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[Big Sam]

The vast majority of people in the UK (and globally) cannot afford any new car at all, forget about "the best". Those that can, absolutely will care about residuals, because they can't just take the hit. I earn a decent amount of money, but not enough to pay £500+/month on an EV. Certainly don't have a spare £10,000 lying around for a deposit on a lease.

The issue is cars in general are far too expensive for ordinary people these days. And when people force themselves to buy a new or second hand car because they NEED it, they will absolutely care about residuals.

You're taking my comment out of context. I was responding specifically to Swissbob referencing the Q8 e-tron and Q8 TDI, neither of which are cheap cars. My comment was I would still buy the e-tron because it's the better car irrespective of residuals.


If you want my views on cheaper cars, then there are decent second-hand EVs on the market (there has to be if new EVs don't hold their value, right?). There are also cheap new EVs on the market (my new arrival is one of the cheapest you can buy). And tanking residuals are not the sole preserve of BEVs. Lots of ICEs drop in value.

The issue I have is that residuals on EVs are heavily influenced by all the BS you read in the press, which is then repeated ad-nasueum by the general public without having ANY idea what they're talking about. "The batteries don't last". "You can't charge them anywhere". "They catch fire".

People don't like change, and there's money to be made in telling people things they want to hear. That's the issue. I'm convinced that for 95% of the population, EVs make far more sense than ICEs. They're just too set in their ways and influenced by anti-EV propaganda to realise it.

@Big Sam
Renault 5 or 4?

Now there's a thought...

 

[Big Sam]

They would make sense if it was easy to charge them. Which it factually isn't for the vast majority of people.
Range anxiety is a serious issue too. People want to be able to drive to a vacation destination properly.
This coming from someone who likes EV cars....

I really don't understand what the issue is. I'm actually in the middle of a holiday now, in the south west of England in North Devon, which is as big a charging desert you will find, and yet it just hasn't been a problem. I don't have a charger where we're staying, so I'm relying purely on public charging. What people need to do is forget about how they fill their ICE cars and start from fresh. ABC (Always Be Charging). Popping to the supermarket? Stick it on the charger for 15 minutes. That's what I did tonight and I added 60 km of range. It takes seconds to plug in. When we leave our holiday cottage on Wednesday to drive back to the Netherlands, we will do it without fuss, I guarantee, and this is in the UK which is behind the likes of NL, Belgium, Germany.

So when are you going to tell us?

When it's delivered. Was supposed to be coming first week in September, but latest I heard was end of September.

 

[klier]

I really don't understand what the issue is. I'm actually in the middle of a holiday now, in the south west of England in North Devon, which is as big a charging desert you will find, and yet it just hasn't been a problem. I don't have a charger where we're staying, so I'm relying purely on public charging. What people need to do is forget about how they fill their ICE cars and start from fresh. ABC (Always Be Charging). Popping to the supermarket? Stick it on the charger for 15 minutes. That's what I did tonight and I added 60 km of range. It takes seconds to plug in. When we leave our holiday cottage on Wednesday to drive back to the Netherlands, we will do it without fuss, I guarantee, and this is in the UK which is behind the likes of NL, Belgium, Germany.

But still you have to constantly think about charging, and finding a charger. I've driven enough EVs to find this particular part of dealing with an EV a hassle. Even in EV loving Holland.
So you don't have a charger at the hotel*, which means you have to look for a charger nearby. Then you have to hope it's not charging another car for the night. And then you have to hope it's not raining (you're in the UK after all) when you walk back to the hotel.

*And when you swap the word hotel with the word house (or dare I say it, apartment), it simply becomes an ordeal for many.
Even here in the Randstad in a city like The Hague, it is a hassle. 6 chargers for the whole block is cute, but there's still 200 cars on the block. How is that going to work out?

And I fully get your life with EVs is perfect and hassle free. You live in a house with private charger, and own like 5 cars including ICE. Get get the convenience you get out of it. But for many it's simply far from ideal as it stands...

 

[Big Sam]

But still you have to constantly think about charging, and finding a charger.

I don't know why anybody is constantly thinking about charging. I hear this a lot but it's usually spoken by people who don't have an EV.

So you don't have a charger at the hotel*, which means you have to look for a charger nearby. Then you have to hope it's not charging another car for the night. And then you have to hope it's not raining (you're in the UK after all) when you walk back to the hotel.

This is something that someone without an EV would imagine you would do a lot, charge at hotels, yet the reality for me is I rarely do it.

At the start of our holiday we drove from Leeds to a hotel south of Bristol, a distance of 370 km, which is on the limit of the range on my Macan, so I knew I'd have to stop to charge before I got to the hotel. I had a quick look before I set off at what ultra-rapid chargers there were around the north of Bristol, and bingo, there was an IONITY 350 kW just off the M5 motorway 329km from Leeds. This took all of 30-seconds to find out. Of course, I could have just let the car decide the charging strategy, but I find it easier to plan myself.

