Wife's new car = ICE thanks to FRT

[Titus]

Wife needed to drive (I live "out in the sticks" in New Territories and added the second kid to the family 6 months ago) and we were looking for a new car. I think our family situation reflects the effect of the FRT.

My budget was around 600k HKD which would have been ok for a basic Model S but now that the FRT is in place, there is no Tesla within my budget. Yes there's the Leaf or i3 but I think we all agree from various reviews that the lack of readily available fast charging (like Superchargers) or even medium charging (public ones always hogged up) makes the range on the Tesla-alternatives unappealing for daily drivers; plus I do not have access to home charging.

So what to do. Off to shop for an ICE I went and we are picking up our Land Rover Discovery Sport next week. HK had a choice, do we have a family drive an electric or ICE car? Legco said let's have them drive ICE.

Sorry next time you take a breath next to my wife's car, I had no choice lol (wait for the trolls "you always have a choice, don't drive! walk!" blah blah blah)

 

[Algbc]

sorry, what is FRT?

 

[Titus]

sorry, what is FRT?

Ops, sorry First Registration Tax; basically for Hong Kong it's an import tax on cars. Recently the government removed the EV incentive by removing the FRT-exemption for EVs. Now Teslas effectively cost close to double or more than what it costed before April 2017

 

[Titus]

On the traffic numbers front, in my case I was going to add another car onto HK roads no matter what unless they ban my wife from driving or tax it out of my budget. It's not like oh EVs are cheap so let me clone myself so I can put another driver on the road with another EV. So, the traffic aspect is out of the picture completely, the single question was EV or ICE. I would love to see more Park and Ride facilities for people out in NT to get to HK Island; just dig a massive underground parking in NT/Kowloon border (Kwai Chung?) and have express lines from there to Island East, West and Central, my wife hates driving to begin with (again we do it out of necessity when it's pouring rain trying to push a baby carriage and hold hands with a 4 year old and not worrying about getting home before the buses stop service) she would be fine with driving the least amount of distance to a good public transport hub.

 

[ediot]

I watched as Chan Mau Ball delivered his speech, 3 sentences saying HK has "too many cars" as if that's the actual reason.

What we need is to keep the same tax parity between EV and ICE to steer consumers towards EV, for those that need to add another car onto HK's roads anyway but that's just too sensible I guess? I think sticking a potato in Mr Chan's car's exhaust pipe may be the next best solution.

 

[FequalsMA]

I watched as Chan Mau Ball delivered his speech, 3 sentences saying HK has "too many cars" as if that's the actual reason.

What we need is to keep the same tax parity between EV and ICE to steer consumers towards EV, for those that need to add another car onto HK's roads anyway but that's just too sensible I guess? I think sticking a potato in Mr Chan's car's exhaust pipe may be the next best solution.

For the record, i'm completely behind this approach too.
But Hong Kong, being at the shining technological glory it is, has too many vested interests in secondary industries supporting ICE.
One can only imagine what it will be like when the day comes and these parties are faced with a rude awakening.

I don't believe you mentioned why a CPO was out of the question. I"m sure there are some with low milage that you could get.

 

[Algbc]

I'm thinking if it is possible, HK or rest of the world should soon give you incentive just for trading an ICE car with an EV. you will get an EV incentive on top of that.
but if this happens the OIL companies will start an uproar.

 

[Captain_Kong]

Ball / Po Su is always a bit of an idiot and am sure that you can find his car parked next to his "subdivided flats" for the potato...

I can attest that all of my neighbors replaced their ICEs to EVs (mostly MS / MX) on an one-to-one basis, and there is a few households managed to replace 2 ICEs with 1 MS or MX. In my complex, there is approx. 20-30 MS or MX. This is probably not an unbiased sampling, but it demonstrates the point that EV doesn't necessarily equate to additional cars on the road!

 

[saichinli]

Is it possible to ask the TD for statistics on how they think the reduced FRT EV is creating more cars on the road?

 

[FequalsMA]

Is it possible to ask the TD for statistics on how they think the reduced FRT EV is creating more cars on the road?

Pretty much another Denmark.

Hong Kong went from electric vehicle ‘beacon city’ to a complete stop of EV sales last month

 

[FequalsMA]

I'm thinking if it is possible, HK or rest of the world should soon give you incentive just for trading an ICE car with an EV. you will get an EV incentive on top of that.
but if this happens the OIL companies will start an uproar.

While it would make sense from environmental point of view, who would foot the bill for this? Taxpayers?
It would result in lost tax revenue (and in the case of hong kong, actively putting people out of work).

But just 10 years from now (or maybe even 20 for hong kong), the business and safety benfits of electrification/ automation will be undeniable. Manually driving an ICE will be akin to owning and pedaling your own rickshaw today.

 

[Algbc]

While it would make sense from environmental point of view, who would foot the bill for this? Taxpayers?
It would result in lost tax revenue (and in the case of hong kong, actively putting people out of work).

