[simplyEV]

Morning all!

I was at the NGMC (National Green Mobility Conference) yesterday in Milton Keynes. There was an awful lot of talk about the future and how EV adoption can be 'easy'. Emphasis on 'talk', why? Because as a lot of the speakers mentioned, car manufacturers are talking a lot about big batteries, many miles of range etc etc... But when will it happen?! Much like the government talk about things, but we won't go there.

The solution is not simple. Car manufactures cannot make them quick enough, try and get a Kona or Leaf quickly... But then people will moan about infrastructure too. So, let's put charge points at every Burger King on every motorway! Ah, but ''EV's are too expensive!'' they will cry... it sometimes feels never ending.

I came away thinking hard about what the most prominent thing would be to change but I'm not sure. Education? When conducting some market research on OEM cable and granny chargers the responses from some of the parts department people were just shocking... ''Erm, this is the part number - I have no idea what ampage or length the cable is, what do you need it to be?'' - does that install faith in a new EV driver? No wonder there is confusion.

Sales, my background was car sales, specifically. I like to think I was genuine and very 'people' orientated but naturally there would be incentives to sell certain models, as many dealers would do, along with hefty contributions to help the customer out. Targets were lingering in my mind all the time. A chap at the NGMC yesterday told his dad to go and ask about a really efficient PHEV or full BEV to buy as a new car... the dealer he went to see ended up selling him a diesel, because it's ''economical''

Where do you think the most noise can be made to start EV's really spiking in their sales?

A blog we wrote earlier in the year relevant to the topic:
Electric cars are coming thick and fast... - Simply EV Charging Cables

Happy friday folks!
Conor

 

[Brads]

Tesla Model 3, it is the game changer.

 

[srichards]

Range and price. £35k is a lot of money. There need to be EVs under £20k that can do 300 miles.

Tesla Model 3 was supposed to be a £30k car but it looks like it's going to be more like £50k when it first arrives in the UK.

Availability is a massive problem. 8 or 9 months for a Kona. A handful of Niros to be available in 2019.

To most onlookers it seems manufacturers are restricting supply massively either through intent or just bad planning.

Lack of driveway parking. Where you want EVs people live in flats or terraces. Worksplaces aren't doing enough about charging at work. There are a lot of anti car councils that don't want people commuting by car so they won't really encourage parking at work with charging.

Grid capacity concerns.

Biggest factor is general ignorance about EVs and dealers not helping at all.

A lot more people could have an EV as their normal car. The problem comes with sudden out of range trips which worries most people so the EV is always considered the second car due to this. That's an area that needs to be solved eg short notice car hire including out of hours. Or a guaranteed destination charge that can be pre booked somewhere where there isn't normally a charger so if you can get there you can be charged up quickly enough to get home again.

 

[donald]

We've done this before.

It's very simple; people will buy EVs once they provide the same convenience, functionality and range at an equivalent price.

It is that simple.

Simple.

Simple.

No-one with a choice, who is energy-supply-agnostic, is going to choose to have less convenience with less functionality and less range for more money.

 

[halcyonrichard]

Not sure that asking people who have EV's what's stopping everyone else buying an EV. I bought one because I wanted to try out and see what they could do (while still having a diesel). I have probably given 30 people a ride in my Leaf. Mainly family and friends. Everyone has asked about range and charging at motorways. Few realise how long it takes to charge and the fact that if they turn up at a single charger and someone is using it they will not know how long they have to wait. My Leaf cost £12,000 and is the most expensive car I have ever bought. In fact if I add up the total cost of all the cars I have bought it comes to less than that. However the car is now worth £10,000 and I have probably saved over £2,500 in fuel/tax/servicing. So overall cost for me was not a problem. But a lot of people do not look at the overall cost. The main thing stopping me going EV again is the charging infrastructure. I should be able to jump in the car and drive. When I get the 20 miles left warning I stop at the next charging hub, get onto a working charger straight away and pay without relying on a phone,signal,and app.I have a busy work life and a busy family/social life. allowing time for charging is not really a problem. Having to plan,allow for broken, in use, ICE'ed charger is a big problem for me.

