It’s Time To Tell The Truth About Electric Cars
By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
This is a good round up of the EV market:
Fire Risk
On 10 October a fire broke out at the Terminal 2 car park at London Luton Airport (which is located 32 miles from central London). It raged for nearly a day and resulted in the complete shut-down of the airport causing massive disruption for travellers. By the time firefighters extinguished the blaze it became apparent that around 1,500 vehicles, mostly parked there by holidaymakers, had become burnt-out wrecks. Fortunately, no one was killed or injured, but the economic cost going forward will be colossal.
CCTV footage suggests that the fire broke out in a parked diesel SUV – an unusual event (though, interestingly, there was no thick black smoke as one might have expected from a diesel fire, so the origin of the fire is contested). But one of the reasons the fire spread with such intensity was that a number of electric cars caught fire. Notoriously, once a lithium-ion battery catches fire it is almost impossible to extinguish it until all its chemical components have been consumed. These unstoppable chemical fires are called “thermal runaways” by the cognoscenti as they can sustain themselves without a supply of oxygen. They emit toxic gases including hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen fluoride, so firefighters require special gear when they tackle them.
In the past couple of years, two container ships carrying thousands of EVs have gone up in flames. A fire on board car carrier Felicity Ace in February 2022 led to the vessel sinking in the Atlantic, along with its cargo of 4,000 vehicles. Lithium-ion batteries were cited as a factor in keeping the fire ablaze. And in July this year, the Fremantle Highway cargo ship caught fire in the North Sea. It was alleged that batteries in EVs on board had overheated. During the salvage operation, all the cars were washed to remove any chemicals from the fire before they were taken off the ship. One charred vehicle, in which the fire appeared to be extinguished, reignited as it was lowered into the water.
Or consider that Paris’s metropolitan transport authority withdrew 149 electric buses from operation last year after two ignited in separate incidents.
It should come as no surprise, then, that according to a new report from the building consultants Arup, our car parks may need to become a lot more spacious because of the fire risk posed by electric cars. Parking spaces will have to be wider, or cars will have to be parked further apart because of the danger of electric battery fire contagion. That means fewer parking places – and higher parking charges.
Moreover, cash-strapped local governments will have to build more multi-storey car parks, which will have to be robust enough to support the weight of cars which weigh, in many cases, double what their petrol-powered forebears weighed. (The Audi E-tron weighs 2,351 kilos).
An EV battery weighs about 500 kilos – so hopefully your local authority will not use aerated concrete this time round. The same applies to bridges. (If readers have noticed a spate of road and bridge closures across the UK due to engineering issues, please let me know – I’m compiling a dossier). Roads will have to be re-surfaced more frequently as these heavy monsters take their toll, making the ubiquitous pot holes even worse.
Meanwhile, the automobile insurers have cottoned on, at last. The cost of insuring an EV is soaring. Insurers are struggling to anticipate the costs of battery repairs, according to Thatcham Research. Some EVs are effectively being written off because relatively minor scrapes can destabilise battery cells, requiring extensive repairs to their batteries. What’s more, damaged batteries are more prone to thermal runaways, which raises the nightmare of spontaneous combustion.
As a result, Aviva withdrew insurance products for the Tesla Model Y earlier this year before reinstating them several months later; and John Lewis Finance has stopped insuring EVs at all, at the request of its French underwriter, Covéa. Other motor insurers have been raising premiums on EVs as estimates of repair costs rise, according to the Association of British Insurers. Average annual electric car insurance premiums rose 72 percent in the year to September, compared to 29 percent for petrol and diesel models, according to Confused.com. The price comparison website notes that premiums for the Tesla Model 3s have risen by more than two thirds over the last two years.
One reason why repair costs are rising is that repair shops are now advised to keep EVs at least 50 feet apart in case of an explosion. Obviously, this limits the number of cars that can be repaired at any one time meaning that repairs will take longer.
