So they wanna bet against exponential worldwide growth!? Good luck, boomers.
For the people that have a hard time reading the text in the graph:
- Global BEV & PHEV Sales ('000s)
- (green) Battery Electric Vehicles
- (blue) Plug-in Hybrids
- (red) EV Market Share
- 2013 - 2014 - 2015 - 2016 - 2017 - 2018 - 2019 - 2020 - 2021 - 2022
They are digging their own grave.
Jesus Christ… You still have ten fucking years to go all electric. So instead of lamanting get to fucking work!
Many companies have expertise producing things, which are not needed at all in EVs. That means switching industries or let the company die and make as much money in the meantime as possible. Given how difficult it is to switch industries, many choose the later option. For them complaining is just logical.
Also oil companies.
The same was true for steam engines, they were not forbidden but the companies that only complained still went bankrupt.
The reason steam engines went went away was because of economics. Electric motors where more powerful, more efficient, fewer moving parts and less maintenance, can power up instantly and don’t need to heat up a boiler for an hour before it’s ready - so in short cheaper to run.
The problem I see with EVs in germany is that electricity costs are already high, and with extra fees on fast charging the price advantage is not there compared to petrol - at least not if you rely on public charging and don’t have a solar roof at home.
An EV is at 15-20kWh/100km so with 0.3€/kWh we are talking 4.5-6€/100km. Average petrol car is at 7.7l/100km. With prices of 1.6€/l we are talking 12.3€/100km. So about twice as much as an EV for home charging. With fast charging it would be about the same. The electric motor being less problematic is also true against a combustion engine. It should last longer, if built properly.
Also the reason EVs are more expensive is that there is a lack of cheap batteries. We currently see a lot of factories being built. This means lower battery prices and therefore lower EV prices. Some of the offers of BYD and the like are already very good.
I drive electric in Germany and I wish the price is what you claim. On a public charger it is >0,5€/kWh.
It’s up to >0,8€/kWh when they pull a quick one and charge you out of network prices - which is a constant danger when driving long distance.
It’s almost as bad as mobile roaming used to be before the EU stepped in. I’m not planning to go back but the pricing is fucked up. The price schemes need to be regulated.
Those are home charging prices.
I’m aware. Comparing home prices to gas stations is apples & pears though. Especially since most people won’t be able to charge at home.
Did you so far only drive short distance/commute or did you get to ‘enjoy’ the pricing schemes on fast chargers?
But the price difference is not so extreme that people would scrap their petrol car for an new 20000 Euro or more EV overnight. It’s only important for people who drive a lot.
No, but it means that as soon as EVs and combustion engine cars cost the same, people will choose EVs. We are pretty close to that point.
I have been looking into this as I’d like to switch. My current car needs roughly 6.5 liters of gas per 100km, gas where I live is around 1.70-1.80€/l, that’s around 11-11.70€/100km Somewhat reasonable EVs of similar size need something between 17-20 kWh/100 km, so break even should be between 55 - 68 cents/kWh.
Electricity at home is around 40 cents, so no solar roof required to save at least some money. (It’s actually more like 30-35 cents if you remember that you need to pay the monthly baseline anyway since you need power for your home).
Public charging heavily depends on the owner of the charger, but you can find AC charging below 60 cents. (I hope we’ll get some regulation against roaming costs between different companies at some point).
Fast charging is expensive and it depends on the individual use case if you need a lot of that. But gas on the highway is more expensive too, especially during holiday season (when a lot of people take longer trips).
But it’s true that the advantage isn’t as obvious as it should be, especially compared to the up front costs.
Ok do you know a single person that relies on public charging for their ev? Cuz I don’t.
And do you think this is sustainable if we acknowledge the need to reach net 0 carbon?
How?
Who said that this is fine in general? The argument that electric vehicles are not competitive with petrol cars in Germany IF you use public charging stations only is kind of irrelevant if in reality 90% of charging cycles are done at home.
Of course it’s relevant. We need people who can’t charge at home (the vast majority) to switch to EVs.
They did a long time ago. This is in fact a fight between the actual producers that want (and demanded for years) those legal guidelines and a mass of small specialised suppliers that didn’t care to (or actually couldn’t) change anything about their business model.
Most EVs still cost 10-20K more than their conventional counterparts. Most working class people simply cannot afford an EV, end of story. It has very little to do with “choice” and “awareness” or whatever.
Working class people rarely can afford new cars anyway and this ban targets initial registrations, not the already existing market of second hand cars.
Which is why I really hate that our local companies took so long to enter the EV market. Viable EVs are slowly entering the second hand market but it’s still a long way away from the combustible market.
I just need an affordable family wagon.
this.
Most EVs still cost 10-20K more than their conventional counterparts.
Which is entirely bullshit and partly caused by misplanning proper production numbers and mostly by just plain anti-EV propaganda that unneccessarily reduces demand by making you believe in actual desinformation.
From an economical perspective we knew for many years that EVs are actually cheaper once batteries fall under ~100$/kWh… Now go lookup battery costs…
Spoiler
~60$/kWh
And alas EVs are actually cheaper already (or are we trying to pretend that people -in particular those struggling to pay the costs- are paying them with available cash and not already financing them over years?).
You need a bigger calculator.
Sure, the purchase price is somewhat higher, but if you look at all the costs in the lifespan of the vehicle, the EVs are cheaper.
Working class people can’t afford not to buy EVs.
End of story? Where is the fucking story?
The car companies need to make them more affordable.
I think we should be aware of the framing the car industry has successfully introduced here.
The car industry and conservative politicians keep ranting about the “combustion ban” and proclaim that we should remain “technologically open” when in fact the opposite is true.
