46 ms·

The treatment of our betters regarding "nudged" electrification is borderline misanthropic. For people with a garage or a driveway who can charge at home, EVs

by muyuu 6mo ago

The treatment of our betters regarding "nudged" electrification is borderline misanthropic. For people with a garage or a driveway who can charge at home, EVs are overwhelmingly a better option. The problem is that large swathes of the population are outside of that and you're making their lives miserable by punishing ICE car ownership. Meanwhile, adoption numbers are thrown about ignoring that for those in optimal conditions, adoption is already very high and cannot grow much more. While for those particularly misaligned with the strengths of EVs, it will often be so painful to own one they will resist with everything they have, and in many cases they will have to admit defeat and stop driving altogether. Which I guess the government will also be content with. But it will take some time. *typo

Thlom 6mo ago
Eh. A new EV can drive 400-700km on one charge. It takes 20-60 minutes to charge on public chargers depending on the charger. Except that charging on public charges is more expensive than charging at home I don't really see the practical issue. I know many people without charging options at home that will never go back to ICE.
- muyuu 6mo ago
  Except availability of chargers is spotty in most of the country, and charging prices so high that the running expenses are considerably higher. Not even considering insurance, which is also a killer. Been there. Second hand EVs devaluation is not a product of anecdote. It reflects the current state of the market. They are a different product and they're great at what they do. In fact, for those in the market for them, "nudging" (state coercion) is not necessary at all.
  - Barrin92 6mo ago
    >Except availability of chargers is spotty in most of the country, the UK is a small country. The average British driver drives 20-30km per day. One full EV charge almost gets you through England South to North. If you're putting a bunch of charging stations next to workplaces for people to charge once or twice per week that's going to cover most drivers.
    - muyuu 6mo ago
      What do you suggest? That people spend most of their time on the road going to and from (very expensive) chargers across the country? That is such a prospect it makes our decrepit railways look good.
- bzzzt 6mo ago
  > A new EV can drive 400-700km on one charge. Only when it's one of the more expensive 'long range' models, weather is good and it doesn't exceed 100km/h.
tshaddox 6mo ago
> The problem is that large swathes of the population are outside of that and you're making their lives miserable by punishing ICE cars ownership. It's obviously not ideal to have an EV if you can't regularly charge at home or at work, but "making their lives miserable" seems like a bit of a stretch. Instead of spending 5 minutes a week filling up at the gas station, you'll spent 30 minutes a week at an EV charging station.
- muyuu 6mo ago
  In my area, charging prices have been in the £0.70-£0.90 /KWh for a while. That makes ownership VERY expensive, especially for road trips. On top of that privilege, you have exorbitant insurance costs and terrible devaluation. I rent EVs every couple of years, last time it was recently, just to see how things are evolving. Since anyway it's clear where policy is going. Whatever you think about said policy. Right now, they're lovely commute machines if you can charge at home.
- rootusrootus 6mo ago
  > you'll spent 30 minutes a week at an EV charging station. And for a lot of people that can be 30 minutes at a grocery store where they were going to be for 30 minutes anyway. The nice thing about using the grid for fuel is that we have way more flexibility to refuel anywhere we want.
bee_rider 6mo ago
It would be interesting to see how the market would shake out without all the nudging. Petroleum companies also get a lot of subsidies—especially if you count implicit things like the cost of cleaning up all this carbon, and oil based geopolitical problems.
cameronh90 6mo ago
I have an ICE and don't feel like I'm being punished? It's exactly the same as it's always been. If anything, we're still benefitting from ridiculous subsidies and driving an ICE should be a lot more expensive than it is. The reason for the EV nudging is it's a chicken and egg problem. The government doesn't want to run a national charging network themselves for obvious reasons, but private investors don't want to build it out either until it can make money. So they've been trying to fix it from both sides, both by incentivising EV ownership and encouraging EV charging infrastructure. They're also trying to make charging at home easier, even if you don't have a driveway, by installing those little channels you can run the cable through. Yes, the government are putting their finger on the scale in favour of EVs. Nobody's pretending they aren't. If combustion taxes were as high as they need to be to account for the externalities, the economy would collapse, but we need to get off ICEs for myriad reasons. Seems like they're doing a pretty good job overall and the main problem is just our high electricity price.
- muyuu 6mo ago
  Far from ULEZ/CAZ areas I guess?
  - cameronh90 6mo ago
    I live in inner London within the ULEZ zone. ULEZ is about local pollution not GHG and even then the newest cars it affected were 8 years old. My 15 year old car was fine. If anything it didn’t go far enough.
    - muyuu 6mo ago
      for me it means there are areas in Oxford that are off-limits, it also means that many cars are just not on the market anymore because of the new emission normatives and that many ICE cars from the last decade have delicate crappy engines as you can only go so efficient before you compromise on durability things visible and invisible are decided by our betters, with or without our consent
subhobroto 6mo ago
> The problem is that large swathes of the population are outside of that and you're making their lives miserable by punishing ICE car ownership I think that's the plan - force adoption and double down on the misery so that people forcefully invest into building infrastructure that otherwise wouldn't have. In other words, you're synthesizing demand. It would be extremely interesting to see how it works out! In my limited experience, these synthetic initiatives explode in costs because it lets grifters, scammers and arbitragers defraud the synthetic demand side (due to the lack of a real free market system which is naturally self calibrating and managing). One thing that I wonder about - unlike in the U.S. where gas is cheap, my understanding is that it's around $10/gal around most of the E.U. right now? If so, what's stopping people from running towards EVs naturally? - Is it just the lack of charging infrastructure? - Is it because most people in the E.U. live in dense areas where it's hard to setup charging infrastructure? - Is it because most people in the E.U. live in dense areas where public transportation is cheap on a unit "per head" basis making local governments hesitate to invest in charging infrastructure directly? - Is it that over-regulation in the E.U. make it extremely difficult to build charging infrastructure in the first place? From a U.S. perspective, I would imagine that most of the U.S. (especially rural and suburban US) would switch to EVs overnight if Chinese EVs were allowed to flood the market. A lot of cities in the U.S. are accommodating literally golf carts on their streets so a $10k brand new Chinese EV that you could plugin is likely to sell like hotcakes.
- muyuu 6mo ago
  we're not in the EU anymore but yep, our petrol and diesel prices are not far off those of France or the Netherlands right now, petrol goes for ~£1.5 per litre and diesel for £1.90 that is converted to US gallons and US currency, $7.67 for petrol (gasoline) and $8.99 for diesel > From a U.S. perspective, I would imagine that most of the U.S. (especially rural and suburban US) would switch to EVs overnight if Chinese EVs were allowed to flood the market. A lot of cities in the U.S. are accommodating literally golf carts on their streets so a $10k brand new Chinese EV that you could plugin is likely to sell like hotcakes. Suburban, sure. I'm not sure about rural, esp in the colder areas, because it takes significant investment to deploy the amount of energy you would need to heat vehicles and still have range, so it would take a bit longer. The main reason the market is not being taken over by cheap Chinese EVs, is that despite the best efforts from our government to destroy the ICE car industry, it still is a MUCH better product for certain niches of the market that are quite significant. So you keep punishing those people for no good reason, while the people who are a perfect fit for EVs already have them. Meanwhile policy is all over the place with new taxes for EVs specifically paid by the mile because they are heavy and they don't pay enough road tax, and they also don't pay petrol tax which is a massive cash cow and the exchequer is broke. Over time, councils will make it easier for people to charge at home getting some extra % of natural growth. But until the energy cost situation is sorted - our electricity is EXPENSIVE, especially in public chargers - and this could take a very long time, then for a lot of people EVs will remain a bad fit. Without the current wave of punitive measures, EVs would have a very similar adoption rate regardless, and I'm convinced that it will surely climb, just more slowly than they would hope. It's also okay that some people keep driving ICEs long into the future.

