Apologies for what is of necessity a long answer:
Purveyors of pure-electric cars have learned many lessons since they started selling in earnest and one of the biggest has been the unexpectedly strong buyer appeal of the silence, smoothness and ease of driving only a pure-electric car can bring.
I've always known e-cars were superior, even when they didn't exist! In the 1900s and 1910s they were the car of choice, infinitely better in every respect than the steam and petrol competition. But of course the severe battery limitations at the time meant short range, so they got no further development and ic gradually improved over the decades.
But e-drive didn't disappear, milk floats and the refined large electric vans that Harrods and John Lewis continued to use right through to the 1960s showing that. And of course trains and trams long since gave up on ic engines. If I was asked to design the worst possible engine to propel a vehicle, it could well be the ridiculous ic engine.
The mistake they'd made was judging from existing applications with high density cells under high load, e-bikes for example!
Their e-cars use large low density cells, and of course they spend most of their driven life at a tiny fraction of their potential power so are never stressed. Nobody floors it in their drive taking off at a constant 90mph plus to the supermarket. Add to that a moderate charging regime and battery life just isn't a worry.
Of course they will need changing eventually at around £8k at today's prices, but against that is a fuel cost of up to 400 mpg equivalent. That still won't fully pay for a battery, but stopping doing what we've been doing to this planet was never going to be cheap. We've in effect been living on a future cost for a long time in every respect, just like PFI (private finance initiative) to pay for our infrastructure, leaving our kids to foot the bill.
As for e-cars only being for the wealthy, no manufacturer can keep up with demand over the last two years and it's currently going through the roof. Expect to wait a year for the most popular models.
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Indeed Andy, and I like this comment from Autocar magazine:
Purveyors of pure-electric cars have learned many lessons since they started selling in earnest and one of the biggest has been the unexpectedly strong buyer appeal of the silence, smoothness and ease of driving only a pure-electric car can bring.
I've always known e-cars were superior, even when they didn't exist! In the 1900s and 1910s they were the car of choice, infinitely better in every respect than the steam and petrol competition. But of course the severe battery limitations at the time meant short range, so they got no further development and ic gradually improved over the decades.
But e-drive didn't disappear, milk floats and the refined large electric vans that Harrods and John Lewis continued to use right through to the 1960s showing that. And of course trains and trams long since gave up on ic engines. If I was asked to design the worst possible engine to propel a vehicle, it could well be the ridiculous ic engine.
Battery life has been surprising everyone, not least the manufacturers. Being nervous about this originally with some negative indications from other applications, Nissan cautiously settled upon a 5 year warranty setting the scene for others and starting the falsehood about poor battery life. They quickly changed that to 8 years as evidence came in but are now having to think again with many batteries even still at full capacity at 10 years old.
The mistake they'd made was judging from existing applications with high density cells under high load, e-bikes for example!
Their e-cars use large low density cells, and of course they spend most of their driven life at a tiny fraction of their potential power so are never stressed. Nobody floors it in their drive taking off at a constant 90mph plus to the supermarket. Add to that a moderate charging regime and battery life just isn't a worry.
Of course they will need changing eventually at around £8k at today's prices, but against that is a fuel cost of up to 400 mpg equivalent. That still won't fully pay for a battery, but stopping doing what we've been doing to this planet was never going to be cheap. We've in effect been living on a future cost for a long time in every respect, just like PFI (private finance initiative) to pay for our infrastructure, leaving our kids to foot the bill.
As for e-cars only being for the wealthy, no manufacturer can keep up with demand over the last two years and it's currently going through the roof. Expect to wait a year for the most popular models.
True, but they don't begin to solve the problem so will also be banned shortly. The target is zero carbon, and even that is not enough since we really need to reduce what we've already produced. And of course hybrids are far more expensive to both buy and run with their two drive chains and fuels. They'll get more difficult to fuel too, we're already down to under 6000 petrol stations, nearly half what it once was. Meanwhile UK e-cars already have this, 11,600 charging locations with 18,600 charging points with 32,300 connectors and expanding rapidly by many hundreds a year.
Fully agreed Andy, and it's never even been once for me with my trade experience.
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