Electric cars roundup: recent news

The Tesla s P100D has a 0-60 time of 2.28 seconds

• (review from motortrend 2017): while it is not the first thing that many people are looking for when they buy a family car, it is one of those cars which can give you everything. It is very spacious, and capable of driving at least several hundred miles between charges (the latest versions are pushing 400 miles). I happen to drive a Tesla S – not one anywhere near these specs, and about fifth hand, but we did the sums and found that by buying ours over 7 years, it is cheaper than us driving our old little Seat Ibiza. Look at your finances, as the price of second hand (and new) electric cars continues to fall, the savings from ditching petrol can easily cover the extra money.

• Department of Transport in the UK has a new scheme which will help with the cost of installing charging points in places like schools and similar (covering 75% of the cost, up to £2500). It will be available to mainstream schools, colleges nurseries and academies. Thousands more will be installed across the country as a result of the Local electric vehicle infrastructure fund. While it is true that electric cars require a change in how to “fill up” that is the limit. With lots of these sort of ways to charge, it could make charging for flat owners and similar- affordable. With something like our tesla, were we stuck with just charging at a tesla supercharger (at the moment) it would not save enough to warrant the change though for us (as with many) it is more about reducing your impact on the world.
• A recent article in the Guardian proclaims “China wants us to buy its electric cars”. Chinese brands like BYD are increasingly improving the safety of their vehicles so they will meet European regulations. This is likely to be fantastic for bringing down prices, though other companies such as Tesla are also well aware of the need for this.
• 2023 best selling car was the Tesla model Y! A pure electric car, beating out the Toyota RAV 4. The sale numbers grew by 64% year on year, allowing them to sell 1.23 million tesla model Y globally in 2023. To put it in perspective, tesla only sold its millionth car in March 2020, and in June 2021 Tesla sold its millionth Tesla model 3. What is clear is that Tesla is growing fast, and given that its sole aim is to accelerate the move over to electric transport (and that companies like Toyota do not believe that this should happen). This makes it particularly interesting that Toyota is being beaten, as it suggests that Toyota has chosen the wrong path. It is true that in 2023 Toyota was the biggest car seller, but their very late electric car entry into the market was not considered very good, and unless they change direction significantly, I think that they are going to loose market share fast. Now it is true that Toyota is still the whale – in 2023 they sold over 10 million, however, they also sold around this number in 2013 (just under 10 million) – with Tesla they sold 1.81 million cars in 2023, and only 22,000 in 2013. Clearly Tesla cannot grow at this rate in the next decade, but it only needs to grow around 500%. In many markets, particularly Europe and China they are being particularly successful.
• A new possible battery breakthrough would both cut the cost of batteries, and bring down the length of time it would take to charge to something similar to that of filling up a petrol or diesel tank. Research in the USA continues to point to range and longevity of the battery being the biggest sticking point for the majority of consumers. As an aside, I have found that I can pretty much go as far as I want, and have done drives of over 1000 miles, only stopping to charge (and never stopping before I was tired enough to need a break anyway. Anyway, to help these people make the transition, electric car companies keep looking for better battery chemistry. This solid state battery can be charged 6000 times (and retain above 80% original charge distance- and it is estimated that it would take 30 years to need this many charges – far longer than the car may last), and can be charged in the time it takes to fill up a gas tank. It is also solid state, which makes fires less likely. This is likely to be quite a change, our 10 year old car, has full range of around 225 when fully charged, which means less than 10% range loss over that time. Yet these batteries suggest a lifespan of 3 times as much. It does not state what range these cars have, but it would have to have at least current range to be worth talking about.
• The UK now has 1 million electric cars on its roads, with another 600,000 hybrids, which is a good start. However, when will all UK cars be pure electric (a question with relevance not least on when this emissions will be dropped). This will obviously be after the government bans the sale of petrol and diesel cars; this date was set to 2030, but the current UK prime minister has recently pushed this date back to 2035. So why did he make this change? Well, he argues that this will bring us in line with other countries (though does not mind leading in other ways). Unfortunately, the majority of the players in the UK market were unimpressed. 2024 is predicted to see the percentage of electric cars hit 25%, and they are aiming for 80% of cars to be electric. Of course, this phase out date is simply the last time they can be sold – meaning that, with an average lifespan of 13.5 years, by 2050 we could rapidly be seeing the end of combustion engine cars. Having said this, I could expect this to be accelerated, as who is going to throw increasing amounts of money into keeping an combustion engine car on the road, when they can see the savings they will make by changing.
• Volkswagen is loosing the electric car race to China and Tesla: as the other whale in the sea of car companies, sold over 9 million cars in 2023, however, much of their market share may well be eaten up by Tesla and Chinese electric car manufacturers unless they are able to change direction in the near future. To make this clear, while they sold over 9 million cars, they only sold 394,000 electric cars in that year. This was down from 572,000 in 2022 and around 450,000 in 2021. In 2019 this company mapped out its electric future, and was the biggest carmaker, with hopes to overtake Tesla in making electric cars, what happened? Also, if places like the UK will be at least 80% electric by 2030, they need to get on with it or they will go out of business. Former CEO Herbert Diess saw this need and was trying to do what was necessary, but he was removed. Indeed, their electric car numbers are close to being pushed into third place by BYD. In 2021 they pledged to sell more than 2 million electric cars by 2025, however they have lost much stock position, as the market has seen they cannot deliver.                                                                  
