General / Off-Topic Electric cars are stupid.

[Stealthie]

Taxes on cars have always been high in Norway. If you buy a new car you pay about 40-60% in car tax and VAT. On electric you only pay the 25% VAT.
This means that E-Cars costs about the same as in low tax counties, while fossil cars costs up to twice as much.
As E-car sales have been higher than expected, the total is a tax reduction.

I don't know what impact this has on CO2 totals, but it helps quite a bit on the air quality in cities. Particularly in the winter, when the fumes tend to get locked in over the city.

In effect, that's exactly what I said: the people who can afford property with off-street parking have an opportunity to save money while those who don't, don't.
Poor people being penalised for not being rich enough to afford cool stuff.

Not keen on that as a paradigm.

 

[Stealthie]

Considering how such kind of schemes work those restrictions do not apply for people running system. People belonging to eco-dictatorship party would have their mansions and luxuries. And with hefty enough bribes so would rich and connected people too. Only ones really affected would be middle class people.

Obviously it'd be unthinkable to prevent Emma Thompson flying (first class) from LA to London so she could participate in an eco-protest.

 

[Rampant]

Baloney. You anti-car, anti economy hand wringing manmade climate change doomsayers can tell yourselves that all you want, most likely because none of you have cars so what else are you going to say, really? But your leg power, or bicycle or public transportation is only going to get you a handful of meters from your point of origin, while I can get off the keyboard right now and into my car and be anywhere in the country I care to be by this time tomorrow (with my legs and bicycles, mind you). Sounds pretty factual to me.

It is entirely possible to be cognisant of the fact that there is a man-made change of climate for the entire globe, yet not be a "hand-wringing doomsayer". That's just calling names and being negative for the sake of it...

Take me, for example... my wife and I own 3 cars between us, none of which has an average economy of greater than 20mpg (least powerful car is 350bhp). I also "work" as aircrew, in the air, on a 4-jet aircraft. I am "bad".
However, none of this changes the facts that man made climate change is real. I am aware of it and as a realistic and honest individual certainly cannot dispute that fact. Anyone who does dispute man-made climate change is either misinformed by accident, or an out-and-out liar (DT?).
To mitigate our impact I also ride a bicycle the 10 miles to and 10 miles from work whenever "possible" and since my wife and I work at the same site, we share when we can, and even though this most certainly inconveniences one of us on timings, (normally me), in the exact same way as public transport would, but we still do it anyway to minimise our petrol costs, mileage and CO2 emissions.

Personally, I just wish that the "CO2 tax" (from Vehicle Excise Duty and petrol based fuel tax) actually went into better infrastructure, public transport subsidy and proper research on CO2 reduced energy collection/distribution.

Plus - as I said before - EVERYTHING in the country is laid out in such a fashion as to make it a REQUIREMENT to own personal transportation - which is the fundamental part of what must change if we are to reduce the dependency on personal transport.

I do not like the idea very much - but in future I can see the possibility of "electric car sharing" within the community - on some terms of "lease deal" where costs accrued/credits spent are related to mileage used - people carried and time of day (peak/offpeak). The shared cars are owned by the public community and called upon through some kind of "app" or home remote system (Alexa/google)...

 

[Rampant]

In effect, that's exactly what I said: the people who can afford property with off-street parking have an opportunity to save money while those who don't, don't.
Poor people being penalised for not being rich enough to afford cool stuff.

Not keen on that as a paradigm.

I'm totally with you on that.
The very people who stand to save are the ones who don't "need" to. Meanwhile, the knock-on effect for the rest of the community, who can't afford expensive stuff, is that public services are diminished through reduction in tax collected - and these are the people who, arguably, depend most on those public services.

What algorithm do you use to balance this with "better air quality" and "reducing climate change". Tricky societal question...

 

[Stealthie]

What algorithm do you use to balance this with "better air quality" and "reducing climate change". Tricky societal question...

Which leads me to another point...

I grew up in Cheshire, near Warrington.
Later on I moved to Scotland.
The common denominator is that both places are semi-rural areas, close to power-stations.

The people of places like London, Glasgow and Manchester might be the ones complaining about "air quality" and love the idea of zero-emmisions EVs but it's the people who live in rural areas, near to power-stations, who pay the penalty for that.

And, of course, when 8 million people, in London, vote for stuff that makes their lives better, the opinions of a few thousand people who live near the power-stations aren't going to count for much.

It's kind of like everybody in your street voting to poop in your bathroom instead of using their own.
The vote might be democratic but the consequences aren't.

 

[Han_Zen]

In effect, that's exactly what I said: the people who can afford property with off-street parking have an opportunity to save money while those who don't, don't.
Poor people being penalised for not being rich enough to afford cool stuff.

