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BloombergNEF has over the years proven to have pretty solid forecasts. The current one about NEVs [1] has a few interesting points. Adoption of EVs is slowing d

by dust42 11mo ago

BloombergNEF has over the years proven to have pretty solid forecasts. The current one about NEVs [1] has a few interesting points. Adoption of EVs is slowing down in the US due to policy changes but going to explode in countries like Vietnam because they are cheeper to buy an run. It is not BMWs and Mercs but Chinese brands. In Europe and the US the Chinese EVs are kept outside with the help of tariffs but that is just closing the eyes to avoid facing the inevitability. Battery technology, production and raw materials is all China. Last not least Europe is driving up KWh costs by an ideologically driven push for renewables which also doesn't help. [1] https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/electric-vehicle-outlook/ https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/electric-veh...

hgomersall 11mo ago
Electricity costs in the UK (which I believe is still in Europe) are cheaper now than they've ever been if you have the right tariff and that's all due to renewables. Granted, that's primarily at night, but for EVs that's perfect. One can get a tariff at <7p/kWh for 6 hours in the night. That's cheaper than gas (actual gas, not gasoline).
- marcosscriven 11mo ago
  If that’s Octopus Intelligent Go, then it will also give you the 7p rate outside the normal nighttime slot if the car is charging and their algo calculates they can do it.
- IshKebab 11mo ago
  Renewables definitely help and I think the UK is doing quite well there but it's a little disingenuous to not even mention the price cap that the government has imposed!
  - hgomersall 11mo ago
    What's the price cap got to do with it? You can get tariffs that are very cheap and outside of the price cap: https://www.goodenergy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Good-Energy-EV-Charge-TIL-Nov26.pdf https://www.goodenergy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Good...
    - IshKebab 11mo ago
      The price applies to default tariff so it is a price that is always available to customers. This means other non-default tariffs like the one you linked have to compete with the flat rate of 26p/kWh. The tariff you linked is much more expensive than the price cap for most people because most people don't have huge batteries for energy storage. Battery energy storage is worth money so essentially you are getting cheaper energy by selling that storage value to Good Energy. Overall the total value you get from Good Energy (taking into account the value of having storage) is going to be about the same as the value with the price cap and no storage. Because the tariffs are competing, if all energy retailers were able to raise their prices to their true cost, then it would be all tariffs that increase in price; not just the ones that the cap applies to. This is similar to why electricity prices went up when there was a gas shortage due to the Ukraine war. Everyone was like "but it's a gas shortage not an electricity shortage!". But of course electricity and gas are in competition in many cases (e.g. for heating), so their prices are linked by shared demand. If you still aren't convinced, imagine the energy price cap was 1p/kWh. What do you think would happen to the price of EV tariffs then? (For a few weeks until the entire energy retail sector collapsed anyway!)
      - hgomersall 11mo ago
        There's always going to be excess supply at night, because demand is lower. At the moment the difference is large because battery capacity is low, but even as more batteries come online, it will stay lower because battery capacity will respond to the differential (since that's where the profit is). What's interesting is domestic battery installation is so cheap that you can capture almost all the benefits as a private buyer. https://www.fogstar.co.uk/collections/solar-battery-storage https://www.fogstar.co.uk/collections/solar-battery-storage FWIW Good Energy are outside the price cap on their standard tariff as well. You don't have to do that many miles for the EV tariff to pay off without any additional storage.
gmac 11mo ago
> an ideologically driven push for renewables Renewables (especially wind) are now just about the cheapest way to generate electricity, and new battery technologies do much to help with their intermittency, so where’s the problem? (Plus, the ‘ideology’ in question would seem to be: it’s bad to fry the planet, and also bad to run even a small risk of radioactively contaminating one’s landmass, and IMHO neither of these positions deserves to be called an ideology).
- earthnail 11mo ago
  Also, to add to the “ideology”: it is bad to rely on other countries for fossil or uranium fuels.
  - modo_mario 11mo ago
