifice all £20k into the pension, paying no tax on it, and get the £12k in childcare subsidies because your income is <=£100k. The EV is costing you £7000 pa out of this.
It still might be desirable, but it isn't free.
If you're at that income level, your employer pension contribution is already likely high and you've likely been stacking it for a while anyway. At some point there is a diminishing return to how much you should put in your pension too; it's tax on exit after all. You only need 2-3 years of maxed out contributions in your late 20s/early 30s to set yourself up very well for the future.
If your income is that high the pension is likely something you have anyway
But how long until those children are no longer in nursery and you are not subsedised for it? In ~2 years you will no longer have this help, you will be paying through the nose for the outstanding amount on your new car, and your take home will be significantly less each month.
Yeah, but you're still taxed at 72% between £100 and £125k if you have a student loan (as most people in that age bracket will be), so even in that case the hit to your take home isn't that much.
There is no need to go that high in salary (a lucky very small minority). The higher income tax band (40%) kicks in at 50k. Salary sacrifice schemes offer huge savings to many people.
true it does kick in at 50k but only for stuff over 50k. so its not a cliff like 100k or if you're at the other end on universal credit.
What I mean is that if salary sacrifice schemes on EV were only used, and very good deals, for people over 100k then it would be extremely niche as we're talking about the top 4% of earners whereas about 16% are higher band taxpayers...
People on higher salaries are disproportionately likely to be the ones doing it though - much much more likely to work for companies that implement the schemes for a start.
Yes, "higher salaries" as in higher tax band (median salary is 39k, higher tax band starts at 50k), which impacts 16% of people. That's why it has an notable impact on sales and also on the used cars market (salary sacrifice schemes are usually PCP/leasing over 3-4 years).
Perhaps it is the "London bubble" on HN as I feel that no-one is registering that 100k+ is a really, really small minority...
I'm not based in London.
according to the IFS 100k+ is top 10% earner in the UK. Which does feel a bit bubbly to me
Yes, seems a bit generous. What I found most often is ~4-5% with up to 18% higher tax payers (>50k) in latest tax year (threshold being frozen...).
> What I found most often
How did you find this?
Yeah, but you'll have a new car.
Obviously if you don't need a new car, it's a really bad financial decision to buy one.
And even if you do, it might be a bad financial decision to buy one.
Obviously if you don't need a new car, it's a really bad financial decision to buy one.
It's almost always a bad financial decision to buy a new car. The first-year depreciation is unreal.
We just bought a 1 year old Audi Q5 in the US for ~30% discount over new. And with the Audi CPO program, the warranty is just as long as a new model.
> Obviously if you don't need a new car, it's a really bad financial decision to buy one.
I dunno ....
At least two EV manufacturers offer a 7 year warranty on new cars on all parts INCLUDING the battery.
Replacing whatever is broken in your 10-year old car will on the net cost less than the amortized cost of buying a new one.
I'm no proponent of PCP or leasing but you have to admit there is a hassle factor invovled once they hit a certain age + mileage.
This oil crisis was a huge boon for EVs. In Brazil, despite the "hate" most people have against EVs, BYD went from breaking into the top 10 in March to taking the #1 spot in consumer sales for the first time ever.
Yeah, money talks. And every time you drop another $100 bill into the fuel tank, maybe you start to wonder what it is like to not pay that. Or to not drive to a gas station at all. Then you drive one and become one of the vast majority of people who suddenly have the epiphany "I will never go back, I like this way too much."
> BYD sold 14,911 units in April 2026
> total vehicle sales in March 2026 was 269,483 units
So BYD market share is 5.5% in Brazil.
But how many BYD units were sold relative to other units?
According to this, 14911 were BYD, VW were 80 behind.
https://www.globalchinaev.com/post/byd-edges-out-vw-to-becom...
Seems a very competitive market, unlike...
Curious as to why American EVs never took off. The US is the most advanced country technologically and has the greatest soft power in history to make deals.
> The US is the most advanced country technologically
Certainly not in cars. The US car industry really more or less stopped even _trying_ to compete internationally in the 90s or so. The sole exception was Ford, but they went for an unusual approach where Ford Europe designed its own cars, using parts from Bosch etc. Ford Europe is now also all but dead in the consumer space, too. To a large extent the US car industry survives due to protectionism (notably this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax).
Incidentally, it's far from what you'd expect, but the US is actually probably more influential in public transport than private transport on an export basis; Cummins is very competitive in the diesel engine space for buses, and the ridiculously-named Wabtec (previously GE and Westinghouse's train-y divisions) is big in locomotive tech.
Though AIUI US companies are largely failing to keep up there, now, too; diesel city buses are on the way out, and electric bus powertrains are largely Chinese or European.
Several reasons:
1. Unlike the rest of the world, EVs were sold in the US as muscle cars for rich people (e.g. Tesla). Everywhere else they're cheap cars for urban commuters (e.g. BYD).
2. Republicans sabotaged every attempt from the Democrats to get EVs going on.
3. Space and demography: EVs do very well in small countries (e.g. Europe) or big countries with a concentrated population (e.g.Brasil, Nigeria). They do poorly in countries with big distances and a spread out population.
> EVs were sold in the US as muscle cars for rich people
Yeah, the Nissan Leaf was a high-torque monster. Though to describe the BMW i3 as a muscle car is... not the descriptor I would use.
EVs were not sold by every OEM as high-power drag-strip rock stars - that's just what it took to get Americans to pay attention
3. Sweden/Norway have a lot of EVs while distances are not small like Netherlands etc and are also less urban than the US.
3. Will change soon enough. Except in the land of the free, oil.
> The US is the most advanced country technologically
Because the US is the most backward advanced country socially/politically
Incumbent American automakers had a hard time switching over. EVs require significant expertise that they didn't have, and didn't particularly want to acquire.
Only Tesla designed cars to be electric from a clean sheet. And they were doing extremely well for a long time, and had an enormous lead. But they squandered it in a variety of ways.
The automakers and oil interests spent a lot of effort badmouthing electric cars. To hear Americans talk about it, they need to haul giant boats on their daily 400 mile commutes into uncharted forest. They didn't come up with "range anxiety"; it was deliberately spread.
For a while there was a partisan divide about it, with electric cars seen as a hippie-liberal choice, much as hybrids used to be. Then circa 2020 Elon Musk began to systematically alienate that market.
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If they have electricity they can charge from a regular power outlet.
A large portion of the population is well served by 120V charging and don’t need more than that. And for what it’s worth, parts of Brazil also run on 220V, so they’re even more set in that regard.
parts? theres different voltage residential supply in different parts of the country? wild.
Japan has different frequencies. At least voltage is easier to go between.
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this is the exact kind of misinformation that prevents progress.
Brazil does not "fuel" cars on sugarcane any more than the US fuels its cars with corn. No one is missing any forests or trees. What you are missing is that the cost savings in fuel are so large with any EV that by itself, the money saved is an extremely compelling incentive to many people.
You are wrong and right.
Wrong because Brazil DOES fuel cars on sugarcane alcohol. Most petrol stations in the country have pumps for sugarcane alcohol, nearly all the ICE cars sold in the last two decades have a flex engine (in the past you had to chose when buying the car if you wanted a alcohol engine or a gasoline engine, now the engines just takes whichever you trow at it and adjusts the injection accordingly), and roughly half the personal vehicles in the country run daily on alcohol. That fact has softened this oil crisis a tiny tiny bit in the country (when oil is expensive many people just pump alcohol instead of gasoline).
And right that electricity is much cheaper than gasoline or alcohol, so people are changing to EVs because of the cost savings in fuel. In fact electricity was already much cheaper even when the price of oil was down, what was holding back EV adoption in the country was never the price of oil, but the relatively high purchase prices of EV vehicles (the average upper-middle-class Brazilian can't afford a Tesla like an American or European can), but the latest batch of basic EVs (like the BYD Dolphin-mini/Seagul) started to break that barrier about one or two years ago, and are now on the top sales charts.
> Brazil does not "fuel" cars on sugarcane any more than the US fuels its cars with corn.
In Brazil "ethanol" is sold separately from normal gasoline, and as far as I know it's entirely made from sugar cane, without fossil fuels. It's why flex cars are so popular there, since they can use either fuel depending on what's cheaper.
Meanwhile, you can't buy 100% corn-based fuel in the US.
sure, but Brazil is a net importer of refined petroleum. That exposes them to the global oil price.
Even though you cannot buy 100% ethanol in the US, the US alone is responsible for over half of global ethanol production, mostly from corn.
Regardless, any EV will almost certainly be cheaper to operate on electricity, rather than using corn, petroleum, or sugarcane for fuel.
