Electric Cars Are Close to Overtaking Petrol In the UK, Data Shows (electrek.co) 136
69 million people people live in the United Kingdom. And now >Electrek reports:
Battery-electric cars took 32% of the UK's new car market in October, while petrol cars fell to just 37.2%, according to new data from the SMMT. That's the closest the two have been. At the current pace, electric cars will outsell petrol in the UK within a year. And it could happen as soon as this December.
The UK registered 152,730 new cars in October, up 5.4% year-over-year and the 11th straight month of growth for the overall market. All of that growth came from plug-ins. Battery-electric vehicle registrations jumped 32.7% to 48,858 units, and plug-in hybrids rose 30.1% to 22,898. Meanwhile, petrol fell 11.6% to 56,876 units, diesel dropped 15.9%, and even conventional hybrids were down 5%...
The brands growing fastest in the UK are mostly Chinese. BYD registered 6,065 cars in October, up 73%. Jaecoo more than doubled to 6,089 units, Chery nearly tripled to 3,707, and Leapmotor doubled to 1,773. MG was up 85%.
Looking at trend lines, EV car sales surpass petrol sales "around August 2027 at roughly 33% each," the article points out. "But that's the slow scenario, because it ignores December." UK battery-electric vehicle share spikes every December as automakers push volume to get closer to their zero-emission vehicle mandate targets... Petrol's days as the UK's default car are numbered. The only question is whether the milestone comes in December or sometime in 2027.
The UK registered 152,730 new cars in October, up 5.4% year-over-year and the 11th straight month of growth for the overall market. All of that growth came from plug-ins. Battery-electric vehicle registrations jumped 32.7% to 48,858 units, and plug-in hybrids rose 30.1% to 22,898. Meanwhile, petrol fell 11.6% to 56,876 units, diesel dropped 15.9%, and even conventional hybrids were down 5%...
The brands growing fastest in the UK are mostly Chinese. BYD registered 6,065 cars in October, up 73%. Jaecoo more than doubled to 6,089 units, Chery nearly tripled to 3,707, and Leapmotor doubled to 1,773. MG was up 85%.
Looking at trend lines, EV car sales surpass petrol sales "around August 2027 at roughly 33% each," the article points out. "But that's the slow scenario, because it ignores December." UK battery-electric vehicle share spikes every December as automakers push volume to get closer to their zero-emission vehicle mandate targets... Petrol's days as the UK's default car are numbered. The only question is whether the milestone comes in December or sometime in 2027.
Poor statistics. What does this even mean? (Score:2)
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This information is actually pretty easy to find: https://www.smmt.co.uk/vehicle... [smmt.co.uk]
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If 37% of cars are "gas" and 32% are "electric" what are the remaining cars? Are you classing diesel as an entirely different species?
That's how it's normally done. They run on a very different fuel with a very different combustion cycle.
I would like to see internal combustion vs. hybrid vs. electric. Or just list all the segments, because the information here is so fragmentary.
The companies which collect it generally want you to pay for that information.
Registrations by powertrain (Score:2)
To anyone wondering, here are the numbers detailed by powertrain:
https://www.smmt.co.uk/vehicle... [smmt.co.uk]
October '26
Petrol - 56,876
Diesel - 5,811
HEV - 18,287
BEV - 48,858
PHEV - 22,898
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Actually, I stand corrected, the "nearly caught up" statistic is only somewhat true for October, not even for the whole of 2026.
October 2026 Market Share (electric/petrol): 32.0% (48,858 units) / 37.2% (56,876 units)
Year-to-Date (YTD) 2026 Market Share (electric/petrol): 26.6% (503,805 units) / 41.1% (778,492 units)
Please stop quoting Yelektrek, it is as useless as a source of information as it is biased and stupid.
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Actually, I stand corrected, the "nearly caught up" statistic is only somewhat true for October, not even for the whole of 2026.
I'm just curious, how long does a moron such as yourself imagine that people keep a car? 2 weeks? 3?
Re:Another day, another baseless headline (Score:4, Informative)
The electrocarts are nowhere
"electrocart"? OMG, you sound like one of those under-informed over-opinionated morons who yell about "libtards" or "right wing nutjobs". Oh wait ... you are. All the self-awareness and nuance of RFK.
