I have been asked by some I know to reasearch the EV thing, esp given the UK new law that all new IC engines are gone by 2040 or whatever.
So I have, I’ve spent basically four days watching and reading and researching everything I can find.
1/ Every single electric car spiel starts with ” Spend 30k on a new electric car” and then they talk about ways to make this affordable, whether it be personal leasing or personal loans or whatever.
At £1.15 a litre you could instead spend £3,000 on a great used diesel car and have £27k left over for diesel, that’s 27,000 / 1.15 = 23,500 litres, and at 10 miles per litre that’s 235,000 miles of fuel…. more realistically the 27k will pay *all* running expenses inc insurance and maintenance and fuel and everything else for say 12/15 years.
So on a basic business accountancy perspective the only way it makes sense is if you have the stark choice of spending 30k on a toy or giving the 30k to the taxman as tax on income / profits…
In the UK the Golf diesel was a popular fleet car, I used to have one, but I would do 30k miles a year in it, and there really was not time in the diary to spend more than 10 minutes once a day fuelling it up, I had to be in Bristol for 10 am and Camborne for 3 pm and Bodmin for 4.45 pm, which google says is 6.5 hours of driving and 358 miles, even tesla supercharger means one of those 3 stops gets left out, and since for operational reasons that often CANNOT happen it means an extra field guy and an extra 70k tesla on the road.
The ONLY TIME IN MY ENTIRE LIFE where a 30 minute stop every 125 miles or so was acceptable was riding a fucking motorcycle in the middle of winter with freezing or sub freezing temperatures, and I’d spend the 30 minutes stomping around to restore circulation slurping hot coffee and smoking desperately…. and even then it wasn’t acceptable when you were on dispatch, only on the way back on your own time (dispatch was paid per mile, provided you got the shit there on time, then it was sweet fuck all, but that’s another story… if I’m not getting paid for it, I’m not delivering it)
So basically you can’t get past the whole “First, spend 30k (plus) on a new car”, and the argument from the other side is of course, there are no second hand electric cars, they are all too new a technology, so of COURSE you have to compare apples to apples and compare the new golf to the new e-golf….
Again, I’m not convinced, there are as I type 605 electric cars for sale in the UK in the “used” only category, and the cheapest “proper” car (exc twizy etc) is a leaf, it’s a grey 2013 with 22,516 miles, and it is priced at £4,995.
Now, £5k for an electric car is *much* more like it, but wait, what’s this, there is a SEPARATE lease for the battery, and that’s the pic above, and yes folks, there are fucking MONTHLY sums of money, the cheapest is £70 a month, and you are only eligible for that if you take a 36 month deal and guarantee to do less than 7,500 miles a year, that’s 625 miles a month, that’s 8.92 miles per quid of BATTERY lease, this DOESN’T INCLUDE THE FUCKING ELECTRIC at 20p per kWh, it’s £1 per 9 miles to LEASE THE FUCKING BATTERY, and my old 2002 volvo shed does around 40 miles @ 60 mph on £1 worth of diesel.
So the car is £5k, which is “reasonable” in money terms, the actual energy used for motive power works out at around one half to one third of an IC vehicles because none of it is waste heat down the exhaust pipe, so again 20p per kWh to charge the 24 kWh battery is “reasonable” £5 for a “tank full” and a 100 miles range is “reasonable” and yes it would work out at 5p per mile which is “reasonable”
The 11p per mile to lease the battery is fucking outrageous, the (always read the small print) surcharge of £7.50 per 100 miles if you go over your 7,500 miles a year equates to an extra 7.5 pence per mile, so between 11p and 18.5p per mile in battery costs, plus 5p per mile for electricity (notice how all the pro electric car guys never show the actual cost of a recharge at an ecotricity stand…) so we are looking at £0.16 to £0.235 PER FUCKING MILE AFTER YOU BOUGHT THE FUCKING CAR OUTRIGHT FOR £5k
My old volvo shed does around 45 mpg average on diesel, 55 on a run, we’ll take the low figure and call it 45, that’s per gallon so simple math says it’s 10 miles per litre, and at £1.15 a litre which is the current price simple math gives us £1.15 / 10 = £0.115 per mile.
So basically if you lie through your fucking ass and ONLY count energy used per mile, while ignoring all the drawbacks like range / refuel speed / cost / etc etc etc yeah, you can claim your £0.05 per mile is soooooo much better than my £0.115 per mile, hell, it’s HALF my energy cost per mile.
Of course if I stole my diesel fuel, my running costs would plummet, and the fact is, that is probably more honest than everything everyone involved in electric cars is doing, with one of the cheapest options that are actually possible today in the UK, and actual yes, can do it today, option, I have to spend £5k on a car and then my per mile costs will literally DOUBLE to £0.16 per mile to £0.235 per mile depending how many miles I’d be doing… currently the volvo shed is doing 460 miles a WEEK, the basic leaf battery allowance is 625 miles per MONTH.
So the cheapest possible option actually possible in the UK today I have to spend £5k of capital and DOUBLE my costs per mile to £0.235, and at 460 miles a week that is £108.10 in electric car costs vs £50.60 in diesel, so £57.50 extra per week…. for FAR FAR FAR less utility, last week I did non stop 258 miles each way at a steady 70-75, left with a full tank and a drink, drove there and back non stop with a 15 minute stop “there” to load up a laser tube, drove non stop home, filled up again the next day.
At this point there is only one conclusion open to me, there are no exceptions, every single electric car out there, and every single person out there promoting or in any way involved in electric cars, is a fucking con / liar / swindler / shyster / etc.
Talk of what is coming is like saying buy a fucking tesla today because nuclear fusion power generation in a suitcase is coming tomorrow, but only if you buy a tesla today.
The CLASSIC trick of sales shysters across the globe, the pub / corner auction starts and you see a line up of a wide variety of things, there is one wow factor thing there for everyone, whether it be a clock radio or a camera or a fancy socket set, all reasonably / cheaply priced (but it’s junk, but that doesn’t matter) but before we get to that I only have these 100 pens, cue spiel about amazing NASA spec ops pen, I could get 20 quid for these, I could get 10 quid for these, I could get 5 quid for these, but I’m selling them to you my friends for 2 quid a pop including the beautiful presentation case, now wait, wait wait, just a minute, I think I have enough pens for everyone, and I will sell them in just a minute, but, if you do not have a pen, you cannot bid on any of the other items, now, who wants a pen?
And £2 seems reasonable for a great quality biro pen in a case that you haven’t been able to handle, and besides you want the 50 quid camera for 18 quid, so you buy a pen.
it’s only £2, after all…
I knew one of these guys, (this is going back 20+ years) he told me,
I sell pens………………………………………………………………
I buy them in bulk for 40p, and sell them 100 at a time for 2 quid, £160.00 profit, 1 hour’s work (I was earning £40 a week back then) everything else is just for show to sell the pens, sure I’ll sell some of that other junk, but I’d rather not as I have to buy something else to put on display that is equally enticing and that I can actually make a profit on if some mug buys it…
I have come to the conclusion that the pen seller back then was more honest than ANYONE involved in the electric car business.
So my take on the electric car thing, if you have one you are what is known as a mug, mark, target, loser, etc. If you are anyone else involved in any way with electric cars, you’re a fucking crook.
post script.
Not that I am a borrower or a lender, I’m just wondering, aloud like, if the guys selling you the lease on that leaf battery pack will advise you that it will affect your over all credit rating and ability to take on other commitments such as a mortgage or car loan etc?????
That would be like all the guys selling cars on personal leases then, a big crickets…