> this is the exact kind of misinformation that prevents progress.
lol
> Brazil does not "fuel" cars on sugarcane any more than the US fuels its cars with corn.
Brazil has been building cars which can run on 100% ethanol since the 1970s.
These are not obscure facts; this is common knowledge the US teaches to schoolchildren.
In the US gasoline is a 10% ethanol blend, sometimes 15%. E85 is available only in some midwestern states (I've NEVER seen it for sale anywhere on the west coast) and it's only good for flex-fuel vehicles, which most manufacturers stopped building ~ 10 years ago when the free money from the government shifted towards EV incentives.
Ethanol is not a good fuel source for something like a personal vehicle. Corn and rice based ethanol are barely energy positive and can be slightly carbon positive.
Sugarcane-based ethanol does have a strongly negative carbon footprint and positive energy but ICE engines are notably less efficient overall that large utility scale cogen plants, even after you factor in transmission and distribution losses.
Making sugarcane into ethanol is good. It's less clear that distributing that chemical feedstock to a zillion people is a net benefit. Just send the electrons and keep the fuel at the plant.
> Ethanol is not a good fuel source for something like a personal vehicle.
It is about as good as gasoline (or better), Brazil has been running a good chunk of its personal car fleet on sugarcane alcohol for decades. Yes, EVs are better than ICVs, but there is nothing uniquely bad about ethanol that makes it worse as a fuel source for a personal vehicle than any other combustive fuel.
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A low cost 120v charged EV is a wildly practical thing for everything other than very long distance travel. They are simple to maintain, require fewer spare parts, and have fewer parts to fail in general. Don't think Tesla, think golf cart and trailer.
There may be places where grid access is impractical, in which case chemical fuels are a decent alternative, but as africa has shown solar microgrids are also quite effective and enable a ton of additional economic activity.
EV utility vehicles match quite well to the second and third world, when they benefit from sufficient economy of scale. I don't know if we're there yet but we're very close. These things are getting quite cheap.
Imagine how much faster electric car adoption would be if incumbent auto makers weren’t using them as dumping grounds for experimental, half-baked, and unsafe design experiments?
We never wanted their “electric cars” … we wanted their cars, but electric.
All of the German car makers, plus Hyundai, are very serious about making really good mainstream electric vehicles because they all believe that will be their core of their business sooner rather than later.
> All of the German car makers
The basic Seat Leon combi is currently 22.000€ on promotion. And that's a spacious family car. No EV car exist at that price point in that size with a range that most people would be comfortable with it.
Yes they will exist in the future but we are still a decade away from that at least.
>we are still a decade away
How much will you spend on fuel during that decade? Seems likely it will be more than today's upfront cost differential. Possibly a lot more.
> No EV car exist at that price point in that size with a range that most people would be comfortable with it.
Disregarding the range because that's a different topic. Fundamentally EVs will be of a different size than ICEs because the big and heavy battery has to placed somewhere low, which is usually under the passenger area floor. Then the car must be higher to accomodate that and also sturdier etc., so at that point we have a bigger and heavier car for the same interior space. And also pricier of course. So it's better to forget the Seat Leon Combi and look at the EVs with fresh eyes.
Or you can retrofit an EN to a ICE shell, like Stellantis did with eg the Opel Astra TS which is also cheap for an EV, but mostly everyone agrees this is a dead end.
One more point regarding the price - that's our own (EU) making. Chinese EVs in China are much much cheaper.
Average price of sold new car in EU is around 45.000 so what exactly is your point?
Coulda fooled me. From what I’ve seen, it seemed like they were dragged to electric kicking and screaming after other options didn’t pan out - even with assistance from regulators. Germany has a severe problem with rational consideration of energy issues.
The Achilles heel of EV adoption, and why I think Tesla has had such a leg up, is that your classic dealership really doesn't like selling EVs.
The salesman aren't knowledgeable about them, they don't have ownership experience with them, and EV's generate dramatically fewer lifetime "service" visits and parts sales.
This was common with the f150 lightning, where salesman were pretty much "If you want it I can do the paper work, but let me show you the regular F150's we have here if you like to drive places without headaches."
We don't have dealerships in the UK like the US has.
A true blessing. Ironically the US dealership scheme was hatched as a way to protect consumers...
How does the UK do car sales?
We have a lot of big dealer groups who are not tied to a specific manufacturer. Independent franchisees tied to a single manufacturer are uncommon I believe.
Even within each sub-brand of the group, they often work with different manufacturers.
Though Sytner (the biggest) tend to have single-manufacturer dealerships.
Probably a mix of both on both sides of the pond I imagine?
And there's less rigmarole during the process. Less aggressive sales tactics I believe
VW tried that, particularly with the eGolf (which was pretty much indistinguishable from a normal Golf); it didn't really work. A lot of people thought VW didn't even _make_ electric cars until the weirder-looking id3 and 4 came out years later.
There are some where the EV is largely the same as the non-EV other than the necessary differences because it is in an EV such as instruments and menus.
For example Hyundai Kona EV differs inside from the Kona ICE and hybrid models by having the shifter on the column instead of on the center console and the floor is flatter from not needing to accommodate the transmission tunnel.
A mix of Googling and LLMing suggests that BMW, Genesis, Mini Cooper, Volvo, and VW also have some EVs that are very similar to their non-EV cars.
I don't know. Kia Niro is now 10 years old and looks completely normal and you could buy it as HEV, PHEV or EV
Yeah, the first EV I bought was an otherwise boring Hyundai Kona. Great car and great EV but you could easily mistake it for the gas version if you weren't paying attention.
And surprisingly to me it is even pretty damn efficient despite being originally designed as a gasoline-powered vehicle.
I remember when there were no mainstream EVs and everyone kept publicizing some EV concept that looks like it'd be a ride at Disney Epcot.
Did you stop looking at cars after 2015 ? Most electric cars look very normal.
Yes and no. The F-150 Lightning did a lot more poorly than expected and it’s the best selling vehicle in the US.
It is interesting with the current oil shock what will happen to US automakers that have all but abandoned fuel efficient cars.
The F-150 Lightning is definitely not the best selling vehicle in the US. Maybe best-selling EV pickup truck.
https://www.fromtheroad.ford.com/us/en/articles/2025/ford-f-...
That lists the Ford F-series as #1, not the F-150 Lightning which is 1.3% of that per https://www.fromtheroad.ford.com/content/dam/fordmediasite/u... . I've seen about 3 ever.
Even the F-series popularity is kinda overstated by this because other cars are more fragmented.
I think they were trying to say that it's surprising the Lightning sold so poorly considering the popularity of the ICE version.
I do think F-150 buyers tend to be more conservative than average car buyers and more receptive to anti-EV FUD for both political and cultural reasons.
Trucks are also more likely to be used to tow at least once in a while. Electric range does poorly there
What's galling is Tesla's influence. Why do electric cars need to have screens besides (or instead of) the dashboard? WHY? Or any other of Tesla's misfeatures.
I own a Kia Rio hachback. It was incredibly cheap for the features and has been incredibly reliable. I just want an electric version of that with as much range as possible and a heat pump for cabin climate control and battery management.
But nope, can't have that, instead we have a market full of cars 4+ times the cost with a bunch of stupid, useless, asinine bells and whistles.
I assume they'll eventually sell that, in about 10 years time, which makes me sad.
> The increase reflects a rebound from an unusually weak April last year, when buyers pulled purchases forward to March to beat incoming vehicle tax increases
Yeah, all but diesel is up a lot. Electric only slightly more than gas as percentage
Diesel is down YoY https://www.smmt.co.uk/vehicle-data/car-registrations/
I am so confused by the categorisation of cars: BEV, HEV, PHEV and so on. I think the industry insiders who write some of these articles don't realise how hard it is for some of their readers to keep track.
To be fair, the article is written on a website for the auto industry, so it's reasonable for them to assume their target audience is familiar with these terms. I argue the onus is on OP for explaining these since they're sharing it to a different audience than it was written for.
Ignore the "EV" part.
B = Battery
H = Hybrid
PH = Plug-in hybrid (Same as a hybrid but you can charge up the hybrid battery at home)
> Same as a hybrid but you can charge up the hybrid battery at home
And, in practice, the battery tends to be much, much bigger. Some PHEVs are basically mediocre-range electric cars which happen to have a petrol generator.
Its time to call a spade a spade - the bulk of the PHEV category sold to date (with a few exceptions like toyota) has been an emissions scam, designed to skirt EU fleet emission laws.
