Tesla reduces output of Y and 3 in Shanghai

[Zilla91]

None of us truly care about the environment, otherwise we wouldn't be here buying new cars that have an environmental impact to produce and transport. Anyone who says they are purchasing an expensive new EV/SUV thing because of the environment is deluded and/or lying to themselves to make themselves feel better.

The only thing anyone cares about is their bank balance.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

I think that with battery technology where it currently is, there may be a natural ceiling to EV adoption. By this, I'm thinking of the roughly 60%+ of people who would find it very difficult/inconvenient to charge at home i.e. those who don't have off street parking. I would not have gone down the EV route if I didn't have the ability to park off road and charge at home.

Battery prices, more than technology. Battery, motor, power electronics. They just need to be cheaper.

 

[Drew57]

It’s gonna be painful for us, but that’s the price to pay and we’ll just have to suck it up.

I know, it's awful isn't it.

Charge overnight or on solar for pennies or nothing, no need for expensive servicing, defrost the car from bed in winter or cool it in summer. No keys, no need to 'open' 'lock' or 'start' the car & peace of mind knowing that even if someone is able to enter it, they don't know the PIN. We are also making tiny individual contributions to climate control, cleaner air & reduced noise pollution. Thankfully, it's a price many of us are happy to pay!

 

[WannabeOwner]

I do strongly believe that a baseline nuclear fleet

I don't disagree, but my view is that by the time a Nuclear plant, build started today, comes online storage will have been solved ... and storage will be a lot better than Nuclear in various ways.

My sister’s 2019 Model 3 has just passed the 110.000 mile mark and TeslaFi shows about 9% degradation. I’m about to hit 90k miles on mine with a similar degradation seen.

I did 95K miles in my 2015 MS with about 7% degradation. Not serviced after the point at which warranty reduced (I've forgotten - 40K or 50K I think). That was the "90" battery, arguably the worse chemistry that Tesla have used.

I bought my car outright and I most certainly wouldn't go back to ICE unless forced by circumstances.

Me too

people who buy outright are probably less likely to change car often so I guess have less sway on the market.

Me too - except:

Outright purchase, for me, so that I don't have to chop it in at e.g. 3 years.
Outright purchase, for me, so that I can chop it in on Day Two, if I want to

Typically I would change because high mileage, or aged-of-vehicle, bothers me, or if "something better" comes along - but I also pay cash to take care of "change of circumstance" not being a PITA, having been burnt by that using finance in the past.

I'd chop my current MS in tomorrow for a Plaid RHD

I'm thinking of the roughly 60%+ of people who would find it very difficult/inconvenient to charge at home i.e. those who don't have off street parking

What about Norway? circa 90% new cars are BEV. My guess is they have a similar percentage of "street parked" owners to UK? I know their domestic electricity is cheaper than ours, and they have a more developed charging infrastructure (quite possibly state sponsored still), but is their 3rd party charging "cheap" compared to, say, Petrol?

If not then their street-parked owners seems to be managing OK (I wouldn't want to do it, but ...)

 

[ACarneiro]

I don't disagree, but my view is that by the time a Nuclear plant, build started today, comes online storage will have been solved ... and storage will be a lot better than Nuclear in various ways.

I think you’re being about as optimistic about solving The Storage Issue as I am about solving The Thorium SMR Issue.
I seriously suspect that storing the amount of renewable energy required to get us through a whole year is much harder than sorting out molten salt reactors.
I really don’t know the numbers but I suspect you’d need to store quite a few TWh over summer to see us through the winter. As physicists would say, that problem is “non trivial”

 

[ACarneiro]

I know, it's awful isn't it.

Charge overnight or on solar for pennies or nothing, no need for expensive servicing, defrost the car from bed in winter or cool it in summer. No keys, no need to 'open' 'lock' or 'start' the car & peace of mind knowing that even if someone is able to enter it, they don't know the PIN. We are also making tiny individual contributions to climate control, cleaner air & reduced noise pollution. Thankfully, it's a price many of us are happy to pay!

