3 hours ago, Reader said:

Get one of these, then you won't need to worry too much about depreciation.

Leave it to Citroen to design and market the second ugliest car in the Universe, the first being the Citroen 2CV Deux Chauvaux... 🙄

Here is a cool review of the second ugliest car in the Universe:

Quote

If you are fourteen and live in France, then spend the five grand and buy one.

Otherwise Avoid!

 

55 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

Lastly, there's the time cost, IE having to wait for an available charging station and then waiting around 30 minutes or an hour for the battery to charge.

Once EVs start outnumbering ICEs there will be more and more charging stations.  By that time battery charge times might also decrease.

 

55 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

Once everyone has been forced to buy an EV

The volume alone will drive the prices down just as the volume alone drove down the prices of automobiles once they became common.

We are in the early days of EVs.  Probably the same arguments were made about horses vs automobiles at that time.  It's cheaper to feed a horse hay than it is to buy gasoline for an automobile.  There are far more stables and fields to graze horses on than there are places to buy gasoline.  Horses are much cheaper to buy than automobiles.  Horses don't scare the wits out of people and other horses like automobiles do.  Horses are easier to start than hand cranking cranky automobile engines.  Horses are easier to drive than automobiles.

You perform a valuable service Dave.  Naysayers have always been around.  While what they say is often true they point out obstacles that are usually overcome by the positive thinkers.

Noel

 

Edited December 7, 20223 yr by birdguy

2 hours ago, birdguy said:

Actually, hybrids get the best mileage in city traffic.  When I am in my Prius and stop at a stop light the engine stops.  Same in stop and go traffic.  And if you are sane and start slowly when the light turns green the battery will power you up to the speed limit (35mph).

Sometimes I can drive the 7 miles from WalMart to my house without the gasoline engine starting at all.

 

Yes, true re hybrids.

Meanwhile prices are dropping as the tech advances.

The new MGZS is £27K. Nice car apparently. Plus decent range for most.

Average price of a new car in US is $50K €40K in Europe. So plenty of people buying luxury electric cars. Depends on range required of course. Quite a few lower priced EV's if range isn't an issue. 

In other news the Hyundai ionic 6 sold out in Europe in 24 hours.

Honda have invested 350 million in their solid state battery plant and will be installing them in the ZR models. Honda solid state test vehicles are on the roads in Japan now.

Toyota along with a Japanese firm Jera have installed grid scale storage using retired car batteries. The batteries have done high milages but still perfectly adequate for grid storage. The inverters from the cars are being used too. Soon of course they'll have access to 15 million Prius batteries from around the world. Toyota are also in the process of developing an environmentally friendly recycling technique for their batteries.

And of course, as we know now, batteries in EV's are doing 100,000, 200,000 and even higher milages on the same battery. And as mentioned, LFP batteries have a very long lifespan indeed. 

Things are developing rapidly in the EV world.

Edited December 7, 20223 yr by martin-w

Apologies if this makes me sound like an word not allowed, but.....how do people with electric cars pay for the "fuel"? Do you have to enter your credit card details in one of those charging stations before you can connect it to your car?

@Christopher Low Yes sir! 02:40 - Starting, stopping and paying for charging

19 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

Apologies if this makes me sound like an word not allowed, but.....how do people with electric cars pay for the "fuel"? Do you have to enter your credit card details in one of those charging stations before you can connect it to your car?

I think you may have to have an account with the charging station company, at least, here in the U.S.  My brother-in-law has an account for Tesla Super-charging and may have to use a credit card if it's a non Tesla charger.

 

7 hours ago, birdguy said:

You perform a valuable service Dave.  Naysayers have always been around.  While what they say is often true they point out obstacles that are usually overcome by the positive thinkers.

Thanks, Noel.  I wouldn't characterize myself as a naysayer, though.  I like the electric vehicle concept and watch with interest as advances are made in the technology.  I consider myself more of a pragmatic skeptic.

I just think there is a lot of hype and wishful thinking surrounding EVs as well as other energy-related technology.  Some folks only want to point out the positive aspects of whatever they support and conveniently leave out the downsides.

We are going through somewhat of a revolution lately, not only in energy and propulsion but several other societal issues as well.  This is normal and healthy for any civilization, although there is a danger in too much change being made too fast and without considering the negative consequences and effects.

I watch and read a lot of radical stuff relating to energy and resources, and much of what I watch and read from people with authority and people with a lot of wealth is not only unrealistic, but also very disturbing.

I just think "the powers that be" need to slow down and thoughtfully consider what they're proposing and doing instead of just being reactionary as has happened so many times throughout human history.  Will what they're doing really make things better for the average person, or merely enrich a few already wealthy people?  Is there a better way to implement the changes we need to make?  I say "yes", there is a better way.

OK, I'm being long-winded.  Hopefully you get what I'm saying.

Dave

 

17 hours ago, martin-w said:

 

Kona's are good cars. And pretty accurate regarding the manufactures range claims.

Absolutely. They even seem to underestimate the range claimed. I think my Kona has an advertised range of 420km but during summer I can get 500 out of it. The 'little' thing has impressed me a lot tbh. Probably the best car I have ever owned. 

I was unsure about how it would behave during winter as it is only FWD and in my neck of the woods we have several months where 4WD is really good to have but it has been clawing its way through snow drifts like a champ. 

9 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

Apologies if this makes me sound like an word not allowed, but.....how do people with electric cars pay for the "fuel"? Do you have to enter your credit card details in one of those charging stations before you can connect it to your car?