In practice, most are mediocre range, low-speed only evs that effectively no one bothers to charge regularly because its impractical and annoying. The manufactures claim 80% reductions in emissions, and use those credits to allow them to sell more gas cars in the EU market. But real world emission reduction is 20%. They know this, they've known for years. Its a scam.
https://electrek.co/2026/02/19/biggest-study-yet-shows-plug-...
Some newer toyotas, newer BMWs and the coming EREVs will actually be able to be electric cars most of the time, and might live up closer to the claims. Doesnt change the fact the category has been mostly fraud until now.
To be fair, running electric only at slow speeds is still good, because it's slow, stop-and-go driving that benefits the most from electric.
except, as the data shows, thats not enough to make much emissions difference.
Maybe blame consumers rather than manufacturers. And if a government sets up incentives incorrectly, blame the government schemes, not those using such badly designed incentives.
The buyers wanted a petrol car. And they choose to fill with petrol. You need your own garage to make plugging in worthwhile (and avoid getting charging cable nicked). Consumers perhaps prefer to avoid the hassle of plugging in?
In New Zealand there's a visible disincentive of a yearly tax on pluggable hybrids (to pay for road use). In NZ roads are paid by taxes earmarked for that.
> In NZ roads are paid by taxes earmarked for that.
It would be better to say that all of the money from road use and petrol taxes are spent on the roads. Those taxes don't actually cover the cost of maintaining the road system.
At which point it kind of becomes moot that those taxes are ring-fenced for paying for roads. Since I've lived here people keep repeating that ring-fenced fact like its some kind of special thing. General taxation and council taxes are subsiding just the road maintenance, and completely paying for new build roads.
> Those taxes don't actually cover the cost of maintaining the road system
Yes they almost did.
Only a few years ago the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF) was almost entirely self-sustaining, funded by road users.
Recently Crown funding (grants and loans) expanded significantly to ~40% of fund income.
But approximately 30% of government transport spending is being spent on rail (to placate voters I think). Before the Land Transport (Rail) Legislation Act 2020, not much we spent by the NLTF on rail.
Currently ~3% of driven kilometres by car use electricity - so as that number increases, BEV and PHEV vehicles will need to have increased taxation. Presumably something like $700 per annum (currently about how much a person driving a petrol car pays on excise tax).
Ultimately it is almost tautological that road users pay for roads, since government spending comes from taxes, and most people use cars. How things get earmarked is just sophisticated accounting.
I find that strange just looking at my current PHEV the engine now is at 75,000 miles or what my previous one was at only 30,000 miles. Most trips we barely use the intent if we use it at all, but every once in a while we do go on the long road trips. Plus, they are great for Americans who normally don't do those long trips, but they don't get rained to anxiety or any other issues with charging.
1. you are you and your data and your use. I believe you, but thats not useful compared to the real world data from "981,035 vehicles across Europe".
2. i suspect but i have no way to prove... the PHEVs sold in america tended to be way better EVs - there's no similar total fleet emissions laws so no incentive to subsidize shitty/fraudulent PHEVs in the US.
In theory, a PHEV is the perfect middle ground for someone that wants to drive electric but has major range anxiety about road trips.
Something with a 60 mile electric range will likely satisfy all of their day-to-day driving. The generator means they don't have to charge though, so they can still take road trips without worrying about electric range.
In practice though, they're somewhat impractical. You still need an entire ICE drivetrain AND a moderately sized battery and electric motor, driving the price up.
My Prius Prime PHEV has a range of about 25 miles on battery. My daily commute to work is about 10 miles each way, so I can get to work and back on electric alone. If I happen to need to make a longer trip, then my car switches to gas. I plug in the car when I get home from work and I only need to refill the tank every few months. And even then, it's extremely fuel efficient because it's still a Prius.
This has been a perfect car for my use case, but the big caveat is my short commute. If your daily commute fits inside that short range (or one way commute if there's a charger at your workplace), this can be a great fit. A+++, highly recommended.
If your work commute is significantly longer than a PHEV's battery range, or if you don't have a convenient place to charge it, then it's a much less attractive proposition.
Not only somewhat impractical.
Most people don't end up charging their battery because it still has an ICE so why bother? So now they have the worst of both worlds. Complex ICE machinery that needs regular service and heavy battery that doesn't end up being used.
Still gives decent efficiency improvements. You can always run the ICE at most efficient RPM. Never need to idle it, etc.
You can also have a much smaller engine for a much bigger car, since you only need to cover average not peak power usage.
You also in most designs eliminate the gearbox.
Only true for a plug-in hybrid with a series drivechain (a.k.a. "extended range electric vehicle"). The more common type has two parallel drivechains linked with clutches, so you still have all the drawbacks of a conventional internal combustion engine drivechain when you're using it.
> The more common type has two parallel drivechains linked with clutches, so you still have all the drawbacks of a conventional internal combustion engine drivechain when you're using it
I don't know about the whole world, but in both the US and Europe nearly half of the hybrids on the road are from Toyota, so unless nearly everything else is two parallel drive chains linked with clutches whatever Toyota does is the more common type.
Toyota uses a series-parallel system that works by having a planetary gear system that connects the ICE, a large electric motor, a small electric motor, and a drive shaft all together.
The planetary gear system functions as a power splitting device and a continuously variable transmission. It lets them direct power flow in a bunch of different ways. Here's a summary based on Wikipedia. (MB == the bigger battery, 12V == the regular 12V batter, ICE == the ICE engine, MG1 == the smaller electric motor, MG2 == the larger electric motor):
• Aux power: MB -> DC/DC converter -> 12V
• Charge: ICE -> MG1 -> MB
• EV drive: MB -> MG2 -> wheels
• Moderate acceleration: ICE -> wheels, ICE -> MG1 -> MG2 -> wheels
• Highway: ICE -> wheels, ICE -> MG1 -> MB
• Heavy power, such as on steep hills: ICE -> wheels, ICE -> MG1 -> MB, ICE -> MG1 -> MG2 -> wheels
• Max power: ICE -> wheels, ICE -> MG1 -> MG2 -> wheels, MB -> MG2 -> wheels
• Regenerative braking: wheels -> MG2 -> MB
• B-mode braking: Wheels -> MG2 -> MB, Wheels -> MG1 -> ICE
This is a big part of why Toyota hybrids are at the top of reliability rankings. Compared to a pure ICE they replace the clutch, the transmission, the starter motor, the alternator, the reverse gear set, and the flywheel with the planetary gear power splitting device. the two electric motors, and electronics. The power splitting device has very few movings parts--just the gears themselves, a pawl that can mechanically lock the gears when parked, and fluid pumps. The gears only move by rotating, unlike in a conventional transmission where they also change position. This makes their hybrids mechanically much simpler than a pure ICE.
This is something people say, but in practice the Toyota Prius is still a very reliable car.
If you charge the battery, sure. Most people simply don't.
Data collected across 600.000 vehicles in Europe show that most people don't and that emissions are just a smidge under typical ICE vehicles. If you factor in the high emissions produced during battery productions it looks to be an overall bad package.
The idea itself is certainly good but the real world simply doesn't show it.
https://www.evshift.com/368695/do-people-actually-charge-the...
You have to factor in regerative braking. Toyota's had ~25 years to get their system dialed in. Hybrid is worth it unless you're only ever doing freeway speeds flat out with no braking.
As a Toyota hybrid owner, you see that Toyota's design is kinda at a local optimum, hitting limits in every direction which sometimes rear their head in the user experience.
For example, the sluggish 0-60 is due to the design being unable to get all the power from the engine to the wheels at slow speeds, due to the electrical path through the CVT gearbox being too small.
The funny noises when going down really big hills are due to the system having no way to dump excess energy after the battery is fully charged and being forced to rev the engine at 5000 rpm with no fuel to waste some.
The slow throttle response is due to the engine always running at 80% throttle for efficiency, which means if you suddenly need more power you can only quickly get an additional 20% before waiting for the rpm to slowly rise and give lots of power in a few seconds.
EV's do have similar design limitations (drive on a racetrack and you'll need to let the hardware cool between laps), but they seem easier to overcome by simply sizing the system slightly bigger to hide the limits.
You make valid points, but to get almost 40 mpg in something that would get closer to 20 mpg without the hybrid system, there are gonna be some drawbacks.
Small batteries mean heavy cycling of those batteries. When on pure EV, the oversized battery means most days you sit in the middle third of the battery which is great for battery longevity.
I wouldn't be sure if that's often the case, most PHEVs are just minor upgrades over existing hybrids. The electric motors on most hybrids, except the Nissan system, tend to only cover zero to city speeds. They need the gas engine connected to handle highway and ramp situations.
