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Carmageddon: the Electric Car Fiasco

by Toby Young
8 May 2023 9:00 AM

If the Conservatives are hoping to get re-elected next year they may have to rethink their policy of banning the sale of new petrol- or diesel-powered cars by 2030. Electric cars are proving to be an unmitigated disaster. Indeed, scarcely a day passes without a story appearing in the Telegraph about just how terrible they are – and not just if you want to get from A to B.

For instance, we learnt last week that some electric cars are losing their value twice as quickly as petrol alternatives.

Drivers have been pushed towards electric cars by a string of government initiatives, which are intended to help the country become “net zero” by 2050. However, drivers going green risk losing thousands of pounds more than those who stick with petrol.

Some popular electric models have fallen in price at twice the rate of petrol cars. A driver who bought an electric BMW i3 in 2020 would have paid £39,000 and could sell the car for £13,900 today, a depreciation of 64%.

However, the petrol equivalent has maintained much more of its original value. A new petrol-powered BMW 3 series cost £32,000 on average three years ago but would sell for £22,360 now – a drop of just 30%.

Yesterday brought more bad news.

First, we discovered that thousands of free electric car chargers have been pulled from Britain’s roads over the past year as soaring energy costs makes them unaffordable.

The number of chargers offering free electricity has fallen from 5,715 a year ago to 3,568, a drop of almost 40%.

They now make up less than one in 10 public chargers on Britain’s roads, compared to one in five a year ago.

The drop in free top-up charging spots is the latest blow to the Government’s ambitions to attract motorists to electric cars by making it cheap and convenient to charge them away from home.

Then we learnt that because electric cars can weigh 33% more than wet cars, much of our basic transport infrastructure – such as multi-story car parks and bridges – may well collapse under their additional weight.

Last month, car park experts raised concerns about the ability of some ageing car parks ability to handle the weight as the number of electric vehicles grew.

Russell Simmons, chair of the British Parking Association’s structures group, told The Telegraph that he had carried out inspections of multi-storey car parks in the UK over the last six months which would not have been able to withstand new EV weights.

Electric vehicles are generally heavier than petrol counterparts because of the weight of their batteries, which can weigh around 500kg.

Earlier this year, Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, found that the best-selling EVs in the U.S. were on average 33% heavier than petrol counterparts.

To summarise, electric car owners have discovered in the past week alone that their cars may lose their value twice as quickly as non-electric vehicles, that free charging points are rapidly disappearing from our roads and if they park their Tesla in a multi-story carpark it might well collapse. Who knew virtue-signalling would prove to be so costly?

You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.

Tags: DepreciationElectric VehiclesNet Zero

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55 Comments
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DickieA
DickieA
2 years ago

The risk of fire is another consideration – particularly in confined spaces such as car parks and ferries. I did read recently that residential blocks in the U.S were banning electric vehicles from the resident parking areas in the basement & ground floors.
Autocar wrote about the fire risks here: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/electric-cars/how-much-fire-risk-are-electric-vehicles

130
0
psychedelia smith
psychedelia smith
2 years ago
Reply to  DickieA

Well doesn’t the manufactures advice tell the owner not to park it in their garage? I’m sure I read that somewhere..

39
0
George L
George L
2 years ago
Reply to  DickieA

I use car ferries a lot.. and yes it does concern me that the EV virtue signaller’s are aboard with their mobile fire bombs..

47
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Roy Everett
Roy Everett
2 years ago
Reply to  George L

That reminded me of the Felicity Ace, which is now at the bottom of the Atlantic along with the remains of half a billion dollars worth of luxury cars. Theh fire burnt for over a week. https://marineindustrynews.co.uk/ship-carrying-4000-luxury-cars-sinks-in-atlantic-after-fire/

28
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George L
George L
2 years ago
Reply to  Roy Everett

Fire at sea.. it doesn’t bear thinking about..

Last edited 2 years ago by Hardliner
16
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Roy Everett
Roy Everett
2 years ago
Reply to  DickieA

That reminded me of the 2017/18 Liverpool car-park inferno. All the cars and the car-park were destroyed. They would have been mostly petrol or diesel, so with lithium it might have been even prettier shade of red. Oddly, the Mayor of Liverpool was vague about the car that started the blaze, saying merely that it had been “converted to a different fuel arrangement“. https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/mayor-joe-reveals-what-caused-14199555

37
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George L
George L
2 years ago
Reply to  Roy Everett

What’s the betting it was electric..

