These HC automotive threads are being dominated by EVs and EV materials. Given that EVs make up less than 2% sophisticated western markets and bugger all of less developed and/or 3rd world markets as Skakespere said: "Its much ado about nothing."
Why might you ask are EV not taking over the market if as Blue Samuri would make us believe that they are the best thing since the sliced pan!
Well, IMO here are some headwinds for Eps:
-Price: EVs are on average $20K more expensive to buy than their internal combustion engine (ICE) equivalent At this stage the prospect of replacing a kit of Lithium Batteries at 10 years speeds up depreciation once the car is over 5 years old. Nissan tried to overcome price & battery life objections by lrasing the battery to the owner but obviously the economics of this did not work judging by their feeble market share.
-Depreciation: looks like much higher rate of depreciation than an ICE (even hybrids depreciate at a higher rate than ICE models as the vehicle ages) There is a sound economic arguement for hybrid taxis for fuel economy and even ICE taxis are only worth 2 bob at the end of their service lives.
-Fuel-Battery weight: Energy for energy, Lithium Ion batteries weigh 50 time more than petrol (this is why Tesla & others have been struggling with range & why HD commercial vehicles are not EVs.
Space: By volume Petrol beats Lithium batteries by 13:1 9although batteries tend to be 90% efficient while our best ICEs are half that. That changes in favour of ICEs on the motorway
Fuel/electric costs: IMO EV will likely be charged a government fee/klm if they gain significant so that they can contribute to road and infrastructure development and maintenance. Clean air wont simply pay for that.
For example the average 4 cyl ICE pays $700/yr & 54c/litre on petrol to the Government in the form of fuel excise & GST. On a car traveling say 20k kms/year that combined is over $2K/year to the Government while EV pay bugger all.
So in summary: this is why EV have less than 2% of the market after 8 years of trying Even Tesla with 2 models only sold 367K units in 2019 and corvid-19 may challenge those numbers this year.
Apart from very expensive prestige/sports cars, your average run of the mill model has to sell twice that per model to break even This is why "our" car manufacturers had to be on Government Corporate Welfare here in Aus for decades. Tesla has to start pumping mega dollars into a model S replacement now because the model is half way throught its model life (nominally 10 years after a few upgrades)
IMO, rather than the EV manufacturers starting at the top price bracket as a general purpose car, they should have started with mini urban vehicles sub $15K with limited range , low battery weight, low battery cost with a range of say 100 klms and max speeds of 80KPH.
This would get one to and from work, in and out of town and a handy shopping cart and who cares if it had to be crushed/recycled in 10 years?
Lets hope that these threads can get back to our everyday ICE car because these Automobile threads on HC have the potential to be of enormous benefit to the majority; not only a few EV enthusiasts.
