Levelling up secretary calls for scrutiny of green policy but says ban on sale of new petrol and diesel cars is ‘immovable’
I actually thought he had done some reading to come back with this one, silly me. The only reason he is pushing this is because they narrowly won the Uxbridge by-election on the ULEZ campaign. This is not going to work in a general election, but whatever it is the Tories throwing grenades to hide from their other failings.
Just as a point of interest the ULEZ was introduced by Johnson when he was Mayor of London, and the main reason Khan pushed it through was because he would have been refused a grant without a promise of implementing it from government. The was the Tories being arseholes because it is Labour ran.
Aside from this I actually agree with the ULEZ as it takes a lot of the crap off the road. It would only affect a very few people. How often do you see a white van doing more than the speed limit with a cloud of black crap coming out of the back of it. There are quite a few where I live.
The restrictions are: Diesels registered after 2015. These are shockingly bad for kids with asthma. Petrol models that are registered after 2005. There will not be many of these on the road. Buses and larger vehicles have tighter restrictions.
People who drive diesels around town thinking they are saving money are the worst. All cars after 2015 come with a DPF which filters the soot from the combustion. Making short journeys in a diesel will drastically reduce the life of the DPF. Google price says £1000-£3000 just for the part. You should be using a preventative treatment at the least annually, it will save you money in the long run. Diesel cars without a DPF filter are a health hazard to kids. The Netherlands is looking for a total ban on any diesel with a DPF from 2025 onwards. I would love to see that here.
As for the heat pumps, my opinion is that money could be spent more effectively elsewhere. They work, but the return can be marginal, and the cost is £7,000-£13,000. Solar panels give a much better return per pound than the cost of installing a heat pump in the UK. More so the further north you go. Scandinavian countries use heat pumps a lot. They manage because they build their housing much better standard than we do through experience with the cold weather. In the winter when the pumps are the least efficient you have to switch to an emersion style water heater. Scandinavian countries have a much lower cost for electricity than the UK. This means we would incur a higher cost to run these than they do which again makes it less sense economically.
The only point I’d make on heat pumps is that they are a good way of heating a home using electricity. Without using heat pumps, even with solar panels most people will still have to use some form of boiler to heat their homes/water and I think heat pumps are a good step forward for us to actually move toward energy efficient heating specifically.
You’re right though that in the short term we can probably get better value from solar panels or investing more in wind
I worry how the Conservative Party will interpret the narrow victory.
Will it be seen as “if we embrace ulez, more people will come across”?
Or (sadly, more likely), “people vote for us because they don’t care about ulez, or have decided it’s their thing to hate. Demonise it.”
It’s pretty grim being on the pavement when a clapped out old vehicle guns it from the lights in a cloud of smoke.
The Tories have gone 100% on the side of populism. They seem to lack any judgement or morality about any subject matter that seems to throw up. This is not a normal Tory party. This is a group of idiots without any real direction to retain power. There will be a reckoning after the next election. It has to lead to an exodus from one of the factions within the party. What they have now is very unsustainable. Usually you would see an easement from government when they know an election is imminent. And yet this government is still fighting within itself to decide on which direction to run. I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime. Unless something really drastic comes along that threat of a Tory party with double digit number of MPs may become a reality.
DPFs can be flushed and cleaned instead of replacing
Very much depends on how far you let them go. People tend not to do stuff until they have to.
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There’s a difference between wanting an EV and affording one. Most people won’t mind an EV but they are not £5k. What you’ll find is the 2nd hand EV market will also be mature, plus they last hundreds of thousands of miles more than a petrol car ever will. In 2030 they will be cheaper 1st and 2nd hand, so you can pay more for an old petrol if you like. My bet is, the cost will win out and people will just buy an EV.
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This isn’t the case. However I don’t want to get into a row about it except to say it’s nearly impossible to argue against the myths people make up in their own mind. Peace brother
Every other device I use with a rechargeable battery suffers hugely with degredation. Can you explain why an EV battery would be an exception (cause I would love it to be!).
Surely if its a very common myth that you know to be wrong you should be trying to correct that.