25
-1
Kornea112
Kornea112
2 years ago
Reply to  DickieA

Lithium battery fires are impossible to extinguish. They must burn themselves out and anything around them. Lithium fires burn extremely hot. If a Lithium battery short circuits, it will explode and burn. Concentrating Lithium batteries in large numbers increases the danger and risk exponentially. Large grid type power storage centre’s are a bomb and disaster waiting to happen. Manufacturing and installations of Lithium batteries requires a very high level of QA and expertise in order to avoid failures. Remember the Samsung phone batteries exploding and burning traced to a manufacturing problem. As more companies get involved in manufacturing and distribution of Lithium batteries, expect more problems.

Last edited 2 years ago by Hardliner
17
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transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 years ago

“If the Conservatives are hoping to get re-elected next year….” Oddly for politicians, who usually love power and will stop at nothing to hold on to it, this lot seem relatively uninterested in winning elections, otherwise they would be implementing policies that are largely supported by their voter base. They either truly believe in this Net Zero madness or they are following orders from above.

243
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NeilofWatford
NeilofWatford
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

The Unaparty doesn’t care. They can achieve their aims with any of their front men. Real power now lies with civil service, quangoes, ECHR and the various agencies.

Last edited 2 years ago by Hardliner
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transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 years ago
Reply to  NeilofWatford

Yes that’s my impression, beyond perhaps a few actually conservative backbenchers and activists

78
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TheBasicMind
TheBasicMind
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

Followers of woke social justice, environmental and woke ideology are incredibly resistant to actual facts and evidence precisely because it is ideology. Witness companies like Disney were to the whole world, bar the woke, it is absolutely clear why their more recent movies crash and burn money. But they are incapable of seeing it, accounting for the failures every-which-way except the blindingly obvious. It’s the same with the mRNA vaccines.

Elon Musk’s phrase “woke mind virus” is wholly apt.

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RW
RW
2 years ago
Reply to  TheBasicMind

The theory behind that is the Marxist We are the future! chestnut. Disney doesn’t need to create movies an audience of today – basket of deplorables they are! – wants to see. Ten years from now, everybody who isn’t woke will have died and then, Disney will again rule supreme! In the meantime, the company has enough money to burn to further its gay agenda (quote).

35
0
jsampson45
jsampson45
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

I expect they believe it. They have ways of getting enough people to believe it, too.

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transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 years ago
Reply to  jsampson45

Yes, I expect you are right at least in some cases. I’d rather deal with a politician whose main aim is to secure himself a luxury villa in the south of France with money from bribes that a politician who believes he is saving the world and wants to rob me blind and ruin my life in the process of “saving” me.

51
0
JXB
JXB
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

I have heard this strange paradox explained as a psychological problem not an intellectual one. They know the truth but their minds won’t let them accept the truth. A bit like moths and electric light bulbs. No matter how much they get burnt, they keep flying at the bulb until they drop.

24
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varmint
varmint
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

The latter is the reason. —–All UK politicians of major party’s pander to the UN and it’s phony planet saving Sustainable Development Agenda —-Net Zero, which was the amendment to the Climate Change Act of 2008 was simply waved through parliament with no questions asked. No politician knows how this can possibly be achieved or how many trillions it will cost. So they are either all utterly as thick as two short planks or they are just following the group think from above for fear of being ousted as a “climate denier”. Well I believe some are as thick as two planks but surely not all of them, so your latter explanation is clearly the correct one. —-They pander to the UN rather than to the people who vote for them.

22
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NeilofWatford
NeilofWatford
2 years ago

Just like windmills that dont generate the energy they used to manufacture them over their lifetime.
Just like the heat pumps that cost thousands, don’t produce heat and break down.
Just like solar that works only when the sun shines.
Just like the energy levies than channel our money to the establishment.

177
0
TheBasicMind
TheBasicMind
2 years ago
Reply to  NeilofWatford

Even something as simple as plastic bag policy is a disaster showing the utter spinelessness and wilful deceit of our politicians. Since charging for plastic bags has been introduced by government policy they keep telling us how the number of bags used has been reduced and fail to mention the volume of bag plastic getting dumped has increased (accounted for because the bags are now heavier). But even with stark clear data showing their interfering has failed and had the complete opposite effect to what was intended, will they do anything about it? Never. Just double down on the lie and let consumers pay more for their shopping while plastic pollution is increased.

Last edited 2 years ago by TheBasicMind
86
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huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago
Reply to  TheBasicMind

The plastic bag policy was just another little arrow in the climate change quiver. Government knew damn well it would make zero difference to plastic consumption but it does help to raise the fret (as in ‘fretting’) level a touch in terms of the demon “climate change.”