by muyuu 6mo ago

Thlom 6mo ago

Eh. A new EV can drive 400-700km on one charge. It takes 20-60 minutes to charge on public chargers depending on the charger. Except that charging on public charges is more expensive than charging at home I don't really see the practical issue. I know many people without charging options at home that will never go back to ICE.

muyuu 6mo ago
Except availability of chargers is spotty in most of the country, and charging prices so high that the running expenses are considerably higher. Not even considering insurance, which is also a killer. Been there. Second hand EVs devaluation is not a product of anecdote. It reflects the current state of the market. They are a different product and they're great at what they do. In fact, for those in the market for them, "nudging" (state coercion) is not necessary at all.
- Barrin92 6mo ago
  >Except availability of chargers is spotty in most of the country, the UK is a small country. The average British driver drives 20-30km per day. One full EV charge almost gets you through England South to North. If you're putting a bunch of charging stations next to workplaces for people to charge once or twice per week that's going to cover most drivers.
  - muyuu 6mo ago
    What do you suggest? That people spend most of their time on the road going to and from (very expensive) chargers across the country? That is such a prospect it makes our decrepit railways look good.
bzzzt 6mo ago
> A new EV can drive 400-700km on one charge. Only when it's one of the more expensive 'long range' models, weather is good and it doesn't exceed 100km/h.

tshaddox 6mo ago

> The problem is that large swathes of the population are outside of that and you're making their lives miserable by punishing ICE cars ownership. It's obviously not ideal to have an EV if you can't regularly charge at home or at work, but "making their lives miserable" seems like a bit of a stretch. Instead of spending 5 minutes a week filling up at the gas station, you'll spent 30 minutes a week at an EV charging station.

muyuu 6mo ago
In my area, charging prices have been in the £0.70-£0.90 /KWh for a while. That makes ownership VERY expensive, especially for road trips. On top of that privilege, you have exorbitant insurance costs and terrible devaluation. I rent EVs every couple of years, last time it was recently, just to see how things are evolving. Since anyway it's clear where policy is going. Whatever you think about said policy. Right now, they're lovely commute machines if you can charge at home.
rootusrootus 6mo ago
> you'll spent 30 minutes a week at an EV charging station. And for a lot of people that can be 30 minutes at a grocery store where they were going to be for 30 minutes anyway. The nice thing about using the grid for fuel is that we have way more flexibility to refuel anywhere we want.

