The Govt’s Version Of EV Facts
By Paul Homewood
Yesterday’s BBC article about the Lords bemoaning “misinformation” about EVs mentioned this govt website, which supposedly offers us the truth.
In fact it is pure gaslighting, trying to convince people that the facts say something which they don’t:
Let’s run through some of the Q & As:
The harsh reality, of course, is that trade in prices are so low that buyers of new EVs now face massive depreciation costs. And the reason why second hand values have fallen so much is that nobody wants to buy one!
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In short, a petrol model that costs £30,000 will now cost you £42000 for the electric version.
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The analysis comes from the highly unreliable ECIU, and their costings for a petrol car includes fuel duties, which sooner or later will have to be paid by all drivers, in one form or another. Assuming 10,000 miles a year, and 40 mpg, fuel duty would cost a typical driver around £790 pa.
There also seems to be no allowance for higher insurance costs for EVs.
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The SMMT figures are based on manufacturer advertised ranges, not real world, which can often be little more than half in practice. Also the use of an average of 300 miles is grossly misleading, as you would only get such mileages on expensive, top of the range cars.
The Nissan Leaf, for instance, advertises a range of 168 miles, based on lab tests, But its “real world” range calculator knocks this down to just 99 miles in cold weather at motorway speeds:
https://www.nissan.co.uk/vehicles/new-vehicles/leaf/range.html
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Again, the petrol running costs include fuel duty.
And why is there no mention of public charger prices, which are two or even three times as much as home charging costs.
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Utterly irrelevant. Of course most EV drivers have access to home charging, as they would not have bought them otherwise.
The key statistic is the 40%+ of drivers who don’t have access.
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This is part of a long puff piece about how many chargers are being built.
But the simple truth is that the government cannot guarantee to any EV driver that he will get immediate access to a charger, wherever and whenever, without having to queue.
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Taking 24 minutes, and three times as long on a 50kW charger, is bad enough. But if there are a couple of cars ahead of you in the queue, you might be waiting for hours.
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Nobody has suggested that EVs cannot tow caravans. The issue is with the range.
An analysis by Caravan Times three years ago, based on a Tesla 3 and the smallest caravan available, found that towing reduced the range by about 60%.
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If a business had provided such misleading advertising, the Advertising Standards Agency would have come down on them like a ton of bricks!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
While a lot of journeys may indeed be under 100 miles, this does not matter, because if you just need to make 10 journeys a year requiring a charge on the journey, you are into a real problem area.
A bigger problem is that most people don’t fill up their cars with fuel each day they do it weekly or monthly and are not going to run around on empty especially in the winter in case of bad weather (you want enough fuel in case your snowed in your car for the night) and god help us if we have electricity shortages and people respond to rolling blackout by charging their electric vehicles when they get power on top of the heat pump load (look at what happened in Texas in Feb 2021 where they couldn’t roll the blackouts in part due to the power surge from electric heating systems in buildings with internal temperatures below freezing).
Good point – I put 20 litres of diesel in my car and don’t expect to buy anymore for over a week. No need to fill up with more as I can always spend 5 minutes or so getting some more from a pump whenever I need to. If I was on a touring holiday then I would fill up.
I fill my main car up on a monthly basis with perhaps an additional fill up maybe twice a year for a long journey – holidays etc. The gauge reads almost 650 miles anticipated range on filling its 45 litre tank. Tops, 14 diversions into a filling station for about 5 minute a time. Do I really want to be fannying about daily charging?
Even if you did want/need to charge your car daily and had off street parking where is the 10s GWs of extra electricity generation during the evening or night (so no solar) going to come from
“a lot of journeys may indeed be under 100 miles …” Hold hard!
Suppose I drive to see Granny. 100 miles. After tea and chat I return home: 100 miles. But in truth it’s a single journey of 200 miles unless Granny has a charger so I am already in trouble with range anxiety.
I’ll grant you it’s a subtle way to lie but it probably is lying, isn’t it?
“Wonders of a lifetime!”
“You gotta make the journey out and in.”
Yes, it’s seems they intentionally ignore the return trip.
By the time, if ever, that new EVs are similar in price to fuel powered equivalents, there won’t be any new non-EVs on the market anyway, by order of the government.
“If a business had provided such misleading advertising, the Advertising Standards Agency would have come down on them like a ton of bricks!“
They’ve just ruled that EVs cannot be described as “Zero Emission” unless it is qualified to apply only when driving because of the emissions in manufacture and when charging from our mixed-source grid.
