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So with 2030 regs and many vehicle manufacturers already committing to abandoning fossil fuels. When will petrolheads life get too hard? Will it happen before 2030 or will it be gradual?
Will the streets be cleaner and safer?
Will people abandon cars and default to self driving ubers?
It will be taxed. This way the people with expensive cars, who can afford it will continue to have their expensive cars and the great unwashed will have to make do with whatever the option is.
The justification will run along the lines of there wil be far fewer cars, and the owners pay a much higher rate.
CEO,MD etc will be able to put it down to a tax expense or such so in effect will have a loophole.
Plenty of Petrolheads are already buying Taycans, Model S Plaid, etc and there are plenty more to come, but in the short term, I think you’ll see a golden age of petrol engines before they’re forced into obsolescence.
As for self driving cars, it’ll kill the service industries like taxis and local buses first, then trains, finally personal vehicles and possibly short range aircraft.
it'll still be available (maybe in kit form - I could imagine a car designed with an extremely cheap electric motor and battery, that you rip out day one and replace with an engine/fuel tank - ala chicken tax) for those who really want it. Owning one will be a bit like owning a horse - an expensive PITA for country folk who like that sort of thing
It's a good question I think and it really depends on who you ask.
My opinions
The 'Motoring Press' are by and large in denial, but it's been decades since most of them really had much to do with what most people drive, honestly if you think the likes of Jeremy Clarkson, Chris Harris and Harry Metcalf have their finger on the pulse of mainstream motoring, you're probably wrong. I get the impression they're hoping and praying for some kind of 11th hour stay of execution, that Hydrogen combustion cars or eFuels will ride into save the day, because really they don't care about everyday cars, because they're just another consumer device to them, and frankly most of us too.
I think the reality is that the ICE car is pretty much dead in terms of new development, the latest generation of ICE cars (and Vans tbh) are really just refreshed versions of old ones, they look a bit different, but they're the same engines and same chassis from 10 years ago. All the big manufacturers are throwing themselves at EV tech in a big way. Forget 2030, I predict by 2025 ICE cars will be in the minority with manufacturers and the mainstream brands will have dropped them completely a few years before 2030.
As for existing ICE cars, well the mainstream stuff doesn't really matter, the average life expectancy of a car is now only around 10 years, but that's going to fall as the switch to EVs takes over. For the enthusiast stuff, to them it doesn't really matter if you can buy your fuel at a dozen petrol stations in every town, or if you have to have it delivered on the back of a truck, when your Ferrari or MG only comes out 3 times a year.
The biggest 'threat' to Petrolheads isn't ICE cars, it's a generational thing, kids don't care about cars like their parents did. My Son who is 15 doesn't know the make, or model of my Car, he knows what it looks like when I pick him up and that's it. When I was a kid we all knew every stats of our Dads cars to compare them, top trumps like in School, no one cares anymore, even the younger guys who are into cars don't care about how they're powered, just how fashionable (or whatever the term) they are. Honestly, Guys keeping £1m+ hypercars in their garage as investments are in for a shock in years to come as people who care and are prepared to pay for them die and new car fans aren't replacing them.
I reckon within our lifetime the ICU will become completely unacceptable like drink driving, smoking, lead in paint or arsenic wood preservaties, we'll wander round going I can't believe we used to drive those things belching out all that crap into the air we breathe.
PJay - yep agree. But why are cars only lasting 10 years? My 2009 Mazda has just sailed through another MOT and I'm hoping to keep it for another few years now.
we’ll wander round going I can’t believe we used to drive those things belching out all that crap into the air we breathe.
definitely. Recently out on my bike I had the following experience:
Me: Cor, look at that TR6! What a cracking machine
Me, 1 minute later: Bloody hell, something stinks around here. Where are all these horrible petrol fumes coming from?
Me, another minute later, as I catch up with the TR6 at the lights: Ah. God that thing is kicking out some shite....
Compared to a busy street full of modern 'normal' cars, it really was horrible!
The air will be cleaner but roads no safer. The growing number of cars is a major problem, replacing them with what look like faster ones is hardly helpful.
Will it happen before 2030 or will it be gradual?
It will be gradual. A lot of fossil fuel companies are going to make sure of it and there will be demand for petrol easily past 2040 (the cars purchased in 2029 will only be 10 years old).
Once it starts to become harder to get petrol (2045?) the number of pumps will drop considerably and it may take a 50 mile drive to go and get some petrol.
It won't matter by then as it will be a small number of enthusiasts and the day's classic car owners who only drive 1,000 miles a year in them while 99.9% of miles will be driven in EVs.
The world will be pretty ****ed up by 2045 though so worrying about petrol cars is not the right thing to be worrying about.
driverless cars will take over at some point, so they'll all be electric you'd imagine. The combustion engine will become more of an enthisiast type thing.
There's no need for it to completely disappear, we just need a high 90+% of it to transition over.
TBH I don't think I will miss the ICE, I'm not enough of a petrolhead and day to day any car I own/use really has to provide reliable transport not some sort of visceral "experience"...
I also think we're at an odd transitional point, EVs are now seen as desirable, thanks to the likes of Elon, the trouble is their wider, faster adoption is being hampered by that too. They're seen as premium, aspirational, expensive "New tech" for the wealthy. the truth is they're simpler machines and manufacturer's are taking the piss a bit on pricing now. by 2030 we want to be well on the way to fully electrified transportation...
TBH 2030 can't come soon enough.
The real question for me is, how long before other forms of transport ditch the diesel units? HGVs, trains, shipping, etc. Car's are the consumer headline, freight and mass transit needs to follow the same trajectory.