We know it’s nonsense, government know its nonsense but the sheeple believe plastic is killing the planet.

Yawn.

56
-2
George L
George L
2 years ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Yawn and Yes.. 😉

13
-1
RW
RW
2 years ago
Reply to  TheBasicMind

The idea behind the plastic bag policy was simply that supermarkets must no longer evenly distribute the cost of free (if you believe in supermarket giveways, someone will also have a bridge to sell to you) plastic bags among all of their customers by including it in the prices of other goods they sell but instead, charge those customers who want them directly for it. I don’t need throwaway bags for my shopping. Why I should I have pay for yours?

Besides, supermarkets obviously haven’t complied with that. Eg, the Sainsburys Bag for life scheme. Customers once pay a nominal price for their first plastic bag and are then entitled to free replacements for it for life, ie, the cost is still included in the general pricing and paid for by all customers.

27
-2
George L
George L
2 years ago
Reply to  NeilofWatford

All well planned in advance to strictly adhere to the deficits you have noted. Its so obvious even a dullard like me notices.. 😉

12
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NeilParkin
NeilParkin
2 years ago

I’m afraid that I’m not laughing Toby. The government has thrown its weight and a vast sum of money behind this God awful, dogs dinner of a policy, with the critical thought of a four year old applied to it. I confess it isn’t out of place in the thinking that says, ‘we will achieve some pointless objective within a fixed time period, by utilising technology that hasn’t yet been invented, or is unsustainable as a mass-market product, and here’s the list of fines if you can’t comply’.

Like the useless ban on gas central heating boilers, it continues to cause frustration, anxiety and cost seriously large sums of money that could be used for other more productive purposes. This is real harm to the citizens and the economy of our country to no end whatsoever. Better still, would be not to print or borrow the money in the first place, and to staff our Government committees with people who are capable of critical and joined up thinking.

171
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago
Reply to  NeilParkin

“This is real harm to the citizens and the economy of our country to no end whatsoever.”

The question to ask then is ‘why are they doing this?’

Your comment is full of common logic and if government are not working to common logic then surely the question is “why not?”

81
-1
George L
George L
2 years ago
Reply to  NeilParkin

Harm to citizens is exactly the aim..

30
0
Sepulchrave
Sepulchrave
2 years ago

BMW X5 3.0d 2180kg
Tesla Model Y AWD 2003kg

4
-34
Tyrbiter
Tyrbiter
2 years ago
Reply to  Sepulchrave

Are those equivalent vehicles? I don’t know if the Model Y is a huge SUV in the mould of the X5

20
0
Mike K
Mike K
2 years ago
Reply to  Sepulchrave

Mini one 1140kg
Mini Electric 1440kg (+26%)

40
0
LaptopMaestro
LaptopMaestro
2 years ago

Unilateral Economic Disarmament.

38
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago

https://www.tiktok.com/@anti_narrative/video/7230071466681781530?_r=1&_t=8c7oTsKVP3r&social_sharing=v1

Four minutes of proper science I urge DS members to watch this.

20
0
john1T
john1T
2 years ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

1.5 degree warmer during the medieval warm period, that’s the same as net zero is supposed to prevent. So even if the environmentalists are correct about CO2 (and they’re not) what is the fuss about. The Earth has been that warm before relatively recently.

39
0
George L
George L
2 years ago
Reply to  john1T

Are we talking the ‘medieval warm period’ the one that’s been virtually rubbed out by the eco fascists.

I can’t remember his name offhand, he was the one who ‘invented’ the infamous hockey stick graph. He was caught out in the Climate Gate emails, and lost a court case against Tim Ball. Ball had asked him to supply the data to back up his supposed findings. Of course, he couldn’t and refused, Tim Ball won the case..

40
0
john1T
john1T
2 years ago
Reply to  George L

“We have to get rid of the medieval warm period”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6sX31KEyucI

16
0
George L
George L
2 years ago
Reply to  john1T

Yes.. it rather spoils their pretty graphs doesn’t it.. 😉

12
0
7941MHKB
7941MHKB
2 years ago
Reply to  George L

Michael Mann

8
0
George L
George L
2 years ago
Reply to  7941MHKB

That’s him.. thank you.. memory is not what it was.. 🙂

4
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago
Reply to  john1T

Exactly.

10
0
TheGreenAcres
TheGreenAcres
2 years ago

I imagine quite a lot of companies are going to be offering salary sacrifice leasing deals on EV’s. That’s what my employer (£120m p.a turnover) are doing. It helps their ESG rating.

