UK rags love to hate on EVs!

Sure what else is new 😬

Not just the UK gutter press, seen a lot of negativity coming from Irish news outlets, including RTE

The electric car ‘revolution’ is a disaster before it’s begun (telegraph.co.uk)

Good points though in it, like VW cutting production because of a demand problem

Volkswagen to cut electric car production in Germany as demand slumps | This is Money

Autogiants are being dragged kicking and screaming into making EV's, they'd rather sell you a petrol and that's just a fact now

EVs are not zero maintenance, but they are much, much lower maintenance than ICE vehicles. This is a problem for the distribution channel; a dealer who sells you an EV isn't creating an opportunity for himself to secure a significant future earning stream servicing the vehicle, because they don't require a lot of servicing.

Paper never refused ink and you do get some EV bashing on UK papers but the three articles in the OP are not really that bad.

Nadine Dorries is mainly complaining about the charging network. Surprise surprise she is happier in a Land Rover PHEV than a Zoe EV. So would I be in her situation.

The one about road damage is based on University of Leeds research and is part of an ongoing discussion about weight of vehicles.

As one would expect from Rowan Atkinson his article is balanced and thoughtful. Of the three it is most worthy of recommendation.

The VW plant shutting is because very few in Germany want an Ev and thats Vws main market (ouside of china).

I went for a late evening walk round the block yesterday (in Germany). I wanted to see if my local chargers were actually available for once and on my way tried to count how many Evs were about. I found 1 Tesla opposite the charger, and 3 probable plug in Hybrids at the chargers, and 2 cars with "E" regs elsewhere but again likely plug in Hybrids. On the rest of my wander 100s of petrol or diesel cars, parked at the side of streets with no chargers, except those 6 which were half blocked.

I live in the city with allegedly the highest per capita electric car ownership, and you can barely find an electric car, or a place to charge the buggers. That sortof tells a tale why VW has to wind down production.

What's this carbon neutral fuel going to be made from? The one I've seen before was for aviation fuel and as that would require more land to be used than is used for food production it's a non runner unless they reduce aviation by >90%

Are you familiar with the mathematical concept of powers? To the power two is usually refered to as exponential. To the power three is the cubed law - things like the rapid fall of in sound volume with distance or the amount of energy drop off from a radiating source like a radio antannae or light from the Sun.

The road damage relationship to vehicle weight is far more extreme; it's a 4th power relationship.

A tractor driving past a rural house once, would cause more damage to the road surface than a years commuting by the occupant of the house. When EVs become the norm, roads are going to require a lot more maintainance.

The maths nerd in me has to point out that the power of 2 is not referred to as exponential - exponential is where the variable is in the exponent. Also the drop off in radiating power is in proportion to the square of the distance between emitter and receiver. This is called the Inverse Square Law - nothing cubic about it.

Have no idea what this 4th power rule is though between the relationship of road damage and weight so wont comment on it - but if you have some details send it on

Thanks - that fourth power rule looks like an interesting engineering approximation - but just to make sure that we are all grounded that would mean that an eV is twice as hard on the road surface as a diesel equivalent.

For example an eNiro 64Kwh weights 1787 Kg while the Niro 1.6 GDi weighs 1494Kg - so ( 1787/1494) ^ 4 = 2.04

Just in case it was missed, there was a response to the Rowan Atkinson article:

theguardian 23/jun/08/ fact-check-why-rowan-atkinson-is-wrong-about-electric-vehicles (I'm not allowed to post links apparently but search engine that and you should get to it)

This is the link, thanks for the heads up.

I have for a long time thought non commercial vehicle taxation should be largely based on weight. This would have kept the SUV plague in check. SUVs and heavy and stiff EV's like Teslas, while reducing injuries and death to their occupants, increase the injuries and deaths of the occupants in other vehicles in accidents where the other vehicle is lighter.

This has probably increased the road toll above what it would have been if non commercial passenger vehicles had been of more similar weight, such as in the 70's. An SUV/car crash of moderate+ severity, is more likely to result in the death of occupant/s in the car, wheras if they had been of more similar weight, the occupants in both would have survived.