You’re preaching to the converted!
Mind you, when you account for devaluation and the “EV insurance premium” it may not work out that much cheaper.
The insurance “discrimination” against EVs will eventually ease off as cars become cheaper and repairs less expensive. But it’s definitely a problem at the moment.

 

[WannabeOwner]

What about Norway?

I did a bit of a Google

Read an McKinsey article that I found interesting "What Norway’s experience reveals about the EV charging market"

Snippets:

In December 2022, more than 80 percent of new cars purchased in Norway were electric
The country’s effective economic and social incentives, its reliable power grid, and its demographics have all contributed to its adoption success.
On the other hand, scaling Norway’s EV charging infrastructure to keep pace with its mounting demand has proved more problematic.
The expansion [of Public Charging] has not come without significant growing pains, and scaling the system will take some time.
EV sales rose sharply in Norway once the total cost of EV ownership reached parity with ICE ownership
This helped trigger a spike in demand for charging stations, suggesting competitive advantages for those who invest in and scale EV charging capacity before EVs achieve cost parity with ICE vehicles in their own markets.

In Norway, on-the-go charging (on highways etc) costs consumers three to four times more than charging their EVs at home

Is that similar to here?


I found a Supercharger price comparison on Github :

Grantham, UK £0.42 - UK Range: £0.30 - £0.50
Norway range : NOK 3.25 - 3.95 (£0.24 - £0.29 - -20% - -42%)

storing the amount of renewable energy required to get us through a whole year

Do we need to do that?

My assumption is that we would need to store an amount equivalent to whatever is the gap between Renewals Generation and Consumption - e.g. the longest period when wind-doesn't-blow and sun-doesn't shine

Interconnect to, e.g. Algeria, may reduce that "max" too?

 

[boombap]

The only thing anyone cares about is their bank balance.

A forum full of £50k car owners might somewhat disagree with that statement.

 

[ACarneiro]

I did a bit of a Google

Read an McKinsey article that I found interesting "What Norway’s experience reveals about the EV charging market"

Snippets:

In December 2022, more than 80 percent of new cars purchased in Norway were electric
The country’s effective economic and social incentives, its reliable power grid, and its demographics have all contributed to its adoption success.
On the other hand, scaling Norway’s EV charging infrastructure to keep pace with its mounting demand has proved more problematic.
The expansion [of Public Charging] has not come without significant growing pains, and scaling the system will take some time.
EV sales rose sharply in Norway once the total cost of EV ownership reached parity with ICE ownership
This helped trigger a spike in demand for charging stations, suggesting competitive advantages for those who invest in and scale EV charging capacity before EVs achieve cost parity with ICE vehicles in their own markets.

In Norway, on-the-go charging (on highways etc) costs consumers three to four times more than charging their EVs at home

Is that similar to here?


I found a Supercharger price comparison on Github :

Grantham, UK £0.42 - UK Range: £0.30 - £0.50
Norway range : NOK 3.25 - 3.95 (£0.24 - £0.29 - -20% - -42%)

This was a really interesting read, thank you for that

Do we need to do that?

My assumption is that we would need to store an amount equivalent to whatever is the gap between Renewals Generation and Consumption - e.g. the longest period when wind-doesn't-blow and sun-doesn't shine

Interconnect to, e.g. Algeria, may reduce that "max" too?

I meant storing in the summer the gap between what we produce and need in the winter. Sorry if I wasn’t clearer.

I probably have an overly simplistic view of it and the storage requirements may not be as big as I think, especially as more renewables come online.

Increasing renewable generation also means significant grid infrastructure cost, though, and I worry that we have already “picked the low hanging fruit” and future wind farm and solar deployments will be technically more challenging and therefore more expensive (the further out into deeper waters you go, the harder and dearer it’ll be to deploy and maintain the wind turbines, for instance).