The EV future: More Traffic Jams
The government’s plan for the adoption of electric cars, called the ZEV Mandate 2024, will require 22 percent of cars sold by manufacturers in the UK to be electric from next year. By 2030, that quota will rise to 80 and, of course, to 100 percent by 2035. Carmakers which cannot hit the annual targets must either sell more electric vehicles in future years, purchase credits from rivals or pay a fine of £15,000 per car. That means that, whatever their drawbacks, and however dangerous and unpopular they are, thanks to state intervention the number of EVs on our roads is likely to surpass the number of conventional cars some time before the end of this decade.
How will that affect the state of traffic on our roads? The Department of Transport recently published a study on this question. It concluded that because EVs are cheaper to run than conventional cars the cost differential between a journey in an EV and one on our expensive public transport system will widen. Therefore, people will make more car journeys – and traffic congestion will worsen. It’s kind of the DoT to let us know.
There will be those who argue that this issue is simply resolved by building more roads. No doubt there will be residential road building at scale in response to Labour’s plan to build 300,000 new homes a year which I discussed recently. The problem here is one of Parkinson’s Law: just as bureaucracy expands to fill the time available to it, so the number of cars on the road rises in tandem with the size of the road network. Professor Andrew Graves of the University of Bath, doubts that building more roads will halt the threat of congestion. “The more roads you build, the quicker you’ll fill them up”, he told the Daily Telegraph last week.
It would be paradoxical if a policy designed to save the planet resulted in concreting over more of our countryside
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EV Sales Slow
Car dealers in the UK are reporting that electric cars are taking longer to sell than conventional internal combustion engine-powered cars. Unsold inventory is starting to stack up, which is why some EVs are now on offer at a discount. Global EV sales grew by 49 percent in the first half of this year – but that is well down from the 63 percent growth achieved last year. What’s more, the global figure is skewed by China, which is responsible for 55 percent of all EVs sold worldwide.
One reason why EVs are failing to impress the punters is that there are too few charging stations and too many charge-points are out of service, forcing people to drive elsewhere in a desperate search for power. The more EVs there are on the road, the more competition there is for charge points – hence reports of people having to queue for an hour or more to charge their car.
Also, the range of EVs is often less than advertised. The range of an EV tends to decline as the battery gets older, although reportedly manufacturers are working on this. EVs are still much more expensive than their petrol and diesel-powered analogues. Their second-hand value is difficult to assess as there is no deep second-hand market as exists for petrol and diesel cars. Their batteries last no more than 15 years and are expensive to replace.
Reading The Runes
It’s time to tell the truth about lithium-ion battery-powered electric cars. The manufacture of a lithium-ion battery-powered EV generates much greater carbon emissions than for a conventional car. And the safety issues associated with them have been underplayed.
The determination of governments in the EU and the UK to force automotive giants in the direction of one single fundamentally flawed technology, while proscribing any alternative internal combustion engine technologies, will come be seen as a huge mistake. If it had been left to the market we would have got to minimal carbon quicker. (Zero CO2 emissions is a chimera – you emit CO2 every time you exhale!).
It’s akin to the Locomotives Act of 1865 which compelled a man waving a red flag to walk in front of any horseless carriage. (Happily, that was repealed in 1896). It will saddle Europe and the UK with a massive competitive disadvantage, since no other continent is likely to embark on parallel policy.
Full story here.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
And what about all the tragic deaths that have been caused by exploding batteries such as those that have wiped out families and homes when scooter batteries have exploded whilst being charged in homes.
Governments interfering in the market place. The results are always chaotic and a heavy burden on the taxpayer.
Agreed, subsidies, price caps never work. Basic economics. Free markets is the only way.
21 Italians, burned to death in an electric coach.
But we have to save the planet, BEVs are the way forward, and my name is George Monbiot, see my article in the Guardian 31/10/23 and look at the comments.
In all honesty, even with common sense articles like this, the green blob is never going to come around and accept that the Net Zero plan is just not possible and not necessary. The climate change act 2008, which is legally enforceable, has to be repealed or watered down, otherwise the courts will be used to enforce its adoption.