 

[donald]

The solution is not simple. Car manufactures cannot make them quick enough, try and get a Kona or Leaf quickly...

That is not as simple as you make out.

How many have ordered a Kona or a Leaf?

This is the same predicament as GM's EV-1. Yeah, there were a number of very keen customers, but the wider customer base didn't really care.

No matter how much the advocates shouted, they were a very small number and not representative of a larger population of car users.

The problem with that supposition is that the relationship of price versus availability is not unrelated. However, there is not a strong correlation. The cheapest available car, the Soul, has sold very few numbers relative to less capable EVs. The reason for that is that the Soul is not a car that people necessarily want, they are not choosing them in vast numbers as ICE, why should they take a more expensive car will less practicality in the same shape?

It is not the consumers who need educating. It is the vehicle manufacturers. The population needs mainstream family hatchbacks with all the space they offer, a considerable range (not necessarily ICE range, but enough to drive to the beach in summer, I believe people will compromise on that) at a price that they can see it is cheaper over a 3 year period than the ICE equivalent.

 

[DBMandrake]

Tesla Model 3 was supposed to be a £30k car but it looks like it's going to be more like £50k when it first arrives in the UK.

Huh ?

The standard range model doesn't even exist in the US yet so any UK price is pure speculation. If they do eventually make their promised $35k standard range poverty spec model they won't be £50k that's for sure.

Lack of driveway parking. Where you want EVs people live in flats or terraces. Worksplaces aren't doing enough about charging at work. There are a lot of anti car councils that don't want people commuting by car so they won't really encourage parking at work with charging.

Inability to charge at home for a significant chunk of the UK population who park on the road is going to be the number one adoption problem for EV's, without doubt. It's the one EV adoption issue that gives me significant pause for concern, and I don't see a great solution for it either.

The other issues you raised are all addressable and will be solved at some point but the parking issue can't be, at least directly. I suspect those without off street parking and no reliable work charging will either have to suffer significant inconvenience compared to those of us that have it, if forced to EV's through outside forces (like city bans etc) or wait until you have readily available 300 mile range and 30 minute recharge time so they can adopt the ICE paradigm of drive for a week then fill up.

If that 30 minute fill up can align with some other activity like a weekly shop then it becomes reasonably feasible to adopt an EV then without a driveway. However 300 mile range batteries that can charge to 80% in 30 minutes won't be cheap, even 5 years from now, and those people are still at a serious cost disadvantage as the rapid charging networks will be fleecing them for all they can get while those with home charging will be getting cheap charging at their doorstep.

In the long run (20-30 years) this could conceivably cause a shift in the balance of property values to make those with driveways and off street parking more valuable relative to those that only offer on-street parking.. on the basis that running your electric car will be significantly cheaper and more convenient if you have a driveway.

We've done this before.

It's very simple; people will buy EVs once they provide the same convenience, functionality and range at an equivalent price.

It is that simple.

No it isn't. An EV doesn't have to be better than an ICE in every metric for it to become the preferred choice.

If what you say was true, nobody would have ever adopted smart phones, because in the metric of how long they can run from a single charge they are something like a factor of 10 worse than the feature phones they replaced, and 12 years after the iPhone popularised the smart phone, they're still a factor of 10 worse than a feature phone for battery life.

My Nokia 6210 (I think that's the model, it was a long time ago!) could run for 7-10 days on a single charge even with normal daily usage including quite a bit of messaging and several calls a day. And it was tiny.

I didn't have a charger for it in my car and I never consciously thought about charging it, I just waited until the low warning came on, knowing I probably had another full days use left then put it on charge for a couple of hours, then I was good for another 10 days.

When I switched to an iPhone suddenly I could only go one and a bit days between charges - realistically I have to charge it every night. It was also more than twice the size of the tiny Nokia. Why would I accept such a performance regression ? Simple - because it does everything else so much better than a feature phone, and does so, so many things that a feature phone could never do.