They have also ruled that TfL and the GLA were telling porkies about the effect of the ULEZ because model results are not facts.
O/T sorry but wind is at five percent of a high demand at 42GW this evening with outside temp 6C here in Hants, minus one in Edinbro’. Gas is doing well and should keep the lights on. I hope
EVs will never be the universal motor vehicle till the production of electricity is sufficient, cheap and easily replenished.
Jolly useful to have an electric runabout for local journeys, provided the £80,000 Range Rover is available for anything else.
Does anyone know at what date the Government will be forbidding the import of ICE vehicles? I’ve asked my MP Flick Drummond three times but have had no answer. Surely this will have some noisy political effects?
I can see the market providing a personal import service due to massive demand and where you used – maybe still do – see used cars being trailered into the likes of the Czech Rep they will be coming here. Any party that shuts down cheap personal transport will be causing cultural destruction on a massive scale. Who will visit country houses without cars? Who will visit RSPB reserves? Motorsport? – dead! The list goes on if people can’t visit places.
The electricity companies are the only ones profiting out of this.
Company car users are real beneficiaries, as their companies also provide free charging. These motorists also have their I/C engine vehicles for longer trips.
Best to be in the wealthy group as usual!
Ørsted suspends dividend, cuts jobs and exits offshore wind markets
Danish group says it needs to create ‘leaner and more efficient company’
Financial Times
Paul noted that Bsroness Brown of the climate change committee was a non-executive director of Oersted. Jobs for the boys! Oops girls
”Jobs for the boys! Oops girls” Hey be careful there – you are clearly discriminating against the other zillion genders out there!
https://teentalk.ca/learn-about/gender-identity/#:~:text=There%20are%20many%20different%20gender,or%20a%20combination%20of%20these.
quite a big story
but in 2020 there was similar headline for them
… https://twitter.com/No2BS/status/1214228886491406336
share price is 41% down over 12 months
However investors must have been in advance that restructuring was coming
cos the share price has doubled since the start of November when the share price dropped to 153 DKK
And the German taxpayer has been asked to prop up Siemens windmill business.
The Govt nudge unit are flogging a dead horse – the masses are having none of the inept battery cars or heat pumps – the UK CO2 global emissions are now 0.4% – China is 7500% higher and India 2150% higher – the UK is doing plants & crops a dis-service by starving them of CO2 in the name of a MM climate crisis hoax, but it’s about stealth taxes, not climate
As I have said many times: I will know when government et al is serious when Government officials, including Mayors and councillors (and of course those that reside in Buckingham palace) universally get rid of their petrol driven vehicles and convert to EVS. Until then…
The greenie mayor of Hamburg walked the walk and got a battery car. Now, having experienced the ‘joys’ of it he has dumped it and gone back to a normal car.
Doesn’t fast charging degrade the battery faster?
Not in the government world.
From a related article:
“What is particularly odd is that, in the declaration of interests by the 13 members of the committee, just two, including Lady Parminter, say they own an electric vehicle.”
Why should the Government intervene to force the sale of a particular car? (telegraph.co.uk)
Given that all those 13 members probably own more than one car each that really is an alarmingly low figure.
Hmm!? Maybe they are not as dumb as has been previously inferred.
Because of the way they are situated it must be fun getting onto a busy motorway services charging point while towing an 18ft caravan.
Cold seasons make life tough for EVs.
Parking an EV in a heated garage while charging seems like a bad idea and when done, that cost ought to be included in its total cost function. Anyway, …
A new industry needs to develop to manufacture EV-Cozies™; somewhat like a Tea Cozy but powered by a nuclear pill about the size of a hockey puck. In hot weather, the Cozy needs to reverse its function and cool the vehicle. The EV-Cozy must be inexpensive.
I know, this item will be difficult to do but that was said of powered flight and phones without wires.
I thought battery cars were self-heating, albeit in a very uncontrolled way.
As far as I can see, the government facts are the same as the supposed disinformation - EVs are expensive, second-hand prices have no premium, range is a problem, excluding taxes running costs are the same or worse and charging outside urban areas is a problem. But it’s all going to be alright because government is in charge.
Hertz has now cancelled a $3bn deal for 65,000 Polestars. In addition, Polestar are asking for the right to buy back cars that Hertz want to get rid of to prop up used prices.
I recently watched ‘Harry’s garage’ on Utube when he tested the lastest electric BMW 5 series. Now the size of a Range Rover and weighs 2.5 Tons. The most interesting part was when he measured the charging. (about 19mins in) From memory the charger registered 88kW but the battery only had 80kW charge. So it appears 10% of the electric was lost, presumable in heat, during the charging.