I am also puzzled why the automotive giants (except Toyota) readily accepted the concept of battery vehicles and did not push back much sooner, any competent economist could have predicted that forcing consumers to accept more expensive and poorer performing personal transport, with limited fuelling resources, with a huge expensive battery, liable to burn fiercely, would distort the supply demand curve, in short they are going to have to be much cheaper to get any sales at all, giving them away may be the last resort, the BEV second hand market is not going to exist.
What choice did they have? ICE cars were going to be banned, no matter what.
“In all honesty, even with common sense articles like this, the green blob is never going to come around and accept that the Net Zero plan is just not possible and not necessary. The climate change act 2008, which is legally enforceable, has to be repealed or watered down, otherwise the courts will be used to enforce its adoption.”
The activists may try to use lawfare and I would love to see how they react to a case brought not by “climate change deniers” but from the prospective of engineers. Then the courts will consider their own self preservation and the job of the courts is to interpret the law in the context of parliaments intentions good luck to the courts if they intent to remain without serious reform if it claims parliament intended for climate change act goals to be at the expense of people safety, impoverishment & worsening the publics quality of life as well as a front to promote a philosophical belief i.e. Veganism.
I think climate change act may actually be useful to putting a stop to some of this group think. The job of the courts is to interpret the law in the context of parliaments intentions and just looking at other acts of parliament before we have to speculate – section 3a electricity act 1989 (the bit about the need to secure that all reasonable demands for electricity are met and viable long-term energy supply).
I would argue that the governments is in conflict with the climate change act & the electricity act as there was no proper review into the gas power stations built after the 2008 act (as they may need to close before the end of their useful life to meet Co2 targets) especially as some clearly replaced nuclear capacity (magnox) if you look at where they were built and if you want to reduce the use of fossil fuels the easiest thing to do would be nuclear so with the closures due to the Large Combustion Plant Directive why wasn’t the feasibility of 40GW+ new nuclear capacity of an existing nuclear design (not EPR) like a CANDU which could be build domestically as it doesn’t need heavy forging & lasts 60+ years investigated.
Then wind and solar seem to have being promoted without an actual plan to make then a technical feasible replacements to fossil fuels (where is the task force for TW/h storage or small scale real world study) or understand the effects load following & having fossil generation in hot standby has on its thermal efficiency, emissions of air pollution (Nox) & maintenance requirements. There is no point using wind when you factor in must run generation (for voltage and grid stability reasons) and you could potentially use less gas in a 61% thermal efficient CCGT vs system with more wind but backed up by OCGT or gas engine & part loaded thermal generation.
Furthermore Co2 emissions need to be based on fuel consumed (to catch the effect of part loading & have a look at the way hot standby of coal last winter) not electricity generated as there is a clear problem with misleading statistics (that the courts should call out) that could make Co2 emissions appear lower then are & then we have the interconnectors with other countries.
“I am also puzzled why the automotive giants (except Toyota) readily accepted the concept of battery vehicles”
Because the people making these decision are probably not engineers or even good at science or maths and probably have a degree in xyz studies but we have a serious problem of people hopelessly out of their depth faking it to they make it and surrounding themselves with people who agree with them.
In my local town the multi-storey car park has set aside six parking bays for EVs to allow them to charge while parked. This worries me now as the parking bays take up a large area of the ground floor just across the road from a multi-storey student accommodation block.
Placing the EV parking on the ground floor must now create an enormous insurance headache for the Council not to mention for the students.
Ground floor essential, as upper decks might not sustain the concentrated weight stress of having multiple EVs (& their charging points) parked adjacently.
The normal BS 6399 design load for car parks is 2.5 kN/m2 so a conventional space of 2.4m x 4.8m (too small for many modern cars but that’s a matter for another day) equates to just over 2.9 tons per bay (without allowing for circulation spaces). So that should still be adequate but not for poorly designed or maintained car parks of course. Some do not allow adequately for the most severe durability case which is corrosion from deicing salt (there should be more concrete cover to the reinforcement inside than outside exposed to the elements or the ground).
