Electric cars.

A bit terrible for anyone nearby if the fuel tank gets bust open in an accident.

 

But its not much fun if its petrol either.

 

True. And petrol stinks a bit if a spills out, but it generally doesn't vaporise immediately and burn the eyes, throat and lungs of anyone close enough to get a whiff of it.

 

No but it's pretty explosive.

 

New car registrations for February in the UK, show a 14% increase compared to last year and the best February for new registrations in 20 years, with 84,886 new car registrations.

UK new car registration data, UK car market - SMMT

Even though there was an increase in new registrations of BEV's, this was driven by fleet and car rental firms, new registrations for BEV's to private buyers decreased by 17%.

In Germany, there was 217,388 new car registrations in February with BEV's accounting for 27,479, a decline of 15.4% compared to Feb 2023, What is interesting, Diesel powered cars are making a comeback, the same as Ireland. There was a 9.7% increase in Diesel car registrations in Germany, accounting for 42,153 new cars.

Electric Car Registrations February 2024 (Charts) - ecomento.de

 

Another electric malfunction.
Electric Jaguar rammed off road by police after brakes fail in 90mph ‘terror ride’

 

To be fair though, rare incidents of this nature aren't unique to electric cars. I remember a fairly high profile news piece years ago about something similar happening in a BMW, with it's perfectly ordinary ICE engine and servo assisted disk breaks. There were questions at the time, like why didn't the driver just put it into neutral. Apparently he tried that, but he couldn't. I tried to Google to see if I could find the news article for years ago. I googled 'BMW throttle stuck open' and a few variations on that, but all that came up was loads of forum entries from people who'd had near misses and minor accidents due to the throttle getting stuck open, but I didn't find the story of the bloke trying to handle his out of control speeding BMW.

 

What's the chances of the throttle sticking at the same time as the brakes not working.
I've got a clutch.

 

The news article I was thinking about from years ago featured an automatic, so no clutch. There'll have been brakes of course, but I think they brakes would rapidly overheat and fail when fighting against a determined engine with it's throttle stuck open.

 

That's why I pointed out I have a clutch.

 

New car registration figures for March have been released, new car registrations were 317,786 a 10.4% increase compared to March 2023, still well below pre-covid numbers when 458,054 new cars were registered in March 2019.

New registrations of PHEV saw the biggest growth with a 36.7% increase, followed by HEV 19.6%, Petrol 9.2%, BEV's 3.8% and Diesel with a -2.7% decline. The market share for BEV's for March is 15.2% a drop of 1% compared to March 2023.

March 2024 New Car Registrations - SMMT Media Centre

The sales of BEV's in Ireland dropped by 41.1% in March compared to March of 2023

New Car Registrations: 16% Decrease in March 2024 | SIMI

Tesla figures for the first quarter show a decline of 9% compared to the first quarter of 2023.

Tesla slams into reverse as sales fall for first time in four years: £20bn wiped off value of electric car firm (msn.com)

Seems like the sales of BEV's has lost it's charge and is going in to reverse.

 

We could end up like Cuba in a few years time, all running around in patched up old cars because nobody wants the only new ones you can get.