From comments on EV forums losses of around 10% are typical when charging at home. Most of that is in the car’s onboard charger as it converts 230V AC for 400V (or 800V) DC. Since home charging is absurdly cheap, on the right tariff, nobody seems fussed about it. 7.5p per kWh is typical which, for an average EV, equates to 2.5p per mile. So an extra 10% is pretty trivial.
Can you imagine the outcry if you put 88 litres of petrol in your car, and it ‘vanished’ ~10% of that leaving you with just 80 litres?
ilma630; it’s a matter of value. Losing 8 litres of fuel would cost you about £12 whereas losing 8 kWh from home charging would only cost about 60 pence.
Who pays 7.5p a KWh for domestic electricity!
Mike do you really believe low rate off peak charging is going to last? And remember almost half the current cost of petrol is taxation that EV owners are tax avoiding.
“7.5p per kWh is typical ” NO it is not typical at all.
Ray; It is typical for EV users. There are a number of tariffs aimed specifically at EV users which give super-low rates during off-peak hours. For example OVO offer 7.5p and Octopus are at 7.0p.
Low off-peak charging could, in theory, last as long as there is a major difference between peak and off-peak demand. But you are right that some form of levelling up is likely as the govt tries to recover lost revenue. That could take the form of some type of levy on EV charging. All recent chargers are “smart” so it would be easy to implement. Another option would be something based on miles driven.
This thread covers lots of examples:
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=247&t=2057187&i=20
This comment caught my eye: “OVO Anytime user here. I have an MG4 Trophy which isn’t compatible with OVO Anytime so got an Ohme charge point fitted which is. Absolutely works perfectly, get home from work, plug car in and that’s it. Set the schedule for 100% by 07:20hrs and use the Ohme application. It’s never let me down in 6 months and 10k miles. Currently 6.7pp unit. The cheapest motoring ever, current 1000 miles costs £17.”
The comment in the article about recharging a 60 kWh battery in 24 mins using a 150 kW charger shows that the author knows very little about EVs.
Charging speed is heavily influenced by a number of parameters, especially the temperature and state of charge of the battery. The rate at which it will charge varies with the SoC. Different cars have different charging curves and the maximum rate is only achievable in a “window” when the battery is between roughly 10% and 60%. At higher levels the charging rate slows down dramatically. That’s why manufacturers quote “able to charge at up to X kW” and also why owners rarely charge to 100% when using public chargers as it takes too long.
Temperature also has a significant effect: about 15 degC is ideal, aiui. At lower temps it all slows down to the point where, in extreme cold, the car will not charge at all – as was seen in the US recently.
He’s just jumped back to a diesel RR Sport! See video link below. Well worth watching.
Harry Metcalf at You Tube’s ‘Harry’s Garage’ is well known in this parish. Ex-owner of EVO magazine so a total petrolhead. He can have the pick of any vehicle he wants and after 4 years of a PHEV BMW has gone for a….diesel Range Rover!
He does a superb deep dive on the entire EV subject in this video, covering more elements than you can shake a plug-in charging lead at. Well worth watching.
I’m back in a diesel after 4yrs running both EV & PHEV. What needs to change to get me to go back? (youtube.com)
It’s an interesting vid but his long rant about battery degradation may be misplaced. According to EV forums there are widgets available which allow the battery’s condition to be checked, including looking at the charging history. If that’s correct, someone looking at a used EV could learn more about it than a comparable ICE.
“According to EV forums there are widgets available which allow the battery’s condition to be checked,” ?????
Oh well that’s the entire problem solved then Mike isn’t it. All we have to do is read an EV forum and all is peachy eh?
Ray; why so snarky? Anyone thinking of getting an EV would find it worth looking at such forums to learn about all the pros and cons from actual users. I’ve done it the last couple of times I bought a car, ICE in my case.
I just found it disappointing that Harry spent so long on the degradation issue without, apparently, doing any research. A couple of minutes on DDG brings up all sorts of advice on how to check battery condition.
lower repair and maintainance costs eh?
I dont think people who have repairs done at a Tesla dealer would agree with that statement.
I am also skeptical of their service times. Tesla was created without a large dealer network that included service. I doubt they have an adequate number of techs available to provide service.
Nor service locations. There is no Tesla service in the entire state of South Carolina.
Should you make the 225 mile drive from Charlotte to Atlanta, be aware that there is literally no service available between them.
There are not that many in the UK although one not too far from me. I know a tech who used to work for them. He didn’t have a particularly high opinion of them.