Hydrogen combustion cars or eFuels will ride into save the day,
I don't think save the day is the right term but hydrogen will be needed in the mix. The fantasy is that you can have one tool (electric vehicles) for multiple jobs, hydrogen will need to be there for many vehicles.
I've no idea, but now feels like the time to enjoy a last hurrah with an utterly socially-unacceptable fossil fuelled fun vehicle. I won't have another car after my current one, but will likely have a van. If electric's possible at the time then an electric van, but if not it'll be a dirty diesel/hybrid I imagine.
Average age of a car scrapped is nearly 14 years now and increasing - remember that includes early crash/write-offs that skew it.
Fuel cost will keep going up with or without more taxation so EVs will naturally take a lot of the market for those who can afford newer cars and actually do some miles. It didn’t take a lot of VED discount (and potential fuel savings) to sell a lot of diesel cars in the 00s, EVs present an even more compelling case as new prices glide down towards parity with ICE. More new sales means more secondhand stock that will filter down to be affordable to the vast majority of drivers.
Lots of enthusiasts go for older stuff anyway. Always a strong market of people 40+ who’ve made some money buying the cars they wanted as teenagers. When the ICE hero cars are gone though what will that be in a few decades? Will it even matter when there’s loads of enthusiast ICE cars that will still be around long after their original owners?
PJay – yep agree. But why are cars only lasting 10 years? My 2009 Mazda has just sailed through another MOT and I’m hoping to keep it for another few years now.
That’s the average now sadly. Some people say it’s the complex and expensive ‘devices’ on them and there was an era of turbo diesel that came with a handful of expensive bits that could easily ‘write off’ a 10 year old car but that doesn’t seem to be the case so much now, but as ‘old’ cars become less popular it becomes self fulfilling because they’re not ‘worth’ repairing from a financial point of view. EVs popularity will increase that, ICE is going to seem very old hat in a few years.
Others blame easy PCP deals meaning new and nearly new cars are a lot easier to have now and it certainly seems to be the case a lot of people have much newer cars than before. My first car was nearly 20 years old when I bought it, my 2nd was 10 years old etc. The stereotype of the 19 year old kid in a 12 month old PCP Focus or Corsa has a lot of truth to it, and PCP is a hard thing to give up, not a lot of people will stop leasing a new car every 3 years to go out and buy one that’s older than they’re driving now if they have to borrow money to buy it because it won’t be any cheaper on a monthly basis.
I think a unpleasant and inconvenient truth of the switch to EVs will be an accelerated shortening of ICE car lifespans, the reality is that if you want to be ‘green’ globally it’s not emissions your car produces, but that’s produced in its construction. A ‘dirty’ 20 year old ICE maintained to give an extra 10 years and 100k miles is far better than Tesla building a new 3 for you.
Personally I’m going the other way, my next car will be my last ICE (because I can’t afford an EV that works for me at the moment) when that’s done (I’m another one on the PCP merry go round) I’ll be working out how we can go from a 2 car family to 1.
For most people the EV tipping point is here, because you can now walk into a VW, Skoda, Ford or Peugeot dealler and actually see, test drive and buy a pure EV! I'm seeing a large number of ID.3 on the roads in the last few weeks, because for a huge number of people, that car is simply nicer than the equivalent golf and no more expensive.
Petrol and classics and high performance have years and years left in them though. Just like horse and traction engine enthusiasts,both of which can still be 'driven' on our roads despite being a hundred years out of date, ICE cars once they are a minority will be largely ignored by Governments and legislators.....
There are already some people doing EV conversions for classic vehicles - I’ll probably get one for my VW camper at some point.
There’s probably going to be a generational shift with vehicle ownership - people in cities already get by with Uber etc. Why pay for an expensive, depreciating asset on your drive when you can pay as you go?
The problem is it’s bad news for car companies who make most of their money selling finance for vehicles replaced every 3 years - sustainable and ecological it ain’t.
I bought an 18 plate petrol car last year and hope it will be my last.
Petrol/diesel will be widely available until it stops being profitable to sell it. Storage tanks coming to the end of their lives after 20-30 years may have an effect as they're expensive to replace. I'm expecting it to be easy to get until at least 2040 though I'd guess a lot of petrol stations will also do EV charging and reduce the number of pumps. I'd also expect the haulage industry to continue using diesel for a long while.
The biggest barrier to EV's is not being able to charge at home. Approximately 33% of households have no off street parking and some of those that do won't have a suitable space to fit a charger next to. Does anyone actually believe that whatever flavour of government will effectively tell these people they're going to drastically reduce their ability to travel?
But cars are usually owned for the purpose of going to places, and spend most to their time parked up. Drive to work - charge at work. Drive to gym/cinema/whatever - charge there. Drive to supermarket - charge there.
The supermarkets in particular sell most of the fuel in this country, at (or often below) cost price to attract people to do their shopping. Do you really think they’ll give up on that concept as everything electrifies? You’ll see supermarket carparks flooded with chargers within the decade, and discount rate charging if you spend £20 in store just like they do with petrol now.
A modern EV supermini with 200+ miles range will need a topup less than once a week to do average mileage. Just do it while you’re doing something else.
A ‘dirty’ 20 year old ICE maintained to give an extra 10 years and 100k miles is far better than Tesla building a new 3 for you.
Not according to the folks on the EV thread.
The biggest barrier to EV’s is not being able to charge at home. Approximately 33% of households have no off street parking and some of those that do won’t have a suitable space to fit a charger next to. Does anyone actually believe that whatever flavour of government will effectively tell these people they’re going to drastically reduce their ability to travel?
No they'll just get councils to install on-street chargers (already happening) or they'll use public chargers like you do for petrol.