This is not true. Popular PHEVs like the Prius Prime can go any speed you like on batteries.
It is true. most are much worse at being EVs than the toyota prime models. Toyotas were the top of the euro data on real world EV-only use. Every other manufacturer ranges from worse to hilariously worse. Toyotas are not over half of sales, so therefore "most" applies.
You're making this outlandish claim so it is on you to name any currently or recently-marketed PHEV that can't reach highway speeds in EV mode, and to demonstrate that this constitutes "most" of the market or installed base.
its been widely reported on.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/18/plug-in-...
https://electrek.co/2026/02/19/biggest-study-yet-shows-plug-...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/16/plug-in-...
the link to the underlying most recent fraunhofer study referred to by the first two seems broken sadly, so i cant get the breakdown by manufacturer anymore. But the data on aggregate is clear - on average the PHEVs cars out there today spend very little time on average in pure EV mode. If they did there would be more than ~20% reduction in emissions.
You are not addressing the claim that PHEVs can't reach highway speeds on batteries. That is a ridiculous claim, and it is false. You will not be able to name even one PHEV on the market with this limitation, because they do not exist.
its acceleration that causes them to drop out of EV mode, when the weak EV drives cant produce enough power. Can you accelerate all the way to highway speed in real world driving without it dropping out? for some yes, for many no, from the guardian article:
"Even when the cars were driven in electric mode, the analysis found that levels of pollution were well above official estimates. The researchers said this was because electric motors were not strong enough to operate alone, with their engines burning fossil fuels for almost one-third of the distance travelled in electric mode."
The manufacturers dont list this admittedly complicated crossover, so you cant say whether one does or doesnt from a spec sheet. The aggregate data is clear though.
Here’s an even better source, which makes it absolutely clear that their electric engines are too weak in the real world.
“In practice, the combustion engine frequently assists the electric motor in CD mode, especially during acceleration, at higher speeds or uphill driving. On average, the ICE supplies power during almost one third of the distance driven in CD mode. This is largely due to insufficient e-motor power, as most PHEVs are not designed to operate fully electrically under typical real-world conditions.”
“ The largest gap between WLTP and real-world PHEV emissions occurs in CD mode, often referred to as an “electric” mode where real-world CD emissions are even higher than the WLTP average. According to T&E analysis, real-world CO₂ emissions in CD mode average around 68 gCO₂/km, which is nearly nine times as high as the estimated 8 gCO₂/km in CD mode under the WL TP methodology, and almost twice the WL TP average overall emissions (including both electric and combustion modes). In practice, the combustion engine frequently assists the electric motor in CD mode, especially during acceleration, at higher speeds or uphill driving. On average, the ICE supplies power during almost one third of the distance driven in CD mode. This is largely due to insufficient e-motor power, as most PHEVs are not designed to operate fully electrically under typical real-world conditions. This relationship is illustrated by the correlation between e-motor-to-combustion-engine power ratio and emissions in CD mode: vehicles with an average power ratio between electric motor and combustion engine of 0.9, emit approximately 45 gCO2/km in CD mode. An average PHEV with a ratio of 0.7 has emissions of around 68 gCO2/km. Vehicles in the lower decile in terms of their ratio of electric motor to combustion engine power, where it drops to around 0.5, have average CD mode emissions of 105 gCO2/km. In real-world conditions, petrol PHEVs consume around 3 L/100km in electric mode. “
https://uploads.transportenvironment.org/production/files/20...
Yes, my Prius Prime handles highway speeds perfectly fine on battery. In fact, the acceleration is great in pure EV mode.
It just doesn't have much range: only about 25 miles on my 2018 model. Newer models advertise up to 44 miles on EV.
Sure, that's the obvious downside of them. But in the role where they spend ~10h slowly charging overnight from a standard plug, about 25-45 miles is all you'd expect to enjoy in a steady state.
I had a PHEV Honda and I put 20 gallons of fuel in it over 6 years. The system works in the niche for which it was designed.
Which ones?
A colleague drives a BMW 3something hybrid and as far as i know has a 14kWh battery..
Thats good for about a 100km, but i very much wouldn't consider that a "fully" electric car by any means (edit: did you edit your post? couldve sworn you said "fully electric" instead of "mediocre range"?)...
Also, what most people don't realize: if you're only (or mostly) driving it electric, you're putting many more cycles onto that tiny battery.
...which usually costs as much as a "regular" EV battery, x times the size.
https://evclinic.eu/2024/09/05/bmw-hybrid-repeated-battery-f... for example...
The latest Honda Civic Hybrid (and its Prelude cousin). The ICE is a generator under most use cases - it's decoupled from the drivetrain most of the time. That said, the battery capacity isn't great - you aren't going to complete many trips out of your immediate neighborhood on EV power alone.
That's because hybrids aren't designed to do so. The battery is small in terms of both energy and power. Sometimes, if the car is initially pointed the right way, you could complete a very short downhill trip at low speeds without the engine starting. But hybrids are designed to run the engine often. The batteries are sized to capture approximately the kinetic energy of the moving vehicle when stopping, and discharge the same energy when starting to move again, and that's it. It's a great system, they all get 45+ MPG.
2026 Denza D9 has 66.48 kWh plug-in hybrid battery pack
https://carnewschina.com/2026/05/01/byd-deploys-new-heyuan-h...
...and apparently most owners never plug them in, so people just burn expensive fuel to charge their battery, while offering little or no savings over a hybrid or just the gas version.
> PH = Plug-in hybrid (Same as a hybrid but you can charge up the hybrid battery at home)
You can, but in practice most people don't. And I can understand why -- it's inconvenient to have to plug in after every short trip, and the short electric range of most PHEV's means you do have to plug in after every short trip.
I plug in my EV around once a week, and it's more convenient than going to the gas station, but I'm not sure I'd want to have to plug it in every time I come home from even a short trip to the supermarket.
I plug in my EV almost every time I get home. The charger is hanging right next to my driver door in my driveway.
I own an EV. If I had a phev I'd sure love to plug it in rather than pay more for gas and have to go to the station.
That is why I setup our PHEV plug to be right next to the door, we park, grab the plug and put it in. That is at most 2 extra steps.
Seems like PHEV can mean it only goes 15-30mi on a charge. Realistically how many people are actually plugging those in?
They vary widely. Some have 1 mile (and the plug is therefore fairly pointless and usually just to qualify for some subsidy), whilst others do 200 miles and are effectively full EV's with a petrol generator to travel further.
Yeah 1-5mi EV seems like pure scam marketing that should be illegal
It still allows regen braking down a hill or at traffic lights in town, so you get a decent efficiency gain. It also gives you a bit more horsepower when overtaking (depending on design). Or an hour of running the AC without belching smoke.
Considering the battery and motors for these tiny EV's is only 100 lbs or so, it is probably still worth having.
Yeah I'm not saying it's useless, it just shouldn't be marketed as an EV when you basically need to burn gas to drive it.
I would. Why wouldn't I? I park my car in an attached garage. If I had an EV or PHEV, I'd walk right past the charger on my way to the door into the house. I don't like standing around at the gas station waiting on the tank to fill. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
I actually wanted a PHEV, since my car is mostly used for local driving but I also drive hundreds of miles for work trips. Unfortunately I couldn't find one I liked.
If you don't have an attached garage
Mine does about 40 miles during summer and 23 miles during winter. Given that my trips are within 25-35 miles range, I charge it daily. It’s at 9.5k miles and I filled up the tank about 7-8 times in 2 years. Rest was all electric.
Charging at home or elsewhere though? Cause lots of people can't charge at home or at work.
lot of comments speculating but we have the data.
> Realistically how many people are actually plugging those in?
Answer: almost no one. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/16/plug-in-...
Most journeys are well under 30 miles.
https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/best-car-insurance/average-car-...
> The average car journey distance in the UK is approximately 8.2 miles
The question isn't how long the journey is, it's how long until you're somewhere with a charger where you can wait a long time, but not too long. Short-range EVs make the most sense for people with single-family homes. Charging at work or apartments helps, but then there's the "too long" caveat.
Don't forget EREV.
> PH = Plug-in hybrid (Same as a hybrid but you can charge up the hybrid battery at home)
Surely that's the "same as a battery but you can use petrol on long journeys"
The only energy input for a "hybrid" is from petrol. It's slightly more efficient. A Toyota Yaris 1.5 hubrid gets about 65mpg rather than the 45mpg on a Skoda Kamiq
https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/realmpg/skoda/kamiq-2023
https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/realmpg/toyota/yaris-cross-2021
> Surely that's the "same as a battery but you can use petrol on long journeys"
Not really. The petrol drivetrain takes up so much room there's no space for a large battery, so the much smaller battery will only take you a short distance if you used it alone, plus now it's much less efficient because you're carrying around a heavy engine with you.