About the only place where EVs are not rapidly replacing oil-burners in sales is the land of mighty Tariff, thanks to your beloved leader.
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i see that you have nothing of substance to add on the subject, just like the rest of the musko fans who have down-modded my factual observation that the headline is a lie.
and if you imply that the orange shitgibbon y'all freely elected twice is *my* leader, then i have bad news for you. he's still your president lol.
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Yes the headline left out an important detail.
Welcome to planet Earth, you'll see a lot of that here. The fact that is was sales, not numbers on the road, was made clear in the first sentence after.
Yet you think you are a stable genius for correcting that?
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Yes the headline left out an important detail.
No, the headline made a very misleading claim, usually called "a lie".
The stable genius here are you, who tries to defend a patent lie by building a strawman and fighting it with everything you've got, which ain't much.
You'd be very welcome in the trump club.
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Wait, wait... you're accusing electric car owners of all driving Nazi Cars, except that... from your comment history we already know that you're an Actual Nazi? Seriously? That's your angle of attack?
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I checked and in Norway 98.6% of new cars sold in September were EV (in some regions 99%). Lots of trucks driving locally in the cities (e.g. rather large garbage trucks) are electric as well.
There's stil a tax difference in bying EVs compared to other types of cars, but the advantage is less than before. Some of the other advantages (e.g. cheaper toll booths) are also getting removed. People buying cars now simply consider EVs to be what they want to drive (at least when I ask.. so, that's anecdotal of c
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Norway is a special case. Lots of government incentives, and lots of guilt for getting filthy rich by selling oil.
Others will follow as EVs get cheaper, which happens as battery prices come down. Already we are seeing price parity between EV and ICE in many cases.
The cheapest car in Australia now is the Atto-1 BEV. And many others cost less than a Corolla hybrid. So the fuel and maintenance savings are pure profit.
V2H is rare in Australia. Some people get home batteries to charge by day from
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It's not a special case anymore, that's the point really (incentives are changed etc). What people want to drive are EVs. It's so much cheaper to drive, even during the wild electricity price fluctuations (due to being price-wise connected to EU), but apparently for other reasons too. Including that about 500 models now have 4-wheel drive, which is pretty useful in a country with months of winter.
When I last rented a car the available options were nearly all EV.
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I've met Norwegians, but... I've never met a Norwegian who can even define feeling guilty, much less actually feel it. And that's when they're actually guilty of something. Here, you're just projecting.
Re: Another day, another baseless headline (Score:3)
Isn't this purely about sales, not on-the-road...?
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Yes. He's just being a grumpy dickhead.
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For your benefit, here's the quote:
Electric Cars Are Close to Overtaking Petrol In the UK, Data Shows
I know functional literacy isn't big on slashdot of late, but where does it say "about sales"?
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It is in TFA:
Battery-electric cars took 32% of the UK's new car market in October, while petrol cars fell to just 37.2%, according to new data from the SMMT.
Ooops, that was so easy again.
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Why are leftists always so stupid?
If you perceive an Actual Nazi as a "leftist," where exactly does that put you on the spectrum?
Klingon? Romulan?
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Yes, but that makes this headline typically bullshit:
Electric Cars Are Close to Overtaking Petrol In the UK, Data Shows
An accurate headline would look like this:
Electric Car Sales Are Close to Overtaking Petrol In the UK, Data Shows
Either they deliberately ran with a misleading headline in order to troll people into writing more comments, or they're incompetent idiots, or both.
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Re:electric cars are gay (Score:4, Informative)
How often do you do cross-country drives? Just because your country is big doesn't mean most Americans drive across it very often. In fact, 93% of all US car trips are under 50km (30 miles) [energy.gov] and more than 50% are under 10km (6 miles).
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I don't know where you live, but where I live, we have things like "rental car companies" that let me rent a vehicle as needed.
I don't drive an 18 wheeler just because once every decade I need to move my stuff from one house to another. I don't even drive a box van. If I need to move, I rent a U-Haul.
Likewise, I don't drive an F-150 because I might need to move something big once a year.
