> That's unfortunate for first adopters and is a significant problem for adaption in lower-income circles (those typically buying second hand), but not a reason for going back to gasoline cars.
I'm not advocating (here at least) for a move back to combustion vehicles, I'm just noting what I have seen. I would say that unless there is a serious used EV market and that the poorer people are able to afford an EV, there will forever be a resistance. You can push poor people out of the urban areas to rural locations with poor shared transport options, but they still need to commute to work.
> All that being said: I agree that "green agenda items" will decrease in popularity (or really: they weren't that popular to begin with). But EVs in particular are just straight up cheaper. If not by construction, then definitely by the air pollution reduction interest of the Chinese government. I'd be highly surprised if incentive reduction has more than a delaying effect, if even that
I think the reversal of most green policies is on the cards as governments struggle to balance the books with an incoming global recession.
EVs are cheaper to run once you tax fuel to a higher price, otherwise they are not. EVs cost about half as much to run, and in the UK the fuel duty is approximately 50%, some of which is put into subsidising green electricity production. EVs are definitely not cheaper to construct, maintain or recycle end-of-life.
The only thing I can think is that they have reduced emissions during the operating life-time of the vehicle, but I haven't seen the numbers to suggest if this includes the entire lifetime. Some quick numbers:
Apparently petrol/diesel vehicles require ~5.6 tonnes CO2 to build, whereas EVs ~8.8 tonnes. I see numbers assuming that combustion vehicles produce ~4.6 tonnes CO2 annually, but it assumes 22.2 miles per gallon (very low fuel economy) and 11,500 miles driven a year (a heavy commuter). I think the assumptions are bad. That considered, then there is the recycling/upcycling of the vehicles. I know that for combustion vehicles this process is extremely efficient, as literally every part is recycled, much reused in the used car market.
> I would say that unless there is a serious used EV market and that the poorer people are able to afford an EV, there will forever be a resistance.
Agreed. And I didn't mean to imply, that there isn't a problem for "everyone gets electric". But that will fix itself with (probably) this year's new cars. So in 2-3 years there will be a fledgling 2nd hand market and in 10 it will be of similar volume as it is now (probably still a bit pricier, since there will be a non-car use for used car batteries)
> EVs are definitely not cheaper to construct, maintain or recycle end-of-life.
There I disagree. The EV price is (still) (mostly) the battery, which is _still_ coming down rapidly. I thought maintenance costs were already cheaper, but maybe not. And end-of-life is mostly a scale question, which will be fixed. Especially since we can reuse the batteries.
The same goes for energy cost and CO2 emissions. I think the EV construction numbers largely assume current (or even worst case) energy mixes, but yeah most of these comparison make at least one questionable assumption (like choosing low efficiency gas cars) and are therefore complicated. Still it's quite a fundamental property: EVs are more efficient and large combustion systems are more efficient. At least CO2-wise it will _always_ be more efficient to burn fuel in a large power plant and run an EV. And the electricity mix is significantly better than that^. Price-wise it's a more complicated story, but at least for Germany, we need to import the fuel anyways. So producing locally should work out better (both personally, where using your own solar is basically a tax break and system wide, where EVs provide a reasonably flexible dispatchable load, which has value)
I think the big question is the time scale here, but fundamentally: The biggest market in the world decided to go EV, that makes the position of any non-EV producer complicated to say the least. Everything downstream (second hand market, recycling, ...) hasn't had time to even develop yet.
^ Assuming we are not tearing down anything already installed..
I'm not advocating (here at least) for a move back to combustion vehicles, I'm just noting what I have seen. I would say that unless there is a serious used EV market and that the poorer people are able to afford an EV, there will forever be a resistance. You can push poor people out of the urban areas to rural locations with poor shared transport options, but they still need to commute to work.
> All that being said: I agree that "green agenda items" will decrease in popularity (or really: they weren't that popular to begin with). But EVs in particular are just straight up cheaper. If not by construction, then definitely by the air pollution reduction interest of the Chinese government. I'd be highly surprised if incentive reduction has more than a delaying effect, if even that
I think the reversal of most green policies is on the cards as governments struggle to balance the books with an incoming global recession.
EVs are cheaper to run once you tax fuel to a higher price, otherwise they are not. EVs cost about half as much to run, and in the UK the fuel duty is approximately 50%, some of which is put into subsidising green electricity production. EVs are definitely not cheaper to construct, maintain or recycle end-of-life.
The only thing I can think is that they have reduced emissions during the operating life-time of the vehicle, but I haven't seen the numbers to suggest if this includes the entire lifetime. Some quick numbers:
Apparently petrol/diesel vehicles require ~5.6 tonnes CO2 to build, whereas EVs ~8.8 tonnes. I see numbers assuming that combustion vehicles produce ~4.6 tonnes CO2 annually, but it assumes 22.2 miles per gallon (very low fuel economy) and 11,500 miles driven a year (a heavy commuter). I think the assumptions are bad. That considered, then there is the recycling/upcycling of the vehicles. I know that for combustion vehicles this process is extremely efficient, as literally every part is recycled, much reused in the used car market.