This first leg took three hours, by which point I need to stop anyway for the toilet. I pull up to the 14-unit IONITY hub in a hotel car park, get out, plug the car in, and it starts charging immediately due to 'Plug'n'Charge' recognising my car. No faffing about with credit cards. Less than one minute after pulling in, I'm already walking into the hotel reception. I go to the toilet while the car is charging, something I couldn't do if I had to put petrol or diesel into a tank. I come out of the toilet and back to the car, where I spend a few minutes checking underneath the car due to hitting the carcass of an animal 30-minutes earliern on the motorway. Everything fine, I unplug. No hanging around. No looking at the clock. Just 13-minutes going to the toilet and checking the car, during which time I also charged. I then drive 20-minutes to the hotel to spend the night, where I don't charge and I also don't get wet.

The next morning I look at my range and identify another IONITY charger on the way to our holiday accommodation and know at some point we'll be passing it and I'll have enough range to get there. Again, no thought needed. We stop off for a few hours in a town for lunch and a look around and where I park there are chargers, but I don't need to plug in as I already know where I'll be charging later. Sure enough, we get to the IONITY at around 1630, just in time to give our children something to eat. I pull up and have a choice of 5-empty spaces. I plug in and we go to the toilet and get something to eat. I unplug at 98%. I now have around 350km of range which means I don't have to think about plugging in for several days.

You probably don't care, but maybe somebody else reading may find it useful. The overwhelming feeling of having an EV is that you can fuel your car while doing something else.

And I fully get your life with EVs is perfect and hassle free. You live in a house with private charger, and own like 5 cars including ICE. Get get the convenience you get out of it. But for many it's simply far from ideal as it stands...

I've used my home charger once in the last three months. 95% of my driving is long distance, because I live 3km from where I work.

Yes, I have an ICE C-Class with a range of 1,000km, yet I chose to take my EV on the 2,500km family holiday to an area which has proportionally less chargers rather than most parts of the UK...because charging is just not an issue.

 

[KiwiRob]

Identical here in The Netherlands in fact.



They would make sense if it was easy to charge them. Which it factually isn't for the vast majority of people.
Range anxiety is a serious issue too. People want to be able to drive to a vacation destination properly.
This coming from someone who likes EV cars....

So when are you going to tell us?

How come it works in Norway, it is easy to charge an EV if you have the infrastructure in place. Most people who own EV's have home charging, apartment buildings have EV charging bays or your designated space has a charger. IMO people are looking for excuses to make the transition more difficult than it needs to be.

This summer I drove from from home to Åre in Sweden, which is 420km, I had one stop going to Åre, the charging station was at a Circle K which had food and tables so we had lunch, on the way home we didn't stop I made it home with 2% battery left. I could have bailed out and charged at any of the dozens of charging locations on the way but I wanted to push it.

Are you implying you can't charge in the rain?

 

[Big Sam]

Are you implying you can't charge in the rain?

No, he's saying that if your hotel doesn't have chargers, you'd have to park at a charger away from the hotel and then walk the rest of the way in the rain, which sounds like a scenario somebody who hasn't lived with an EV would create.

The reality is you would just park up at the hotel like any other car and charge elsewhere, which is exactly what I did three days ago.

 

[Matski]

IMO people are looking for excuses to make the transition more difficult than it needs to be.

You really do need to consider scenarios outside of your bubble. You have an expensive EV, you do have access to a home charger, and you live in one of the most well prepared countries for the transition. That factually and objectively doesn't represent a large part of the car driving public, possibly even the majority.

I cycle to work everyday, I'm not going to pretend that would be a solution for everybody just because it works for me, because I understand that peoples circumstances vary, but it appears to be what you're doing.

 

[Big Sam]

You really do need to consider scenarios outside of your bubble. You have an expensive EV, you do have access to a home charger, and you live in one of the most well prepared countries for the transition. That factually and objectively doesn't represent a large part of the car driving public, possibly even the majority.

I cycle to work everyday, I'm not going to pretend that would be a solution for everybody just because it works for me, because I understand that peoples circumstances vary, but it appears to be what you're doing.

To be fair to KiwiRob, you're both talking about different things. You're right in that there are *some* situations where transition to EVs will be difficult. KiwiRob is refering to people creating hypothetical scenarios that have no connection to reality. A hotel not having a charger so you have to park away from the hotel and therefore you'll get wet? It's exactly what someone who doesn't live with an EV would invent in their head if they want to demonstrate EVs are not convenient. I hear examples like that a lot.