Fair question. EV batteries do suffer degradation, it’s to do with the nature of lithium. When it allows electrons to pass through a vein is formed in the substance, it looks like marble and over time these veins become larger and the overall capacity of the lithium is lower. This happens in all lithium. In an EV you need a higher grade, more expensive substance because what driving requires is instant power to the drive train for longer so it’s not like a laptop battery which is lower grade. There have been teslas doing over 1 million miles and suffering lower degradation, and current models of EV other brands are seeing a few percent per year in a heavy mileage year. In practice this translates to a minute extra charging. It will take decades to get into a situation where you can’t go anywhere but you’ll most likley have changed vehicle by that stage, if the average ownership is 5 years.
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But that is the fuel, not the motor. The motor has almost no moving parts, a petrol motor has lots more and is generally a complex and over engineered solution to move a drive train by comparison. What you are saying is that petrol doesn’t go off, it does and that it’s a preferable fuel - it just isn’t by any measure. Repair and maintenance of electric motors is far easier and cheaper, and motors last a lot longer.
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Apologies, but when you said ‘batteries won’t last as long as an engine’ I was answering you. You’ve conflated the two possibly by accident.
I totally disagree with everything else you say. All the best
If they last longer then surely there won’t be much of a used market for electric cars in 2030?
at the moment you can get a decent EV for under £10k. The people buying new and selling on used will still exist, they havnt vanished. ill tell you what will be expensive: Petrol. As demand drops there will be less petrol stations and they wont be able to justify the ludicrous subsidies.
Which models should I be looking at for this kind of price?
Earlier models like the Zoe, the e-golf, there’s a few. The tech has moved on a lot even in the last two years, so you’ll be getting city car runabouts rather than a giant volvo diesel equivalent. If you do under 10k miles a year those will be totally fine
Yeah but what I’d really need it for is my day job, which takes me to random addresses sometimes I’m gonna do 2/3 in a day which can be far apart. I was looking at the older electric berlingos but they’re still pricy and the range doesn’t cut it unless you go for the latest ones and then it’s far out of my price range. That’s why I’m currently driving a 2003 Kangoo for that and we have a hybrid Lexus ct200h as the family car/my wife.
You really think people will stop trading in their cars after 3 years to get the latest model ? I sincerely doubt it. Rolling over the lease is built into the finance model (it’s not financially smart but that’s a different discussion).
No I don’t doubt that at all. I just don’t think we’re going to have used car forecourts packed solid with EV’s in 7 years time, let alone them also being affordable to the masses.
EV Percentage of total vehicles sales has been rising each year for the past 10 years. Exact number varies country to country but for most western countries it is now between 10 and 20% of sales per annum (obviously 100% in Norway).
Vehicle fleet turns over about every 15 years in Western nations (give or take depending on country) i.e around 90-95% of cars are less than 15 years old (there will always be very old collectors cars, but that’s an entirely different ball game).
So in 7 years time unless EV sales suddenly plummet, at the very least 20% of used cars sales will be EVs. However EV cars are tracking perfectly to S curve of new technology take up (very small number to start then it explodes). So there is every reason to suspect that today’s 20% of sales will be significantly higher. In fact it is expected that they will be the vast majority of new sales in most western countries, particularly those like the UK who are banning NEW ICE sales from 2030. Note that’s not banning the sale of second hand ICE.
There will therefore be a reasonably large number of second hand EVs, an even larger number of hybrid PHEVs (as a lot of those have been sold over the past 5 years) and there will be an even larger number of very very low cost ICE vehicles as people exit the technology.
People will buy what makes sense for them.
I also am uncertain about the 2nd hand value of electric cars. Don’t know how much battery degradation kills their range…
There is a lot of FUD paid for by the oil industry on this subject.
BUT in EV circles, you see stories like:
https://insideevs.com/news/592845/tesla-model-s-passes-1-million-miles/
Generally the battery will out last the rest of the car. The warranty on the battery is normally 8y/100000 and it will absolutely last longer than that.
Batteries that out live their car are already a thing and getting a second life as static power storage. I know if some in homes, but I also know of plans to have them in big banks for grid level backup.
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It’s not that risky, the battery are designed to last in a way iPhone battery aren’t. iPhone batteries if anything are designed to not last!
At the cost saving, maybe the “risk” is worth it. My commute was costing me £16 a day in diesel, now it’s £8 of kWh and as of Friday, when I get the night rate, £2 a day. So yes, my monthly repayments are a bit more than they were on the diesel, but minus the fuel saving of electricity over diesel, it’s substantially less.