That said…. there are still an awful lot of roofs with no solar panels out there, and an awful lot of buildings with no batteries to capture said sun. Perhaps a big chunk of the solution is not massive deployments but smaller scale self-consumption and local grids.

Anyway, sorry for that stream of consciousness.

 

[Zilla91]

A forum full of £50k car owners might somewhat disagree with that statement.

A forum full on £50k car owners will have a fair few quid in the bank and are hardly on the breadline.

 

[FastLaneJB]

I think you’re being about as optimistic about solving The Storage Issue as I am about solving The Thorium SMR Issue.
I seriously suspect that storing the amount of renewable energy required to get us through a whole year is much harder than sorting out molten salt reactors.
I really don’t know the numbers but I suspect you’d need to store quite a few TWh over summer to see us through the winter. As physicists would say, that problem is “non trivial”

I'm pretty sure Duracell solved the energy storage problem even when I was a kid

 

[Drew57]

You’re preaching to the converted!

I knew you hold the same views, just intended as irony for others who don't.

 

[WannabeOwner]

significant grid infrastructure cost

A bunch of additional pylons going North-South through East Anglia is proving very unpopular (I don't know why they can't just choose to bring the power ashore (from North Sea) via multiple sea-cables, rather than "to one place and then distribute it North/South "on land" [well, "profits" being the driver I understand, but whether it is actually eye wateringly expensive to do, as they say, I am sceptical])

We (in East Anglia) are putting in a North-South water main too ... that is years behind schedule as ecologists inspect every hedgerow that the pipe has to cross and digging gets held up for another year

the further out into deeper waters you go

I have a rosy view that the area available for North Sea wind is vast and UK is very fortunate that we are going to have unlimited power (from North Sea) and that we will attract electricity-intensive industry to our shores and, once we stop basing electricity price on the price of Gas, it will be cheap ("Too cheap to meter" anyone?!)

 

[UkNorthampton]

Overprovisioning 3-5 times demand and then all the interconnects seems like a bit of a waste, though?
It’s obviously different ways of approaching the same problem and I guess we’ll never know which is better until one of them actually gets built.

Cheapest way. Plenty of Tony Seba/Adam Dorr videos or people commenting on it.

Renewable cheaper to BUILD and run than fossils are to run, even if overprovisioning.

Excess domestic electricity can be sold to neighbouring countries at a profit.

Think about when windy weather moves west to east. Ireland sells excess to others, then Great Britain, then Denmark etc. Then interconnects smooth out across wide geography but excess capacity has a market in other countries.

 

[Adopado]

None of us truly care about the environment, otherwise we wouldn't be here buying new cars that have an environmental impact to produce and transport. Anyone who says they are purchasing an expensive new EV/SUV thing because of the environment is deluded and/or lying to themselves to make themselves feel better.

The only thing anyone cares about is their bank balance.

That no doubt applies to many people, sadly, but not all. Personally I would be prepared to pay more in order to make the transition if that was necessary. My consumption is also more than buying cars. I have made many other decisions in recent times that I hope will make some small contribution towards reducing my impact on climate change. Of course you can say that’s just to make me “feel better” (but is that a bad thing?)

If you have children and grandchildren I would have thought you would be wanting them to have a chance of a better future. If you don’t have children then you still must feel some responsibility for your part in establishing a framework for a sustainable future for the human race.

 

[UkNorthampton]

I think regardless of how private buyers finance their vehicle, it's them buying it and not a business or a salary sacrifice lease which is still a business purchase.

Don't think it matters what the percentage is vs fleet here. The point is that when people have to put their own money down without any incentives they are pulling back from EV's, not buying more. Fleets and businesses aren't picking EV's on a level playing field, they are drawn to EV's by all the financial benefits they bring. If that was a level playing field also, would they buy as many EV's? I bet you they wouldn't.