I'm all ears if people want to tell me why EVs wouldn't work for them, but the majority of the time their reasons are based not on experience, but a completely skewed guess as to how it *might* be.

I know it may appear not to be the case, but I couldn't care less if someone doesn't want an EV. What I find frustrating is when their reasons for not wanting one are based on complete fallacies.

 

[Design FIRST]

... because I understand that peoples circumstances vary.

They certainly do. Not that I have any compelling reasons whatsoever to unload my 10 year old ICE smaller SUV. But were there, a leased BEV would certainly be a highly viable alternative. Most probably the route that I would take, in fact. For me and in my particular region an attractive solution-where BEVs and charging facilities have become so commonplace.. But residing on the suburban periphery of a large metropolitan region is a whole different situation than the one prevalent in the secluded rural, infrastructurally underdeveloped regions in the eastern portion of my country.

 

[klier]

How come it works in Norway, it is easy to charge an EV if you have the infrastructure in place.

Maybe because we have almost 4 times as many people living in a much smaller area. It's cramped and people live in different houses than in Norway.

Are you implying you can't charge in the rain?

No, I am implying you, like Betty, live in a fictional bubble hardly reflecting the reality of the masses.

I cycle to work everyday, I'm not going to pretend that would be a solution for everybody just because it works for me, because I understand that peoples circumstances vary, but it appears to be what you're doing.

Perfect way to end the conversation for me, right here.

 

[SKY]

The moment of the conversation when an EV owner just treats non-EV owners as weirdos is just silly and tiresome.

 

[martinbo]

The moment of the conversation when an EV owner just treats non-EV owners as weirdos is just silly and tiresome.

Well, that's a bit of an extreme interpretation of the discussion.

Personally, my viewpoint is that EVs and wealth are mutually inclusive.

 

[SKY]

Well, that's a bit of an extreme interpretation of the discussion.

Personally, my viewpoint is that EVs and wealth are mutually inclusive.

Don't pretend to bother our buddies here, but I do believe in what I have stated based on my personal experience. My company offers most of company cars now as EVs and some people embrace them in a weird manner.

I will stick with ICE for at least some other good 5 years.

 

[Design FIRST]

The most diehard of "petro-or gearheads" can also embrace BEVs. One of my siblings is an example of this. He's been restoring "young" classic automobiles/motorcycles with his best buddy for some 20+ years. Primarily as a hobby. They can usually sell them at a profit. Original FIAT 500, SAAB 99, Ford P5 17m, M-B C123 280E as well as a number of old BMW motorcycles are part of their repertoire. The "everyday" vehicles are, however, BEVs. Company vehicles, mind you. And they are very impressed by what BEVs have to offer.

 

[Rolf]

I like the idea of driving or been a passenger in an EV with autonomous controls that aid relaxation and also the chance to do other things during the morning traffic, but where I live (South Africa) and where I work (Saudi Arabia) the infrastructure is not yet viable or set up for owning an EV. The only way to charge would be at my house (in South Africa) but in Saudi living in an apartment and with my car parked at the outside of the building on the street there is no way to charge. Both countries are far behind Europe and China in EV transition and another thing is the cost to buy a new EV. In South Africa the cheapest EV you can buy is the BYD Dolphin (R550K or $30K), although the smaller Atto 1 (mini Dolphin) will apparently be launched in Sep 2025 with a price tag of about R350K ($20K) but if you want a larger sized car then you have to stretch to R800K ($45k) for a BYD Atto 3 or Volvo EX30. Even a Mini Cooper SE is also the same price. For a decent sized family car then the budget will have to stretch to R1mill ($56k) for a BYD Seal or Mini Countryman SE. A BMW iX1 starts at R1,2mill ($67k) which is the same price bracket as a E-class and BMW 5-series diesel model (E220d/520d). For that kind of money I would rather invest in a classic sports car which is guarenteed to appreciate in value and not drop like a stone in 2 years like the EV cars will.

 

[Matski]

I'm all ears if people want to tell me why EVs wouldn't work for them, but the majority of the time their reasons are based not on experience, but a completely skewed guess as to how it *might* be.

With your experience, how might your long distance runs be if you had to use a 40kWh 2015 Nissan Leaf with a real world range of 150 miles?

 

[Sunny]

FWIW, I been living with an EV and no home charger for almost 6 months now. It is a 25 mins stop at the local charging station once a week and some quite me time I look forward to. "Honey, can you do the dishes, I got to go charge the car!"

 

[Sunny]

Personally, my viewpoint is that EVs and wealth are mutually inclusive.

True, but also almost every new thing starts off that way, be it refrigerator, tv, computers, heck even cars! I still remember, being fresh out of college looking at a ~25k flat screen TV when they came out and thinking how I will never ever have one!