But just 10 years from now (or maybe even 20 for hong kong), the business and safety benfits of electrification/ automation will be undeniable. Manually driving an ICE will be akin to owning and pedaling your own rickshaw today.

Thanks, you are right. That makes a lot of scense.

 

[LoL Rick]

@Titus - there was a rumor that Tesla pre-registered a bunch of cars just before the exemption expired. Did you check with them to see if they had an inventory car available?

 

[kkeeiith]

Any industry or product cannot solely rely on government subsidies (or grant of tax incentives) for the long term. What we need is cheaper and better quality EV that fits the budget of different people in accorandance to their needs.

 

[Titus]

@Titus - there was a rumor that Tesla pre-registered a bunch of cars just before the exemption expired. Did you check with them to see if they had an inventory car available?

From their website I see all the inventory cars are P100D top models haha out of my 600k budget even without FRT. Would have wanted a 70D or something

Another thought; perhaps EVs are still being sold but just not "registered" in the last month because of Tesla and some private individual/companies that bought like 300 at a time before FRT cut off date? When they re-sell it, would it not show up on the "number of first registered EVs"? Heard they basically bought like 4000 of them which is like a year's supply

 

[Captain_Kong]

From their website I see all the inventory cars are P100D top models haha out of my 600k budget even without FRT. Would have wanted a 70D or something

Another thought; perhaps EVs are still being sold but just not "registered" in the last month because of Tesla and some private individual/companies that bought like 300 at a time before FRT cut off date? When they re-sell it, would it not show up on the "number of first registered EVs"? Heard they basically bought like 4000 of them which is like a year's supply

These are all registered and inventory stocks, so technically 2nd hand vehicles. You should ring up your sales specialist and find out what's in the inventory. Their website shows only a sub-set of the inventory stocks, am pretty sure there are lower-spec MS available, but they're going fast. MX is almost sold out though I heard.

 

[FequalsMA]

Any industry or product cannot solely rely on government subsidies (or grant of tax incentives) for the long term. What we need is cheaper and better quality EV that fits the budget of different people in accorandance to their needs.

The market will be able to drive the prodcution and sale cost of vehicles down YoY with tech innovation (cheaper/ denser batteries, quicker charge rates, increased production efficiencies). Government subsidies aren't absolutely essential here.

But infrastructure is key component of adoption. Any government (HK or otherwise) will need serious plans to
a) change the grid and switch to cleaner sources
b) make EV charging more ubiquitous and accessiable

Luckily, electricity is commonplace most developed areas. It's that last bit of getting it to the cars that's the issue (ie: change new building codes to require minimum number of charge spots, retrofit exisitng parking lots etc)

 

[markwj]

Any industry or product cannot solely rely on government subsidies (or grant of tax incentives) for the long term. What we need is cheaper and better quality EV that fits the budget of different people in accorandance to their needs.

Fossil Fuel industry (and related products) have been relying on government subsidies for decades.

I'd be happy if ALL subsidies were removed, and the 'polluter pays' policy imposed. That would level the playing field.

 

[mmd]

Do people of Hong Kong like hybrids? 40-50% less emissions with very small battery packs seems quite effective to me. The gas prices in Hong Kong is pretty high. A hybrid should pay off quickly, no? With the high gas prices, it seems the ICE drivers are paying a big tax for the gasoline they use.

Unfortunately, EVs with big battery packs is not a scalable solution for the world. The world doesn't have enough batteries or resources/mines to convert the ~90M cars sold every year to pure EVs. That also requires massive charging infrastructure.
With one 60 KWh battery pack for a Model S60, 40 hybrids can be produced, each cutting emissions by 40-50%.
With the batteries for 500k M3, we could have 20M hybrids made each year around the world without worrying about charging infrastructure, range anxiety or time to recharge. The range on some of these hybrids is impressive (~700miles with a tank of gas.) .
Above all, no one needs to wonder where the electricity comes from. It's a straight 40-50% reduction in emissions.

There was also a recent study published, that claimed production of long range EVs itself causes lots of CO2 emissions. The emission analysis over entire life cycle of EVs can get very interesting.
New Study: Large CO2 Emissions From Batteries Of Electric Cars | The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

Hopefully, Hong Kong will promote hybrids and plug-in hybrids, which are better, scalable solutions in cutting emissions.

Just checked the Hong Kong grid. it looks like Hong Kong is using 53% coal. So, in effect, BEVs could be worse in Hong Kong for CO2 emissions ? Is this data obsolete?
Electricity sector in Hong Kong - Wikipedia

n 2012, Hong Kong relied on coal (53%), nuclear (23%), natural gas (22%) and a very small amount (2%) of renewable energy for its electricity generation.[4] As coal-firing generation units start to retire in 2017,[4] the Government plans to raise the share of natural gas to 50% in 2020 while maintaining the share of nuclear power at present levels.[5]

 

[wombat]

Tesla has quite a few Model S pre-registered, the sales say they still have most model/ colour available. However for Model X they only have P100D remaining.