Electric Cars
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What is your opinion on electric cars? Do you think they're too expensive and should have better incentives, and what do you think about charging them, are there enough fast charge stations, and is it fair to charge for them after purchading a car. Do you think you should pay more or do you feel they're a rip off, or perhaps more work needs to be put into the infrastructure?
To be honest I have only ever heard negative things about electric cars. I guess I would be called uncaring but I am content with my little petrol Citreon C1 until I quit driving.
I think we do need to move away from fossil fuels but it seems like the common man is expected to foot the bill for these oil companies making billions.
I do hope to own an electric car at some point but currently they are too expensive and with what has happened with energy prices over the last couple of years I can’t even be sure I’ll save on fuel.
We had a hybrid car for a while but found it more expensive to run so we have gone back to petrol. Shame really, it was a good car.
eyeballkerry thankyou for your comment. It's nice to hear from someone who has experienced both types of cars.
We actually know a few people who have bought them and every one of them has bitterly regretted it and the garages won't take them back!
They have trouble charging them on long journeys, the charging machines, if you can find one, and, if they aren't already being used are troublesome when using credit cards. All of them have been left stranded, miles from home without funds after the charging machines have voided their credit cards etc causing endless misery.
The charging itself is really slow in the cold weather too as it is with other kinds of batteries eg, electric drills & lawn mowers in cold garages.
The EVs are also extremely expensive and very heavy due to the bank of batteries they contain ergo stopping distances are greatly increased.
I've heard that they're slow to charge too. I didn't know about credit card issues. Thank you so much for your comments.
I don’t like the fact they can spontaneously combust batteries. Still too dangerous for me and still not enough infrastructure and reliability.
Yes there was a container ship going from Germany to the US which sank due to an EV fire and another container ship was hugely damaged by a fire again going from Germany to Egypt.
Lots of fires in China caused by EV's be it cars, buses, motorbikes, mopeds and electric bicycles.
They are such unstoppable fires too so if you are in an accident with you in a EV and the other car a standard petrol or diesel vehicle then it is likely you will be the most likely to die. You may be trapped inside the car as its crumpled and lithium ion becomes an inferno very quickly so you have little chance. It's extremely unlikely the fire service will get to you in time. Diesel and petrol are much safer, you still get them igniting but its much more controllable and less intense.
Also transporting lithium ion vehicles across the oceans with a high risk of fire is completely irresponsible as it could cause a huge amount of lithium to enter the sea and then enter the food chain. The seas are already damaged enough.
I think you have to understand politicians are complete idiots they have no long term planning and do no proper research. EV's are incredibly dangerous on so many levels. Cars need to get smaller and lighter and we need to cycle where possible for short journeys. Ideally use your existing car for as long as possible but use it less on a daily basis.
Toyota is coming up with ammonia engines and they could be a much better solution, you still have the combustion engine but fuel production is more easy and they don't produce dangerous gases.
mumstheword26 There are also newer salt based batteries coming which are inferior in capacity to lithium ion but much cheaper to produce and safer but the range will be less as they aren't as energy dense. It's quite likely they will provide a cheaper and safer option for people with lithium ion being a more premium end to the market for performance and luxury EVs. Note the image below has the titles the wrong way round.
Electric cars were brought out before all the tweaks were worked out which has given them a really bad reputation. The infrastructure isn't ready for them and the media have been more than willing to spread news of electric cars catching fire and the fires having to be contained whilst they burn themselves out (they can't be put out using water/foam etc). It's as if the manufacturer's greed to sell them now destroyed any chance of them being popular.
I think that they are far to expensive to buy and I've heard lots of negatives about them. They don't have a great driving range, it takes a long time to charge them, there aren't enough public chargers, I can only think of 3 places in our town that has chargers and even then only 2 or 3 of them. The infrastructure just isn't there for them.