A ‘dirty’ 20 year old ICE maintained to give an extra 10 years
How many folk you know driving 30 year old cars
There's a reason for that and it's not simply the cost.
I tend to buy a car outright for £3k and then run it for as long as possible until its not longer economically viable or has died. I'm intrigued to see how it'll play out with EV's and whether there will reach a point where they'll become affordable for the mainstream.
Yep - somebody is going to have to come up with an amazing subsidy scheme before I'm even close to spending on a relatively new EV.
somebody is going to have to come up with an amazing subsidy scheme before I’m even close to spending on a relatively new EV.
But it's cheaper than the alternative they say
whether there will reach a point where they’ll become affordable for the mainstream.
Well there's a few things to consider:
1. Industry analysts have long said that when batteries reach £100/kWh the cars will cost the same as petrol. It's currently £137; in 2010 it was £1,000. So we're basically there already. And the cars are selling faster than ever so as production ramps up they'll only get cheaper.
2. If the price continues to fall below £100 then EVs may well end up cheaper than ICEs. Of course, supply of battery materials may not hold up, however the number of technological advancements queueing up to be productionised is pretty big.
3. To mask the high cost of batteries manufacturers (starting with Tesla) design their EVs as premium cars and throw loads of tech and design at them. This makes people want them enough to pay those prices. However, at those prices they are selling as fast as they can make them, so they won't get any cheaper for a few years. They'll keep prices as high as they can and keep the cars as premium as they can for as long as they can to make cash and fund investment in production for the time they know is coming - when they need to start making actual cheap EVs. They won't have a 300 mile range, 350kW charging or luxury interiors; but they'll have a 150 mile range and be £15k new probably.
4. The upcoming bans will force the issue anyway, so they'll need to make as much cash from the premium market as they can before 2030 when the need to start making cheap cars again.
the average life expectancy of a car is now only around 10 years
Anyone able to verify this? I searched and didn't find it. Did find an article claiming the current average age of a car is 8.5 which is quite different.
So, 2030 for "cheap" cars and then another 10 years before the cheap cars star to become affordable second hand, and even then they'll be limited to 150 miles?
Aye. Right.
This says that VW are making a 20,000 € car with a 180 mile ish range by 2025. And fast charging. That's the sort of thing I was thinking of.
https://insideevs.com/news/531195/volkswagen-meb-small-platform/
You have to understand that a 150 mile range car doesn't mean you can only go on a 150 mile trip.
And how will bangernomics work...
It wont. We'll all be roped into PCP loops for batteries....
The 1000 quid car will vanish pushing costs onto the least fiscally stable
By 2040 the whole idea of personally-owned car transportation will be an almost forgotten memory.
Humanity will have switched en-masse from choking their cities with cars, to getting everywhere by bike, or on foot, or on public transport.
Exoskeletons for the physically frail will be commonplace, and so everyone will be able to cycle.
With this flowering of the bicycle not only will congestion and pollution become a thing of the past, but overall physical health, mental well-being and happiness will achieve previously unimagined heights, powering a new worldwide renaissance of the sciences, philosophy, the arts, justice, tolerance and understanding. Name one politician who has declared war after *cycling* to work?
Rapid advances in technology and global collaboration will lead to the development of cheap, safe nuclear fusion and planning will start for the first serious steps in the colonisation of the inner planets and the asteroid belt.
That will be when the first of the comets hits. The first one, the small one, stuns humanity into action, seeing the creation of the largest rescue effort and humanitarian aid effort in human history.
The second one though. That finishes us.
Do cockroaches need a car?
Since a significant proportion of the CO2 and environmental damage produced by vehicle is produced during it's manufacture, including the mining of rare earth minerals for batteries, it is probably more environmentally friendly to keep an older petrol car on the road (that's already been manufactured) than to scrap it and replace it with a new electric vehicle. Hence the sensible thing to do would be a slow phase out, allowing previously manufactured vehicles to be used until worn out.
I must be one of the dinosaurs on here but I love my 3.0 6 cyl Z4 , it goes so good and sound fantastic but seeing as I'm almost 60 yet never smoked in my live I don't feel too bad. All these folk who have flown for years many times a year , the amount of campervan blocking the roads etc
I might give it up in ten years time
We could have a massive demolition derby.
Or what cranker said 👆
the average life expectancy of a car is now only around 10 years
as ‘old’ cars become less popular it becomes self fulfilling because they’re not ‘worth’ repairing from a financial point of view.
That's the opposite to what's currently happening. My first car in 1990 was 12 years old and was on its last legs. My current 9 year car seems to have loads of life left. It's common to see 20 year old cars. According to https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-8739771/Britons-keeping-cars-longer-says-new-report.html from a year ago (so pre-covid) there were 6 million cars over 13 years old - 5 times as many as in 1994.
It's great that we're phasing out ICE cars, but there will need to be some effort put in to get the older cars off the road in a way that doesn't disadvantage those who can't afford a new car.
The world will be pretty **** up by 2045
Judging from many of the ages of members previously posted, I don't think what happens in 2045 is going to be that much of a problem for them 😉
.
They'll have been combusted themselves by then 😆
We have 3 ICE vehicles in the driveway. Average age is 13 years. We have no plans to replace any of them and expect to have the same 3 for at least the next 5 years.
Anyone able to verify this? I searched and didn’t find it. Did find an article claiming the current average age of a car is 8.5 which is quite different.
there's a big difference (approximately double) between the average age of a car on the road and the average age at which they're scrapped. 8.5 years is probably about right for the former.
