Govt. electric car plans - effect on us

[malcolm]

The government plans that from 2040, you will only be able to buy new electric cars. Sales of new petrol and diesel cars will be banned. There are no plans currently to ban existing petrol or diesel cars by then.

So, this could mean that values of second hand petrol cars goes up, as you can't get new ones.
Or, there could be major tariffs on anyone using petrol in towns, so second hand values go down.
Could be that petrol becomes incredibly expensive, or even unavailable. Can't see Shell keeping thousands of stations open for E Type club members.

Thoughts? Other impacts?

[mgcjag]

Hi Malcom......quite a few of us here on the forum will be all electric by 2040 anyway so no problems..I mean you cant get a petrol mobility scooter can you...

[cactusman]

It wont be 2040. As has been reported the electrical supply grid runs at close to max at times now without several million cars being plugged in at six o'clock. Added to that the cable and local substation infrastructure to domestic properties was in most cases installed long before electric cars. If a whole street came home at six and put their tesla cars on fast charge the local substation and cabling from it probably could not cope....or at least the lights would dim... Charge points claim to provide up to 11 kW on a single phase 230 volt supply or 22 kW if you have three phase 400 volt..and 98% of domestic premises dont...another case of ignorant minister's pronouncing on things they know very little about....it will happen when intelligent engineers have improved the supply infrastructure (wonder who pays?) but by the time it does...2050....2060...we will all be long gone....

[malcolm]

Hi Malcom......quite a few of us here on the forum will be all electric by 2040 anyway so no problems..I mean you cant get a petrol mobility scooter can you...

Love it! But I was thinking of taking the 4.2l out of the E and installing it in my scooter...

Good point about charging them Julian, but of course charging technology will change and improve. A research team is looking at cells that will take an electric car battery to full power in the time it takes to fill a petrol tank.
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j ... T3XckMeTPa

And a Japanese car manufacturer is investing billions in researching an "instant charge" car. Can't remember who, and can't find the article now!

[cactusman]

Charging efficiency and battery efficiency may improve but ultimately to travel x miles ones needs so many joules of energy and this has to be transferred from the grid to your battery and right now the infrastructure we have cannot sustain delivery of the amount of energy per unit time that would, as i read it, be required if millions plugged in when they got home at six....and added to that will the generation capacity be there?...six pm is no use for solar unless they have huge battery banks to store the day time sun or force all office car parks etc to have solar charge points. The wind may be blowing.....or it may not... coal is out and nuclear has a bad reputation although it will probably be essential....I don't doubt it can be done given enough generation capacity, resources and infrastructure improvements but all these aspects were conspicuously absent from the ministerial orifice...

[mark10337]

There are also many experiments at the moment with wireless charging, stationary - e.g. taxi ranks, car parks and such like as well as in motion charging - using cells in the tarmac to pick up charge.

[Steve Marshall]

There will need to be a sophisticated pricing scheme.

If you get home from work at 6pm and need to charge up for along trip at 7pm it will cost a fortune.

If you let the smart grid charge your car any time it feels like it before 7am next morning, it will be cheap.

It is a natural use for nuclear power, for which the fuel is not a big part of the cost, and which is slow to ramp up and shut down.

Just like economy 7 used to let you do your tumble drying cheaply at 2am, to use up that surplus nuclear capacity.

Steve

[cactusman]

Indeed....there are plenty of imaginative solutions but they need to be in place before the proposed petrol/diesel ban....the gov't is putting the cart before the horse .....just a cheap sound bite for a politician who will be forgotten long before 2040....

[PhilP]

I don’t think we need to worry too much about running our cars after 2040, I for one will probably be using the electric scooter as previously mentioned. I own a small electrical firm in Yorkshire and from our experience the supply network will not handle the additional load without major investment and major disruption to all our towns and cities. It’s not about just generating the power but people forget that most of the cabling suppling there properties is original from when the house was built so if your property is 50 years old the supply cable is 50 years old and never designed to carry the loads we use now let alone charging electric cars. You have proberbly not noticed that all new supply’s to new homes have been dropped from 100amp to 80amp and if you have any work carried out on your existing supply this will have been dropped to 80Amp this is being done because the existing network is overloaded already. I don’t want to come across as some kind of expert just a hands on person who comes across supply cables in peoples properties with black tar running down the outer sheath every week, this is a clear sign that it is already can’t handle modern demands as they are today let alone any additional load.

[cactusman]

Exactly Phil....

[mystery type]

Like it or not, alternative fuel cars are the future, and Electric cars are the ones making the most advances.
supply of electricity now comes from solar, wind and sea turbines as well as power stations.
service stations have long had charging points.
car factories already exist making nothing but electric cars.