I drive a normal car -
Re:electric cars are gay (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: electric cars are gay (Score:2)
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Plenty of countries are seeing oil demand destruction through adoption of EVs.
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Yeah, great. So I just have to rent a proper car for that other 7%.
My younger daughter lives in Manchester, we live in the Highlands of Scotland. The distance between the two is 300 miles. There are service stations all along the route and all have EV charging points. If and when we change our car, it will almost certainly to be to an EV, given that there is no problem with find a charging point.
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Doing that kind of distance now and then I'd say it's no problem at all these days. I tend to just drive until I get to about 20%, then stop at the next service area and charge. If anything, it reminds/forces you to take a safety break.
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tl;dr, with a little planning on where to stop (which we also had to do to locate petrol pumps), and when due to the long
Re:electric cars are gay (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, great. So I just have to rent a proper car for that other 7%.
Do you though? I know someone who commutes cross country on a weekly basis (curtesy of being a commissioning engineer on a project up north) and he drives an EV. Why doesn't it work for you? I was in the UK last week, and literally every Uber driver drove an EV. That's people who make money by driving and being in motion, and they use EVs. Why doesn't it work for you?
This is why people who do real work don't take kindly to urban midwits telling them they could be forced to buy electric vehicles instead.
Yes quarterwits largely don't like the idea of people who they themselves consider to not be intelligent to point out how silly they are. I believe literally everyone should be forced to own an EV for at least a month. At the end of it we'd have less quarterwits complaining about midwits, and coming up with weird scenarios claiming that the car isn't suitable for them, when in virtually all cases it most certainly is.
When the mobility industry itself is migrating to EVs, then your mobility problems with EVs cease being meaningful.
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People who drive for work are legally obliged to take regular breaks anyway. Time spend charging is time they would be resting anyway, and now the problem is that the chargers are so fast that they need to move the car half way through the rest period.
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OK, now I'm wanting a Mr Bean episode where somebody stops in the middle of the road because it's break time. And he refuses to drive on the wrong side of the road, so he attempts to trespass to get around them. But is thwarted by a bulldog. And some sheep.
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It does happen occasionally. Years ago when I was in the office we had one guy run out of time with his lorry parked over the exit to our car park, and nobody could get out. Claimed that the truck wouldn't allow him to move it until his break was over, and I've read that some do in fact have a lock out mechanism like that.
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It seems like, in various excessive comments on this one story, you're alternatively claiming to be a UK person, and separately to somebody who sometimes visits there?
Maybe just stop over-selling your arguments with misleading blah-blah? Especially where you make good points with dishonest set-up.
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"Yeah, great. So I just have to rent a proper car for that other 7%."
What car is not sufficiently "proper" that it cannot be driven over 30 miles? We are laughing at your stupidity, as is commonly the case for MAGA posters.
"And some trips would become impossible without towing a diesel generator because there are no gas stations, let alone electric chargers. Even with a diesel truck, one of our friends has to carry a second diesel tank in the back because he works in places where there is literally no fuel
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Don't kid yourself, he doesn't even own a car. He drives his mom's minivan.
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"I'm not going to rent hot plates or whatever for these rare meals."
You ABSOLUTELY would if the standard configuration for a kitchen didn't meet your needs. You don't remodel your kitchen to destroy functionality that you count on, the analogy is absurd.
"...people don't buy a vehicle for 99% of their driving every year, they buy a vehicle for 99.999% of their driving."
Laughable bullshit. There isn't a car owner in the world that understands the difference in their own driving between those two numbers.
"Th
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Yes. When I lived in the UK I drove from London to Edinburgh a few times and that was considered a long trip.
Here in Canada that's about the same distance as the drive from my house to the Mother-in-Law's house and I've sometimes driven there and back in a weekend. Using an EV would add at least a couple of hours to the trip, except I've never actually seen a charger along the way to charge at.
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Isn't that about 7 hours by car? I've done San Jose to Seattle which was about 14 hours for me, I did it in one go only stopping for gas and one meal. So I believe you someone could do the round trip in a day, although that doesn't leave you a whole lot of time. But if you're picking up something, like a piano or some difficult to find item for a collection or hobby, then quite possible to pull off.