Not keen on that as a paradigm.

Most have access to chargers. Both at home and at work. It's not a toy for the rich anymore.
Say you want to buy a Golf. Prices are similar for an e-Golf or a petrol Golf. You can choose what suits you. Both have benefits.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Wind power and greens...In my country on national level Green party makes much noise for wind power. On local level, well....When someone tries to build wind power farm on hilly area there is much whining about how those wind turbines ruin natural scenery. When somebody tries to build offshore wind power farm there starts whining about "wind turbines kill seabirds"...essentially you are allowed to build those turbines to some valley where they are hidden and preferably there are no birds. Sadly such magic areas tend to have quite bad wind conditions. Off course some members of Green party are little bit intellectually challenged, at least on technical questions. True anecdotes: "Electricity comes from wall outlets, why there is need for power plants", or "Why cannot we build hydro power on lakes, there are many lakes in Finland", well yeah there ARE many lakes, but lakes tend to have smooth water level, no drops involved. Hard to make hydro power with such situation.

People simply associate green with sustainable even if such thing isn't. Nuclear FTW.

 

[Stealthie]

Most have access to chargers. Both at home and at work. It's not a toy for the rich anymore.
Say you want to buy a Golf. Prices are similar for an e-Golf or a petrol Golf. You can choose what suits you. Both have benefits.

I guess infrastructure will only improve but at the moment that can only work as long as EV's are a "novelty item".

Our local council offices, for example, have a couple of EV charging points in the car park - the only place in town to charge an EV in public, BTW.
That's great as long as only a couple of people are driving EVs though.
What would happen if everybody who worked for, or visited, the council offices drove an EV?

What'd happen is that half a dozen of them would get their cars charged and the other 194 people would be walking home that night.

Similar thing reflected on a national level too.
We currently have 40m cars on the roads in the UK.
1.5% of those cars are EVs, for a total of around 600,000 EVs.

What'd happen if, somehow, the other 98.5% of car drivers decided to, and could afford to, buy EVs?
Would there be the facilities to charge them up?
Would the national electrical supply be capable of providing the power for them?

One power station and one wind-farm went off-line at the same time in the UK last week, resulting in a million homes losing power, railways losing power and airports closing.
Kinda seems like the UK infrastructure would implode if EVs rapidly gained widespread appeal.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Most have access to chargers. Both at home and at work. It's not a toy for the rich anymore.

Do they?

When there may be four EV chargers in a workplace car park for 500+ cars?

When, at home, they don't have the luxury of a driveway and must rely on on-street parking (which means that their parking location is somewhat random)?

 

[Robert Maynard]

Kinda seems like the UK infrastructure would implode if EVs rapidly gained widespread appeal.

I expect that, when EV takeup has reached a point where charging them has a significant impact on the National Grid, a condition of charging ones EV will be that the grid can draw power from EVs when required....

 

[Stealthie]

I expect that, when EV takeup has reached a point where charging them has a significant impact on the National Grid, a condition of charging ones EV will be that the grid can draw power from EVs when required....

Honestly, I have a sneaky feeling that EVs are going to be the "Betamax" of the automotive world.
By the time it's viable for the majority of people to own/run a non-IC car, there'll be something other than batteries to run them on and the infrastructure that's been set up for EVs will be modified to suit whatever replaces them.

I recall when walkmans were first invented, shows like "Not the 9 'o' Clock News" used to make jokes about teensy little stereos/TVs that needed to plug into giant battery packs.
Seems like we're currently in a similar situation with EVs.
Sure, car designers can dress it up and try to hide the problems but when you've got small EVs that weigh almost double what a comparable IC powered car weighs, something's badly askew - and that's almost certainly going to get fixed at some point, rendering current EVs obsolete.

 

[Han_Zen]

Do they?

When there may be four EV chargers in a workplace car park for 500+ cars?

When, at home, they don't have the luxury of a driveway and must rely on on-street parking (which means that their parking location is somewhat random)?

There are outlets in many street parking spots and commercial parking lots as well. Their numbers seem to grow gradually, with the number of cars that need charging.
You can also charge from normal 16 or 10 amp. outlets, but this is slower.
On of the quick chargers should be able to charge about 8 cars in a work day. There are always some available where I work, but I think most live close enough to not need it. It's not like you need one charger per car, in a place of work.

 

[Robert Maynard]

There are outlets in many street parking spots and commercial parking lots as well.

I have not yet seen any charging points outside designated parking areas.

Their numbers seem to grow gradually, with the number of cars that need charging.

Slowly.

You can also charge from normal 16 or 10 amp. outlets, but this is slower.

When the car is hundreds of metres away from ones flat?