I am totally anti electric cars. Total rip of plus lot's of people think they are Greener ! They are not , what they don't seem to tell people is the battery is seriously toxic and has to be buried when finished with as nothing else can be done with it !! How is that good for the environment, plus electric has to be made to charge them that doesn't just appear through thin air
sallylester1 I agree about the toxic nature of the batteries completely but so much energy is now being produced by solar, wind and waves etc. There is so much free energy out there that I feel EV's are the future I just think Lithium Ion is probably best kept to smaller devices up to ebikes only where you can deal with the fires more easily.
London has bought a load of BYD electric buses from China and they are causing a lot of fires.
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/electric-bus-london-fire-putney-capital-b2484622.html
We shouldn't be buying buses from abroad anyway, these are huge costs and we certainly shouldn't be buying low quality electric buses from China which have been the cause of many fires and deaths in China.
Got one a year ago. Never looked back. It’s costing around 2p per mile now that we are on an EV Tariff. Servicing is slightly cheaper than it was with my Astra. No Tax. MOT is the same price. The only downside was the £995 to get the charging point installed on the house. But the cheapness of the car has paid itself back now. I get (realistically) around 120-130 miles out of a full charge. It’s not for everyone, but it works for us. The car was about the same price as any other car of the same age, size, features. And it’s FAST. Absolutely no lag on the accelerator. I’m all for them, but I respect people who say it’s not for them. Everyone’s different.
Andy10000098 That's all positive and I'm sure true but if you were in the car and hit side on by a joy rider and you and your family were trapped inside the car while the batteries exploded into incredibly intense flames in mere seconds you and your family wouldn't stand a chance. Personally I feel the inconvenience and range anxiety is nothing compared to the far greater danger of EV's. Safety I feel is the paramount concern with EV's however I totally accept that the vast majority will have no safety issues with EVs but for those that do it could have an incredibly bad ending. The other thing that isn't being properly discussed is as the battery cells age they become far less safe and we haven't really got to the point of vintage EV's yet but what happens with the EV's that are past 7 years old and cells are starting to fail and much more likely to rupture and ignite?
Andy10000098 Seems to be a lot of conflicting information out there;
Statistically, the estimated failure rate (and therefore risk of combustion) of an individual battery cell is one in ten million. However, when you consider that an average EV contains approximately 7000 cells, the risk increases significantly. Data from the London Fire Brigade suggests an incident rate of 0.04% for ICE car fires, but the rate for EVs is more than double that at 0.1%. Although it is not clear whether EVs are more likely than ICE vehicles to catch fire, it is common ground that the consequences are potentially more disastrous and more difficult to handle.
www.nautinst.org/resources-page/recognising-the-risk-of-evs.html
However its not really about which is more likely to have a fire its about the fire itself and the far greater danger of EV's. It's one thing to stand next to an lit firework but another to stand next to live grenade. Also the above incident rate is a little confusing, is that 0.04 percent of their callouts i.e. when they come out to buildings on fire, rescuing cats from trees etc, are vehicle fires quite rate. Then when you consider the saturation of ICE cars compared to electric vehicles in the market it would seem EV fires are incredibly common compared to ICE vehicles. I'm not convinced in reality EV fires are less than ICE vehicles at all but even if they are an EV can still be ignited by a nearby ICE vehicle fire and will be a far greater fire with much higher safety risk, a much more intense fire that will take out buildings etc. We may even get to a point where low life scum purposely set fire to EVs to see the explosion of flames that would happen. Lets not also forget the danger of lithium poisoning on dealing with EV fires. It is highly toxic and can lead to many medical conditions and death. An EV fire can pollute the area where it happened.
BonzoBanana exactly that. Conflicting info. There are people who will do everything to push a negative narrative of EV’s, I’ve had an EV for well over a year and in my case it was a great decision. Do you honestly think I’d drive my family around in a car which is likely to catch fire ? It’s hype. Plus, I think most of the negative views are from people who have never owned an EV. At the end of the day it’s about being happy with the car you have, whether it be EV, petrol, diesel or hybrid.