San Francisco to LA is about a 5 hour drive, similar distance (perhaps 80%?) of a London to Edinburgh. But it
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Of course driving from London to Edinburgh
Re: electric cars are gay (Score:2)
checked the train fare number because I was unable to believe it wasnâ(TM)t three figures. Booking ahead is more like 40 quid for the outbound trip (with flights about the same but you have to schlep to Gatwick first).
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I live in California, and commute about 70 miles round trip 2 days a week (used to be 6 days a week). The size of the entire US does not matter much for my driving habits because I would not drive to New York, I really am going to mainly travel around my local area. Which is typical in nearly all civilizations, and not uniquely British nor is the US an exception to this.
BEVs making headway in US metropolitan areas before it gains traction in rural areas was always expected. And many of the statistics around
Gulf of Mexico, dammit! (Score:2)
For myself in the Midwest USA it would take 2 days, of roughly 10 hours of driving, to get to the Pacific coast, Atlantic coast, or the Gulf of America.
You lost my interest when you named it the Gulf of America. How sycophantic can you get?
You do realize that in two years when Trump is dithering away in his assisted living center the name will go back to Gulf of Mexico, just like the rest of the world still recognizes it.
Worst. President. Ever.
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Yep, "Gulf of 'Murica" is a flashing neon troll sign.
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If the USA jumps in with both feet on BEV adoption, to where new BEV sales make up 1/3rd of car and light trucks, then the world is simply going to run out of a lot of critical minerals.
Classic bad projection based on linear assumptions.
When prices goes up, mining optimizes usually reducing costs, while at the same time producers search for ways to reduce or replace the consumption of whatever drives prices up.
Even if the whole world moves to EVs the worlds isn't gonna run of critical materials, because "critical" means difficult to obtain, not impossible to replace.
There are multiple ways to manufacture EVs and we choose the current way through a cost-based analysis. Change prices, and th
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Even if the whole world moves to EVs the worlds isn't gonna run of critical materials, because "critical" means difficult to obtain, not impossible to replace.
Critical means that the supply of this material determines the whole production chain, because the supply of all other materials for the same production chain is better. How the supply of the material is limited is not relevant for the material to be critical, just that it is, which makes this material the kriterion, the means of judging.
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You were doing so well up until "tree huggers" , then I am afraid you got a bit orcish.
(A)ctual (I)diot tells me average us daily mileage is 31 miles per day, uk 20
Interestingly we both spend about an 1h in the car, we love putting up traffic lights and have lots of old medieval town layouts not designed around freeways.
Looking at driving profiles EV's make sense in the UK, maybe suburban america too. I still drive a very orcish diesel , things holding me back from an EV, inconvenience charging and range an
Re: electric cars are gay (Score:2)
I drive my BEV 500 miles one way to visit my family 3 to 4 times a year. Yes, not as convenient as a regular car or a hybrid but I can make it work.
It's nonsense to indicate the size of the US as a non factor for getting an EV unless it's a work vehicle and you are putting 30k miles per year on it.
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Shit, those chuckleheads with their giant diesel trucks in my town are crying that they can't even afford to drive 10 miles into civilization to visit their children.
Nobody tells them how relieved everybody else is regarding this situation.
The climatalogical implications are also generally avoided. There's just no "there" there, to put it in Boomer terms.
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Mostly hybrids (28%), but also diesel (4%).
Re:electric cars are gay (Score:5, Informative)
The average cost of electricity in the UK is 26p/kwh.
A typical EV can go 6 km per kWh, so that's 4.3p/km.
The average cost of a liter of petrol ("gasoline") is 170p.
The average car in the UK can go 13 km on a liter. 170/13 = 13p/km.
So driving a petrol car costs three times as much as driving an EV.
An EV owner can sign up for cheaper nighttime rates at half the daytime rate, which would make driving a petrol car six times as expensive as driving an EV.
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Unlike petrol, you can make electricity yourself. Once the equipment is paid for, it's free.
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Jokes aside, I do appreciate an EV can be cheaper to run day to day but that's only part of the picture.