bee_rider 6mo ago

It would be interesting to see how the market would shake out without all the nudging. Petroleum companies also get a lot of subsidies—especially if you count implicit things like the cost of cleaning up all this carbon, and oil based geopolitical problems.

cameronh90 6mo ago

I have an ICE and don't feel like I'm being punished? It's exactly the same as it's always been. If anything, we're still benefitting from ridiculous subsidies and driving an ICE should be a lot more expensive than it is. The reason for the EV nudging is it's a chicken and egg problem. The government doesn't want to run a national charging network themselves for obvious reasons, but private investors don't want to build it out either until it can make money. So they've been trying to fix it from both sides, both by incentivising EV ownership and encouraging EV charging infrastructure. They're also trying to make charging at home easier, even if you don't have a driveway, by installing those little channels you can run the cable through. Yes, the government are putting their finger on the scale in favour of EVs. Nobody's pretending they aren't. If combustion taxes were as high as they need to be to account for the externalities, the economy would collapse, but we need to get off ICEs for myriad reasons. Seems like they're doing a pretty good job overall and the main problem is just our high electricity price.

muyuu 6mo ago
Far from ULEZ/CAZ areas I guess?
- cameronh90 6mo ago
  I live in inner London within the ULEZ zone. ULEZ is about local pollution not GHG and even then the newest cars it affected were 8 years old. My 15 year old car was fine. If anything it didn’t go far enough.
  - muyuu 6mo ago
    for me it means there are areas in Oxford that are off-limits, it also means that many cars are just not on the market anymore because of the new emission normatives and that many ICE cars from the last decade have delicate crappy engines as you can only go so efficient before you compromise on durability things visible and invisible are decided by our betters, with or without our consent

subhobroto 6mo ago

> The problem is that large swathes of the population are outside of that and you're making their lives miserable by punishing ICE car ownership I think that's the plan - force adoption and double down on the misery so that people forcefully invest into building infrastructure that otherwise wouldn't have. In other words, you're synthesizing demand. It would be extremely interesting to see how it works out! In my limited experience, these synthetic initiatives explode in costs because it lets grifters, scammers and arbitragers defraud the synthetic demand side (due to the lack of a real free market system which is naturally self calibrating and managing). One thing that I wonder about - unlike in the U.S. where gas is cheap, my understanding is that it's around $10/gal around most of the E.U. right now? If so, what's stopping people from running towards EVs naturally? - Is it just the lack of charging infrastructure? - Is it because most people in the E.U. live in dense areas where it's hard to setup charging infrastructure? - Is it because most people in the E.U. live in dense areas where public transportation is cheap on a unit "per head" basis making local governments hesitate to invest in charging infrastructure directly? - Is it that over-regulation in the E.U. make it extremely difficult to build charging infrastructure in the first place? From a U.S. perspective, I would imagine that most of the U.S. (especially rural and suburban US) would switch to EVs overnight if Chinese EVs were allowed to flood the market. A lot of cities in the U.S. are accommodating literally golf carts on their streets so a $10k brand new Chinese EV that you could plugin is likely to sell like hotcakes.

muyuu 6mo ago
we're not in the EU anymore but yep, our petrol and diesel prices are not far off those of France or the Netherlands right now, petrol goes for ~£1.5 per litre and diesel for £1.90 that is converted to US gallons and US currency, $7.67 for petrol (gasoline) and $8.99 for diesel > From a U.S. perspective, I would imagine that most of the U.S. (especially rural and suburban US) would switch to EVs overnight if Chinese EVs were allowed to flood the market. A lot of cities in the U.S. are accommodating literally golf carts on their streets so a $10k brand new Chinese EV that you could plugin is likely to sell like hotcakes. Suburban, sure. I'm not sure about rural, esp in the colder areas, because it takes significant investment to deploy the amount of energy you would need to heat vehicles and still have range, so it would take a bit longer. The main reason the market is not being taken over by cheap Chinese EVs, is that despite the best efforts from our government to destroy the ICE car industry, it still is a MUCH better product for certain niches of the market that are quite significant. So you keep punishing those people for no good reason, while the people who are a perfect fit for EVs already have them. Meanwhile policy is all over the place with new taxes for EVs specifically paid by the mile because they are heavy and they don't pay enough road tax, and they also don't pay petrol tax which is a massive cash cow and the exchequer is broke. Over time, councils will make it easier for people to charge at home getting some extra % of natural growth. But until the energy cost situation is sorted - our electricity is EXPENSIVE, especially in public chargers - and this could take a very long time, then for a lot of people EVs will remain a bad fit. Without the current wave of punitive measures, EVs would have a very similar adoption rate regardless, and I'm convinced that it will surely climb, just more slowly than they would hope. It's also okay that some people keep driving ICEs long into the future.