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UK Government EV and Environmental Policy
- Thread starter dpeilow
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- Ireland United Kingdom
The press always put a negative spin on EVs. "Electric cars don't sell." Of course they never mention the problem is the supply not the demand.
Though you might compare that to Norway with a yearly total car sales of 100' to 120' cars has already delivered about 500 EVs to customers in Q1. We don't have any £5000 incentives either. That's mostly MiEVs at £28 000 or $46 600 per car. So compared to that UK isn't really selling all that well. 
Cobos
Cobos
Actual deliveries barely started in december 2010 but most dealers had inventory in january 2011.
We do have a negative incentive for gas cars but in the segment the MiEV is in it's not really all that good for the EVs.
For comparison a basic Bluemotion 5-door VW Polo starts at £22 650 or a 1,0L 5-door Toyota Aygo starts at £14 600. Of course that's with basic equipment and not including navigation and other goodies the MiEV has. Still you can get a small frugal ICE-car with similar equipment and performance for less than the MiEV.
Our negative incentives are very progressive, so for the cars above maybe adds about £1 000 to the price, while for a Porsche Cayenne we might be talking £60 000 - £100 000 in negative incentives.
So considering how good the Polo Bluemotion actually is, the sales of the MiEV is pretty good. It is getting help from the fact that it is the first "real" car EV with 4 seats, and the price will probably fall if the Leaf is priced agressively.
Cobos
We do have a negative incentive for gas cars but in the segment the MiEV is in it's not really all that good for the EVs.
For comparison a basic Bluemotion 5-door VW Polo starts at £22 650 or a 1,0L 5-door Toyota Aygo starts at £14 600. Of course that's with basic equipment and not including navigation and other goodies the MiEV has. Still you can get a small frugal ICE-car with similar equipment and performance for less than the MiEV.
Our negative incentives are very progressive, so for the cars above maybe adds about £1 000 to the price, while for a Porsche Cayenne we might be talking £60 000 - £100 000 in negative incentives.
So considering how good the Polo Bluemotion actually is, the sales of the MiEV is pretty good. It is getting help from the fact that it is the first "real" car EV with 4 seats, and the price will probably fall if the Leaf is priced agressively.
Cobos
Nik
Got there eventually :-)
A different view on the same story : http://www.thegreencarwebsite.co.uk/blog/index.php/2011/06/30/uk-plan-to-take-charge-of-ev-revolution/
Note for non-UK readers: the Guardian is a somewhat left-of-centre newspaper, as opposed to our centre/right coalition government. I can't comment on how sensitive to political nuances the reporting of the Green Car Website is...
0.2% of the population signs a petition so the government considers a U turn.
BBC News - MPs to debate motion calling for halt in petrol prices
News this morning is full of stories about the rising prices of petrol, electricity and food. Are we the only ones who can see how this is linked?
BBC News - MPs to debate motion calling for halt in petrol prices
News this morning is full of stories about the rising prices of petrol, electricity and food. Are we the only ones who can see how this is linked?
A classic bit of muddled thinking: "if we increase the tax on petrol, then people won't have enough money to buy food."
No:
- People will shift consumption away from petrol towards other goods and services, including public transport. This is a public benefit, reducing pollution, road congestion, and the need for ever-increasing public works projects.
- For a large fraction of the population, a 3p/l rise in the petrol tax is unimportant. By taxing a good with highly inelastic demand, the government avoids distortionary effects of taxation.
- For the small fraction of consumers or businesses for whom the increase in the petrol tax actually is a hardship, the government can provide a revenue-neutral tax offset (carefully designed to not be directly linked to that person's usage of petrol, but rather to the average impact). This will keep the consumer's purchasing power unchanged, while still encouraging a reduction in petrol use through an increase in petrol prices.
The sad thing here is that Quentin Willson who is mentioned in that story as a spokesman for Fair Fuel UK is in fact a staunch EV supporter. That goes unmentioned.
On the TV news today they have been saying the long term solution is to permanently reduce petrol prices.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Not once has this been mentioned as a solution.
The BBC is portraying garage owners as victims in this too. They supposedly make very little margin on the fuel sales after wholesale cost and taxes are taken into account.
If that is the case, it is in their interest to encourage visits from EV drivers. Rather than popping into the kiosk or shop to pay for the petrol, they will have them there for a whole 20 minutes while the EV charges - plenty of time to sell them high margin coffees or confectionary.
If the garage is independently owned and franchised, then why not install rapid chargers in every forecourt?
The BBC is portraying garage owners as victims in this too. They supposedly make very little margin on the fuel sales after wholesale cost and taxes are taken into account.
If that is the case, it is in their interest to encourage visits from EV drivers. Rather than popping into the kiosk or shop to pay for the petrol, they will have them there for a whole 20 minutes while the EV charges - plenty of time to sell them high margin coffees or confectionary.
If the garage is independently owned and franchised, then why not install rapid chargers in every forecourt?
No, no, it's to build lots of big swimming pools!
Hmmm....if every household in the world had a 15m x 10m x 3m pool, and there are 7billion/2.5 = 2.8billion households, the pools would contain 1.26e12 m^3 of water. The surface area of the world's oceans is about 3.6e8 m^2, so collectively the pools would lower the ocean's surface by 3.5 mm. Hmmm, that's not going to work very well.
So the debate happened in the House of Commons for about 3 hours.
Very little mention in the way of alternative energy (someone needs to ask why when we had LPG in many locations for over ten years, there are barely any such cars on the road).
It's pretty clear the road haulage lobby is the driving force behind this.
Inaccuracies such as it being claimed that the UK is the most expensive for petrol in Europe (it's 4th and many others are within a few percent).
The motion was passed at the end. Now that makes it very easy for the government to justify a tax cut or put in place a stabiliser.
Very little mention in the way of alternative energy (someone needs to ask why when we had LPG in many locations for over ten years, there are barely any such cars on the road).
It's pretty clear the road haulage lobby is the driving force behind this.
Inaccuracies such as it being claimed that the UK is the most expensive for petrol in Europe (it's 4th and many others are within a few percent).
The motion was passed at the end. Now that makes it very easy for the government to justify a tax cut or put in place a stabiliser.
UK green energy projects fall by wayside in dash for gas | Environment | The Guardian
The old CEO of Shell said that they pulled out of wind power projects the day their engineers figured out how to do fracking. Combine that with GTL and we are far from winning the battle.
The old CEO of Shell said that they pulled out of wind power projects the day their engineers figured out how to do fracking. Combine that with GTL and we are far from winning the battle.
Great article, dpeilow; thanks. Zero-carbon energy with current technologies and prices is a luxury good, and as would be expected in tight economic times, demand is falling off. This shift is compounded by the increasingly wide gap between the total cost of renewable vs. fossil-fired power, driven by sharply dropping natural gas prices.
In the summer of 2008, gas prices peaked at over $13/MMBtu; last week, it closed below $3. With natural gas setting the wholesale price for power most of the time in the U.K. and in most U.S. markets, it was easy to cost-justify new renewable projects in 2008. Today, all of them require large subsidies, at precisely the time when governments are imposing austerity measures. It takes very long-vision politicians to hold steady on the zero-carbon course in such rough seas.
In the summer of 2008, gas prices peaked at over $13/MMBtu; last week, it closed below $3. With natural gas setting the wholesale price for power most of the time in the U.K. and in most U.S. markets, it was easy to cost-justify new renewable projects in 2008. Today, all of them require large subsidies, at precisely the time when governments are imposing austerity measures. It takes very long-vision politicians to hold steady on the zero-carbon course in such rough seas.
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