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Domestic wind turbines are a waste of time. Solar isn't that expensive now. Basic system with 1200W panels for a few hundred Euro, battery does double it if you can't charge directly off it.
There is a good argument that it is cheaper to subsidize domestic solar than to continue using more gas for electricity generation, as we do in the UK.
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Not everyone can charge at home and public charging rates can be over £1/kWh.
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Not everyone can charge at home and public charging rates can be over £1/kWh.
Then walk - When people being up "I can't charge, I live in an apartment" as some sort of reason to not make EV's, I have to chuckle. I don't have space to put in a Dump truck, that doesn't mean they shouldn't exist.
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I know you jest....as that "walking" for most folks isnt' a viable option at all.
I think the main thing is....while there are significant number of folks that can NOT charge at home for various reasons, people should not be penalized for sticking with ICE vehicles which still server them quit
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Re:electric cars are gay (Score:5, Interesting)
That average price of electricity only applies for those recharging at home. Electricity rates will be higher at EV chargers.
Its actually not that much higher. Go look it up yourself there's plenty of apps that show you the current price for any charger. The GP mentioned 26p/kWh, I'm looking at one outside the office here and it's currently listed at 35p/kWh with a 50p flag fall charge. That is a rounding error difference from what the GP claimed.
You are however correct, recharging at home is different. For example my colleague sitting next to me charges his EV6 at home. Octupus energy offer a EV charging contract that gives him an energy rate of 8p/kWh. Yes 8, less than 1/3rd of the GP's example. All that is needed is for him to set his intelligent charger to only charge between 11pm and 5 am, something he has been able to get away with for the entire year now without ever using a different charger. I guess one day he'll take a road trip somewhere and have to pay closer to 90p/kWh for that one brief trip, but again over the year that becomes a rounding error.
As soon as I claim a PHEV offers the best of both worlds there will be someone that claims a PHEV can only offer the worst of both. If that's what they believe then they have an outdated idea on how a PHEV works.
Nothing says "I am arguing dishonestly" more than dismissing someone's argument before you have even heard them. On behalf of everyone intelligent here, fuck you, we expect better discourse.
But at least you did mention *one* of the problems. Just one of them. I'd debate the rest with you, but you're clearly not interested.
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I'll just throw in some extra Octopus details...
Firstly, they've limited car charging via a smart charger to 6 hours per every 24. We now can't fully charge our car from near zero to near 100% in a single night. Not a problem for us, as we charge our car about once a fortnight, but it could be a problem for the road warriors.
On the plus side though, Octopus-enabled smart chargers will soak up any excess energy in the grid, so ours will frequently run for half an hour, or an hour during the day. When this ha
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"On behalf of everyone intelligent here, fuck you, we expect better discourse." /. still has the occasional gold nugget.
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"That average price of electricity only applies for those recharging at home. Electricity rates will be higher at EV chargers."
So that drives EV interest towards people who can charge in desirable ways, as we already know. You aren't saying anything, you are just spreading FUD.
"A PHEV allows for cheap recharging at home for daily commutes while allowing for a quick refill of gasoline for the less common long trips."
Only applies for those recharging at home! Guess it's not a disadvantage now.
"The problem w
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One important factor is the battery lifetime Most EV batteries last 10 to 20 years It's fairly common for people to buy second hand cars and not brand new ones, so how much of that battery will be useable by the time it's sold second hand or even third hand? How much will it cost to get the battery replaced? a quick google suggests in the thousands.
For someone buying a new car it's fine, but for the rest of us that easily prices this sort of thing out of our range for anything realistic
Wow - the same argument from the days of the Prius! Which was so debunked that I thought it went away. Prius batteries had to be warrantied 100 thousand miles, 150,000 miles in California. And almost none ever needed replaced, outside accidents.
Here's the problem. What is the cost of replacing a EV engine? 20 years ago I had to replace one - 5 grand for a used engine.
Or maintenance. EV's require no where near as much. Anyhow, you buy what you want. Drive what you want. Roll coal if you want. But the
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How much does it cost to get an engine replaced? A transmission replaced? How much of those "will be usable by the time it's sold second hand or even third hand".