    Frying the planet is bad. That said i don't see the reliance argument for uranium. There's a variety of existing sources on the planet and some we stopped mining. It's proportionally a super small financial element of the energy production process unlike with fossil fuels. So in the case of let's say Putin's Russia you can avoid using their or let's say Kazakhstan's fuel and if you don't but don't take it's gas directly or via intermediaries like armenia then Russia still ends up in the financial shitter because their income from Rosatom/uranium one/... doesn't even compare. It's almost inviting anti renewables arguments based on things like aluminium mostly being produced in china and russia or based on where the vast majority of panels are produced, etc.
- diatone 11mo ago
  Chiming in as Australian with no context on European situation. AFAICT the key drivers of cost inflation are to do with reconfiguring the electric grid to transfer power efficiently and reliably from plants that produce renewable energy. However, the grid is set up to do so from non-renewable sources. And you want to do it while smoothly operating the network. This is extremely hard. Doing so quickly therefore elevates prices. That’s the rationale I could imagine being the case in EU markets.
  - 11mo ago
andy_ppp 11mo ago
Would we price out cheap Vietnamese EVs (say) in the same way?
- rcpt 11mo ago
  The US would just ban them with some regulation like we do with most foreign competitors
jillesvangurp 11mo ago
It's not just Vietnam. It's almost any country anywhere in the world that is seeing healthy growth in EVs. Especially the ones that barely have a road network or a petrol distribution network. This is an effect that is still underappreciated in western markets but developing markets embracing renewables and EVs means they are enabling some serious economic growth. They are eliminating chunks of fossil fuel imports from their balance sheet while enabling economic activity in areas that have poor grid coverage and limited access to fuel. Pakistan is a good example. They have a very under developed grid. Solar and battery storage are enabling the locals to work around that and they have installed a lot of that in recent years. This is enabling local businesses that previously had very poor access to reliably power to now have reliable power and grow. The Pakistan government is also putting in place incentives to stimulate EV imports. Ethiopia is going a lot further and has actually banned ICE car imports last year. They want to reduce the amount of fossil fuel imports on their balance sheets.
- csomar 11mo ago
  > Ethiopia is going a lot further and has actually banned ICE car imports last year. They want to reduce the amount of fossil fuel imports on their balance sheets. My understanding is that they are more concerned about oil shipping as they are landlocked and the situation in the gulf of aden is less than ideal.
- usrusr 11mo ago
  So you buy a battery for your tiny grid island and pay a little more so that you can also use for a drive? Or perhaps not even more, because the standalone battery is less mass market item. Truly an interesting change, considering how much of the ICE market used to be hand-me-downs from more industrialized countries. I guess proximity to those is now a hindrance to the renewable revolution, because places with less access to hand-me-downs have a market (and mindset!) for low-priced new cars that never existed in places flooded with second hand cars? Will the upmarket-first kind of BEV ever work in that way?
ploxiln 11mo ago
For many years (20+?) Vietnam has had huge import tariffs on US/German/etc cars. It varies by origin country and engine displacement, but it's around 75% to 175%. Some trade agreements with other Asian countries result in much more reasonable tariffs for Asian brands, but some rich Vietnamese people have bought BMW or Merc with 150%+ tariff/tax. (I found it a bit mind-blowing.) So, it's pretty obvious why Asian made EVs are expected to "explode" in popularity over there. (I'm pretty sure the trend is already well underway, I know a retired guy there who replaced a Merc with a hybrid Mitsubishi (?) last year.)
oezi 11mo ago
> an ideologically driven push for renewables It is not an ideological push, but one driven by the necessity to fight climate change. Maybe it is ideology to emphasize renewables over nuclear. But all over the world the energy transition seems to involve primarily renewables and only maybe a dash of nuclear.
tromp 11mo ago
The European tarriffs on Chinese EVs typically amount to 20%, which doesn't keep them out but does somewhat slow their adoption.
ZeroGravitas 11mo ago
Your reliable BloombergNEF says that onshore wind became the cheapest source of unsubsidized new electricity in Germany and UK in 2015, a decade ago. Coincidentally that's roughly when the UK government banned the building of onshore wind across England, which was only recently revrsed. Now that sounds like an Ideologically driven attempt to raise electricity prices.