The regulations do not ban a specific technology nor do they codify which technology to use.
They just set emission targets. Car makers can use any technology that meets these targets. If they invent a miracle combustion engine without emissions they are free to build it.Imho, we should not follow their framing and whenever someone talks about keeping combustion engines we should immediately change the narrative to whether or not we want to keep emissions and only talk about emission no matter how often they try to derail the discussion with their talk about technology.
But there’s a big difference between polluting emissions, and greenhouse gas emissions. So far, CO2 hasn’t been considered anything but a harmless byproduct but it’s one of the main drivers of global warming. So unless there’s a combustion engine that does not produce that (maybe hydrogen-based?)…
And the car/petrol industry has systematically ignored these things for decades. It would have been possible to build more sustainable cars that consume less than half the fuel, decades ago. Or invest into alternatives (hydrogen, electricity etc.).
And now they’re whining.
There is a ICE fuel that does not produce co2, at least considering the whole fuel cycle, it’s called biofuel and it’s already used by half a century in some places like Brazil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel
In general, biofuels emit fewer greenhouse gas emissions when burned in an engine and are generally considered carbon-neutral fuels as the carbon emitted has been captured from the atmosphere by the crops used in production.
That does not mean they do not produce CO2 when burned, sorry.
edit:
The very next sentence in that wikipedia article:
However, life-cycle assessments of biofuels have shown large emissions associated with the potential land-use change required to produce additional biofuel feedstocks. The outcomes of lifecycle assessments (LCAs) for biofuels are highly situational and dependent on many factors including the type of feedstock, production routes, data variations, and methodological choices.
As you said. This CO2 is “harmless”. For the atmosphere it does not add any more co2 than it existed, since you are releasing the one was captured by the crop.
So it does not create more greenhouse gas emissions.
That’s what you meant on your first post. You don’t care about local emissions, but global overall emissions of CO2, sorry.
No, but in contrast to fossil fuel, burning them does not add to the amount of co2 in the atmosphere
So far, CO2 hasn’t been considered anything but a harmless byproduct but it’s one of the main drivers of global warming.
I mostly agree with you but “so far” is pretty generous considering that the effects of CO2 as a greenhouse gas has been known for over a century.
Talking about car emission regulations here, and in that context “so far” is correct.
In Germany, when we read news like these, we say “ich kann gar nicht so viel essen wie ich kotzen möchte”, and I think that’s beautiful.
Why do German car companies act like the EU is a major oil producer? Have they secretly found a massive well in Bavaria that they are keeping secret?
They think that their combustion engines are the best out there. But for electric, they really are not special… so they will loose a unique sales point
Car companies are pathetically clinging to the past, who would have known? Unfortunately, that fits with our conservative “we wanna stay car centric” government that people somehow still voted for.
The best way out for them is to delay any switch to EV’s. As far as I know, their current plan is to sell “hybrid” motors, which are said to burn both gasoline and hydrogen.
Hydrogen is a fuel with a future - maybe in shipping with the fixed routes and general incompatibility with batteries - but in the context of cars it’s not economical (at scale) and they know that. So 99% of the time, those hybrid motors will drive on gasoline, because who would pay 10 times the amount for something only available at a select few stations.
But if they sell those hybrid motors as a 0 emission alternative, they can keep selling something that’s basically a combustion engine as long as the gas station network still exists, while blaming the rising emissions on consumer preference and bleeding the government dry with hydrogen subsidies in the wrong sector.
SHOCK NEWS! Companies founded on thing ask for ban on thing to be reversed.
The actually shocking thing is that this NEWS is a lie told a million times already and we still pretend that it’s true.
In fact the actual car industry is begging for clear guidelines for years and for the most part loudly advocating for a stop of this useless discussion as they WANT to have a stable basis for their planning.
It’s a mass of (often small) suppliers that refused for years to change anything and are now finally seeing the wall they are heading for.
Of course Mercedes and BMW want to have the combustion ban reversed.
Really bad idea. To be fair the German car industry is hit hard by it. Not as much the actual car makers, but the suppliers. When you produce say crankshafts moving to EVs is much harder. With falling car sales numbers in Europe and EVs taking market share they really have a problem. That btw is a big reason, why Germany has such a bad economy right now.
However EVs are the future and giving those companies a few more years is certain to doom the ones, which can survive. When you look at EV sales you find many German car companies doing pretty well. With the combustion engine industry in a death spiral, the lobbying work is going to decrease as well.
I think if you postpone de deadline to 2040 the same companies will have the same complaints
Yep. Rinse and repeat until you have to do it anyhow. Except the ecosphere is dying meanwhile.
And keep claiming you’re actually on the people’s side on this.
German car makes rely on exports, and a lot of other countries are much more electric car friendly, or will ban the sale of petrol cars soon. They are already late to the EV market; if they delay till 2040 then they wont be able to sell any cars overseas anymore and will have to close factories.
They have been lobbying for this for years now. Not that I think it’s good, but it’s not so new. It’s an ongoing attempt.
Especially since changing the law needs a qualified majority to do so. So 55% of the countries with 65% of the population voting for changing the law. As the article stated, not even the German government is currently willing to do so, as the social democrats want to keep it.
People who profit from Climate change are against rules to slow down climate change
more news at 10
I don’t know about other working class people but I live paycheck to paycheck. The only vehicles in my price range are like 3k 15 yr old beaters. Ain’t no way I could put a down payment on an EV let alone a loan.
Those old cars will not be hit by the ban though. It’s only about new cars and initial registrations. Calling this generally an ICE ban is masterful lobby propaganda.