I tend to buy a car outright for £3k and then run it for as long as possible until its not longer economically viable or has died. I’m intrigued to see how it’ll play out with EV’s and whether there will reach a point where they’ll become affordable for the mainstream.
if you have somewhere to charge they're probably already there, albeit with compromises. You can get a leaf for £5k, which costs at least £1k less to fuel, per year, than your £3k car (assuming a normal-ish amount of driving). the break even is then 2 years, and if 'as long as possible' is normally longer than that (I'd assume 5 years ish), the electric car is already cheaper.
The downside is that car has fairly limited range (maybe 80 miles or so).. but you can imagine the pattern repeating in future years.
The 1000 quid car will vanish pushing costs onto the least fiscally stable
But this is not necessarily a bad thing. £1,000 cars are too cheap, people literally buy them as disposable items. People are not fixing cars because they are cheap, there are too many of them, and they are 'not worth fixing' because they're too cheap. Restrict supply, and suddenly they are worth fixing after all.
Those people who can't afford £3/4k or whatever it ends up being will have to get to work somehow, so they'll need PT or bikes. And PT will have to get better. The car market will completely change in 20 years and that means how we own and use them will change too.
Will converting existing ICE cars to full EV become a more common thing? Is it ever going to be sensible or economical? Is it much better if at all for CO2 emissions than building a whole new car? I suspect the downfall of this path is that there are so many different shapes and models.
Why is it that in any thread discussing the future someone will make the assertion that the world will be some sort of dystopian nightmare in x number of years?
I’ve been hearing this sort of nonsense for as long as I can remember, yet I see no evidence that life in general is any worse than it was 10, 20 or even 40 years ago.
JP
They'll be around for a long while yet. Only new cars have to be EV's from 2030. Older cars will continue to run and petrol and diesel will be produced to run them. No government will force people to abandon cars overnight...that's not the best for individuals, the economy or the environment. For the majority of people they will just go into decline over 20 years or so. Interesting cars will continue to run but may become more difficult to run...some will be converted into EV's (already happening), some will have engines replaced with Hydrogen engines. Some will continue to run as petrol and diesel on synthetic fuels...but costs may be prohibitive to be used as daily drivers.
They'll be around long after we're all dead...though their decline will start from 2030...but there are alot of cars not he road so will take alot of time for them to be phased out.
Ultimately the 15 largest ships produce more CO2 than all the cars in the world...so as long as they're shipping a shed load of new EV's around the world to feed the demand for cars then don't expect a significant reduction in CO2 emissions as petrol and diesel cars start to decline. The production of EV's chucks out a fair amount of CO2 and the huge machines that dig big holes in the earth to dig out the rare earth elements that BEV's will need in increasing quantity will be powered by good old diesel and petrol.
But cars are usually owned for the purpose of going to places, and spend most to their time parked up. Drive to work – charge at work. Drive to gym/cinema/whatever – charge there. Drive to supermarket – charge there.
Have you seriously thought about the infrastructure needed to charge a shit-load of employee’s cars, or how people living in terraced streets, or blocks of flats will manage?
Admittedly, if manufacturers can get average range well north of 400 miles/charge, preferably 500, which is what my old Octavia would manage on a tankful of diesel.
As for public transport, there seems to be a sort of fantasy land that many on here live in where millions of people who live in scattered villages and small communities well away from larger towns and cities will have access to cheap transport, multiple times a day. I don’t buy it, without tens, hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies it’ll never happen. Around my neck of the woods, villages are lucky to get three buses a day, one at maybe 9am, another at perhaps midday, and a third at sometime in the mid-afternoon. If I wanted to go to a gig in Bristol by train, I’d have to leave the venue halfway through the performance at many venues in order to get the last train back, which leaves Bristol at 10.32 - most concerts finish at 10.30-10.45, so hopelessly impractical.
Same thing from London, although that may have changed a bit.
I’ve just looked at the bus service that covers Chippenham and the surrounding villages; there’s one outbound, and one inbound. Miss either and you’re screwed.
https://geopunk.co.uk/timetables/south-west/wiltshire/36-colerne-biddestone-corsham-chippenham
Ultimately the 15 largest ships produce more CO2 than all the cars in the world
No they don't. According to https://www.iea.org/topics/transport shipping emits 0.9 Gt and passenger road vehicles (which admittedly includes buses) 3.6 Gt per year.
“ Admittedly, if manufacturers can get average range well north of 400 miles/charge, preferably 500, which is what my old Octavia would manage on a tankful of diesel.”
Man I wish people would stop trotting out this line every time. That argument only holds up if you regularly drive 500 miles without stopping. Which you don’t.
EVs are already on the market which will charge from 0-80% in 20mins, and that will become more available as the cars get better and the charging infrastructure improves.
I think the major block at the moment, apart from the charging issue, is the lack of cheaper 2nd hand cars. Yes you can get a cheap Leaf and use it as a run around but that’s hardly getting anyone excited.
When electronic ignition came in there was loads of people saying it was too complex etc, same with other new car tech but garages and mechanics and tuners adapt and change.
It’s going to be interesting to see what people can do with 10yo EVs - I am sure we will see specialist battery replacement companies who will pop a new battery in like you might change a clutch on an ICE car.
Same goes with modifying EVs, there’s people reprogramming Teslas and other EVs but it’s rare but it will become more popular.
Overall I think the attachment to ICE cars will diminish when the manufacturers make more characterful cars. Too many are designed to look like ICE cars (looking at you Audi) but the cars that people are getting excited about and really pushing people interest are things like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 or the Honda E. interesting cars, they look space age compared to ICE cars - they aren’t looking back but forward. It isn’t about speed or luxury - that’s been covered by Tesla and other premium brands to get peoples initial interest piqued.