by dust42 11mo ago

hgomersall 11mo ago

Electricity costs in the UK (which I believe is still in Europe) are cheaper now than they've ever been if you have the right tariff and that's all due to renewables. Granted, that's primarily at night, but for EVs that's perfect. One can get a tariff at <7p/kWh for 6 hours in the night. That's cheaper than gas (actual gas, not gasoline).

marcosscriven 11mo ago
If that’s Octopus Intelligent Go, then it will also give you the 7p rate outside the normal nighttime slot if the car is charging and their algo calculates they can do it.
IshKebab 11mo ago
Renewables definitely help and I think the UK is doing quite well there but it's a little disingenuous to not even mention the price cap that the government has imposed!
- hgomersall 11mo ago
  What's the price cap got to do with it? You can get tariffs that are very cheap and outside of the price cap: https://www.goodenergy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Good-Energy-EV-Charge-TIL-Nov26.pdf https://www.goodenergy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Good...
  - IshKebab 11mo ago
    The price applies to default tariff so it is a price that is always available to customers. This means other non-default tariffs like the one you linked have to compete with the flat rate of 26p/kWh. The tariff you linked is much more expensive than the price cap for most people because most people don't have huge batteries for energy storage. Battery energy storage is worth money so essentially you are getting cheaper energy by selling that storage value to Good Energy. Overall the total value you get from Good Energy (taking into account the value of having storage) is going to be about the same as the value with the price cap and no storage. Because the tariffs are competing, if all energy retailers were able to raise their prices to their true cost, then it would be all tariffs that increase in price; not just the ones that the cap applies to. This is similar to why electricity prices went up when there was a gas shortage due to the Ukraine war. Everyone was like "but it's a gas shortage not an electricity shortage!". But of course electricity and gas are in competition in many cases (e.g. for heating), so their prices are linked by shared demand. If you still aren't convinced, imagine the energy price cap was 1p/kWh. What do you think would happen to the price of EV tariffs then? (For a few weeks until the entire energy retail sector collapsed anyway!)
    - hgomersall 11mo ago
      There's always going to be excess supply at night, because demand is lower. At the moment the difference is large because battery capacity is low, but even as more batteries come online, it will stay lower because battery capacity will respond to the differential (since that's where the profit is). What's interesting is domestic battery installation is so cheap that you can capture almost all the benefits as a private buyer. https://www.fogstar.co.uk/collections/solar-battery-storage https://www.fogstar.co.uk/collections/solar-battery-storage FWIW Good Energy are outside the price cap on their standard tariff as well. You don't have to do that many miles for the EV tariff to pay off without any additional storage.

gmac 11mo ago

> an ideologically driven push for renewables Renewables (especially wind) are now just about the cheapest way to generate electricity, and new battery technologies do much to help with their intermittency, so where’s the problem? (Plus, the ‘ideology’ in question would seem to be: it’s bad to fry the planet, and also bad to run even a small risk of radioactively contaminating one’s landmass, and IMHO neither of these positions deserves to be called an ideology).

