Electric cars are already cheaper to own and run in Europe, says study
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Electric cars are already cheaper to own and run than petrol or diesel alternatives in five European countries analysed in new research.
The study examined the purchase, fuel and tax costs of Europe’s bestselling car, the VW golf, in its battery electric, hybrid, petrol and diesel versions. Over four years, the pure electric version was the cheapest in all places – UK, Germany, France, Netherlands and Norway – owing to a combination of lower taxes, fuel costs and subsidies on the purchase price.
Researchers from the International Council for Clean Transportation (ICCT) said their report showed that tax breaks are a key way to drive the rollout of electric vehicles and tackle climate change and air pollution.
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Electric cars offer the biggest savings over diesel in Norway (27%) as the battery-powered vehicles are exempt from a heavy registration tax. The ICCT analysis was updated for the Guardian after recent cuts in the UK’s grants for electric car purchases. It shows British drivers see the smallest saving – 5%. In Germany, France and the Netherlands, the saving varied from 11% to 15%.
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Tate said the UK government could do more to drive the growth of electric cars. “My view is that the UK should do much more to steer the market away from the most polluting and inefficient cars, ie SUVs/4x4 which are continuing to grow in sales,” he said. “These large, heavy vehicles burden us and the climate with unnecessary CO2 and air pollutants. A taxation policy that rises with fuel consumption rates, such as in the Netherlands and Norway is overdue.”
UK taxation does increase with emissions for company cars, but not for privately owned ones.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/12/electric-cars-already-cheaper-own-run-study
don't think anyone thought this wouldn't be the case eventually
Probably not, but the rapidness is what's surprising here.
Personally I didn't think this would be the case until closer to 2025.
I thought it would, just expected it to take at least 5 years at least
Smaller family EV's have become quite popular as a leasing option. The main thing that keeps me from EVs (aside from brand new cars in general being too expensive) is what you do as the battery and other electric components inevitably wear out. Leasing solves that problem rather elegantly (for the customer).
Yesterday my coworker said "I had to borrow my mom's car because my Nissan had to charge."
Jokes aside, this really isn't a particularly EV friendly area, I live in. I'm actually pretty excited for the fact of how fast this technology is advancing, and before long, I can just... Buy a used EV. I drive a 2013 car and I remember thinking at one point it was the pinnacle of car features. Now 2013 feels... So long ago.
We just need a "Honda Civic" of EVs and a push to make recharging them easier. Give businesses incentives to install EV chargers.
Dumb EV question though: is there an issue with proprietary charging, or is it at least a non-issue?
feckin socialists and their green energy and cheaper cars! what happened to the 9$/gallon gas jokes!
I'm glad the European Model 3 has a CCS charging port rather than Tesla's own standard. They also bringing out a CCS adapter for the Model S/X. In Europe though the charging infrastructure for non-Tesla vehicles is much more prevalent than in the US, while in the US they own 40% of all charge points in the country.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/12/morgan-stanley-tesla-charging-station-network-competitive-moat.html
It leads to some pain points for Tesla though, with the boom in Model 3 sales the charging infrastructure is struggling to keep up in the US since there's not really any viable alternatives for rapid charging.
Guys, the only reason it's cheaper is because the government hugely subsidizes them. That's fine if you want to encourage their use, but let's not pretend EVs are actually cheaper.
Friendly reminder that you may still be indirectly causing carbon emission even tho you're not using gas, the electricity still may come from a non-renewable source.
We're all aware of that, but it's a stepping stone. A lot of countries are working towards carbon neutral power generation as well. One step at a time.
Still vastly better than Diesel/ICE
A coal/gas plant generally runs a lot more efficient than the average ICE car maintained by Joe Average.
Cars are everywhere from highways to residential areas and therefore pollute everywhere, while a powerplant is generally far from residential buildings in a industrial area.
All carbon emmisions are centralised. So switching to a cleaner source in the future is a lot easier.
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The only real hurdle that's left is that electric cars are too expensive when purchased new, because most people buy second hand. But the first Teslas are currently starting to drip into the secondhand market, and plenty of manufacturers are announcing cheaper electric cars. The following few years will be very interesting.
That's not the only hurdle. We need to make all forms of transport electric from boats, planes, trains and trucks.
Need to think of the big picture, not just the smaller consumer one.
Also switching from lithium ion to something such as Salt based as that means they're far more recyclable.
power generation even with coal is more efficient than gasoline/diesel combustion for transportation and the combustion byproducts are generally not wafting around populated areas or can be mitigated on a powerplant level using scrubbers.
Absolutely true, but I was just focusing on consumer vehicles because that was what the article talking about.
As soon electric cars become more affordable, either through price drops or the second hand market, they will spread like wildfire.
Vehicles like planes and boats will have other hurdles, the biggest one I think is weight.
You cannot just drop a giant Li-Ion battery in a plane or boat because that will limit the amount of people/cargo it can carry.
Hydrogen would be a possible alternative for boats with the standard fuel-cell/electric motor combination while planes could use it to power hydrogen turbines.
Then again, the developments in battery technology are very interesting so I'm not counting out battery boats and planes just yet. Time will tell us.
This is not true. EV's are cleaner unless you're hard wiring it into the dirtiest coal plant you can find. And as the grid gets cleaner, EV's get cleaner. It's not a hard concept.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwMPFDqyfrA
At the end of the day everything will be dirty in some regard. The best we can do is be the least dirty.
This still doesn't flies in Portugal...
The Twizy is the cheapest, and thats absolute crap because its a 1 seater designed to get pelted with rain, after that we got the ZOE which is the best out of all of them, but it costs upwards of 8k used, and the interior will only be seen as good by a robot that doesn''t cares about anything other than having a place to seat.
Then we got the Peugeot ION, the Mitsubishi IMIEV and the Citroen C-ZERO, which are all the same and are absolutely dreadful, which all cost upwards of 9k (what the FUCK), and the Smart ForTwo EV. I don't need to say anything about a Smart now do I?...
After that we got the very expensive first gen Leaf, have no idea why it still costs so much and tbh the second gen should be a lot better, but above that, we're treading into i3 territory, which I have no idea why anyone would ever want something as bad as that.
The i3 is a fantastic EV and I'm trading in my Ioniq for one. Even running a super efficient hybrid is starting to add up now.
Untaxed externalities for the oil industry make it so actually, ICE cars are the ones being massively subsidized.
Why not a new Kia Niro EV? Those are excellent, with the added bonus of actually looking like a normal SUV.
It would suck ass to get in a fender bender with an all-carbon i3, since it would spend weeks in the body shop.
Can't get one until 2020 unfortunately, the waiting list is massive.
I think Aveiro has a few spots already. Don't know exactly where, but it could be worse, like having none... And it will only get better from there on out.
Thing is, EV support isn't the biggest problem. There just isn't any good choices. To have an EV, you can't like cars whatsoever, because all you can get are basic, boring, or outright ugly cars. They literaly have to look like household appliances, and weirdly enough, those 3 brands that do all the same car, the CZero IMIEV and ION, not only have ugly cars on the outside, the interior is AWFUL.
It just fucking sucks. You're better off with a cheap TDI Ibiza and it will do EVERYTHING you need for less than 8000 euros.
I think the i3 looks cool
I don't think most manufacturers can manufacture EVs fast enough yet, only Tesla really have the battery supply chain sorted for mass numbers. Pretty much everyone else is sourcing batteries from LG for now.
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