ECIU’s Disinformation About EVs
By Paul Homewood
This week’s disinformation from the ECIU propaganda unit!
Ahead of the Government’s Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate’s being debated in Parliamentary committee tomorrow, Colin Walker, Head of Transport at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said,
The Government’s impact assessment for the ZEV mandate clearly states that, once you subtract the policy’s costs from its economic benefits, the net benefit to the UK economy is £39bn [1], or around £1,400 per household.
That’s because the ZEV mandate will accelerate the UK’s uptake of EVs, and EVs are much cheaper to own and operate. Research by the ECIU has found that a Nissan Leaf, compared to a petrol equivalent, can save its owner over £1200 a year in fuel costs alone. [2]
To access these savings, most UK households will rely on the second-hand market – its where most of us buy our cars. And this is where the ZEV mandate will play a critical role – in driving up sales of new EVs, it will drive up the pace at which EVs arrive on the second hand market. Without it, the UK’s drivers will be stuck driving slower and more expensive petrol cars for longer”.
WOW!! The ZEV mandate must be wonderful to save us all £1400 each!
But as with all con-merchants, it pays to check the small print first.
Firstly, the Government Impact Assessment they quote covers the period 2024 to 2071! So that £1400 actually works out at just £30 a year. The amount is so tiny in overall terms that statistically it is meaningless.
But if we burrow deeper into the Impact Assessment we find that it is based on a set of very dodgy assumptions.
First off, the supposed benefits include £103bn in “emissions savings” :
But nobody will be any better off economically just because we cut CO2 emissions. It is just a made up number to make the benefits look substantial.
Secondly the assessment uses unrealistically low price assumptions for EVs:
To claim that an EV will only cost £3100 more in 2025 simply does not reflect the current reality, which tells us that the price differential is at least £10000, even for small cars.
I certainly don’t know what they might cost in ten or twenty years time, but neither does the Government or ECIU. But it is dishonest to pretend that people won’t be much worse off in the foreseeable future if they are forced to buy EVs.
We then come on to the second claim:
The link they give is wrong, as it takes us back to the Impact Assessment.
However their costs for petrol include fuel duty and VAT – the typical annual fuel bill including these taxes would be around £1400 for a small petrol engined car.
Take the taxes away, which is the true comparison, and fuels costs would drop to about £800. The saving with an EV would at best about £200, which plainly would not compensate for the higher purchase price.
But that saving would only apply to motorists with off street parking, and who never use public charging.
According to the RAC, anybody using a public charger the cost/mile would be double that of petrol, with fuel duty excluded.
Finally, the ECIU make a big claim about second hand EVs, which supposedly UK drivers are desperate to get their hands on:
Buyers of second hand cars tend to be relatively poor. And poorer people are less likely to have off street parking. So it is the less well off who will be hardest hit by the ZEV mandate, which will perforce lead to many fewer ICEs appearing in the second hand market in a few years time.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
It should be renamed the Energy and Climate Propaganda Unit. There is not much intelligence involved. Just go look at the Board.
Second hand BEV market. When you buy a second hand ICE you rarely have to buy a new engine for it, and the petrol tank hasn’t shrunk.
BEV batteries lose capacity every charge/discharge, so after a few years will need replacing. (Circa £12 000 to £15 000.)
ECIU have ‘overlooked’ some insurers in the UK are declining to insure BEVs, and others have increased premiums by 70%. The reasons for doing so won’t be going away.
Yes, even if a battery lasts for 150,000 miles and can be replaced for $15000 that’s an additional 10 cents/mile for the BEV.
I doubt using public chargers would be cheaper even with fuel duty included. Andrew English tested an electric Toyota van and compared it to the diesel version on the same journey. The diesel saved him about £70 if memory serves.
It is total Bullshit, you cannot extrapolate to 2071 that is 48 years, the most you can extrapolate is 3 to 5 years ahead and then there will always be some error. With the chaotic state of BEV market, I would think that 18 months is pushing it for any prediction.
My prediction is that, over the next 18 months, BEV sales particularly second hand will be non existent. In a confused market customers will just hang on to their existing car and wait and see what happens. A few more big BEV fires and electricity shortages, both generation and charger availability, ( as Paul points out, many people buying second hand cars live without the ability to charge at home, high rise and terraced housing, so they have to pay more to charge up) should finish off the BEV take up by second owners, Of course the rich with salary sacrifice tax relief will continue to buy Tesla and Mercedes, but that is not what the average driver wants second hand.
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we set out to deceive
About the strength of of it Geoff.