On of the quick chargers should be able to charge about 8 cars in a work day. There are always some available where I work, but I think most live close enough
to not need it. It's not like you need one charger per car, in a place of work.

That would rely on staff requiring to move their car once it is charged.

 

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

I have not yet seen any charging points outside designated parking areas.

There are a few dotted around the streets in my local area, though I’m not sure where else you’d put them other than designated parking spots.

 

[Han_Zen]

I have not yet seen any charging points outside designated parking areas.

Slowly.

When the car is hundreds of metres away from ones flat?

That would rely on staff requiring to move their car once it is charged.

I talking about the current situation in Norway. 50% of new car sales are electric and people don't have problems with charging.
All the problems you describe were anticipated, but few materialized.
In total about 8% is electric. about 15% in the bigger cities. It rises every year and so far the infrastructure follows at the same or higher rate.

UK is is a different story with far more people and far less space and far lower prices on fossil cars. The change will be slower and better energy storage may be required in the cars (solid state batteries or fuel cells).
The electric motor is here to stay though.

Here is an example of a typical street parking charger. You usually pay with an app, for the time you need.

Spoiler

 

[Stealthie]

Just to put that in perspective, Norway has a smaller population than London. (5.2m vs 8.1m)
Norway has 2.7m cars on it's roads whereas the UK has around 40m cars on it's roads.
Norway has new-car sales of around 220,000 per year vs 2.4m in the UK - proportionally, Norwegians buy twice as many new cars as brit's do.
Norway has around 195,000 EVs vs 600,000 EV's in the UK - 8% of total cars vs 1.5%

Seems like there's a problem of scale here.
I suspect that even to match Norway's current level of EV adoption would require massive improvements to infrastructure.

 

[TiberiusDuval]

And don't know if this is so, but I think this is how things are in Norway too: In my home country, Finland there are power outlets in parking areas, even in parking areas of urban flats. Why? Those are for electrical car warming devices, which are very much needed in our northern climate. So yes technically you could recharge EV more easier here.

 

[Stealthie]

And don't know if this is so, but I think this is how things are in Norway too: In my home country, Finland there are power outlets in parking areas, even in parking areas of urban flats. Why? Those are for electrical car warming devices, which are very much needed in our northern climate. So yes technically you could recharge EV more easier here.

What are these "parking areas" of which you speak?

TBH, I've noticed that a lot of apartment complexes in europe seem to have underground parking garages, which would be much better for EV's, and I've always thought it's a shame we don't do that in the UK.
Here, we usually just get a car-park somewhere next to the flats/apartments, which is ideal for allowing scumbags to steal or vandalise nice cars during the night.

Also, in the UK, we have something of an "epidemic" of unplanned multiple-occupancy housing.
Basically, an awful lot of big houses, which were lived in by a single family back in the 1960s, have now been bought by "property developers" and split into several flats... which means that the residents don't have any parking facilities at all, resulting in mayhem at 6pm as everybody in the street hunts for a parking space.

I live in a fairly small town and the main street is lined with these type of houses, all have which have been converted into flats.
If every resident of every house bought an EV there'd need to be charging points installed roughly every 15ft along the street for a mile and in all the side-roads for all the residents who couldn't find a parking space next to their house.

 

[EUS]

The basic divide as I see it, is a point of view form those that live in europe, where (IN GENERAL) travelling from one large city in a small country to another large city in a small country is trivial, as there is HUGE rail infrastructure, and distances between are not great.
Compare and contrast to Canada, or even some US states, where there are small populations spread out over vast areas that make it fiscally irresponsible to put mass transit into place.
Example, France will fit 1.2 times into the province of Manitoba.

 

[Han_Zen]

And don't know if this is so, but I think this is how things are in Norway too: In my home country, Finland there are power outlets in parking areas, even in parking areas of urban flats. Why? Those are for electrical car warming devices, which are very much needed in our northern climate. So yes technically you could recharge EV more easier here.

I think it has a bit to do with the energy infrastructure in general. In Norway and probably Finland to, everything is electric. We use five times more electricity per capita, than in the UK. Putting cars into the loop makes far less impact on the total consumption.

My understanding is that the UK use gas for most heating purposes. Houses are generally smaler and temperatures are a bit better. If the UK power net is scaled for this relatively small consumption, it could have serious impact to electrify cars rapidly.

There are other alternatives for helping the environment. Where I work, we run quite a few natural gas cars. This gas is made from food waste, which is sorted in households. This is a CO2 neutral option that is only a small conversion from a petrol car.

I don't think there is one correct answer to these questions. Sometimes public transport is the answer, sometimes it's electric and sometimes petrol/diesel is the only viable option. Every small step helps though. It reduces emissions and pushes technology.