> Surely that's the "same as a battery but you can use petrol on long journeys"
They put tiny batteries in a lot of plug-in hybrids. Unless you live very close to work, you’ll struggle to use it as primarily an EV
Commuter[1] PHEVs start at 30 miles EV range.
Which is ~enough to cover the vast majority of commutes, and the majority of US commutes.
Keep in mind that even if 20% of your commute is done on petrol, the other 80% isn't.
---
[1] Yes, there are PHEVs with shorter ranges, but those tend to be weird luxury models that for some compliance reason have a battery strapped to them.
the short ranges make them impractical and annoying to charge all the time, so people just dont in the real world
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/16/plug-in-...
That data needs to be split out by how the person acquired their PHEV. In much of Europe the majority of PHEVs are purchased by companies because of tax incentives. I remember seeing a study which said that people who are driving a PHEV because it was assigned to them by their employer are much less likely to plug it in than are ordinary consumers who bought or leased a PHEV.
Does it? It’s a million cars sampled at random. Perhaps fleet affects that a little, but these are big numbers. Claimed 80% reduction in emissions, real world 20%. Some fleet skew is not going to impact that meaningfully
> In much of Europe the majority of PHEVs are purchased by companies because of tax incentives.
Love to see some evidence for that being the majority
In Portugal a whopping 87% of PHEV registrations are to corporations [1]. It was close to 60% in the UK a few years ago [2].
This should not be too surprising, once you learn another fact that is probably more surprising: corporate sales make up a majority of car sales in much of Europe. Around 65% in Germany, 60% in UK, 55% in France (the 3 largest car markets in Europe).
Corporate buyers love PHEVs. They get many of the same or similar tax breaks that full EVs get, whereas hybrids that are not PHEVs usually just get the same corporate tax treatment that ICE cars get. Even though a PHEV usually costs more upfront than a similar regular hybrid which usually costs more than a similar pure ICE, the tax breaks make the PHEV a better deal even if the company has no intention of ever plugging it in.
Compare to individual buyers. They get much fewer incentives from the government. For them the higher cost of a PHEV over a regular hybrid only makes sense if they are going to plug the thing in.
Countries are starting to phase out the PHEV tax breaks for corporations, so we should start seeing the percent of PHEVs that actually get plugged in start to go up.
[1] https://theicct.org/publication/european-market-monitor-cars...
[2] https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/car-industry-news/2022/05/3...
Although outliers like Portugal are interesting, the whole EU averages are more useful.
you are right in that corporate sales make up ~60% of new car registrations eu wide, that is kinda crazy.
But 11.7% of EU corporate registrations are PHEV [1] versus 9.8% overall [2]. So, it’s a little higher, but not really meaningfully higher.
So yeah, ~61% of new PHEVs registered to corporations. But I’m assuming a majority of those corporate cars get resold after a few years , entering the private registered market. So I don’t really know how to guess at the % of corporate ownership of cars currently on the road. Let’s wildly guess that half of new car reg corporate PHEVs are in private hands now.
That leaves ~33% of total PHEVs corporate owned, which is a sizable chunk and would affect the statistics somewhat, if those folk truly have different behavior.
Btw this analysis of the whole situation has a ton more data than the guardian I originally linked [3]. A huge part of the problem is even in full electric mode the PHEVs still used gas 1/3rd of the time due to weak ev engines. So even if plugged in they’re still a lie in real world emissions.
So I doubt changing the corporate ownership % will change the results that much, but we’ll see.
The biggest change to watch for will actually be once the UF (utility factor) for EU PHEVs is adjusted down in 2027 to match the real world emissions [3]. If they do that, I expect the category to collapse in sales as it won’t make sense for manufacturers to subsidize them as an emissions loophole anymore.
[1] https://www.transportenvironment.org/articles/eu-regulation-... [2] https://www.acea.auto/files/Press_release_car_registrations_... [3] https://www.transportenvironment.org/articles/eu-regulation-...
Sort of...
IIRC, the latest Honda Civic Hybrid has the ICE decoupled from the drivetrain most of the time (even if it is running to generate power), but it can couple to the drivetrain under some conditions?
That sounds like what the Chevy Volt did back in the day. Turns out that it just was not feasible to achieve higher efficiency through the generator when cruising on the highway than just direct driving the wheels.
Almost certainly why nearly all hybrids have been parallel hybrids up to now. What is changing, I think, is that a significant number of people are warming to the idea of a BEV, and want all of the benefits of that, but want to fall back on gasoline in a pinch. Thus EREV, or series hybrid, which provides that crutch. Expensive, though.
I'm curious why exactly they haven't made 2-3 speed trans typical in EVs already, like Porsche did. Single gear is too inefficient at freeway speeds. Tesla supposedly solved this with dual-motor models where the second motor has a different final drive ratio, but I feel like that's more expensive than 2WD w/ trans, which doesn't need to be nearly as advanced as the ICE-driven kind.
To my understanding the increase in efficiency is marginal at best, highway efficiency is completely dominated by wind resistance in either case. It would never come anywhere near paying for the increased cost or complexity of implementing the transmission. It may not be quite as complex as a five or six speed ICE transmission, but my bet is that it is much closer to that end of the scale than it is to a single speed reduction gearbox.
It's just a regular transverse FF with the clutch sandwiched by a pair of motors...
> Surely that's the "same as a battery but you can use petrol on long journeys"
No, that would be an EREV.
45 to 65mpg is a near 50% increase. I would say that's "slight"
Depends on how you use it. Some never plug in. Some always do. I save a ton of money without worrying about range since there is always gas when I make a roadtrip
Don’t forget PZEV (Partial Zero-Emissions Vehicle) which isn’t even an EV at all!
What horrible acronym/concept are those.
It seems to be a US thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_zero-emissions_vehicle
> In California, PZEVs have their own administrative category for low-emission vehicles. The category was made in a bargain between automakers and the California Air Resources Board (CARB), so that automobile makers could delay making mandated zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs)—battery electric and fuel-cell electric vehicles.
This is actually something I think is a pretty big failing in a lot of internet publishing
You could easily turn those terms in the article into hyperlinks to definitions.
You could even have the links go to definitions hosted on your own website to boost page reads and ad counts if you really wanted to
Most user agents allow you to trivially search from selection. Double-click unfamiliar word, right click, select "search" or on macOS there's also "lookup" but that really only works on dictionary words.
It's actually dead simple: there are battery electric EVs and internal combustion cars. That's it.
ICE cars come with a variety of add-ons and schemes to improve efficiency: fuel injectors, ECUs, braking energy capture systems (aka hybrid), small batteries for short trips that no one plugs in (aka plug in hybrids), etc.
You forgot EVs that come with an add-on that generates electricity by burning fuel!
AKA container ships and locomotives, lol.
There is also MHEV
"Mild" hybrid electric vehicle which is just using a oversized starter to break and then drive any accessories instead of the motor.
And EREV, the only hybrid that makes sense.
Is that extended range? I was reading about them the other day. A small ICE engine in the car but it only charges the battery, right? Basically the opposite of a Toyota hybrid.
Yes, also known as a series hybrid, though EREV has become the dominant term in my experience. Nearly all hybrids on the market today or at any time in the past have been parallel hybrids, where the electric and gas motors both attach to the drivetrain. BMW did make an EREV version of the i3. Chevy made the Volt, which was almost a series hybrid, but in the end still parallel.
The new Civic hybrid is a series hybrid. It puts down 200hp and does 0-60 in 6 seconds, all while getting 50mpg. It combines the torque of an electric motor with an Atkinson cycle engine, which is known for better efficiency but worse torque, as a generator. And it clocks in around 3200lb, a bit more than a classic Civic, but far lower than any BEV.
The slight compromise is at constant highway cruising speeds, it may let the engine take over, since the efficiency calculus likely is more favorable in those conditions. It uses a clutch to do this, and only has a single gear ratio, rather than the messy setup of typical parallel hybrids.
I would still call that a parallel hybrid, because it has the mechanical bits to connect the gas motor to the wheels, even if only when on the highway. I would guess that Toyota enthusiasts would be quick to point out that the Toyota parallel hybrid design is pretty elegant and ends up being more reliable, not less. But I'm not a Toyota enthusiast.
where ER = Extended Range EV
That’s like Pedal Assist I…
Mild Hybrid… pfffft.
"Must heve"?
"Mild Hybrid". Slight boost. I don't know of any on the market, but I'm sure they're there.
