Questions about electric cars.

Grantanow

Early adoption of new technology is always a mistake in my view. Wait for the problems to get ironed out. Also, something will have to be done about people with no home charging possibility.

Electric cars are far from new. This all reminds me of when solar panels first came out and everyone was "oh no this is all too hard and rubbish and it will never catch on"...

As with Solar Panels, when early adopters had an incentive scheme FIT at a very high rate, index linked too, they are now benefiting massivel. EVs have also got massive incentives, particularly for company users, as for reliability of the car mine has been great with a range of 240mls, charging during Covid was not always easy because many hotels with chargers were closed, its much better now.

Battery technology seems to be static currently so range is not going to change greatly, but I’ve not found a range problem, newer models also charge more quickly .

Grantanow. We have solar panels which we use to partially charge the car. Thanks to early adoption of solar panels we get a good return from them as we are paid for the power we generate whether we use it or feed it to the grid. Nowadays we can use it in our car as well as household daytime usage. This is a huge saving.
By being an early adopter of electric cars our pod point charger cost under £300 instead of £900 thanks to a couple of grants and we can presently charge the car from the free fast chargers near us. It is only a matter of time until that benefit is removed but we met a Tesla user who had so far done 13,000 miles without paying for the electricity.
If you decided today to order our car today it would cost £6,000 more.
All in all early adoption works.

At my age I wouldn't consider an electric car, especially a Tesla. Apart from anything else, I don't want to help Elon Musk take over the world.

They are cheap (to run) now, but wait until the tax man starts to lose too much income from road tax and fuel tax. It will not always be so.

As for their "environmental friendliness" it's worth looking up how the batteries are made, and from what. Then there's the generation of the electricity. Once the additional power required is being generated, the environmental benefits become less (in 2020 there were just under one million UK homes with solar panels). There are around 420,000 electric cars on UK roads currently and almost 33 million petrol or diesel ones.

My petrol car will do me nicely until I pop my clogs, thank you.

DD had to research the environmental effects of making an electric car.

Building the cardwas much the same, no matter what fuel it used, but the excess amount of emissions needed to make the battery was the equivalent of driving a petrol engined car aabout 100,000 miles. Plus, of course the hydrocarbons needed to make much of the electricity they will consume for some time ago.

The electric car is very much the solution to the problems of air pollution in cities, all the emissions attributed to these cars and their operation can be relocated away from city streets and if some inner city areas ban anything but electric vehicles from their streets, that seems reasonable, but otherwise electric cars are over-rated. Their day will come, but not yet.

M0nica

“Production of a lithium-ion battery for an electric vehicle emits carbon dioxide equivalent to operating a gasoline car for about one or two years depending on where the battery is produced”
“The carbon emission from battery production can be quickly offset once an electric car is in operation, because it has no tailpipe emissions.”

Source Politifact which gives a list of references.

It’s true the energy used to produce EV batteries increase CO2 pollution to get the real benefit we need more green energy. No excuses let’s have a proper green energy policy.

Esspee

M0nica

“Production of a lithium-ion battery for an electric vehicle emits carbon dioxide equivalent to operating a gasoline car for about one or two years depending on where the battery is produced”
“The carbon emission from battery production can be quickly offset once an electric car is in operation, because it has no tailpipe emissions.”

Source Politifact which gives a list of references.

Whilst we're on the subject of lithium, it's worth reading this....

www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-batteries/

Rameses

Esspee

M0nica

“Production of a lithium-ion battery for an electric vehicle emits carbon dioxide equivalent to operating a gasoline car for about one or two years depending on where the battery is produced”
“The carbon emission from battery production can be quickly offset once an electric car is in operation, because it has no tailpipe emissions.”

Source Politifact which gives a list of references.

Whilst we're on the subject of lithium, it's worth reading this....

www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-batteries/

Interesting article.

China can only dominate markets because it can get away with the pollution that is caused and widespread labour abuses in developing countries. The dont care who they buy from or how or where they pay and the population does not benefit at all.

Thank you Esspee. This is a very informative thread.