Electric cars.

If you can - there are a LOT of people in the UK now that cannot afford to own their own home and are therefore at the behest of landlords as to what can and can't be installed onto their homes; that is before the question of positioning is taken into account as some homes simply face the wrong way to make good use of solar panels, and then for those that can there is the cost of installation as well.

To be fair to Merc and even other premium marques, they are often no more expensive to repair. My mum is running a Peugeot and it is proving to be more expensive (and less reliable) than my Jag. The point is not regarding marque, but more the technologies involved - it is all well and good saying that a car won't need an exhaust (usually only fitted ever 10 or so years anyway) but that cost is simply transferred to other components such as regulators etc.

Yes, mandated - from 2035 only electric cars will be sold new in the UK. Of course, they are not going to scrap the other ones at that point so there will still be ICE cars running after that point - - what they will do, however, is ramp up the costs on ICE cars to 'encourage' people to make the change (that is hard-lefty-speak for force ) without any regard to people's circumstances.

My own fairly recent car history saw me go for a diesel which at the time were being given tax breaks and a bit of a push as being green, only for me to pay three years on a deal that should have saw me sitting with a couple of grand equity at the end of the fourth year - - then along came the VW emissions scandal and then the subsequent vilification of diesel and values tanked. That was followed by an announcement that the ULEZ zone in London was being extended outward by quite a margin and I then learned that I was going to be hit for £12.50 per day just to run the car that I had lost literally thousands on. I heaved it and walked away.

After coming out of hospital, I couldn't find something petrol that was suitable and affordable, so decided to stick two fingers up and bought a 4.2 V8 Jag. That was fun whilst it lasted, but it was asking a lot in running repairs and fuel, so had to go really - - the current one is a diesel, albeit Euro 6 so exempt for the ULEZ charge... for now, but which sort of car do you think is next in line to be clobbered? That is the reason why I didn't wed myself fully to a car and went on more of a lease type deal where I can walk away at the end of the term if I so wish. I looked at hybrids, I even looked at electrics but they were simply too expensive.

That may well be the case, but a lightbulb is significantly different to a car. For a start, you have a place to plug a lightbulb in, in almost every room in your home and the socket is the same be that bulb an incandescent, compact fluorescent or LED. What of folks that do not have driveways and cannot park outside their homes for example? I can think of many, many streets not all that far from me that are lined with homes like that and that is before we get to blocks of flats etc.

Electric cars are great and they are still improving at a rate of knots whilst also prices are becoming keener, but they are not the panacea they are being made out to be - - the real trouble is, that is it exactly the same as everything else nowadays.... things have become like a religion, cultish almost and if you are one of the ones that dare to speak out negatively or highlight the pitfalls against said cult, you are an outcast. Oddly, not enough of an outcast that they will refuse your money in taxation to pay for it all, but an outcast none the less.

 

There's nothing wrong with postulating an alternate world where things came about differently (I'm a sci-fi fan ) but most people are just trying to manage to get by in the current world.

I'm one of your target group that own my house (sorry, no garage ) but am also in the group that we spoke about earlier that don't want to pay more than necessary for what I get (utilities etc.).

EV's are still too expensive for me to wish to buy one and I have serious doubts as to whether we could generating enough electricity to cope with a fully EV society. Being able to produce electricity in sufficient quantities, and cleanly, is still a long way off.

If we're talking about trying to protect the environment then a good way to do that is to ban mobile phones! They are one of the most polluting elements in the world today. Another complete topic in itself .

Of course, these things aren't mutually exclusive but there are many other things that could be looked at more deeply.

 

There will be many that won't benefit or even be able to cope with electrification as there isn't the charging infrastructure available to them. Yes, it will get better, of that I have no doubt but there is substantial cost and work to be done along the way and in cities such as London that will also be very difficult (nigh on impossible) to do.

It is law - a ban on the sale of ICE cars from 2030 - Government takes historic step towards net-zero with end of sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 - it was initially 2035, but that was brought forward. So nine years from now. However, let's not lose sight of the fact that there will be further forcing of that in some parts of the country (London, Bristol, Manchester, Edinburgh being prime bets) so I suspect that we will see diesels effectively banned (or taxed so heavily they are simply not viable) within the M25 by 2028 and petrols following by 2032 or so. It could be argued that things won't be delayed quite as much because we are not having to deal with the EU (as demonstrated by the roll out of Covid vaccines), but fully accepted that we are dealing with politicians both locally and nationally and they do little more than lie and cheat their way through life.