Fleet includes private buyers via some kinds of finance. Private buyers includes cash and maybe some other finance,but not all. This is why fleet is such a high percentage and private is only a subset of private buyers

 

[Tiger]

None of us truly care about the environment, otherwise we wouldn't be here buying new cars that have an environmental impact to produce and transport. Anyone who says they are purchasing an expensive new EV/SUV thing because of the environment is deluded and/or lying to themselves to make themselves feel better.

The only thing anyone cares about is their bank balance.

Well, it is better than buying a new ICE, though.

Though I would still be buying ICE if EV didn't have better performance/price ratio.

 

[PaddyB]

I think I've got away relatively lightly, Tesla installed a Power wall in the house for free, I've got a set of 22inch wheels in the garage, and 'free' SC certainly has been put to good use. Coming up to 8 years of ownership I've comfortable with what we paid, and where the car has taken us etc.

But I can see why a similar aged diesel Q7 is worth more than our X, soon to out of the battery/motor warranty, we know VAG TDI engines will literally last indefinitely if serviced, once past 150k miles a new traction battery for £10-20k will 100% be needed.

EV adoption was suppose to take off in the last few years, but looking at the figures it's flatlined at sub 20% of new car sales. We've seen how quickly the politicians are keen to drop the green agenda for votes, I'll be amazed of mayor of London gets in again given the unpopularity of the extended ULEZ zone.

I hope it doesn't happen, but it really wouldn't take a lot to cause EV sales to nose dive even before they have become established.....Imagine if Tesla folded and the whole SC network disappeared.....who here would still want to own an EV?

Model X residuals to be strong going forward as they aren't making any more of them (in RHD)? Future classic? Used prices of the Model X don't seem to be too different to Audi Q7s of similar age. Source - Autotrader. Main downside of Model X is the cheap feeling interior, the 3 and Y are much better. The new 3 is vastly better.

Regarding UK EV adoption, BEV % of the market -
2019 1.6%
2020 6.6%
2021 11.6%
2022 16.5%
2023 17.8%
Source - SMMT
In 2024, year to date BEV sales are up by 21.3%, total market up 10.3%. Source - SMMT

95.2% of cars in London are now ULEZ compliant. Source - Ulez: Vehicle compliancy rate at 95% across London, City Hall report says

Tesla UK sales in 2024 (year to date, ie January and February) up by 67%, market share of 2.1% against 1.39% last year. Source - SMMT
This is without the discounting we saw last year. Unlikely to see Tesla folding any time soon.

 

[gangzoom]

That no doubt applies to many people, sadly, but not all. Personally I would be prepared to pay more in order to make the transition if that was necessary. My consumption is also more than buying cars. I have made many other decisions in recent times that I hope will make some small contribution towards reducing my impact on climate change. Of course you can say that’s just to make me “feel better” (but is that a bad thing?)

Let's get honest here and not pretend to live a fantasy. UK summers are getting hotter, my answer is to add aircon to all the bedrooms. I know that is actually the worst thing to do interms of reducing consumption which drives changes in weather patterns, but why wouldn't you add aircon if it makes hot summer nights more bearable?

As for paying more, would you vote for a party that promises to cut down on unnecessary air travel by putting on an additional £200 on each plane ticket? Instantly you will reduce pointless short haul flights, but a family holiday to Europe is now £800 more expensive on flight, though you can always just drive. How many votes would that policy get?

Money is artificial and ultimately fake, it actually doesn't even relate to any real assessts, but it makes the world round. There is a theory's that the inhabitants of Easter Island died because they chopped down every tree around till there was no more to chop down. Humanity as a whole is heading in the same way, just be hopefully none of us live long enough to see the final show down.

 

[FastLaneJB]

Fleet includes private buyers via some kinds of finance. Private buyers includes cash and maybe some other finance,but not all. This is why fleet is such a high percentage and private is only a subset of private buyers

I don’t believe that’s true. Quick Google tells me that last year fleet / business purchases were 58% of new car purchases. There’s no way the remaining 42% all brought new cars with cash.

Fleet / Business I’m sure will include people on salary sacrifice but it won’t include people using PCP for instance.