Andy10000098 I don't think it is likely to catch fire although that risk increases as the car ages. The rate of EV fires in China is horrific but then Chinese products especially sold on their own domestic market are not as regulated and certified.
Looking at the london fire brigade statistic of 1 in 10,000,000 chance of a cell failing and 7,000 cells in a vehicle. Those odds are about 1 in 1400 of the car igniting due to a failed cell (10000000 shared by 7000) but then you have other faults within the vehicle which could cause failure and of course collisions with other vehicles which I would of thought were the most likely to cause incidents. Other issues that have caused EV fires are battery cooling systems have failed and temperature monitoring failed. Also you have to factor in vehicle quality. There has been Japanese brand EV's with a great safety rate but many Chinese designed and built EV's have a very poor safety rate like BYD vehicles.
I noticed on watching a video about electric lithium-ion airplanes that they had a ridiculous number of safety systems for monitoring cells, it was something like 3 independent systems for monitoring cells and there were some voices not recommending their use for aeroplanes as crashes could be much more fatal if the cells are compromised on impact with a zero rate survival rate quite likely and again concerns about contaminating the sea with lithium with crashes into the sea. Insurance rates for container ships carrying lithium ion EVs have skyrocketed recently and this has added huge costs to forecourt prices for EVs. Some companies shipping other products seek guarantees that there are no EVs on board the container ship they are using. It seems likely we will see smaller container ships being used for EV's so they can be the exclusive cargo because of course all insurance goes up for container ships if EVs are onboard as it becomes a greater risk to all cargo not just EV's. The EV doesn't even have to be the source of the original fire it just needs to be close to the fire to have a runaway effect and explode and then take out the whole container ship. What was a controllable fire becomes an uncontrollable fire.
This is why I think salt/sodium based cells are the future. The cars can be transported safely at zero volts so there is no energy stored into the vehicle itself and zero risk to container ships. Those are much safer cells even if not as energy dense but they charge much faster. A 200 mile range lithium ion EV would be something like a 140 mile range sodium/salt based EV but I don't think this is the end of the world in range especially as the car charges much faster and will be much cheaper and safer in the marketplace. Also being able to store cells at 0V is a huge deal. It means you don't have top up charges or need to keep reserve current in lithium ion cells. At the moment most lithium ion cells have a BMS which ensures 5-20% of charge is left in cells to prevent them being damaged, that is unused capacity. They also have hugely improved charge cycles too so you will be able to buy a sodium/salt based EV and perhaps use its for 20 years or more if you want to. You aren't limited to 500-800 good charge cycles.
BonzoBanana completely sound advice, yeah my car is a Nissan Leaf, which has a good long safety record. I don’t think I’d ever buy BYD or other Chinese firms. They seem to skimp on quality. And like you say, you’re more likely to have a typical accident than a battery accident. There’s no way I’d let my family travel in an EV if I was even remotely concerned. I know EV cars are not for everyone. And I respect points of view on both sides. But in my particular circumstances it made a lot of sense and I’m happy with mine. But you give some good points in your reply 
Don't ever see these taking off on a massive scale, they are expensive to buy, people that I know that had them mostly don't like them and there is a severe lack of charging points around the country . My local Morrisons has over 400 parking spaces and only 2 electric charging points, similar situation in most places.
A neighbour of mine took his car to the Airport went on holiday , when he came back at 3.00am in the morning first thing he had to do was find somewhere to charge his car before coming back home, his wife wasn't impressed.
I'm not a fan of EVs, but if you avoid Chinese made EVs it might be fine.
And everyone's favorite Elon Musk has recently made a deal with China...
www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/business/elon-musk-tesla-china-full-self-driving.html
Yeah, no thanks. I'm happy with Gasoline/LPG cars rather than cars that could explode and set themselves on fire.
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