Some positive news rather than talking stuff down .... mirrors what I see in our street and in general .... in a very ordinary town in the middle of the UK.

 

People don’t care about the environment, they care about their pocket or bottom line.

Show most people two similar cars and they gravitate towards the one with the lowest sticker price. Not the one with the lowest emissions.

Now once they show an interest tell them the cheaper one is an EV and will cut their fuel costs by about £100 per month if they can charge at home (most drivers can).

No amount of FUD will sway the majority of people if it costs them thousands of pounds.

 

True, and a sad indictment of how most people are too.

 

People don’t care about the environment, they care about their pocket or bottom line.

Show most people two similar cars and they gravitate towards the one with the lowest sticker price. Not the one with the lowest emissions.

Now once they show an interest tell them the cheaper one is an EV and will cut their fuel costs by about £100 per month if they can charge at home (most drivers can).

No amount of FUD will sway the majority of people if it costs them thousands of pounds.

True, and a sad indictment of how most people are too.

Not sure I agree with this. Many many people are really struggling to exist , so replacing a vehicle is a luxury that they can’t afford

People do care about the environment, but it will be well down their priority list if they are cash tight. They also won't pay any extra upfront for future savings. Effectively if you truly live month to month then your time aversion is immense. Looking at some hedonic behaviour my back of the envelope calculations for certain groups gives an effective temporal discount rate of near or greater than 100%. This fact means it is effectively more expensive to be poor (separate from the actual cost differences and the like). Finance, while it may add to the overall cost is a 'win-win' for some groups (provided their income doesn't drop) as it pushes payments out.

What people are particularly bad at is comparing uncertain outcomes, and will often choose the dominated ones simply because the mental gymnastics are massive and you just cannot keep everything in the front of your mind.

 

People do care about the environment, but it will be well down their priority list if they are cash tight. They also won't pay any extra upfront for future savings. Effectively if you truly live month to month then your time aversion is immense. Looking at some hedonic behaviour my back of the envelope calculations for certain groups gives an effective temporal discount rate of near or greater than 100%. This fact means it is effectively more expensive to be poor (separate from the actual cost differences and the like). Finance, while it may add to the overall cost is a 'win-win' for some groups (provided their income doesn't drop) as it pushes payments out.

What people are particularly bad at is comparing uncertain outcomes, and will often choose the dominated ones simply because the mental gymnastics are massive and you just cannot keep everything in the front of your mind.

But this is down to where our respective lives position themselves .... through fair means or fowl .... through effort, fortune, or poor fortune, or of course lack of opportunity etc. That discussion in itself would make the current SpeakEV Ukraine thread look like a kids Ladybird book.

There are those that (at this time until things trickle down) of course cannot afford an EV. Same as they are unlikely be taking 2 week holidays in the sun somewhere exotic. I guess we could say that those folks are currently denied the means to think about environmental impact in the personal transport sector. Certainly not in others.

Given that we cannot 'level up' or fix that, then we can either a. do our own bit environmentally vehicle wise or b. if we choose a vehicle for self gratification then we can take environment into account. And it does seem that those who can afford to do so.....are doing so, according to the trends. Which surely is great news.

The numbers and trends (even if a bit inaccurate or open to challenge) cannot be a fabrication. Are folks doing it to save the planet or because the EV option is better for 'other' reasons? I don't know. And it is a question I'm going to ask our family members who run an EV .... it's a solid question.

For me it's both. The EV product is (for me) ... light years better than any ICE in it's relevant sector. And the fact that is is significantly better than any ICE provoked the discussion about environment .... and from there it's been the trigger for any number of lifestyle changes to the positive. It was also a financial situation, an age and a moment in time thing.

But surely the entry point doesn't really matter .... it just 'is'. And from there, things can only get better.

 

Going to say something unpopular but it is noticeable to me how the English (and I suspect their Anglo Saxon cousins too) are obsessed with ”price“ and getting the cheapest over most other if not all considerations, whereas here people do look at price of course they do but they balance that with other attributes of the goods they are buying. Hence they will still buy French produced goods and pay more to do so, still support food markets, will buy certain cars for the perceived longer life expectancy…..it is a different mindset that I have recognised.
Now of course there are plenty of people for whom price is the only consideration they can have due to limited financial means but overall I really do think the expression he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing is apt for the English.

 

Going to say something unpopular but it is noticeable to me how the English (and I suspect their Anglo Saxon cousins too) are obsessed with ”price“ and getting the cheapest over most other if not all considerations, whereas here people do look at price of course they do but they balance that with other attributes of the goods they are buying. Hence they will still buy French produced goods and pay more to do so, still support food markets, will buy certain cars for the perceived longer life expectancy…..it is a different mindset that I have recognised.
Now of course there are plenty of people for whom price is the only consideration they can have due to limited financial means but overall I really do think the expression he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing is apt for the English.

100% agree that Parkwood ..... price and not value or experience or quality seem be the British driver of life.

We always talk about price, cost, discounts etc. And I fully get that for some, this is essential. For me also in the past and at various times in a life.

But value, quality, experience, life span etc seem be far less of a driver.

 

I do have concerns about how our illustrious government is going to fill the huge black hole being created by the drop in tax revenues from sales of petrol and diesel

 

I'm glad my 3 bed semi consumes 6000kWh of electric (50% being for the EV) and 6000kWh of gas... Heating winter and yearly cooking...

 

Main problem with any kind of energy reduction in heating homes is that gas is still too cheap to make it worth bothering too much.

i.e. I'm paying 4.3p/kWh for gas at the moment, and 'typical UK household consumption' of 11,500kWh of gas would be £500. About £350 of that is heating.

For your average median income household, that's not a big fraction of their bills. Sure, they could be cold 9 months a year, and have everything go mouldy unless they are really careful with ventilation, and maybe save half of that, but that is a pretty difficult sell. Nor is any significant investment in insulation ever going to pay off in financial terms.

It is basically incredibly reasonable to just decide to keep your house warm. Cold homes are usually a sign of pretty severe financial desperation, because the health benefits alone of not being cold are worth the cost.

 

Main problem with any kind of energy reduction in heating homes is that gas is still too cheap to make it worth bothering too much.

i.e. I'm paying 4.3p/kWh for gas at the moment, and 'typical UK household consumption' of 11,500kWh of gas would be £500. About £350 of that is heating.

For your average median income household, that's not a big fraction of their bills. Sure, they could be cold 9 months a year, and have everything go mouldy unless they are really careful with ventilation, and maybe save half of that, but that is a pretty difficult sell. Nor is any significant investment in insulation ever going to pay off in financial terms.

It is basically incredibly reasonable to just decide to keep your house warm. Cold homes are usually a sign of pretty severe financial desperation, because the health benefits alone of not being cold are worth the cost.

You not met my wife or Mother have you dashpool?

I honestly think folks who can afford it are more usage aware than those who can't.

 

Back to the amount of EVs sold. Where I work we are doing huge amounts of gen e pumas. They will be hitting the used market in a couple of years

 

Given the fiesta used t9 be the best seller in the UK for years and years the Puma may well be the game changer…..

 

Well off people didnt get there by wasting it but by good financial decisions.

 

Not exclusively ….. some of it is simply good luck being in the right place at the right time. Now in the first place the
very first piece of good luck is to be born in europe probably Switzerland or Scandinavia ……on a sliding scale. Yes there then comes further down the chain the situation where some make good financial decisions and others may not but that assumes they have the finances available to make those good decisions…
Sorry but such statements really are very trite and rather like the Victorian concept of the deserving poor but we have been conditioned to accept them sadly.

 

Well, this is good news all round as far as I'm concerned