Most often I charge at work, the parking cost me about $22 a month. For almost three years that has been about all I pay for fuel. I have used a fast charger at one occasion and I simply have an RFID-tag with my credit card connected. Easy peasy. 

In my humble opinion, electric vehicles are only an answer if the electricity they use is generated using
a means that does not burn a fossil fuel.
Even then, their environmental impact is huge, but possibly less obvious and plenty of fossil fuel is burnt
during their manufacture and delivery.
Both these and the diesel particulate filter seem to be designed to remove soot and other pollution
from densely populated areas, only to dump it in less populated areas.
This of course does not address the overall problem, it just moves it around.

 

 

2 hours ago, Reader said:

In my humble opinion, electric vehicles are only an answer if the electricity they use is generated using
a means that does not burn a fossil fuel.

 

Electric vehicles are far more energy efficient than internal combustion engines. In a gasoline vehicle almost 80% of the energy is lost to various inefficiencies, most of it through the heat the ICE generates. In an electric vehicle only 11% of the energy is lost. In fact EV's are cleaner even when the energy comes from coal. It is dependent  on how the grid power is generated of course, and most developed nations now have significant  renewable energy contribution. In Quarter 2 in the UK, 38% was from renewables, and in the first quarter 2021, it was 60.4%. For the US, I believe its 22%. And the more renewable energy in the mix the lower the emissions of course. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikescott/2020/03/30/yes-electric-cars-are-cleaner-even-when-the-power-comes-from-coal/?sh=3e12550a2320

 

2 hours ago, Reader said:

Even then, their environmental impact is huge

 

Its not about huge, its about relative contribution to environmental damage. Everything we do has an environmental impact. Even walking has an environmental impact. And the environmental impact of electric vehicles is far lower than for ICE powered cars. Oil has to be extracted from the ground or from under the ocean, which is hugely energy intensive and contributes greatly to environmental damage both on land and the marine environment. Then that oil has to be transported in huge tankers that burn tens of thousands of gallons of marine diesel each day. That oil then reaches the refinery and undergoes yet another hugely energy intensive process to refine it and turn it into petrol, which includes using Cobalt to rid the fuel of Sulphur (something they criticize batteries for) That refined fuel then has to be transported all around the world in uneconomical diesel tankers to the petrol stations and those petrol stations are powered by fossil fuels. And it doesn't stop there, our IC engine then has to be manufactured and that big chunk of steel that has a carbon footprint when its created is turned into an engine with hundreds of complex moving parts. And then of course our IC engine then burns fossil fuels its entire life and emits not just CO2 but all manner of noxious gasses that contribute to ill health. 

• t takes a typical EV about one year in operation to achieve "carbon parity" with an ICE vehicle.
• If the EV draws electricity from a coal/fired grid, however, the catchup period stretches to more than five years.
• If the grid is powered by carbon/free hydroelectricity, the catchup period is about six months.

https://www.cotes.com/blog/greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-ev-vs-ice-vehicles

Oil and gas drilling is a dirty business

https://www.wilderness.org/articles/blog/7-ways-oil-and-gas-drilling-bad-environment

Quote

FACT: The greenhouse gas emissions associated with an electric vehicle over its lifetime are typically lower than those from an average gasoline-powered vehicle, even when accounting for manufacturing.

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths

 

Edited December 8, 20223 yr by martin-w

3 hours ago, Swe_Richard said:

Absolutely. They even seem to underestimate the range claimed. I think my Kona has an advertised range of 420km but during summer I can get 500 out of it. The 'little' thing has impressed me a lot tbh. Probably the best car I have ever owned. 

I was unsure about how it would behave during winter as it is only FWD and in my neck of the woods we have several months where 4WD is really good to have but it has been clawing its way through snow drifts like a champ. 

 

Yes, there was  a review a while back, think it was one of the guys from the Fully Charged channel, he was very surprised to find his range was higher than advertised. Hyundai's are great cars, no wonder the Ionic 6 sold out in 24 hours in Europe. 

 

13 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

Apologies if this makes me sound like an word not allowed, but.....how do people with electric cars pay for the "fuel"? Do you have to enter your credit card details in one of those charging stations before you can connect it to your car?

 

Most people charge at home while they sleep Chris, on cheap rate electricity. Daft not to. For charging away from home an account is required. That's the issue currently some find, the Tesla chargers are easy, but there are quite a few companies in the mix in the UK with slightly different approaches. They really need to standardize the approach.

13 minutes ago, martin-w said:

 

Yes, there was  a review a while back, think it was one of the guys from the Fully Charged channel, he was very surprised to find his range was higher than advertised. Hyundai's are great cars, no wonder the Ionic 6 sold out in 24 hours in Europe. 

 

Yup. I've been eyeing the Ioniq 5 to replace my Kona but they seem hard to come by as well. Some friends of ours ordered an Inoiq 5 months ago and they seem to be in for a looong wait. 

The average human being exhales about 2.3 pounds of CO2 a day.  There are about 8 billion people on the planet currently.  That comes out to approximately 800,000 tons of CO2 people spew out on a daily basis.  I think the only answer is electric people.

Noel

2 hours ago, birdguy said:

The average human being exhales about 2.3 pounds of CO2 a day.  There are about 8 billion people on the planet currently.  That comes out to approximately 800,000 tons of CO2 people spew out on a daily basis.  I think the only answer is electric people.

Noel

 

😄 Its not additional though Noel. We take up the equivalent amount of CO2 from the air. Electric people might be our future though... cyborgs followed by full blown androids. 😲

Edited December 8, 20223 yr by martin-w