More FUD, particularly crappy in this instance.
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Britain also has some of the most expensive electricity in the world, so they're screwed either way.
No problem, just put some solar panels on the roof. Oh wait ... sun.
I've read that a large percentage of new cars sold in the UK are funded by the government under some kind of 'disability' scheme and the government may be pushing those people to buy EVs . Of course it's the Internet so I don't know whether that's really true.
If only there was a way to check these "facts". Scheme is real - In 2024, the scheme accounted for around 1 in 5 new cars purchased in the UK. But it has nothing to do with EVs.
and customers of the scheme are eligible for a new car every three years [wikipedia.org]
Owing a new car in the UK is like living in central London - you must be either rich or on welfare.
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Oh wait, second hand EV prices have gone Up as people try to avoid paying high petrol prices https://www.electrifying.com/b... [electrifying.com]
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It's a pity that none of those EVs will be slightly less shiny after 4-5 years and get sold to someone else.
Why are you talking like that? Is it supposed to sound clever saying something obviously wrong, but also irrelevant? Any point you might have had in your head failed to make it out. Sarcasm is not a mask for stupid.
The fact is that it is a leasing scheme, and the tax and benefits structure incentivises high turnover, replacing them every 3 years.
They pay no VAT etc, but sell them competing with other used cars that did pay VAT, thus depressing used car prices and public tax revenue.
There is
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Any point you might have had in your head failed to make it out.
Nobody as stupid as yourself should even go there.
Something about "people who buy used" "buy new?" STFU, adults are trying to talk.
Re:electric cars are gay (Score:5, Informative)
You're thinking of Motability, about which there is a lot of right wing harrumphing. There are no more than 815,000 Motability cars on the road, and there's about 40m cars in the UK fleet, and 2m new cars bought each year. Motability used some of its financial surplus to set up a one-time support scheme to incentivise customers to choose EVs. That's now all been given out. But largely the right wing press was excited about the opportunity to be cunty to disabled people, cunty to welfare recipients, and cunty about EVs all at the same time.
On Chinese cars, you are spot on. We have a Mercedes EQA on finance, and it's going back soon. So we're looking for a replacement with another SUV EV. I want the smallest thing I can get that has a nice interior. The EQA is being replaced by an electric GLA, starting at about £55k for the trim we are interested in. It's pretty nice but the tan leather seats are just plopped into an otherwise black interior, and they're heated but not ventilated or massaging. We're also looking at the Genesis GV60, which works out about £75k for the trim we're interested in. That interior is gorgeous and there aren't any compromises. But it's very pricey. Or there's the Geely EX5, which has a better interior than the GLA but not as nice as the GV60, and not only has the heated, ventilated and massaging seats but an ottoman for the front passenger. And it's £35k. And that's more than double the price it goes for in China, $16k(!). There's an upgraded version in a few months, but we're not going to wait. (We will buy via a salary sacrifice, so our figures are completely different, but the relative levels are the same).
Just as importantly: the GLA was launched a few months ago, but there's still not even a demo in UK showrooms, and it'll be 20 weeks to get one. The GV60 has been out for years, but the showroom doesn't even have the right colour samples, and the lead time can be up to six months. Meanwhile the EX5 is available in 9 weeks if you do a build to order, but that's only needed for a couple of colours, the others are in stock in all variants right now.
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Britain also has some of the most expensive electricity in the world, so they're screwed either way.
No they really aren't. EVs make financial sense in the UK even if you use public chargers. But if you have an actual house you're paying only a couple of pence to charge your EV overnight. Again there's a reason the data shows what it shows. It's a financially sound option to pick an EV in the UK, despite cost of electricity.
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Ahh I see. Good ol' benzene. My favorite of the unsubstituted, six-membered, fully conjugated, carbocyclic, aromatic compounds. Being a great solvent it works well as a window cleaner too.
Re: over 40 million ICE on the UK roads (Score:4, Funny)
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Norway has a relatively tiny population.
If we were to see many more nations try to copy what Norway has done, or just one large nation like the USA, then that will mean so much demand for BEVs that costs will rise to bring that demand back down to match supply.
The biggest market of Earth is China, and China is also moving towards electrification.