I'm willing to trade off the shorter battery life for the utility it gives me and I accept the fact that it just needs plugging in at night, and in no way could I go back to what I had before. Feature phones are dead to me.

Likewise an EV doesn't have to better an ICE in every single metric before it becomes a compelling product that you want.

I think for mass adoption that purchase cost and range will have to be comparable to ICE. At least in the same ballpark. If at £32k it's £10k more to buy and does barely 200 miles in summer, vs 400 miles, that's a hard sell.

Prices will come down over time though, and range will go up. At some point near parity will be reached on the price and range factors and you're then left with the "convenience" issue of where to charge and charging times.

I think it's pretty self evident that purely on charging times during a long journey, an EV will never be as convenient as the quick fill up of an ICE. There is only so far that charging speeds can be pushed. 350kW is pushing things to the very limit and requires complex and costly systems to implement both in the car (800 V DC system etc) and at the charger. Realistically 150kW will be the maximum charging speed for "ordinary" EV's for years or decades to come. People just need to get over that like they got over the fact that smart phones need daily charging.

The question is do other attributes of an EV compensate for the longer refuelling stops on a long journey ? Attributes such as convenient charging at home, vastly lower per mile charging costs, massive torque, quiet, smooth power delivery, pleasant driving experience, theoretical low maintenance and repairs per mile, and so on....

And I think the answer will be yes, it's something people will be willing to make a compromise on for those occasional times when they need to drive out of range on a long range EV.

Get EV's with the range of a Kona down in the low to mid £20's which support 100-150kW CCS charging, and make it available in a few different body styles and there will be a lot of people who see the overall benefit. Most people at the moment are stopped by range and purchase cost, and perhaps that an EV isn't available in their preferred body style.

We all say that the state of the charging networks is a factor for adoption but it really isn't - the people who are potential first time purchasers of EV's aren't even aware of the problems with charging networks like Ecotricity. They'll find out with a bump after they do buy an EV of course, but it's not what's stopping them at the moment.

Get the price down, the range up, and production numbers and availability up and the ball will really start rolling. I think there are a lot of interested buyers who are just waiting for the right time to make the jump.

 

[donald]

No it isn't. An EV doesn't have to be better than an ICE in every metric for it to become the preferred choice.

If what you say was true, nobody would have ever adopted smart phones, because in the metric of how long they can run from a single charge they are something like a factor of 10 worse than the feature phones they replaced

That's a terrible analogy and actually supports my view rather than yours.

I have said I think people will compromise on range, but I have emphasised functionality as more significant; people aren't going to pay more if they merely get the same functionality.

Smart 'phones offer more functionality. EVs offer nothing more than ICE, functionally speaking.

 

[DBMandrake]

That's a terrible analogy and actually supports my view rather than yours.

I have said I think people will compromise on range, but I have emphasised functionality as more significant; people aren't going to pay more if they merely get the same functionality.

Smart 'phones offer more functionality. EVs offer nothing more than ICE, functionally speaking.

The analogy was only to counter the assertion that an EV had to out perform an ICE in ever way (including convenience of use) before it would be adopted.

That's both not necessary, and not possible as charging speeds will always be slower than pouring fuel down a filler neck. Physics says so. So it then becomes a question of if that is the downside, what upsides would compensate for it in the mind of an average driver to make the purchase of an EV a preferred choice on balance.

After owning a 60 mile range EV for nearly 2 years now I don't agree about range. I think time is proving that the one thing that people will not compromise on is range, and EV manufacturers have cottoned onto that now. Only early adopters are interested in EV's with a range of less than 200 miles.

The general public wants Kona levels of range. We can argue till the cows come home that 90% of people don't really need all that range (which is true) but you're not going to change people's opinions on range. They want their 200-250 miles of range on a charge, then they will consider buying one. They might consider a smaller shorter range car for a 2nd city runabout, but not their primary or only car.