23
0
SimonfromAshby
SimonfromAshby
2 years ago

And more expensive to insure, because even the slightest shunt can cause damage to the battery, requiring it to be replaced.

35
0
FerdIII
FerdIII
2 years ago
Reply to  SimonfromAshby

And how much is a new battery £10.000? Does the average Joe have that on an average salary of £40-50.000 pa?

Isn’t a new battery required every 6 or so years and aren’t the old ones just tossed into a dump where the chemicals can seep into our dear loving caring tender Earth mommy?

16
0
john1T
john1T
2 years ago

US army going to go for all EVs. I can’t wait to see how effective their electric tanks will be. This just gets sillier by the day.

48
0
George L
George L
2 years ago
Reply to  john1T

New rules being set for war.. give us 24 hours to recharge our tanks and then let battle recommence..

37
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago
Reply to  George L

😀😀😃

15
0
Steve-Devon
Steve-Devon
2 years ago

Electric cars do seem to be the front runner of net-zero issues and consequently this is hugely important. TPTB have bet the farm, their power and reputation, their wealth and influence on the net-zero scam if they are seen to back down at all then all sorts of stuff starts to unravel and all sorts of vested interests get hugely upset and lose out.

I have no idea how this will all play out? But there is so much riding on this net-zero scam that they are not going to readily back down in any way even if this whole EV business is patently farcical.

60
0
JXB
JXB
2 years ago

The weight issue also has implications for road surface wear and tyre and brake wear.

But the real problem which nobody in the Net Zero clown circus wants to address is that the infrastructure to carry and distribute the increased electric load is neither there nor planned. Then of course increased generating output needed.

And electrification also includes lorries – that doesn’t get a mention. Batteries for an artic will weigh around 8 000lbs or 3.6 Tonnes. That will displace the amount of cargo the unit can carry. That will mean more lorries on the roads. Since it will take about 10 hours to charge a truck battery, even more trucks will be needed since many will be idle waiting to charge. Our already congested roads will be filled with trucks.

Imagine a company with say 20 trucks and chargers at their depot. What will the power requirement be and will the local electricity network be able to handle the load? Then multiply that by all the truck and bus depots plus of course roadside charging.

Just where will the power come from and how?

Last edited 2 years ago by JXB
60
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago
Reply to  JXB

I wonder if some sort of massive reduction in population numbers would resolve your posited problem JXB?

24
0
George L
George L
2 years ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Oh I think so Huxley.. I most certainly think so..

14
0
George L
George L
2 years ago
Reply to  JXB

JXB.. its a distraction. The real deal is getting rid of both our cars and us. When the smoke clears we are the carbon they want gone, and collapsing our economies by the use of ridiculous tools like Net Zero is how they are going about it.. planned for decades..

the-great-reset-agenda.JPG
23
0
DrDan
DrDan
2 years ago
Reply to  JXB

Also the tax on petrol/diesel pays for roads (or does in Australia anyway). Electric cars wear out roads more, but do not contribute to their maintenance. Also we make roads from the by products of fossil fuel processing. What will the roads of the future be made of? Fairy bread perhaps….

26
0
George L
George L
2 years ago
Reply to  DrDan

Good post..

4
0
Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
2 years ago

Electric Cars – economic car crash
************************************
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane 

Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field 
near play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE

17
-1
Arum
Arum
2 years ago

I don’t have an electric car, or any wish to get one, but ‘a series of negative articles in the Telegraph’ isn’t really a great measure of their effectiveness or otherwise. The DT website has become the home of clickbait and listicles.

8
-1
varmint
varmint
2 years ago

Think to yourself for a minute. —–Why does the government want me in an electric car? Why do they want rid of my gas central heating? Why do they want to cover the country and offshore areas in huge industrial turbines? Why do they try and force a smart meter down my throat? etc etc etc.—–It is all part on the one political agenda.—Sustainable Development. Then say to yourself—–What is Sustainable development? Do I really know? ——If you don’t know, then can I suggest you find out pretty soon before you end up with a heat pump that won’t heat your hot water or your house when it’s cold, and you’re getting charged through the roof for your electricity because the smart meter knows what time of day you’re using that electricity and wind cannot provide base load so they have to discourage you from using it at peak times. Or as a former head of the National Grid (Steve Holliday) said a few years ago —“We are going to have to get used to using electricity as and when it is available”. How is that for progress? You can have electricity in the 21st century if it happens to be available?——-Wake up people.

21
0
George L
George L
2 years ago
Reply to  varmint

Great post varmint..

Altogether now >>> AGENDA 21 now AGENDA 2030

8
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