Placing the EV parking on the ground floor is probable determined by cost/ ease of installation, but also perhaps due to the concentration of weight stress where half a dozen EVs are parked adjacently.
Or the car park wants to make sure everyone sees what good people they are.
Unfortunately, the idiots that drive the Nut Zero hysteria will not read the article or if they do will not understand the implications
7/1/20 Small fire at Stavanger Airport. Only 800 cars burnt out. Diesel to blame. Car park demolished.
Don’t believe the illusion of EVs being cheaper to run. Public chargers are vastly more expensive than home charging, an option not enjoyed by swathes of drivers.
Our supine media is on message with the green gesture game it makes it hard to expose the myth of Net Zero.
Indeed, all nonsense like zero emissions and nett zero.
I could run a Toyota Prius for 4 years on just what the home charger costs.
Check “The Macmaster” and “Geoff Buys Cars” on YouTube.
They did a 2 day John O’Groats to Lands End challenge using an £120k two year old Porsche Taycan against a BMW 320d 14 years old costing £2650 bought 2 days previously. You can see both trips.
The result isn’t surprising, the differences are though, including the stress.
Thanks, I’ll watch it with interest. It should be pointed out that most car journeys are short and well within EV range anxiety. But that said a relative of mine is ditching a Jaguar I Pace because the Sheffield to Devon trip is beyond the anxiety threshold.
Devoncamel
That’s true, but conversely most people doing average mileage only fill up every two or three weeks or even once a month. I see several Tesla etc that seem to be plugged into the charger almost every other night or a couple of times a week.
Having memories that date back to Suez, I wasn’t a driver then, I don’t like getting much below a quarter of a tank.
“Short” car journeys is not the issue. It is the fact EVs need recharging more often (and each of those recharges takes a lot longer than ten minutes) for the same actual use as a proper car with a diesel or petrol engine.
Also the little matter of multiple “short” journeys on the same day. That soon adds up and the EV will run out of range very quickly.
I believe that the VAT on domestic charging is 5%, while the VAT on charging whilst out and about is 20%. That’s a no-brainer!
They also do not pay any “fuel duty” (climate change penalty) on their electricity, but they will have to, otherwise the UK Gov will have a big hole in their finances when EVs take over.
That duty is £0.5295 plus VAT, while the EVs pay £0.0000 duty.
” Don’t believe the illusion of EVs being cheaper to run. ”
In the UK before covid, the biggest “running” cost for most newer cars was depreciation. Covid created a spike in the value of secondhand cars, that spike is now reducing.
My understanding is that depreciation is now a factor for EVs.
A reliable classic car is probably the cheapest car to run when depreciation is included as a running cost.
Haven’t checked it in a few years . . . what I found was that high line cars, like Tesla, held their value quite well, equivalent to ICE cars. Low line cars, like LEAF, had CATASTROPHIC depreciation – 71% in two years.
This is more like it! 🙂
It’s an overview of the Green Agenda with Freddy Gray (of The Spectator) with Robert Bryce at the Arc Conference. And the video gets better and better. 🙂
(The ‘About’ thread is unreachable on my smartphone. It stops before completing the load.)
Really excellent, thanks. My comment at Battle of Ideas last weekend was Nett Zero is the ultimate example of a ‘Luxury Belief’ (whatever we do has no effect on us in UK but is severely negative for poorest and weakest). It went down like a cup of cold sick with the panel but got a (gratifying) round of applause from the audience.
Tim the coder
The Sun said
“The city’s fire chief Mauro Luongo said the cause of the crash was not known, but “in the impact the electric batteries of the bus caught fire”.
He said: “The bus flipped upside down. The impact was terrible because it fell from over 10 metres (32 feet)” landing next to railway tracks below.