I think charging speed (relative to ICE fuelling) is what people will be willing to compromise on, not range. And long range makes that compromise realistically not happen most of the time if they have charging at home. Another reason to want long range.

Low fuelling costs per mile will be a big driver for EV's initially when affordable long range models are available but that could well be neutered by the government slapping a large per mile road tax on EV's, which I think must happen eventually unless we want general taxation to go up to cover the lost fuel tax.

 

[simplyEV]

It is not the consumers who need educating. It is the vehicle manufacturers. The population needs mainstream family hatchbacks with all the space they offer, a considerable range (not necessarily ICE range, but enough to drive to the beach in summer, I believe people will compromise on that) at a price that they can see it is cheaper over a 3 year period than the ICE equivalent.

Nail on the head. But, consumers still need to be educated (although not on the same level as the OEM's)... there is ignorance out there.

 

[donald]

The analogy was only to counter the assertion that an EV had to out perform an ICE in ever way (including convenience of use) before it would be adopted.

I never said they would. You are answering your own mis-read. But if they are going to pay MORE for a car, it has to be better in SOME way, ANY way!!!

An EV may not be better than an ICE in every way, unfortunately, on the things that count (fuel agnostic) an ICE is better in every way than an EV.

 

[donald]

Nail on the head. But, consumers still need to be educated (although not on the same level as the OEM's)... there is ignorance out there.

I am very cautious never to say this, for the following reason;-

I have discussed such cars with several of my very well educated and auto-industry aware colleagues. All of them [bar one] have chosen NOT to get an EV for entirely legitimate, informed reasons.

If you take the position that the only reason a person wouldn't buy an EV is because they are ignorant, then you are on to a hiding for nothing.

Intelligent and well informed people, clearly even better informed than EV users in some cases given some of the stories we hear about, may choose not to have an EV.

I am sure that there may be more people who take up EVs if they had greater knowledge of them, but equally we also see a stream of people going back to ICE because of what they have learned about EV ownership the hard way.

It is not education. It is having sufficient breadth of EV products that meet the needs, and affordability, of consumers. Put 'EV' in the back of every car brochure merely as an alternative option against petrol and diesel models, in the same table, no differences other than the energy source, and then tell me this isn't true!!

 

[DBMandrake]

I never said they would. You are answering your own mis-read. But if they are going to pay MORE for a car, it has to be better in SOME way, ANY way!!!

You seem to forget what you write quite quickly...

It's very simple; people will buy EVs once they provide the same convenience, functionality and range at an equivalent price.

Public charging is not as convenient as fuelling an ICE. And nor will it ever be.

At best, you can have an experience like a Tesla supercharger where you pull up, don't have to queue, plug in and everything works straight away without any fiddling around. But you still have a charging time that is 6-12 times longer than fuelling an ICE...

Or you can have the nightmare that is some other charging networks. Pull up to find the charger broken, or have to queue for one. Then fiddle around with apps on your phone that have forgotten your login and credit card details, or 3G/4G that isn't working, or it's too dark to see what you're doing to operate the machine. While it rains. Then you finally get it working and have to wait 10-20 times longer than filling up an ICE.

This is not the "same convenience" as using an ICE. So there needs to be other benefits to owning an EV to make up for it. (Which fortunately there are, or will be)

 

[simplyEV]

I am very cautious never to say this, for the following reason;-

I have discussed such cars with several of my very well educated and auto-industry aware colleagues. All of them [bar one] have chosen NOT to get an EV for entirely legitimate, informed reasons.

If you take the position that the only reason a person wouldn't buy an EV is because they are ignorant, then you are on to a hiding for nothing.

Intelligent and well informed people, clearly even better informed than EV users in some cases given some of the stories we hear about, may choose not to have an EV.

I am sure that there may be more people who take up EVs if they had greater knowledge of them, but equally we also see a stream of people going back to ICE because of what they have learned about EV ownership the hard way.