• EU has set a target of 30 million electric cars on its roads by 2030 is looking like it will miss, as consumers shun used electric vehicles. Car dealers are suggesting that buyers are shunning electric vehicles and buying the combustion engine equivalent. Now, why is this? Are car dealers right? Of course not, a quick search of cars on ebay shows that the first combustion engine car starts as low as £500, while the cheapest electric car is £3795. Furthermore, while the Nissan leaf is a good car (these cheapest models) it also has many flaws, from having a range of under 100 miles, to being restricted on rapid charging and more. At £10,000 you start to see Mercedes B electric and the BMW i3, though these also still have a range of around 100. At £12500 you see the first e-golf, with MG and electric Hyundai starting to appear around this price. This MG car is the first to have a range of over 200 miles (though its ability to rapid charge rules it out for longer journeys). The first teslas start to appear just short of £14k, and I would argue that at the current time, these are the lowest cost vehicles which can directly replace a combustion engine car, without changing your whole life around it. However, prices are still falling, and will continue to do so. However, whether they will fall fast enough to meet the targets is anyone’s guess. Having said this, sales will be greatly helped by cars like the Tesla model 2 and similar, which continue to push down the entry price. in 2022 7.8 million electric cars were on EU roads, and this is likely to have gone above 10 million in the intervening time. Still, to reach 30 million in 6 years, we would have to increase the fleet size by over 3 million a year – doable but only with many incentives.
• The Chinese government is promising to rein in the number of electric cars its companies are making, so as to not flood the west. This is not (as you might think) through any pity on the old car companies, but instead is to stop ‘disorderly’ competition or ‘blind’ project expansion. This comes as China reaches the top of the league for number of cars exported at 4.9 million. It is predicted that by 2030 1/6 electric cars sold in the UK would be electric. There are fears of trade wars, as the EU has charged Beijing of distorting the market with illegal subsidies – helping BYD. In the USA, they are reducing subsidies on cars which contain battery parts from China.
• Freezing temperature are known for reducing electric car range, caused long queues for charging Unfortunately in the USA very low temperatures caused problems, with range falling dramatically. It should be noted, that this happens with combustion engine cars, but as they can refuel faster, and therefore there is less queue (and they generally have longer ranges) this is not noticed. A similar article last year, saw newspapers and websites reporting on cars stuck on a motorway in the states, and electric cars running out of battery and having to seek shelter in combustion engine cars to stay warm (read here). While this is true, and can happen, given electric cars can be charged at home, it is far more likely that an electric car would have a full or nearly full battery, than a combustion engine car would have a full tank. Now, while if you try to heat the cabin, a tesla s will use around 6kwh per hour, if you heat the car by using the seat warmers, these only take 50wh per hour, allowing a tesla s to keep 5 inhabitants comfortable for 24 hours using just 6kwh, in comparison a combustion engine car burns around 1l an hour. This means that in a survival situation, a tesla s could keep its inhabitants warm for around 2 weeks, while a combustion engine car would run out of fuel in perhaps 2-3 days, depending on how much fuel was there at the beginning.
•  Autocar published an article looking at how green electric cars actually are. The way the article is written (click here to read the original). It starts by laying out the various positions like EU requirements to lower carbon emission, and talks about China. In the 3rd paragraph it states that electric cars have a lower carbon footprint, given electric cars have around 3 times higher efficiency in taking energy and turning it into forward movement, and even with hybrids (when used properly) can have half the carbon footprint, however, it goes on to say that this is largely down to the green-ness of the electrical grid. While this is true, even the dirtiest electric grid makes an electric car less polluting – and electric grids are only getting greener, while combustion engines can never ditch emissions. It then brings up the carbon cost of making the electric cars battery- a tesla is estimated to have a carbon footprint of around a tonne for the battery. Comparing the carbon emissions of manufacturing a tesla 3 and a bmw 3 series, they each come out at around 10,000kg. This obviously includes the battery, and as such, the tesla is usually greener within a year of being sold. Should you by a used electric car, these numbers are far easier. At the rate that we drive, we save around 2.5 tonnes a year directly (and as I have calculated before this equates to around 10 tonnes indirectly, if you include extraction refining transporting and storing the fuel). Given the need to account for all carbon, it seems odd that most calculations give no account for the carbon used to get the fuel to the car in the first place. In the middle of this article, it suggests that on the EU grid, an electric car would have to drive over 400,000 miles before being clean, though the author does concede that on a green grid this is reach in just 18,000 miles. What should be noted, is that carbon emissions during manufacture can be met through solar and batteries (as in the case of the Audi Etron which is powered by a huge solar array on the roof – the carbon footprint of building an electric car can be as low as any other car with clean electricity. Tesla, being a company which is really interested in reducing its footprint (that is also the whole point of building electric cars) is likely to meet this requirement quicker. Already, many of teslas mega factories produce more than 20% of their power though solar with a long-term aim to be independent of the grid (or at least net zero metering, so that they export as much energy as they import).
• Paris Mayor plans to triple SUV parking tariffs to cut air pollution In theory this sounds like a very good idea- charge people who choose to drive cars that would be more at home in the wilds of Africa, when they insist on driving them in congested cities. Not surprisingly, these cars are also often very expensive. Having said this, they are also considering banning electric scooters, which is easiest the cheapest means of getting around rapidly from a cleanliness point of view. If paris votes yes, then on-street parking for SUV will be 18 euros an hour in the city centre, with 12 euros an hour being the price outside. This will apply to cars that weigh 1.6 tonnes as a combustion engine car or hybrid car, and 2 tonnes for an electric car. Obviously there is a significant issue with this – electric cars are generally heavier, and it is likely to rule out people owning teslas. While there may be more particulate pollution from heavier cars, electric cars produce no fumes what so ever. As such this sounds like an incredibly regressive charge. If this ruling blocks people buying teslas and other electric cars, it is likely to end up backfiring badly.