“Among the difficulties was the fact that the bus was electric so it had batteries.”
The Guardian, on the other hand did not mention the electric batteries but quoted only the Interior Minister, who said the bus was powered by methane.
Misinformation or what?
It is a sad fact, backed up by history (think Concorde and the R101) that it will take the deaths of more than 100 people in a multi-EV fire incident before anything is done.
Sorry to be pedantic, the Concorde crash was caused by the French maintainance team leaving a vital allignment spacer from the undercarrage causing the left wheels to crab , overheat the tyre , the rest is history
It wasnt a dangerous design like EVs are , quite the opposite really
Wasn’t there some debris on the runway too?
Yes, a small light piece of aluminium cowling trim , non structural
Never understood how it could tear through a highly reinforced tyre designed to take the load of the fully laden aircraft at high rotation , like a car running over a drinks can it wouldnt have done a thing
Got alot of people off the hook tho , who knows , sorry gone right off topic but this has always nagged me
Not at all, thanks, very interesting
I understood that the metal debris on the runway (from a previous aircraft) was kicked up by the aircraft tyre(s) and punctured the fuel tank in the wing?
Concerning tyre damage, look at how Formula 1 car tyres are frequently destroyed by running over a small piece of carbon fibre knocked from a front wing endplate.
For goodness sake, do our politicians not realise that BEVs are disasters? Maybe they are so brainwashed by the green mob and concerned about their wallets in some cases, that they won’t admit that the whole net zero concept is unwanted and unnecessary. EVs create economic and safety issues that any sensible government would outlaw.
In an accident, if you survive being trapped a metal container surrounded by 400 volts DC, you may still get barbequed by a battery fire, EVs are death traps that in this health and safety age should be banned.
The £15K levy for every EV not sold is a worry. Will all of it or part of it be added to the price of an ICE car? This would level the differential in price of the 2 types of cars but would also make cars in general too expensive for the bulk of the population to own.
I might be tempted to buy an EV as a second ( small, city )car, if I could barter £15000 off the price to ‘ help sales reach their required threshold’.
I think there will be a place for small electric cars in the future. The proviso is if they can bring in battery technology that doesn’t ignite, and there is already stuff out there, and they can get the cost down. The big problem we have right now is that developments and change are not being allowed to evolve at a sensible pace because of Net Zero and the Climate Crisis hysterical mob pushing it.
Has an initial report been made public on the Luton fire?
Are investigations still continuing or will the car park get conveniently demolished before sufficient details, such as makes & locations of all vehicles have been accurately logged.
Date not known, but…
Luton airport fire car park to be ‘fully demolished’
Published 20 hours ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-67313813
For an excellent cost comparison and to see how a grown man was reduced to tears watch the Geoff Buys Cars videos on youtube for the BMW diesel vs Porsche Taycan battery car John O’Groats to Lands End challenge. If you want the quick version just watch the summing up video. The fuel vs charging costs result was that Geoff in his 14 year old diesel could afford to drive all the way back and still have money left over. As for Lee….I doubt his mental health could stand a return journey.
Agreed, as a follow up, the depreciation on the Porsche over the week of the test videos was MORE than the cost of the BMW and the fuel to do the trip!
Do the trip 10 times in the Taycan and you could buy the BMW.
Twice the fuel cost. Why on earth buy an EV unless you’ve overdosed on the kool-aid?
And to make it even worse, using webuyanycar Geoff found that the Taycan had depreciated over the journey by more than he bought the BMW.
I’ve got to do a bit more mythbusting here.
An EV is typically only about 25-30% heavier than an equivalent ICE car.
Cars have anyway been getting bigger over the years. A modern Fiesta is very nearly as big as a Mk3 Cortina, which was thought of as a biggish car at the time.
Look at a Nissan Micra, isn’t it small. But then put a 1960’s Mini next to it. All of a sudden it looks massive.
Then there is the huge number of SUVs on the roads. If anyone was actually worried about vehicle weight, surely this would’ve been stopped ?