I've driven one. Zipcar UK (RIP!) had a few Fiat 500 Hybrids and I ended up with one once when every other nearby Zipcar was booked and I had a last minute need for a car.
Given they are a relatively gutless car to begin with (1 litre 3 cylinder 70hp tinpot engine) I did wonder what the zigzag/lightning icon was on the dash so I googled it.
Turns out the system uses a 11Ah lithium battery that lives under the driver/passenger seat that charges through regenerative braking. It gives a small boost during acceleration (mostly at low speeds so it's more for stop-start urban driving), I think it's not much more than a glorified belt around the crankshaft giving a few extra hp.
No appreciable benefit to it that I could feel, but if it's helping us burn fewer dinosaurs then that's all good. (It's still a car but much better than a massive wankpanzer.)
There's a mild hybrid Qashqai. A friend of mine hired one and drove it into a bus.
This thread is some deadpan comedy gold.
Ford Puma [1] is available as a mild hybrid.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Puma_(crossover)
Ram 1500 eTorque is one.
Quite frankly, today there is no need to look anywhere else than a pure electric car. No point to buy an ICE with battery + electric motor. It just adds complexity and makes it expensive to service. The newly released EVs today are so good and have fantastic range.
Unless you travel a lot and live in hotels for months at a time, like I do. Granted, that's not horribly common but there are still legitimate reasons to want an ICE.
As a companion to this article these pages have good charts and data:
The road to electric - in charts and data - https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/choosing/road-to-e...
Electric car charging prices at public chargers - https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/charging/electric-...
I’m not surprised with fuel at like £1.80/L and electricity as low as 3.5p/kwh
Makes EVs quite appealing.
https://carcosttool.com/ev-vs-ice-breakeven
It also helps that they drive nice and are more convenient for most people.
That was always my thing about early EVs. Thumbs up to the early adopters but it took a while to take off as a lot of the early ones were just car but battery and they weren't very polished and had a lot of downsides.
Now the experience is much improved.
Cars aren't just a pure cost benefit analysis.
They're also quiet and no combustion means no exhaust fumes.
> They're also quiet
As someone who lives near a busy road, I'm 100% all for them for this reason alone
The boy-racers doing 2x the speed limit with their loud exhausts and poppin can go do one
Agreed, though I was disheartened to find that we are now forcing electric cars to be loud because won't someone think of the pedestrians. There was a moment when EVs were quiet, and now there are some which drive by my house (residential neighborhood, so around 20 mph) that are louder than a well maintained ICEV would be at the same speed. The worst offenders are hybrids (looking at you, Toyota, with that unholy screech you make...)
> louder than a well maintained ICEV would be at the same speed
ffs why can't we have nice things??
The amount of 'eco' things that turn out worse...
158p (about $8 a gallon) might be a pretty effective motivator, although electric prices need to stay reasonable for this to work.
Why is the most unsaid part out of all of this fuel nonsense is that there are less cars dumping emissions into the air. The Iran war may be the best driver we've had for air quality. Bring more EVs, they're overdue by a decade.
Donald Trump and Beniamin Netanyahu in a single year did more to curb emissions than all green activists since the inception of green activism. Nobel Peace Prize worthy if you ask me!
Reverse psychology works very well on Trump but probably not Netanyahu.
Possibly not in this instance though, as Trump has a FIFA Peace Prize already.
He's got that Venezuelan woman's Nobel too, doesn't he?
I quit driving in the last century so buying petrol is not something I do. I have a bicycle for most journeys and the train for elsewhere.
Hence my perspective is different. To have everyone priced off the roads is going to make the cycling so much faster and pleasant.
I have considered getting an electric car in the past, but, one look at the traffic, and I decided against going that slow. So I thought about getting an electric bicycle, only to come to the same conclusion, a normal bicycle is all I want or need.
There is a similar story with food. No fertiliser? No problem! I only eat plants, with no processed food or dead animals. Soon the 'grow crops to fatten animals so fat people can eat them' idea will be too costly.
Of course, the world isn't going to stop eating animal corpses at every occasion or ween the adults off milk, so we will see what happens. Nonetheless, plants only is a good starting point.
I don't see electric cars as a solution except for boomers, particularly in the UK context, where the goal is to have 50% of urban journeys taken with active travel by 2030. Active travel means walking or cycling, and I am all for it.
If you are obese, car dependent and eating burgers, the situation is not good. However, if free from car dependency and able to cook from scratch with plants, then the situation is somewhat different, previously unpopular lifestyle choices make sense.
I also don't see what right I have to West Asian oil, it is not a birthright to have access to all the fuel one can afford. My view is that it is best left in the ground.
Fuel (diesel, specifically) in the UK is getting towards $10/gallon, so not surprising really!
A lot of fast chargers are over $1 per kwh so unless you have access to home charging there isn't much room for savings.
At some stage I wonder if the UK will need to regulate the charger industry. The price gouging is wild in places. If we look at the energy content of petrol, a litre of gas contains about 9kwh of energy, or at average pump prices 1.58/9 = ~18 pence a kwh.
For sure, EVs are far more efficient at converting a kwh of energy into forward motion, but if we assume 35 mpg (9.25 miles/litre) for the gas car, we need about 970wh to travel 1 mile. A modern EV can manage a mile on ~260wh, almost a quarter of the gas requirement.
There are public charging networks in the UK averaging 92p/kwh - we know we need much less energy to move the more efficient EV, but even with this adjustment fuel cost per mile looks like:
petrol at UK average today: 17p/mi
Electric at very expensive public charger: ~24p/mi !!
At many chargers, there are no savings at all. For comparisons sake, that 92p kwh would be just 28.6p on the most expensive domestic electricity supply, and charging at home would be ~8p per mile on the worst possible tariffs.
I've probably done some bad math somewhere here, but I think the broad picture is correct.
The market should sort this out by itself, not saying regulators shouldn’t watch closely, but competition should be enough to do its thing. Cartel formation especially should be watched for vigilantly.
dpeends on the car. My Zoe does 4.8 miles per kwhr, my old car does 35 miles per gallon (or 7.6 miles per litre) petrol is currently £1.6 a litre.
Which is 21p per mile, for my petrol car
at 98p a kwhr its 20p per mile.
but in practice the electric car is 3 pence a mile for me (average car charging price for me is 15p a kwhr)
> dpeends on the car
Of course, thats why I've been clear all my assumptions are for 260wh/mi, which I think is a very fair middle ground figure to compare to a 35mpg car - one can pick far more fuel efficient gas cars for this comparison too, the possibilities are endless.
I think your numbers still illustrate the same point though; if you can't charge at home, an EV is not necessarily cheaper to fuel, and the gap between the public charger price and the cost to a private consumer with home charging is still far too big. 98p vs 15p is staggering.
oh yeah sorry it was meant to illustrate your point, that some of those fast chargers are massive piss takes.
But compared to the US home charging via a mains outlet is much more viable because it's 240v vs 110v. If you plug you car overnight you'll typically have enough charge to last you the next day.
This isn't as big an advantage as you might think, as a huge number of US homes have 240v sockets to power the clothes dryer:
> https://getneocharge.com/a/blog/identifying-your-240v-dryer-...
Almost everyone I know with an EV charging at home just reused the 240v dryer socket to avoid paying for a dedicated fast charger. It's often cheaper too to have an electrician fit a new 240v socket instead of the dedicated charger as well.
Home chargers with dedicated sockets is three phase 400v actually over here in the EU and every single home, and even relatively new apartments have that because of induction stoves.
> every single home
Let me guess, you live in Germany? :)
Three phase power is definitely not 100% in the EU. Not even in Germany, though adoption does tend to be higher than neighboring countries.
And FWIW, I find that my induction cooktop works wonderfully on plain old 240V 40A, so I do not think it is a requirement to get three-phase for that ;-).
I've been doing level 1 charging for the past 3 years or so. It is fine even in cold Calgary (albeit in an unheated garage)
Unless you are regularly doing upwards of 150 km/ day, it's fine.
The US is 240V. We split it into two 120V legs for some sockets, and not for others. Some people do choose to get by on 120V, true, but they are the minority. Usually people who do not drive often.
Most homes in US built after 1980s(?) have electrical panels with 240V.
It's used for dryer, stove etc.
Most? You mean all. 240V [0] as been the standard in the US basically since electrification started in the late 19th century. 120V has for all practical purposes never been a thing, it has always been an artifact of split-phase 240V. A deliberate choice to offer two voltages to every consumer.
