UK Car sales

[dan_b]

Year to date 2024 at end of Feb:

EVs at at 15.8% market share of new car sales vs 14.3% in 2023.
Diesel has fallen to 6.3% vs 7.7%.
Petrol down slightly to 57% vs 57.4%.
Plug in Hybrids up to 7.9 from 6.7%%
and bland old standard hybrids down to 13 from 13.9%

Of course although the current Government pushed back the ICE "ban" from 2030 to 2035, they retained the ZEV mandate. Which for this year is meant to be 22% of new vehicle sales should be ZEVs by end of 2023. And that's a fair gap.

So, will legacy ICE makers simply discount the prices of their existing BEVs to drive growth (and therefore presumably sell at a loss), or will they actually seek to restrict supply of their own (profitable) ICE vehicles, thus altering the shape of the market overall? Or both?

I believe the fine for not meeting the ZEV mandate is something like £15k/vehicle. So pretty gnarly penalties for not doing so.

[Krill]

VW retailers are restricting the sale of at least some ICE vehicles. I know Golf Rs are severely limited in availability, they have to sell 8 EV for every Golf R they register.

[ecogeorge]

Probably controversal but so not convinced that Ev is less damamaging v diesel . Battery and charging carbon footprints.......... etc etc
Lithium batteries charged by gas generation.
BUT every modern vehicle i drive is plagued by engine management and ad blue issues ...... looking around various forums and in Agriculture the common feature is run to end of warranty then pay say £250 get ad blue and particulate filters deleted from ECU .
My current car (kia ceed -12 yrs old 50k has intermittent EGR valve error causing management light issues that spooks ptnr .......
Same money to blank it and delete it from ECU than replace and get better fuel economy !! decissions ..............

[Moxi]

I had the same sort of problem with my Pug 5008 where the EGR kept failing (started at 100,000miles and then was a repeat offender every 50k afterwards) the valve was located in an inaccessible space between the bulkhead and the back of the engine block typically and was around 500 quid a time!

I had it replaced twice before a careless driver solved my problem by killing the pug after he turned into me at a junction at point blank range

Personally, I would replace it and then monitor the milage and if it fails prematurely next time reconsider your options.

The argument regards BEV's and ICE will always be debatable - BEV's are as clean as the power used to power them and the industries used to build them. The steel for components is the same level of pollution for both and since there's less steel in a BEV there's less pollution, I cant speak for Lithium mining and processing but if you compare oil extraction, transport, refining, transport, and burning in an ICE then I would say the lithium industry has scope for being equal to or better than. Definitely better at the tail pipe in terms of post combustion product, tyre particulate is the current hot topic, but I maintain that if you drive like a gentleman then the tyre wear will be minimal but if you drive like you stole it them yes, like Clarkson on the top gear track you will tear up a set of tyres in no time.

BEVs are not the ultimate solution BUT they seem to be better than the previous option of ICE to my mind.

Moxi

[Tinbum]

Our Skoda octavia has 250,000 miles on it, just passed its mot again with nothing to do. It occasionally has egr problems but, believe it our not, a spray with Bardahl EGR cleaner and it resolves. It's cost me absolutely nothing to maintain over the years we've had it. It's very fuel efficient as well. I believe running it till it dies is good for the planet. I'd like an ev, could afford one, but won't be getting one as just too expensive to go for something similar to the octavia and be cost effective.

[Moxi]

Our Skoda octavia has 250,000 miles on it, just passed its mot again with nothing to do. It occasionally has egr problems but, belive it our not, a spray with bardol (if I remember correctly without looking) and it resolves. It's cost me absolutely nothing to maintain over the years we've had it. It's very fuel efficient as well. I belive running it till it dies is good for the planet. I'd like an ev, could afford one, but won't be getting one as just too expensive to go for something similar to the octavia and be cost effective.

If it isn't broke then there's no point replacing it and as you say at that age it is the best option for the planet to extract as much of the embedded energy from the car as possible.

Moxi

[dan_b]

When you look at all the systems that are now in place to reduce the emissions harms from diesel, it's amazing that burning diesel unabated for so long was ever allowed in the first place. Those systems all come at a significant cost though of complexity and unreliability so it's no wonder many companies found it easier to simply cheat the tests, and why so many owners choose not to maintain those systems during their lifetimes.

Common rail high pressure injectors
Exhaust Gas Recirculation
Variable Vane Turbochargers
Exhaust gas catalysts
Exhaust gas particle filters
Post-combustion urea injection...


As long as humans have been on the planet, we've survived by digging stuff up, burning stuff and turning that stuff into other stuff. But from what I understand, the scale of resource extraction to get oil and gas out of the ground, to use once and then do it all over again, far far far exceeds the scale of extraction of everything else. So even if by switching to huge fleets of BEVs we increase the amount of lithium/cobalt/other metals we dig out of the ground, by also switching to renewables, we reduce the overall resource extraction because the batteries last for decades and can then be reused/recycled, and the power comes from the sun.

[Mart]

Hi Dan, the estimates from Transport & the Environment for an average BEV v's petrol car over lifetime, are that the Petrol will need 17,000lt, whilst the BEV will require 30kg of battery material extracted.

Note, the 30kg is based on the losses after recycling. And the petrol is only (I believe) for the petrol car, not the additional energy/fuel consumed in extracting, transporting, refining, transporting and pumping said fuel - That's fair as leccy generation still involves FF consumption, but reducing all the time.

PS - Linked to this, but really the bigger picture, there's the linked fact that approx 40% of international shipping by mass is FF's. Given that cleaning up long distance shipping is one of the toughest tasks, then RE/BEV's/HP's etc have additional benefits - virtuous circle.

[dan_b]

That figure of the % of international shipping that is moving oil and gas around is absolutely staggering. The amount of energy expended to move fossil fuels around must be gigantic.

[Ken]

The world avg for extracting oil and making petrol is of the order of 1 unit energy in to 6 units of energy out. We could nearly run EVs on just the energy used and wasted in FF production just forget the oil !

https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/148748/ ... script.pdf "This implies fossil fuel energy-return-on-investment ratios may be much nearer to those of renewables and could decline precipitously in the near future

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/1902 ... it-bitumen