Once the majority of people own an electric/alternative fuel car, attitudes will change against those who own a petrol/diesel vehicle. Fuel stations will eventually become harder to find, just like they did when we wanted 4 star fuel.
when you do find a station, it will be too expensive to buy the petrol.

Sadly, as car enthusiasts, our piston days are numbered, as people start to see the future, more classic
cars will enter the market for sale, and prices will tumble. Those too attached to sell their classic, will be left with no option but to install an electric motor, or be left with a museum piece.

I can see this happening long before 2040, even in the next 10-15 years.

Sounds depressing, but there's not a lot we can do about it, except use and enjoy our cars whilst
we still can, and be ready to sell before the market collapse's.

[cactusman]

I suspect that many here would agree that electric cars are the future...although they are not actually new...in the very early days of the car they were tried out....and we all remember the milk float..

What the announcement failed to address was the necessary improvement to the generation and distribution system before hydrocarbon fuels sure banned....

My own view is that the gov't needs to introduce a directive forcing all car manufacturers to use, say four, removable battery packs of the same size and connection configuration. That way you can drive into a battery situation, pull one or more exhausted packs out and slot into charge bays and pop in one or more new charged ones ones.....right now whether you drive a mini or a maserati they both use the same fuel and can be refuelled anywhere....to make electric cars similar to petrol cars we have to make all cars use the same replaceable energy source.....but the car companies will hate the idea....

[Herzeg]

If I remember right, the statement was to ban fuel only cars, so hybrids would work like now. It's true what has been said that the energy infrastructure won't support multiple Teslas charging along the same street and I very much doubt the government would finance an upgrade of that.

Mt concern is range of electric cars. The best Teslas can do over 300 miles but I occasionally use my car for business trips and often drive 300+ miles. I would have to charge it at some point to ensure I got home safely and why would I spend £100k on long range Testla when my daily driver cost half that and the fuel bill is £1k/year?

John

[Tony]

Well as long as they don't start putting lighting on grave stones, I will not be to worried. I am sure we will get around it somehow. Maybe all our cars will become track cars and we can have a vibrant E Type race series and not worry about them getting to odd dent.

[steve3.8]

The discussions always seem to concentrate on cars ! .

If fuel stations are to disappear and electric is to replace petrol and diesel then what happens to everything else ie lawnmowers for 200m2 +lawns ?, chainsaws for forestry? ,the 500,000 hgv's on our roads ?, boats ? [15 years of waterskiing for me] ,motorcycles , motorsport ,generators , farm machinery .

The list is endless and so are the industries that make these products --are they all doomed ---i don't think so ,that would create a backward economy .

PS At the worst i might replace the E with one of these.

https://www.engadget.com/2016/01/06/184 ... or-people/

[politeperson]

@ Herzeg (John),

I regularly achieve over 500 miles a day in the Tesla, its easy with the supercharger network and its also free for the life of the car from Mr Musk. Have a look. These charge at very high power levels, so an hour will put over 200 miles in the tank.

https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/findus#/bou ... ame=Europe

I have now done over 85,000 miles in the Model S, I have never even had a service, it comes with a million mile warranty on the drive-train for 8 years. I love it. I have had 2.5 sets of tyres and that is it.

When I took the E type to Barcelona it cost me £600 in fuel. The Tesla cost me £nothing. Nothing wrong with taking a driving break to charge in the Tesla every few hours.

The UK electrical infrastructure is knackered though. Hybrids are a joke of complexity and pointlessness.

However, as the Governments statement makes clear, the target date is 2040. That is a long way away, so plenty of time for the network to be upgraded. As long as the generation source for the electricity is clean, then I think it is all great.

However, I will never want to give up my e type. I suspect "classics" that are merely old cars are doomed to be re-cyled. Fine. I am all for that. I think the cars at the higher end of the desirability spectrum will be preserved, and will continue to increase in value.

To go back to the original theme of this thread- "what effect it will have on us?", I think it will be seeing the roads being dug up everywhere whilst the electricity companies upgrade the system and you might also see more nuclear energy plants being built.

On a separate note, sorry for my lack of e type posts recently, its not that I haven't been using her, its just that nothing has gone wrong! she is great.

[vikla]

Unfortunately Tesla gave up free charging for life earlier this year.
My brother had his Model X on order for about a year and threatened to cancel after repeated delays and eventually only got it delivered on the last day of 'free for life'.
Tesla now say:
Each year, owners receive 400 kWh of free Supercharger credit, enough to drive about 1,000 miles. These credits cover the long distance driving needs of most owners, so road trips are completely free. Customers who travel beyond the annual credit pay a small fee to Supercharge—only a fraction of the cost of fuel.