Maybe not 20 years unless for the enthusiasts/historical collectors - the life cycle of day to day cars is ten years and as mentioned previously, hands will be forced via taxation to eliminate them.

When looking at my most recent car, I gave serious consideration to a electric or PHEV - the cost of installing the required charging infrastructure in my driveway varied wildly depending on what I was wanting to charge but was at a minimum almost £1000. I am lucky, my landlord would allow me to do this (at my cost) and I have a driveway to allow it but many do not. The main point was that to change a lightbulb type all you do is unscrew one and screw in another -- no costs involved)

The streets may be lined with lamps where you are, but that is quite often not the case here in the UK. The street I live in for example has sparse lighting at best, down one side of the street. Approximately ten years ago, our council installed new lighting (fluorescent) and then around a year or so later it was decided that they should be LED - we are still waiting for that change years on. Furthermore, the wiring supplying those street lights would be wholly incapable of supplying sufficient power to charge numerous vehicles. Whilst this infrastructure can be changed, the costs involved in doing so are not inconsiderable and that raises the question of who pays?

I am not coming at this without experience - one of my sites at work was one of the first to be fully electric in London; the costs to our business was over £1.5m and that saw us restricted to being able to charge only at night. To allow us capacity to charge during the day a further £1.2m would have been required. That is just one bus garage of 98 vehicles - - there are almost 8000 buses in London. We are about to electrify a further two sites again at vast cost, but there are other sites which we will not currently be doing as the cost to do so is simply prohibitive - the work to do those two sites will take approximately 6 months.

This is a fairly typical street, not all that far from me - Google Maps

Where would you put the charging infrastructure there? What potential damage to the tree roots in doing so? What of the density of power required in a street like that? Sure, not all of the cars will be charging at the same time, but even 50% would be a significant amount of juice. For those who are in a situation like that, or live in flats for example, are they to be discriminated against by being forced to pay an inflated price/subscription to charge their car street-side whilst those like me who have a driveway enjoy cheaper overnight tariffs? For the record, the houses in those streets are not cheap either - at least £700k.

We have railway lines in this country that are not yet electrified and have even had electrification programs put back or cancelled. By their very nature, railways are highly controlled environments that follow a fixed path, require little in the way of planning permission, can be closed at will and for however long it takes as well as being virtually free of restrictions to clear vegetation and trees - - yet we have not succeeded in electrifying all of those yet. We haven't even successfully managed to get high speed broadband rolled out properly across the country yet, but yet we are to believe we will have all the requisite infrastructure in place for everyone to stop buying fossil fuelled cars in just nine years??

I agree, an ignorance to the benefits is hugely frustrating, however to have someone's views/beliefs simply imposed upon you and mandated by law without any debate or openness to discussion is not how it should be - - it is where we are however and it is very sad indeed. It seems those of us who are able to say "I can see x, y and z that is good about this but I don't agree with a, b and c" simply get shouted down because we don't agree - - yet those who worship the current trend won't even consider that there is anything to consider from the other viewpoint. The feeling that yours is the correct view does not give you the right to force that view on someone else -- by all means persuade them, show them or encourage them, but force?

Indeed, it would be bizarre - but then, the same could be said of bicycles. Can you imagine a world full of cars, vans and lorries and coming along and saying "I have this new invention.... you sit on top of a frame with two wheels, nothing around you to protect you or anything and you power it yourself which means you move slower than everything else around you".

 

There is no street lighting where I am but I'm outside the village. The village is a reasonable size with a population of 2,000 - and no street lights! Where would people charge their cars?

Infrastructure needs to be in place before bringing in a ban on ICE. I can't see them hitting their 2030 target. An unattainable aspiration if they think they can persuade people to abandon ICE vehicles. Public transportation is almost non-existent around here -one bus per day to the nearest town and no bus to the nearest rail station two miles away.

 

In some respects, I think having it pushed is a good thing - it will make folks think to see if an electric car does fit them and every one that does helps bring the prices down and helps the technology advance. However, I do think the same as you @shiney that the target is unrealistic and has been done with a very London-centric view and also with rose-tinted glasses on.

There are so many things we could and should be doing ahead of this, but seem to be completely ignored.

 

All I will say is that Crossrail - one railway project across London is currently two years overdue to complete and massively overbudget. One project. Yet we are to expect infrastructure the length and breadth of the country for electric cars in nine years? My backside.