I want to see the big manufacturers make some futuristic normal cars we can get excited about. This is where Kia and Hyundai are pulling ahead - look at an ID3 or 4 and they look dumpy and old fashioned compared to them (and the quality is poor by all accounts too!).
I can’t wait to see what happens to the EVs when they run out of warranty and people d see start to modify them.
ICEs will gradually become a niche thing over the next few decades. They are still the overwhelming majority of new cars and can easily last for 20 years if they are regularly maintained. The proportion of EVs will steadily increase until they are the majority of new vehicle sales and ICEs will be scrapped as it become uneconomical to maintain them. Eventually, ICE vehicles will become a novelty.
One point is that ICE doesn't necessarily mean fossil fuel - biodiesel may have a long-term niche for users where long range and being able to refuel out of a drum of fuel is important. Military users are an obvious case of this, but in isolated rural areas of many countries, there will probably be a market for diesels for a long time yet. That's a small niche market, but a small niche of a very large market is still a lot of vehicles.
I look after my 14yo car because it was such a cheap bargain. I also drive it more cautiously because it's worth so much more to us than its 'market value' after a prang.
I imagine in the UK the reduction in petrol forecourts will be the ultimate driver to get rid of ICE vehicles for most people. Many traditional forecourt, fuel plus small shop won't be competitive, the bigger outfits will adapt, Euro Garage forecourt are already mini shopping malls with a Greggs, Costa and largish shop. They will be the ones who can afford to put some rapid chargers in.
ICE vehicles won't disappear soon, electric vehicles are far too expensive and charging infrastructure is still being developed, but it is coming.
We have 3 ICE vehicles in the driveway. Average age is 13 years. We have no plans to replace any of them and expect to have the same 3 for at least the next 5 years.
But do you actually need three cars - as in, do all three need to be used at any one time?
We've also three cars - me, OH and my Mum (who lives in the annex). In reality we could probably get away with two, and if we lived urban rather than rural, one (and use taxi's, buses, car-share etc).
We've two diesels and a petrol but I'm pretty much convinced that my next car will be electric (my OH though needs to tow horse boxes, so not yet), and tbh based on my current car was +£40k it's not really a 'money' issue.
The 'decision' will actually be made for us anyway, by not been able to buy ICE vehicles - your opinion of whether it's right or wrong is irrelevant, it's happening.
But I wouldn't be surprised for a 'grace' period to turn up, effectively delaying by a few years.
I'm non-plussed tbh, I like driving and have had lots of nice cars and rode motorcycles for +30 years, so was use to proper high performance that even todays' supercars are only getting near, but I've pal's with electric cars doing sub 4 sec 0-60 - quick enough for anyone.
Move on, worry about stuff that really matters.
I can’t wait to see what happens to the EVs when they run out of warranty and people d see start to modify them.
flames
I tend to buy a car outright for £3k and then run it for as long as possible until its not longer economically viable or has died. I’m intrigued to see how it’ll play out with EV’s and whether there will reach a point where they’ll become affordable for the mainstream.
Similar situation here.
But from my recent browsing it seems for a decade old leaf or Zoe (they are about) the asking starts around £5k, you'll get a questionable 50ish mile range, because who knows how well the battery has fared. Compare that to an 11 or 12 plate Note or Clio...
I don't know how much fresh battery packs would cost you but if you're already £2k over budget for a 'runabout' (which is really our family's need TBH) with a battery that's degrading all the time, and you probably want to get a charger fitted on the drive, even used they're not yet a comparable option on up-front cost. The real question is what's the fuel cost (over say 3 years) that you'll be offsetting against to justify the spend?
But do you actually need three cars – as in, do all three need to be used at any one time?
If there was a decent reliable hire business within walking distance I'd already be down from two to one vehicle. Im really hoping that happens tbh.
As for public transport, there seems to be a sort of fantasy land that many on here live in where millions of people who live in scattered villages and small communities well away from larger towns and cities will have access to cheap transport, multiple times a day. I don’t buy it, without tens, hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies it’ll never happen.
Most people live already within walking distance of public transport. 82.9% of people in England live in an urban setting. People living in the countryside is no reason to discount public transport as a major part of the solution. It 'just' needs to be a preferable option the the car. And no, that doesn't have to mean private transport being unaffordable, just public transport not being shit.
Im waiting until 2015 for my Hoverboard they are the future of travel
But do you actually need three cars – as in, do all three need to be used at any one time?
I'm willing to bet two of the ICE vehicles are not cars.
Bit like here. I have 3 vehicles.
1 is used regular. The other extremely sporadically. The one in regular use can't be replaced with an electric vehicle yet as its main use case can't be satisfied without an hour's walk at the far end - but I'm sure the replacement for it will manage that. The others are used so sporadically that it makes no financial sense to replace with electric.
I may replace one with a twizzy in the medium term if we ever start going back to clients offices.....
I also went down a rabbit hole of buying an old shitrange leaf and getting a company to replace the battery but unless you have the mega bucks you get stuck with shit charging capibilities and still a reasonably shit range. Although in that same rabbit hole I saw a company doing upgrade systems for a twizzy for about 5k to do fast type 2 charging and double the range and horse power......
As for public transport. We are rural and it's actually quite good. 2 busses an hour from the end of the road - half hour walk. How ever they don't go anywhere useful. I rarely want to go to town. To get to the office is 3 busses and 2 hours for a 20 minute journey /45 minute cycle.....want to go to a friend's house....forget it.
In the long term, ICE vehicles will become cherished history like steam engines.