But I bet the standard car park space has not increased since the 1960’s?
Correct in all aspects, although a BEV Fiat 500 is only 35kg lighter than a Mark2 Jaguar!
kzbkzb. Not just car park space sizes. Look at any new-build home estate with garaged parking and you will see cars sitting on the drive. Some cars are too big to get through the under-sized standard garage doors. If lucky enough to get the car through the door and into the garage, they cannot open the car doors.
But is it the garage doors that have shrunk or the cars that have got bigger ?
What happens as a Fiesta, or any other small car, “grows up” is that the manufacturer slips in a new small car at the bottom of the range, for example the Ford Ka, Aygo under the Yaris and many more examples. It means that someone replacing a Fiesta Buys a bigger more profitable car of the same name.
There is truth in that. However Ford (I believe) no longer sell any small hatchback/saloon car. They are all big things now. The Ka was discontinued some time back, despite being a big seller.
I was trying to find the dimensions of a 30kWh battery which would be one limiting factor in the size of an EV.
It wasn’t easy but I came across this which was interesting in many ways.
https://www.buyacar.co.uk/advice/nissan-leaf-batteries/
Especially this
Plug In America’s data showed that both age and mileage impact how quickly a battery loses capacity. The headline findings suggested that after 100,000 miles a Nissan Leaf battery pack (either the 24kWh or 30kWh) would typically have just over 60% of its original capacity.
You hear various stories about how long the batteries last. Tesla owners enthuse that their batteries last far longer than the warrantied lifetime. They say things like, I’ve done 100k miles and the battery is still 99%.
I suspect it depends a lot on how you treat it. Stick to the 80-20 rule, avoid rapid charging and high speeds and maybe it lasts a lot longer than otherwise. Who knows, because I’ve never owned one or been close to anyone who has.
In addition to your comments…why, when we are supposed to be cutting back on natural resources, are they making all these new cars – especially ‘Stupid Ugly Vehicles’ – so big? Most people don’t have big families now and don’t need to carry stuff around. Is it because it’s a status symbol? Is it because they’re following fashion? Is it because everyone seems to be getting fatter?
In my experience, a lot of people who own one of these can’t drive them very well when it comes to manoeuvring. Car park spaces are too small for them and they’re clogging up residential roads. What’s wrong with an estate car? They seem to be non-existent now.
I’m not in the slightest bit guilty about my motoring ‘footprint’. I’ve never bought a brand-new car and never will. I own two small Honda ’90s sports cars and do less than 6,000 miles p.a. in both of them. They are well-serviced and maintained and I – mostly – enjoy driving. It’s given me freedom and independence with no worries about whether I’ll make it to the next charging point. Long live the ICE!
A great many of the SUVs are only used to ferry the kids to school and back.
I suspect a lot of people are poor drivers and have been involved in past accidents. When they have kids they think it’d be classed as child neglect to put them in a traditional car. They need to come off best in their next RTC.
Back to the point: this concern over vehicle weight which has suddenly appeared because of EVs.
The other side will say it’s funny how you are all getting worried about this now, after showing no concern for increasing vehicle weights over the past many years.
“On 10 October a fire broke out at the Terminal 2 car park at London Luton Airport ….”
Compare & contrast
Soon after the event:
https://fullfact.org/online/electric-hybrid-did-not-start-luton-airport-car-park-fire/
Yesterday:
“The fire broke out on level three of Terminal Car Park 2 on 10 October and was thought to have started in a diesel car……”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-67313813#
7/1/20 Small fire at Stavanger Airport. Only 800 cars burnt. Diesel to blame.
EV Car safety including during repairs.
The recommended safety requirements for the repair of EV’s are chilling reminders of the dangers, not only of Fire but Electrocution.
“The main dangers in hybrid and electric vehicle repair are electrocution and the possibility of the car turning on accidentally while work is being performed.