48 years from now we’ll all be driving hydrogen horses and comparing the BEV and Tulip manias.
If I was an EV manufacturer I would be looking for a hedge against disaster. It would only take a nasty multi story car park fire with perhaps a couple of deaths for the bottom to fall out of the market and stocks to become unsellable
Why do these folks think there will be a market for a secondhand Battery car, it makes no sense.
No mention of the much higher insurance cost of EVs
Utter lies. Geoff and Lee drove from John O’Groats to Lands End in a 14 yr old diesel BMW and a Porsche Taycan. The cost for charging the Taycan was so high that Geoff could have driven all the way back to John O’Groats and still have money to spare. He wasted a lot less time too. Lee commented on the huge stress of finding an available working charger and that it was worse than a previous trip due to there being more battery cars needing charging.
They’ve done a follow up, £800 Luxury Merc versus the Taycan North Wales to South Wales
Summary end of trip video here.
For the forseeable future, EVs will be powered by electricity either from burning fossil fuels in power stations, or diesel generators connected to charging points as the grid cannot cope with new connections. This will not change in the forseeable future, and when you add on the carbon emissions from the manufacture of them, the extra brake and tyre particulates from them, the scrapping of a much higher percentage of them, and the replacement of the occasional building or ship destroyed by them, I doubt that there is any reduction in emissions at all.
I think a key cost missing is the maintenance cost of second hand EVs. If the battery pack fails, the cost of replacement will potentially cause the vehicle to be scrap value to the poorer consumer.
“Finally, the ECIU make a big claim about second hand EVs, which supposedly UK drivers are desperate to get their hands on:”
Hardly. Prices have been plummeting lately and lots of dealers will not take them as they can move them.
It’s the ECIU who think drivers are desperate to buy the useless things second hand!
Understood Paul.
My comment should have been clearer and the last line should have read “….as they can NOT move them”.
EVs are a niche product. USED does not match that ethos.
They are a bit more than niche with sales growing by 34% year-on-year, taking 16% of the market:
That said, sales growth has slowed. My guess is that it is reaching a plateau as the business and fleet users switch over from ICE and private sales stagnate.
From what I read, fleets, inc. rental companies, are now realising the high costs and cost risks of EVs, and will start switching back.
ilma630; I think it’s a mixed bag. As you say, lease and rental companies have probably been caught by unexpected costs, especially depreciation. Otoh, the 100% first-year write-off is still very attractive for businesses.
It will be interesting to see how it plays out!
Just received a distribution email from my (so-called Conservative) MP…
“This week I steered legislation through Parliament which will require 80% of car sales and 70% of van sales in the UK to be zero emission by 2030, and 100% by 2050.”
When will he understand, the multiple levels of sheer stupidity of this!!??
I renewed the insurance on my Audi A4 this week.
Last years cost with full NCB was £290.
Cheapest this week was £600.
Apparently, insurers are spreading the risk of EVs to petrol and diesel owners. Also, lack of new cars means increased prices for second hand, with increased risk for beyond economic repair.
Renewals for younger drivers could be north of £1000.
Yet more joy for the carbon pirates.
Because that’s right. The cost of damage to an EV is very high for minor collisions whatever sort of car hits them, and the cost of a total write-off is also higher. The likely cost of you or I having an accident that is our fault has become higher. We are now surrounded by fragile high-cost cars so our insurance has risen.
If EVs really did make sound economic sense there wouldn’t be any need for the government to get involved at all. Superior technology displaces the existing technology naturally. Think about smart phones, sat navs, flat screen TVs, all have completely wiped out what went before without government mandates. EVs are massively inferior to ICE vehicles by every possible metric, including their environmental impact, without government subsidies they would be completely unaffordable to anyone but a few eccentrics.
I did not see in the government assessments anything about the coming restrictions and/or much higher prices for the essential rare earth elements that most electrical transport system rely on. We do not have the capacity or capability to gain those elements alone, so we will be heavily dependant upon importation which will be in competition with other nations similarly driving down the road of madness, or facing their embargo for failing to obey their overseas suppliers demands.
If the depreciation of new(ish) cars has now returmed to the usual UK decline then the biggest cost of running a new(ish) car will generally be depreciation.
Cheapest mainstream production car to run in the UK over the last 20 years? Probably a 1970s / 1980s Porsche 911 (unmodified). Or perhaps a rear wheel drive two door Escort? I’ll have one of each please.
If they are using figures out to 2071, check the discount rate. As a rule of thumb, any sensible discount rate makes anything beyond 20 years valueless.