In the short & medium term, a lot of ICE will continue to be used for purposes that EV's don't yet address, like trailers and roof loads, and at the lower priced end of the market. It will be a while before the EV market includes the equivalent of the 10 year old Octavia estate (or the Pug 405 before that).
If personal vehicles really cease to exist, so will mountain biking as currently practiced.
Why is it that in any thread discussing the future someone will make the assertion that the world will be some sort of dystopian nightmare in x number of years?
I’ve been hearing this sort of nonsense for as long as I can remember, yet I see no evidence that life in general is any worse than it was 10, 20 or even 40 years ago.
mentioned this to my teenage daughter who will never be able to afford to buy a house and has spent much of the last year of Uni studies confined indoors cos of the global pandemic that has killed more than 130,000 of her fellow countrymen. She said things must have been really grim in the 70s.
My thoughts on this (as a keen car enthusiast who'd like to buy an old Landrover soon)
90% of people see cars as transport, and status symbols - they don't care how it is fuelled.
All the mums at my kids school currently driving Diesel VolvoXC90s/Discoveries/BMWs would switch to EV without a thought when it becomes a bit more mainstream, and there are more 'normal looking' SUVs and cars available.
I've got a company car - a 190BHP Diesel BMW, which is going in 13 months time - it'll be replaced with an EV - probably an Audi as there are some viable options on the company car list now.
However Industry is miles behind - there are no sensible alternatives to Diesel Tractors/HGVs/Industrial vehicles so they'll be around for a little while yet.
We're currently building diesel powered ships for our Navy which have a 40-50 year life span...
The power distribution and charging infrastructure is years away from being able to support everyone driving an EV - my house only has a 63A supply coming in (rather than the usual 100A) as it was built as a 2 bed retirement bungalow in 1959.
If my wife and i both had EVs we'd struggle to charge both at the same time - especially when our Gas boiler is replaced with Electric...
As for the demise of ICE vehicles - they'll eventually fade to being owned/run by enthusiasts, there will be less petrol/diesel garages but still be 1 or 2 in every town.
I'm 48 and there will still be ICE vehicles on the road at the end of my life - they'll just be brought out on Sundays for car shows/ICE Rallys/etc.
If personal vehicles really cease to exist, so will mountain biking as currently practiced.
I note the Skoda Enyaq is pictured with bikes on a row bar mounted rack.
A lot of charging will have to be slow daytime charging as in a green electric world where PV is a substantial contributor the costs of storage and generation fleet that can run at night will be prohibitive (and slow because network upgrade costs need to be controlled). That means work place rail car park or home charging (or similar).
Fast charging capability will be needed in most vehicles and on trunk roads so you can do a long journey.
As an interesting aside a pedal assist bike will do circa 3000 miles on the same kWh as a car does 100, and needs less road space. A bit of all weather cargo bike thinking and I wonder what big cities are going to be pushing?
Most people's journeys in towns and cities will be mostly in 20mph zones soon - certainly here in Wales. No need for a multi thousand pound saloon car/suv lookalike EV for that - a small golf buggy like piece of kit would do that job. Car manufactures are building EV that look the way people expect cars to look like (and are most profitable for them to make) - not cars that suit the way people live and move.
Of course - its just a small step from small, golf buggy like EV to Cargo bikes for urban transport. Car Manufacturers will continue to spend billions advertising and "lobbying" politicians to make sure people will still want to and be allowed to drive child crushing tanks (albeit EV) on the school run
The present generation looks dubious, but remember milk floats turned into Teslas.
But this is not necessarily a bad thing. £1,000 cars are too cheap, people literally buy them as disposable items. People are not fixing cars because they are cheap, there are too many of them, and they are ‘not worth fixing’ because they’re too cheap. Restrict supply, and suddenly they are worth fixing after all.
Those people who can’t afford £3/4k or whatever it ends up being will have to get to work somehow, so they’ll need PT or bikes. And PT will have to get better. The car market will completely change in 20 years and that means how we own and use them will change too.
Which is fine in a city, however out even in the suburbs it's never going to happen. People buy cheap cars for a reason mainly. Cos they're poor and they need to get to places.
At that price point they are disposable, the longer they last the better for the environment.
Government want us all to buy new cars, they want the VAT. Look at the scrappage scheme even environmental groups where saying its absurd scraping road worthy cars. It was just an exercise to get people spending money.
I read somewhere the greenest car co was Aston Martin as their cars had the longest in service live.
The big damage comes from production. Not the use. Obviously inner city air quality is better with electric but it's still using huge resources to build it.
Also anyone see the article on the Guardian explaining that electric isn't as cheap and will cause us to then be taxed elsewhere...
PS - match the pedal assist speed limit (16mph today I think?) to the urban speed limit (say 20mph) and cars in town start to look like an extinct species much sooner. And even the biggest petrolhead doesn’t enjoy sitting in city centre traffic.
Combine that with a bit of hybrid WFH and city centres might become quite nice places to live.
The big damage comes from production.
I very much doubt that. The bulk of the weight of a car is metal. Non-ferrous metal is expensive and will be recycled. Steel can also be recycled. Steel production produces about 2 tonnes of CO2 per tonnes of steel. Aluminium about 5 tonnes. Recycled material is much lower. So, manufacturing a 1.5 tonne car is probably going to result in 5 to 10 tonnes of CO2 as a ballpark figure.
If a car does 20k per year and gets 10 km/l, that's 2000 litres of petrol per year. For a vehicle that does 200 000 km over its lifetime, you're talking about 20 000 litres of petrol over the lifetime of the car. That's about 15 tonnes of fuel for a vehicle weight of about 1.5 tonnes, so 40 to 50 tonnes of CO2 as a ballpark figure.