These serious risks make safety training a priority. It is important that there should be a designated area cordoned off and identified as a ‘Danger – High Voltage’ area, with appropriate barriers and signage. It is also important that high-voltage rescue and first-aid equipment be available in case of emergency.”
A typical repair workshop EV Safety Package.
https://autotechtraining.co.uk/product/workshop-and-vehicle-package/
Formula E Motor Racing have a special procedure to remove the risk of electrocution to the rescuers using large rubber mats and clothing.
I wonder if the UK Fire Service are fully prepared for rescuing people in road accidents surrounded by lethal amounts of electricity?
During a long distance Motor Race at Spa, shown live on TV, using hybrid sports GT cars, a radio message was given to a driver to pull over as the chassis had become electrified. He was told to prevent marshals approaching or to touch the car, and when exiting the vehicle to jump as high as possible to avoid making the connection with the ground. As the commentator remarked it could have been fatal.
These serious risks should be stated be in every EV Car brochure and User Manual. The Politicians seem totally unaware of these unique problems.
When Grant Shapps was Secretary of State for Transport recently, following a question in Parliament, he demonstrated that he was totally unaware that an EV battery can catch fire, with a chemical reaction that is un-extinguishable.
Our local Multi-storey car park at the main shopping centre has two EV charging points, on the ground floor. I have written to the Council and the reply I got was this;
“Thanks for your email. While I can see why you are concerned, I would have thought that the issue of potential fire has been explored at a National level, with a degree of specialist expertise above that held in the ************* Council area, and that the systems required by Law have been assessed more thoroughly than would be done locally. Given that, I cannot see either ************* Council or the local Fire Service overruling National requirements. As with so many things, we inevitably need to simply work within existing regulations.”
I am not sure that there are any actual National guidelines for Planning of EV Charging Points, and it may actually down to the local Fire Service ??? Can this be investigated properly as it is a very serious issue?
The fun is going to start in a few years when the lease EV’s come off lease. Who is, in their right mind, going to purcahse a used battery. As the risk of failure is higher with age what view will insurers take on used EV’s. Moreover there is going to be a critical shortage of qualified EV technicians. The risk of electrocution is not appreciated by most people, especially thick as a post politicians
In the MacMaster v Geoff Buys Cars challenge when they are in Mousehole Lee won’t take his Porsche into one car park because the bottom of the car will scrape the surface. I can’t be 100% certain but damage to the battery was a major concern.
Now I know that an ICE car can suffer damage in those circumstances but a £40k battery and/or a fire versus a few hundred for an exhaust or even a replacement sump and you can understand the concern.
An excellent article – it should be sent to every MP
A friend says he pays no more to insure his Model 3 than he did to insure his previous Jaguar. I’m not convinced reports of higher EV insurance aren’t just wishful thinking.
Note that the potential liability from EVs is vastly greater than for ICEs. No ICE ever burned down a car park. Should the Luton fire have originated in an EV, the owner’s coverage wouldn’t be within an order of magnitude of the damage.
I think I have like a half-million coverage. A car park and 150 cars has to be tens of millions. Here, you have to have enough insurance to satisfy state requirements. Certainly, if I ran into a Veyron, I’d have a problem. Perhaps that’s why I don’t see many exotics on the highway. The owners know the schlubs out there don’t have enough insurance.
This seems possible:
Damage to battery . . . fire . . . insurance doesn’t cover it . . . bankruptcy. Or can you get away with just saying you are sorry?
“No ICE ever burned down a car park.”
6 – 7 years ago there was a huge car park fire in Liverpool, similar car numbers to the Luton incident. It started with a diesel Land Rover SUV.
Seems diesel Land Rovers are the problem, as was given as cause of Luton fire, too.
K. So problem isn’t just EVs.
However, burning down car parks seems rare. If it gets more common, the state should require ten million in liability insurance. Spread over millions of cars, and being quite rare, it really shouldn’t cost much more.
Most vehicle fires are started by electrical faults in the 12V system.