It is not education. It is having sufficient breadth of EV products that meet the needs, and affordability, of consumers. Put 'EV' in the back of every car brochure merely as an alternative option against petrol and diesel models, in the same table, no differences other than the energy source, and then tell me this isn't true!!

No no no.. ignorance is not the only reason. That's for sure. I've talked at length with friends, family etc etc and much like yourself they are of automotive or at least well informed in 'cars' - they chose not to at the moment. Having the products is brilliant but 'the people' need to know about them. Much like my sales person example... the father only wanted something to do local trips in - a 2nd hand Leaf, Zoe or even an Outlander PHEV would be suitable... Now, was the sales person uneducated on EV products (when I was selling there was little in depth training on PHEV/EV products) or just lazy and opted for the diesel sell which he knows inside out?

Needs and wants, good old buying factors eh

 

[donald]

You seem to forget what you write quite quickly...

No, it is you who wish to take the inverse as a thing said.

I said "It's very simple; people will buy EVs once they provide the same convenience, functionality and range at an equivalent price."

I hold this to be obviously and absolutely correct. Why the heck wouldn't they?!?!?!

I did NOT say "people won't buy EVs until they provide the same convenience".

You seem to forget what you write quite quickly...

Presumably in your world this means I will remember everything I write slowly? I can assure you, I don't!

 

[AtTheVan]

There’s nothing stopping mass adoption, unless you count time (which doesn’t stop it, it just stops it happening all at once)
Adoption is a curve and eventually that curve will become steeper as prices come down and supply goes up.
Then the curve will flatten out when all the people who want one have one.

 

[donald]

There’s nothing stopping mass adoption, unless you count time (which doesn’t stop it, it just stops it happening all at once)
Adoption is a curve and eventually that curve will become steeper as prices come down and supply goes up.
Then the curve will flatten out when all the people who want one have one.

You might think so. I am positive but not yet convinced.

How many companies are gearing up for this?

VW are saying that AFTER the NEXT generation of cars they will not build any more ICE. This is a 10 year cycle and they've just started a new one, so this current generation of ICE will run to 2026 and the next one 2036, so they are doing nothing more than following the stuff which is going to be imposed by legislation.

What they are actually hoping for is that it'll all get forgotten about and this pesky EV nonsense will stop, people will see sense, and they'll have the 'diesel renaissance' that they think, at board level, will happen.

Ghosn has been put in the brig and gagged to stop him making any more of these novelties.

Fiat make a 500 EV and give them away, no intention of making money from them.

German barge makers think a 7kWh 'defeat' device makes their cars cleaner.

PSA bought out GM and then canned the Bolt.

Ford ... heh....

Who else is left for me to throw scorn at?....

C'mon. Anyone who thinks EVs in Europe and USA are out of the woods is thinking happy thoughts in their happy place. Reality might have different ideas.

In Asia, however, EVs are already heading for mass adoption. Lots of models, over a million on the roads, etc.. SE Asia are gearing up accordingly, and we're getting thrown a few tidbits out of that production. We're probably just beta-testers for HKMC.

 

[john andersen]

Charging convenience is a major part, ordered a renault zoe now waiting for delivery, got no driveway but getting a charger installed at work, not all are able to do that. And until that happens i have to use public chargers (better pull my finger out and get hold of chargemaster again )
and all the rubbish sprouted about battery change, and degradation, that thing is sitting at the back of a lot of peoples head as soon they think electric vehicle.

The other thing i have gotten told by none ev drivers, is that they will tax electricity like diesel as soon enough has switched to it (government) so why bother,,

 

[donald]

The other thing i have gotten told by none ev drivers, is that they will tax electricity like diesel as soon enough has switched to it

I believe that is more than likely true. Do you not think so?

 

[AtTheVan]

I believe that is more than likely true. Do you not think so?

They wouldn’t be able to do this unless they metered cars separately. If you increase tax on all electricity then you negatively affect the poor and elderly and plunge them deeper into fuel poverty.