Most of the damage from cars comes from driving them, not from making them.
ICE is under huge pressure now. It isnt just the 2030 targets. I work in the commercial motor industry and have quite a bit of info on this countries future plans with regards to LEZ. We are not too worried about them in terms of forcing our customers into EV. I say not too worried, we are terrified because EV MUST happen quickly (I will explain the reasoning) for every manufacturer. The dates and requirements will just force those in dirty polluting older vehicles to upgrade to newer, less poluting Euro 6 vehicles. Still ICE but not quite the huge investment they would need to make to get EV. Our thinking is, how many companies running £5-10k vans for their business will take the leap to £50-60k replacements. More likely to buy another second hand van which is cleaner and reduces LEZ exposure for £10-15k (See availability of used vans 🙁
Right now for the reason we think people WILL have to buy EV. EVERY manufacturer has aN emission target enforced on them. Do you remember the Aston Martin Cygnet? It was a ploy to average out some of their emissions decades ago. Well manufacturers are still playing this game and it has suddenly got to Bankrupt levels of fines.
Take for example any of Mercedes, Ford, VW. They sell shit loads of cars & vans. They even have a decent EV ranges. BUT IT IS NOWHERE NEAR ENOUGH. The same goes for Ford, PSA group, Jag etc etc etc. Basically everyone except Tesla. We are now being told the figures needed are 2:1 ICE/EV.
What these manufacturers have relied upon for the last decade is to PURCHASE tokens from Tesla to counter their numbers. When i say purchase, you are talking hundreds of millions and it is now at breaking point where there are not enough of these tokens to go around, the cost is too much and the fines make it uneconomical to sell ICE vehicles.
There are a few perfect storms hitting at the moment with micro chip shortages, material shortages, covid, brexit etc etc. Lets now throw into the mix manufacturers stating that they will only build the order of ICE vehicles IF it is backed up with 50% of EV product costing double the amount. Dealers are obviously scared shitless. Manufacturers are stock piling these EV product at docks and we will suddenly see ICE vehicle costs go through the roof because it wont just be trying to make the ICE car competitively priced, it will need to take the EV cost into consideration.
Its going to be an interesting future.
Fair point, i was always under the impression they where much carbon heavier in production.
what about the plastics,shipping dealerships and other items.
Do you have any comparisons for an electric car?
does that CO2 figure for steel include mining and transport to foundry?
what about all the other stuff in the car, electric doohickeys, plastics, organic plastics, fabrics, rubbery bits, etc?
The big damage comes from production. Not the use. Obviously inner city air quality is better with electric but it’s still using huge resources to build it.
Whilst BEV production does produce more CO2, you're wildly overstating it. The study at the link found the break even point can be as little as 8,400 miles on the Norway grid, so the first year of use. 13,500 on the US grid and a completely achievable 78,700 in coal rich countries like China/Poland. Even the most pessimistic study I could find has had to reduce their estimate by a factor of 10 since 2019 (down to 67k to 151k km). Bearing in mind grid carbon intensity is going to have to come down very fast by 2030, the production argument isn't the problem so many people think it is.
Electric cars break even point
No they don’t. According to https://www.iea.org/topics/transport shipping emits 0.9 Gt and passenger road vehicles (which admittedly includes buses) 3.6 Gt per year.
https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/cargo-container-shipping-carbon-pollution-114721
Go on we can argue stats all we like. The ignorant love a good stat they've googled to support their argument and we're all ignorant ultimtely...dig around enough and you can find a stat that supports any argument you want to make...my point was that even with the 2030 rules don't expect a massive drop in CO2 emissions.
The push to reduce CO2 is not being led in an intelligent way. Its being led by politicians who are just after soundbites and election winning slogans, and as a result we are targeting the wrong things and not taking a holistic view of things. All that is important is we reduce global CO2 emissions. But those who hate cars are hijacking the cause to justify banning cars. Those who don't like planes are doing the same and so on and so forth and the politicians are pandering to those groups. The result is despite banning all these things we wont reduce CO2 significantly and make the world a worse place overall for everyone.
We haven't learned the lessons from the Kyoto treaty that has ultimately caused more global deaths from worsening air quality thanks to pushing more diesel cars out there, than it can ever save from the threat of climate change from CO2 emissions from cars.
does that CO2 figure for steel include mining and transport to foundry?
what about all the other stuff in the car, electric doohickeys, plastics, organic plastics, fabrics, rubbery bits, etc?
It will all add up, but you're still going to be an order of magnitude smaller than the CO2 produced by driving the car. Aluminium takes a lot of energy to produce. If you just assume the entire car is aluminium, I'm pretty sure you'll overestimate the CO2 from production by a large amount. 1.5 tonnes of aluminium will result in less than 10 tonnes of CO2.
It will all add up, but you’re still going to be an order of magnitude smaller than the CO2 produced by driving the car.
Look at all the stats above, even the ones that disagree with each other, they all are not orders of magnitude less.
as a result we are targeting the wrong things and not taking a holistic view of things
The holistic view is that everything needs to be reduced to meet net zero. The fact that shipping is harder to solve doesn't mean that BEVs won't reduce emissions. I have no idea how you come to that conclusion, unless you're arguing we should all give up cars entirely? They are a much easier win than shipping so absolutely should be part of the first wave of solutions.
they all are not orders of magnitude less.