earthnail 11mo ago
Also, to add to the “ideology”: it is bad to rely on other countries for fossil or uranium fuels.
- modo_mario 11mo ago
  Frying the planet is bad. That said i don't see the reliance argument for uranium. There's a variety of existing sources on the planet and some we stopped mining. It's proportionally a super small financial element of the energy production process unlike with fossil fuels. So in the case of let's say Putin's Russia you can avoid using their or let's say Kazakhstan's fuel and if you don't but don't take it's gas directly or via intermediaries like armenia then Russia still ends up in the financial shitter because their income from Rosatom/uranium one/... doesn't even compare. It's almost inviting anti renewables arguments based on things like aluminium mostly being produced in china and russia or based on where the vast majority of panels are produced, etc.
diatone 11mo ago
Chiming in as Australian with no context on European situation. AFAICT the key drivers of cost inflation are to do with reconfiguring the electric grid to transfer power efficiently and reliably from plants that produce renewable energy. However, the grid is set up to do so from non-renewable sources. And you want to do it while smoothly operating the network. This is extremely hard. Doing so quickly therefore elevates prices. That’s the rationale I could imagine being the case in EU markets.
- 11mo ago

andy_ppp 11mo ago

Would we price out cheap Vietnamese EVs (say) in the same way?

rcpt 11mo ago
The US would just ban them with some regulation like we do with most foreign competitors

jillesvangurp 11mo ago

It's not just Vietnam. It's almost any country anywhere in the world that is seeing healthy growth in EVs. Especially the ones that barely have a road network or a petrol distribution network. This is an effect that is still underappreciated in western markets but developing markets embracing renewables and EVs means they are enabling some serious economic growth. They are eliminating chunks of fossil fuel imports from their balance sheet while enabling economic activity in areas that have poor grid coverage and limited access to fuel. Pakistan is a good example. They have a very under developed grid. Solar and battery storage are enabling the locals to work around that and they have installed a lot of that in recent years. This is enabling local businesses that previously had very poor access to reliably power to now have reliable power and grow. The Pakistan government is also putting in place incentives to stimulate EV imports. Ethiopia is going a lot further and has actually banned ICE car imports last year. They want to reduce the amount of fossil fuel imports on their balance sheets.

csomar 11mo ago
> Ethiopia is going a lot further and has actually banned ICE car imports last year. They want to reduce the amount of fossil fuel imports on their balance sheets. My understanding is that they are more concerned about oil shipping as they are landlocked and the situation in the gulf of aden is less than ideal.
usrusr 11mo ago
So you buy a battery for your tiny grid island and pay a little more so that you can also use for a drive? Or perhaps not even more, because the standalone battery is less mass market item. Truly an interesting change, considering how much of the ICE market used to be hand-me-downs from more industrialized countries. I guess proximity to those is now a hindrance to the renewable revolution, because places with less access to hand-me-downs have a market (and mindset!) for low-priced new cars that never existed in places flooded with second hand cars? Will the upmarket-first kind of BEV ever work in that way?

ploxiln 11mo ago

For many years (20+?) Vietnam has had huge import tariffs on US/German/etc cars. It varies by origin country and engine displacement, but it's around 75% to 175%. Some trade agreements with other Asian countries result in much more reasonable tariffs for Asian brands, but some rich Vietnamese people have bought BMW or Merc with 150%+ tariff/tax. (I found it a bit mind-blowing.) So, it's pretty obvious why Asian made EVs are expected to "explode" in popularity over there. (I'm pretty sure the trend is already well underway, I know a retired guy there who replaced a Merc with a hybrid Mitsubishi (?) last year.)

oezi 11mo ago

> an ideologically driven push for renewables It is not an ideological push, but one driven by the necessity to fight climate change. Maybe it is ideology to emphasize renewables over nuclear. But all over the world the energy transition seems to involve primarily renewables and only maybe a dash of nuclear.

tromp 11mo ago

The European tarriffs on Chinese EVs typically amount to 20%, which doesn't keep them out but does somewhat slow their adoption.

ZeroGravitas 11mo ago

Your reliable BloombergNEF says that onshore wind became the cheapest source of unsubsidized new electricity in Germany and UK in 2015, a decade ago. Coincidentally that's roughly when the UK government banned the building of onshore wind across England, which was only recently revrsed. Now that sounds like an Ideologically driven attempt to raise electricity prices.