As a vehicle ages the chances of an electrical fault increases. This will apply to BEVs as they have a 12V system as well as the HV drive.
But Hyundai and Kia are recalling nearly 3.4 million vehicles in the U.S. and telling owners to park them outside due to the risk of engine compartment fires. Brake fluid leak causing a short circuit igniting the fluid.
Brake fluid is used in BEV braking systems
Yes how quickly we forget. I too recall that car park fire in Liverpool.
It seems to me that vehicle fires spread surprisingly fast. Modern cars (both ICE and EV) seem to be almost tinderboxes on wheels. They seem to burn fiercely and it is not the fuel tank that is burning in most cases.
There’s a video on the net – sorry, I can’t remember where – showing different cars in a test for what happens when they are ‘T-boned’. Various models are tested and of course, some come off better than others. The final car is a Tesla – at first, it appears to have come off quite well… but wait a moment – it goes on to burst into flames! (Which none of the others did).
There are queues for charging partly because charging takes so long. A typical service station forecourt might have 16 petrol/diesel pumps. At 5 minutes per car, in one hour you can fill 192 cars. In other words, to wait for an hour, there would have to be nearly 200 cars in the queue. 16 EV chargers at 20 minutes per charge is only 48 cars in an hour. At 40 minutes a charge. it’s 16 cars fully charged in an hour. To wait for an hour, there only need be 16 cars in front of me. ITs a crazy difference.
And to put in enough battery chargers requires space….lots of space…..fields of it. And a generating source onsite to provide the power as the grid can’t. A diesel generating plant would be a good idea – probably a field of them. And battery cars are great for the environment because…….
More cars on the road because of BEVs – by what logic. BEVs are considerably more expensive than ICE cars to purchase.
As the day of banishment nears, the second hand value of ICE cars will plummet – residual value in old vehicle part finances the replacement – dealers won’t offer more than scrap value for ICE vehicles in part exchange.
As residual value of BEVs is low due to need to replace expensive battery, lease deals will be expensive.
Many people won’t be able to afford a car.
Running costs: insurance rates are already climbing substantially, fast charge rates for BEVs are equal to or greater than motor fuels over the sale distance. As sales of ICE vehicles and motor fuels decrease, Road Fund Tax, excise duty, green taxes and VAT revenue will fall away too, and inevitably these taxes will be transferred to BEVs.
Given increased cost to maintain or beef-up roads and infrastructure caused by the added weight, vehicle taxes will also increase to cover this as will parking costs, and repair/maintenance costs. Then there’s replacement batteries to consider.
The notion that BEVs will be cheaper to operate is fantasy thinking like the rest of the whole Net Zero nonsense.
Although Riad congestion is likely as BEVs run out of juice trapped in traffic jams or unable to get to a charger point soon enough.
There is a parallel with renewables. Fossil fuels make renewables viable. Likewise, EVs aren’t viable without ICE vehicles.
Their existence depends on that which they are supposed to replace.
“Renewables are great, til you run out of other sources of power.”
There’s no “date of banishment”. From 2035 you will no longer be able to buy a new ICE car but there will still be many millions on the road and the second-hand market won’t go away.
As long as there are pumps, there’ll be cars.
Plus all the cherished and classic cars that owners love and still use, on a daily basis. There’s a huge market here too – owners need to maintain these vehicles and need parts, so there’s quite an infrastructure. Owners will also take care of these cars and service them so they run as well as they can – probably everyone is doing a lower mileage in them, so not a big footprint here. Just go to a car event and you will see several hundred cars, all usually ICE – they happen regularly during the summer for lots of different makes.
If new ICE’s are banned, it is easy to see Western motor vehicles going the same way as Cuba. Lessons to be learned.
Might as buy your new ICE while you have the chance, because the second hand sale value should be guaranteed by the lack of availability of replacements. Your biggest risk is government abandoning the ban on ICEs, and you can take that as a racing certainty.
A diesel hybrid has both a diesel engine and a battery.