What I said was "an order of magnitude less". I did not say "orders of magnitude." Most of the car's weight is metal. The rest will be glass and various types of plastic and rubber. Aluminium produces roughly 5 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of aluminium. Steel produces less CO2 than that. If we assume the plastic and rubber are entirely synthetic and are burned at the end of life then that's going to be in the ballpark of burning the same weight of fossil fuel. On top of that, production of rubber and plastic components will produce CO2. So, the worst case scenario would be that the plastic and rubber parts are about as bad as aluminium, but they are much less than half the weight of the vehicle. So, assuming the car is made entirely from aluminium will get you in the ballpark, but overestimate the value because most cars are still mostly made from steel. Compared to the 50 or so tonnes of CO2 the car produces over its lifetime from burning petrol, the CO2 to produce it is going to be about an order of magnitude smaller (i.e. in the ballpark of one tenth). Not two orders of magnitude, not three orders of magnitude. One order of magnitude. That's why I did not say "orders of magnitude", as you misrepresented.
Here are some links to a research paper on the topic. The energy consumption of current vehicle production is roughly an order of magnitude smaller than energy consumption from using them. That will change in the future because future vehicles will have better fuel economy. Battery EVs will probably be quite different, depending on how battery recycling works out.
dig around enough and you can find a stat that supports any argument you want to make
You seem to think that there's no point reducing CO2 emissions from cars because shipping is a bigger problem, and dug out a stat to support that view. Your stat is wrong: shipping is a big problem but cars are a bigger one. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a reliable source of stats and says that shipping produces 9% of transport CO2 emissions.
Come on guys, if you're going to nit-pick and argue on the internet, you need data, lots and lots of data, and stats, all the stats, with sources!
As for Co2 to build a new car, it supposedly varies massively. 6 tonnes for a little basic spec Citroen C1, to a huge 35 tonnes for a LR Disco.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car
The average new car emits 120.1g/km of CO2, 10 years ago it would have be around 140g/km
The average annual mileage (for English drivers anyway) is 7400 miles
https://www.racfoundation.org/motoring-faqs/mobility#a28
Meaning the average car, doing the average mileage produces 1.4 tonnes of Co2 per year.
So if you're driving a C1 it takes 4 and a bit years to produce as much Co2 as used in it's construction (giving now allowance for the fact they're very efficient) for the big old Disco it's 25 years (again, now allowance for the fact they're not as efficient as the little car).
As for EVS, well it supposedly 'costs' 60% more energy / co2 to produce them, but there's no emissions so that's okay right? Not really no. The average co2 cost in the UK is 0.233 kg of CO2e per kWh of electricity. It doesn't matter if you buy only renewable energy, you're not really, it's horse trading, you get what you get and the only think that matters is the average.
So to fill up a Ioniq 5's 77Kwh battery it will cost 17kgs of Co2, and it'll do 200 miles in, near ideal circumstances. 10 years and 74000 miles (estimated lifespan) it'll produce 6.29 tonnes of Co2 at the power station and at a guess 45 tones in it's production, call it 50 for arguments sake.
The little C1 will produce 20 tonnes in the same period / mileage.
The LR, assuming it'll produce twice as much co2 driving as the C1, say 63 tonnes.
Here's the thing though, if the current EVs are as bad as 10 year old Leafs are now, then they're really not much use after 10 years.
With ICE cars, even though the average lifespan is only around 10 years, there's no reason why it should be. If you really care about Co2 and honestly, money, then you don't go out and buy a new Tesla 3, or Ioniq5 or whatever, you buy a 10 year old C1 for buttons, you look after it, keep it maintained and drive it for another 10 years, in which time it will produce another 10-14 tonnes of Co2.
It varies where you live as well, frankly if all I cared about was global warming and renewable resources, here in Wales I'd be better of driving around in an old V12 Jag doing 8mpg than buying a new Tesla. Despite a wind farm on every hillside, our energy production is some of the dirtiest in the UK.
With ICE cars, even though the average lifespan is only around 10 years
It's not though. It's quite a lot higher and seems to be increasing.
https://www.smmt.co.uk/industry-topics/sustainability/average-vehicle-age/
I suspect we overestimate the difficulty in transitioning to alternative fuels.
Policy definitely has a part to play, but the attractive economics of making and selling EVs is proving to be driving the market at amazing speed. As mentioned above, retooling for ICE manufacturing basically stopped three years ago and EV production is ramping at an amazing rate.
In terms of the charging infrastructure and the grid capacity, as the market builds volume there will be no shortage of willing vendors, in turn driving competition and efficiency.
It baffles me that people think that the installation of widespread charging infrastructure is an impossibility, yet in the 40s and 50s infrastructure to drill, refine, ship, store and pump a highly flammable liquid around the world was entirely achievable. All it takes is the promise of profit!
It baffles me that people think that the installation of widespread charging infrastructure is an impossibility
The question is the economics, not the technical feasibility. Somebody will have to pay for it. Then, in a few years time, some new technology will be better so it will all have to be dug up and replaced. That will probably happen a few times before the technology matures.
Taking a step back and looking at a typical residential street private car ownership makes no sense at all - why are we manufacturing all these things that spend most of the time doing nothing?
The other aspect of driving that feels a bit ridiculous is all the separate 'boxes' travelling down the motorway at very slightly different speeds.
Self driving cars and widespread club/rental schemes may offer some solutions. I could imagine a future where an app allows you to summon a fully-charged vehicle to your front door within 5 minutes. Choice of type or sizes depending on what you need it for, with per mile or hour pricing accordingly.
On the motorway vehicles would 'talk' to each other, allowing them to drive safely in convoy, hence maximising efficiency (wind resistance). This would also likely increase the capacity of our roads, as the speed could be controlled to minimise those stop-start jams that don't have any particular cause...
I'm not convinced it will happen mind, particularly the first point. There are lot of vested interests involved in selling us new stuff (also see gravel bikes and 29ers). 🙂