They assume everybody will charge overnight at home and don't seem to publish the price of the 'small fee' for using their Superchargers.

[Moeregaard]

I don't think things are as doom-and-gloom as some suggest. Even though the popular political position is to demonize all things internal combustion, the fact of the matter is that the world economy still depends on the production and consumption of petroleum products. Here in California, owners of hybrid and electric vehicles are already seeing increases in the cost of their annual registrations, and we also just got hit with an increase in the petrol tax. While the politicians like to pontificate on the evils of the internal combustion engine and the use of petroleum, I don't see our cars being forced off the road any time soon--at least in the U.S. Too much money is made from fuel taxes and the political class doesn't want that goose killed anytime soon. It's a lot like tobacco in this respect; they may want everyone to quit smoking, but please keep buying cigarettes because the government really likes the tax revenue.

[Simon P]

It's a good point. I seem to remember once being told that every time you see a petrol tanker drive past, it's carrying £30,000 of duty for the government

[MarkE]

Some really interesting thoughts about the impact of the phasing out of fossil fuel vehicles.

There are a couple of other issues to consider looking at the bigger picture…

- The maintenance of the revenue stream currently provided to the government by the Vehicle Excise Duty and Petrol Duty.

- The impact of local councils implementing ‘ultra-low’ or zero emissions areas around the city or city centre areas. Huge impact in London with the extension of the Ultra Low Emissions Zone by 2021, and many other cities looking to follow Oxford’s lead in banning all non-zero emissions vehicles from the city centre from 2020.

- The cost of converting ‘public service’ trains, buses and taxis to electric or at least hybrid vehicles.

- The cost (and currently, the feasibility) of converting long distance trucks to electric / hybrid.

Add on to that lot the cost of upgrading the electricity generation, transmission and distribution systems, the street charging infrastructure required and the development / implementation of the industry standard ‘cartridge battery’ change concept, and the totals must be running into many hundreds of billions, possibly even trillions of pounds over the next 25 years or so. And that’s just for the UK.

We will have to pay for that lot, or rather; several generations in the future will have to pay! This is no political flash in the pan either. I was working for a few years on a project for central government designing a new business and the systems to manage a new national road pricing scheme, where road users would ‘pay as you go’. This work was completed 10 years ago, and all this stuff was being discussed and planned then.

The national road pricing scheme was intended to replace VED and petrol tax. The charging was based on the actual road you were on, the type of vehicle you were driving (emissions, weight and number of passengers being the main parameters into that costing section) and the time of day. For example, a Range Rover with no passengers, driving in Knightsbridge at 8.00am on a Friday morning could pay £60 / mile, whilst a Prius driving down a lane in Devon on a Sunday may be 0.1 p per mile.

The parameters were set for several reasons.

- To ‘manage’ the revenue stream from road usage that would change with petrol and diesel sales being reduced over time.

- To effect societal change (in order to manage congestion) by making vehicles using the road in peek time or with single occupancy pay a premium.

- To effect societal change (in order to manage pollution) by making the cost of driving high emissions / high weight vehicles increasingly more expensive to use.

Fundamental to this management was the categorisation of vehicles, with the obvious groupings being private / commercial / public service, and interestingly, historic. That stood out to me having a few classics, but of course, the reason it was there was to be able to effectively manage that group in the future.

It’s seems quite likely that classics will be treated differently, at least for a while and / or until most of the current classic car owners and enthusiasts are revelling in their new autonomous electric cars (unable to drive!). The London Ultra Low Emissions Zone for example, being extended to most of London by 2021, has classic cars as exempt from the additional charges. The worst scenario for classic cars that I heard being discussed was to limit their use to attending pre-booked events, plus a couple of hundred miles a year. Probably more miles than many classics are driven currently! I believe that this system is already in use in some states in Australia.

A road usage scheme could very simply be used to manage / monitor how classics are used on the road, and it whilst it was shelved 10 years ago as being too ambitious and expensive then, it is being resurrected, primarily to ensure that the revenue stream currently provided by petrol and diesel vehicles is protected, and city centre exemption / clean-up schemes can be simply implemented and managed.

This lot is being played out around the world, with the issues being debated around Europe, Asia and at least at State level, in the USA. Change is certainly going to happen over the next 20 years, with the ambition of it being done and dusted in 40.

My reaction is to enjoy the cars now whilst we can, and hopefully we have another 20 or more years of fun with our cars. Then bring on the autonomous car, when drinking and driving will be encouraged once more amongst a group of octogenarians behaving badly! We’ve had it good, I’m sure most will agree.