That's just the classic excuse. No, there isn't materials stoppers. There are certain concerns about some materials so it's smart to invest before a bottleneck appears in more mining, lowering consumption and full replacements. Which is happening, by the way.
An EV can be manufactured with different methods turning into different material requirements. There are no physic rules that implies an EV uses X material now and fo
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They pay their employees $4-5 an hour. Is that the proper wage you want for workers outside China?
Re: over 40 million ICE on the UK roads (Score:2)
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- Norway (pop. 5.6 million) 98.6% of new sales
- Denmark: (pop. 6 million) > 82% of new sales
- Sweden: (pop 10.6 million) 51% of new sales
- Finland: (pop 5.6 million) 51% of new sales
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And that's just cars. Some countries don't buy diesel busses anymore (Denmark, The Netherlands, Luxembourg), all new busses are electric there. Long distance trucking is getting electrified already. Nanno Janssen, a truck operator in Northern Germany, runs 70 electric trucks already (and no, not Tes
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"If we were to see many more nations try to copy what Norway has done, or just one large nation like the USA, then that will mean so much demand for BEVs that costs will rise to bring that demand back down to match supply."
Could very well happen, so what? Your only interest in posting that is FUD. You don't have a point, you just need to argue for your team.
"Given current production of minerals critical to BEV production, and the time we'd need to open new mines and refining, it would be nearly impossible
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You need a couple more numbers to work out how quickly the transition will happen, but it's three decades max, not more, before *all* cars are electric, and will take much less time than that to get to 50%. The UK buys about 2m new cars a year. Your vehicles figure is too broad, we are talking about cars only here, of which are there are 34.5m. About 2m of those are EVs. So, 32.5m/(2m*2) means a minimum 8 year transition for the remaining fleet to go 50% electric, but of course, we are nowhere near 100% of
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I'd imagine that in half that time there'll be a change to the emissions laws that mean that a whole load of older ICE cars won't be legal or will be so expensive to drive that they'll be replaced pretty quickly. That'll accelerate the switch to BEV. This sort of thing is already happening - lots of cities are introducing emissions-based pricing, so it's only a matter of time before it goes national.
Say nothing about the price of diesel right now - you'd be mad to buy a new diesel car at the moment, especia
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One thing that can change the dynamic is if new cars become so cheap we treat them like disposable appliances.
That's already true, really. Most autos are woefully undermaintained. They're not generally designed to be affordable to fix.
But would disposable cars be a good development for the environment?
No, there are portions of the vehicle which aren't recycled, most of what's not recyled is plastic, the faster you churn the more waste there is. And recycling isn't free either.
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The key technology is the battery, and technical developments are underway that could very well be released soon. Some of that research is by Toyota, Volkswagen and BMW.
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"where even the Japanese can't compete"
Well, that's not really because they can't, it's because of an absent EV market in Japan. It's currently at 3% of new sales, i.e. almost non-existing. It's way easier to get to see an imported Mini Cooper than an electric vehicle. Japan, for various reasons (including extreme promotion by Toyota) is still much more focused on hybrids.
There are a few EVs now on the market, the exception here is really the Nissan Leaf which has been sold for years. Japan will introduce
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Japan, for various reasons (including extreme promotion by Toyota) is still much more focused on hybrids.
They don't have the power for EVs. They already have shortages and these have been exacerbated by Trump's child rape distraction war [worldpoliticsreview.com]. They'd have to do grid upgrades and build more plants and dump the imported fuels into them, and this would cost a lot and increase pollution. They haven't gone all in on EVs because they won't work at home. This has been a big mistake though, as they are ceding the international market to China.
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It's not really surprising, considering how rare it is for Japanese people to drive. They have the best public transit on the planet, and high urban density.
Even a cartoon like "Solo Camping for Two," about fucking camping in the wilderness has the characters taking the bus into the mountains. Because what place wouldn't have public transit?! No place in Japan, anyway.
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Capitalism is a bitch.
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Sounds like great news.
Funny how progress gets consistently spun as a negative. Yes, roads need to be maintained, we should all celebrate when ICE vehicles disappear even if that means changes to tax policy.