There are people who buy SUVs solely because they believe they better protect their children, and they would be correct, but in a crash with a car also containing children, they are buying their own children's safety and continued existence with the severity of injuries and lives of other people's children. That to me is an unacceptable currency.

It's completely unconscionable and governments have ignored and allowed this immorality to proliferate unchecked, leading to a sort of vehicular arms race of weight and size.

Non commercial passenger vehicle road taxation as a 4th power of the vehicle weight would have done more for the environment, emissions and human benefit, than EV's ever will.

The whole NCAP tetsing mania is incredibly flawed and I think partialy to blame. Most vehicle accidents don't involve them smashing into a commercial buildings reinforced loading dock, and only the test dummies in the tested vehicle are shown. If you had NCAP videos of an SUV or Tesla ploughing into a Fiat 500 and the consequence for both sets of dummies, something probably would have been done politically along the lines of my suggestion, a long time ago.

I disagree with a few points of this.

Heavy does not mean safe, and there are plenty of heavy, unsafe cars and SUVs. I accept that compacts aren't as safe, but lets be honest, these are city cars and are not designed for motorway miles and speeds, and the standard Paddy spec omits driver assist features. The Irish Govt has incentivised their purchase through low tax rates and low running costs, so they're very popular in this country.

Second, if I'm buying a car to protect myself and my family, I want the car to prioritize my safety over the safety of other road users. Call me selfish, but that's what I'm paying for. It shouldn't be my concern that the other driver is in a more unsafe car.

Finally, road deaths are on average decreasing as cars and roads get safer, though 1 in 5 car deaths is still down to not using a seatbelt.

You might prioritise the lives of your family over the lives of other road users — who wouldn't? But there's no reason why we (i.e. the community atlarge) should prioritise the lives of your family over the lives of other road users. So when it comes to things like safety standards, road and vehicle tax structures, etc, it's unrealistic and unreasonable to expect them to prioritise the lives (or interests) of car buyers and their families over the lives (or interests) of others.

I think your first paragraph has been and continues to fuel endless discussion and argument on this forum and elsewhere. The most important word there is 'many'. Yes for many ICE is and will continue to be more convenient technology but for others EVs are more convenient, e.g. if they have home charging. So it's not a one option suits all situation despite what a lot of people on either side will spend countless posts trying to argue.

The latest thinking on carbon neutral fuel is.....

1) produce hydrogen from renewable energy

2) capture c02.

3) combine the c02 and the hydrogen to create a synthetic fuel that can go straight into a petrol or diesel.

The idea is that the c02 produced by a diesel running on synthetic will be removed from the environment when you take it out again when producing the efuel

Funny enough, a 3 series sedan is only 12cm lower than a Tuscon.

I was merely addressing the land use issue - ie efuels is no longer using food production land in the way older biofuel thinking was doing.

On the wider EV debate.

I'm increasingly noticing a trend where EV criticism seems based on an assumption that EV tech will never evolve from what's there today....

But alternatives to EV are promoted on big assumptions of superb progress on the development of those alternatives.

You also see people talk of.....

"EVs costing 80 grand" when BYD and MG are delivering usable cars for 30 k.

"1 hour to charge a car for 150 miles" when 1 hours total en route charging takes a long range Model 3 600 miles plus.

"Let's ignore what Tesla do" because it doesn't fit the narrative.

This. The figures used to claim "SUVs kill the bees hurr durr" by most of the eco headbangers (such as those vandalising 'SUVs' in Dublin recently) are hugely influenced by American massive yokes spewing out vast quantities of fumes. These bear little relation to the far cleaner crossovers so popular in Europe (often erroneously called SUVs, even by their own publicity) which are in fact simply taller standard cars. Take the best selling Tucson which at 4.5m long is similar to a bog standard hatchback.

Yep if your privileged to have a nice house with a driveway in a good neighbourhood, EV's are great, charge while your sleep, how nice.

If your one of the 56% of Europeans that live in flats with no driveway, it's a pain in the hole.

Currently. It’s not an insurmountable problem with no possible solutions.

I'll believe it when I see it..

I think basically to translate what Toyota are saying is that we cannot make good full electric cars at the moment so all you customers would be far better to buy one of our self charging hybrids...😋