[0] Okay, technically 240V did not become official until around 1967, but the split-phase design was there from the beginning. They capped it at 240V to stop the creeping up that had been going on in the earlier part of the century. This is why you still have a lot of people (not all of them old enough to have been alive in 1967, oddly enough) that refer to 240V as 220.
In tge early days they did sometimes wire 120 only houses. That was mostly done before WWII
Sure, but that is the exception proving the rule. Not quite urban legend, you can find people on mikeholt.com who have actually seen one in the wild. Usually because of some shenanigans the local power company pulled to directly connect more houses by giving each one a phase of a three-phase feed.
Given that the majority of people in the uk have or can have access to home charging it's not a major problem
https://www.racfoundation.org/research/mobility/still-standi...
Wales – 75% of households have – or could have – off-street parking and EV charging England – 68% Scotland – 63%
In London, sure, most homes don't have off-street parking and ev charging, but then only half the households in London have a car
https://content.tfl.gov.uk/travel-in-london-2024-car-ownersh...
I think you're somewhat underselling the problem.
Even in Wales, 25% can't. This isn't a figure you can ignore.
And that's a hypothetical, it relies on landlords playing ball etc. then there's the social issues. On the north of England we have lots of terraces built for mill workers, these aren't owned by the richest on society. So then you're in the situation of charging the poorest more for transport. And these are necessarily on towns with good transport links (think 1 bus and hour).
Many of those "can't" won't have cars. 20% of households in Wales have no car.
Now clearly that 25% and 20% won't overlap exactly, but they will overlap a lot
When 80% of cars in the UK are electric and 20% are those households who rely on public streets to store their belongings for 23 hours a day, then sure that will be a problem
Given that there's only about 2 million electric cars in the UK, yet 18 million homes which can charge electric cars, that's a long way off.
Fuel in the UK is £1.58 a litre (£1.48 at one garage I passed today, £1.61 at another, some garages are certainly profiteering)
In 2022 is was £1.89 a litre and spent most of the year over £1.60 a litre
Adjusted for inflation that would be most of the year at £1.85, and a high of £2.18 a litre
https://www.racfoundation.org/data/uk-pump-prices-over-time
From 2011 to 2014 petrol was about £1.30 a litre. Adjusted for inflation terms that's £1.80-£2 a litre -- far less than current "highs".
The average UK car does 8000 miles and about 45mpg (uk gallons), or about 10 miles per litre. It thus costs 800 litres, or £1,260 a year.
Last year petrol was £1.35 a litre, and thus £184 a year less for the average car.
Fuel is insanely cheap in the UK in historic terms, just not as cheap as it was last year.
> In 2022 is was £1.89 a litre and spent most of the year over £1.60 a litre
Why are you choosing the 2022 energy crises as your baseline? Not only your choice was arbitary but you managed to choose the year fuel was at its highest as a reaction to the war in Ukraine.
That price was not representative or typical, it was a spike. You can see it here.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/time...
Eh, last year I was paying the equivalent of £0.38 per liter over here in the States ($2 a gallon gas, $3.30 or so for diesel).
"Insanely cheap" for the UK to feels really strange for those of us way over here who tend to forget how good we have it.
> tend to forget how good we have it
That is an interesting perspective. We do not forget how good we have it, because we choose not to put high taxes on gasoline and diesel. Do drivers in the UK tend to forget that taxes are more than half the retail price they pay at the pump? Sometimes way over half. That is a policy decision.
In the US, roads are paid for by other taxes instead. Property taxes for local roads, and general fund monies (income, sales, and inflation) for highways. Unfortunately that hides the real cost of using the roads, and makes it harder for people to make good choices. This seems unlikely to change though.
I think it is a complicated issue. People who do not drive still benefit from having a road going to their house. Either for deliveries, or for emergency vehicles, or whatever personal transportation they do end up using. So we want to spread the cost around a bit so everyone is paying something, in a perfect world as close as possible to how much they benefit from it.
I imagine it also varies somewhat across the US. Locally, our city does not use property taxes for road maintenance, we have a pavement fee which is billed through the utilities system (same one that handles water & sewer, for example). Plus gas tax from the state. It could be argued that the distinction between the pavement fee and property taxes is subtle, though.
Most of us laugh at the high taxes and prices in California, not realizing that their prices are reasonable, perhaps even cheap compared to overseas.
Depending on where this crisis goes, it’ll be interesting to see what effect it has.
America seems to have a lot of large vehicles that use a lot of fuel. The UK less so.
The tax will have played a part in this (how much?).
I hope we can get the kinks worked out. Even in many 'blue' states, we have created a situation where the road maintenance tax paid by EV owners is twice or more what the typical ICEV driver is paying. I sort of expected that in 'red' states, since punishing EV owners is a political priority, but we see that same crap in Oregon & Washington, for example.
Yes well people like to complain, and people have a short memory. If it were really a massive problem you would see a lot more smaller cars, rather than Range Rovers and BMWs.
We will see exactly the same thing again in a few years when people are 'shocked' that prices are rising again. And then expect the government to step in, even though on the interim they've bought a massive car on PCP rather than take some personal responsibility and buy a car that they can afford when inevitably something goes wrong.
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EVs aren’t exactly new; there’s a deep, accessble secondhand market by now. I’ve been using a 2019 Nissan Leaf as a primary family car for two years now, that I picked up off Gumtree for around £3k. It’s been one of the best (little) cars I’ve ever owned.
Not saying new EVs aren’t pricey, but if you want into electric on a budget (i.e. because you don’t feel like you can afford to fill up on diesel) it can absolutely be done.
If you're savvy you can get a really good discount on a second-hand EV as well because people overestimate the wear on the batteries and assume a second-hand EV will have terrible range.
The id.Polo starts at 22k GBP. The ordinary, petrol-driven Polo also starts at 22k. You can see how massive increases in the price of petrol and diesel might influence purchasing behaviour there...
Minor point: The id.Polo isn't released in the UK yet and prices are not confirmed. VW are not shy about price rises either I believe, so I wouldn't imagine the £21.7k figure in the media lasting more than a year if that price-point does happen.
Also, my god, £22k for a petrol base Polo! That's about £4k above inflation-adjusted prices from ~15 years ago
This is a good site for seeing the differents UK models, and their prices, that are on the market or coming onto the market.
These are all models under £20,000 - https://ev-database.org/uk/#group=vehicle-group&av-1=1&av-23...
There's also a large number of used EVs available. Here's a selection of 2024+ models between £8000-£10000
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?channel=cars&fuel-ty...
Price sensitivity doesn’t spring into existence at the point something becomes unaffordable.
You have half a point here.
Diesel was traditionally the fuel of people who did high miles. Ie not the people that can't have an EV 'just in case they need to do 300 miles on a day's, because they probably legitimately are.
You kind of spoil that point by pull £80k out of your arse without looking at comparable diesels though.
There are new 30k euros EVs on the marker right now.
23k even in some markets, ok, small low range cars. But yeah, the 30k ones start getting good.
The id.Polo is apparently starting at 22k GBP in the UK; the VW Polo's always been a pretty popular car (and also starts at about 22k). I'd expect those to sell very well.
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Or they could buy a super cheap SH EV when their current ICE car stops working.
And if they rent or otherwise don't own a home with a driveway? In the UK with its strict electrical codes, your charger must be installed by a loiscensed electrician. So add £1k right there.
Your money saving effort suddenly becomes a major inconvenience to fuel your car.
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Those goalposts sure do keep moving
Doesn’t increasing fuel price affect the electricity prices, which increases the charging cost?
The UK is well suited to wind power, already has many wind turbines, and continues to install more. We have a good amount of solar panels too. Renewables provide the majority of electrical power when conditions are good and the share will only increase. Electric vehicles avoid the biggest weakness of renewables (unreliable base load), because they can be set to charge unattended when cheap electricity is available. Electricity suppliers offer variable rate tariffs specifically for electric vehicles.
You start running numbers the cost of solar and wind capacity to power an electric car is about 10% of the purchase price. And considering they have a battery that can store a weeks worth of energy and spend 95% of the time just sitting. Basically not a problem.
Maybe, in the best case, your gas engine is maybe 45% fuel efficient, but realistically, you're probably getting closer to 20-25%. By contrast, a combined cycle power plant gets over 60%.
But that's assuming we're just running power plants off of petrol and fuels. Coal is much cheaper than petroleum in some cases. There's also a lot of people who get their power from nuclear, hydro, solar, and wind. In many cases, your electric prices are not at all affected by the increases in petrullium prices, because most of your electricity is coming from something else. In fact, I doubt there's any place in the world that all your electricity is coming from petroleum fuels. Even if that's the major input, there are almost undoubtedly other sources in the mix.
