Electric cars.

Vauxhall are part of FCA (Stellantis) now, hence me mentioning them being a behemoth. GM shot their boot completely off by selling off Vauxhall/Opel, essentially removing themselves from the European markets.

 

That is the thing that many folk really don't like here, is that it is all being done by force/mandate and at the same time, a lot of questions are simply going without answer. There is little opportunity to have grown up conversations about people's very real concerns and the risks involved as there is an almost cult like evangelism surrounding EV's. Don't get me wrong, there are some EV's that are quite likeable - the real issue is that a lot of the sums and promises do not add up in reality (I have first hand of that on a fairly grand scale)

 

Only the brand name - purchased out of the ashes by a Chinese company. Can't say I am a fan of the MG4, odd looking thing.. much prefer a Kia EV6 or Hyundai Ioniq 5

 

That is where Ford have really gone wrong - first, they didn't have any real plan for electric, but at the same time also started to reduce their engine manufacture (presumably because they knew the mandates that were looming) - they tried to follow the pack with SUV's and to be fair the likes of the Kuga seemed to to a fairly good job of it, but their styling folks seemed to lose any form of imagination and they just started churning out fairly generic stuff and hoped that by slapping well known model names like Puma, Capri and Mustang that the cache of those models would carry them through. Worse still, the engines that they started fitting (EcoBoost, or EcoBoom as they are known in the trade) are little more than a liability for the customer. I know of someone who paid £1700 for a timing belt to be done, much earlier than it was due, simply to try and get some peace of mind. I was speaking to someone last week who had a Transit, 28000 miles and the engine grenaded leaving him at the side of the road and subsequently £7k worse off to replace the engine. He had signed on the dotted for a new Mercedes having traded the Transit in and understandably vows never to touch Ford ever again.

As for the MG - it isn't the MG of old, but in fairness neither was the Rover MG's that we were seeing in the latter years. They are 'budget' and those that have them seem to like them, which is all that matters. I, personally, don't like them but it is horses for courses.

Ioniq 5 is pronouced like iconic but remove the first c...

 

Therein lies part of the discussions that need to be had - yes, it is feedstock for so many things including plastics, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics amongst others; all of the raw materials for these come off as various fractions from the oil thereby making each fraction economical to produce. If there is a mass reduction in consumption of the gasoline and diesel/heavy oil, the other fractions will have to 'absorb' the cost - so the cost of all of those will rise; plus, the unused fractions will no longer have a market to sell them, so how will they be used?

Will oil use reduce? Almost certainly. Will there be any positive impact on the environment? Maybe at a local level, but overall doubtful especially given the number of coal fired power stations China is opening to allow them to produce goods to sell to those of us who are being daft enough to financially hang ourselves. Is electric the solution? No - it is part of it, but I don't believe it is the only solution. Those other solutions will never be found here in Europe however, as we've been too busy tying ourselves up in legislation and signalling our virtue to be able to afford to innovate. The other solutions will come from China, South Korea and Japan.

 

I don't think we will, purely because we've painted ourselves into a position of reliance rather than one where we can be competitive.

 

For a car costing north of £115k, I would expect it to do well. From CarWow:



Therein is the current problem - to be able to afford EV, you are being boxed into something like an MG as anything else is not affordable.