FWIW, I don't think there are any oil or coal power plants left in the UK. Certainly none in general operation.
> By contrast, a combined cycle power plant gets over 60%.
Over 25% of this is then lost in transmission and distribution[0] (down to 45%). Then 10-25% of that lost in charging the car[1] (down to 40%). Finally, the car itself loses about 10-15% of that[2] (down to 35%).
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/322834/transmission-dist...
[1] https://go-e.com/en/magazine/ev-charging-losses
[2] https://evreporter.com/understanding-the-complete-efficiency...
Total UK electricity consumption is around 300 TWh annually. That would put the grid losses at less than 10% based on your link. The charging is never as bad as 25% (internal house losses are negligible for any sensible charging rate) and the car is typically ~12% charging loss. Moreover, EVs recover quite a bit too. Even in purely dissipative driving (highway driving), I get around 4 miles/kWh, which is about 4 times better than an ICE vehicle.
Furthermore, if you're going to include distributional losses, then let's also drop the available petrol by 10-15% to account for refining etc.
Finally, on anything resembling a sunny day, my car charges entirely of rooftop solar, so what efficiency do we assign to that?
That first chart is in absolute units, not percentage.
25TWh annual distribution losses off of ~300TWh usage per year is 8% loss.
Oh! Sorry, yes. @dang can I edit it, please?
That depends entirely on where you are. In Ontario electricity is mostly hydro, nuclear, and renewables. But also, compared to burning gas directly, EVs are still more efficient and require less gas if you burn the gas to charge the EV.
Somewhat. But price rises for electricity aren't remotely on the same scale as price rises for diesel and petrol, and fuel/electricity was a smaller part of the TCO to _start_ with for electric cars.
Electricity generation is already diversified. Nuclear, coal, gas, solar, wood, witches, etc. The fuel mix can be tweaked as the economics change. ICE vehicle fleet is stuck with one energy source.
Depends on how you charge and where.
If you charge at home, and you don't have a car tariff, it'll be ~25-30p per kwhr
If you get a car charging tariff then you'll be paying ~9p a kwhr.
if you are brave then you can use an agile prices which depends on the weather you can be paid to charge (my record was -11p a unit) however in winter it can be a lot high, like 45p a unit.
Charging on the street can be around 50p a kwhr up to 98p a kwhr
Even then, EVs are still cheaper to operate.
UK has a massive new renewable installations which aren't affected by gas prices.
Electric price in the uk on an off peak tariff overnight is about 7p/kWh, or about 2p/mile, so charging your car overnight with the average electric mileage (10,000 miles a year - higher than the average mileage) costs £200, about £1300 a year less than petrol.
Thanks, I didn’t know about variable tariffs. But can this be residential or has to be on designated charging points?
Residential. Very common in the UK to have a separate night rate, even before smart meters.
Can you actually get different tariffs in the UK for residential?
In Canada most of that is pretty opaque. Electricity tariffs are not really something that most households would worry about. Businesses and Industrial usage do though
Yes, there are multiple competing providers - all the electricity comes from a single grid but competition in how you are billed for usage.
Many people choose a single fixed or variable rate tariff, but there are also off-peak tariffs that are very cheap at night but slightly more expensive in the day (designed for EV users), or even tariffs where the rate changes every 30 minutes depending on what is being generated - in this case when there is excess solar and wind generation then sometimes the rate even goes negative and you are paid to use the excess power.
Yes, the newer suppliers have EV and solar friendly domestic tariffs. Plug it in overnight, and the supplier determines when the charge happens and charges at the reduced rate.
A simple day and night tariff was introduced at some point in the 1980s in the UK.
Most places I lived had this set up.
(Nowadays smart meters offer many more options.)
Sure
You can base it on the wholesale price, great if you have battery storage
https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/
Or just an overnight rate
https://octopus.energy/smart/intelligent-octopus-go/
Again if you put in a £5k 10kWh battery you are golden, as you put 8kWh into your car and 8kWh into your battery every night, dropping your electric cost to £38 a month (plus the standing charge, which is far higher)
A fifth of these last year were paid for by the government scheme that buys people cars - Motability. I wonder how many of these current ones are like that.
Motability is not 'a Government scheme that buys people cars'
People use the mobility part of their PIP payments to lease a car from Motability which is an independent company, they could use the mobility payment to pay for taxi instead.
The government heavily subsidises it. It's not a government scheme but it walks and talks like one.
its £77 a week. so its not going to buy you a top end car, you'll need to top up. if you want something "decent"
I'm not talking about that. The government waives multiple taxes for the scheme. Off the top of my head, no VAT on the car purchases, no luxury tax on vehicles worth £40k+, no insurance tax, no VED (road tax).
The scheme has cost billions in lost revenue and it's the only reason it can exist. The exact accounting is up for debate because it's complex but nonetheless.
> no VAT on the car purchases
You can't buy the car, and your limited on miles to 10k, and VAT is now payable, along with insurnace tax. plus you can't lease a landrover.
but like I just don't get it. its not like you have a choice to be on PIP. its fucking humiliating to get on PIP, and keep on it.
Yeah, Motability buy the cars. Stop trying to come up with gotchas.
its a lease, I just don't know what to tell you
Yes, subsidised by the government. That's all.
There are / were no £40k+ cars available on Motability
Can't find it now but there's a breakdown of the cars supplied somewhere and even when small BMWs etc were available very few people chose them - most people chose smaller average cars
Motability also plays a huge role in priming the used car market in the UK - without them there would be less choice and cars would be more expensive
> There are / were no £40k+ cars available on Motability
This is categorically false.
> Motability also plays a huge role in priming the used car market in the UK
You could also argue that it's distorting the market. Having billions worth of subsidies supporting a market isn't necessarily good.
It's also misleading to treat it just like another independent private company too (not just because Motability consists of both a limited company and a charity (or two, IIRC)). The limited company reinvests revenues or transfers to its charity, not to private shareholders. Its origin was a charity.
But the only reason it exists is because of government funds and government policy.
The scheme would collapse if the government stopped allowing benefit money to be used for Motability leases. The banks lent them money under the reassurance of the government funding.
But yes, they lease the vehicles, they don't sell them.
EDIT: my comment may have some minor inaccuracies. I just found https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmwo... - a very detailed description of the company, charities etc
And you can claim you have anxiety in order to get a brand new Audi. So it’s a government scheme which buys people cars.
It’s not independent, because it derives all of its income from the government and uses it to buy people brand new top of the range cars.
> And you can claim you have anxiety in order to get a brand new Audi.
You're gonna have to cite sources on that one, but I would sincerely doubt that £77 a week will allow you to lease an Audi.
Also the pip claimant has to be probed by a panel every three years to keep getting the benefit, unlike say a state pension (but I paid for that I mean possibly you did, its still a non means tested benefit, unlike PIP)
Not the OP but they have since been removed as they were luxury cars, but yes £77 a week did use to cover it. Here is the source directly from Audi:
https://media.audi.com/is/content/audi/country/uk/en/find-an...
Luxury meaning about a £33k car,
which on lease is about £80 a month more expensive https://www.gateway2lease.com/cars/audi/a3-saloon/22564/tfsi... (motobility is £308 a month)
so its not like its a luxury car, its a new car.
Personally I'm more pissed off about pensioners on final salary still getting state pension, even though they don't need it. Thats far more fucking expensive and doesn't serve a purpose, well apart from buying votes. means test that shit, right now.
Yes and to get a 'luxury car' aka small Audi, BMW or Mercedes someone had to put down a deposit of £3,000 of their own money
TSLA not in the top 10- very interesting
I expect , data such as ... would be illuminating here ...
Electric cars registered in countries with large land mass?
"..Electric car adoption , ranked by value of government incentives.."?
Eventually I just searched for
I have not posted links, not sure if its allowed.Since this is a discussion, I would suggest it would be most helpful if you just provided your opinions explicitly. And you are welcome to post links to back up assertions that involve facts, of course!
Holy crap the scrolling behavior on this site is the worst I've seen. It hijacks my browser (Chrome)+OS X trackpad scrolling speed and inertia in a horrible way.
Interesting how that doesn't seem to be a front where Europe wants to isolate itself from foreign influence; the models mentioned in the link seem to be Chinese in origin, not European.
Unlike with fuel, we're not burning the EVs, so even if China cuts off the supply we can keep using the ones we've already got. It would be inconvenient, but not an urgent problem like loss of access to fuel.
It's less about fuel and more about industrial dependence.
This has a breakdown of the numbers by fuel type, brand etc.
https://www.smmt.co.uk/vehicle-data/car-registrations/